Feral

by Berkeley, Anne

  “I was teaching Lucius to drive a few years back. I had a BMW then. He dumped the clutch and drove the car right through the last bay. ‘Slow,’ I warned him. ‘Let it out slowly.’ ‘I know what I’m doing Dickhead,’ he insisted. ‘Stop hounding me.’ Next thing I knew, half the front end of the car was through the back wall of the garage, with the door resting atop us. We were pinned to the seats with the airbags, noses filled with chemicals from the deployment. Lucius just looks over at me, all innocent-like, and says ‘Whoops’ as if he just spilled a glass of milk. The others heard the crash of course and they all came trucking outside. I wasn’t laughing at the time, but they sure got a kick out of it. Sounded like a pack of hyenas. Lucius never lived it down. The fourth bay has been his appointed parking space ever since.”

  I smiled weakly. It felt foreign and misplaced.

  Eyes deepening poignantly, Icarus reached and stroked my hair. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but it’ll be ok.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed, leaning away from his hand, “It doesn’t feel like it.” Opening the door, it gave a percussive little pop, and I climbed out, rising on my giraffe legs until I reach my full six-foot two inch height.

  Icarus unfolded himself on the other side and retrieved my bags from the trunk. I followed him from the garage and watched as he punched the code into the keypad. In a grating rumble, the bay door began to descend.

  Quietly, he led the way into the house and up the stairs, passing the room I had used the last time I stayed, and continued down the hall. At the very end of the hall, he opened a white door and flipped on the lights. There was another flight of stairs, an undressed bulb lighting the way. I wasn’t sure whether to think Rapunzel or Flowers in the Attic.

  “It’s a large space,” Icarus explained. He glanced up the stairs and back at me. “The light’s not much to look at, but we can have it replaced. The rest of the room’s not so bad.”

  I followed him up the stairs. Each of my steps sounded like a gunshot against the bare wood, even after my years of ballet lessons. I guess Crispin was telling the truth about plodding.

  Pulling me from my chagrin, we reached the top of the stairs. The room ran almost the entire length of the house with four large dormers evenly spaced across the front, one octagonal window on the western side, and another door to the east. My eyes drew up to the ceiling, which sported large, exposed beams, and drew down the warm, white walls to the raw, honey colored wood plank floors. A large, queen bed sat in the far corner, dressed with shabby linens and a multitude of pillows in all shapes and sizes. On the left side of the bed, stood a large bedside table, white with chipped paint and scuffed edges. A large chandelier lamp hung above the table with white crystals that shattered yellow light across the room.

  “Not so bad,” I agreed, using his words. “Did you just do all this? For me?” I hadn’t given much thought to where I would sleep, but I had to admit, I was pleasantly surprised.

  Glancing sideways at me, Icarus’s mouth quirked. “Someday you’ll stop being amazed that I can behave respectably.”

  “My reactions aren’t unfounded.”

  “Which I apologized for.”

  “By poisoning me!”

  “I apologized for that too.”

  Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply through my nose and counted from one to ten silently in my head. “I really don’t have the energy to do this right now. I’m tired, physically and mentally. And what are you staring at?”

  Most people looked you in the eye when conversing, but he was staring at my mouth. I couldn’t remember the last time I had brushed my teeth. I could barely leave the bathroom floor let alone groom myself. My breath was probably offensive. And with his heightened senses, he probably got a good whiff with every vowel I’d uttered. I was like the caterpillar smoking the hookah, blowing little green smoke rings toward his face. I probably curled, if not singed his nose hairs with the foulness of my verbal exhalations.

  Blinking, Icarus disregarded my accusation. “This is your home now, Thaleia. It’s only natural you should have your own personal space.” Placing my bags at the end of the bed, he pointed to the door on the east side of the room. “You have your own bathroom. You’ll find towels in the linen closet. Any toiletries you need we can pick up at the store when you feel up to it. There’s a small closet on the other side of the stairs, but as I said, it’s small, so I ordered you a dresser. A few other pieces as well. They should arrive tomorrow.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. I had stuff at home.”

  “Money’s not an issue, but if there’s anything that you want to keep for sentimental reasons, I can arrange to have it moved.”

  “Thank you.”

  With one last look, he nodded. “I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

  Curling up under the mountain of covers, I tried to exploit the last dregs of night, but between human trafficking and Marcus’s transformation to Bennie and my parents filling my thoughts, I found it difficult to sleep. Instead, I ended up chewing the inside of my cheek. When finally I gave up on the vain effort, I fished my phone from my bag and sent Benny a text.

  “U ok?” I said succinctly. I only had to wait a few seconds for a reply.

  “Get a grip,” he texted back. “Taking your room. It’s bigger.”

  I smiled, reassured.

  A second later,another text popped up. “R U?”

  “Get a grip,” I replied. “I have my own bathroom now.”

  Tossing my phone on the bed, I decided to investigate said room. It roughly matched the size of our bathroom at home, but where our bathtub was a built in with sliding glass doors, this one had a freestanding claw foot tub and a frilly shower curtain. Chipped and weathered, the vanity was a vintage find with a porcelain vessel sink and a brushed steel faucet. A silver guild framed mirror finished the ensemble, flanked on either side by a pair of rustic sconces.

  Obviously, Icarus meant it when he said money wasn’t an issue because there was no way he decorated the room himself. From the shabby bedspread to the frilly shower curtain, there were feminine touches everywhere. He must’ve had the help of a decorator or at least a personal shopper. Either way, I was flattered with his generosity and kindness.

  Honestly, I could almost forgive the muffin poisoning. Almost. At best, I could understand why he did it. He had committed the act in desperation. While I may have taken everything else he told me with a grain of salt, I hadn’t taken his concern about my safety seriously enough. If I had gone to school, Alec would surely have abducted me and God only knows where I would’ve ended up. I could imagine worse places than Icarus’s custody.

  Showering, I brushed and flossed, making myself respectable. I took the time to dry my hair and run an iron over it, then carefully apply a little mascara, eyeliner and lip gloss with the hope that I’d feel rejuvenated. Mind over matter, I told myself. It worked in the past.

  Downstairs, I found the house nearly empty. Max sat at the island eating a bowl of cereal, and Hailey was scowling balefully into hers. The others had just left, leaving a wake of dirty dishes behind. The counter was piled with bowls stacked six high and leaning like the Tower of Pisa. Boxes of cereal littered the counter, tops left open for the cereal to stale. Puddles of milk and cereal covered the counter, remnants of the recent free for all.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, assuming the task of clearing the mess. It was habit. I had been used to handling the kitchen at home and it had become second nature.

  “School,” Max answered around a mouthful of Captain Crunch. That explained the mess. They’d rushed out the door to make it to school on time after their late night stakeout at my house. “Icarus and Lucius are outsid—”

  “I can do that!” Hailey snapped.

  “It’s ok. I don’t mind,” I assured her, which only made her temper flare. Apparently, I was stepping on her toes because she dropped her spoon into her bowl, sending milk and soggy Cheerio’s sloshing onto the counter.

 
“I SAID LEAVE IT! I CAN DO IT!” The kid made Damien Omen look like Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver. I was waiting for her head to spin on her shoulders while she spewed split pea soup at me. Eerie, she was just eerie.

  “Hailey!” Icarus rumbled, emerging through the back door. “Enough already! Now apologize!”

  “But—”

  “Now!” Icarus roared, using his alpha voice. Even I flinched. Hailey’s eyes rimmed with angry tears, her lips pressed to a thin, white line. She turned her head to me, eyes narrow.

  “Sorry,” she sneered and ran to her room.

  Afraid to speak, I stood in silence, still as the air around me.

  Icarus ran his hand through his hair and exhaled loudly, his cheeks puffing out. Eyes flickering to me, he looked me once over. “You look much better.”

  “I thought I’d feel better if I got out.”

  “Shopping?”

  I nodded.

  From what I guessed to be Hailey’s room, I heard a loud crash, followed by several smaller ones. Glass might’ve been involved, and a rubber ducky…? No, that was Hailey’s high-pitched girly shriek. The Omen was having a tantrum if I ever heard one, and an impressive one at that. If she struck another cord like that, I thought the windows might shatter.

  “Wait outside if you don’t mind,” Icarus requested, heading in the direction of Hailey’s room. “I’ll be out shortly.”

  Max stood and placed his bowl in the sink. “Come on. This could get ugly.”

  “What’s he gonna to do to her?” I asked, watching from over my shoulder as Max grasped my arm and began leading me out the door.

  “Whatever’s necessary.” Once outside, he released my arm, leaving me to my own faculties. “Kid’s not right in the head. That’s what happens when you turn them too young.”

  “That’s not her fault.”

  “No, it’s not, but you need to understand. Her body’s twelve, her mind…that’s where the problem lies. She’s the intelligence of an adult, but the maturity of a child. She’s juvenile, temperamental and confused, which can be dangerous in our kind.”

  “So I see.”

  “Unfortunately,” Max continued, “With no other women in the house, she’s been alpha female for too long. Now that you’re here, she feels threatened. She’s defending her territory.”

  My mouth popped open. “Over doing the dishes? They’re a chore where I come from. If she wants to do them, she can have at it. Besides, I’m not the alpha type anyhow.”

  Max laughed at this, entertained. “You—who disobeyed Icarus—are not the alpha type? Do you know how many times any of us has disobeyed Icarus? Never. It’s not only unheard of, it’s impossible. It can’t be done—unless you’re the alpha type.”

  “Whatever,” I said, feigning interest in my cuticles. “If the kitchen’s hers, she can have it. She was here first.”

  “No!” Max blurted. Clearing his throat, he quickly collected himself. “That’d be bad all the way around. You claimed the kitchen when you cooked last weekend. If you back down now, she’ll never respect you again. She’ll walk all over you. You’ve seen how she can be. Is that the way you want to live out your eternal existence? Hmm?”

  Intuition kicked in. Not that Max didn’t have a point. But his enthusiasm left little guesswork. Men were so transparent. “You want me to do the cooking.”

  Smiling sheepishly, Max said, “Yeah.”

  I stood in contemplation, my toe tapping on the pavement, deciding how I could make this work in my favor. Chances were, taking responsibility for the cooking, I was most likely taking responsibility for the cleanup, too. And after seeing what the kitchen looked like today, I wasn’t thrilled with the aspect. “Fine, I’ll do it, but only if everyone agrees to clean their own dishes afterwards.”

  Pumping his fist, Max grinned triumphantly. “Deal!”

  Transparent.

  “The kitchen isn’t really the issue,” Max assured, recanting his claims. “Icarus is. It’s only been Hailey the last five years. And now his attention’s all on you.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s free to have his attention all she wants.”

  Smiling wryly, Max arched one brow. “You still don’t like him much, eh?”

  I could feel his presence before I heard him. Call it intuition, a sixth sense, or a hunch, call it whatever you want, I could feel him behind me. It was as if his body emitted a micro electric signal that in some conscious level, while insubstantial, I could detect.

  The problem was that signal screamed danger. Maybe it was something we are all born with, a natural means of survival, an instinct that told us to run. A predator was near. Clearly, mine worked differently. I hadn’t run when I faced Marcus in the woods. I had stood my ground. Yet now, every instinct told me to flee. Get as far away as you can, it told me.

  Deep down, I knew the reason why.

  “This way,” Icarus said, aiming his key fob at the garage. The fourth bay door began to rise. “We’ll take Lucius’s car. It has more trunk space.”

  “Get a roast!” Max said. “With those little red potatoes!”

  Rolling my eyes, I slid into the car and buckled the seatbelt. Icarus turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine. It growled like a sick dog, the reverberations palpable against my chest. One hand clutched instinctively onto the seat belt and the other onto the seat beneath me.

  “Relax, Thaleia. We’re not driving Nascar.”

  Looking at my hands, I realized my knuckles were white. I let go of the seat and stretched my fingers out. I stole glances at Icarus as he backed out of the garage, bracing himself on my seat as judged from over his shoulder, steering the car carefully out of the bay. He must’ve been doing the same because our eyes met for a fraction of a second that seemed to last forever. I looked out the passenger side window to hide my flush.

  Icarus cleared his throat. “I want to start over. I’ve left you with a monstrous impression of me and I want the chance to repair that.”

  “Ok.”

  “Ok?” Icarus repeated, expecting an argument.

  I shrugged. “I’ve made my share of bad judgments, though they weren’t as execrable as yours—” Icarus looked ready to object, but he quickly straightened his face. “But I’m willing to overlook them so that we can move past our differences. I think it would be best for all involved if we got along.”

  This seemed to appease him because he pondered over it several minutes. When he wasn’t inclined to say anything further, I asked, “What happened with Hailey?”

  “We had a talk.”

  “Is there anything I can do to…I don’t know…help?”

  “No.”

  Again, he wasn’t inclined to discuss the subject any further. “Max said she was being territorial. The thing is…I don’t know how this all works. Am I stepping out of line if I don’t yield to her demands? Aren’t you supposed to decide the hierarchy here?”

  “No, alpha male and alpha females stand alone.”

  “Ok, but—”

  “Enough about Hailey, ok?”

  Clasping my hands together on my lap, I shifted away, facing out the window. I had a terrible poker face, so there was no pretending I wasn’t annoyed. I was only trying to understand the structure and etiquette within his home so that I wasn’t constantly causing discord.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Icarus apologized. “I’m trying to give you normal, Thaleia. You’ve dealt with enough this morning. Let’s just be two people out shopping, and enjoying each other’s company.”

  Normal? I could use normal. “Fine. We’re two people…shopping.”

  “And enjoying each other’s company.”

  The corners of my lips turned up.

  Icarus smiled. “Stretching it?”

  Chapter 8

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked loudly so that Icarus could hear me above the ringing in his ears. I hadn’t considered his heightened senses or how the volume of the stereo would affect him. Shoving his fingert
ip in his ear, he tried to dislodge the complaint.

  Music should be listened to loud in my opinion. I liked to feel the base as if I was sitting in the front row of a concert, feeling like your heart was nearly defibrillating in your chest.

  “You were enjoying yourself. And you have a nice voice.”

  “Gah,” I said, cringing. “The point of the volume is to drown it out.” I grabbed a cart from the chute and pushed it backward and forward a few times, testing the wheels.

  “What are you doing?” Icarus asked, eyeing me warily.

  “Checking the wheels. You get a reject and everyone stares. Ooh, bingo, we’ve got a winner.” The wheel stuck and as I pushed the cart, it squealed a constant C sharp. I smiled sweetly. “See?”

  Grimacing, Icarus rubbed his ears. “Point taken.”

  Grabbing another cart, I started through produce. “Why don’t I feel any different? I mean, you’re hearing is better. I’m assuming all your senses are. You even move more quietly.”

  “Your body is still changing. As the moon waxes, your senses will grow stronger. They’ll reach their height after you’ve shifted the first time.”

  Stopping at the cantaloupe, I picked a few up, judging their ripeness. Such an ordinary thing to do while discussing lycanthrope puberty. Icarus must’ve been of the same mind, because he promptly changed the subject, watching my exploits with feigned interest.

  “How do you tell when they’re ripe?”

  “Everyone says differently. Some say squeeze them. Some people say tap them to see how hollow they sound. Me, I smell them. The sweeter they smell, the riper they are.”

  Selecting two examples, one green tinted and the other a nice cream color, I held them both up for his appraisal. He eyed me dubiously and smiled, taking in the twin melons balanced parallel with my chest. I followed his line of sight and rolled my eyes.

  “Really?” I admonished. “You’re supposed to be the adult here.”

  “Thaleia, men are always children when it comes to breasts.”