“So we don’t have to worry about the two of them making more hybrids?”
No one spoke for a good minute, and I had the impression Apollonius was checking in with someone, though he didn’t move. Finally, he looked to us and said, “If you purposefully make more of you, we’ll bring you in and likely incarcerate you. If you do so on accident, you should notify Aaron, Abbott, or Bran as soon as is physically possible so we can figure out what happened and how to keep it from happening again. Should you wish to try to turn someone on purpose, you’ll need to register with the Concilio as a new species and obtain permission to grow your numbers. We aren’t taking that route at this time because we don’t believe replicating you will be an easy feat. Also, the two of you aren’t identical, so at this time we have one snake/wolf/Lugat hybrid, and one snake/wolf hybrid with a few Lugat strengths. Unless you intend to create more of you, there isn’t cause to declare a new species.”
“Let us not forget the problems we had with the chimera,” said Abbott.
“Not relevant. The chimera didn’t have a human form and wasn’t a shapeshifter. It gave us problems because it had the strengths of multiple animals, but doesn’t fall under the same purview. Also, the means of creation was totally different, not to mention the fact she was many animals at once, and not a being who could shift into different animals.”
“Point,” said Abbott, “and yet because of the strengths of every animal, we had immense difficulties gaining control and to this day we have to deal with the statues and stories. It’s likely humans wouldn’t even remember Echidna if it weren’t for her daughter.”
“Despite Homer’s works being brought back into the daylight and taken more seriously in recent decades, no one has suggested the chimera is anything other than a mythological creature,” Apollonius argued. “Again, the chimera isn’t relevant to the current situation.”
Abbott nodded, and Apollonius looked around to see if anyone else had anything to say.
I’d actually researched Echidna when I’d discovered what I am. She was half-woman and half-snake, and gave birth to Cerberus, the three-headed dog who helps guard Hades.
“Wait,” I said. “Echidna’s real?”
Apollonius turned to Abbott with a look that clearly said, You brought it up and now you can answer the question.
“The stories aren’t accurate, but the description isn’t entirely wrong.” Abbott told me, his expression grim. “However, Echidna left this realm long ago and we don’t know where she went.”
“You’re saying she wasn’t a shapeshifter? She was half-woman and half-snake, and was always half-and-half?”
Bran answered me after an uncomfortable silence. “She was of a race of monsters, Hailey. Think of a mermaid, but instead of a fin — her bottom portion was the body of a snake. The snake-skin started just below her breasts and not at her waist, but it was a similar look. Her mother was human to her pelvis, and had a snake body in the place of each leg. The statue of Echidna in Italy is actually of her mother. As Apollonius said, this race has nothing in common with you.”
“They’re correct,” said Abbott. “I fought the chimera and I want to be sure we aren’t headed in that direction again, but the circumstances are different.” He gave me a gentle smile. “I’m not concerned you’ll blow fire at me in a fight. We’re good.”
* * *
Ghost
Hailey and I went home without guards, and two days later I left her home alone while I went to the gun store to teach a class.
Two weeks later, she played guitar at an open mic night, and a week after that she was on stage at a small venue playing guitar for a killer vocalist. I love watching her on stage — you can tell she has fun with it, and she kicks ass no matter what genre of music she’s playing.
I offered one of the MC’s working-girls two thousand dollars for the twenty-minute job with Bran, and she countered with twenty-five hundred, and a specific menu of what she wanted when she changed back to human. I accepted, notified Bran of her food request, and sent one of the prospects with her to be sure she was safe. I trusted Bran, but felt she needed an escort.
When Hailey found out what I’d agreed to do, she nearly came unglued. The vampire, the wolf, the snake, and the woman were pissed, hurt, and more than a little enraged. There’s now a new rule — she’s the only vampire I’m allowed to feed. I’m hers, and hers only, apparently. It never occurred to me she’d be possessive about me feeding another vampire, but now I know and I won’t promise myself to anyone else.
Meanwhile, Viper was insistent we needed to go to North Carolina and announce our status to the Elders. Hailey was against it, and I smelled fear when Viper brought it up. Fear from both of them, but more from Hailey. One evening, I told her, “We can take a contingent of my brothers with us, if it’ll help you not be so worried.”
“I can handle being outside on a rainy day now that I haven’t had blood for a while. Do you think I’ll be able to handle a merely overcast day in another couple of weeks?”
“Is that what’s worrying you?”
“From what I gather, snake is my birthright so they won’t be able to say anything about it, but I just know they’re going to see the vampire bit as evil, or a bad omen, or something along those lines.” She sighed. “And you? I don’t think they’re going to approve at all, and my loyalty will be with you and not my people, and…” She leaned forward and put her face in her hands.
“We’re a unit, Shortstuff, but they’re your family. We’ll figure it out.”
She lifted her head away from her hands and met my gaze. “You haven’t called me Shortstuff since we…”
“Started fucking?” I stepped closer and kissed her forehead. “I know. I wasn’t sure if it still fit, but it does, doesn’t it? We’re the same people — our relationship changed, but it doesn’t mean we can’t remember what it was before.”
“Yeah. It still works.” She leaned into me as I put my arm around her, and I told her, “Your mom may be more upset the two of us are an item than she is about the snake/wolf/vampire thing.”
“No shit. Do we really have to do this?”
“Yeah. You can’t go the rest of your life without seeing your mother.”
“We talk on the phone most Sundays.”
“And yet she knows nothing about what’s really going on in your life.”
She sighed and I held her. After a few moments silence, I kissed the top of her head and told her, “We’ll plan a trip to Deep Creek for the club, and you and I will make arrangements to spend time with your mom and whoever else you think needs to know. My brothers will be close if we need them.”
“My uncle James will have to come. I know Viper wants me to tell his Grandfather, but I’d like to start with my family.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“In two more weeks, when maybe I’ll be able to handle a little more daylight?”
“Call your mom and set it up.”
Chapter 29
Ghost
I’d have preferred we show up on my bike, but if we needed to leave during the day we could put Hailey in the back of her little SUV under a UV blanket.
I looked ridiculous driving a Nissan Juke. I should’ve taken that into consideration when I bought it for her, but all I could think was that it was the perfect size for her, and exactly the kind of car she’d want if she was picking it out.
Eventually, she’d told me how good of a job I’d done choosing it, but she had to grump at me over it a little while, first.
Her mom lived in a modest, neat little house. Her backyard was adjacent to the Deep Creek portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I smiled as I realized she’d done as we had with the Chickamauga Battlefield.
“I always liked your mom,” I told her as we got out of the Juke and stretched. “This is a perfect spot.”
Hailey took a deep breath, smiled, and relaxed. “Yeah, it is.”
Her mom came out to greet us, and the sec
ond she hugged Hailey, Aggie went stiff.
“How?”
She took a step back and said it again. “How?”
“It’s a long story, mom. I was shot and…” She shook her head and repeated, “It’s a long story. Can we come in, hug, wait for Uncle James, and then let me tell the story once, to both of you?”
Her mom hesitated and I said, “Aggie, she’s still Hailey. She’s still your little girl.” I sniffed again to be sure before I said, “I never smelled snake on you before. Why do I smell it on you now?”
“It’s my birthright but I never wanted it until…” She shook her head. “I wasn’t a snake when you lived with us, but now I can smell snake on you, too. Not just wolf. Both of you smell of snake and wolf. At first I thought your wolf smell was on her, and her snake smell was on you… but that isn’t it.” She sniffed again. “There’s something else, too. Something wrong.”
“Long story, Aggie. Can we come inside?”
She let us in, offered us water, and thankfully Hailey’s uncle arrived within a few minutes. However, Uncle James identified the Lugat smell immediately, and almost left before we could tell the story. I’d thought we’d be safe with just the two of them, but I excused myself to the restroom and texted Duke shortly after James arrived.
It might not be a bad idea to put two people about fifty yards behind the house. There’s a lot of hostility.
Our guys were camping in the Deep Creek campground, so they weren’t far away. Duke let me know they’d be sure I was covered.
Hailey didn’t start at the beginning of my finding her because she didn’t want her mom to know she’d been whoring herself out. However, when she reached the part about me bargaining with Bran to heal her hand, her mom wanted to know what she’d been doing for money.
“I was… I was…” She looked at me for help and I imagined how bad she’d be as a waitress, saw her spilling an entire pitcher of tea in a customer’s lap, and told them, “Do you have any idea how bad of a waitress your daughter is? She was so bad, I picked her up and carried her out and took her home.”
As snakes, they’d be able to smell a lie, but I’d just told something close enough to the truth, it wouldn’t hit as a lie to their noses. She’d certainly be a bad waitress, and I had carried her out because she was bad — the red hair and skirt she’d been wearing were horrible.
“I told her I’d see her through college,” I continued, “but then we started her on Bran’s blood to fix her hand, and when she was shot everything went to hell.” I shrugged. “I withdrew her from her classes so she wouldn’t have a whole semester of failing grades.”
“You were shot!” Her mom totally forgot about what Hailey had done for money, and let her daughter continue with the story. I filled in for the parts Hailey’s mind hadn’t been there, to let them know how long it took for her to remember herself, and to talk about what we had to do to bring her back to us.
“Who texted me? Someone lied to me, because I got a text I thought was from you, telling me you were going to the woods and I shouldn’t expect to hear from you for a while!”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth,” I told Aggie. “But I knew you’d expect to have your weekly conversation with her, so I had to come up with something.”
“Why isn’t Viper here?” James asked after we got to the part where she had her bloodlust under control enough the snake could make more of an appearance.
“He’s in town, but Hailey wanted to tell the two of you what happened as a family. He’ll be present when his grandfather and any other Elders who need to know are told.”
“You aren’t family.”
I met his gaze in spite of the disdain and condescension pouring from him, but Hailey answered for me. “He is, Uncle James. He’s my family and I love him. I’m sorry if you don’t approve, but we hadn’t seen each other in six years and he’s been there for me in ways you can’t imagine since he came back into my life.”
I thought the man was going to have an aneurysm when we got to the wolf relationship ceremony. Aggie wasn’t happy either, and she stood and walked to the back of the room to look at the forest through her large picture window.
With her back to us, she said, “Darnell never asked me to do that. He never told me he loved me, but he took such good care of us, and was so nice, and… attentive when he was home.” She sighed. “I thought he cared about us when he didn’t.”
I chose my words carefully. “My dad recently told me it was just a business transaction between the two of you. He married you, bought you a house, and gave you spending money in exchange for you taking care of me when he was deployed.”
“That’s true, but I thought he’d changed his mind. He never mentioned the deal again, and he pretended to everyone like we were married, even me.”
I could smell her pain and I wasn’t sure what to say. I settled on, “I’m sorry you were hurt, Aggie. I didn’t find out about the deal until recently.”
“Do you love my daughter, or are you using her for something?”
“I love her. I’ve loved her forever. She was my stepsister when we were teens, and I took care of her like my little sister, but then six years apart…” I shrugged again. “She wasn’t my stepsister anymore. I mean, she was at first, but then something changed after she’d lived with me a while.”
“And now we’ve literally been through fire together,” Hailey told them, her voice plaintive at first, then stronger as she added, “He’s mine and I’m his. He called me his from the beginning, but now I know exactly how his wolf feels and I can see and feel how much he considers me his. This isn’t you and Darnell, Mom. Dare loves me for real.”
I smelled more pain coming off Aggie as she turned to look out the window once again. I walked to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry you were hurt. I didn’t know. He said he wanted to tell me, but you’d only agree to the deal if Hailey and I didn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, I was a little embarrassed to have taken it.” She sighed. “And then when Hailey had central heat and air for the first time, and a refrigerator full of food — I felt like such a failure as a mother.”
“No,” Hailey protested as she came to us. “Oh god mom, no. You gave me the best childhood ever. I learned who I am without all the crap other American kids have. They confuse happiness with things, and I know better. I’d never give up a moment of hunting for dinner, playing in the creek to stay cool when it was hot and miserable in the summer, or bundling under ten pounds of blankets with you in the winter to stay warm.”
I pulled them both into a hug and we stood in silence, a tiny little family that once was. My dad was gone more than he’d been home, so it’d usually just been the three of us.
I could sense James’s hostility from across the room, but he stayed quiet while we had our moment, and it was Aggie who finally led us back to the seating area with, “There’s more story to tell. We should hear the rest.”
We’d agreed to a version of the story that allowed for her to have Lugat strengths, but we didn’t bring up her drinking blood or having trouble with daylight. She could handle an extremely overcast day for about thirty minutes at a time, a few times a day. Lucky for us, major storms would move in around sunrise tomorrow and would stick around for the day. We’d told everyone we had to be home the following morning for me to go to work, so we’d travel home tomorrow night. Viper was only on board with this version because she hadn’t drunk anyone’s blood in two months and he felt we could honestly say she didn’t need it to survive.
In truth, she wanted it — and the longer she went without, the more she craved it. I planned to stop in Ocoee and let her drink her fill from me on the way home.
When the story was finished, Aggie looked to James and said, “If you don’t explain, I will. I consider him family and that’ll have to be enough for you. He was my stepson and I damn near raised him from eleven on, and now my daughter’s mated to him.”
“Jordan Walker wasn
’t authorized to create more of us, and the ruling council may deem one or both of you unworthy of the honor.” He held his hand up as he put his next thoughts together, so I stayed silent. “If you’re deemed worthy, you’ll need to be an active member. You’ll need to come home for sweats, for ceremony. You’ll need to be part of our energy.”
“There are three of living us in Chattanooga now,” Hailey argued. “We can do our own sweats and ceremony. We can stay connected to Mother Earth without coming home.”
“Maybe eventually, but if they allow your freedom, they’ll expect you here for ceremony for a few years, at least.”
“How would they disallow our freedom?” I asked, careful to stay neutral and not let my wolf’s opinion set the tone.
James shook his head. “This I cannot speak of, but we’re given freedom from the supernatural overlords because we police ourselves.”
“We’ve been tested by the Concilio and given our freedom,” I told him. “You can’t use them as an excuse to be racist against me.”
James stood and let his anger out. The entire room vibrated with his power as he shouted something in Cherokee at Hailey.
* * *
Hailey
My uncle didn’t like Dare, but I don’t think he used Cherokee to make him feel like an outsider. At that point, I chose to believe he felt he was speaking of Cherokee secrets and wasn’t sure he could do so around Dare.
Ghost: The Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club, Book 8 Page 19
