by Sage Domini
FORBIDDEN MATE
~A Luna Junction Story ~
By Sage Domini
Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
***
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Forbidden Mate is the second novella about the strange and passionate world of Luna Junction. If you want to check out additional stories about Luna Junction’s sensual residents, Feasts with Wolves is also available.
~At the intersection of legend and reality, of human and beast, lies Luna Junction, Arizona.~
Chapter One
There are certain memories which imprint upon the soul and wait, always, for the occasion to resurface. You could be hoisting yourself up to reach the top shelf in a grocery store and flash back to the feel of his strong hands pulling you the last few feet up a steep hill during one of a thousand afternoon hiking adventures. Or peer into a crowded parking lot in search of your tired car and gasp as the lowering sun momentarily blinds you. Because when you blink again it’s his devastating smile you see.
There are other recollections you can’t make sense of, no matter how many sleepless hours you spend puzzling over them. Like your father’s grim insistence on endless archery drills, even though he seems to take no joy in the sport. Or the parade of cloaked figures who pass through the house you share with your parents and engage in darkly intent conversations which you could never quite overhear. And always, that peculiar sense of otherness which nestles in your subconscious as part of you understands, somehow, you are not like those around you.
But I wasn’t thinking specifically of these things as I urged the Toyota to keep struggling along the highway which threads though the inky expanse of Death Valley. I cursed as the driver’s side front tire bumped over an obstacle, a small animal perhaps, causing the undercarriage of the vehicle to shudder ominously. I estimated nearly two hundred miles remained in this desperate journey. I wasn’t at all confident my transportation would cooperate in sputtering to its conclusion.
Gingerly I reached up and touched my swollen jaw, feeling a surge of rage. I should have known better after the first time it happened. I had warned Dylan that the last time would be the last time.
“Shit, I’m so sorry Acie,” he had sobbed and clung to my waist, begging me not to leave as he issued promise after sniffling promise. He forgot them all when that bottle of liquid paranoia beckoned and he attacked me for stealing money he’d never even had. Luckily he was so drunk his reflexes had gone to crap. He only managed one cheap shot in before I picked up an Ikea end table and flung it at his head. The o-shaped surprise of his mouth made me smile as I remembered the satisfaction of toppling him to the ground. I didn’t wait around to see how long it would take him to recover.
Instinct was propelling me to Luna Junction. That and the fact I neither money nor friends to offer additional choices. Luna Junction was a rural northern Arizona town which in my mind represented an idyllic early childhood. The last place, the only, place I had ever been carefree and happy.
But those blissful times had come before the dreams. Before my pulse began to race with an inexplicable rush of fear when I found myself in the presence of familiar faces. People who, to my knowledge, were as benign and unthreatening as Mickey Mouse. Before I began to pick up the bow without being forced and drill the backyard targets again and again, feeling for the first time a grim joy in hitting the curiously heart-shaped centers. Before the sweetness of a first kiss which had never been matched since. And the ensuing rejection which made its memory so painful.
As I emerged from the most forbidding segment of California desert, I followed the exit signs to a truck stop. The adrenaline had worn off, replaced by exhaustion. A handful of eighteen wheelers were parked nearby in the bleak pool of fluorescence, their occupants catching a few hours of rest before resuming their eastward trek. The warmth of the June night seeped quickly into the car but I didn’t mind. I curled into a ball across the backseat and sighed. Feeling Dylan’s fist against my face had summoned a nearly forgotten urge to hold a bow in my hands again. It seemed the wisest answer to danger. Absurd given that far better weapons existed for self-defense. Sleep found me, but uneasily.
“I won’t let her stay.”
“This is what we are, Rachel. We have an obligation.”
“Bullshit,” she hissed. “We can walk away.”
A deep sigh. “She’s reaching maturity. You know what comes with that. The Casteel boy knows too. She’ll understand his reasons soon enough.”
Her voice was impossibly sad. “We should never have allowed it.”
“That was my fault. But how do you explain to a child that her best friend may someday be her nemesis?”
“There’s no reason for her to know now. It will only get worse for her. I’m getting her out of here, Max.”
My father’s sob was painful. “I know.”
My eyes flew open and I bolted upright. The earliest threads of sunlight were tickling the eastern sky. Wearily I brushed my sweaty hair out of my face. That conversation had replayed a thousand times in my mind, a heated exchange between my distressed parents when they assumed I was sleeping.
Six years had passed since I stood in a dark hallway, not daring to breathe as I tried to make sense of everything. My world had upended and I didn’t understand why. I was thirteen and struggling with the usual angst as my body changed and my emotions careened out of balance. But then I’d also been having strange thoughts, irrational fears. The long simmering discord in my house had finally reached a fevered pitch. My mother was taking me away.
Max Jaeger was never affectionate but the morning I left Luna Junction forever he gripped me in an intense embrace and placed a lingering kiss on my forehead. “Forget, honey,” was all he said as I stiffly followed my mother to the packed car. My eyes were dry. I was as wooden as the looming ponderosa trees. I had already cried more hours than I cared to remember. For I had already learned the hard lesson that no pain surpassed a broken heart.
Gideon Casteel.
I fumbled with the car keys, shaking my head. Even the thought of his name still pierced me like a knife so I tried not to remember it often. Thousands of moments were wrapped up in that name. Endless walks in the pine wilderness outside town. Long, lazy summer afternoons spent in wild adventure of something imaginary, whether it was lost treasure or a fantastic fairy tale mission. Shared ice cream cones from the Luna Junction Café, purchased with carefully pocketed loose change. Winter wonderland afternoons of tunnels and igloos as he laughingly shrugged off the cold and swept the snow out of his dark blonde hair with a bare hand. Gideon Casteel had been my best friend since before I really understood what a friend was. When I started to feel something more it seemed like a completely natural development. The discovery that he felt the same was spectacularly, almost mythically, right. Six years later I still didn’t understand his abrupt rejection. It had been cruel, and I had never known Gideon to be cruel.
I turned the ignition and the car sighed into reluctant life. None of that old pain mattered. I wasn’t returning to Luna Junction for Gideon Casteel. My relationship with my father had long been strained. He made his way dutifully out to California several times a year for awkward visits which usually ended on a sour note. When he’d called to ask what date h
e should plan on coming out for my high school graduation it was with near glee that I informed him I would not be graduating. I could hear the sad pause on the other end. As he unhappily uttered my name I hung up the phone. A year had passed since then. A year of scummy waitress jobs and various homes in tiny apartments in the worst San Bernardino neighborhoods. My mother was grappling with her own shadowy grief and our relationship had more or less fallen off the radar in recent months. I knew I should call her and let her know I was returning to Luna Junction but I couldn’t bear the bewildered hurt in her voice. And her refusal to answer questions infuriated me. I wasn’t a thirteen year old child any longer. I needed to know why we had left Luna Junction in such a rush of despair. What was the cause of the palpable tension hovering over that small town? And the restlessness which began to plague me six years earlier in Luna Junction had followed me since, to a lesser degree, and no amount of Zoloft banished those sudden surges. It would always be when I least expected. I would be rushing down a thickly crowded street or serving drinks to a quartet of smartly dressed businessmen when my heart would quicken and an electric pulse of alarm would shoot up my spine. Sometimes I would catch strangers watching me warily, almost fearfully. I didn’t understand.
“It’s your imagination, Acie,” my mother always insisted, but her tone was careful, guarded, and she would never look me in the eye when I asked.
“It’s not!” I had screamed more than once, though some doubtful part of my mind wondered. Maybe there was nothing to any of it. Maybe Luna Junction was just a town like ten thousand others and my broken family was just another casualty of modern sorrow.
But I remembered what Gideon had said to me in the moments before an inexplicable act of betrayal. “We’re not friends. We never were. Come after us, Artemis, and we’ll rip you to pieces.”
It wasn’t just his odd words which terrified me. It was the look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t even seeing me. My best friend had grown taller and broader during or last summer together. As he towered there, stoic and icy, I felt invisible. We’re not friends. We never were. As if I didn’t know his face better than my own, as if the events of our lives weren’t hopelessly intertwined every day. As if he had never kissed me under a dark and moonless sky.
I grimly set my jaw and watched the mile markers pass. My father wasn’t expecting me and I was unsure how he would react. However, I wouldn’t tolerate being turned away. The mess inside of my head, the aimless of tumult of my life, was all linked to whatever mysteries lived in that town. I would get the answers I needed. He owed me that.
People tend think of Arizona in terms of sand and saguaros. But north of the Sonoran desert and east of the Mojave lies the evergreen beauty of Coconino County. Flagstaff was the only city of any appreciable size. Mostly the region was dotted with small towns. Luna Junction was just one of them, smaller than most. The town was almost exclusively populated by five extended families whose children cliqued together when they attended school in nearby Williams. I was the only one on the yellow school bus who was not a Casteel, a Bellini, a Landon, an Ivanov or a Hoffman. It had never occurred to me to question the oddity of this arrangement because for all those years Gideon stuck stubbornly by my side, ensuring my acceptance amongst the town children.
My hands gripped the steering wheel, my palms sweating. I didn’t need to relive memories of Gideon. Yet with every mile I drew closer to the old joys and pains. And it was all bound up with him. Last fall I had Googled his name on impulse and found he was on the football roster at UCLA. I stared at the few lines of basic information accompanied by a tiny headshot. The tousle-haired boy I had known had grown into an insufferably handsome man. His head was tilted backwards and defiant eyes gazed into the camera as if he were daring a challenge. I didn’t know him anymore. But then had stopped knowing him the night he threw me away. I stared at the page for a moment and then hurriedly closed the window. I had not searched for him since. I could only hope his new life was keeping him out of Luna Junction.
As far as I knew, my father still owned the boxy tourist trap gift shop off State Route 64. I had finally reached the segment of I-40 which passed through the picturesque town of Williams and followed the signs for SR 64. There, on a modest green and white sign were the words which caused my heart to lurch with recognition.
LUNA JUNCTION 10 Miles
The landscape seemed smaller than I remembered, more intimate. But it was all as familiar as the back of my hand. The building, labeled simply ‘Gift Shop’ stood on a particularly lonely stretch just outside of town. The exterior badly needed a face lift and a coat of paint. Three cars were parked on the gravel in front and I recognized my father’s ancient orange Ford.
I turned off the engine and sat silently for a moment. If I’d been sure my car was up to it, I might have returned to the Interstate and seen what else the world had to offer. Going back to San Bernardino was not a plan. No, there had to be someplace new and unknown, without history and without hurt. Someplace else. I swallowed thickly and opened the door. My father must have seen my car pull up. He was already standing by my front bumper. Max Jaeger had grown softer and heavier since I last saw him. The resignation in his lined face was almost painful to behold.
“Artemis,” he said.
My hands clenched involuntarily. He was the only one who still called me by my given name. My mother had arranged for it to be legally changed to my nickname once we’d reached California. I was only Acie Jaeger. Artemis Cynthia Jaeger had been left behind in Luna Junction.
“Hey, Daddy.”
He looked me over, taking in my rumpled cheap clothing and disheveled hair. His gaze lingered for a moment on my face and I touched my swollen jaw self-consciously.
Max nodded at me. “You gave him hell for that, I hope.”
I coughed thickly. “His name’s Dylan. He’s an asshole.”
“So I see.”
I toyed with my keys during the ensuing awkward pause. This wasn’t proving to be the most heartwarming father/daughter reunion in the world. “I guess you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing here.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No?” I was getting irritated. Couldn’t the man even pretend to have a little bit of interest?
Max crossed his arms and appraised me thoughtfully. “I figured you’d find your way back here someday.” He sighed. “Rachel and I…we handled things badly. Sending you off without explaining anything. And then once you were gone, it just seemed too late.”
“No shit.”
A quick smile skated across his face and then disappeared. “Well, you’re here now.” He fished around in his back pocket and tossed me a set of keys. “You remember where the house is, I’m sure. I’ll be home around eight.” And with that he turned away and opened the flimsy door to the shop.
“Great,” I muttered. He didn’t seem disappointed to see me, not exactly. Although he definitely wasn’t dancing with joy.
“And Artemis?”
I looked up. His brow was furrowed anxiously. “Go straight to the house. Don’t linger in town. Don’t interact with anyone.” He leaned closer and his voice became urgent. “Anyone.”
That wasn’t a problem. There was really no one in Luna Junction I was dying to see. But taking orders from an absentee parent didn’t sit well with me. After all, I was nineteen, technically an adult. “Why the hell not?”
“You just do as I say, girl.”
I crossed my arms. “I might have some friends I want to look up as long as I’m in town.”
Max issued a hoarse laugh. “You have no friends here.”
We’re not friends. We never were.
My father didn’t await my reply. He returned to his dilapidated store just as a pale, doughy woman spilled out, loudly complaining to her lanky husband about the rude absence of service in this part of the country.
My pulse began to race as I reached what passed for downtown Luna Junction. A four way stop with a gas station on one corner an
d the Luna Junction Café on another and not much else in sight. I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten o’clock and I hadn’t eaten in about eighteen hours. There was no telling what Max did or didn’t have back at the house. My stomach groaned beseechingly at the thought of food. I recalled the owner of the Café; stringy old man Dieter Hoffman. Of all the potential encounters Luna Junction had to offer, the vapid Hoffmans seemed the least threatening so I didn’t feel bad about ignoring Max’s orders.
I changed my mind a few moments later when I opened the creaky door to the Café, my eyes struggling to adjust to the dim interior. I heard the sound of a glass falling to the floor and a low rumble which sounded suspiciously like a growl. After the tumult of the last day, my senses must have been operating on overdrive because a trill of warning jolted through my spine. I crouched in the doorway as if I were expecting an imminent assault and desperately my eyes darted around for a weapon, my hands itching for the solid comfort of a bow. A bow strung with a gleaming arrow which was ready to release and meet the threat that somehow I knew was coming for me.
The abrupt grip on my elbow was painful and I scarcely had time to yelp before I was hurtled bodily out of the doorway and toward the dirt parking lot. I did not understand what was happening, only that I was being attacked and I had nothing with which to defend myself.
My feet left the ground briefly as I was hauled roughly upright. Dimly I realized I was in the clutched of a very strong man. Instinctively I kicked out my right foot, hard, but he anticipated my move and blocked the blow between his own powerful legs.
“Are you fucking crazy?” he bellowed in my ear.
Then something sort of broke inside me. After all, I’d only just hours earlier escaped being slapped around by one piece of shit. I wasn’t about to meekly endure more trauma at the hands of a stranger. He had my arms pinned and my leg was still clasped between his. So I lowered my head and aimed for his solar plexus. The effect barely moved him back an inch so I prepared to ram him again when I realized he was shouting my name. “Acie! Acie! For fuck’s sake!”
