“I’m guessing I was attacked by a werewolf then, right?”
He nodded.
“But it was in the middle of the day. Definitely not a full moon, and it seemed like a perfectly controlled attack to me.”
“Yes.” Eli’s brow creased in thought. “It is not that werewolves are incapable of voluntary transformation as well.”
“And,” Vanessa chimed in, “unlike lycans, they are bound by no pact that prevents them from attacking a human.” Her lips fell into a frown as she spoke. “We’re still trying to determine just what the motivation behind that attack was, but it is entirely possible that the attack was simply for sport,” she said.
“And my dad?” I said, suddenly recalling the conversation with Sera. “Was it a werewolf that…that attacked him too?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word ‘killed’. “It kind of seems like they’re targeting my family, don’t you think?”
“That idea has occurred to us, of course. But we do not know all the details yet, Alex,” Eli said quietly.
His inconclusive words made me angry—I hadn’t trekked all the way up this mountain in the company of two possibly-murderous supernaturals just to come away without complete answers.
I had to take several deep breaths before I trusted myself to speak again. “Okay. So that’s it then? That thing bit me, and now I’m turning into some shape-shifting monster?”
“Not necessarily,” Eli said.
“I don’t—”
“I told you that you were lucky you had only been—to use your word—‘poisoned’, remember?”
Suddenly my heart was pounding in my throat.
“Very lucky, in fact, because there is an antidote, which is almost always effective if administered in time. You do not have to become a werewolf. In fact, we insist that you do not.”
“An antidote?”
That’s not how it worked in all the fairy-tales I’d ever heard.
Was this some kind of trick?
“Your first shift would take place tomorrow night under the light of the full moon. But as long as we give you the antidote before sundown tomorrow, you will remain human. If not…”
“I become a werewolf?”
“And our enemy. Something I would much rather avoid. You would be unstable, a monster we would have to eliminate for the sake of the other humans in the area, and for our own safety.”
My first instinct was to agree.
Obviously.
Give me that antidote now, please, I thought, because I’m not a crazy person and also I quite like being human.
But for some reason, what I said out loud was: “And there’s no chance I wouldn’t be a bloodthirsty monster?”
Was this a dumb question?
Oh, absolutely.
And yet… I had spent the past several weeks feeling so powerless, raging at the universe for taking my dad away in the most random and unexpected way possible.
Except maybe it wasn’t random.
Maybe my family was being targeted.
Maybe there was a way I could channel all this anger inside of me and use it to fight back. Maybe I wasn’t powerless after all. Maybe I could protect myself, and Lora, and Mom…
“You would be a danger to yourself, to everyone around you. To your family,” Eli said, looking worried.
“I could help my family. I could protect them.”
“If by protect them you mean slaughter them in their sleep,” Will said dryly. I turned to him, mouth open in a horrified gape, but he just shrugged. “I’m just saying, Al—it could happen. If you don’t let us help you, then this time tomorrow night you won’t even remember who you are. There’s no telling what you might do.”
Vanessa nodded in agreement and placed a hand gently on my shoulder.
I shrugged it away. “Werewolves learn, right? I mean, they learn how to voluntarily transform and all that, so there must be some level of conscious thought—”
“That takes years to achieve. Some never achieve it. You would be—”
“I mean, obviously my family isn’t very safe now, are they? Your little protection league didn’t stop my dad’s death, and it barely stopped mine. And what about right now? How do I know my family’s safe right now?”
“There are several of us monitoring—”
“But is it enough? And how do I even know you’re telling the truth about any of this? How do I know I can trust any of you? Have you found out who killed my dad? Have you done anything about them?”
“Alex…” Vanessa began timidly.
I knew they were right to question me. Again—I knew how crazy I sounded. But all of the anger that had been building inside me since the moment I found out my dad was gone was unleashing itself now, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.
“No? Okay then. So you’ll forgive me for not automatically rejecting the idea of becoming something capable of fighting back myself.”
“It’s not worth it,” Kael said suddenly.
I jerked my head toward the doorway. I was a little surprised to see him still standing there; he’d been so quiet.
“Even if you could control yourself, even if you could protect your family, get back at whoever killed your father, whatever—what will you do after that? There’s no undoing this. After you transform, that’s it. You can’t go back to your normal human life, even if you wipe out everyone that’s threatening your family. You’ll spend the rest of your life—your long life— a monster. It’s not worth it.”
“Maybe I think it is,” I said defiantly, even though his words had caused the doubt in my mind to swell to double its size.
Just shut up, Alex, I commanded myself.
But then Kael said: “You’re not capable of rational thought right now. Understandably so—”
“You don’t even know me,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m not capable of.”
His eyes narrowed.
Mine did the same in automatic response.
“Fine,” he said. “Do what you want.” He left the room without another word.
And watching him go, leaving that room suddenly seemed like a great idea.
“I’m going to get some fresh air. I need to think,” I said. Without waiting for their objections, I headed toward the door Kael had disappeared through.
“Please do not go far, Alex,” Eli called as I approached the door. “If you really are a target, then it would be unwise for you to be wandering off this close to a full moon…”
* * *
Why in the world would monsters be targeting my family? I wondered as I kicked at a rock along the well-worn dirt path.
I’d wandered as far away from Eli’s house as I dared, and then doubled back, and now I found myself drifting farther and farther away from it again. I was at least ten minutes away at this point, and I was seriously considering not going back.
My eyes strayed up the path ahead of me, and I wondered if ten minutes was enough of a head start to let me outrun them. I seriously doubted it. Part of me still wanted to try. I glanced over my shoulder.
Maybe they would just let me go?
Again, doubtful.
But my legs were suddenly carrying me a lot more quickly down the path. I’d only made it a few hundred feet, though, before the sound of footsteps crunching through the brush reached my ears and jolted me to a stop.
For a moment my body tensed, but then I recognized a familiar scent on the air; Kael’s scent was a mixture of leaves and freshly-turned earth, and of smoke— like the kind that lingers on your clothing and hair after you’ve spent too much time sitting around the campfire. It was surprisingly easy to pick out amongst all the other scents the forest air was filled with.
“I know you’re there,” I called. I sighed as he appeared beside me on the path a second later.
“Heard me?” He asked as he picked off a leaf that was clinging to his jacket.
“And smelled you.”
I could smell people coming.
I nearl
y smiled at the thought. There really wasn’t anything funny about the reason behind my new-and-improved sense of smell—it was just so bizarre that it was almost amusing.
Almost.
Also, if I didn’t smile and laugh about all of this stuff, I would probably end up crying…and I was not a crier and never had been.
“Ah. Guess all your senses are getting stronger, huh?” Kael said.
“Or maybe I’m just trying to tell you that you should shower more?”
Okay, that was completely untrue—I actually kind of liked his smoky earth scent.
But I was hoping if I was rude to him he might go away.
“You’re such a nice person. I’m so glad I came after you,” he said, his lips forming a sardonic smile.
“Why are you following me?”
“Because I enjoy the company of bratty teenage girls. Why else?”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I know.”
“But seriously? I said I wanted to be alone for a while. Have you been following me the whole time?”
He frowned. “I knew you wanted to be alone. And to be perfectly honest, I would’ve preferred to leave you alone. But…”
“I probably shouldn’t be alone?” I supplied.
“That’s the conclusion the others have come to, yeah.”
“And what do you think?”
He looked at me, hesitating. “Normally, I would’ve said this was your own problem, and you should deal with it yourself.”
“But?” I prompted, folding my arms across my chest.
“But maybe I just wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Like running away, like you were thinking about doing,” he said. “And to answer your question—no, ten minutes is not nearly a big enough head start. I would’ve caught up with you in about thirty seconds, maybe less.”
I slowed to a stop, and he walked a few more feet and then stopped as well.
He glanced back at me, and he nodded toward the sky—or at least to what we could see of it through the tangled web of tree branches above. “It’s getting closer to the full moon, to what would be your first transformation,” he explained. “Your senses aren’t the only things changing.”
“So that’s not just a lycan thing, then?”
He shook his head.
“Still, I thought people only heard the thoughts you wanted them to hear?”
“There are exceptions,” Kael said. “If you’re really close to someone—emotionally speaking, I mean—you can’t always keep things from them. And as for you? Well, it takes practice; the newly transformed can’t always direct their thoughts the way they’d like.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling incredibly self-conscious all of a sudden. Had people been listening to my thoughts all night?
Kael laughed quietly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t think you thought anything too terribly embarrassing,” he said.
I groaned and wandered a few feet up the path, staring at the moon. “Directing thoughts…” I thought aloud—even though apparently that wasn’t even necessary now. “That’s going to take some getting used to. You’ll teach me how, right?” I turned back to him.
He was frowning again. “If it should come to that, I guess,” he said. “But I don’t think it will.”
“Why not?”
“Because you strike me as a somewhat intelligent person. I think once you’ve thought about it, you’ll realize what a mistake becoming a werewolf would be.”
“There you go making assumptions about me again,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t know me.”
“No, I suppose I don’t. But I can hear your thoughts, remember?”
“Cheater,” I said with frown. “Can you not like, tune-out of my head or something?”
“I could,” he said. “But why would I want to do that?”
“Oh I don’t know, common courtesy or something? It feels like you’re eavesdropping on me. It’s kind of rude.”
“Okay. I’ll stop then.”
“Really?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Wait…how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t,” he said with a small smile.
“You’re an incredibly annoying person—has anyone ever told you that?”
“I might have heard it once or twice before.”
We walked side-by-side in silence for several minutes after that.
Every now and then, I would cast a wary eye over at Kael, and every time I did he seemed increasingly more oblivious to my presence—but I was sure that was only because he was concentrating on trying to hear my thoughts.
With that in mind, I tried to keep them as vague as possible. I didn’t want him to hear my uncertainty, and I definitely didn’t want him reinforcing it.
One part of me—the sane part of me—was screaming for me to get a grip. Of course I should remain human. What kind of person wants to become a bloodthirsty monster?
Why was I even considering anything other than taking that antidote and resuming my normal life?
But there was the catch—that word, ‘normal’.
Considering the way the past few weeks had gone, it didn’t look like my life had any plans to return to ‘normal’ any time soon.
I wasn’t completely ignoring what Eli and the others had said, though. I might be a monster at first. But I was convinced that part would pass quickly, and once it did…
Once it did, I wouldn’t be weak anymore. I wouldn’t have to rely on others to keep my family safe. The more I thought about it, becoming a werewolf was the only thing that made sense to me. Maybe it was what was supposed to happen? Things happened for a reason, right? That’s what people kept telling me after my dad died.
“You can’t seriously believe that,” Kael said suddenly. “Are you insane?”
“Stop listening to my thoughts!” I hissed.
“Would it make any difference if I told you that, werewolf or not, you’re no match for what threatens your family?” he asked.
“None at all.”
“You’re delusional.”
“You’re obnoxious.”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Maybe I’ll find out?” I said. “And maybe they’ll be no match for me?”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Kael said.
“I’m not afraid of death.”
Who was this person and what the hell was she saying?
I was lying, and I knew it.
I was afraid. I wasn’t insane. Just insanely scared, and desperate for a way to be able to fight all of these frightening things.
I would never admit that fear out loud in a million years, and I was doing my best to keep thoughts of it to myself—though I doubted I was having any success at that, judging by the way I could still feel Kael watching me.
My gaze shifted sideways at him, expectant.
He sighed.
I braced myself for his words.
But he didn’t call me out on my lie. “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked instead.
I stared at him.
“It would be better if we got you back before your mother came home from work,” he said.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess.”
The offer had sounded almost…thoughtful. Not a word I was quick to associate with him, based on our interactions so far.
Nothing made sense tonight.
“Of course,” he began, nonchalantly glancing once more at the almost-full moon, “you know there’s still a chance that I’m a serial killer, and that I’m just trying to lure you away from the others.”
I exhaled slowly. “There it is.”
“There what is?”
“For a minute there I was beginning to think you were actually a thoughtful, kind person.”
“Wow—you’re just an all-around terrible judge of character, aren’t you?”
Our gazes met. His mouth curved into a slight, cr
ooked grin. I found myself automatically mirroring the expression, and an odd heat shivered through me as I did.
I hastily averted my eyes and started to walk—but then he grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.
He closed his eyes, and his body tensed. Even his breathing stopped.
“I…um…what’s wrong…?”
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Can’t you hear that?”
I closed my eyes too. At first, there was nothing to hear but the sound of our own, steady heartbeats. But then there was another sound—faint but getting louder every second—and there was no mistaking it for what it was.
“Someone’s coming.”
8
blackmail
Unlike before, I didn’t readily recognize the scent on the air.
“Who is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“One of the others?”
“Be quiet,” Kael growled. “I’m trying to listen.”
“Well excuse me,” I shot back in a whisper.
“We should probably get moving,” Kael said a moment later. He sounded worried.
I watched him questioningly, hoping he might elaborate, but he only started to walk away. I’d only taken a few steps after him when a low-pitched howl sounded somewhere in the distance, and I jumped and latched on to the closest thing I could find—which was his arm.
“You’re awfully jumpy for someone who’s not even afraid of death,” he mused, looking down at me.
I released my circulation-stopping grip and hurriedly stepped away. “Be quiet,” I muttered. “It startled me, that’s all.”
“That was just Will,” he said.
It was hard to believe, because I still couldn’t picture Will as anything other than human—even though now I knew what he really was.
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