Descendant

by S. M. Gaither

  For better or for worse, I knew there was no way I could step back and trust my life—or Lora’s, or Mom’s— to anybody but myself. I didn’t want to. I was used to doing things myself. I was the only person I’d ever really needed, and I didn’t want that to change now.

  “Alex?” Vanessa gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “Now would probably be the time to tell me if you’re not sure about this.”

  I stared out one of the low windows lining the hallway. I could see shadows of the distant mountains, pink and orange ribbons stretched across the dark blue sky— remnants of what had been a spectacular sunset. A flood of warmth swept over me, followed immediately by a tingling sensation that started at the base of my neck and ran down my spine and along each of my arms. It was the same pins-and-needles feeling that had been bugging me earlier this afternoon. Except now it didn’t seem nearly as unpleasant. It felt powerful. Reassuring.

  I looked back and met Vanessa’s concerned eyes.

  Then I took a deep breath, and I nodded.

  “I’m sure.”

  11

  gone

  “How do you feel?” Eli asked.

  We were sitting in the same room I’d met him in last night. Each of us had claimed one of the squishy leather armchairs arranged in front of the fireplace. It was glowing faintly, the flames steadily licking the logs to ash.

  “The best I’ve felt all day, actually,” I said. And it was true. In fact, I felt perfectly normal.

  I mean, despite the fact that I was about to turn into a werewolf.

  That minor detail aside, I felt great.

  “That’s… interesting,” Will said after a pause.

  Vanessa and Eli nodded in timid agreement, and all three of them exchanged an anxious glance.

  “Interesting?” I repeated. “Why is it interesting?”

  “It is not entirely unheard of…” Eli began in a voice devoid of its usual intellectual authority. “It is just strange that you do not seem to be suffering from any of the ill-effects that usually accompany one’s first shift.”

  “But I have been. I’ve been sick all day, and yesterday too,” I pointed out.

  “True. But now that the moon is full and risen, those negative side-effects should be at their height.”

  “Maybe I’m just lucky enough that the effects are going to skip me?”

  “Doubtful.”

  I grimaced.

  “Your body is completely rearranging itself, after all. It is fascinating how it happens, really… If you would like, I can explain the details—” Behind his glasses, Eli’s eyes shone with excitement.

  I looked away, not wanting him to see the fear in my own.

  “Maybe we’ll save that for another night?” Vanessa interjected, eying me with a worried expression. “I don’t think she needs to hear those gruesome details right now.”

  “It is not gruesome— it is science,” Eli muttered as I gave Vanessa a grateful look.

  “This is so weird,” Will said, getting out of his chair and stepping between Eli and Vanessa, who were now throwing dirty glances at each another. “Has anybody looked at the time recently?” he asked, his own eyes darting toward the clock that hung above the fireplace.

  I followed his gaze, and I saw that it was after midnight.

  “Wow—when did it get so late?” Vanessa asked.

  All three of them turned and looked at me.

  “You don’t feel…weird at all?” Will asked after several seconds of awkward silence.

  I shook my head, confused. “I told you. I feel perfectly fine.”

  “Huh.”

  I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat and scraped my fingernails along the armrest, trying to think of something to say that would direct the conversation toward anything but me.

  But before I came up with anything, Eli spoke: “At the lake… you both saw Sera attack her, correct?”

  Will and Vanessa both nodded.

  “And the wound? Kael told me it healed almost immediately… Did either of you actually see it before it healed?” Eli’s voice was calm, but his eyes had a funny gleam in them.

  It looked a little like desperation.

  “I pulled her away from Sera myself,” Will said. “When she came up out of the water, I saw it.”

  “And we are sure it was deep enough for the toxin to have entered her bloodstream?”

  “Deep enough?” Will said with a short, humorless laugh. “Dude, her arm was barely in one piece.”

  “And you saw the mark’s reaction to that magic last night, Eli…” Vanessa said quietly. “We all did.”

  “I know,” Eli said. He seemed frustrated. Uncomfortable silence fell over us again. Determined not to let it set in, I decided maybe this was a good time to retry the conversation I’d started with Kael earlier.

  “Speaking of Sera,” I began. “Can I ask you guys something?”

  “Of course,” Vanessa said.

  “How much do you guys know about her? I mean… it’s just been bugging me since I found out—you guys knew it was her that day at the lake, right?”

  “Yes,” Will said slowly. “We knew.”

  “So why didn’t Kael just tell me who she really was?”

  A look of unmistakable surprise spread across all three of their faces.

  “He was probably—” Will began.

  “He told me he did,” Vanessa interrupted furiously.

  “He told me to stay away from her,” I said, turning to her. “He didn’t say why, though. And I asked him, after everything that happened earlier, but he didn’t seem to want to explain. I mean—I probably would’ve been more likely to listen to him if he’d told me that Sera was the one who’d tried to kill me.”

  “No kidding,” Vanessa said, her jaw clenching.

  “Why would he lie about something like that?” I asked, frowning.

  “Probably because he—“

  “This is not really something we need to talk about right now,” Eli interrupted. “We have more important things to worry about.” He gave Vanessa a stern look—or at least as stern a look as someone with his boyish face could give—and then he turned to me. “How are you feeling now, Alex?” he asked.

  “I’m feeling just as good as I did the last time you asked me—you know, two minutes ago?”

  “That’s good,” he replied, seemingly indifferent to the bite of annoyance in my voice.

  (We’ll talk later,) I heard Vanessa think.

  I met Vanessa’s eyes briefly and gave her a discreet nod. I don’t think it went unnoticed, though, because a second later Eli was frowning at both of us, shaking his head.

  I almost wished I hadn’t brought up Sera, because for some reason everyone seemed on edge after that. Most of the evening, we’d been talking, laughing—we’d even played cards earlier. Now everyone was off in a world of their own, intent on not letting anyone else interrupt it.

  The silence made every second the clock counted off all the more painful.

  Still, I was looking forward to talking with Vanessa about it later. Because for some reason beyond my knowledge and control, I cared about Kael’s motives all of a sudden. I couldn’t help it—which was really annoying, since the last thing I wanted to think about right now was him.

  I shouldn’t have been thinking about him.

  I shouldn’t have cared why he did the things he did, why he acted the way he did.

  I’d meant it when I called him a jerk earlier. That’s exactly what he was—and a lying jerk, at that.

  So why was I still thinking about him?

  “Alex?” Vanessa’s voice made me jump.

  “Huh?”

  “I asked if you’d like a blanket and pillow? It’s getting late, and as long as nothing’s happening you might as well rest.”

  “Um… sure.”

  Vanessa’s face was more somber than I’d ever seen it as she leapt to her feet and hurried toward the door.

  “What if something happens during the night?” I as
ked nervously as Vanessa disappeared into the hallway.

  “We aren’t going to leave you, Alex,” Will said, giving me a reassuring smile.

  “Aren’t you guys tired, though?” I asked, fighting a yawn.

  Eli gave a small chuckle. “We can go days without sleeping, if need be. We will be fine.”

  I was thinking about how awesome it would be to not have to sleep for a week, and I was about to ask Eli if werewolves were just as tireless, when Vanessa came back.

  She had a pillow tucked under one arm and a blanket draped over the other. “Here you go, Alex,” she said, attempting a smile. A worried frown took its place quickly.

  Will’s comforting smile had faded, too.

  Eli was massaging his temple between his fingers, his frustration from earlier obviously enduring.

  And for what seemed like the hundredth time that week, I didn’t know what was going on. Obviously, the fact that I wasn’t transforming despite the full moon was a problem—but I had no idea why, or what it might possibly mean.

  Fear skipped through me, but I tried not to let it show. I just left my chair, took the pillow and blanket Vanessa had given me, and stretched out on the couch closest to the fireplace.

  I was asleep within minutes.

  * * *

  My eyes opened slowly, only to be blasted by bright sunlight. I rolled over on my side and folded the pillow over my face, partly to shield my eyes, and partly to drown out the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.

  “Alex?” came Will’s voice a second later. “You still asleep?”

  “I was,” I said grumpily, my voice muffled by the pillow.

  “Are you planning on sleeping all day? Because it’s going on eleven ‘o’ clock right now.”

  “Eleven…?”

  Crap.

  My mom’s shift at the hospital had ended at seven; I had planned to be back at my house hours ago.

  I sat up, opening my eyes slowly to give them time to adjust to the brightness of the room. I lifted my hands in front of me, turning them back and forth, over and over again. Then I lifted one hand to my face and felt my way over it.

  Two eyes, a nose, a mouth— everything was there.

  Everything was normal.

  “Yeah, you’re looking particularly human this morning,” Will commented.

  And just like that, I promptly forgot about the wrath I would no doubt be facing from my mom later on.

  “Nothing… happened?” I asked.

  “You fell asleep around one a.m. last night, and slept fine as far as we could tell,” he said with a shrug. “And, as you can see, it’s morning now and you’re still about as human as it gets. Kind of anticlimactic, really.”

  “But why? I mean, is this…normal?”

  Will shook his head. “We’ve never seen anything like it. Eli locked himself in his library this morning and told us he wasn’t coming out until he found out what was going on,” he said. “And hopefully his books will have an explanation, because that kid gets grumpy when he doesn’t have all the answers.”

  His sounded amused at the thought of a grumpy Eli—amused seemed to be his default setting, I’d noticed. So I attempted a half-hearted grin in response.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about how grumpy I was going to be if we couldn’t find out what was going on.

  “Are you hungry?” Will asked, offering me a hand.

  “Starving.”

  “Good, he said, “because Vanessa’s an excellent cook. And I feel like giant, potentially cataclysmic problems are always easier to deal with when you have a full stomach.”

  “Agreed,” I said, my grin briefly turning a bit more earnest as I let him pull me to my feet.

  The kitchen was all the way on the other side of the house, but as soon as we stepped into the hallway, a dozen delicious smells filled my nose. Bacon was the most obvious scent, but I could smell pancakes, blueberries and a particularly tart orange juice, too—and all with amazing clarity.

  Vanessa smiled at us when we entered the kitchen a few minutes later, and then she went back to flipping something in the frying pan she was hovering over. In the far corner of the kitchen was a large round table basking in the sunlight shining through a tall bay window. Will pulled out a chair for me at this table, and we both had a seat. He talked to Vanessa as she cooked, but I let my attention to drift out the window and across the peaceful mountain scenery.

  Peaceful.

  What I wouldn’t have given to have a peaceful life again.

  “Morning sunshine,” Will said as Kael entered the kitchen.

  “Shut-up,” Kael replied with a yawn, taking a seat at the table as far away from me as he could possibly get. He didn’t look my direction, or even acknowledge my presence in any way.

  Not that I cared.

  “I see you finally decided to get up,” Vanessa said, briskly, as she walked over and sat a plate of biscuits in the center of the table. “Did you sleep well?” There was something dangerous about her tone, and the apprehensive look on Kael’s face told me I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed it.

  “I’ve slept better,” Kael said, yawning again. For some reason, Will seemed to find his answer amusing. The two of them laughed quietly over what must have been an inside joke, and I made a determined effort to direct my gaze back to the window.

  Their laughter came to an abrupt halt as Vanessa slammed a jar of strawberry jam onto the table with such force that all three of us jerked our heads toward her. She was glaring at Kael, gripping the glass jar so tightly I was surprised it didn’t shatter.

  “I’m sensing a bit of tension,” Will said, smiling that crooked, amused-at-the-world smile of his. He leaned back into his seat, like he was in a theatre getting ready for the movie to start.

  “I think someone owes Alex an apology for last night,” Vanessa said, plunking herself down in the chair across from Kael and folding her arms across her chest.

  I tried not to sigh. I didn’t need Vanessa to fight my battles for me. And besides, I didn’t really care if Kael apologized or not.

  I didn’t care what he did.

  At least not until he laughed that arrogant little laugh of his again, lifting his eyes to Vanessa and shaking his head, and I suddenly found myself fighting the urge to chuck my coffee mug at his head.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said, eyeing the mug with a mocking smile.

  “Keep annoying me and we’ll see what I will and won’t do.” I turned to Vanessa and gave her an insistent look. “You told me you were going to teach me how to block people out, remember? So that I can keep idiots like this—” I jerked my thumb towards Kael “—from listening to my thoughts.”

  Vanessa hesitated, not taking her eyes off Kael.

  “It’s not hard to do. It just takes some practice, and a bit of conscious effort at first,” she said.

  “So you can teach me then?”

  Still, she didn’t answer. But after a minute she pulled her eyes slowly, reluctantly, away from Kael.

  “Please?” I pressed.

  “…Okay,” Vanessa finally agreed, throwing Kael one last irritated look before placing her full attention on me. Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully for a moment, and then she continued: “So, I think the best way is to learn how to direct them first. It’s really easy,” she assured me. “Just picture the person you want to hear your thoughts—and then, think. Since you’re new at this, you should probably try to picture the person while you think, too; your thoughts will be less likely to stray if you do. Understand?”

  I nodded. It sounded simple enough.

  “Okay, then close your eyes—it’s easier that way—and picture me.”

  I obeyed, although I felt a little foolish doing so.

  “Alright, are you picturing my lovely face?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yeah,” I said with a nervous laugh.

  “Good, now think something that you only want me to hear.”

  I considered it for a second, then settled on a thoug
ht from earlier. (Kael is a jerk.)

  I opened my eyes as Vanessa erupted into a fit of giggles.

  Will looked confused, but at the same time still amused by Vanessa’s reaction.

  “It’s not really that funny,” Kael said before taking a sip from his coffee mug.

  “What’s not funny?” Will asked.

  “She thinks I’m a jerk,” Kael said in a dull tone.

  I felt the slightest tinge of red ignite my cheeks.

  “Wait—you heard her?” Vanessa said, straightening up and turning to Kael.

  “Obviously.”

  “And you?” Vanessa asked, looking at Will. He shook his head, and she turned back to me. “Well, it was a good first try,” she said. For a fraction of a second, Vanessa looked discouraged. But in the next instant she was smiling again. “Let’s see if you can keep your thoughts to yourself—some people find that easier. I’m not one of them, mind you, but that’s just me.” She clapped her hands together like a cheerleader about to start chanting for me. “Okay, so instead of focusing on others, just picture yourself, and only yourself. It can be hard, especially if the thoughts you’re thinking are about someone else. I’ve heard of some people who picture an actual wall as they think, maybe to remind themselves that what they’re thinking is not to leave their head.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, feeling a bit doubtful after my last failed attempt.

  “Right. So think about something, anything, and try making an effort to block us out, and we’ll make an effort to listen in.” She gave me an encouraging smile.

  I nodded. Turned away, looked out the window, and tried to focus on a single thought.

  It wasn’t long before I saw Lora’s face. And then Mom’s. They must have been really worried about me by this point, and I was worried about them, too…

  How could I be sure they were safe?

  “Jack and Emily were both keeping watch last night,” Kael said quietly. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

  His words both reassured and frustrated me at the same time.

  “What are you talking about?” Will asked.

  Vanessa gave Kael a quizzical look as well.

  “Her mom and her sister,” Kael replied, looking just as confused as Vanessa. “She’s worried about them. Didn’t you hear her…?”