Dr. Coffman knocked at the screen door about twenty minutes later. He took inventory of the people in the room and as his gaze fell upon me, I was certain I saw the destruction of my future. “Got the whole family together, did you, Elise?”
“Well, you know teenagers,” Elise said. “Their cell phones are faster than their cars and they heard there was food.”
Dr. Coffman looked at me. His calm expression held just a touch of pity around his eyes.
“Are you sure you want everyone here? This is about your medical history and such.”
“This is my family, doctor. I need them,” I said. Xavier pulled me closer; Elise stepped into the living room and sat on the arm of the sofa. Even Mairin leaned forward and Mathias switch from holding her hand to laying his hand on her shoulder. My family would protect me, even from myself.
“Then if that’s what you want,” the doctor said, “I’ll get right to the point.” Dr. Coffman pulled several sheets of paper from the small briefcase he’d brought with him. My heart thundered, keeping a reckless pace I knew would render me unconscious if I didn’t calm down. I held my breath and waited. “The blood test was, at best, inconclusive,” Dr. Coffman said. His voice was soft and I could hear an apology in his tone.
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “How can the tests be inconclusive? I thought this was an all or nothing endeavor.”
“As you know, Kerry, we’ve never before had any attacks by a partially changed wereanimal. We didn’t know what to expect. Unfortunately, we still don’t.” Dr. Coffman took the chair one of the panthers offered him. “The virus is in your blood, Kerry,” he said. “But in such low levels that I just can’t say for certain if you will or will not make the change.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought it was an either, or kind of thing. Either you had the virus or you didn’t. If you had it, you changed. If you didn’t, you were safe. I didn’t think levels of anything mattered.”
“That’s the problem with your tests,” Dr. Coffman said. “I’ve never seen such low levels of the virus in anyone before now and so I don’t know if the virus will have the same effect on you as the virus at normal levels would have.” He fidgeted with his cuffs for a moment before continuing. “For example, these three girls who have been infected since Friday,” he gestured to the girls in the room, “their virus levels are two hundred times higher than yours. They’ll undergo the change in five days when the moon is full. I know the change will come to them because their virus levels are what I’ve seen in victims of wereanimal attacks the past.”
“But my levels are so low compared to theirs that you just don’t know,” I said.
“Exactly.” Dr. Coffman’s kind eyes were almost more than I could handle. I wanted to be angry, to scream at him, but I knew it wasn’t his fault that my body wasn’t cooperating with the tests and known variables from previous wereanimal attacks.
“Shit,” I said. My brain kept circling the thought that I still didn’t know what was going to happen when the sun went down in five days. I still had no idea if I would hunt with Xavier or just lay curled into his fur and clench my hands deep into it. I wanted to scream.
“That was my thought,” Mairin said. I heard the edge of anger in her voice and reached out to take her hand. She squeezed my hand and asked, “Are there any other tests you can do to get a more definite answer, Doc?”
Dr. Coffman shook his head. “No, I’ve done every test I could think of. I think we’re just going to have to wait this one out.”
I nodded. Five more days and we’d know for sure. Five more days of wondering if my life as I knew it would change and I would start a new one.
“Well, until then, we need to deal with Lane and his new tactic of changing girls rather than killing them,” I said. I looked around the room at the pride members, wincing as my gaze found each of the three girls who awaited their first change at sunset in five days. I squeezed Mairin’s hand once more and looked to Mathias and Xavier. “We need to get the bastard so he can’t do this to anyone else.”
The front door banged open, startling me out of the first really restful sleep I had gotten since the doctor's visit. Try as I might, I couldn't focus on the walking nightmare standing in the middle of the living room, dripping blood on Elise's carpet. There was something familiar about the shape of the face behind its veil of blood, but the gore distracted me. I sat up carefully only to nearly end up on the floor as Xavier vaulted off the couch to catch the body before it hit the floor.
“What the hell?” Xavier exclaimed. I rubbed my eyes and tried to wake up enough to make sense of what was happening in front of me.
“We almost had him, Xavier.” Christian's voice brought a shock of recognition with it. Somewhere under the horrifying image of the body on the floor was a boy I had just joked with at dinner. “I was with that big Italian vamp and he had a hold on him, but when Lane transformed, he broke the big guy’s grip. Then he came for me.”
Xavier leaned over Christian in an attempt to stop the blood flowing from the younger boy's head. As he got closer to the blood, Xavier’s nose wrinkled and he jerked back from Christian’s body. I knew Xavier had no problem with the scent of blood and though he’d told me he didn’t particularly like the scent of vampires, their smell had never made him jerk back as though he’d been slapped.
“Xavier?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
“I know that scent,” he said. Fury put a razor's edge on his voice. It was a sound I'd never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
“That son of a bitch,” Xavier ground out. He leaned back on his heels and shook his head. “He did it on purpose.”
"Who did what on purpose?" I asked.
Xavier shook his head. His jaw clenched tight and I could hear the marble on granite sound of him grinding his teeth.
"Gram? Are you going to help us or just watch Christian bleed on the rug?" Xavier asked, turning to find Elise standing in the kitchen doorway. Her wide eyes and open mouth spoke to her incredulity that Xavier would speak to her as he just had.
"Xavier, it's not Elise's fault Christian is hurt. Don't take this out on her."
Xavier backed away from Christian and left me and Elise to work on the injured boy's wounds. Elise encouraged me to help Christian heal as best I could. My healing ability seemed almost entirely absent since Lane had attacked me, but I did what I could to help close the gashes after Elise stitched them up. As we worked, Xavier paced the living room and cursed. He paused from time to time to see how Christian was doing, but he refused to get close to his pride member.
Christian leaned carefully against the kitchen counter, sipping a glass of water, while Elise and I attempted to scrub the blood off the yellow linoleum. The swirls of red, brown, and yellow made me want to scream or vomit, thought I wasn't sure which was the stronger urge. I rocked back onto my heels as Elise mopped the area I had just scrubbed. I turned to watch Xavier pace and curse, finally reaching a breaking point with the man I loved. If he wasn't going to be helpful, he needed to shut up. The string of profanity which had issued unending from his lips did nothing but make me want to curl into a ball in a corner. I decided it had to stop.
“Xavier, either tell me what’s wrong or shut the hell up. The cursing is driving me crazy.” I lay my hand on his shoulder and when he swung around to face me, I saw not the anger his words carried, but the agony of betrayal.
“He did it on purpose, Kerry,” he said. “All these years I thought it was just a hungry werepanther who attacked me, but that son of a bitch infected me on purpose.”
Realization slowly plowed through my sleep-fogged and shell-shocked brain. “Lane was the panther who attacked you when you were seven?”
“I will never forget the scent of the panther who attacked me and who came back to Mom and Dad’s house every year when I was there. The panther made sure to mark the area as much as possible so I would always smell it. He made a point of being obvious and I never knew
why.” Xavier punched his right fist into his left hand. The resulting crack of flesh on flesh made me jump. “Now that scent is all over Christian,” he said bitterly. “Lane wants me to know he’s the one doing this and that he started it all when I was seven.”
“But if Lane was the panther who infected you when you were a kid, why didn’t you smell that scent on me?” I asked.
Xavier shook his head. “I thought I smelled something familiar, but by the time I got close to you, the scent was so masked by the hospital and the people who had touched you, I thought I had imagined the familiarity. Maybe the scent was lighter because he hadn't fully transformed. I don't know." Xavier plunged his hands into his hair and pulled until his face became a grotesque mask. The man I loved disappeared behind that mask.
I reached for Xavier, but he backed away, shaking his head. “Please...please don't touch me," he said. "I'm only barely holding onto my control now and...I don't know...I don't know if I can control myself."
He dropped his hands, allowing his face to fall into something closer to normal, but I could see the change. This was no longer the Xavier I loved. This was an angry wereanimal bent on destroying an enemy. For the first time since I'd met him in my mother's store, I feared Xavier and the power of his beast. I wanted to believe he wouldn't hurt me, but when I looked into his eyes, I found no trace of the loving man who had held me as I slept, who had fought to protect the safety of our families. That man's gentle nature was gone. Replaced with a kind of vengeance I knew would destroy him.
"I couldn't forgive myself if I hurt you, Kerry," he said, still backing away from me.
“You wouldn’t. You couldn't. I know that.” I said.
“My own father purposely made me what I am. He took choices from me at the age of seven that no one should have to face at any age and he did it on purpose. He knew who I was. He told us that himself. He knew I was his son. He wasn’t just trying to hurt my mom. For whatever reason, Lane wanted me to be like him.”
"But you aren't like him. You're nothing like Lane. You have spent your whole life protecting the people around you. Lane has never once cared about anyone but himself."
"But I could be like him," Xavier said softly. "I do what I do to protect East Hampton because I believed the attack that infected me was God's way of testing me...of making me stronger. How do I go back to that role...the savior...when I know the attack wasn't an accident, but a calculated plan to destroy me perpetrated by my own father?"
The pain in Xavier’s voice tore at my heart. He’d been so careful with me, so supportive of me since Lane’s attack on me and Dr. Coffman’s revelation that we wouldn’t know for sure if I was going to go through the change until the full moon, but the agony in his voice now told me how much he resented the changes being a werepanther had wrought in his life. No matter what he’d said to help me survive my own attack, I knew now he didn’t believe it for himself. Given the choice, he’d be human, not were.
“Xavier, please. I need you to calm down. Let me help you,” I said.
The wild fury in his eyes when he lifted them to meet my gaze snatched a gasp from my lips. He had truly believed he was meant to be a guardian after the attack when he was seven. I could see that now, had always seen it in the way he worked to keep the pride together despite the solitary nature of panthers, and how he put his own desires aside when the need to protect those who were weaker arose. The revelation that Lane had purposely infected him had broken something vital in Xavier. That part of him that had believed in fate and God's plan for him was deeply damaged. So deeply damaged, I wondered if it could be repaired.
“How could anyone hate their own child like that?” Suddenly the strong man who saw vengeance as an option was gone--replaced by the small boy he'd been when Lane had attacked him. I wanted to take his pain as my own, but there was nothing I could do but reassure Xavier he was loved, no matter what had happened to him or who had done it. Any other healing Xavier needed, he would have to find his own way of coming to terms with what he knew now.
“I’m sure he didn’t do it because he hated you, Xavier,” I said. “You saw him when you met him in August. Lane is missing something essential in his soul. He may have once been whole--maybe even whole enough to have loved your mother--but he lost part of himself somewhere. I know there’s no excuse for what he did to you, but I know he didn’t do it because he hated you.”
Xavier dropped to his knees in front of me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I wove my fingers into his hair and whispered words of comfort as he had done for me over the last several days. No wonder he'd taken on such a haunted look since my attack. It was heart-breaking to have to try to tell someone who saw no future for themselves why they had to forget their pain and continue to live. That Xavier had been willing to do exactly that for me told me how deep his love for me was. I wouldn't fail him now when he needed the same reassurances. No matter how much I wanted to be able to reach into his soul and extract the part that was crushing his spirit, I knew I couldn't heal his pain anymore than he'd been able to heal mine. Flesh healing, I understood. Mairin seemed better with soul healing, but I knew even she wouldn't be able to heal this wound. All I could do was tell him I loved him, promise I would help him, and assure him that no matter what, I wouldn't leave him. The thunder of his heartbeat against my legs where his chest touched me began to slow and I felt the burning heat of his tears as they soaked into my shirt.
“I love you,” I said. “No matter what, that’s all that matters, right?” I echoed the words Xavier had used to calm me since Lane had attacked me.
“Right,” he said softly, sounding less than convinced. “I have to find him, Kerry. It wasn’t bad enough that he killed. It wasn’t enough that he tried to kill you. He didn’t stop at infecting strangers. Now he’s going for the pride. If we don’t stop him, he won’t ever stop on his own. Maybe if I’m the one to find him, I can give him what he wanted ten years ago and I can stop him.”
I shook my head. “No, Xavier,” I said. “You can’t go looking for Lane with the idea that your death or his is the only way to stop him. I won’t lose you that way,” I said. I'd never felt fear as a choking presence as I felt it then. Not even when I'd knelt on the sand beside Xavier's bloody body had I been so helpless in the face of fear. I knew if Xavier were the one to find and kill Lane, the man I loved would never return to me. I'd lose him to the stranger who looked at me from his haunted eyes. “You can’t be the one to kill Lane. Remember what Mathias said about the damage killing Lane would do to your soul? Are you willing to give him so much of yourself? Are you willing to give up something so precious to this beast?”
“I’m pretty sure killing the man who took my future from me when I was seven will not harm my soul, Kerry,” Xavier said, but his tone was unconvincing. “I think his death at my hands would simply put paid to that account, don’t you?”
I shook my head. "Killing never ends when it's done for vengeance, Xavier. You know that as well as I do. Didn't you learn anything from battling Azael? Revenge may be a great motivator, but it's a terrible way to feed your soul."
"You don't understand," he said. He stood and the distance between us grew until it felt as though I'd never again be able to reach the man I loved. "You don't know what it was like. What it felt like to have your life drain into the grass. To watch the beetles and worms come to make a meal of your body while your soul fought to stay alive. To hear your mother scream until she had no voice left. To be told what the virus meant to your future before you had even begun to live. An infection with no cure. Secrets to be kept from everyone at all times. Having to learn control before you even understood what the word meant. And no future for your own family. No children. No sons and daughters to carry on your name. That's what I knew at the age of seven!"
My heart thundered in my chest, pushing my life's blood so quickly through my body that I felt I could fly. No one had ever said anything about what might happen if I did change. No one had mentioned an
ything to me about not having children. Suddenly a future I had carefully built for myself since I'd been a child playing with my dolls was ripped away from me. I slipped to my knees, a low keening sound coming from behind the knot in my throat.
"Xavier!" Elise exclaimed. She knelt and pulled me close against her chest.
"Kerr...I'm so sorry..." Xavier reached for me, but his hand hesitated above my head before he pulled it back to his side. "I didn't mean for you to find out this way."
I shook my head, trying to negate what he'd told me, but there was no turning back. Even if I didn't change, Xavier couldn't give me children. My dream of being a mother, a grandmother, floated away on the wisps of pain that escaped my iron control. I looked up to find Xavier watching me, a broken and silent sentinel to the end of my--our--plans.
"I'm okay," I said, struggling to stand up, to be on equal footing with Xavier. "So we adopt. Big deal." I laughed, but the sound was brittle like old glass. I could see he didn't believe me, but he wasn't going to believe anything I said to him now. I looked back at Elise, trying to plead silently that she talk some sense to her grandson. Something in my gaze must have been clear because she finally sighed and sat on the arm of the couch.
“Xavier, I know what we’re saying won’t change your mind,” she said. “I can see that stubborn set to your shoulder, but I beg you to wait until you have taken the time to calm yourself. Don't go head-first into danger in the state you're in. You'll regret your actions for more reasons than the ones I can see you considering and just as Kerry doesn’t want to lose the man she loves, I don’t want to lose the grandson I love.”
Xavier opened his mouth to say something, but Elise’s tear-bright eyes stopped whatever justification he'd planned to utter. Instead he nodded and said, “I’ll wait until tomorrow, Gram.” He hugged Elise and kissed her cheek. “You aren’t going to lose me, Gram. I’m tougher than that.”
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