I'm not sure what I expected my grandmother to look like...but I guess I didn't think she'd look so much like Ma. Her hair still has some black in it, though it's mostly white, and it's thickly curled over her shoulders in much the same style that my mother wore it. Marie's got the same laugh lines that Ma did, the same nose with the thick bridge, the same upward sloping right eyebrow. Even how quickly her long legs eats up the distance between us reminds me of how Ma zipped through life.
It hurts, seeing Marie.
It physically hurts.
My heart aches inside of me, and—almost unconsciously—I reach up and place my hand over my heart, pressing down, trying to soothe it.
Silver flicks a gaze to me and frowns softly as I look at my grandmother.
Can Silver feel my pain?
Can she feel my heart aching inside of me?
Because my grandmother certainly can't.
Marie's beaming as she opens her arms to me, her smile huge as she enfolds me in an embrace that's hard and unyielding.
She's all muscle and sinew and there's nothing soft to her as her shoulder blade jabs me in the throat.
Ma, too, was wiry from all the running she did, but there was always softness to her when she gave me a hug.
This woman, Marie...she's not Ma.
Obviously, she's not Ma.
It's just hard to see someone who looks so much like her and not compare every part of her to Ma.
“Hello, Ella,” says Marie, holding me out at arm's length with narrowed eyes. Her gaze roves over my face.
Does she see my mother in me, too?
I don't know.
There's not much of a change in her expression as she looks me over, almost clinically, like a director examining an actress to see if she's pretty enough for his picture.
It's calculating, the way she looks at me, even with that bright smile of hers.
My stomach turn a couple more degrees south, and suddenly, it's all just the tiniest bit too much. The warehouse with its mildew smell, the rotting furniture, the rusty walls, the wolves outside the chain link fence.
This woman who is supposed to be my grandmother...
I cough a little into my hand and try to relax, try to give Marie a smile.
I do my best.
“Hello,” I answer her, voice low.
This is a stranger. I can't bring myself to call her “Grandma” or “Grandmother” or any other term of endearment.
I don't know her. Not yet.
Endearment is earned.
“How was the trip up here? Uneventful, I hope.” Marie raises her brow further and casts a glance at Silver, who's leaning back in the couch, her hands behind her head.
Silver shrugs elegantly. “No trouble. Not since the house.”
“Vampire pests,” Marie spits out and sighs, lifting her nose. “Sent to kill you, and they were utterly useless, by the looks of it. You got out of that scrape quite well, Silver.”
I suppose this is praise, but the smile that Silver gives her in return is...guarded.
“How did you learn about the fight?” Silver asks mildly.
“Cameras.” Marie waves her hand as if that much should be obvious. “I have them all over the house.”
Silver and I exchange a glance. There's no expression on Silver's face, and I'm carefully trying to keep mine neutral, but how do you not panic about the possibility that your grandmother filmed you having sex...?
Well, this makes this first meeting all the more awkward.
“Cameras...all over?” I repeat in what I hope is a prompting tone.
Marie smiles indulgently, reaching out and patting the back of my hand.
“I erased the tapes, dear. No, I didn't watch.”
I blink, and then the realization sinks in.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
There is no tomato on earth redder than my face at present.
But Silver stretches languidly, giving a little shrug. “That's...appreciated,” she murmurs, raising a brow, too.
“Though if you really wanted to have some time for intercourse, darling, you could have done it up here.” My grandmother spreads her arms, indicating the rotting warehouse. “You didn't have to postpone meeting me just for that.”
I'm not even sure how to reply.
If, at all possible, I'm blushing a few shades redder, and there's not a single word in the English language I'm capable of speaking at present.
So Silver steps in.
Literally.
She rises up and off the couch, stretching overhead, turning her neck right and left and massaging her right shoulder.
“Marie, I think Ella is pretty overwhelmed by all of this...as she has ever right to be,” Silver rumbles.
“Of course she's overwhelmed, dear,” says Marie, and though the words are sweet, there's a bit of bite to the end of the sentence. “Her mother hid an enormous part of who she is from her, and now she has to face all of it, all at once. That's enough to send anyone spiraling.”
I flick my gaze to Marie.
I didn't like the way she said “mother.”
She barked out the word like a curse.
But Marie's stepping forward, looping one of my arms through hers and pressing it to her side.
“Walk with me, darling, all right?” she asks.
And since she turns, tugging me along deeper into the building, I have no choice but to follow.
“Now,” says Marie, closing her hand over my own and squeezing a little. Her nails are sharp. “When your mother left here, I told myself that I'd respect her wishes and never meet you. It was a very difficult decision to make, but I made it for my daughter's happiness.” She sighs for a long moment. “But now, none of that matters because Anna is gone.”
There is finality to her words, like a heavy stone rolling over the mouth of a grave.
It hurts to hear it.
Obviously, it's true. Ma is gone. Ma died, was murdered, is dead. All of that is true.
My heart is thrumming with ache inside of me.
“Your mother thought that keeping you from the wolf pack, from our culture, was what was best for you. I don't want to say she was wrong, but...” My grandmother sniffs. “Well, after all, if she hadn't left, she'd still be alive. And you wouldn't be in danger.”
At this, I stop.
I stop so quickly that my grandmother, breezing through the warehouse, her arm entwined in mine, is dragged to a halt beside me.
It's dark back here. There were a few lights by the door, and there's still plenty of holes in the roof overhead, but the amount of ambient light from the out of doors that it lets in is negligible.
Especially with the beginnings of a snow storm brewing outside.
So my grandmother's face is in shadow as she turns to study me. I can't quite make out her expression.
But I can make out a little.
I don't need light to see that there's not a bit of sympathy in the lines of her face.
Not a drop to spare.
My breath is coming hot and fast, and I spit out the words before thinking of them: “my mother...my mother died protecting me. She died saving my life.” My hands are curled into fists, and I don't know how my arm got loose from my grandmother's grasp...but it's free now.
I stand apart from her.
My grandmother gazes at me with a calculating expression. “Of course she did, dear.”
It's couched to be soothing, these words.
But they're not soothing at all.
They grate over my skin like a dull knife blade.
We stare at one another.
Uneasiness permeates the air.
“You're overwrought, of course. Overwhelmed by all of this. I don't blame you.” She shrugs elegantly. “Overemotional. That's fine. We can pick up this conversation after you get a meal and a good night's sleep in—”
Overemotional?
I snap.
“Just because I'm mourning the death of my mother does not mak
e me incapable of conversation,” I tell her with gritted teeth. “I want to learn everything...about who I am, about where I came from. But that's all secondary. I need you to understand that whatever sort of argument you had with my mother...it doesn't matter anymore. She did the very best she could by me. Every decision she made was for me, to keep me happy, to keep me safe...”
My voice trails off, because I'm afraid if I say one more word, the anger will evaporate, and pure, potent grief will wholly consume me.
Anger keeps it at bay.
So I stay in the anger.
My grandmother raises her hands in a mollifying gesture. “Of course,” she repeats, but, again, there's insincerity in her tone. “Your mother took after me in many regards.” She raises her nose. “She was strong and had strong opinions. It looks like you take after me, too.”
But I don't.
I don't take after this woman I never met. Who was never a part of my life.
I take after my mother.
I study the older woman in front of me.
I recognize that part of me is behaving like a child who's just been introduced to her new stepmother.
But this is the truth, and it's immediate and powerful:
I don't like Marie.
It's not her fault, she's done nothing to make me dislike her...
But the dislike is there, all the same.
“We shall stick with the facts, shall we, dear?” she asks, brows raised.
I keep my mouth closed.
I don't trust my voice not to shake in my anger.
So I simply nod.
“All right.” She claps her hands together. Above us, a small flock of pigeons takes off from a beam, flies around in two small circles, then settles on the same beam again.
A few gray feathers drift down through the patches of light from the holes in the roof. They twirl listlessly, aiming for the ground.
I can't help but think that's a pretty apt metaphor for this first meeting with my grandmother.
High hopes, followed by a slow descent to earth.
Marie spreads her hands, gives a little shrug. “The facts are, Ella, that your mother is dead.”
I stare at her.
Wow.
Yes, that's true, but...
Did she have to say it quite like that?
Marie seems to realize that she's speaking a little sharply.
She clears her throat, straightens a little, pastes an even brighter smile on her face.
“And, of course, yes, she died to keep you safe. She thought that, with her death, the matter would be closed. But it was not.” The smile disappears. “Shall we sit down?”
She gestures to another couch, here along the far wall of the warehouse. The couch is very clearly from the seventies with avocado green flowers all over the cushions. I sit on the edge gingerly, and my grandmother sits down beside me.
“The people who want you dead are not going to stop until they get what they want,” my grandmother tells me, leaning forward.
I try to keep my breathing even, but it's hard.
My grandmother's eyes glitter in the dark.
“And the thing that they want...” My grandmother lowers her gaze from my face...
To my chest.
“Is your heart.”
Chapter 20: The Lock and the Heart
“What do you mean?” I manage.
Because of course she doesn't mean what I think she means.
Like...my actual heart. As in “the organ.”
That would be...I mean, that'd be barbaric.
Grotesque.
Impossible.
She couldn't possibly...
“I mean your heart. Your real heart,” Marie shrugs. “The thing that pumps blood through your body. Your heart, dear,” she repeats, brow raised.
I stare at her, the aforementioned “thing that pumps blood” pounding against my rib cage at an increasing rate.
Fear.
Fear rises in me.
But I push it down.
I lick my suddenly very dry lips.
“Could you start at the beginning?” I ask her weakly.
My grandmother nods.
“You don't know werewolf culture,” she tells me, words sharp, dismissive, “and I don't have the time right now to even give you a truncated version. So I'll tell you the only part that's relevant at the moment. There is an eternal...well, struggle between vampires and werewolves. With me so far?”
I nod slowly.
“There are many of us in the world. Vampires and werewolves. And we do our best to keep from being seen by the predominant species. The humans. But. There are those of us in our ranks, vampire and werewolf both, who—being much more powerful and, to be quite honest, better than humans in every way—do not understand why we are subjugated to these less evolved creatures.”
I blink.
There's a lot in that statement that makes me raise my brow, and a lot that sounds fairly uncomfortable.
And...what would be the word for it?
Specist?
But I keep my mouth shut.
I need to understand what's happening...
So I listen.
“Specifically, there's an increasingly growing group of vampires who wish to rise up and subvert the humans...for good. And it's this group that killed your mother.”
I blink again.
“What...what in the world did my mother have to do with vampires?”
“Nothing.” Marie shrugs. “But your mother had a power that the vampires could use, and use liberally. Your mother could create a heart lock. She could set a lock on a werewolf's heart and this lock would prevent them from transforming into whatever shape they were not, at the moment. If they were in wolf shape, she could keep them from becoming human. If they were human shape, she could prevent them from becoming a wolf.”
I take a deep breath. It's a lot to take in all at once.
“But...what could vampires use that power for?” I ask her.
My grandmother stares at me in surprise for a moment.
A moment before she starts to laugh.
She puts her head back, and the laugh is jarring, loud, carrying through the empty warehouse. I stare at her, my brow furrowing.
I'm pretty sure she's laughing at me.
Always a good feeling coming from the grandmother you never knew you had.
“Oh, my goodness...you're quite the innocent, aren't you, dear?” Marie asks, and she reaches out and pats my thigh with bony fingers.
The skin of my thigh begins to crawl.
“Darling girl, you must consider the possibilities. If the vampires knew how to create a lock, they could put it on any wolf they like. They could control the wolves they wanted. Through that control, they could build up an army of wolves to do their bidding. Werewolves do not often see eye to eye with vampires, but if a vampire could control them? My goodness, what wouldn't be possible?”
Now all of my skin begins to crawl.
“I thought...I thought we were special. The wolves in this pack,” I stammer. “That, yes, we have...we can do magic. But that we were the only ones who could.”
Now that I think about it, I don't know where I got that idea.
Fanny said that the wolves in the pack could do magic.
But why did I think we were the only ones?
Why did I think we were special?
“There are others.” Marie gives a flippant little shrug. “The universe is much bigger than you think it is, my dear. There is so much you don't know. There are many others. And if a vampire could find someone who could do magic, who sympathized with them...well. The sky would be the limit, now wouldn't it?”
Her eyes glitter as she stares at me in the dark.
It's a very disconcerting expression.
“But why do they want my...my heart?” I manage. “Then they'll just have the lock, I assume? What could they possibly do with that?”
“They could recreate it. Reverse engineer it. If
they possessed your heart, they would be able to recreate the lock, given enough power. And enough time.” Marie sighs. “Your mother died protecting you, because she thought that, with her death, it would be the end of their bid for her power. But she was wrong.” Another elegant shrug.
She's talking about the death of her daughter like she'd talk about a dinner reservation.
Clearly Marie and my mother didn't see eye to eye.
But Marie sounds so flippant when she speaks of her.
It turns my stomach.
And it makes me angry.
“So...they want to kill me...and...I guess cut out my heart, so they can use it to hurt and control people. Okay.” I grind my teeth together. “That...clearly can't happen. So. Can you take the lock off?” I gaze at my grandmother.
Her smile is bright.
And eager.
“Of course I can remove the lock. I can do it just like that.” She snaps her fingers, and—again—far above us, the pigeons take off from their roost, flapping circles in the air.
Her tone turns calculating. Wheedling. “But...I'm sure you're tired, darling.” She reaches out to pat my thigh again.
She's being pretty patronizing.
I stand abruptly, shake my head.
“No...” My hands are balled into fists. “These past few days...they've all been nightmares. I don't want anyone else getting hurt on my behalf. Let's do it now.”
My grandmother blinks. “...Now?”
“Yes.” And then, voice quieter. “If you can. Please.”
My grandmother stands too, sliding her palms over her thighs as if they're suddenly a little sweaty. Her gaze flicks from me to the front of the building, to the couch where Silver still sits, her back to us in the distance.
Waiting.
“I'm strongest where I can draw power from,” says my grandmother a little primly. “So we'll need to go to the stream to do it.”
I don't understand, so I just nod. My stomach is leaden inside of me. I turn, flick my gaze to Silver, who—even across that great distance between us—must have heard us, for she's standing, turning toward us. I gesture with my arm. Please come, the gesture says. I need you.
And, more or less:
I need help.
Silver crosses the distance between us, quick as a rumor.
“We're going to take the lock off Ella now, dear,” snaps Marie, not even glancing at Silver. “Get towels and robes and meet us at the swimming hole. Immediately.”
Wild Hearts Page 16