by Apryl Baker
“For our family, it is.” Sabien says gravely. “We were to be the last, never to force what we are upon anyone else.”
“Did she leave because she wanted to kill us?” Jason asks softly. The same question bounces back and forth in my head now that he’s voiced it.
“No,” Sabien tells us adamantly. “Never. She would have hurt herself first. All she ever wanted was to keep you safe and happy.”
“Safe from what?” It is the one question that haunts me.
“From others of our kind. Alesha thought that if she changed her name, didn’t use her magic, and didn’t shift, it would be fine.” He sighs heavily. “We may be the last of the Blackburnes, but we are not the only ones with gifts. There are many who would seek us out to kill us.”
“Why would they want to kill us?”
“There are three main families of Power—the Blackburnes, the Winters, and the Petrovichs. We’ve gained more power than any of the other families across the globe who practice magic. Some came by it honestly like the Winters, others killed for it like the Petrovichs, while the Blackburnes cultivated it and became selective. You asked why they would want to kill you? Power is always in the blood, Jason. The only way to gain that power is by shedding the blood and consuming it. To consume the blood is to consume the power, and the magic that courses in our blood is more ancient than most. Many would sell their souls to gain even a taste of the power we have.”
“But not me or Jason.” I laugh hysterically. I can’t help it. It’s all too much—magic, werewolves, and the murdering of children. The thought that my mind has really snapped occurs to me and that I’m trapped in some kind of delusion. “Kill on sight, remember?”
“They’re afraid.” Sabien eyes me carefully. “You don’t understand the strength of will it took for your mother to resist her very nature for over two hundred years. They’re afraid of what you and Jason will be capable of. Our gifts get stronger, more pronounced with each generation. Considering what your mother was capable of, the two of you will be extraordinary.”
Two hundred years? Did he just say my mother was two hundred years old when she died? “Wait, what? That’s not possible. No one lives that long, Uncle Sabien.”
“Normal humans don’t live that long, no,” Sabien agrees. “Even normal witches don’t live that long. It’s part of why our family has been able to gain so much power. We are shifters as well. Even if we never shift, we still gain the healing and regenerative abilities of a shifter. We don’t age like normal supernaturals either. The combination of our power and the lupine gene has morphed us into a hybrid. A hundred years to us is like a nanosecond to most. You won’t age past your prime for a very long time.”
Uncle Sabien himself doesn’t look older than maybe twenty-five or thirty. I just assumed he looked young for his age. If what he says is true, just how old is he? Then the reality of what he is saying sets in and I gasp, my breathing speeding up. He’s telling me I’m not going to age? What does that mean? What does that mean for the rest of my life?
“Calm down, Alexandria.” Sabien is in front of my chair, kneeling. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Going to be fine?” Jason shouts. “This is ludicrous. Alex, I think we should go. You don’t need this after everything you’ve been through already. We don’t want you back in Compton.”
“Compton?” Sabien tilts his head curiously. “What is that?”
“You don’t know about Compton?” I ask quietly.
He shakes his head.
“It’s a psychiatric facility.” Jason’s words are laced with a fierce loathing. “They put her there when the nightmares got to be bad.”
“Your father locked you up?” A dawning understanding lit his face. “Dear God…I knew he thought Alesha wasn’t stable, but to put his own child in an institute…”
“No,” I interrupt him. “I needed to be there. I hurt Jason.”
“What happened?”
I close my eyes. “No, Uncle Sabien. I can’t talk about it right now. I just want to deal with this. We’ll discuss Compton later.”
“Your father and I are going to have a long talk about that. He never told me, and I’m guaranteeing he never told your mother. She wouldn’t have stood for it.”
I laugh bitterly. “Right. She left me, but she wouldn’t have stood for me being locked up in a place where I got help for the problems she caused.”
Sabien opens his mouth to argue, but closes it instead. I think he knows I’m not that stable right now and not to push me.
“Just finish telling us what you should have told us the day you arrived.”
“Alex, this isn’t healthy. It’s crazy talk.”
“Is it, Jase?” I turn my attention to him. “Or is it an explanation for my nightmares? Does it prove that I wasn’t crazy all these years? That what happened that day in the park was real and not a figment of my imagination?”
“I…”
“I saw that thing change into a human, Jase. Saw it with my own two eyes. I can’t deny that. Let’s give Uncle Sabien a chance, okay? Try, for my sake, to believe in it just a little bit.”
Jason’s expression morphs from outrage to consternation, to confusion. It’s hard to swallow, I know. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. “Are you sure that’s what you saw, Alex, that it wasn’t just another hallucination? You’ve been having the nightmares again.”
“I wish it was a nightmare, Jase, but it’s not.” I almost tell him Luka was there, but Micah said not to tell Sabien and I keep my mouth shut. I’ll tell Jase later.
“So our blood is chocked full of…power,” Jason’s words come out strangled. He’s going to try to do this for me.
“Yes,” Sabien says. “More than in almost all the lines put together.”
“You said you and Mom were the last of the bloodline. Your parents died?”
“No, but they are so old they can no longer procreate. Last I heard, they were in New Orleans. Alesha and I stay as far from them as possible. We make sure they never know where we are.”
“Could it be them who are tracking us down?” I ask. I hadn’t thought of that.
“I don’t think so.” He stands and starts to pace. Clearly, that hadn’t occurred to him. “I’ve got people watching him, but that means nothing if he truly wanted to find you. I don’t think he knows about the two of you, but if he does, that changes everything.”
“How?” Jason sits back, his anger cooling.
“Because with your blood, he can gain what he’s lost.” Sabien turns to look at us. “He’ll get back everything. His youth, his power, his influence. Dear God, why did this not occur to me? If he enlists others of our kind to help him…” He stops and runs a hand through his hair. “We might be in serious trouble.”
I keep going back to the dreams of being chased, of jumping, of watching my mother leap off a cliff and the suffocation squeezes my chest. What if it wasn’t just a dream?
“You keep saying our kind. What exactly are we?” Jason asks hesitantly.
“Witches.” Sabien smiles at him. “Not the kind of witches you read about or see on TV, but real witches with magical abilities. Our family also carries the lupine gene. No one else in the magical community knows this. It is a well-guarded secret. One that you both must promise to keep.”
“How did she die?” I have to know how my mother died. It’s a burning need that has melted the hysteria away for a moment.
Startled, Sabien answers. “She jumped from a cliff to keep them from gaining her blood.”
Sweet Jesus…no…I saw…
Blue, you’re fine!
Jason and Uncle Sabien stare at me.
Calm down. I’m here, Blue. You’re fine.
No, I’m not.
“Do you know why she left us?” Jason keeps his eyes on my face.
“She called me, hysterical because she’d almost lost Alex. They found the two of you that day in the park, the trackers. She had to shift to save you, but she
knew if one group found you, it wouldn’t be long before others came. The only scent they had to track was hers, so she left to pull her scent away from her family. She didn’t want to go, but she had to. By leaving, she kept all of you safe. They would have killed you.”
“She could have taken us with her,” Jason argues.
“No, she couldn’t have.”
“Why not?” he demands.
“It wouldn’t have been fair. You would always be running. You and Alex were just children and she loved you too much to do that to you. Alesha wanted you to have a normal home with family and friends, something she’d never had until she met John.”
“Do you honestly think any of that ever mattered to us?” Jason asks quietly. “All we ever wanted was our mother. When she left, it broke us in more ways than we can ever possibly tell you. Do you know what it’s like to pick your baby sister up off the ground, crying, trying to find a way to make it better when you feel the same way yourself?”
“Jason…”
“No, Uncle.” His voice is hard. “She made a choice, and it was the wrong choice.”
I squeeze my brother’s hand. Mine is still shaking from shock, his from years of anger and rage. I understand his rage. I feel it, but we have each other. We will always have each other.
“I’m sorry,” Sabien tells us, “so sorry.”
“It would seem they have found us anyway.” I change the subject. Best to leave some hurts good and buried. I will deal with my dreams later. Sweet Jesus, but I’d seen her die…
Blue!
“They’ll keep coming?” I push down the mad giggles once more.
“Yes.”
“What do we do, then?” Jason leans back, troubled.
“You haven’t come into your powers yet.” Sabien starts to pace again. “The lupine gene can take up to a hundred years or so to mature enough to allow you to shift. The two of you shouldn’t be showing any signs of the gene for at least another fifty or sixty years.”
“Wait, you said the children were murdered who didn’t have the gene. How could they tell if they didn’t show any signs?” Jason questions.
“On the inside of your left wrist there should be a birthmark. It’s very faint, but it is a bite mark.”
We both look at our wrists. Sure enough, if we look closely, there it is.
Well, crap. It’s true, all of it.
This majorly sucks.
“You are showing signs of the gene now, both of you.” Sabien laughs harshly. “Jason, you’re faster and stronger than anyone you know. I’ve seen you play football. You have an agility that defies logic. It’s amazing. I had thought the gene was dormant in you, Alex, but I’m not so sure now.”
We both look at the broken mug on the floor.
Freak show, coming soon to theaters near you.
“Does that explain why I’m hungry all the time?” My stomach has never been a bottomless pit before.
A laugh bursts out of Jason. “She eats more than I do.” It’s odd in the severity and seriousness of the conversation, but he’s always been able to see the lighter side of anything.
“You eat just as much as I do.”
“That’s perfectly normal. Right before you mother shifted, her appetite became ravenous. She was never full and had to have lots of protein. Your body is beginning to ready itself for the shift from human to animal. It needs to be strong, vital. You’ll find not only your appetite increasing, but you’ll feel the need to run, sometimes a little wildly. Your mother would wake up in the middle of the night and run for hours. The first time she did it, she never even remembered it. She woke up with dirty feet, and her loss of memory terrified her.”
“Is that normal?” Jason glances toward me, both of us remembering his own dirty feet.
“It can be. The wolf is waking up inside of you both, and sometimes your wolf will take over, until you learn to be at peace with each other. Has this happened to either of you?”
I explain to him Jason’s episode as well as my own crazy run through the woods. Jason is none too pleased I hadn’t told him, but I ignore his baleful expression.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Sabien assures us. “For awakening pups, you’re both fine.”
Pups? That’s what Luka called Micah this morning. Does he know what Micah is? Fear rumbles through me at the thought of Luka. I hope he’s alive.
“So if what you are saying is true and we are…shifters, does that help us?” He makes the word sound filthy. Maybe it is, but it keeps me from feeling like I’m crazy. If I believe in this, it means I shouldn’t have been locked up and I’m not going to freak out and hurt anyone now. At least I hope so.
“I don’t know, Jason.”
“What do we do now?” I reach down to pick up the broken pieces of the mug, much like I’m trying to pick up and fit together the broken pieces of my life. I hadn’t realized until now how symbolic that mug on the floor is. I was broken and now I’m putting myself back together again, truth in hand.
“The immediate threat is gone. I took care of it. There won’t be a scent for whomever comes looking for them to find.”
“But more will come?” My voice shakes. I already know the answer.
“They always do, Alexandria, especially if my father is involved, but I promise you, I will find a way to keep you safe.”
“You won’t leave us?”
Sabien takes my face in his hands. “I swear to you upon my own life, I will never leave you.”
Why should I believe him? Mom left us.
“Believe me, honey,” he tells me, reading my face.
I try to nod, to say something, but another bout of giggles strikes me.
“Maintenant sommeil,” he whispers and catches me as I fall forward.
“What did you do to her?” I hear Jason bite out.
“I put her to sleep…”
My mind goes dark. Blessed, silent sleep.
Chapter
Sixteen
I wake up to the sound of a whispered argument and…growling.
Growling?
Images flood my mind, and the sounds of shifting, breaking bones haunt me. Please, no more. I try to push the memories away.
“Shh, Blue, everything is fine. You’re safe.” He strokes the back of my hand in slow, soothing circles.
Micah’s here. He’s one of…them. It has to be him growling, but at what?
Light blinds me as a bedside lamp flares to life. Once my eyes refocus, I see Luka is the culprit. So that’s who Micah has been arguing with and growling at. I should have guessed it, but I’m so tired. Wait…Luka? He should be in the hospital. There’s no way he could have managed to escape injuries.
“Luka?” I rub the sleep out of my eyes. “What…how?”
“I am fine, munya,” Luka tries to calm me.
“You can’t be fine, Luka.” I push myself up into a sitting position, fighting the dizziness that threatens. “I saw the cat sink claws into you. You should be in a hospital.”
“Go ahead, Luka.” Micah’s voice is grim. “Tell her why you don’t have a scratch on you.”
“Do you not think she has been through enough already?” Luka asks through clenched teeth.
I am so over this bickering. It’s making my head pound worse.
“Both of you will stop fighting right now. I’m sick to death of it.” I look from one to the other. “I need you both, so please, just please stop arguing.”
“You don’t know…”
“Leave it be,” Luka interrupts him, his voice low and hard.
“Why don’t you just tell me, Luka?” My voice sounds tired. “I don’t think there’s anything else that could shock me today.”
“Tell her,” Micah taunts.
Luka snarls at him.
Whoa.
“Are you a shifter too, Luka?”
“No.”
“But you are something?”
He nods, looking down at clenched fists.
“Well?”
“I do no wish to frighten you, Alexandria.”
I’m already so scared, he’s lucky I’m not screaming. Really, how bad can it be?
He lifts his head and meets my gaze.
Red ringed onyx eyes stare into my own.
My mind shudders back from what I see, and I pull my hand away from Micah.
“I told you was too soon,” Luka snaps at Micah.
I feel the force of my fear, coupled with the pain and anger I’d felt all day, course through me, looking for an outlet. A buzzing starts in my ears. It won’t stop. My skin begins to crawl like thousands of tiny insects are covering me.
“Blue?” Micah’s voice is wary.
Luka glares at him, accusation in his glowing black eyes.
“Alex?” Micah reaches out a hand to me.
“Don’t.” I flinch away from him, my eyes never leaving Luka. What is he? The buzzing grows louder, demanding a release.
“What…are…you?” I manage to ask.
He shoots a concerned look at Micah before answering. “Is complicated. Even I am no quite sure what I am. I was cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Your uncle, he tell you of the families of power?” At my nod, he continues. “Gypsies’ magic is strong, powerful. The families, they own some of the strongest Gypsy bloodlines. We do their bidding. My mother’s family, they refuse to keep doing this. For many years, there were no…bad things to happen to us. Then one day, someone come to our home in Bucharest. My mother is summoned and she goes. My grandmother begged her not to. Mama is not afraid, she say. She go with them. When she returns, she tell us they want her to capture the magic of a girl, that the magic belongs to them. My mother, she say no.”
Luka goes to stand by the fireplace, his eyes haunted. “Three days later, they come. They kill my father and my sister with dark magic. They die hard, painful. The woman who came, she say if we want to keep the rest of our family alive, my mother must do as she was told. Mama say no. She refuse to take life just to give them power. I beg them to stop, to leave her alone.”
Micah has a strange expression on his face, like he’s seeing Luka for the first time as he continues his story. “They tell my mother if she will no kill for them, then they will curse us all until she do what they say. They give my brother to an unholy thing. I had to watch as he died. Then they cursed me. They turned me into a monster, a monster with a blood thirst.”