by Aila Cline
Lenora’s eyes spoke of sympathy and pain. “I understand. I wouldn’t have chosen this life for any of my Children.”
All four of us shared a silent moment of pain. Rachel finally spoke, as pragmatic as ever.
“But he has to become a Lycanthrope, doesn’t he? I’m taking it that his dad is one of you?” she asked Emily.
“Yes.”
“Then you don’t have a choice.”
“There’s got to be some way,” Emily said stubbornly. “I know there is. I refuse to believe that this is the only way.”
Lenora’s bright green eyes were just as luminescent as Emily’s, I noticed suddenly, a relic from her birth as a Lycanthrope I was sure. They sparkled with energy even now.
“The Lycathrope have found a way,” she said cautiously. “But it is very dangerous, and the process can’t be undone. They make their children wait until the Change is upon them at the beginning of adolescence if the child is adamant about remaining human, but I think the antidote can be given at any time.”
“Then there’s a way?” Emily asked desperately.
Rachel’s eyes lit up. “Lenora, why haven’t you said something about this before?”
“It doesn’t work for those who have been Changed,” she replied sadly. “Do you think I would live like this if it did?”
Rachel sat in stony silence. “Then there’s no hope for us. Ever.”
Tears came to my eyes. I guess I had always known the truth. Rachel and I had talked about it sometimes, being human again. This whole constantly starving thing sucked. Being set apart from humanity sucked pretty hard, too. The only people who could possibly understand and help us, the Lycanthrope and Lycanti, hated us and treated us like a plague. I pushed my glass of lukewarm blood around on the table, passing it from hand to hand.
Emily put a protective hand on her baby bump, then thoughtfully reached over and took Rachel’s hand which was resting on the table. Rachel glared at her, but then her face softened when she saw the tears in Emily’s eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel.”
Emily squeezed her hand and then let it go quickly, as if it had never happened. Rachel smiled. A real smile between friends, not the patiently indulgent smiles that I got. Rachel treated me like a child who needed to be taken care of, but Emily she treated as a confidante. Jealousy surged up, puke-green and intense. Now the tears in my eyes were from frustration instead of loss. I sat there silently trying to ignore my feelings.
Their little private moment over with, Lenora felt the need to start the conversation again. “I can help you, Emily, but not until after the baby is born, and not before you learn some vital things about yourself. To save yourself and your son, you will have to learn self-control. You need to be just as powerful as the man you want revenge on, just as driven, just as confident. If you’re not as strong as he is, you won’t be able to do the things you need to do.
“I have a plan, but we’re going to have to work on your attitude first. I hope you don’t have anything you miss too much at Rachel’s place right now, because if you want to do this, then you won’t leave this house for at least a year. We’re going to get most of your anger under control. You wouldn’t want to hurt your son, would you?”
Emily looked aghast the idea of this. Psycho bitch. She’d probably kill that poor kid within a week of his birth.
Lenora paused thoughtfully. “Think of it as a boot camp for your soul, Emily. Are you in?”
Emily didn’t even pause when she answered. I wanted to be happy for her, because I knew that now she’d get revenge on Josh and his pack and we’d get to kill most of the Lycanti and be full for the first time in years, but all I could focus on was how worried Rachel looked about her.
For the rest of the night, I had to endure conversation that switched back and forth between talk about baby clothes and cribs, and the merciless plan Lenora had for the Lycanti. Through it all, Rachel expressed her concern over Emily’s well-being. By the time the sun was due to rise, for once I wanted to kill something, and maybe not even drink its blood.
Emily
Only a day after the monthly Change, and Luka showed up at my hotel door at midmorning. I had already showered and put on a sundress, still driven by the manic energy that accompanied the Change and lingered for days. I had planned to walk the city and maybe take a bus over to the next city over just to have something to do.
“Did you eat?” he asked as I opened the door.
His question caught me off guard. I spent a few seconds wondering if he was speaking about devouring something juicy while Changed the night before, or if I had had breakfast. I decided to go with the latter. The answer to same, thankfully, was the same.
“No.”
After all, I’m no animal, regardless of what the priest thought of me. I don’t eat human flesh—at least, not anymore.
His whole attitude had changed to one of indifference. After all, I hadn’t seen him in almost three weeks. “Let’s grab breakfast then.”
“OK,” I answered simply. I wasn’t sure how to react to his new sense of calm, especially after feeling the sexual energy that still danced between us.
We had breakfast in a small café, eating eggs on cheap plastic plates and swilling black coffee from little paper cups. It was insanely sweet, but I had gotten used to it after some time in Brazil. The locals drink it all day. It’s pretty good, and I knew I would miss it when I returned home. I figured I could learn to brew it and sweeten it correctly with some experimentation.
The breakfast basically took place in silence. Luka would look at me, start to say something, then reconsider, shake his head, and take another bite or sip of something. I tried to remain composed, breathing deep and recalling everything Lenora taught me about achieving balance. It’s like I could hear her mellifluous voice in my head: You can’t achieve your goals if you’re angry all the time. Breathe. Losing control means that someone else will have control over you.
Finally, Luka made some mundane comment about the weather, and my patience snapped.
“What, exactly, do you want?” I demanded. “You were here bright and early to collect me. You must have something in mind.”
He was unfazed by my intensity, even though the other patrons were quite interested in my outburst. In Brazil, even if they can’t understand you, they will try like hell to understand you just so they can get in your business. Luka kept his words deliberately vague. “It is time for you to go home.”
His words confused me. “I’m supposed to get Micah. Ranier promised.”
Luka’s voice had a warning edge to it. “You have played enough games here, Emily. Do not pull my House into this game. You will not like the result.”
Anxiety rose in me, and I quelled it. “Ranier promised,” I repeated. “He promised men from his house, your house, to help me get Micah back. Don’t you want your own son to be safe?”
“Oh, so now he is my son?” Luka asked sarcastically, his voice now louder. “Less than a month ago he was Will’s son. Whose son is he to be next month? My father’s? For that would most assuredly be just as believable as the rest of the lies you have thrown out thus far.”
I bit back a thousand tart replies about my virtue. After all, I had just tried to seduce a priest the night before and killed him because he refused to fuck me. I felt disgust and guilt, but the Change overwhelms me. The Lycanti in me overcomes all reason. I swallowed my anger as best as I could. Instead of arguing, I said simply, “Your father will not go back on his word.”
“No, he will not, even though I have told him how foolish this whole venture is. I have a son. Alexander is to be heir to my father’s fortune and the Lycanthrope legacy after me. I will not have his future corrupted by a child who may or may not be mine.”
“Luka, I have told you— ”
His fist hit the table in frustration. People were openly starting at us now, and a blush stole into my cheeks. “You have told me nothing. You have evaded every question I have asked
with what you claim is ignorance, but I can see it in your eyes. There is some dark purpose that you have here. I cannot even begin to guess what it is, but I know that all of this is not just to get Micah back. I knew that when I saw you react to Josh in the north. He is the father of this child, and you hate him for it. You knew very well what you were doing when you took him to Maria. You knew she would keep him and claim him as her own. You knew she would not give him up. You knew that by telling my father that he is of our house, Ranier would retrieve him for you, even if it meant blood between the clans. Dizer a verdade! Tell me the truth.”
I stared hard at him for a minute, watching his chest rise and fall, wishing suddenly that he was Lycanti instead of Lycanthrope. If so, the emotion in his outburst would have made him Change, causing a commotion so large that I could run away from him and from his accusations. Only the truth would suffice now.
“I knew,” I admitted. I added, “All those things.”
It calmed him as I knew it would. He had never hated the idea that Micah was not his child. He had only hated being lied to by someone he had vowed to protect, someone who had broken his trust once before and asked for it again. Soft-hearted by strong-willed Luka, who let me back into his life after I killed his best friend with my Lycanti lust for blood, who has barely spoken one truthful word to him since I found him again in that bar and let him meet Micah that night, extracting from him a promise to protect me.
The chiseled blue of his eyes met mine, but this time with regret instead of anger. His voice had fallen to a low whisper that only I could hear with my Lycanti ears. “Was any of it true?” And even more softly: “Did you ever love me?”
I should have recognized the difference in Luka’s attitude after we fled Mexico and connected the dots more effectively. My stomach flipped with the knowledge that he had been silently hating me all that time, leaving my side while I convalesced instead of confronting me so I could heal instead of become emotional and Change. Now that I was whole again, he felt at liberty to even take me out in public. He, at least, recognized the difference in me from the girl he had known by Will’s side two years ago. I had learned something of self-control after my time with Josh.
Lost in my thoughts, I apparently took too long to answer. Josh stood and threw some money on the table. “That is what I thought,” he said with finality. “My biggest regret is that Micah has a mother like you to use him for her own selfish purposes.” He walked away too quickly for me to retort.
And just like that, I was alone again. I played with my food listlessly for a bit, trying to avoid the stares, then walked to the edge of town and Changed. I had had enough of this human bullshit for a while.
Shasta
Rachel made it clear to me that I was expected to help when the time came. It was my duty, and we would all benefit from a larger food supply. If we wanted to stay in South California, then we had to follow Lenora’s plan.
So I became the recruiter, basically. I didn’t even have cookies to bribe people with, and I didn’t particularly want to do it anyway. What had the Lycanthrope or Lycanti ever done for me? I didn’t owe Emily anything.
Luka’s face kept flashing before my eyes. Even he had abandoned me. Him of all people! The man who had killed me didn’t even have enough sympathy to stay by my side when I became what I am. He didn’t love me enough to love me for whatever I was. He only wanted to love one of his precious Lycanti. Emily loves him. I can see it all over her face any time she speaks of him. I wonder if he loves her. I wonder if he wants to fuck her the way that he did me so many times. I wonder if he dreams about her.
But no, there’s this Brooke girl. She’s the one who got him. Will got Emily, who wanted Luka, who got Brooke, who wanted Will. What a screwed up circle. Werewolf soap operas, can you imagine? And now my friends and I are tied to these people with bonds of Lenora’s making. And when the Mother speaks, the Children listen. That’s why I didn’t need cookies to recruit people. I just had to tell them that “the Mother sends word,” and they started making their way to Washington. Ugh, ok, whatever, now I’m rambling. Look, the point is that I got stuck with a job that I didn’t want to do, but I did it anyway, OK? I did it because I love Lenora and Rachel and Delilah, and I don’t want them to ever be hungry again.
But mark my words: Emily is going to be the cause of a lot of pain on both sides of the battle. We’re going to lose people, and if I lose Delilah or Rachel or Lenora, or any other of the Children who have taken care of me since that night three years ago, I will kill that bitch, with or without Lenora’s permission.
But for now, I will gather together as many of our kind as I can find and send them west to Lenora. From there, they’ll keep those mangy werewolves chasing their tails for months while Lenora moves all the right pieces into place.
Emily
“Do not antagonize me, girl.”
Ranier’s voice always had that slightly supercilious air to it that I hated now, and seated at a walnut office desk, he seemed imposing. When I met him two years ago, his voice and manner had sounded distinguished. Now it always grated my nerves. But I needed him.
“Then let me pick the men going with me,” I insisted. “It is my son’s life that is on the line.”
“All sons of this house are my sons,” Ranier snapped. “And for someone who imposes on the hospitality of house in which she has no place, you have too much to say about the matter.”
If had sought to impress me by summoning to his mansion in the middle of the day while servants buzzed around performing trivial errands while we spoke, he was sadly mistaken about me. I had a goal, and he would not throw me away from it at this point. We sat in his office, a beaker of brandy before him and a glass of cold water for me, haggling over the expedition as if this were some common vacation for me and not a life-or-death mission which could very well determine my son’s humanity.
I calmed myself using the techniques Lenora had taught me during that long year at her home. “Let’s be completely honest here, Ranier.” His face twisted at my informal use of his name. “I know why you’re willing to risk all of this for Micah. You want to steal the drug trade back from Maria, and you think you can use Micah as leverage.”
“Ha! You know nothing,” he barked. “Who has filled your head with these ideas? You are an ignorant American girl who for some reason fascinates those ignorant American men. Somehow even my own son cannot escape you. I blame it on your Blood.”
That took me aback. “My Blood? What do you know of my Blood?”
He scoffed in disgust and said something harsh in Portuguese. In English, as if explaining to an imbecile, he said slowly, “Do you know nothing of your line? My ignorant nephew failed to make you of our Blood or to properly kill you, but since Will completed the Change, you have some of the purest Blood of any Lycanti alive. You are, for all impractical purposes, almost full Lycanthrope.”
I let that sink in for a minute, fascinated. Even after two years, I knew almost nothing about the Lycanthrope world. Josh’s harsh baptism in blood had only showed me how to embrace my most base passions. Aloud, I said, “Josh taught me nothing of your history or culture or, well, anything.”
“Of course he did not,” Ranier said with contempt, his next words dripping with derision. “It is your maker’s responsibility to tell you such things. Since you felt the need to promptly kill him after your Change, I am sure you missed several vital pieces of your education.”
We sat in uncomfortable silence. He wanted me to ask. He wanted to be the one to enlighten me, but Ranier had, so far, never given me anything which did not cost.
He spoke without prompting. “Allow me to choose the men to accompany you without fight, and I will tell you exactly what, in the world of the Lycanthrope, makes you somewhat of an anomaly.”
I thought that was a strange choice of words, but didn’t comment on it. I pondered for a moment on my choices. I knew none of Ranier’s household, and he had already expressly forbid Luka from accompanyi
ng me in the hotel room that day when these negotiations began. Almost a month later, and he still would not budge from that position. Those were the first words out of his mouth. I had planned to rely on some sort of gut feeling to pick the men to go with me, but how reliable could that be?
“What if we compromise? I let Luka pick my team.”
Ranier turned the offer over in his mind. “I will allow him to pick three of the men,” he countered.
The patriarch had offered me eight men. Three trustworthy men out of eight were not good odds.
“I want at least five.”
“You will get three, or none at all. This knowledge costs me nothing. I am merely attempting to be courteous and following the common civilities of negotiation.”
He was lying and I knew it. For some reason, he wanted to tell me. He wanted me to know what made my son so damn special to him. “Fine. Three, then.”
He nodded. “Will is Maria’s son. Maria is de puro sangue, of the purest blood. Both of her parents were Lycanthrope, as were theirs, and so on and so forth. The chain had never been broken until Maria took a human paramour.” He smiled to himself, as if lost in memories. “It proved quite a scandal when she became pregnant. At William’s birth, Maria’s parents refused to acknowledge him as one of the Blood. Maria was banished from the Clan’s grounds. She had to raise her son among humans with his human father.”
That made more sense than Will’s story about how his mother had chosen to live among the humans but felt chained by them, thereby seeking long weeks away from his father and him at a time. Much more sense, actually. I didn’t speak, just allowed Ranier to continue.
“When Maria killed her mate, she attempted to bring William to the Clan’s grounds to live. After all, he carried the Lycanthrope gene. It was possible he could Change upon adolescence. Maria would not hear of it. She wanted him to be human.” His nose wrinkled. “Such a love for humans she had then,” he said distastefully. “Thank the gods she overcame that.”