The night David showed up, she seemed furious that he was interfering. Van and I were right along with her in many ways. His promise of answers to what our hunger is and how to control it and use it to our benefit was the only thing that kept us from throwing him out. Neither Van nor I have changed our opinion of him, but I’m constantly surprised by how much my grandma’s views have changed.
“Thank you, Gloria,” David says with all politeness.
“You’re welcome, David. How did the training go tonight?” she asks.
“Better than expected,” he admits, “but they’re still very far from where they should be.”
“They’re both fast learners and very capable. They’ll be ready by the time you have to leave.” She pours him a glass of lemonade and reaches for my cup. My hand clamps around her wrist before she can lift the empty glass. Her eyes snap to mine, but I don’t back down.
“Why don’t you ask me how training went? Or ask why Van is in the backyard with Ketchup, too sickened to even think about food?” I say sharply.
David clears his throat. “Gloria, would you mind if Zander and I had our meal in private?”
“Of course,” she says with a strained smile.
I’m too shocked to react, and her hand slips out of mine before I can stop her. She doesn’t hurry out of the kitchen, and she doesn’t take her time, either. She takes the plates she prepared for Van and Ketchup, calmly heading for the back door. I can’t believe she did what he asked so willingly. My grandma is known for her iron spirit and encompassing desire to be in control. When I turn back to David, I expect to see his all-too familiar smug smile. Instead, I see a steely look that demands my attention.
“Zander,” he begins, “stop blaming your grandmother for your problems and failures. I have put up with your detestable attitude for long enough.”
“My detestable attitude? You’re the one…”
David holds a hand up. It’s a testament to his methods that I actually obey. “My attitude is everything it needs to be in order to get you and your mouthy little sister ready to meet the rest of the Godlings. I have no hope of your sister improving her attitude at this point, but you I expect to make a better effort toward understanding why I am teaching you.”
“I don’t have any trouble understanding why you tortured a cat tonight!” Frustration at this whole situation floods my mind.
“No?” David asks.
“No,” I snap. “I get it. We have to be able to stand by and watch people suffer without going into a frenzy. I understand that. I hate the way it has to be taught, but I know why I need to learn these lessons.”
David looks at me with interest. “Then why are you being so unpleasant to your grandmother?”
“Because I don’t understand her!”
“What don’t you understand?” he asks. His usually haughty demeanor has dropped away, which is somewhat disturbing. He genuinely seems interested in figuring out my problem. I’m not sure how to take that, but I need to talk to someone, and currently he’s the only one willing to listen.
I’ll probably regret confiding in him, but I say, “I don’t understand why when you first showed up here, she was ready to skin you alive, but now she makes you dinner and compliments you on how well you’re training us. You are everything my grandma has taught us to avoid, yet here you are, living in her house, teaching us to fight, and killing cats.”
David sits back in his chair. He nods slowly as if he understands my frustration completely. Maybe he does. “Zander, tell me what you know about your grandmother’s life. Specifically, her childhood.”
Not prepared for his request, it takes me a moment to answer. The buzzing of my phone in my pocket momentarily distracts me. Needing a minute to think, I pull it out and glance at the screen. The blocked number almost makes me shove it back into my pocket, but for some reason, I answer the call and hold it up to my ear without speaking. The silence that greets me is strangely disturbing.
“Hello?” I finally say.
The call ends immediately. I shake my head in confusion and get back to David, who is waiting for my answer with a rather annoyed expression. I try to ignore his attitude and answer his question.
“Well, I know she grew up in the Midwest. Her dad was a Godling, and her mom… I guess she took off when she was a baby.”
“Her mother knew nothing of her father’s true identity when they married. He thought he could keep it secret from her, but that proved impossible. Shortly after your grandmother’s birth, she ran, fearing your grandmother would take after her husband.”
“But she didn’t.”
David shakes his head. “No, but your grandfather was not very forthcoming about his hunger. She was scared, so she ran.”
I feel terrible that my grandma grew up without her mom, but I can’t say I blame her mother for leaving. “I guess after that,” I continue, “her dad raised her.”
“But not for long.”
“No. He killed a woman when Grandma was three and the police shot him.”
David leans forward again, his elbows on the table with his hands pressed together in front of him. “Your grandfather killed more than one woman. There was a string of eight garish murders the six months preceding his death. He had obviously lost all control of his hunger by that time.”
I didn’t know her father had been that deadly. Not that my immediate family has much room to talk. My older brother, Oscar, went insane when he found out my parents had been lying to us about our true identity all our lives, and murdered them both. I… I accidentally crushed my first girlfriend’s windpipe, and nearly took Ivy’s life as well. So far Van is the only one still untainted, although if David doesn’t lighten up soon, I fear she’ll finally lose control and he’ll become her first victim.
“What else do you know about your grandmother’s childhood?” David asks, interrupting my thoughts.
I think for a moment, and then shrug. “I don’t know. After her dad died, she…”
My voice trails off as I realize I have no idea what happened to my grandmother after witnessing her father being gunned down in her own home by the police. Who raised her? I look up at David, whose eyes are fixed on me.
“Haven’t you ever wondered,” he asks, “how your grandmother learned so much about the Eroi and Godlings if her father, the only one who could tell her about the Eroi and their hunt for the Godlings, died when she was only three?”
“Well, I…” I stop talking before I show him what an idiot I am. I always assumed she had learned it all from her father, or some other family member. I’ve never met any other cousins or aunts and uncles, though. As far as I know, my grandma is the only member of her family still alive, aside from my siblings and me.
I look up at David. If my grandma wasn’t taken in by a sympathetic family member, then … “The Godlings took her in?”
“Of course they did,” he says. “We take care of our own.”
“But she wasn’t one of you.”
David pierces me with a withering look. “She’s still one of us. Even though she wasn’t born with hunger, there was a chance she would give birth to a Godling. We want parents to be prepared.”
“So my dad…”
“Yes, your father spent several summers with us, training, learning how to help his future children control their hunger,” David explains.
It seems to have worked so well, I think sarcastically. I hold back my criticism for now, as it will win me no points with David. “So why did Grandma and my parents turn away from the Godlings and blow off what they taught them?”
“They didn’t blow off everything they were taught. Many of the rules you and your siblings live under now are ones you will continue to abide by for the rest of your lives, such as using music and sports…”
“But not using combat training to slowly feed our hunger,” I argue. “That was a huge rule to throw away.”
David’s neck tightens. He looks up, away, and then back at me. “Yes,” he sa
ys, “that was an unfortunate rule for them to abandon.” His gaze softens. “But can you blame your grandmother for suggesting they cut ties with us and forbid any kind of violence? She was only three, but she witnessed each of her father’s murders. He was trained by us, and look how he turned out. She blamed us for his failures. Even letting her son come to train with us was difficult for her. She only brought him to us because she felt she had no other choice at the time.”
“Why did her dad lose control if he’d been trained by the Godlings?” I ask.
“Despite what you and your sister might think,” David says, “the Godlings are not a cult. We are not a dictatorship. We teach methods of control but, in the end, each person chooses their own destiny. Your great grandfather abandoned what he had been taught and indulged in his hunger. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. However, we try to intervene in situations like this as soon as we can. Unfortunately, your great grandfather was very good at hiding, and he had not been in contact with any other Godlings in a very long time.”
I balk at the impossibility of that statement. “He had to be in contact with at least one Godling. The sickness, we can’t survive more than a week without contacting another Godling. Right? You said that was true for all Godlings, not just Van, Oscar, and me.”
David holds up a hand to forestall any more arguments. “I misspoke. When one of our kind goes rogue and we lose contact with them, we no longer consider them Godlings. They don’t deserve the title. Yes, your great grandfather was in contact with others like us. We never found out which rogue he was working with, but there are more rogues running about than we would like. They are a very well organized group and very difficult to track down. Because of that, we were slow to find your great grandfather.”
My understanding begins to deepen. “But you did find him. You were the ones who told the police it was him killing those women.”
David nods. “Of course, it was never intended for Gloria to witness her father’s death. That was deeply regretted by those leading the Godlings at that time.”
I shake my head. No wonder my grandma left them. They gave her a home, education, and safety, but there was a lot to forgive them for. I would have left, too.
“None of the Godlings blamed her for walking away,” David says, “and you shouldn’t either.”
I don’t blame her. She did what she thought was right. She was protecting us, like she always has. I wish she would have explained all of this herself. Knowing her reasons for some of the rules she imposed on us would have made them much easier to abide by. I also understand that hindsight is twenty-twenty, while being the one in the moment of decision, your vision is never clear enough to see all the possible repercussions. She did her best. I don’t blame her for that.
“Why the sudden change in attitude, then?” I ask. Now she seems perfectly happy to let David do whatever he wants with us.
David leans back in his chair again and crosses his arms over his chest. “After Oscar murdered your parents, the Godlings contacted your grandmother. Myself, specifically. I warned her that if she could not keep her grandchildren in check, we would step in.”
“You would have taken us from her?”
“If we believed you to be a threat to those around you, yes.” After taking a drink of his lemonade, David continues. “She was the one to contact us the night you almost killed Ivy Guerra. She didn’t think Van would get to you in time and, if that was the case, she would have handed you over to us rather than the police.”
I admit that would have been preferable, but it hardly explains her attitude that night. “Why was she so mad at you then?”
“Because I didn’t come for only you. I wanted your sister as well. If two of you were already proving to be unmanageable, I had little hope for the third. Now that you two have agreed to train, and we’ve come to an acceptable arrangement, she’s happy for the help. I’m somewhat surprised to find you more willing to adapt to this new lifestyle than your sister. She submits during training…for the most part, but she battles me on the day-to-day rules I insist she follows—rules which are extremely important to her surviving in society. I fear for her future.”
I snort at him, which raises one of David’s eyebrows. He wants an explanation, judging by the air of expectancy surrounding him. I contemplate not obliging him, but perhaps if he understood my sister better, he could train her without making her want to break him into kindling.
“Van is the last person you need to worry about in this family.”
Now David laughs. “I would have to disagree, based on her school disciplinary record.”
I wave off his argument. “Sure, Van gets in trouble… a lot, but it isn’t for the reasons you’re thinking.”
“No? Then why don’t you enlighten me?”
I do. Settling into my own chair, I say, “Van’s hunger is raw and messy, but it doesn’t control her like you think it does. Sure, she has a temper, and when she gets mad, she may punch someone in the face, but did you know that she has saved the lives of each of her friends? And I’m not talking about getting Band-Aids for paper cuts. Her friend, Wyatt, was riding his dune buggy around the neighborhood a few years back during a rainstorm, lost control, and flipped it into an arroyo that was quickly filling up with runoff. His leg was broken, pinned under the dune buggy, but Van went in after him, saving Wyatt and the dune buggy.
“Van wants to help people,” I say. “She does what you say during training because she knows it will help her stay in control. It doesn’t matter that she hates the way you train us. Control means helping other people and not hurting them. It means having a normal life, and that is what Van wants more than anything else.”
I pause for a moment, my thoughts turning back to Noah and Van’s renewed interest in him. The connection between training and Noah bothers me again, but I can’t yet pinpoint why it makes me so anxious. I shove it away for now and refocus on David.
“What happened tonight, Van’s not going to forget it. She learned your lesson, there’s no doubt about that. The reason she fights you on everything else like bedtimes, eating habits, and curfews, is because you’re taking away the last few areas of freedom—of normal life—she has left. It doesn’t matter that she does need to learn better self-control. She’s already given up so much control over her life that losing even a little bit more infuriates her.
“Van isn’t motivated by logic a lot of the time, at least not in my opinion,” I say, “but if you can convince her on an emotional level that what you’re trying to teach her is going to help her be a better person, she’ll put every last drop of energy she has into mastering a skill.”
A rare smile crops up on David’s lips. “Thank you for sharing that with me, Zander. I don’t plan on changing my tactics—that would make her even more suspicious of me than she already is—but I know precisely who to hand her off to when we get to the training camp.”
“Just trying to prevent any more murders,” I say with a not-so-genuine smile of my own. As smart as David seems to think he is, he really should have figured out a month ago that he wasn’t going to be able to teach Van the same way he teaches me.
“What about you?” David asks. “What motivates you to control your hunger?”
“Protecting my family,” I say automatically, but my thoughts turn inward as soon as the words leave my mouth. Another reason comes to mind, but I do not voice it. A month ago, learning better control would have meant being with Ivy. Now, it means getting closer to finding her, to finding the Eroi, and bringing them down.
I poke at the chicken on my plate as my thoughts wander to places they shouldn’t. My grandma is a trained chef. Her meals are always perfect, but tonight, I can’t seem to find my appetite. The sound of a chair being pushed across the floor rubs against my ears. I hope David has decided to turn in and leave me to my thoughts. The clink of dishes being rinsed in the sink buoys my hopes even more. I wait for the telling sound of dress shoes clicking across the tile. Wh
en I don’t hear it after a few minutes, I finally look up. David is watching me from next to the sink.
“Ask me,” David says.
“Ask you what?”
His expression is sad, understanding even. “Ask me the question that has been eating you up for the past month.”
An hour ago, I wouldn’t have taken a glass of water from this man without checking for poison first. Now… something about the way he’s regarding me gives me the impression that he knows exactly what I am struggling with in this moment. He thinks he does, anyway. A hint of satisfaction hits me as I see how well I have played my part. He thinks he understands me, but I refuse to let him see what I am really after. David is waiting for my response, though, so I ask the question he is expecting me to ask, instead of the one I really want to know the answer to.
“Did Ivy ever actually love me?”
David’s jaw tightens angrily, as if my question has stirred an unpleasant memory. “Yes,” he says tersely. “She may have.”
“Then why did she do it?” I ask. In reality, I see now that Ivy never loved me. I thought I loved her, but I don’t think something that sadistic and twisted could ever be considered love. I do want to know, though, what could possibly be a strong enough motivation for her to give up her life for the Eroi. If I can understand that, it will only bring me that much closer to finding them.
David struggles to unclench his jaw. “You know so little of the Eroi still. Usually, we don’t tell young Godlings about Eroi sacrifices until they are nearly done with their training and ready to reenter the world, but I can see that you need answers.”
I nod. I need answers about a lot of things, but this one first and foremost.
“The Eroi know how to identify people like Ivy. They call them Richiamos, lures. Normally, two Godlings are not enticed by the same person. Richiamos are different, because they attract every Godling. When the Eroi figured this out, they actively sought them out and used them as suicide agents. Ivy would have been identified as a child, raised with the sole purpose of becoming a sacrifice.” David pauses and looks away. The way his hands tighten and his eyes drop doesn’t escape me.
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