Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  “How is that possible?” I asked. “Kieren is a genius. Back home, if he hadn’t dropped out of high school, he would’ve graduated valedictorian.”

  “It cuts against him, being not only a hybrid but also one raised by a mother who long ago severed ties with the international pack network. Especially since he’s never achieved full Wolf form, the consensus seems to be that — however brainy or knowledgeable — he’s not tough enough to rise through the ranks.”

  It was so unfair. Kieren couldn’t live in the human world because he couldn’t master his inner Wolf, and he couldn’t succeed in the Wolf world for the same reason.

  “By the way,” Zachary said, glancing up at sharp, bright stars, “the pack leadership — or what’s left of it — thinks we’re both shifters.”

  “What? Me, too?”

  The angel nodded. “Because of your relationship to Kieren. Because their healers have verified that Clyde is a Possum. Because of my appetite. But also because of your display of speed on Main Street this morning. Quincie —”

  “I know,” I said. “I have to be extra careful around the Wolves. Harrison already hit me with the scary bedtime story.”

  “It’s not just that,” the angel replied. “Whenever you tap into the demonic . . .”

  “What?” Taking careful steps, I added, “What’s the big deal?”

  “It further jeopardizes your soul.”

  For a while, Zachary and I both went quiet. I gave him the blanket, and he gave me the sports bottle filled with blood. We perched, side by side on the edge of the roof, peering through the Michigan woods at the immense funeral pyre, listening to the mournful music of the Wolves. Everywhere that Brad went, grief and chaos followed.

  I took a long drag of animal — deer? elk? — blood (it tasted gamy). “Does it matter how a neophyte is destroyed?”

  “You’ve been reading Wolf lore,” Zachary observed, pulling the blanket around his shoulders.

  “And Stoker’s novel,” I reminded him. I recalled Arthur staking Lucy. How she was decapitated and her mouth stuffed with garlic. How, later in the story, Mina had begged Jonathan and the rest to, if necessary, do the same to her. Kieren’s notes had mentioned the same ritual. “Does it? Matter, I mean. So far as the soul is concerned?”

  “I’m not disputing the Wolves’ beliefs,” Zachary replied. “But giving up one’s soul to the Big Boss falls under the powers of the divine. Not the supernatural and especially not the demonic.”

  I was sure that my GA knew what he was talking about, but it still seemed that if a price of becoming an undead immortal was the loss of the soul, the demonic had something to do with it. “I just don’t get it,” I began again. “Why would God send me an angel and then reject me because of what I’m becoming through no fault of my own? That doesn’t sound like —”

  “In my experience,” Zachary said, “when the Big Boss green-lights something that seems unfair, it’s to protect us from a worse potential future. One we can’t foresee.”

  Actually, I could foresee it in high-def. Better that I — like his Miranda — be destroyed than lose my soul and claim victims for centuries to come.

  Hard to argue, but where was the justice in that?

  Fine. Maybe I had it coming for having doubted Kieren’s innocence, for letting myself be wooed by Brad. For having been too much of a big dummy, in my blood-wine stupor, to see what was happening. But what about Aimee? All she did was eat a tainted dessert.

  “It’s not about punishment,” the angel added. “Dying with your soul, it’s a blessing. A second chance at redemption. A second chance at true eternal life.”

  I thought about what Kieren had said at the library about how the old books could be wrong. Had it just been the love talking? “With Miranda, did you always feel like it was best —”

  “No,” my GA replied. “There were moments when I longed to rationalize the whole thing away. To pretend we were the exception. That it would be different with us.”

  And it hadn’t been. I briefly considered asking how evil she’d become by the end. But I could tell it was a painful subject for Zachary, and I had a feeling that it was a very, very long story.

  We sat companionably and stared out at the flame below and the stars above. Zachary finished off the turkey leg, and I finished off the whole bottle of blood.

  “Do you spend a lot of your time on rooftops?” I asked.

  “I can’t fly around all the time. Too showy. But I like being up high.”

  I wasn’t the only one who was homesick.

  After a Jacuzzi bath, I slipped on an oversize Fat Lorenzo’s T to watch Ladyhawke and then sang along in a soft voice with Lady and the Tramp.

  There had been noticeable wolf, canine, and shifter representation in the B and B movie library, though too many in which the four-footed died at the end.

  On the registration desk counter, I’d also noticed a stack of brochures for a nonprofit organization advocating the protection of Michigan gray wolves. If someone didn’t know they were staying in a pack-run B and B, they’d probably just assume that the owners were environmentalists.

  Much more than an hour had passed, but Kieren had told Zachary that he was still coming to see me, and I had faith in that.

  At half past midnight, I pushed aside thoughts of Harrison’s YouTube horror stories and unlocked the door of the München Room. Then I climbed into a queen-size bed so tall it had its own step stool, resting my body on the double wedding-ring quilt and my head on the eyelet-fabric pillows. I’d wake up when Kieren knocked.

  “It’s me,” a familiar voice whispered. “Sorry I’m late.”

  I felt the bed dip. A muscular, warm arm pulled me closer to a muscular, warm body. Kieren. He’d taken a shower. His hair was still damp. But I could still detect the scent of smoke and pine. It wasn’t like him, just crawling beside me onto the quilt like that. As if it were something he’d done before.

  The cut over his brow had scabbed over, but now the eye beneath it was swollen. “What happened?”

  “Long night,” he replied like it was no big deal. “Not everybody is as understanding as Graciella about y’all showing up at about the same time as Brad.”

  I hadn’t come here to ruin Kieren’s new life. “We have to try to talk to Ivo, but if that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, we’ll hit the road. Depending on Clyde’s condition, you know, whether he can travel, if it makes sense to move him.”

  If he wasn’t already dead.

  “I’m glad you told me what a hero he’s been,” Kieren said.

  Had I said hero? Maybe not, but it fit. I’d never forget the sight of Clyde — Clyde — this morning, jumping out of the SUV right after Aimee. He’d honored Travis’s memory and his promise to Kieren by being there for both of us.

  I closed my eyes. “He’s my friend, too.”

  Kieren kissed one eyelid and then the other. “I love you, Quince.”

  Just like that. I. Love. You. Quince.

  I rested my hand on Kieren’s chest, and he flinched. “What?”

  He reluctantly raised his black T-shirt to reveal a dark purple bruise running clear across his rib cage. “There used to be a gazebo in the town park,” he explained. “Brad threw me into it this morning. We fed the scrap to the funeral pyre.”

  With those injuries, Kieren had held me against his chest at the library and then been forced to defend himself tonight. “How bad is it?”

  “I asked one of the healers to take a look after you left the clinic. The ribs may be bruised or cracked. Don’t worry, though. I heal fast, shifter fast, and I did manage to lie still on a cot while Graciella chanted in Latin and waved some rosemary over me.”

  “Did Brad recognize you?” I began again. “You know, this morning.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Kieren replied, “I’ve been thinking. When I first saw him, I thought that he’d come after me.”

  Not surprising, given their history. Brad had gone to a lot of trouble fram
ing Kieren for Vaggio’s murder, in large part to diminish the young Wolf in my eyes.

  “But then he tossed me aside, just like anyone else.”

  “Something’s wrong with him,” I whispered. “I wonder whether it’s something we can exploit to our advantage.”

  “Exploit to our advantage?” Kieren slowly blinked at me. “You used to have business strategies, not battle strategies.”

  Neither of which sounded especially feminine. “I don’t mean to —”

  “Please don’t stop on my account.” He brushed a curl from my forehead. “It’s very sexy. Very animal, as the Wolves around here say.”

  “Be that as it may,” I replied, blushing, “I don’t want to waste tonight talking about Brad.” I reached to touch Kieren’s shoulder, and he winced again. “Oh, I —”

  “How about I take the lead?” he suggested. “It’s my turn and then some.”

  “About damn time,” I replied, and we both grinned.

  There were no Jacuzzi bubble baths or burning eucalyptus candles or, for a long while after that, words. There didn’t need to be. It was a celebration of what should’ve been. We didn’t need to do anything in particular, let alone everything.

  Just kissing, kissing, was so new to us. He tasted sweet and bitter. Like orange juice and beer. My touches were tentative, aware of his injuries. His were more assertive, mindful of me. We whispered things we’d never said before.

  We didn’t hurry, and then we did. When I reached to guide his hand, he threw his arm across his face, rolled onto his back, and asked if we could just talk awhile.

  I felt a flutter of rejection before realizing Kieren was simply trying to rein himself (or maybe his Wolf) in a little. If he wanted to talk, we could talk. “Clyde spent most of the trip to Chicago with a cricket leg stuck between his two front teeth. He wouldn’t take it out, even after Aimee offered him two bucks.”

  Kieren glanced over. “Then what happened?”

  “Freddy offered him five.”

  I’d missed his laugh.

  After a while, I began tracing circles on Kieren’s forearm and he kissed me again.

  I arched against him, resenting the cotton between us, until he brushed the tiny twin scars beneath my breast.

  I jerked back, sat straight up on the bed. “What if . . . what if Brad’s watching us?”

  Kieren blew out a long breath. “Is there anything we can do about it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He frowned. “Do you want to stop? Because we don’t have to —”

  “Hell, no. I really don’t want to stop.”

  Kieren opened his arms. “Then let the jealous SOB look.”

  He kissed my smile, my earlobe, my fingertips . . .

  Hours passed, the sun rose, and we burned hotter.

  Again, kissing, just kissing, was so new to us. So heavenly.

  By early the next afternoon, Ivo had miraculously recovered enough to summon us to the biergarten. He offered everyone a Bavarian lager.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I never drink . . . beer.”

  While Zachary, Freddy, and I joined Ivo at the table, Kieren kept his distance. He made himself comfortable on the concrete steps leading to the adjacent kitchen.

  When I glanced over, he offered me a slight smile.

  Because we “visitors” were presumed to be human or non-Wolf shifter, it was considered acceptable for us to deal more directly with the professor than Kieren could, as a lower-ranked Wolf. The whole thing made me appreciate Mrs. Levy and Mr. Wu.

  Ivo speared a chicken-apple sausage from a platter on the table. He reached for the horseradish and hollered to the kitchen for sauerkraut. “You tell me what you know.”

  It was mostly Freddy, with Zachary’s help, who explained about Bradley, the knives, and Dracula Prime’s powers — minimizing my role in the story.

  Leaving out the baby-squirrel eaters altogether.

  While the others talked and I took notes in Frank, I could feel Kieren staring at me. Harrison had questioned my coming. But I was our link to Kieren, and Kieren to the Wolves, and the Wolves, hopefully, to — if not a solution, at least a way to fight back.

  “It is as I feared,” Ivo declared. “You say your Bradley extracted the abilities from Morris’s knife, likely in Texas, and then those from Harker’s knife in Chicago.

  “I am sorry to tell you . . . at the lakefront, when he completed the blood rite, he did not only permanently transfer the knives’ combined powers to himself. He also unleashed something unexpected and far worse.”

  Not what we’d been hoping to hear.

  “The Wolf pack was attacked not only by your Bradley, using the Carpathian might of the Abomination,” Ivo explained, “but also by the essence of the Abomination himself.”

  I scribbled that in my planner. “Essence?”

  “The personality,” explained Freddy, adjusting his glasses. “The will.”

  Zachary set down his stein. “It’s what continues to animate the undead. What, after a soul has been eaten away, can still be banished to hell.”

  That essence. “So you’re saying that, inside the knives, Dracula could think?”

  “No!” Ivo barked, loud for an old Wolf on the mend. “I am saying that the Abomination’s essence could have remained intact, if long ago he had been felled by one weapon. However, in the two-fronted attack by Morris and Harker, his consciousness — like his powers — was split between the weapons and thereby rendered dormant.

  “I am saying that, with your Bradley’s blood-sacrifice spell, he not only unleashed all of the Abomination’s supernatural skills into his own form. He also reunited and took in the actual essence of the Abomination.

  “I am saying that the Abomination thrives again within your Bradley.”

  Damn it. “He’s not my —”

  “Drac is back?” Zachary and Freddy exclaimed.

  “Brad must be losing ground already,” Kieren observed. “That explains why he didn’t recognize me yesterday or, at first, even Quincie.”

  “Ultimately,” Ivo said, “there is no halfway. The count will triumph in any contest of wills, utterly vanquishing the foolish younger Nosferatu who resurrected him and fully adopting the body for his own use.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. “No more Brad?” Was that why I hadn’t heard from him — no thought whispers, no dream visits, no delusions — since the showdown on Main Street?

  “As you knew him, no,” Ivo confirmed, “though the struggle may take some time. I suspect that, after so long dormant, the Abomination will be disoriented, confused by changing times and by the mental influence of your Bradley, as long as he lasts.”

  This time I restrained myself from arguing that Brad wasn’t mine.

  It was ironic. My soul was being eaten away by the vampirism that Brad had cursed me with while his essence was being overtaken by an even stronger variety.

  Bradley was smart, ambitious, and successful — what with his mass-infection scheme, acquiring the Carpathian magic, and crippling the Wolves.

  But he hadn’t counted on the count. Dracula Prime was more monster than . . . what the hell . . . my Bradley could chew.

  “In life,” Ivo continued, “the Abomination was a soldier, a statesman, an alchemist. Who knows how much of that existence he remembers now.”

  I recalled Van Helsing saying something along those lines.

  “But in death, in death, his power is godlike. We speak of affecting the forces of nature, of affecting animal, human, and inhuman minds.

  “The Abomination is not like any other Nosferatu, not even like other Carpathians. He sets his sights beyond his own borders. And yet, when cornered, he flees. He is patient, immortal. He can afford to wait. It makes catching him more difficult.”

  The conversation cycled for a while.

  Finally, we stood to leave, thanking Ivo for his information and hospitality.

  “Be swift,” the professor urged. “‘For the dead trave
l fast.’”

  Outside the biergarten, as Freddy and Zachary went ahead to the library to check on the Possum, I lingered on the sidewalk with my Wolf man.

  “I should see about Clyde, too,” I said.

  Kieren gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “And I have to go back and talk to Ivo. I’ll meet you at the library, you know . . .” To say good-bye.

  It didn’t make it any easier that this time he was the one staying behind.

  “Your friend Clyde has slipped into a coma,” Graciella announced at the makeshift clinic. “Our professor of healing is dead. As students, we don’t have the level of expertise necessary to treat him. We have called for assistance and supplies from the nearest affiliated pack, but it will be another two days before they arrive.”

  I fisted my scarred hand. “I know someone who may be able to help.”

  Meara. I had to get the Possum home to Austin. Now.

  Aimee sported her sling and a royal-blue, long-sleeved shirt with a short vertical collar, purchased that morning at a local shop. Not her usual style, and she’d blown off the heavy eyeliner today too. The way I figured it, Aimee felt self-conscious about the fang marks on her neck, even if the crosses tattoo had prevented Bradley from really sinking his teeth in. Then again, it was cloudy, chilly. Maybe she was just cold.

  I joined her on the bench in front of the library while Freddy and Zachary loaded Clyde into the back of the SUV.

  “Where’s Kieren?” Aimee asked. “We’re about ready to go.”

  The plan was to wait in the car until Kieren came out of the biergarten. As the SUV slowly rolled past the Sausage Haus, Harrison mentioned something about the private jet — Sabine’s — that would meet us in Detroit.

  “Excuse me,” said Aimee from beside me. “I’ve never been on a plane before, and you want me to take one owned and operated by the forces of darkness?”

  “For Clyde,” I reminded her. “We don’t have a choice.”