The Ballad of Aramei

by J. A. Redmerski

  “They can appear as anyone,” Minna adds. “They can be sitting next to you and you’d never know it.”

  I feel like I can elaborate a little more, having heard her very familiar description, but I stop myself from making that huge mistake. I can’t let her know anything more about me. I’ve done enough damage. There’s no telling what she might do if she knew for a fact that a Charge is sitting in her living room at this very moment.

  “How do you know that we aren’t one of them?” I say instead.

  Minna grins impishly and says, “Well, the obvious answer would be that your delicious boy here,” she points to Isaac without looking at him, “said the magic word at the door.” She nods towards Nathan now, but adds a curious little smile that disappears as soon as her eyes fall on me again. “However, the other two of you I know check out because you’re sitting in a trap and haven’t tried to kill me yet.”

  All of us look down at the floor and then up and all around us.

  Minna stands up from the recliner and waltzes around to the other side of the coffee table. She looks down at us, watching Nathan more than Isaac or me, but trying to be covert about it.

  “This whole house is a trap,” she says and then her shriveled hand comes up to press against her chest as she begins to cough violently. Nathan’s body impulsively leans away, out of the path of her cough and presses into my shoulder. His hand comes up, the side of it shielding his nose and mouth.

  Minna shuts her eyes and lets her breathing calm before opening them again. She looks down at us and continues, “You think being what I am, I’d let just anyone come into my house?”

  To all of our surprise, Minna takes a seat on the couch right next to Nathan. Even Isaac tenses up next to me, but nothing can compare to the rigidity of Nathan’s body.

  God, she smells like baby powder and Aspercreme and…there’s something far more devastating underneath the skin. I try not to think about being able to smell it, any of it, because I know if I try too hard, it’ll only get worse. But Minna has finally made her interest in Nathan more obvious now and she’s all but nuzzling up next to him, biding her time and dragging out the inevitable.

  Poor Nathan. I really do feel bad for him right now, all laughs at his expense aside, because no one deserves this.

  Nathan seems to have stopped breathing. His big blue eyes are huge in the sockets, his shoulders fallen completely away from his neck as his back shoots straight up as if to summon some kind of wall between their bodies. Thankfully, she hasn’t actually touched him yet.

  “I will help you,” she says in a scary, manipulative voice, “but you should know that I do nothing for free.”

  Chapter 10

  WE ALL KNEW THAT was coming, but Nathan had dreaded it a hundred times more. I can sense that Isaac and Nathan are communicating telepathically, so I open my mind to Isaac to listen in.

  “I’ll owe you one,” Isaac says.

  “You’ll owe me more than one!”

  “Just work your charm. I’ve seen you do it. Come on, bro, I’ll buy you a steak later.”

  “Just a steak?”

  “Yes, an expensive one—Fine, two steaks then.”

  I jab my elbows into both of them at my sides and glare at them as if to say: Get on with it!

  They straighten up and Nathan turns to Minna who’s so disturbingly close that it even makes me shudder.

  She gives Nathan ‘the look’, batting her wrinkly eyes and letting her tongue gently lick her top lip.

  “I think I just threw up in my mouth,” I hear Isaac say in my mind.

  “I know what you are,” Minna says, disrupting the flow of our thoughts suddenly.

  She gets up from the couch, surprising all of us, and I see a thick layer of relief suddenly wash over Nathan.

  But he’s certainly not out of the woods yet.

  Minna walks away from the couch and to the center of the living room, crossing her arms and letting her long, bony fingers dangle over her biceps. The hot pink nail polish contrasts brightly against her white robe.

  I don’t know what just happened, but it’s obvious that Minna is playing a different game than what any of us expected of her.

  “You’re lycanthrope,” Minna says and we remain perfectly quiet and still. “Tell me, is Vargas still vying for the power of Sovereignty?”

  “Always,” Isaac says, retaining his professional demeanor.

  Minna nods and paces back and forth over the same strip of shag carpet and then stops to cough again. This time she can barely stand on her own; her body heaved violently into a coughing fit where she stumbles her way to the nearby wall to hold herself up. To my complete surprise, Isaac and Nathan both instinctively jump to their feet to help her, but she fans them away with one hand, the other hand still pressed against the yellowed wall.

  “G’on back to your seats,” she says in a croaky voice. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and when she wipes her hand on her robe I glimpse a streak of blood left behind, seeping into the plush, dingy fabric.

  “Oh no,” I say under my breath, but I keep the rest of my thoughts to myself.

  I have a feeling I know where this is heading.

  Minna moves away from the wall and straightens herself up, gathering whatever composure she has left and looks back at us as if about to make a speech.

  “My price is immortality,” she announces and I think the three of us each share completely different feelings about the turn of events. I’m indifferent only because I’ve not had but two seconds to let it sink in that she actually wants what I’m totally against. Why would anyone want that? But then after a few more seconds I become sympathetic because it’s obvious she’s dying already—probably lung cancer. Isaac, on the other hand: I know he’s completely unsympathetic and now will have to make a very difficult Alpha decision which I know he doesn’t want to make. Nathan? Well, his heart and stomach just fell at the same time because he knows that out of the three of us here, he will be stuck with the job of bonding this woman to him. That’s like giving a ninety-year-old woman her last dying wish and asking Nathan to have sex with her, except only worse, because a Blood Bond is usually only done between lovers: two people so devoted to one another that they would die for each other without thinking twice about it.

  This isn’t just repulsive. This isn’t only asking Nathan to do something ‘gross’ that we can make fun of him about later. No, this is a serious matter that no one in their right mind would ever consider turning into a joke.

  “And I won’t accept anything else,” Minna adds.

  Nathan takes a deep breath and rolls his head back, his eyes shut heavily. He brings up both hands balled into fists and presses them against his temples and then shoots up from the couch. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?” His face is twisted by sadness and disappointment rather than anger.

  “Of course I do,” Minna says and presses her palm against her heaving chest. “I’ve been coughing up my lungs for nearly six months and I don’t have much time left.” She’s struggling even more now to breathe as she speaks and I see her glance toward the side of her recliner where an oxygen tank is partially obscured by the chair arm.

  Nathan begins to pace, the muscles in his arms hardening, crossed firmly over his ribs.

  Isaac stands up, too. “You can’t ask my brother to let you drink from him,” he says stern but calmly. “If you know what we are then you know what emotional effects that will have on him.”

  I’m listening intently, engrossed in this tragic twist. My face feels stiff with anticipation, but my heart is hurting, too. It’s as though being a werewolf now, I’m picking up even on Nathan’s emotions, which are surely the most turbulent in the room.

  “Yes,” Minna answers hoarsely, “I know that a Blood Bond is only ever done out of love. I know that if he does this, not only might he become someone darker, but that he could become a rogue as a result. But that’s not my problem.”

  Now I’m the one shooting u
p from the couch, my eyes wide and enraged. “What?” I say, dropping my hands to my sides. My head jerks swiftly over to see Isaac, my face full of question and shock and disbelief. “What does she mean by that? A rogue? You’re not serious….” I turn to see Nathan now, but he can’t look at me. He has stopped pacing and now only stands there staring off into nothingness.

  “Oh dear,” Minna says, “You must be a new one.”

  “Yes, I am!” I lash out. “But let’s not get off topic. Someone needs to explain this. I’m serious.”

  Minna can’t stand any longer. She makes her way back to her recliner, carefully sitting down with her shaky hands gripping the arms of the chair for balance. For a second it seems she intends to reach for the contraption hanging off the oxygen tank but then she decides against it. She takes three heavy, unsteady breaths and then looks back at me.

  But Isaac is the one who answers:

  “A Blood Bond is sacred,” he says, “No one of our kind—except for rogues—has ever, nor would ever, share that bond with someone they had no intention in sharing everything else with, too. If Nathan does this, they’ll be linked forever or at least until one of them dies.” He sighs and glances behind me at Nathan. “I won’t ask him to do this. I refuse. We’ll find another way.” Isaac shoots an angry glare back at Minna and then he grabs my hand. “Let’s go, Nathan. We’re out of this shithole.”

  “No,” Nathan says, stopping us both in our tracks. “We have to do this, little brother. All of us are at risk and it needs to be dealt with before someone gets killed.”

  Minna remains quiet, letting us come to the final conclusion all on our own which she already knows is going to go her way. I glimpse her from the corner of my eye, that sickly smug look on her face and it takes everything in me to keep from marching across the room and knocking it right off.

  “But I’ll only agree to it,” Nathan says, turning fully at the waist to face Minna, “if you agree that you won’t drink directly from me and this is the only time you’ll ever drink of my blood.”

  That seems to have sparked an unexpected reaction. Minna’s smug face collapses.

  Nathan, clearly the one in control now unfolds his tanned, muscled arms and walks toward her. “Take it or leave it,” he says. “She knows as well as I do that there won’t be any other desperate werewolves lining up at her door to do it anytime soon, and time is something she doesn’t have.” His eyes never leave Minna, who is slinking more and more into her chair.

  “Fine,” Minna spats out the word, “I agree to your terms.”

  “Nathan,” Isaac says, “as Alpha, I forbid you to do this.”

  Nathan turns to face Isaac and I feel my body stiffening as they stand toe to toe.

  “I respect you as my leader and my brother,” Nathan says, “but if you don’t let me do this, you’re risking Adria’s life.”

  Isaac looks away from him.

  “You know it, man,” Nathan goes on. “The traitor is the reason for everything, for the attack in the car that almost killed her, for the Blood Bond, for everything. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s obvious that this Praverian has it out for Adria more than anyone.”

  “I know!” Isaac roars, startling me with both his voice and his admission. “I know….” His voice calms and his rigid body loosens, his shoulders falling. He looks away from Nathan and gazes down at the floor. “I’ve known this since Genna told us all about the traitor. I’ve known, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Then you know I have to do this,” Nathan says stepping up to his brother and softening his voice. “I would do it for either of you.”

  “I’ll do it then,” Isaac says.

  I stiffen.

  “Oh hell no you won’t,” Nathan argues, narrowing his eyes. “You’ve already been bonded. That would cause worse emotional repercussions than it would if I did it.”

  “Don’t I have a say in this?” I speak up. “Apparently it’s all about me, right? Then I should have a say.” I cross my arms.

  Minna hacks and coughs into a tissue, but no one pays her any attention.

  “Sure, doll,” Nathan says with a playful grin, “you can say whatever you want. Get it all out. But it won’t change anything.”

  I march right over to him and stand looking up at his tall height with my arms crossed angrily. “But what about that emotional stuff?” I say, gritting my teeth. I look over at Isaac once too, letting them both know I need answers no matter which of them I get them from. “You risking your life for mine sort of makes this my business, therefore I should have a say.”

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Nathan says, “if I’m not letting her drink directly from me, that takes out the intimate factor at least.”

  Minna waves her hand in front of her. “As much as I’d love to drink from those delicious veins of his, I’ll settle with a cup.”

  “Disgusting,” I say snarling across at her.

  Isaac finally jumps in, “…And since Nathan won’t be sharing his blood with her but this once, that might lessen the emotional trauma,” he glares at Minna with the emphasis of that word.

  “You’re agreeing to this?” I say, disappointed.

  Isaac steps up to me, taking my hands. I can tell by how thoughtful and regretful his expression reads that he’s about to give me one of those why-he-has-to-do-it speeches, but I shake my head and pull away from him.

  “Don’t…,” I say, putting up my hand. “Isaac, do you have any idea how it feels to be the cause of so many people you love getting hurt?”

  “Baby—”

  “Stop!” I say, moving farther back away from him and crossing my arms. “Don’t you understand? My shoulders are full. I can’t carry anymore.” I feel like I want to cry, and in a situation like this I normally would tear up, but I can’t. I’m angrier than anything. And something wrenches at my insides and I quickly realize that I’m on the verge of shifting into my mediate form so I try to calm myself fast. Deep breaths. I shut my eyes and just breathe.

  “Wow,” Minna gloats from behind, “I don’t need my TV shows to keep me entertained, I’ve got all the drama I need right here, live in my living room.”

  I storm over with black, swirling eyes and just before I reach out, intent on knocking the old hag from the chair, Isaac grabs me around my waist from behind and pulls me back.

  Nathan steps in-between me and Minna.

  I allow my body to calm and my eyes to shift back to their natural color and only then does Isaac release his hold on me.

  “Fine,” I rip the word out, “let’s be done with this. I want this traitor caught so that maybe we can all get on with our lives.” I glare down at Minna, but her face remains full of malice despite being in a room with three werewolves who despise her. I figure she doesn’t have anything to lose anymore and all she has left are her treacherous ways so she might as well make the best use of them.

  I turn away and walk to stand near the glass curio cabinet, absently staring in at all of the different elephant figurines. Vaguely, I can hear the television still playing somewhere else in the house, but I’m too infuriated for it or any other unsolicited noises to amplify the volume. There’s another shelf next to me holding a mountain of books; everything covered in a thick layer of dust.

  “How are we gonna’ know,” Isaac says, “If whatever you tell us to do to trap the Praverian is actually going to work?”

  “Good question,” Nathan adds. “If I bond you to me and this trap is a bust, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Minna says and I turn at the waist to see her because I detect a malicious grin in her voice. “You can’t kill me; we all know that.”

  Unsettled by this information, I take a few steps back over to them so that I know I won’t miss any of the conversation, including facial expressions.

  “Maybe he can’t,” Isaac says, “but I will kill you.”

  “Why can’t he?” I finally say, standing behind them with my arms crossed loosely.

&nb
sp; “Just like I knew I couldn’t hurt you all that time you were bonded to me,” Isaac says, “they won’t be able to hurt one another, either.”

  “Well, that’s easily fixed,” I say, stepping up farther so that Minna can see the threat in my face. “Just like Isaac said, if Nathan can’t deal with you, then we will.”

  Minna stands up again, though very slowly. “You’re a cocky little bitch, I have to say.”

  Minna makes a fraught choking sound as Nathan’s hand grips firmly around her throat. I know it would’ve been Isaac standing there if Nathan hadn’t of been closer to her than Isaac when she said what she said. Her thin, bony hands come up, gripping his wrist, clawing at it futilely.

  “Pl…please!” she begs between breaths; her eyes are starting to roll into the back of her head. “I-I’m s-orry!” She coughs and chokes, tiny droplets of saliva spewing out.

  Nathan releases her and she falls to the floor, but this time no one is running to help catch her.

  Holding her sickly body up with one hand, she raises the other to her throat, rubbing the area where Nathan’s hand had been. She looks up at us, never really losing that cold, malicious grin and she says, “It will work. I’m not going anywhere, even after the blood heals me. I’ve lived in this house for forty-years.” She pushes herself to her feet and catches her breath. “And so soon you three forget what I am.”

  “An old witch,” I say, smirking.

  She smirks right back at me. “I’m a Harvester,” she says, barely letting on that the title ‘witch’ actually offended her. “I live to trap and reap these bastards, these dangerous beings that you three so blindly trust.” She walks toward the exit that leads back into the kitchen and stops in the doorway. “I’ll get you a cup.”

  Nathan walks over to the coffee table and takes up his coffee mug. Minna stops before leaving the room completely and watches him curiously.

  “Here,” Nathan says. He pours his coffee into the flower pot of a nearby fake plant sitting on the floor. “This’ll do just fine.” And then without even pausing to think about it, a razor-sharp black fingernail juts out at the tip of his finger and he slashes the skin on the under-part of his lower-arm just above the wrist. Blood oozes out of the wound in a stream of thick, heavy crimson; a few droplets staining the carpet at his feet just before he positions the mug underneath his arm to catch it. I stare at his blood filling up the mug so quickly; my eyes slanted horrifically, my fingertips dancing on my parted lips.