Alex is unaffected. She’s smiling up at Rachel’s angry face. Smiling!
Oh no…this can’t happen.
Isaac, me, Nathan and Daisy all rush the rest of the way into the den to surround them. Isaac starts to reach for Rachel to pull her off Alex, but stops abruptly.
“It was Ashe,” Alex says and Rachel freezes on top of her, stunned.
“Ashe?” Rachel looks like she just got hit in the back of the head with a rock.
“Mind getting off of me?” Alex says sarcastically. “I’m not into girls.”
Rachel does move off her, but not because Alex asked her to; it’s as if she’s trying to get her head together.
It’s already obvious to all of us that Ashe was who sired Rachel, too, before she even admits it aloud.
And Alex is the first to bring it out in the open.
“Yeah,” she says, pretending to dust herself off once Rachel has moved away, “he mentioned you a few times. Said you were one crazy bitch.” She looks her over. “I see he was right,” she adds casually.
Rachel finally pulls her stupefied thoughts together and looks downward at Alex, but she doesn’t say anything. Something different is taking place between them and I’m not sure I’m believing what I’m seeing.
Alex goes on, “But really, Ashe has no room to talk about someone else being crazy. He should be in a nut house…without nuts.”
“He did the same to you?” Rachel says.
Nathan throws his hands up in the air, his dreams crushed, and Daisy laughs under her breath as he leaves back down the hallway.
Isaac looks back at me, takes me by the hand and we quietly move back toward the hall leading into the kitchen.
“What just happened?” Camilla says still standing at the den entrance where we left her.
“I’m going to eat my sandwich,” Isaac says. He leans over and pecks me on the lips. “I think Rachel just solved our babysitting problems, babe.”
I nod absently, still not quite believing how things just happened. “I think you’re right….”
Isaac slips back down the hall and into the kitchen.
“…You’re frickin’ serious?” I hear Rachel say as I listen in on the middle of a conversation. “Well, I totally believe it. The second that Lyla girl joined the pack, I was last week’s news. Stupid blond whore.” Rachel’s nostril’s flare again.
“Lyla?” Alex laughs. “Well, I guess you can say she got what was coming in the cycle of paybacks because when Ashe sired me, she was last week’s news.”
Rachel smiles first before bursting into laughter.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rachel actually smile. At least not in the happy, spirited sense.
It’s kind of freaking me out.
Camilla and I look at one another simultaneously, both a little baffled.
“Come on,” Rachel says with the nod of her head, “I’ll show you my room.”
As Alex walks in short, confined steps with Rachel toward the staircase, she looks back at me and winks before heading upstairs.
A smile breaks in my face and I just shake my head. Alex always was as slick as oil, but in this situation, I couldn’t be more impressed. Not only did she refrain from all-out war with Rachel right there in the den, but she just became Rachel’s new best friend all in a matter of a few minutes.
~~~
After thinking on it for a while, I decide to head upstairs to talk to Zia. I stand outside her bedroom door and knock a few times, knowing she’s inside because I hear her talking plain as day. It’s when her voice stops abruptly and then rises even higher that I realize she knows full well that I’m out here, but she’s not ready to talk to me. My shoulders fall over in a slump and I start to walk back down the hall when I hear her door click open.
Sebastian steps out and closes the door behind him.
“She hates me, doesn’t she?”
“Nah,” he says, shaking his shaved head. “She’ll get over it.”
I sigh and lean my back against the wall. The red-haired girl who apparently used to be Rachel’s number one sidekick shuffles past, smiling at me. Positions in Rachel’s little clique are shifting fast with Alex here; already Rachel’s ‘old’ friends are looking for sides to change loyalties to. I smile back faintly as she slips down the stairs, hoping not to give her any hopes. I really want no part of that.
“I want to tell Zia everything,” I say to Sebastian as he leans against the opposite wall, crossing his arms, “but I can’t. Like really can’t. I have no control over it. I wish she understood.”
“Between you and me,” Sebastian says quietly, looking back once toward Zia’s door, “Zia is dealing with a lot of rejection lately.”
“Rejection?”
“Yeah,” he says, “even her brothers have pretty much blown her off and she never sees them anymore. They’re too busy doing their own things, y’know?”
Zia’s brothers, Damien and Dwarf, are rarely ever at the Mayfair house anymore. I haven’t seen much of them since Seth’s going-away ceremony the day Nataša was here and I fainted in front of her. And even before then, it was like they had moved out of here and only stopped by on occasion. New girlfriends are to blame. But I admit that I kind of miss Damien’s dark natured playful attitude and Dwarf’s big mouth.
“I wish she would talk to me.”
“Just give her time to cool off,” Sebastian says. “It’s really not about you, so don’t put too much into it.”
He looks towards the door once more and moves over closer to me and whispers, “What is this thing you guys are looking for anyway?”
I pause, suddenly untrusting of him, or just being paranoid again.
“A Praverian,” I say. “Like Genna who had been following me. And Malachi, the one I met when we were all in Portland last month.”
Sebastian nods, but doesn’t say anything.
“Why do you ask?”
He shrugs. “Just looking for something to tell Zia when I go back in there.” He smiles and runs the palm of his hand across his bald head. “I hope it grows back soon.”
“Seriously?” I say, looking surprised. I’m glad the topic has shifted. “It’s a good look for you, like I said before.”
Sebastian crinkles his nose a bit. “It makes me feel naked—Well, I better get back in there with the…,” he holds up his fingers in quotations, “…info, before Zia has my head.”
“Ah, so she sent you out here?”
The right side of his mouth lifts into a confirmation, “Yeah.” Then he leans in and adds quietly, “So if you could help me out with a little more than what she already knows, that’d kick ass.” He leans away, grinning.
“Hmmm…,” I purse my lips and mull it over for a moment, “well, you can tell her that I wouldn’t tell you jack because I’d tell Zia before I ever told you.”
His grin gets bigger. “Very smart,” he says, nodding.
And then he disappears back inside Zia’s room.
I want to go see my sister, but I think I’m going to give her and Rachel time to hang out and get to know each other. It’s important for both of them, I think. They technically are the outcasts here, if I think about it. Both of them of the Vargas bloodline. Both of them pretty much rogue, but strong enough not to give into rogue behavior completely. Now I actually feel bad for Rachel, realizing that she’s been the way she is because she can’t help it. But she’s never done anything to lose the Mayfair’s trust; in fact, she attacked and beat Alex because she thought Alex was a threat to us.
As much as I want to catch up with Alex and do all of the things two long lost siblings might naturally do after being reunited, I know that Alex fitting in is important right now. But more than that, I’m still not sure she can be trusted and I’m not going to jump into anything with her too soon. I need to feel her out. We need to trap the traitor. There are several things that need to happen before I can commit my heart fully to my sister again.
And Aramei is one of them.
Chapter 19
Balkan Mountains – Eastern Serbia – Winter 1761
FIRES HAVE BEEN BURNING on the horizon for six days; plumes of smoke spiraling into the heavily overcast sky. And at night, the fires are more frightening as the flames lick the black sky all over the mountainside and throughout the vast valley and beyond. A war is spreading. It’s drawing closer to Aramei’s village and everyday life here has all but come to a halt. The people have boarded up their homes and stables. Families sit huddled around a low, inadequate fire for fear of too much smoke rising from their chimneys and drawing attention. “Maybe it’ll pass us up and head west,” a man said during the village meeting earlier this morning.
But none of the villagers believes that. Aramei doesn’t believe it. She knows more than anyone about what is coming and although she doesn’t truly understand the extreme of it, she still knows more than they do. She’s afraid to tell anyone about Viktor. She committed murder and if they knew, she would be ripped from her family and hanged. But this hasn’t stopped her from doing everything in her power to convince the people of her village to prepare. It was because of her they decided to board up early rather than later. She had told her father how afraid the fires on the horizon had made her and begged him to call a meeting in the village.
“I have a terrible feeling about the fires, Father,” she said on that day. “Nightmares attack my sleep every night. You must warn the people! Please, Father!”
And he did because he felt it, too.
While most of the villagers in the beginning let themselves believe this strange unknown war that had nothing to do with the Turks would pass them by, Aramei’s father knew it might not. And so after a two hour debate, it became unanimous that the village must protect itself.
Aramei and Filipa have been sleeping huddled together on a bed in Filipa’s room since that night.
“Filipa,” Aramei whispers lying next to her, “I have to tell you something.”
Filipa rises to sit upright on the bed. “What is it?”
Aramei lifts from the bed, too, and pulls her thick robe tight around her to keep in the warmth. She gazes toward the window where she can see a single fire, far off in the distance, dancing victoriously against the sky. But at the last minute, Aramei decides against confiding in her sister. It never goes the way she hopes it will and if Filipa knew anything about Viktor’s murder, she would be in as much trouble as Aramei. Guilty by association.
She lets out her breath and lies against the cot, staring up at the low wooden ceiling.
“I’m just afraid,” she says; her voice distant.
“So am I, sissa. So am I.”
They lie together, curled against one another’s body as the night falls into an eerie, silent darkness. A howling unlike any they have ever heard before carries on the bitter winter air. But both of them are too afraid to speak of it, neither of them willing to admit they heard it because it truly sounds more monstrous than natural.
They tremble and shake against each other.
Silently, Aramei cries into her pillow. But she doesn’t cry because she’s afraid. She cries because she killed a man.
Finally, after hours of lying awake, the sisters fall asleep, but Aramei’s sleep remains tumultuous throughout the night, her dreams rife with horrifying images of Viktor’s face. She wakes with a start, sweat soaking her cotton gown and pillow. She presses her hand against her breast and waits for her heartbeat to settle. But soon she realizes that it wasn’t a nightmare that had woken her. The low mooing of the cow in the barn sounds frightened and the sheep are…silent. Aramei looks over at Filipa lying next to her. Filipa is out cold, sleeping on her back with her mouth hung open. Carefully, Aramei crawls out of the bed and slips her feet down inside her boots. She takes Filipa’s heavy fur coat hanging on the back of the door and wraps herself inside of it, pushing the hood over her head.
Her father is passed out on the chair in the front room; a low fire burns behind the hearth in the fireplace, but it needs more wood; it’ll burn out soon. As Aramei goes toward the front door, she stops when she stands in front of it, placing her outstretched hand upon the wood. Slowly she pushes it open after sliding the lock away with her other hand and the wind licks at the flames in the fireplace as it escapes into the room.
Her father stirs, but doesn’t wake up and Aramei slips outside into the cold night and makes her way to the barn. The snow crunches underfoot as she draws closer and it and the cow are the only sounds that she can hear.
The barn door is open.
Like the house, the back portion of the barn had been boarded up leaving only one way in and out, but the barn door swings unevenly as if it had been knocked off one hinge. It makes absolutely no sound as it swings back and forth in the mild wind.
Aramei spots one sheep moving across the land about fifty feet from the barn and she expects that the rest of them have also gotten out. She hurries her steps through the thick snow and enters the barn. Something doesn’t feel right. The cow is agitated, constantly bumping her hind against the wood guard across her enclosure. The three goats also appear more agitated than usual, but they aren’t putting up as much of a fight to get out. Aramei approaches the cow and reaches her hands over the top rail, patting it on the hind. “It’s okay, girl. It’s okay.” The cow moos and smells god awful, especially with its back end facing her.
As Aramei looks away from the cow, she catches movement in the back of the barn from the corner of her eye. Peering further into the bluish-black darkness, puffs of breath coil up from behind Vela’s old stable and disappear into the air. Aramei’s breath catches and her hand springs to her chest, but she calms down once she realizes that it’s probably one of the sheep. And she approaches it, taking small, cautionary steps as though something in the back of her mind is warning her to stay away.
She pushes open the stable door and her entire body locks up in fear when she sees the giant beast lying bloodied on the barn floor surrounded by hay and the remains of one sheep.
She stumbles backward and falls over a wooden tool crate, cutting her forearm on something she can’t bear to investigate. Her heart hammers inside her chest. Her breath comes out in rapid, heaving puffs of hot air swirling amid the frigid cold through her gently parted lips. Her arm stings from the cut, but she’s too afraid and mesmerized to look away from the black beast-like creature staring back at her with dark predatory eyes.
“Father…,” she tries to shout out, but it comes out raspy and weak and dry. “Filipa….”
The beast, three times the size of her and twice her height, groans and growls as it tries to adjust its position. This is when Aramei notices the hilts of three swords protruding from its chest that should’ve been obvious before if she weren’t so mesmerized by its massive head. The beast moans in pain; blood has soaked up so much within its black fur that it looks drenched and heavy and sticky. Six-inch razor-sharp claws jut out from each of its ten massive fingers.
If Filipa were here, Aramei would already have been dragged right out of the barn with Filipa’s screams piercing the air for miles. Filipa was the sensible one, but Aramei, she had always been the curious one.
The beast’s left eye catches Aramei and for a split second the lid blinks over it. It raises its head carefully, revealing the other eye, which is also bleeding profusely as a great gash has been cut across the corner and along the bone toward the bottom of its pointy, hairy ear. It grunts suddenly and Aramei jumps in reaction to the frightening sound.
Its head falls back to one side as though it can’t bear to hold it up any longer.
Aramei takes a deep, concentrated breath, pushing down her fear and moves forward toward it, taking small, cautious steps. Her small fingers are clutched around the opening of Filipa’s long-coat and her soft, pale face peeks out from underneath the furry hood; wisps of her light hair blow gently across the bridge of her nose when a little breeze makes its way inside the shelter of the barn.
She stops about eight
feet from the beast and crouches low to the hay-covered floor. And all the seconds that it takes her to go into a full crouch, Aramei’s curious, childlike eyes scan over every massive inch of this strange creature, every frightening feature from its tall animal, yet human-like hind legs to the enormity of its snout where a set of razor-sharp teeth are visible.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she whispers as softly as the wind coming through the roof. “You’re one of the Black Beasts that live in the mountains.”
The beast’s glistening dark eyes move over her as it tries to adjust its head to better see her. Aramei can sense right away that it’s aware she had spoken to it. Its colossal chest moves slow and unsteadily as it struggles for breaths.
Aramei moves closer.
Her perilous actions are part curiosity, part vulnerability, but most of all determination. Maybe now, once and for all, she will know that what her mother said happened to her was true.
Her hand emerges slowly from the sleeve of her coat as she reaches out to touch the beast’s foot. She pauses inches from it, waiting, searching its eyes for any sign that might cause her to stop, but sees none. And then she rests her fingers gently within the beast’s black fur. Her whole body shakes uncontrollably beneath the coat; the blood pumps through her veins so fast and so hard that she can feel it in the tips of her fingers and hear it walloping in her ears.
The beast’s black eyes roll over to search her; hot, visible breath emits from its nostrils sometimes followed by small shuddering noises that no longer seem to be any cause for alarm and so Aramei ignores it. A wounded creature of any kind can makes noises like that and she can tell the difference between those of warning and those of pain.
She strokes the beast’s foot, splitting her fingers through its long, coarse fur.
“I will help you,” she says gently, “but you will probably die.” She moves closer, now crouched at level with its knees and she knows she can’t go back now. She is fully in its reach. All the beast would have to do is reach out its massive arms and grab her. But she remains calm and continues to talk to it, showing it her most prominent quality: compassion.
The Ballad of Aramei Page 20