Of Watchers & Wolves- The Awakening

by Tiffany Foxe

  “Phobos, we have to go!” a man shouted from afar.

  Cecelia looked up and nodded. She took one last look at Sophie and retreated.

  Chapter 12

  Em awoke to the muffled sound of voices. She lifted her hand as she squinted at the sunlight piercing through her bedside window. She pulled her hand away from her face as she noticed an I.V. line taped to her hand. She followed its length to an I.V. pump which stood next to a monitor. She looked down at her clothes. She was in a hospital gown. She heard the voices grow louder. The door opened and several people flooded in. She recognized one of them right off the bat.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” Cecelia exclaimed cheerily. “How are you feeling?” she asked

  Emiline grimaced as she placed her hand on her stomach.

  “I feel like I’ve been hit with a ton of bricks,” she answered.

  Cecelia chuckled.

  “Well, you almost were,” she said.

  “Where am I?” Em asked

  “This is one of our safe houses. We’re north of town. We took one of the tunnels out,” she explained. “You took a pretty nasty blow. But, with time and some much needed rest, you’ll be good as new.”

  “Where is Sophie?” asked Emiline.

  Cecelia checked Em’s vitals in silence. Emiline waited impatiently for her to finish, then asked again.

  “Where is she?”

  Cecelia put her stethoscope down and looked at Em. She shook her head. Emiline immediately looked away. She felt her eyes well up and struggled not to blink so that they would not spill over. She focused her attention on the window, watching the orange rays refract off the glass, struggling to distract herself from the emotional tide of loneliness and heartache that gushed forth.

  “Are you sure?” she forced out, still clinging to hope.

  “Yes,” Cecelia nodded.

  “How?...How...she’s immortal. How could she be…” her voice cracked.

  Cecelia shook her head and sighed.

  “She was severely injured. She lost a lot of blood...It...It’s been three days…”

  “Three days?” Em asked in confusion.

  “Yes. You’ve been out for three days. You lost a lot of blood, yourself. And, that silver is a pretty nasty allergy.”

  “You’re sure?” You’re 100% positive?” she pleaded. “Cece, she saved my life.”

  Cecelia stood silently.

  “Try to get some rest. I’ll be back in to check on you later,” she said, reassuringly.

  Emiline returned her focus toward the orange rays that danced upon the glass. Cecelia walked out of the room.

  “Come on,” Cecelia said to Daemian who sat on guard outside the room with Brutus.

  “So, when do you think she’ll be ready to take over?” he asked her as he jumped to his feet.

  Cecelia glanced over her shoulder at him as she walked down the hall.

  “Who said she’s taking over?”

  “Well...she is the rightful successor. She’s his daughter,” he explained.

  Cecelia stopped in her tracks and turned toward him.

  “Do you really think that someone who has been one of us for five minutes is apt to lead our people?”

  He stood in silence.

  “Let’s go,” she said as she continued down the hall.

  Emiline lay in bed with nothing to distract her from her heartache. She looked around the room for some kind of distraction, anything. She crawled out of bed when she saw a candle on the table across the room. She shuffled over, holding her stomach and pulling the I.V. pump with her. She found a box of matches beside the candle and used one to light it. She carefully placed it on the window sill, returned to her bed, and stared as the flame flickered to and fro.

  Daemien and Cecelia returned to the pile of rubble that had once been their lair. Large blocks of stone and boulders lay scattered along the floor. Cecelia searched for the area where she had found Emiline a few days before. She walked over to a pile of stones and pointed.

  “Here,” she said.

  Daemian lifted a stone which revealed a hand. He lifted several more and found Sophie prone with her head to the side. Her legs were pinned under a massive boulder from the ceiling. He knelt down beside her and looked her over. Her eyes were wide open, still facing the tunnel where Em had disappeared.

  Cecelia took a couple steps closer to get a better look. Sophie lay motionless, her eyes unflinching.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Daemian as she turned and walked away.

  Daemien strained his eyes as he watched her closely. He noticed the slightest hint of her chest rise and fall. He looked closer, and watched the process repeat.

  “Doc, she’s breathing.”

  ***

  “Good Evening, Dr. Phobos,” Luce said, cheerfully. “I presume you’ve called me here to surrender.”

  Luce and Cecelia sat in a local brewery in downtown Vancouver.

  “What? No. Why would I do that?” Cecelia asked in an offended tone.

  “Well, it’s the logical choice. Ralph is gone. Zadok. Your home is in shambles. You can’t keep up this kind of...lifestyle.” She took a sip of her beer. “It’s best to cut your losses.”

  Cecelia struggled to temper her irritation.

  “Actually, I wanted to inform you that I have something you want.”

  Luce chuckled.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Sophie.”

  Luce snapped her head toward Cecelia, obviously surprised that Sophie was alive. She quickly regained her composure.

  “So you have? Is that all?” She waved to the bartender to get her tab.

  Cecelia glared at Luce, astonished by her disinterest in her closest confidant.

  “Don’t you want her?”

  “She’s of no consequence to me. Keep her.” She stood up and pulled some cash out of her coat pocket. “I understand she likes sleeping with dogs.” Luce placed the money on the counter and gave Cecelia a terse stare. “Anything else?”

  Cecelia shook her head, still baffled by Luce’s response to her information.

  “Then, expect more of the same from us. Since you are in violation, our current treaty no longer stands. We’ll continue until our new terms are accepted.”

  “Ralph and Emiline are dead. You’ve killed countless others and destroyed our home. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. It isn’t. Goodbye, Phobos.”

  Cecelia watched Luce leave, dumbfounded by the turn of events. She came to ransom Sophie to the Watchers. She hoped Sophie would be a means to negotiate autonomy from them. But, Luce expressed no interest in her leverage. She ended up with a declaration of war, a war that would only end if the Sons accepted new conditions in the treaty. Cecelia was certain those terms would be undesirable at best.

  Feeling defeated, Cecelia headed back to their hideout. She pulled up to a large cabin in the snowy basin of Mt. St. Helens. She had had plenty of time to think about their predicament on the way back and one thing had become blatantly clear. They needed to pay.

  She marched into the bedroom where Sophie lay unconscious, barely clinging to life. She pulled a gun out of her pocket and pointed it directly at Sophie’s head.

  “Cece!” shouted Faelan from the hallway. “What are you doing?”

  Faelan heard Cecelia was back from her meeting and wanted to hear the news. He found her near tears with a gun pointed at his friend’s head. He rushed into the room. Cecelia immediately turned the gun on him. He took a few steps back and slowly put his hands up.

  “She’ll pay. They’ll pay,” her lip quivered as she turned the gun back on Sophie.

  Emiline heard a commotion outside her room as she lay in her bed recuperating. She crawled out of bed and opened the door. She watched Cecelia pointing a gun at Faelan in the room across the hall. She noticed someone lying in the bed in front of Cece, but she couldn’t discern who.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “They’ll pay for what th
ey did to us.”

  “Cece, she saved her,” he persuaded.

  “Saved who?” Em asked as she stood in the doorway.

  The two turned toward Emiline who caught sight of Sophie lying in the bed beside Cecelia. She gasped. Sophie was alive. Then, she noticed the gun pointed at herself.

  “What are you doing?” Em asked cautiously.

  Cecelia chuckled hysterically.

  “You’re right. This won’t kill her,” she remarked as she looked at the gun in her hand. She turned and kicked the wooden bedpost, snapping a piece into the air. She caught it and held it over Sophie’s heart. “But this will.”

  “Cece, no!” pleaded Em.

  “Seriously?” asked Cecelia. “They make us like this, and all they’ve done is treat us like dirt for it.”

  “Cece, she helped us save Em, remember?” Faelan reminded.

  “She did?” asked Em.

  “Yeah. How do you think we got in Diablo? She distracted Luce for us.”

  Emiline recalled her last glimpse of Sophie and Luce as she fled Corazon Diablo. It was a distraction. Sophie did care about her.

  “That doesn’t take away everything else,” Cecelia asserted.

  “It does for me,” said Em calmly. “She never treated me like dirt.”

  “Or me,” added Faelan.

  “Pfft. She’s the one who did this to us. We are lycan by her hand,” Cecelia asserted as she lifted the stake in her hand and aimed. “She deserves this.”

  Cecelia drove the stake down toward Sophie’s chest.

  “No!” Em charged Cecelia, knocking her on the ground.

  Pain from her wound shot all through her abdomen. She slowly got to her feet, careful not to inflict any further pain upon herself.

  “No. No she doesn’t. She doesn’t deserve death anymore that you or I. We’ve all done things we can’t take back,” Em said.

  “Don’t you get it?” Cecelia asked with frustration as she got up off the floor. “She’s why we’ve the done things we can’t take back.”

  “Listen. Something occurred to me, recently,” Em started as she held her stomach, attempting to quell the pain. “I’m pretty sure I was stoned out of my mind, but it’s still relevant just the same. What’s done is done. We can’t change who or what we are. It’s pointless trying.”

  “I like what we are,” Faelan chimed in. “We’re badass.”

  Emiline lifted her hand as if to say, “See? He has a point.”

  “You’ve just gotta play the hand you’ve been dealt and try not to read into it because...it doesn’t mean anything. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that there’s good, and there’s bad, and there’s fucked up situations. But, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I’m fine with what we are,” said Cecelia. “It’s how they’ve treated us for it. That’s my problem. This…” she looked at the broken bedpost still in her hand. “This will make a statement.”

  Em took a step toward Cecelia. Cecelia responded by pulling out her gun and pointing it at Em.

  “Wait,” Em said with composure.

  “No, you owe me this,” she said.

  “I owe you a lot but…” Em said a little confused.

  “Who do you think shoved a stake in that stripper after you attacked her?”

  Em thought for a moment, then remembered the body at Corazon Diablo. She was the one that attacked that woman. The footprint was hers.

  Cecelia nodded.

  “She’s not the only one to save your life.”

  “What…” Em’s mind raced as she tried to think of a way out of this. A way that would save Sophie’s life and her own. A way that would save them all. “What if there was another way to make a statement? One that wasn’t an endless eye for an eye?”

  ***

  Cecelia hung several transfusion bags that connected intravenously to Sophie. Em had made a proposal that could change the way the Watchers and Sons operated, forever. A new order for both sides, but it required Sophie’s participation.

  She watched as Sophie’s body consumed the red liquid, using it to nourish and repair the injury sustained by Luce several days prior. Cecelia was astonished she had survived such an injury for so long. Any other Watcher wouldn’t have made it. Hours passed and she hung several more bags of blood and left the room.

  Em sat by her side and watched in earnest as the color gradually returned to her face. The clock ticked as Em waited for her to wake. Finally, she opened her eyes.

  “Hey!” she said cheerfully as she placed her hand on Sophie’s head. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hmm,” Sophie grunted. “Better,” she smiled.

  Emiline leaned forward and gave her a kiss.

  “You need anything?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “Just you,” she mumbled.

  Em smiled.

  “Good,” she said satisfactorily. “Because I have a proposal.”

  Em pulled a small jewelry box out of her pocket. She opened it revealing a diamond ring encased in white gold. Cecelia had offered it to her when she learned of Em’s proposition. The ring had belonged to Ralph who intended to propose to Em’s mom with it before she disappeared.

  Sophie’s eyes widened with surprise as she gazed upon the contents of the box.

  “Sophie Shepherd, will you marry me?”

  She searched Em’s eyes for a moment, then smiled.

  “Of course. Yes.”