“I told you, if I had a good answer I would give it to you.”
“Think of one, give me something, Ethan.”
“I can’t!” I groaned. “I wish I could, Cordillia. Do you see why I wanted to leave?” She nodded slightly as she brought her knees to her chest and stared out at me curiously.
“This is messed up.” She sighed as she dropped her forehead onto her knees and took a deep breath.
“You’re telling me.” I smirked.
“I know,” She smiled slightly. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it was like to figure this out on your own.”
“I still haven’t figured it out.” I yawned.
“Are you still planning on leaving?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, looking up at her as she relaxed and stretched herself across the bed.
“Then I’m coming too.”
“No.” I barked, eying her sternly. “It’s not safe for you.”
“Ethan,” she groaned. “Don’t give me that I’m doing what’s best for you routine.”
“It’s true,” I argued.
“No, if you’re so intent on leaving then I’m coming with you.”
“Were your eyes closed a minute ago?” I barked as I jumped to my feet. “Did you not see what just happened?”
“Yes I did and that’s why I’m coming.” She crossed her arms at her chest and looked up at me with a scowl.
“It’s not safe!”
“Like you’re in a better position!” she screamed as she jumped up off the bed and moved toward me. “I want to help.”
“And how do you think you’re gonna manage that if you’re dead?” Her eyes turned to the ground and she chewed at her lip as the gears began turning in her head.
“What makes you think I’m gonna die? You didn’t attack me.”
“I’m your brother.” I smirked.
“So you were logical and had the ability to reason?” I’d never really thought about it but she was right. I nodded. “Who’s to say that others like you aren’t the same?” I sighed heavily and ran my hands over my face as she waited for me to give in. I really didn’t want to agree but I knew if I sent her packing she would just follow me, it was her way. She wasn’t the type to take no for an answer.
“Fine,” I grumbled, wanting nothing more than for this conversation to be over with. “But if I ask you to leave or do anything for that matter please promise you’ll listen.”
“I promise.” I could tell that she didn’t want to but it meant a lot to me that she had. I took a deep breath and yawned.
“Come on you, let’s get some sleep. We’ll head north in the morning.”
“Why north?” She asked as she turned down the covers and crawled underneath. I climbed into bed next to her and closed my eyes just as soon as my head hit the pillow.
“I don’t know, I guess it’s just a feeling,” I groaned through my tired haze. I settled myself in and for a moment my mind was quiet. It wasn’t long before a string of doubts and fears kicked making it hard to feel like this was the right thing to do but it wasn’t like I had a choice.
I felt the hold of sleep beginning to wash over me as the sound of her soft snoring filled the room and somewhere in the middle of it, my world went dark, giving way to the nightmares that consumed my dreams.
Chapter Three
I woke to the sound of a strange tapping next to me. I couldn’t place it and my eyes argued as I forced them to adjust to the room around me. Rolling onto my back, I rubbed my eyes and looked over at Cordillia as she sat cross legged on the bed next to me and typed away on a small black laptop.
She stared intently at the flickering screen, her eyes filled with wonder and confusion as she surfed quickly from one page to the next. Images of monsters and pages full of text filled her screen. I didn’t need a second glance to figure out what it was that she was researching.
“Morning sunshine.” She smirked without even looking at me. I grumbled in response and sat up as she continued her work.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked quietly as I stretched. My body ached in all the wrong places but I had high hopes that a shower would fix that as it always did. She shook her head and reached down, lifting a large paper cup and handing it to me without so much as a glance. I hoped she was just engrossed in her research as I took it from her and shot her a questioning look.
“I didn’t poison it.” She smiled, looking over at me quickly. “It’s just coffee, I thought you might want one.” she added as she reached down and grabbed her own. I took in the smell as I pulled off the lid and took my fist sip, it was enough to coax me out of sleep and bring me further into the land of the living.
“When did you leave?” I asked as she returned her attention to a web page splattered with images of various monsters.
“I got back about twenty minutes ago.” She shrugged. “I found your key near the broken table. By the way,” She turned to me and took a sip from her own cup. “What are we gonna tell the owner about that?” I thought for a moment and smiled.
“He’ll figure it out on his own.”
“Really?”
“What?” I chuckled. “I’ll tip him.” She eyed me for a second and shrugged.
“Setting a great example here, Ethan.”
“Hey, you said yourself that you’re an adult.” I smiled over the rim of my cup as I took another sip.
“So?” She smiled.
“So you should know better than to follow my example.” Cordillia chuckled lightly and shook her head a she placed her cup back down on the floor and went back to work.
“How long was I out?” I asked curiously as I leaned over to get a better look at what had her attention.
“Mmmm...” She mulled for a second and looked down to her laptop. “It’s about ten now so seven hours or so.”
I nodded as I crossed my legs in front of me. It was a little later in the day than I liked but it wasn’t like we were in any kind of hurry. I couldn’t even explain why I was headed north in the first place. Something just told me that I would find others there, people who could help me.
“So why are we headed up north?” she asked just as the thought had crossed my mind. “I can’t find anything that suggests there are others like you there?”
“No werewolf match dot com then?” I smirked. She smacked me in the arm and glared through a smile.
“Real funny, jackass, you know what I mean.” she ended with a chuckle. She leaned down and grabbed her cup from the floor and took a sip as she waited for me to give her an answer.
“I can’t really tell you, I’m not sure myself. I guess it’s just instinct.” She raised an eyebrow as she watched me.
“So you’re telling me that we are headed on a three day drive based on your instinct?” She stared at me for a moment, placed her cup back down on the floor and turned her attention back to the flickering screen in front of her.
“I guess that’s not the strangest thing that has happened in the last little while then. My brother turning into a creature right out of a horror movie takes the cake on that one,” she spoke sarcastically as she typed away at the keyboard.
“Hey,” I nudged her side. “Ouch.”
“What?” She smiled. “It’s true.” I shrugged as I placed my cup on the floor and leaned toward her.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she continued flipping through page after page.
“Well I figured that there has to be someone out there who knows something. I mean, we know werewolves,” I winced. I didn’t like that word, it sounded too Hollywood for my tastes. “Sorry,” she added as she saw my reaction.
“It’s okay, its right isn’t it,” I stated more than asked.
She shrugged and continued her theory, “Well we know at this point that they exist, we can’t deny that. So there has to be some information somewhere.” She placed her chin in her hand and tapped a finger over her lips as she read a blue page on the screen.
“How opposed are you to maki
ng a stop in Oregon?” she asked without taking her eyes from the page.
“I guess I’m not opposed to stopping anywhere. It’s not like I’m in a rush.”
“Good!” She smiled before I even had the chance to think. “There’s an Indian reservation there. They have a lot of legends about what they call skin walkers maybe we can get some information. Even if its legend it can’t hurt to know right?” it took me a moment to realize that she was asking me a question.
“Um, sure I guess you’re right,” I added skeptically. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she was clever, more so than I gave her credit for and maybe just maybe she was onto something. I could see the perks of having her with me already. “Did you find anything else interesting?”
“Not really, just that there have been stories of werewolves told all over the world for hundreds of years. But they vary so much from decade to decade and country to country that it’s kind of hard to find anything reliable.” I smirked.
“You’re looking for truth in bedtime stories?”
“They’re not bedtime stories, Ethan. What happened to you is real. You can’t tell me that we both had the same hallucination about you turning into a six foot tall creature of myth.”
“No I guess not.” I smiled and looked down as I shook my head.
“You guess?”
“Alright, smart ass.” I smirked. “Go on, what else did you find?”
“Well,” She sighed as she opened up a web page and turned the computer toward me. “I found that back in the day, like way back when, people used to hunt werewolves regularly.”
“Let me guess, they were really just hunting wolves?”
“Kind of.” There was a cringe in her words as she reached down and grabbed her coffee cup from the floor as I peered over the page in front of me. “Sometimes the hunters would come back with wolf heads sometimes they would have the head of a person.” I cringed slightly. “I know right.” She smiled as she saw my reaction. “And it wasn’t limited to werewolves. Vampires, ghouls, witches, basically anything that a culture or town couldn’t understand they blamed on something monstrous and most of the time they killed it for good measure or as a warning to others like them.”
“That’s barbaric.” I shook my head.
“You know I thought so too but if you think about it we kind of do the same thing now.”
“Okay now I can honestly say I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I chuckled. “But I’ve never seen a group of witch hunters in California.”
“Okay maybe it’s not the same way but people still get killed for being supposed witches and we put serial killers to death on a daily basis, maybe it was no different back then they just had a different way of explaining why someone would commit cannibalism or kill like fifty people for no reason. Each culture has their own way of defining things.”
“Why are you not in college?” I smirked as she finished her lecture.
“Because I’m busy helping my werewolf brother keep his ass out of trouble.” I laughed loudly and leaned back against the headboard.
“You seem to be taking this rather well,” I added as I made myself comfortable.
“Really?” she snapped as she slammed her laptop shut and placed it on the ground. “You think I’m taking this well?”
“I’m about to get lectured aren’t I?”
“Oh yeah,” She nodded as she turned herself to face me. “First of all, the last month has been horrid, Ethan. You took off without any kind of explanation and left me in the dark, then I find out you’re holding up in some seedy hotel halfway out of California and if that wasn’t a bad enough way to find out you were telling the truth about leaving, I get here and you turn into this....” She motioned wildly toward me before stopping to shake her head. “this thing that shouldn’t even exist and now I don’t know what to think.” I lowered my eyes and nodded slightly.
“I don’t know how to take this, I don’t know what to think all I know is that something really messed up happened to you and I want to help you get to the bottom of it.”
“I really appreciate that,” I muttered.
“You would do the same for me.”
“Yeah.” I smirked. “I guess I would, wouldn’t I.” I looked over at the clock and groaned, I wasn’t in a hurry but my stomach was beginning to make itself known.
Reaching over, I ruffled her hair. “Don’t do that,” she grumbled as she brushed my hand away and smoothed her hair back down. I crawled off of the bed and my body groaned as I stretched and cracked my back loudly. I walked over to the broken table near the door, grabbed my bag out of the rubble and shuffled through it until I found my wallet and began counting the money that I had left.
“What are you doing?” she asked curiously as she watched me from the foot of the bed.
“Counting my cash.”
“I can see that,” she mocked me. “Do you have enough?”
“I should.” I shrugged and tossed my bag to the ground. “Why?”
“If you don’t, I have some stashed away. I brought my bank card just in case.” I smirked and shook my head. It’s not like I didn’t deserve it but she gave me so little credit sometimes.
“Come on, Cordy,” She glared at me. I wouldn’t feel bad this time. She had it coming, “Give me a little credit at least. I took care of you for four years by myself. I saved whatever I could for you.” She blushed and smiled apologetically.
“Alright and thank you. You didn’t have to do that for me.” She stood up and trotted over to me, wrapping her arms around my waist and pulling me tight. I hugged her back and smiled as she let go and grabbed her bag from the floor, tossing it onto the bed.
“I may be retarded sometimes but I try to make sure I’m the only one that suffers for it,” I added as I finished counting what I had.
“That’s why I love you.” She smiled as she began pulling handfuls of clothes from her backpack and sifted through them. She took a few pieces into the bathroom without saying a word and shut the door gently behind her so I took the opportunity to change myself. I pulled a clean shirt over my head and wrestled it into place before making my way over to the large oval mirror that sat just on top of the old oak dresser to smooth out the rest of my appearance. Monster or not, it was no excuse to stop caring about the little things that made someone human.
I did the best I could to fix the tangled mess of bedhead that covered my eyes and proudly gave up when it made no attempt at cooperating with me. It wasn’t long before Cordillia skipped out of the bathroom and back to her laptop. I glanced over at her as I went to take my turn. She had traded her pink pajamas for a yellow tank top and jeans. Her hair was once again tied back into a ponytail and a subtle hint of light makeup lined her face.
“Can I help you?” She smirked as she noticed me looking at her.
“When did you start wearing makeup?” I sneered.
“I’ve always worn it.”
“No you haven’t,” I argued as I searched my memory for even one time I saw her dolled up like this.
“Yeah I have,” her eyebrow rose as she insisted. “You just never notice.”
“That’s not true.”
Wolves among men Page 3