He falls in behind me and together we head for Athene’s.
TRIBE
Lily
I WALK UP THE STEPS TO ATHENE’S HOME and Wolf stops at the bottom of the steps so I pause with my hand on the door knob. Turning towards him I arch an eyebrow.
“Be going,” he says. “Pick you up tonight, early.”
A thousand words run through my mind and none of them are a good response, none of them will change anything so I nod and enter the house, letting the door swing shut behind me without missing the metaphor of a door closing on a chapter in my life. No matter how short that chapter had been it was an intense one. I notice a scent in the air, the same scent of sandalwood I noted earlier drifting down into the sewers. My muscles tense and for a moment I’m locked between anger and fear. I don’t want to face the situation before me, I have a very good idea who that scent belongs to now and while I don’t want to face her there is a part of me that does.
My desire to be strong, to face whatever the world throws at me head on wins out so I move ahead. Athene’s servant Jeff walks up with a silent smile and motions towards the library, I give him a smile before heading there. The library has double doors that slide into the walls which are closed as I approach. I pause before them listening to the conversation on the other side, there are two female voices, one I know is Athene’s and the other I don’t recognize. My hand rests on the door feeling the smooth texture, slowly easing towards the handle to slide the door away, I try to build my own confidence as I do, wrapping it around me like a cloak. I slide the door aside and the conversation inside stops.
“Lily! I’m so glad you’re home,” Athene exclaims. Rising from her chair she crosses the room to embrace me warmly. “Both of my beautiful girls come home to roost, what a great night this will be. It will be just like the old days Luna, remember the times around the fire?”
“Hello Athene,” I greet her as I stare over her shoulder at the intruder not only in my house but in my relationship with Wolf. I can see immediately what he sees in her; she is strong, it exudes from every pore of her body. She stands at ease yet ready to move, confronting the world on her own terms. She is taller than me, I’m sure that appeals to Wolf as well, she has olive skin and raven black hair, I don’t even know what to think of her form fitting leather outfit.
As I look her over I realize that the pile of clothes in Wolf’s cave I have raided so many times belongs to her as they are all sized right for her. There is, as well, a motherly look to her, her hips are wide where my own are narrow and curve in, hers flare out from her tight stomach. Mostly it is in her eyes, she looks at me without jealousy, anger, or any other emotion I can describe as anything other than caring. She smiles at me and I note with satisfaction there is a slight gap in her front teeth, I latch onto this imperfection that makes her more human. I look at her beast, knowing there I can judge a vampire best. It is walled in by what looks like a wall of spears, all of them covered in blood. I see the remains of bones, conquered foes I would assume, lying around the wall. She controls her beast by being a warrior.
“Lily, you haven’t met Luna yet, Luna, this is Lily my newest addition to our family. Lily this is Luna, she is your older sister. The three of us together, oh what wonderful nights we will have, it will be so much like the old days when the tribe would gather and sing songs, tell tales, together we were unstoppable. Now we will forge new stories to share, new tales, we shall stop the coming disasters and it will be amazing. Jeff!” Athene pauses in her discourse and calls out. “Bring the wine Jeff, refreshments for our family!”
Athene has an amazing ability to ignore the negative, to her the world is what she creates. She seems completely oblivious to the tension between Luna and I as we stand there a few feet apart. I’m not sure what to do, being the other woman is awkward and a new experience for me. I didn’t set out to take on this role, is it my fault my heart latched onto Wolf? Does she still care for him at all, after all where has she been?
“Hello Lily,’ Luna says gesturing to the couches arranged around the library.
I pause, unsure of myself, wanting to hate her. Logically I feel I should but at the same time Wolf has made his choice clear and it is not me. Am I going to be the jealous hanger on or am I going to be the predator? I feel all at once that I stand at a crossroads. I can make a choice right now and it will affect my future. Do I stand for him or do I let him go? I look her over again, really looking at her, judging her openly. There is nothing in this woman to hate, nothing to be jealous of, so I let it go. I feel a pang of regret or jealousy I’m not sure, but it fades quickly. I will not be a lost puppy pining in his wake.
“Hello Luna,” I move to take a seat. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I see her relax with my words and as the tension drains from the room I know I’ve made the right choice. Jeff enters with a bottle and several glasses which he sets on the table before pouring for each of us. The ‘wine’ is actually blood I see. Athene pretends to be a god, the wine sustains her but she refuses to acknowledge what it is which I’m beginning to realize is part of how she holds on to her beast, how she is so filled with light and is another example of how she bends the world to be what she wants it to be.
I accept my glass with a murmured thank you and sip it, and then I pause. The blood is not human like Jeff has always served before. I look up at Jeff but his back is to me as he serves Luna. She catches my look and gives a small nod and smiles. I raise my glass to her, thankful that she understands the need. Had she been here all along, the past several days could probably have been avoided, but then I wouldn’t have had the chance to figure some things out for myself.
I force myself to drink slowly despite the urge of the beast to swallow it down in a single gulp. This is vampire blood, rich, thick, and satisfying, filling my needs unlike anything I’ve been served here before. I will have to find a balance in my diet, maybe Luna can help with that, too and the fact that I’m not sure how to even get vampire blood on a regular basis.
“I’m so excited to start gathering the family home again,” Athene continues. “It has been too many years since we’ve gathered, I miss all my Ghost Torn. Wolf is not the best of company after all, getting that boy out of the woods is akin to untying a gordian knot!”
I frown at Athene. “What are Ghost Torn?”
Athene stops and looks over at me, Luna watches quietly sipping her glass.
“You are of course,” Athene states as if that explains anything.
At times she and Wolf are so similar, she just uses a lot more words to not tell you anything at all. I look to Luna for help.
“Ghost Torn is what those of us in Athene’s line call ourselves, it is a title that was given to our group by an Indian tribe many years ago,” she explains.
“How many more are there in . . . her line?”
“There are many,” Luna replies. “I don’t think I actually know how many these nights we are spread around the world.”
I look over at Athene where she sits with her feet pulled up under her on the couch. “Oh yes, if you look at it in genealogical terms we are out to at least twelve greats from myself,” she chuckles swirling her drink. “The later generations don’t really keep in touch like they should but I do try to keep tabs on all of them.”
I take this information in trying to absorb it the best I can. “How old are you?” I ask Athene.
“What a question,” she laughs. “Very impolite, even for a daughter.”
Luna laughs, too and it turns into a snort as she puts her hand over her mouth.
“Well then how old are you Luna?” I turn the question around on the other woman.
“It is really hard to comprehend I think until you have lived a couple of centuries,” Luna explains. “I was once known as Queen Thalestris of the Amazons.” She speaks with easy matter-of-factness.
“You’re right, I have no idea how old that would make you.”
“Old enough to know better,” she says with a wry hum
or. “It is neither here nor there. We have much more important things to discuss. These matters we can talk about anytime.”
My stomach tightens, is she going to bring up Wolf and my relationship with him? How do I handle it if she does?
“Athene says there is a disaster looming, one we must avert at all costs.” Luna says.
Tension drains out of me at her words, not that conversation then, not yet at least.
“Yes, I have information on that,” I relate to both of them what I learned in the sewers from Katherine and Calhoun. Athene nods eagerly as I relate Genosoa’s plan.
“Yes, that would fill the prophecy perfectly,” she agrees.
I yawn, it is past sunrise and I’m feeling sluggish and lethargic. “Wolf is coming to get us at sunset. We can stop this, we have to save those people.”
“Yes, we do,” Luna asserts with fierceness in her voice. “We should retire now, the sun is well up.” She rises and I follow suit, Athene smiles at us.
“Sleep well dear ones,” she says. “It fills my heart with joy to have you both here with me.”
Luna and I bid Athene good night and head for the stairs together. I maintain the awkward silence, not wanting to start a conversation that I don’t know how to handle or how to even start if I did.
“I understand about Wolf,” Athene says at the top of the stairs stopping me in my tracks. I turn back towards her slowly.
“You’re not . .. angry?”
“No, not with you,” she says. “You think I don’t feel his attraction? I know the pull he has, I’ve pieced together most of what happened with you and I can only imagine in that situation how I would have reacted.”
I feel I should say something but I don’t know what to say or do, so I blurt out the only thing that I can think of. “I’m done with him.”
Luna smiles sadly and shakes her head just slightly. “Don’t give up on him yet, I haven’t.”
Confusion reels around me; the lethargy seems to be affecting my mind as well, what is she saying? I try to look at her words and put them into something that makes sense.
“I guess I don’t understand,” I say slowly.
“He needs you,” she says. “I might need you as well.” Luna shrugs.
“I can’t,” I say but the words stop. I want to say I can’t have half of him, but can’t I? Isn’t some of his affection better than none? It just isn’t that easy to just stop caring.
“You have a long life ahead of you, believe me when I say can’t becomes very relative.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I say.
She embraces me again. “Good night sister,” she whispers in my ear before releasing me.
INTO THE FIRE
Lily
WOLF IS WAITING IN THE FOYER when I walk down the stairs after night falls. I was awake as soon as the sun went down so I have no idea how he can wake and travel so fast from his cave to here. He is dressed in his signature cowboy getup of duster, hat, boots, and plaid shirt. Tonight he also has his pistols strapped on and spurs on his boots.
Luna walks out of a side room and she is also dressed for war in a tight fitting leather outfit that accents her body, she has a bow slung across her back and a quiver full of arrows. I look down at my own jeans and hoodie; I have no weaponry or any real skill to use. Athene promised she’d teach me the bow, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not honestly sure what I’m going to do but I have my power and I’m sure that can help, after all I was the one who put Griogar under control. That memory boosts my confidence as I stride down the stairs to join them.
“Where’s Athene?” I ask.
They share a look that communicates volumes and that is the exact instant I know there is nothing I can ever do to really come between the two of them. The connection there is so much more than sexual, their connection is one that runs as deep as their souls, they are meant for each other.
“We try not to let her get too involved with violent things,” Luna explains. “She doesn’t always handle it well.”
I remember back when I lost control with the seamstress and the entire room started shifting reality around me. I imagine that could really mess with a battlefield plan.
“Ready?” Wolf asks.
Luna looks around, checks her bow and quiver then nods.
“Did Calhoun get the intel?” I respond back, pulling on every television crime procedural I have ever seen to at least sound like I know my part here.
Wolf nods and I wonder again that he’s had so much time to do stuff and I just woke up.
“Well, lets go.”
We leave Athene’s and Wolf sets a fast pace across town. The stars in the sky shine brightly tonight and the moon is almost full creating impossibly large shadows. He pauses at the side of a building, crouches, and then jumps to the roof. I stand and stare as Luna does the same. Really? Just make it look easy guys. I crouch down and jump pushing with all my might. I clear the building and keep going, when I reach a height of at least fifteen feet higher than the roof I start back down and panic sets in. I’m coming down fast but Wolf and Luna are watching me as I hurtle in at them and at the last minute, almost as one, they both step aside and grab one of my arms to steady me as I land. Embarrassment fills me and if I was human I know I’d be blushing though they take it in stride as if nothing else was expected or wanted of me.
Now that we have taken to the roofs they start leaping from building to building with little effort. It only takes me four leaps to start getting the hang of it, at first they are there to catch me and steady my landing but by number four I am leaping and landing on my own, not gracefully but not falling on my face, either. I love the feel of the wind on my face as we leap, I love the freedom of vaulting into the air with absolute confidence, of landing and running. We cross the city in no time using this method. I see the advantages, people we leap over down below rarely look up and if they do they catch a glimpse of a blur that is gone too fast to recognize. Also, there are no cameras on the building tops, below there are traffic cameras, the atms, and security cameras that watch the streets constantly recording. Up here we can move with our powers without drawing unwanted attention.
“Wolf!” I see something in the distance and I skid to a stop.
He stops, too turning back towards me with Luna at his side. I can’t speak so I just point.
“Damn,” his voice is almost a whisper.
There in the distance the night sky is lit by a glow that is all too natural. Behind us towards the downtown area is the massive glow of neon that comes from the beating heart of a city but ahead of us in the ‘bad’ section of town the night should be dark. In that section of town street lights rarely work for more than a night or two before someone shoots them out. There should be little to no light but tonight the skyline glows orange. As I watch even the moon dims and I look up to see it is not a cloud but a plume of smoke that seems to be reaching into the sky trying to grasp it.
“We have to move,” I say and we do. The three of us pour all our will into moving faster, I push myself and I know they do as well. We leap building to building, we fairly fly across the city but it’s already too late. As we get closer I can hear the screams sounding through the night. My stomach tightens, my anger rises, and my beast growls all as my skin begins to tingle. I push blood out to my limbs which is the vampiric equivalent to an adrenaline rush. With one final leap I land between Wolf and Luna on the edge of a building and look down into a scene drawn straight from hell.
I spot twelve vampires patrolling around the tenement block and as people come running out of the building they casually grab them and toss them back in to the inferno. They don’t even bother to kill them, letting the flames do the dirty work for them. Blinding rage fills me and I start to leap, the demon roaring for blood but my arms are grabbed pulling me back down. I turn on them with fangs extended growling but Wolf and Luna hold me down. Wolf just shakes his head at me.
“Plan first,” he says.
I exert myse
lf over the beast but it is not easy, I don’t want to take control, I want to let it free to tear those monsters limb from limb then find their boss and destroy him, too. It takes a moment but I pull myself together even though the screams are still echoing through me. I look at the situation again trying to take it all in. The entire block is on fire, it seems to have started on the ground floors. The buildings that make up this tenement block are all six stories and only the bottom two are on fire at the moment. People are screaming out the windows and smoke has filled the streets and is climbing to the sky in a massive column. As I watch flames start licking their way up the outer walls like arms stretching for the sky.
“We have to take out the guards first but then how do we stop the fire?” Luna asks.
I look around for some sign of hope, some way to do that very thing but nothing comes to mind, I have no idea how to fight a fire this big. Something explodes in one of the buildings, the sound tears through the night and flames shoot out of a window at the end of the block from us like a fist made completely of rolling fire. It leaves in its wake a shimmer in the air that at first just looks like a heat wave but it doesn’t dissipate. I don’t know why it holds my attention but it does. The shimmer looks like a tear in the fabric of reality, it seems as if I am looking through a crack into something else and on the other side of that crack the street looks different somehow, more empty and rundown. The street around it looks normal so I look back at it and still it looks like a reverse mirror where that shimmer in the air is at. My beast rumbles, something stands out to me there but I can’t put my finger on it.
“Water lines, hydrant there,” Wolf points but he and Luna are tangential, my attention is absorbed by that tear.
I look over at the burning building, noting that the fire seems to be pulling towards the tear as if there is a vacuum pulling it in that direction. Then I see the first person come out of the burning wall and get sucked into that tear screaming.
“NO!” I scream.
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