by Lewis, D. C.
Glad to be relieved of her mother's scrutiny, Kiera went back to her meal, this time attacking it with a fork and knife, attempting to reestablish the civility she had worked all these years to maintain. Meanwhile another awareness deep within her paced like a caged beast waiting to be set free once more.
Twenty-Two
Finishing her plate of food, Kiera resisted the urge to lick the juice from her fingers, electing instead to get up and go and wash her hands in her bathroom sink. Though her body was still incredibly stiff, the pain in her muscles had greatly subsided and she could move without wincing. Running her hands under the warm water, the grease resisted her attempts to rid her fingers of its presence so she spent a few minutes engaged in a micro-battle with soap and a washcloth as her allies until the evil grease was eradicated from its newly acquired territory. Drying her hands and taking the plate with her, Kiera went in search of her mother. She had questions and needed answers.
Katrina was sitting at her normal spot at the bar in the kitchen when Kiera found her. She appeared to be going over some paperwork, most likely sales and acquisitions from her store. Katrina never really stopped working, always finding something that “needed” to be done “immediately” when it came to the store. Kiera didn’t mind, it kept her mother occupied and Kiera’s bank account funded. Even Kiera had to admit that it was a good life, much better than what most people had, with just one difference.
“A big freaking difference,” Kiera thought to herself.
Rinsing the plate off and putting it in the dishwasher, Kiera noticed a whole other plate of chicken on the counter, grilled and seasoned just like the previous one. Kiera was still hungry and contemplated finishing off this plate as well but her talk with her mother currently took precedence. Unsure exactly where to start, she decided to use the direct approach.
“Why did I get attacked?” she inquired.
Looking up from her neatly stacked paperwork, Katrina stared into her daughter’s eyes, conveying a sense that she had known this question was coming. Pushing her work to the side, she folded her hands on the bar in front of her.
“I have been telling you that there is a rebel faction in the pack and that Larissa is the head of it. You got attacked to send me a message to step down. She figured that an attack on you would convince me to let her have leadership. What I do not know is if she meant to only wound or kill you. The bite on your neck was severe, it had severed numerous tendons and caused you to lose a lot of blood. I get the feeling that she attacked you because she knew you had not embraced your Lycoan side. She had not anticipated you ‘changing’.”
“What difference would that make on whether or not she wanted to kill me?”
“What you are not understanding is that it was your ‘change’ that saved you. Not only did it scare Larissa off but more importantly it started healing your wounds. Had you not ‘changed’, you wouldn’t be here now.”
It wasn’t easy for Kiera to digest, just how close she had come to death. Even now she could remember its call and how easily it would have been to give in.
“It wouldn’t let me die,” she mumbled, more to herself than anyone else, forgetting about her mother’s superior hearing.
“What would not let you die?”
Berating herself for her slip, Kiera doesn’t have the energy to fight with her mother right now so for one of the few times in her teenaged life, she gave in.
“The voice in my head, it wouldn’t let me die, it kept talking to me, repeating ‘surrender’. At first I thought it meant surrender to death but it meant something else entirely. I don’t know what I did, but once I did it, it was like my consciousness was pushed aside and something else took over.”
Katrina hadn’t budged the entire time Kiera was talking, only staring intently, her eyes lost in thought. Finally she nodded.
“I have heard about this happening though I have never experienced it myself. It was your Lycoan side finding a way to speak to you in your time of need. It was telling you to surrender to it, to allow it to take control. What was happening at the time?”
“That woman.”
“Larissa,” Katrina interjected.
“Yes, Larissa,” Kiera responded in an exasperated tone. “Larissa had me pinned to the ground, I was struggling to get up but I couldn’t move. She started digging her claws in my back,” Kiera recalled, having to hold back tears from the painful memory. “I struggled as hard as I could and then she bit me on the shoulder, the pain was so bad that I thought I was going to die from that alone.”
Even a regular person would have been able to see how the recollection of the event was having an effect on Katrina. Suppressed rage was barely held in check by a superhuman restraint, Kiera hoped it held, she didn’t want to bear witness to the destructive force of her mother in a fit of rage.
Enjoying the catharsis of verbalizing what happened to her, almost as if by talking she was washing her soul clean, Kiera continued, hoping that her mother maintained her control.
“I was losing consciousness, I knew that I was losing a lot of blood and I was feeling very tired, all I wanted to do was sleep, it seemed so easy to do. Just when I was getting ready to close my eyes, that’s when it started talking to me. At first I thought I was hallucinating and tired to ignore it but it kept repeating ‘surrender' over and over, each repeat louder than the previous one, it got to the point where it was shouting, so more than anything else, to make it shut up I ‘surrendered’ and that is when it happened.”
Having considerably calmed down and returned to her previous demeanor, Katrina bobbed her head in acknowledgement.
“Like I said, it was your Lycoan side talking to you, it knew that it was your only chance of survival.”
“So that isn’t common?”
“No it is not, I personally have never known anyone that it has happened to.”
“Then why me?”
“I believe for a few reasons. For starters, you are the only Lycoan in history to suppress your Lycoan side. I have been telling you that eventually it would find a way and it looks like the way it chose was to speak to you directly. Secondly, you are the first Lycoan born in a long time. Even with our long lives, we are a dying species, a lot of hopes depend upon you. You are the result of hundreds of years of evolution. You are a special Lycoan. You were born an Alpha. Even if I were not your mother, you would be destined to be leader. Haven’t you ever noticed how people flock to you? Look up to you? That is your Alpha nature coming through. You were born to be a leader.”
Deny it though she might, what Katrina was saying was making a lot of sense to Kiera. Part of her had always understood this, but just like her Lycoan side, she suppressed this as well.
“Let’s say that I believe what you are saying, does that mean this voice is going to continue to talk to me?”
“Kiera I do not know, once again, I have never known anybody this has happened to but I do know that if you don’t finally embrace your Lycoan side, it will make itself known again.”
The news wasn’t what Kiera had wanted to hear. While she was grateful, though reluctantly, that her Lycoan side had in fact saved her life, the ever present feeling of losing control of her destiny overshadowed any possible benefits. It seemed as if this issue would never stop coming up, the harder she tried, the more control she lost. The whole issue was more exhausting than her recent physical encounter, and not really feeling like dealing with it, she changed the subject.
“How is my car?” she asked, reluctant to hear the answer.
“Your car has seen better days,” her mother responded, “It looked like an animal was slaughtered inside it, blood spray was everywhere and in some places had formed pools an inch deep.”
A flashback of driving while sitting in a pool of her own blood, feeling it trickle down her legs, raced through her mind.
“Also, you ran into one of the gate columns,” Katrina continued, “It was not that big of an impact, the gate doesn’t show any sign, but it
was enough to cause some significant damage to your car.”
Kiera wasn’t surprised by the news but it still upset her. She had loved that car from the moment she saw it and just like her Power Ranger comforter from long ago, it took many days of nagging before Katrina had finally given in and bought it for her. This was just shaping up to be a crappy morning. Kiera wondered if it could get any worse.
“So I sent it to the junkyard to be crushed.”
It took a few ticks of the second hand on the clock for Katrina’s comment to process in Kiera’s already overloaded mind. When it dawned on her what Katrina had said, the revelation struck her like a physical blow and her body actually swayed.
“You crushed my car?” she asked, irritation clearly evident in her voice.
“Kiera, there was no other choice,” Katrina explained, “Trying to get it repaired in its condition would have caused too many questions to be asked. From what would we have told people all the blood came from? What if there was a police investigation? Then what? Just like the clothes and blood at the park, it is better for things like this to disappear so that those questions are not asked. These are things you need to start thinking about, else we run the risk of exposure. But do not worry, all your personal items were removed from it before I sent it off.”
Kiera knew her mother was right, she really couldn’t argue against such plain logic but the defiant and immature side of her wanted to find a flaw just so she didn’t have to agree. Here, Kiera was reaching a crossroad in her life. How she handled this situation would influence the rest of her life. She could choose to behave like a child or act like the adult she had always thought herself of being.
“You’re right mother, I understand.” Verbalizing this wasn’t nearly as painful as she thought it would be, in fact, it almost felt good. Too many questions would have been asked by a repair shop when they saw the damage done, especially to the interior. The fact that Katrina had taken the time to get all of Kiera’s stuff out of the car softened the blow of its demise. There were things in the car that had a lot of meaning for her and it was nice to know those things had been spared the fate of her car.
Apparently Katrina wasn’t prepared for her daughter’s response either as her dark eyes widened in shock. She had obviously been preparing herself for the upcoming argument and this had taken her off guard, not a real easy thing to do to Katrina Hemming.
“I am glad you understand,” she replied. “Now then,” she continued, “there is something else we need to discuss and that is Larissa. She has disappeared, nobody knows where she is. More than likely she has gone because her attack on you failed but I am not sure. Therefore I need you to be on guard for a while until we figure out where she is. Try not to be out alone after dark or go to strange places. I doubt she would run the risk of attacking you in public or in front of someone and chance exposing herself. Even she is not ambitious enough to break the rule about revealing ourselves, even her cohort would stop supporting her if she did. It should not be an issue anyway, our packmates are actively looking for her and keeping watch over us. If she comes anywhere close, we will know and you will be protected.”
Not really relieved with the news about Larissa, Kiera felt some trepidation about the lack of knowledge concerning her whereabouts. Her mother’s opinion that Larissa was gone didn’t do much to reassure her. Still feeling like a victim, Kiera doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for the next attack. She wanted the Larissa issue dealt with although it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon.
“One last thing,” Kiera said, breaking the silence. “Something else happened before Larissa attacked me that I don’t quite understand. There was a smell coming from her that made me feel like I was unwelcome, with it came visions in my head, almost like the smell was sending me a message that I could actually visualize. It was tough to figure out but I knew that it was hostile and telling me to leave, not just the park, but the town.”
“You were experiencing your first scent dreams,” Katrina explained as she stood up and walked closer to her daughter. “That is the way we communicate when we are ‘changed’. The Lycoan mouth was not designed for speech. Try talking after a transformation and you run the risk of chewing off your own tongue and all you will accomplish is sounding like a whining pup. Just like some other mammals, we use smell to communicate with each other, though our way has evolved to a level unachieved by any other species. We are able to convey entire messages through smell, messages that are picked up through unique and highly sensitive receptors that actually allow us to ‘see’ in our minds what the other Lycoan is sending. The better your relationship with the Lycoan sending the message, the clearer the image. They can get very detailed. That is why it is so important for packmates to have such close relationships. That way we can communicate more effectively, because there might be a time when our lives depend on it.”
These scent dreams intrigued Kiera, she admitted that it was pretty cool being able to communicate this way and she could see how advantageous this would be over talking.
Standing only a few feet away from her daughter, Katrina faced her body towards Kiera.
“We can even do it in human form, though to a lesser degree. Now just relax and let your nose do all the work. Sometimes it helps, at first, if you close your eyes,” Katrina instructed.
Allowing herself to relax, Kiera took her mother’s advice and closed her eyes, experiencing the world without sight. A smell that was unique to Katrina began wafting its way towards Kiera’s ready nostrils. The smell of her mother would always feel like home to Kiera and she would always immediately be able to identify her mother by scent alone. This time though, her mother’s smell was altered. The base of her smell was there but with something added, the newly added smell tickling her memory, like she had smelled it before, but try as she might, she couldn’t place it.
“Kiera, relax,” her mother’s command ringing in her ears.
Clearing her mind once more, Kiera allowed her olfactory senses to guide her. The scent returned, teasing her mind like just before. Kiera had to fight with herself to stay relaxed, not an easy thing to do. She wanted to investigate the smell instead of just letting it come to her. The longer she stood there, the more frustrated she was becoming. Annoyed and feeling more than a little foolish, Kiera was ready to give up on the whole thing. The novelty of being able to pass messages through scent had quickly worn off and Kiera was over it. Right as she decided to open her eyes and tell her mother she was too tired to continue, it happened.
The vision she had gotten from Larissa was nothing compared to what she was receiving from her mother.
Standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking a turbulent ocean, the sky was cloudy, a storm was brewing. Kiera could see lightning in the distance, streaking the sky, electrifying the ocean as it struck the huge swells that were ponderously rolling towards shore. The percussion of the booming thunder shook Kiera to her core, yet she had a sense of peace, that regardless of how chaotic things were, she was protected, safe, and able to witness the oncoming storm without fear.
Large waves crashed against the base of the cliff with such force that she could feel sea spray gently kiss her cheeks and smell the brine of the ocean. From the looks of the surroundings, it appeared to be winter but she felt no cold, though she could feel the strong wind blowing through her hair, turning it into a blonde pennant.
The environment was harsh and rugged, but with a sense of purpose. This place had seen a lot of perilous times but had managed to survive. It gave Kiera hope that she, too, would get through this tough period in her life.
And then the vision ended.
Out of breath and panting, Kiera was speechless after her experience of her first full- fledged scent dream. The level of detail was mind-blowing - the colors, sounds, and other sensory stimuli allowed tons of information to be relayed, much more than speech would allow. Reaching up to touch her cheeks, she expected to fin
d them wet with water from the ocean and was somewhat disappointed to find them still dry.
“That was incredible,” was all Kiera could say, not trusting herself even to try and describe her experience, afraid that any attempt would ruin the vision. Seemingly satisfied, Katrina went and sat back down at the bar, her eyes on her daughter, ready to rush to her aid if she saw Kiera’s stance falter. Kiera stood there a few moments more, wanting to enjoy that moment for as long as she could. Just thinking about the experience - the sense that she was safe, still infusing her body, letting her know that she wasn't alone - sent chills of excitement through her body.
“And that is while we are in human form,” Katrina’s voice interrupted, “Scent dreams that are both transmitted and received while in Lycoan form are much more vivid.”
Kiera didn’t understand how any greater detail could find its way into that vision. She secretly suspected that this was a ploy by Katrina to try and get her to voluntarily “change” but even now it wasn’t going to work. Kiera might have “changed” in order to save her life but she felt as if it were not voluntary, her primal side having taken advantage of her when she was at her weakest. Like a woman lying to herself and believing that she is still a virgin because she was drunk when she had sex, Kiera lied to herself and just like the other girl, it made her feel better, like it happened to “somebody else,” not her.
Feeling as if her mother was on the verge of one of those “talks” she seemed to be so fond of, Kiera wanted to quickly get out of Katrina’s presence, and found the perfect excuse.
“I am still feeling a little tired, I think I will go back to bed,” she offered, doing her best acting, trying to look at pathetic and frail as possible.