by Roxie Spears
“Okay, why did you bring me here?” she asked, her eyes floating around, searching.
“Well, your uncle is the problem. We needed to get you away from him.” He paused, his eyes boring into hers. “You’re going back to Quafin, my dear.”
Jasmin had no memory of that place, but she knew it was terrible. Her eyes grew wide and her lips parted, but no sound came out. Finally she rose from her chair, feeling her legs wobbling underneath her.
“Don’t bother trying,” Kyle said with a smirk. “You can’t leave here.”
“Yes, I can!” Jasmin yelled, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks as she fought to transform. The feeling was anticlimactic, to say the least. Jasmin’s fiery fists failed her, and she was just standing there, helpless. Her skin was still soft. She felt the same.
She tried again.
“Don’t bother,” Ludwig said, that same menacing grin still plastered to his face. “Jasmin, you’re a force to be reckoned with, my dear. You think we don’t know that?” A snicker escaped him. “Thankfully we’ve found a way to stall your powers.”
Jasmin’s eyebrows were furrowed. “Fuck, it was that injection, wasn’t it?”
“It’s an enzyme. It was made to stop beasts like you.”
“I’m not a beast. You are,” she snarled. “You’re the monsters here, not me. I didn’t do anything to you!”
“But you’re very capable. That’s why you needed to be stopped,” Ludwig said. Jasmin closed her eyes and breathed deep. She felt her cheeks get hot again, but it was all for nothing. The pair stared back at her, a glimmer in their eyes, as if feeding off her pain.
Jasmin smiled.
Her body shivered again, sending the fur sprouting from the pores of her skin. She remembered what Colt had taught her. Her fangs extracted and her claws were out. She grew at least three times in size, taking up more space than she had ever before. “You forget I’m half wolf,” she said with a smirk. Jasmin tilted her chin up towards the ceiling, her howls deep and ghastly, causing the walls to rattle. Shocked, Kyle and Ludwig called up flames, sending fireballs zooming at her. She dodged them and rolled across the floor, getting back up again and hurling herself towards Ludwig.
Always remember, go for their wings, Colt’s voice sounded in her head.
During the first blows, Jasmin concentrated her defense and let her muscles settle into the rhythm of the fight. After several minutes and attempting to get past her defenses, Ludwig lost his temper and began to batter at her, as if to pound her into the ground. But Jasmin was agile and fast, much like Colt, dodging every blast and blow. Ludwig’s simmering anger about Jasmin now boiled. She began to fight for her life, her claws slipping past her defenses and targeting Ludwig’s wings. Kyle joined soon after, gurgling fire at Jasmin, who went tumbling across the floor. The fire crept up the walls, starting near the carpeted floor and working its way up. Jasmin tried to protect her fur, the most susceptible part of her.
She thought desperately for a way out of this mess. Before she knew it, a black mass came bursting in through the door, shrieking like a lion and charging towards them. Colt was two times her size, hurling himself towards Ludwig while she slashed Kyle backhanded in a return blow. Her claws pierced through his wings, which oozed blood. He collapsed on the floor immediately, rolling around, shrieking in pain. She stood over him, thrusting her claws vertically down his neck and slashing it in half. Suddenly she felt so powerful. Standing over Kyle, Jasmin blinked , as if snapping out of a trance but continued to go for blood. She was brutal. In the corner of her eye she saw Colt, but he still resembled a black mass, tumbling across the place, wreaking havoc on everything and everyone.
She didn’t even feel sorry for Kyle. As he took his last breath his eyes rolled back; she had never killed a person before, and neither was she looking forward to this. She never thought she would need to do something like this, despite her uncle’s constant warnings. He had always told her that she was different, and that one day she would conquer the world. “But it all comes at a price,” he would always tell her. But Jasmin never thought it would boil down to this. She slashed through Kyle’s throat one more time, watching the life escape his eyes. Slowly he shifted back to his human form, his skin remerging from under all those scales and his nose returning to its normal size. Steam escaped his mouth, which was now slightly parted and hanging open. She could see the whites of his eyes, which had a splatter of red across them. His neck was leaking blood; an overall gruesome sight.
She couldn’t believe she had done this. Meanwhile, Colt was stepping back from his own horrid crime. Ludwig, too, was lying there, his arms splain to his sides. He wasn’t breathing. Colt checked his pulse and rose to his feet again, breathing a sigh of relief.
Jasmin’s eyes snapped sideways, and the moment their gazes met she felt herself choke up. She ran to him, ran into his arms, and he took her in. She was crying like a child guilty of something, but she knew the feeling would go away eventually.
“I know you feel terrible,” Colt whispered, stroking her hair with his fingers. “But it’ll be okay. You had to, we both did.”
“I didn’t have a choice, did I?” she looked up at him. Colt, too, had tears in his eyes.
“Yes, you did,” he nodded. “I think you’re coming to realize how powerful you are, and all that power can be a dangerous thing. It can blind you, make you think you can do anything. But the truth is, Jasmin, you’re still just as mortal as any human.”
She nodded in contemplation. “Can we just get out of here?” she asked Colt, who led the way to the door. When they walked outside, all she saw was darkness. The woods were peaceful, despite the chaos that had taken place. The warehouse was tainted with destruction, but Jasmin kept reminding herself that she had no choice. It was all in self-defense; if she hadn’t done it, she would’ve been dead by now. She thanked herself for everything, but more importantly, she thanked Colt.
“I would’ve been dead if it weren’t for you,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his. The pair penetrated the darkness, their ears straining for sound. Trekking into the woods, Jasmin felt peaceful. “It’s nice out here,” she added, her lips barely moving.
“I love it out here, too,” he felt a sudden urge to set up camp there, but it was all too dangerous. “Hey, we could make it out of here faster if we-”
“Say no more,” Jasmin said, straining. She shifted faster this time, almost instantly. The silver of Colt’s eyes flared up as he watched her go. She ravaged through the forest, racing him across, her body fit and agile, almost fitter than him. There was something satisfyingly different about running on all falls, feeling her paws get dirty as she dashed and weaved her way past the trees. Despite it being dark, Jasmin had night vision, which helped her through. Before they knew it they had arrived at the edge of the forest, so they took a moment to shift back and start hitchhiking their way along the road.
They were sweating profusely, their clothes stained with blood. “We can’t see people like this,” Jasmin said, taking a moment to dust herself off. She folded her arms across her chest, concealing the blood stains on her shirt. At that point Colt didn’t seem to care how he looked; for all he knew, they could’ve passed for a homeless person.
Jasmin stuck her thumb out, her eyes fixated on the winding road. It wasn’t long before a car slowed down; they got on, riding all the way back downtown. Jasmin wondered where Colt got all this energy to converse with a stranger. She was in the backseat shivering, watching the town go by, wishing she could just retreat back to the woods. The truth was that she didn’t like herself very much right now, in fact she didn’t know what she was. It was hard enough being a teenage girl, let alone one that breathes fire and is all too familiar with fur and scaly skin. She wrapped her arms around herself and breathed, wishing she could just be home. Colt, on the other hand, seemed at ease, sharing a cigarette with the stranger along with some funny stories that she couldn’t hear. Nothing was getting through to her right now, and all she
could obsess about was the fact that she had just killed someone.
Kyle was a beast, but he was young. All those thoughts circled her mind, clouding it, making her feel drowsy. Finally she fell asleep, and it wasn’t long before Colt’s voice permeated her consciousness. “Hey, Jazz,” his soft whispers woke her up. She shivered awake, staring up at him. Her throat felt like sandpaper. “Come on, let’s go.”
Jasmin found herself in their neighborhood. She thanked the man who had been driving, finally catching a glimpse of his face, to which she had paid minimal attention on the way back. He was an average looking guy who seemed to smoke a lot of cigarettes, but that was pretty much it.
As she stumbled towards the apartment building, Jasmin began to feel dizzy. Just as they were about to reach the door she bent over and started heaving, her whole body trembling. Colt held her in his arms. “I know, Jazz, I know,” he said, his voice soft. He rubbed her back while she emptied the contents of her stomach. She wondered if he’d been through the same thing, if after his first kill, Colt felt like the Devil himself.
Chapter 14
Jasmin stared around their apartment, thinking about all that time she had wasted sitting alone in her room when she could’ve been out there hanging out with Colt while he watched the baseball game. It was true she hated baseball, but she had grown to love him. He had been there for her, and because of him, Jasmin finally understood what it felt like to have a father.
“Remember when I peed myself right around here?” she asked, pointing in a vague direction.
“Oh, yeah,” Colt chuckled, tossing the final shirt into his backpack. He stood there, inspecting the place.
“Wow, I’ve never seen you stare so lovingly at this apartment,” Jasmin said with a smile on her face. She, too, had mixed feelings about leaving Victoria.
“I mean, maybe this place wasn’t too shabby, after all,” Colt said with a longing stare. It was as if he was yearning for this place even though he hadn’t left it yet. Holding onto his backpack, he headed for the door. “Let’s go?”
“I don’t know,” Jasmin said, shaking her head from side to side. For some reason the two of them were just staring at the ceiling the entire time. “Everything about this apartment, it reminds me of our time together. I don’t think I’ll ever forget this place.” Suddenly she turned to him, her eyes glimmering with juvenile hope. “Can’t we just stay here? I mean, we’ve got powers, right? We can take them on if they try to attack us.”
Colt snickered quietly. “If only it were that easy,” he said. “I’ve been on the move for years now, Jazz, and I can tell you that once the enemy have found us, we must run.”
“But why?” she demanded, suddenly agitated. “We took them on once, why can’t we take them on again? What gives them the right to drive us out of here? Will we live in exile forever?”
“Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve made a home for myself,” Colt said solemnly. “And you must do the same, too. We took them on once, Jazz, but there’s so many of them. A whole army. Are you telling me two people can take on a whole army?”
She was silent, averting her gaze to the floor. Suddenly Jasmin felt awful, despite having woken up that day feeling perfectly fine. The truth was that she had gotten attached to Victoria, and Fieldstone High and Tina and Maggy. She didn’t want to leave. “It’s just unfair,” she blurted, stomping her foot against the floor.
“It is unfair,” Colt said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “But at the end of the day, we have to pick ourselves. We have to. It’s true we never picked any of this, but it is up to us to pick our lives over everything else.”
Jasmin nodded her head in agreement, then followed him out the door. She caught one last glimpse of their apartment before finally shutting the door and marching down. “So that’s what leaving everything behind feels like,” she said, frowning.
“I’m afraid so. But hey, at least you get to make new friends, meet new people…”
“Start a new life. Sounds scary,” she said.
“A little bit.”
Jasmin paused. The pair walked to a nearby bus station and slumped down on the bench. The truth was that they had no idea where they were heading. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“What’s gonna happen with you and Maggy?”
Colt’s face changed, his face breaking into a smile. “Oh, you picked up on that?”
“Come on, she called you every night. You went on dates with her.”
“How did you know it was her?”
Jasmin shot Colt a disappointed look, as if to tell him he had underestimated her. “Do you love her?”
“I don’t know,” he said, staring in a vague direction. “But all I know for sure is that it’s over.”
“Why, why’s it over?”
“Well for starters, she saw me do all that wolf shit.”
The duo laughed.
“I haven’t seen or talked to her since.”
“Think she got creeped out?”
“A little bit. I hope she’s doing okay.” Colt reached for his pack of cigarettes. Jasmin eyed him cautiously, tilting her head to the side. Without saying anything he crushed the pack with his hands and threw it in the nearest trash can.
“So you’re just going to let her go?”
“After what she’s seen, I don’t know how she’s going to feel about everything,” he said. “And after all, kid, you’ve always been the most important thing in my life.”
Jasmin nodded and smiled warmly. The midnight bus pulled over at the station, but they didn’t get on it. “So where do we run to now?”
“I’m a bit tired of running,” he confessed, clasping his hands together and inching forward in his seat. “I’ve been running for years now.”
“And soon I will, too,” Jasmin said, realizing that there was no escaping this life, or conversely, she had no choice but to escape. All she had was a big hiking bag with all her clothes, her phone and all the memories she had to leave behind. She knew, though, that the memory of her first killing would haunt her forever. It was a lot of weight to carry on her shoulders, heavier than all the backpacks in the world combined. Finally and after a long wait, Colt rose to his feet.
“Come on, you ready?” he reached his hand out to her.
“Alright,” Jasmin said, joining him. “What do you have in mind?”
Epilogue
“I’m glad we never sold the car,” Jasmin said, sticking his hand out the window, feeling the wind against it. She watched the city go by and disappear, knowing that she was probably never coming back again.
Colt drove on, not saying much. Those past couple of weeks had been rough on his soul, forcing him to come to terms with his life and what had become of it. His car rumbled and whirred, an indication that it was getting old. “How do you feel now?” he asked Jasmin, who was still staring out the window.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said, rather coldly. “I’m just moving, living. Is that what it feels like to be you?”
“That’s what it feels like to be us,” Colt smiled, gripping the steering wheel. He paused, considering. His eyes were fixated on the road, observing and perhaps… reminiscing. “I’m not sure how he’s gonna react,” he said, his lips pursed. Jasmin shot him a glance, feeling quite nervous, herself.
“What’s he gonna think of me?” she asked him, her question coming from a place of undeniable insecurity. She had heard her uncle Gerald was a great man. She only knew his face from the photos. Colt and Leah were her whole life, encircling her until Leah broke away from the circle, leaving her and Colt behind.
“What’s he gonna think of you? My God, I don’t even know,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. Jasmin didn’t know what to make of this, but this happiness, now splain across his face, must’ve been a good sign. “Gerald hasn’t seen you since you were a baby. He won’t recognize you at first, but when he does… he’s gonna cry for the first time in years.”
“Is he
living alone now?” Jasmin asked.
“No. He lives with his wife, Beth.”
“Is she, is she human?”
Colt smiled again. “Yeah.”
Jasmin wondered if she would ever end up with a human. “How did she react when she found out about him? Was she scared?”
“She was scared, yeah. They always get scared at the beginning, but then they get used to it.”
“I don’t want anyone to get scared of me,” Jasmin admitted, lowering her gaze to the floor. She was staring at her feet now, feeling lower than ever. Her adolescent mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea of non-reciprocal love, of feeling like some sort of monster. “How am I ever going to find love if I’m like this?”
“Like what?”
“A two-headed monster. Half wolf, half lizard.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. Watching her body change had broken her, especially after having found love, if only for a little while. Colt pursed his lips again and frowned.
“I know how you’re feeling,” he said with a little bit of remorse. “The truth is that I used to feel that way all the time. Whenever I would meet a girl, I would obsess over the idea of having to tell her, and when Leah finally saw me, she proved to me that love is greater than that.”
“Was she not weirded out at first?”
“Oh, she was dead scared, but she loved me. She fell for me. Jazz, when you love someone, none of this matters. You see them for what they are on the inside, not-”
“Oh, cut the bullshit.”
“Jazz!”