The Gathering

by Michael Timmins

  “Those hunters could have been attacked by anything!” she yelled at him, though the fire cooled inside. She knew it wasn’t true.

  Hank peered at her with sympathetic eyes and tilted his head as he watched her. He had reached her. She was reasoned enough to understand the way of things. Taking out Clint might be necessary. God help her, it just might.

  “Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.” Sylvanis spoke in a rush, seemingly unaware of Kat’s change in demeanor. She glanced at Kat, and Kat saw something she hadn’t thought she would see from Sylvanis. Shame.

  She is trying so hard to be an effective leader, to make the hard calls, but it’s killing her inside. Kat nodded to her to try and alleviate some of the hurt the woman felt about making a difficult choice.

  “He just needs Sarah. He needs her free,” Kat insisted. “You’ll see. Sarah will reach him, just as mentioning her tonight reached him.”

  Sylvanis’ lips turned down. “I do hope you’re right, Kat. There were few who never came back from turning wild. Let us hope Clint is stronger than most.”

  Something occurred to Kat. Something she had failed to mention when telling them about the fight earlier.

  “Sylvanis?”

  “Yes, Kat?” She had been about to turn away but turned her full attention back to Kat.

  “Something else happened tonight. Something that . . . I don’t know what it might mean.”

  “What happened?” Sim asked, curiosity evident in his voice.

  “After fighting Clint. I caught a scent.” She cocked her head thinking of how best to explain it. “It smelled . . . like a Were, only . . . different . . . strange.” Different and strange didn’t feel like the right words either, but she couldn’t figure out anything better.

  Sylvanis’ eyebrows drew down, lines creased her forehead, her blonde hair hanging loose and framing her pretty face. She was a beautiful girl. Kat had to keep reminding herself this girl was not technically a year old. Not even a year old, and yet, over two millennia old. Thinking about this crap always gave Kat headaches.

  “What do you think it was?” Sylvanis watched her, expectant.

  “I don’t know, Sylvanis. Ben here,” she thumbed towards him, “thought I might be Clint. You know? Since he isn’t quite himself.”

  Sylvanis mused over it for a time and gave a slight nod of her head. “Seems like a reasonable explanation,” she said firmly, “though, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  Kat frowned. If it wasn’t Clint, then what the hell was it?

  Sylvanis sensed her disappointment in her answer and so added, “Though, to be honest. It wasn’t talked about much. It was an . . . uncomfortable topic among the Weres.”

  “I’ll bet.” Sim stood up from the edge of the bed he had been sitting on for most of the conversation. “Well, if we are going to enter this shit storm, we might as well get going.”

  “Son, just because I haven’t cuffed you yet for saying shit, don’t think I won’t if you keep using it every five seconds.” It was all seriousness from Hank, but Kat couldn’t help but snort out a laugh.

  Sim smiled broadly at his father. Hank’s frown grew deeper.

  Kat out and out laughed. After a moment, Sylvanis giggled as well, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle it. Next, Sim started to laugh, then Ben chuckled trying to cover it up with a cough when Hank’s gaze fell on him. The rest of them were unmoved by Hank’s glare. Kat loved Hank and Sim’s relationship. It reminded her of her and her dad.

  Hank sighed and shook his head. “I thought we needed to get going?”

  The sobriety of what they were about to head into shut the laughter down immediately. Each of them had been forced to fight already. Each of them had the moment they realized this wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a competition to see who would win the trophy. This was life and death. Kat had learned tonight how quickly you could go from feeling invulnerable, given these strengths and abilities, to feeling powerless and realizing you could die any second.

  Everyone looked at her now, as if sensing she was the one who truly understood the stakes here, and if she was ready, they would be as well.

  She met their gazes. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Ten

  Shae dreamed. The dreams, elusive in their nature, still left her feeling a sense of peace. Peace was a concept she knew little about. Yet, she felt it while she dreamed. Something encroached on that peace though. First, along the edges it began wounding the tranquility of her dreams, like someone grabbing two sides of a piece of paper and deliberately moving their hands away from each other. A tearing, causing ragged edges on the periphery.

  Peace clung on. Cushioning her. Protecting her from the impending arrival of unease and tension. Exponentially, the feeling of peace dwindled. Dread and worry approached till it stood on the doorstep of her soul. It was going to enter.

  Shae awoke with a gasp.

  Darkness blanketed the room. Muted shapes of furniture sat in quiet regard of her as she propped herself up to search the room for what woke her. Quick, ragged breaths forced themselves out of her chest as she tried to compose herself, but the feeling of approaching unease would not leave her. It took her a moment to realize why.

  Daniel?

  Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Shae quickly crossed the room and flung open the door. Standing in the doorway was Daniel. The days she had been away had apparently not treated him well. His customarily close-cut beard had grown longer and creeped past his normal, well-manicured lines. Exhaustion was visible on his face. He had not been sleeping well.

  Shae stuck her head outside the door and look furtively down the hall in both directions before grabbing Daniel’s arm and yanking him inside.

  “You should not be here!” Her voice came out in an angry hiss, barely audible as she feared others of her type may have the ability to hear with their acute hearing. Though she only shared the room with Kestrel, who appeared to still be meeting with Samuel, the others’ room was adjacent to hers.

  Daniel’s pitched his voice to match hers. “You didn’t come back!”

  Shae all but dragged Daniel over to the far side of the room, away from the doorway.

  “I wasn’t planning on it!”

  Daniel stared at her in the dark. She was surprised to see a look of hurt in his eyes. She figured he would be happy she was gone.

  “What? Why?” She wasn’t mistaken, because the hurt was evident in his voice.

  Shae sighed and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Daniel.” She glanced away from him. “We are not good for each other. This . . . this . . . thing . . .” Shae turned back and motioned to him and to herself. “It is poison. You are better off without me and I am better off without you.”

  “I don’t understand, Shae.” His voice was soft with a hint of uncertainty to it. “We are linked. There is no me without you, or you without me.” He sat down on the other corner of the bed, close to her, but not too close.

  Shae peered down at her hands and shifted between entwining her fingers and pulling them apart. “Yes. We will always be linked, but that doesn’t mean we have to be together.”

  Daniel remained quiet for a long while, and Shae felt no desire to break the silence.

  After a bit, Daniel spoke. “Who are these people?”

  Though he didn’t specify, Shae knew who he meant.

  “Friends. Well. Sort of. They are like me. Like us.” She stumbled over her explanation, uncertain as to how to explain who these people were. Mostly because she was uncertain as to who they were herself.

  “I sensed fear from you earlier.” She met his gaze fully and he continued. “Did they hurt you? Did they force you to go with them?”

  Shae snorted. “You mean, like what you did?”

  Daniel winced.

  The edges of her lips curled down as she thought of Blain. “There are those, within the group, who I do not like.” She thought of Sarah, and Kestrel and the way she treated Shae with kin
dness. A soft smile crept upon her lips.

  “There are others though I like and who are nice to me.” She looked up at Daniel, her face awash with a sense of optimism. “Do you know what that is like for me, Daniel? To have people be nice to me?” Again, he flinched, but it didn’t stop her. “Do you know how long it has been since I was treated like a human being? To have someone who truly seems like they care about me and how I am feeling?”

  As much as she tried to stop herself, tears pooled in the corner of her eyes before tumbling down her cheeks to land on the bed sheets.

  Daniel regarded her, his expression soft, the muscles in his face slack and his eyes held a shimmer of their own. Whatever had happened between them had at least in some way, brought his humanity back. What she felt for him was a broiling sea of confusion, a tumbled mass of emotions, cascading in a turbulent froth. Anger. Hate. Need. Revulsion. Pain. Obsession. She wanted him dead, but she would die without him.

  “You need to go,” she told him. “I haven’t told them about you, and I won’t. I don’t want you to get caught up in what is happening here. Go home, Daniel.” She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “You know you don’t need to change if you choose not to. Live your life. Forget about me. Forget about all of this.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I can’t, Shae.”

  “Yes, you can,” she insisted. “In fact,” she poured her will into her next statement, “Go. Leave, Daniel, and don’t come back here.”

  Daniel went stiff. Slowly he stood; his eyes never left hers as he backed away from her to the door. His movements were rigid, like he was fighting every movement, and Shae imagined he was. Daniel didn’t want to leave her, but she left him no choice. She had enacted her will upon him, and whether he liked it or not, he had to obey.

  “Don’t make me do this, Shae,” Daniel pleaded as he opened the door to leave.

  Shae hardened her resolve. This was for the best. For both of them.

  “It’s already done, Daniel.”

  He shut the door as he left.

  Chapter Eleven

  “So,” Mike began, drawing out the word, “you want us, to become like you?”

  Mike sat on the armrest of the sofa in his apartment, one leg resting on the ground, the other propped up, folded at the knee on the sofa cushion. Beside him sat Beth. They were both looking at Stephanie with a fair amount of skepticism at her proposal.

  “Look,” Jason sat forward in the chair he had dragged over from the kitchen table, as she rested in the other cushioned chair in the room. There were modest sitting arrangements here, but that was the simple life of college students. “I know this must seem like an outlandish suggestion.”

  “I’ll say,” Mike interjected, but Jason pressed on. “But if you understand what we face. I think. Well, I think you will want to join us.”

  “What do we face?” Beth, Stephanie had noticed, sat next to Mike on the sofa. Not just next to Mike. But, next to Mike. There was barely three inches in between the two of them on a sofa which sat four. Something had happened while Jason and she were gone from school. Something she was going to get Beth to tell her about later.

  They had arrived that afternoon and Jason had called Mike to tell him they were coming over and they needed to talk to him. She had done the same with Beth, suggesting they meet at Mike’s and Jason’s old apartment. When they had arrived, Beth was already there ahead of them. Stephanie began to suspect Beth had already been there. She chose to table that thought for the moment as they had more pressing concerns.

  “This is going to sound really out there.” She gave them an apologetic look, as if to say, sorry for being about to sell you on some wacky shit.

  “You mean like you being a Werefox? Or you infecting your boyfriend and making him into a Werefox too? Or you almost killed him in the process?” Beth listed off these in a flat tone.

  “Well . . .” Stephanie realized Beth had a point, but still, what she was about to tell them was more bizarre than that.

  “When Jason and I left, we did so because we felt a, for lack of a better word, summons.”

  “A what?” Mike’s face scrunched up in incomprehension.

  “A summons,” Jason repeated. “Like a . . . pulling. We both felt it. So, we went to where it pulled us to.” Jason turned toward her, and she nodded to him to continue.

  “When we got there, we stumbled onto a fight.”

  Both Beth and Mike straightened at this. It wasn’t as if they weren’t paying attention before, but now, they were both fully focused on what Jason said.

  Jason looked at them and then off to the side; his mouth opened and closed several times as he seemed to be trying to find a way to explain what happened next. Stephanie decided to intervene.

  “The long and short of it is, there were other Weres there and not like us. There was a Were . . . er . . . snake, a Werecrocodile and two Werebears. There was also two women, who as it turns out are Druids from ancient Celt, who have been resurrected, or reborn, or whatever, and are now waging war against each other and we are their warriors.

  “That is why I became a Werefox. My ancestor was one and fought alongside one of the Druidesses and so when she came back, the power came back. Same as the others. Though some are on the side of the other Druidess.” All of it came out in a rush. Her rapid-fire assault of words rocked Mike and Beth back and by the end, Mike had slid down beside Beth on the couch and they were both, pressed against the back of the couch as if some weight held them there. Their eyes were wide, their mouths open, and speechless.

  Beth recovered first.

  “Umm . . . O.K. So that was a lot to process.”

  Beth rested a hand on Mike’s leg and quickly moved it off, but Stephanie caught it and raised eyebrows at her. It was hard to tell with Beth’s dark skin tone, but Stephanie believed she blushed. Beth shrugged, and a slight smile crept upon her lips.

  “The point is,” Jason began, “One of the Druidesses wishes to destroy civilization and she is prepared to use Weres to do so. She will use the ones she has on her side to spread lycanthropy to as many people as she can in order to create an army.” He let out a sigh. “So, we need to do this as well.” A soft smile lifted the edges of his mouth. “We immediately thought of you two as possible recruits.”

  Mike and Beth were silent for a long time, neither looking at them or each other, but looking elsewhere, as if searching for the right words to say.

  “Why?” Mike said finally.

  Stephanie eyed him and cocked her head. “Why what?”

  Mike glowered, an expression he seemed to use, often.

  “Why would you think of us? I mean, I have never given you the notion that I’m a fighter, or that I would like to fight.” He gave an exasperated grunt. “I’m in college, dammit. I have my whole life in front of me and you want me to abandon that, to physically change who I am, for what? Someone else’s war?” He stood and began pacing. “I’m sorry, I know that you guys are in this now; your lives have already been changed by what you have become, and maybe, for you, this all makes sense, but not for me.”

  “They will come for everyone, eventually,” Stephanie replied calmly.

  Mike wheeled on her. “We have armies for this!”

  Stephanie was silent for a time, then stood and went to the kitchen.

  Mike glanced to Beth as she left and raised his hands in a questioning shrug. Beth responded with her own shrug.

  Stephanie returned from the kitchen with a sizable knife and approached Mike. When she came within a few feet of him, she took the knife and dragged it across her upper forearm, slicing skin, muscle and fascia. Blood flooded the area around the cut.

  “Jesus!” Mike exclaimed and began looking around for something to stop the bleeding.

  “Mike!” Stephanie demanded, “Look.” Reluctantly, Mike turned back to her.

  Stephanie thrust out her arm and everyone watched as the wound quickly repaired itself from the inside out. Muscle reformed and reknitted, ar
teries and blood vessels sent tendrils out to grasp at the strands of their severed pieces to reconnect and the skin regrew and closed, leaving not a scar.

  Mike had been told about their healing of course, but she knew hearing about something was not the same as seeing it. Mike needed to see what this all meant.

  “Now tell me, Mike. What will our armies do to people like me?” She motioned to Jason, who still sat where she had left him. He hadn’t moved when she had cut herself, for he understood what she had been up to. “Jason here took a shot to the chest at almost point blank range from a shotgun and has no residual scars from it. I saw a column of stone, which almost certainly weighed a ton, land on the back of a Werebear and he shrugged it off.”

  Stephanie shook her head. “We are not like soldiers on the battlefield that once you shoot us, we are down. No. We get back up. They can’t stop us; they don’t have the power. We are the only ones between them and the destruction of the world, Mike. It is what we were made for.”

  “We understand if you don’t wish to involve yourselves,” Jason told them. “It’s just, well, you are our closest friends and we wanted you to be a part of this.”

  “We know it is asking a lot,” Stephanie added. “We just know that this world is on the verge of something it is not ready for, and by the time they are, it may be too late.”

  Jason frowned and put his hands on his hips but didn’t immediately respond.

  Stephanie realized Beth had been quiet this whole time, allowing Mike to do all the talking, which frankly, was uncharacteristic of her.

  “Beth?”

  Her friend looked up. She had been lost in thought it seemed. Beth shifted uncomfortably as everyone turned to her. She cast a furtive glance at Mike before returning Stephanie’s gaze.

  “I will join you, lil sis.”

  “What!?” This clearly wasn’t the response he had been expecting from her.

  She sighed and turned in her seat to face Mike squarely. “Look, you’ve said your peace and now I’m going to say mine.”