by T. F. Walsh
• • •
“Are you so thirsty for her blood that you can’t think of another alternative? Is this the work of that creature again?” Moiren asked angrily, rising from the couch, trying to block Caleb’s access to the hall.
“This has nothing to do with my problems or with my little friend,” Caleb answered, sneering, attempting an ironic smile.
“I’m serious, Caleb. If she dies at your hands all the wolves will come for you.”
“This is the best way to end the war. If the pack heir dies in the trials because of the vampire prince, it will be the excuse the wolves have been looking for — the excuse we’ve been looking for — to escape this stalemate, to finally end the war.”
“Your father sent you here to get information about her.”
“I am going to get information.”
“Then what? Use it to kill her? Did your father order this done?”
“No, you know my father. He never expressly orders things like this. He suggests them. Killing her was one of the many possible things he ‘saw’ happening. He is leaving the final choice up to me.”
“Do you really think killing an innocent, starting the war again, is the best thing for our people?”
“I’m tired of this war, Moiren, of what it does to our people, what it did to me and to my family. It is time it all came to an end. What’s her life in the balance of that? Besides, I didn’t know you had any love for these beasts.”
“Caleb, I — ”
“Forget it, Moiren. You have been my teacher, but the time for school is over. I will soon be king; it is time you started listening to me. Now let me pass.”
• • •
Caleb hit her once, his fist arcing up toward her ribs, and she did not dodge it. She wanted a reading of his feelings and thoughts, and for her, there was no minimizing how important contact could be in analyzing adversaries. After years of practice, she could read much from only a glancing blow: was her opponent afraid of revealing a weakness? Was he in pain or planning a new offensive? Was he expecting back up or relief? In the heat of combat, emotions flared and anxieties peaked, the body and the mind exerting incredible focus to register only a limited number of stimuli, a finite number of concerns. Because distractions could be deadly in fight, this psychological instinct would normally help a fighter, giving him much needed focus, but, for the people she fought, it gave her the advantage. It made their minds easier to read. In battle, she could size up an opponent in seconds.
And the first thing she could tell about Caleb? He wasn’t trying at all. He was barely putting any effort into their sparring, but she didn’t need her magic to know that. She could tell from her ribs. She felt pain, but had taken on no substantial damage. That should be virtually impossible. A true blow from a vampire would have a considerable effect on her body. A vampire — with only a little training and skill — could kill a human with no more than a slap. Of course, wolves were different, their bodies more dense, more strong than humans. Still …
“I take it you don’t like hitting girls or something?”
He merely glared at her. So she glared back. He raised both of his eyebrows, wrinkling his forehead a little, which only served to make him look bored.
“Are you some kind of deaf-mute vampire?”
He still said nothing. She waited. Still, he said nothing.
Finally, crossing her arms, she mimicked his calm stance, and said, “Ok. I see I’ll need to solve this puzzle myself.” Acting as though she was considering the facts, she titled her head, studying him. “All right. We have a quiet vampire. A very quiet vampire. An extraordinarily quiet — possibly mute — vampire.” She began to circle him as though she needed to see him from all angles. “He appears to hear and, at times, even to understand my words, but he is unable to articulate a response or to answer with gestures or other nonverbal signs.” She paused to rub her chin in false confusion. “While he does react with his rather incommunicative eyebrows, he could be merely acknowledging the movement of my lips in a meager attempt to fool me into believing he can hear me. All of which could point to deafness. Moreover, and incredibly incriminating, is the fact that his punches are unusually ineffective for his kind. Ah, I see.” She raised her arms up, in a gesture of understanding. Then, she grinned widely, showing her teeth, her eyes wide with false excitement, pretending to have made a sudden revelation. She walked a little closer to him, and then said slowly, exaggerating each syllable, “Are … you … ” she pointed to him, “part of … a special … program … for challenged … vampires?” She waited only the smallest moment, holding her serious pose, then giggled quietly, pleased.
“Hardly,” he said simply.
She had grown used to his not talking. The fact that he had opened his mouth to speak was almost uncomfortable. Maybe the strangeness was due to the quality of his voice. It was deep and sure, beautiful in its own way. And it caught her completely off-guard.
“What a miracle. He speaks. To what do I owe this honor?”
He didn’t answer.
She prodded, “Do you only speak when offended or — ”
“I assure you. I was not offended.”
She said nothing, wanting him to continue. When he didn’t say more, she prompted, “You weren’t offended, you were … ?” She stretched out the word and held out her hand, suggesting that he finish the sentence.
After a few uncomfortable moments, he said, “In truth, I just preferred not to see that pantomime go on any longer. It was rather a waste of both our times.”
“Oh, kind sir, noble gentleman, I beg your pardon. To be sure, I wasn’t aware that time was of the essence. Rather and indeed, I believed you wanted to waste the day before us.”
He merely raised his brows again.
“Oh, there he goes again with the evil eyebrows. Look, I’m not the problem here, buddy. You are. You’re not doing anything right.”
As she talked, he crossed his arms and lowered his head. Was he trying to tune her out?
“Don’t ignore me. We’re supposed to be strategizing and learning about each other, and you’re … well … you’re just mucking everything up. You won’t talk to me. And now you won’t even really spar with me. How are we going to learn anything about each other that way?”
He sharply pulled his head up a notch and glared at her. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that I wouldn’t want the pack heir to have information about me?”
She gasped. It wasn’t a secret, of course, who and what she was, but she was somehow surprised that he had known. He had seemed curious about her; she’d thought she was more of a mystery to him. She should have tried to read him more carefully. Instead, she had leaped into all kinds of assumptions and fantasies.
“I mean to say,” he hesitated, seeming to search for the right words, “why would I want anyone in your pack to have information about me? Your beta knew what he was talking about. I’m just trying to protect myself. If this progresses the way it should, you and I will battle each other, right? Too much sharing and you might just have an advantage I don’t want you to have. Understand?”
“When it rains, it pours. You go from zero to sixty in seconds and now I’m getting a lecture in trial strategy.” She laughed. “Well, at least we’re talking.”
“Hardly,” he said, stonily, but he seemed a little pleased.
She threw her head back and laughed again. “This is going to be beautiful. Just beautiful.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him. “Don’t you dare say ‘hardly’ again.” When it was clear that he would remain silent, she added, “I really do think it’s going to work out. Now, what do you say about talking some strategy?”
“Do you truly expect me to coordinate with you?” he asked, stretching out “co-ordinate,” insinuating that at least one of them didn’t know the real meaning of the word.
“Isn’t that the goal of this part of the trials? That is what Thomas said, right? Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first?”
“Stop being so difficult.”
“Pack heir, can’t you see the gap between politics and purpose?”
She didn’t know what he was trying to get at, so she just stared back at him, hoping he wouldn’t like the silent treatment he gave her.
He simply waited, too, clearly unbothered by the silence.
“Well,” she prompted.
“The political line tells us we are meeting to gain knowledge.” He lowered his gaze and stared intensely at her. “But, though the goal is gaining knowledge, I suppose, it is not knowledge gained for the purpose of understanding and camaraderie. It’s … ” He stopped talking, and then snapped at her, “Surely you don’t need me to explain this to you? We aren’t really playing games here after all.” He sounded exasperated.
“Look,” she returned, harshly. “I know this isn’t a social call. I understand the whole the-trials-are-a-miniature-war-scenario thing. Trust me. I know it down to my bones. But my blood doesn’t beat to the tune of politics. I do what I feel like doing. Do you understand that? You can sneer all you want. You can certainly continue treating me like an undereducated child. Go ahead. It won’t faze me in the slightest.” She narrowed her eyes in anger, but her tone was calm and forceful. “But, if you want to win this — hell, even if you don’t want to win, even if you only want to get me close enough to do a little surveillance for your people — you need to let me school you on something. You’re my enemy because you make yourself one. The minute you stop trying to attack me, I will chose to work with you. The same goes for many of my people. You want to keep fighting, well, by all means, keep charging forward, keep playing politics.”
“Well, now wasn’t that a fascinating lecture?”
“Hardly,” she bit back.
He lowered his head and nodded a few times. Finally he looked up at her and said, “I concede your point. Shall we talk strategy?”
She hated holding grudges. It just seemed too much of an energy waster, but this was a fast turnaround, even for her, and she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him. He had adopted, predictably and disappointingly, the hard line held by her father. She was angry that he wouldn’t work with her, angry that he would so foolishly hold on to old and dangerous ideas about the relationship between their peoples. But she was mostly angry that he wasn’t who she had hoped he was. But, as she had told him earlier, they needed to work together. “Yes. Fine. Let’s talk strategy,” she answered as lightly as she could. Was it his fault that she had created an image of him that wasn’t at all true? Really, she had no one else to blame but herself. “So. Where do you want to start?”
• • •
Where did he want to start? He was tempted to ask her to start by explaining how she could go from ecstatically happy to furious and to happy again so quickly. And she claimed he went from zero to sixty! Her emotions made him confused, almost dizzy. How could a stranger anger you? Make you laugh? How could a stranger disappoint you? For he was sure he had done just that. And, beyond logic, she had made him feel … guilty. He had offered her an explanation of his thoughts as an apology, but he could tell she was still … hurting … upset. How? Why?
“Are you back to not talking now?” she said, her voice raised a little. From anxiety? Anger? He simply couldn’t tell.
“I’ll always be back to not talking,” he said, a meager attempt at humor, but, inexplicably, she didn’t laugh at that. So he simply continued, “I don’t think sparring is a good idea. I tend to have too little control for it.”
“What? Why?” she said caustically; clearly she still didn’t think he was willing to cooperate.
“How can I put this delicately? Let’s just say I have a bit too much killer instinct.”
“Are you saying you can’t fight a battle that’s not real?”
“I can’t fight that way, no.”
“You can’t or you just don’t like to?”
“I can’t. If we try to spar, it’s likely that I’ll simply go for the kill.”
“‘Simply go for the kill?’ Who says stuff like that?” she wondered out loud. “So you get carried away and just want to kill people? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t deal well with ‘pretend.’”
Suddenly, she was laughing again. He really didn’t understand this girl. She sounded slightly — and happily — hysterical.
“I knew it. This is going to work beautifully. See, I do deal well with pretend, really well. I promise, I pretend well enough for the both of us,” she said with even more laughter, which he also did not understand. “So, let’s say we pretend we’re not sparring. Can we just play a little tag?” she asked, quickly adding, “Don’t give me that look. Just humor me, all right?”
He wasn’t sure what “look” he’d given her, but he was willing to play along for now. “All right,” he answered. “But I don’t see how that’s going to be useful — or even very different from sparring.”
“I need to learn more about how your kind moves — how fast, what style, that kind of thing. I don’t need to attack you to understand that. Obviously, knowledge of how you fight would be great, but, really, that might vary a lot by individual anyway. So, if you just try to catch me that should give me something to work with, and you can learn something about me … I mean, about my kind. Do you think you can handle that without wanting to kill me?”
“I’m not sure. Speaking frankly, this conversation is trying to me. I kind of want to kill you now, without doing much of anything.”
“See? And now we’re swapping jokes. This is going to be fine.”
“I’m not joking,” he said.
“Ok, but you’re not killing me yet, right? So my prediction is still true. This is going to be fine,” she said cheerily.
“And how can you say so?”
“Let’s just see what we can see.”
• • •
Over the next few days, following her advice, they continued to practice and train together, slowly increasing the intensity of their sparring rounds and exponentially increasing the amount he knew about her kind. She had been right about “playing chase,” and each day, when he thought they had progressed as far as they might, she pushed him further, helping him stretch his limits, helping him calm his cravings.
The first day, he had merely pursued her. The second day, if he caught her, or if she doubled back and snuck up behind him, the winner was allowed to attempt one offensive move, but the loser wasn’t allowed to strike back. The third day, the loser was allowed one returning blow, and like that it developed. In between rounds, they would stop and talk — or rather, she would talk and he would listen. It seemed that she took this friendship business seriously, for she told him all he wanted to know after only the slightest provocation, regardless of the confidential and perhaps secret nature of what she shared.
One day, responding to his tease that werewolves were the foolish men who had failed to evolve out of their tails, she told him a history of her kind that he had never heard. “I don’t know why we are what we are,” she said. “Some say that, if we chose, we could shift into anything. Others believe that wolves, connected to the moon as they are, are the ideal and only vessel for our kind of magic. Honestly, in the early days, the packs had a hard time returning to their human form, so, in their wolf form, facts were lost, history forgotten. We simply don’t remember our reasons for being here. We just live, and maybe that’s the way it should be.”
Another day, when he asked her about the spells he had heard about, the magic the females of her kind could use, she said, “You all call us witches and you’re all wrong. I mean, even we call them spells. If they had another
name it’s long since been forgotten, but we’re not using magic. I don’t even know if magic exists. We’re just good at the in-between. We can see at once what something was, is, and will be. And if we are powerful enough, we can make it be what we see.”
He still didn’t understand what she meant by that, but he planned on finding out, and if he understood her — and he thought he did — she would be all too happy to help him. Today, again following her suggestion, they were going to have a full sparring session. He wasn’t sure if this was the best plan, but he needed to know what the pack heir was capable of and about these spells that the women could cast.
“Well, don’t you look moody,” she said, stepping into the clearing and interrupting his thoughts.
“I look the same way I look every day.”
“My point exactly.” She laughed.
“You know, I never understand why you are laughing.”
“I know you don’t. That’s one of the reasons I’m laughing. Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m not teasing you. I like that moody face of yours. In fact it makes me downright cheerful.”
“And why is that?” he asked, honestly confused. He really didn’t understand half of what she said.
“Lots of reasons, but today it’s because I’m wondering if it will look more broken when I punch you slap in the nose.”
“Assuming you can even get close to my face, what do you mean by more broken?”
Sucking in the side of her cheek, she tried to bite back another laugh. “You mean to say it’s not already broken?” she asked, her voice rising at the end, almost unable to contain her chuckling.
“Of course not. I’ve never been injured.”
“Never injured, huh?” she asked as though she refused to believe it. Her incredulity was replaced with an affected expression of confusion. “Well, if it’s not broken, then what’s your excuse?”