Fate Succumbs

by Tammy Blackwell

  “Do you think…” God, I couldn’t even complete sentences. “Will he live?”

  Liam ducked his head even lower. Even though we didn’t spend a whole lot of time having face-to-face conversations, I knew this was purposeful avoidance. “The news said he was expected to make a full recovery.”

  “That’s the exact same moron who said it was surprising an actress the size of a broom handle and has more nervous twitches than a squirrel on caffeine has a drug problem. I’m not putting my faith in her opinion.”

  Liam looked up and met my eyes. “But you’ll put it in me?”

  “You saw him. You know where he shot himself. This was your plan.” I gave him a second to correct me on that point, and when he didn’t, I continued on. “So, tell me, Liam. Is Charlie going to be okay?”

  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he wasn’t. I knew that with absolute certainty. Charlie would never be the love I dreamed of for so many years, but he was still mine in every way that mattered. We parted as friends, but friend didn’t seem the right word to encompass what Charlie was to me. He was a part of me, the good part. If he died, he would take that part with him. I would still exist, I would still live, but I wouldn’t be me.

  Liam grabbed what appeared to be a container of Clorox wipes out of his bag and started scrubbing down all the surfaces in the room. “I would say the injuries from the fight are probably causing more problems than the gunshot wound.” He disappeared into the bathroom, but kept talking. “I’m surprised the doctors haven’t said anything about how they’re not consistent with a car wreck. He had scratches from human fingernails down his face for God’s sake.” Liam trailed off, talking to himself more than me. “Of course, Sarvarna could've called in the Alpha Pack’s doctor, probably pulled some strings to make it appear he was called in by the Senator’s office. Or maybe she did get the Senator’s office to call him in. Who knows what kind of connections she’s got her claws into.”

  When I questioned that statement, Liam explained how far the power of the Alpha Pack reached. There aren’t exactly a ton of Shifters in the world, but there are enough in positions of power throughout the world to make the Alphas major players in world politics. According to Liam, the Den - the Alpha Pack headquarters located in Romania - operated like a small but powerful country. In addition to the strongest fighters and most gifted Seers, it was home to the smartest and most skilled of us from all over the world. I hadn’t touched a computer or cell phone since our escape on Liam’s insistence that the Alpha Pack could trace a call, text, or Facebook message in seconds. Like Liam, I didn’t doubt her ability to make sure a well-respected Washington politician called in the doctor she wanted to attend to a person hurt while trying to save his granddaughter. What I doubted was my grandfather’s desire to call in anyone, Alpha Pack doctor or not. Sure, he would play up the whole granddaughter kidnapping story for press coverage and polling points, but to actually care enough to do something about it? We didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  “Why the car crash/terrorist story?” I asked as Liam got down on his hands and knees and started combing the carpet I didn’t even want to have my feet on. “And what on earth are you doing?”

  He plucked a long silvery strand of hair off the floor. “Being cautious. The police most likely won’t come back here, but if they do, I don’t want them to find your DNA conveniently lying around.” Not for the first time, I questioned his sanity. “And the news story was a way to flush you out using the best resources available. You and I might have been able to slip around the country unnoticed for years before, but now that the whole world knows the granddaughter of Senator Harper is missing? Every person who sees you will be calling 9-1-1.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. I let out a frustrated roar, flopped back onto the bed, realized what I was doing, and hopped back up and began looking for any hairs that may have landed on the comforter.

  “I should turn myself in,” I said, thinking aloud. “The Alpha Pack can’t do anything to me with the world watching. Their plan will backfire. I’ll get to go home to my family, and they can’t touch me without attracting unwanted attention.”

  Liam’s voice was bland when he said, “They’ll kill you before you ever see your parents again. And not only you, but anyone they see as collateral damage. Police officers. FBI agents. It doesn’t matter. None of them stand a chance against well-trained Shifters.”

  “Then what are the options? It’s not like I can blend into the masses.” He had to realize that. After all, he was the one who pointed out less than an hour ago how someone couldn’t forget my weird face.

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Care to clue me in?”

  Liam looked around the room with a critical eye. “No.”

  Chapter 4

  I kept a steady stream of curses aimed at Liam going as I climbed out the tiny window whose width was exactly the same measurement as my hips. Just climb on the back of the toilet and hoist yourself through, I mimicked his voice in my head. Be sure you don’t make any noise or scratch yourself on that metal. Someone might notice the blood. Oh? What? You wanted me to be concerned about it hurting you? Sorry, no. I don’t care if you get cut by rusty metal, except the resulting infection might slow us down as we carefully execute this elaborate plan I have but won’t tell you because you’re so far below my notice I can’t be bothered.

  If I didn’t rip out his throat with my bare human teeth it would put us even for him saving my life, right?

  We drove on to Denver that day since there was the chance the police were keeping an eye on Liam. Or, I guess I should say Liam drove to Denver. I had to stay crouched down in the back seat the entire journey. My legs hurt from staying scrunched up and I was getting claustrophobic from sitting in the floorboard, but it was better than Liam’s idea, which had me riding in the trunk.

  The motel in Denver was a bit better than the other one, but still somewhere my family would have never considered staying on our vacations. At least I got to walk in the front door instead of shimmying through a window or vent.

  I should have known something was up when Liam left his bag in the car and then decided he needed to “run some errands”. In two weeks he hadn’t left me alone any longer than it took for me to go to the bathroom. After sitting in the Denver motel room for four hours, I finally accepted he wasn’t coming back.

  “I don’t blame him,” I told the anchorman on the TV screen. Despite knowing it was a bad idea, I had been flipping between all the news stations since Liam left, watching the fictional account of my disappearance over and over again. My parents declined to comment, which Fox News found suspicious, and Charlie’s medical records weren’t being released to the media, which caused some ire from the good folks at CNN. I refused to watch MSNBC after I realized they were using the school picture from my sophomore year, which was possibly the least flattering photo of me ever taken. “He doesn’t owe me anything. Heck, I owe him more than I could possibly ever repay. At least he got me somewhere where I can make a decent run for it.”

  And yet, I felt abandoned and kind of hopeless. Not exactly shiny new emotions in my world, but they sucked all the same, especially for Wolf Scout who trusted Wolf Liam so explicitly. But I wasn’t going to let it break me. I had already been through hell and back and was still in one piece. Sure, I might have thought about throwing myself on the proverbial sword for a few minutes earlier in the evening, but then one of the news stations showed a shot of my family walking into our house. My parents both hurried inside, heads down, as if not looking at the crews camped out in our front yard would make them disappear. Angel, on the other hand, stopped at the front door, turned around, and looked directly at the camera. And even though she didn’t say or do anything, I knew what she was thinking.

  You promised.

  It had been an attempt to soothe my little sister after I almost died when Jase accidentally ripped out my stomach last April, but it turned into something more. I
wasn’t going to die, at least not easily. If for no other reason, it was my way to ensure Sarvarna and the rest of the Alpha Pack didn’t win. If she wanted me dead she was going to have to work for it. I wasn’t giving up.

  Of course, that meant coming up with some sort of plan. I couldn’t exactly eke out the rest of my existence in a cheap motel room. For starters, I didn’t have any money, which left me with the same overwhelming problem that made Liam bolt: Disappearing into the crowd despite my freakish face, which every person in America knew.

  I pulled myself off the super-uncomfortable motel bed and ambled over to the sink. The mirror hanging on the wall was one of those really old dull things with the actual shiny reflective stuff peeling off around the edges. It made me look like a ghost, which caused me to giggle. Scout Donovan, the girl who came back from the dead. Twice.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually I stopped looking like myself. That’s not exactly right. I still looked like me - it’s not like my face suddenly morphed into the wolf’s or anything - but I became a collection of features instead of just Scout. And those features? They’re not so bad. It's not like I have a hook nose, crossed eyes, and bologna-like flesh. If it wasn’t for my hair, skin, and eyes being pretty much the exact same color, I could pass for any other normal teenage girl on the street.

  All I had to do was change the coloring issue, right? Except, it’s not as easy as you would think. For one, I can’t just get a suntan and look different. My skin doesn’t understand that whole browning process. It pretty much operates on two settings: pale white and painful, blistered red. Eye color can be changed with contacts, but where was I going to find those? Maybe if I had an optometrist or Internet connection, but I was lacking both. Hair dye was also out of the question. I tried it once before, even had it professionally done. At first it looked great, but then I took a shower and most of the color washed down the drain despite being permanent. By the third day my hair was a really unpleasant grey color. My hairdresser refused to put anything else on it, and I was too chicken to try again.

  I fingered the strands hanging down to the middle of my back. Even if I did manage to get some contacts and develop a tan, the hair was a dead giveaway. The color is a silvery white, much the same as my fur when in wolf form. Sometimes you’ll see a little kid with my hair color, but never anyone over the age of five. My hair is the first thing people notice about me.

  So what if I didn’t have any?

  As soon as the thought hit, a plan started formulating. I could shave my head and then wrap it up in a scarf. My skin tone already screamed “sickly,” and thanks to the trauma of the past few months, my bones were a bit sharper than looked healthy. What better way to avoid notice than passing as a cancer patient? No one wants to look too closely at sick people, and if I coughed every once in a while, everyone would keep their distance.

  Liam had one of those fancy electric razor things in his bag, but all I had was some cheap disposables, which meant I was going to have to cut it all off before shaving my head. Fortunately, Talley had been the one to pack my escape bag, a fact I realized the moment I opened it up to discover everything organized neatly into individual freezer bags. I dug through what was now a random assorted mess until I found the travel sewing kit. Inside was a tiny pair of scissors, but a test of the ends proved they would cut as long as I did it strand by strand.

  I pulled the first strand out from my head and positioned the scissors an inch from my scalp.

  Snip.

  I had about a fourth of it done with my arms started getting tired. Halfway through I got so bored I thought I might scream. At three-fourths of the way through the door swung open.

  “What are you doing?” Liam asked, setting some bags on the dresser.

  I couldn’t even say anything I was so shocked. I just sat there on the vanity, my feet in the sink, with microscopic scissors in my hand and a pile of hair scattered about me.

  “Did you cut off your hair? With those?” He looked at me as if I was completely nuts. “Why?”

  “I need to be incognito.” I sounded like a little kid who just got caught doing something stupid, which pissed me off. What was it to him anyhow?

  Liam reached in a bag and pulled out a brown wig. He cocked his head and lifted his eyebrows as if to say, what do you think this is for? I looked back at the mirror, actually saw what I had done to myself, and burst into tears.

  If the little kid voice had made me angry at myself then the tears pushed me firmly into the livid camp. I hadn’t cried in weeks. I didn’t cry when Talley’s mom, the woman who took care of me when I was a kid, turned me over to the Alphas, or when my brother chose a mateless, Taxiarho-in-Training existence over my life. I hadn’t shed a tear when I saw the guillotine that was to kill me, when Charlie hugged me goodbye, or when I saw the devastation wrought from my escape. But now I was in full waterworks mode over my hair. Yet, no matter how furious I was with myself, I couldn’t stop. It was like a dam had broken.

  “You’re crying,” Liam observed with more than a hint of horror.

  I answered with a gasp for breath.

  Since I buried my face in my hands so I didn’t have to look at the tragedy of my hair any longer, I didn’t see Liam move up behind me. But I smelled him. And I felt him tug the scissors from my hand and then begin lifting up strands of the remaining hair.

  “I used to cut Alex’s hair,” he said. “We never really had the money to go somewhere to get it done. The first few times I cut it, it was horrible. I think I may have even given him a mullet on accident, but he somehow pulled it off.”

  I looked up and watched in the mirror as the remainder of my hair started falling away. “I bet half the guys at school were sporting mullets by the end of the year.”

  Liam smiled. It was the first time I’d ever seen him do it, and until that moment, I would have thought him incapable. He didn’t have Alex’s dimples, but his cheeks folded up in a way that was equally boyish. Because of his Dominance, it was easy to forget that Liam was just a few years older than me, but when he smiled he actually looked like the college-age guy he was. I found the corners of my mouth twitching upwards in response.

  “You know, he didn’t even notice. The whole town started looking like a Billy Ray Cyrus convention, but he had no idea it was because he started a new hair fad.” He tilted my head forward and started trimming the hair at the base. “To be such a smart kid, he was pretty oblivious when it came to how other people saw him.”

  “That was part of the charm,” I said, somewhat surprised I was willing to talk about him with Liam. “He was beautiful and smart and funny without being even the littlest bit arrogant.” And he had loved me, which was the most amazing part of all.

  Liam’s hands paused. “You made him happy,” he said. “I’m glad he found you before he died.”

  He didn’t mention how if it wasn’t for me Alex would still be alive, which both amped up my guilt and made me feel oddly affectionate towards Liam. Would I have been so generous if the roles had been somehow reversed? If it had been Alex who killed Jase over something Liam had done? Could I have stood there talking to Liam as if everything was okay? Would I have risked myself to save his life?

  “Okay, turn around so I can do the front.”

  I swung my legs around so they would dangle off the edge. The vanity was high enough that Liam and I were right at eye level as he began doing something with what would have been bangs if I had enough hair left. I didn’t know what to do. Looking at his face seemed too intimate, so I kept trying to stare at my hands, but that tucked my head down, which caused him to lift it back up, which meant he would touch me. And that was just all kinds of awkward. Because while Wolf Liam and I were cool, and Wolf Liam and Wolf Scout were BFFs, Human Scout and Human Liam were merely two people forced into a strange alliance. Touching was not part of that alliance.

  “Well, that should do it,” he said, brushing stray hairs from my shoulders. “Sorry, but there were some p
atches I couldn’t do much with.”

  Those patches were the places where I had snipped a little too close to my head. And while Liam was probably a better barber than most twenty year old guys, he wasn’t exactly a trained hair stylist. The result left me looking like an unsupervised three year old.

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

  He shrugged and looked anywhere but at me. I tried not to laugh at his obvious embarrassment. “No problem. It’ll probably make the wig fit better, so that’s good.”

  The wig! How could I have forgotten there was a wig to cover up this mess? I leapt from the counter and raced the three steps it took to get from the sink to the bed where Liam had dropped it.

  There were lots of layers, but eventually I figured out the front from the back. I slid it on, turned towards the mirror, and…

  “Did you beat up some old lady and take her wig?” It even smelled faintly of mothballs and Chanel No. 5.

  Liam scowled. “It’s not that bad.”

  “All four of my grandmothers have better hair than this.”

  Liam stalked over to the other bags and pulled out a second wig. This one was definitely not granny hair.

  “That’s awesome!” I said as I made gimme hands. “I’ll look like a rock star!” This wig was also layered, but not in short puffs. This one had the whole razor cut edges thing going on, some trendy hipster bangs, and the coloring was a dark brown shot through with streaks of the deepest purple I ever saw.

  “You’ll draw attention.”