by Heidi Lowe
"Seems like a strange place to have a meeting," I said with a nervous laugh, wondering what the hell I was doing in the middle of nowhere with a relative stranger. A werewolf at that. Jean had once said that I had this innate ability to get myself into trouble, almost as though I went looking for it. She wasn't wrong.
We'd been walking for a few minutes, having left the bike at the start of the trail, uncovered, visible to anyone passing through. Something told me that this wasn't the type of place that anyone outside of her pack ever strayed – day or night.
"Your strange is our peaceful."
A little way in the distance came the rowdy, raucous laughter of drunk people. The party had obviously started without us.
"Is it all right that I'm here? I mean, is it just going to be people like you there?"
"Some might have a problem with it, sure."
"Well, that's reassured me," I said drily. "Maybe I should head back. I'd prefer not to get my eyes clawed out by a bunch of angry werewolves."
She chortled. "It's not a full moon. No one's doing any scratching. But you're welcome to go back. I'm staying, though."
Great! She was my ride. You would think that I'd learned my lesson from the last time, being stranded in the back of beyond with no means of escape. I was pretty sure Uber didn't come out here...
The smell of smoke was heavy in the warm night air. The laughter and voices got louder, and I became more anxious the closer we got. Then we came to a cluster of trees, from behind which light spilled out. Dallas stepped in before me.
"We thought you weren't coming," someone said. A couple of others cheered. I hung back, waiting for the right opportunity to show myself.
"You wish I hadn't come," Dallas laughed. "Less people to share the marshmallows with."
The silence that followed once the laughter died was deafening. I held my breath just for fear that they would hear me breathing from behind the tree.
"Is someone with you?" a female voice said. "I can smell someone."
Shit! Fuck! Of course they can smell me. They're wolves!
I stepped out cautiously to a crowd of seven twenty-somethings sitting around a campfire on tattered blankets, bottles of beer lying everywhere, empty and full. Three women, four extremely hairy men. I recognized one of the women from the night of the soiled blouse. As they all gawked at me with dumbfounded expressions, I was doing exactly the same. They might have been the most attractive group of people I'd seen off the screen, and they all had the same shade of dirty blonde hair. It was like The Village of the Damned – The Adult Years!
"Who is she and why is she here?" one of the girls said, her stare more of a glare. Yep, while the others were merely shocked at my presence, she looked pissed.
"Her name's Liz. She's a friend."
"Uh, it's actually Lissa," I interjected. "You can just call me Lissa, it's fine."
"We're not going to call you anything. You're not staying," the angry girl said with a haughty scowl, as though I'd truly offended her.
Dallas laughed, turned to me and said, "Gina has a problem with outsiders. That and she only sees humans as sport, not to be socialized with."
They must have all been able to see my horrified expression as clear as day, because they burst into laughter. All except Gina, who continued to scowl at me like the intruder I was. Why did this scene seem so familiar?
"You broke the cardinal rule bringing her here, Dallas. Not cool. As if they don't have the rest of the world to themselves, they always have to encroach on our territory."
"She does have a point," one of the men said. "But as long as your friend doesn't do anything overly mortish, I'm cool if she stays."
Mortish? How would I know not to do it if I didn't know what the hell it was? Boy, this trying to fit in thing was a real bummer. It would have been better if I'd stuck to my own kind. Fewer complications, no weird rituals to accommodate. This was Jean all over again.
"Expecting a sapien whore to not be mortish is like expecting the sun not to shine," Gina said with a haughty air, folding her arms defiantly. It was the first time I'd ever heard the term Homo sapien used as an insult, and coupled with the word "whore". It was certainly original; if I hadn't been so impressed with the term, I would have been more offended.
One of the girls scooted over and made space for me and Dallas, though did so reluctantly, and with a sigh. Someone handed us each a stick and we helped ourselves to marshmallows. Although my mouth watered for them, I dared not take more than a couple, wishing not to draw any more attention to myself. Or even risk Gina's accusations of morts stealing everything.
It didn't take them long to forget I was there, and resume as though there had been no interruption. Laughing, joking, making fun of each other. In-jokes about their pasts, about their pack, about their childhoods, all information I wasn't privy to. I may have been surrounded by eight other people, but I might as well have been in those woods alone. Even Dallas wasn't speaking to me.
Well, not everyone had forgotten I was there. Gina's ceaseless glowering was proof that I hadn't gone completely invisible. It was strangely reassuring.
While they entertained themselves, I couldn't help marveling at this unusual group of people who, I noticed, all wore necklaces resembling Dallas's. And the more I looked at them, the more their similarities became apparent. It wasn't just the hair: the nose; the shape of the eyes; to some extent even the voices sounded the same. Could they have been from the same family?
This assumption was quickly laid to rest when two of the boys started Frenching each other. I frowned, suddenly taken aback. It was like watching twins kissing. Very weird.
"What's the matter? You never seen two guys kiss before?" one of the girls said.
Crap, she was talking to me! Why hadn't I turned away quicker?
Now everyone was watching me again, waiting for me to do or say something mortish, no doubt. I'd seen men kissing plenty of times – thanks to Petr. But I couldn't exactly tell them why I was so freaked out.
"Uh...no...I mean...sure...of course I have...I'm just–"
"Homophobic?" one of the Frenching guys said, once he'd managed to pull himself away from his reflection.
Dallas threw a marshmallow at him. "You idiot, she isn't homophobic. She has a girlfriend."
Oh God, I knew where this was going. The doom that filled my body made me dizzy. I was about to be exposed, and this was the last group of people I wanted knowing my secret.
"So what's she doing here with you?" Gina asked, her tone accusatory.
"Having some fun. She's sick of her girlfriend. Oh, and did I mention that her girlfriend's a fanger?"
For the second time that night, a silence spread across the woods. It was as though all of nature shut up too, not just the speechless crowd before me. And they were speechless. They exchanged looks, mostly with Dallas, searching her face for any signs of jesting.
"And you brought her here?" Now those looks had become cold, those beautiful gray-blue eyes had narrowed into slits of suspicion, of hatred. I was sure the whole pack were about to pounce on me and eat me alive.
Dallas chuckled. "Don't judge her. Everyone makes mistakes. She's learning from hers."
"That's not just a mistake, that's the sort of thing mentally impaired people do. Why would you go to bed with a fanger?" The boy shivered. Thankfully some of the animosity had receded from his eyes, though it had been replaced with a look of deep repulsion. I didn't like that one any more than the first. To know that I was seen as repulsive to anyone simply because of my choice of girlfriend upset me. Upset me for myself, but also for Jean.
"Come on, Cody. You know sapiens see things differently. They don't see fangers like we do, for the dead abominations that they are."
"Exactly. It's just like I said, a mental illness. Isn't there, like, a name for being attracted to dead people? Necrophilia? Yeah, I think it's that."
I thought I was going to throw up all over their stupid fire, all over their marshmallows. T
hat was how angry and sad I felt. How could they say such nasty things, speak like I wasn't even there? How could they compare me to a necrophiliac?
"She's not dead," I mumbled through gritted teeth, eyes downcast, afraid that if I looked up at them all I would lash out.
"Not in the technical sense, but where it matters." I didn't know who was arguing with me, nor did I care to look. As far as I was concerned, they were all one voice, one opinion.
"Not there either," I said. Jean wasn't dead, she was as alive as I was. As they were. I felt her, I tasted her, I loved her. Unless the definition of being dead had changed in the dictionary, she didn't fit it.
"I think we've hit a nerve," someone laughed. "You need a thicker skin if you're going to be a fanger pet."
Now they were all laughing.
"We're just messing with you, Lissa. We get it. They're charismatic and mysterious. Just the kind of thing a mort needs to bring excitement to their dull life."
"Yeah." Dallas put a hand on my thigh. "Don't mind them. They're just a bunch of miserable wolves with nothing better to do." Her voice was playful, lighthearted – in stark contrast to the way I felt. And her hand there did nothing to soothe me.
"I can't imagine what it would be like to sleep with that lifeless flesh. Is it cold? Does everything work down there?"
Dignifying it with an answer would have meant letting them win. They wouldn't have believed me anyway if I'd told them the truth, that making love to Jean was the best sex I'd ever had with a human multiplied by a thousand. Because no words that showed vampires in a positive light were welcome here.
And I certainly wasn't.
"Aren't fangers notoriously promiscuous? You can't be her only one."
"Don't tell me you love each other?" Gina said in a mocking tone, then started cackling along with a couple others. "Best not get too attached then..."
The laughter stopped so abruptly that I had to look up at them, and just in time to see the looks they were now shooting Gina. I didn't know what they meant, or what she'd said or done to warrant them. Honestly, I was too busy wallowing in my misery to think too much about it.
Then Dallas started talking about a new bike she'd seen that she said she had to have, the tension and stares subsided, and everyone went back to ignoring me. How quickly I'd grown to appreciate being ignored.
"Are you having fun?" Dallas whispered to me while the others were talking. I wasn't sure whether she was deliberately trying to infuriate me, or if she was genuinely oblivious to my foul mood.
"No," I snapped. That got a couple of people's attention. By then I had stopped caring what they thought of me. I'd spent an hour and a half with them, and I'd come to the conclusion that they were the worst group of people I'd ever met. It seemed almost unfair that they'd been blessed with such beauty.
"I'd like to go home now."
"Then go," Gina said. "No one's stopping you."
"I'm her ride." Dallas got to her feet, stretched high. "Let's go."
I couldn't get up fast enough. And I walked ahead of her without saying goodbye to her friends, while she said her farewells.
"Maybe we'll see you around, Lissa," someone called after me, then laughed with the rest of them. "Or not."
Definitely not. If I never saw that dreadful herd of beasts again, it would have been too soon.
"Wait up," Dallas called behind me.
I stormed on until she sped up and reached my side. Then I slowed down, because it quickly occurred to me that I didn't know how to get back. This was her territory.
"You're not still mad about what they said, are you?"
"What do you think?" If it wasn't almost pitch black out I would have been able to glare at her properly.
"Don't take anything they say personally. It's just our instinct to hate fangers."
"You didn't have to tell them about her."
"We don't keep secrets from each other. Something like that is a big deal for the gang."
"I think you wanted to humiliate me."
She let out a little laugh. "Why would I want to do that? I like you, no matter what your girlfriend thinks of my intentions."
That made me stop walking. She stopped too. Was this the way she treated girls she liked – making them the laughing stock of the woods?
"You have a really funny way of showing it."
And then, for the third time, she sprung a kiss on me that I didn't see coming. I was furious with her for not having my back with her friends, and I took this out on her in the kiss. I became the beast, attacking her mouth with all the rage I'd built up around the campfire. I couldn't see much but the outline of her and the trees. I drove her back against the nearest tree and continued to kiss her.
And then the little, sane voice inside me told me to back off.
"I really needed to do that," I said. To me it wasn't a kiss, it was me being in control, overpowering her. To me it was payback.
"I'm glad you did." I couldn't see the grin on her face, but I heard it in her voice.
We carried on walking, the air much clearer between us now.
"So Gina's a real piece of work," I said after a little while. That was putting it mildly.
"Ah, she's just jealous. She's my ex. Well, they all are, but me and Gina get back together more frequently than we do with the others."
I stopped for the second time, and gawked into the darkness, at the figure before me.
"What?" was all I could manage as my mind tried to decipher what she'd said. I must have heard wrong. Because she couldn't possibly have been saying that she'd dated everyone in the group.
When she laughed I was certain I'd fallen for some type of sick joke. Then she said, "Why do you find that so shocking? Don't you know anything at all about us?"
"Werewolves? No, nothing."
"It's not a big deal. In fact, it's expected among my kind. It's the only way to strengthen the bloodline. We're not like sapiens."
If their sense of smell was strong when they were in their human form, their sight would also be strong. She would have, thus, seen my flabbergasted expression with her night vision.
"You mean you...you interbreed?"
"Why do you think we all look the same? And don't tell me you hadn't noticed."
"Whoa." I felt like I'd just stepped into the most baffling episode of The Twilight Zone. "Whoa."
"You need a minute?" she chuckled. "Or are you good to carry on?"
I'd almost forgotten where we were going. I carried on walking, though my mouth stayed agape the whole time.
"So what, are you guys cousins or something?"
"Cousins. Brothers and sisters, no one really knows. It's all the same."
"But that's incest." And how rich of them to call me all the names under the sun for sleeping with a vampire, when every single one of them was screwing their family members!
"That's not how it is in our community. Our nature has its own set of laws. Interbreeding is the only means of survival."
I wanted to be open-minded about it, but it was really difficult to wrap my head around the concept. It probably made a whole lot of sense in her world, though I doubt it ever would in mine. Inside I was hysterical with laughter at discovering this taboo secret about those horrible people who'd tormented me. It took a certain type of chutzpah to stand tall and hurl insults when you were the product of incest, and practiced it willingly yourself.
"So people can't be turned? You have to be born that way?"
"There is a process for turning, but it doesn't happen often. And it's complex."
"But I thought...I saw the scratches on the back of your neck..."
"We're born with those."
The ride back to Greenfields took thirty-five minutes, all of them cold. I was lost in my thoughts and musings, still stunned by the revelation of Dallas's origins.
That was on my mind even as I got off the bike outside my apartment.
"So some day soon you're expected to mate with one of the men from the campfire,
produce a bunch of blonde Were-spawn, then...what?"
She opened the mouthpiece of her helmet so that I could hear her laugh.
"Were-spawn. Nice. Well, that's usually how it works. But who knows? I might be tempted away from tradition. See you around."
She was probably winking at me, the tone suggested it. But she laughed and sped off.
What a crazy night!
NINETEEN
She always looked forward to her visits. A pleasure any time of the night. Even if they sometimes consisted merely of brief hellos and short kisses before she ducked away into her studio to work on her painting. Sometimes they made love before the painting commenced, sometimes immediately after it ended. But mostly they sat together, talking about nothing, doing as true lovers did.
That was why she kept her mouth shut when she discovered the painting. And why she kept her mouth shut on two occasions when her sense of smell didn't fail her.
Tonight Lissa had skipped the love-making altogether, and only spent the briefest time working on her secret piece.
"Why won't you let me see it?" Jean asked, hoping upon hope that tonight would be the night when she stopped lying. When you know your lover is keeping something from you, you pray they come clean on their own, so you don't have to expose them. So you don't look like the bad guy. And Jean was tired of being the bad guy to Lissa; they both were.
"I told you, I'll show you once it's finished. You won't like it as it is."
"You still haven't told me what it is." And here she regarded Lissa carefully, willing her with her eyes to tell the truth. To stick to the promise they'd made each other.
"Nothing interesting. Just your regular painting of nature." The girl didn't even blink. She was getting so good at lying.
Inside, Jean's heart was slowly breaking. Her Lissa, so pure and honest and innocent, had become so deceptive, she almost wanted to believe her, despite knowing she was lying.
Maybe she was just as bad for going against Lissa's wishes. Her punishment for looking at the painting when Lissa told her not to.
She took the girl in her arms and they cuddled for a little while. She needed to feel her, to convince herself that whatever happened, whatever untruths were being shared, the truest and most wholesome thing between them was their love for each other.