by M. Leighton
“Is that Trace’s truck? Maybe Brady rode with him?” Lacey asked as she looked into her rearview mirror.
“Where?” I said, turning to look out the back glass.
Sure enough, Trace was turning into the dirt drive that led to Chad’s dad’s cabin. I couldn’t see into the dark interior of the truck, but I didn’t need to. I knew Brady wasn’t with him. They were well on their way to falling out no matter how much I tried to prevent it. A girl could only fight fate for so long.
“You stay and watch for Brady. I’m gonna go talk to Trace.”
“So Brady’s not with him? Could you see inside his truck?”
“No, Brady’s not with him.”
With that, I unbuckled my seatbelt and hopped out of Lacey’s car, scurrying along the shoulder of the road toward the dirt drive. I hadn’t walked very far when I came upon Trace’s truck, stopped right in the middle of the lane. Curious yet cautious, I slowly approached the driver’s side window.
“Get in,” he called softly from his open window once I was within ear shot.
“Brady will be here any minute. I can’t leave.”
“Yes, you can. Get in,” he repeated.
“Seriously, Trace, I don’t want to cause any more friction—”
“It’s come with me now or I’ll take my chances and talk to you at the party.”
When faced with those as my two options, leaving with Trace seemed infinitely preferable. Besides, the idea of spending some time alone with him was undeniably appealing.
I rounded the hood and hopped in the passenger side, immediately assailed with the light soapy scent that I associated with Trace. Even though at that moment he was freshly showered, he always smelled that way. Clean. Very clean.
Without a word, Trace shifted into reverse and began backing down the lane. Silently, I prayed that we wouldn’t meet Brady pulling in. That would be the disaster of all disasters.
I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief when we were on the road heading in the opposite direction from which Brady would arrive. I settled more comfortably into my seat and watched Trace’s big, capable hands where they rested lightly on the steering wheel, competently guiding the truck along the two-lane road.
“Where are we going?” I asked after we’d been traveling in silence for nearly ten minutes.
“You’ll see,” he answered enigmatically, not even glancing in my direction.
Two Lakes was a fairly small community, consequently there were very few places that took more than ten minutes to get to, regardless of your starting point. I couldn’t help but wonder if Trace was heading for town limits, something that just wasn’t done.
Unease prickled along my spine as I considered it. The scary part was, I didn’t even know why. I had no idea why no one traveled outside the town limits or why the mere prospect would make me apprehensive.
When the road on which we were bumping along turned to nothing more than a narrow gravel path surrounded by unfamiliar forest, my apprehension upgraded to real fear.
“Trace, we’re not supposed to be out this far.”
At that, he did look at me.
“And why is that?”
My mouth worked open and closed a couple times like a fish’s might, but no words came out. I had nothing to say, no logical reason or explanation.
“Don’t worry. You’ll like where I’m taking you.”
What small amount of illumination the moon had shed on the landscape was completely drowned out by the increasingly dense vegetation. The further Trace drove us into the woods, the brighter the lights of his dashboard seemed inside the inky blackness. They cast an eerie glow on his face that made me shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asked, a concerned frown marring his smooth brow.
“No.”
Trace looked at me—really looked at me—and his expression softened, his lips curving ever so slightly at the corners.
“Don’t be afraid, Peyton. I would never let anything happen to you.”
Anyone could’ve said those words and they’d have sounded empty, as no one could ensure without question the safety of another person. But for some reason, I felt the certainty of Trace’s promise, the safety and security of it, all the way down to my bones. He truly meant what he said. And I believed him.
“I know.”
As suddenly as the forest had seemed to erupt around us, it thinned and then completely disappeared, leaving me staring into a beautifully lush meadow drenched in rich, silver moonlight. Trace pulled off the rustic road and drove across the grass to the edge of the river that fed one of the two lakes that gave Two Lakes its name. He slowed to a stop and shifted into park before cutting the engine.
“Come on,” he said as he got out of the truck.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and climbed down, my feet sinking pleasantly into the soft cushion of thick grass. A delicate floral scent wafted up to my nose and I looked down. In the faint light, I could make out some kind of tiny flower that was growing amongst the grass. As I crushed the petals beneath my feet, they released their heavenly aroma into the air, saturating it. I’d never smelled anything like it.
“Smell good, don’t they?” Trace asked, his teeth flashing white in the low light. He reached back and grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
I let him lead me away from the truck, further out into the meadow. The feel of Trace’s fingers wrapped around mine, the sound of rushing water, the sweet smell arising from the lush ground—it was all an intoxicating blend that overwhelmed my senses. When Trace pulled me to a stop at what appeared to be roughly the center of the meadow, I smiled contentedly up into his handsome face.
“Feel that?” he asked.
“What?” I inquired, not certain to what he was referring.
“That buzz in the air. Can you feel it?”
I reached out with every nerve to feel something out of the ordinary, but, alas, I felt nothing more than the myriad emotions I always felt in Trace’s presence.
“No.”
“You will,” he said with a confident smile. “Are you ready?”
My heart leapt with excitement and I felt suddenly breathless. “Ready for what?”
“Ready for this,” he said, pulling me toward him.
CHAPTER TEN
It was as though a veil I’d been born with and worn every day of my entire life had been lifted. All of a sudden, I could hear the intensity of true silence. All of a sudden, I could see stars in what had always been a blank dark blue sky. All of a sudden, I could smell so much more than the crushed flowers at my feet. All of a sudden, I could taste the salty tang that permeated the ambient air. All of a sudden, I could feel…everything.
I don’t know how long I stood quietly, mouth agape, staring at the world around me before Trace spoke.
“You can feel it, too, can’t you?”
There was an anxious look on his face that belied the casual nature of his question. I could tell how desperately he wanted me to say yes. And to mean it.
“Yes, I can feel…something. Everything. What is it?”
I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to stay shut. I was more than a little awestruck by what I was experiencing. To say that it was overwhelming would’ve been a gargantuan understatement.
I didn’t realize that Trace had released my hand until he stepped in front of me, turning to fully face me.
“Hold up your hand,” he whispered. “Like this,” he indicated, holding his hand up in the universal stop sign, his palm facing me.
The light breeze carried the sweet, minty scent of his breath to my nostrils. It cooled the perspiration that had gathered on my brow causing chills to break out on my chest and spread down my arms. Without question, I did as he asked.
Once my hand was in front of me, a mirror of his, our eyes met and locked. I thought for a moment I saw the warm amber swirl like the honey they so closely resembled. I caught my breath just as he slowly began moving his hand toward mine.
Neither of us looked aw
ay when the sensation erupted. My palm felt as though the water that I heard in the background stirred beneath my skin. It was simultaneously warm and cool, and more soothing than anything I’d ever experienced. It was like being completely exhausted and finally resting your head on your pillow.
Then he moved his palm even closer.
Although the tugging sensation was familiar, I didn’t recognize it right away. I was too mesmerized by Trace’s fathomless eyes. It was the movement that finally drew my gaze away from his and down toward our hands.
Several thin, red wispy tendrils rose from my palm to twirl and writhe in the air above our hands. Moments later, thick black ones danced away from Trace’s skin to join mine, where they entwined in a lover’s embrace. I watched them curl around each other, at times losing track of which one was which as their colors blurred together and they melded into a single wavy thread.
“We were made for each other. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you see that we make each other stronger?”
Trace’s voice was so low and soft, I had to glance away from the strange smoke to make sure he’d even spoken. He was watching me, as if awaiting a response.
Once again, I found myself tongue-tied, as though my body was physically preventing me from speaking the words that I so longed to say, the words that would assure him that my heart was his. And that it always had been.
But there wouldn’t have been time for that anyway. Just then, my brother’s furious voice destroyed the moment.
“You’ve got three seconds to get away from her, Trace.”
His voice startled me and I jumped back from Trace, jerking my head to the left. Brady was stomping across the field toward us. He was being followed by two of his friends and I could see that they were creatures, too.
I stood at Trace’s side, paralyzed by a growing irrational fear that someone was going to die, and I watched them come. Brady was obviously livid, which had apparently triggered his second nature. I could see his gray skin and red eyes even from a distance. His fangs were bared like some kind of wild animal and they glistened with saliva.
Jace Stewart was hanging back at Brady’s left flank and I could see his ebony skin and wicked-tipped beak despite the low light. The bigger surprise, though, was the guy to Brady’s right.
His name was Harrison Faust. He was a lanky guy who played football with Brady. He was known for having a sense of humor that matched his bright red hair and freckles. I couldn’t imagine him with a temper, much less him actually being dangerous. But then again, I hadn’t known he was a dragon.
Flaming red hair still topped his head, but his freckles had turned to brown oval scales that covered every inch of visible skin, right up to the edges of his bright yellow eyes. As he walked, puffs of smoke flew from his nostrils and wafted through the air like an acrid cloud.
Brady stopped and turned to his friends, saying something and pointing back toward his Jeep. The two nodded and then turned on their heels and walked back the way they’d come.
Resuming his stalking approach, Brady kept his eyes on Trace, who moved to face him, reaching behind his back to pull me in tight against him. Once again, the protective gesture stirred something deep inside me. It released the knowledge that his act was not contrived or filled with false bravado. It was sincere. I knew in that moment that Trace would die for me.
At likely the most inopportune time, with one angry brother bearing down on us, Trace turned to me. He looked deep into my eyes, as if he could sense the path my thoughts had taken.
“I would, you know,” he said simply, raising his hand to brush his knuckles across my cheek.
Speechless, I could do nothing more than watch Trace turn back to face the oncoming storm. When Brady arrived, he wasted no time coming after Trace.
“Stop!” a deep, menacing voice shouted.
Although I knew what the word meant, I also knew that it wasn’t spoken in English. I had no idea what language it was voiced in or how I knew what it meant, but I did. It rang in my head as clearly as if the word stop had been spoken outright.
Brady and Trace must’ve understood as well, as even the tiniest of movements ceased in our trio. Every eye turned in the direction from whence the sound had arisen.
Standing at the edge of the river, near Trace’s truck, was a man. Although I was certain I’d never seen him before, he looked strangely familiar to me.
No one said a word until Trace took several steps forward and spoke.
“Dad?”
I felt like my gasp was a collective effort, as if both Brady and I contributed to it. We were equally stunned by Trace’s question, our eyes now turned in confusion toward him.
“Dad?” I asked. “I thought your father was dead.”
“I thought so, too.”
The man Trace identified as his father slowly began walking toward us. He was tall and fair, his pale hair slicked severely away from his forehead. He was wearing sunglasses, which was both bizarre and a little terrifying. His mouth was set in a grim line and he walked with a purpose that somehow frightened me. He seemed predatory. And I felt very much like prey.
The fact that he said nothing else only added to his already intimidating brand of pseudo-hostility. If ever there was a ghost-like assassin type needed to play in a creepy movie, this guy would fit the bill.
When he was within a few feet of us, Trace’s father stopped abruptly and turned to his left, toward the woods on the other side of the meadow, opposite the ones from whence we’d come, and raised his nose high into the air. I saw a long thin bifurcated tongue slip from between his lips and taste the air. Once, twice, three times it flickered until he turned back to Trace and said another single word, spoken in that same foreign language but ringing in my head as though in perfect English.
“Run!”
I knew each of us understood that word as well as we had the first. Only we were rooted to the spot, each of us merely looking at one another and then back to Trace’s father.
When the ground began to shake as though a herd of stampeding cattle was heading for us, we three turned toward the woods, toward the air Trace’s father had been tasting.
And we saw them.
I doubted Trace and Brady saw the same thing, but I saw an enormous army of hairy part-man creatures, an army that was racing toward us with inhuman speed. I recognized some, as they looked similar to what Trace had when I’d seen him in his second nature. Others looked quite different, some even running on all fours rather than upright. It seemed that there were at least five or six variations of creature in the mob and none of them looked friendly.
Shaking myself from my stupor, I turned toward Trace, intent on urging him to do as his father had instructed. For the first time since I’d seen it that fateful night of the party, I saw Trace in his second nature. He was standing before me as a werewolf.
Panic rose up to clog my throat and I turned to Brady, intending to try and get him to leave as well. He was still in his vampire form, but I could easily see by his expression that he was paralyzed.
“What are they?”
The words I don’t know were on the tip of my tongue, as the whispers hadn’t come yet, but before I could utter them, the wording of his question played through my mind again.
“What do you mean ‘what’ are they?”
“Look at them, Peyton,” he hissed angrily, pointing one elongated finger toward the approaching crowd. “Can’t you see? They’re not human.”
“You can see them as they are?”
Brady snorted, although he didn’t take his eyes off the creatures. “Of course I can.”
Shocked, I glanced back at Trace and realized that he could see them in their true form as well, which only added to my confusion. When I turned back to the nearing band, I saw that a few of the beasts had sprung ahead of the rest and were approaching at a much faster pace. My heart hammered painfully inside my chest, begging me with its tempo to leave before it was too late.
Trace’s father’s mo
vement drew my eye. I looked at him just in time to see him tear the sunglasses from his face. I got a glimpse of flashing silver eyes—they looked like shining drops of mercury around a vertically-slitted pupil—but I only saw them for a second before he turned them on those first few wolf-like creatures.
With a truncated yelp, five hairy monsters froze. Their arms and legs were arrested in motion, as if someone had hit the pause button in mid stride. Within a few seconds, they each turned the dusty gray of old stone. It started at their head, as if someone had blown ash into their faces, and then spread quickly throughout the rest of their bodies. For a few short moments, they looked like figures in a concrete garden. Then, with a loud pop that sounded like a crack of thunder, they exploded into a fine chalky mist that blew through the air like a sandstorm. And then they were gone.
The man squeezed his eyes shut and turned toward our group once more and shouted a second time, “Run!”
I grabbed Trace’s arm and pulled, but he resisted. “Go!” he shouted. “I can’t leave him.”
“Trace, he said to run. He obviously knows what he’s doing. We have to get out of here!”
“He’s my father.”
“He can protect himself,” I added. “Look what he just did to them.”
Trace looked torn as his eyes darted between me and his father.
“Trace, please. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
I could tell that he very much wanted to give in to me, but I could also understand his reluctance to leave a man he’d thought dead without helping him. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded getting some answers either. But then the man himself helped tip the scales in my favor.
“Run!” he called again. “I’ll get away when you’re safe and I’ll find you again.”
This time, there was no hesitation. Trace grabbed my hand and the three of us turned and ran as fast as we could to Brady’s Jeep. We piled in beside Jace and Harrison as quickly as possible while Brady fired up the engine. With only a brief spin of the tires as they struggled to gain traction in the tall grass, the Jeep lurched forward and Brady whisked us away to safety.