by Evie Ryan
“Very well,” said Christoph. “Is there anything else I should know?”
Elektra eyed Brandon carefully then turned to her partner.
Ismay only added, “We welcome you, Mr. Barone and on behalf of the Sanctuary let me say that our greatest hope is that your presence during Gwen’s recovery will be the mark of restoring our societies to peacefulness and good will.”
“Of course,” Christoph said dryly.
“Ismay can get you settled,” said Elektra before addressing her partner. “Let’s prepare the Timber Suite for Christoph.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Christoph. “I’ll select my sleeping chamber in the wilderness.”
Elektra blushed sheepishly for a moment. She’d forgotten that the strict requirements and extreme sleeping conditions of Christoph’s species, the location of which was their most guarded secret. “Will Gwen be alright in the dormitories?”
“For the time being she will. Her roommate on the other hand...”
“I see,” said Elektra. “Get Joseph on the phone right away,” she told Ismay. “I’m afraid he’s assigned her in Molly Perkins’ room.”
“Well, as long as our Gwen hasn’t been left alone with good Molly,” Christoph stated, “I’m sure the girl is still alive.”
Ismay’s eyes widened and he rushed from the room.
“You won’t regret this,” said Christoph with a smile. “In fact, you’ll thank me.”
* * *
Gwen had been standing awkwardly in the corner, a wallflower amidst weeds, in a large room that reminded her of a gymnasium except that all the equipment and apparatus’ seemed to come from nature. Instead of a blue spring tumbling floor there was only dirt. The uneven parallel bars were tree limbs. The vaults were boulders. And the balance beams, unsurprisingly, were logs. It was easy to forget she was still indoors unless she looked up. The ceiling of the Training Center was a steel grid of glass windowpanes, which allowed natural light to flood through.
It had been the longest ten minutes of her life since Joseph had deposited her here. At first she was merely self-conscious and couldn’t seem to stop shifting and twisting inside her dress. It fit her like a glove, which she hadn’t expected. The black slinky material, which she couldn’t quite place (she’d never encountered a fabric quite like this) had shrunk to her figure the second she’d put it on until it hugged every inch of her like a second skin. The wedged heels had adhered to her feet in the same manner. Both were made for her, and though she felt her every curve was exposed, she also felt confident she could run and jump and fight wearing it. Though she had no idea why she would need to do so.
Gwen wouldn’t have felt as self-conscious about the dress if the other students (was that what they were, students?) had been wearing similar, but they weren’t. Throughout the Training Center men and women were running about, tumbling across the floor, climbing the equipment, and otherwise making use of the obstacle courses, as their trainers (Coaches? Mentors?) shouted at them about form and concentration. Everyone seemed to be dressed in athletic appropriate garments. The trainees were all wearing uniforms of khaki pants and olive green cotton shirts, both of which seemed to have a lot of give and flexibility, as they moved through their respective exercises. The trainers, though not dressed quite so athletically, looked ready for the great outdoors. The jeans, work boots, and flannel shirts they wore gave them a lumberjack appearance that seemed both fitting and out of place.
If Gwen thought the Training Center was surreal, if she thought waking up in a strange facility in the middle of the wilderness was utterly bizarre, and if she found it impossible to process the notion that she had died, then she was even more disturbed that those individuals who’d claimed to be in charge of her recovery had told her virtually nothing about what had happened, how they brought her back to life, and why she couldn’t return to Seattle. Being pragmatic and having a strong will, she was already plotting her escape. As soon as she was feeling more herself she’d get the hell out of here.
That was the problem, though. She wasn’t feeling like herself. When she had woken up in the I.C.U. (she assumed that’s what it was, intensive care where her vitals could be monitored) she hadn’t noticed how truly off she’d felt, because she had been consumed with the jarring fact that she had no idea what was going on. But now that she had gone through the paperwork with Joseph, been escorted to her room and given a brief tour of the facility, which everyone kept calling a Sanctuary for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, and then brought here to wait for God only knows what, Gwen realized that she felt vaguely weak, yet incredibly strong, as though her muscles were fatigued, but the tiredness didn’t compare with her tremendous energy level. Mentally, Gwen had always been sharp as a tack, quick witted, and could read social cues like second nature, but now she felt like her mind was often going blank. She couldn’t perceive her own thoughts, which seemed somehow replaced with gut feelings. Intuitive, came to mind, but it made her uneasy. She felt oddly inhuman, like she was an animal, but hoped that was a side effect of whatever medication they’d given her. Maybe painkillers were messing with her mind. Maybe that blood transfusion (that’s what it had been, right?) had done something to her nervous system.
As Gwen watched the others tumbling about the room, she wondered about the circumstances that had landed them here. Had they fallen down Tucker’s Ravine? Had they been on the brink of death, as well? Or dead, for that matter? Dead. She couldn’t accept it. And yet the fact that she had cheated death twice was incredible. Had she?
Her train of thought was interrupted when she noticed an owl. It flapped its wings, lowering clumsily onto a tree branch that was serving as the uneven parallel bars. How did that get in here? She looked around the room, investigating the ceiling, eyeing the doors. The room was sealed. Below the tree branch that the owl was now sitting on stood one of the Trainers, but he wasn’t taking steps to get the bird out of here. In fact, he seemed to be talking to it.
She suddenly felt eyes on her and realized it was the students. They were staring. They didn’t bother darting their eyes away when she returned their gazes. Soon it felt less like curious staring on their part and more like they were glaring at her, though they continued with their exercises when necessary.
Gwen watched a young man sprint down a dirt runway towards a boulder that she'd decided was meant to be a vault. Six feet shy of the boulder, the man sprung into the air, arms stretched out, palms opened wide, as though he was about to use his hands to spring off the boulder and flip around. But before he did, his body contorted in the blink of an eye and Gwen discovered that she was watching a wolf. It flew over the boulder and landed in a slide, stirring up dust from the dirt where it landed. Then, just as quickly, it twisted back into a human. He locked eyes with her after coming to a standstill and laughed, glaringly.
Before she knew what she was doing, Gwen found herself pushing through the exit doors then walking briskly down a corridor. She glanced over her shoulder briefly to put her mind at ease she wasn’t being followed when she suddenly slammed into someone.
“Excuse me,” she apologized even before looking up to see who she’d run into.
“It’s Ok,” a deep voice told her, a man’s voice. His hands gripped her arms, helping her regain her footing.
She took a step back and met eyes with him. His steel blue eyes gave her instant recall. He was the one who had been looking at her through the small windows when she had been in the infirmary. This was the same guy, same thick dark hair, same scruff of stubble. His hands, large, warm, and holding her firmly, remained on her upper arms.
“How are you feeling?” He asked, the timbre in his tone was strangely soothing, but Gwen reclaimed her arms by crossing them. Soon the man’s hands were by his sides.
“What is that place?” She asked, ignoring his question since she couldn’t tell whether it was coming from a place of genuine concern or amused intrusiveness, though she figured the latter. People here seemed to be eyei
ng her like a lab rat. Why would this guy be any different?
“It’s our Training Center,” he offered.
“Training for what?”
He narrowed his gaze then lowered it, traveling over her facial features. Then his eyes snapped back up to meet hers, sending her into a state of self-consciousness even worse than she’d felt in the gym.
“Well?” She prodded after he’d given her no information.
“You met with Joseph,” he stated, but without a follow-up, Gwen had to assume it was a question.
“Yeah,” she confirmed.
“He didn’t tell you what we do here?”
“No, he didn’t. And I just saw a guy turn into a wolf in there and honest to God, I think I’m gonna lose my mind if someone doesn’t explain to me what the hell I’m doing here.” Gwen’s voice arched up in frustration and though she tried to steady herself, the words kept spilling out. “Am I hallucinating? Is that what’s going on? How am I standing? How am I walking around after falling off a cliff? Have I been in a coma for years? Is it the future? Have people developed the ability to transform into animals and I slept through it?”
A smile spread across the man’s face, which disarmed Gwen stopping her assault of questions. It was slightly unnerving to lose the momentum just because the guy’s lips were curling up in such a way that made her heart race. She’d always had a thing for teeth and his were pretty good: aligned straight with unusually pointy incisors that gave him a rowdy look. Gwen made a point to divert her gaze from that smile, those teeth, and his curling lip, so she locked eyes with him. “Any other questions?” He teased.
“Why don’t you start with those?”
“You’re not hallucinating, first of all. Second of all, it’s not my place to give you the rundown of what you’re in for-”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Not really,” he said, as that lip curled up again into a playful grin.
As far as Gwen was concerned the guy was taking pleasure in her frustration. In an instant she had his plaid shirt balled in her fists and was slamming his back against the wall, which judging by the look on his face both surprised and aroused him. His hands had found her waist and using her force against her he pulled her into him.
As soon as they pressed together, Gwen pushed off him, backing away and breathing heavily. “I don’t know what that was, I’m sorry. Sorry I pushed you.” She wasn’t really, but she was highly confused by her erratic behavior. First the heart monitor she’d thrown across the I.C.U. and now physically assaulting a complete stranger just because she didn’t like that he wasn’t taking her seriously.
“It’s fine,” he said. He was still leaning back against the wall where Gwen had left him. He looked down at her. His head was cocked to the side and he had a glint in his eye that conveyed a world of intrigue. You’d think they’d just kissed the way he was drinking her in. Again, she felt oddly disarmed by him. “But the fact of the matter is that I work here and would get into a fair amount of trouble if I stepped on anyone’s toes.”
“Something tells me it wouldn’t actually bother you to step on anyone’s toes,” she challenged.
“What makes you say that?” He asked, cocking his head the other way and eyeing her just the same.
Gwen couldn’t help but look fixedly at him, taking him in with just as much intensity as he did her. It seemed there was a line between them that was starting to blur and though she didn’t understand it, Gwen had a feeling the blurrier it got the easier it would be to get the answers she was looking for.
“I’m not sure. I guess you just strike me as the type of person who doesn’t care about getting into trouble.”
He suddenly stepped out from the wall and crossed his arms. Had she laid the last compliment on a little too thick? His smile was gone and he made a point to tower over her. “There’s an Italian guy who’s in charge of your recovery. Have you met him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Pale guy, black hair, looks like he just stepped out of an Armani ad?”
“Oh, he’s Italian?”
“No accent, I know, but yeah he’s from Italy.”
“Yeah, he came into the hospital room with a few other people.”
“If he finds out I told you anything, it will not be good.”
“So you will?”
“Not here,” he said, looking over Gwen’s shoulder then his own.
Eager, her brows floated up and her eyes widened, indicating that if he leads she’ll follow.
He started up the corridor and Gwen followed at his heels. “I’m Brandon, by the way.”
“Gwen,” she offered.
They passed through the back exit, Brandon first and Gwen following into a vegetable garden. As Gwen hopped up so that she could walk beside Brandon instead of behind him, she noticed the aisle they traversed was flanked by tomato and pepper bushes. She recognized the green fronds of carrot tops and other root vegetables, as well as the wall of flowers that wrapped the perimeter, which included sunflowers, roses, and interestingly golden rod. It occurred to her that she wasn’t sneezing. Golden rod tended to stir up the worst allergies and yet she felt fine.
“We grow a lot of our own food. I don’t eat it, but the herbivores do,” he said offhandedly before they stepped through an archway of roses, leaving the garden.
“What do you mean herbivores?” She asked, trying to follow. There had been so many bits and pieces of information between the Administrative Heads, Joseph, the pale Italian, and now Brandon and though Gwen kept the tidbits on mental file and well organized, she couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Brandon held his tongue until they’d ducked into the forest where a mulch path stretched out before them. “So you know you’re in the Cascade Mountains,” he started.
“Yeah, that much I got,” said Gwen.
“Our organization is called The Cascade Sanctuary & Wildlife Preserve and what we do here is nurture sick and injured animals back to health, then release them into the wilderness.”
“Ok,” she said to show she understood. That woman, Elektra had told her as much.
“But we also serve a different purpose,” he went on.
“Ok,” she said again, encouraging a detailed explanation. She was now looking up at him as they walked deeper and deeper into the forest. His eyes shifted intensely as he kept his gaze straight ahead, as though he was searching for the right words. The stride of his gait was firm, deliberate, highly masculine yet fluid. There was something graceful about how he moved, the swing of his arms, the slight roll of his shoulders, the way his weight transferred from one foot to the other. It dawned on her that she found him attractive, but when the feeling struck she realized attractive didn’t fully capture her impression of him. In a snap decision, Gwen shut the feeling down before she could explore it further. The last thing she needed was to get blindsided by unruly emotions when she was clearly in the crisis of her life.
“The Sanctuary homes shifters,” he said.
“Shifters?”
“Like what you saw in the Training Center, which was only our gymnasium, by the way. We have additional exercise rooms, as well as classrooms, and that’s only listing our indoor facilities. Outdoors we have countless practice spaces.”
“Brandon, what are shifters?” She asked, gently bringing him back on topic.
“You said you saw a guy turn into a wolf. Well, yeah, that’s what you saw. He shifted from his human form into a wolf.”
Gwen stopped walking so she could focus on the mind-bending information. After a moment’s consideration, she asked, “The Sanctuary finds these people?”
“No, it makes them,” he clarified, which Gwen found utterly jarring. “Sometimes hikers get injured, usually if they’re alone. The scouts at the Sanctuary spend all day combing the wilderness for animals in need, but when we come across a hiker in need, we bring them here and make them like us: shifters. If someone’s only injured in a minor way then we’ll arrange for trans
port to the nearest hospital. But if someone’s unconscious, sick with infection from injuries, or otherwise half dead, we’ll bring them here.”
“So I’m a shifter?” Asked Gwen, hardly able to believe any of this except that she had in fact watched a man turn into a wolf before her very eyes.
“Not quite,” he said. “You had blood cancer.”
Had? Gwen felt a zing of excitement at his use of past tense.
“When we turn people into shifters their blood constitution remains pretty much intact. It holds the same composition. If we’d turned you into a shifter, you’d still have cancer. You’d still die in a few months. That’s why Christoph is here.”
“The Italian guy,” she added.
“Yeah. The Administration didn’t have the means to save you, but he did.”
“How did he save me? Just tell me,” she said turning frustrated once again by his lack of forthrightness.
“Our only option was to replace your blood. We had to turn you into something that would completely cure you of the cancer in your blood.”
“And?”
Brandon gazed deeply into her pleading eyes. They were bright blue. Her mop of blond hair blew in the breeze, falling into her eyes, as the light shifted overhead.
It was nearly dusk. Gwen ran her hand across her forehead to clear it of her side sweeping bangs, as she exercised patience.
“You’re a vampire,” he said.
It took Gwen’s breath away, though her mind didn’t race. Rather it seemed to go blank. She felt unusually calm, or maybe stunned was a better way of putting it. She was reminded of her original diagnosis, the way she’d gone blank then flew into a fit of wild laughter. Would she now lose her mind just as abruptly?
She didn’t. Unlike the death sentence her doctors had delivered, what Brandon was telling her was quite the opposite. It was a life sentence. She would live, and if memory served her, if all those vampire movies she’d seen were true, she would live for a very, very long time.