When Johannes reached this rite of passage, Evan would be a distant memory to the people of this place and they to him. He wasn’t sure what unsettled him more, the feelings of not wanting this to be so, of wanting to be a part of this world, or that he felt them at all.
Evan pulled himself back to the moment and stood. He would be late if he didn’t hurry. He finished the buttons on the shirt he had pulled on before tending to his injury. He should just get his stone from the drawer that currently held it and use the power of the thing to heal himself. Alexi had laughed at him when he expressed concerns about infection and the possibility the animal was rabid.
The big man shook his head at him. “Evan, have you ever been sick a day in your life?”
“Once a month,” Evan grumbled.
Alexi had given him a reproachful glare. “That is not an illness. That is what you are. Have you ever been ill?”
He had to admit that he hadn’t. The days before and after the full moon often found him moody and worn but he had never actually been ill.
“The thing isn’t rabid, that I’m certain of. Clean the bite and you’ll be fine. Don’t clean the bite and you’ll be fine. It really won’t matter.” Alexi’s big hand had clapped him on the back. “Now, go eat and get cleaned up.”
Evan tucked in his shirt and left the room. He paused to run a hand through his hair. The thick light brown strands waved slightly, enough to keep it from ever looking fully neat. The front had a way of falling cross his face to hide his eyes. One of his elementary school teachers, from the days his parents sent him to a normal school, had said it best when she told him he always looked as if he had missed his last haircut. Trim it as much as he liked, the werewolf in him brought it back to this length within hours.
“At least it’s not as bad as Seth’s,” he thought. The man’s hair was so tightly curled that it was at best a mop. Unlike Kira’s curls, which spiraled around her face, Seth’s sprang out wildly from his head. He wondered absently if young Ryder would inherit Seth’s dark coloring or Ari’s fair skin. Would he be dark-haired and freckled or would the blonde hair and fair skin win out?
He climbed down the stairs. He wasn’t sure what he thought he’d find at the bottom but this certainly wasn’t it. Well, not entirely. He did find Kira waiting for him. She was again in slacks, her chestnut hair falling loose around her shoulders. She wore a sweater over her blouse. The house was comfortably cooled but not that cool. But it wasn’t what she wore or how she looked up at him, so obviously nervous and even distinctly frightened, that surprised him. It was the corridor, or rather the door at the end of it. The walls weren’t the fine wood and plaster he had noticed in the rest of the house, they were stone. It looked a great deal like a passageway one might find in the large cavernous underground of his Master’s home. The secret areas of the house used for magic. Except this one had fluorescent lighting that illuminated it and a large steel door at the end.
“I thought you were going to show me your library?” Evan asked, still looking at the door. It was large and impressive. There didn’t seem to be a handle. None he could see from his current position.
She smiled but couldn’t push away the sadness that seemed envelop her. Gods, how it touched him to see that unhappiness. He wanted so badly to drive it away. How had this happened? How in just a few days had she slid into him so deeply? How had he come to care so much in such a short time? And he did care. The very center of him called out to her, to hold her and claim her. He wanted to enfold her in his arms and protect her.
“That is my library. Or more accurately it is ‘The Family’ library.” She pointed to the large steel door.
His brows pressed together. “Kira, I’m confused. I’ve now heard all three libraries referred to as the family’s library.”
She nodded. “The main one is for all family, staff and guests. Our family keeps one for private use. This library, the one protected behind that door, is the Family library. It contains the records of the Family and I am its Archivist. It is my duty to tend to the books, to learn what they have to teach us, to make sure they are updated.”
A family archive? No, he thought, a Family archive. There was a difference he was beginning to understand. When she said the word in that way it meant something more than her parents, brothers and the extended Gregoravitch family. It meant something more, it meant all the Wolves.
She led him down the hall, which looked longer than it turned out to be. A bit of an optical illusion played out in the curving of the walls and the sloping of the ceiling. Reaching the door, Evan noticed a panel in the door and a recessed handle that hadn’t been visible before. Kira opened the panel.
His hand reached out and stopped her. The melancholy that permeated her and the beauty of her form had the wolf in him snarling loudly. She was his and it was his responsibility to make her smile, or at least feel better. What was he doing just standing there when he should be doing something about this? An impulse had occurred to him and he was going to act on it. I’m thinking the wolf way now, Alexi, his mind rationalized. He placed his hand on hers and she turned to look up at him. He loved the way her face looked. The skin was fair but showed the color of someone who wasn’t cosseted and pampered. Her nose was long and its lines strong. The full mouth was the color of a dust covered rose and she wore no cosmetic enhancement. But the eyes. The eyes were what pulled the face together. The blue called to him, the color and the depth. He loved the openness of her gaze. He could see, plain enough even for him to read, the tenderness, the compassion and something more, something much deeper that he never thought he’d ever see in a woman’s face. No, Evan, he mentally shook himself. Not even a wolf learns to love that fast. Only fools and Kira is no fool.
She was still staring up at him, half over her shoulder. He took her hand and turned her to face him. She knew what was going to happen, wanted it more than she had wanted anything in a long time. She could see the changes in him the past few days. He was more open, more free, more who he was meant to be. It made her ache deeply to think he would leave that behind when he returned to his mage’s world and she knew he would return to them. Especially after tonight, and this Evan Forester would be left behind. She would be left behind.
“Kira.” His voice surprised even him. It was soft but held a quality that made it indefinable but impossible to ignore. She watched the swirling infusion of color in his eyes. Gray swirled with blue and created a shade unique to this man before her. His face was handsome, boyish and gentle with a perpetual shyness that made him irresistible. His free hand moved up and touched her cheek. His skin felt so right against hers. His skin was soft, just beginning to blister in places from the morning’s activity. The bandage on his hand scratched against her flesh.
“Evan…”
“Shh,” he quieted her. He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek and along her jawline. Her eyes closed and he leaned into her, brushing his lips first against her forehead and then her cheeks. His fingers cupped her chin and tipped it upward. He pressed his mouth to hers feeling the warm, faintly moist skin yield. Softly, sweetly he kissed her. His hands moved up to cradle her face. He pulled away unwillingly, the wolf in him howling in protest. He completely understood and sympathized. His human body was equally angry at him. He’d always controlled those physical impulses but now his body was stirring sharply from just the simplicity of her kiss.
Her eyes opened slowly and looked into his. How this man before her could ever have been the hesitant, backward boy he described to her brother was unfathomable. His instincts were flawless, his beauty astonishing. His touch so tender, so welcome, she couldn’t imagine he wasn’t surrounded by eager young women. The thought made her blood burn, ready for a challenge. She’d stand before them all. She’d prove herself worthy of him, prove he was hers alone. But that’s not how things worked in Evan’s world.
He stepped back and she felt his reluctance. She wanted to pull him back to her, to make him kiss her again, to hold him t
ight and memorize the feel of those lips, of that body in her arms. He wasn’t used to their ways. Breathe deeply, she commanded herself. It’s the moon. I should be readying for a run with a potential mate tomorrow night. I haven’t run in so long, I’ve forgotten the pull. For the three days of the running moon, one before, the day of and the day after the full moon, the Wolf chose its mate. Those who had not chosen ran with other unmated Wolves, seeking, testing a potential partner. Tomorrow would be the first day of the running moon.
She tried to pass off what she was feeling but the cry that came from her soul wanted him. Not just a mate, him. It wanted to learn every inch of him. To memorize what she would soon be saying goodbye to. Even if he didn’t hate them for the truth she was going to tell him, he was a mage first. He’d return to them.
She turned her back on him and fumbled with the keypad. Evan understood why. This was mildly surprising but he knew that she was struggling. He could feel her desire and her passion. And he could feel her trepidation at what was going to happen in this room. He failed to see what answers she could provide him, what secrets she could reveal that would change what he was coming to feel for her but that she was disturbed by the possibility was unmistakable.
The door hissed and air rushed out at them lifting the shorter tendrils around her face. She pushed on the handle and stepped forward. The large door opened inward and Evan followed her inside the room. The brightness was a bit overwhelming. The air was cool, very cool and rather humid. It was an odd combination. She stepped aside and said nothing as he took in the room. The walls were covered with large glass-fronted shelves. They held books, rows upon rows of books. Tall rows of shelving, sealed in glass as well, began some ten yards in and ran at intervals. This room must stretch back from the door over two hundred yards. To one side of the door was a large rack that held parchment rolls. It was also covered with glass casing and had a panel of buttons similar to the one that controlled the door.
It was an enormous collection. If one counted the scrolls, there were easily a million books in this room. In the space directly inside the door, before the rows of standing shelves began, there sat a large desk and a long table. The desk was clear of books and papers. The table however held several scrolls and one enormous book lying on a bookstand in the center.
He turned to look at her and she was watching him carefully. “This is your library?” He smiled. Alexi was a master of understatement.
She only nodded. She didn’t want to speak, once she started speaking she would have to start the revelations. She turned from him and grabbed a sweater from a hook by the door. “Here, Evan. You’ll get cold soon. This is Father’s. He won’t mind your using it.”
Evan slid the black cardigan on over the red shirt he had tucked into khaki pants. Her eyes closed for a moment, her face pained, before clearing and he watched her struggle to place a calm look on her face. He willed her to tell him what was wrong, why she suddenly seemed so distraught.
The color combination had startled her. Black and red. Just like the pajamas worn by that little boy on that night so long ago. They had been decorated by small golden moons and stars.
Again her sorrow pulled at him. He wrapped his arms around her and smiled at her. “What is it you need to tell me, Kira? I can’t think of any questions that you and Alexi have left unanswered, at least not any I’d expect to find the answers to in the pages of these books.” The look on her face was disturbing and he wanted to move on with this as soon as he could, to make her say something of relevance to him.
“I’m not sure where to start,” she confessed. Her palms were pressed against his chest.
“Well, its clichéd but how about the beginning.”
She nodded and moved away to the table. “What if we start with the history of history? Evan what do you know about the origins of our people, of Weres and werewolves?”
He shrugged, this wasn’t what he expected but he did ask her to begin at the beginning. He moved up behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder. He hoped she could sense his affection, his desire to comfort her as much as he could feel her anxiety. “Of curse wolves? Just the basics. Those we call Weres are not native to our world. They came from beyond the portals, the doorways into other worlds and existences. Once they lived in isolation, avoiding humans. But after the cataclysm that destroyed what we call Atlantis, they were forced to bind their souls to animals. They now compete with humans for this world and its resources. The werewolf, the curse wolf, was created when a Were-Wolf bit a human but failed to kill him. Each month on the night when the moon is full, the human transforms into a wolf. The Weres discovered they could control the werewolves and some say that there are those who even believed they could use the creatures to create an army.”
“Is that what you teach your children? That’s what you teach them about us?” Her jaw was set in an angry line.
“That is the story as I was taught it. The truth is that we don’t really know, just as we don’t really know the origins of other dark creatures beyond that are not from our world. The stories are just as plausible as any explanation I’ve heard.” Evan brushed his hand over her shoulder but she batted it away.
“Other dark creatures? You compare us to the sanvi and the psyvi? To vampires and demons? Mage stories,” she huffed. “Foolish mage stories. Propaganda. What better way to vilify what you don’t understand then to make up such ridiculous stories. We are not like the others. If you believe that then all of this is a waste of time.” Deep inside her heart ached at the very thought that he saw her, saw her family, in this light. These others were killers. Conscienceless predators who fed off humans with no remorse or hesitation. Humans were no more to them than food.
He frowned. “Then tell me the truth as you see it, Kira. What is the truth about your people?”
“About our people, Evan. How conveniently you forget that.” Her eyes were sharp as she looked into his. How could he be so close to understanding and yet so far from acceptance?
He sighed heavily, “I thought I wasn’t like you and your kind.”
She bit her tongue and took a deep breath. “You are different in a way, yes but you are not different in that you are wolf. You are one of us.”
Kira reached for the parchment she needed. “That story of yours has elements of truth but it is not the truth.” She opened the scroll and placed a heavy glass hemisphere on each edge. “The story you know of the Weres is only partially true. We did come from another realm, another plane of existence, to settle here in this one. We brought with us energy sources that allowed us to synch our life forces to this place. A cataclysm, a terrible earthquake, destroyed that energy source and our ancestors were left with three choices. Adapt, return home or die.”
Evan looked down at the scroll. It showed an ancient map of the world but included large islands he’d never seen and coastal lines for existing continents he knew to be wrong. There was a large land bridge connecting Africa and Spain. The Bering Strait was filled. One shouldn’t be able to see the large strip of land between Asia and North America that had been used for migration during the last ice age. Kira did not move away when he placed his hand on her back as he looked over her shoulder. The wolf in him grumbled happily.
What stood out most on this map was the large island almost the size of a subcontinent that stood where nothing should stand, in the midst of Mediterranean Sea. The whole was marked with a series of symbols he couldn’t read. Kira continued.
“There was no Atlantis, not the way that human stories tell it. There was a land mass that was raised from the depths of the sea by our ancestors, the first to come to this world.” She turned to look at him. “They came here looking for peace, Evan. They did not take what belonged to anyone else, instead they used the youth of the planet to their advantage and coaxed to the surface a place where they could live. It was near pockets of human development but they avoided them. Humans weren’t ready yet and the ancient ones had no desire to interfere with their natur
al evolution.”
“So these benevolent beings from another dimension come to our world and set up shop. They don’t prey on the weak, they simply live in a happy little Utopia that they will one day share with us pitiful humans if we ever advance far enough.” Evan couldn’t shake his years of indoctrination and it came out in the skeptical tone of his voice.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Kira said, trying to keep her voice calm. The contrast between the soft stroke of his hand on the small of her back and the irritating words he was speaking was making it hard for her to concentrate. “The ancient ones were by nature pacifists. They’d had enough of the war and fighting in the homeland and just wished for some place to escape it.” She ignored Evan’s disbelieving grunt.
“As I said, tragedy changed that. The land they had raised would soon return to the sea when they no longer had the power to keep it. The only way to stay in this new world, one they had now lived in for several centuries, was to find a way to merge their life forces with the rhythms of their adopted home. The only way to do that was either to prey upon the humans, using their life forces to stabilize their own or to tie themselves to other creatures of this land. They chose to leave the humans in peace.” She pulled a sheaf of papers out from under one edge of the map and opened it. The top sheet held a drawing of a great circle. The circle had been divided into twelve sections.
“It looks like King Arthur’s round table,” Evan remarked.
“Emrys Merlin, or more accurately Merlin Ambrosius, was a mage who guided Arthur. As he remains the only human ever to have stood before what you people mistakenly persist in calling the Atlantean Council and not because he was such a wonderful guy I might add, it is not so hard a thing to believe he may have retained a memory of the event,” Kira said snidely. Why is it that it always came back to Arthur? If not he then that fool Plato and the gifted’s mutation of his Atlantis theory. Both annoyed the hell out of her.
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