by L. C. Davis
Suddenly I had everyone's undivided attention. "I thought it was just a mental glitch because I was so afraid of shooting Arthur. It was like I blacked out, just for a second."
"Did anyone hear what he said?" asked Victor. "Before Remus handed over the gun, he muttered something. Did anyone hear what it was?"
A small, trembling hand raised and Maverick's hood fell back. "I did," he said meekly, tears streaming down his face.
"Please, Maverick," Victor said urgently. "I need every word you can remember, exactly as he said it."
"It was something like, 'You don't have to do this, Arthur.' And then he said something about closure. I'm sorry, I can't remember the rest," said Maverick, hanging his head in shame. Brendan came over to put a hand on his shoulder. Jason took his place at Clara's side and wrapped his arm around her, whispering something in her ear. She nodded and broke down with her face buried in his neck.
"Why?" Sebastian asked gruffly. It was the first time I had heard him speak that evening. "Why does it matter what he said?"
"Because the Patriarch possessed Remus and I think whatever he said caused Arthur to kill Ulric," said Victor. "Or maybe it was Prentice. It doesn't matter. Whoever it was, I think they used a trigger word. It's an old form of hypnosis. You brainwash a sleeper agent and they fulfill a command upon hearing a certain word or phrase. Arthur probably didn't even realize what he was doing."
My world spun and I didn't even realize that I had collapsed until Sebastian lunged to catch me. Even his arms couldn't make me feel safe after this latest revelation. "You mean I gave him the command to kill Ulric?" I asked. The words grated against my throat on the way out.
"This wasn't your fault," Sebastian said through gritted teeth. "It's the fucking Patriarch. I'll kill him, so help me --"
"We will," said Victor. Any trace of the emotion he had shown before was gone. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I wouldn't have believed it was ever there. "We'll have our revenge on all of them, but until then we have to be rational. We have to act quickly."
"The window for completing the ritual is closing," said Hunter. He gave me an especially sorrowful look. It would have been infuriating coming from anyone else, but he knew what this was like. He understood the shock, the grief of losing a parent that I had never been able to understand until it was in my lap.
"We have to move quickly," Victor repeated, clearly in his own world. The pack parted for him as he walked over to Arthur and lifted the fledgling hunter's limp body into his arms.
"You aren't seriously going to bury that thing after what it did to Ulric?" Sebastian asked in disgust.
Victor turned to him and from the way they both fell silent I knew they were having a conversation the rest of us weren't privy to. "If we don't do this, his death is meaningless," he said in a firm tone that made it clear Sebastian had not come out on the winning side of the argument.
With a low growl, Sebastian left my side and tore the robe from his broad shoulders. He draped it over Ulric's body before gathering it into his arms with more care than I had ever seen him exercise.
"Where are you taking him?" I asked.
He looked up at me with an expression of pure grief. "To the temple. Victor is making sure that the fucking hunter gets a proper burial. I'm gonna make sure Ulric gets the same."
"But Alex is gone," I protested. "How will you even know what to do?"
"I can help," said Foster, pulling back the hood of his robe as he stepped forward. "I've studied the rights to perform a funeral."
"I'll go, too," said Hunter. He left the hood of his robe up, but I could still see one of the lines of his mark. "I don't know anything about burial, but Alex said he'd be able to teach me if I was at the temple. With his guidance, we'll make sure Ulric gets the burial he deserves."
Sebastian nodded. "We need to leave soon, before --" He broke off, but we all knew what he was going to say. Before Ulric's body started to decay. It was a four-hour drive to the temple, after all.
"I'm coming with you," I said, forcing my nausea down. As tempting as it was to call upon the numbness that my vampire nature could grant so readily, I knew there was a very good chance that if I let myself escape this grief I would never feel anything again. My wolf's sorrow was the only thing tempering emotions with far bloodier consequences. I had always humored myself with the notion that maybe as a hybrid I was immune to the psychopathy that seemed to plague the full-blooded vampires, but the thoughts filtering through my mind dismissed that notion entirely. If I let that side of me take over, I knew even Victor wouldn't be able to put me back together this time.
Hunter shook his head. "You have to stay, Remus. Arthur and I both coached Victor on how to perform a hunter funeral, but someone Arthur knew well has to be there to throw the first handful of dirt on his grave. Someone who loved him."
"That and the hunters are sure to come looking for Arthur's body," Sebastian muttered. "You need to be here, the only place where they can't get to you."
"But he --"
"No," Sebastian growled. "For once in your life, just listen to me. I can't fight with you, not now," he said, casting a mournful glance down at Ulric's shrouded body.
I swallowed hard, nodding. "Alright. I'll stay."
"Thank you. Hunter, Foster, I'll be in the SUV," he said before disappearing out the front door.
I took a step to join the others outside in the garden and barely missed stepping in the small pool of Arthur's blood. I closed my eyes and bolted for the back door before sickness could overtake me.
When I made it to the garden, the others were already gathered around the deep grave and the oak coffin Sebastian had carved to Arthur's exact specifications. The hunters were very particular about their funerals, it seemed.
I had prepared myself for one temporary death that night, but the weight of two losses was too much to bear. Once the adrenaline wore off and the necessity of keeping some semblance of order for the sake of the pack had faded, I felt sure that I would be crushed beneath that weight.
Victor and Clarence settled Arthur's body into the oak box before long. He had been changed into a crisp black suit in record time and he rested so naturally inside the coffin that he truly did look like he was sleeping.
Maybe he was. Maybe a hunter could never truly die.
What was left of the pack gathered in two rows on either side of the coffin. Victor opened the book hunter had used to record Arthur's description of the funeral rites and began reading.
"We are gathered here on this night not to mourn but to celebrate the new life of Arthur Donovan," he began in a somber yet steady voice. Sometimes I was sure that Victor was better at suppressing his emotions than I was. "While some may grieve the passage of life, we of kindred blood know tears to be nothing more than the snake oil remedy of the fool."
"Touching stuff," muttered Brendan. Clara elbowed him in the ribs.
"For we know that when the morning sun reaches its sacred peak, the watchful eye of the father will look down upon the birth of his newest child with great joy and adoration," Victor continued, looking up at me over the book. "Will the beloved of this resting soul step forward to testify on his behalf, that he may pass swiftly through his transition and into the waiting arms of the father?"
I took a reluctant step forward. We had practiced this, and it had seemed a simple thing to testify on Arthur's behalf back then, before he had killed my father. All of a sudden, nothing in my world was simple. I reminded myself that it was Prentice, not Arthur, who was responsible for Ulric's death and that the only way to make him pay was to stick with the plan to bring Arthur back and hope it worked. The one thing more unbearable than the pain of losing Ulric was for his death to be in vain.
"I will," I said, struggling to keep my own voice steady.
"What will you testify, dear one?" Victor asked, glancing down at the book.
I turned to take the flawless white rose that Clara offered me and clenched it in my fist until the thorns drew blood. The
pain was soothing in its own familiar way. It helped channel the grief and rage into something far more productive. Resolve.
I knelt beside the casket and placed the flower around Arthur's right hand, closing it around the thorns until they bled him in the same way. His hands were still pliable. I had taken enough biology classes to know that was still normal within the first few hours of death, but it didn't make his lifelike state any less unsettling.
"I will testify to the purity of his blood and the cleanness of his heart," I murmured, leaning into the casket. I steeled myself for what was to come. "And I will testify to the truth he spoke in life that his lips may speak only the truth of the Patriarch evermore."
When I rose, Brendan, Clarence and Jason closed and lifted the casket as they had practiced. They were a man down now that Sebastian was gone, but they had no trouble lowering the casket into the grave. The golden hunter's sigil on the front of the lid gleamed in the moonlight, but the hole in the earth was otherwise black.
I knelt down and gathered a handful of freshly disturbed soil and tossed it on top of the grave. "I testify to his sacrifice and to the submission of his will to the almighty will of the Patriarch."
The words held bitter irony now whereas they had only inspired vague discomfort in me before.
"Amen," echoed the small crowd. Victor closed the book sharply as the three Wolves began shoveling fresh earth into the pit. They couldn't cover that box soon enough for my liking.
I turned and walked out through the vine-covered archways of Clara's garden and made it no further than that before the weight of my grief expelled all the air from my lungs. I clutched my chest and walked quickly towards the forest.
"Remus, wait." Victor's voice stopped me in my tracks. "You can't be outside right now, it's too dangerous."
I turned to face him, shaking my head. "If I don't leave, I'm going to pose as much of a danger as any hunter."
He stood still and his expression shifted slightly in realization. "You're going to transform."
"I've been putting it off," I admitted. "Selene said she would send me a dream before it happened. I haven't slept in days because I've been too afraid to go through with it, but I can't hold it back anymore."
He nodded slowly. "Alright," he said, peeling off his jacket as he stalked towards me. When he threw his tie to the ground, I stared at him in bewilderment.
"What are you doing?"
"We'll do it together," he said. "I'm not letting you go through your first shift alone."
"But the others --"
"Arthur won't be our problem for another ten hours. We have until then to get you under control."
"But Sebastian isn't here," I reminded him as he took my arm and pulled me towards the forest.
"I'll be fine." He kept going long after we were under the cover of the trees and didn't stop until I could hear the waterfall at the close edge of the mountain range. "Even if I do have a vampire's soul, I've had a wolf's body my entire life. Sebastian isn't the only one who knows how to handle this kind of thing."
"But what if you get stuck in your beastform again? What if I attack you and you go berserk?"
"Then you'll run and find Clarence. Take off your clothes."
I hesitated only a moment before following his lead. A moment later, our clothes were in a scattered pile on the ground. Victor stood before me and took my hands in his. "I hate that this has to happen now, but if you can channel the emotions you're feeling, it will help you through the shift."
"It's not safe, Victor," I told him, looking at the ground. "I'm ashamed of some of the things I'm feeling, of the thoughts that are going through my mind."
"You don't have a choice," he said firmly. "All that anger, all that pain is just going to be magnified a thousand fold once the wolf is released. If you don't open the valve now and release some of the pressure by transforming while it's still a choice, you'll explode and then you really will be a danger."
I wanted to argue, but I could already feel the beast clawing at the doors of my mind. It wasn't the creature I remembered from our mutual journey through the past. It was scared and hurt and it thirsted for blood every bit as ravenously as my other half. I knew Victor was right and I gripped his hands tightly as I tried to follow his instructions. "How do I do it?" I asked desperately.
"Just talk to me," he said in a coaching tone. "Tell me the thought that's burning in your mind right now, at this very moment."
I gritted my teeth. "Ulric is gone..."
"And how does that make you feel?"
"How do you think I feel?" I snapped. He wasn't the proper target for my anger, but in that moment, it didn't matter. Fortunately, he seemed unphased.
"Tell me."
"I feel angry. Sad. Confused. Terrified," I choked. "I just found him, just got to know what it was like to love him and have him in my life, and now he's gone. Forever. The person who pulled that trigger is going to come back to life tomorrow, but when they put Ulric in the ground, it'll be for good and I --"
The pain in my chest began to spread and I felt a familiar sense of dread like none I had ever experienced, except on the night I had first started to transform. The pain sent me to my knees and I clutched my heart again. It was beating so hard it felt like it would burst.
Victor knelt beside me, resting his hands on my shoulders. "This is it. Push through it."
"It hurts," I groaned, leaning on him as my spine began to creak.
"The first time always hurts the worst," he murmured. "It will get easier after this, I promise."
That was little consolation in the moment. My spine cracked and I arched back with a sharp cry of agony.
"The more you let yourself feel, the faster it will be," he coached. "Tell me about the anger. Tell me all the deepest, darkest things you're feeling in this moment."
It was impossible to get a clear view of Victor through the tears in my eyes. Another bone in my back split and I lurched forward, my palms barely catching me against the ground. I dug my nails into the dirt and said through gritted teeth, "I want to dig up Arthur's fucking corpse and rip it apart before he sees the light of day."
Victor seemed staggered for a moment, but he leaned in and caressed my hair. "Good. Focus on that. Hatred is the easiest emotion to grasp onto."
"I don't hate Arthur," I gritted out as my shadow began to creep up from the earth, spiraling its way around my hands and knees. It crept up my flesh and the unbearable gnawing began, only this time, it wasn't so unbearable. Physical pain was a welcome distraction from the weight of the grief that I was sure would swallow me whole at any moment. At least I would survive transformation. The grief I wasn't so sure about. "I hate myself for not stopping him."
"Yourself?" Victor frowned. "Remus, you were possessed by Prentice, or the Patriarch himself for all we know. You were no more responsible for Ulric's death than Clara or even Arthur."
"That's not why," I snarled. My voice had taken on a raspy, almost inhuman quality that made it sound foreign to me. The shadow crawled ever further up my arms and legs. "I saw it. I saw him die, in a dream. It was an omen, a chance to warn him, and I did nothing."
He looked shocked. Disgusted, maybe. Who could blame him? I might not have pulled the trigger, but I was the reason Ulric was dead. At the very least, I could have been the reason he was still with us, and I had passed up the chance.
"You can't --"
"No," I screamed. The shadow surged up to my shoulders and its gnawing legion of teeth began consuming my flesh with even greater hunger. "Don't make excuses for me. If I had said something, if I hadn't taken Selene's word that the dream meant nothing, Ulric would still be here."
"Selene?" His confusion lasted only for a moment before he shook his head. "Whatever you saw in that dream, you don't know that things would be any different if you had acted on it."
"He would have at least had a chance!" I cried. "He wouldn't have died without even seeing it coming. He could have died fighting, not with a look of s
adness and betrayal on his face!"
Victor didn't have a reply for that. He knew I was right. He knew I was responsible, even if he couldn't bring himself to admit it out loud.
I let out a scream of anguish as the shadow consumed everything up to my neck. Despite the mind-numbing pain, I wasn't resisting any longer. I longed for it to consume me, all of me. If the shadow wouldn't kill me, I hoped it would at least eat away the wicked, selfish part of me that had led to my own father's death.
"Remus," Victor said in a strained tone, reaching for me. His hand was the last thing I saw before the shadow swallowed me whole. The gnashing of teeth intensified until it felt like there was nothing left to consume. Every bone in my body shattered and blood gushed from my skinned form. Pain edged out everything, even the grief. When taking a lungful of air became an unobtainable dream, I prayed for a death that never came.
I blacked out at some point unknown to me and when I came to, I was further off the ground than I remembered. My flesh didn't feel like my own. Everything was twisted, misshapen. When I looked down, it took a moment to process the fact that my smooth flesh had been exchanged for light red fur.
This was it. This was my beastform incarnate, and this time it wasn't a dream. I had survived the ghastly transformation process. I shook off the dull ache that plagued my head and turned to see Victor standing off to my side, still very much human. He wore an expression of pure awe on his face and his mouth hung slightly agape.
"You're beautiful," he whispered reverently.
Beautiful seemed a bizarre word to describe a monster that had just emerged from a hellish cocoon. I tried to speak, but found myself strangely ignorant of my own tongue.
He stepped forward and I took an instinctive step back.
"It's alright," he said gently. "I won't hurt you."
Victor thought I was scared of him? The idea was so bizarre it made me laugh, only the sound came out as a familiar chuffing sound. He was the one wearing a suit of skin, rippable and tearable. Nonetheless, he continued forward and reached out to touch the side of my face.