Stronger Than Blood

by Genevieve J. Griffin

  Don’t forget your dancing shoes.

  *

  The next day was a never-ending exercise in pretending.

  Pretending Brandon wasn’t giving me significant, smug looks all day. That I wasn’t unable to concentrate on anything. That I knew how to cover up my plans for the night, particularly to my brother.

  That one was the worst.

  The idea of lying to him again practically made my teeth itch. The only excuse I could concoct was a study party at Lacey’s. He looked surprised, but eventually agreed. I think he was just grateful I was doing something normal—which just about killed me with the irony.

  So after school I ducked upstairs to change clothes. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, but I wanted to look more presentable than last time. After some digging, I found a decent sweater and a battered but passable pair of jeans. There wasn’t anything to be done about my ugly sneakers. I thought of that inaudible command to wear my dancing shoes, and shivered, suddenly unsure if I could go through with this.

  What else are you going to do, though? Hope they forget about you?

  I shook my head, picked up my crutches and clunked downstairs to where Grey was waiting for me.

  “Something I meant to ask earlier,” he said, anxiously jingling his keys. “About Brandon…”

  I tried not to tense up. I failed. “Yeah?”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  My mouth opened and shut again, completely uselessly. He sighed. “You don’t have to give me that look, B. I was just wondering. That is, if we ever need to…”

  “Don’t,” I said warily, before he could finish. All I could think of was Ilsa’s warning: Keep your brother out of this.

  “If you’re getting ideas about spying on him or something—really, don’t. He’ll notice. You will get eaten alive.”

  Grey turned away, obviously testing and discarding several possible replies. Then he took a deep breath. “Maybe. I shouldn’t be bothering you about this tonight, anyway. Not when you’re going out with—”

  “My normal friends?” I said thinly.

  “Right. One of us doing something normal? That’s a red-letter day.”

  He smiled. I stumped forward before he could see the guilt catch up with me. “I think I hear hi—my ride,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I could hear something like tires over gravel, some distance away.

  Grey passed me my coat. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Despite his flippant tone, he still looked nervous. So I spoke up again, God knows why, but I felt like I wanted to give him something.

  “About Brandon’s place?” I said hesitantly. “I’ll try to find out, okay?”

  Grey slowly nodded. With that I left as quickly as I could. I could only hope Grey wasn’t watching out the window as I limped down the driveway and turned down the street to where I heard an engine idling.

  In the dim evening light, the car blended away into almost nothing. It was black, a few years old, and had its windows shaded. It looked like someone had once backed it into a tree. Somehow I’d expected it to be red and noisy, and I couldn’t resist ribbing Brandon about it when he opened the door. “I guess Antonella doesn’t need showy cars to be impressed?”

  He gave me a look. “It’s the only car we’ve got,” he said. “Put the crutches in back. You won’t be using them.”

  I took a moment to wonder what I was getting into, then did as he said.

  We didn’t talk much during the drive. Well, Brandon talked, while I glowered silently out the window. We were headed up a remote, wooded hill. The pack clearly wanted to be out of anyone’s way. The paved road eventually became dirt, and then the dirt road stopped. Brandon parked at the end of the path.

  “That way,” he said, pointing out a trail between the trees. “Think you can make it?”

  He wasn’t asking out of concern. It was more like a dare. I wanted to be bigger than that, but I also didn’t want to let him see me fail. So I got out of the car. I had to ignore how shaky I felt. It was cold, the erratic wind was unsettling, and I kept seeing movement in the trees. Whatever was out there was assuredly scarier than me. Fortunately, I had Brandon to distract me from it all. Small mercies.

  “We’ve done up the place,” he said, casting a hand out. He snagged it in a blackberry bush in the process, but didn’t react except for a half-hearted, “Fuck.” He sucked the blood off, but I still smelled the unmistakable tang. “Ilsa fixed things up, anyway. Not that you can make the middle of the woods that fancy, but—”

  He cut off when I heard a rustling noise, and turned to see something disconcertingly large race through the underbrush. “What was—”

  Brandon started humming under his breath. He was desperately off-key, but at last I recognized it as “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.” By the time I’d collected myself enough to swat him, he’d already headed off again.

  I snatched up a branch as a makeshift walking stick and followed.

  The trek was like following Pan and Ayu into the woods, but far stranger. I was so aware of everything around me—every odd noise, every breath of wind through the trees. I thought I could see lights flickering through the brambles.

  “Not far now,” Brandon said. When he grinned back at me, for just an instant I felt captivated. Everything fit, suddenly—us in the wild away from everything else. It didn’t last long, but it was there.

  Then we broke into a clearing,

  Judging from the massive old stumps between the second-growth trees, it had likely been a logging camp way back when. Two of the old cabins remained, and someone had expanded on a third, which rambled up into a second story. That one had lights from a jury-rigged power line. Most of the light, though, was provided by fire, and that was everywhere: lanterns staked into the soil, candles in the windows, and brightest of all, a giant firepit in the center of the grounds, from which Kane was removing the last of a roast.

  I stopped noticing the people for the food at that point. It was stacked on a rough-hewn table on the biggest cabin’s porch, and the main dish was unmistakably venison. They’d already put about half the deer on the table. There was something unnervingly savage about that kind of display, but my mouth watered anyway. I couldn’t help it.

  Brandon slipped the walking stick out of my slackened hands, and used it to wave at the table ahead. “Go, go, eat,” he said, sounding like someone’s psychotic grandma. “You’ll feel better.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice.

  Almost everyone was already digging in with abandon. Pandora and Ayu sat beside one another, sharing some private joke and finding excuses to brush hands. Ilsa sat to the right of the table’s head, but that seat remained conspicuously empty. Kane sat beside her.

  I noticed Pandora had positioned herself as far from him as possible, and was avoiding his part of the conversation.

  I edged forward and caught her eyes. She muttered “hello” around her mouthful. Ayu give a little wave of her fork.

  It was Ilsa who finally said something to me outright. “Good. You made it.”

  “Yeah, we made the jail break,” Brandon replied, as if waiting for congratulations. I winced. It wasn’t jail. “Here, B. Sit down.”

  I scooted in between Pandora and Brandon. He gave the empty chair a curious look, but Ilsa subtly shook her head. I could guess what that was about. The Elder would not be joining us.

  Before I could ask why, a platter of food was deposited before me. The only question I could muster then was if the health regimen around here really did include eating your own weight in red meat every day. I gave up and did as the Romans. It tasted as good as it smelled.

  And soon enough I discovered what the party was really about.

  It wasn’t about the dinner, even though there was a lot of it, with my plate and glass constantly being refilled—the latter with wine, and I’d never really had alcohol before. It wasn’t about the conversation, or even about me. Everyone seemed to be counting down to something,
and it wasn’t until Ilsa stood and faced us all that I understood what was going on.

  “We’ve reached another new moon,” Ilsa called. “Still standing, still strong.”

  Brandon raised his glass to that, a little too enthusiastically. Something sloshed over the side.

  “We’re here to welcome a new friend,” Ilsa went on. I tried to hide under my hair again, but it didn’t work. This crowd could cut through all my normal defenses. “B, this is your place now, too. And we’ll keep working toward something even better.”

  Kane’s eyes flashed as he watched me.

  “This may not look like much, but it’s the home we’ve built, the pack we’ve held together, despite everything standing against us.” Ilsa spoke to us all, but she was focused especially on me. “We can make our own rules here. Take control of our lives. And on a night like this, when the moon can’t interfere…”

  She looked up, a strange smile glittering on her face.

  “What do you want to say to the sky?”

  Brandon answered by throwing his head back and letting loose a howl.

  Even from a human throat it sounded like the wolf, like how I sounded during the moons, except all I could remember expressing was anger, frustration and pain. This was something else. It was more like defiance. It was the dark of the moon, we were as free from it as we were going to get, and he was howling like he wanted the moon to know it: it had no power over us now.

  Everyone else joined in. Ayu screamed like a banshee, Pandora ripped out a vicious, primal sound, Kane’s call sounded deep and wild, and Ilsa soared. It was gorgeous and terrible and the scariest thing I’d ever heard. Even so, I couldn’t resist—I howled along too.

  There was suddenly a drumbeat under all that sound. Brandon had gotten up to flip over an empty trashcan, after which he snapped my improvised walking stick over his knee, and used it to hammer out a beat. I couldn’t resist that, either. For the first time in years, I joined the others in something, if you were being generous, that resembled a dance.

  I know I stumbled, and by the end of it I hurt like hell, but there was something exhilarating about it, dizzy and delirious and strangely right. No matter how broken I may have been about it, I danced, and then I fell over and stared at the stars until the drumbeats stopped. All around me, people were still talking and laughing and singing and howling.

  Starting to get it now, B? someone said. I just giggled, too taken by the wine and weirdness to do much else. For once, everything felt like it might just be okay.

  When it started getting cold enough that even dance-dazed little me was shivering, Brandon took me home.

  It took a long time for the buzz to fade. I was surprised I didn’t wake Grey by tripping in at whatever appalling hour it was, or that he wasn’t pacing a hole in the floor with worrying, but he was sound asleep over a pile of books—his usual motley collection of medical texts, folklore, and Internet printouts, scribbled over with notes. I skirted my way around him and headed upstairs. There, I fell onto the bed and tried to take everything in. I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known there could be anything like that.

  And it wasn’t until I reached the edge of sleep that I remembered I’d left my crutches in Brandon’s car.

  Chapter Seven

  I rarely expect my dreams to be normal, but that night’s were even stranger than usual.

  I don’t know, not really, what real people dream about. Mostly my dreams are like my transformation memories—unfocused, over-stressed, and often about being trapped. In this one I’d been running. I hadn’t recognized the wolf beside me, but he kept a steady pace, egging me on. We ran together for what felt like hours until the moon grew so bright it looked ready to burst—

  Then my alarm went off, and I woke in a disoriented mess, having tumbled onto the floor in a messy tangle of limbs. I flailed one hand up to silence my cell phone, then laid there, breathing hard, until I felt more like myself again.

  By the time I’d fully stretched out and sighed in relief, my brother was staring down at me, nonplussed.

  “Uh, B? You…missed the bed.”

  “Unnnh.”

  “Also, you ripped your pajamas again.”

  I instinctively clutched the fabric close. Fortunately, I hadn’t completely destroyed my dignity, but I’d split the sleeves at the seams. Typical casualty if I started changing shape. What had I done to myself last night?

  I groaned and rolled onto one side. My head was throbbing. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have guessed this was what hangovers felt like, but as fast as I metabolize everything, that wine was long gone. Good thing, too, or Grey would have had my head. Still, it left me with a mystery, because something was definitely wrong.

  “Give me fifteen,” I mumbled. Grey, mercifully, did.

  Unfortunately, fifteen minutes weren’t enough.

  Last night, I’d felt brilliant. Alive. Even in the dreams I’d felt good. Now, it took way too much effort to stagger into the bathroom, where I grimaced at the mirror, seeing shadows around my eyes. I must have overdone it. Too much walking. Too much dancing. Too much everything.

  I tried to get ready anyway, but even brushing my hair was too much work. After a few half-hearted strokes I dropped the brush with an uneven clatter. Then I sat on the floor, hoping things would stop spinning. One good day, I thought wearily, and this is how I have to pay for it?

  Grey found me like that twenty minutes later. He didn’t even ask. He just helped me downstairs to the living room couch where he could keep an eye on me while calling up the school.

  I fell asleep again midway through the phone call. If I dreamed again—of wolves or people or anything at all—I didn’t remember a thing.

  *

  That afternoon, while I was still recovering, we got an unexpected visitor.

  I was half-awake and still curled uncomfortably on the couch when Grey went to answer the door. I could see the whole thing: my brother staring in suspicious confusion, and someone giving an overly friendly wave. Brandon, of all people—wearing only ripped jeans and a faded, rain-spattered t-shirt, but not looking the least bit cold—was holding out some sort of offering. It looked strangely like Tupperware. Werewolves own Tupperware? I thought, dazed.

  “I brought B something,” Brandon said, just as Grey asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I didn’t want to know why Grey had recognized him. If my brother had been investigating on his own after all, that was bad news. I tried to prop myself up and protest, but a sharp twinge stopped that straightaway.

  Brandon watched me thunk back onto the cushions and said, “Listen, I swear it’ll help.”

  Grey made a face. I sighed. “Just let him in,” I said, before the standoff got any worse.

  Grey grudgingly allowed it. Brandon sized everything up on the way in, from the sparsely-furnished room to every detail of the people inside it. He gave my brother an especially sharp inspection.

  “Nice scar,” Brandon commented. When Grey’s hand went to his cheek, Brandon noticed me wince.

  “You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?” he whispered to me.

  I pointedly said nothing. Brandon sat on our coffee table, which was sturdy enough that even I hadn’t destroyed it, and lowered the dish. “Don’t thank me. Thank Ilsa.”

  He popped the lid enough to release the scent of venison stew, rich and heavy. It reawakened my appetite in a rush. Grey only wrinkled his nose.

  “It’s what she always does with the leftovers,” Brandon explained. “Says it’s foolproof.”

  She was probably right, considering I was already reaching out in a reflexive, there-must-be-a-spoon-here gesture. Brandon smirked. “Yep. She figured you’d be hungry.”

  I didn’t want to admit he was right. Instead, I looked plaintively at Grey. He stalked to the kitchen, where he started rattling around more loudly than necessary.

  Brandon, having been given the opening, leaned closer to me. “How’d you get this sick, anyway?�
��

  “I don’t know. Probably wore myself out last night.”

  He shook his head. “Weird,” he said, summing up the entire contrast between us in a single word. I didn’t argue. Instead, I tried not to look as shocked as I felt when Brandon reached over to tuck the blankets tighter around me.

  When Grey returned, spoon in hand, there was a long, awkward pause.

  “Still hungry?” he said, his voice flat.

  I couldn’t blame him for being suspicious. But he also didn’t know everything, and I couldn’t tell him. The best I could do was say, “Just give me the spoon.”

  Grey did, watching Brandon all the while. He was visibly on the verge of barraging Brandon with questions. Before he could start, however, the phone rang. Brandon raised his eyebrows, went silent, and waited.

  “Grey?” I said uneasily.

  He grimaced, but finally went to answer. I eyed him as I ate, watching the shift of his posture. From the dull way he said, “This is he,” I knew it was someone official on the other end. The school, maybe. Or more financial crap. Whoever was on the line, Grey already looked tired and frustrated. He withdrew a few steps, obviously trying to keep out of Brandon’s earshot.

  “So…good news, then?” Brandon said dryly.

  “None of your business,” I muttered around a bite of stew. It was, as promised, delicious.

  “Of course. Just…” He looked around. “You guys don’t have it easy here, do you?”

  I swallowed hard. I couldn’t make myself answer. There was an undercurrent in his voice I couldn’t place—an intimation, maybe, that there were other options. Or that we both might be better off if I…

  “Still none of your business,” I said.

  Brandon’s lips creased upwards. “Maybe I should leave him to that call, then.”

  Imagining the interrogation that would ensue if Brandon didn’t go, I swallowed my last bite and nodded grimly.

  “We’ll talk later, then. Ilsa will want to know how you’re doing.”

  I felt weirdly unsettled at the suggestion of sympathy. So did my brother, apparently. Grey couldn’t even hear Brandon from where he was, but when he noticed Brandon’s closeness to me, he glowered.