Descendant

by S. M. Gaither

  “We used to talk,” Lora said. “You used to tell me everything.”

  “I’m sorry, Lora.”

  She just shook her head and turned away. But it wasn’t long before she spoke again: “There’s that guy again.”

  I turned my head to follow her gaze, which eventually landed on a blond-haired young man sitting by himself several tables away.

  “I’ve seen him like ten times now... I think he’s following us.”

  “I doubt it,” I said quickly, more to convince myself than her. “I mean, there are hardly any people shopping in here. Of course you’re going to pass the same ones over and over again.” I forced my attention back to my food.

  “He’s looking over here now.”

  My head jerked around.

  Lora was right.

  He looked away as soon as I laid eyes on him.

  “He’s just some weirdo,” I said with an attempt at a dismissive shrug. But I watched him out of the corner of my eye until he got up and walked away a few minutes later. A shiver ran up my arm as I watched him leave. “We should get going,” I said, jumping to my feet.

  “Okay,” Lora agreed, eying me uncertainly. She gave her empty Styrofoam cup a shake. “But I’m going to get a refill first. I’ll meet you outside, okay?”

  I nodded absently, staring in the direction that guy had disappeared into.

  Slowly, I collected my stuff and headed toward the nearest exit, out the door and into the blinding sunlight. As I stepped off the curb and into the parking lot, I couldn’t keep myself from scanning the rows of cars, frantically searching for that man.

  You’re overreacting, I tried to tell myself.

  I mean, I hadn’t even noticed him while we were shopping. So what if he just happened to be shopping in the same stores as us?

  When I finally reached my Honda, I threw open the door so hard that the hinges screeched loudly in protest. With a shaky hand, I slipped the key into the ignition and turned it, then dropped my sunglasses from their perch on top of my head down over my eyes. As my car’s engine stammered to life, I leaned back against the headrest, wondering how much longer Lora was going to take.

  After a minute, I twisted my head back towards the mall entrance, thinking maybe I should drive to the entrance and pick her up.

  But I couldn’t see that entrance, because it was being blocked by someone standing next to my passenger door.

  And it wasn’t Lora.

  My hand flew to the lock, but I wasn’t quick enough. The door opened, and a familiar person lowered herself into the seat beside me.

  “Hello, Alex,” Sera said, shutting the door and turning to me with a smile. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

  9

  choices

  “Sera?” I sat up straight in surprise. “Um, hi. Can I help you with something?”

  “As a matter of fact, you can. If you wouldn’t mind driving me home?”

  “Driving you home?”

  Her expression was deathly serious, and somehow I was pretty sure she wouldn’t respond favorably if I told her to get the hell out of my car.

  “I…I guess I can. Where do you live?”

  “Not far from you. It’s easy enough to get to; I’ll tell you the way,” she said as she rummaged through the bag at her side.

  “Okay. But we need to wait for my sister, she should be out in a—”

  “Actually,” Sera interrupted quietly as her hand emerged from the bag, “I’m kind of in a hurry, so I’d prefer it if we could get going. Now.”

  I already had my mouth opened, an argument ready to roll off my tongue.

  I swallowed it quickly.

  Because out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw what she’d been searching for in her bag: Her left hand now held a shiny, silver revolver.

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  “Drive,” she ordered.

  “Are you kidding me—”

  “Drive,” she repeated in the same, toneless voice.

  We shot out of the parking space, accompanied by the squeal of tires, and nearly collided with an oncoming SUV.

  I swerved away from the other vehicle at the last second, and after that I somehow managed to get my nerves under control enough to drive somewhat normally— even though I felt oddly disconnected from the crazy reality I was currently living in.

  I drove for what must have been at least ten minutes before Sera finally spoke again.

  “You didn’t listen to me, Alex.” She twisted the gun casually around in her hands. “I warned you about those people—about Kael and the others. And what did you do? You went to visit them.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a leisurely visit,” I said through clenched teeth. “And how do you know about that, anyway?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “What sources?”

  “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “It’s funny to me,” Sera said with a shrug. “But anyway, where I get my information isn’t really important right now.” She gazed out the window as she spoke.

  I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Okay—well can you at least tell me why? Why are you following me? What do you want with me and my family, anyway?”

  “I’m just looking out for you, Alex.”

  I pulled my eyes off the road and gave her a quick, incredulous look. “This is your idea of looking out for someone? What is wrong with you? Seriously?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Sera lifted the gun into her line of vision, appraising it like she’d just realized she was carrying it. “As long as you cooperate, we won’t have to use this,” she said.

  “There are other, less-insane ways to get people to cooperate.”

  “I thought so too, but apparently I wasn’t clear enough during our lunch the other day, was I? I thought you would have been more careful about whose side you were on after our little meeting. But apparently not.”

  “I am not on anybody’s side,” I snapped. “And the fact that you have a gun pointed at me is absolutely not helping your case, just so you know.”

  “Turn left at this stoplight,” Sera said quietly, settling back in her seat.

  I jerked the car into the turning lane. My fingers drummed against the steering wheel as I stared into the glaring red left turn arrow. I swear every other light at that intersection turned green at least three times before it was finally my turn.

  As my car finally rolled forward, I pictured my story being shown on one of those unsolved mystery shows—you know, the ones with the crazy twilight-zone music that you find when you’re surfing channels, and you don’t want to watch them, but for some reason you can’t manage to look away. So you stick it out until you learn the outcome and all the grisly details.

  Hopefully my episode wouldn’t have too many grisly details to share.

  Or hell, better yet, maybe there’d be no episode at all.

  I’d heard about victims of car-jacking who purposely crashed their cars in order to escape. If it came down to it, I could do that. Of course, there was no guarantee I’d walk away from that crash…

  But ever since turning at that stoplight, we seemed to be putting more and more distance between ourselves and civilization—which meant my chances of being able to alert anyone to my situation were growing increasingly slim.

  As I sped through curve after curve, I started scanning the roadside for possible places to make an effective get-away crash.

  (I thought I told you to stay at your house?)

  Kael’s voice inside my head made me jump, and I accidentally yanked the steering wheel to the left, throwing Sera into me and causing the gun to brush against my arm.

  I never thought I’d be so happy to be hearing voices in my head.

  (Sorry,) I thought back.

  “What are you sorry for?” Sera asked.

  Damn it.

  (Try and distract her,) Kael thought.


  I tried my best not to think anything in response, afraid of Sera’s interception. I simply glanced her way and shrugged.

  “I was just, you know…just thinking about how sorry I am that I’m not going to get to see the world like I wanted to. And I’m also kinda sorry this is how it’s going to happen, you know? I mean, assuming you kill me, which hopefully you won’t because…well, because I always thought I would go some way much cooler than this.”

  My voice was surprisingly steady. But my heart was hammering in my chest. I could actually feel the blood pumping through my palms, a violent pulse throbbing against the steering wheel.

  “Have you ever seen those people who go over Niagra Falls in barrels?” I rambled on, trying to keep talking instead of thinking. “I always thought that would be a really cool way to die. That, or jumping out of a plane or something—something to get your adrenaline going before it’s all said and done, you know? Get it going in a good way, I mean—because this has definitely got my heart racing, don’t get me wrong. But not exactly in the way I was hoping my last adrenaline rush would go.”

  “You talk entirely too much,” Sera said.

  “It’s a nervous habit. I think it’s a pretty common one. I know my sister’s the same way, when she gets nervous she starts talking a mile a minute. It’s impossible to shut her up sometimes.”

  “That’s nice,” Sera said.

  “I find it kind of irritating, actually. I mean really—sometimes she just will not shut up, and I have to—”

  “Stop talking. Now.” The cold barrel of Sera’s gun was suddenly pressing against my temple.

  “Right. Shutting up,” I said, voice cracking.

  What could possibly be taking Kael so long?

  “Where is he?”

  I realized my mistake even as she spoke.

  “Where is who?” I whispered, trying to keep my eyes occupied with the road.

  “Don’t play stupid with me, Alex.”

  “I’m not playing any—”

  “I wonder what could be taking him so long?” Sera said in a mocking voice, alternating between glaring at me and throwing expectant glances into the rearview mirror.

  My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow.

  (She knows you’re coming,) I thought with a frown.

  (That’s not going to save her,) Kael replied.

  I wished I felt half as confident as he sounded.

  (Listen to me, Alex.) His voice stayed confident, but it seemed a lot more urgent all of a sudden. (You’re going to have to stop quickly so we can throw her off guard. When you reach the end of the long curve up ahead, just hit your brakes as hard as you can, okay?)

  (I…Okay. Yes. I can do that.)

  “You can do what?” Sera demanded.

  Instead of answering her, I took a deep breath, and then I stomped on the gas pedal so hard that the momentum slammed us both against the backs of our seats.

  “Driving rather fast, aren’t we?” Sera said as she gripped the center armrest for support.

  “You’re right; I should slow down,” I muttered as I flew around a curve so fast that my car ended up on the other side of the road.

  “Maybe just a—”

  The screech of tires ripped through the air, cutting her off.

  Both of my arms were braced against the steering wheel, but I was thrown forward anyway. My chest hit the center of that wheel with a sickening thump that knocked the wind out of me.

  Still gasping for air, I looked sideways to see how Sera had fared. Her face was pressed against the glove compartment. She was still for several seconds before she slowly, slowly leaned back into an upright position and turned her venomous gaze on me.

  “You’re going to regret that,” she said, her hand reaching up to her temple and wiping off the thin trickle of blood running down from it. She pulled her eyes away from mine and looked down.

  I followed her gaze.

  Her gun rested over the cupholder in between us, glinting in the sunlight.

  My hand fell on the gun first, but hers was right on top of mine an instant later. I gripped the barrel as tightly as I possibly could, but she gripped my hand even tighter and pushed it down, crushing it into that cupholder.

  “Remember what I said about cooperating?” Sera hissed, digging her nails into the flesh on the back of my hand. “You weren’t supposed to be this much trouble.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I said with a grunt as I poured as much strength as I could muster into one last effort to free the gun.

  To my complete surprise, I succeeded—so abruptly that I fell back against the door, clutching it against my chest.

  Sera looked surprised too. “Fine. Take it,” she snarled. “I doubt you even know how to shoot it. And I don’t need a gun to deal with the likes of you, anyway.”

  I fumbled the gun around until I had it pointed at her, and I gripped it as tightly as I could with shaking, clammy palms.

  “Go on then,” Sera said with a nasty smile. “Shoot me.”

  My finger inched onto the trigger, but that’s where it froze.

  Our eyes met.

  The world stopped.

  There was no sound other than my own breathing, my own heartbeat. All of the colors around me faded into black and white as I watched Sera laugh soundlessly from the passenger seat.

  And then glass shattered all around us.

  Pieces of the window rained into her hair, onto my arms. They bounced off the gun with sharp metallic pings.

  Time seemed to switch into overdrive to make up for what it had lost, and suddenly everything was trying to happen all at once.

  I watched as Sera’s expression twisted from triumph to terrible agony.

  The reason behind her rapid mood shift—a massive beast of a wolf— stood in the frame of what had been my passenger door, which was now bent in toward the seat. That door had crumpled so easily that it might as well have been made of clay.

  I lifted my horrified gaze from the crumpled door to the beast’s teeth. They appeared too big for its mouth, several inches long and dripping with saliva as they latched onto Sera’s shoulder. When I finally forced my eyes away from that mouth full of daggers, the creature’s familiar blue eyes met mine for a fraction of a second.

  “…Kael?” I said uncertainly.

  He only growled a deep-throated growl in response, twisted his shaggy, silver head and pulled Sera with ease from the car, and then threw her through the air with a toss of that massive head.

  She landed several yards away on the side of the road, scattering gravel in every direction and sending of cloud of dirt exploding into the air.

  Kael backed his way out of the gnarled metal frame. Tufts of fur clung to the jagged shards of the broken window, and drops of blood dotted the glass, shining a brilliant, pinkish-red as sunlight poured in through them.

  Lifting my eyes away from the shattered window, I saw Kael advancing quickly on Sera’s heaving, broken form. I sat frozen in my seat as she climbed to her feet to face him.

  I wanted to look away.

  I didn’t want to witness a massacre.

  She didn’t even have the gun to defend herself—I still held it in my trembling hands. I kept telling myself to look away, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  Sera stood completely still, fists clenched and a determined look on her face, until Kael was no more than five feet away. She took a single step backward and crouched low to the ground, her teeth bared as if to return Kael’s growl.

  Then things started to get even weirder than they already were.

  I was about twenty feet away, and at first I thought what I saw must have been a trick of the sunlight. The sun’s rays couldn’t possibly have been beaming off her teeth.

  Could they?

  Yeah, apparently they could.

  Because her teeth had suddenly grown into fangs that had plenty of surface area to reflect sunlight. Her face grew longer to accommodate her new set of teeth, and she fell forward onto
her hands and knees. Her arms and legs shook uncertainly for a few seconds before shifting into more muscular, canine versions. Then her own shadow enveloped her, and for a few seconds she was nothing more than a cloud of darkness that seemed to be growing bigger every second, until it finally unfurled, the strands of it whisking away to reveal a massive, jet-black wolf.

  And there was something very familiar about this particular wolf.

  There was no mistaking it: I was staring at the same creature that had tried to drown me in the lake.

  Before the newly transformed Sera had even taken a single step, Kael attacked. His teeth went for her throat, but she danced sideways and out of the way just in time, so he just barely grazed her shoulder instead.

  Sera stumbled briefly as Kael hit her, but she recovered quickly, spun around and threw her uninjured shoulder hard into his side— with what must have been incredible force, judging by the indention Kael’s body left in the ground when he landed several feet away.

  Almost as soon as he hit the ground, Kael sprung to his feet once more, and in the next instant, he propelled himself forward in a single, fluid motion.

  Sera dodged and retaliated with a strike of her own, but Kael managed to dodge it as well. They moved with surprising grace for such large creatures, and I couldn’t help but be a little awestruck by it all.

  Neither seemed to have a clear advantage over the other, which was terrifying—because what was I supposed to do if Kael lost?

  Not to mention that if anything happened to him, it would be all my fault.

  He’d told me to stay at the house. He’d told me I would be safer there.

  Why couldn’t I just listen?

  A sharp yelp tore me away from my racing thoughts, and my anxious gaze flew back to the battle.

  While I’d been busy freaking out in my head, Kael had clearly gained the upper hand. He towered over Sera now. She seemed to be having difficulty putting any weight on her right front leg. I watched her hobble backward on her three good legs, snarling and snapping, her ears pinned against her head. She stopped once she’d put about five feet between them.

  Kael wasted no time closing the space between them. For every step he took toward her, Sera took two reluctant steps backward, until she’d backed all the way up to the edge of the woods that ran alongside the road. There, her stubborn figure remained even when Kael stepped so close that their noses nearly touched.