I leaned my head on the back of the chair. I looked up at the ceiling for a moment, recalling the way it mesmerized me as a young child when I'd visited. "There were nine of them," I said. "I know for sure that five died. We also blew up the house with Addie and Alan unconscious inside, so I don't know if they survived or not. I don't know if anyone survived aside from the four of us."
My father stared at me in shock. "You blew the house up?" he asked. I nodded. "The old one where they kept you?" I nodded again. He shook his head in surprise and looked at me with continued astonishment. I stared back at him. "You don't know if they're alive?" he asked. I shook my head. He sighed. "Do you know what this means?" he asked.
I nodded as my eyes found my knees. "Yeah," I muttered. "If they're alive, I just made things a lot worse."
My father barked out a bitter laugh. "That's putting it light," he snapped. "We're going to have to deal with this with extreme caution, Wolfgang," he continued. "I'd rather not start another war in this town; however, we do need to prepare for battle. You train her and you teach her everything she needs to know so that she may survive this. I cannot have her die because I cannot have you die. Do you understand me?" he asked. "We will deal with this, and we will pray that the Hunters do not turn their attention to us."
I nodded. "Yeah," I mumbled. "We'll pray...." Not that it will do us any favors. Praying never helped anyone, at least not anyone that I knew.
"I don't think I need to say this, but I'm going to anyway," he said, "I do not want the two of you mating until things have calmed down. Do you understand me?" he asked. "If you mate, she will be pregnant, and I don't need to tell you how dangerous that is for her right now."
I sighed. "Yeah," I said. I had to say that, despite how much I wanted to claim her as soon as we made it through the full moon, I couldn't help but agree with him. Until we knew that the coast was clear, her life would be in too much danger for me to justify mating with her before then.
I left shortly after giving my father all the details of the fight that I could recall. Since I'd forgotten for a moment that I'd driven Riley's car to the house, it took me a second to remember that it was his keys in my pocket. My truck wasn't missing. When I slid into the driver's seat, I felt like I couldn't wait to get home and see Ceres there. It was probable that she was still unconscious from the sedative but knowing that she was home safe made my heart beat a little faster.
When I pulled out onto the main road, I wasn't expecting to have to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting someone in the middle of it. The tires hit a patch of black ice and the car spun around twice before lodging itself into a snowy embankment. The airbag went off and I growled as I pushed it out of my way before I opened the door and got out of the car.
I stared at Abigail as I walked toward her. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" I screamed at her. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"If I am?" she asked, holding her arms out. "Are you man enough to do it? You blew up my house so why the fuck should I stick around?"
"Why are you asking me?" I demanded. It was so eerie to look into her eyes and know that they were almost identical to Ceres's eyes. Green, instead of brown. It was astonishing to me that these two women shared no relation and yet they looked as though they should have been twins. "What the fuck makes you think that I give a shit whether you live or die? What the hell is so bad about your poor, pathetic, privileged life that makes you wish you were dead?"
"She's one of you!" Abigail cried with a voice that shook. I knew in that moment that Alan and Addie had survived. This wouldn't have been about Ceres if they were dead. I mentally swore while she continued her rant. "I've spent my entire life measured against that bitch! Every time my father was in town, he always told me that she was speaking five languages, that she was getting straight As, and that she was president of the fucking student body!" she screamed. "Now, she's nothing but a goddamn Lycan and you love her more for it! You, of all fucking people, have fallen for another of Alan's daughters. That must be hell when you stop to think about how much she looks like me and how much I hurt you, doesn't it?"
I shook my head. "Nope," I replied. "She's not you, Abigail. She's better than you are. She cares about other people. You don't. That's what kills you, isn't it?" I asked. "You're so bent out of shape about her because she's the bar that you could never measure up to and now, she's also Lycan. You won't even dare to condescend to that level, so the only thing you can do is take yourself out of the equation. You want a car to hit you so that you can die? Fine. But don't expect me to run you down."
I started to walk back to Riley's car. It wasn't in so deep that I wouldn't be able to drive it back out, a small miracle I was grateful for.
"GET BACK HERE!" she screamed. "You tried to blow up my parents, you piece of shit dog! You owe me!" I kept walking. "DON'T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME!" she screeched.
I turned around and continued walking backward to the car so that I could keep an eye on her. I didn't want her to attack me from behind. "I figured I'd drive," I replied before I got into the car. I put it into reverse and managed to get out of the snowbank with ease, thanks to the snow tires on the car. I put the car into drive and watched her through the rear-view mirror. I knew, better than anyone else did, that getting away from Abigail was never that easy.
Sure enough, as I drove away, I saw the crackle of Witchfire in her hands. She threw it at the car, and I felt it hit. Since Witchfire was electricity, the car died in an instant. I sighed in frustration as I put the car in park, yanked the keys out of the ignition, and got out to face Abigail again. "You goddamn-fucking-bitch!" I spat. "You can't stand the thought that it's possible for a Lycan to be better than you, can you?" I demanded. "How the hell do you live with yourself knowing that a Lycan was inside of you?" I asked. "Is your daddy proud of that? He was the one who told you to do it, wasn't he?"
"Jesus, you don't know anything?" she cried. "He asked me to get you there, but he didn't tell me to sleep with you! I wanted to be with you! I loved you!"
"You don't know how to love!" I shouted back at her. "You were fourteen, Abigail! No one knows what love is at fourteen! People shouldn't even know what sex is at fourteen!"
"But I did!" she shouted back at me. "We did!"
"We're over," I said in a slow and calm voice. "It's been thirteen years. If you can't get over it, that's not my problem, but I am not going to stand here and listen to you talk to me as if it was only a few weeks ago. Being with you almost killed me and I'm not going back there. I don't want anything to do with you or your family. I just want to live my life. I want to be with the woman that I love. I'm sorry that she just so happens to be better than you."
Abigail's face contorted and she let out a banshee-like scream. I cried out and had to hold my hands over my ears. The sound was agony and I felt like my eardrums were about to burst. I dropped to my knees and screamed because the pain was so intense. The next thing I knew, Abigail stood over me and hit me across the face with a fist wrapped in a silver chain.
I went down hard, and my face hit the asphalt. I blinked and tried to clear my vision. As I turned onto my back, a blurred image of her stood over me. She laughed as she raised her hand into the air above me. I saw a discolored square in her hand and wondered what it was. A moment later, I felt something powdery fall on my face. It hit me with so much pain in a single instant that I passed out before I could scream again.
I had a moment to wonder if the serum the doctor had given me would work on silver introduced into the body after injection. I wondered if I would be reliving the worst night of my life. What if someone who couldn't see me ran me over. Would I ever get to see Ceres again...?
That was my last thought before the blackness overwhelmed me.
Chapter 18 ~Ceres~
When I woke up, I was alone in the bedroom. I had no idea how I'd gotten here. I had a distant memory being in a doctor's office and Wolfgang telling me that I had to let the doctor help me, but beyond that, I had noth
ing. My body hurt so much, and my wrists were immobile. Upon further inspection, it was because they were in soft casts. I had a flash of a memory of Alan kicking my wrists and breaking at least one of them. My fingers of the hand attached to the broken wrist were purple and the pain when I tried to wiggle them was nauseating. I could move my fingers of the other hand without too much of a hassle, but the fact that it had a wrap on it suggested that it was also injured. I also felt a bandage around my neck and my face felt swollen.
I stood and walked over to the vanity and flipped on the light. The harshness of it burned my eyes and I blinked a few times before I had a chance to look at myself. I looked... horrible.
The bandage around my neck made me think of Frankenstein's monster. My broken nose had given me a pair of black eyes that were so dark and purple that I wondered if they would ever go back to normal. There was blood in my hair and a gash on my forehead that someone cleaned up. I felt just as bad as I looked.
I reached up with a cautious hand to take off the bandage around my neck. I wanted to know how bad it was, and it itched like crazy. It was hard to remove with fingers that didn't quite work, but I got it off. When I pulled it away, I started to wish I hadn't. My neck looked like a blistered mess. From one side to the other was an almost perfect line of tiny blisters. The part that scared me most were the tiny black veins around the edges of the blisters. With any luck, whatever it had taken to save my life had taken care of that too and they would go away soon.
I started to search for something to re-bandage my neck with and then realized that there was no way I could do it on my own right now. I sighed and went into the bathroom to do my business. You don't want to know how hard it is to clean up down there when you have no wrists.
While I was in there, I could hear Riley on the phone. I couldn't make out every word he used, but his tone sounded more than a little upset. When I heard Wolfgang's name, my heart started to race.
I rushed into the living room as soon as I finished in the bathroom and saw Riley pacing with his phone to his ear. "I've tried calling him, it goes straight to voicemail. We have to start looking for him." There was a pause as Riley stopped walking and listened to something on the other end of the line. He turned around for another circuit around the living room. "Yes, Enkidu, I understand," he said. "I'll try to keep it from her, but I don't think I'll be able to for long." I knew he was talking about me. I wondered what he would have tried to tell me. He sighed as he turned to look at me. It surprised me to see a bandage on his cheek. "Because she's awake and she's standing right in front of me," he said to Leon. "As soon as I hang up with you, she's going to want to know everything, and you don't know how hard it is to keep a secret from this girl."
Another moment of silence, some sighs, and a few quick responses later, Riley pulled the phone away from his ear. He didn't seem to care about it as he set it down on the coffee table next to his cigarettes. He picked those up, pulled one out, and lit it up all without a word. It wasn't until he took a drag from his cigarette that he finally looked at me. "I bet you want to know what's going on," he said in a soft voice.
I nodded. "Of course," I said.
"And I don't suppose that knowing the Enkidu wants to keep you out of this is going to make a difference, is it?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Not if it involves Wolfgang," I replied.
Riley nodded. "It does," he said as he collapsed onto the sofa. "Wolf took my car up to his parents to tell them what happened with you," he said. "That was four hours ago and he's still not back. I've tried calling him, but there's no answer. Either his phone is off, or it's dead. He wanted to come straight home so that he could watch over you, but I made him go to his parents...."
"It's not your fault," I said.
"If I'd just gone like he asked me to, he'd be fine!" Riley snapped at me.
"If you'd gone, we'd be looking for you instead of him!" I argued. "Instead of focusing on that, why not try to think of something useful? What are they doing right now?"
Riley sighed. "Searching the area around the house," he said. "They're going to see if they can track him by scent."
Don't you love when things happen right on cue? Riley's phone rang as soon as he had finished speaking. He was quick to answer it and I could hear Leon's voice on the end.
"We've found him; he wasn't far from the house. He's unconscious and in serious condition. Whoever attacked him poured silver powder on him. Bring the girl. We're rushing him to the clinic now."
"Yes, Enkidu," Riley said. I didn't need him to tell me twice. I rushed for the door and was halfway to Wolfgang's truck before Riley was out of the apartment.
It seemed as if everyone was waiting in the lobby. I knew Wolfgang's father, of course, but he was the only person I recognized. The woman holding the little girl had to be his mother, making the girl his sister. It was probable that the other four people were the Guardians. I hadn't met any of them yet.
I stayed by Riley as he approached the group. When Riley bowed his head to Leon, I followed his lead, wincing as the blisters on my neck compressed together. When I looked up, Leon was staring at me with a look of surprise on his face. It made me more than a little nervous.
"Ceres, how are you feeling?" he asked.
As if I want to scream and cry because of how much pain I'm in, I thought. "I've been better," I replied. I hesitated. "How..." I let the question die before I finished asking it as I looked toward the examination rooms. I wasn't even sure if I could ask.
"The doctor is with him now," Leon said. "He's in good hands."
The woman holding the girl walked up to me next. I bowed my head toward her. "You must be Ceres," she said. I nodded. "I'm the Skaapie," she said. "I'm Wolfie's mother. This is Mira, his sister."
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," I said. "I just wish it had been under better circumstances."
The Skaapie nodded. "Me too," she whispered. "Come here," she said before she pulled me into a one-armed embrace. I let out a whimper from the pain, but I dissolved into that hug all the same. I missed my own mother so much that this was almost as if I had her back, even though this woman wasn't mine. Wolfgang's mother was much smaller than mine. I could see where he got his sensitivity and even the softness of his features. He almost looked like a carbon copy of his father, but with deliberate mistakes. I knew now that they weren't mistakes. The Skaapie had taken everything the Enkidu could offer and shaped it into a gentler being, in both of their children.
I couldn't help but to cry. Hot, thick, slow tears fell from my eyes and made stinging tracks down my cold cheeks. My shoulders shook with a soundless sob. That one action seemed to let loose the waters held back by cracking floodgates. I started bawling and she continued to hug me, rocking both Mira and I in the way only a mother could. I didn't cry for long. I knew that I needed to get a hold of myself before I completely lost it. I couldn't lose control of anything anymore. I remembered Wolfgang's words. If I were to lose control of one part of myself, I ran the risk of losing control of all the different aspects of me. No one could afford that sort of outcome.
When I pulled away from the Skaapie, she dried my tears with her sleeve because I couldn't. She gave me a watery smile before she pulled me in to kiss my forehead. "He's going to be fine, Sweetheart," she promised. "The men in this family don't know how to let the Witches take them down."
I smiled. It was comforting. I took in a deep steadying breath, but more tears continued to fall. "Everything is happening so fast," I whispered. My throat was tight around the words. "It's like I'm drowning, but I don't know which direction I need to swim for air. I don't...." I stopped because I didn't know how to finish the sentence. I shook my head and brushed my tears away with my fingertips. "I don't know what to do," I whispered. "I've never not known what to do...."
The Skaapie nodded and brushed some of my hair back behind my ear. "A lot is changing in your life," she said. "It's only fair for you to feel this way. You're part of this pack now," she pro
mised me. "As pack, we are all family. You have many people to lean on for support in everything that you do. You are not alone. Know that, and you'll have everything you'll ever need."
I nodded. "Thank you," I whispered. I didn't know how else to respond. We waited for the doctor to come out and tell us how Wolfgang was doing, I met the four Guardians. Skvaeoi was an enormous man with a military-style crew cut for his blond hair and more scars than I had ever seen on one body before in my life. He towered over me at close to seven feet tall and his muscles looked like they were going to burst through his shirt. He was what I thought of when the name Rambo came to mind, except that this Rambo wouldn't have guns, he had claws and teeth. His name was Richard, and I prayed never to find myself on his shit list.
Scythia and Roulet were a mated husband and wife team. Scythia was Cynthia, a tall blonde who looked like she could have been a model in another life. She was all leg, but you could tell just by looking at her that she had muscle and that she wasn't afraid to put it to use.
Roulet was Hunter, a fitting name for a Lycan. He looked right at home at his wife's side and anyone could see that they were as in love now as they were the day that they met. It was in every glance between them and the way that they always had to touch each other whenever they were close enough. Hunter was a head taller than his wife was, and no less blond.
Rusalki, the final Guardian, was Margaret. She had mousy brown hair and a freckled complexion. She seemed too frail to be a Guardian, but there was a way she held herself that could make anyone think twice before approaching. She looked like a tight spring, waiting to burst apart and show the world what kind of damage she could do. I'd hate to be on the receiving end of that.
By the time I finished meeting everyone, the doctor walked out. I had a vague memory of seeing a blurry version of her when Wolfgang brought me in. Her hair was a dark brown, something I hadn't been paying attention to earlier, and pulled back into a high, tight bun. She also wore black horn-rimmed glasses. She had dressed in scrubs and a lab coat, so there wasn't much else to see of her that I didn't know about before.
Vanilla Moon: Awakening Page 17