Eden's Creatures (5 page)

He smiled at her. “Cal.”

“I am Rebeka.”

“Hi, Rebeka.”

“Are you a boy?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You are small for a boy.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“Be brave, Cal.”

Before he could ask what she meant, Caliphy gestured to them from the pavilion.

“It is time,” Stassi said, shooing little Rebeka off in a fit of giggles, her tiny wings flapping behind.

“Your mother is very beautiful,” Cal told Stassi as they moved toward Caliphy at the top of the stairs.

“She is not my mother, she is my sire’s mate.” At his questioning look, she said, “My mother died when I was very young. I do not remember her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for. She is in a far better place than we are.”

Cal didn’t disagree, but had no time to reflect with the pounding of his heart drowning out all thought. It all seemed so surreal. It felt like it wasn’t really him walking up these steps, but someone else. Stassi. The Faedin. Fangs and wings. These things just couldn’t be real.
So why then aren’t I waking from this dream?

On legs with a slight wobble, he stepped into the pavilion.

A light mist curled through the air, filling his nostrils with a heady scent and distorting the scene before him. The Faedin were everywhere. Standing and staring with their eagle gazes.

At him.

Taking his measure. Anticipating.

For what, Cal had no clue.

He inhaled deeply, taking the smoke into his lungs and feeling more relaxed with every breath.

To his surprise, he began to sway on his feet. His sight narrowed to a pinpoint of light, and all peripheral vision disappeared. In a panic, he blindly reached out for Stassi, but couldn’t find her, his hand flapping sluggishly in the air.

Somewhere nearby, someone began to tap out a baleful tempo on a drum.

A loud
whoosh
sounded from the center of the pavilion and flames leapt high, touching the ceiling.

Out of the fire, several male Faedin appeared with ornate headdresses and the masks he saw earlier. They circled Cal, gyrating in some sort of tribal dance. Devilish strangers hovering in close, leering at him, touching him, pulling him forward. Cal found himself drunkenly moving along.

Strange hallucinations filtered through his mind. Dancing silhouettes. Swirling colors. Menacing visages.

A soft chant filled the air. The music, louder now, battered through him with jolts of foreboding.

He knew what it meant.

The shadow is coming.

The knowledge buckled his knees and dread washed over him. The demonic tone of the drums. The singing. The bodies. His legs trembled from the tension.

The shadow is coming.

Any minute, the greedy claws of the shadow would drag him away and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. Someone spun him around and he screamed. Lurching clumsily, he broke free of their grasp.

I need to find Stassi! I need to warn her!

He squinted through the mist and finally spotted her. She had removed the skin from around her breasts and danced unabashedly with her arms raised above her head. She looked barbaric and savage, her mouth open in a wild grin and the flames striping her body in ghostly tattoos.

I have to save her!

Only his legs gave way from beneath him and he felt himself falling. Falling down into a dark abyss. Never to return. Slamming face first into the void and then sharp pain.

Suddenly, the drumbeats and chanting came to an abrupt halt. Someone lifted him to his feet and carried him toward the fire. Stassi smiled at him and pressed her hand into his.

“What…?”

“Son of Adam!” Julius called out. “Perstassia! Come forth and commit yourselves to the strength. Commit yourselves to each other!”

Stassi slipped her arm around his waist and they stumbled together toward Julius.

The chieftain held out a plate with slivers of raw meat.
Bloody
, raw meat.

The Faedin in the pavilion surrounded them. Close. Too close. Cal felt sweat pop out on his brow and he wanted nothing more than to run.

“Eat, young ones! Let the flesh of our ancestors fill your heart with resolve and your muscles with power!”

Ancestors?

Stassi reached out and took a piece of meat, but Cal hesitated.

“Do it!” Stassi ordered.

With shaking fingers, Cal chose a small slice and put it in his mouth. It was the vilest thing he had ever tasted, and he started to gag.

The chanting started again.

“Eat it,” Stassi said, kindly this time.

Determined to see this through, he ignored the metallic taste of blood and chewed the rubbery meat, doing all he could to swallow past the bile tickling at the back of his throat. Somehow, he managed to get it down and instantly wished he hadn’t. A tingling sensation coiled about his limbs. The blood in his veins began to boil, scalding his body from the inside out, setting him afire.

He threw his head back and screamed in anguish.

And, then, mercifully, there was nothing but blackness.

“Cal! Cal! You must wake now!”

Cal groaned. “Leave me alone.”

Someone hit him across the side of his head. “Cal! Wake up.”

Stassi’s voice peeled back the fog from his brain and he groggily came to. Trees loomed overhead in the pitch darkness of the woods. “What happened?”

“You fainted.”

Embarrassed, he slowly sat up and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The ceremony came back to him along with all of the confusion and pain and fear. “Is it over?”

“It is done.”

He looked around and recognized his precious clearing a few yards away. He wanted to cry.

“Can you get to your home from here?” Stassi asked.

“Yeah.”

She knelt down next to him. “We did it, Cal! We can start the warrior trials now! Come back to me tomorrow. There is much you need to know now that you are one of us.”

He nodded, all the while thinking there was no way in hell he would step foot in these woods ever again.

T
he idiot’s home,” Ross Taylor announced loudly from his armchair in front of the television.

Cal swallowed and shut the front door, surprised to see his family still awake. It felt like he had been gone for a lifetime, and he half expected to find that they were the dream after all, and not the Faedin.

“Hey, Cal, where have you been?” Landon asked, getting up from the floor with a look of concern.

The sting of tears prickled the back of Cal’s eyelids, but he quickly blinked them away. “Time got away from me, bud,” he said hoarsely and ruffled his brother’s hair. “Come on, let’s get something to eat before bed.”

They walked into the kitchen together, and Cal noticed his mother standing at the sink. She only glanced at him for a second before turning back to washing the dishes, yet it was enough time for him to see the purple bruise beneath her eye. It matched his.

“You shouldn’t be out this long, Cal.”

“Would you rather I stay home and serve as a human punching bag?” he asked, and reached around her into the cupboard for a box of cereal.

Her shoulders stiffened. “You shouldn’t get involved when he’s been drinking. How many times have I told you that?”

“Get the bowls,” he told Landon and then leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I was trying to get him off you, Mom. Jesus, I’m not going to stand around and let him hit you.”

“I can handle him,” she hissed back. “Just stay out of it. I don’t want you hurt.”

He moved to the refrigerator, pulled out the milk and plopped it down on the table.

“I don’t want you hurt either. Damn it, why don’t you just leave the bastard?”

She threw the towel in her hands on the edge of the sink. “And, do what, Cal? Go where? I can’t support us on my own.”

The expression in her eyes was one he’d seen a thousand times. The look of a beaten soul who couldn’t handle life on her own. Who was always clawing for a strong hand to hold. Even if that hand held a stick.

“I’m so tired of that excuse, Mom. There’s support services for people like us. They can help out until I can get a job after I graduate. You just have to want to do it. My miserable childhood is almost over, but at least think about Lan.”

He glanced over at Landon, busily reading the back of the cereal box as he poured the milk. He’d heard these arguments so many times that he didn’t even pay attention any more.

“I do think of Lan,” she insisted. And then, as an afterthought, “And you.”

“Nice try.” He pushed away from the countertop and walked toward the doorway.

“I’m scared, Cal, can’t you understand that?”

“I’m scared too, Mom,” he said without turning around. “I have been for a very long time.”

He strode out of the kitchen and into the living room. His stepfather had nodded off and was now slumped in the chair.

Cal paused beside him and looked down. At the thinning hair, the dirty shirt and protruding belly. How easy it would be in this moment to wipe this cruel man out of existence. To end his reign of terror. It would take very little effort, really, with him asleep.

Cal glanced around the room to look for a possible weapon. An extension cord, a pillow, his fist. All would work. He imagined the brief struggle beneath his hands as he tightened or pressed or pummeled.

Of their own accord, his hands reached forward slowly toward his stepfather’s neck, shaking with the need to commit violence. To demand retribution for a lifetime of pain. Closer and closer they stretched. Inches now from flesh.

Fortunately, rational thought seeped back into Cal’s brain and he dropped his arms down. After one last lingering look, he walked away.

In the privacy of his bedroom, he fell back on his bed and laced his fingers behind his head.
Did any part of tonight really happen?
If the pains in his body were any indication, then yes, it did. His bones ached and his skin felt too tight. He could still taste the rancid meat in his mouth.

He desperately needed to talk to someone about this whole business. But who? Landon was far too young and his mother far too disinterested. Should he go to the authorities? Talk to a teacher? People in this community had a right to know that winged creatures straight out of a Grimm fairytale lived among them, didn’t they?

He exhaled noisily and rolled over onto his side. Wherever the answer hovered, he fell asleep long before he could reach for it.

At the sound of his alarm, Cal flopped an arm over to the nightstand and gave it a good whack. When the beeping stopped, he burrowed deeper into his covers for a few more minutes of sleep. It went by sooner than he liked and the alarm went off once again.

Finally, he swung his feet to the floor and stretched his arms overhead. A ray of winter sunshine flooded into the room, illuminating the tiny motes dancing within the beam. Outside, a dog barked. The roar of a truck sped by. And, in that very brief moment, the world was normal.

Then the evening before flashed back into Cal’s mind.

Nothing will ever be normal again.

He glanced over to the dresser and the large white feather lying on top. No, Stassi was very real. The Faedin were real.
So what am I going to do about it?