Feral (7 page)

Caius pulled him into a headlock, rasping his scalp with his knuckles, trying to diffuse the situation.
  “You’re right, Runt,” he agreed.  “She could.”

“Don’t fill his head with false hopes, Caius!” Lucius snapped, dropping down from his barstool, hands fisted at his sides.  “If
she’s still alive, she’s obviously doesn’t want us!  He’s gotta grow up and face the facts!  He’s not a damn whelp anymore!”

Storming from the room, Lucius knocked the lamp from the table.  It dropped to the floor with a loud pop,
breaking the bulb and knocking the shade off base.  Crispin wrenched free from Caius’s hold and ran in the opposite direction, out the front door.  The storm door slammed closed with a loud, aluminum thwack.  I could feel my face flush in the resounding silence.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, mortified.  Crossing the room, I picked up the lamp and righted it.  The shade hung askew.  I fiddled with it vainly for a few minutes before I gave up.  “Will he have gone far?”

“No, there’s a park up the street.  He usually goes there,” said Caius.  “I should go see if he’s alright, though.”

“I should come with you,” I said.  “It was my fault.”

Caius grinned wryly.  “Oh Crispin will just
love
that.”  Holding the door open, he stepped aside so I could pass.

“Wait!”
Bacchus objected.  Crossing the room, he picked up one of the bags from their shopping excursion and extracted a largish shoebox.  “Your sneakers were a mess so we picked you up a new pair of shoes.”  Opening the box, he let the lid fall to the floor and pulled out a pair of beige Uggs.

“No, I can’t take those.  Do you know how expensive they are?”

Cocking his head to the side, he gazed curiously.  “Don’t you like them?”

“Of course I do, but—”

“Good, cause we already paid for them.  Besides you can’t walk around barefoot.”  Refusing to take no for an answer, he started yanking out the balled up tissue paper from the toes and dropping them next to the lid.  “Here.  Put them on.”  He jabbed them in my direction.

Sighing in defeat, I took the shoes and slid them onto my feet.  Admittedly, they were soft and cushy.  And they fit.
  I wriggled my toes, amazed they got the size right.

“Don’t worry,” Max called from the kitchen.  “I’ll clean up the leftovers
!”

“He ain
’t kidding, either.  He’ll lick the pan clean.”  Rolling his eyes, Caius turned and pushed open the door.  “After you.”

Shaking my hea
d, I walked through the door and trod down the porch stairs.  As I followed the twins up the street, my thoughts turned toward the dynamics of their family.  Considering the trials they’d endured, they were remarkably well adjusted.  Like me, I noted, they were fluent in the use of sarcasm.  We’d get along fine.  With the odd exception or two.

“What’
s a cur?” I wondered aloud.

“
A cur is someone who’s turned after being bitten,” Caius explained.  “Half breeds.  Mutts if you will.  No offense.”

Well if that didn’t expand my list of questions.  “So…how old is Hailey?”
  It must’ve been horrible.  A child her age attacked like I was.  She must’ve been traumatized.

“T
wenty three.”

“What?” I blurted, my voice
going up in question.

“She’s twenty three,” Bacchus repeated.  “Born—pureblood lycanthrope age naturally until they reach their prime.  Cur are created, immortalized at the age they were bitten.”

“What—why would anyone do that to a child?”

“They wouldn’t.”

“But they did, obviously,” I pointed out.

“
She wasn’t meant to live, Thale.”

“From what we’ve gotten from her, she and her mother were hiking in the park when they got lost,” Caius elaborated.  “Before they could find their way back to their car, it grew dark.  It’s not the place to be after nightfall, if you catch my meaning.  The forest becomes a lycanthrope hunting ground.  They killed her mother and they would’ve killed her too had the park rangers not disrupted their attack.  As it stood, she was bitten several times.”

“But how did she end up with you?”

“We found her in the park.
  Adopted her.”

“She doesn’t speak much of what happened between the attack and the time we found her, except that she returned to the park to find her creator.  Naturally, he rejected her from his pack.  As far as we know, she spent the next six years there, hiding out.  She had nowhere else to go.  Her mother was dead.  She had no other family.  And even if she did, she was afraid of harming anyone.  She became a virtual recluse, living off the land and avoiding people.”

I shivered, thinking of what it would’ve been like if Marcus left me there alone, bleeding and infected, ignorant of what had attacked me.  Ignorant of the things to come, the change especially.  What would I have done if Icarus hadn’t taken me in?  This was hard to accept, even with his help.  I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I had no one to answer my questions.

“Why was she rejected?  I can’t believe that if she met others of your kind that they wouldn’t help her.  She was just a
kid.”

“She’s an outcast, a burden.  She brings nothing to the pack.  She’s an extra mouth to feed.  She’s too small to fight.  And she can’t bear children.”

I stopped, my mouth popping open.

“We obviously don’t feel that way about her,
Thale,” Bacchus quickly pointed out.  “But most lycanthrope do.”

“Bearing children?  I’m sorry, but that sounds so
…obsolescent.”  I wanted to say chauvinistic, but it was cliché and inappropriate.  Maybe I should’ve said primitive or barbaric.  I didn’t know if that was right either, though.  What I did know was that we were living in the twenty first century.  Fertility wasn’t necessarily a prerequisite when looking for a compatible partner.  There was always adoption.

Lord, what was I thinking?  She was twelve.  Sort of.  What a conundrum.

“It’s not, really.  It’s a necessity for our kind.  There aren’t many of us left.  In order to uphold our species, we must either procreate or infect.  Unfortunately, the male to female ratio is exceedingly high.  And women aren’t easily turned.  They die more often than not.  So when our packs war with each other, naturally the women are taken ali—” Bacchus cut Caius off with a sharp kick to his ankle, but I’d already heard too much.

“What do you mean
‘taken alive.’  Do you mean, like, abducted?  Are you saying they take them so they can…they
steal
them for bearing children?  That’s just sick!”

Bacchus and Caius confirmed my assumption with an apologetic frown.

I was seriously considering the notion that Hailey was dealt the better hand.  Why me, I lamented.  I thought of myself as a good person.  I never used my looks as a crutch.  I earned the things I had the hard way; I worked for them.  I had morals.  I never looked down upon others.  I was a firm believer of the Golden Rule.  So why, I ask again, was I being punished this way?

Because I didn’t believe.  The Gods, God, whatever higher beings there were, single or plural, were now seeking vengeance on me.  They were exacting retribution for my years of faithless prayers.  It didn’t matter that I had prayed for other people, like my gram when she was dying or my brother when he had appendicitis.  I had prayed, and yes, while technically it was for others, I benefitted from it, too.  As a result, here I stood—the object of their amusement.

Everyone point their finger and laugh at Thale Llorente.

“So you’re really not a goth girl,”
Caius asked, noting the declining change in my mood.  It was a gallant attempt to change the subject, but offered little distraction.

“No,” I said succinctly, wallowing in self-pity.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Bacchus said.  Placing his arm in front of me, he stopped me at the curb as a police cruiser rolled slowly around the corner.  When it passed, he dropped his arm again. I stepped around them and crossed the road, watching the cruiser coast away.

“No?” I
rebutted.  It sounded deplorable to me.

The park was quaint with a large structure that contained a few modular plastic cubbies, a sliding board and several climbing apparatuses.  Off to the side sat a swing set and a seesaw, all empty, bereft of children.  And in the back rested a small asphalt basketball court, buried beneath a shroud of multihued leaves.
  Surrounding the playground stood a sentinel of mature trees.  Their foliage ranged from bold red to vivid yellow.  The leaves shuddered in the fall breeze, floating and falling gracefully to the ground.  I shivered, knowing what things could hide within their shadows.  Even in the daylight, the woods now took on an ominous appearance.

“What happened to our parents was ten years ago, and on the other side of the country,” Bacchus
pressed.  “We lived in in Washington then, close to Mount Rainier in a small town called Buckley.  Most of the packs stick to the countryside.  We don’t see many here in the suburbs.  Usually just the occasional rogue, like your fucktard ex.”

“That’s comforting!  Really!” I
exclaimed.  “As long as I don’t come across any more fucktards I should be safe!  I mean, what are the chances of that—because I didn’t just come across two different instances last night—and I didn’t get mauled—and immortalized—and dominated—and seriously fucked in the span of one really un-fuckin’ lucky night!”

Lengthening my strides, I
strode ahead of the wonder twins and veered toward the swings.  Tears streamed down my face, and I rather they not see.  It had nothing to do with how red my nose turned.  I just needed five minutes alone.   My life just went from complicated to beyond daunting.  I earned a good crying jag, if not a full emotional meltdown.

I wanted to go home.  I wanted to wrap myself in my rag quilt with its frayed and ratty edges then curl up in my bed and wake up from this Godforsaken nightmare
that was now my life.  Bennie would make pancakes and mom would blend smoothies.  Dad would surf the net on his laptop.  And I would bare my razor sharp teeth and rip their throats out all before noon.

“
Thale?”

Opening my eyes, Crispin stood shyly, kicking the grass at his feet.  He was stronger than I was.  His eyes weren’t even the slightest bit red.  I envied that, wearing my emotions for everyone to see.  Almost as quickly, I felt guilty that I envied his familiarity with grief.

“Swing double?” he asked.

Wordlessly, I widened the chains on the swing so he could climb through.  He grabbed the metal links above my hands and pulled his weight up then slid his legs over mine, straddling my waist.  When he settled in place, he smiled sheepishly, his cheeks reddening.

“Can’t reach the ground.  You’ll have to start us out.”

Pushing backward with my legs, he leaned back, counterbalancing my weight.  Swiftly, I lifted my feet.  We began pumping our legs, gaining momentum until the swing reached height.

“Higher,” he directed.  “And close your eyes.  I want that moment when you’re suspended in air, weightless, when your heart jumps into your throat.  It’s like a mini heart attack.  That’s what we need right now.”

I smiled.  Crispin smiled, too.  And we began pumping harder, each shifting our weight on the downswing, forcing the swing higher.  The smile never left our faces as we reached the summit and hung there, suspended in space for one heart stopping moment.  As we fell back down with a sharp snap of the chains, we broke down into a fit of giggles.

“Thank you, Crispin,” I said gratefully.  “I
did
need that.”

Crispin shrugged with forced nonchalance.  “Personally, I prefer bosom hugs, but I’ll make due.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “you will.”  Holding on with one hand, I grabbed his ankle with the other, nearly dumping him backwards.  He retaliated, of course, and it quickly became an all out war.  For a few minutes, I was able to forget about the family to whom I couldn’t return.

Crispin’s face falling signaled the end of my brief respite from reality.  “I think we’re in big trouble,” he whispered, eyes fixed over my shoulder.  I needn’t ask whom he was watching.

“Get home,” Icarus ordered tersely.  Hastily, Crispin climbed off my lap, untangling his legs from the swing.  He turned back a few times, glancing over his shoulder before he loped out of sight.  Icarus then turned his glare on me.  “You’re not to leave the house!  In fact, you’re not to freakin’ peek out the window without first asking!  Is that understood?”

“It was our fault,” Bacchus said quickly.

“You’re damn right it is,” Icarus agreed.  “But it’s my problem now, isn’t it?  What if someone sees her with us?  Do you know what kind of trouble it would cause?”

Guiltily, m
y eyes dropped to the ground.  As did the Wonder Twin’s, evidentially, because Icarus pinched his eyes shut, infuriated.  “Someone saw you.”

“The police,” Caius answered.  “They were patrolling.  But maybe they didn’t notice her.  He was turning the corner.  He might not have gotten a good look.”

Icarus scoffed.  “Not notice Thaleia?”