Authors: Tammy Blackwell
“
So, to clarify, you know
about…?”
“
Nicole. Your parents. The
role the Alpha Pack played in their deaths.” Nicole whimpered. “I
know about Liam’s Army and what they expect of me.”
Alex soothed his sister with a kiss on the
forehead. “Liam’s Army?” he asked as he continued to nuzzle her.
The sight reminded me of the way Wolf Scout and Wolf Liam comforted
one another.
“
Yeah, it’s like
Dumbledore’s Army, but instead of going against an evil witch cum
temporary headmaster, we oppose an evil Seer cum temporary
Alpha.”
“
Temporary
Alpha?”
“
No matter what, she’s not
going to hold that spot for long.” I knew the position itself was
corrupt, but I couldn’t image a more vile person than Sarvarna in
the spot. She had to be removed from power, even if it meant I was
going to have to kill her. I might not be ready to do it now, but
Liam would get me there. Of that I had no doubt.
“
You know, I’m not really
sold on ‘Liam’s Army’. How about ‘The Jedi’ since it’s this whole
rebellion against an evil Empire thing?”
I snorted. “That’s what Jase wanted to call
it.”
“
The guy has good
taste.”
“
Well, he certainly chose a
good mate,” I said. “Couldn’t have chosen a better one for him if I
had accidentally made him declare himself to her myself. Oh wait. I
did do that, didn’t I?”
I got to see Alex’s completely shocked
expression yet again. “Jase and Talley? Seriously?”
“
They seemed pretty serious
to me.”
Alex leaned down to talk to Nicole. “You’re
right. All the really interesting stuff happens after you die.”
His words were light, but they sat heavy in
my heart all the same. True, these dream meetings were better than
nothing, but I missed him. I wanted him with me in the real world.
What would this have been like if he had been by my side? Would he
have been the one to save me from the Alphas? Would he be the one
absconding with me? Would it be his job to teach and train me? Or
would all those responsibilities still have fallen to Liam? And if
so, would Alex have come along for the ride?
Of course, if Alex hadn’t died, there was a
good chance none of this would have happened. The exact cause of my
ability to Change was still very much up in the air, much to my
chagrin, but most every theory centered around the night Alex died.
If he was still alive, I would probably still be a normal, boring
human, and the Alphas would have never known I existed.
And they would have gone on terrorizing the
Shifters of the world for God knows how long.
That’s when I had a revelation. I was
already beginning to accept my life as a Shifter, but at that
moment, I was happy I Changed. I might not be looking forward to
the battle ahead, but it was one that needed to happen. Some things
are worth fighting for. For me, this was it.
“
I’m going to do it, Alex,”
I said. “I’m going to Challenge Sarvarna.”
His hand froze on Nicole’s neck. “Now?”
“
No, your brother has made
it abundantly clear I’m not ready yet, but once I am…” In my head I
saw myself on a field with tall evergreen trees and a winding
stream. The ground was littered with the wounded and the dead, and
in the middle I stood in front of Sarvarna, her knife lodged in my
stomach.
No,
I told myself.
It’s not happening.
Talley said it was a future not set in stone.
Or maybe that was The Terminator. Either way, I had to believe
that. I had to believe there was a way I could come out of this in
one piece. And if there wasn’t… well, I had to ensure there was a
back-up plan, someone else to swoop in and save the day.
“
You don’t have to do
this,” Alex said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I looked into the grey eyes I would never
forget no matter how long I lived. “Don’t I? Isn’t this the destiny
you’ve been pushing me towards?”
***
I was jerked out of my dream. You know those
times when you wake up from an accidental Sunday afternoon nap by a
ringing phone, and because you’re so confused and discombobulated,
your heart beats so hard it literally makes your chest hurt?
Imagine how much worse it would be if instead of the familiar ring
of your cell phone it’s the sound of a horn and some random
stranger’s scream that wakes you.
“
What the Hades?” I asked,
my fingers digging into the first thing they could
reach.
“
Some idiot on a motorcycle
cut in front of us,” Liam said. He motioned towards his thigh. “You
know, that kind of hurts.”
I looked down to see my fingernails embedded
in the denim of his jeans. “Oh, sorry!” I jerked my hand away as if
his leg was scalding hot. “So sorry. I was…ummm…”
“
Asleep and awoken suddenly
by a potentially deadly near-accident? Yeah, I get it. It’s not a
problem.”
Of course it wasn’t. There was no need for
me to be embarrassed, which is exactly what I tried to explain to
all the blood rushing up to the surface of my face and neck.
I leaned back and waited for the color in my
cheeks to return to normal. According to the road signs, we were
getting close to Indianapolis, our next stop. That meant I had been
asleep for at least two hours. I took a moment to marvel at how
time turned into a wibbly-wobbly ball when you were asleep. I
could’ve sworn I was only on that beach with Alex for a brief
period of time, twenty minutes max, but in the waking world hours
had passed. Timey-wimey stuff, indeed.
“
I sometimes dream about
him, too.” It wasn’t even a whisper, just a breath of words I
wasn’t sure I’d actually heard. Nothing about Liam’s body or face
said he'd spoken, they were still in the
relaxed-and-bored-bus-passenger mode, but still I waited for more.
It wasn’t until I turned away he continued. “Most of the time it’s
nothing. We’ll be doing something really normal and lame, like
sitting around watching television and then I’ll start noticing
that something is wrong. Off. And then I’ll remember.”
Still no change in position or expression,
but the knuckles on the hand resting on the thigh I had just
molested were turning a startling color of white. “Once I remember
he’s dead, the dream is over. I never get to talk to him.” Finally
he turned, and I really wish he hadn’t. I wasn’t prepared to deal
with the pain in his eyes. “Not like you.”
“
I have dreams like that,
too.” Of course, my dreams like that weren’t about Alex but the man
I killed, but Liam didn’t need to know that part. “I think Freud
would tell us they represent unfinished business, a need to
communicate that one last thing we never will be able.” Not that I
gave it much thought, unless you count hundreds of hours of
obsession as “much”.
“
But you were talking to
him,” Liam countered.
“
How do you know?” Could he
reach into my head like Talley?
Liam looked so uncomfortable I really
thought he might be about to admit to keeping the fact he was a
Soul Seer from me. “You said his name,” he told his knee. “And
then… ummm… you smiled. And then frowned. And then… I don’t know. I
could just tell you were having a conversation. You had
conversation face.”
“
Conversation face? That’s
a thing?”
Without an ounce of humor Liam said, “It is
when it’s you.”
I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what he
meant, but I felt confident it wasn’t a compliment.
I considered what I was willing to share. My
meetings on the beach with Alex were private. I didn’t want to
share them with anyone, let alone someone who would have no problem
telling me just how stupid I was for letting myself believe they
were really Alex reaching out from beyond the grave. But my
conversation with Jase was still swirling around in my brain. All
of this came back to trust, and last night Liam had trusted me with
his past. I knew without having to ask, it wasn’t one he easily
shared.
It was time for trust to become a two way
street.
“
Sometimes I have these
really vivid dreams about Alex. They’re like the ones
before--”
“
The ones
before?”
“
Before the accident.” That
word still felt so wrong in my mouth, even though I now knew it to
be the truth. “I had these crazy vivid dreams where I was standing
on one side of the lake, and Alex the other. And when I say ‘crazy
vivid’, I mean ‘could feel the wind and taste the rain’ kind of
vivid.”
Liam nodded like he understood.
“
In the dreams, that part
of the lake was completely foreign to me, but it was where Alex
took me the night he died.” It had been a date, our one and only.
“I told him about how I had seen it in a dream, and he seemed upset
about it, but he couldn’t exactly tell me why.” Because he was in
wolf form at the time. We managed to communicate surprisingly well
for one of us to be without the ability to speak, but not well
enough to discuss the finer points of dreams.
“
Now, when I dream about
that same place, he’s there. It’s the same as before. Everything is
so
real
it’s hard
to remember it’s a dream.” In the beginning, those dreams had been
my escape. In them, Alex held me in his strong arms and kissed me
with his warm mouth. I was able to feel every brush of lips, taste
the salt of every tear. “It’s not like the accident never happened,
but it’s as if he’s come back to me. It seems like he’s trying to
help the only way he can now, giving comfort and guidance through
dreams.” I couldn’t look at Liam. “I think…” A deep breath. “I
think they may be real.”
He didn’t answer immediately, which made me
think he was ignoring me. I should have realized, though, that Liam
does that when conversations start getting intense. And while it
may make the person having a conversation with him go a little
bonkers from time to time, it was probably a good practice. I could
use a bit more time to think before I speak quite often.
“
My great-grandmother was a
Dream Walker,” he finally said. “She died before I was born, but my
mom talked about her a lot. Sometimes, when she would have a
particularly confusing vision, she would worry about it for days
until the answer would come to her in a dream. She said it was her
grandmother who helped her figure it out, that she came to her in
her dreams. When I was a kid, I believed it absolutely. Of course
her grandmother was able to talk to her in her dreams. It made
sense, especially since I watched my dad Change into a wolf once a
month and knew my mom could predict snow days.”
I was disturbed at the idea of a child
watching the painful and, let’s face it, grotesque, act of
Changing, but instead I said, “You were in Canada. It couldn’t have
been that hard. Don’t you guys have snow on any day of the week
ending in ‘y’?”
“
As I grew older, I started
having my doubts,” Liam continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I
thought it was just her way of working through stuff, but now…” He
blew out a breath and rubbed the back of his head. “What does he
talk to you about?”
“
I don’t know… everything?”
I tasted blood and realized I had just bit through the inside of my
lip. “In the beginning, he was there every time I went to sleep, so
we literally just talked about anything we could think of.” In
those first weeks, they were the only normal conversations I would
have. “Once I Changed, he came less often, and the conversations
got more focused. We theorized on how I became a Shifter. He
listened to what was going on and offered advice.” Not that it was
easy to understand advice, but he did try. “He got grounded after
The Great Escape and wasn’t able to visit me for a month, and the
visits have been really sparse since then, but it’s still basically
the same thing. I tell him stuff, he responds with
less-than-helpful answers, and then I beg him to elaborate. He
swears they won’t let him.” I tried for a smile, but fell short.
“Today we talked about how I now know about the rebellion and my
role in it.”
Liam’s scowl wasn’t unexpected. “Who are
‘they’?”
“
Angels? Gods? The Fates?”
Not that I necessarily believed in all of those. “I don’t know.
He’s pretty cagey when it comes to that stuff. He said if he
reveals too much his visitation rights will be revoked.”
The traffic had picked up as the
Indianapolis skyline became visible. Liam took a keen interest in
the vehicles passing by the window over my shoulder. I couldn’t
read his face. The ever-present scowl was gone and replaced by
something less self-assured. Sadness? Confusion? Heartache?
Disbelief? We weren’t close enough for me to know for sure, but
they were all valid emotions. I had a healthy mix of each going
on.
“
I’m glad he has you,” he
told minivan full of middle school aged soccer players. “It’s good
he’s not alone.” There was a tremor in his voice I would have
attributed to unshed tears on anyone other than Liam.
“
I don’t think he’s ever
alone,” I told him with complete honesty. “I get the feeling he’s
usually with others and our time at the beach is supposed to be
private, but Nicole always follows him there.”
When Liam’s eyes met mine they were
definitely wet. “Nicole?”
I nodded. “That’s how I knew your sister’s
name. She stays in wolf form, but she’s almost always there.” I
smiled at the thought of the little wolf pup who wiggled when you
scratched just the right spot behind her ears. “She’s happy. Alex
is… Alex. He worries about me and you and everything that’s going
on out here in the living world, but he still smiles like an idiot
at the drop of a hat. I think if it wasn’t for us, for all this
crazy mess with the Alphas, he would be very happy and at peace
there, too.”