Authors: Sierra Dean
At least there was something funny to come out of this situation.
“I’m human now,” I explained again.
“What were you before?”
“Half-vampire. Half-werewolf.”
“But you weren’t human?”
“If I’m one half each of two different things, it doesn’t leave any room left over for being anything else.”
“You
looked
human. I mean, you looked like you do now. Only with less bruises.”
It was taking awhile for Holden’s blood to work its magic. I’d already started to feel better, but vampire blood could only do so much. I wasn’t actively bleeding anymore, and most of the major swelling had started to go down. By morning I’d probably still look bad but less like I’d wandered out of the emergency room a week too soon.
“I wasn’t human.”
“How do you know you are now?” She sat back, placing her hands in her lap and watching me expectantly. Her long blonde hair hung in straight curtains over her shoulders, pushed back at the crown with a glittery pink headband. Her shirt was a cute button-up number in cotton-candy color, but it worked on her. Pink always worked on Brigit. Rio was curled up behind her on the headrest, purring loudly, having come out of hiding shortly after Holden left.
“I can go out in the sun. I can eat stuff other than blood. I can’t beat you up anymore.”
Brigit smiled. “So now would be a good time to challenge you to an arm-wrestling contest?”
“Now would be a good time for people to challenge me to
anything
. That’s why you’re here.” I explained Holden’s theory to her and how dangerous it was for me to be around other vampires until we knew what was happening. Halfway through my explanation my gaze drifted back to Desmond, and he and I stared at each other while I spoke to Brigit.
When I was finished, he was the one who spoke. “We could leave,” he said.
“Could we?” I leaned back into the loveseat, and Rio’s restless tail flicked me in the forehead. “I mean it, Des,
could
we? Just up and make a break for it?”
“Why not? What are we staying for? Not for Lucas anymore.”
“What about the pack?” I watched him and saw the moment he understood what I meant. “The pack is more than Lucas alone. It’s your dad’s pack, or it was. It’s your brother’s pack. It’s
your
pack.”
“What else?”
“We have responsibilities. Both of us.”
Desmond got to his feet and started pacing the living room. “Do they apply anymore, though? The pack was your responsibility when you were a wolf. The council was your responsibility when you were a vampire. Now you’re…you’re—”
“Nothing. Now I’m nothing.”
He crossed the room and crouched in front of me, taking my hands in his. “You are
not
nothing.”
Brigit sighed the way a dreamy romantic watching a good movie might.
“I’m not special anymore.” I wasn’t saying it to be melodramatic or mopey. The fact of the matter was I had become something utterly normal and average.
He kissed my fingertips and stared up at me. “What are you staying for?”
“If I leave, I put everyone here in danger.”
“People can take care of themselves. I’m worried about
you
being in danger.” He was looking at my face, and I knew what he saw. Bumps and bruises. Tangible signs I wasn’t unbreakable anymore.
I shook my head and pulled one hand free so I could touch his slightly stubbled jaw. “I love you. But we can’t leave. Trouble has a way of finding me no matter where I go.” Understatement-of-the-year award goes to…
“Maybe it’s time you stop worrying about other people and start worrying about yourself.”
“He has a point,” Brigit chimed in. “If you are human, what good are you? I mean, like, no offense of course. But you totally got your ass handed to you by a werewolf tonight.” She sneered at the word
werewolf
before casting a glance to Desmond. “No offense.”
“None taken?” he replied uncertainly.
“I’m not
useless
,” I argued. “I have training. I can still fight. Only now I need to find a new way to do it. Nolan isn’t useless,” I said to Brigit. “Shane isn’t useless. And they’re humans.”
“But they grew up learning how to fight,” Desmond said.
“And they know how to get beaten up,” Brigit added.
“I think I know how to get beaten up.” I pointed to my matching set of black eyes.
“I mean they’re used to it.”
“And I’m not?”
“You’ve never been beaten down so hard you couldn’t get back up again,” Desmond answered for her. “You’ve never had to wonder if you’d come out of a fistfight alive. And I’ve never been as worried for you before as I was tonight.”
That was saying something considering how many close calls with my life Desmond had seen me through.
“I’m not running,” I said flatly.
Desmond sat back on the coffee table, and Brigit looked torn between melancholy and joy. Happy to see me stay, I guessed, but sad I wouldn’t do my best to protect my own life. After what had happened with my mother’s pack tonight, there was no way I could run. Imagining what they might do to my friends to get to me had left me feeling cold and terrified. If I could keep them safe by staying around and keeping her attention focused on me, then I would do it.
“If you won’t run, you have to stay here,” Desmond said. “At least until we can figure out what to do.” The last sentence hung in the air like an unintentional threat.
What
was
there to do?
I could think of three options, and none of them were ideal. One, I could have a late-in-life Awakening and become a full-blooded werewolf. I definitely had the DNA for it thanks to my mother, and we’d seen I was able to turn. If I were bitten now, it would mean I could maintain my position within the pack and no longer have to worry about how my vampire blood factored.
On the topic of vampires, there was option number two. Let myself be bitten and become a
real
vampire. Heartbeat gone, pulse gone, but I would
belong
on the Tribunal. Juan Carlos could stop trying to unearth my secrets, and the council would have no reason to question my authority. No pulse, no problems.
And last but not least was option three. Staying human.
For my whole damned life I had straddled an uneasy line between two worlds without feeling like I’d belonged to either of them. I was a vampire and a werewolf, but I didn’t fit with either culture. I’d dreamed often of excommunicating myself from the supernatural drama and having a normal life. Now I was within spitting distance of living my dream, only to realize I had no way to make it possible.
But giving up now was like being in the middle of a marathon and someone telling you to stop because there was a chance you might be tripped before the finish line. Except in my case, instead of getting tripped I’d probably have my throat ripped out either by a social-climbing vampire or my own mother.
“I can’t just sit here. There’s something I have to do.”
“What could
possibly
be so important you need to do it right now?” Desmond asked.
“Lucas asked—”
“Secret.” His tone had gone flat, and a cold, almost dead quality filled his eyes. “
No
.”
“It’s not for him, it’s Kellen.”
“I don’t care if he asked you to go save African orphans. You’re not doing a favor for Lucas right now. There’s no fucking way.”
“I need to check on Kellen.”
Desmond rifled through his pocket, then handed me a cellphone. “Call her.”
“I need to see her,” I insisted. “Lucas says she’s not leaving her apartment and she’s been weird since we got back. I need to know she’s okay. I’m worried something happened to her while she was away.”
“Something like?”
“Like getting raped and impregnated by a fairy,” I said harshly.
My words got the point across because Desmond was quiet and looked abashed for fighting with me over it.
“Okay, we’ll go.” He waited and watched me. If I knew Desmond—and myself—he was waiting for me to insist I wanted to go alone. I might have, in the past, but I was stubborn, not stupid. I had no intention of risking my life to see Kellen.
“Can we take your car?” I asked. “Mine might be under observation. People might not know what happened, but Mercy is obviously gunning for me. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“Yeah, that’s…well, that’s actually what I was going to suggest.” He gave a small smile. “Great minds, I guess.”
“We both want me to live. That’s a start.”
“Do you have a wig?” Brigit asked, interrupting my moment with Desmond.
“A wig?”
“Yeah, we can make a disguise for you. Some sunglasses, a wig.”
Desmond and I both stared at her. “I don’t think I need a disguise, Bri.”
She blew a raspberry at me, her bangs tufting out with her forced breath. “You’re no fun.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Kellen had barricaded herself into her apartment.
“Kel…hon, can you open the door?” I didn’t want to make Desmond break it down unless we had no other choice, but at the moment it didn’t seem like she was leaving us one.
Brigit said she could hear crying on the other side, so we knew Kellen was in there, but why she wasn’t opening up was another story. I worried barging in would upset her more, especially if she’d been hurt, but I didn’t want to wait too long in case she was upset enough to do something drastic to herself.
Kellen had never struck me as the type to commit suicide or hurt herself, but sometimes people did unexpected things when they were pushed to the breaking point.
“Kellen, please. We’re here to help.”
“
Go away,
” came the reply.
Well, at least she was talking to us.
“We aren’t leaving until you open the door,” Desmond said. “Come on.” After a silence that didn’t sound promising, his voice dropped into a more serious—almost mean—register. “Kellen, open the door or I will break it down.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but hearing the tone of command in his voice made me think dirty, nasty things. Things that didn’t mesh well with what we were trying to accomplish here. I forced the ideas out of my mind and refocused my attention on the door.
After some dramatic foot stomping, the locks rattled and the door popped open. My first reaction was to ask the human-raccoon hybrid standing in the frame what it had done with my friend. Then I slowly processed that the mascara-smeared creature clutching a bottle of Moët was, unfortunately, Kellen Rain.
She didn’t look like someone who had walked out of a living hell, though. She looked like…well, exactly like I had when I’d been dumped. Like a crushed teenage girl who caught her football-star boyfriend making out with a cheerleader under the bleachers.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked, momentarily forgetting I was here to be supportive of her.
“
What’s going on with me?
” she parroted, swinging the bottle outwards at us and losing her balance. Desmond grabbed her by the armpits and kept her on both feet while she tried to get upright again. “What’s going on with
you
?” Her words were slurred, which told me it probably wasn’t her first bottle for the night.
“We’re here because we’re worried about you.”
“
Fuck off.
” She jerked free of Desmond’s grip and teetered back into the apartment. “I don’t want your…worry, or pity, or
fucking whatever
.”
She nearly tripped over a glass end table but managed to sidestep it at the last moment, and wove her way towards the living room. Brigit and I exchanged wary glances, but Desmond followed right behind Kellen, shadowing her steps while she charged through her apartment.
“Kel, can you talk to us?” he asked.
“So you can ruin something
else
for me?”
Ruin something? I was so shocked by her words I stopped hanging around the door and tracked the pair of them into the kitchen. Even though Kellen’s current bottle of champagne still had liquid in it, she was rifling through the fridge for another. I couldn’t fault her on that since I’d double fisted whiskey last time I tried to drink my problems away.
I also knew if she was drinking this much fermented alcohol, she was in for a doozy of a headache tomorrow.
“Maybe you should take a break from the—”
Kellen didn’t let me finish my sentence. “Did I tell you to lay off the booze when Lucas shafted you? No. Did I tell you to stop being a mopey, whiney bitch when you were dumped?
No
. Because I’m your friend.” She was waving the bottle at me again, and I was genuinely worried she might clobber me in the face with it.
“What is she talking about?” Brigit asked, tapping me on the shoulder. “I thought you rescued her.”
“We did rescue her.”
“Rescue me?” She started laughing and buried her head back inside the fridge, finally finding the bottle she was after and hauling it out. “Yeah, thanks. You rescued me from being
happy
.”
Desmond gave me a worried look, wearing his uncertainty on his face. He wouldn’t remember anything that had happened, including seeing how loopy and out of it Kellen had been when we’d seen her with Brokk.