There was an anxious look on his face that belied the casual nature of his question. I could tell how desperately he wanted me to say yes. And to mean it.
“Yes, I can feel…something. Everything. What is it?”
I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to stay shut. I was more than a little awestruck by what I was experiencing. To say that it was overwhelming would’ve been a gargantuan understatement.
I didn’t realize that Trace had released my hand until he stepped in front of me, turning to fully face me.
“Hold up your hand,” he whispered. “Like this,” he indicated, holding his hand up in the universal stop sign, his palm facing me.
The light breeze carried the sweet, minty scent of his breath to my nostrils. It cooled the perspiration that had gathered on my brow causing chills to break out on my chest and spread down my arms. Without question, I did as he asked.
Once my hand was in front of me, a mirror of his, our eyes met and locked. I thought for a moment I saw the warm amber swirl like the honey they so closely resembled. I caught my breath just as he slowly began moving his hand toward mine.
Neither of us looked away when the sensation erupted. My palm felt as though the water that I heard in the background stirred beneath my skin. It was simultaneously warm and cool, and more soothing than anything I’d ever experienced. It was like being completely exhausted and finally resting your head on your pillow.
Then he moved his palm even closer.
Although the tugging sensation was familiar, I didn’t recognize it right away. I was too mesmerized by Trace’s fathomless eyes. It was the movement that finally drew my gaze away from his and down toward our hands.
Several thin, red wispy tendrils rose from my palm to twirl and writhe in the air above our hands. Moments later, thick black ones danced away from Trace’s skin to join mine, where they entwined in a lover’s embrace. I watched them curl around each other, at times losing track of which one was which as their colors blurred together and they melded into a single wavy thread.
“We were made for each other. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you see that we make each other stronger?”
Trace’s voice was so low and soft, I had to glance away from the strange smoke to make sure he’d even spoken. He was watching me, as if awaiting a response.
Once again, I found myself tongue-tied, as though my body was physically preventing me from speaking the words that I so longed to say, the words that would assure him that my heart was his. And that it always had been.
But there wouldn’t have been time for that anyway. Just then, my brother’s furious voice destroyed the moment.
“You’ve got three seconds to get away from her, Trace.”
His voice startled me and I jumped back from Trace, jerking my head to the left. Brady was stomping across the field toward us. He was being followed by two of his friends and I could see that they were creatures, too.
I stood at Trace’s side, paralyzed by a growing irrational fear that someone was going to die, and I watched them come. Brady was obviously livid, which had apparently triggered his second nature. I could see his gray skin and red eyes even from a distance. His fangs were bared like some kind of wild animal and they glistened with saliva.
Jace Stewart was hanging back at Brady’s left flank and I could see his ebony skin and wicked-tipped beak despite the low light. The bigger surprise, though, was the guy to Brady’s right.
His name was Harrison Faust. He was a lanky guy who played football with Brady. He was known for having a sense of humor that matched his bright red hair and freckles. I couldn’t imagine him with a temper, much less him actually being dangerous. But then again, I hadn’t known he was a dragon.
Flaming red hair still topped his head, but his freckles had turned to brown oval scales that covered every inch of visible skin, right up to the edges of his bright yellow eyes. As he walked, puffs of smoke flew from his nostrils and wafted through the air like an acrid cloud.
Brady stopped and turned to his friends, saying something and pointing back toward his Jeep. The two nodded and then turned on their heels and walked back the way they’d come.
Resuming his stalking approach, Brady kept his eyes on Trace, who moved to face him, reaching behind his back to pull me in tight against him. Once again, the protective gesture stirred something deep inside me. It released the knowledge that his act was not contrived or filled with false bravado. It was sincere. I knew in that moment that Trace would die for me.
At likely the most inopportune time, with one angry brother bearing down on us, Trace turned to me. He looked deep into my eyes, as if he could sense the path my thoughts had taken.
“I would, you know,” he said simply, raising his hand to brush his knuckles across my cheek.
Speechless, I could do nothing more than watch Trace turn back to face the oncoming storm. When Brady arrived, he wasted no time coming after Trace.
“Stop!” a deep, menacing voice shouted.
Although I knew what the word meant, I also knew that it wasn’t spoken in English. I had no idea what language it was voiced in or how I knew what it meant, but I did. It rang in my head as clearly as if the word
stop
had been spoken outright.
Brady and Trace must’ve understood as well, as even the tiniest of movements ceased in our trio. Every eye turned in the direction from whence the sound had arisen.
Standing at the edge of the river, near Trace’s truck, was a man. Although I was certain I’d never seen him before, he looked strangely familiar to me.
No one said a word until Trace took several steps forward and spoke.
“Dad?”
I felt like my gasp was a collective effort, as if both Brady and I contributed to it. We were equally stunned by Trace’s question, our eyes now turned in confusion toward him.
“Dad?” I asked. “I thought your father was dead.”
“I thought so, too.”
The man Trace identified as his father slowly began walking toward us. He was tall and fair, his pale hair slicked severely away from his forehead. He was wearing sunglasses, which was both bizarre and a little terrifying. His mouth was set in a grim line and he walked with a purpose that somehow frightened me. He seemed predatory. And I felt very much like prey.
The fact that he said nothing else only added to his already intimidating brand of pseudo-hostility. If ever there was a ghost-like assassin type needed to play in a creepy movie, this guy would fit the bill.
When he was within a few feet of us, Trace’s father stopped abruptly and turned to his left, toward the woods on the other side of the meadow, opposite the ones from whence we’d come, and raised his nose high into the air. I saw a long thin bifurcated tongue slip from between his lips and taste the air. Once, twice, three times it flickered until he turned back to Trace and said another single word, spoken in that same foreign language but ringing in my head as though in perfect English.
“Run!”
I knew each of us understood that word as well as we had the first. Only we were rooted to the spot, each of us merely looking at one another and then back to Trace’s father.
When the ground began to shake as though a herd of stampeding cattle was heading for us, we three turned toward the woods, toward the air Trace’s father had been tasting.
And we saw them.
I doubted Trace and Brady saw the same thing, but I saw an enormous army of hairy part-man creatures, an army that was racing toward us with inhuman speed. I recognized some, as they looked similar to what Trace had when I’d seen him in his second nature. Others looked quite different, some even running on all fours rather than upright. It seemed that there were at least five or six variations of creature in the mob and none of them looked friendly.
Shaking myself from my stupor, I turned toward Trace, intent on urging him to do as his father had instructed. For the first time since I’d seen it that fateful night of the party, I saw Trace in his second nature. He was standing before me as a werewolf.
Panic rose up to clog my throat and I turned to Brady, intending to try and get him to leave as well. He was still in his vampire form, but I could easily see by his expression that he was paralyzed.
“What are they?”
The words
I don’t know
were on the tip of my tongue, as the whispers hadn’t come yet, but before I could utter them, the wording of his question played through my mind again.
“What do you mean ‘
what’
are they?”
“Look at them, Peyton,” he hissed angrily, pointing one elongated finger toward the approaching crowd. “Can’t you see? They’re not human.”
“You can see them as they are?”
Brady snorted, although he didn’t take his eyes off the creatures. “Of course I can.”
Shocked, I glanced back at Trace and realized that he could see them in their true form as well, which only added to my confusion. When I turned back to the nearing band, I saw that a few of the beasts had sprung ahead of the rest and were approaching at a much faster pace. My heart hammered painfully inside my chest, begging me with its tempo to leave before it was too late.
Trace’s father’s movement drew my eye. I looked at him just in time to see him tear the sunglasses from his face. I got a glimpse of flashing silver eyes—they looked like shining drops of mercury around a vertically-slitted pupil—but I only saw them for a second before he turned them on those first few wolf-like creatures.
With a truncated yelp, five hairy monsters froze. Their arms and legs were arrested in motion, as if someone had hit the pause button in mid stride. Within a few seconds, they each turned the dusty gray of old stone. It started at their head, as if someone had blown ash into their faces, and then spread quickly throughout the rest of their bodies. For a few short moments, they looked like figures in a concrete garden. Then, with a loud pop that sounded like a crack of thunder, they exploded into a fine chalky mist that blew through the air like a sandstorm. And then they were gone.
The man squeezed his eyes shut and turned toward our group once more and shouted a second time, “Run!”
I grabbed Trace’s arm and pulled, but he resisted. “Go!” he shouted. “I can’t leave him.”
“Trace, he said to run. He obviously knows what he’s doing. We have to get out of here!”
“He’s my father.”
“He can protect himself,” I added. “Look what he just did to them.”
Trace looked torn as his eyes darted between me and his father.
“Trace, please. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
I could tell that he very much wanted to give in to me, but I could also understand his reluctance to leave a man he’d thought dead without helping him. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded getting some answers either. But then the man himself helped tip the scales in my favor.
“Run!” he called again. “I’ll get away when you’re safe and I’ll find you again.”
This time, there was no hesitation. Trace grabbed my hand and the three of us turned and ran as fast as we could to Brady’s Jeep. We piled in beside Jace and Harrison as quickly as possible while Brady fired up the engine. With only a brief spin of the tires as they struggled to gain traction in the tall grass, the Jeep lurched forward and Brady whisked us away to safety.
********
“What happened?” Jace asked for the fourth time in as many minutes. And for the fourth time, no one answered. I was fairly certain that no one else knew how to answer that question any more than I did. So we didn’t even try.
When still he got no answer, Jace crossed his arms over his wide chest and turned his head to look out the window, pouting. After that, an uncomfortable silence filled the stuffy cab with tension. It was only increasing when we’d gone another three or four miles and no one had spoken. So I broke the tension in what was admittedly probably not the most advisable question in the world.