Even as disturbing as his visage was, however, it was his eyes that scared me most. Trained unerringly on Trace, they burned in Brady’s face like two bright red, fiery coals filled with an evil hatred that made the blood in my veins run as cold as ice.
In the back of my mind, I marveled at what I was seeing. On some level, I knew I should doubt my eyes, doubt what I was seeing. But I didn’t. Somehow the whispers that I’d heard earlier on the deck and again only moments before were beginning to make sense. It was as though they’d spoken things that only my heart or my soul could understand. And they did. They understood what Brady was, and they believed it beyond all the doubts that my mind shouted into the silence. My brother was a bloodthirsty monster. And it terrified me.
“Brady?” I whispered, dumbstruck by the entire scenario.
As if in answer to my question, a growl sounded in front of me. It wasn’t coming from the still-hissing Brady, though. No, it was coming from Trace. It rumbled in his chest. I could feel it reverberating through his back where I was pressed against it.
Curious, I took a step away from him, a step that would bring me more toward the front of his body. I looked up at his face and paused, horrified. Trace was changing, too, but not in the ways that Brady had.
I saw him first in profile. Trace’s forehead and chin had shifted and stretched to accommodate a longer nose. It was somewhat muzzle-like and covered with a light dusting of tawny hair. I watched it wrinkle in agitation, like the intimidating snarl of a wolf. Beneath his snout was a wide mouth with a thin upper lip that curled up and away from a vicious set of teeth. They flashed in the dim light like lethal weapons. And I had no doubt that they were.
His body seemed to be in the midst of more change. His ribs flared out beneath his shirt and his muscles seemed to be more defined through his finely hairy skin. His waist seemed thinner than ever, his neck thicker.
Before I could think better of it, I gasped, drawing Trace’s eyes to me. Though they were smaller and sharper, they were still the color of sparkling amber, the color I’d always associated with Trace. And they watched me. Steadily.
I took another step away from Trace, then another until I was standing between the two creatures, looking from one to the other in utter disbelief. It was surreal, more so than I could fully process. I struggled to wrap my head around the truth of what I was seeing. In the back of my mind, I kept waiting for the laughter to start, for one of them to deliver the punch line, to tear off their elaborate masks like the pranksters they were. Only none of that ever came. I watched the two people I loved most in the world face off against one another like mortal enemies, both trapped inside bodies that I barely recognized.
As I stood between them, praying that they wouldn’t come to blows, something I would have no idea how to stop or prevent, I felt a wrinkling, bubbling, churning sensation erupt on the back of each of my hands. It spread quickly up my arms. As the feeling ascended toward my trunk, I felt a tearing work its way through my chest, as if something was literally pulling me apart.
At first it wasn’t very painful, but the longer it went on, the more painful it became. And it was more than a simple physical pain. It was like the pain of a thousand heartaches breaking my soul apart and rending my skull in two. And then I saw what it was doing to me physically.
My left arm had turned a sickly gray color, my flesh feeling cold and tingly. My right arm felt hot and flushed and looked slightly more muscular and hairy. I held both limbs out in front of me to examine them. I was both horrified and fascinated, because, as I brought them together, the changes became less obvious. But then, as I spread them wide, reaching toward Trace at my right and Brady at my left, the changes became more pronounced. It was as if the close proximity to each of them magnified the struggle that was taking place inside me.
As I stood in stunned silence, the tension between Brady and Trace escalated to a level far beyond dangerous. It was Brady’s movement that shook me from my internal struggles and thrust me back into the moment with alarming clarity.
Brady took one enormous step toward me and, with it, unwittingly tipped the scales in his favor. Immediately, I felt the impact of his nearness in a visceral way as it ripped through my body and threatened to overtake my appearance. I felt the cold, tingling sensation permeate my chest, my neck and face, and begin to work its way down my right arm, cooling the warm flush of Trace’s influence.
Although I had no idea what was going on, wouldn’t have believed what was happening if someone had told me about it, I knew instinctively that eventually there would be tough choices to make. Painful choices that would forever change my life and the lives of those I loved most.
It seemed that we all became aware of Brady’s influence at the same time. It was then that I felt the
tethers that stretched between Trace and me reach out to draw him close. Responding immediately, Trace stepped toward me.
Even though his body was only a foot or two closer to me, I instantly felt an increased calm at his nearness. I barely heard Brady’s warning hiss, but when I did, I looked up to smile at Trace so that he wouldn’t feel compelled to draw any closer to me.
“Sorry. I’m okay,” I said reassuringly, genuinely feeling better with him a bit nearer to me.
At this, Brady’s anger seemed to spiral upward, increasing his influence on my body. In response, Trace took steps to bring himself even closer to me, his chest nearly touching my shoulder. Instantly, I felt the shift as warm became hot and the flush of Trace’s nearness pushed Brady’s sway further and further out the left side of my body, like the burn of sunlight chasing away the fog.
It was that insult that pushed Brady over the edge.
With an inhuman growl, Brady threw himself at Trace, glistening teeth bared and deadly. He went straight for Trace’s neck.
If it weren’t for Trace’s lightning fast reflexes, Brady would’ve torn his throat out. But as it was, Trace managed to get his arms up in front of him, wedging them between his body and Brady’s, giving him the ability to hold Brady and his snapping jaws at bay.
My heart stuttered to a stop and then restarted at a breakneck pace. A surge of adrenaline seemed to purge my body of any influence other than my own, as if it cleansed my cells of all things foreign. It was that feeling of being back in control, of being just me rather than a lightning rod for either Brady’s or Trace’s dominance, that gave me the courage and the determination to step up.
I knew that if I didn’t do something, I would have to stand there and watch Trace and Brady tear each other apart. So it was with near-panic suffusing every muscle in my body that I stepped forward, somehow managing to insert myself between the wrestling bodies of my brother and his best friend.
At first, the contact appeared to invigorate both of them, vicious snarling and frantic grappling breaking out from every direction it seemed. But then, when a blast of determined irritation worked its way up from my gut to explode through my palms, I laid a hand against each of their chests and I pushed with all my might, an unfamiliar, guttural sound erupting from my lips as I strained. Instantly, I felt them calm. I felt it in my soul as much as I felt it against my flesh, as if the animosity simply drained away.
Once more, I pushed at the two chests threatening to crush me and, obediently, they separated to give me room to breathe. When they did, I was free to inhale, which I did as quickly as I could. With fresh air filling my lungs, I looked up into their faces. It was then that I noticed with no small amount of shock that they both looked exactly as they had every day of their lives up until those few moments before. They had both returned to normal.
It was Brady who seemed to snap out of his stupor first. With a shake of his head and a look of confused disgust on his face, he looked from me to Trace and back again.
“
What
is going on?”
There was a pregnant period of silence before I could speak, a silence during which all eyes were focused on me.
“Something has happened to the three of us,” I answered.
“Well duh,” Brady snapped sarcastically. “Thank you for stating the obvious. Care to tell me something I
don’t
know?”
Brady’s tone was a testament to his level of upset. He was the consummate prankster slash jokester slash happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He rarely ever got hateful like that. Obviously, tonight was an exception.
“Um, it’s kind of obvious. Didn’t you see him?” I asked, jacking my thumb over my shoulder in Trace’s direction.
Brady just looked at me as though he had no clue what I was talking about.
“See him what? Sneak into your room in the middle of the night? Try to kiss you against your will? Stab his best friend in the back by hitting on his sister? Yeah, I saw that,” Brady said, finishing his thought through tightly gritted teeth. It was readily apparent that he was getting himself all worked up again.
“No, I meant the way he looked. Couldn’t you see him change?”
“Change? Change what? From my best friend into a total douche? Yeah, I saw that, too.”
“All right, Brady,” Trace said, the warning clear in his tone. “Cool it before you end up making me mad.”
“Don’t you tell me wh—”
“Enough!” I shouted, thoroughly surprising Brady if the look on his face was any indication. When I glanced at Trace, his face was wreathed in a smug smile. “Both of you,” I added.
“What?” Trace asked, holding his hands up in surrender. He looked genuinely puzzled. “I didn’t do anything.”
“But you’re not helping matters either.”
Although I hoped my glare would be somewhat withering, it seemed to have no effect on Trace. He was still grinning from ear to ear.
“So neither of you saw anything strange?”
Brady and Trace looked at me, to each other and then back to me. They both shook their heads.
For a moment, I questioned what I’d seen, reminded myself that things like that didn’t happen in real life, that creatures like that didn’t exist in real life. But still, deep down, I knew what I saw. And my heart, alive with the new and profound knowledge of things beyond my normal life, knew it, too.
Without thought to consequences or the wisdom of such an action, I jumped in head first trying to explain what I’d seen.
“Brady, you’re a vampire and Trace,” I said, turning to him. “You’re a werewolf. The three of us were born during an eclipse and something about tonight and
this
eclipse was very significant.”
Both Brady and Trace were staring at me as if I’d completely taken leave of my senses. And then they both started to laugh.
“Is that all you got? Some crazy babble that’s supposed to be cute and funny?”
“Brady, I’m serious!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head skeptically, “you’re not.”
“Then how do you explain what happened tonight? Don’t you think it’s strange that all of a sudden you hate your best friend? How do you explain that?”
“I didn’t realize that my
best friend,”
he sneered, “was stupid enough to put the moves on my little sister.”
“Stop calling me your little sister!” I snapped.
“Fine then, my ‘sister’.”
“Brady, something is happening to us and you can’t let it destroy your relationship with Trace. It’s important that you two stick together. It might mean our survival.”
“Survival? What are you talking about, woman?”
“It’s hard to explain, but somehow all sorts of information keeps getting sort of…imparted to me,” I said, finding no better way to explain what I felt was happening to me. “I don’t have all the answers yet, but I know they’re coming. But what little I
do
know
right now is that you two are changing, but you have to fight together, not fight each other.”