Waken (The Woods of Everod Book 1) (18 page)

“This weekend. I’m speaking to the Council tomorrow.”

“What if they say you can’t tell me?”

“Then I’ll go to Ms. Markov. She’ll support me.”

Tristan slipped his arms around me, and immediately a sense of absolute calm flooded me. His lips pressed close to my ear and I shivered as his warm breath tickled my skin.

“I promise,” he whispered again.

“I’ll wait,” I finally said. “Until the cabin.”

Chapter 15

I pulled away from his arms, going back to the sofa and sank onto the soft cushions, curling up my legs. He sat on the floor in front of me, threading his fingers through mine, and my tension faded at his touch. He rested one arm beside my bent legs, and brought his face within inches of mine. There were still so many questions racing through me and while I wanted answers, I also needed to digest everything I’d learned and seen. So, I let the subject drop and focused on him, mesmerized by the light glinting in his eyes. If eyes are the windows to the soul, I wanted to know what his were trying to tell me.

I gravitated towards him, trying to inhale his rich scent. My eyelids fluttered closed and I breathed deeply. The slamming of the front door stopped me and I flopped back on the couch. Tristan groaned then shifted to face the television.

“Hey, guys.” Tim came into the living room, blatantly studying us, searching for some sign that we’d been doing what he thought we’d been doing. What I couldn’t tell was whether he wanted us to be doing that so he could reassure himself that I was a normal kid, or whether he didn’t because I was still his little girl.

The silence became awkward as Tim painstakingly measured the situation. Tristan finally broke it. “How was the movie?”

“What?” Tim twitched and looked taken aback, “Oh, it was alright.”

“Alright?” Justin exclaimed from the hall, “It was awesome! I’d never seen so much blood and guts in a single movie before.” His face grew animated, “I loved it. Usually these Hollywood horrors don’t do the full out gore, but this one was awesome! The special effects were amazing.” When Justin’s vocabulary got stuck on awesome and amazing it couldn’t get any better for him, so I knew it wasn’t a movie I’d go to see by choice.

Tim sat in the armchair at the end of the couch by my feet and flicked the channel to the sports station. I listened as he and Tristan discussed the baseball results and began debating who was the greatest player to ever pick up a bat.

The tension that had built in Tristan’s face disappeared. Talking with Justin and Tim, he was just a regular guy, not the passionate man who had been kissing me, nor the mysterious boy who refused to reveal himself completely.

Under my inquisitive gaze, he turned to me, breaking off his comment to Tim mid-sentence. “I should go,” he said. “You’re tired.”

“No, I’m fine,” I protested, then immediately contradicted myself with a loud yawn. “Okay, I am a little tired.”

He stood and then grasped my hands helping me to my feet. I walked with him onto the porch, shivering in the cold. He wrapped me in his arms, enveloping me with his heat, defending me from the harsh elements of the world. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the furious beating of his heart.

It was hard to stand there with so many questions still racing through me, but not ask them. But tempering those were the ones that questioned what I had seen, and heard.

His embrace tightened momentarily, then he let go, placing a quick peck on my forehead.

“I don’t know.” The words left my mouth, answering an unasked question. Could I believe in the story he had told me? The evidence he had given me? Whether it was his question or mine didn’t matter. His lips tipped in a sad smile.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

He leapt over the three rickety steps and jogged down the drive to where his car sat parked on the side of the road. He started the engine and still I stood there unmoving, wishing he would come back and hold me, just for another minute. His touch pushed everything away.

He motioned for me to go and I knew he wouldn’t leave until I was in, so I gave a final wave and went back inside. Hearing the car accelerate down the road, heaviness settled over me.

Every instinct in me told me I was going to be hurt, yet I didn’t want to walk away from him. And honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the rest of what he was hiding. Everyone was acting so crazy about me knowing I wondered if once I knew I would wish I didn’t. What if Tristan was just using me? What if I was some small pawn in a giant game of cat and mouse? What if I was the mouse? What if it was better not to know? Ignorance is bliss, and personally, I loved bliss.

Friday was two days away and what little ignorance I had wasn’t enough to keep me from imagining the worst.

The days after Tristan had revealed his healing ability, it was all I could think about. Thursday morning I was up before even Justin, though I’d barely slept, despite my exhaustion. On the way into town that afternoon, he took in my red-rimmed eyes.

“You look like crap,” Justin said in his typical charming way.

“Gee, thanks. Just what every girl wants to hear.” I rolled my eyes and rested my head against the passenger window, watching the houses whip by.

“I’m serious, Janie. I know you haven’t been sleeping and when Dad and I got home from the movie, you were looking like you’d seen a ghost or something.” He pulled into Trail’s End parking lot, and turned the car off. “Are you having nightmares again?”

“No- yes, but...” I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind, but all I could see was Tristan’s cut hand, the massive laceration on his forehead, healing itself instantly. “This isn’t because of that.”

“Tristan then?”

My voice refused to make the denial, so I shook my head instead. Having Justin come to my imaginary defense with Tristan wasn’t something I wanted to see, especially when I considered the few times I’d watched Tristan fight in the gym.

“Anything to do with Rachel or Bryce?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because they keep hounding you about something, giving you warnings to get out of town. Don’t look so shocked. I hear things and just because I’m hot doesn’t mean I’m brainless.” He evaded my swat with a laugh. “Besides, they’re guarding the door to the diner and glaring over here, so I figure they’re waiting for you.”

My laughter stopped and I glanced over to the entrance.

“Crap.”

Rachel and Bryce looked pissed. It was getting tiresome the way they kept at it. I’d have thought that by this point they’d have given up already. I climbed out of the car with a sigh. Tristan was supposed to meet me inside, but another confrontation wasn’t appealing to me in the least.

“Hey, can you tell Tristan I’ll see him at the library?” I threw the request at Justin, already speed walking away from Rachel and Bryce. Weather he agreed or not didn’t matter as much as keeping my sanity.

Ms. Markov was behind the counter, and I smiled a hello. She looked to be in her forties, so if what Tristan told me was true what would that have made her? Close to eighty? Would she come to work tomorrow looking ten years older?

What would that be like? Tristan said all he wanted was for a cure. To escape the confines of living in Everod for the rest of his existence, to build a life that he chose. If he felt like that at eighteen, I could only imagine how she and the rest of the town felt. Had no one found a way to leave Everod behind permanently?

I wandered the aisles a few minutes, pulling out a number of paperbacks and shoving them in my bag before heading for the stairs. Tristan had mentioned that one of his favorite movies was there and I wanted to watch it before I had to admit I’d never even heard of it before.

The basement was dark, the only light coming from under the closed doors of the Archive and Media Center rooms. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I fumbled along the hall until my fingers passed over the switch.

I paused outside the media room, before turning and going into the archive room. There was something about the Wolf’s story that kept bugging me. Something that I was missing. Something that if I could just remember would put all the pieces together.

The book was there, all traces of dust gone. Someone had been reading it since my last visit. I turned to the page at the back and read the words of the promise again. There was nothing there that filled the empty space my mind had created within the story.

I closed the book and stared at the front cover. The wolf banner stared back at me. Mocking me with its reminders of my mother, of my father’s necklace still hiding under my bed.

My fingers drifted over the etching and I sucked in a sharp breath as darkness engulfed me. There was a swirling sensation, but the whirl of colors that had come with my other visions was absent. A deep thumping pulsed through the air, rippling the darkness with threads of light, until the darkness took the ripples and my eyes could see what lay before me.

I am underwater, the thumping becoming the thunder of the waterfall as my mind clears, but this time my lungs don’t beg for air, pain doesn’t slice my chest in two.

My hands drift above my body, caught in the gentle currents of the water. I push out, straining toward the surface, but no matter how close it seems I can’t reach it. Red rivulets swirl into the water above me, shielding the sky from my view. The pounding of the waterfall becomes rhythmic and steady, mirroring my pulse echoing through me. Eyes drifting closed, I absorb the feel of death, wrapping its way around me.

Panic sets in. I swing my arms out and open my eyes, but only darkness surrounds me. There is no light from the sun, no glittering reflection of light on the water.

Something warm touches my hand and my fingers automatically grasp onto it, a lifeline among my feelings of death. It pulls me up, but still the water traps me, sucking me down. I kick my feet, finally pushing to survive, but watery fingers capture me, preventing me from leaving their depths.

The pain starts in my chest, a ripping sensation that is so familiar from my last time in this place. Then it creeps around to my back and down my arms, until my entire body is on fire.

My fingers tighten their hold on the object as my entire body aches in agony and then releases.

White light burst through and I was flung back into the book room. I glanced down and saw my hand wrapped around the edge of the Wolf book with a hold so tight my skin was white with strain.

“You have a fascination with the Wolf, Janie?”

I spun around with a gasp to see Ms. Markov. She stood only feet from me, but the vision had masked the sound of her footsteps.

“There are few people who hear the call of the Wolf, who can see the path laid before her.” She smiled sadly. “Helena, my daughter, searched for it until it drove her from here. In you, I see what she always sought.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is much that sets you apart from the other girls. Your blood being one.” She stepped closer, lifting a hand to smooth along my hair. I wanted to move away, but her blue eyes looked so familiar that I wanted to see them closer, just for a moment.

Her hand lowered and she drew in a deep breath.

“Tristan’s done a good job of finding you. I have a feeling that soon everyone will be glad he did.”

She turned and walked back out of the room, leaving me with more questions than I could even process. When Tristan came in a few minutes later, I still hadn’t moved. I wanted to drill him for answers, but I’d told him I would wait until the cabin.

One night and I would finally have my answers.

Friday finally came, but my excitement about the prospect of spending three nights with Tristan was muted by the uncertainty of what he would reveal. I was shaking with nerves by the time Tristan pulled up to the drive in a new truck. I glanced out my open window, watching Justin rush out to greet him carrying his duffle bag.

“Man, a Cadillac EXT. This is so awesome. When did you get it? This must have cost you a shit load.”

“It’s my dad’s new one.”

“Dang, he let you take this one after the accident?”

“Yeah, well the car doesn’t really do well on the ride up to the cabin.”

They began talking torque and horsepower, so I tuned them out and finished jamming clothing into my bag. Tristan hadn’t been too clear on what we were going to be doing up there, so I tried to pack for anything outdoorsy; a hoodie, jeans, and my barely used hiking boots.

I was putting on my cardigan when Tristan walked through the door. He drew me close and rubbed my nose with his, inhaling as he did. “Strawberry and passion fruit. Eskimo kisses are good for something after all.”

“Come on,” I said laughing. “Justin might take off on us if we don’t hurry.”

Justin had settled in the backseat of the truck and was squeezing through the gap between the front seats, fiddling with the stereo. Tristan opened the door for me and I slid in, relishing the coolness of the leather seat. He climbed in his side and backed down the drive. Justin was still trying to work the stereo when Tristan jerked the truck to a stop. Justin lurched forward and threw him a startled look.