I woke up in my old room, in my old bed, with my head banging like it was a basketball being dribbled down the court. I still hadn’t opened my eyes yet though, it was easier to process the dreams I’d just had that way. Dreams. Yeah, not really the right word, they were more like memories, under a new light. It was as if certain memories had all been clouded over and Antonio’s big reveal had lifted the shade and haze away from them. I must have passed out from an information overload; my brain had temporarily crashed from trying to accept too much information at once.
That was actually the second time I woke up. The first time I had just shot up-right screaming at the top of my lungs. My brain had fought itself, not wanting to accept the truth, it had tried to reject the merging of recollections I had only thought I knew with actuality. Being smacked in the face by a bulldozer probably would have hurt less. So, I had only lasted about ten seconds before I had blacked back out again.
The second time I had just decided to accept it all. Everything was just fitting like a puzzle putting itself to rights. First it was the things that should have been painfully obvious to me. The fact that the only medicine cabinet in the entire house with three full bathrooms with actual medicine in it was my own. No one else ever got sick, not even when I caught the flu that put out more than half of the school. Never having seen Mildred’s school, ever. Even at ten years older than me I should have been able to recall something, I would have been eight at the time she should have graduated.
Then there were the memories that had been changed, like parts were cut out of my head. The one family reunion we went to at Belle Isle where almost everybody brought puppies with them, that looked more like wolves than dogs. A portion of that event had been hazed over; one of those puppies had turned into a toddler while rolling around in the dirt, then back again. Nothing compared to the last time I got into my sister’s bed in the middle of the night and woke up next to a wolf. All I had remembered about that night was being told I was too old to be climbing in anyone else’s bed, after that memory had been deleted. There were plenty more than just those, I just wasn’t in the mood to psychoanalyze each and every one of them.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I asked my mother without even bothering to open my eyes. I wasn’t ready to look directly at her just yet, I was still too pissed.
“Since the first time you woke up screaming like a banshee.”
“Let me guess, those are real too. We probably even live next door to one.” When she made no reply to that I just kept it going, “Is Antonio still here, or did one of you eat him for dinner?”
“That’s a little uncalled for young lady.”
“Oh really. I think learning at Easter dinner, in front of a boyfriend who also lied to me, that I was raised by a pack of wolves is what’s uncalled for. No wonder you hated the Jungle Book, too close to real life.” That image brought on a disturbing thought and made me sit straight up grasping the sheet. I turned and looked at where my mom sat in the chair by my window with my eyes wide open, “Please tell me you didn’t find me laying in the woods somewhere.”
She had the audacity to roll her eyes to the top of her head at that, like she was hoping to find some patience up there or something. “What happened to the good ol’ days when humans were scared of the big bad wolf?”
“I’m pretty sure they weren’t raised by said wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I meant that literally, she was sitting there wearing a pale peach cashmere sweater with a pair of ripped up jeans. She must have taken the time to wash the fake gray from her hair too. No more Mom bun either, her dark brown hair was now in natural tight curls around her dark chocolate, heart shaped face. When I looked down further, half expecting to see her wearing a pair of heels, I was shocked to see that she was barefoot. And her toenails were a lot longer and thicker than I had ever seen them. “Besides, no reason to run scared now. If any of you were going to eat me, I’m pretty sure it would’ve happened long before now.” She laughed at that, this conversation seemed to be going upside down. “That’s not funny. None of this is funny.”
“It is kind of funny.” She said with humor still lacing her voice, “We were actually afraid that Millie would eat you.”
“Were you ever going to tell me? When you sat me down to tell me I was adopted did it ever occur to you to add on, ‘by the way, we’re werewolves’?”
“Honestly, no, it didn’t.” Mom leaned forward and scrubbed her hands down her thighs, she seemed to think about the best way to explain, which words to choose. “Do you want the truth? All of it?” the expression on my face must have been ample enough because she continued, “You started out as being a family pet.”
“Oh this just keeps getting better.” I plopped back down on the bed and covered my face with my pillow.
I heard Mom sigh, then the side of my bed plunged down with her weight as she sat down. She snatched the pillow away from my face before she continued, “If you want to hear the truth Miranda Jade Hatcher, then you have to be willing to listen to it. Without any dramatics. And one thing you need to come to terms with is that we are not human, no matter how much we may look it. And another is the fact that we truly do love you, no matter how much human you still are.”
Mom didn’t say anything further after that, just drilled holes into my cranium with her gaze. Finally I gave in, looked up at her and said, “Fine, I’m listening.”
“Good girl.” She paused for a second when I groaned at the pet reference, “Too soon? Anyway, Mildred wasn’t originally an only child, but one of a full litter. She’s just the only one that survived. While most have a litter with one runt that doesn’t make it, we had the bad luck of the exact opposite. I don’t think we would have survived the loss of those pups if we had lost her too. So, me and Derrick doted on that girl like no tomorrow, giving her any and everything that she wanted. But when she asked for a sister or brother, well, that was the one thing I couldn’t give her. I couldn’t risk going through that all over again. Then she asked for a pet instead, a human baby.”
“Are you serious?”
“What? Just like some humans take in rescue dogs, she wanted a rescue baby. Like they say, too much tv can be a dangerous thing. Almost every time we turned on the news there was a story of a baby being discarded by some human. Being abandoned, sold for drugs, left in dumpsters, some even flushed down toilets, yet we’re the ones described as monsters. When the song came out by Tupac, ‘Brenda Had a Baby’, there was unfortunately a lot of truth to it. The rate of it happening became so high humans were at a lost as to what to do. They ended up creating a policy where no questions would be asked if any newborn baby was left at an emergency room, fire department, or church. We told her if she found one, she could keep it.” She must have noticed me start to cringe at those implications and decided to spare me the gory details of where I had actually been found; which was probably a dumpster with the way things were going. “Let’s just say a few weeks later she found a little bundle that she happily brought home. We thought she’d dress you up, play with you for a while, and end up eating you or something. Surprisingly, we began to love you just the same as we do Millie. You became our daughter just as much as she is.”
“When were you planning on telling me all this?”
“I already told you, I wasn’t. We figured with your lifespan being so short, we could just fake the aging process, raise you as a normal human, and you’d never even know a thing. It had been working so far, you never knew anything was amiss. And whenever you saw something you shouldn’t… Then you had to go and bring home a damn tiger shifter.” The last was grumbled under her breath so low I barely heard her.
“I’m kind of shocked the idea of turning me didn’t cross anybody’s mind.” I couldn’t keep laying down anymore, so I sat up with my back against the wall so we could have the rest of that talk face to face.
“It did, but the odds of you actually surviving it were way too small for us to risk it. Had we attempted to turn you, your first shift may have killed you.” Mom pulled both her legs up on the bed and made herself more comfortable. “Knew I shouldn’t have let the two of you watch all of those human shows. The only way a human can be turned without any risks is if their mate is the one that turns them. The bond shared between the two enough to tether them to this plane of existence as they become another species. Just like giving birth is so close to death, so is the change. And, yes, soul-mates really do exist. Every creature other than human, even animals, just have a stronger sense for who that person is. And there’s no question about loverboy downstairs being yours. Which is why him revealing himself to you wiped everything hiding magic away from you clean.”
“All that damned hard work I went through for nothin’, just no damn respect around here,” My eyes couldn’t have bucked out any harder had I duct taped my eyelids to my hairline. The space in the middle of my room that had just been vacant held a six-foot-tall male that was as dark as a midnight sky with no stars shining. He wore a blindingly neon pink three-piece suit that had various sized hearts embroidered all throughout, with a pair of pearlescent wings that I watched him fold behind his back. Thanks to all of my memories now being intact, I recognized him as the fairy that did indeed wipe or rearrange everything that had to do with magic throughout my life. He stood there with his hands on his hips and head cocked to the side, “Don’t be looking at me like two hens that just got caught in the rooster’s house. Y’all better get ya behinds out back before your two honey’s tear each other in half. Derrick couldn’t stop sneezing at the table but he sure seems to be holding it in just fine now that he wanna fight. Go on now, get. Me and the Missus got plans for tonight that do not involve scrapin’ up blood and guts.” Dietrich shrunk back down to the three inches I remembered and flew out of my bedroom door. Me and Mom hurriedly followed behind him.
Why did the only human go out the back door first? That is a very good question, that I cannot even attempt to come up with an answer for. Not one that made even a tad bit of logical sense. Only thing I could come up with was some twisted form of fate.
So, when a giant tiger and an equally giant wolf leapt at each other, fangs and claws bared, each with a paw getting ready to strike, I’m the one that got caught in the cross fire. The claws that had been meant to go into one and the other went into each my sides. They both were brutally snatched away from me, and someone caught my body right before I collapsed to the ground.