Nathan
I was seeing life in flashes of bright lights and loud voices. Then silence and darkness would suck me in again.
In the first flash, I saw Christine’s white comforter. It was soiled with my bright red blood. She lifted my head and pressed it into her chest. My mother’s ring sparkled near my eyes.
She yelled for someone to give me something for the pain. Mostly, my bones ached from shifting, into what … I didn’t know. I couldn’t feel my legs to know if they were long and furless or not.
“Christine, let him go. You have to let us help him now,” Sophia said.
“I’m not going anywhere. Just get it out. Get the dagger out of him!”
Cold fingers touched my cheek, and I felt something sharp slice its way out of me.
Then … darkness. It was so sudden and forceful that I couldn’t even try to fight it and stay awake.
Another flash of light blinded me, but I wasn’t awake this time. I desperately needed to be. This wasn’t a dream that I wanted to have.
The blood on Christine’s white comforter had followed me to my nightmare, but instead of staining her bed, it was staining white snow.
I wasn’t used to feeling cold, but in this nightmare, my tiny body was always freezing. The drums were banging in my ears, and dogs were barking like the end of the world had fallen upon us. My little hands splashed in the pool of blood around me. Under a bloodstained tree, a skinny white dog was twitching and trying to get to me.
More white dogs lay slain and bloody in the place that I called home—a cluster of tiny wood houses under the cover of snowcapped trees. In the middle of the houses, there was a fire pit surrounded by stones. That was where most of the dead dogs were.
I tried to crawl to the pack, but I couldn’t move. Something growled in my ear. My hands and legs were cold, but fire crawled across my back. Now the blood wasn’t just in the snow. It was on me. Spilling down my little body. Filling my little mouth.
It was around this part of the dream that I always realized that no one was going to save me and that Zain was one of the dead white dogs in the snow.
Slowly, the sounds of the attack faded, and another flash of light startled me. It took me a minute to recognize the wooden blades of the ceiling fan surrounding the light. Christine’s room. I was still in her bed.
I saw her standing in the bathroom with her mom, still covered in my blood. I tried to say her name, but nothing came out of my mouth. Trapped in my seemingly dead body, I could only watch her cry. That was worse than being blasted with a hose.
“Sophia is helping him,” Lydia said. “You know how good she is.” I heard Sophia humming somewhere near me. I didn’t have the energy to turn my head to look for her.
“It’s my fault.”
“It’s not. That wizard did this, and we will find this coven before they do anything else.”
“So you believe me now?”
“I believe that things are too dangerous now not to consider every option.” But that wasn’t the same thing as believing her. I still heard apprehension in Lydia’s tone. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up. Being covered in someone else’s blood is hell on your powers. No wonder you can’t stop crying.”
Lydia closed the door, and I assumed she was helping Chris prepare for a bath. I strained to hear them through the closed door.
“You were right,” Chris whispered. “I couldn’t do it.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but she had enough pain in her voice to kill me … if I wasn’t already headed that way. I felt like I was lingering between life and death, not quite here or there.
“I tried to fight,” Chris said, “but I didn’t … I didn’t know what I was doing. By the time I snapped out of it, they paralyzed me and it was too late. You were right about me.”
“And you were right to go after Nathan. We were running out of time. So if we both say that we were right, neither of us has to admit that we were wrong.” Lydia chuckled, but Chris just kept sniffing. “We’ll try something new. When you’re feeling better, and when he’s feeling better and shifting just fine like we know he will, we’ll work together … and be right together. How does that sound?”
I didn’t hear Christine’s answer. I drifted back into a dark and silent world where I managed to feel both heavy and weightless at the same time.
I had no idea how much time had passed, but eventually a heart started to pound in my ears—slow, at first, then faster, and faster, until it turned into a continuous hum.
The stench of rotting flesh entered my nose, John Reece, and I opened my eyes in my old bedroom again. I was fully-grown with my new muscles that had appeared out of nowhere weeks before, and I was sweating buckets on my Batman sheets.
I’d always been able to hear well and smell things that my mom and John couldn’t, but this night, a night that I would remember for the rest of my life, I heard every sound in the house.
I heard my mom humming in her sewing room and taking slow breaths. I even heard the thread gliding through the pillow she that was stitching. And in the living room, John was flipping channels on the television quickly, tapping his foot on the floor, and blowing loud smoke out of his nose.
The house smelled like cigars and wilting flowers and death. My heart pounded even louder, and sweat streamed down my neck and chest. Something inside of me was clawing to get out.
More foot tapping.
More sewing.
Loud breathing.
Smoking.
The clock next to my bed sounded like someone was hammering on steel, and it pushed me and pushed me until I screamed, “Shut up!”
“Excuse you?” John yelled. “Theresa you better get your son before I throw both of you out of here for disrespecting me.”
After years of hearing that, I’d had it with his empty threats. He wasn’t going to throw anyone out. He liked having two prisoners captive in his home who could only talk when he said so, eat when he said so, and laugh when it didn’t annoy him.
“I’m done,” I said, and kicked my comforter to the floor. The thing inside of me clawed at my stomach, making me more nauseous than I’d ever been in my life. I gagged as I swung my door open. The force of it nearly knocked my thin mother to the floor.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t fight with him. He had a hard day. You know he doesn’t mean it.”
A hard day? John was having a hard sixteen years. I’d never seen him have a day unlike the one he was having. I was the one who’d changed.
“Son,” she said. “Just go to bed. You look very tired.”
I was very tired. I assumed I had some kind of stomach bug, but I didn’t ask her for medicine. At that point, I didn’t want anything from her.
I closed the door without saying goodnight to my mom. What did goodnight and good morning mean anymore? Good morning: to welcome another horrible day in the Reece house, and Goodnight: to signal that I’d made it another day without running away. I turned off the lights and crawled in bed.
The next morning, I’d woken up with paws and white fur, and everything had changed.
Another burst of light yanked me out of my memories.
The balcony door opened, and light streamed through the small crack Christine had slipped through. The weight pushing me into the mattress had lifted a little, and I felt strong enough to move.
I sat up slowly, pushing my elbows into the mountain of pillows that someone had stacked around me. I pulled at the foreign clothes I was wearing. Someone had dressed me in a navy button-down shirt and matching silk pants. I rubbed the fabric between my fingers. I hated it, and I looked ridiculous.
My weak hands shook as I wrestled with the first three buttons. On the fourth, I let the shirt win. The simple act of unbuttoning it would’ve taken me all day at the rate I was going. Through the opening I’d made, I saw a smear of white cream. I rubbed my thumb through it and revealed a purple mark on my chest. A bruise. I had two more just like it on my ribs, from the hose, I assumed.
I brought my hand to my neck to see if someone had rubbed cream where the dagger had been, and I found a mound of gauze. I picked at the bandage and rubbed my fingers across my newly disfigured skin. The wound had closed, from either magic or me healing on my own, but I knew the bumpy scar would be there forever.
My mysterious body had the power to close wounds, but it always left a memory of it behind. My back was an ode to the attack that had made me the only shifter of my kind, but at least my wounds had healed.
I suddenly thought of when my mom would tell me that her kisses could heal. Because I’d never had a scratch for more than an hour, I’d believed that her lips had special powers for a long time.
It took me several minutes of scooting to get out of bed, and I turtle-walked to the balcony. As she pushed earbuds into her ears, Christine’s curly hair blew in the wind, wild and just the way I liked it. It was how she looked when she woke up every morning. Simply her, untouched.
I managed not to fall as I placed my hands on the railing and enclosed her between my weak arms. She tilted her head back, very slightly, and smiled. As she pulled the earbuds out of her ears, she said, “Maybe I’m bad luck.”
My voice came out rough and broken. “Why?”
“You got out of bed the minute I left you.”
She chuckled and closed her eyes tightly, as if I were the sun and she couldn’t stand to look at me. I leaned down and kissed her, with her eyes still closed, and I did everything I could to keep from falling over. As I started to tilt dangerously to the left, she pulled away and made it a little easier to concentrate on standing.
She faced our view of the beach and sighed. A normal couple would’ve polluted the air with questions about my kidnapping and everything else that had happened, but I held on to the railing, pressed tightly and wonderfully to her back, and just watched the water with her.
When the moment felt right and not like I was interrupting the peace, I said, “Who put me in these awful pajamas?”
She chuckled. “Sophia.”
“Of course,” I said. “How many days has it been?”
“Three really long days.”
I kissed a random spot on the back of her head. It was the closest part of her to my lips. “I’ve had my share of those,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I scared you.”
“I’m sorry. You wouldn’t have even been in that situation if not for me.”
She turned around and laid her head on my chest. I would’ve hugged her, but I was sure doing so would’ve made me fall over.
“I’m okay, Chris.”
“No, you’re not.” She raised her head slowly until her deep brown eyes arrested me. I wasn’t sure if she was using the power she had over everyone or the one she specifically had over me, but I couldn’t move again. “Nate, you almost died because of me.” She sniffed and kept speaking through the tears falling into her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t do what needed to be done. I didn’t know what I was doing, and you...”
I risked toppling over and used one of my hands to lift her chin. “Stop,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. I almost died because other people know more about my body than I do. They did the drums again, Chris, the freaking drums, and if they went off right now, I’d probably run to them again.”
“They used those drums because of me. I was wrong. They have something to do with Remi, so Carter is involved like Mom said he was. And they called me an heir, Nate. An heir to a throne that they want. That’s my problem, not yours. You can’t deal with stress like this, and I think you’d be healthier and safer … away from me.”
It was obvious that she’d had way too much time to think about this. I knew her, so I knew that she’d been sitting in the dark for the last three days and obsessing over my attack while staring at my lifeless body. She’d driven herself crazy. Either that, or she’d been taking some heavy drugs, because it sounded like she’d become delusional enough to think that we could ever break up.
“I’m never going to leave you,” I said.
“You might want to consider it.” She took the compass out of her pocket. It was still pointing to the magical side. “According to this, it isn’t over, and we’re not going to beat them. You might be dodging daggers for the rest of your life, however short it is.”
I chuckled. “That would make a cool video game. Dodging Daggers … not suitable for children under the age of twelve.”
“I’m serious, Nate.”
“Whoever dodges the most daggers wins.”
She sighed, and I decided to save the rest of my dagger jokes for later, when she wasn’t out of her mind.
“And it disappeared, Nate. The freaking dagger is gone. They did something to take it back, so maybe they can do that to our bodies. We don’t know what they’re capable of. You can’t want a life where someone’s DNA makes powerful people kidnap you, and burn your best friend, and chain you up, and tort…” Her voice broke, and I hugged her as hard as I could with my one free arm. Now I felt like a jerk for making jokes when she’d clearly gone crazy from days of blaming herself for what Paul and I had gone through.
“I’m never going to leave you,” I said, again. She didn’t appear to believe me that time either, so I kissed her. Normally, my kisses would do something to her, but that one didn’t work. It was cold and sad, like pressing my lips to a brick wall. I needed a sledgehammer to break through it. Something heavy and serious to say that I was never, ever going anywhere.
I knew what I wanted to do, but there was a voice in my head telling me that her dad wanted us to just be friends, and our lives were on hold until we found our enemies. It suddenly upset me that other people were dictating our lives, so I stopped letting them.
I took the compass out of her hand. I wanted to throw it off of the balcony and remove it and everything bad from our lives, but I tucked it into her pocket where she couldn’t see it. I needed her undivided attention.
“I could’ve lost you,” I said, and unhooked the necklace holding my mother’s ring from her neck. She froze. “Right now, one of us could’ve been standing here without the other.” More tears spilled out of her eyes, but I refused to cry. More than ever before, I needed to speak clearly. Moments like these couldn’t be redone.
I slid my mother’s ring off of the chain. She laughed through her tears, assuming where I was headed and the question that I was about to ask her. Maybe I should’ve stopped and thought about what I was doing or about what her parents would think, but I didn’t want to. I liked the feeling of flying high on life and the chance we’d been given, and I wanted to run fearlessly towards our future.
I struggled as I tried to get down on one knee, and she caught my arms and helped me down there. I bobbled a little before catching my balance.
“Chris,” I said. She covered her face with both of her hands. “I want to marry you, and your problems. The danger. The laughs. The tears. Your crazy mother. Your mean father. I want it all.” I sniffed, barely keeping it together. I couldn’t let myself cry, so I cleared my throat to compose myself. “Christine Cecilia Gavin, I was made to love you, and I want to do that for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”