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ELIZABETH
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BRIAN TOOK A TENTATIVE step toward the bed, then stopped.
“Come sit here,” I said and I patted the place beside me.
He was beside me in two strides. “I scared you to death, didn’t I? I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice filled with concern. His hand moved to touch mine, then retreated. I smiled. Brian Canagan was nervous like a high school boy on his first date.
Well, someone needed to be brave. I reached for his hand and intertwined my fingers with his. The warm, soothing current did its magic, as always. “It was my fault,” I said. “I thought I was ready.”
“I wanted to prepare you somehow.”
“There is no way to prepare a human to see a werewolf. Lucky for you, I believe in empirical evidence.”
His sea green gaze, tired and worried, found mine. “You’re not disgusted?”
“Disgusted? Of course not. You’re big and sort of scary, but magnificent.”
The relief on his face was almost palpable. “Oh, Elizabeth! I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me anymore.”
I touched his face. “It doesn’t change how I feel about you. And I’m glad it’s over. Many things that drove me crazy now make sense.”
He closed his eyes, brought my hand to his lips and kissed my palm. I lifted myself up and allowed him to help me crawl into his lap. His arms closed around my body.
It felt good. Safe. Secure. Brian’s body radiated heat; I’d noticed that before. Could this be the reason for that strange sensation I felt whenever we touched?
I nestled my head on his shoulder, feeling his hard, strong and very human body against mine.
“You called me ‘Brian’ this morning,” he said, kissing the crown of my head. “How did you figure out my real name?”
“When you signed the papers for the bike. I watched the movements of the pen.”
“Clever woman.”
“Resourceful,” I said, and I closed my eyes. A new wave of fatigue, the drenching relief that follows extreme stress, crept over me.
I’d made the biggest step, I thought sleepily. Now I deserved a rest. Everything would be fine.
Brian gently rocked me back and forth.
“Sleep, Elizabeth,” he whispered into my hair. “It’ll give you strength. You’re doing great.”
I was mentally and emotionally too overwhelmed to sleep, but keeping my eyes open required more energy than I had. “Stay with me, Brian,” I whispered.
“Always, cariad. Always.”
I let myself drift into a light hypnotic state, relaxing my body and calming my mind as much as I could.
I didn’t know how much time had elapsed—a minute, an hour or a day. But then, out of nowhere, a thought flashed through my mind, making my adrenaline level spike once more. My eyes flew open and my body jolted up. “Brian, I can’t leave Copper Ridge now, can I? I know your secret! You can’t let me go.”
Brian’s grip tightened around me. “No, sweeting, no. Shhh, don’t worry. You’ll be free to leave if that’s what you want. I give you my word. Nobody will keep you here against your will. Now calm down. Your heart is about to jump out of your rib cage.”
I breathed in and out a few times. Brian’s assurance was enough for me, and I gradually relaxed.
But the awful tiredness that had crawled through my body only a minute ago had vanished. I looked up at Brian. “It’s time to talk.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Dr. Falkenstein said I’m a special kind of human. How special?”
Brian tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You’re a vardanni. ‘A guardian of the realm.’”
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WITHOUT MOVING, WITHOUT interrupting, I listened to the story about the world hidden in plain sight—the realm of the Langaer, the Tall People: wizards, werewolves and Tel-Urughs, whatever those were. About a small number of gwerin, what they called “their humans,” that is, those who knew about the Langaer and shared their world.
Like my friend Lottie, with her faraway looks, strange comments and—apparently—a half-werewolf son. David’s birth mother was a she-wolf; his father a human. They had died under strange circumstances. Unsure whom they could trust, Lottie and her late husband had kept David away from other werewolves. Until she’d met Astrid and Jack.
It was quite a revelation, but it didn’t answer the question about my status. “Where do I fit?” I asked. “I’m not ‘your’ human, am I?”
“No. You see, ordinary humans can’t tell us apart from them. That’s why we can live side by side. If they witness anything unusual while on our territory, they forget it right away. If they accidentally see us changing or using our powers while we are on their territory, we do a bit of our magic to make them forget before they can tell. It’s harmless for them, and it keeps us safe.”
“And they never recollect what they saw?”
“No. Once erased from their memory, it’s gone.”
I pressed my head against his shoulder, quiet for a moment, pondering his words. We believed we were the only civilized people. How arrogant. The clues proving the opposite were everywhere, in the unexplained, in legends and mythologies, in religions and beliefs, in fairy tales, epics and oral traditions, yet we ignored them. I felt proud and privileged to be initiated into this great knowledge. “Tell me more about the guardians,” I said. “Are they always humans?”
“Yes, from the outside world, not gwerin. As a guardian, you’re resistant to our mental powers. Immune to our Talsyns and tallins—that’s what we call the practical use of our powers.”
“Talsyn, tallin,” I repeated softly.
“Think of Talsyns as serious magic and tallins as magic tricks. But they don’t work on you. We can’t make you forget what you once saw. Once exposed to our world, you started seeing us for what we are, although not right away, as you recollect. It’s a gradual process.”
Questions buzzed in my mind like bees in a hive.
“Are there other guardians here?” I asked.
Brian smiled and kissed my temple. “You’re the first vardanni in Copper Ridge and Red Cliffs history. There are only a handful of vardans we’re aware of, scattered all around the world. There are probably more but neither they nor us can know unless they come in contact with us.”
“How did you know I was a vardanni?”
“Lottie tipped us off,” he said and explained the basic werewolf terminology: blaidd, the foreign, melodic word Rosie had said once, blaidd benywaidd, gwerin y blaidd; asyr, asanni, asyngaer; wolf-man, wolf-woman, wolf-people; wizard, wizardess, wizard folk. “You’ll often hear the words dyn and dynes as well,” he added. “They have two meanings. They refer to the human forms of a blaidd and blaidd benywaidd, but also to their human spirits within their wolf bodies.”
Lots of words to learn. I needed to know something else, though. “What do you do with us once you identify my kind?”
Brian squeezed my hand. “As a token of our gratitude, we offer for them,” here he cleared his throat, “to stay with us.”
Stay with them as humans or as one of them? Could they turn a human into one of them? I wasn’t ready to hear that part. “Gratitude for what?” I asked in a small voice. “What’s our role in your society?”
“Gratitude for knowing about us, but keeping this knowledge a secret, until humans are ready to accept our existence. Your kind will help us come out. Eventually.”
“Ah. So, we’re some sort of link between your people and humans?”
“Yes. We have been living in hiding since the dawn of Homo sapiens. That was our choice. From the very beginning of their history, humans couldn’t find an explanation for us. The fear of the unknown triggered their survival instincts. In the beginning, they were few in number, but soon we realized that humans were genetically a vigilant and aggressive species. They procreated easily, quickly, they were strong and resilient and they were adaptable.”
It’d been only a matter of time, Brian continued with his incredible story, before early humans turned against them to protect their territory. Werewolves—and I guessed the others I was still not ready to learn about—could’ve conquered or destroyed humans, but they hadn’t.
“You’ve chosen to live in the shadows instead,” I said.
“It’s not in our nature to rule others and we certainly are not mass-killers, no matter what mythology and legends say. We helped to create these misconceptions, in a way, to protect ourselves. Not that we lack aggressiveness. We’ve had our share of wars and fights, but they never affect humans. We know what they can do when threatened, or when they think they can use something to gain more power. In spite of all their great achievements, as a civilization, they lack compassion. They’ve shown an alarming tendency to destroy whatever they think is in their way. We’re a hard bunch to kill, and we have the means to protect ourselves, but we’re not indestructible. Humans have ugly weapons and a lack of understanding. They’re not ready to share this world with us on an equal basis. Not yet.”
The last traces of stupor disappeared. “How big is your population?”
“A drop in the ocean, compared to humans. We have a long lifespan but low procreation rates. Right now, it’s a couple of hundred thousand all around the world. Some of us live on our sacred lands, organized in clans such as Copper Ridge, or Red Cliffs or Winston. Some others prefer to live among the humans. We often alternate between these two options, but no matter where we live, we have the clan identity. I’m Brian Canagan from Red Cliffs Clan, for example, no matter if I live in Paris, Honolulu or Winston. There is a loner here and there, a blaidd who lives outside of either societies, or a rogue, a dangerous creature to both us and humans.”
“A rogue, you say. It’s good to know that you could be both good and bad. It’s so human.”
“We are humanoids. We’re not that different from humans. Or the others.”
“Save for a few minor differences, like the ability to change form. Who are ellidas, Brian?”
Brian explained that they were the rare, precious offspring of a werewolf/wizard couple. Always daughters. They were the flesh and blood incarnation of an old alliance between the two kinds and the ultimate authority of a werewolf clan. It didn’t surprise me to hear that Astrid was the ellida of Red Cliffs. Rowena, her mother, a wizardess by birth and a werewolf by choice, was the Copper Ridge clan’s leader.
“So, she’s not the mayor,” I said with a chuckle.
“Well, she’s the einhamir benywaidd, or, officially the Einhamiress of the Copper Ridge Clan. In our old language, einhamir means ‘a man of two skins,’ a shapeshifter. We call an alpha einhamir.’Before Rowena, no woman was an alpha; she’s the very first in our history so we hadn’t had a word for it. An einhamir benywaidd—‘a female einhamir’ would be an oxymoron if it wasn’t for her. The more practical solution, however, was to add the appropriate English suffix to the existing word to identify her gender. Hence the word einhamiress.”
I smiled. “Ellidas, female alphas. I rather like that. Copper Ridge and Red Cliffs must have enormous respect for Astrid and Rowena.”
“They deserved every bit of it, and then some.” He looked at me. “Are you comfortable? Maybe you should lie down?”
“Maybe I should if you lie beside me.”
“Happy to oblige, Miss Chatwin.” He kissed me and lowered me down on the bed. I rolled to the other side to make room for him, realizing how much better I already was feeling. Brian stretched beside me.
“Have I met your parents?” I asked, pressing my head against his chest. “Disguised as your friends or something?”
His arm closed around my shoulder. “Ah, my parents,” he said with warm affection. “Anwen and Robert are their names. And no, you haven’t met them. We somehow managed to keep my super-curious mother away from you.”
“Some of you made yourselves look older for my sake, right? Although not always successfully. Harriet looked younger and younger by the hour. Jason, too.”
He laughed. “That’s because Jason cheated in the first place.”
“You don’t need to be a vardanni to figure out Rowena wore heavy makeup, yet still looked too young to be Rosie’s—”
Rosie.
I clasped my hand over my mouth. “Rosie’s your granddaughter!”
When Brian and Rosie’s possible family relation crossed my mind for the first time, I wasn’t ready to accept it. It was easy now; a small aftershock instead of a big earthquake.
Brian turned sidewise and braced his head on his elbow “Don’t I look awesome for a grandfather?”
“You’re one hot grandpa, Brian Canagan,” I said, leaned in and kissed him. “Smokin’ hot.” I was quickly going from a state of shock to a state of euphoria.