Charming (45 page)

W
e wound up breaking into a hunting cabin that belonged to some fairly affluent retirees from Molly’s old church. They had moved to Texas five years ago but still kept the cabin to stay in whenever they wanted to come back and do some hunting in the mountains or visit friends and relatives. This cabin, you understand, was more like a lake house in the middle of the woods than a bunch of planks thrown together around some cots and a card table. There were no bunk beds or outhouses. There were guest rooms and hot water and lots of plaid. The coffeemaker made gourmet brands a cup at a time out of little foil-covered plastic packages, and the television had a satellite feed, although it didn’t work very well.

“What do you think will happen to Ted?” Sig wondered. The question was asked with concern but not much urgency. Sig and I were sitting on quilt-covered rocking chairs on the porch outside the cabin, drinking cider. She had just run God knows how many miles trying to burn off some emotional
pressure and whatever sedative was still inside her. I had been trying to meditate while periodically nodding off.

“I don’t know,” I said. Ted was lying on a bed inside the cabin like a wax statue, draped in crosses and smothered in blankets while Molly force-fed him chicken broth made from holy water, his pulse still fluttering every minute or so. Choo and Ted had the same blood type, and Molly was a universal donor, so we’d taken some of the transfusion equipment from the tunnels and were pumping blood in and out of Cahill as fast as we could.

If Cahill survived, he might remain a normal human with uncommonly sharp incisors, or become an albino who could see in the dark, or some variation of a zombie, or a dhampir, or even a vampire. Supernatural transformations aren’t clean or tidy or predictable any more than any other aspect of life is clean or tidy or predictable. I had called Ted’s wife pretending to be the police, and Molly had called the police pretending to be Ted’s wife, and between us we had bought Ted’s body a few days to figure out what it was going to do with itself.

If Ted remained too human, the bullet wounds would kill him. If he became too vampiric, I would, and I would deal with whatever grief my geas gave me afterward.

Settling back in the rocking chair, I propped my feet up on the porch rail. “The odds are he’s probably going to die. I have a feeling he’s going to beat the odds, though. I think he’s going to become something hard to categorize.”

“That’s how I feel,” Sig agreed. “I think whoever’s in charge upstairs listens to Molly a little more than the rest of us.”

“Maybe she should pray for you and me,” I said. That sounded a little like self-pity, but I meant it.

“You mean pray for you and pray for me?” Sig asked. “Or pray for
us
?”

She made air quotes around the last word.

“Is there an us?” I asked. We hadn’t really talked about it. Hadn’t talked about much of anything. We were all still a little shell-shocked.

“I’m the reason you’re a full-blooded werewolf.” Sig said this as if she expected me to argue the point. “You tried to warn me about Stanislav. I know you’re angry about that.”

“Thinking about it does piss me off,” I admitted. “I’m scared. I don’t like being scared.”

“I know,” Sig said. “You’re all calm on the outside, but it feels like I’m sitting next to a volcano. It makes me want to hit you.”

“Go ahead,” I told her. “I can take it.”

She shot me a complex look full of exasperation and fondness and lust and anger.

“You’re mad too,” I asserted. “I can smell it.”

“You think?” Sig blew a huge breath out, vibrating her lips like a horse’s. “You killed the man I want to kill right now.”

I wasn’t going to offer to role-play Stanislav so she could have some closure.

“I have real regret for a relationship that was bullshit,” Sig went on. “That really sucks.”

“I know,” I said.

Sig ignored me, thumping her upper thigh hard with a clenched fist. “It’s humiliating. Then I get angry. Then I get sad. Then I get angry at myself for getting sad.”

I took a too-large gulp of cider. It burned my mouth. I barely noticed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next full moon, Sig.”

It took her a moment to follow the shift in topic. I was sort of interrupting her, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Yeah, her dead boyfriend had been a sociopath and nobody had liked him and she should have dealt with it a long time ago and it
was some heavy stuff and me killing the guy she had confused feelings about was all tangled up right there in the middle of it and by the way I WAS A FREAKING WEREWOLF!

“You don’t have to deal with it alone, you know,” she said, her voice softening.

“Yes, I do.” I had never been so certain of anything in my life. It was partly fear of hurting anyone close to me if I lost control, and partly irrational, unreasoning shame.

Sig shot me another one of those looks. It wasn’t hard to read, exactly, but there were a lot of things going on under the surface all at once. “You’re going to be OK, John.”

“And you know this how?” That came out a little confrontational, but Sig let it pass.

“Kresniks work with some werewolves,” Sig reminded me. “And some kresniks are really powerful psychics, a lot more powerful than Stanislav or me. Kresniks wouldn’t work with werewolves if some werewolves weren’t able to deal with their gift.”

I bit down on a snide comment about Sig’s track record with knowing kresniks so well and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. It was difficult.

“You were close to coming to terms with what you are,” Sig said. “Don’t let this set you back.”

“That’s just it,” I snarled. “I thought I finally had it figured out. And then the wolf took over. I can’t remember what I did while I was a wolf. I can’t remember a damn thing. That’s messing with me.”

“I’ve had blackouts before,” Sig said quietly. “And I didn’t have nearly as good an excuse as you do. You are the wolf. The wolf is you. You’re not being possessed.”

I jumped out of the chair and threw the cup of cider far off
into the woods. It shattered against a tree somewhere in the distance. It didn’t make me feel better. “I hope you’re right.”

“I think for most people becoming a werewolf must be like finding themselves on a motorcycle going ninety miles an hour, and they’ve never even ridden a bike.” Sig’s voice was calm and steadying. “That’s why they lose control and crash and burn. But you’ve had a lot of practice riding the bike, John. You’ve had training wheels.”

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t in the mood for metaphors.

“You’re just freaking out,” Sig said. “But it’s the freaking out that’s the problem, not the werewolf thing.”

I sat down again and the chair rocked back with my weight. “Like I said, I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” she assured me, reaching out to squeeze my knee.

“If you’re wrong, I want you to kill me,” I said.

Sig removed her hand. “What?”

“If I become something that thinks it’s me but isn’t me,” I said seriously. “If I start killing for my own gain, or start enjoying it, or hurting the weak, or doing things you know I would never do, I want you to kill me. Or contact someone who will. Would you promise me that?”

“John…” she said.

“I know what your word means to you,” I said. “It will make me feel better if you promise. It really will.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” I said.

It turns out that asking someone to kill you creates a bit of a lull in a conversation.

After a while Sig said, “I want a beer.”

She spoke casually, like she was about to get up and go get one from the fridge. Still preoccupied as I was with my own
problems, it took a moment for the full import of those words to register.

“What?” I said brilliantly.

“I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours drugged off my ass,” Sig said. “A vampire was abusing my friends and holding my life in her hands, and the truth is, I still kind of liked it.”

I stayed quiet. It was a lot to take in.

“I would really love to just take all these messed-up feelings and get completely obliterated,” Sig continued. “I don’t know if it’s from having drugs in my system again or if things going down with Stanislav the way they did hit some kind of reset button or something. This voice I haven’t listened to in a long time is telling me that it’s time to come back home.”

“You didn’t quit drinking because of Stanislav,” I said slowly.

“No,” Sig admitted. “If anything I quit drinking in spite of Stanislav. It’s not like that asshole ever quit drinking to support me. But this isn’t about logic.”

No, it wasn’t. Those little voices don’t really get hung up on technicalities like truth.

“So if you really want to talk about being afraid of losing control of yourself…” Sig said.

“Do you have to get competitive about everything?” I complained.

Sig choked and spluttered cider over the edge of her cup.

I draped my hand over the side of my chair and held it out, offering my palm to her. After a moment Sig took my hand in hers. We stayed like that for a while.

“God, we’re a couple of train wrecks, Charming,” Sig said.

It had been a long time since anyone had called me by my last name. I kind of liked it.

“This week has been… eventful,” I said.

“I heard what you told that vampire.” Sig hadn’t said Anne
Marie’s name since we left the tunnels, and she had yet to speak about what had gone on down there. “About not believing in happily ever after.”

I let go of Sig’s hand and leaned forward so that I could put my forearms on my knees. “Let me tell you a story I heard when I was in India. A man climbed up to a mountain where a wise monk lived and told him that he was desperate and about to kill himself. His wife had left him, he’d lost his job, and his life was in ruins. So the monk looked at this man and said, ‘Just remember, this will pass.’ And the monk said it with such absolute certainty that the man went away oddly comforted.”

“Those monks have it easy,” Sig remarked bitterly.

“Be quiet, I’m being profound,” I admonished her.

“Sorry,” she said, and made a zipping motion over her mouth.

“So five years later the man came back and found the monk again,” I continued. “He thanked the monk over and over for talking him out of committing suicide. The man told the monk that the monk had been right, that now the man had a new wife who was the love of his life and a better job than the one he’d lost. The man told the monk that he was happier than he’d ever been. And the monk looked at the man and said, ‘Just remember, this will pass.’ ”

Sig smiled faintly.

“It’s not so much that I don’t believe in happy endings, Sig,” I told her honestly, looking over at her. Some powerful emotion was tightening my chest and my shoulders and my neck muscles. “I just don’t believe in endings.”

“You don’t really know who I am, John Charming,” Sig said. “I don’t really know who you are. We’ve only known each other a few days.”

I didn’t look away. “I know enough to want to know more.”

Sig made a shrugging motion. “You know this kick-ass Norse warrior-maid persona I constructed. She was just a scarecrow I made to frighten bad feelings away, and now the scarecrow has had all its straw pulled out and the bad feelings are back.”

“That’s just self-doubt doing your thinking for you,” I said. “The person you’re talking about wasn’t a scarecrow. She was the parts of you that you were comfortable expressing. I’m glad you’re more complicated than that, but it wasn’t a fake who ripped a vampire’s throat out with her teeth.”

“I hate that you rescued me,” Sig admitted. “I hate it.”

“Well, I am a Charming,” I said. “By the way, traditionally, this is the part where you’re supposed to give up your virginity to me.”

Sig put a hand over her lips. “Oops.”

I smiled.

“I guess I did save your life in the alley,” Sig said reflectively. “So technically we’re tied.”

My throat got a little tight again. It made my voice sound choked. “Listen to me. When I finally became a knight after fighting for it my whole life, I had some guys save my life a few times. They knew I’d do the same for them too. It was the closest thing to a family I’d ever had, and it meant everything to me. It defined me. Then I lost it. It wasn’t even any choice I made… I lost it because of what I was.”

Sig reached out and offered her hand again. I took it.

“Then I tried to make a life with Alison, and she died because of what I was. I got to the point where I was so lonely and tired of running that I was just looking for a proud way to die,” I said. “And then you came along and saved me. And I’m not talking about throwing that spear in that alley either. Me saving you from a vampire… that doesn’t even come close to what you’ve done for me. If this werewolf thing had happened
a week ago I wouldn’t be struggling with it right now. It would have broken me.”

Sig squeezed my hand tighter.

“Speaking of me owing you, are kresniks going to be coming after you or the others?” I asked. “Because of Stanislav and his nephews?”

“I don’t think so,” Sig reflected. “No matter how you look at it, Stanislav and Andrej and Andro sided with heat-seeking vampires against humans. And they did it because Stanislav was a weak-ass bitch who couldn’t handle a little heartbreak. And the kresniks have some really powerful psychics who will be able to get to the truth without torturing anyone.”

And the kresniks’ secret society started out hunting vampires in particular. Stanislav’s betrayal would seem even worse to them than it would have to the knights. On the other hand, secret societies like to cover up messes once disgraced members are safely dead and buried.

And Sig had a history of giving kresniks too much credit.

“Tough guys,” Sig went on scornfully, caught up with her theme. “When it comes to dealing with emotions that women deal with every single day of their lives, big strong he-men are the biggest pussies on the planet.”

Staying quiet seemed prudent.

“What about you?” Sig asked. “Do you know what you’re going to do next?”