Kindling (14 page)
Authors: Abigail Colucci
“You like puppies, don’tcha?” Braith had leaned in close and startled me.
“What?” I snapped.
“Puppies? Little baby doggies?” Braith said.
I didn’t answer and turned away from him. What did my love of dogs have to do with anything? I thought he might still be drunk or maybe he was getting re-drunk. My mom sometimes drank those champagne orange juice cocktails at brunch - Mimosas or something - so maybe that’s what was making Braith weird ... although, he was pretty weird to begin with.
“Yeah, you like dogs,” Braith said. His smugness was overwhelming and I snarled. “I’ll give you a puppy and you’ll forgive me, eh? I’ve got a dog in mind for ya. Then, our little spat here will be all water under the bridge.”
I looked at him like he’s crazy. “That’s not how it works. You can’t just buy back someone’s friendship with a thing.”
He thought about this and a slow grin spread on his face. “I’m your friend?”
I blushed. “No,” I said. “Oh, god no. You’re obscenely annoying and a chauvinistic pig and I can’t stand you.”
Braith grinned even more and his eyes widened. “Ahhh, yeah. I’m your friend, aren’t I?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m your buddy, I’m your pal. You can’t live without me.”
“Oh, god, how do I shut you off?” I said.
“Well, you can’t, now. Now that I’m your ... what do you Americans said?” I rolled my eyes and didn't bother to answer. “You’re Bee-ef?” I sighed, but I couldn’t help but smile a little at his ridiculous emphasis on the letters. “What should you and your new Bee-ef do when we get to Portugal? Long walks on the beach? Shopping all the malls? With that puppy, maybe?”
“How long are you going to be like this?” I sighed.
“Until you start to talk to me,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and looked at him. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
“You know your eyes are going to get stuck like that one day? You’ll be the girl with backwards eyes,” he said. He ate a spoonful of pudding.
“Hm,” I said, then remembered he wanted me to talk. “That would complete my freakish ensemble,” I said.
“Aw, you’re just a little freakish,” he laughed. “Add those backwards eyes and you’ll be full-blown side-show.” I glared at him. He was being flippant and every word he spoke drove me to dislike him even more. He ordered two deserts and we were silent until the stewardess came. “You’re in for some surprises when we get to The Coven,” he said. He shoved a heaping spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.
“I’ve heard,” I muttered.
“No, seriously, Kit, these boys are arses,” he said. Then he furrowed his brow. “You don’t know much, do you?”
“About what?”
“Anything,” he laughed. “No, seriously. Do you know anything about The Coven?” He asked after I glared at him. I shook my head. “Do you even believe it exists?” I shrugged. “Ahhhh,” he said. He thought for a moment and ate a cookie. “Your classmates, we call ‘em boys. That’s all they are, little boys. Right now, you have more experience dealing with vampyres then them. You’ve actually fought off four of them. That’s no small feet, Kit, and I will brag to everyone that you helped me.”
“I helped
you
!” I said. He was making me so mad! “You helped
me
! I did way more than you!”
Braith chuckled. “Keep that spunky attitude, please. You’ll need it.” I pursed my lips and sighed. He continued without taking much notice of my annoyance. “Cuz the boys, they hate women and they hate Americans. So, you’ve got that going for you. Thirdly, they’re celibate and haven’t seen a women outside their mum or sista for over a year, so they’re going to make your life hell and probably want to pounce on you at the same time,” he said.
“Wait, they’re celibate? Why?”
“Mainly cuz they’re all fugly twats,” Braith laughed. “But Heike makes us all sign a celibacy pledge at the beginning of training. It focuses the mind, he says.”
“So ... all the guys there are celibate? You can’t have sex?” I blushed when I realized how that came out. “I mean ...” Braith’s grin grew wider. “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“Ah, I know what you meant,” Braith said. He shrugged his eyebrows at me. “You moved me from Bee-ef to ef-fing, eh?”
I moaned. “God, Braith, you’re such a pig,” I said. “I’m just asking. It’s weird, alright. You were telling me something weird and I was just asking!”
“Oh, I know what you were asking,” he said and winked a few times at me.
“Go to hell,” I said. I turned away from him.
“I'm just teasing you, brat,” he laughed and nudged me. “They’re only celibate for 24 months. Then we’re released onto the world, ready to fight vampyres, find a gal, and procreate.”
“Why for only 24 months?” I asked.
“Believe me, sweetheart, 24 months is too long to go without sex,” he said. He humped the air once and I rolled my eyes again.
“Aren’t you too old to be acting like a teenager?”
Braith glared at me and then a tiny smile formed at the corners of the mouth. “I’m not old, Kitty Cat, I’m well-traveled,” he said. “And I’m just teasing you. If you can’t take a little bit of teasing from your Bee-eff, you’re gonna get chewed up when you start getting harassed by people who actually hate you,” he scolded. He examined my face as I glared at him, then he smiled. “Van Helsing wants us to put all of our energy into training. He believes it focuses the mind. That’s why there are no girlfriends allowed.” He sniffled and sighed. I think his breakfast high was wearing off. “And then, after training, that’s when the fun starts.” He turned to wink at me and I rolled my eyes. “I meant the Hunting begins, not sex. Although sex is an added benefit.” I sighed and looked out the window. God, I couldn’t stand it when he winked at me and I tried my best not to shudder.
“Why do you keep calling me Kitty?”
Braith shrugged. “You don’t like it?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “It’s Kit.” He grinned a sly grin and I knew I had just solidified being called Kitty for the remainder of my life. I rolled my eyes. He was so juvenile. We were quiet for a few moments. “What is it like?” I asked.
“What?” He asked, still looking away. “Sex?” He flashed me a mischievous smile.
I tried to ignore him but I couldn’t help but sigh a little. “The fighting. What is it like?”
He let out a lengthy sigh and looked at his hands. “It’s not like a war that you go on a battlefield and fight. If that’s what you’re thinking it’s not like that. It’s more like exactly what it’s called. You’re hunting. You get a scent of one of ‘em, but it’s not really a scent it’s like a bright, color streak. And you follow that streak until you find ‘em.”
“Is it ...” I paused. I didn’t know why I was asking and what I was hoping to find out. “Is it difficult?”
Braith shrugged. He picked at a clear piece of tape stuck to his arm rest. “I don’t know. What’s difficult? Everything is difficult, right?” He paused to call the stewardess over. “Hello, lovely,” he said to the girl. She giggled and blushed. “Be a doll and get me a scotch, love.” I noticed he intentionally made his accent thicker when he spoke to her.
“Of course,” she said. She swept her long hair over her shoulders and walked to the front of the aisle, swaying her hips in a wide arch as she walked.
“It’s not too lonely, though, if that’s what you mean.” Braith continued. “We’re usually hunting in threes.” He holds out three fingers. “You got your Hunter, that’s like Heike. He’s the one that does most of the killing. They learn some tracking skills but what they know was learned, not born in them.” He paused again when the stewardess came over with his drink.
“Anything else?” She breathed.
“Not just right now,” Braith teased. “But I’ll let you know when something’s up.” He winked at her.
She grinned and was obviously flattered - she didn’t seem bothered by his winking. When she left us, Braith continued yet again. “So the Hunter, he’s the killer. They’ve got strength and speed and accuracy with weapons. Hunters are born with that, Trackers are not. Trackers are exactly what they sound like, born to track The Scent of a vampyre. Where the Hunter can lose the scent of a vampyre easily, especially if he’s traveling in a city, the Tracker zones into one scent and never lets it go until the vampyre is dead. That’s how it works, Hunter and Tracker work hand-and-hand together.” Braith sipped his drink. “It’s really quite marvellous when you get a good team together. They might take down one vamp a week, if they’re in a heavy area.”
I thought this over for a minute. I didn’t like the idea of killing anyone or anything. “What’s the third?”
“Hm?” he said.
“You said you hunt in threes. Who was the third hunter?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Last one isn’t necessary, Kitty Cat, but it sure as hell helps, especially if you’re hunting a pack of vampyres. You usually are because those buggers travel together, so the last member of the Hunting party is a wolf. Wolves are usually pretty useless till you get real close - they might catch you some food while you’re traveling, but that’s about it - but then, when they can’t keep their skin anymore, they round up the vampyres, bring ‘em in like a cattle. They’re faster than vampyres, you know, and somehow they manage to be on all sides at once, closing in the perimeter until we get them close enough to kill.”
“Holy shit,” I said. Braith beamed over impressing me. But, something he said was strange. The part about them keeping their skin - it’s just what Lysander wrote in his journal about Tafari. “I don’t understand? Wolves lose their skin? Where do you get them from? How do you train them?”
He looked at me funny and then grinned. “They ain’t your regular wolves, Kitty Cat, they’re Lycan." He downed half his glass of scotch. It was extremely frustrating getting through a conversation with him, especially as he became progressively more inebriated. I didn’t know what Lycan were and I didn’t think he was going to finish explaining, until finally he looked at me with a glassy look in his eyes. "You know, werewolves.”
Braith started to drink again and it made me uncomfortable. I could see him getting tipsier with each drink. I knew very little about beverages of the alcoholic sort - although, sometimes I was allowed to have a little Sangria during holidays - but I did know what he was drinking was strong. I could smell it all over him even though he’d only had a few.
I was a little hurt that he didn’t finish telling me about werewolves. He was more interested in the blond stewardess with the short skirt. She was on her break and leaned against his armrest in a very unladylike way, so her boobs shoved up into his face and heaved every time she giggled at one of his awful jokes. She put her hands all over him and even rubbed her hand through his hair. It made me nauseous to watch them flirt and fall over each other.
I tried to ignore them by putting on my iPod and, in a few minutes, they both left. I was friends with Alejandra, a girl with a voracious sexual appetite, so I knew what they were going to do. I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward. I mean, I wasn’t jealous or anything. Really, I wasn’t jealous. Braith annoyed me to no end and I was glad to have a break. It was just weird, a guy you were chatting with a second ago about life-changing stuff I had never before heard of just going off to have sex with some random chick with awful hair extensions. What did he see in her? That her I.Q. was double digits? Or that each of her boobs were the size of a volleyball?
I looked down at my own, minuscule chest for a moment. My tiny boobs had always made me feel inadequate, especially around my friends. Even my mom has nicer boobs than me.
Suddenly, Heike sat next to me. “What are you doing?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Just looking out the window.”
“Hm,” he said, as if he knew that really wasn’t what I was doing. “Is Braith helping you learn a little?”
I shrugged. “I guess, when he’s not drinking or eating or flirting.”
Heike patted my arm. “Don’t be too upset with Braith. It’s hard being a hunter. You have to let them have a little fun.”
“You’re okay with your Hunters having sex with random strangers? He could get a disease or something. He could get her knocked up,” I said.
Heike laughed. “Am I okay with it? No, not really. But, I’m not him, am I? The Hunters make their own choices. I can’t stop them.”
“Aren’t you the leader, though?” I said, although as soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. Heike glared down and snarled a bit.
“Your bisabuela talks too much,” he grumbled.
“It’s true, though? You’re the leader of The Coven?”
“I am one of the leaders of our coven, yes,” he said.
“You didn’t want to tell me?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to make things worse. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. I don’t want you to feel more pressure than you already do. And me being the Head High Master isn’t going to help, I’m sure.” I nodded. “And I don’t want you to have too high expectations of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re going to be rough on you, Katja,” he said. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me this. I get the point. “You sigh now but a few days with them and you’re going to be begging to go home. I can’t let you. Once training has begun you can’t leave until it is over. The boys there are going to treat you like dirt, less than dirt, Katja, and there is nothing I will be able to do about it. Do you understand? For two years we Hunters are expected to act like wild animals learning how to bring down a kill. And they do. For the most part they are wild boys that can only learn manners when they are on their first hunt.” I thought back to Lysander’s journal. My papá had said there were some things I shouldn’t read. Perhaps Lysander had his period of animalistic behaviour as well. “The boys, the’ll make it much worse on you, because you’re different. They hate anything different. ”