The Waking (The Upturned Hourglass) (44 page)

LETTING GO

The evening sun was falling behind the horizon, dimming the world around her as Valie watched Jack’s relaxed features. He slept in the hospital bed of his fifth-story room. All week she had mourned the pain he’d endured, the pain she’d inflicted. He’d been comatose for days and hadn’t woken until that morning.

She still hadn’t gone in to see him.

The girl looked down numbly from the rooftop on which she sat, across the street from the hospital building. Her auburn hair flew out behind her, whipping in the cold wind. She stood floors higher than Jack’s room, but her improved eyesight let her watch over him with ease.

Jericho
—a former doctor before specializing in the Occult—had been forced to call in a favor with an old associate at the city hospital to gain access to the better facility. He and the others were the only ones allowed in Jack’s room. No other physician could have examined the Lycanthrope boy without suspecting his physical distortions.

In a strange way Valie was glad
Jericho had been unable to treat Jack’s injuries with the limited medicine available to him in his house. It was easier for her to be alone when the focus was on her injured partner.

The surrounding city provided solace for Valie’s increased sense of isolation from not only humanity, but from her new world of the Occult, from her friends, from those she loved. She
was just
other
in body, mind, and now, she believed, soul.

The tale of the battle and the havoc the beast residing in her had created after her transformation had had to be told to her when she’d awakened a day later. She had blacked out the moment the beast took over.

Though she knew it was the beast which had killed Terrence and six Council-men’s guards and injured countless others—including Jack—Valie could no longer discern where the beast ended and she began. Remorse and self-loathing had been the only feelings she’d had as she’d sat on Jericho’s familiar couch while Maxine relayed the events that had happened. She was not allowed to leave. The Council still wanted her, now more than ever. It was only Daniel’s benevolent manipulation of the situation that had enabled Valie to escape the exchange of blows and blood alive. She couldn’t say the same for Isaac. He was supposedly on his way to incarceration in one of the Council’s secure prisons, leaving Eliza to the mercy of the Council. She, too, had been dragged away by Daniel’s men, an easy task considering the damage Valie had wreaked on the she-wolf.

Maxine’s appearance had been uncharacteristically somber as she related Eliza’s fate. The woman had sworn revenge on Valie for the death of her love—and Valie didn’t blame her.

The list of Valie’s enemies continued to grow. The Council and its followers wanted her dead, Eliza, as well, even Isaac now saw her as proof of his own failure. She saw the fear in Maxine’s eyes when she looked at her, the uncertainty held in the crimson pools that purely reflected the blood the Vampyre had shed. Valie doubted Maxine, who fed on donated blood, had ever created as much chaos in her decades of life as Valie had in a single night.

Shane and Noah had not gone unharmed; they, too, sustained injury from the massacre. Daniel convinced his men to let the others alone, though Maxine couldn’t explain why.
Jericho suspected a deal had been struck between the Lieutenant and Jack, but no corroboration could be found until Jack awoke.

Shane walked into Jack’s hospital room shaking Valie out of her thoughts. Valie read the blonde beauty’s lips as she greeted
the conscious boy. She laughed, but grew tense at something Jack said. Valie ironically wished her hearing were
more
improved; she couldn’t hear over the sounds of the city.

She was getting used to the extreme reactions of her new body—for that was how she saw her existence now, not as a rebirth, but an incarceration in a form not her own. Her muscles were as steel wire, her eyes wide and alert despite clouded conditions or darkness.

Darkness…

She did not consider the dreary gray shading of the world as darkness. The only true darkness she could find was in the closing of her eyes. Unconsciousness was her beloved refuge from the world.

“Hello, Noah,” Valie greeted without turning. The boy was ten paces behind her.

Ever since Valie had woken to the damage she’d caused, he’d tried to convince her that it wasn’t her fault, not in common words, but with his presence. He was the one who thought she could not leave the others without his escort, for protection, he said. What protection could he supply that the beast within Valie’s own body could not? If anything, Noah was putting himself in danger.

He stood, his hands in his pockets, looking unblinkingly at the girl as she leaned over the edge of the building’s precipice.

“Hello, V.”

Valie flinched and fingered the pendant of her necklace. It was the old charm from her mother’s bracelet. Jack had kept it from when he had picked up the pieces as clues to rescue Valie before the Council meeting, before Isaac had bitten her, before she’d turned.

It was a long-forgotten nickname Noah had stumbled upon. The girl did not discourage him, however. A small part of her enjoyed the memories it brought to light as it reminded her of her friends back in Anders.

“What are you thinking?” the pale, freckled boy asked quietly.

The animal within her had been generally silent over the last week, content to remain caged, knowing that it could escape
when it pleased. Valie felt caged, as well, by this knowledge. She was at the mercy of the hellion whose satisfaction was her grief.

“I am thinking about Jack,” Valie answered truthfully, though, reservedly. The full extent of her thoughts she was forced to keep to herself. Noah would not allow her freedom if he knew her true thoughts.

The boy stayed silent. Valie’s eyes remained fixed on the boy across the street. She wished she could see him one last time, up close. She wished she could feel his strong arms around her now. Just for reassurance, to feel close to anyone. To feel close to anything.

But all she could do now was pull away.

“Valie, I know you’re planning something. The fact that you won’t tell me what it is you’re going to do, leads me to believe it would be a very bad idea.”

Valie laughed once harshly.

Good-bye, Jack
, she whispered in her thoughts. She allowed herself no tears to shed. From now on, she would practice her control, over her body, her emotions, her mind. She would stay in control.

She turned to Noah, a demure smile on her face, altering her features without light.

“I’m not planning anything, Noah. What is there to plan? My father, who I believe has disowned me—even though I disowned him first—is locked away. Eliza calls for my blood but is detained by the Council. The Council condemns me, but evading their reach should prove relatively simple if the proper care is taken. Everyone is miraculously alive—except Max, of course.” Valie waited for a chuckle, but the boy did not oblige. He stood more stoic than ever, but no judgment lay in his features. Jack, Valie knew, would have given her a look of disapproval for her attempt at light words. Noah, though, was a pure friend. He was there for Valie. He was there to understand.

Valie took a deep breath. Unwanted tears came to her eyes. “I can’t stay here, Noah,” she said quietly. “I can’t continually watch those I’ve hurt so badly, so completely.”

“You would hurt them more if you leave…”

Valie shook her head. She’d thought this through. “At least
they can be alive to feel the pain. I’m a killer, Noah. Maybe not all of me, but part of me. I don’t know how to protect you, my friends, my family. I have to go. If I leave, all the forces stacked against us will only come after
me
. No harm will come to anyone.”

“Except
you
. You call us a family and yet you discard us. A family sticks together. As cliché as that sounds, it’s true. I’ve learned that. Haven’t you?”

Valie stared at the young boy, who had grown up to survive his circumstance. The comparison between himself as an orphan and herself was an accurate one. She had never known family. It was true that she had learned some of its principles through her dealings with what she was now thinking of as “Jack’s pack.” But there was one principle that overrode all others—family members do whatever it takes to make the others safe. It is what the others had done for her from the very beginning of their relationship and it was what she was going to do for them now.

“You’re still going to leave…”

“Yes, Noah.”

For the first time, Valie saw the boy grow stern, his features distantly reflected that of his mentor, Valie’s love. It was not Noah’s resolve that Valie saw in the steel gray eyes, but Jack’s. She cursed it, knowing what was coming next.

“I’m coming with you.”

Valie offered a quick denial with a firm shake of the head. “No.” She could not have the boy she thought of as her brother—and that, by Lycan standards, rightly was her kin—come to harm because of her. Not again.

“Whether you think so, or not, I am coming. I’ll trail you if I have to.”

“You haven’t the skill,” Valie protested.

“We’ll see.”

“You won’t be able to keep up.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“You’re being ridiculous! I’m five-times faster than you are.”

The boy didn’t respond. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, ready to follow Valie to the ends of the earth and
back.

The girl sighed. She suddenly realized she wasn’t prepared for what was ahead. To have a partner, a companion, would be both difficult and of great aid.

But that wasn’t going to be her fate.

Nimbly, Valie got behind Noah and held her arm to his throat. The beast inside her roared at her to apply more pressure as the boy gasped for air, trying to break free, but she resisted. She pressed, just enough to cut his air, just enough to knock him out.

As Valie lowered him to the ground, after his struggles had subsided and his breathing returned to normal, she started to cry, knowing she had severed her last tie.

She was no longer Valentine McRae. She was not just some half-blood, or some experiment. She was truly Fate’s progeny. She was what the Council feared. She was Occult. She was Lycanthrope.

She was Abomination.

AB
OUT THE AUTHOR

Teryn Keeley Burckhardt is a happily married, young mother of one who enjoys her life in California’s Silicon Valley.
The Waking
began as a hobby when she was fifteen years old, but the story and its characters became a more refined passion soon after. The final draft was completed when she was twenty-one. Now, when she is not cooking or walking with her husband and son, she is clattering on the keyboard, wrapped up in her favorite sweater blanket with a cup of white tea and their loyal Chihuahua, Spock. Life and the Lord is good.