The Ylem (24 page)
He stared at his hands for a few heartbeats,
as if knowing what I’d meant by that. Then, he took a deep breath.
“We’re not…werewolves, exactly. We’re Shifters.”
Wasn’t it the same thing?
He closed the distance between us and
stretched his arm across the backrest, placing it close to my
shoulders, as if he was half embracing me. I gulped. “Werewolves
have been present since ancient Greece. It is said Zeus punished
the Arcadian King Lycaon for murder, condemning him to spend the
rest of his life as a man-wolf. Melia, an ash-tree nymph, helped
Zeus to carry out Lycaon’s dreadful fate by summoning the spirit of
a wolf, cursing Lycaon’s to share his body with it and forcing him
to transform involuntarily whenever the wolf wanted to satiate his
hunger.
“However, since Melia wasn’t an experienced
conjurer, the alchemy that brought the wolf spirit and Lycaon
together went wrong. When she summoned the wolf spirit, she
summoned by mistake the fire, earth and wind spirits, better known
as Elementals.”
“Elementals?”
He glanced at me and smiled. “Mystical
creatures dwelling within the spirit realm of the elements. Earth
spirits are known as gnomes, air spirits as sylphs, fire spirits as
salamanders and water spirits as undines.”
“And they all really exist?” I widened my
eyes.
He nodded. “Gnomes and sylphs are mostly
invisible to humans. They have high vibratory rates that make
interaction with them pretty hard, but not impossible.” He looked
at me. “It’s complicated to understand, I know.”
“It is.” I admitted, overwhelmed by all the
information I was getting. Acknowledging the existence of
werewolves—sorry, Shifters—was way more than enough. “What do you
mean by high vibratory rates?” I felt like I was speaking
Scientific American.
“They live in a parallel dimension to
ours.”
Whoa. Different dimension? That totally blew
me away.
“You okay?” he asked, looking at my unseeing
eyes.
I shook my head, blurting out my bemusement.
“Just surprised,” I told him. “What about the other two
elementals—the fire and water spirits? Are they mostly invisible as
well?”
His eyes were filled with doubt, still
wondering whether to carry on or end this. “No,” he said finally,
turning his head away. “Salamanders often appear to humans in the
shape of small, lizard-like flames. They move freely at night,
visible as balls of light drifting across water. Undines, on the
other hand, are the most human of the four elemental types. They’re
mostly known as…water nymphs.”
Nymphs? Actual nymphs? I could imagine their
heavenly beauty—long silky hair, beautiful voice, porcelain skin.
It was all beyond a dream. “And these four elementals gave Lycaon
exceptional skills, right?”
“Three elementals,” he corrected with a short
nod. “When Melia summoned the wolf spirit, only three showed up.
The water spirit never came, fortunately.”
“Why was it fortunate?”
“Every elemental has a special ability.
Gnomes can influence the human mind and control it. Sylphs can
gather clouds, create rain, and form snowflakes. And Salamanders
can move at an incredible speed. So, when Melia performed the
curse, she did not only force Lycaon to share his body with the
wolf spirit. She made him share with the other three spirits,
giving him exceptional abilities like the ones I mentioned.
“Instead of enforcing a punishment, she gave
Lycaon a gift, transforming him into a tremendously powerful
creature. If the water spirit had come, he would’ve been
unstoppable,” he said with frustration, which I didn’t understand.
Did he want the water spirit’s power? “Undines have the power to
control the very source of life in this planet.”
“Water,.” I said, realizing the magnitude of
such gift.
“Yes,” he muttered.
“So, if Lycaon had four spirits inside of
him, why did he turn into a man-wolf and not into a Salamander or a
Sylph?” I asked.
He moved closer to me. “Simply because the
wolf spirit was stronger than the others. He took possession of
Lycaon’s body, leaving the other three with minor positions, but
not less important. Whenever the inner wolf needed to come out to
quench his flesh-hunger, his whole body transformed into a
wolf-like creature, pushing away all trace of humanity. He was
entirely absorbed into his animal instinct. He couldn’t help it,
nor control it.” He turned and looked at me, eyes wary. “But it’s
different for us.”
I wasn’t worried. I was completely engrossed
into the story.
“We don’t give ourselves to our senses in
such an absolute manner,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “The animal
instinct is always there, but under control. It doesn’t pop up if
it’s uninvited.”
“That means you won’t howl at the moon when
it comes out?” I said, staring through the tall windows outside.
The light was fading to an orange-pink haze.
He laughed. “A foolish myth, worthy of the
movies.” I couldn’t help but smile. “A full moon doesn’t make us
shift. It has nothing to do with the impulses that do provoke a
transformation,” he said. “Though I have to admit a full moon does
makes us more impulsive. Perhaps that’s the reason why older
generations couldn’t control the lunar tidal force.”
“Lunar tidal force?” I felt so dim-witted
asking all these questions.
“Higher ocean tides take place during full
moons because the gravitational pull is stronger. And just like the
moon affects the ocean’s tides, it affects the human body as well.
Do you remember Mr. Harder saying our body is mostly water?” he
asked, aiming his star-like eyes at me.
I nodded, sensing more than ever the arrival
of the moon in a few minutes.
“Well, it has the same powerful effect on
us—more powerful than on humans because of our acute senses. We can
lose our focus and get too impulsive. I guess that’s what happened
to older generations. They were rather new to the lunar effect and
couldn’t manage the force. It made them crazy, driving them to step
out of the woods to eat. Maybe that was the reason for the full
moon association.”
It made sense. “But you can control it.” Not
that I objected.
“Evolution,” he said flatly. “Lycaon was our
primal ancestor, more like our…gene pool. For centuries, he spread
his genetic material between humans, either by mating with
women—when in human form—or merely by a bite. Gradually, the
genetic recombination increased the variation in our traits, making
the harmful ones more rare, and the helpful ones more common.
Physically, when we shifted, we were getting less bestial and more
human-like. We were faster and more skilled at hunting. We didn’t
need to howl to communicate, nor transform involuntarily. We gained
a greater control over our instinct.” He looked at me. “The lunar
force doesn’t affect us the way it did to our ancestors. Our mind
power is stronger. We even use telepathy to communicate among
ourselves, which is less obvious than howling.”
Wow. Telepathy.
“I see it as natural selection through
generations,” he added.
And he’d clearly got the finest selection. I
raised my head and looked into his eyes. I felt as if I was looking
at two Silver Star clusters in a faraway galaxy. They were as clear
as glistening stars in a moonless night. His arm behind me suddenly
felt even closer than before. I swallowed and opened my mouth. “I-I
wonder…what happened with those exceptional skills Lyc, um” —I
shook my head nervously— “that Lycaon gained. Were they lost
throughout time?” I asked quickly before I swooned right there in
the couch.
He unleashed an amused, sexy smile. He must
have thought I was a living joke—or cute, rather. His eyes were
filled with tenderness. “Almost all of them were,” he answered a
moment later. “The only two that remained were the salamander’s
flashing speed and the sylph’s sensitivity to the wind, which gave
us this small puncture,” he said touching the upper edge of his
ear. Again, just like the old lady had said he would have. “We can
listen and communicate with others through some sort of tunnels
that form in the wind. It’s our alternative channel to telepathy.
But unlike telepathy, it can only be used when in human shape.”
Another wow. “That means you can talk to
all—I mean, to your pack right now?”
He nodded. “Actually, Elan was bugging me
some minutes ago, but I closed my mind.” He chuckled under his
breath, as if the thought of it was hilarious for some reason. “We
can do that when we don’t want to be bothered. It’s like putting a
cell phone on silent mode.”
“Oh.” So he didn’t in fact need a cell phone.
And he’d confirmed who the members of the pack were. Did it mean
that—
“My younger brother, Vincent, is in the pack
as well,” he told me as if he’d known what I’d been thinking.
Something he’d said, though, confused me.
“Wait…you’re older than your brother?” I’d surely heard wrong.
His face stiffened once again. “I am,” he
said quietly.
“But…he looks about twenty four or
something.”
“Physically…he is. But not in age.”
Silence fell into the conversation, weighting
us both down with uncertainty and awkwardness. I didn’t want to
even think what his words had meant, because something told me it
wasn’t going to be easy on the mind. But curiosity, as always, got
the best out of me. “Could you explain?”
He ran his hand through his hair and paused
for a moment. “I was born during the Great Depression,” he said at
last.
It didn’t take me long to do the math.
“You’re in your eighties?” I said with the image of a wrinkled face
in my head. Tristan was a galactic contradiction.
“Soon to be eighty-three,” he added with a
small smile.
Then…was he immortal? “I thought only
vampires were entitled to an eternal life.”
“Oh, we’re not immortal. We just have a very
long lifespan—because of the constant regeneration of our physical
tissue. But we’ll end up dying someday.”
An ache blossomed within my chest at those
last words. The idea of him dying was overwhelmingly painful. I
swallowed the sad lump in my throat and said, “Well, you’re not
that old. I thought you were going to say a millennia or
something.”
“I could be your grandpa,” he said with a
cute grimace.
“Hey, Hugh Hefner is older than you and he’s
surrounded by bunnies that are at least four times younger than
him.”
“You don’t care about my age?”
I smiled. “Nope.”
He stared into my eyes with a sparkle of
relief and gratitude. The intensity galvanized my entire body. I
hurried to speak before my voice would turn all shaky again. “Were
you born in Bordeaux like Julian? My dad told me he's French." He
didn't have an accent, though. Plenty years to practice, I
supposed. One of the many gifts immortality gave you.
He shook his head with a smile. “I was born
in Brevard, North Carolina. It has the most beautiful waterfalls,
streams and mountain trails you could ever imagine. Watching
sunsets at the Blue Ridge Parkway was one of my favorite hobbies,”
he said, engrossed into his own visions. A tinge of melancholy
ruffled in his voice.
I suddenly remembered something. “What about
your mom? Where is she?”
He stiffened. The sparkle in his eyes
disappeared. Inwardly, I slapped my forehead for asking that. He
obviously didn’t like to talk about her. He turned and stood up.
With his back to me, he said, “She died many years ago, because of
a…a heart attack. I didn’t spend too many years with her.” There
was deep sorrow in his voice.
I pushed myself up and had to stop myself
from walking up to him and wrapping my arms around him. Seeing him
like this weighted my chest down and crushed my heart. But I
couldn’t do that. Chloe’s words channeled through my mind again.
And unless you live in another world, Tristan is out of bounds
for you
.
You’ll never be able to be with him. Ever
. They
made so, so much sense now. He belonged to another world, and I
didn’t belong in it.
My shoulders sagged. Why had I taken Tristan
inside my heart? Why? I knew how bad things were going to end if I
allowed that. But still. My heart had eclipsed my mind at the end
and now I had to suffer the consequences. Chloe, apparently, didn’t
have the same problem as me. She could be next to him. And I didn’t
like it one bit.
I half circled the table and stopped in front
of him. “Why is Chloe so involved in all of this?” I asked. I
wanted to know why she knew the things she knew, why she placed
herself above them, and why, if they didn’t like her, they had to
put up with her.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and
looked up. “Chloe is a Benandanti,” he said.
I froze.
A Benandanti. Chloe a Benandanti
. It
couldn’t be. The book said they were like shamans of other
cultures. That they healed and protected people. Good Walkers was
their second name, and the idea of Chloe next to that benevolent
term didn’t click in my brain. At all.
“A Benandanti is a spiritual guardian that
protects humans from any creature of the night,” he explained,
taking my shock as confusion. “They're bound to protect humans.
There’s always one where a pack is settled, to keep things in
order—they’re supervisors, of sorts. The Tessitors, however, are
the ones who keep control of all the Benandantis. They make sure
each one of them perform their duties,” he continued. “If not, the
punishment is quite painful.”
A punishment Lamia had used to threaten
Chloe. “What is the IPO?” I suddenly remembered.
“It’s some sort of a…secret police group that
deals with everything non-human related, better known as
International Preterhuman Organization. They’re in cooperation with
the Benandantis. Both make sure we respect the Covenant.”