Part Eight

Yared waited inside the kitchen of Scotch’s house. The sun had begun to set beyond Mount Aurora and was turning the room a golden color.

It reminded him of Amber. He didn’t have a single true memory of her, but that feeling, that wash of color, told him everything that she was. He wondered if Maple had an idea of Thursy like that.

Thursy was touching his arm. There was a smile on her face that made him realize as if for the first time how beautiful she was. Especially now that she had snuck over to her house next door and put on a set of her own clothes.

"They’re beginning to assemble," she told him. She didn’t lift her voice above a whisper, even though Galdwyn’s house was across the courtyard. "Simone and Neika are there."

He nodded. Thursy glanced uncertainly at Gedmark, who was had been sitting at the kitchen table for the last hour. She had an unlit cigarette in one hand and was rolling it back and forth between her thumb and forefinger.

"Have you heard from Maple?" Thursy asked.

"No. I wasn’t expecting to." For a moment he didn’t speak and then, remembering the moment that morning when he had told Thursy how much he missed their parents, he said, "I’m a little worried."

"Why?"

Gedmark hadn’t moved, but he had no doubt that she was listening. Well, the truth about Maple was going to come out sooner or later. Better it be when Gedmark wasn’t in a talkative mood.

He took a step back from Thursy and then peeled the sweatshirt Coalise’s stepfather had loaned him over his head. Thursy made a choked sound and clapped her hands together.

"What happened?"

Over her shoulder he could see his reflection in the metal toaster. A jagged red wound appeared on his chest a few inches above the heart and a bruise was pooling on his stomach.

"I don’t know," he answered. "It started when we were in the basement talking. Suddenly my chest just started hurting, and then my stomach, and I’m getting a really bad headache."

Thursy ran her fingers across his scalp as Gedmark stood up and walked to them. "There’s a bump," Thursy said. "There’s a huge bump. Are you sure you didn’t knock yourself on something?"

"Certain. You saw me, I was just standing there next to you."

Gedmark peered at the wound on his chest. Her brow creased. "This looks like a stabbing."

"I didn’t get stabbed. And it’s not even bleeding."

"That’s why you think something might have happened to Maple," Thursy connected.

He shrugged. The pain that zig-zagged through his chest felt more like it had come from a splinter than a knife; his stomach ache, too, was disproportionately small.

"How is this connected to Maple?" Gedmark asked.

Thursy looked at Yared for permission. Instead, he said simply, "She’s my soulmate."

Gedmark sighed. "Then I guess we really can’t kill her," she said as she turned and walked back to the table.

Thursy bit her lip. "Is she okay?" she mouthed.

"I’ll talk to her," he whispered. "Give us a couple."

She nodded. When he was alone with Gedmark, he sat down at the table across from her.

Gedmark glanced at him and smiled knowingly. "I won’t get in your way," she promised.

"I’m not worried about that."

"I won’t challenge your leadership. I’ll do what you ask."

"I know." He took some of this newfound strength within him and closed his hand over hers, stilling her rolling cigarette. "This is a stupid question," he said, "but what’s wrong?"

Tears shuddered in her eyes. "You’re just a kid, Yared. You’re just a kid and we’re asking you to lead the pack, when look at what a fucked up mess us adults have made of it. I led Thursy onto the stump the morning of the execution. I walked her right up there. Ever since Brandy died she’s been the closest thing I had to a daughter, but I walked her up there. I didn’t object when Galdwyn said we should kill her.

"You know your mother and I never got along. Never. But when she and your father were alive, we didn’t execute children. Galdwyn never killed anybody or used anybody. There weren’t vampires and humans running around our village. I’m not saying this is your and Thursy’s fault. You’re both just kids, we never expected you to be anything else. But you don’t have a choice now. I can’t stop thinking about how good Galdwyn’s blood will taste, and Tish scares the bejesus out of me, and Simone’s ancient, and I can’t look Thursy in the eye after what I saw happen to her. You’re all we have left, Yared."

To hear everything he secretly feared spoken aloud put him in a cold sweat. And yet...it strengthened him further. He would rise to the occasion or die trying.

He brushed the tears off her cheeks. "I’m not going to disappoint you."

She gave him a sheepish smile. "After the way we’ve behaved, I don’t see how you could."

She slipped her hand out from under his and gave her eyes a thorough rubbing. "So, you and the lamia?" she asked, attempting a conversational tone.

"Not exactly," he said, uncomfortable. "It’s more of a destiny thing."

"Ah. And Scotch and the human. And Thursy and the bogeyman." She sat up straighter, her moment of weakness and despair passing. "As much as I hate to say this, because I don’t trust humans further than I can pounce on them, but I think it might be a message from the universe."

"Yeah? What’s it say?"

"That we’re all going to have to learn to get along. But that sort of thing is more in your department than mine."

As she stood up, he asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, you’re the one who has to decide the Nightworld versus Circle Daybreak issue now."

Yared swallowed.

"Come on, let’s go out to the stump and avenge Kiria."

He followed Gedmark outside.

Yared knew something was wrong as soon as Maple followed Tish and Galdwyn out of the house. She didn’t look at him, not for a moment, while he, Thursy, and Scotch recounted the entire story. He couldn’t even be sure she was listening while he explained to the pack what he believed Galdwyn had done and why.

They stood in a restless circle around the stump. Many of them were openly staring at Thursy and Osprey with distrust, reaffirming Yared’s decision to make Coalise hidden stay in Scotch’s house. Falash was flexing his hands like he couldn’t wait to take Thursy apart again and Narsa was glaring self-righteously. Tya backed up a step every few minutes until she was standing ten yards from the group. Corrie asked question after nit-pickedy question and exaggerated the importance of every hole in Yared’s story.

A few people were on his side. Kiria’s mother, Kimber, turned her sore, furious eyes on Galdwyn almost immediately. Jinchae pointed out plausible explanations that Yared hadn’t thought of to the holes Corries obsessed over. Simone listened thoughtfully and even nodded once.

"If these things are true," Yared said after the story had been told, "then Galdwyn has betrayed the pack." He looked at the double-chinned man, who was wearing an ironed tee-shirt and jeans. "Do you have a response?"

Galdwyn half-chuckled and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Hell," he said, "I don’t know."

Corrie, Talisen, and Preza laughed. Wen and Alber smiled.

Yared swallowed and looked at Maple. She had changed clothes and was wearing a gray high-neck sweater and slate blue pants. Her dark hair fell around her face like night fell over Mount Aurora. She stared steadily at the ground.

"I guess I’m a bit overwhelmed," Galdwyn said. "I know you’re trying to prove that your sister is innocent, Yared, but that story is so much more complicated than the truth that I think you must have been up all night thinking of it. Not that," he was quick to add, "I think you’re lying. I just think you’ve tried very hard to find something that isn’t there.

"Maple has been staying with me since November, that’s true. But she was there by choice and I didn’t even know she had a sister until tonight. I asked her to come here to help Tish. She’s learning to be a potions master and I thought she might be able to help Tish...be a little more normal." He reached out and took the limp, heavy hand of his daughter. "I just wanted her to be happy," he said with Movie Of the Week sincerity. "I was hoping Maple could help, and I kept it from all of you because I know you don’t trust lamia. That was wrong of me, and I apologize for it."

Nods, too many nods from the pack. Yared’s heart began to beat faster.

"As for my killing Kiria..." He sighed. "Kiria was a wonderful young woman, and I never could have hurt her. Her death is such a weight on my shoulders now that I don't think I could be standing in front of you without doubling over if I had killed her. You have my sincerest condolences, Kimber. If I lost Tish, it would tear me apart."

Kimber’s eyes didn’t warm a bit, for which Yared was grateful. He was sensing that he had few allies.

"I hate to say it," Galdwyn added, "but if not for Thursy’s...ah, accident, there would never have been any question about the cause of Kiria’s death."

"Of course not," Jinchae told him. "You were counting on that."

"This is bullshit," Falash burst out. "Thursy’s a temperamental girl, Kiria was in love with Yared, ‘nuff said. And we all know there’s something wrong with Tish, if I were her father I’d try to fix her come hell or high water, too."

"What if you’re wrong?" Jinchae asked.

"What if I’m not? You’re the one standing there and committing treason, Jin. I’m not turning my back on the pack."

"What if the pack has been mislead?" Kimber asked icily.

"It doesn’t matter. Galdwyn is one of our leaders, and he’s older than Yared by sixty years."

Simone lifted her head of gristly hair. "You’re willing to put your faith in the decision of the leaders?"

"Who isn’t?" Narsa demanded. "This is how it’s always been. We trust in the leaders and they do what’s best for the pack."

There were voices of agreement from all around.

Simone met Yared’s eyes. It seemed that she was smiling behind them, but he had no idea why.

"Yared," Talisen said, "I trust you as one of our leaders. But I also trust Galdwyn, and he’s been at this a lot longer than you have. Unless you have anything besides accusations, I don’t see how I can believe you."

Now was the moment. Maple was standing with her back to the stump, arms wrapped around herself. Yared called her name but she didn’t respond.

"Maple," he said again, louder. He thought he saw her shake her head. The pack began to look at her.

"Maple."

Unbelievably, Galdwyn reached out to touch her shoulder. "It’s all right, honey."

Yared felt the pain of the man’s fingers digging into his own shoulder. One slipped down to the edge of his open wound and pinched.

Maple jolted and turned at the same moment Yared had to stop his knees from buckling. He felt their bodies mesh, the pain in her head, in her stomach, in her chest.

He felt a wave of brunt orange sunlight wash over him. Love poured out of her and crashed like waves against the walls of the amber that surrounded her. She was beating on it with everything she had, Yared could see her darkened outline through the wall between them, but even her fits barely made a sound.

"Everything Galdwyn said is true," she told the pack.

Yared looked at her as if he had just opened his eyes. The sun was in the last stages of setting and night was swarming over the village. Maple blended into it as if she was only an apparition. She kept her eyes on the ground while she spoke. Galdwyn kept his hand on her shoulder.

"I’ve never even met Yared or Thursy or Kiria. I don’t know what happened to Kiria, but I know that Galdwyn was with me and Tish nearly the entire day, and neither one of us helped him murder anyone."

Yared realized that he had never truly hated before now.

His heart turned black and began to rot.

Hours of silence surrounded him while he shut down the part of him trying to weep for his loss, for all the loses, for the betrayal. He went underwater into an ocean of certain death where his spread his arms and opened his mouth to let all the air, the loving, life-giving air, spill out of him. The dark water filled his throat and his eyes and his ears. It stained his skin as he rose to the surface and climbed to his feet on the stump.

The water ran down his clothing and formed a puddle beneath him. Hatred was in his mouth, his stomach, underneath his fingernails and trapped in his glare.

Thursy grabbed his hand. She looked like an alien, like an angel, or some character who he had never seen in life. He didn’t even know her. He didn’t know any of these people.

She didn’t see the hate oozing across his skin but she felt how cold it was and let go quickly. Her lips parted and then were motionless as if she had just forgotten what she meant to say.

Jinchae’s voice reached him and he turned away from his sister. "I don’t see that we have any reason to pursue this line of thought any further. I’m sorry, Yared. Thursy, please leave the village as quickly as you can."

"Wait," Simone said. Yared felt her drawing his gaze until their eyes were locked. She was still smiling a tiny bit.

"With all due respect and regret," she said, "I wish to request that Tish step down from leadership of the pack. Yared may have no proof to support his story, but he is right that Tish is unfit to be a leader. Giving her a vote is the same as giving Galdwyn two."

Galdwyn sputtered, his second chin rocking back and forth. "I don’t think that’s at all warranted. Tish is perfectly competent to know right from wrong, and I’m a bit offended by the implication-"

"You yourself brought a lamia into the village to try to help her," Talisen pointed out. "Obviously she’s unwell."

Galdwyn’s cheeks had turned a dark red.

"We’ll have a vote," Simone said breezily. "Galdwyn says she should stay on, I think she should step down, Yared?"

"Down," he growled.

"Then it’s decided. Tish is removed from her role as a voice of the pack. She is given no shame and no banishment, only gratitude for her years of service. She will continue to live on in the village with all warmth and friendship.

"Also, I wish to make an announcement. I, being the last of my family and having no heir, do withdraw from leadership of the pack."

The pack burst into noise. Thursy clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god," Scotch murmured.

Falash was less polite but perhaps more succinct when he shouted, "What the fuck?"

Simone’s eyes met Yared’s again. The torrent of fury around him began to settle into a stone-hard wall. It was cold inside, but as long as he didn’t look at her he could think clearly.

"That only leaves me and Galdwyn," he said under the din. Thursy was "dead," Tish had been kicked out, and Simone had withdrawn.

He stepped forward and Scotch grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?" he asked, but Yared was already shaking him off and walking into the pack.

He stopped in front of Galdwyn. Less than a foot separated them. Yared looked into Galdwyn’s wheat-colored eyes, looked into them hard and let him know all that he felt. The stone wall around him expanded to drawn Galdwyn and Maple into it.

Maple was only an arm’s length away. With one hard punch to the stomach, she was down on the ground in a ball.

The pain that rippled through his own torso felt good.

He could hear her releasing choked breaths as he said to Galdwyn, "I challenge you for leadership of the pack."

Galdwyn’s attempt at a light smile was shaky. "You don’t mean that. Surely you and I can make some sort of peace, for the sake of the pack."

"No," Yared told him simply, and he ‘shifted.

He felt the transformation roll up his spine and climb into each limb. Power flooded his legs. The dim evening came into sharp focus. His tail fell out like a dropping noose. The clothes Coalise’s stepfather had loaned him tore and fell to the floor.

He saw Galdwyn hesitating before him and smelled the acrid, vegetable scent of fear. He stretched his neck, rolled his head, and whistled so loud Jinchae clapped his hands over his ears. "Wait, wait," Galdwyn shouted, backing up. The pack parted behind him, only Tish stayed at his side.

His fangs dripped bitter saliva and he drew his ears down flat against his head. Maple was laying on the ground only a few feet away. The scent of blood surrounded her weak form, old blood, new blood, the blood of others on which she had feasted. No one dared to touch her except Thursy, who scrambled past Yared and fell to her knees beside the lamia.

"The challenge has been made," Simone cried in a voice much stronger than her tiny, old-lady body could have created. "Either ‘shift of fight as you are."

Galdwyn was trapped. He had used the laws of the pack to try to control it, and now Yared and Simone were using the same laws to bring him down.

Somehow, the irony wasn’t sweet.

Galdwyn passed a panicked look over the crowd and shrugged helplessly. He shapeshifted with effort into a nearly white puma with a belly so saggy it brushed the ground and half-length brittle whiskers. The pack cleared around them, a dozen people ‘shifting and the others beginning to call out encouragement. Thursy lifted Maple easily and carried her to the stump.

Yared blocked everything out and focused only on Galdwyn. He could see the hair on the back of Galdwyn’s neck quivering, bristling and then collapsing. He felt his own fur stand straight up and lowered his head close to the ground. He and Galdwyn began making a slow circle around each other.

There was never any question in his mind that he would win. Galdwyn was old and weak, and he had nothing behind him like the ocean of hatred Yared was drinking from.

From the look in his pastel eyes, Galdwyn knew, too.

He hissed. Galdwyn hissed back.

Yared stretched his paws and his claws came out. He leaned back on his haunches and Galdwyn sprang into the air without warning.

He didn’t go for the neck, the way pumas most often do. He didn’t try to tear out the eyes or rip open the throat or break legs.

Yared froze, caught off guard, and then he lost feeling in part of his tail.

He spun. Blood splashed through the air, onto the pack members gathered all around. Pain reached into his back like the roots of a plant spreading.

Galdwyn was crouched on the ground. He had half Yared’s tail in his jaws.

Yared took a few steps back. His paws landed in a wet swamp of his own blood and he felt his heart skip two beats.

Galdwyn’s pastel eyes were wide, terrified. He knew that he had either just won or else sentenced himself to death. It all depended on how strong Yared was willing to be, and how much more pain he was willing to endure.

He had lost Kiria, not his love but his best friend, who had perhaps been worth more to him that way. His parents had been washed away with Brandy, the kitten he had just begun to think of as a possible mate. Thursy was alive but cut off from him, from their pack, forever. Scotch had fallen in with the humans and was eating their peace propaganda with both hands.

And Maple was a soulless bitch whose blood he would taste before he slept.

He had nothing to lose. But strangely, he knew he had nothing to gain, either.

So he would do his duty now, and rip out the tumors from the body of his pack, and they might appreciate it and they might take him for granted, but at least he would know tomorrow that he had been true to them, even if they hadn’t been true to him.

He leapt. With his tail had gone his balance and he stumbled through the air like an acrobat on the trapeze for the first time. Galdwyn didn’t try to defend himself, he only crouched down further. Yared landed flat on top of him with his fangs ready.

But instead of biting, he found himself beating Galdwyn. Beating him with his claws retracted the way he had fought with his parents as a child. Even when Galdwyn had fallen onto his back and was blinking as the stars spun, even when Yared hit him so hard he felt it in his shoulders, he didn’t bring out his claws.

Galdwyn kept the tail in his mouth.

Yared knocked him until Galdwyn’s head came loose on his neck, the vertebrae broken into pieces like a dropped mirror, and still the old man wouldn’t let go of that tail. Yared recognized every spot on it, the scent of himself clinging to the fur.

Finally he sat up. Galdwyn looked at him dizzily. His jaw was locked.

Yared stared at him, exhausted from the blood loss and the exertion and the force of the hateful waves he was swimming through. He stared at the man who had stolen everything from him and for the first time was not so blind to think that this man cared any longer about surviving or gloating or winning.

All he wanted now was to have left a mark. He was the ultimate egotist, if he couldn’t have glory he would at least be a legend.

In a strange way, Yared understood that.

So he rested his unclawed paws on the ground, nuzzled his muzzle beneath Galdwyn’s soft, flabby chin, and then carefully bit down. He broke through the fur and Galdwyn whined. Yared moved down further, biting through veins, arteries, muscles, organs, pipes, tubes, bones and gristle. Down the neck and onto the mound of muscle over the breastbone, where the blood really began flowing, where the torn muscles began to cry onto the cobblestone of the courtyard. He bit until he had broken every rib and could hear Galdwyn’s heart throbbing in his ears. His underbelly slid apart like well-cooked lamb and Yared didn’t stop until his jaw went limp and those heather gray and seafoam green eyes turned a cloudy brown.

Yared took his tail out of Galdwyn’s mouth. There was fur and blood and bile in his mouth as he walked toward the stump. He didn’t look back to see Galdwyn’s body torn open like a feather pillow. He didn’t listen to the shouts and pandemonium the pack had broken into. He climbed wearily onto the stump and collapsed into Thursy’s outstretched arms. Blood dripped off his mouth onto her shirt and a red line marked the path he had come.

"Oh, Yared," she was saying, "my beautiful Yared, don’t die on me."

She tore an entire leg of her pants off with one hard jerk and used the fabric to wrap Yared’s tail, what was left of it. He let the portion Galdwyn had bitten off fall out of his mouth and rolled onto his back to stare at the stars just beginning to peek out.

"Don’t die, kitten," Thursy said.

He knew he wasn’t going to die. He just needed a few minutes to rest, to let his blood begin clotting at the wound.

He just needed a rest. Then he was going to go kill Maple.