Blood Ties (5 page)

For the rest of the day, Samantha haunted my every thought. If I was going to have any peace, I knew I had to confront this.

I
had
to go down to the school and see. Just to look at the crime scene. If nothing was familiar, I’d tell Julie about my dream, and we’d go to a real psychiatrist and get me on some drugs fast, quick, and in a hurry. However, if it
was
familiar… well…I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

I snuck out of the apartment while Julie was in the shower. I knew she’d be in there for at least an hour because she’d said she was going to shave. For a female Julie had a massive amount of body hair, and it always took her that long to scrape the moss off.

We didn’t live too far from campus, so it only took me a few minutes to get there. The closer I got, the more it felt like I was reliving the dream—a morbid déjà vu. There was just enough dusky sunlight to see the campus yard. Police tape hung like laundry on a line. The cleanup crew had done a shitty job of power-washing the blood off the sidewalk and steps, leaving a dried river of pinkish streaks behind. If I saw the fleur-de-lis, that would confirm that it hadn’t been a dream—that in some way I had actually been there during the murder. I scanned the area and could not find anything resembling a fleur-de-lis.
Phew…
It had been only a nightmare.

I laughed despite my neurosis, satisfied that I could hold off on the crazy pills a wee bit longer. I turned around to walk home and heard dried grass crush under someone’s feet. Then I was hit with a concussion-inducing blow that pushed me forward about five feet. I saw what appeared to be a man. His hideous face could have passed in a crowd of regular people, but upon closer inspection you’d see something was off. He stood there looking at me for a moment as if he already knew who I was, with a strange combination of awe and hatred on his face. His mouth pulled back over his teeth. I could see some caked-on blood on their pointy tips.

In the next instant, he knocked me down and straddled my legs. I was trapped by the overwhelming weight of his large body. In turn, my body reacted, and my fangs emerged from my gums.

Just then something flew out of the twilight and crashed into my attacker, smacking him off me. A humanoid, wolf-like creature appeared. Its graceful, almost feminine beauty momentarily struck me. It stood about seven feet tall and had chocolate-brown fur that lay smoothly on its skin. Its yellow eyes had midnight-black irises that strobed brightly in the dark. They were scary as hell…and yet oddly familiar.

The wolf wrestled with the killer. They effortlessly picked each other up and threw one another around the yard. The wolf slashed at the killer with its mammoth claws, leaving fleshy gashes behind. The killer, in return, bit into the wolf and tore out bits of hairy skin.

I wasn’t sticking around to see which monster would win the fight. Despite my head injury, my body took full advantage of the excess adrenaline, and I ran all the way home. Usain Bolt had nothing on me.

Julie wasn’t going to believe this!

I slid into the apartment like it was home plate. I secured the chain and dropped to my knees to turn the lock on the knob. I was far from being a religious person, but since I was already kneeling—and had Freddy Krueger and a big-ass dog possibly chasing me—I clasped my hands and spouted out a random prayer: “Hail Mary. The kingdom and the power. Santa Claus. Easter Bunny.” I tried to make the sign of the cross, but was so scared I couldn’t remember how.

I waited a moment, trying to get my mind in order. Then I steeled myself and looked out the peephole. The fisheye view showed nothing except the fire-escape door across the hall.

My head felt like it was about to explode, and I had to get to the couch. I touched the back of my head where that Section 8 had slugged me; it was saturated with blood. I wiped it on my clothes and sank into the couch like I was the Titanic.

“Julie,” I called out. “Julieeeee!”

The sliding glass door opened, and in walked the shewolf—the one from campus—morphing into Julie. “You called?” she said.

And I faded to black.

I woke up feeling the high-speed velocity of a car underneath me. “Oh, my fucking head. Julie…Advil.” I was disoriented, and thinking I was still at the apartment. I looked over and Julie—no, Wolfy—was driving. I jerked back, trying to wedge my body between the door and the seat.

“Okay, I know you’re fully about to wig out on me. But can you just chill for a moment before you do?” Julie said as she flew around curves. I opened the door and tried to jump out of the car. But Julie’s oversized hand dragged me back in.

“Are you trying to fucking kill yourself, you big dummy?” she said, warding off my prissy hand slaps.

“Deputy? Seeing eye? Snoop Dog? Exactly what kind of fucking canine are you?” I said with my back pushed hard against the door.

Julie raised one eyebrow. “All right, keep it up and see if I don’t pop you one.”

“
Oh
, I don’t have permission to say anything, right? But you can go all Teen Wolf on me.” Yeah, I was glib. But my mediocre world had just been turned upside down. What else was I going to do? Fight? Talk about my feelings? Being a smart ass was all I could think to do.

Julie pulled off to the side of the road. “I’m not upset with you. I sympathize, really.” She took a deep breath. “This is going to be really hard for you.” She kept hemming and hawing, and I was in no mood to guess what she was talking about.

“Just tell me what’s going on,” I said.

Julie got out of the car and leaned back into the driver’sside window. “Wait till we get to your dad’s.” She went to the trunk and brought something back around for me—some of her sweaty-smelling athletic gear.

“I don’t want to wear your funky duds,” I said.

“Yours have blood on them. You don’t want your dad to get any more upset than he already will be.”

Chapter Five

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

—Mark Twain

T
he wolf and I arrived in Massapequa around sunrise. Dad was pacing on the porch. He had given up smoking years ago; however, it was obvious he had been chain-smoking all night from all the scrunched up cigarettes scattered about. He was joined by our ever-faithful beagle, Hercules, who thought he was ten times bigger than he really was. I could see now why Hercules and Julie got along so well. Cousins maybe?

“Hey, Mr. Thomas,” Julie said as respectfully as she could. I saw in Dad’s face that he was blaming her for whatever was going on, but I suspected that was because Julie was the only one at that moment he
could
blame.

“You alright, baby?” Dad asked.

Apparently this whole situation was not new to him. Like Julie, he had been keeping secrets from me too.

“Dad?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

He tried to lead me to the house, thinking if he didn’t say anything I wouldn’t ask any more. So sorry, but he was wrong. “Dad! What’s going on? Stop blowing me off.”

“I gotta make a phone call. Let’s go inside.” He looked around, making sure we weren’t being followed, and led Julie and me into the house. I made sure to stay on the opposite side of the room from Julie, and looked at her with suspicion. I just
knew
Dad was calling the police. Julie was going to be arrested for kidnapping and thrown into a cage. Hell, she was probably already used to that.

Instead I heard Dad talking to my aunt Evelyn on the phone. He was rambling on about it being “time,” and something about me waking up. Under different circumstances, Aunt Evelyn would have seemed like an odd choice to call… but not that morning.

Dad put the phone on speaker, and I heard Aunt Evelyn instructing Julie to bring me over to her house. Aunt Evelyn owned this awesome occult store just outside Massapequa, and lived in a house right behind it. She catered to New Age freaks, and teenagers who dabbled in Internet spells.

Of course!
Evelyn was going to give us a free supply of wolf ’s bane and mandrake.
Like that’s helpful.

Dad looked out the window. “I think it’s best if we lay low here. Everything seems clear.”

“Ed, Grace’s Awakening is being sensed right now by only the most powerful witches. It’s too dangerous for her to stay in her childhood home. Her energy is too strong, too pure there. She’s got to get out now, because when the rest of the witches sense her Awakening, it’s really going get hectic.”

“I guess we’ll be right over,” Dad said, then started to make his way to his bedroom to pack.

“You can’t come, Ed. You have to stay away from Grace for a while. It’s easier for us to protect her that way. We can’t watch over Grace and you at the same time. All of our energy has to go to her.”

Dad smashed the receiver against the wall and spoke to the heavens. “Damn it, Ilan, why did you do this to our little girl?” He got back on the phone. “I’ve spent her whole life protecting her, and now you tell me I can do nothing? What kind of father can’t protect his baby? I’ll let her go, but you’d better take damn good care of her.”

I went over to Dad, who was trying to hold back tears. “I’ve dreaded this day ever since they brought you to me. If things were different, I’d never let you go. But we’re up against people…evil people… Just go.”

Julie pushed me out the door. “C’mon, Grace. We’ve got to leave.” She forced me into the car, and we peeled out of the dirt driveway. I still remember my dad as he waved goodbye until the car was out of sight.

“Grace, it will all make sense when we get to Evelyn’s,” Julie said.

I listened to her dribble off at the mouth as the trees blurred past us. I chuckled to myself at the irony of the situation. All this time I’d thought I only had to worry about hater girls, a retarded ex, and schizophrenia. Meanwhile I’d been living with a girl who should’ve been eating out of a dog dish.

Julie tried to keep a poker face, but I wasn’t buying it.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked. “You were in the shower when I left.”

“I’m not a mind reader. But I am assigned to you, and gifted to know when your life is in peril. Basically, you pinged.”

“Great, now I’m pinging too.”

We both sat in silence. I was wondering what my aunt could possibly tell me that would alleviate this crisis. I tried to make sense of the last few hours by replaying them over and over again:
Murderer. Wolf. Waking up. Murderer. Wolf. Waking up.

Finally we pulled onto a steeply inclined, graveled road. It led up to Evelyn’s store and house. At the end of the road was an old, wooden mailbox embossed with the name Evelyn Valois. On top was an iron sculpture of a witch on a broomstick.

I had spent many summers hanging out with Aunt Evelyn. Her store and home were old, totally refurbished farmhouses. She filled them with odd family heirlooms, antiques, and strange items she picked up along the way. Around town she was known for specializing in fulgurites—also known as lightning glass. It was the closest thing you’d get to holding real lightning.

To make the glass, Evelyn would head down to the beach in her truck filled with long, metal tubes. Obviously no normal person would be caught in a storm with a metal rod on a beach. However, Aunt Evelyn was not your average person. She placed them carefully into the sand, and when lightning struck them, it produced a long rod of sand crystals in elaborate shapes and colors. Aunt Evelyn pulled them out, polished them, and sold them as wind chimes. She couldn’t keep them on the shelves.