Masquerade (34 page)

“
What happened?”

“
My mom was scared of me.
She was furious that my Dad wouldn’t tell her something like that,
but to her, I was still her son. My dad didn’t want me around, I
heard him say it, loud and clear. He thought I was a disgrace. He
thought I was weak. How come all the other generation could manage
to overcome the gene when I couldn’t? I think that deep down he was
scared of me. He was afraid that I would hurt him, my mother and my
little brother. But I wouldn’t do that. I would never do that.” He
said the last like he was trying to convince me, like he was trying
to make me believe.

“
I know that, Sam. Of
course you wouldn’t hurt them. They are your family.” I said the
words because I believed them, but more importantly because he
needed to hear them.

The tension in his body
seemed to ease, and he turned back, able to look at me once
more.

“
My mom
convinced my dad to let me stay. He didn’t have a choice really. He
lied to her for years and allowing me to stay was the only thing
that would even come close to making up for it. For a while we
lived like nothing happened. They ignored when I impulsively went
out into the night, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t
stop from changing. They pretended that my quick growth spurts were
because I was a boy, and that it wasn’t unnatural. I wasn’t allowed
to talk about it or ask any questions about what was happening to
me. But even though they pretended that nothing was wrong, there
was. My mother was terrified of me. She didn’t understand how my
body could transform, to twist myself into something else. She used
to pray constantly asking for me to be spared. She couldn’t accept
that I was a freak. My dad just kind of ignored me, tried to
pretend I wasn’t there. He would take my brother out into the yard
and play football, but I was never allowed to play. My mother was
terrified that I would hurt him – the only normal son they had
left. Right
before I turned
sixteen, Dad brought some paperwork home and handed it to me.
Emancipation papers. They wanted me to file for emancipation and
move out, so I did. They bought me my truck and paid the rent for
six months in advance for a crappy studio apartment on the other
side of town. When they dropped me off there, Dad handed me an
envelope with some cash in it and told me that from there on out I
was on my own. I haven’t seen them since.”

“
They let you go? Just like
that?” My words were an echo of the time I tried to walk away and
he’d asked me the same.

“
Yeah.”

“
How dare he!” I raged,
pacing away, fists clenched at my sides.

“
He?”

“
Your father,” I spat. “He
did this to you, and then he had the nerve to disown you! If I ever
see him I’ll…”

Sam seemed amused by this, and I had
no idea why. “You’ll what?”

“
Punch him in the
nose!”

He laughed.

“
It’s not funny.” I glared
at him.

He sobered. “Of course it isn’t,” he
rasped and walked to me, grasping my balled fist. “You’re cute when
you’re mad.”

A frustrated sound escaped me, and I
leaned into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“
Don’t be.”

“
Not for you.”

“
No?” He pulled back and
lifted an eyebrow.

I shook my head. “For them. They made
a huge mistake by not keeping you in their lives. I can’t imagine
not having you in my life.”

His eyes softened, but then he stepped
away. “You turned me away too.”

I winced and stepped forward. “Not
because you’re a hellhound. Because you lied to me and it hurt. But
even before my dream last night…I was on my way back to
you.”

“
You were?”

I nodded. “I couldn’t stand being
apart.”

He swept me into his arms and held me.
He was solid and strong; he’d always been those things. Except now
he was even more so because of what he’d managed to live through.
He rested a cheek against my hair and his raspy, deep voice filled
the room. “Original hellhounds were used a long time ago to take
souls through obstacles into Hell. To enter Hell one must pass
through a wall of fire and a body of water. They were used as
guardians to the gates of Hell, and sometimes souls would escape,
and they were sent to hunt them down and drag them
back.”

“
How did the hellhound gene
end up on Earth?”

“
Hellhounds were cast out
of hell and sent to Earth, where they took human form and lived
among humans.”

“
Why were they cast
out?”

“
Hellhounds were extremely uncontrollable. Not even Satan
himself could make them do what he wanted. So he banished them, he
cast them out of Hell and gave them human traits. He sent them to
live on earth where he had hoped they would spread evil throughout
the human race.
The hellhounds
began to reproduce, and the gene was passed down from family to
family, skipping a generation. Best I can figure is that eventually
the gene pool became diluted and the children became more human and
less hound. It was Satan’s ultimate revenge against God. He was
using his evil to contaminate some of God’s children and twist them
into sin.”

“
I don’t believe you are
evil, Sam.” I told him wholeheartedly.

“
I don’t
believe you’re evil either.” He said, giving me a knowing look. It
dawned on me that we had more in common than I thought. “It’s why I
got so upset that day at your house.
I’m
the one who came inside and
kissed you.
I’m
the one who was so caught up in you that I didn’t hear your
mom. And
you
are
the one who got blamed for it. She said the exact words to you that
my father said to me. He said I was marked by evil

“
We have each other,” I
said, “and what happened with my mother isn’t your fault. It had
been brewing for a long time, and I just never noticed.” I had been
too caught up in my own pity.

In two short strides he was in front
of me, pulling me close for a long, hard hug. I tightened my arms
around him and sighed then stepped away and pushed the hair from my
eyes.

“
How do you know all of
this?”

“
China.
It was one of the reasons I went with her when she found
me
–
and
one of the reasons I stayed. I dropped out of school because she
convinced me I would never fit in
.
She’s older than me. Older than my roommates.
She’s lived longer inside her body, and she knows how to use her
abilities. She taught us, showed us how to live and how to keep our
secret.”

“
Does it hurt very much?” I
asked. “When your body changes like that?”

“
Not anymore.”

“
That’s good.” I didn’t
want to think of him in pain.

I needed a minute to digest
everything he was saying, so I went to the fridge to get a bag of
carrots. They
were a little wilted because
I hadn’t been in here for a while. Sam watched me from the door as
I went to each stall and fed the horses. They all eyed him warily,
but the lure of the carrot was too strong, and soon they just
ignored him. “They’re getting used to you.”

I looked over my shoulder
at him. He was looking at me from beneath lowered lids, almost like
he was shy. “I understand now why you love comic books so
much.”

He grinned. “Oh, yeah?
Why’s that?” He settled his shoulder against the doorjamb and made
himself comfortable.

“
Because you can identify
with the guys who are different, with the guys who can do things
that no one else can.” It made me think of something else… “Do you
have any cool superpowers?”

He laughed. But I saw some
sort of smug satisfaction in his eyes. The kind that guys always
got when they scored a touchdown or pulled up in front of a crowd
in a muscle car.

“
Maybe,” he
teased.

“
It’s okay if you don’t,”
I said, feeling mischievous. “I guess turning into a big dog is
cool enough.”

For a second his mouth
dropped open, but then he laughed. It was a rich sound, and it
drifted to the rafters. It was a sound I wanted to hear over and
over again.
This
was the real Sam. My Sam.

“
I
hear really good. And I have inhuman strength.”

“
I figured that out.” I
said, trying to sound unimpressed, when really I was totally
impressed.

“
I’m fireproof.”

“
You are?” Now this was
pretty cool.

“
I can stand in the middle
of a fire and my body won’t be affected; my core temperature would
rise, but that’s it.”

“
Interesting,” I said,
patting Jasper. That would explain why the night I almost fell into
the
fire, his jacket and shirt got burned
through but not his skin.

“
I can survive being
frozen, too. I would only lose consciousness until my body
temperature returned to normal.”

“
You’ve tried freezing
yourself to death?”

His teeth flashed as he
laughed. “No. China told me. I also read that we are really great
swimmers. I’ve tried that one out.” He grinned again. “It’s
definitely true.”

“
Well aren’t you just a
show off?” I smiled. I liked being like this with him. With
everything out in the open, no secrets between us. It felt lighter,
easier.

But then a stray thought pierced
through my happy mood. I returned the bag of carrots to the fridge
and cleared my throat. “I should be getting inside before Gran
comes looking for me.”

He frowned and hooked me around the
waist, towing me near him. “Hey, did I frighten you?”

“
No. I…” I tried to step
out of his hold.

He wouldn’t let me. “You
what?”

The words rushed out of me, toppling
over one another. “Can you live forever?”

He paused, weighing my
words and searching for something in my eyes. “The idea upsets
you?”

I was embarrassed, and I
shrugged.

“
Why?”

Because the thought of me aging and
dying while he stayed behind was depressing. I wanted him all to
myself; I was selfish. When I got wrinkled and old and died, he
would find someone new, young and beautiful. I turned and buried my
face against him, inhaling deeply of his scent.

“
Heven?”

“
Because I have to get old
and die. I want to stay with you.”

He chuckled. “I have to get old and
die too.”

“
Really?” I pulled back
searching for the truth in his eyes.

“
Yes. You seem thrilled at
my impending doom.”

“
Our
impending doom,” I said, burrowing against him once more.
“And it won’t be for a long time.”

His chest vibrated with laughter, and
it tickled me.

“
You’ll come for
breakfast?”

“
Sure. I’m going to go home
and shower first, then I’ll be back.”

At the barn door I stopped but didn’t
look back. “Sam? I never really walked away. I thought of you every
minute, and I couldn’t sleep without your bracelet. It was a
terrible mistake that I never, ever plan to make again.”

I heard his breath hitch as I let
myself out the door.

The scent of breakfast wafted all the
way upstairs and made my stomach growl viciously. Throughout my
routine of showering and dressing, I couldn’t stop thinking about
the things Sam confided in me. I didn’t understand how his parents
could turn him away. It made my stomach ache.

I stepped in front of the
mirror to brush my hair, and my gaze landed on my scars. After
everything Sam had been through, they seemed small and
insignificant. Staring at myself, I pulled all my hair back, away
from my face, into a high ponytail. If these scars were the worst
that ever happened to me then I was lucky. My mother’s words
floated through my head,
marked by
evil.
I guess I could understand how Sam’s
parents treated him. Wasn’t my mother treating me the
same?

How could she
raise me for sixteen years and then blame me for
how I turned out? It hardly seemed fair that something I didn’t ask
for or want could make others judge me. But, to be fair, the only
one who truly judged me was my mother. My friends, they never
judged me, I allowed myself to believe that is what they were
doing, but they weren’t. Hadn’t they just explained that to me at
prom? So, yeah, I guess I did know how Sam felt, only it was worse
for him because his rejection is real. The realization was
humbling. Suddenly
, I ached for Sam, ached
for his crooked smile and golden gaze. I wanted to touch him and
feel his strength. A strength that not only came from his true
identity, but from everything he had already overcome.

Downstairs Gran was heaping steaming
blueberry pancakes onto a huge platter. “I hope you’re hungry,” she
said, adding the platter to an astonishing array of other
loaded-down platters. Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast,
fruit…