Revelations (11 page)

I didn’t correct her at the use of Jonas’s favorite nickname. In fact, I didn’t mind at all.

Jonas finally got hold of his tongue and said, “What the hell is going on around here?”

Alendra simply said, “Let me have your jacket.”

Jonas shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over without protest.

Though she knew the answer to this, she said, “I thought you were sick.”

Jonas looked to me to answer, but I only echoed his shrug. “I was,” he said slowly. “I’m not anymore?”

Alendra grinned. Jonas’s jacket barely covered the important parts of her body, but she didn’t care. “It’s okay, Jonas. I know what happened.”

“You do?” he asked.

Alendra nodded.

Jonas looked from me to her then back again.

I lifted my palms in a yet another shrug. When Alendra gave me the appropriate look, I said, “She can read my mind.”

“What?” Jonas said.

“While wolf,” Alendra said. “I can read her as easily as she can always read me. But apparently only when in my other form.” Off of Jonas’s concerned look, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret.”

“Thanks again,” I told her. “Really.”

“I know how dangerous it can be out there,” Alendra said. “We protect each other. And keeping what you can do a secret will protect us all.”

“Got that right,” I muttered.

Both Alendra and I looked to Jonas, who shivered horribly without his jacket. Alendra had an answer to the situation, saying, “You’re freezing your ass off, Jonas. Let’s go inside.”

Jonas smiled at me then led the way back to the house. He and I waited alone in the kitchen while Alendra retrieved her clothes from where they had been left, out by the shed. She’d returned Jonas’s jacket and walked out mother naked into the night. She came back in time to find me putting Hermione’s tea kettle on the stove to heat up some water. I like tea, but I was up for some coffee, and I’m not one for using the coffee pot. Anyway, she sat across from me and Jonas, clasped her hands on the tabletop and angled her head.

“So what does this all mean for us now?” she asked.

“Guess this means we have to be friends,” I said.

It was well known Alendra and I disliked each other. We avoided each other as best we could. In fact, we hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other each day I lived in the Commune. I’d never seen her change before. I really didn’t know anything about her except what Philip and Jonas told me. This new discovery changed everything.

Alendra smiled at me.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

“I wish I could read your mind at all times, like you can mine.”

I laughed quietly. “No, you probably don’t want to. It’s not pretty in my head.”

She echoed my laughter then gave me a sly look. “I’m betting most of your thoughts are about Jonas.”

Jonas lifted an eyebrow, or a brow ridge or whatever you want to call it since it really isn’t a brow of any kind.

“She’s not lying, you know,” I said to him.

If Jonas could blush, he would have just then. I got up to take the kettle off the stove and went about making myself a cup of coffee. This involved the use of fresh coffee grounds and a strainer. I made three cups and gave one to Jonas and the other to Alendra. I sat with the third cup and stared into its depths. What I was looking for, I could not say. So much happened in a twenty-four hour period. There was a lot on my mind.

Alendra seemed to sense this, and she said, “Jonas, it’s good to have you still around. Hermione was mighty worried.”

“She had every right to be worried,” I said. “He would have died.”

Jonas looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“Seriously?” he asked.

I nodded.

I saw Jonas shudder then hide it by taking a drink from his cup of coffee. That was enough of a distraction for him to say, “This is great. Where’d you learn to make coffee like this?”

I smiled. “On the street.”

“The street?” Alendra said.

“I wasn’t the most obedient kid,” I said. I left it at that. It wasn’t a story I really wanted to tell. Ever.

She sensed this and stayed quiet.

So it was the three of us stayed up until the sun rose. We talked about everything and nothing. We discussed the many aspects of our lives at the Commune. We laughed about something Pete said the night before. We talked about our favorite
The X-Files
episodes; mine being “Bad Blood,” the one about the vampires, and hers being the one with the ghost ship, where Mulder kissed Scully at the very end. When the sun rose, Alendra went to bed to get a few hours of sleep. Jonas and I went back out onto the porch and sat together in the swing.

Chapter Eighteen

Starch was the first to find us, and he couldn’t think of much to say upon seeing Jonas as healthy as an ox. He’d gone out onto the porch only because he couldn’t stand being by himself in his room anymore. He waited patiently for news of Jonas’s death. I don’t have to say he was pleasantly surprised. “I thought you were a goner, man,” he said.

Jonas gave me only the briefest of looks before giving Starch his full attention. “I’m okay,” he said.

“You sure?” Starch asked.

“I’m all right,” Jonas said, trying to assure him.

Starch was a little skeptical and curious. He leaned against the porch rail, facing Jonas and me.

“I’m fine,” Jonas growled.

“Okay,” Starch said. “I just thought….”

“Yeah,” Jonas said, “I thought the same thing for a little while there.”

Starch left it at that. The rest of the day went pretty much like any other day, except Jonas had to answer for his renewed health. Nobody questioned it really. Hermione said it must be her tea that was the ultimate cure. I only rolled my eyes when she wasn’t looking. The worry left the house and everything was okay. It was over quickly and it really was that simple.

Though everyone was kinda pissed when I commandeered the remote control and took over the TV for the night. Cadence did what she always did; she retreated to her room with a book; she almost hates TV with an ultimate passion. Pete and Patty tolerated my flipping channels for a while. Starch, still holding onto his confusion, but not voicing it, went to bed early. Philip, who returned from his business trip to find everything in chaos, relished the quiet that settled over the household since Jonas’s seemingly miraculous (there’s that word again) recovery. Philip was sitting in the kitchen eating a late dinner with Alendra, who liked her steak as raw as she could get it. Humbolt and Hermione vanished into their usual domain.

Jonas alone knew what I was looking for on the television.

I did not see Christian again. Not for a long time. Not after a lot had happened. I continued to channel surf until I fell asleep. Jonas carried me off to bed and slept beside me. Waking in his arms gave me just about the greatest feeling I’d ever had— next to being kissed by him for the first time and every other time he kissed me after that. It was still late, and I lay awake for a long time, running my finger along the line of his hard jaw, tracing the path of his scaled skin. Gods, I never knew I could love someone so much.

While I lay awake, dawn very far away, I heard her calling me again. That was a call I knew I could not deny, so I went outside to a private conversation with my new friend, Alendra.

Chapter Nineteen

She sat outside on the ridge overlooking the Commune, the place where Jonas and I so loved to sit, only because there was a big, flat rock up there to sit on. In the dark, barefoot and not worried about thorns or cactus needles digging into my feet, I climbed up the side of the hill, guided only by the dim light of the waning moon. She was wolf, and she sat on her haunches, staring out at the desert beyond with her back to the Commune. Her tail once again swished the ground.

Her first question caught me off guard. “
Do you have faith, Christiana?”

“
In what?”
I asked, having no idea how I should answer this.

“
In anything,”
she said. “
In yourself? In others? In humanity?”

I thought about it for a moment, but there was only one way I could answer. “
I don’t think so.”

Her wolf eyes met mine. “
Not even in yourself?”

I shook my head, feeling honesty was best. “
Never have
,” I told her.

She angled her head, looking at me sideways then turned her attention back to the desert. “
You can read minds, Chris. You know the truth about people. You can know the truth about everyone. And yet you have no faith? I know you don’t believe in God, but you must believe in something
.”

I looked at her even though her eyes were focused elsewhere. “
Alendra, how much did you read from my mind?”

“
Not enough,”
she said. “
And I won’t pry now. I was just curious.”

“
Well,”
I said, “
what about you? What do you have faith in?”

“
I, at least, have faith in myself
.”

I smiled wanly as her eyes darted my way. “
People died because of me,”
I said, my voice a whisper in my own head. “
I’ve killed people, Alendra.”

“
I don’t believe you,”
was her instant answer.

“
You know I’m not lying,”
I said. “
I have no faith because of the things I’ve seen. Because of the things I’ve done and because of the things that have been done to me. Like you, I may not remember being used as an experiment, but I know it happened. I know what people are capable of. I’ve watched reasonable men shoot down innocent children. I have no faith in people.”

Alendra was silent, her eyes once more on the dark world. She didn’t question my words, though I know they plagued her. Instead, she said, “
I haven’t seen what you’ve seen. I at least know myself well enough to have faith in myself. You should, too. I have faith in you.
“ When her lupine head turned towards me, I was too stunned in silence to speak. “
You are extraordinary. Whether you believe that or not, no one on this planet can do what you can do.”

“
How do you know that?”
I asked. “
There could be hundreds of people out there like me.”

“
Then you wouldn’t be so afraid about being hunted
,” she said.

She had me there. There would be no reason to hunt me down if there were others like me. I was wanted, because of what I can do. I knew that. I’d lost my father to this reasoning. Alendra was right, and she knew it.

We said very little more as the night wore into the dawn. We spoke of unimportant things. I thought more and more about what she said. She had faith in me? Of all people? I didn’t understand. Someday though, I would.

Chapter Twenty

Things happened rather fast after my night talk with Alendra. First off, Philip, my saviour, got a big job out in Los Angeles and was going to be leaving us. Philip, in ways I didn’t quite understand, provided for all of us. While some of the normal folks, meaning Pete, Patty, and the others who did not look different from any other human being, worked part-time or like Cadence full-time positions, others not at all, like myself. Then there was Jonas, who fixed up whatever junked cars Philip brought home and then resold them. I didn’t work. I was too afraid of what would happen.

Anyway, saying goodbye to Philip I found to be very difficult for me, even though I knew he wouldn’t be gone forever. I called him my saviour because he brought me away from a life of misery after my coma and took me to a place I now called home. He cared about me, even loved me to a degree. As he let on to me when he left, he loved someone else, too.

There were many things I didn’t know about Philip at the time, at least up until he left. He was almost leading a double life. A lawyer for some big firm in Los Angeles, he drove out there three or four days a week, sometimes staying overnight in hotels, and coming back to the Commune. Well, over the past couple of years, even before I came to the Commune, Philip met a girl, a girl he fell in love with. He didn’t tell anyone about her. He felt it easier to tell everyone that his new job required him to be in the city. I didn’t blame him for keeping this secret. The others would think he abandoned them for some girl. I knew better. Philip, just like all the rest of us, wanted a normal life. He felt like he could have it with this woman.

“I won’t be far,” Philip said. He held me at arms’ length, having left me as his last goodbye.

“A few miles is too far,” I said.

“You’re the strongest of us all,” he told me. “You’ll be fine.”

“Guess I’ll have to go out and get a job, work to support myself now.”

He laughed. “Well, you won’t have to work full time, or at all, but if you want to, feel free.”