Feral (33 page)

Bennie’s eyes dropped to his plate, shrugging
his shoulders. He pushed his food around with his fork, forlorn over my desertion.  I had accepted the fact our plans to travel Europe were null and void, but clearly he hadn’t given it much thought until now.

“Bennie is going to study art abroad,” I spoke up.  “In Europe.”

“Actually, I’ve been looking into PCA&D,” Bennie said into his plate.  “They have a good graphic arts program, and it’s right in Lancaster.”

“But…
you do
canvas
.”  I said this like any other media was a sacrilege.

“I can still do canvas.  But there’s more work in graphics.  I can freelance.  Build my portfolio.  Then sell my paintings on the side.”

“Oh.”  I guess I was wrong.  He
had
thought about it.  Again, I realized how unavailable I had become.  Even if we only texted, we had kept some sort of contact with each other, but I’d only talked to him twice since Thanksgiving, and I’d been laconic in conversation.

“Thale’s going to college,” Crispin offered.  “She wants to be a doctor.”

I could’ve crawled in a hole.  Bennie and Icarus looked at me as if I’d just announced I was pregnant.  With twins.  And I’d conceived asexually.

“That’s why she’s been holed up in her room the past few weeks. 
She’s been studying diseases and antidotes.  She wants to be a virologist.”

I could’
ve cut the tension with a knife it was so thick.  Icarus’s jaw strained, the cords and muscles standing out in a display of animosity.  I don’t know why he was so upset.  We’d barely talked since the incident in the pantry.  He’d apologized, and I’d accepted, but he never pressed me for more than that, so I never offered.  Unlike Bennie, I thought the distance between us was beneficial.  I’d accepted my place in the pack.  As long as I didn’t cross any lines, he didn’t hassle me.  We settled into a comfortable truce of agreement and respect.

“Desert anyone?” Lucius said, in a much better segue.  “I made apple pie.”

“And we bought vanilla ice cream,” Crispin enthused.  “I’ll go get it.”  In pure Crispin fashion, he jumped from the chair and tore out of the room.  I supposed he would take after Max with his unfailing appetite.  When food was involved, he was always first in line.

Composing his features, Icarus unfroze from his inte
rnal struggle.  “I have contacts in Italy.  When you decide what you’d like to do, I could make some calls.”

“Really?” Bennie brightened.  “
In Italy?”

“
Yes, in Rome.”

“Rome!” Bennie blurted, his eyes going starry.  “Have you ever been?  Is it beautiful there?  Have you seen the Colosseum?  Or the Foro Romano?  Or the Pantheon?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Apparently recalling the obstacle of
lycan territories, Bennie’s smile faded.  He retreated into the morose depression of reality.  It was only in the receding wake of silence that I noticed the boys staring at their alpha, their expressions ranging from perplexed to bemused.

“What?” Icarus snappe
d at them.

“Nothing,” Caius answered, fighting a smile.

“Don’t you all have dishes to do?”

“
Not yet,” Caius replied, his smile unwavering.  “We didn’t even have dessert.”

“Do we really want to chance des
sert?” Max muttered.  “Pie’ll probably still have seeds left in it.  We’ll all die of arsenic poisoning.”  I’d say he was taking his turn at rescuing the conversation, but I think he was genuinely worried about Lucius’s dubious cooking skills.

I’ll admit the turkey was dry, the stuffing was bland, and the mashed potatoes were lumpy and slightly grainy from being undercooked.  The carrots were
overcooked.  Crispin mashed his on his plate with little effort.  But, overall, the food wasn’t life-threatening.

“I heard that!” Lucius shouted from the kitchen.

“Apples don’t have arsenic in them,” I assured.  “It’s cyanide.  And you’d have to eat a whole lot of them to suffer any effects.”

“Ooh,” Max taunted
, brushing the tip of his nose with his finger.  “It’s not arsenic—it’s cyanide.  Should we all call you ‘Doctor’ now?”

Reluctant to ruin Christmas with bickering, I repressed a scowl.  Instead,
I winked and pursed my lips.  “No, but you can call me tomorrow.”

“OOOoohhhhh!”
the boys howled in chorus, chortling.

“I’ll call her anything she wants if she wears one of those uniforms,” Caius smiled.
  You’d think he’d learn after Icarus repealed his rule on hitting the boys.  Although he didn’t spank him, he tanned his arse with the flat of his leather belt.  Seriously.  Ouch.

“You mean scrubs?” I threw back at him.
  “Because they’re so sexy.”

“No, like a lab coat with nothin
’ underneath.”

He’d seen me in less, but I refrained from pointing that out.

“She’s practicing pick up lines already,” Bacchus added.  “Is that what you’ve really been doing up in your room all that time—it took you a month to come up with that?”

“Nah, I’ve gotta bunch of ‘em.”

“Like what?”

“Hmm, wanna
step into my office and take off your clothes?  Or—Has anyone looked at that?  Why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll give you a full exam?”

“Boooooo!” 
Bacchus chucked a biscuit my way.  Max tossed his napkin.  Terrible as Lucius’s cooking was, he wasn’t squandering it.  “Lame,” Bennie jeered.  “That was so lame.”

“It’d work
,” Caius said.  If Max loved food, he loved flirting.

Noting Icarus sitting back in his chair, watching the antics of his cousins
, I realized he was letting it slide, enjoying the bantering and laughter.  I smiled and lifted my glass.

“Yo Saturnalia,” said Bacchus, lifting his own glass.

“What?”

“It’s a toast.”

“Oh, yo Saturnalia.”  Lifting my glass, I touched my rim to his.  I guess I was wrong.  It really was a holiday.

Laughing, Bacchus stared at me, making me feel
self-conscious.  “It’s not yo like ‘Yo bro, look at that chick,’ it’s e-o, spelled io, like ‘Hooray,’” Bacchus explained.  “‘Io Saturnalia,’ we’re celebrating Saturn.  For us, it’s kind of like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one.”

“That’s what I said.
‘ Io Saturnalia.’  It’s just my Philly accent.”

“You said
‘yo’ not ‘io,’” Max scoffed.  “And you’re about as Philadelphian as we are.”

“Apple pie,” Lucius said, placing the object of perfection in the center of the table.  It was huge.  Like half a dozen blackbirds huge.
  The crust bowed upwards like they might burst through the moment you pierced it with a knife.

“
I think you’re supposed to cut the apples up,” Bacchus pointed out, “before you bake the pie.”

Abandoning the fruits of his labor, he cut a hard glare at his cousin.  “I did, dickhead.  Don’t knock my pie.  It looks beautiful.”

“It does look beautiful,” I agreed.  “Cut it.  Let’s have some.”

“Who wants ice cream on theirs?” Crispin asked.  “His trigger finger ratcheting the ice cream scooper.”  Bennie held up a hand.

“Me.”

“Just
ice cream,” Caius qualified.  He refused to eat all things fruit or vegetable in origin.  In my own opinion, apple pie was a far fetch from fruit.  The crust alone probably had enough butter to expand the circumference of my backside by a good two inches.

Lucius picked up a butter knife and sank into the pie.  The crust fell
in a flaccid heap, collapsing into a pile of sugary crumbs onto the bed of gooey apple filling.

“Dude,” said Crispin,
condolingly.  Snickers sprawled across the table.

“The apples cooked down,” I explained.
  “I’m sure it tastes—”

“Shut up,” Lucius
growled.  Digging his fingers into the stoneware dish, he scooped a handful of filling and flung it at Bacchus.  “Here’s a whole fuckin’ apple for you!”  At Max.  “Eat your freakin’ heart out!  I hope you do get arsenic poisoning!”  At Caius.  You’d think these people would learn to duck.  “Here’s you damn dessert. 
Now
you can do the dishes!”  At Icarus, who ducked.  The second throw hit home.  “Next time, we order out!”  At me.  “Thanks for the help!  It was Christmas for God’s sake!  This is the first year we didn’t have to eat Chinese food!  I’m fuckin’ sick of Chinese food!  But you go ahead and sulk in your room because nothing bad’s ever happened to anyone else!  Well, I promise you I’m done!  I’m never settin’ another foot in that Godforsaken kitchen again if it’s to save my damn life!”

Tearing the apron from around his neck, he tossed it on the table and stormed from the room.  The back door slammed shut with a bang that shook the house.

Shrugging, Caius reached and scooped the pie filling from where it was sliding into my cleavage and licked it from his finger.  “Actually, it’s not bad.”

Wide eyed, Bennie gawked
at the mess, ducking as Icarus dove for Caius, jarring the table a few feet to the left.  Bowls and glasses overturned, spilling across the tablecloth and onto the floor.  Crispin began shouting at them to stop, but the two sparring males ignored his protests, in favor of pounding one another’s brains from their too-big heads.  I looked to Bacchus for help.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” I pleaded.  “Someone’s going to get hurt.”

“Someone needs to get hurt.  Maybe Icarus will pound some sense into him.”

With a disgusted scowl, I took matters into my own hands and reached to break up the mêlée of testosterone and fists.

Chapter 18

It was the best Christmas ever, Bennie had
assured.  I had to disagree.  (No surprise there.)  After the unusually tense table conversation, Lucius’s tantrum, the food fight, and the fist fight, I ended up with a broken nose and two black eyes when Icarus’s elbow accidentally caught me in the backswing while I tried to separate him from his younger but by no means smaller cousin.  Because of my quick healing and horrendous luck, they had to break it again to reset it.

To top things off,
I committed my first kill while hunting.  I had always done my part in running down our prey, but I hadn’t actually taken their lives.  Nevertheless, I had done so that sacred and holiest of nights when the young buck we separated from the herd, turned and charged with no warning.  His antler caught Crispin in the ribs, goring him in several places from chest to flank.  Spurred by Crispin’s yelp, I’d charged forward in an instinctual race to protect.  The buck’s head was down, focused as he was on his present threat, and before he could react, my teeth sliced through his flesh and ripped his throat clean from his body.

I’d lost my meal that morning, along with Lucius’s feast from the night before.

Best Christmas ever.  Not.

I cooked Christmas night, hoping to make reparations for Christmas
Eve, and salvage a vestige of the holiday season.  I was sharing it with Bennie.  For his presence alone, I was thankful, so I showed my appreciation with a spiral sliced ham and all the fancy trimmings, including a fresh baked apple pie.  It was the least I could do for their unexpected gift.

Ok, so it wasn’t the best Christmas ever, but it was
n’t the worst either.

ΑΒΩ

Icarus stood quietly at the top of my stairs while I finished the paper I was reading.  He had padded up a few minutes earlier, upon the departure of his cousins.  The twins left to watch a game at their friend’s house, dropping Crispin off at the movie theater along the way.  Max and Lucius went to patrol for signs of Alec.  Hailey was the only one left.  She was still stalking about somewhere.

“You think you’re going to find a cure.”

“Perhaps.”

“You won’t.  My parents were both doctors. 
Years, they searched for a cure and they were no closer at the end than the beginning.”

“They’ve made groundbreaking strides in medicine the past ten years
with the aid of computers and technology.  They’re coming close to finding a cure for aids.”

Crossing the space, Icarus sat of the edge of
my bed.  He’d barely set foot in my room the past month.  “My parents weren’t killed over territory, Thaleia.  Some of us don’t want a cure.  Did you ever consider the possibility that this isn’t a disease?  This is part of who we are.  Our heritage.  Our religion.  We have a right to exist, just as anyone else does.”

“I wasn’t born this way.
  Neither was Hailey.  We were infected through a bite.  Does that sound like a religion to you?”

“I would call it an act of God.”

“I’m sure Hailey would disagree, as do I.”

“Nevertheless, this is a dangerous ambition.”

Resting my book on my legs, I asked, “Do you think your parents discovered something?  Is that why they were killed?”

“No, they just became careless.  They
owned a pharmaceutical company.  Really, it was a cover for their research.  They shared your ambitions for science.  But others feared that if they slipped, they could’ve revealed our existence, which wouldn’t have ended well.  Do you know what the public would do if they discovered our abilities?  We’re talking about cell regeneration.  Disease resistance.  Virtual immortality.  And what would happen if no one ever died?”

I
was loath to think of the consequences.  Overpopulation.  Depletion of natural resources.  Pollution.  Famine.  Species extinction.  The list goes on and on.

“
By the same token, if the military discovered our existence, they wouldn’t hesitate to produce and exploit our strengths, and naturally we’d become their archetypes.”

It was an equally alarming thought.
  I honestly wasn’t sure of our limitations, but I had no doubt he was right.  The army wouldn’t hesitate to utilize our DNA for experimentation.

“But that wasn’t their only ambition or what I think got them killed, for that matter.  They also were studying genetics,
tracing bloodlines to try to find a common gene in those who’ve survived the change.  Females, particularly.”

Unable to help myself, a wry smile tickled my lips.  “I’m sorry,” I said in apology.  “It’s just that I had a theory on that too.  The Sabine women.”

When Romulus founded Rome, they acquired wives by abducting them from the neighboring city of Sabine.  Romulus and Remus, of course, were believed to have gained their lycan abilities from the Capitoline wolf.  They were the creators of all lycanthrope today, the ancestor from whom they each descended.  Naturally, his parents would have suspected the Sabine women for carriers of that gene.

This earned me an appraising caress of my cheek.  “You
have
been studying.”

“Am I right?”

“That’s what my parents suspected, and what I believe led to their deaths.  Collecting the genetic samples was a difficult and dangerous job.  The only way to acquire them was to visit each pack, and all packs aren’t trusting of outsiders or in agreement of my parent’s views.”

“But if
we could find that genetic marker, it would save lives.  We’d be able to identify those who could survive the change ahead of time.”  I would think they’d want this.

“
One would think,” Icarus said in answer to my disparagement.  “But there are two sides to a coin.  The ability to identify these women could be used in offense and not just defense.”

“What do you mean?”

“With lycanthrope, nature herself controls the population with the high male to female ratio in a pack.  Fewer females, less offspring.”

“
Overpopulation.”  Duh.  I gave myself a mental smack to the forehead.  Didn’t we just discuss this?  It never occurred to me the same was true for lycanthrope.

“
Considering we eat substantially more than humans, I think it’s safe to say we’d deplete our food sources quicker too.  We would begin to fight over territory in search of a steady supply of prey.  Already, we’re competing with humans on this very issue, so as an added precaution, most packs only have one breeding pair.”

“Except for your pack.
  All four brothers were able to find wives.  Maybe your parents
were
able to find the genetic marker.”

Icarus shook his head, his expression
inscrutable.  “No, they didn’t.”

“Then how do you explain all your cousins?”

“You think your parents were liberals; you never met mine.”

“Come on.  What could be so bad?  Your parents obviously had morals.
  If anything they deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for their philanthropy.”

“That’s the thing.  They might have meant well, but who were they to play god and
govern matters better left in the hands of nature?”

“I don’t know.  I really don’t, but
all lycanthrope are doing the same thing when they’re killing women by trying to turn them instead of accepting what nature provided by birth.”

“I
completely agree, but I have to point out, that the decision to change in most circumstances is consensual.  We don’t run out, pick random women, and hope we’re compatible.  We date.  We fall in love.  We present them with a proposal.  They have every opportunity to turn us down.  And in the end, if they don’t survive, we have to live with the guilt of their deaths.  But that’s the tithe we pay for our immortality.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Again, I agree.  Yet, if this is our only choice, if this is the way nature devised to keep us in check, if these women are willing to gamble their lives for us, then they should be properly mourned if things don’t work in their favor.  To do it any other way is cowardly.”

“Thank you, Icarus.”  I was touched.  Genuine
ly.  It was moments like these—when he shattered my view of him with his compassion—that I could look beyond his faults and see why I cared about him.

“
Now you want to know how my cousins came into fruition.”

“Of course.”

“Just hear me out before you jump to conclusions.  Promise.”

“Cross my heart.”

“Alright.”  He scrubbed the scruff around his mouth, searching for an appropriate outset to present his revelation with minimal blowback.  “There’s no easy way to put it so I’ll just be frank.  My uncles wanted children and my mother provided them.  You said you would hear me out.  Now hear me out,” he snapped, watching my jaw bobbing wordlessly.  “There was nothing polygamous about it.  They were doctors.  Everything was done in vitro.  In a lab.”

“Ok, so she was a surrogate,” I said, walking myself through this.  “It’s not that uncommon.”
  I’ve heard of relatives graciously offering to step in where Mother Nature failed.

“
They wanted what anyone wants.  A family.”

“Ok!” I stressed, holding my hands up in surrender.  “You obviously feel defensive about this
, but you’re barking at the wrong person, because I get it.  Shocking, I know, but I do.”

“
They were executed for it, Thaleia.”

“And you t
hought I’d persecute you alike.”

“
It’s unconventional—human or lycan regardless—and society tends to reject what’s different.”

“
Tell me, if this was such a breach of ethics that it got them all killed, why did they do it?  I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t they cheating nature by having so many children?  Didn’t they think that would draw attention to themselves?”

“
I told you they were liberals.  They came to the states to escape the antiquated beliefs still followed in Rome.  The New World, you know—land of the free?  But, really, they thought with the discoveries of cloning and God particles that the world could handle a few betas and omegas having their own children.  Don’t get me wrong.  They didn’t have any more children than a typical pair would produce.  We have large families to protect our bloodlines because of the warring between packs, so six isn’t unusual.  But what they didn’t anticipate, was a rival pack mistaking their compassion for successfully completing their research.  They slipped up, grew complacent.”

“
You sure they weren’t trying to steal their research?”

“There was nothing to steal.  My parents hadn’t found anything conclusive. 
I know.  I know.  Their killers didn’t know that, but they didn’t come in asking questions.  They came to cease and destroy.  They murdered my parents then burned down our homes, starting with the lab in the basement of our home.  They never even went inside, just torched it.”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but
are you positive everyone was killed?  Your cousins are considering the notion that they might’ve taken your mother alive.  And if you think about it, they wouldn’t need the files if they had the scientist herself.”

“It
’s always a possibility.  But research aside, I don’t’ know whether I should hope that they took mercy on her because of her gender or pray that she died quickly.  I hate to think of what’s happened to her, because it’s a cruel enough world for a female lycan without someone trying to extort information from her.”

“I’m sorry.”
  My mother was safe at home.  I don’t know how I would handle it if she were abducted and I had no idea of her whereabouts.  He had to be going out of his mind, and here I was throwing salt on his wounds.

“Thaleia,
I don’t want your sympathies.  I’m telling you this because I want you to think long and hard before you pursue this any further.”

“Are you asking me to give up searching for a cure?”

“No, if I tell you to stop, I’ll lose you.  If I don’t tell you to stop, I could lose you anyway.  I’m stuck in a Morton’s fork.  I see no winning end.”

He reached for my face, intending to steal another
caress, but I turned my head.  He was asking me to give up my only hope of a normal life.  To give up my parents.  Bennie.

“I’m sorry.  I was trying to give you space. 
If I’d known this was the direction you were headed, I would’ve told you this a long time ago.”

“Why,
because you know it would’ve broken me?  You might not realize it, but that’s what you’re doing.  You’re trying to destroy all hope I have for a normal life.  My parents are still alive.  Bennie is still alive.”  I stabbed my finger furiously at my chest.  “I
have
a family.”

Icarus flinched from my words. 
“I’m presenting you with facts so you can make an informed decision that will leave you at peace with your life, with what you are.”

“
No, you’re hoping that when I
do
break,” and I would, “I’ll run into your arms for comfort.”