Starfall Page 20

  “We are now bound by the light of Orion,” she hisses. “Do not betray me!”

  Keep your end of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine.

  I shake my head free of Luba’s touch—she is my partner, not my master—and open my mouth, not to let out a sound or a warning, but as a reminder. I have powers too.

  The cloud of red smoke tumbles out of my mouth. I have no idea where it comes from, if it’s a tangible rendering of my wolf soul, if it’s being given to me by Orion or some other outside force, but in times of attack or incredible focus, I can will it into existence. We all watch as the red energy hovers in the air in front of Luba and then expands and bursts like a blood shower all over Luba’s body. There are no remnants, no proof that it ever existed once it is gone except the memory and the knowledge that I have branded Luba as well.

  “Now we are bound by my spirit!” I cry. “So do not betray me!”

  Furious yet impressed, Luba responds by spinning her body around several times until there’s no bone or flesh or hair, only black smoke that lingers behind after she disappears into the night. I don’t know if she felt the need to put on a more masterful display or if she just grew tired of being in the presence of two people she despises. Whatever the reason it’s now only Vera and me in the clearing.

  “Go and rest now,” Vera instructs. “There is much work to be done.”

  Vera’s starlight gazes deep into my wolf-girl eyes and uncovers what lies inside my heart.

  “I know you don’t trust Luba, and I know you don’t fully trust me either,” she says. “So only trust yourself.”

  A fool could give me the same advice, and I’d be a fool not to take it. Starting right now.

  I hear Louis before he speaks. About five hundred yards to my left there’s a shift in my surroundings, a new noise, someone taking a step forward, closer to his prey, me.

  “I found it!” Louis screams.

  With nowhere to hide in the clearing, I flatten myself onto the dusty ground just as I hear the gunshot. Raising my eyes I see the bullet fly straight through Vera’s star-glistened body. Vera billows as if she’s a breeze, and when the movement stops I see that the bullet has created a hole in her stomach from which rays of blinding starlight shoot out. This light is much more powerful than the light coming out of her eyes, perhaps because it was released violently and not as a result of Vera’s own actions; I’m not sure. All I know is that I can now only hear Vera’s voice; her body is gone.

  “Run!” she commands.

  “Where? There isn’t any cover!”

  “Just run!” Her voice carries an unexpected quality of human desperation. “If Orion’s wish is to be fulfilled, you must not be harmed.”

  A quick calculation tells me that the closest refuge is straight ahead, so I leap through pieces of Vera’s starshine and run blindly, wildly forward until I’m outside of the clearing and at the entrance to a more densely covered part of the woods. Before I run too far within the belly of the forest, I crouch low and turn around, my panting banging against my ears, and I have to fight the urge to run right back into the openness.

  “Don’t hurt him!”

  I know Vera can hear me, but she ignores my plea. She’s too busy wrapping Louis in her starlight and slamming him into the ground. His eyes are wide not so much with terror, but disbelief. His mind isn’t working fast enough; it simply can’t fathom what’s happening to him. I’ve had a much longer history of dealing with supernatural occurrences, and I’m still having a hard time believing what I’m seeing. Louis looks like a bull being lassoed by an unseen wrangler. One who is showing absolutely no mercy.

  Bang! His shoulder rams onto the ground, only to be buoyed up again several feet into the air. Slam! His back crashes onto the dirt so hard that a brown cloud swirls up, comingling with Vera’s light.

  “Stop it!!”

  My cry drowns out the sound of Louis’s final plummet. Vera has either listened to me or she’s simply satisfied that Louis will no longer be a nuisance this evening. He is lying on the ground, unmoving. I have to listen with all my wolf-hearing to detect any sign of his breathing. It’s shallow, but it’s there.

  “I would never kill him,” Vera claims. “But he had to be stopped before he killed you.”

  She might have stopped Louis, but his backup is still ready to fight.

  “Go!” Vera screams. “Now!”

  Certain that I’ll follow her command, Vera and her light disintegrate before my eyes, and I’m left alone. Just as I’m about to turn and run I hear Luba’s words again—do not betray me—and I’m frozen. If I’ve made a pact not to betray Luba, how can I turn my back on Louis? After all he’s done for me, how can I flee and think of my own safety when he could be dying? I know Vera said she wouldn’t kill him, but how do I know some other animal won’t come out of hiding after I leave and devour Louis like I’ve devoured so many living creatures before? No, I must stay until I know that Louis will be safe.

  When I hear Officer Gallegos’s voice, I know that my good deed may end in compromising my own safety.

  “Captain!”

  Gallegos scours the area quickly before running toward his superior, immediately pressing his fingers against Louis’s neck to check for a pulse.

  “Hold on, Chief,” Gallegos says.

  “Gallegos!”

  The cry comes from the other side of the clearing, and, without seeing the man’s face, I recognize the voice; it’s Officer Owenski. Older and wiser than Gallegos, he may not move as quickly as his younger counterpart, but his movements are sharper, developed over years of training and experience, and he has skills the more reckless Gallegos may never master.

  “It got him!” Gallegos cries. “The damned thing got him!”

  Ignoring his fellow detective’s emotional outburst, Owenski pulls out his radio, never taking his eyes off of the surrounding area, and calls in an ambulance request to meet them on the north side of Robin’s Park. Two other men rush into the clearing, one a civilian, the other a police officer, and Owenski instructs them to carry Louis’s body to the awaiting ambulance.

  “Be careful with him,” he orders. “We don’t know the extent of his injuries, but we have to get him to the hospital.”

  Dutifully, the two men lift Louis up, one at his feet, the other at his shoulders, and carry him out of the clearing to safety. Gallegos is pacing the clearing, and instinctively I retreat deeper into the brush, even though I know he can’t see me from this distance. He isn’t even looking; he’s found something else that he finds far more interesting.

  “Owenski!” he calls out. “Look at this.”

  The two men stare at the ground that is illuminated by their flashlights as if they’re looking into a black hole, as if they’ve stumbled upon the key that will unlock a profound mystery. They haven’t found the key, but they’ve uncovered the door.

  “Look at those prints,” Gallegos says.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Owenski replies.

  “Human and wolf prints,” Gallegos states, his voice filled with both shock and excitement. “Maybe Lars was right.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I was attacked by a werewolf.”

  Gallegos swirls his flashlight all around, and I practically bury myself into the ground to hide, but there’s no way I can leave; I have to hear what else they have to say. What are they going to do with this newfound information?

  “Or maybe it’s some joker who wants us to think it’s a werewolf,” Owenski replies. When he speaks again, his voice is no longer calm. “Do you have Louis’s gun?”

  “No,” Gallegos replies. “He must have had it on him.”

  “He didn’t,” Owenski confirms. “I checked while you were trying not to freak out.”

  “I wasn’t freaking out!” Gallegos says defiantly. “I was saving . . .”

  “We can debate it later!” Owenski interrupts. “We have to find that gun, or we just might have an armed werewolf on the loose!”

  I
may not be armed, but if they find me they’ll still be satisfied. There’s nothing more I can do here to ensure Louis’s safety; his team has taken care of that. It’s time for me to leave. The wolf has done everything he can; soon it will be the girl’s chance to take over.

  The next day at school, the last before our Christmas break, I try to convince myself that last night was a dream. I didn’t find out Vera was a fallen star, I didn’t commit to working with Luba, and I didn’t overhear Louis’s detectives continue to entertain the idea that not only do werewolves exist, but that one is roaming our woods. I do a pretty good job of it too until I literally bump into Vera on the way to my last class. Racing around the corner of the hallway to grab my French textbook out of my locker, I don’t see Vera until we slam into each other.

  “I told you Louis wouldn’t be harmed,” she declares.

  And she was right. Louis spent a total of twenty minutes in the hospital, most of the time unconscious, while the doctors performed a battery of tests on him, all of which came back negative. And when he came back to consciousness he arrived with no memory of what had taken place right before he blacked out.

  He told us this morning that all he could remember was thinking that he saw a wolf, shooting at it, and passing out. He doesn’t even recall being attacked.

  Looking at Vera now, I search for a clue that she isn’t human, that she really is a piece of Orion’s constellation walking on earth, and I can’t find one. Her disguise is foolproof. At least she can be taken at her word; she said she wouldn’t harm Louis, and she didn’t.

  “Thank you,” I reply. “There’s just one thing though. Louis can’t find his gun.”

  Vera smiles conspiratorially and reaches into her schoolbag to reveal Louis’s missing gun. “That’s because I took it.”

  “What are you doing?!” I shout, immediately positioning myself in front of her so if anyone passes by they won’t see what she’s holding. “Do you know what’ll happen if you get caught with a gun at school?”

  “And do you know what’ll happen if you let the hunter keep his gun that’s filled with silver bullets?” Vera asks.

  Silver bullets?

  “Louis may not understand what he’s dealing with,” Vera replies. “But he harbors enough instinct and superstition to take precautions.”

  I always knew that Louis’s Creole background had empowered him with a different type of knowledge than the typical Nebraskan cop, but I really didn’t think he would go so far as to load his gun with silver bullets, the only kind that can kill me. Guess I was wrong. About that and a lot of other things.

  Vera places the gun in my locker and then slams the door shut. I make a mental note to bury the stolen item after school in case I forget that it’s there and Dumbleavy decides to do a school-wide locker search for drugs and other illegal items when we return after Christmas break. She looks directly into my eyes, and she looks like every other girl in this school, but I know that she’s so different she’s practically unexplainable. Just as unexplainable is the question of why she’s going to such great lengths to protect me. Sure, she needs me to work with Luba to thwart Nadine’s plans, but Vera’s preternatural, for God’s sake. Why does she need me to do her dirty work?

  “You really should brush up on your Greek mythology, Dominy,” she says, reading my mind.

  Random! Before I can ask what her odd comment is supposed to mean, she continues, “I thought that giving you one of the only weapons that can truly kill you might convince you that it’s time for you to do the right thing.”

  Frightened, but curious, I ask, “And what exactly would be the right thing to do?”

  “Maybe it’s time you told Louis the truth.”

  Chapter 18

  I feel like I’m in limbo. In that space that isn’t before or after, that space that’s filled with worry and anticipation and excitement, not truly free, not truly a prisoner, and thankfully not alone.

  Sitting in our basement I’m surrounded by the Wolf Pack, wasting time during that universal limbo period, the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day when the trivialities and regular pulse of life go on hiatus and leave us hanging until their return after the first of the new year. It’s usually a time when most of the world slows down to breathe easier and more fully, to indulge in forgotten pleasures, to reconnect with family and friends. Unfortunately, my inner circle is about to expand.

  “So now that you and Luba are some sort of supercouple like Gwenaby, I think we should refer to you as Domuba,” Arla suggests. “No, wait!! Lubominy!”

  I hate it, and yet I love it at the same time.

  “I think I’m finally getting the hang of this newmencla-ture,” Arla squeals. “Oh my God I did it again!”

  Leave it to Arla to make me laugh. Gigglaughing may be inappropriate, but despite its implications, Lubominy really is a terrific word.

  “So it’s kind of like Orion gave you the perfect Christmas gift,” Arla states.

  And gigglaughs are officially silenced to allow reality to regain control.

  “Sure, instead of a thank-you card, I have to join forces with Luba,” I snap.

  Chugging a glassful of chocolate egg nog, Caleb chimes in, “Sounds like me and the starman have something in common.” He’s either too enraptured by the thick sweetness of his drink or he’s just ignoring my sarcasm. He can’t ignore Archie’s.

  “And what exactly would that be?” Archie asks. “The gift of giving really bad gifts?”

  Still swallowing, Caleb swats Archie on the back of his head. “Winter! You’re supposed to be on my side,” he cries. “I told Domgirl that she should team up with Luba the instant she told me Nadine was having twins.”

  “Which I’m sure was something Dominy was thrilled to hear,” Archie says.

  It wasn’t. But sometimes the most important things you need to hear are the things you don’t ever want or ever expect to be told.

  “I wasn’t thrilled by Caleb’s suggestion,” I admit. “But when Vera told me the same thing and why, from Orion’s point of view, it was vitally important, it really started to seem like the only logical course of action.”

  Archie remains silent, but I can tell it’s only because he can’t find the words to disagree with me. He’s come to the same conclusion I have; there’s no argument against my joining Team Luba. He isn’t happy with it, but like me, he can’t fight it any longer. Once again Arla’s unruffled approach to all things supernatural lightens the tense atmosphere that is threatening to make our basement inhospitable to life, human or otherwise.

  “What does it say about me that I thought it was weirder when Vera was a Connecticutian than now that she’s celestial?” she asks. “I mean, I’m actually having an easier time accepting the fact that the new girl in town is a fallen star than thinking of her as a former resident of Nadine’s hometown.”

  “It’s because you’ve been hanging around me for too long,” I say.

  “And none of us would have it any other way,” Caleb replies, giving me a quick kiss. His lips taste deliciously chocolaty, and for a split second I forget that we’re pondering life-altering decisions, until Archie bends over to scratch his ankle and I see a stagnant pool of blackness in the center of his sea of white hair.

  If Jess is right and if the world is truly one giant balancing act, that means there’s good and evil everywhere and in everyone. We’re all half-breeds, which I know is an offensive term, but it’s fitting in this instance, because all of us except for Caleb can be found in the two-for-one aisle of the Price Chopper. Me, Arla, Archie, Jess, Vera, Orion, and if I’m being fair, maybe even Luba. Is it possible that shrouded under all that darkness and deception and duplicity lies some goodness? Is there an uncontaminated piece of her that I can trust? There has to be; I mean if not, then our truce is nothing but a sham. And if she is infused with Orion’s star energy just like Vera is and I trust Vera, then according to the laws of mathematics I should be able to trust Luba too. But can I truly trust Vera
?

  “Vera told me something else,” I say.

  Archie lifts his head, and all I can see is his smooth white skin and violet eyes. “She always does this.”

  “I know,” Arla agrees.

  Heads practically touching they still look like carbon copies of each other, even though the crew cuts are gone since Archie’s let his hair grow out and Arla’s wearing her long black wig that makes her look like Cher from the early days of her career, which thanks to cosmetic surgical enhancements looks exactly like Cher four decades later. Physically, Archie’s and Arla’s appearances may be different, but emotionally, their attitudes are in sync.

  “Dom tosses us only a teeny bit of information like we’re lab rats who can only chew on a tiny piece of cheese at one time or else we’ll explode,” Archie states.

  “Have we not proven, Dom, that we’re not going to explode if you tell us everything you know all at once?” Arla asks.

  “She’s right, Domgirl,” Caleb adds, pouring himself his third glass of choconog. Clearly, college has increased his appetite.

  Well, I’m about to increase my friends’ cheese intake. I draw my knees into my chest in preparation for the explosion.

  “Vera said it’s time for me to tell Louis the truth.”

  On cue Arla, Archie, and Caleb explode, and I’m showered with thought-shrapnel; their ammunition doesn’t pierce my flesh, but it’s still as powerful. Not that they’re saying anything I haven’t already told myself since Vera dropped the bombshell that Louis should be allowed membership to the Wolf Pack. Why should I make Louis more involved than he already is? He’s managed to free himself from both Luba’s spell and Melinda’s mind games. Why tell him the truth about both of them now? And if we tell him about them, we have to tell him about me too. And not just the selected truth, the whole truth. That the serial killer he’s searching for is living under his roof.

  “I can’t imagine Jess would want you to confess,” Caleb says. He runs a finger slowly over his bracelet, and I can feel his fingers gliding across my flesh. As always his words, like his presence, are a comfort, even if they stir up the little pellets of fear that live in the center of my soul. “Not after everything she’s done to protect you since . . .”