So I lay there, still and alone, and despite myself, played and replayed that little snippet of memory endlessly. Truth or mere dream, a fabrication of my mind? Only one person could tell me. And with that thought, my mind circled back to Dante.
I had believed myself unarmed when I had walked up to him. No sword, my dagger sheathed. But in Dante’s eyes, I had been armed in the deadliest of manners. And he’d let me touch him.
Who are you? Who am I? And why have we come together again?
Last time we had, it had ended with my death. And as I had just discovered, I did not want to die yet. So soon, so young, with no afterlife ahead of me…triggering another thought. Was I really young, merely twenty-one years old? Or did my previous life, and the long stretch in between, make me an ancient hag? And regarding that long stretch of time in between, had I lived other lives before and not remembered them?
I gazed down at my moles as if they could provide me with an answer. And in their fashion, they did. The Goddess’s Tears and their incumbent gifts had not been seen since the time of the Great Exodus when the Monère had fled their dying planet. So, no. Chances were that I hadn’t lived other unremembered lives in between. Just before…and now.
Dante. His name was a soft whisper in my mind. I have a lot of questions to ask you. I wondered briefly if he would answer them. If he could? Or would it be better if he did not?
You may feel differently when you remember.
My flesh prickled with goose bumps and I shivered again.
For the next several long hours, as sunset inched slowly closer, the most tantalizing, morbid question of all teased my mind.
How did you kill me? How did I die?
THIRTEEN
AS DAYLIGHT EBBED, the house finally stirred and I was freed from the prison of my room. Thaddeus hadn’t returned yet; the space where he normally parked his car was still empty. I wanted to talk to him, tell him what I’d learned. Perhaps comfort myself with his presence. He was not aware yet of the revelations of the night before because he ran on a different time schedule than the rest of us did. The normal human cycle: sleeping at night, going to school during the day.
After school, in deference to our flip-flopped habits, Thaddeus usually studied at the library, doing his homework there so as not to disturb the rest of the sleeping household. And probably not wanting to be inhibited by us either, restricted by the need to be quiet. He returned to the house when the brilliant hues of sunset began to paint the sky.
Chami, Thaddeus’s unofficial guardian, hadn’t liked the idea at all. If it were up to him and the other men, Thaddeus and I would have been guarded at all times, Thaddeus because he was the men’s hope for a different future. My brother was the only male who could call down the moon’s light, who could Bask, something before now only Queens could do. They had wanted to put a guard around him 24/7. Both Thaddeus and I had balked at the idea. Thaddeus had argued that instead of protecting him, it would point him out as a target. His greatest safety lay in secrecy, in letting no others know of his gift. In treating him like a normal Mixed Blood. And trust me, they were not guarded around the clock. Far from it.
I’d backed Thaddeus because I had promised to try to give my brother as normal a life as possible…and because had I allowed the men this twenty-four-hour watch, the next person they would have imposed it on would have been me. Same blood that we were, we both were used to our freedom, and did not wish it restricted so.
Chami had finally relented, agreeing that Thaddeus would probably be safer among humans. In general, humans were much more peaceful and civilized than Monères were. In general, though, as I found out, did not take into account the high school teenage subspecies homo sapien idiotae. Schoolyard bullies.
Thaddeus made himself scarce that evening after returning home. And I saw why in multihued blue-and-purple glory when he slid quietly into his chair at dinner that night. He was sporting not only a black eye, but a bloody nose—one that had stopped bleeding not too long ago. The faint iron-rich scent of fresh blood clinging to him was unmistakable.
“Thaddeus, what in Hellfire happened to you?” Chami demanded, beating me to the question by a nanosecond.
I repeated the question. My version of it. “Yeah, what the fuck happened to you?”
I’d invited the Morells to join us for dinner, with thoughts of having them get to know us better. All thoughts of polite table talk, however, went flying out the window as I gazed at the livid bruises that swelled up Thaddeus’s left eye and puffed up his nose like a bumpy balloon.
Thaddeus sighed.
What had he hoped, I wondered? That we would just ignore the black-and-blues and pretend that someone hadn’t used his face as a punching bag?
“I got into a fight after school.”
That much was obvious. We waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. I was sorry about focusing everyone’s attention on him, but the fury, the trembling outrage that rose up in me demanded answers now! Not later.
“With who?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could manage, which was not very calm at all.
“With three other guys from school,” Thaddeus muttered into his plate.
“Three other seniors?”
He nodded. His eyes were cast down so he didn’t see the heat flash through my eyes. Three seniors! Eighteen-year-old boys who were probably taller than I, and way bigger than Thaddeus. He’d basically skipped a grade, and was not only a year younger than the other seniors in his class—he’d only turned seventeen a couple of weeks ago—but he was much smaller in size and of slighter build, making him look years younger than his age. His predominant Monère blood made him mature more slowly, so that while all his classmates had already hit puberty, cruised long past it, he was only just starting to enter it. Only just beginning to hit that fast spurt in physical growth and supernatural strength. He had almost a Full Blood’s strength, but he’d suppressed that part of him through denial.
Thaddeus had grown up thinking himself human. When his sharper senses and supernatural strength had started to emerge, he’d thought he was going crazy. He’d imposed an unconscious blanket of control over that part of himself, so that his greater Monère strength flared only when that control cracked, usually during times of anxiety and stress. Still…being ganged up on by three boys much bigger than you…that had to count as one of those times of stress.
“Tell me that they look worse than you do,” I said. “Make me feel better about this.”
My little brother shook his head.
“Why didn’t you wipe the floor with them, Thaddeus? You could have if you’d wanted to.”
His answer surprised me, and made me close my eyes and grind my teeth.
“This sudden spurting strength is so new, Lisa.” He was the only one who called me by just my human name. “I was afraid of hurting them if I fought back.”
If I fought back. Meaning that he hadn’t. He’d just stood there, or lay curled up on the ground, letting them beat on him without fighting back. Shit.
“I was worried that…I don’t know…that I might even kill them without meaning to,” he mumbled. “I didn’t start it.”
“I know that, Thaddeus.” He didn’t have to tell me that; I knew my brother. Even in the short time we’d known each other, I knew he was not the kind of kid to go around looking for trouble.
“Why were they picking on you?” I asked.
“Why else? I’m smarter than they are and much smaller.” It obviously bothered him, his short stature and skinny build. “I’m helping a girl out in calculus who’s failing the class. Her jock boyfriend didn’t like the time we were spending together. He and his football buddies decided to let me know just how unhappy they were today after school.”