The girl who made the crackers for me stepped forward and pulled up her shirt to reveal her stomach. Or, what was left of it. I tried not to look aghast, but my face betrayed the intention. I could see where the teeth went in and dragged across the flesh.
“That’s how I was infected,” said the girl. She pulled her shirt back over the scars. “I was lucky; few ever live through a wound like that, especially females.”
That was the second time I had heard mention of ‘females’ and their strange misfortune with werewolf life.
“Zia and Isaac tried to get me to come here after it happened,” Sebastian said, “but I thought Zia slipped something in in my drink one night. I didn’t trust them.”
“Yeah,” said Zia, “and we couldn’t tell him what was happening to him because he definitely wouldn’t believe that.”
Sebastian went on:
“The Change took days. My temperature rose so high I should’ve been dead. I was craving raw meat and drank everything I could get my lips on—I couldn’t stay hydrated!—but still went through days when I vomited everything I ate or drank. Mom took me to the hospital. They ran tests and did the usual, but couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Said I had a few extra white blood cells; that it was normal to fight off infection or some hospital mumbo-jumbo like that. So, they prescribed antibiotics and sent me on my way. A few nights later, I shifted for the first time, right there in my bedroom. I don’t remember anything from that night except waking up in the basement here, chained to the floor.”
I imagined it all as he told the story of what happened. Sebastian had gone through his bedroom window, cutting himself on the glass, which left blood.
Alex’s face crept up in my thoughts then. I thought back to the night in Georgia when I knew she must have been infected. Then I turned to see Isaac standing beside me. “So Alex was the reason you came to Maine then?” In my heart, I knew it was not for anything other than to monitor her, but a part of me despised Alex for it. It was the first time I had ever been truly jealous of my sister.
“Yes,” Isaac said. “We followed the Vargas family to Georgia from South Carolina and from Georgia to Maine. We follow them everywhere, especially the humans they newly infect.”
“My father and Viktor Vargas are mortal enemies,” Isaac went on. “They’ve been at war for three hundred years. Over time, that war spread out among their fledglings as Viktor recklessly created hundreds of them to keep my father and his loyals busy.”
Nathan said then, “And every time a Vargas fledgling infects a human, we try to...take control of the situation.” He was careful to say it, but not careful enough to keep the obvious from me.
“You kill them, don’t you?” I said. “You all were going to kill my sister.”
Isaac put his hand between my knees. “Not exactly,” he said. “We watch them first; see if they show signs of becoming a rogue like the rest of the Vargas bloodline. If they can’t be controlled, we have no choice but to kill them.”
“No matter the bloodline you’re Sired by,” Daisy spoke up, “chances are you’ll be just like them.”
“A fledgling of the Vargas bloodline is dangerous to humans,” Zia added. “A savage plague.”
A horrible thought crossed my mind. I almost couldn’t bring myself to ask. “Did one of you kill Julia?” I couldn’t bear the answer, but it was imperative that I knew.
“No,” Isaac said, “fortunately we weren’t the ones that had to end Julia’s life. The Change did it for us.”
Zia added, “Yeah, it was probably Alex that infected Julia; not sure, but girls have a hard time living through the Change. According to Trajan, the world’s werewolf population is about eighty-five percent male.”
“We were surprised your sister made it through,” said Nathan.
I looked around the room then, noticing how many girls were there. There were a lot. There were always a lot.
Isaac was still in-sync with my thoughts. “Most of the girls here,” he said, “are not fledglings of ours. Some of them infected by smaller random bloodlines; a few even kin to the Vargas bloodline.”
I felt the color drain from my face.
“You can easily pick them out of a crowd,” Nathan said.
I knew that Rachel was one of them. There was no doubt. Now I had more reason than ever to be afraid of her.
I looked toward the exit where Rachel last stood.
“Rachel is a bitch,” said Nathan. “She can’t help it because it’s in her nature to be hateful. But she despises the Vargas brothers and has never betrayed our trust.”
“A woman scorned,” said Daisy.
Isaac added, “She has to be put in line every now and then, but she’s not a bad person.”
“So this place is like a refuge?” I said, skipping over adding my own opinion about Rachel’s character.
Nathan smiled and hit Isaac gently on the shoulder. “Your girl catches on quick, bro.”
“Sort of,” Isaac said to me. “Most of them follow us wherever we move; a few find us here and there. It seems to grow by five every year.”
I had more questions, tons of them, but I was so overwhelmed by everything already.
I looked at Isaac then. “You really weren’t sick then,” I said, “were you?” He had already confirmed this before in the barn, but since last night I still didn’t fully understand it. And I was trying to wrap my head around all of these damn lies.
Isaac shook his head.
Zia said, “I really hope you’ll forgive me for all the lies and stuff. I’m really, really sorry.”
“I think your situation sort of lets you off,” I said. “It’s okay, honestly.”
“A week before a full moon,” Isaac began, “is when all werewolves are the most volatile. Not even an Elder can be one hundred percent sure of himself during that time. We have to make ourselves scarce, just to be safe.”
I laughed lightly under my breath. “Sounds like a time-of-the-month thing.”
Nathan’s mouth fell open. “Sick, but funny,” he said. “I like her!”
The cracker girl said, “Better than your last girlfriend, Isaac.”
I think she soured the mood worse than Rachel had, but I could take it. It wasn’t like I expected to be his first ever girlfriend, especially since he was...I had no idea how old Isaac really was.
I had to know.
And though already the very thought of it was making me nervous, I was fascinated by it just the same.
“Just how old are you anyway?” I said. “Was that a lie too?”
Isaac shifted, uncomfortably.
“You don’t really want to know that, do you?” he said grimly.
“Of course I do.”
“Don’t tell her, bro,” said Nathan playfully. “You’ll run her off.”
“No, really,” I said. “Just tell me.”
Isaac breathed in deep. I, on the other hand, wasn’t breathing at all.
“I’m...” he hesitated and I was turning blue, “...I’m nineteen.”
Silence. I could hear my stomach making funny little noises.
“Really, Isaac,” I said finally, “the truth.”
“Love,” he said, “I am telling you the truth. I’m nineteen years old.”
“But....”
Nathan started laughing and then Daisy and Zia joined him. When I saw Isaac’s face finally break into a smile too, I knew I was the butt of some innocent joke.
I just sat there, looking at each of them critically, waiting to be let in on it.
“How old did you think I was?” Isaac let the playful smile leave his face and he was on my side again.
“Ummm,” I said, gently biting my lip, “well, I don’t know. You’re sort of immortal, so I assumed—“
“She thought you were really up there, little brother,” Nathan said, still laughing. “Better start looking into wrinkle creams and microdermabrasion kits at Lancôme.”
Daisy laughed out loud and turned Nathan’s own joke around on him. “How do you know about microdermabrasion kits, Nathan?” she said accusingly. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Zia and Sebastian were eating this up as they stood off to the side; Zia enveloped by Sebastian’s arms. I wondered how long that would feel awkward to me.
Nathan’s eyes grew perfectly round, but even he couldn’t help but laugh.
Isaac kept his full attention solely on me, discounting anymore laughs on my account. “Yes,” he began to explain, “I’m only nineteen, but next year on the first full moon after my twentieth birthday, my aging will begin to slow as it does with all of our kind.”
I was instantly fascinated. “How does it...slow exactly?”
“Well, after that,” he went on, and by now everyone else had stopped laughing and were listening too, “for every ten human years, we will physically age only one human year.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re like a real life Fountain of Youth.”
“I guess you can look at it like that.”
“That’s amazing,” I added, still not fully grasping it. “So then how old are you, Nathan.”
He stopped smiling then and I heard Isaac fake a small cough into his hand next to me.
“Nathan is pushing seventy,” Daisy happily answered for him.
“Hey!” Nathan said. “You’re a witch sometimes; you know that, Daisy?”
Inattentively, I began jotting down formulas in my head, trying to pinpoint this whole human/werewolf aging process and I was coming up short. “But that’d make you...” I thought about it harder just to be sure, “...you’d have to look seven-years-old, Nathan, and believe me when I say you definitely don’t look seven. More like around twenty-five.”
“Technically, I’ve lived fifty years after Abating,” Nathan explained, “but you have to add the twenty years I lived before Abating, too.”
“So he’s seventy-years into wrinkle cream inevitability,” Daisy laughed from behind.
“I think I get it…” I said and then went back a topic or two. “Wait, what about when you shifted, Zia? I mean, how did Sebastian not know something was...well, not exactly normal?”
“Like I said,” Zia began, “I was in my mediate form; easier to disguise, especially if it’s dark and other things are going on.”
I thought someone might tell me what a ‘mediate’ form was exactly, but apparently, everyone had forgotten so soon I was only human.
Finally, Isaac spoke up:
“It’s the form in-between human and full-fledged werewolf,” he said. “Like you saw Rachel earlier.”
“Oh....”
Isaac and I stayed with everyone in the den for about an hour before we migrated up to Isaac’s room. I learned so much in that hour that I should’ve been mentally exhausted, but I was alert and ready to know more.