Waken (The Woods of Everod Book 1) Read online

  “I... This weekend, I promise.”

  “No. Tell me now, or I won’t go this weekend.” Any agreement I’d just made to wait vanished from my mind. All this mysterious crap was driving me nuts. I wanted to yell at him, but didn’t trust myself to be coherent. The normal glow of peace I felt with him was gone.

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Why?” I snapped, my patience at an end. Every ounce of frustration was now pushing on my last nerve, causing me to sink heavily onto the couch.

  He walked to the fireplace where glowing embers rested in a bed of ash. He picked up a log, placed it within the pit, and blew gently until the flames licked its sides. He acted so casual, brushing the dirt from the log off his hands then looping his thumbs through his belt loops.

  Could I tell him every dream I’d had, every crazy emotion and sensation that he drew from me? How could I put it into words, when I didn’t even understand what I felt, what I had been going through? My life since coming to Everod had been so surreal. Before, I may have been hiding inside myself, but I’d been relatively content with the way things were, just Tim, Justin and me. Now I was sitting there with no idea what was going on, of what he had to tell me.

  Being with Tristan had changed me more than I had wanted to change myself. I loved the way I felt when I was with him, the way he made me feel cherished and wanted. Worthy. But inside was a part of me that questioned that. A part that actually resented the control he had over me, how I had automatically gravitated towards him from the moment we’d met. All of the cryptic warnings and the questions were pooling in my mind and I wondered if anything was real.

  “The night of the accident, I thought you were dead.” I wrapped my arms around myself protectively; the still fresh memory was terrifying. “You were cut, bleeding everywhere. We tried to get you out, but the door wouldn’t open, no matter how hard we pulled. Then before we could try anything else, there you were, unhurt.”

  He wasn’t stopping me or interrupting to tell me I was nuts. I continued tentatively, questioningly, “Rachel and Bryce have been warning me to stay away from you. Why?” I paused, giving him a chance to answer. He said nothing. “You wanted to explain, well here’s your chance. Explain or leave.” My voice quivered. I was tired of waiting for an explanation.

  Nothing. I thought he was going to leave. I started towards the door, but his quiet words stopped me.

  “Will you really listen? Because all sense of logic you have will reject what I tell you and you need to hear everything, then you can decide what you want to believe.”

  “I need to know, Tristan.”

  He moved soundlessly to the window gazing out at the glittering dewdrops that clung to the glass. “God, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Anywhere.”

  “I’m not normal. The people here, in Everod, are not normal.”

  Restlessly, he paced back to the fireplace. He placed his hands on the mantle and rested his head on top.

  “Since I was ten, I’ve known what I would become, what everyone around me is. That was when the change first started. As a child, you don’t notice the little oddities of our town. Mom and Dad are just Mom and Dad.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it of everything but his words.

  “I’d always been healthy, but on my tenth birthday I was running with the cake knife. I slipped and fell. It sliced right through me. I was terrified. I’d watched enough horror movies to know that a knife through your stomach wasn’t good. But Dad just came over and pulled it out. He said ‘Slow down or one day you may hurt someone’.”

  “I suppose next you’ll tell me you’re a vampire.” I shoved myself off the couch. His head jerked up from the mantle and he spun around.

  “What?! No, definitely not vampires. I wish it was that simple. We don’t bite. Well, maybe, but only for fun.” His smile turned faintly flirtatious and, despite everything, I could feel myself blushing, then just as quickly the seriousness returned.

  “Come on, Tristan. Do I really seem that stupid?” My shoulders drooped as Elin’s voice came back to me. Pathetic.

  He watched me pick at the fine dusting of dirt on my jeans. “You don’t believe me,” he said after a moment.

  “Would you?” I glanced at him from under my lashes.

  “I still don’t believe it and I’m living it.” He lifted an envelope knife from the mantle, and ran his finger along the broad side, the flickering flames glinting off the edge.

  Before I could guess what he meant to do, he gripped the knife in his palm and slid the blade through his closed fist. When the blade emerged, a vibrant red stained the edge and a drop of blood pooled on the tip.

  “Oh my God!” I cried, surging forward. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

  I grabbed his hand and pried his fist open, intent on inspecting the cut. But there was none. The only evidence that he’d cut himself was a drop of blood and a thin red scratch, that faded even as I watched. My fingers burned and I dropped his hand.

  “Why would you do that?” I demanded, angry that he had done something so stupidly dangerous.

  “You didn’t believe me,” he answered.

  “So, what? You can’t be hurt? You can’t die?”

  “No.” He laughed miserably. “That hurt like hell, so I hope you don’t want a repeat performance.”

  “But you can’t die?” I persisted.

  “We die. It’s just not very common unless you’re old.”

  “Old? How old?”

  “About as old as an average person. The infection increases our body’s ability to heal and regenerate our cells, but there are injuries that even the infection can’t heal. We’re still human.”

  An infection I could handle. That could be cured, right? There was a way for him to be normal again. I tried a smile of encouragement, but my lips were stiff from disbelief no longer with his story, but in the actuality of the existence of his story. How was it possible that something like him could exist, and the world be unaware, unsuspecting?

  He smiled and pulled an old sepia colored photo from his wallet, then handed it to me. Taken in the sixties or seventies, a young couple smiled in front of a newer looking Trail’s End diner.

  “That’s my mom, Katrina, and my dad, Adam. We don’t completely stop aging, it only slows us down. That photo is from just after they got married. Mom is sixty-five and Dad won’t admit it but he’s almost seventy.” He looked down at it. “They still look pretty much the same now. Dad says it’s like being stuck in the prime of your life, until we hit about eighty then it all catches up with us.”

  He put the photo back in his wallet and walked to the window, before turning back to face me.

  “How is this even possible?” The words tumbled from my lips.

  “Do you remember the story Samara told you about the Wolf? How he infected the villagers?”

  “So, the infection is contagious?” There was something else nagging my brain. I’d labeled it a folk tale, nothing that could be true to life. Even with the fascination the town had, I hadn’t taken it seriously and the small details of the story had faded.

  “It is. It passes easily during pregnancy, and for Ericka it could be as simple as a few drops of blood. For the rest of us, it takes a lot of our blood to infect another.”

  “So basically you - this town - are a walking eternal fountain of youth?”

  “It’s not eternal, more like an extended youth.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Some people think so,” he replied.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. For seventeen years I’ve been pretty much normal. The healing doesn’t bother me. But the idea that I’m never going to play pro football, or live somewhere other than Everod. All I’ve ever wanted is for a cure, to be normal.”

  “I know it’s hard to accept, but you need to know what we are. Everything we are.”

  “There’s more?” What more could there be?

  “Yes, but t
his...it’s better if I show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t- I know. I know,” he said and held up a hand to cut off my interruption. “But this is entirely different. Telling you without the permission of the Council could end up causing a lot of problems.”

  “So when?” Now that I had some answers, I wanted to know everything.

  “This weekend. I’m speaking to the Council tomorrow.”

  “What if they say you can’t tell me?”

  “Then I’ll go to Ms. Markov. She’ll support me.”

  Tristan slipped his arms around me, and immediately a sense of absolute calm flooded me. His lips pressed close to my ear and I shivered as his warm breath tickled my skin.

  “I promise,” he whispered again.

  “I’ll wait,” I finally said. “Until the cabin.”

  Chapter 15

  I pulled away from his arms, going back to the sofa and sank onto the soft cushions, curling up my legs. He sat on the floor in front of me, threading his fingers through mine, and my tension faded at his touch. He rested one arm beside my bent legs, and brought his face within inches of mine. There were still so many questions racing through me and while I wanted answers, I also needed to digest everything I’d learned and seen. So, I let the subject drop and focused on him, mesmerized by the light glinting in his eyes. If eyes are the windows to the soul, I wanted to know what his were trying to tell me.

  I gravitated towards him, trying to inhale his rich scent. My eyelids fluttered closed and I breathed deeply. The slamming of the front door stopped me and I flopped back on the couch. Tristan groaned then shifted to face the television.

  “Hey, guys.” Tim came into the living room, blatantly studying us, searching for some sign that we’d been doing what he thought we’d been doing. What I couldn’t tell was whether he wanted us to be doing that so he could reassure himself that I was a normal kid, or whether he didn’t because I was still his little girl.

  The silence became awkward as Tim painstakingly measured the situation. Tristan finally broke it. “How was the movie?”

  “What?” Tim twitched and looked taken aback, “Oh, it was alright.”

  “Alright?” Justin exclaimed from the hall, “It was awesome! I’d never seen so much blood and guts in a single movie before.” His face grew animated, “I loved it. Usually these Hollywood horrors don’t do the full out gore, but this one was awesome! The special effects were amazing.” When Justin’s vocabulary got stuck on awesome and amazing it couldn’t get any better for him, so I knew it wasn’t a movie I’d go to see by choice.

  Tim sat in the armchair at the end of the couch by my feet and flicked the channel to the sports station. I listened as he and Tristan discussed the baseball results and began debating who was the greatest player to ever pick up a bat.

  The tension that had built in Tristan’s face disappeared. Talking with Justin and Tim, he was just a regular guy, not the passionate man who had been kissing me, nor the mysterious boy who refused to reveal himself completely.

  Under my inquisitive gaze, he turned to me, breaking off his comment to Tim mid-sentence. “I should go,” he said. “You’re tired.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I protested, then immediately contradicted myself with a loud yawn. “Okay, I am a little tired.”

  He stood and then grasped my hands helping me to my feet. I walked with him onto the porch, shivering in the cold. He wrapped me in his arms, enveloping me with his heat, defending me from the harsh elements of the world. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the furious beating of his heart.

  It was hard to stand there with so many questions still racing through me, but not ask them. But tempering those were the ones that questioned what I had seen, and heard.

  His embrace tightened momentarily, then he let go, placing a quick peck on my forehead.

  “I don’t know.” The words left my mouth, answering an unasked question. Could I believe in the story he had told me? The evidence he had given me? Whether it was his question or mine didn’t matter. His lips tipped in a sad smile.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  He leapt over the three rickety steps and jogged down the drive to where his car sat parked on the side of the road. He started the engine and still I stood there unmoving, wishing he would come back and hold me, just for another minute. His touch pushed everything away.

  He motioned for me to go and I knew he wouldn’t leave until I was in, so I gave a final wave and went back inside. Hearing the car accelerate down the road, heaviness settled over me.

  Every instinct in me told me I was going to be hurt, yet I didn’t want to walk away from him. And honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the rest of what he was hiding. Everyone was acting so crazy about me knowing I wondered if once I knew I would wish I didn’t. What if Tristan was just using me? What if I was some small pawn in a giant game of cat and mouse? What if I was the mouse? What if it was better not to know? Ignorance is bliss, and personally, I loved bliss.

  Friday was two days away and what little ignorance I had wasn’t enough to keep me from imagining the worst.

  The days after Tristan had revealed his healing ability, it was all I could think about. Thursday morning I was up before even Justin, though I’d barely slept, despite my exhaustion. On the way into town that afternoon, he took in my red-rimmed eyes.

  “You look like crap,” Justin said in his typical charming way.

  “Gee, thanks. Just what every girl wants to hear.” I rolled my eyes and rested my head against the passenger window, watching the houses whip by.

  “I’m serious, Janie. I know you haven’t been sleeping and when Dad and I got home from the movie, you were looking like you’d seen a ghost or something.” He pulled into Trail’s End parking lot, and turned the car off. “Are you having nightmares again?”

  “No- yes, but...” I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind, but all I could see was Tristan’s cut hand, the massive laceration on his forehead, healing itself instantly. “This isn’t because of that.”

  “Tristan then?”

  My voice refused to make the denial, so I shook my head instead. Having Justin come to my imaginary defense with Tristan wasn’t something I wanted to see, especially when I considered the few times I’d watched Tristan fight in the gym.

  “Anything to do with Rachel or Bryce?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because they keep hounding you about something, giving you warnings to get out of town. Don’t look so shocked. I hear things and just because I’m hot doesn’t mean I’m brainless.” He evaded my swat with a laugh. “Besides, they’re guarding the door to the diner and glaring over here, so I figure they’re waiting for you.”

  My laughter stopped and I glanced over to the entrance.

  “Crap.”

  Rachel and Bryce looked pissed. It was getting tiresome the way they kept at it. I’d have thought that by this point they’d have given up already. I climbed out of the car with a sigh. Tristan was supposed to meet me inside, but another confrontation wasn’t appealing to me in the least.

  “Hey, can you tell Tristan I’ll see him at the library?” I threw the request at Justin, already speed walking away from Rachel and Bryce. Weather he agreed or not didn’t matter as much as keeping my sanity.

  Ms. Markov was behind the counter, and I smiled a hello. She looked to be in her forties, so if what Tristan told me was true what would that have made her? Close to eighty? Would she come to work tomorrow looking ten years older?

  What would that be like? Tristan said all he wanted was for a cure. To escape the confines of living in Everod for the rest of his existence, to build a life that he chose. If he felt like that at eighteen, I could only imagine how she and the rest of the town felt. Had no one found a way to leave Everod behind permanently?

  I wandered the aisles a few minutes, pulling out a number of paperbacks and shoving them in my bag before heading for the st
airs. Tristan had mentioned that one of his favorite movies was there and I wanted to watch it before I had to admit I’d never even heard of it before.

  The basement was dark, the only light coming from under the closed doors of the Archive and Media Center rooms. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I fumbled along the hall until my fingers passed over the switch.

  I paused outside the media room, before turning and going into the archive room. There was something about the Wolf’s story that kept bugging me. Something that I was missing. Something that if I could just remember would put all the pieces together.

  The book was there, all traces of dust gone. Someone had been reading it since my last visit. I turned to the page at the back and read the words of the promise again. There was nothing there that filled the empty space my mind had created within the story.

  I closed the book and stared at the front cover. The wolf banner stared back at me. Mocking me with its reminders of my mother, of my father’s necklace still hiding under my bed.

  My fingers drifted over the etching and I sucked in a sharp breath as darkness engulfed me. There was a swirling sensation, but the whirl of colors that had come with my other visions was absent. A deep thumping pulsed through the air, rippling the darkness with threads of light, until the darkness took the ripples and my eyes could see what lay before me.

  I am underwater, the thumping becoming the thunder of the waterfall as my mind clears, but this time my lungs don’t beg for air, pain doesn’t slice my chest in two.

  My hands drift above my body, caught in the gentle currents of the water. I push out, straining toward the surface, but no matter how close it seems I can’t reach it. Red rivulets swirl into the water above me, shielding the sky from my view. The pounding of the waterfall becomes rhythmic and steady, mirroring my pulse echoing through me. Eyes drifting closed, I absorb the feel of death, wrapping its way around me.

  Panic sets in. I swing my arms out and open my eyes, but only darkness surrounds me. There is no light from the sun, no glittering reflection of light on the water.

  Something warm touches my hand and my fingers automatically grasp onto it, a lifeline among my feelings of death. It pulls me up, but still the water traps me, sucking me down. I kick my feet, finally pushing to survive, but watery fingers capture me, preventing me from leaving their depths.