Claimed (8 page)

“We noticed that there was hooked keratin growth at the end of your fingers. These might be signs of a panther claw.”

Jared raised and dropped his hands with helplessness. “Great.
Like I needed anything more to feel like a freak. What next? Cat eyes?” It was the way Tara looked at her mother that told him that he hadn’t heard everything yet. “Tara?”

“I saw your eyes flash green one night during your drugged rages,” she let out slowly.

“It’s true,” Dr. Langford added. “We can confirm that you have a layer of tapetum lucidum behind the retina of your eyes. Tapetum lucida reflects the light back into the retina. It’s what gives cats their nocturnal vision.”

“Anything else?”
Jared asked, shaking his head. “Before I kill you?”

“Come on, Jared,” Tara consoled. “It’s not all the doctor’s fault. He wouldn’t have acted upon it had
Da not given his consent.”

His eyes
welled with tears as he glanced up at his mother.  He walked up to her slowly and dropped to his knees, laying his head on her lap. “Why, Ma? Why did Da do this to me?” he whimpered.

She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to comfort him, sobbing with him.

He ran his shaver along his jaw line. It had been
almost three weeks since he and his family had fled their home in that horrifying urgency. Jared stood now in his own bathroom with gold-plated fitted knobs and the sounds of Bach filling the air while he shaved off his stubble, recollecting the events that had transpired over the weeks. He caught the reflection of his expensive cotton robe hanging on his coat stand behind him. He could get used to this luxury, he thought.  He knew the children loved it and he had never seen Tara and his mother so peacefully content before.

He splashed h
is face with a handful of water, washing the foam off it. He raised his head, watching the droplets of water trickling down his chin as a myriad of thoughts ran through his mind. James wasn’t merely being nice because of his guilty conscience. He knew there had to be more to why he was putting up with the Ryders at his house.

He turned to the side
to get a glimpse of his newly developed accessory. Instinctively, his wings extended out of his back. They were now a thick band of earth brown feathers with tinges of black. He managed a tiny flap but then he winced. The surgery hadn’t fully healed yet. He leaned onto the wash basin, closing his eyes.

There was someone else
also who hadn’t yet left his mind and he wondered if his hybrid qualities now made her nothing more than a fantasy. A woman like Ellie Callum would never give a freak like him a chance. He shook his head, brushing aside his thoughts of her morosely.

Grabbing his towel, he headed towards the shower.
He needed to find a dream that didn’t include Ellie Callum anymore.

Jared ruffled Mae’s hair as he sat down beside her at the table. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Pancakes and eggs and muffins and cranberry cream cheese pinwheels,” she replied gleefully.

“Sounds great,” he smiled. He picked up a toast and began buttering it. “Thanks for the stay, James,” he said, addressing the man at the head of the table reading his newspaper. “But we really should be heading home now.”

The children groaned.

“As much as we all love it here, this is not our house,” he said to the now sulking pair. “We need to thank Mr. Saunders for his hospitality and we sure do appreciate all he’s done for us. But now that I am feeling so much better, we should return to our own home. What do you think, Ma?”  he glanced at his mother across him.

Stella shifted nervously in her chair, trying to avoid looking at the growing suspicion in his eyes.

James indicated at the butler and whispered some instructions into his ear. Once the butler was dispersed, he smiled at the children. “I’ve had Ray prepare something for you both in Fern’s room. I thought you might want to have breakfast there today. Perhaps, make a mess?”

“
Oooh, yes,” Mae replied excitedly and raced out of the dining room with Fern protesting after her.

James drew his lips into a long, thin hard line. “We have something to tell you.”

“Another mutation I don’t know about?” Jared asked sarcastically. “What is it now? A tail?”

James made a sound
in his throat as he folded his newspaper away.

Stella’s fingers trembled, clattering her cup against her saucer. She took a deep breath in
as she tried to steady her hands.

“
Ma, is there something you want to tell me?” he asked cautiously.

“Honey,” she started. “James and I… we are getting married.”

Jared sat back, a numbness overpowering him. “What?”

“Your mother and I are getting married,” James repeated.

“I heard that. But why? Ma, when did this happen?”

“Your mother-” James began.

“Okay, you need to shut up!” Jared stopped him. “You’ve done enough damage in my life. In fact, you’ve messed it up. And now, you’re trying to ruin what is left of it? So I would greatly appreciate it if you’d just shut the fuck up!”

“Jared, please,” his mother begged.

“I don’t believe you’re doing this, Ma,” he looked at her with a distinct hurt in his eyes. “Anyone but you. You love this… this luxury so much; you’re going to marry the very man who is responsible for Da’s death and my mutations?”

Stella balled her nervous hands
and rose out of her chair. She moved slowly around the table and then sat slowly beside him.

“Jared, I’m not marrying James for his wealth or because of love,” she uttered almost in a whisper. “We’re doing it for you.”

His eyes narrowed and then let out a mocking laugh. “Oh please cut out the sacrificial dialogue, Ma. Why would I ever want you to marry that deluded unethical scum who thinks he can play with human lives however he wants to?”

“Your father held a purpose for your birth,” Stella explained shakily. “I didn’t understand it
. And you know well enough I was absolutely against it. And then I saw you mutate into someone with potential, someone with para-human strength. Someone, who has the chance to end the suffering imposed upon our people. Jared, what you have now is something we could never ever have- power.”

“She’s right,” Tara spoke up.

“You knew about this?” Jared stared at her with disbelief.

“We discussed it between us- yes.”

“And no one bothered to talk it with me?”

“Aren’t we doing that now?” she challenged.

“You know what I mean,” he snapped back.

“
The reason why we didn’t tell you
is
because of this,” she threw back angrily at him. “You flip out without even contemplating that it might be a good idea. James is giving us that chance to do something, Jared. But your stubbornness and pride is standing in your way of any common sense- like it always does.”

He grew quiet. “I need to think,” he said finally, rising out of his chair.

“So you‘re gonna run away? Why didn’t I see that coming?” Tara mocked.

“God-damn-it
, Tara!” he raged. He started to argue but he shook his head instead, throwing his hands up in the air with helplessness. “You know something, I didn’t ask for this… this power. I don’t remember anyone giving me a choice. You may well think that it is awesome to be this mutated thing, half-human and half-bird and cat and what-not, but that’s because you’re not living with it. You’re not living with the pain I go through every single day. You don’t feel it. You don’t know the anger that surges through me every time I look into the mirror and see these animal parts creeping out of my body. Para-human, you call it but you damned know nothing of what that means. Lesser of a human being, that’s what it means! Not more power like you think. I live scared each day that I will slowly grow into an animal. That I will forget what it is like to be a man. And
power
is what you all can think about?” he spat out with disgust. “You all can go to hell with your patriotic, inspirational speeches. Talk to me when you decide to have Dr. Langford and his team inject you with some animal chromosome!”

He threw back his chair in his furor, toppling it over.

“Jared!” his mother cried, running after him as he marched with a tempestuous stride towards the door.

“Please, Ma,” he stopped her. “Not now.”
He glared at Tara and James before slamming the door furiously behind him.

*****

“Wolf!” he called out as he made his way to the wide open fields of Saunders’ land. Unlike his home, he would not need to resort to the woods to vent out his frustrations. Saunders had miles of empty fields to run wildly through.

His stroll turned into a
faster stride. He felt a remarkable lightness in his feet as he moved, exhilaration filling the pits of his stomach. He sprinted through the meadow and with each leap he felt he was bounding over the tall flowery grass. The breeze fluttered through his hair wildly, blowing it back roughly as he gained more speed.

Wolf chased alongside him, barking
excitedly at his ankles.

“Come on, Wolf!” he shouted as he leapt over a fallen tree trunk. 

He didn’t know how far he had run, his mind solely focused on his new found ability to almost soar with each leap and the rapturous feeling it effected on him. The meadow drew to an abrupt end and he skidded to a stop. Panting for breath, he clutched his sides, glancing at his dog.

“How was that, Wolf? Incredible right?” he chuckled. “Well, I can say one thing about James Saunders
is that he’s a damned lucky guy for having all this at his leisure.”

He walked carefully to
wards the cliff’s edge overlooking the cold, Atlantic Ocean.

“What do you think is on the other side, boy?” he whispered. “How must they be living? Like us? Or better than we do? Do they suffer the same corruption and oppression? Or do they have the freedom we all long for?”

The waves beat against the rocks, its crashing sounds carried into the air, booming about him. He picked up a pebble and threw it into the ocean. It disappeared beneath the cold foamed waters without a sound, silenced by the angry waves that enveloped it.

“Do you think we’d disappear like that Wolf?
Without a trace? Without having done anything constructive with our lives?” Wolf whined as it nervously trotted along the edge of the cliff. It turned away wistfully to sniff at Jared’s ankles, slopping them with his wet nose.

“
The irrelevant duo; that is who we are,” he ruffled the dog’s thick fur.

He sat down on the green turf of the grassland, his eyes on the looming horizon in the ocean. He was all alone in this corner of the world. There was nothing he could see that told him that this was once a busy port a thousand years ago. All remnants of a dock had been either pulled down or washed away into time, as had done all the beautiful cities he had heard of.

“I’d give anything to see them, Wolf,” he muttered. “The ancient Sin City, the overly glamorous Hollywood and the Empire State Building in New York. What must have they been like sitting in one of them tall buildings and looking down upon everything else below?” Wolf licked his face and then lay beside him. He chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, it would have felt great. I suppose it would be no different than admiring those giant rocks below, seeing them as no bigger than this pebble in the palm of your hand.”

He
gave the stone a little toss in the air before flinging it into the water below.

“They’v
e all disappeared along with Pompeii and the incredible Maya cities,” he whispered.

His mind contemplated
their argument at breakfast, weighing in its different aspects. Tara was right. He was already a mutant. There was no point in wishing he was normal again because he would never be normal. His fate had been determined prior to his birth and there was no one other than his father who should be more burdened with the blame. He was angry because he couldn’t scream or rage at his father for making that decision. He only had James Saunders who annoyingly continuously addressed him as ‘son’.  And if his mother had her way, there was every possibility that it was going to turn out to be just that.

He always had looked upon his father with awe.
He had always been the hero he wished he could be. But this mutation erased all reverent thoughts of his Da. He realized he didn’t know his father as well as he thought he did. Suddenly, the man he had emulated since he was a child was now shrouded in a cloud of mystery.

“What do you think, Wolf? Should I go along with Saunders’ plans and give this revolution a go?”

Wolf didn’t answer, but blinked sadly at the oceanic horizon.

“That’s what I thought too, boy. It’s damned well confusing,” he muttered.

The waves silkily washed into the white sandy beach. Its repetitiveness mesmerized him just as Ellie Callum had done a few days ago. She had strode into that hallway and taken away a piece of him with her when she had marched back out of it. No matter how hard he had tried to eradicate her existence from his memory, his body was very aware of how alive she was.

He still remembered her sweet smell. Every cell within him was ingrained with the memory of her warmth and the touch of her skin against his.

“But it isn’t like I would have stood a chance with her even if I was normal,” he whispered, his fingers combing through Wolf’s fur. “She’s a Callum and I am a poor resident of Sector 8 Central. What would have the probabilities been? And now that I’m a chimera, I just reduced that probability to a whole new level. I’m screwed either way, aren’t I Wolf?”

Wolf made a small noise and closed his eyes.

“Oh, you’re not gonna do that now,” he chuckled. “Up, you lazy ass! It’s time we head back home.”

*****
 

He found them sitting sporadically in the library. He could tell that his mother had been crying. Tara didn’t look too well either as she sat biting into her nails; a habit she succumbed to whenever she was stressed or anxious.

He ambled into the room with his hands in his pockets. If they had seen him, they pretended not to.