Howl for Me (13 page)

“Listen, my son,” Poko said. “It’s a very long story, and I’m not sure we have time, but I can try.”

“I’m... I just...” Damon brushed the hair out of his face, and looked back and forth, then began to pace. “I can’t...”

“Calm yourself, child,” Poko said. “Settle, and listen. This is a story I meant to tell you when you first came here. But I thought it might better to wait until your adopted parents left you in my care.”

“I just,” Damon was wringing his hands. “Why did you keep this from me?”

“For your own safety,” Poko said. “As you now know, yours is not the safest life. Many wish you harm, wish you dead. First, your rival, and then those who threatened your pack. And now, there are those who threaten
all
packs. Keeping you in the dark, also kept your mind from betraying you.”

“You mean... this Jacarth guy can read minds?” I asked. “Like... like, I can?”

“Different.” Poko spat a red wad onto the ground and kicked sand over the top of it. “You read emotions. Your Fae blood gives you the gift of empathy, of sensing when something is wrong or right, and of taking control of minds, for a short time. His? His is no gift. Jacarth senses movement in the spirit world, senses the very movement of spirits themselves, because he has, for so long, been one of them.”

For a moment, we sat in silence, looking back and forth at each other.

“I see that’s not setting well with you. What I mean,” Poko continued, “is that he’s so very old, that he cannot be contained. He moves both bodily and spiritually. Lily...”

Poko turned to me, his white eyes burning my soul. Out of instinct, I grabbed for Damon’s hand.

Just feeling his skin against mine, made me feel safer and more secure. Even though I had no idea what I was afraid of, not really, just having him was a very, very good thing.

“When you travel, Lily, you are
traveling
.” Poko smiled as he spoke. “You are going to places you’ve never experienced, yes? Your spirit flies on the wings of dreams, on the sand that flits between worlds.
Your
wings are gained in this way, and you can go wherever you want.”

Habitually, I squeezed Damon’s hand again.

“Okay, but what does that have to do with Blight?”

Poko took a pair of stumbling steps forward.

“Everything,” he said. “Jacarth has been a part of this planet for longer than there have been people. He is one with it, one with the spirits, and the winds, upon which you fly. Are you beginning to understand?”

Slowly, I was.

“He senses me moving around? Like... if a bird flies past you, you can tell by the air moving, which direction it came from? Where it went?”

“I knew I liked this one, Damon. She’s brighter than you.” Poko took another step toward us. “Knowing his power, it isn’t impossible to imagine, that he’s sent someone to find me. After all, if he snuffs my life, then he has the power to gain it. He can twist and manipulate the world of spirits, and drink their power.”

I shook my head. Hunter and Damon were doing the same.

“How is that possible?” Damon whispered, under his breath.

“What the hell did I wander into?” Hunter said, laughing a little. “I’ve got some incredible timing.”

“You do,” Poko said. “They’re going to need your help. Desperately, they’re going to need it. Now, there’s one other thing. It is entirely possible that Jacarth – Joram – whatever you wish to call him – has tracked us.”

“But, how?” Damon asked. “No one followed us.”

“Damn,” Devin said, stumbling out of the cave.

He was burned, and badly, but most of his skin was, at least, intact.

“It’s bright as hell.” Devin said. “I was kinda wondering where everyone went.”

Poko arched an eyebrow. “Damon,” he said. “You trust so easily. But, it isn’t a concern. It’s better that we know something of his plans. And with his pawn here, your beautiful mate can do a little bit of... counter espionage.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, trying to process everything. “You want me to go in Devin’s head? And ferret out this big, ancient bad ass?”

“More or less,” Poko said, grinning in his quizzical way. “I can’t think of any way else to keep ourselves abreast of his movements. I’m afraid they’re coming soon, whoever it is he’s bringing with him, and we have to be ready. But, Lily,” he grabbed my hand.

His skin was thin and brittle, like paper, wrapped around bones.

“I will not lie to you.” His voice was urgent. “This will not be safe.”

I was starting to shake a little, again, for about the fifteenth time.

“How do you mean? What’s so different about this time than when I’ve done it before?”

“He doesn’t
want
you in there,” Poko said.

All three of them – Damon, Hunter and Poko – looked at me at the same time. When Damon and Poko were right next to each other, the resemblance was incredible. I mean, add about eight centuries to Damon’s face, of course, but they looked very, very similar.

“Is he going to look like you, someday?” I asked, distracting myself from the horror that gripped my stomach, and twisted it in a knot. “I’ve never noticed it, before, but...”

“Only if he’s lucky,” Poko said, with a dry laugh. “Lily, this is a terrible danger. There’s no telling what lurks in that head of his.”

“I
am
right here,” Devin said, scratching a place on the side of his face, where his skin was growing back and flaking.

Everyone fell silent as he stepped a little closer.

“You don’t have any right to come in here, and act all fucking cute, Devin.” Damon stepped right up in his face, jabbing his brother straight in the chest with two outstretched fingers.

“You tried to kill me once. Do you think I’m just going to forget that, because you decide to get jokey?”

I grabbed Damon’s arm, though, I wasn’t really sure
why
I was stopping him.

“Not only that,” Hunter cut in. “But what you did to Cat? How can you even look at yourself in the mirror? How can you stand to be in your own skin?”

The air was so tense that I thought it was going to snap back in my face the next time someone spoke. Thankfully, it was Poko’s soft voice that filled the air.

“It was my fault.” Poko said.

“Huh?” Damon, Hunter, Devin, and I, all whirled around at once.

“Your fault?” I asked. “How could what Devin did possibly be your...”

It hit me, right as I was starting to speak. He abandoned Devin. When Damon was picked to be the heir to the Skarachee, Devin was just kind of forgotten.

“She understands,” Poko said, with a sad smile. “Were it not true, we would have a less controversial tone. He was alone, Damon. He came into his own skin without any help, and for that... I am to blame.”

“But Poko, he—” Damon tried to speak, but Poko quieted him with a raised hand.

“You may be the alpha, Damon, but in this, trust me. When you’re a parent, you’ll understand.”

The glance that both Poko and Damon shot in my direction, made me shrink right up. Damon knew, of course, and Poko was Poko, but this was
not
the announcement party I wanted.

“So back to Devin,” I said, with all the grace of a hippo sliding across a sheet of ice.

Luckily, no one seemed to notice, or mind.

Visibly uncomfortable, Devin retreated slightly toward the cave’s entrance. To say I felt sorry for him isn’t exactly right. When I saw him curled up on the ground with all those burns and the cuts and all that, sure, I was sad that a person was hurt. But... feeling sorry for
Devin?
I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

It’s like that disconnection when someone you don’t know dies. You say how sorry you are. You say how you feel for whomever it is who lost their dad, or uncle, or sister. But really, you’re just sad because someone
else
is sad. And then, you get even more down because you think you’re not reacting the way you’re supposed to act, and... It just goes on and on.

Then, it struck me how tired Devin looked. Back in school, he was always distant, disaffected. He was always hot in the way that Johnny Depp with a cigarette dangling from his lips is hot. You can tell just by looking at him, that he’s bad news, but he has – or he had, anyway – a way of grinning, that made you forget all about how obviously no-good he was.

But, right then, staring at him, he was just... broken.

There were bags under his eyes. The patchy hair and burned skin too, but even aside from that, he wasn’t all there. He was just a million miles away.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I know it’s dangerous, I know I could be hurt, but this... I don’t understand what got us here. I don’t understand what happened to him, or didn’t happen to him.”

“Lily,” Damon said. “He’s... Why do you care?”

“Because,” I said sharply, “no one deserves to be hopeless and helpless. Look at him, Damon. Look!”

Before my eyes, Devin just shrank. He crouched against the face of the cave, and just started to shake and weep.

“Do you see him, Damon? That’s not the same person who tried to kill you. That’s not the person who did all those horrible things. He’s broken, Damon. Can’t you see that?”

Devin’s whole body shook with sobs.

“I don’t know,” Devin whimpered. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I never knew, I just... One minute, I was me, and the next minute, I was torn up, and it was a week later. Then there were truancy officers harassing my parents about me missing school. I always thought there was just something wrong with me, that I was...”

He fell silent, and kept right on sobbing. The scars on Devin’s face were all bright red, the patches where his hair used to be burned angrily. I walked over to him and crouched down.

Just like I thought, his skin almost hissed with fever.

“You’re burning up,” I said. “Is he sick, Poko?”

The old man shook his head.

“Healing,” he said. “As his bones correct, and his skin pushes back against the silver, he will suffer a great deal. Though, I think the worst may be over.”

“Well,” I said, frowning a little as Devin winced at my touch. “I don’t know what you expect me to do, but if you tell me, I’ll try it.”

“You’re sure about this, Lily?”

It was Damon pleading with me that time.

“We don’t need him. He’s a liar and a cheat, and I promise, that the second he can, he’ll do it all again. He’ll sell us out,” Damon said. “He’ll do it without a second thought.”

“There’s something in his eyes,” I whispered back. “There’s no such thing as pure, black-and-seething evil. Not really. Think about what Poko said, Damon. He had no guidance, no nothing. He was just kind of jettisoned out into the wild world with. What chance
did
he have? What would you have done if it weren’t for Poko and your parents helping you control
your
beast?”

Damon crossed his arms over his chest. He squeezed one forearm with the other.

“Control what, Lily?” he asked. Control the urges I have to rape and murder and... Oh wait, no. I don’t
have
any of those urges. He’s a killer, Lily, but if you insist on trying to help him, I won’t stop you.”

“Rape?” Devin said. “I hurt people, I know I hurt people. But rape? I never...”

“It’s okay,” I whispered, laying my hand on his sweat-soaked back.

I don’t know how I did it. I really don’t. I hated him as much as anyone, more maybe, for what he did to Damon and Cat, but there was something so vulnerable and helpless about him.

“Everything’s fine.” I said, trying to soothe him. “You’re going to feel cold, and then you won’t feel anything.”

I had no idea if that was true. Either my touching him, or the calmness in my voice, seemed to calm Devin a little. He stopped sobbing, and I knelt in front of him, using my thumbs to close his eyes.

“Hold her Damon. Go to her.” Poko’s voice was distant and fading. “Yes, like that, she needs an anchor to this world, so she can find her way back.”

My consciousness went green – the fringes of my vision started to wobble. The instant before I was swallowed whole, I felt Damon’s hands on my shoulder and my neck.

I was right about one thing, at least. As soon as I was inside Devin, everything was really,
really
cold.

––––––––

W
hen I woke up, I was in Devin’s mind, seeing things through his eyes.

I was in a closet that I wasn’t supposed to be in, poking around in boxes I shouldn’t have been poking.

The part of the closet I was in was totally black, even with the door open into the living room. In the opposite end of the house, Dad was doing something in the garage. Yelling at something, like he was watching TV, and arguing with a referee.

Under my fingertips, the paper was slick and cool. I ran my hands along a seam, and found a bit of tape holding it together. I scratched at it until the tape tore, but I made sure the paper didn’t. The last thing in the world I wanted was for that paper to rip.

If it did, they’d know.

He
would know.

I slipped my thumb under the tape, acutely aware of every sound in the house around me. The tape losing its grip made the softest
pop
, but the instant it did, I froze.

“Margo?” my father’s voice came from the other end of the house.

I had to remind myself that it wasn’t
my
father.

“Margo! Answer me when I call. Have you seen that little bastard wandering around? I need him out here for a second.”

“No! Haven’t seen him. He’s probably in his room. Why don’t you leave him alone for a while, Dale? He’s got enough troubles.”

“Shut up!” the man shot back. “If I want something done, gotta do it my goddamn self. I—”

He fell silent as soon as his boots hit the slick, textured linoleum, in the kitchen. It was like I’d been in the house a thousand times, even though I never had. I could clearly see the layout in my mind.

It never fails to really weird me out when I’m living someone else’s memories.

I looked back and forth in the dark, trying to think of somewhere to hide, but in a closet, hiding space is a little hard to come by. As carefully as I possibly could, I placed the tape back on the package.