The Ballad of Aramei (2 page)

The bear draws closer and my body locks up out of fear. I don’t want to run. They always tell you never to run when you come face to face with a bear. But everything in me is screaming at me to run. I keep looking to and from Isaac and the bear, expecting him to pounce on it from behind any second now, but instead, Isaac falls back and keeps a still position near a tree, letting its massive trunk partially conceal his naked form. My heart is hammering against my ribcage. I’m hunched over slightly with my knees bent and hands out in front of me, arms bent at the elbows. Instinct now tells me to be ready to fight. Wait…fight a bear? This is insane.

The bear rises up on its hind legs and begins to sniff the air, its clawed paws dangling down near its belly. It grunts and sniffs and grunts some more.

And then it sees me.

My preternatural eyes, shifting black of their own accord, catches the bear’s eyes boring into mine. I don’t know whether to be terrified, or…territorial. The moose’s blood rises up into my nostrils heavily, but for some reason unknown to my human mind, this time my throat doesn’t retch at the scent of it. My stomach doesn’t swim in a poisonous lake of bile. No, it smells good and my stomach
aches
for it.

My black claws come out and the skin on my forearms begins to turn gray.

I move toward the bear, my back arched over as my body molds itself into a battle-ready stance. The bear growls and jerks its head abrasively side to side. But it begins to back away and then it runs in the opposite direction. I watch as the mass of black fur bounds through the forest and out of sight.

Isaac steps away from the safety of the tree and moves toward me, a grin spread across his beautiful face.

I catch myself pushing my hair back down over my shoulders so that it covers my exposed breasts and I turn my body at a sideward angle and press my thighs together.

“Like I haven’t already seen all of that before,” he says just a few feet away.

He is right, after all, but it just feels weird. I mean really there’s nothing sexy to me about standing here in the nude, covered in blood and dirt with wild woman hair.

“Actually there is,” he says having fished around inside my head, still grinning the grin of the Devil. I love that grin. It usually means he’s up to no good, and Isaac being up to no good usually means I’m going to like it.

No! Not here like this! I cover myself even better, pushing my hands down below my pelvic area to hide as much as I can.

“Thought you weren’t going to read my mind?” I snap, though there’s a trace of humor in my voice.

His hands come up as if surrendering. “Closed off now. I swear.”

“Okay,” I say looking at him more scoldingly, “what
was
that? That bear could’ve killed me, Isaac.”

He smiles and looks downward for a brief moment. “Ummm, no it couldn’t have,” he says. “And I wanted to see how well you handled it—that’s why I was reading your thoughts.”

“You were testing me?”

He nods. “And you did well,” he says. “You gave in to your animal side quicker than most newbies do.”

Of course, I have not at all forgotten the fact that he is standing here talking to me butt naked. It doesn’t matter one bit that we’ve already seen each other in our birthday suits and that we’ve consummated our relationship; there’s just something uncomfortable about talking to
anyone
while completely nude. It’s not natural…well, I guess in a sense it sort of is, but I easily keep my eyes looking at everything above his waist.

“And besides,” Isaac goes on, “a black bear would never attack a werewolf. A grizzly, on the other hand, would without hesitation. They never win, but they’re a formidable opponent.”

“Well, what if that would’ve been a grizzly?” I say, now crossing my arms and tilting my head to one side. “Huh? Tell me that—would you still have left me to fend for myself?”

Isaac laughs under his breath and moves to stand right in front of me. He presses his forehead against mine, cupping my arms in his hands below. “Good thing there are no grizzly’s in Maine,” he says and pecks me on the tip of my nose. “But yes, I’d still leave you to fend for yourself.”

My mouth falls open. I playfully push him away and let out a spat of air. “Seriously! I can’t believe you!” I’m still sort of laughing through my poor attempt at being offended because he’s still sort of grinning behind his poor attempt to be serious.

He grabs me and pulls me toward him, crushing his lips against mine. He kisses me long and hard and I press my naked body against his, grabbing his hair in my fists.

The kiss breaks and the first thing I notice is that Isaac looks clean. I step back and look him up and down.

“Why aren’t you gross like me?” I cross my arms to look reproachful, but really it’s more to cover my breasts. And I still stand at sort of an angle so that my thigh covers my private area below.

He tugs his head back. “This way,” he says and reaches out his hand.

I take his hand and walk alongside him toward the sound of water.

“I feel like Adam and Eve,” I say, “well, Adam and Eve written by Seth Grahame-Smith, anyway.”

Isaac smiles over at me, but doesn’t say anything.

“What is it?” I say.

“Nothing.”

I narrow my eyes at him and he gently grips my hand as we make our way over a large fallen tree branch.

“Isaac,” I say, though watching my footing more than looking at him now, “I’ll just start digging around inside your head if I have to—Oh! That’s right! I can do that now, which means you can’t hide anything from me anymore.”

His lopsided grin deepens.

“I already told you that I don’t care if you ever listen to my thoughts,” he says.

He reaches out and pushes away a dense patch of low, thin tree limbs that jut out over the path so that I can walk through them.

“But you know I don’t want to,” I say.

He walks in behind me, letting the limbs snap back into place afterwards.

I see the creek out ahead now.

“It’s just that I’m glad you’re taking to this so easily,” he says.

We make our way to the edge of the creek and I step right in, letting the water come up to my waist and I begin to wash. Isaac sits on a large tree limb sitting low near the ground. The tree that it comes from is awkwardly shaped, rising over the top of a small ridge that surrounds the creek.

It really doesn’t feel so weird bathing in a creek. Not that I’ve ever done it before, but I spent my childhood swimming in ponds and creeks and rivers and lakes, so it doesn’t bother me. Of course, I’d love some soap, shampoo and conditioner.
A lot
of conditioner.

I look over at Isaac sitting on the limb as I scrub the blood from my elbows and say, “Define easily.”

God he looks good naked
…I force myself to look away.

Chapter 2

I HEAR ISAAC JUMPING down from the limb and I wait to look up when I hear the water move as he steps into it. He comes up behind me and guides my body back so that he can wet my hair.

“I tried to prepare myself for this,” he says, combing his fingers gingerly through my wet, tangled locks. “I expected you to be completely traumatized by the whole experience, to wake up after a shift like right now, and maybe hate yourself, hate me for what you’ve become.”

He works his fingers through another section of my hair, never pulling it.

“I told you that I would never hate you,” I say, “I promised you the night you changed me.”

I feel his breath on the back of my neck as he sighs deeply.

I turn around to face him.

“Isaac, what’s wrong? And don’t lie to me.”

He gazes into my eyes, searching for something, though I’m not sure what, but he seems concerned. I study his face for a moment and then it hits me. I don’t need to probe his thoughts to know what he’s thinking.

I let my head fall slightly to one side and I reach up and rest my fingertips on his cheeks, water drips from my hands and runs down the length of my arms.

“You think I’m forcing myself not to hate you because of my promise?” It discourages me that he would even consider that, but I can’t bring myself to criticize him for it.

Isaac looks right into my eyes, but doesn’t answer.

I lean up and kiss his lips softly and he knows that words aren’t needed to assure him now. He knows that I would still love him even if the promise was never made.

“So,” I say, looking around at the trees on all sides, “exactly how do we get back…you know…being naked and all?”

Isaac turns me around again and scoops water into his hands, pouring it on my shoulders and neck and gently scrubbing the blood away that I had missed.

“That’s the tricky part,” he says, “but it should be fun.”

“Fun? How could anything about that be fun?”

I hear him laugh softly behind me and then he leans around and kisses my cheek.

I don’t like that mischievous feeling I’m getting from him right now. Okay, maybe I like it just a little bit, but something tells me this is going to be an interesting morning.

~~~

Apparently, we ended up nearly three hours away, north of Hallowell and when Isaac told me this on our trek through the mountain, I could hardly believe it. I just couldn’t understand how I had traveled so far away on foot (as a werewolf, but
still
) and hardly remember anything but bits and pieces of my kill.

We walk for an hour before I finally see and hear signs of human life and it all starts coming at me like a whirlwind of noise: the sound of traffic, the thumping and rapping of something trapped inside a wooden box trying to get out. I hear someone humming and someone else whistling in the shower.

I hear two people having sex and I instantly reach up to plug my ears with my fingers.

Isaac stops in the forest before we make it onto a trail that leads into a small town.

“You didn’t hear anything unnatural when we were at the creek,” he says, placing his hands on the sides of my neck.

Now that I think back on it, he’s right. I look up at him, searching for answers.

“You were able to block it all out because your mind was only on me,” he says. “It’s all about focus and discipline. You have to
know
that you’re the one in control of your mind and not the things around you.”

I nod heavily, fully understanding yet at the same time not so sure of my ability to pull it off.

“It’ll come natural to you soon enough,” he says, “but you have to stop fighting it.”

“How am I fighting it?”

“You’re trying too hard. Just let it go. Don’t think about how you
need
to do it; just don’t think about it at all.”

I nod once more.

It’s true; when we’re having a conversation the noises around me seem to naturally fade into the background unless I’m
trying
to push them into the background.

He takes my hand again and says with an I-hope-you’re-ready-for-this sort of expression, “Just follow my lead. Don’t say anything if we’re spotted, alright?”

I swallow hard and nod. “Okay.” I’m hoping he’s going to explain exactly what we’re about to do, but as he starts to walk away, pulling me along beside him, I realize I’m not going to get an advance briefing.

We head down the path and when we come to the end minutes later, instead of stepping out into the wide open of someone’s backyard, we stay hidden in the veil of trees on the outskirts. The back of the old house comes into view. There’s a high deck perched against it and a sliding glass door covered by thick, long curtains. I catch the scent of bleach and Pine-Sol from the raggedy mop that hangs stiffly over the deck railing. The house sits on at least two acres of land where just outside of it, off in the distance, a few other houses are scattered about the hilly landscape.

Isaac pulls me farther around the back of the house and we come to a barn, fairly new. I can smell the heavy scent of freshly cut wood and paint which the red door had recently been painted with.

“Do you hear anyone inside?” Isaac says, crouching with me still in the cover of the trees.

“In the barn?”

“No,” he says with a hint of laughter, “the house.”

I listen for voices and movement, but all that I can hear this closely is the purring of a cat.

I shake my head no.

Isaac points toward a part of the back of the house, just off to the side near the deck that looks like a small add-on room.

“Do you smell it?”

I look at him confusedly, wishing he would start elaborating his questions more.

“Coming from that room,” he says, “do you smell the detergent?”

I inhale deeply and shut my eyes, thinking only of that room and I do smell detergent strongly, along with fabric softener and dryer sheets. Normally, stuff like that always gives me intense headaches, but not this time. It’s as if I’m immune.

“Yeah, I do smell it,” I say and I’m starting to understand what his plan is.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand again.

My heart is pounding in my chest as I follow him out into the open and toward the back of the house where the laundry room waits for us. We duck behind a large tractor, stop to look around to make sure no one is outside and then when Isaac feels it safe to continue, we dash across a long stretch of yard and make it to the high deck. I hear the cat purring inside more clearly now and I look up to notice a white fluff-ball curled up inside next to the window, sleeping. We inch our way around the deck and make it to the laundry room. He tries the knob, but it’s locked. I hear both the washing machine and dryer humming inside.

I start to say something about needing a key, but just before the suggestion leaves my lips, the doorknob cracks and falls into Isaac’s hand, broken.

“Isaac!” I whisper harshly. “Why’d you break it?”

He turns at the waist to look at me. His gaze strays up and down my naked body, the grin on his face getting bigger. “As much as I like what I see,” he says, “if we don’t hurry and get dressed we run the risk of being found like this.”