The Legacy of Kilkenny (4 page)

We talk for about 20 minutes until Shane says he has to get home.
 
We say good bye and get in the car…. not before noticing the car she is getting into… a 2011 white with inferno orange racing stripes SS Camero! Only the coolest car at school: clearly blowing away Shane’s 2005 mustang.

I no sooner get in the car when my phone starts blowing up with messages from everyone in FBLA.
 
I don’t usually get texts, but when the new girl in school actually walks up and introduces herself to you and everyone else wishes it was them, that makes for good gossip.

After dinner, I sit with my mom watching some dancing show where they have three judges and men wear
ohsotight
glitter costumes. I don’t know anyone that will be caught dead in those outfits.
 
Who comes up with those clothes?

“Mom, I think this show has stolen part of my soul. I have some reading for English class and a math paper to do.”
 
I grab my backpack off the couch and casually head to the stairs.
 
I pause and say, “Oh, we have a new girl at school, her name is Pru, she moved here from Choctaw, I think.”
 
I am trying to play it off as nonchalant as I can.
 
My mom starts the Spanish Inquisition if she thinks I’m interested in a
gir
.

“Pru?
 
That’s an interesting name.
 
Is she pretty?” mom asks.
 
She hits pause on the TV so she can give me all of her attention.
 
She wouldn’t want to miss my expression in case I show some interest in someone.

Here we go with the twenty questions.

“I didn’t really seem to notice one way or the other.
 
Look, I just told you because you always ask if anything happened at school today.
 
Well, we have a new girl, and that is about the most interesting thing to happen here in Piedsville in about a month.
 
Oh, and George got braces over the summer.”
 
I turn back to head up to my room.

“You can get your attitude in check,” she snaps.
 
 
“I only wanted to know if she is pretty.
 
Go read,” she starts the show back up and I ran up the rest of the stairs.

I take the stairs two at a time trying to reduce my speed before I get to the landing at the top of the stairs.
 
My ‘toxic waste’ sign tilted sideways on my bedroom door, I flip it with my finger straightening it until my door closes behind me and skews it again.
 
I slip my I-pod into my docking station and pick up my required reading.
 
I chose
The Good Earth
by Pearl Buck.
 
We have a list of books to read, with a book report due once a month, throughout the school year.
 
I wish they had let us read something cool like
Harry Potter
; at least I wouldn’t be bored to death with this dumb assignment.

I ran downstairs to grab a snack.
 
I hear my phone buzzing on my nightstand when I get back to my room.
 
I pick it up and see there is a missed call from an unknown number.
 
I listen to voicemail, recognizing the husky voice as Pru asking me to give her a call.
 
Now this is an unexpected turn of events.
 
I dial her number and on the third ring she answers.

“Pru?
 
This is Abel, um, you called?”
 

PRU

Well, my first day at Piedsville High School is finally over.
 
It was probably the worst day in the history of first days ever.
 
Someone played a horrible joke on me by partnering me with this imbecile named Julie.
 
I thought I was going to physically strangle her by the end of the day. Her delight in taking self portraits was about to render her knocked out, if she took one more picture of us.
 
I never even agreed to have my picture made in the first place, but she kept snapping them.
 
I couldn’t make a scene so I did what Oakley said to do, suck it up.
 
I did just that…. all day!
 
Every time I thought I’d get a chance to go over and introduce myself to Abel, there she was, rambling about every single aspect of her life.
  
Just shoot me already.

Abel is so cute, like a little puppy you want to grab and snuggle.
 
From the surveillance pictures, I expected him to be shorter but he has to be almost six feet tall. His chestnut brown curly hair was long enough to cover his big brown eyes and bushy eyebrows. He is adorable for an awkward 16 year old boy.
  
If my mom heard me call him an awkward boy she would have a heart attack.
 
She’d probably tell me it was blasphemy to say something like that about him.
 
I tried telling her over and over, he is just like us, regardless of his destiny, he is still human….mostly.
 
Of course I’d never talk to my parents like that; it would not go over well to disrespect my parents.
 
It took me forever to get them to agree to let me even do this assignment. At first, they were going to send someone else in, but I swore I could do it, and I am.
 
 
I graduated early so I could take this assignment and train Abel for what is written.
 
I wasn’t going to let something or
someone
like Julie get in my way.
 
I figure if I can get close to him, I’d try to make friends quick.
 
I knew he didn’t have a car so I felt that would be my ‘in’.
 

It isn’t overly complicated, or maybe it is slightly - I’m in charge of his death.
 
My entire life has prepared me for my encounter with Abel Casey.
 
He is a boy that has no idea how special and important he is, a boy that is so special; his life is in jeopardy if anyone finds out who he is.

 
I am Prudence Phelan, daughter of General Ernan Phelan and Dolina, General and Dolly as their friends call them.
 
My father is one of those strong quiet types, when he tells you to do something, you better do it, and do it right.
 
Mom is the nurturing type and incredibly protective over us, that is
us
as in our pack.
 
I’m biologically the only child of my parents, everyone else in our pack are mostly adopted in.
 
You’d have to be mental to mess with my mom. If she doesn’t serve your head on a plate, I assure you if one of us gets there first, we’ll be the servers.
 

We have a farm on the edge of Oklahoma County, in a small town called Choctaw.
 
We have the largest vegetable and herb farm in the county. Everyone in the pack works it daily without complaint.
 
 
We have been fortunate enough to be successful at what we do.
 
We’ve been selling jellies, jams, and canned vegetables to the local markets since the 1950’s when my grandfather tilled up his first acre for vegetables.
 
We eat well, and mom is a great cook.
 
We are big into giving back to our community so we donate fresh fruits and vegetables to the homeless shelters and the local families that have suffered due to the economy.
 
We respect the animals that become ‘pets’ and we drool over the animals that feed us well.
 

I really enjoyed the FBLA meeting, everyone was super cool and it sounded like we would actually learn something about business.
 
Being homeschooled my entire life, it is my first school club.
 
I’m the first person in the family to go to a human school, it felt a little strange not having one of my adopted brothers around.
  
I feel like a spy, especially when I’m creeping on Abel like a stalker.
 
I hope I don’t scare him off before I get to be his friend.
  

I finally ditched Julie by telling her I was going straight home.
 
She tried to talk me into trying out for cheerleader.
 
What a laugh that would be, I could just see me punching out someone on a football field.
 
I’d never live it down if I were a cheerleader.
 
I laugh to myself at the thought of it.

After FBLA I stood outside talking to Shane and Abel, I loved the way his eyes sparkled as he squinted against the sunlight.
 
When we were talking, I could sense he was nervous, his scent was a little musky with a hint of designer cologne.
 
He fidgeted from foot to foot, rocking heavier on his left one.
  
He wiggled the change in his pocket, probably unaware he was even doing it.
 
It’s going to be fun being friends with him, and the good part is…. he will be more willing to die in the hands of a friend.

I know it sounds all mysterious and blasé, but there really isn’t too much of a mystery. My family and I are
shapeshifters
, werewolves, lycanthrope, or
therianthropy
as many people like to call us.
 
Movies always make us out to be ugly and mean.
 
 
I hate that!
 
Fables come from humans taking snippets of stories and stretching the truth to be more interesting.
  
Thankfully, I don’t need to stretch the truth.
  
Some of us werewolves have multiple attributes; I have the gift of sight, a shaman of sorts.
 
It is important Abel stays in touch with his soul, without his soul, it can cause his rebirth as one of
us
to be useless.
  
We’ve all heard about shifters that hadn’t been around other shifters so they didn’t know how to stay grounded.
 
Some have been known to shift and never return to their human form; that would ruin everything! I can’t wait to start his training and the first task is to become his friend.
 

My parents were told I was a shaman when my mom was pregnant with me.
 
She had gone to see her spiritual advisor to discuss the happenings within our Pack and the advisor told her she was pregnant.
 
She hadn’t known she could have children, so she was surprised by both the news of me and that I would be gifted.
 
Within our society it is rare that a
shapeshifter
get pregnant by a
shapeshifter
, it is usually a human that will impregnate a shifter or vice versa.
 
Although there have been a few full blood shifters, my father is one, they are very powerful with keen senses and stronger physical strength, and some have other gifts as well.
 
They could be lightening fast, or abnormally strong, some could shift into different animals and some could be empaths.
 
We also have shifters that obtain the virus, either by a recessed gene in both parents or by being infected by a shifter.
 
Very few are the former, that is what Abel is, and his parents are not aware of his legacy.
 
I was enlightened of his ‘condition’ when I was about three years old, I told my parents his name and said the words, “great wolf has been born”.
 
Unbeknownst to me our kind had been waiting for The Great Wolf for hundreds of years.
 
His life could be at risk if discovered by the wrong people so my father took it as his responsibility to train and prepare him for his reign over
weres
.
 
It took my parents a few years to track him down, the internet wasn’t a household item when I was a kid, so they did it the old fashioned way, they hunted him.
 
They felt it was fate that he was in Oklahoma.

Even though I possess the full-blooded attributes; my other abilities are still developing.
 
With my gift of ‘sight’, I have dreams that have to be documented in a diary and then I see my mother’s spiritual advisor Josie to go over the information for the message.
 
I was so young when I started journaling my mom actually did the writing for me.
 
Although I keep a dream record for greater understanding, there are times I have no idea what they mean.
 
Lucky for me I have Josie, she has a keen sense of what the subconscious has to say.

ABEL

Surprisingly, Pru and I talked that night for at least an hour.
 
She convinced me that it would be easier to face another day with Julie if I actually rode to school with her.
 
 
Usually it would be a little odd for a girl to pick up a guy before school, but hey, I’m a liberal dude, equal rights and all.
 
Who wouldn’t want to hop in the coolest car, with its 440 horsepower, orange and black leather seats, and kick-ass stereo? Hell yeah!
 
We spent the next few weeks hanging out and doing everything together.
 
We aren’t dating, she makes me too nervous to even ask her.
 
It is cool having the prettiest girl in school as your friend, but it’s a little unnerving too.
 
Shane and Tim constantly ask me if I have kissed her yet, and daily I tell them ‘no’ we are JUST FRIENDS.
 
I’ve concluded it is some compulsive obsessive habit they have acquired.