Читать книгу Beneath the Skin - Amy Lee Burgess - Страница 4

Chapter 1

Run. Run, run, run. Scared. Littles hide, no scrape legs, no make noise. Wind no push things. Fur stick up. Me scared. Me follow scent. Her. Me love Her. See big hard thing. Pushed in. Black water drip, drip, drip. Blood. Smell blood. Drip, drip, drip. Scared. See Her. See Her in big hard thing. Her two legs now. Her eyes no see Me. Look up to Big Shiny and little shinies. No see. Smell blood. Smell Her. No hear beat thing. No hear blood move under skin. Her no move no more. Her gone. Me look up see Big Shiny. Me cry loud.

* * * *

When I jerked awake, a smothered scream on my lips, the digital clock on the nightstand read five thirty-two in the morning. I rolled over and reached out instinctively for the reassuring warmth of Grey’s body, but of course he wasn’t there. He never would be there again.

Two years, I told myself as I threw back the covers of the single bed in a small, unfamiliar Paris hotel room and staggered for the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. The dregs of the dream slipped away under my fingertips as I massaged my cheeks and forehead, blond hair spilling over my shoulders into the wet stream of the water.

My hair was getting long. Two years, I told myself again, bitterness twisting my face.

I scowled into the mirror and saw my own reflection—as familiar to me as anything in the world. I thought of the wind, the trees at night, the scent of the pine needles embedded in the soft earth of the forest.

Everything conspired to create a wall between me and the rest of the world. I hadn’t connected with anything or anyone for so long I barely remembered what it felt like not to be alone.

My thirty-second birthday had come and gone three months earlier. Once upon a time there would have been a celebration. Grey and Elena would have been there with me. Presents. Cake.

Instead I’d sat in a dark theater and watched a horror movie while secretly envying all the couples who sat around me.

When I saw people in love, a strange, isolating ache gripped my whole body.

Two years, I told my reflection in the mirror.

Grey used to tell me I was beautiful. He loved to trace the contours of my face with his fingers—my high cheekbones, my full mouth, my eyelids and forehead. Even my nose, which I thought was too big but he pronounced elegant. Ha.

He was the elegant one with his sensitive mouth and long, thin fingers. A poet’s face. Hollow cheeks, dreamy eyes.

Elena had been the beauty in my opinion. Blond, like me, only hers was so fair it was nearly white. The milky translucence of her skin made me think of women in castles in the medieval days, women who stayed behind the castle walls and never saw the sun because of the feuds and fights their men waged for them.

Grey and Elena—my bond mates, my lovers, my friends.

There had also been Jonathan, Nora, Callie, Vaughn and Peter. Grandfather Tobias. My pack.

Two years ago, that is.

When everything stopped.

* * * *

I spent the day shopping. I ended up at Au Printemps on the boulevard Haussman where I sorted through a bewildering array of bright, modern dresses and used my limited French with the saleswoman who tried to steer me away from black toward something brighter.

“Tout le monde préfère des robes noires, mais, pour vous, madame, je pense rouge! Voila!” She produced a shimmering red gown with a plunging sequined neckline and a nearly indecent slit up the right thigh.

I had thought something a little plainer. Something that would allow me to blend into the background, because I wasn’t sure I wanted attention.

Two years, I heard my own accusing voice say in my head then, abruptly, I agreed to try on the dress. If I didn’t like it, I would stick with the original plan.

Ten seconds after staring at my reflection in the three-way mirror in the dressing room, I abandoned my idea of blending into the background. I looked gorgeous. Gorgeous, hell. I hadn’t even felt pretty in so long. The crimson color made my blond hair glow and darkened my eyes to navy. I looked regal and self-assured. It was a dress that would force people to take me seriously. For two years I’d felt invisible. In this red dress that would be impossible.

Of course it wasn’t cheap and I winced at the hit on my bank balance as I paid. Back in my little hotel room I had a new pair of fantastic cherry red stiletto pumps that would be the perfect accompaniment. Paris was proving to be an expensive adventure.

As I left, the saleswoman wished me a good afternoon, and that she hoped I would enjoy myself at the party tonight.

Party. I nearly snorted aloud at the idea. It was a not a party. No one there would dream to call it something as frivolous as that, even if there would be canapés and cocktails, three or four different types of music, candles and designer clothes. People there would laugh and flirt, dance and drink, but it was not a party.

It was a gathering. The Great Gathering.

So many of the Great Pack would be there from all over the world, maybe including people I hadn’t seen in five years, since before Grey and Elena had died.

There I would be in a bold, sexy red dress without them, and everyone would see me. My stomach lurched. What was I thinking?

I turned around on the sidewalk so I could return the dress. I should be in mourning still. I should wear black. What kind of a message would I send with a red dress? Could I afford that message? After all, everyone thought—my own former pack even—it was my fault they were dead—Elena and Grey. Of course I thought so too.

After all, I had driven the car that night.

My pack’s eyes had been so cold when they’d severed ties with me. Jonathan’s, especially. He was Alpha, the leader, but Grey had been a favorite in the pack, even if he hadn’t been Alpha. He could have been, but he didn’t want to. He said no when Vaughn asked. Everyone had been a little shocked he’d turned it down. After all, everyone wanted to be Alpha at some point in their lives. But then he explained it to me. Some people needed to lead more than others, and that popularity didn’t prove the best indicator of need. Jonathan needed to lead. If he’d been under another male, he would have chafed at it, and the bonds between us all would have suffered. Besides, Alphas rotated. We’d get our chance. Let Jonathan go first. Grey had been so wise. So good. He would have made a much better Alpha than Jonathan, and now he would never have the chance.

It was November in Paris and cold even with the wintry sunlight filtering down through the clouds. A gust of wind rattled the plastic bag in my hand and blew the skirt of a tall woman who walked in front of me. She squealed a little, and held it down while her companion laughed indulgently beside her and said something in rapid-fire French.

The sun struck her hair and lit it up into a white-gold halo around her head and, for a moment, I thought of Elena. The sun used to turn her hair into a white-gold halo too sometimes.

My heart hurt so badly inside my chest I couldn’t breathe, and I stopped dead on the sidewalk and squeezed my eyes shut against the sudden blinding burn of tears.

Two years. When would it ever stop? When could I walk down the street and see the sun hit some woman’s hair and not be overcome with grief? When could I wake from a nightmare and stop reaching out for somebody who wasn’t there?

When would I run through the forest on all fours, fur whipping back against the wind, knowing I was with my bond mates, safe and secure, and above all, loved?

Even though my hotel was only a few streets away, I didn’t feel like walking. Yet I wanted to escape the Paris afternoon where everyone was happy and be alone with my thoughts of dead connections.

Instead I found a sidewalk café and ordered hot chocolate. I sat on the cold wrought-iron chair in the Paris sunshine and shivered a little in my navy blue pea coat as I people-watched until my drink arrived.

It was sweet and warm, and I tried to convince myself I deserved to live again and to be happy. Over the past two years, I’d paid my dues to the Great Pack, to everyone, and tonight was my chance to start over again. I was not the same as I once was, but I could start over again. The invitation to the Great Gathering proved it, even though it was my right to attend, because the two years had been up three months ago, on my birthday.

The clock always reset on birthdays. It was a day to examine yourself and your ties and bonds, to renew them if you wanted or dissolve them, if you could. At least start the process if it wasn’t a mutual agreement.

My pack had severed our ties on Jonathan’s birthday. It was the first pack birthday after the accident and they only waited that long because they had to. The accident had occurred on the night of my birthday, and by the time they all knew about it and the circumstances surrounding it, it was already past midnight and the chance to dissolve then had passed.

They’d formally severed ties on Jonathan’s birthday, because that was how our laws worked. They’d blamed me for the accident, and instead of offering me comfort, they’d condemned me.

I hadn’t protested back then. I was too shocked—too shattered by the knowledge Grey and Elena were gone. I had felt guilty because I had been driving and it had been my idea to go to the club that night. Why shouldn’t we have gone out? It was my birthday. I was young and happy and I loved to dance. So why shouldn’t I have wanted to go to a dance club?

I saw their hostile faces as I had been interrogated by the Councils at my tribunal, after they’d had time to think about it and talk about it among themselves without me. I smelled them too and I knew. They smelled of the same despair and grief I gave off. But they also smelled of anger—against me.

One thing about being Pack, we could smell emotions. We could try to mask our feelings from each other, but our scents usually gave us away.

Others, people who weren’t Pack, couldn’t do this. It was one of the things, besides shape-shifting, that made us different.

All my life it had been drilled into me that the Others would not understand our kind. We would be persecuted and bullied, isolated and studied. Perhaps even exterminated. I was kept away, home schooled when I was little. The only people I knew until I was eight or nine years old were the members of my birth pack.

One day my mother brought me to a grocery store. All the Others scared me, I remember that. A world that had consisted of twenty-four people who were Pack had suddenly changed and twisted. My insular little existence had been shattered, and the idea of the Others scared me. They outnumbered us. They always had, they always would. Somehow we had to coexist. We could know about them, but they could never know about us.

My father made me watch werewolf movies so I would understand that I needed to keep silent about what I really was. I didn’t like the way those movies made me feel. Hunted, persecuted. I wasn’t a bit like any of the monsters in any of the movies or books, but he told me the Others would not see the difference.

We had no special protection in wolf form. We didn’t bite people, or change them into wolves like us. We didn’t even call it werewolf. We called it being Pack. You had to be born Pack, or you would never be Pack.

The legends of being bitten by a werewolf then turning into one were just that—legends. The grandmothers and grandfathers said the legends protected us. Spread false information about something real and you could hide behind the legends. Twist it just enough so no one would believe you, even if you told them the truth. Not that we would. Who would believe, and what profit would come of it if they did?

Some of the Pack, especially the older ones, thought my generation was soft and the ones after us only getting softer. We were losing touch with our beast natures and becoming weak. We used our ability to shape shift as if it were a hobby, as if we were in a secret club. Our nature no longer defined us and gave us strength and purpose of will. Or so the grandfathers and grandmothers said.

I supposed modern life had made things easier. I’m not sure about softer. In the modern world it was harder to disguise the fact we aged much slower than Others. We lived in isolated areas. Switched jobs often, changed social security numbers and passports. Of course most of the grandfathers and grandmothers disdained such things. They usually lived under the radar. They preferred not to have Other identities. They might live in cities but they didn’t vote or own businesses. They did nothing but exist on the fringe. If they traveled, they paid cash and used transportation that didn’t require ID. Or, if they still were up for it, they traveled in shifted form.

They had jobs, but menial labor, under the table. Or they stole, begged or borrowed.

Most Pack members were particularly adept at pick-pocketing and sleight of hand. Lots of the grandfathers and grandmothers gambled for a living. They ran shell games or dice or any game of chance.

The younger generation liked material comforts. We didn’t want to live in squalor, or squat illegally on somebody else’s property, or rely on someone “legit” in our pack to provide us with housing. Lots of the old grandfathers and grandmothers lived in homes owned by their children and grandchildren.

Since we weren’t the Alpha couple in our pack, Grey and I hadn’t been allowed to have children. In the old days, if you got pregnant and you weren’t Alpha that meant going to an old grandmother for a potion to miscarry. Nowadays we had modern birth control, thankfully. Not that the old grandmothers endorsed such things. They had herbal concoctions but their efficacy was not as reliable as the Pill.

The old ways were good enough for us, they lectured. They should be good enough for you. But why not use something better if it was available?

That’s how I thought anyway.