Chapter 42

11.11.2004-11.17.2004

After packing the many of them into the van, they’d somehow managed to make it home in one piece. Kacea didn’t think the tight ride home would have been possible if the vehicle had been filled with humans instead of lycanthropes. Fifteen people... If there’d been seats in the back, she knew they wouldn’t have all made it.

They’d had to be discreet whenever they went to a rest stop, seeing as how half of the wolves were clad in nothing more than their birthday suits. Kacea almost felt like her van had become a clown car. It didn’t seem physically possible for that many fully grown people to pile out of one vehicle.

A few weeks had passed since then and things were starting to go back to normal. Kacea and Jynxx were finally caught up on their homework, and Amy and Roger were finally getting used to the fact that their little girl wasn’t quite so little anymore.

Explaining her absence had been tricky, but she’d duped her parents with a tale of an extended field trip that she’d told them about, but they must have left the memory at the bottom of a bottle. That had completely slapped the two of them in the face. Since the day she came home, she hadn’t seen either of her parents touch anything that contained alcohol. And if they were still drinking, they weren’t downing enough to get drunk out of their minds. So long as they could still function and she didn’t have to keep them from drowning in their own vomit while they slept, Kacea was happy with the change. She’d even gone Christmas shopping with her mother, an occurrence which hadn’t happened since she was about eight. The year Amy had lost the baby...

Her heart was light and it warmed her to see her mother smile and have it reach her eyes. Her sober eyes. Her relationship with her parents had never been better, and she hoped things would stay that way.

Thanksgiving had come and gone and Christmas was fast approaching, the outside world being coated in a chilly blanket of crystalline white. The air was clean and fresh, and Kacea’d had more than her fair share of snowball fights with the wolves. It looked as if the winter was going to be a mild one, but a good one filled with friends, nonetheless.

Home life was good, school was back to normal, and pack life was great. All of the boys were seeming to get along, and she was getting to know some of the others wolves of her Clan much better.

She’d talked to Elomina about Ansonja and the strega had sobbed at the mention of her sister. “Tears of joy,” she’d said, her eyes glistening wetly. “I am gladdened to know that she is alive and well.” When Kacea had explained about her co-habitation with the Moon Goddess, Elomina seemed excited and had wanted to speak with Luna. However, the Goddess had declined, relaying the message through Kacea that she didn’t want to interfere with Kacea’s life unless absolutely necessary. The strega had nodded, understanding, but still wishing she could converse with her sister goddess.

When Kacea and Jynxx had returned, they’d checked in on Jimmy. He was behaving abnormally well and would continue to stay at Kyle’s house. Her friends looked at her strangely when she finally returned to school, but things had soon fallen back into place. She’d been practicing with Benai and Fae three or four times a week, living with her guitar in hand whenever she was at home. She’d come up with two notebooks full of songs and fragments about her adventures over the last few months, and especially the last few weeks. Combined with her acres of work inspired by Jynxx, as well as some of the writing Benai and Fae had cone, they had enough material to make ten albums. It was almost as if she’d become possessed, living solely for one riff after another.

She sat in her room with Benai and Fae, strumming out some chords as she sang some bits of a song she was working on. She hadn’t told them anything about the whole werewolfs and vampires thing, knowing that they’d just think it was some cool story concept she’d come up with. Werewolfs and vampires and stregas, oh my! she thought almost bitterly.

“Throw her on the fire, the beetles all expire. Not a single bat escapes, roasted all the snakes. Skin will crack and flesh will peel. For the Earth, a lovely meal. Shrieks of pain, arcs of blood. Kill her for wounding the ones that you love...”

As the last angry chord rang out, Kacea glanced at her calendar. She jerked her hand back as the high E string snapped and slashed open the back of her hand. Air hissed through her teeth and she let out a muffled, “Shit!”

She clamped her other hand over the wound to staunch the flow of crimson that had arced through the air and now bubbled to the surface. The Lupa wiped a few droplets of the warm spray from her snowy cheek, making several rather vivid streaks across her pallid skin. Her bluish grey-green eyes blinked, bewildered, in slow motion. She ignored the concerned babble of her two friends. Neither of them knew that her curse had dual meaning. It was for he wound and something she’d caught sight of on her calendar: a black crescent moon she’d drawn on one of the days.

A little cut on her hand, no matter how much it stung and bled, was the least of her worries. The mond versammeln was in one week.