13
“Please Gram, will you try and listen to me at least? Just listen, that’s all I’m asking. Give me that much respect.”
“Respect? Are you trying to talk to me about respect, boy? I don’t believe it. Not after the curse you’ve brought down on our troupe.”
“Enough!” Archer roared, so loudly and with so much anger behind it that he surprised even himself. “That’s enough of that! I won’t be called ‘boy’ again, do you hear me? I won’t. This time you push too far.”
Anyone else in the world would have recoiled and almost certainly burst into tears being on the receiving end of such terrible, vicious strength, but Gram was unlike any other Archer had ever encountered. It was almost always a blessing, but in this case, it felt much closer to a curse. If she had been anyone else, even any of the other werewolves, she would have relented.
She would have broken underneath the weight of his fury and she would have done whatever it was he asked of her. Instead, she became very still, the way she always did when she was feeling seriously grave about a situation. Normally that was enough to make Archer start to feel guilty about whatever he had done, but this situation wasn’t normal.
He could practically feel Eloise shuddering with pain and delirious fever and it was that feeling that kept him going down his chosen path when he would normally have just let it go. It was that feeling that made it almost easy to maintain defiant eye contact with his grandmother, that made it easy for him to stand his ground.
Seeing this determination, Gram shook her head, her ancient face wearing an expression of sorrow and exasperation. When she spoke again, the fire of her previous words was gone. Instead, her words were heavy, measured, as if she knew that there was something very big at stake in this scenario.
Who the hell knew? She probably did know. Knowing was her business, after all. And God, if she knew how this whole thing was going to work out, Archer sure did wish she would let him in on the secret. Almost three days and nights had passed since he and some of the other men of the camp had discovered Vera and Eloise’s battle and Eloise had been unconscious for almost all of that time.
At this point, he was feeling half-crazy with worry and the knowledge that there was not a damn thing he could do. He could not give her what she needed, at least not on his own. The entire fate of her getting what he knew she needed lay in the hands of Gram, who hadn’t wanted her to come along with them in the first place.
“If I push too far, Archer, it’s only because I love you. It’s only because I want to protect you.”
“If that’s so, then do this thing for me. You can help her, Gram, you and I both know it. It would take you very little time at all and without your medicinal skills she may very well die. Do you understand that? She’s very badly hurt and the injuries aren’t healing. On top of that she’s got a raging fever. It’s going to kill her. Do you hear me? It’s going to kill her, Gram.”
“And what about Vera?”
“What about her,” Archer spat, the fury burning bright inside of him all over again. “She deserves whatever she gets.”
“Is that so? You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that the two of you were rolling around in the brush together.”
“Just minor dalliances, nothing that meant anything.”
“Not to you, but did she know that?”
“Of course, she did. What do you take me for, a complete rake? I told her it was only passing time. She agreed with me, Gram. She didn’t want to couple any more than I did.”
“I’m sure that’s what she told you.”
“And?”
“And that’s what women always tell the men they hop into bed with. It’s stupid, but they think it’ll help them win the man’s heart.”
“That’s got nothing to do with Eloise! It’s not my fault that she did things that way and it’s sure as hell not Eloise’s fault. She tried to kill her. She would have killed her if we hadn’t stepped in. Do you understand that?”
“I do. Now, let me ask you a question. Have you gone to look in on her?”
“On Eloise? Of course, I have! Sitting by her side is all I do! It’s all I’ve done these last three days.”
“No, not Eloise. Vera. Have you gone to look in on Vera?”
“Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because, she’s your kind, that’s why. She’s your kind and that girl laid up in your trailer is another. She’s not like us.”
“I don’t care about that. Don’t you see that? Haven’t you figured that out yet? I don’t care what she is, I love her!”
Silence. His words were met with silence so complete he fancied he could hear his profession echoing off of the walls of Gram’s camper. Her eyes were wide and full of fear, but beneath that fear was understanding. Seeing that in his grandmother made Archer think back to stories he’d been told when he was very small. He hadn’t heard them in years, but remembering them now made it feel as if he’d listened to her telling them only yesterday.
They were stories about love, or more specifically about a love so rare there were many who didn’t believe it existed. It was a love that transcended everything, even death. This rare love was one that bound soul to soul and remained that way through each reincarnation of the beings bound by it.
He remembered the way he had heard these stories when he was a child, with belief and disbelief that were almost neck-to-neck for their position inside of him. But now? Now he knew. Now he knew without even the smallest doubt that it was that rare love he had found with Eloise. It was why he had not been able to get her out of his head after first seeing her, why he had felt drawn to her like an addict to his substance of choice. He felt so overwhelmed by the sudden realization that you could have knocked him over with a feather and when he looked again into his grandmother’s eyes, he saw this new truth there as well.
“It’s like you used to tell us, isn’t it?”
“It’s not for me to say something like that.”
“Stop it. Please, Gram, just stop it. You know what this is. You knew when she first came into your tent, didn’t you?”
“I suspected. That’s why I warned you off her, don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t. Why would you want to separate us if you know what there is between us?”
“Because, she’s not like us. If you do this thing, if you go down this road with her, it’s going to be hard, dangerous. You both may not survive it.”
“I don’t care.”
“And if you put yourself at odds with the whole tribe? Your ties with them are already severely damaged, Archer. I don’t think you realize how damaged they are.”
“I don’t care about that either. I just want her well, do you understand? The rest of it can be dealt with once that’s happened but while she’s still sick like this I can’t do anything. I can’t even think, except to think about her. I’ll go mad if you can’t help her, and that’s not an exaggeration. I’ll go mad and there won’t be any bringing me back again.”
“Alright.”
“Alright?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? I’ll help her. God help us after it’s done, but I’ll help her.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Gram, I mean it. I'll figure out a way to fix the rest of it, I swear I will. Only let’s go do this now. Let’s go help her before it’s too late.”
His grandmother opened her mouth to say something else, thought better of it, and then shut it again without speaking a word. Instead she opened the door of her camper and stepped out into the chilly dusk, not looking back over her shoulder to make sure that Archer was following. She needn’t have worried about doing a thing like that, of course. There was nowhere else on the planet Archer would have chosen to be besides by her side while she worked to make Eloise well again.
His mind, his thoughts, they had become a singular thing, fully occupied by that task and that task alone. There wasn’t room for anything else and so he did not see the little clumps of his people who spoke in hushed voices that went silent as he passed. He did not see the looks of doubt and sometimes outright anger on their faces, nor did he feel their mistrust of his switching allegiances.
He knew, of course, he wasn’t a fool. The thing Gram had been trying to make him see was something he already understood. His people, the werewolves he had spent the whole of his life with, were doubtful of him now because they saw his actions as those of a traitor. He had chosen Eloise over Vera, had stood by her despite the fact that she had gravely wounded one of his own kind.
Nothing like that had ever been done before and it served to ostracize him a little. Not that he cared, not at the moment. The only thing he could care about was Eloise and the fact that someone was finally going to do something for her.
“Wait here.”
“What? No, absolutely not. I’m going inside with you.”
Gram stood with her hand poised over the handle of his camper, ready to turn it and go inside. When Archer told her no, she stopped moving. One eyebrow raised and she gave him a look he knew all too well. It was the look that said this was a thing she would absolutely not bend on and he had better get wise about it for all of their sakes.
“The things I’m going to do in there, the remedies in this little bag of mine, they are not for you to see. They are old remedies, ancient remedies, and not to be observed.”
“But—”
“No, Archer. This is a fight you will not win. Either you wait outside, wait out here and don’t come inside until I tell you it’s alright, or I’ll leave you right here. I’ll leave her to die, if that’s where she’s headed.”
Archer was bested and he knew it. When Gram spoke to him the way she was doing now, she meant business and there was no point in arguing his case any further. Because he knew this and because he had so little extra energy to expend, he nodded his head at her curtly.
She nodded back and opened the door to his camper, not looking at him again before shutting it in his face. When he heard it close, he winced with the sense of finality that sound gave him. It wasn’t just the sound of the latch going, either. It was also the smell. He hadn’t really noticed it before because he had been so engulfed by it, but his camper smelled like death.
He knew that smell well from his hunts around the times of the full moon and it was what his camper was filled with. He hadn’t been over-reacting to Eloise’s condition, after all. Without the aid Gram was about to give her, she would die and she would do it sooner rather than later.
He clenched his fists and lowered his head so that to an outsider, it would probably have looked like he was praying. What he was actually doing was very far from that. His head was lowered because he was trying not to lose control of himself, to shift and rip the whole camp apart just so that he could feel something other than the panic that had been closing in on him ever since he had picked her broken body up in the woods and carried her back to the camp.
“Archer! Hey, Archer!”
“Not now, Roman,” he answered without looking up, not needing to see the owner of the voice to know who it was. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
“You can, and you’re gonna.”
This was enough to make Archer look up, which he did just in time to see the nasty look on Roman’s face as he shoved him roughly against the side of the camper. Because he was so completely caught off guard by the act, Archer went sprawling, landing in the mud and biting down on his tongue so that it began to bleed.
“What the fuck are you doing, Roman? What is this?”
“It’s your wakeup call, brother, that’s what the fuck it is.”
“Wakeup call, huh? And what makes you think I need one of those?”
“The way you’re acting, that’s what! Are you really standing by that bitch? After what she did to Vera? Because if that’s the case, it’s bullshit and you know it.”
Archer stood slowly, deliberately, keeping Roman in his line of sight as he did so. The two of them had fought plenty over the years, fought physically and viciously, but never with such a tone of severity as this. They were as at odds as two people could be and Archer felt his body ripple with the effort of staying in his human form.
That task was made more difficult by how close they were to the time of the full moon, and Archer would later wonder to himself in amazement at how he managed to keep himself in control. When he was sure that he was in control, at least as well as he could manage, he spoke to Roman in low, measured tones that only made him seem more dangerous.
“I would be very, very careful what you say next, Roman. Very careful.”
“But don’t you see what’s happening here? She’s tearing us apart! She’s coming in between you and your family, don’t you see that?”
“What I see is a family that’s being the same kind of unaccepting we’ve always hated the humans for, that’s what I see. I wouldn’t be in this position if you all hadn’t put me there.”
“But Vera! She’s one of us and that—”
“Don’t call her a bitch again, Roman. It won’t go well for you if you call her a bitch again.”
“Fine. That girl in there attacked one of us and you know it. Try and tell me it didn’t happen.”
“I won’t try and tell you that, just so long as you don’t try and tell me it wasn’t Vera who started it.”
“What does that matter?”
“Of course, it matters. What would you have her do? Just stand there and let Vera take her life? Because that would have been the alternative and you know that. Even with her fighting back the way she did, Vera almost killed her. Gram is in my camper right now trying to bring her back from the brink. Vera did that, Roman. Vera did that to the woman I love.”
“Love? Is that what you said? You love her?”
“I do, Roman. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s—”
“Like the stories.”
“Yes.”
“Christ. Shit. That’s what I was afraid of.”
“But why? Why be afraid? Why does it have to be a bad thing?”
“Because, Archer, it means nothing will ever be the same again. It means we’ll always be looking over our shoulders, even more so than we’ve already been doing.”
“We can go off on our own.”
“No, you can’t. We need you here and you know it.”
“Then you’re just going to have to get used to it. All of you will because Eloise isn’t going anywhere.”
For a minute, Archer was sure Roman was going to shove him again, or maybe just sock him in the face. Instead, he reached out and put a hand on Archer’s shoulder, then nodded his head.
“Alright, brother. If that’s the way you want it.”
“It’s more than the way I want it, Roman. It’s the way it has to be. There is no other way for me now. I don’t think there ever was.”
Roman nodded again and the two of them put their foreheads together in a gesture they acted out since they were little boys. It was a familiar gesture and one that made Archer feel like things might actually turn out alright. He did not know then the things that were to come, and that was good. He knew only that he needed his brother, and that he was finally seeing the first ray of hope for the woman he couldn’t seem to stop loving.