Chapter Fifteen
“So, who is he?” Jacob asked. “Your friend?”
“Just – a guy I met.”
I sat down across from him at the kitchen table the next afternoon. I figured the talk was coming, and though I felt more in control of myself, more confident, there were some things you just didn't really want to discuss with a parental figure.
Even more so when the man your parental figure wanted to discuss with you was somebody they saw as dangerous. An enemy. Somebody they wanted to kill. I wasn't sure how I was going to navigate those waters, but I knew that I was coming to a point where I needed to.
I felt bad about lying to Jacob all this time. About not telling him where I was going or what I was doing. Because I knew what his reaction would be. He was old school and took the laws of the Order very seriously. He would never knowingly violate them – nor would he tolerate those who did. And by not only letting Zarik live I was violating that law, I was pretty sure that sleeping with him did too.
Memories of the night before filled my head, put some color into my cheeks and a warmth in my belly. But I had to squash those down. Put them out of my mind. I couldn't let myself lose focus – and at the moment, my focus was on Jacob. Specifically, trying to decide just how far to let him into this world I'd discovered.
“Uh huh,” he said. “Where'd you meet him?”
I shrugged. “Around.”
Jacob looked at me evenly. “Why are you being so purposely vague?” he asked.
“Because this is kind of an awkward conversation to have,” I replied. “My – sex life – is private. Or at least, it should be.”
Jacob laughed. “I'm not trying to pry into your sex life, El,” he said. “I'm just asking about this boy. Given how much time you're spending out of the house, I imagine you've been spending a lot of time with him. Which makes him important to you. And since you're important to me, I just wanted to get to know him a bit. Or at least, know about him for now.”
I sighed. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm just not very good at dealing with emotions. Not those kinds of emotions, anyway.”
Jacob gave me a tight smile. “That's my fault, El,” he said. “I was always so busy preparing you to be a warrior that I failed to prepare you to be a woman. And I know I've been a piss poor example of somebody who has healthy relationships.”
“It's not your fault, Jacob,” I said. “It's just one of those things. Besides, I don't think there was any way you could have prepared me for it. It's just one of those things I have to figure out as I go along.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “But tell me about him. What's his name?”
“Zarik,” I said.
“Zarik?” he asked. “Odd name. Where's he from?”
Oh, you know, he's from a parallel world, Jacob. Yeah, I knew exactly how that sounded and there was no way I was going to tell him that. If I did, he'd probably take my blades and have me committed to a nice, padded room somewhere.
“He's from – LA,” I said – which technically was true. Sort of. Kind of. He'd been living here for a good, long time, anyway.
“Uh huh,” he said. “And what does he do?”
I sighed. Having to lie to Jacob – or at least, mislead him – was getting to be too difficult. I didn't like it and I didn't want to have to continue doing it. But, at the same time, I was terrified to tell him about Zarik for fear of his reaction.
I was torn between Jacob, who'd always been a mentor and fantastic father figure to me. And Zarik, a man I was coming to care very deeply for. There was no easy answer to what seemed like an impossible circumstance.
I sighed. “Jacob, can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“Do you ever think that maybe some of the Order's laws are wrong?” I asked. “Or, at least, that maybe they should be updated to coincide with the times?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just that – I don't know,” I said.
Now, that I'd opened the door, I knew I couldn't close it again. I'd started to put it out there and knew that I needed to see it through. It was just really difficult when I knew how Jacob would react. Knew his biases. His bigotries. I knew them because I'd lived them. They'd once been my own biases and bigotries as well.
I didn't know if Jacob could ever be as open or accepting of change as I was. And not knowing terrified me like little else. What would I do knowing that the man who'd raised me wanted to kill the man I was falling for?
“What are you talking about, El?” Jacob asked.
I sighed and tried to steel myself for what I knew would be a fight. “The law of the Order is clear – non-humans are a threat to humanity and must be exterminated,” I said. “Right?”
Jacob nodded. “Yeah, that's pretty clear.”
“What if I told you that law was based on a wrong assumption?” I asked. “What if I told you that there were non-humans – shifters, in fact – who were not only not a threat to humanity, but were actively working to protect humanity. Just like we are.”
Jacob laughed and shook his head. “Then I'd say you were getting suckered,” he said. “And somebody's feeding you a line. El, the creatures out there in the dark, the ones who hide in the shadows before striking – like those who got your parents – they're nothing but bad. They want nothing more than to kill us all. Or make us food. One of the two.”
“But that's my point,” I said. “What if I told you that wasn't true? That I'd seen it with my own two eyes?”
Jacob gave me an inscrutable look. “What are you talking about, El?” he asked. “What have you done?”
I sighed. I hadn't intended to tell him everything when I'd walked into the kitchen, but found that since I'd come as far as I had, I didn't really have a choice but to keep going. There was something in me that wanted – no, needed – to convince Jacob that what I was saying was true. That the old assumptions of the Order were wrong. And that there were non-humans out there who wanted to protect humanity. Who were on our side. Fighting the same fight we were.
“The man I met – Zarik – he was the man who spit fire that I told you about. The one who fried that Scale we saw at the sewer entrance,” I said.
Jacob looked at me and I could see the anger beginning to build in his eyes. It was like a wave out on the ocean that was beginning to build, gather strength. And I knew I needed to head it off before it broke.
“This is going to sound nuts, I know,” I said, speaking quickly, “but he said that he comes from a parallel world, a place called Chondelai. He transforms into a dragon – hence, the fire spitting bit.”
“Are you kidding me, Ella?” he asked – though it was strictly rhetorical, so I remained silence. “You're sleeping with one of them? One of the monsters we hunt?”
I shrugged. “We're not hunting the Dragonborn, Jacob,” I said. “In fact, they're on our side. They're fighting the monsters just like we are.”
“Oh, I'm sure,” he said. “Until they decide to start fighting us instead.”
“It's not like that, Jacob?”
“No?” he asked, anger turning his face an unnatural shade of red. “Then how is it exactly? Please, explain it to me, Ella. How is it that you can willingly let yourself be defiled by one of these – things.”
I felt my anger rising up within me – an anger that was as strong and powerful as Jacob's. I'd come to care for Zarik. A lot. And to hear Jacob calling him a “thing” didn't sit well with me. Not anywhere close to it.
“You don't even know him, Jacob,” I snapped. “He's a good man with a good heart and –”
“No, he's a beast who will tear your heart out the moment you become inconvenient for him,” he snapped back. “That's just the way of the world, El. We fight the monsters for a reason – because they all want us dead.”
I shook my head. “No, that's not true,” I said. “The Dragonborn have been here for decades, centuries, and they've been fighting to protect us from the creatures we fight.”
“And you know this because he told you, correct?”
“That doesn't make it untrue, Jacob.”
“It doesn't make it true, either,” he replied.
I slammed my first down on the table in aggravation. “You're not listening to me,” I screamed. “If you'd just meet him –”
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “I ever meet this Zarik, I'm going to put my sword through his heart. He's a beast and needs to be put down like a beast.”
I looked at Jacob, a dark rage descending over me. Even though I knew this was going to be Jacob's reaction, it didn't make me feel any better about it. Nor did it head off the anger flowing through me. The fact that he was so blindly bigoted – and couldn't see it – made me want to scream while tearing my hair out.
“You try to do that,” I hissed, “and you're going to have to go through me first.”
“Ella, what you're doing is serious,” he said. “You know the penalties for aiding or abetting these beasts.”
“Stop calling him a beast,” I shouted. “He's treated me with more kindness and respect than any other man ever has – including those guys from the Order you've tried to set me up with, Jacob.”
Jacob sighed and stood up. He looked at me and shook his head, the expression on his face a mixture of anger and disappointment.
“You're not thinking clearly, El,” he said. “Which is why I'm not going to the Council with this. I want to give you some time to think it over. This guy, this Zarik, has some sort of hold on you. So, I'm going to confine you to the house. Give you some time to think about it and clear your head.”
“I don't need time –”
“I'm confident that you'll see that I'm right,” he said. “That this creature has some sort of hold on you. And maybe, with you away from him for a little while, that hold will break and you'll see things clearly again.”
“Jacob –”
“Those are my orders,” he said. “You are confined to the house until I say otherwise. If you leave, you're going to face charges of insubordination and all the penalties that come with it.”
“Don't do this, Jacob,” I said. “Please, don't force me to choose between you and Zarik.”
“I'm not forcing you to do anything, El,” he said. “But I won't allow you to see him. Not while you're living under my roof. Not while you're a member of the Order.”
Tears of frustration rolled down my face and I wanted to scream. Jacob was forcing me to choose between my life within the Order – my life with him – and a life with Zarik. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my thoughts, my fears, and my frustrations – and of course, the dark cloud of rage that still hung over me like the sword of Damocles.
I got up and ran to my room upstairs, slamming the door behind me. A few minutes later, I heard the front door downstairs slamming, which was soon followed by the sound of Jacob's truck starting up. I glanced out the window to see it heading down the long driveway – Jacob was obviously giving me some time and space to make my decision.
I paced the room, back and forth, my mind spinning in a million different directions all at once. I was kicking myself for telling Jacob in the first place, knowing what his reaction would be – at least, for the most part. I'd expected him to be angry. I'd expected him to yell and scream.
What I hadn't expected was that he would threaten me the way he did – with the loss of my freedom and my life. If he turned me in to the Council for my relationship with Zarik, the penalty was immediate death. They made no distinction between non-humans and people who – as they called it – gave comfort to the enemy.
If they knew I was engaged in a romantic relationship with Zarik, they'd cut my head off and then go hunting him.
Back and forth, I paced my room, my stomach in knots and tears streaming down my face. Never in my worst and wildest dreams would I have imagined being right where I was at that moment. Torn between two men – the one who'd raised me, and the one I cared for.
I forced myself to stop and take a deep breath. I needed to get myself under control again. I needed to get my head on straight and think. I had to make a decision – one that was going to change my life forever.
Did I want to move ahead, into the future, possibly building something with a man who, in all truthfulness, I didn't really know? We'd spent a lot of time together over the past few weeks, of course, but was I really considering leaving the only home I'd known for most of my life, risking it all on something so uncertain?
I didn't even know how Zarik felt about me. I had an idea that he cared for me, but I didn't know how he felt for sure. What if I left Jacob's house to be with him, only to have him reject me? Where would I be then? Where would I go? What would I do?
On the other hand, could I continue belonging to and fighting for an organization that could be so blindly bigoted? So completely hateful? Zarik was a good man who was risking his life every single night to protect humanity. That the Council could not conceive of that notion, that they would order me to kill him just because he wasn't like us – it was monstrous.
In my mind, as I thought about it more and more, that sort of thinking, made them every bit the monster those we hunted down and killed were. It was nothing more than bigotry and blind hate. Painting everybody with the same broad brush, regardless of whether or not they'd taken the time to get to know the other person.
And clearly, Jacob – and by extension, the Council – had no interest in getting to know Zarik. They'd kill him on the spot if they knew who or what he was.
And I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that happen.
Grabbing a backpack out of my closet, I moved around my room, quickly and efficiently. But most important, quietly. I packed up some clothes, my weapons, my laptop, and anything else I saw that I felt like I needed.
With that done, I set the pack down on my bed and sat down at my desk, staring through the window that overlooked the backyard for several, long moments. I knew what I needed to do, but I was trying to find the right words to explain it.
Grabbing a sheet of paper and a pen, I started to write out my letter to Jacob, explaining my decision. I knew that once I set foot outside the door, the life I'd led for so long – a life I loved for the most part – would be closed to me forever.
But I couldn't, in good conscience, continue to be part of a group like the Order. Not unless or until, substantive changes were made to how things were done. Until the bigotry vanished. And I didn't know if that would actually ever happen.
Putting my letter into an envelope and addressing it to Jacob, I grabbed my pack and headed downstairs. I took a look around the house one last time, cherishing each and every single fond memory that was scrolling through my mind. I knew that once I walked out the door, I was never going to see the place again. I knew that I was going to be hunted every bit as ruthlessly as the Scales and other creatures the Order dealt with.
But it was a risk I was going to have take.
I propped the letter up against the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table and walked out the door, making sure to close it firmly behind me. I walked out to the barn and to my bike. I fired it up and looked at the house again. I'd miss it, but was surprised to find that I had no regrets about what I was doing.
This life was over – and yet, I smiled as a tingle of excitement shot through my body, knowing that a new life was going to begin.