Clear
SONIA ARLINGTON WALKED through her store and switched off the many Christmas lights decorating the space.
She loved Christmas.
She couldn’t help it. Her mother and father had both loved Christmas. They made it so special that the ones she remembered made the season one she always looked forward to even though her parents died during it.
She adjusted her fluffy, white scarf around her neck, pulled the white knit cap down over her ears, and transferred her dove gray suede gloves to one hand, pulling the strap of her matching stylish suede handbag more securely over her shoulder.
She took one last look at her shop, called Clear because everything she sold in it was either clear, silver, gray, or white. Everything. Furniture, clothing (though the clothes were never clear, of course), candles, jewelry, knickknacks, everything.
She loved her shop almost as much as Christmas.
Yuri wondered (aloud and often) why she bothered to work. He thought she was crazy, considering she had her father and mother’s millions of dollars “festering” (his word) in different accounts.
Sonia couldn’t imagine not working. What on earth would she do if she didn’t work?
She knew what Yuri wanted her to do.
She loved Yuri but she still wrinkled her nose at the thought, pressed the code into the alarm panel, and quickly exited, locking the three locks to the front door.
She turned toward home.
It was four blocks away. She was wearing dove gray suede stiletto-heeled boots and it had snowed that day. Still, she walked the oft-not-shoveled sidewalks with a grace akin to a model on a catwalk.
This, her father would have said (if he’d lived to see her wearing heels and, of course, walking through the snow in them), was one of her special abilities.
She had many. All of which, her father told her, time and time (and time) again, were exceptional.
She was, her father told her, gifted.
Extremely gifted.
And for this, he explained time and time (and time) again, she should be proud.
Very proud.
But, even so, she could never tell anyone about them.
Never.
Anyone.
So she hadn’t.
As she crossed the street from the first block to the second, she felt it.
And smelled it.
These, too, were part of her gifts.
She sensed things. Strange things. Eyes on her. A presence. Mostly benign but recently (and upsettingly) there were some that seemed menacing. And she smelled things. Lots of things. Things others didn’t smell.
It was out there. She sensed its presence, smelled its smell. It was benign. It was even pleasant (immensely so), attractive (that was immensely so too), and it was familiar.
Very familiar.
She sifted through her memory banks but she couldn’t find it.
Whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t hurt her.
In fact, she had the strange, strong desire to seek it out, to turn to it—even to run to it.
Even though this urge was powerful (and surprising, she’d never felt anything like that before), she didn’t let on she sensed it. To do so would let it know she could feel it, which she could not do.
Her father had told her, repeatedly, she was special, exceptional, and gifted. But without him telling her that for the last thirty-one years and knowing no one around her shared her “special” talents, she’d settled into the knowledge that she wasn’t special, exceptional, and gifted. Instead, she was just strange.
Even bizarre.
Definitely weird.
And that was not a nice thing to know about yourself.
The presence was moving with her, tracking her, and she ignored it as she did the many others she’d felt throughout her life (or, more precisely, since her parents’ deaths) as she carried on home. Then she saw her little farmhouse on its corner and smiled to herself. The sight of her home and the peace she always felt when she saw it allowed her to be able to set the alarmingly alluring sensation firmly aside.
Gregor (and Yuri) had both gone nuts when she’d bought her farmhouse. Well, not nuts, they were too polished to go nuts, but they definitely disapproved. Firstly, because, even though a rather nice (if colorful) residential area of the city had sprung up around it, it was a simple farmhouse. Sonia Arlington (as they told her repeatedly), did not reside in something as common as a farmhouse.
Secondly, because when she’d bought it, it was a wreck.
Luckily, Sonia was loaded. Therefore, she’d had it fixed up.
She walked up the steps and unlocked her door. The alarm beeped when she entered and she punched in the code. She dropped her purse on the chest in the entryway, and through the dark, she went directly to the plugs that would turn on her Christmas lights. Then she plugged them in, all of them, and there were many . . . on both floors.
As she did so, the inside and outside of her farmhouse lit up and she didn’t have to look at it to know it was perfect. Just as if it had been decorated for a magazine (which it had, her house was always photographed for the city’s monthly magazine, every year at Christmas, twice it had even made the cover).
Sonia would have preferred to decorate herself, but even though in her early years she’d tried, she’d never had a flair for it and it always turned out wonky.
Her mother had had a flair for it. Cherise Arlington was the Master Christmas Decorator. Therefore, Sonia could not abide her own wonky efforts.
So she hired designers every year to come and decorate her house.
And it was always beautiful.
She walked straight back out the front door and down to her white picket fence to get her mail from the box that was fitted to the gatepost.
“Hey, Miz Arlington!” She heard called from her side.
She turned to see the Lanigans getting into their mini-van, their two young boys, Jed and Jake, both standing outside and waving at her.
She’d known they were there, of course. She’d heard their feet in the snow Jay Lanigan had not (and would not, because it was football season and Jay Lanigan didn’t do much of anything during football season) shoveled from their drive. She’d also smelled the scent of their skin and hair. But as they were several doors down, she didn’t turn to them. To do so might expose her secret and Sonia guarded against that every second of her life.
“Hey there!” she called back, feigning surprise and waving. Then she saw Joanne Lanigan round the hood of the van. “Ready for Christmas, Jo?” she called.
“If you’re ready for Christmas, I’ll shoot you!” Jo yelled back with a smile in her shout. “It’s weeks away.”
Sonia was ready in September. That was how much she loved Christmas. She planned for it all year.
“A few more things to do,” Sonia lied.
“Right,” Jo shouted. “We got your card today. The first one every year.”
Sonia shrugged even though they couldn’t see her, however she could see them, clear as day. Her night vision, another gift, was perfect. “I’m organized and don’t have a full-time job, two boys, and a husband who disappears when it’s football season!” Sonia replied loudly.
“Hey! I heard that!” Jay shouted from the other side of the van.
“Good!” Jo replied. “Then maybe you’ll notice the neighbors see me taking out the stinking trash from September to January. Yeesh!”
Sonia chuckled to herself as she pulled her mail out of the box, turned to her neighbors, and called, “Be safe, Jay, it’s supposed to snow again.”
“Always!” Jay called back, not affronted by Sonia’s earlier comment.
He wouldn’t be. Sonia was a great neighbor.
She watched their house when they were away, including walking their completely out-of-control dogs, which was why no one but Sonia would watch their house (or dogs). She regularly babysat the boys. She threw fantastic barbeques during the summer. And she had a catered Christmas party that was so spectacular, the entire neighborhood waited with bated breath to receive their invitation and turned out for it. They did this even if they were invalid. She knew this because another of Sonia’s neighbors had broken one leg and the other ankle falling off the ladder while fixing Christmas lights to his house and he’d still rented a wheelchair and wheeled himself to her place for her party.
Sonia waved the Lanigans away and then turned to her house.
The picket fence surrounding her property and the porch that ran two sides of the house that had a white railing were dripping with greenery, clear lights sparkling in their bows, white poinsettias affixed to the points of the drapes. Two little white sleighs filled with white poinsettias and lined with twinkling lights sat at angles pointing in at the top of the stairs. Single candles shown in every window on all sides. More greenery, lights, and poinsettias were draped around the faux widow’s walk on the roof. A tall, wide, fabulous real fir tree—dressed to perfection and lit with an abundance of glimmering lights—stood in the window.
She sighed at the sight, as she did every day from the minute it was decorated. Always returning home, turning on the lights, then walking back out to get her mail so she could witness it and let the season shine down on her.
With regret, she reentered her house, took off her hat and gloves, and carefully placed them tidily in the chest by the door. She hung her scarf on the hooks at the other side of her entryway with her coat.
She walked into her house, shuffling the post (mainly catalogues) in her fingers.
The inside of her house was decorated in a way that Gregor and Yuri approved, but she’d done it only so they’d be quiet about it.
It wasn’t comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.
Once you stepped through the wide entryway, the whole of the downstairs was one room, the walls torn down to make it open plan. Left and right were seating areas, fireplaces on each side, their mantels festooned with Christmas cheer. The back left was a dining room with another fireplace, ditto the Christmas festooning. The kitchen was behind the right area. No festooning in the kitchen but she did have Christmas kitchen towels and pot holders and red and green plastic-ended pancake turners (which she never used as she didn’t eat pancakes) sticking out of her utensil crock. The red one had a turner the shape of a bell and the green one had a turner the shape of a snowman.
The walls all around were painted in coordinating tranquil light colors of seafoam (left seating area), green (right seating area), and blue (dining room and kitchen). The kitchen was state-of-the-art. The furniture was sleek, modern, and most especially, expensive and elegant. The minimal décor was carefully chosen to augment the furniture and paint.
It looked almost like her store Clear but with subtle hints of color.
Sonia loved Clear.
She detested her décor.
But she detested Gregor and Yuri complaining even more, so she’d given in, which was once in enumerable times in her life that she’d done so since Gregor had become her guardian after her mother and father died.
She went to the kitchen and threw the mail on the counter. Without taking off her high-heeled boots, she poached a piece of fish, boiled some brown rice, and steamed some vegetables.
She ate it standing up at her counter, thinking it tasted of nothing.
Bland and well . . . just bland.
Sonia loved food. Too much. In her teens, she’d started to put on weight, Gregor had noticed and commented, often.
This was a problem, considering, even as active as she was as a child, she’d always been slightly plump. And even as careful as she was now—and she was obsessively careful with diet and exercise—she was curvy and nothing she did shifted a centimeter off her bottom or her breasts, no matter what it was. And Sonia had tried everything.
Therefore, for Gregor and her own peace of mind (because Gregor could shatter it, something he did with great regularity), she was careful with her food, and once she became an adult, her drink.
She stood at her counter eating and flipping through catalogues, carefully folding down corners if she saw something she wanted to buy for Christmas for a friend, a neighbor, or one of her shop girls. Next year, of course, as her Christmas shopping was well since complete and wrapped for this year.
Once she was done eating, she tidied everything away and went to her office upstairs to check her e-mail and her Facebook page. She didn’t change her status. She never did. She had few friends on Facebook because she had few friends at all. This was because she knew she was weird, not because people didn’t like her.
Then, as it was Friday, the cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house seemed fresh and lovely (and because she always did it on Fridays), she drew herself a bath.
Fridays meant facial, manicure, and pedicure.
Every Friday.
Without fail.
Unless, of course, she had an appointment at a spa to have this done on a Saturday, which she also did, once a month.
This was because Sonia didn’t have friends who she went out to drinks with (very often) and Sonia didn’t date (anymore).
To get close to anyone, spend more than a small amount of time with them, meant they’d notice her gifts.
No matter how careful she could be, she’d always slip up. Friends or boyfriends had noticed in the past and it had been uncomfortable (to say the least).
So, Sonia Arlington spent most of her time alone.
Considering she was social, very social, this meant that Sonia Arlington spent most of her time lonesome.
As the bath was filling, she took off her clothes and put them away. She rubbed an exfoliating mask on her face and shaved her legs.
As her mostly-white, very clean bathroom filled with the fragrance of lavender coming from the salts in the bath, Sonia carefully body brushed every inch of her skin, even her back, with a handled brush. She settled in the bath and went through her extensive regime of different face masks, shampooing and deep conditioning her hair as she relaxed.
After, she alighted from the bath, toweled off briskly, and donned her robe. Then she gave herself a manicure and pedicure.
All of this was done with practiced ease and precision.
When finished, she went to her medicine cabinet and pulled out the injection.
She had an extremely rare blood disorder inherited from her father. Every night of her life (and Gregor had done it until she was eleven when he patiently taught her how to do it herself), she took the injection.
She hated them, but as her father told her—again, many a time—she could die without them.
She’d once, as a rebellion during her early teens, stopped taking them. This she hid from Gregor. He would have been livid if he’d known. He was very careful with her injections and was just as adamant as her father that she take them every day without fail.
When she didn’t, it was a mistake.
Two days after she’d stopped, while she was in bed asleep, she woke having the strange, terrifying sensation she was coming out of her skin.
Seriously.
As if, at any second, her tingling skin would split and she’d boil straight out of it, her blood felt that hot. She could feel it, every last cell of blood boiling through her veins.
She’d crawled to the bathroom, so immense was the pain, to give herself the injection, and like now, as the needle pierced the flesh of her right buttock, she felt the injection invade.
There was no other way to put it. Just like the boiling of blood cells she’d felt that awful night, the injection invaded. Searing through her system, down to the ends of her toes, up, around, and down to her fingertips, up through her scalp, and out—even to the ends of her hair.
But this sensation only lasted minutes. Unlike that night where she’d fought it for hours before giving in.
As usual, when the burn ended, she clutched the basin, took deep breaths, and gave her system several long moments to settle. She disposed of the needle in a small sharps container and walked to her bedroom.
Gregor nor Yuri, although he’d very, very (very) much like to, had ever seen her bedroom.
This was because it was not sleek, modern, and elegant.
It was comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.
Mismatched, homey furniture. A colorful wedding ring quilt on the bed. Scalloped shams on the pillows. Vibrantly colored braided rugs. A poofy dust ruffle and even poofier shades in the dormer windows which had even poofier pads on the seats.
Her bedroom was beautiful and she adored it, more than Clear, more even than Christmas.
Because it reminded her of home.
Not the elegant townhome she shared with her socialite mother and United States Senator father in DC when her father was at work. Or their gracious, rambling home in that very city.
Their real home.
The cabin in the mountains.
She glanced around her room and saw, amongst her plethora of toss pillows in the middle of the bed, her wolf. Like her Christmas lights did, every night, all year long, the sight of her wolf made her smile.
Her father had it made for her and given it to her the first Christmas she could remember.
She was two.
And she slept with it every night since she was two.
It was a stuffed animal the exact replica of her wolf, the one who had, very unfortunately, died the same night as her parents.
She’d known it was her wolf the minute she’d seen him (she did have a stuffed animal to prove this fact).
And she’d loved him with an inexplicable and unfathomable depth from the moment her eyes fell upon him.
Even though he’d died, he’d never left her, not once, not in all these years.
She knew this because he came to her in her dreams.
She turned her head and saw in the corner her Christmas tree. It was smaller and not perfectly decorated. The multi-colored lights were wonky because she put them on. The decorations didn’t match because they came from her mother and father’s belongings, of which she had practically nothing. This was because Gregor had sold them, given them away, or tossed them out with a thoroughness that was astonishing. Therefore, she truly had nothing but those decorations.
They were the decorations her parents bought during their marriage, were given by friends or had taken from their childhood homes. They were the decorations that hung on the tree in their beloved cabin, long since destroyed in a forest fire (yet another precious thing Sonia had lost).
Over the years, because she figured her parents would want her to, Sonia had added sweet but mismatched decorations that she’d found and fallen in love with. All of which were far from perfect but definitely perfect on her tree.
It was this tree she sat beside alone every Christmas morning and opened the presents friends and neighbors had given her.
This was her real tree.
She turned on the lights of the tree and the one by her bed. She carefully moisturized her face (so as not to destroy her manicure) and lay on the covers (so as not to destroy her pedicure) and read until her nails were dry and she was sleepy.
She then, as she did every night without fail, rubbed lotion into her feet, a different lotion on her hands, and finally, almond oil into her cuticles.
She turned out the bedside light. Her gaze went to her little Christmas tree, and again, this time with a deep contentment, Sonia sighed.
This was her absolute most favorite time of year.
Because every night, from the day after Thanksgiving until the day after New Year’s, she’d sleep in a room bathed in Christmas lights.
And she’d remember a time, long ago, when she was loved.
She opened her eyes and saw her “puppy” standing by her bed.
In her dreams since the night her parents died, she’d see him standing beside her bed, staring at her with his intelligent tawny eyes. But she knew in her heart he was there to look after her, to keep her company, to keep her safe, to protect her.
Not every night (regrettably), but most nights after her parents died.
Over the years these nights came fewer then fewer, until now he only came a few times a year.
But always, one of those times was around Christmas.
“Hello, puppy,” she whispered in her dream.
He sat, so huge was her puppy, and he appeared somehow regal.
She grinned at him.
He watched her.
“Is my handsome wolf coming tonight?” she asked.
Her “handsome wolf” had started coming later, years later, when she was in her late teens.
He was an entirely different kind of dream.
She hated to admit it because she loved her puppy, but she liked those dreams even better.
Her puppy growled.
Sonia blinked, slowly, dreamily.
When her eyes opened, her handsome wolf was there. She felt him.
The covers slid down her body, she turned, looked up, and saw him.
God, he was handsome.
And he was huge.
His naked body slid in bed beside her, mostly on her, and she took his warmth and his immense weight gladly.
She looked in his clear blue eyes.
“Hi,” she breathed.
He smiled.
God, he had a great smile.
She wrapped her arm around him as her other hand went up, as it always did, to touch his beautiful face. Her fingertips in his thick hair, her thumb glided along his dark eyebrow then down, over this sharp cheekbone then down, along his full bottom lip.
She watched, fascinated (no matter how many times she saw it) as the tawny spikes shot out of his pupils, the normal sky-blue color of his irises was forced out, and the warm, glittering, deliciously hungry tiger’s eye took over.
She lifted her head from the pillow and placed her mouth against his. “Where have you been, my handsome wolf?”
His tongue glided along her lower lip.
Sonia shivered and opened her legs so his hips could fall through.
This was, mostly, an invitation.
It was also so she could wrap him lovingly, protectively in her limbs.
She heard him growl as she felt it against her mouth.
She shivered again.
His deep voice rough with approval, he said, “Always in heat, my little one.”
“Only for you,” she whispered, her breath catching, her heart racing, her skin warming.
She didn’t need him to touch her, kiss her, anything.
He just needed to be near and she was ready for him.
“What do you want?” his voice rumbled, his hips pressing. She could feel the promise of him and she could . . . not . . . wait.
“You, inside me,” she answered.
“Just like that?” he teased.
“You’ve been gone a while,” she told him and arched her back. “I missed you.”
She watched close up as his face gentled before he murmured, “Baby doll.”
She loved it when he referred to her as “little one” because, at five foot nine (and three quarters), she was far from little.
But she loved it even better when he called her “baby doll.”
She pressed her lips against his, tightened her limbs around his body, lifted her hips into his, dug her nails into the muscles of his back, and begged, “Please, my handsome wolf, fuck—”
She didn’t finish, his hips reared back, her breath caught in thrilling anticipation, and she waited for his invasion.
Sonia’s eyes opened.
“Damn!” she snapped softly into the night.
Always, right before the good stuff happened, she’d wake up.
And always, when she woke up, she was hot and bothered.
Immensely so.
Frustratingly so.
Unless she did something about it, which she always did.
She turned to her nightstand, took out her toy, touched the button, and slid it between her legs.
Her neck arched, her body tightened, and not long later, her mind filled with visions of her handsome wolf, she made herself come.
It was nowhere near as good as her dream even as frustratingly short as her dream always was.
But it was all she was going to get.
Her “puppy” was dead and her “handsome wolf” didn’t exist in the real world (alas), so her toy was all she had.
For some reason that night this upset her more than it usually did.
She put her toy away, got out of bed, and padded to her window seat to look out into the dark.
“I need a dog,” she told the window.
And she did. She’d always wanted one, even as a child. Her father had actually bought her one that last Christmas and he and her mother were on their way to pick it up when they got into the accident. But after they’d been killed, Gregor, not wanting the animal in his home, had given the dog away.
A dog wouldn’t think she was weird because she could see better, hear better, smell better, and sense things. A dog wouldn’t care just as long as she fed it, pet it, and threw a Frisbee for it.
“That’s it,” she told the window, “I’m getting a—”
She stopped, her body froze, but her head jerked around to look toward the door.
Someone was in her house.
She jumped up and ran to the bedside table, yanking her phone from its cradle.
She’d pressed the nine and the one before they were on her.
This stunned her.
When she’d sensed them, they’d only just breached the door and her alarm didn’t go off. She knew no one who could move that fast and that silently while at the same time disabling an alarm.
One hand at her mouth and one arm around her waist, she was swung around, her legs flying wide, and she dropped the phone.
Instinctively, her fingers formed a claw and she scratched the arm holding her waist. She felt her long strong nails (she religiously took a cocktail of vitamins every morning and this gave her shining hair and fast-growing strong nails, that, in that particular moment, she was deliriously happy for) digging in deep.
She heard his inhuman howl and was tossed away with such force she flew across the room, right through the air, and slammed into the wall.
She fell to the floor and didn’t hesitate. She surged up, already on the run.
She was tagged within seconds. Her wrist caught, she was whirled sharply, the tug at her arm causing her to feel an acute intense pain up her arm and along her shoulder. She had no time to cry out, her arm was wrapped around her front, her other wrist caught and pulled forward as well. Her attacker, she noted distractedly, was huge and had enormous hands, holding both wrists tight at her front with little effort while his other hand went to cover her mouth.
His lips came to her ear.
“Play nice, queenie,” he ordered.
“Jesus . . . fucking . . . God, she’s a goddamn wildcat,” the other swore from behind them.
Their smell hit Sonia then.
She’d smelled them before.
They’d tracked her before.
They were the menacing ones.
But they’d always kept a distance. Now, obviously, there was nothing distant about them.
This made terror slice through her.
He held her easily. His strength was hard to miss. She was kicking out with her heels, connecting with his shins, and he didn’t even so much as grunt.
He could snap her neck in an instant, she knew it. How she knew it, she couldn’t say. She just did.
Still, she fought his hold and only stopped when she noticed what he was doing.
Her body went solid.
He was sniffing her.
Sniffing her.
She held her breath.
“Fuck, do you fucking smell her?” he asked against her neck, his arms tightening painfully.
She felt his comrade get close but she heard him pull in breath through his nose.
Then his friend muttered, “Jesus.”
“You touch yourself tonight, queenie?” her captor asked, his voice a leer.
Her body jerked with surprise.
Oh my God, she thought hysterically, they’re like me.
“Sure she did.” The other got close, bending from his enormous height to peer in her face. “She doesn’t smell like that normally. I would have noticed.”
For some strange reason, her captor was rubbing his temple against her neck, her jaw, her cheek. “Christ, I’m getting hard.”
“What do you think?” his friend asked, getting closer, his voice dropping, becoming ugly with greed. “Will we get medals, promotions, or both, we do her before the king can claim her?”
Sonia’s body locked tight as fear froze every muscle.
“Both,” her captor muttered, his hand moving from her mouth, down her neck, her chest, his aim unmistakable as he continued, “Me first.”
She opened her mouth to scream. Her captor’s friend’s hand shot toward her face and she gave an almighty heave to get loose when they heard the thundering, unbelievably terrifying howl.
Everyone froze but Sonia’s eyes shot to the door.
The man from her dream stood there.
She gasped.
Then he moved, dropped down, crouched low on both legs and not even a second passed before he surged up . . .
And the man was gone. But, suddenly—she could not believe her eyes—her wolf, alive and snarling, was flying across the room.
He landed on her captor’s colleague who went down with a wounded yelp.
Sonia, thinking vaguely that her fear was making her hallucinate, got one chance to look and saw a spray of blood spurting across the room before she was tossed again.
She flew through the air and fell down, the back of her head slamming against the corner of her bedside table. She felt a brief moment of pain and heard a vicious snarl at the same time she could have sworn she heard the tearing of flesh.
Then everything went black.