The Family Curse (Cursed Wanderers Series: Book 1)

Chapter 8 - The Impediment of Decorum

Chapter 8

The Impediment of Decorum

AND JUST LIKE THAT, after all their freaking out and scowling, I slowly edged my way into everyone’s daily routine.

            It wasn’t like I was dying to be part of my family, honestly, it’s just because I had nowhere better to go. They were nice people enough—when they weren’t trying to kill me, I mean.

            Still, I was living in a house with my father, Matvei, who was a berserker by curse, a curse our ancestor had been given by an evil wolf-skin wearing douche that forced our entire family to hunt and kill evil creatures and to always wander. My grandfather drank a lot of vodka, was also a berserker and was married to Kara, a four thousand years old Valkyrie—some kind of advice-for-battles giver—and also, a snob. My father had a sister, Yelena, who was well, a psycho—she hit me on the side of the head with a gun—and was married to Flynn, an… ein… well I wasn’t going to pronounce it, but basically he was a Valkyrie’s errand boy, aka my grandma’s bitch. And together they had three kids—Pavel, Marina and Kirill, all insanely sweet. And finally, there was stick-up-my-ass Hugo, that stayed with us but had no blood relation with us what-so-ever, with a “if you hang around him shit’s going to hit the fan” daddy, and a tree hugger mommy.

             That was all enough to give me a fucking nosebleed.

            But all in all, my life was actually kind of normal. I woke up early in the morning and helped Mary feed the dogs—which were stomachs on four legs but they were still adorable. Then, I’d eat breakfast with Matvei and Pavel and Hugo if they had come home from their early jog. The rest of the morning I’d either spend it on the deck by the lake or in the library at the house, if Semyon was there, going through the basic of my life as a suprahuman—things like the fact that if I wasn’t in a city of refuge, I couldn’t stay more than two years in one place, and that when I turned eighteen that was when I had to officially start to kill evil creatures and hunt them down for real because otherwise I’d have real-life muthatrucking Hellhounds after me—could someone scream Supernatural, seriously? For lunch, I’d eat with Matvei and whoever else felt like joining us and the rest of my afternoons I’d spend them again in the library. The book there were filled with information about the creatures I’d have to hunt at one point, so I was trying to get familiar with them, but where the hell was I supposed to start? For dinner, the whole family ate together, and with each passing days it was getting less and less awkward and Yelena wasn’t always giving me the stink eye. And finally, at night, I’d watch movies or hang around with Pavel and Marina before going to sleep in my awesome room, my room, counting the stars.

            After a week, Matvei seemed to be under the impression that I was here to stay, so he decided to do something absolutely dreadful—he enrolled me in school. It was still summer, so school wouldn’t start for another two weeks, but the news was still insanely appalling.

            And of course, my up-bringing didn’t exactly work in my favor. Since I had been thrown around foster homes most of my life, from one side of the city to the other, let’s just say my school attendance wasn’t exactly shiny. I had to actually freaking do tests to see if I could attend senior year with Pavel and Hugo. Luckily, education wasn’t at its finest these days, so I passed—though barely, and maybe Matvei paid them to make me pass—it wouldn’t surprise me.

            Another thing that came with enrolling me was the whole I’m-the-property-of-the-government-and-they-had-been-looking-for-me-filling-me-as-missing-or-run-away. I was in the system and entering me back in the system by enrolling me in school, made flashing lights go on in Detroit. Child Services called. Luck was on our side again because apparently Kara had filed things to be a suitable guardian or something along the lines that they could be a foster home if they wanted to. With what my family was and the role they played in the whole suprahuman community, apparently, they had to be ready for any kind of situation, and it appeared that, the possibility of fostering some wayward kid was in the job description.

        So all in all, things were going well, and were fairly normal. Well, fairly normal, if you considered berserking normal—as in Semyon’s face going all freaky looking because Pavel had eaten the last of his cereal for instance. Or just because he wasn’t in the mood. Honestly, it was a miracle there were furniture in one piece and walls still standing in the house. At least once a day someone would get pissed off enough to have their face change. Most of the time it was my grandfather. Seriously, unsettling was the understatement of the century.

             Apparently it got worse when their other brother—and my uncle—Mikhail was here. He was gone to attend to some surpahuman business, meaning he was hunting down and killing something. I had never seen him, aside from on pictures. In the corridor on the second floor, there was an old family picture with my grandparents and their children. But the thing about that picture was that they were six on it. Semyon, Kara, Matvei, Yelena, Mikhail and another dude. With his age and look I could easily guess he was their brother and my uncle, but whenever I asked anyone about it, people just recoiled and ignored me. So that was one of the many things to put in the Faustin mystery box.

             At one point, it was also decided that I had to go shopping for things. That happened when Marina went through my bag and all but had a stroke after seeing its content. Matvei actually locked himself in the bathroom for a while and I’m pretty sure he punched a whole through the wall and covered it with a picture frame.

             I ended up going with Marina and Pavel—he was just there as a chauffeur but in the end he pretty much ended being my only source of entertainment because Marina basically did all the shopping and we just followed around making sarcastic comments about everything.

          Of course, I was grateful for the clothes. I was grateful for pretty much everything actually. Okay, my family wasn’t exactly normal, but at least now, I could take a hot shower everyday—damn I could even take baths if I wanted. I was fed more than properly. I had an actual room to myself that was out of this world. I had access to computer and television with cable and well, technology—Matvei actually bought me a phone though I was pretty much incompetent when it came to that kind of things, but still, I was in their phone family plan, how could I be more part of the family? If I wanted, needed, something that was reasonable, I could get it, and nobody was hitting me—not counting that one time with that gun upside my head—or yelling at me, just for the heck of it. I wasn’t scared of falling asleep because I’d be vulnerable then. Sure, it was hard to get rid of deep rooted habit, so I was still a light sleeper, I still had nightmares, I still hid food back in my room—I got seriously weird looks when I snuck food in my hoodie pockets during dinner—I still had issues with personal space, and I was still a borderline schizophrenic paranoiac untrusting scared little girl but at least now I had people that actually freaking cared. How impossible was that?

          Now, there was the whole stick-up-his-ass Hugo deal. Hugo wasn’t treating me like a complete pariah anymore so that was nice but he still didn’t exactly smile though and sometimes he did glare at me a little. My personal opinion was that the dude was bipolar. It would explain a lot of things.

             Still, I had a family now, an actual family, and a home, an actual home, and it was hard to even grasp that concept. After almost eighteen years I had never thought I,d be able to get anything like this, deserve anything like this. There was luck in unluckiness, because even though I was cursed, at least now I was actually wanted somewhere, I was part of something. How odd was it to realize that it was something I had needed, to be part of something? I still had countless questions bubbling in my head, I still wanted to find my mother to shed some light in the whole abandoning me thing, but at least now, it wasn’t the only thing that mattered in my life.

             And so, that’s how, after three weeks of living with the Faustin, of living with my family oddly fitting in, I was about to be thrown with the figurative—and maybe literal, I mean, who knew at this point—sharks that inhabited the school walls of RHAM High School.