Normally, Volya would have snarled if someone touched his face out of the blue. If it were a guy, he'd punched him. Unless it was Toshka... a guy could dream, right? But Anabelle wasn't a guy, let alone Toshka. When she squeezed his chin, while staring deep into his eyes, it placed high on his list of the most embarrassing events in his life. Maybe it didn't take the grand prize, being a couple of points lower on the mortification scale than dropping his pants down by the Mnemosyne. But only just.
"His eyes were like mine? Why?" His eyes crossed, focusing on her fingers, mind grinding to a halt.
"Well, I don't know why." Anabelle, thankfully, released him. She gave him a tiny frustrated shrug. "It's just the more I look at you, the more I'm sure you have exactly the same eyes as that shaman."
What was he supposed to say to that? Sorry? She ought to be traumatized. Sorry wouldn't cut it.
"Sorry?" he said.
Anabelle, however, didn't look the least bit upset with her head tilted to one shoulder. Her long hair spilled so prettily over it, that it couldn't have been an accident.
She shrugged. "Not your fault. And your eyes are pretty."
Volya expelled a relieved sigh: at least his ocular mess didn't reduce her to tears. A solid win right there. But, naturally, this couldn't have been the end of the underwater stones.
"So, what do you think about girls?" Anabelle went on, like it linked perfectly with the compliment. No rest for the wicked.
"Girls... girls?" Volya repeated the word experimentally in English. "Which girls?"
Okay, so he was caught off guard, but did he have to parrot her? He should just have said they were fine and dandy, and be done with it.
Anabelle's eyes lit up with delight.
"Girls in general, I guess. Like, girls our age?" Her curved eyelashes fluttered with pretend innocence.
Okay, it shouldn't be hard to get back on track from this detour. Volya broke eye contact to collect shattered earthenware from the sink. He paid it as much attention as he could, because who needs a bleeding cut? Not on top of this conversation, that's for bloody sure.
"I don't really know many girls. They're fine and dandy, I suppose? I'm just more comfortable around guys my age."
There! He did it. A nice and polite response. Frigging A!
He straightened with his hands full of shards and looked around for a trash can.
Anabelle leaned from her impressive height to pat his right knee.
He squirmed a little, before it dawned at him that his leg was legit in the way.
"Sorry..." he muttered, reprising his bumbling idiot role. It seemed to stick to him for life.
"Thanks for helping," she said, opening the lower cabinet so he could dispose of his troublesome load.
When he shook off the last bit from his hands, Anabelle peered into his face again, grinning from ear to ear. "So, do you think girls are pretty?"
He didn't say any such thing and he grew tired of her needling. "I don't really think about girls that way, okay? I should get—" get going, he intended to say, but Anabelle glanced above his head to something behind him. Her grin spread even wider.
"Did you hear that? He doesn't think girls are pretty!" She sounded pouty, like his romantic choices were directed against her personally. Maybe he should have said she was pretty, then she wouldn't be complaining to that person behind him. Because, obviously, it wasn't something behind his back, but someone.
Three guesses who that would be. Except he didn't need three when one would do. His back tingled and his toes curled inside his shoes. Yes, it was Liam.
"Fine! Next time I unearth a direct descendant of an ancient nearly-extinct tribe, I'll make sure he's a womanizer."
Volya whirled to the sound of the familiar to-die-for baritone.
Liam stood at the entrance. His arms folded comfortably across his chest, his back and one leg pressed against the opposite sides of the doorframe to create a leaning silhouette. The sunshine masterfully back-lighted his perfect body in the rectangular opening, like a framed picture.
He was just so, so... Volya's toes uncurled, but a bunch of tadpoles darted merrily in all directions inside his stomach. The shameless squirts flipped and fluttered worse than Anabelle's eyelashes. It was unbearable, but he wanted it to last. Heck, he wouldn't have minded a shot of electricity through his veins either. Pain came close to pleasure, that's the kind of a confused individual he had become.
"I approve!" Anabelle roared. "Chop, chop, brother. Go back to Russia and bring us another werewolf."
Gee, the girl was high maintenance.
Liam lunged into the house.
Anabelle guessed his intent and took off at a good clip, hooves skidding at the wood floor, but Liam beat her to the couch and managed to launch a blushing-pink cushion into her face, before dashing back outside.
With the cushion clutched in one hand like a club, Anabelle required two seconds to catch her brother.
While the siblings made the unsteady trek back, shoving each other out of the way, laughing, with Anabelle attempting to muss up Liam's too-short-for-that hair, and Liam re-purposing the cushion as his shield, Volya rinsed and put away the surviving pieces of the floral tea service.
Somewhere, I also have a sister... he thought with a pang of longing in his chest that replaced the tadpoles' high-diving championship. And she might be trying to kill me. The pangs intensified, combining with the tadpoles. The result was an absolute havok. Some people were lucky. Their bodies were temples, instead of this frigging circus. Temples are dignified.
Volya stifled a sigh after stealing another glance at the siblings. Suppose, his sister didn't try to kill him. How would it have been to grow up with her? Even if it were fighting for scraps or bickering like the Anders' duo, it would have been better than the suffocating loneliness before Toshka came into his life. Did solitude torment him more because his soul searched for this bond in vain even before he knew? What about his twin? Did Nadezhda even know about his existence?
"Volya," Liam called out, bringing him back to the warm spring afternoon in Montana from the foggy land of what-might-have-been. "I came to fetch you. The Elders agreed to admit you to a place of power."
Volya inwardly groaned. "Now?"
While Volya howled his soul out in the night, the science team was burning the midnight oil searching for the ways to unlock something useful in their sort-of-werewolf. At first, the debate went in like twenty-six different directions, but finally zeroed in on the places of power.
Lydia, daSilva and Sangha stood firm that the special points in the landscape, used from the beginning of time for the rituals, influenced the genetic memories. If Volya was admitted to a place of power, such as the one on the Cree lands nearby, his memories might be unlocked.
Yang and Marina hotly argued against the idea as completely bogus.
Damir pretended to write an article on PIE, and said ah, maybe? a lot.
"No better time than now," Liam replied.
"Okay," the translator app, the stupid thing, faithfully repeated after Volya. Yup, okay needed to be translated big time. Maybe he should have struck a pose and said something grand instead. If not I, then whom? If not now, then when? Volya suddenly couldn't wait to be fluent, so he could get rid of this filter between Liam and him.
He switched to English. "Will it work, Liam?"
Liam chewed his lips. "I hope so."
If Volya's ears were less sensitive, he would have only caught the lip chewing. Yet, the broad smile assuring the world that everything would work out just fine needed no words. Liam believed. Liam hoped.
Anabelle burst inside, carrying a handful of leaves to toss at them. They scattered all over the kitchen, and the three of them froze for a fraction of a second, not knowing what to say.
"I'm restless! Bye!" she yelled over her shoulder, then pirouetted and galloped away. The earth shook in her wake, and she was gone.
Volya touched Liam's shoulder. "Ah... I think your sister enjoys some things that come with being a centaur."
"She's a good sport," Liam replied. A sense of wonder colored his voice so strongly that Volya squirmed with jealousy. "But don't feed me the bullcrap about it being her destiny or that she is happier just the way she is. My sister is a human, Volya, a human, not some monster. It's a curse."
As if they were taking turns, Liam's hands gripped Volya's shoulders, giving him a slight shake after every word.
"Help me!" Liam said in the ancient tongue. The translator choked up, spouting garbage.
But I'm clueless, Volya thought, and his stomach twisted. Liam's eyes blazed.
"I'll visit this place of power. If you want, I'll hook up to the Mnemosyne for two hours. For three hours. For a week, even. But what if it doesn't work, Liam?"
"It'll work," Liam replied hoarsely. Then, as if he'd only then realized what he was doing, Liam let his fingers uncurl from Volya's t-shirt and stepped back. The fire in his eyes was actually the sheen of the frustrated tears, not anger. "It has to work."
Toshka was the same way when he was lit up by a new hope. And then Toshka would collapse into a dark pit. Volya could never do anything to give Toshka what he had wanted—until now, until the band, until a fraction of Liam's light reflected on them. And Liam's hope rested utterly on him, Volya.
Volya rolled his shoulders, breathing heavily. He had to force the blood in his veins to give up its secrets. Somehow he had to make it possible, for nobody else could.