Strategy
The malevolence twists Kieran's face before morphing into my the fading light in my dying father's eyes, and the blood behind to pool around Leo's dying body, and then I'm faced with the fear in Leo's killer when he sees me...
I jackknifed to a sitting position, breathing heavily with my skin damp with sweat. I gulped and suppressed the shiver than threatened to overcome my body as I shakily stood up. Don't think about it. Distract yourself. Don't you dare think about it. I steeled my nerves and walked as steadily as I could to the kitchen, where Kieran sat with a cup of coffee, looking at me concernedly.
"What?" I asked defensively.
"Nightmares?" The one word was enough to tell that he'd heard my cries
"They pass. Nothing much." Kieran raised an eyebrow dubiously as he passed me my coffee but didn't say anything. "So when do we leave?"
"Soon," Kieran mumbled after a long sip. "Need to psych myself up."
My eyebrows rose but I remained silent. Obviously he was intimidated in some way by Emory. By the time he'd finished his coffee, I'd already changed was waiting impatiently by the door.
"Done?" I finally asked as he picked up the keys.
"Why're you so impatient?" he muttered as we waited for the elevator to reach our floor.
I shrugged with no response to provide. I just wanted this to be over.
Kieran took in my lack of response without comment, even once we were on the road.
The trip was one of utter quiet, and not once did either of us bother to start a conversation until he finally swerved into an inconspicuous driveway that led to a seemingly small and rundown house.
"So... is this the residence of the almighty Emory?"
"Don't know about 'almighty', but we don't want anything flashy, do we?"
"Of course not, that would be stupid."
Kieran rapped the flimsy flywire mesh of the security door impatiently, but with no response.
"What is it?" I asked confusedly.
I was treated with the typical silence, and he rolled his eyes in exasperation. He raised his fist again, except this time he knocked an irregular rhythm. I raised an eyebrow, and he grinned at the ridiculous level of clandestinity.
I discerned faint footsteps through the door and then a gruff voice mumbled through the door, "Password?"
"Oh, come on!" Kieran almost whined. "How many people have the ability to perfectly mimic my voice? Who can infiltrate your fortress with my voice?"
"Password," The man behind the door repeated, although it sounded vaguely amused.
Kieran seethed silently for several moments before saying," Password's a stupid password. You happy? God, that's the stupidest password anyone could ever have, you know? Yes, I think we all know that 'password's a stupid password', but that doesn't have to be a password, right?" Kieran continued talking even after a series of locks were unlatched and the door was opened. I followed him inside, and to my surprise, the house was neat and organised. Almost clinical, with white ceilings, white walls and white furniture. To be honest, it ran a chill down my spine.
The man behind the door was a large and well-built man with pale blonde hair buzzed close to his scalp. His dark eyes were warm as his greeted Kieran in a mumble, but instantly iced over at the sight of me. His stance instantly adjusted into one ready to fight.
"Who's this?" he asked, his voice quietly threatening.
"Emory, this Megan Vaughn."
"And? What about her?"
"She's part of Cassandra's prophecy. I think, at least."
Emory's eyebrows shot up at the statement before turning his attention on me. I kept my face neutral as he gave me a scrutinising once-over that clearly showed that he wasn't impressed. He finally settled on my face, meeting my eyes doubtfully. "You sure? She doesn't look like much."
Kieran noticed my rigid posture of rising anger and hastily said, "Trust me, I know she's part of the prophecy. I'll explain once we're inside."
Emory frowned in uncertainty, but all the same gestured to me to go past. Kieran strode through the almost ascetic hallway to what I assumed was supposed to be the living room, with two long, white leather couches arranged perpendicularly in the corner of the room. A small table was positioned in the corner, holding a mass of wires and connections tangled together that led behind one of the couches to a large blank screen that was mounted on the wall several feet above the ground.
While I took in the eerie detachedness of the place, Kieran sprawled himself along the length of one entire sofa, gesturing me to share the second with Emory, who I hadn't even exchanged a single word with yet. I glanced unsurely at him, who returned it with equal wariness.
Emory noticed the heavily-wrapped hand and asked, "Had an accident?"
Kieran grimaced and shook his head. "The balance tipped."
"The balance—ah," Emory broke off as he glanced at my guarded expression. "So... want to explain?"
"Do you want to?" Kieran asked me, but I frantically shook my head. Being in Emory's presence was intimidating enough. He rolled his eyes at my sudden muteness but told the entire story to Emory, from Larentia and her wolf-blooded children to Leo's death and the mystery bag that he was killed for. Emory listened attentively while I effectively sat on my hands, staring blankly at the massive screen of the plasma television.
"Well... doesn't this all sound like you're grasping at straws, don't you think?" Emory asked after a long moment that followed Kieran's explanation. "I man... we don't even know if this whole Larentia story is even an accurate account, let alone real in the first place, right?"
Kieran stared at Emory in disbelief as he sat up. "Emory, we are Nephilim. Megan is Lupi. We are figments of the world's imagination, and you sit here, questioning another 'figment of imagination'? How can we exist when the story of the Lupi's existence is false?"
"Because—"
"Because all myths are based on the truth? Because that's exactly what this is! If myths of werewolves and sons of angels are based on us, then why can't Larentia be real, and her story?"
Emory pursed his lips in consideration. "I believe you," he finally said quietly, "but no one else is going to. What you said about Vaughn, the others will write her off as a pretender, a hoax. We have no solid proof, Kieran, and without that, we can't do anything. Find that, and only then will we be able to have out first step ready to be planned out and executed."
Kieran sighed and buried his head in his hands, deep in thought.
"Do you know what happened that night?" Emory asked almost inaudibly after a moment, his question directed towards me.
I started and shot him a frantic look. His pale eyebrows rose in expectation.
"I—I—" I struggled to speak with words that refused to come out, opening and closing my mouth like a fish caught on a hook while flopping out of water. Emory smiled slightly as he watched on in amusement. My jaws finally clamped shut once I'd regained my composure.
"I already told you what happen," I managed to say "I don't know any more than what I've already told you."
Emory looked at me sceptically. "It's bad enough that Cassandra's lied about the prophecy for two years, but you... you could have some crucial information, so I'll ask again: do you know anything else?"
"Just accept it, Emory, she doesn't know anything else!" Kieran almost shouted in exasperation through his hands. He finally sat up, and I noticed the reluctance and guilt worn into his expression. "Okay, I've got an idea, but you aren't going to like it," he said, directing the statement towards me.
"What is it?"
"You... well, you could go undercover."
The next thing I knew was that I had surged to my feet, shaking with alarm. "What?"
Kieran stood up as well with a wary expression, obviously expecting me to explode. Hell, I expected myself to explode.
"Meg, you know that I would ask this of you if there was an alternative, you know that," Kieran pleaded with me, but that name made matters worse. The panic in my eyes must have been all too obvious.
"I could go undercover doing what exactly?" I demanded with little control over the fluctuations in my voice.
"Well... I was thinking that you could pretend to be a rogue looking to join them, and... well, you know, get some inside information—to verify our theory."
The quivering didn't get much better, but rather intensified to the point where a tiny pinprick at the back of my mind flared into a spark that fast began to spread.
Kieran must have noticed the telltale ripple of flesh across my face, because he suddenly looked at Emory and snapped, "You still have the containment unit in the basement, right?" Emory looked startled at the abrupt question but nodded. "Good. Help me get her in it."
No sooner had those words left his lips, and crack echoed through the air as I fell to the ground, clutching my right arm. It was always the first limb to shift, and whenever it was against my will, it always hurt like a bitch.
"Hurry up!" I vaguely heard Kieran shout over the raging sea of red, and then I was in the air, my limbs held as stationary as possible between Kieran and Emory. Everything else for the next half hour was pain, screaming and agony. All I could hear were my screams and the harsh cracks of realigning bones shifting in their sockets. Why is this taking so long? Why is this so painful? Was this the consequences of the Lupi's spell retreating?
By the time the pain had ebbed away, no trace of the human remained, and there was only a silver wolf prowling restlessly inside a large reinforced glass box. It was a large square with sides around three metres long, and the glass rose around me in sheets up to the ceiling before closing off. The box was completely airtight apart from the minuscule holes drilled through the glass that were only as wide as half of the width of my bony human little finger, leaving barely enough air for me to breathe regularly.
I raised my muzzle and a long plaintive howl broke through the silence. Two humans stood outside the box-like cage, both with angular bodies of flat planes: male. One was slender with night-hair and the other just as tall but twice as wide; the second man must have been the Alpha of the two. Both stared at me with eyes as round as the moon and full of emotion that I related to fitful anxiety. My lips peeled back into a fanged snarl as I attempted to hide the fear behind a threatening appearance. I reared back on my hind legs and splayed my front paws against the glass in a pointless effort to crash through. What is this cage that they have imprisoned me in?
The slender-limbed man caught my eyes, and we regarded each other silently. His honey-coloured eyes bore into my green-grey ones, and a sense of familiarity struck me, the feeling when I met one of my pack. I knew this man...
The man must have noticed the change in my demeanour, because he abruptly took three long strides forward until he was directly in front of me, separated by nothing but a pane of glass.
"Megan," he whispered, urgency eminent in his quiet voice that reached my ears through the glass with ease. "You remember me, don't you? Kieran? I found you, the day you escaped from the woods. I took you to the hospital, remember?" I cocked my head to the side in puzzlement, and a hint of frustration flashed across his face. "Megan, I need you to calm down. I need you to reign your emotions in, let the human side shift back, okay? Okay?"
I maintained eye contact with the man—Kieran—and my breathing slowly grew less laboured and frantic. As the panic gradually faded, I managed to focus on that minute presence in my head that belonged to the human—Megan Vaughn. The emotional wreck that surfaced as of two years ago after that night. If she was a real wolf she would never survive.
I was still staring at Kieran when the first bone in my right paw jerked out of its soccer before I collapsed to the floor as I reassumed my human form. I kneeled on the cold floor, shoulders hunched over as I sorted through my scattered emotions.
"Get her a fresh set of clothes," I heard Kieran instruct Emory.
"Right." I could detect a sense of terrified awe and fascination in his one-worded response at my transformation before he headed off.
A soft click, and then Kieran was beside my, his hand gently resting between my scrawny shoulder blades that felt like they protruded though a thin sheet of paper.
"You alright?" he asked, his voice quiet and gruff. I stiffened and shrunk under his touch like a deflating balloon. I was particularly self-conscious of exposed skin, especially at that moment in my current state. At this, yet another part of me clawed away at my insides with rage and self-loathing; it isn't the snide self-deprecating voice. Get your fucking emotions under control, Vaughn! Can't you see that he's sick of you losing your precious shit?
"I'm sorry," I rasped, my voice hoarse from tears and screaming. "I just—I just can't stop myself from doing... well, this."
Kieran sighed softly. "I get it. I mean, sure, you overreact like a little bitch over a lot of stuff, but then you've been through more than anyone else would have so... you have some leeway for that.
"Are you saying that you don't get pissed at my temper tantrums?" I looked up tentatively to see a wry smile on Kieran's face.
"No... I'm just saying that I don't blame you—"
"I couldn't find anything small enough to be your size but I found some...um, some of Lisa's stuff."
I noted the subtle exhale of relief as the topic changed as Kieran took 'Lisa's' clothes and passed it to me before turning away politely.
The black sundress and undergarments seemed as though they'd just been bought from some cheap retail superstore and hung loosely off my body.
"So when exactly am I supposed to go undercover?" I finally asked, readjusting the spaghetti strap that kept slipping off of my shoulder.
"As soon as you start not looking like a walking skeleton," Kieran replied, turning and gesturing down at my knobbly knees. "You're going to stay here for a month or so until you look like you won't attract unnecessary or unwanted attention, so Emory's going to be making you eat like a pig."
"Wait, what? Stay here?"
"I should be offended," Emory muttered.
"Yes, here. I'll send your clothes over here, but you'll have to stay here for as long as it takes for you to be ready."
I glowered at Kieran but his expression was clear: his decision was final. I sighed in resignation and shrugged with as much feigned indifference I could muster.
After Kieran left, Emory proceeded to show me around the strangely located base of the Nephilim and the small guest bedroom where I would be sleeping, but my mind was elsewhere. My mind was dwelling in the future, where I would have filled out my clothes and would be pretending to be someone who I was not, someone who isn't Megan Vaughn. It terrified me how appealing the idea sounded.