Chapter 54

Bayla

By the time we drove through the part of the forest marked on the map as the Blairs' territory and crossed the border into the DeLoughreys' territory , dusk had fallen.

You could tell because the asphalt was suddenly rougher, and the thicket next to the road became denser. The forest seemed deeper, darker, almost dead. As if, if you dared to set foot in it, you would be instantly devoured.

I swallowed and wrapped my arms tighter around Larissa's wasp waist.

I didn't want to end up like the woman on the forest border.

As much as I would have liked to tell Larissa everything, I didn't want to burden her unnecessarily with this creepy werewolf stuff if we were leaving here soon anyway. But I couldn't just let her drive here on her own, either.

I had to protect her, because if I told her about all the shit that was going on here, she probably wouldn't want to leave. And I didn't want to lose my best friend to a serial killer, hungry werewolves or a crazy cult.

And then there were the DeLoughreys …

I didn't understand why these rich people were buying up forests as if they were obsessed with wood. Besides, I hadn't yet understood the DeLoughreys' role in this whole game about the town. If they were human, the Blairs and the Copelands would certainly have an easy game. Something really stank about this family, and the fact that Larissa was throwing herself headlong into it worried me all the more.

We took one curve after another on the dark asphalt.

The fog was getting thicker and thicker.

I didn't really think we were going to find anything.

Did I even want to find anything? No. I didn't even want to be here in the late evening. Especially since I knew there were fucking werewolves in the woods surrounding the town, I'd always tried not to be out after 7pm. No offense to Julian and the professor, but you never knew...

Larissa hit the gas, apparently assuming that we were alone on the road and that this road would never end...until it did, abruptly as it had started.

Larissa stopped a little gruffly and took off her helmet.

"What the... This can't be..."

She sounded disappointed by the forest piling up in front of us, leading toward the three higher mountains of this surprisingly big island, surrounded by misty dark woods.

Somehow, I didn't feel comfortable here at all. It was freezing cold, even though I had put on many layers of clothing.

There was a rotten crackling in the undergrowth. Or was it the bony branches of the few deciduous trees that were overhanging the road?

"I don't get it..." Larissa muttered and got off before securing the motorbike from falling.

How could she not find this place creepy? The dark sky, the black thicket, the snarling branches and the noises made by the wind...

I would have loved to go back. Now. Right now.

But Larissa went to the side of the road and bent down to take a photo.

The branches creaked a little louder, and the wind suddenly whistled ice-cold through my hair.

I shivered.

"We should go. There's nothing here, Larissa," I insisted, hoping that there really was nothing out here.

I had the feeling that it was getting icier and icier.

But Larissa didn't seem to be so convinced, because she continued forward to where the forest began.

"Larissa, come on, the deal was that we'd leave if there was nothing there."

Larissa didn't look back at me, but walked further into the thicket.

"But I think there is something there. There must be something here."

The fact that there was nothing there was somehow more comforting than the thought of anything else. What should be in a forest like this?

As if the forest was telling us to leave, a branch crashed to the ground just off the side of the road to my right, and I was so startled that an abrupt scream escaped my throat.

"What the... Bayla! What's wrong with you?!"

Larissa came running to me.

I'm sure she thought something had happened to me, but my heart had just dropped, and I was clutching the seat.

"Can I leave you alone without something happening to you?"

That had been a lousy statement. Just because I was clumsy didn't mean I was a little kid. I didn't like this place, and I had a good right to be scared of falling branches.

"I don't think you should leave me alone at all when you take me into a forest like this ."

She looked at me blankly.

"What? It was your idea. I didn't want to come here?"

"And it would have been smarter not to come here."

Larissa spun around.

My eyes widened at the sight of a man with countless scars on his bare scalp. His eyes were completely black. The veins around them stood out.

Larissa took a step back and bumped into me and the motorcycle.

My heart slipped into my pants a second time, only this time a little deeper. I held my breath.

The abnormal-looking man spread his fingers before clenching them into fists, inhaling the air in a deep, threatening way.

"How come you both smell so good?"

I swallowed because I knew immediately that we were dealing with something inhuman. A freaking werewolf?!

I should have known. We never should have come here. There were reasons why there was no one here. We were alone. Alone with a supernatural psychopath.

"Larissa, let's go, please!"

I quickly handed her the helmet.

"You're not going anywhere!"

The man contorted his face into a disgusting grimace, and came closer.

We both shuddered but didn't move an inch.

Every step closer he came, my heart tightened. I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not in Blairville .

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a second man stood between us and the disgusting psycho.

Larissa glanced quickly at me, as if she no longer understood the world. She looked frightened, which was a rare phenomenon. Anyone who grew up on the streets of Sacramento had actually seen a lot.

Her uncertainty increased my fear.

"Who gave you permission to be so greedy?" the one in the long black coat asked, turning his face away from us. He had dark brown hair and was slightly thinner, but very tall, taller than Larissa.

"Get out of my way!" the bald man pressed out. He sounded angry, furious and demanding.

"You're too conspicuous."

The other man pressed his hand against the psycho's chest, who didn't seem to like it at all.

"What would your Nicolaj say if he knew how much you're out of his preferred manner ?" the bald man snapped back.

The dark-haired man seemed to feel offended, which was why he wrapped his fingers around the other's neck to push him back a little further.

"Nicolaj wouldn't want us causing indiscriminate damage within his territory, don't you understand? There's far more at stake here than your hunger."

The psycho shoved him away, back toward us.

"It's too late, they've already seen us in our dark form."

Larissa did something very clever and slowly put on her helmet.

Both men immediately turned toward us. The psychopath was unchanged, but the other one also seemed to have a problem with his eyes, because they had become just as dark. Completely black . He was a little younger, maybe in his late thirties, and more attractive, albeit dangerous and threatening. And he seemed to be eyeing us.

Then I recognized his silhouette.

My eyes widened, and his gaze lingered on me.

No doubt about it. This was the man from the street yesterday. And he seemed to know that I recognized him.

"Can't you smell it, too? And you know what that means... They both have it in them. If Nicolaj knew what a treasure we'd found, he'd be delighted."

I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't want to know. The dark-haired man seemed to be thinking about the other's words while eyeing us, which didn't make it any better. But above all, he was looking at Larissa in a strange way.

I just wanted to disappear. But Larissa didn't move.

"They've seen us, Tristan. We can't let them go now," the psychopath laughed loudly and approached again.

That was the last straw for me. I wouldn't stay here another second.

I pulled Larissa onto the bike.

"Drive!" I shouted loudly and Larissa started the engine.

But the bald man suddenly jumped in front of the vehicle in a flash and held it with his sheer physical strength.

What the...

"I'm afraid that's not going to happen, pretty ladies," he laughed disgustingly and showed us his filthy teeth.

Then everything happened far too quickly. A shadow pulled the man in front of us away from the bike so that Larissa simply shot off, and I struggled to hold on to her without slipping backwards. Larissa accelerated more and more. I looked around, where I could vaguely make out that a third figure seemed to be fighting with the psychopath. He simply flew through the air into a tree, then the brown-haired man disappeared into the forest, leaving the bald man behind with whatever had just appeared in front of us.

Larissa took the first curve, then the second and finally the third. Another long section of road followed.

I looked around again to make sure no one was following us, but the fact that no one was there didn't reassure me one bit.

What in God's name had just happened?

I realized that it hadn't been one of the Copelands.

An icy breeze swept past my shoulder and I jerked my head toward the forest. Larissa was driving far too fast, and I shouldn't have recognized anything, but I spotted something. Him . The man with the knee-length coat. He was running through the thicket at the speed of the motorcycle, dodging every single tree without taking his piercing eyes off us.

"Fuck, Larissa. Drive faster!"

I didn't have to tell her twice, and although the needle on the speedometer was already way too high, Larissa sped up again.

I looked back into the forest, where this guy wouldn't stop running alongside us. He got closer to the edge of the forest, but stayed in the thicket. And the scariest thing was that he looked me straight in the eyes.

Goose bumps ran down my spine.

Then, suddenly , he looked ahead and disappeared deeper into the forest again until he finally disappeared out of my field of view entirely.

We came out onto a more even road, where isolated Victorian houses appeared at the side of the road every hundred meters.

As far as I remembered the borders correctly, this was the start of the Blairs' territory. We drove through it until we were back in the city center and Larissa took me to Mum's house.

She braked loudly and got off the hot machine she'd been given for her birthday by one of her ex-boyfriends. Probably the one with the rich parents in the drugs business who'd always said he'd change . And I was grateful to that bastard, because without that bike, Larissa would still have had that piece of junk from back then. And that wouldn't have saved us.

"Holy shit!"

Larissa took off her helmet. I did the same.

My breathing was going crazy and I suddenly felt so weak. Then I got off the bike, coughing, and propped myself up on my shaky knees, but when I gasped for air, I couldn't breathe.

Was this a panic attack?

"What happened?"

We both wheeled our heads around in panic, where a person I was all too familiar with just jumped out of his bedroom window like it was a normal thing to do.

Julian's face was full of shock, as if he had just been in the middle of this chase.

Larissa eyed him with suspicion until she recognized him.

"You must be Bay's neighbor. The one who got into a fight with Nash Copeland..." she realized and continued to scrutinize him. "And you just jumped out of the second floor..." she continued.

Julian ignored her and looked at me.

"You're shaking, what happened?" When I didn't answer because I was simply in shock, Julian looked at Larissa. "Where have you been?"

"Somewhere in the woods. I don't know..."

His expression darkened.

"What happened?" he repeated his question, which no one seemed to want to answer.

Larissa didn't seem to understand anything. And I understood even less, because how did Julian know that anything had happened at all?

"There was some crazy guy with completely black eyes in the middle of the forest, and he and his friend wanted to do something to us... But we managed to get away," Larissa groaned, running a hand over her forehead.

Julian's jaw was clenching hard. He seemed to be struggling for composure.

" What the... What were you looking for in Fogs Forest?! " He gave me an intense look, his olive-green eyes sparkling, then looked back at Larissa.

She was silent, probably because she didn't want to reveal that we had been looking for something that was none of our business.

"I don't want you to ever set foot in there again! " he said harshly. But more to Larissa, who raised her eyebrows.

"Whatever's wrong with you, we barely escaped two very nasty men, and I don't think I want to go back there any time soon."

Only then did I realize how much I was actually shaking. My knees had gone weak and the headache that had disappeared after the blueberry milkshake earlier had returned. And for the first time, I considered taking Mum's stupid pills again. By choice. I wanted the throbbing behind my temples to stop.

"Good!" Julian grumbled.

He looked tense.

Little did he know Larissa . I knew that she had convinced me to go there for the last time. But did that also apply to her? Her curiosity was bigger than her fear. This trait powered her into every adrenaline rush.

"I'll take you inside," Julian said, addressing me.

I just nodded, because I felt too weak to argue now. I just wanted to go to bed, with the unrealistic hope of being woken up by Mum's vacuum cleaner in Sacramento in the morning. I never thought I'd miss that stupid thing so much.

"And you should go home now, too."

He glanced over at Larissa, who snorted and put her helmet back on.

"We're texting, Bay!"

I nodded.

Then, she disappeared on her motorcycle along the lantern-lit street. Into the night.

I jumped up and realized with relief that I had only been dreaming that Amara Blair had taken off her hood and suddenly turned into that psychopath from yesterday who had tried to shove a blood-soaked dagger into my heart.

I was going mad in this town!

Julian had simply picked me up after the upsetting events of yesterday and carried me through the whole house to my bed.

I must have been in such a state of shock that I'd allowed something like that to happen.

He had sat me on my bed, told me that I should sleep now and also that I was safe here in the house. A werewolf had told me that I was safe here, and I had believed him.

Somehow, I must have fallen asleep.

The memories of yesterday seemed like a surreal dream.

How had Mum not noticed?

Reflecting, I got up, texted Larissa that I was okay, and went to make my bed, which rarely happened. But I dropped the pillow, in shock.

I grabbed my head and when I looked at my hand again, it looked like the pillow: F ull of brown hair?

I jumped up in horror and rushed to my standing mirror. Examining my head, I came closer to look at my scalp.

I felt sick to my stomach.

It looked like I had less hair . My freckles seemed paler, like the rest of my skin.

A radical fear grew inside me.

What if Amara had made me ill? What if something had gone wrong with this ritual? A small mistake? Maybe because I wasn't one of them? What if my body couldn't take it?

A sweet melody snapped me out of my destructive daydream.

Julian was playing the grand piano again.

I tiptoed to the curtain and pushed the hair thing out of my mind. Peering past the curtain, I spotted Julian sitting at his open old floor-to-ceiling window, shirtless as usual, playing on the keys in front of him.

His broad shoulders were relaxed, and I caught a glimpse of his taut skin and large chest muscles.

I shook my head.

No, Bay, better give him his T-shirt back.

I walked across my room to my backpack, where his – fortunately not sweaty – T-shirt from a few days ago lay, and took it out. A pleasant smell hit my nose.

What? Wait, no...

I grabbed the piece of clothing in shame and went back to the window.

Lots of people smelled good. And besides, that was probably just his cologne...

A little confused, I pulled the white curtains away and opened the window so that I could sit down and let my legs hang out. Then I waved at him and held up his T-shirt.

"You left something with me," I croaked in my morning voice, feeling instantly embarrassed.

Oh God , I sounded like one of the ravens, like I was catching a cold, which, by the way, happened quite often. My immune system was broken.

Julian stopped playing and eyed the T-shirt. Then he closed his eyes in embarrassment for a second.

I had to grin and threw the T-shirt, hoping it would make it over there.

Julian held on to the window frame, hung himself out a little and caught his top. His upper body muscles tensed as he did so.

He was certainly doing more than jogging to keep that body in shape.

I was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and although they were thick, I was freezing again.

Julian didn't seem to mind the low temperatures. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that he was a werewolf.

"How are you?" He gave me a worried look, which brought back all the memories of yesterday. "I mean, because of last night, you looked knocked out."

"I just want to get out of here, Julian."

I looked at him, exhausted.

There was pity in his expression, and I didn't like it one bit.

"You shouldn't have gone into that area. It's dangerous and no one goes there unless they have something to do with the DeLoughreys or a death wish."

I looked up.

"What were you even looking for there, at this hour?"

Julian suddenly seemed very interested in what was going on. He'd been acting so strangely yesterday.

"Were you there?" I asked, seeing invisible question marks pop up above his head. "Did you follow us?" That look again. He didn't answer, so I continued. "We were attacked yesterday until something fast suddenly appeared and snatched this man away."

"Tell me about this man," he demanded.

I would probably still be able to describe this guy in 50 years' time.

"He was bald and his eyes were completely black. And the skin around his eyes..."

"Completely black eyes? Not red?"

I looked at him again.

"No, black..."

Julian's expression darkened.

"What?" I asked. "Do you know him? Is he one of you?"

Julian shook his head.

"He's a Ruisangor."

"A what? "

Julian looked at me with a serious frown. "If you ever wondered if vampires existed, you met one yesterday."

"What?"

That was the only thing I could say in response.

First, I was chased by a werewolf, then my mum's cult tried to convince me I was a witch, and now fucking vampires wanted to kill me?

"Just give me a minute to process this."

I lowered my head against the white window frame behind me, hearing the soft crackling of crumbling paint.

"Is there anything else I should know? Unicorns, goblins, maybe even dragons?" I joked, though by now I couldn't assume it was fun. Who knew what was out there?

Julian laughed and sat down in the floor-to-ceiling window frame. "Not that I would know."

"Hybrids?" I asked jokingly, because the question of whether werewolves and witches could have children together was still on my mind after the conversation with Alarik.

Maybe he didn't know the whole truth.

"There's no such thing." Julian seemed to scrutinize me, so I looked down at the grass, which grew quite lush on our side, while the Bardots had mowed theirs. "Ask your mum, she's researching something like that."

I looked up.

"How do you know that?" I asked, confused.

Mum worked at the DeLoughrey Science Center as a molecular biologist, but she hadn't told me what she was working on.

Why would Julian of all people know that?

"Dad and her know each other from the old days," he reminded me and stroked his hair briefly, trying to fix it, but it remained messy. "I've heard them talking about work."

Great , more secrets.

"I feel like even my neighbors know my mum better than I do," I sighed, disappointed in her again. I was still angry that she had reacted in such a sensitive way to the book yesterday.

"You shouldn't hold it against her."

I raised my eyebrows.

That was easy for Julian to say. He didn't know what it felt like when a parent lied all the time and yet everyone else knew what was going on.

"I'm sure she had her reasons for leaving back then, and just the fact that she'd had the chance to get away from here, even if only for a while..." He paused and stared at our front yard. "If I had the chance, I wouldn't do it any other way."

I looked at him.

He was staring at his hands, lost in thought, the veins running elegantly beneath his skin.

"Then, why don't you just leave? What's holding you here?"

He laughed as if I'd made a joke.

"Won't the pack let you go?"

He looked up again.

"I have nothing to do with them, and that's the way it's going to stay. They allow me to live in peace as long as I live in this area of Blairville. But if I leave this territory, I will be forced to join their pack or another one."

I'd noticed he had something against the Copelands because he cut himself off from them. He had assured me that he was different. Did he mean that?

"Aren't you friends with Emely?"

He laughed dryly.

"We get on well, but since I've been out of there, I try to keep it that way."

I'd seen the two of them together on campus a few times and wondered how deep their friendship went and if they were really just friends .

I would ask him about it again later, because even a blind man could tell that Emely was seeking his company.

"Why did you leave?" I asked instead.

"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?" Julian looked at me insistently, and I had to keep my grin in check.

"This is all new to me, and I'd at least like to understand it," I sighed.

Of course, I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, but learning a bit more in the meantime wasn't a bad idea either. Who knew, maybe it could save my life sooner or later. If I had known about those vampires, I would never have gone into that damn forest. Never!

"Normally, each species minds its own business. And normally we wouldn't even talk to each other, because you're a Quatura, and I'm a Senseque."

What a poor excuse. Here I was being pigeonholed again.

"First of all, I'm not one of them."

He laughed.

"What?" I asked demandingly.

"It's just funny how we both don't want to belong to our species. And believe me... Life here can really suck. Once you belong somewhere, you have duties to fulfill."

The last thing I wanted to do was fulfill any duties for this sect.

I wondered whether such a wolf pack also functioned like a cult, whether they had their own temple and also performed such rituals at the full moon. I wondered if they howled at the moon together.

"Do you transform on the full moon?"

Julian's expression became more serious. "Normally, we do. I don't."

I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

"There's a plant that was originally used against us by the Quatura that weakens us. Wolfsbane. If you use it on a regular basis, you won't have to turn."

The Quatura had used it against the Senseque? What was going on here that they hated each other so much?

I sighed. "It's a good thing I'll be gone soon and won't have anything to do with all of this."

"You're not leaving."

"I will."

Julian raised both eyebrows. "You're so stubborn."

"I'm an ungifted," I said firmly.

I didn't belong and would soon forget everything.

"You don't smell, which is extremely strange, but you have gifts."

"I don't smell? " Stunned, I looked at him. "You sniffed at me?"

Maybe he would remain my strange neighbor after all.

"No!" He raised his hands defensively. The grin was back. "We can smell everyone, even from hundreds of meters away. But there are so many species in Blairville that it's sometimes confusing."

I relaxed a little. "And I don't smell like...witch?"

"No," he said. "But that doesn't mean anything, apparently, as long as you have a gift. It's just unusual to me, because normally one can be recognized by his scent."

So, their senses were very heightened and even nuanced... But I didn't quite understand about the gift.

Julian seemed to want to say something, but left it at that.

"Okay, one last question..." I changed the subject. "What's keeping you here?"

Julian swallowed and looked at his hands again. "My family."

And that opened up so many more questions for me to ask. But he was just my neighbor. And I shouldn't be so rude as to pester him with all these questions.

"Julian!" Mr. Bardot's voice came from the garden. "What are you doing there again? The girl can hardly get a break from you."

Julian's father gave me a friendly wave, and I greeted him back with a grin.

"Tell your mother that we'll do a bit of work in your garden later." I nodded before looking at his son. "And you come down now and eat something. I hardly ever see you at the dinner table anymore."

Then Mr. Bardot disappeared around the corner of the house again.

"Listen to your father," I laughed, and Julian ran his hand through his hair with a grin.

"I'll see you in the morning," he said and stood up. Then he jumped down from the window onto the ground and disappeared into the garden.

I shook my head.

That man...

Tomorrow, he would drive me to university again.

Mum hadn't managed to get me there yet, let alone pick me up. She worked very long hours and seemed to be absorbed in it. And I was beginning to wonder what exactly she was working on...

I got up from the floor and went to my mirror to take another look.

Of course , nothing had changed. I looked like a corpse in a coffin, ready for burial.

Dissatisfied, I turned away.

I would read something and maybe my condition would improve as the day went on.

I looked for the hoodie and when I discovered it in the corner of my laundry and reached for it to get Alarik's book out of the pocket, I groped in the void. The book had disappeared.

"Mum..." I whispered.

Without hesitation, I stormed down the stairs.

"Mum!"

I spotted her at the kitchen table, with her reading glasses over some lab papers.

"Where's the book?"

Mum looked at me questioningly.

"What book, darling?"

"You took it from me because you didn't want me to read it!"

Mum raised both eyebrows. "I don't know what you're talking about." She gathered up the papers and stowed the glasses in their case. "But while you're here, feel free to clean out the dishwasher." She walked past me and planted a kiss on my forehead. "I've got another shift now, so we won't see each other again until next week."

And with those words, she disappeared through the front door.

My jaw dropped.

She couldn't be fucking serious!