Disclaimer: Not mine, ALL Disney's! Well, some of them are mine..umm...Crimson is! Yeah, I own her! Okay--as for some of the description of werewolf kind in this chapter, I don't own that either. A lot of that comes from Susan Krinard, the amazing author of Touch of the Wolf and Once A Wolf, two books that inspired me to write this story. The phrase loups-garous is hers. Hommage, not stealing, was intended when I used this word, and other ideas that she had of werewolf kind. (Really, I'm not kidding--she's an amazing writer--her books, while considered romances, are WELL worth the read, even if you hate romance!) Anyway, I know that it's been forever since I got the last chapter out, but I hope that you enjoy it...so without further ado...
Call of the Blood
Chapter 8--Blood on the Moon
The first thing Caitie focused on when the darkness retreated was a pair of large brown eyes made darker with concern. Dark brown eyes the same shade and shape as Jamie's, with even the same mischievous twinkle that his eyes constantly held. However, these beautiful eyes did no belong to her best friend and partner in crime--these were bigger, and there wasn't any of the softness that she always saw in Jamie's eyes when he looked at her. The femininely long lashes didn't make much of a case for Jamie, either.
Blinking to clear her vision, Caitie got a better look at the person with that the exquisite eyes belonged to. High cheek bones and a slightly pouted mouth combined with a round nose and chin were a sharp contrast to Jamie's more hawk like features--sleek and sharp. Waves of crimson hair hung down around the young girl's face, and Caitie blinked again.
"Well...it's about time you made if back to the land of the living." Heavy sarcasm lacked the voice that came from the bee stung, pouty red lips hovering about a foot away from her face.
Wait...that voice. Where had she heard that voice before?
Her dream! The bizarre, over the top dream about Jamie being, of all things, a werewolf, and having a smart mouthed little sister. A smart mouthed little sister that looked suspiciously like the girl hanging over her.
"Who...who...?" Caitie couldn't pull her thoughts together enough to form a coherent sentence, and even if she could have, she wasn't sure she would have been able to force the words past her closed up throat. So, after a few more seconds of sounding like a hoot owl, she gave up.
"Are you always this articulate?" The girl asked, lifting an eyebrow, in an expression oddly similar to Jamie's favorite "don't be an idiot" look.
Caitie glared at the girl as best she could, even though her head was pounding. The younger girl just rolled her eyes, before glaring back. Something about the girl's baleful stare tripped a foggy memory in Caitie's still-half asleep brain--remnants from her dream, strangely vivid, almost life like danced in her mind's eye like images on a movie screen. Jamie's hurt brown eyes...the way he turned away from her...a sadness that she have never noticed before, shimmering in the depths of his eyes.
"What happened?" Caitie muttered out loud to herself. But the red head heard her, and lifted an eyebrow.
"You don't remember?" The young girl's words were still laced with a sarcastic edge that was far to adult sounding for her youthful appearance.
"I....no. Where's Jamie? What's going on? Where am I? And who are you?" The lump in Caitie's throat was suddenly gone, and everything that she had been trying to say suddenly came spilling out.
"On the roof; got me; my aunt and uncle's house; Crimson Waite. Satisfied?" Crimson asked, cocking her eyebrow again.
"The roof?" Caitie asked, tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. "What's he doing on the roof?"
"Brooding." Was Crimson's sharp reply, and she glared at Caitie, her eyes betraying what she was thinking. About you where the words she didn't utter, but where plainly written in her expressive brown eyes.
Caitie looked away, swallowing hard. Everything from her supposed dream came flooding back to her at that moment, and she shut her eyes, her heart pounding in her ears. So it was true. Jamie was a werewolf.
What exactly do you say to something like that? How do you react?
What are you suppose to say in a situation like that?
An image of Jamie's handsome face, laughing at something some one had said danced into her mind. This vision was replaced by the memory of him holding her after everything with Brianne. Next was the way he had smiled when he had won that first race in the motocross meet where she had met Bobby for the first time. A thousand different images of her friend danced in her mind, and she swallowed hard, her heart beat banging in her ears.
So Jamie was a werewolf.
So what?
"Where did you say he was? On the roof?" Caitie asked, looking over at the younger red head, standing at the end of the couch with her arms crossed.
"Yeah--finally wrapped you're brain around the truth?" Crimson asked, the sarcastic edge still present.
Caitie decided not to answer Jamie's little sister's remark, just heading for the stairs, and, she hoped, a way out onto the roof--and to Jamie.
---==**==---
The stars were beautiful tonight, glimmering in the heavens like tiny diamonds on black velvet. The moon was a almost two thirds of the way visible, the silvery blue light spilling down through the sky, turning everything it touched to silver.
Jamie Waite sat staring up into the sky, blind to the beauty that unfolded in front of him. Pain exuded from his hunched frame in waves, his face was a mask of agony.
Jade had been wrong.
It was happening again--God, he should have known better. He should have known not to tell Caitie, should have never used his "powers" in front of her.
But, really, what else could he have done? She would have died if he hadn't done what he had done.
So, what was worse--having Caitie hate and fear him, or having her dead?
As much as the thought of Caitie hating him hurt him, he knew that it was better--a thousand times better--then having her be dead. So in that light, he really couldn't begrudge her the knowledge that she had gained--it had saved her life.
But it still hurt.
Jamie leaned forward and put his forehead against his raised knees. A sob rose in the back of his throat, but he quickly pushed it back, controlling the pain that was welling up inside of him. He couldn't break down--not with Crimson in the house. She would surely sense his pain, and come looking for him--he didn't want her to see him torn up, knowing that it would only set her even more against Caitie then she already was.
The soft creak of the window opening caught at his ears, and he winced. It seemed Crimmie had already picked up on his feelings, and was coming to check on him.
The scent that wafted past his nose was spicy and sweet, and hinted at jasmine and violets. Caitie.
"Caitie?" Jamie called, not even turning around.
"Yeah." She whispered as she sat down beside him. He didn't look up at her, just continued to stare out at the sky, his profile tight and controlled. "Who else would drag themselves onto a roof for you?" Her attempt at levity fell flatter then a pancake run over by a steam roller. Caitie winced when Jamie finally turned his gaze on her, his eyes darker and sadder then she had ever seen them before. 'Sorry." She quickly covered, dropping her eyes to look at her hands.
She can't even look at you now--she can't stand the sight of you. A small voice whispered at the back of his head, and he looked down at his hands, the waves of pain he had been fighting so hard to contain crashing over him again.
"So...umm...how did you...ya know...like...find out?" Caitie asked after a minute of awkward silence.
"Find out? Find out what?" Jamie asked, confusion joining the riot of emotions that swirled in his expressively beautiful eyes.
"That...ya know...you were..."special"." Caitie clarified.
"Special? That's not exactly the word I would use." Jamie muttered under his breath, not intending for Caitie to hear him. But she did anyway, and gazed at him questioningly. Knowing her question before she voiced it, Jamie cleared his throat and looked down at his interlaced fingers. "Cursed is the word I use."
"Cursed? You mean by a witch or something?" Caitie asked, knitting her eyebrows together. At Jamie's stilly bemused and baffled look, she snorted. "Oh come on! You're telling me that their are werewolves running around the world, but no witches?"
Jamie let the ghost of a smile dance on his lips for a mere second, and shook his head, lifting his eyebrows. "None that I've ever heard of."
"Ummm...okay..." Caitie chewed on her bottom lip for a minute, as another pregnant pause stretched out between the two friends. "So--you never did answer my question."
"What question?" Jamie hedged, studying the dirt under his right thumb with avid interest.
"How did you find out you were...you know...a werewolf?" Caitie asked, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them.
Jamie's shoulder's heaved in silent sigh, and he stared hard at the stars for a minute. No, not the stars, Caitie realized as she followed his gaze--the moon. He was looking at the moon like he was expecting it to provide all the right things to say.
"I've always known."
"What?" Caitie asked, baffled. "How could you always know something like that? I don't understand. Didn't you have to get turned into one, or something? Get bitten by a rabid wolf or something to that extent?"
Jamie looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and another ghostly smile played on his lips. Caitie found herself wondering if the ability to convey so much emotion with just a twist of the lips was a werewolf thing or a just a Jamie thing.
"You've been watching to much Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Jamie informed her rolling his eyes. "You can't be changed into a werewolf--you have to be born werewolf."
"Born? So...it's like an inherited thing?" Caitie struggled to understand, creasing her eyebrows together. "It's a...a gene?"
"Umm...yes and no." Jamie allowed, looking up at her quickly before dropping his eyes back down to his hands.
"How so?" Caitie couldn't help but be fascinated by what Jamie was telling her. Sure, it was sorta weird and even a little creepy--but those were the kind of things that she liked best.
"Werewolves...aren't exactly human. We're a different...well.... The word they use for themselves is loups-garous. Well, true werewolves do." Jamie hated explaining what he was out loud. Just saying that he wasn't human, wasn't even the same species as humans, brought back all the alienation and pain he had lived with all his life.
"True werewolves? What, there false ones running around?" Caitie asked, leaning forward unconsciously.
"No." Once again, the ghost smile returned, but was gone in a few nanoseconds time. "But there are half werewolves."
"Wait--half? How can you be half a werewolf?" Caitie asked.
"Same way you can be half anything." Jamie told her, shrugging. "One parent is a werewolf, one's a human."
"Wait--okay, I might not have gotten the best grade in biology, but even I know that's just a LITTLE bit weird.
"Not really--see...ummm...ever seen that movie "X-Men"?" He asked.
"Yeah--we went and saw it together, remember?" Caitie asked, a smile slid across her face at the memory of how she had moaned and groaned when Jamie had begged her to go see it with her--and she had wound up rather liking it. The smile fell off her face when her brain screamed that that was another time and another place--and nothing would ever be like that again.
"I remember." From the way he intoned the words, she could tell her was thinking the same thing she was--how nothing could ever be the same. He shook it off after a few seconds, continuing with his explanation. "In the movie, mutants and humans could have children together, right? And there was a fifty percent chance the kid would be a human, and fifty percent that it--wouldn't. That's how it works with werewolves."
"It's an all or nothing deal?" Caitie deduced.
"Yeah." Jamie nodded. "But, you can carry the gene, even if you're not a werewolf. So, even if you married a human, you're child could still possibly be one."
"Is that what happened to you?" She asked, studying his profile again with wide brown eyes. "Is that why you live with you're aunt and uncle?"
"How'd you know I live with my aunt and uncle?" Jamie's head snapped around and he looked her in the eye for an instant, before once again dropping his gaze.
"Your sister--what's her name? Red?"
"Crimson."
"Oh." Caitie paused for a second, before restating her question. "So, is that why?"
"Is what--oh. No, that's not why." Jamie suddenly found something in the exact opposite direction from her fascinating.
"Then...why?" Caitie pressed.
"I don't want to talk about it." Some how, even facing away from her, Jamie managed to convey the hurt that was probably reflected in his beautiful brown eyes.
"I think you need to talk about it." She laid her hand on his shoulder, trying to coax him back into looking at her. "Come on, just tell me."
"No." Jamie was going to be stubborn about this, Caitie could tell.
"Why?" Caitie asked.
"Because I don't want to."
"Why?"
"Because I just don't!" Jamie suddenly exploded, vaulting to his feet, tossing her hand off his shoulder. Caitie cringed slightly, glad that the piece of roof that they were sitting on was relatively flat, or Jamie might have gone tumbling off the house.
"Jamie..." Caitie stood up as well, crossing her arms over her chest.
"No!" It took Caitie a minute to realize that her best friend was close to tears.
"Jamie..." She whispered again, walking forward slowly until she was standing close enough to reach out and put her hands on his back, hugging him from behind. When he didn't pull away, she laid her cheek against the smooth leather of his black jacket, her heart pounding in her ears. What was she doing? Why was she doing this?
Because Jamie needs you. A small voice in the back of her head whispered, and Caitie knew that it was right.
For a minute, no other sound was heard in the world--and then a choked sob filled the air, and Caitie tightened her grasp on Jamie's wiry body.
"It's my fault...my fault...I killed him..." He wept openly.
"Who Jamie?" Caitie whispered, an uncalled for surge of terror leaping in her guts. "Who did you kill?"
"My father."
