Last Teardrop (The Chronicles of Amber Harris) Read online

  ***

  Coming back from my run, I see Christopher and Judy are still awake and watching a movie. “Good morning. What movie are you watching?” Judy seems to be engrossed in the screen; Christopher is able to break contact with the television.

  “Dirty Dancing. Judy has never seen it.”

  A smirk appears and disappears just as fast on Christopher’s face. There is something he is leaving off the rest of his statement. I drop my wall and read his thoughts: “It’s not my first time though.” I dig deeper into his past memories and see that he used to take unsuspecting females out to see this movie at the theaters, before helping himself to a late night snack. I suppose those girls had a lot of fun, dinner, movie, and then he had a snack. Rolling my eyes at my brother, I turn to go upstairs to change for work. I really hope I hear from Sarah sometime today.

  12

  Forgotten History

  “Good morning, Amber, how are you today?”

  Looking up from my computer, I try to look surprised to see Cynthia standing at the office door. “Hello, Cynthia.” I knew this was coming. Since I have the best hearing in the office, I am aware of situations that arise as soon as they happen.

  “Amber, do you have a minute? I need to speak with you in my office.”

  I wish I could tell her I already know what she is going to tell me, and not to worry, I will take care of it, but I am positive that would cause more problems than solutions. “Sure thing, Cynthia.” As I get up to follow her into her office, I can only wonder if I could have done anything to prevent this; however, I still see one conclusion. It would create more problems.

  Walking into Cynthia’s office, I see she has two chairs set up at the tiny square table set off to the side of the room. The blinds to the windows facing outside are shut, and her screen-saver is showing a slideshow of pictures from our last company picnic. Hmm, I did not think she cared so much.

  Turning to face me, she gestures with her right hand, “Have a seat,” she says. This won’t take that long.”

  I would prefer to stand, since I know what is coming, but I sit anyway just to make her happy. As Cynthia takes her seat, a weary look settles on her face. What she is about to tell me is upsetting her.

  “I’m sorry to have to bring you in on this. Lisa ordinarily handles these issues, but as you know, she’s out sick today.”

  I was planning on calling Lisa on my “lunch break”. I have worked with her for two years, and she has never called in sick. I am trying to give her privacy, but everything in me is screaming find her mind, and read her thoughts! Something is wrong. Hopefully, I will not have to go to such drastic measures and we simply can talk on my lunch. Cynthia shifts slightly in her chair before she continues speaking.

  “I received a call this morning from Nicholas Anderson’s fiancée. She called to tell me that Nicholas was hospitalized last night, after passing out. I guess he was having trouble breathing. The doctors say it’s not good. They don’t think he’ll be leaving the hospital.”

  I watch as my boss’s eyes fill with tears. She closes her eyes for a moment to collect herself.

  Clearing her throat, she goes on. “It’s very sad news and he will be missed here. Can you please send flowers to the hospital? Also, will you pull his file and see what benefits he has? Hopefully he has been here long enough to have a pension.”

  Reading her mind, I can tell she is rather surprised that my reaction to this is not closer mirrored to hers. I try as much as possible to match human emotions; however, I do still struggle with death, which is the normal cycle of a human life. Maybe it would have hit me a little harder if I already did not know Nick was sick, or if I had not overheard the phone call Cynthia received this morning. I stand up and do my best to convey some sort of sadness in my voice as I speak. “Yes, I’ll get right on this. I do believe Nicholas has long term disability, benefits and a pension. I’ll pull up the proper paper work for his funds to be released.”

  “It’s so sad. He’s so young and should have had his whole life ahead of him. Let me know if you need any help with any of this. I’ll pick up a card on my lunch and pass it around the office. If he’s feeling up to company after work, I’ll drop by with the card.”

  Cynthia’s voice has begun to shake, and the first of many teardrops start to fall. I notice her hand is shaking as she reaches for a tissue to wipe her eyes. I should be holding my breath. There is an alluring scent to a human’s tears, and there is no ventilation in this room. It is time to take my leave. “I’ll let you know if I have any questions.” As I turn to leave the room, I can only wonder if she thinks I am nothing more than a cold-hearted person for not showing any compassion. She would not be too far off base with the cold-hearted part.

  I wander back to my desk and question for the umpteenth time, if my cold-heartedness is just a part of the territory that comes with being vampire, or if there is something really wrong with me and only me. Yet, I compare myself to the reactions of others of my kind and I see a pattern. The first time I met Olivia, she seemed like an Ice Queen. I now understand she did not mean to come across that way. I truly doubt how I could have ever thought of her as anything less than kind and loving. Her reaction towards me when we first met was only brought on by the fear that she had placed her current family in danger, by saving me from Jackson’s grasp. Life has shown me that any mother or woman that has loved ones will react in that way to keep them safe. Still Isaac and his actions come to mind. He is the most patient man I know. He has a way of looking at things from all angles and taking the time to make sure that you see the subject matter from all perspectives too. If he was not so tolerant, I wager he would have snapped Christopher’s neck by now. Christopher, oh where should I start with him? Well, besides his Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde act, or whatever he would like to call all the mood swings; there is always a soft spot in his heart for me and my needs. No matter what it is, he is there for me and willing to put up with any and everything I want. Then there is me. I ponder this so often. I do not have a soft spot. How can I when all I see is hurt? My entire existence as a vampire, I have done nothing but push others away. Over the years, Christopher has made it known to me more times than I can count that he has a love interest in me, and still I continue to trample all over his heart. I left the one person I truly saw myself being with. And Lance was right all those years ago to be mad at me. I just left; I was not even bold enough to say goodbye to him. When I first became a vampire, I repeatedly said I wanted to go home, I wanted to see my family, but somehow I never made it there. Because of my selfishness, I will never know what became of the beings I claimed to love so much. And now, here I am once again. Some young person that is going to lose his life and I could have possibly warned him, given him and his doctors a heads up on what was to come, yet, I did nothing. Nick Anderson is not the first sick human to cross my path, and I know that he will not be the last. Settling into my desk, my shoulders slightly sag. Maybe I can send Mr. Anderson an extra bouquet of flowers.

  The time seems to be slowly ticking by, but it is now the lunch hour and I can finally call Lisa. With the phone to my ear, I cross my fingers and hope Lisa will pick up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lisa, it’s Amber. How are you? I was worried, you never call in sick.” I can hear her breathe into the phone. There’s a hitch in her breath as she brings air into her body. I wonder if she has been crying.

  “Oh...hey, Amber.”

  This does not sound like her. I feel my body tense as I wonder what ails my always chipper officemate. “Lisa is everything all right? Cynthia said you were sick.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m not feeling too good today. I thought it would be best for me to stay home. I didn’t want to get everyone in the office sick. Hopefully, I’ll be back to work in the next day or so. Hey, look, Amber, I have to go. I, umm, I’ll talk to you later.”

  That was weird. The phone disconnects without her saying goodbye. Lisa is as clos
e of a friend to me as I will let any human get. There is something wrong, but I know her well enough that if she wanted me to know, she would have just come out and said it. I guess I will give her some space, and hopefully she will be back to work soon. There is no doubt in my mind she is not sick. I would have picked up on it sometime yesterday.

  Because of his mother’s illness, Lance wanted to become a doctor and open his own practice. He would talk for hours about how much he wanted to help save people’s lives. He also talked of me becoming his assistant. He was amazed by my ability to know when he was coming down with a cold and how I could frequently pinpoint what it was or what areas it would affect to help give him a fighting chance at cutting the illness time to a minimum. The conversation would always start the same way.

  “You know, Amber, if I open a private practice, with your help, we could help heal a lot of people.”

  Lance knew I would not feel comfortable around so many humans, not to mention the fact of them bleeding around me. So my response would always be the same. “I would be no use to you in a doctor’s office. You wouldn’t be able to trust me with giving shots or helping close a wound. What would your excuse be when I lunged at a patient’s bleeding appendage? Or when I suddenly ran out the room because I wasn’t able to control my temptation?” In response to my retort, Lance would look at me with a disapproving gaze that seemed to cloud those brilliant blue eyes of his.

  “Amber, you need to give yourself much more credit than you do. Besides, do you really think I haven’t thought this through a million times already? There would be other people that worked with us. You would be like an usher in a way. Instead of a nurse bringing them to an examination room, you would. That is, unless the patient was bleeding. In those cases, you would just happen to be very busy at that time, and someone else would just have to do it. It’s not like you wouldn’t already know the patient was coming in bleeding anyway. Don’t you smell the blood like a mile away or something? Anyway, as you walk the ‘non bleeding’ patient to the room, you can let your vampire senses do the trick, and after you make sure they are in the room changing into their gown, you can come tell me what you think may be wrong and then I go from there.”

  This conversation always ended the same way. I would start to respond to him by nodding my head, because by this point there would be nothing else for me to say. It was something that would never work.

  My cellular phone begins to ring, just as I am finishing up Nick’s paperwork. If it is who I hope it is, I will want to step outside to take this phone call. I am glad Lisa is not here today, because I am moving much too quickly to complete this paperwork before answering my phone. I pull the phone out of my left desk drawer, and head toward the front door. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Amber, this is Sarah. Can you speak?”

  “Yes. Hi, Sarah. I’m surprised you’re awake.” In response to the time of day in which she is calling me, she gives a heavy yawn. She must have something really important to tell me for her to be fighting sleep right now. “I’m heading outside so we can talk in private.”

  “Okay, well I’m sure those around you don’t have as good of hearing as you do, so I’ll start to tell you what I’ve found out. Chime in when you can. You’ll find what I have to say interesting.”

  “I hope you mean interesting as in ‘hey, I have fun, silly facts for you’, and not ‘hey, you should pay closer attention to who you let in your house’.” I can hear Sarah suck in a deep breath. That is not a good sign when a vampire needs to have extra air in their lungs.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Amber, but it’s going to be closer to you need to watch who you let into your home. I talked to my werewolf friend and then a few older vampires, older than you and I. From their answers, I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

  She stops to take another breath. I bite my lip to keep from saying anything before she continues. I would rather not prolong this. I wager I will have questions; still, I must wait until the end.

  Sarah understands my silence, so she continues, “As I was saying, I talked to a werewolf friend of mine and I asked him all the questions you and I talked about before. I don’t know if this matters as much to you now, but depending on how far along a person was in their transformation of becoming a werewolf and before being bitten by a vampire, will determine if they can have children. However, as we all know, vampires cannot have children, so unless your brother plans on loaning his mate out, the only other way they would have a family is to go out and make new vampires. Since she is a bloodwolf, she won’t be able to change anyone herself. Bloodwolves don’t have the ability to bite and turn others like a full blooded werewolf or vampire.”

  I chuckle to myself, my brother does not share well, so I am assuming ‘loaning’ will be out of the question.

  “My friend also said that from what he knew, no werewolf has the ability to block a mind reader, and only three percent of bloodwolves drink blood. He also told me that werewolves are all supposed to be a part of a pack. There are six major packs and each has one Crowned Head member that sits on the council. Each werewolf family should be legalized through one of these packs. Because there was once bad blood between werewolves and vampires, all bloodwolves need to be brought to the Six Crowned Heads Council as a way to document their existence. I guess bloodwolves were being created many years ago to enter the werewolf world as spies. Vampires once thought it would be a good idea to have werewolves as pets and slaves. They, however, underestimated how tight each of the six communities were until the werewolves started to fight back.”

  I wonder if this is where the wives tales of vampires and werewolves being mortal enemies came from.

  “I had my friend check their records for any bloodwolf females who would have been created and legalized about the time you were made vampire. I remembered we talked before and you told me where your hometown was. It helped him narrow down his search, but he still came up with nothing. Werewolves are still in the stone ages when it comes to technology. But between the six packs, they are pretty good at keeping track of their members. Like all species, there will always be a few that go rogue. Those are typically the ones who end up helping create the illegal bloodwolves. I’m to warn you that, if your brother’s girlfriend is unable to morph into a wolf then her vampire instincts will be closely matched to yours. She may be able to hide it better because of the wolf in her, but do not be fooled by her strength or speed. The combination can be lethal. And yes, her temper will most likely flare, just as fast as a normal werewolf if provoked.”

  This is a lot for me to take in. Sarah has collected more information than I expected. “Wow! Sarah, thank you so much.”

  “Well, don’t thank me yet. I’m not done.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “After talking to my werewolf friend, I still had questions. From everything he told me, there should be no reason for you to not hear her thoughts. I called an old vampire friend of mine. She’s not an Elder, but comes as close to one as possible. Her husband was an Elder. Following the pronouncement of his death, he returned home and wasn’t able to help himself. He attacked and killed their four year old daughter, before attempting to kill her. Somehow, during the process, she was able to bite him. I guess you can say, she could be considered one of the first to be turned. She kept it a secret, which is probably why when the story is told about the first transformation, it's told about a man in the woods. I can only imagine how many others were transformed before then, and also decided to keep it a secret.” Sarah pauses as the enormity of what she says settles in. She fiddles with the phone before continuing. “Sorry, I digress. Anyhow, she was able to tell me that there are a few other vampires out there like you. They have the ability to block others from their mind; however, she also let me in on a well-kept secret, that the Elders really only share amongst themselves. As you know, our bodies vary from humans, and can react differently to substances that could have deadly effects on a human.”


  “Yes, please, go on.”

  “When the other vampires first realized that the Elders had started to go crazy with bloodlust, they set out to have them destroyed. Because of this, the Elders tried to find new ways of keeping their bloodlust under control, and vampires with such abilities like yours, out of their head. Think about it, how do you know how old a vampire really is, unless they tell you or in your case, you read their minds? Vampires run into each other all the time; look at my line of work. If you were unable to read their thoughts, then the only way you would know they were a crazed Elder, is if you were to witness them rip the throat from a human just for the fun of it. So to help keep others in the dark, the Elders found that by using lead-grinding it into a powder and ingesting it-they could block or project a white noise to anyone who was listening in.”

  Okay, I really did not expect her to say that. I thought she would have told me they used something silly like garlic, which would explain where that myth had come from. “Sarah, are you trying to tell me, that you think Judy is somehow ingesting lead every day without my brother knowing, or for that matter, any other vampire in the house? Do you really think she learned this from an Elder?” As I ask these questions, the gears slowly start moving in my head. A lot of this makes sense. Judy had gone missing a few months before I became a vampire, and Jackson was an Elder. What if he was the one who had turned Judy? I quickly dismiss that thought. There is just no way. I shake my head in an attempt to dislodge the crazy thoughts that are running through my mind. None of this makes sense. Why and how had Judy ended up with Christopher? Did she know that Jackson was the one who turned my life upside down? Christopher believed that whoever turned Judy was dead, and still, Jackson and our paths have not crossed since that ill-fated night. Could it just be a coincidence? Am I looking for a reason to hate my brother’s girlfriend?

  “Amber, are you still there?”

  “Yes, Sarah, I’m here. I was just thinking, how likely could all of this really be? I mean what are the chances?”

  “My friend, we think alike. That’s why I did some research of my own. I guess there is one surefire way to see if she is ingesting the lead powder; well, there are two ways. You can go through her belongings to see if you can find the powder. Or you can use kerosene. This is where her being a bloodwolf comes in handy. If she was only a vampire, there would be no real way to flush the lead out of her system. Nevertheless, she has werewolf flowing through her veins too, and we all know that werewolves and kerosene are a deadly combination. Not only will it burn their flesh on contact, but ingesting it will kill them, and best of all, come to find out, they can’t smell it! Now, don’t worry, I’m not trying to kill the girl. I’ll leave that up to you, if she is lying. The kerosene won’t react in a deadly way with her system since she is only half werewolf. It’ll probably make her a little lightheaded but it will help flush the lead out of her system. She may be able to smell it, but I don’t think her sense of smell will be so strong that you won’t be able to conceal it in something easy for her to ingest. From what I’ve researched, she cannot ingest a great amount of lead daily, but she must be getting enough in to keep you out of her head.”

  “It’s funny that you say that, Sarah. I noticed over the weekend, that if I concentrated really hard, I was able to hear fragments of her thoughts. She had to be thinking about it at that very moment for me to hear it. I’m wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that I kept them busy, and she was unable to take her normal dose of lead.”

  “Hmm, that would make sense.”

  “Thank you so much for your help, Sarah. I don’t know if I would’ve found all this information out on my own. Granted, I hate to say this, but I sincerely hope the two of us just have overactive imaginations.” I hear Sarah sighing in the phone. She doesn’t need to answer for me to know she is thinking the same thing. “Sarah?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I have one more question, and this goes with me wanting to be overly prepared for what I hope will be nothing. And I completely understand if you don’t have an answer for this, but...”

  “You want to know how to kill a bloodwolf? Is that the question you’re beating around the bush with?”

  I have to give Sarah more credit than I do. She seems to know me better than I would have thought. “Yes, that was my next and last question.”

  “I figured that was coming. I’ve looked into that too. Are you really sure you want to know? I mean do you really think this will be carried that far?”

  “Sarah, can I tell you that I’m seeing how far out of touch I am with my own kind?” Until now, I thought I knew a lot about the creatures mankind thinks are nothing more than mythical stories. You would have thought that after that ordeal with Annie, I would have learned all I could about the monsters that go bump in the night-another downfall to my self-loathing.

  “Don’t feel bad, my friend. I was feeling the same way. I didn’t have all of this information just sitting in my brain waiting for someone to access it. I had to turn to friends, as you did with me. We vampires should know that our kind are selfish individuals. We usually don’t play well with others. Besides the Elders, what need do we really have to group together? I do believe if the Elders hadn’t become such a danger to all, then the rest of us would have never banned either. Look at our past. Once we were no longer humans, we were to be written off; nonexistence. And why is it that you and I are just finding out about the vampires trying to enslave werewolves? It seems that our own kind has things they would like to be erased from our past. You can say in a way that we are lucky. Like you, I’ve never gone against a werewolf, but I hear that they aren’t so easy to take down. Thankfully, they have in most ways forgotten about the bad blood between our two species.”

  “You’re correct, Sarah. I just know that this is not the first time my family and I have run into some sort of creature that we were unaware of until it was almost too late. I don’t want that to happen again.” I can hear Sarah fiddling with the phone cord. The wires that connect the mouth piece to the base of the phone, are giving off the faintest crackle as it winds and unwinds. She remains quiet for a moment before she speaks again.

  “Okay, so you really want to know?”

  “Yes, if anything, for peace of mind.”

  13

  Déjà vu

  I replay for the nine hundredth time in my mind what Sarah and I talked about as I sit outside of the hardware store. After getting off the phone with her, I came up with a plan of action. It is not fully developed yet, but I do have the who, what, where, and when down. The how is still a kicker. Judy is the who; the truth is the what; the where will be my house. Unfortunately, if this goes bad, I want to keep Christopher away from as many humans as possible. I am debating on knocking out all of Christopher’s senses until this is over, and then erase his memory. But that leaves me with the problem of too many gaps to have to fill in later. In addition to all of this worrying, I still have to deal with the when. I believe I should get this over and done with as soon as I return to the house. The quicker the better. Right?

  As I walk down the aisles at the hardware store, many different fragrances assault my nose. The humans working and shopping here smell the best; however, some of the chemicals are too strong. I think it will be best if I stop breathing for now. I muse if I am on the verge of a nose bleed from all of the fumes. I come to a stop in front of the kerosene section. The how of my problem, is in the front of my mind. I do not want to kill her-not yet, at least. So to make this plan work, I will need to get the kerosene into the house without anyone sensing it. I debate on the size bottle I will need. I plan to use some today and store the rest of the kerosene for a rainy day. I hope this is the only time I will need to rely on this stuff.

  “Excuse me, do you need any help?”

  My stare shifts from the bottles that line the wall, to the nasally sounding teenage boy standing closer to me than I would like. A tight smile cr
osses my face, as I try to shoo him away. “Thank you, but I will not need your assistance today. I believe I have what I’m looking for.” I do not think the little one has heard me speak. He is standing with his mouth in an ‘O’ shape gawking at-well, I think my eyes, but I do not have time to stand here, and pick through his head to find out. “Umm, thank you for asking.”

  I spin on my heels to walk away when he comes out of his trance. “S-sure any time.”

  I am not sure how acute all of Judy’s senses are. I do know that my family will smell these fumes the moment I take the lid off the bottle. I will need to block their sense of smell for a little while. At least until Judy has the kerosene in her system. This is going to be a very long evening. I can feel the pull of the moon weighing down my eye lids. No matter what I do tonight, I do believe I will need as much energy as possible. Sarah told me Michelle is working right now, so going to the blood bank is out. A trip to the woods has been added to my places to go list.

  I attempt to relax my muscles as I pull the car into my driveway. My plan is fully mapped out. With the two brown paper bags in hand, I head for the house. Like every day, Olivia has the door open for me before I make it to the top step. Her arms are outreached and blocking me from the threshold of the house. I am in no mood for a hug right now; nonetheless, I know I must continue to act normal. We embrace and I immediately leap into her mind. I do not want to cut off her whole sense of smell, just the small part that will identify the kerosene. Our hug last a little longer than usual. I want to make sure there are no thoughts running through her head that may giveaway what I am about to do. Isaac is in the living room reading the newspaper. Part of his sense of smell is the next to go. Giving Olivia a tight short squeeze before letting go and walking into the foyer, I secure my mind block. I cannot let Isaac know of my plans just yet.

  “Well, hello, Amber. How was work?”

  Isaac places the newspaper next to him on the couch, and pulls his hands through his lose black shiny hair. “Work was nice. I have wonderful news.” I did not need to say that too loud for everyone in the house to hear me. There is a soft movement upstairs and a light shift in the air as Christopher enters the room, and stands next to me, with his hand held out waiting for Judy. As I turn to show them a warm smile, I cut part of Christopher’s sense of smell off too. “Hello, Brother, Judy. How was your sleep?” Judy stayed up last night so she and Christopher could sleep together during the day. A ‘what if’ crosses my mind again. I sure hope I am right about all of this.

  “We slept well, what’s in the bags?”

  Christopher was never good with surprises. He jabs his finger toward the objects in my hand and sniffs the air. I hold my breath, waiting to see if he detects kerosene. Nothing. “Well you see, the bags go along with my good news! Come with me, and I shall explain.” The five of us head into the kitchen, and I put the bags on the small breakfast table in the corner near the dishwasher. I then retrieve five glasses from the cabinet. “My boss brought me into her office today, to tell me I was getting a raise and a promotion! You’re looking at the new Human Resource Manager!” I am really trying to put the right amount of excitement in my voice. I need them to be happy for me. I need them to want to celebrate with me. Really, how often do vampires get promotions? I can see this is not going over smoothly. Isaac has one eyebrow raised and Christopher and Olivia are just looking at me like I have lost my mind. I sigh and grin harder, “Umm, okay people. Have none of you worked in the last century or something? This is a good thing…in the human world.” Feeling sorry for me, Judy, of all people, seems to understand the best.

  “Wow, well then, that’s impressive!”

  “Thank you, Judy.” Great, she is going to make me feel bad for what I am about to do. I move on quickly to not give myself a chance to doubt my actions. “Anyhow, I figured that we could at least have a drink to celebrate the good news. To answer your question, Christopher, our favorite drinks are in the bags.” I have perked his interest a little more now.

  “Really, they bottled blood?”!

  All I can do is roll my eyes at him. I would reach out and smack him, but I would have to reach around Olivia and Judy to do so. Instead, I pull the three bottles out of the bags. “No, I have brandy for us; and Judy, I figured you probably don’t want as strong of a drink, so I got plum wine for you. I hope this is okay.” It is too bad if this is too strong for her to drink. It is all I picked up and there is no way around it. She will drink this, but I should at least let her think she has an option.

  “The wine will be fine,” Judy replies as she reaches over to grab an empty glass.

  Pouring brandy first, I fill four twelve ounce glasses, before pouring Judy’s drink. I want to give her the shortest amount of time possible to smell the kerosene, if she can smell it. Once all of our glasses are filled, I raise my drink, “Here’s to spending moments like this with family and loved ones.” The four vampires finish our shots before Judy is able to get her second gulp down. Not to say that she could. I notice the moment she realizes there is something wrong with her drink. Her eyes have begun to bulge, and I can smell the kerosene ripping down her throat. She drops the glass-which does not have a chance to hit the floor, Olivia has caught it before then-and bolts for the back door holding her throat. It is funny. I do not think I have seen her move so quickly before. I wonder if the first part of her act is over. Christopher is close on her heels. I turn to follow them, leaving Olivia-still holding the glasses-and Isaac in the kitchen looking dumbfounded. As I stroll through the back door, I drop my wall to see if Judy is now streamlining her thoughts for all to hear. I need to be careful though. If I drop the wall too much, and the kerosene is not working, then I will give myself away. Christopher is standing over Judy, who is on her hands and knees throwing up. Hmm, I wonder if she can shift into a werewolf. If she can, does she need to be in that position to do so?

  “Judy! What’s wrong?”!

  Christopher seems frantic. His arms flail around like an octopus stranded on land. He’s afraid to touch her, but he keeps trying to see why she is unable to talk. In between gasp, Judy is finally able to say, “B-burns.”

  She heaves another deep, gagging cough before spitting out, “Keros...,” then more choking and gagging.

  She does not need to get it all out for Christopher to understand what she is attempting to say. He is up and rushing towards me. I should move or stop him from attacking me, but I do not want to hurt him, and he needs to know. I can hear her thoughts now. Shifting through her mind, I can see her past, I can see…

  My train of thought is broken as Christopher grabs me by the neck and begins to squeeze-squeezing tighter than I would have thought. I feel my windpipe crushing under his grip. I resist the urge to fight as I meet his eyes. They are not the brilliant shiny green that I love so much. No, they are rimmed with red and the majestic green is now a pale, pale green. His grip becomes tighter around my neck-which is trying to heal itself even under all this pressure. Christopher can feel it as he re-breaks my windpipe.

  “What the hell did you do to her, Amber? I swear, I will rip your head off!”

  In the process of him saying that, saliva managed to slip through his gritted teeth and has landed on my face. As I lift my hand to wipe the dribble off, I notice Isaac rushing to my aid. “No, it’s fine.” I put my hand up to stop him instead of wiping my face. Christopher squeezes tighter and my windpipe shatters. Christopher’s eyes demand an answer. It is kind of hard however to answer him using my voice right now. “Christopher, listen, Judy has been lying to you. I’m sorry I had to do it like this, but it was the only way.” As I try to communicate this to him, I bring him and the family into Judy’s thought process.

  She is still on her hands and knees looking sickly. All of her thoughts are coming out loud and clear. I show my family how every other day she takes the lead pills. She had done such a good job with hiding the pills. As Olivia sees this vision, she takes off into the house. I am
assuming that she is going to get the tablets. Thankfully, Christopher’s grip is starting to loosen. Without stopping, I continue streamlining Judy’s thoughts to everyone. I have now pinpointed how it all began.