Ascension (2 page)
Authors: Kelley Armstrong
"You’d what?" Dominic said, turning on him. "You’d have thought of it first? You’ve had years to think of it, Wally. And you didn’t. No one did."
"That’s—-"
"It’s called showing initiative," Dominic said. "Something we could always use more of around here. Now, Jeremy, go check out that truck of yours. Make sure it’s the way you want it. If not, you and Antonio can pick out something else. Before dinner, though, I want you to have a look at Cliff’s shoulder. It’s been acting up again."
Cliff shook his head. "It’s nothing. I don’t need—"
"You were favoring your right foreleg. That won’t do. First mutt that catches you doing that will fix your shoulder for you—permanently. Did you see Clayton out there today? You’d never know he broke his arm four months ago. All those special exercises paid off, and that’s what I want Jeremy to do for you." He shot a look at Cliff. "And you’re going to let him."
"Come on," Nick whispered to me. "Let’s go see the truck."
As we started to run, I caught a glimpse of Malcolm. He was watching Jeremy, a strange, unreadable look in his eyes. I stopped and circled back, sliding between Jeremy and his father. Malcolm shook his head, glanced over at the truck, shook his head again, and strode off toward the house.
Vision
Late that spring, when Jeremy was called in to deal with Gregory’s sprained ankle, Dominic found excuses to extend our stay for nearly a week. Why? Because Malcolm was at Stonehaven, and had been for three weeks. Not only that, but Malcolm had invited the
Santos
brothers, Stephen and Cliff to Stonehaven for the week, which turned an uncomfortable visit into sheer torment
—
for both of us. Dominic knew we could use a break.
When we returned to Stonehaven, Malcolm was still there. Most times he only stopped by long enough to get money but, occasionally he stayed longer. I had no idea what his excuse was this time. Like Jeremy, I’d stopped caring
why
he was there, only gritting my teeth and toughing it out until he left. Asking him when he was leaving only invited trouble. I’d done that last year, and he’d extended a planned two day visit to two weeks, just to show me that he could stay as long as he liked.
By the time we got home from
"All done playing doctor?" he said.
"Yes," Jeremy said. "Gregory is fine."
"No, Gregory is not fine and hasn’t been for eight years. If you really wanted to do us a favor, you’d give the idiot strychnine instead of aspirin. But I’m sure that wouldn’t help your cause, would it?"
Jeremy only gave a half-shrug and took off his boots, then turned to me. "Go into the kitchen and we’ll fix dinner." He glanced at his father. "We’re having sandwiches. Can I make you one?"
"Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about."
Jeremy tugged off his coat, hung it on the rack and steered me toward the kitchen.
"How’s that new truck working out for you?" Malcolm said, sticking at our heels.
"It does the job," Jeremy murmured.
"Dominic must be pretty pleased with you these days. Taming stray pups. Training the boys. Learning emergency medicine. What’d he call it? Initiative. That’s right. Showing initiative. The question is: what do you hope to initiate?"
When Jeremy didn’t answer, Malcolm swung in front of him and brought his face to Jeremy’s.
"You get in my way, boy, and I’ll squash you."
"I never doubted it," Jeremy said, and sidestepped into the kitchen.
Malcolm’s next extended stay came six months later. It was early December, a month away from my eleventh birthday.
That weekend Antonio and Nick were coming up to take me Christmas shopping for Jeremy. Although the Pack didn’t really celebrate the holiday the way humans did, we would have a Pack Meet and exchange gifts. The original shopping plan had been for me to go to
On Wednesday night Jeremy woke up from a nightmare. When I heard a muffled cry from his room, I bolted upright and nearly fell out of bed in my haste to get up. As I scurried into the hall, I heard the click of his door handle, and backed into my room. I listened, heart thumping, almost certain it was just a nightmare, but unable to shake the fear that someone had attacked him in his bed. When I heard his soft footfalls in the corridor I knew it had just been another bad dream. Staying behind my door, I waited until he passed, then slid out after him.
Normally after a nightmare, Jeremy would fix himself a sandwich, or pour a glass of brandy, depending on how bad it had been. This time, though, he walked into the study, passed the brandy decanter and headed straight for the desk. He stopped in front of the phone, and stared down at it, as if expecting it to ring. For at least five minutes, he stood there. Then he sighed, picked it up, moved it to the table beside his chair, and sat down.
He picked up a paperback mystery novel he’d left by his chair, but after ten minutes of staring at the same page, he tossed it aside and he eased back in his chair. A few minutes later, he started to nod off. His eyes were only half-closed when he jerked up, mouth forming a silent "o". From my post outside the door, I swear I could hear his heart pounding triple-time. His gaze shot to the door and I pulled back farther out of sight. He tensed, listening, as if afraid he’d cried out and alerted Malcolm. He listened to the silence for a minute, then looked back at the phone, swore under his breath, and rolled his shoulders.
"Call, damn it," he whispered. "I can’t help if you don’t call."
The phone didn’t ring. After glaring at it for a few minutes, he sank back into his seat.
Twice more, he began to drift off and twice more a vision startled him awake. It was a vision, not a nightmare. I knew that now.
Jeremy saw things. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. I
can’t
explain it any better than that. I’ve never understood much about this side of Jeremy’s life. I don’t know because I don’t ask. I don’t ask because I don’t want to intrude
—
no, that’s bullshit. I don’t ask because I don’t really want to know.
Wolves like conformity. They understand it. In the wild, a pack will drive out a member who doesn’t fit the accepted standard of wolf behavior
—
most animals do. While the Pack wasn’t so heartless, even those less attuned to their wolf-side were uncomfortable with change, and with those who were "different". I knew Jeremy didn’t like to fight, and I knew that wasn’t normal werewolf behavior. Yet I could overlook it, even accept it, because I knew he
could
fight. As a wolf, that was what was important to me
—
the ability, not the desire. Not every member of the Pack felt that way. Take Malcolm. To him, a werewolf was a fighter, and a werewolf’s value was directly related to his martial skills. For Malcolm, having his only son show no interest in fighting was a humiliation beyond bearing.
If Jeremy’s refusal to fight lowered him in the opinion of some Pack members, knowing that he had visions might have been grounds for exile. Such a thing went beyond the realm of individual difference. Even I had a problem accepting it. Unlike the rest of the Pack, though, I knew that Jeremy sometimes saw things, bad things, always about a Pack brother.
After nearly two hours, Jeremy fell into a semi-doze, disturbed only by the twitches and moans of a fitful sleep. When I was sure he wasn’t going to wake up again, I crept into the room and fell asleep on the sofa.
The next day, Jeremy stayed close to the phone. Malcolm noticed. Malcolm always noticed Jeremy’s moods. He hated the thought that something bad might be happening in his son’s life . . . and he couldn’t claim the credit for it.
The phone rang twice that day. Both times Jeremy bolted for it, which didn’t escape Malcolm’s notice either. The first time it was
Pearl
, the woman who cooked our dinners, confirming our menu for the next week. The second time it was one of Jeremy’s employers asking whether he’d received a delivery.
Late that afternoon, Malcolm went out. Where? Didn’t know, didn’t care. He was gone, and that was enough. Jeremy tried to curb his restlessness by painting, one hobby he never dared practice in front of his father. At least marksmanship was a sport, which made it a marginally worthy pastime for a werewolf. But painting? That would open him up to a whole new arena of mockery. So when Malcolm was home, the paints and canvasses were locked in a basement storage box.
Today, though, even that hobby couldn’t distract Jeremy from whatever bothered him. Instead, he threw himself into physical activity, playing two straight hours of touch football with me before dinner. While we played, he kept the study window open, despite the bitter December cold. Every now and then he’d stop in mid-play, motion for me to wait as he looked toward the window, as though he’d heard the phone ring. When no sound came, he’d shake it off and resume the game.
After dinner I reminded Jeremy that it was our hunt night. We had two joint Change nights per week
—
one for hunting and one for running. As well, Jeremy encouraged me to run by myself once a week, and he did the same. One advantage to Changing so often was that if anything interrupted our schedule, we could skip a run or two with no ill effects. Given Jeremy’s mood, I figured he planned to skip our hunt that night, and I knew that we
could
skip it, but I wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight. On my scale of Change events, solo runs ranked at the bottom, runs with Jeremy fell in the middle, and my absolute favorite
—
the one thing I loved even more than a full Pack hunt
—
was our weekly hunt together.
When I reminded him that our hunt was scheduled for that night, I was fully braced for verbal battle but, to my surprise, Jeremy told me to grab our coats and boots. Like playing touch football, a hunt was action—it was something to do. If someone phoned, he’d miss the call, but I think, in some ways, Jeremy was almost as uncomfortable with his psychic abilities as I was. At that age, he hadn’t yet learned to trust them and, when the phone hadn’t rang in twenty hours, he’d probably decided it wasn’t going to ring at all.
We caught a fawn that night. Normally young deer aren’t on our menu, but that one was a fall fawn, born out of season and abandoned by its mother. Better to kill it quickly and let its death serve some purpose, rather than leave it to starve.
We were still feeding when the phone rang. Jeremy had left the study window open again, so the distant ring cut through the stillness of the forest. Jeremy tore off to Change. I listened. The phone rang only three times, then stopped. Jeremy was fast with his Changes, but he wasn’t that fast.
By the time I finished my Change, Jeremy was already in the house. I ran inside to find him striding down the hall, peering into each room. One sniff and I knew what he was looking for. We found Malcolm in the kitchen, pouring a beer.
"Did you
—
?" Jeremy started, then stopped and made his voice casual. "I thought I heard the phone. Was it for you?"
"No idea," Malcolm said with his back to us. "Strangest thing. I picked it up, said hello, and no one answered." He turned and fixed Jeremy with a look. "Very strange, don’t you think?"
I didn’t think it was strange at all that someone wouldn’t want to speak to Malcolm, but he wasn’t asking me, so I kept my mouth shut.
Jeremy shrugged. "Probably a wrong number."
"I’m sure it was."
Jeremy poured me a glass of milk, then grabbed a bag of cookies and led me to the study. Malcolm followed. He walked to the sofa and dropped onto it, beer sloshing to the floor. I looked at the frothy puddle and bit back a snarl. Of course he didn’t care about it.
He
wasn’t the one responsible for cleaning the floors. That was my job, but I wasn’t wiping it up with him looking on. I’d rather let it dry and scrub the spot off tomorrow.
Jeremy stood in the doorway, looking at Malcolm and struggling to hide his dismay. "I have work to do," he said finally.
"That’s fine. You do it. I’ll just sit here and keep quiet." Malcolm’s gaze traveled to the phone
—
the only one in the house
—
and his lips curved in a smile. "Seems a good place to relax tonight, don’t you think?"
Jeremy poured himself a brandy, took a sheaf of his work papers and sat down. I grabbed my book and plopped onto the throw rug to read.
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. After a furtive glance toward his father, Jeremy answered it.
"Hello?"
Relief flooded Jeremy’s eyes as I heard a man’s voice reply. Malcolm put down his newspaper and perked up. Jeremy gripped the receiver tighter to his ear, muffling the voice on the other end.
"Slow down . . . no, slow
—
wait. Stop. You can tell me when I get there. Let me grab a pen."
He took a pen and paper from the desk. Malcolm stood, sauntered over and leaned around Jeremy, trying to see the paper as Jeremy wrote. Jeremy covered his notes, then ripped the paper from the pad and stuffed it into his pocket.