Kindling (20 page)

“Isn’t Lilith like a baby-stealer or something?” I asked. Then I thought she might take offense and immediately regretted saying that. Thankfully, Sarah just laughed.

“You
are
new, aren’t you?” She grinned. “It’s just a name for us. To my knowledge no Lilith has ever stolen a baby. But, you are right. Lilith the demon did steal children. Oh, and Ami hates the term, but that’s what we’ve been called for forever, you know. I don’t mind it. And we do such good things. You’re better, right?”

I nodded. “Immensely better.” Sarah laughed and handed me a robe. She turned around again so I could have privacy and motioned for me to follow her.

She led me from the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom and opened the closet. “Everything you could possibly need is in here or in those drawers,” she said, nodding to a bureau across the room. “Ami picked most of the clothes out. God love him, but he’s no fashionista. He was just so excited to have a student and you, my goodness, he gushes about you. You must really be something.”

“He gushes about me? I didn’t even think he liked me,” I said.

“Oh, Kit, he adores you. He didn’t tell me everything, but I know he worked you until you collapsed. Pushing you until you break was part of what you have to go through. You’re different. You’re a Kindler.” She nodded towards the closet. “There is a dress in there that a whore wouldn’t wear. You’ll see it, I’m sure. Some sales lady in France convinced him that it was all the rage. Pick out anything else that suits you,” Sarah said. I looked through the clothes – I did see the whore dress, my god! – and I moved it aside to bring out a black and white polka dotted dress with capped sleeves and a collared neck. The skirt had a black, white, and red ruffle up the thigh to the hip, similar to a salsa dress. When I brought it out, Sarah smiled. “That’s Ami’s favorite. As soon as he saw it he had to have it for you.”

“Why? I don’t understand. What’s going on?” I asked. She motioned me to sit down and began fixing my hair. She reminded me a bit of my abuela.

“Something about Kindler training. I don’t really know. I’ve just been waiting for you for a month though! I work off the island but it does get lonesome here. And to have a girl here, that’s something special.”

I blushed. “Thank you, for all you’re doing. It feels good to be in a home.” She grinned at me in the mirror. “But, you won’t be lonesome much longer, with babies coming.”

Sarah stopped brushing my hair and her face fell. “Babies?” She said.

“Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry,” I said. I turned around and placed my hand on hers. “Did you not know?”

“How?” she asked. “How do you know?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just knew as soon as I saw you.” I thought about it a bit. “I guess, I can see the color of your babies. Does that make sense?”

“That’s weird, Kit,” she said. She looked at herself in the mirror, turning from one side to another. “I didn’t know, not for sure. Do you think Ami can see it?”

I shrugged again. “If he hasn’t said anything, he probably can’t.”

She nodded. “I’ve never known someone who can see The Coloring of someone not born, yet.” She placed her hand on her belly and then her eyes widened as she seemed to remember something. “You said babies! How many babies?”

“Two. I can see two colors,” I said, then chuckled. “My coloring is great. I can protect myself from the evil wrath of unborn fetuses. That’s great, just great,” I laughed.

Sarah started laughing and went back to brushing my hair. “Twins, eh? You can see the sexes?” I nodded. “Don’t tell me, okay? And, please, don’t breathe a word of this to Ami. He doesn’t want any more children. He’s too old for babies, he says. But he’s been married twice before and had his families. I haven’t.”

Sarah finished my hair and handed me a razor. “I don’t want to pressure you, but your legs are almost as bad as the werewolf,” she teased.

I agreed - my legs were awfully hairy - I shaved and dressed and there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I said. I thought it would be Sarah, but it was Braith. He didn’t say anything when he came in, just stared. I felt embarrassed and my whole face reddened, I could see it in the mirror. “Sarah made me better,” I said. I smiled but he still didn’t say anything. “What? Do I look okay?”

“You look okay,” Braith said. Boy, I thought, did he know how to compliment a gal. He shook his head and looked away. “I’m here to take you down to dinner.”

“Do you know what this was about?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Come and see.”

Braith led me downstairs and the others were waiting for us at the dining room table. The Rabbi beamed when he saw me. “Katja, you look marvellous. And you’re feeling better?” I nodded. “My Sarah, she’s amazing, isn’t she?”

I nodded. “She healed me.” The table was set with fine china and a very nice meal had been laid out. “What is all this?”

“First, we eat as friends, then we’ll talk,” The Rabbi said.

Jean-Luc came in carrying several bottles of wine. “You clean up nicely.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned. “You are a work of art, Mon Chaton.” Jean-Luc kissed me on both cheeks. “Hungry?” I nodded and relented to the fact that my questions might be answered later. Right then, I was ravenous.

So, we ate and drank and had a really lovely time. It was nice and normal, which was weird in itself because we were five totally abnormal people.

Ami, Jean-Luc, and Braith joked and talked the most. I could tell Sarah was preoccupied - I
had
just told her she was expecting twins - so she didn’t talk much. The men didn’t notice, as they told elaborate stories and jokes and made fun of each other. The Rabbi teased Braith and Jean-Luc about their short stints in training with him - Jean-Luc made it through a day and a half, Braith made it through three days - and then they began to badmouth the current trainees. Those boys were the worst group The Rabbi ever had: unruly, undisciplined, and out of control. Some of them even refused to obey The Rabbi on the first day, he said. Well, that didn’t go over well with him, so he made the group spend 28 hours on the field, running laps and doing different conditioning exercises. He finally broke them until even the toughest wept for his mother.

“Of course, Master Walters and Master Sayer had a fit,” The Rabbi grumbled. “They called a meeting of The High Coven. They can’t order me to do anything, but they politely suggested that I stop training for the remainder of the year. So I did.” The Rabbi smiled a little. “Gladly, I may add, because I had enough of The High Masters and their spoiled little turds they called trainees.”

Jean-Luc thought this was hilarious. “Training with you is like working with an oncoming truck,” Jean-Luc told The Rabbi. “Although, if Sarah was around back in my day I’d come back just to see her.” Jean-Luc laughed and Sarah giggled.

“I don’t think you’d last a day even if you had me around,” Sarah teased.

Jean-Luc feigned offense. “I will have you know that I am the toughest werewolf working with The Coven.”

“Yes, I agree,” The Rabbi laughed. “As one of three werewolves working with us, you are one of the toughest.”

Jean-Luc laughed and went on and told us about his humorous adventures chasing vampyres down to South America. He had a way of telling stories that was both incredibly funny, self-deprecating, and vain. During training at The Coven, he and Braith were ostracized because of what they were - The Coven seemed to hate werewolves just as much as they hated dhampirs. As soon as Braith’s training was finished, the two of them left on the scent trail of a group of vampyres to South America. It was both of their first solo Hunts - which they both regretted immensely since they ended up losing the vampyres and getting themselves lost in the Amazon. Jean-Luc had us all laughing as he continued his story, “Braith was bitten by a snake and his whole leg swelled until he could barely walk. I got so worried because he wasn’t healing and he started to get delirious. I had to turn into a werewolf to drag him and my clothes tore off me while I was struggling to move him. I was completely naked and going back and forth between human and wolf was awful. As soon as I became human the mosquitoes attacked and as soon as I became a wolf the fleas and ticks attacked. Both of us were miserable and Braith? He was mostly unconscious. But me? Look at me, I am beautiful and this was extremely degrading for me. You know I love my clothes and being clean and looking good,” he joked. Sarah and I giggled. “In the end, we were so ashamed and embarrassed. We hadn’t caught our vampyres and we were miserable, between Braith’s bite, the mosquitoes, and the bugs. Oh, the bugs! I can’t tell you how irritated our skin was from the bites. I think that’s what kept Braith so ill. He couldn’t heal because the bugs kept him sick. It was awful. We felt like failures, because, of course, it was our first Hunt after training, you know. Of course we had hunted before, but not on our own, only when we lived in the Wolf Den.

“Finally, after about three months we were starving, covered in dirt, smelled like manure, we thought we were going to die, and Braith’s leg was the circumference of a watermelon. We were so young, eh Braith?” Braith nodded. I could tell he was in a serious mood. “One day, we woke up, and do you know who was standing above us? Ami and Heike. I look up and see they’ve got these giant grins on their faces. And, of course Braith and I just stared up at them like we were hallucinating. It couldn’t be them, I thought. And then Ami says to us “We could smell you from Portugal. Didn’t even need to see your colors.’” Sarah, The Rabbi, and I laughed hysterically at this. Braith smiled a little. “Heike just looked at us like we were insane. And we must have been a site, two scrawny, underweight boys, almost completely naked and filthy, covered in red, bug bites, and smelling like we had rolled around in dung. God, it was awful.”

“And I’ve never let you live it down,” The Rabbi laughed.

“Will you ever?” Braith smiled.

“Not until I’m senile,” The Rabbi laughed, then grew serious as he looked around the table. “It seems we’re finished here. Now to the fun?” He looked at me, expecting an answer. I shrugged then nodded. “Excellent.” He rose and gestured for us to follow.

The Rabbi led us into the living room. “Here, you sit here, Katja.” He pointed to a large easy chair. It was very comfortable and I sank into the pillows.

When everyone was seated – the others sipped on wine, but I declined – The Rabbi smiled. “Now, I have had ulterior motives up until now. I was asked to train you as a Kindler and I wanted to do it just as my Master trained me. I just didn’t think you would last five weeks with the intensity of training I put you through.” He laughed a little. “Now, I’m doing the same for you as my Master did for me. He pushed me until I was at my weakest point, as you were this morning, and then he took me in, cleaned me, clothed me, fed me, and then we worked to find my fire.” He looked around for a minute. “Of course, my recovery took weeks. But, you have my Sarah,” he grinned at his wife and then looked to Jean-Luc. “Jean-Luc, where was the ...”

“Ah, let me get it,” Jean-Luc went into another room and came back with, of all things, a box of microwave popcorn.

The Rabbi smiled when he saw how how confused I was. He dug into the box and unwrapped a package. “My Master made me use dead fish, but I thought popcorn would work just as well,” he said. He took one of my hands, palm up, and placed the bag of popcorn on it. Then, he placed my other hand on top and moved my hands vertically, so the bag was between both palms. “Now, relax. Close your eyes, lean back. If you think hard enough, you’ll feel the whiteness inside of you. When you find it, move it to your hands. Do not get alarmed. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” I confessed.

“The whiteness is the fire inside of you. You have probably always felt it, but ou just thought it was normal. You’ve ignored it for so long, but you’ll know it when you find it again. You’ll understand when you feel it,” The Rabbi explained. “When you find it and begin to move it from your inside to your hands, the popcorn should begin to warm and pop.” I was sure I looked puzzled, so he smiled. “Just try. Close your eyes and search.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated but I really didn’t feel anything. How did you feel whiteness? And I felt stupid for holding a bag of popcorn while everyone was staring. I opened my eyes. “Does everyone have to watch?”

“Oh, of course not. Braith, Jean-Luc, go wash some dishes,” The Rabbi ordered. I was shocked when they left without complaint. I continued concentrating. I inhaled and exhaled and tried to concentrate on that, the rhythm of my breath. Maybe that would clear my mind and leave me to feel what I needed to.

I was tired, though, and thought maybe I couldn’t do it. Maybe I was too tired to find my whiteness. I know The Rabbi wanted me exhausted, but how could I find my inner Kindler if I was too fatigued to concentrate properly?

Just when I was about to give up, I felt something. I wouldn’t quite call it white, more like a bright warmth inside of me that I had always felt but had never paid attention to before. I focused on that for a few minutes and it grew. I found that I could grow it at will and move it with my mind, from deep inside me to the palms of my hands. It was slow, at first, but suddenly the popcorn began to pop. “Oh!” I cried. I opened my eyes and almost dropped the popcorn.

“Don’t stop,” The Rabbi commanded. “Don’t be alarmed. Ease the warmth out, not too fast.”

I tried not to let the whiteness go and the heat kept coming from my hands. The bag expanded with the popping corn and I was shocked but I tried not to freak out. I should have freaked out. I mean, wouldn’t you freak out if microwave popcorn began to explode in your hands? But, with everything else, this seemed weird but nothing crazy. I mean, I was in Portugal learning to fight vampyres, so this really didn’t freak me out as much as I thought it would.

When the corn stopped popping I sucked the heat back in. That part was easy, as my mind was exhausted from the effort, but even after I returned it inside I was still very aware of its presence. I heard clapping behind me and saw Braith and Jean-Luc grinning. “Jerks,” I said. I blushed.