The Truth About Kadenburg (14 page)

Fourteen

S
he didn’t understand what was going on. The
world was moving at the speed of light and in slow motion at the same time.
Lorcan’s hand held hers tightly as he led her back into her childhood home
where they joined her uncle, Lorcan’s parents, and
that
guy in the
living room. They all looked as if someone had just died, and the alarm going
off in her brain told her something bad was about to happen.

What could possibly be worse than turning into a
freaking bear?
Presley wondered when she felt Lorcan’s arms coiling around
her body in a protective manner. It was weird actually, how Lorcan’s touch
calmed the tension and melted away her anxieties. Even when they were younger,
Lorcan always gave her great comfort in times of overwhelming stress.

Presley could remember the first time she ever wrecked
her bicycle. All the Kadenburg kids met up near Manor Lane to ride to the
creek together to do typical kid things, but Presley hadn’t quite gotten a
grasp on how to turn around while pedaling at the same time. There was a small
ditch near the bank where they parked their bikes, and Presley didn’t want her
peers to know she wasn’t as skilled as they were. It wasn’t her fault she was
such a prideful girl.

While her friends zoomed past her and turned with
precision to park their bicycles, Presley panicked and squeezed the brake on
her handlebar without much thought about it. The last thing she remembered was
flying over the bright pink handlebars and soaring through the air like Mighty
Mouse before crash landing against the gigantic rock nestled between mud and
twigs below.

“Pretz! Pretz, are you okay?” Liam called as he
slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt near the ditch’s edge.

She was too embarrassed to look up. The
pain in her knee was hot and searing, much like the tears in her eyes.

“Presley?” Lorcan called. His bike hit
the dirt road as he appeared above her, staring down at her with a frown on his
face.

“That looked like it hurt!” Larry Johnson
laughed.

“Shut it,” Lorcan warned angrily before he
leapt down into the ditch. His shoes sank into the mud as he crouched beside
of her, reaching his hand out to touch her arm. “Presley, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth
as a tear slid down her cheek. It was one of those instances where she was in
a lot of pain and she didn’t want to show it. Despite her best efforts though,
the tears fell anyway. “Stupid bike.”

“Hey, it’s not the bike’s fault,” Lorcan
offered with a boyish grin. “That was a pretty nasty fall. It looks like you
banged up your knee though. Let me help you out of here.”

“No,” she said urgently as her tearful eyes
snapped up to his face. “No. Just leave me alone, Lorcan. I’ll be fine.”

Lorcan gazed at her quizzically before he
tilted his head to the side. “You can’t stay down here, Presley. You’re
covered in mud and you’re bleeding.”

Presley lowered her gaze to her left knee.
The impact against the rock must have been pretty hard judging by the gash.
She frowned from the sight of the blood oozing down her leg before she quickly
covered it with her hand.

“Just go,” she demanded.

She could hear the other kids laughing at her.
What idiots! It wouldn’t have been so funny if they had gotten hurt.

“Shut up!” Liam scolded. “It’s not funny.”

As the laughter quieted down, Presley
chewed her lower lip. She was more embarrassed than anything else. She
should’ve been more careful…

“It’ll be okay,” Lorcan said gently as he
pulled his green t-shirt off and offered it to her. “Put this on your knee.
It’ll help it stop bleeding I bet.”

“But that’s your Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles shirt,” Presley protested.

“It’s just a shirt, Pretz.”

He didn’t give her a chance to argue as he
pressed the balled up material against her knee, smiling at her.

Presley wasn’t sure how long
she’d been lost in the memory, but she caught the tail end of a conversation as
Mr. Bamey slammed his fist against the doorframe that separated the hallway
from the living room.

“I knew this was a bad idea!” He exclaimed. “It’s
never amounted to any good having your kind here, kid. Do you understand
that?” He asked angrily as he glared at Dimitri. “We’ve not forgotten the
last visit.”

The auburn haired male remained silent as he nodded his
head. “Of course I understand that,” he stated in a calm tone. “Do you think
I’m not aware of what my alpha is capable of? Do you think I turn a blind eye
to the true nature of lycanthropes? I do not. I was born as one; I am one. I
know exactly how we work and what we do.”

Presley glanced up at Lorcan and she realized that he
was deeply engrossed with what the wolf had to say. But why-
why
was
anyone listening to this man if he was the bad guy? She might’ve been new to
the game, but she was a hell of a fast learner. Given the fact he was the
reason for her traumatic first transformation, she’d gathered he was not their
friend at this point.

Just thinking about it made her skin crawl. It was
like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. Kadenburg was a town full of
hillbillies and grandmothers who loved to bake; not weird man-bears and
psychotic wolves who liked to feast on said man-bears. It was madness!

“Perhaps you should take this conversation into another
room,” Mrs. Bamey suggested in a soft tone as she gazed at Presley. The worry
was evident on her face.

“Why?” Mr. Bamey asked with a frown as Presley met his
gaze. “Presley has a right to know what these monsters did to us in the past.
She should know
exactly
what they’re going to try to do again.”

Presley couldn’t help but to be curious about what had
happened in the past. She had a feeling that it was going to affect her more
than anything had thus far. Maybe she was wrong, but her instincts never led
her astray.

“Richard, you can’t dump all of this on her,” Mrs.
Bamey frowned. “She’s just a girl.”

Presley fought the urge to roll her eyes. If Mrs.
Bamey thought she was innocent in any way, the woman had another thing coming.
Life had corrupted her since day one and she wasn’t a stranger to bad news.
Who did the woman think she was kidding?

“
She’s just a girl
,” Mr. Bamey mocked with a
scowl. “Take a good look at her, Charlotte. She’s nearly as old as Lorcan.
I’m pretty sure she can handle it.”

“Handle what?” Presley asked as an eerie silence fell
over the room. She’d never felt tension rise as quickly as it did in that very
moment. Lifting a brow, she glanced from one person to another. No one would
meet her gaze. She felt Lorcan’s arm tightening around her and she turned her
head to stare up at him. “What are they hiding from me?”

Just when she thought no one was going to answer her,
Uncle Arnold cleared his throat.

“Why don’t we go into the garage?”

The garage was hardly big enough to fit the truck in,
let alone the seemingly mile high pile of junk her uncle kept around it. It
nearly always smelled like mold and the small light bulb hanging down from the center
of the ceiling barely managed to illuminate a third of the area. Uncle Arnold
was a hoarder and refused to throw anything away. He always said he could use
this or that for something-even though he never did, and the tiniest things
held sentimental value to the guy. Sometimes Presley thought about staging an
intervention.

Cautiously stepping over an old tire that rested
against the dirt floor, Presley hugged her arms around herself from the chill
that met her as soon as she entered the room. Her eyes stayed on her uncle as
he moved towards his bright red toolbox. She remembered the exact moment in
time when he bought that. They had gone “yard saling” one early Saturday
morning when he spotted it sitting alone on a table. That was the same morning
he bought her first bicycle.

“No more secrets,” he started as he grabbed a
screwdriver to toss into the toolbox. He turned his head to glance at her over
his shoulder and Presley could see the conflict on his face. “That’s the new
policy between us, isn’t it?”

Despite the frown tugging at her lips, Presley nodded.

“That’s what I thought,” he murmured as he turned back
around to face her. He leaned against the table as he scratched the side of
his neck. His green eyes met hers and he sighed. “I reckon you need to know
about your aunt Natalie.”

“Aunt Natalie? I don’t have an Aunt Natalie.”

“Yes, you do,” Uncle Arnold nodded. “Or you did. I
don’t reckon you’d want to claim her anymore.”

“Why not?” Presley asked, suddenly defensive. “If
she’s my aunt, I’ll claim her. Why didn’t you ever tell me you and my mom had
another sister?”

“We don’t have another sister,” he replied quietly as
he let his head fall back to peer at the ceiling momentarily. “She’s your
father’s sister.”

Presley felt a jolt of disbelief gripping at her heart
as her mouth fell open. Did she hear that correctly?

“What the hell?” Presley asked angrily. “Why would you
keep that from me? I have an aunt on my father’s side and you never told me!”

“Wait a minute before you get mad,” her uncle insisted
as he held his hands up in front of himself. “You need to know the story
behind it first.”

“What do I need to know?!” Presley bellowed. “I have
family on my father’s side, which you previously allowed me to believe
otherwise, and you never told me about her!” Presley was shaking with sudden
rage as she curled her hands into fists.

“There’s a damn good reason I never told you!” Her
uncle thundered as he slammed his palm against the edge of the table. He hit
it with such force that it sounded like a whip cracking and Presley immediately
froze. Even with the worst things she’d done as a child, he’d never yelled at
her like that before.

It felt like someone was squeezing their hand around
her heart while simultaneously tugging at each organ in her stomach as Presley
lifted her eyes to peer at her uncle again. He was visibly shaking. His eyes
were downcast as his face glazed over with an unreadable emotion. Was he
angry? Sad? Presley couldn’t quite tell in the moment, but part of her wasn’t
sure she wanted to know what brought on the sudden outburst.

“Natalie was your father’s older sister,” he finally
said as he turned his back to her once again. He busied himself with putting
tools into the bright red box, the clink of metal hitting metal ringing loudly
in Presley’s ears. “She always despised what we were. She was ashamed to be
an ursithrope.”

A pang of guilt made its presence known in Presley’s
chest as she frowned and looked down at her bare feet. She didn’t
mean
to despise it. She was more upset with the fact it had been hidden from her
for so long and it had caused so much grief. Wouldn’t anyone be angry over the
fact that
who
and
what
they were caused them to lose a child?
She was justified with her feelings at the moment, wasn’t she?

“Don’t even think like that,” her uncle’s stern voice
jarred her from her thoughts and she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. He
frowned as he shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking right now and it’s
not true. Natalie knew who she was from day one, Presley. Her parents loved
her more than anything in the world and they would’ve bent over backwards for
that girl. It wasn’t anyone’s fault she hated herself so much.”

Presley swallowed the painful lump that formed in her
throat as she nodded in understanding, but it didn’t make her feel any less
guilty. She could tell that this particular topic bothered him a lot more than
it bothered her. She was only upset she’d never known about an aunt until now.

He kept her a secret for a good reason,
she
thought.
Especially now that you know the truth about what you are.

It was still difficult to come
to terms with her new reality. Her entire life had been a lie, and it made her
feel more anger towards her mother for abandoning her than ever before.
Weren’t mother bears supposed to have a love so deep for their cubs that they
wouldn’t leave them until the cub could fend for itself?

Obviously not,
she thought bitterly as she
looked up to see her uncle standing right in front of her.

Uncle Arnold lifted his hands to cup her face in
between them, tilting his head slightly.

“I can’t even begin to imagine how hard this has been
on you, Pretz. I never should have hidden the truth from you, kiddo, but I
just wanted you to have a shot at a normal life. That’s all I ever wanted for
you. I didn’t want you to turn out like your mom, or end up hating us as much
as your aunt Natalie,” he frowned. “I especially didn’t want you to end up
dead like your father.”

Presley flinched, her eyes closing tightly as her mind
wandered back to her dad. He was such a scarce topic of conversation, yet one
question lingered on the tip of her tongue anyway.