Chapter 6

Sam Elrod has really evolved during the process of rewriting this novel again. I've debated on taking his story further and writing a sequel that follows his life after this one ends.

Chapter 6

 

            Due to the nature of my career, I have enjoyed having the company of a variety of friends and companions from all spectrums of differing race and social background. While I have enjoyed the society of my human colleagues, I have also had the privilege of becoming acquainted with others who live in a similar state of ambiguity as myself. Not all have necessarily been Lycans.

One individual in particular, who has proven himself time and again to be a very good and loyal sort of friend and is ever eager to make himself useful, came into my knowing during my practice in New York. Being the sprawling old city that it is, it is not illogical to admit that humans are not the only ones that might thrive in its shadowed corners and forgotten streets. 

            Gideon Draun was much like Katia when I first met him; he was little more than a child and rather ignorant of himself. Just as Katia was, he too knew very little about the nature of his race and his place in the world or his own capabilities. I will admit that upon meeting him the first time, I too was baffled at first as to what he was. His kind, called Uncianthropes, are not so common as other races who likewise choose to live outside of the realm of human acknowledgment. So few of them remain, in fact, that they number hardly into several hundred and very little is known about them because of how extremely removed they were from the rest of the world.

            At the time I first met him, I had taken to working the long night shifts in order to avoid the bulk of patients coming into the ER during the daylight hours. This allowed me a little more free time to indulge my own studies and also allowed me to spend the days with Katia. However, on this particular night, Gideon was brought into the ER by ambulance and appeared to be in dire shape from which a normal young man his age might not have recovered. He had sustained massive wounds as a result of having been struck by a speeding car, an 18-wheeler as I was later informed, and I had my initial doubts that he should live very long at all.

He’d been conscious the entire ambulance ride and was still responsive, one of the nurses informed me, and both his legs were broken, he had massive internal bleeding that likely implied substantial damage, and he’d sustained massive head trauma. Looking at him at last, I was resigned to the paperwork I would have to do after he did die while under my care. The human body, after all, can only renew itself from so much damage and while it has astounded me in some instances, there are not enough miracles in the ER to warrant irrational faith.

But Gideon’s body was not that of a human and upon seeing him and observing him and acknowledging his scent, I became aware of this and my opinion of his fate was changed. I was intrigued, having never seen an Uncianthrope before and hardly knowing anymore about them than their name.

Through methods facilitated by the unquestioning respect of my colleagues, I was able to take Gideon into my own private care and see to his healing that really needed little encouragement from myself. His kind, like my own, is far more durable than what would be normal for a human being and I supplied him only with a needed dose of medication to dull the pain while his body repaired itself speedily. It took only three days for him to be well enough to walk around the townhouse where Katia and I lived.

Physically, he looked to be little more than a boy of high school age with hair of an odd, sandy platinum color. Normally his age would have been highly deceptive and his mind would have been far exceeding his appearance in regards to wisdom and maturity, but his past was unique and had, in essence, prevented him from maturing beyond the age that he appeared to be.

He gravitated to Katia and she relished having someone nearer to her age to befriend, but was quickly bored with the maturity difference between them. I was able to extract very little from him about his past simply because he knew little about his origins. He had been left at an orphanage when he appeared to be a toddler and was adopted several years after. His adoptive family was lukewarm, at best, and he refused to divulge much about them apart from they took notice to his lack of physical maturity and took it as some kind of disease. I suspect they probably treated him with indifference or neglect, else his race would have been discovered quickly as something other than human. For any grudge he may have against them because of this, I fear he really cannot see the blessing in it to have been able to remain anonymous.

He discovered himself quite accidentally and as soon as he became aware that his difference encompassed more than just slow aging, he fled from his adoptive family and began a fruitless search for others like himself. It was years later, on this same search, that I came across him and was able to shed some light upon his confused race and origins.

Gideon was grateful for what little information I could provide, but I did not have the wherewithal or nurturing instincts to see that he was educated properly about the human world, his own race, or anything else for that matter. So I commended custody of him to my elder stepsister, Ima Brunhilde, who had always been a faithful and affectionate relation and was residing in New York as well.

Ima, always eager to find a willing recipient for her energetic attentions, was pleased to take responsibility for Gideon and came to retrieve him personally. She gladly took him into her care and has been faithful to keep me informed about his progress. This information I gladly received and quickly reciprocated with what I had been able to uncover about the details of his near extinct race.

 

~>*<~

 

             Charly believed that she had been careful to remain unseen when she left her room later that evening. She had redressed in a far more casual ensemble of an old sweatshirt that was two sizes too big and a pair of cotton shorts. The house was oddly silent, her mother and father nowhere to be seen and Sam was oddly absent too. On any other night, she would have been more inclined to seek them out, but after all that had transpired that day, Charly was all but lost amidst her own thoughts.

She paused in the living room, pulling one of her mother’s handmade quilts from the back of the couch and making for the front door on quiet bare feet. The air was cold outside as she opened the door, wrapping the quilt around her and going to sit in the swing on the front porch. The old chains moaned when she sat and then fell silent as she remained still, her knees tucked up close to her body and her thick gold curls spilling about her face and shoulders.

It was nearly dark and the world had grown dim. From the porch swing she could see out across the rolling valley where nothing stirred or made a sound. The world felt empty. There were no fireflies to light the dusk like fleeting, warm yellow stars. The mountains stood, breathless cold spires that stood guard against the rest of the world. Each passing minute brought a handful more of brilliant stars scattered across the sky. And Charly felt a more disturbingly abrupt sense of loneliness than she had ever experienced before.

Somewhere out there across the fields and through the coming night, there was a light lit in a window of Dervyshire Park where he was. She couldn’t help but wonder if might ever pause there and look out that window with his calm silver eyes, watching the world fade away.

The front door opened and Charly flinched, looking through fluffed gold curls to where Sam was coming outside. He closed the door, looking like he’d showered, changed clothes, and cleaned himself up since she had seen him last. His blonde hair was still wet and the nearer he came, the more she could smell the strong flavor of whatever aftershave it was he used. She could feel the touch of his inquisitive blue eyes though she didn’t look back up at him, curled beneath the mound of her mother’s quilt.

“Someone was calling you.” He spoke, holding out his hand down towards her with her cell phone resting in his palm.

Charly’s expression was sharp as stuck a hand out from beneath the warmth of the quilt to snatch it from his open hand. “Thanks.”

Sam was quiet for a little while, standing there before the swing, until he finally closed the distance between them and turned around to sit on the swing next to her. Perhaps he’d been hoping she might tell him who had called or volunteer a conversation of her own, but her eyes like wild green rose thorns were fixed upon the valley that stretched out from her front porch.

“I know we haven’t really had a chance to talk since I came back,” He started, “But I think we need to iron some stuff out.”

She was quick to rebuke him; perhaps faster than he had anticipated, “There is nothing we need to talk about, Sam.”

Sam frowned, “Come on, Charly, can I at least explain some stuff to you?”

“You can have nothing to say that I would want to hear.” She quipped. Her subconscious was acutely aware of having had this conversation with him before on several occasions. But whatever clarity she must have lacked then she hoped she could now afford in greater detail. “You’ve spent a lot of time assuming far too much about me. Or taking my parent’s advice about me as fact, I cannot decide which is worse.”

His forehead creased as his jaw tightened a bit, raking some of his wet blonde hair away from his face, “I’ve been in love with you for a long time, Charly, the least you could do is let me get that off my chest.”

She snapped her head around to look at him, dark green eyes touched with wrath, “Don’t you dare say that to me. You are in love with the idea of me and nothing more.”

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t a call you get to make.” He countered, matching her frustration and anger with his own.

“It is in this case. To be in love with someone you must know them and you, Sam Elrod, know nothing about me. So I can only conclude that it is the idea of my allowing you to get to know me and therefore love me that you are so infatuated with.” Her eyes narrowed squarely upon his, recoiling to the other side of the swing.

“Who is that Randolf guy?” He demanded without a second of pause. His face became extremely smug and satisfied when he witnessed that her own visage was utterly stunned and speechless. “You’re letting him get to know you, right? What is he to you?”

For what little time she had to reassemble her countenance, Charly managed to appear somewhat resolved and insulted. It wasn’t as difficult as she had suspected it might be which made it all the more surprising to her. “What I do and who I spend my time with isn’t any of your concern.”

“So you like him then?” He pressed further, his expression hardening.

She pressed her lips together bitterly into a small snarl, “Get out of my face, Sam, and out of my life. It isn’t any of your business.”

He hardly seemed affected at all by her threats and snorted, looking away back to the front door with an unnerving smile upon his lips. There was nothing at all friendly or amusing about it and she was surprised at how it concerned and nearly frightened her; as if she were watching a serial killer smile over the thought of his next victim.

“I’m not giving up, you know. I’ve known you a lot longer than he has, loved you a lot longer. Maybe he’s some kind of foreign fling or whatever. Or maybe you’re just flattered at having a guy like that flinging money and charm in your direction, but I’m not going to give up.” He looked at her with that unsettling grin still intact, “You’re playing at a dangerous game with him, Charly. Just make sure you don’t bet too much of what you can’t stand to lose.”

She made no reply as he stood up and went back inside the house, leaving her alone in the cold night air with her cell phone squeezed tightly in her hand. It was only then that she thought to look down and see whom it was that had called. Kim’s number was attached to the missed call announcement and she let out a trembling exhale of exhausted relief.

“Sorry I missed your call. Saw Randolf again today.” She typed carefully into a replying text message to her.

            Kim’s response took only half a minute and made her phone chirp and glow excitedly, “WHAT?? HOW??”

            “Met him in town & had lunch. We talked for a while.” Her fingers paused as she hesitated, nibbling at her bottom lip before she finished, “I think I like him…a lot.”

            The next reply from Kim took a bit longer and the message flashed on the screen after several minutes of anxious waiting, “IF UR SURE THEN U GOTTA LET HIM KNO ASAP. ILL HELP IF U NEED ME 2.”

            Charly could not but smile slightly, typing her last response in before she set her phone aside and resumed her quiet, meditative stare across the valley from her front porch swing.

            “He invited me to visit him at Dervyshire. You have to come with me. I’ll call you tomorrow with details. Night!”

Author's Note

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