Sisters Red

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  throw me off. I can feel its pulse, feel its throat tightening as it gasps for air. Its eyes turn dark umber; one claw rips across my back; the monster struggles, thrashes. I stare at its eyes. Look at me--let me be the last thing you see.

  Tears begin to stream down my cheeks and fall into the Alpha's greasy fur. He took Silas from me. Took him like it was nothing, like he wasn't the one I love. How could I not make the beast suffer? I feel like someone else, like I can't be the same person who kissed Silas in this lot just over a week before. Like I'm powerful, like I'm strong, like I'm my sister. Like I can stop my pain by taking the monster's life. I tighten my grip around its neck, relishing the dullness in its eyes.

  The Alpha stops struggling. Darkness explodes over the lot, blackening the streetlights, the sky. It unfurls in the air like a great black kite, then explodes into a million pieces that flee into the abandoned apartment building like scared vagrants. I fall to the ground, my body shaking from effort and exhaustion, and turn toward my love.

  He's pale, so white that the blood running from his small wound looks violently red. He's perfectly still. At first I think he's dead, but then he blinks and meets my eyes. He's calm and breathes slowly, as though he's appreciating each inhale. My blood cools, the anger dissipates, and suddenly my skin feels cold. I want to close my eyes, I want to cover my ears, and I want for all of this to not be happening. I want Silas to kiss me, to wake me up from this nightmare.

  Instead, I crawl toward him, unable to stand.

  "It'll be okay," I lie, choked breaths distorting my words

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  as I reach him. I touch the wound on his chest, trembling. If only I could get the poison out, pull it from him into me. Silas struggles to sit up. I grab his shoulders and pull him forward, and blood from his chest seeps onto me. We're both wondering the same thing, I'm certain: how long does it take?

  Silas breathes against my neck and winces as he reaches up to stroke my hair. I tighten my grip around him, as if I might be able to hold him back against the transformation. Tears run down my face and onto his shoulder.

  "You have to go, Rosie," he says gently after a few moments.

  I don't move.

  "You have to get away from me." His voice is harder, trying to sound determined.

  "I can't," I choke. It's the truth--I don't think I can pull my hands away from him. I entwine my fingers in his hair, inhale the scent of his skin. "I love you," I whisper.

  "I love you too, Rosie," he says slowly and moves away so we're looking in each other's eyes. He runs his fingertips down my cheek, his thumb across my lips. He lets his hands fall to my shoulders, as though he's studying me carefully one last time.

  "Stay with me," I plead. My throat is so tight from holding back cries that the words are little more than a whisper. Silas's hands tighten on me and I tense--is this the beginning of the change? I can't fight him, I can't hurt him, even if he's the monster--he can have me. He can devour me.

  But no, he's not a monster yet. He pulls me against him

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  and kisses me, arms wrapped tightly around my body and desperation on his lips. I can feel his heart pounding through his chest as I press myself against him. We kiss as if it's the first time, and I know he's as afraid to pull away as I am because when the kiss is over, everything is over.

  He pulls away first. Tears leak out of the corners of his eyes, but his jaw is firm, resolved. I can't control the cry that escapes from my lips, the garbled pleas for him to kiss me again, to not let everything end. Everything about me tangles--my words, my fingers, my tears, my mind. Silas looks solemnly over at my sister, who has pulled herself to standing in the midst of my sorrow.

  "Scarlett," he says hoarsely. "You promised."

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SCARLETT

  MY BODY DOESN'T WANT TO MOVE; IT PROTESTS EACH breath, each tiny step toward my sister and Silas. Rosie crumples to the ground near him after he holds off her attempts to get back by his side. Her eyes are wide and wet, her body trembles, and her fingers dig into the dirt, as though she's looking to grab something that can make her spinning world stop.

  "I promised," I answer Silas, though I'm saying it as much to myself as I am to him. I promised. I promised my partner. He saved my life; I can't deny him a promise. Silas moves away from my sister as best he can, closer to me. Rosie chokes on tears, as if each inch between them is making it harder to breathe. I take another step toward Silas, searching for any sign that he's already changed, that I have to move

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  far faster than I want to. But those are still his sparkling, determined eyes.

  My stomach lurches when I get close enough to see the bites in detail. Puncture wounds crescent around his chest and spit blood at me as I raise my free hand to my mouth. I'd hoped there had been some sort of mistake, that I hadn't seen what I'd thought I'd seen. But no, he's been bitten. He will lose his soul, and he will want to devour my sister like a monster. He isn't Silas, or, at least, he won't be for long.

  "Silas..." I say his name softly, like a prayer.

  He swallows hard. "I'm so sorry, Lett," he answers.

  "You saved me," I murmur, shaking my head, throat thick with unreleased sobs.

  "Don't let it bother you too much," he jokes, but his voice shakes.

  I look away and close my eye against the flood of tears that begin to fall, hoping that my aim will be true even with the convulsing way I'm sobbing. I turn back to see Silas reaching into his shirt pocket. He removes a tiny folded paper rose and clutches it as if it might save him.

  "I don't know that I..." I try to speak, but my voice breaks and refuses to pull itself back together. Silas shakes his head at me.

  "You promised. Don't look at me. I'm just another wolf. Just another monster."

  I obey, squeezing my eye shut again so that my cheek is inundated with tears.

  "I can't," I protest over Rosie's sobs.

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  "Yes, you can. You're a hunter, Lett. I'm a wolf," he says slowly, coaxing me through it. I raise my hatchet. "Come on, Lett. Do it," he murmurs, so quietly that I'm sure Rosie can't hear.

  "Silas," I plead, shaking my head.

  "Do it."

  "No--"

  "Kill me, Lett, before I change. I don't want you and Rosie to see me changed."

  "I--"

  I'm cut off again, not by him, but by the sound of the church's horribly mechanical bells tolling.

  Once. Twice. Twelve times, the tinny sound echoing through the lot.

  "Midnight," I whisper frantically.

  "What?" Silas says. I look at him, his face contorted into a worried grimace.

  "Midnight," I whisper again. I release my hatchet, and it falls into the dirt with a heavy thud. "The clock rang once for the quarter hour before the wolf pinned me. It's been over for nineteen minutes, since eleven forty-one. You're not a wolf, Silas."

  Silas presses his lips together and closes his eyes. "I-I..." he stutters, and his lips seem incapable of forming words. Instead he looks up at me, eyes filled with emotion. I fall to my knees and take his hand. I want to speak, want to reassure him that it's okay, but words fail me. Instead we stare at each other, hands locked together.

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  Until Rosie inhales, a sharp, wounded sound. I turn toward her and see her face pressed against the dirt, hands over her ears. She hadn't wanted to hear it--hadn't wanted to know the moment that I killed him. I release Silas's hands and crawl across the ground toward her.

  I pull her hands away from her ears, then wrap my arms around her, pulling her up from the ground as I do so. Her eyes are squeezed shut, tears forcing through the corners and running down her face. I hear Silas stand and take several unsure steps toward us.

  Rosie hears it too.

  Her body freezes. Everything about her stops as she listens to him take the final step forward. She opens her eyes--they're red and longing as they meet mine, as if
she wants me to confirm that what she suspects is true, that he's standing just behind her. I smile as best I can through my own tears, and Rosie whirls around.

  Silas drops to his knees and he and Rosie fall against each other, as though they each need the other to hold them up. Rosie laughs, cries, speaks all at once, but I can't understand her. Silas seems to, though, and he nods as they hold each other so tightly that it becomes difficult to tell where she ends and he begins.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Rosie

  Scarlett doesn't want to go to the hospital. Not surprising, really, since we have to come up with an elaborate story about how we all got so severely wounded.

  "Dogfight. We broke one up," my sister answers for us as a horrified emergency room receptionist looks at Scarlett's raw, bleeding shoulders.

  "Dogs dislike us." Silas shrugs, clutching the wound on his chest. He glances down at the burn wounds on my legs. I think they might scar, but it's hard to say. The receptionist speaks into a walkie-talkie, then lets her eyes travel from the fresh wounds to the ancient scars on Scarlett's body.

  "Dogs pretty much hate me," Scarlett says testily. The poor receptionist looks relieved when the ER doctors appear and usher us down the hall.

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  The doctors give me ointment for my legs, shaking their heads when I tell them that not one of us has health insurance. Scarlett is the worst off. They cover her shoulders in bandages until she looks as though she's wearing football pads, but she draws the line when they ask her to stay in the hospital overnight. By the time we've quietly snuck out without paying, it's dawn. The first few rays of hazy lavender light are fingering their way into the sky, the cool blues reflecting off the glass and concrete buildings.

  Silas calls a taxi--a luxury that we can't afford but feel we deserve--and we speed through the nearly empty streets without talking. He takes my hand in his, and I meet his eyes meaningfully.

  "You understand," Silas says quietly--the words are just for me, but I know Scarlett hears--"I'm... when I'm twenty-eight, Rosie. You know what this means. I'm dangerous, Rosie."

  "You plan on loving me when you're twenty-eight?" I interrupt, uncertain if my question is serious or not.

  Silas's eyes widen in surprise. He turns to look out the taxi window for a moment, and when his eyes meet mine again, there's a beautiful sincerity glistening in the gray-blue irises. "Rosie... I love you. Now, when I'm twenty-eight, when I'm thirty-five... I love you."

  I exhale. "Okay, then."

  "But I'm--"

  I put a finger against his soft, bow-shaped lips. "Okay, then."

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  Silas closes his eyes and nods in relief. He's right--I probably should be thinking about what this will mean in seven years, what it means now, how close we all came to a very different fate, but all my fears vanish and a single warm feeling fills my body and mind: completeness. Well, that, coupled with total and utter exhaustion. I take Scarlett's hand with my free one.

  "You're happy?" I ask quietly over the hum of morning talk radio. The driver takes a sharp turn and I bump Scarlett's wounded shoulder. She winces but nods in response.

  "I suppose. Fenris are dead. The Alpha is gone. For now," she says, sighing contentedly. For the first time in weeks, she looks calm, as though her mind isn't on the hunt. "We're safe."

  "We can go home?" I ask hopefully, visions of the cottage and long grass and streets that are more dust than garbage flitting through my head.

  My sister nods, ends of bandages fluttering around her face like scarves. "I think we are long past due to go home."

  Packing to leave Atlanta is a lot easier than packing to come here. We bundle most everything up in our bedsheets and cram clothing into duffel bags, leaving the rugs and thrift store findings to whoever the next tenant may be. We leave the next morning, Scarlett waving a sarcastic farewell to the junkie downstairs before we take off in the hatchback, pop

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  music blasting and me leaning toward Silas, both to avoid the door of death and to rest my head against his biceps.

  Ellison hasn't changed, unsurprisingly. Buildings here are yellow and pale gold instead of harsh steel and silver. Trees dapple the sunlight across the car. The air is warmer, like loving arms that swirl around me for comfort. It's so good to be home.

  Days pass. Weeks. Silas and I steal moments together. We kiss, we touch, we let our fingers graze each other's shoulders whenever my sister isn't looking. I want to wrap my arms around him and lie on the couch for hours on end, but Scarlett... Just because she knows, just because she doesn't say anything about us, doesn't mean she doesn't busy herself whenever she sees us touch, or find a sudden reason to sprint out the screen door if we lean in to kiss.

  "She'll come around, Rosie," Silas assures me one day as we watch Scarlett dig up the mostly ruined potatoes from the garden. It's evening, and fireflies blink on and off around the yard like living Christmas lights. The table outside is set--most of Oma March's old and battered dishes filled with as many of her garden recipes as I could find. Mashed potatoes with sweet butter, stuffed green peppers, watermelon cut into sugary pink squares. Even food tastes better here, as though the city food we'd been eating had been missing something integral.

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  "We're ready to eat?" Scarlett asks, rising as Silas and I kick open the screen door, letting it slam behind us. She ripped the bandages off her shoulders weeks ago, and now new, shiny pink scars lace her skin, as if she's only badly sunburned. My legs have healed almost completely, and I have to admit, I'm somewhat proud of the few dotted burn scars that remain. Silas and I slide onto the smooth wooden picnic bench, and Scarlett joins us on the opposite side. We don't speak, just serve our plates in silence. Scarlett glances back at the moon behind her. It's full, heavy and white in the sky. When she turns back to me, our eyes meet for a moment.

  And there it is.

  I knew it would return; I just didn't know when. The look, the need that I saw for wandering in my mother's eyes, I see for hunting in Scarlett's. I never expected her to quit, and it was only a matter of time before she wanted to begin training again, hunting in the night, buying gauze and scented soap and using our newfound knowledge of Potentials to track them. It is not a sickness, it's a passion, I now realize, a passion to hunt the same way a painter must paint or a singer must sing. It's her blood and her heart.

  We don't need to speak. I drop the slice of watermelon I'm holding and Scarlett slowly rises, because we both know. We both know the light is there, and there's no use pretending the shadows are real. I swing my bare legs out from under the picnic table, Scarlett mirroring my actions, and we meet at the table's head, entangling our arms around each other

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  and breathing in the scent of each other's hair while Silas watches, silent, confused.

  My sister has the heart of an artist with a hatchet and an eye patch. And I, we both now know, have a heart that is undeniably, irreparably different.

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  EPILOGUE A Fairy Tale, Seven Months After

  The sisters walk slowly. Their arms are weighed down with bags, and the afternoon sun beats down on their necks mercilessly. Scarlett stops to drop a handful of change into a street drummer's bucket while Rosie pauses to count the money in her pocket. Their thoughts are on each other as they almost always are. They reach their destinations simultaneously, Rosie on the platform of a train station with her luggage in tow, and Scarlett asking one of the junkies to grab the apartment door for her.

  There are letters outside Scarlett's door, and it looks as if someone has already rooted through some of the mail. She grabs what's left--the important ones almost always get left anyhow. The ones from Rosie. She kicks open the heavy wooden door and drops her bags just inside, tearing into the paper eagerly.

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  The cursive handwriting tells her that Silas is still learning to play guitar--and still isn't very good at it--and that Rosie is practicing all of Oma Marc
h's old recipes--and isn't very good at them. Scarlett smiles and sets the card on the dining table with the others. There are hundreds, one almost every day, filled with folded roses and swans and frogs. They come from different cities--San Francisco, Phoenix, Boston, New York. Silas sold his father's house so he and Rosie could use the money to visit and make amends with his siblings, to get purposefully lost in strange places, to eat local fare and hold hands as they explore the world together. Their lives are the eager question "Where should we go?" while Scarlett's is a resolute answer: "Here is where I am needed."

  The sisters rarely call each other, because whenever they hear the other's voice, they repeat the same things into the phone: I love you, I miss you, are we making a mistake? And both know the answer to the question. No, this is not a mistake. This is a hard, and perhaps cruel, necessity.

  Rosie grins as Silas catches up to her, two train tickets in his hand. He abandons his suitcase and puts his arms around her. They kiss like lovers in an old movie, two people who don't care if others are watching. She giggles as he looks at her adoringly, as though she is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen and if he blinks, she may vanish. She runs her fingers across the hair at the nape of his neck and smiles as the train pulls into the station.

  Scarlett climbs the stairs to the rooftop deck. Tonight will be a good night to hunt. Already the desire to take to