Since We Are Apart

Chapter 2. The Kennel

"Have you packed all your things?" Kostya glanced around the room.

"I think so," I said, approaching the bed, which I had made almost perfectly, trying to kill time until my father arrived. Despite my expectations, the medication didn’t help me fall asleep. I wanted so much to be home that I kept running through in my mind what I needed to do. Kostya had brought most of the textbooks almost immediately so I wouldn’t fall behind the gymnasium curriculum and lose my place because of low grades. However, for most written assignments, internet access was required, and the signal inside the hospital was so weak that Dasha had to send the list of homework by subject via SMS. Who even uses SMS when the world has long had messengers and social networks? No matter how annoyed I was about it, I had to accept the reality and endure it.

As I reached for the bag with my things, Kostya lightly slapped my palm and hurriedly moved me aside.

"Dad," I protested immediately, "I’m not fragile. It weighs almost nothing; I’ve already lifted it several times while packing."

"Not fragile, of course, but the nurses shouldn’t see you casually carrying heavy things after a month in a hospital bed. The staff here, like most city dwellers, expect a weak, pale girl who has just recovered. Maintaining the right image others expect of you is part of the game. Now come on, move over."

Kostya threw the long strap of the sports bag over his shoulder and took a bag of textbooks and books in each hand—books I had managed to read during my "illness." I had only a few at home, but as soon as Dasha heard about the poor internet, she immediately rummaged through her own shelves and arrived with an impressive stack. Of course, Stas had driven her during one of the first visits so that Romanova wouldn’t have to struggle with bags on the bus during rush hour. It seemed to me that Smirnov had found a common language with her, although maybe that illusion was due to Dasha’s inevitable following of Tanya. As far as I knew, Darya had only two friends because of her shyness, and since one was in the hospital and the other tried to spend all her free time hanging around Stanislav, Dasha often had to be the “third wheel.”

"Dr. Smirnov asked to say that I need to come back for a check-up in four days," I remembered Vladimir’s request as Kostya and I walked down the long hospital corridor. "The treatment course needs to be finished."

My father nodded briefly and frowned but said nothing. Adjusting the bag on his shoulder, Kostya kept walking forward as if he wanted to quickly pass by the open doors of the shared wards where patients lay. From one room came groans; from another, the cheerful voice of a gymnastics instructor. When I peeked into the third ward, I noticed two girls who looked a couple of years younger than me playing cards, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds. I wondered how long they had been in the hospital. Maybe I should have left the ward more often, and then the lonely morning hours, when all my friends were busy, would have been a little easier to bear.

***

Seeing the long-awaited sign to Bugrad from the car window, I smiled. Just a little more — and home. I closed my eyes, recalling the scent of my favorite lavender candle. The softness of the blanket I had ordered online during my confinement within four walls because of the Kserton “maniac.” All those events seemed so distant, as if they happened in another, forgotten life. I never would have thought that one day I’d be waiting with such impatience to return to the walls of my own room. A month ago, I was ready to argue with Kostya just to go out with friends to the nearest mall or cinema, or go on a date with Nick.

But that life was gone for me.

Or was it?

I opened my eyes: the car kept rushing forward, Kostya was speeding down the highway, but now taking us further away from home.

"I thought we were going straight home."

"The plans changed," Kostya said without taking his eyes off the road, his expression unreadable. "You know, Dr. Smirnov called me last night and said you’re not going to seek treatment."

I stayed silent, trying to read the emotions on my father’s face but only getting lost in guesses about how Kostya felt about my decision. Mentally, I cursed Vladimir with words I probably wouldn’t dare say out loud. So much for doctor-patient confidentiality!

"So it’s true then."

Dad gripped the steering wheel tighter. The leather of his gloves creaked under the strain.

"No matter what I say, you won’t listen, as usual."

"You’re right about that," I interrupted mid-sentence, bracing to defend myself. How quickly the family world was shaking again, for the same reason. When would Kostya finally understand he can’t decide things for me? I thought after that Halloween night my father understood past mistakes and planned to build a bridge of understanding between us — a bridge I was powerless to finish alone from the other side. But Kostya seemed to have been nurturing a completely opposite decision in his mind all month, which meant that in the near future he would want to clip my barely spread wings again.

"Let me finish," he said after a pause during which I crossed my arms and turned to the window where the scenery matched my mood. "I’m not going to talk you out of it."

I smirked, sensing the trap set ahead. Kostya couldn’t give up and accept what was happening as easily as I wished. I just couldn’t believe it and was building myself up to be less disappointed when facing reality.

Black trunks of bare trees lined the highway in neat rows, stretching deep into the distance, creating the illusion of an endless forest. The whole world was a garden that a dark witch had cursed to eternal sleep, and the trees could only dream of warm summer days under the sun.

"If you decide being a werewolf isn’t for you, then you should first learn the price you’ll have to pay for that choice."

Skeptical, I grimaced at how pompous the phrase sounded — as if an old TV show about the knights of the Round Table was playing, and a madman with a ridiculous prophecy had just appeared on screen, a prophecy the writers would forget by next season and never explain. If Dad wanted to scare me, it didn’t work.

"And what’s the price? Let me guess: you’ll have to chain yourself up for a few hours before the full moon, down in a dark basement, ooooh," I fluttered my fingers in the air, trying to sound spooky.

If I wanted the phrase to sound like Kostya’s warnings, I failed miserably. I quickly burst into nervous laughter, afraid that such a future might be waiting for me soon.

"I already told you the moon phases only have an indirect influence over us. Yes, the closer to the full moon, the sharper the senses even in human form, but that doesn’t mean the moonlight touching your skin will instantly trigger the process. All those tales were made to confuse clever people who suspect something is wrong. The same goes for silver bullets: it makes no difference whether you’re shot with an ordinary gun or with custom-made rounds. Either way, it’s going to hurt like hell," Dad’s lips trembled in disgust, as if he remembered well what that felt like.

"But aconite isn’t a myth then," I recalled the strange reaction when touching the flower in Denis’s greenhouse.

"No, not a myth," Dad repeated, turning on the blinker to exit the highway into the woods. "Basically, I didn’t lie when I said there was a family allergy."

"Too bad you didn’t warn me beforehand," I said reproachfully, but Dad seemed not to notice, still staring at the road ahead.

"How often do you find aconite growing in the middle of a field? The plant is poisonous to people too, though in small doses it’s used in topical ointments. Maria and I never imagined we needed to create at least some convincing legend to warn in advance."

Mentioning Mom’s name softened me. I missed Maria, who I knew as a caring, cheerful mother. She was like a calm island associated with a happy childhood and youthful years with problems that paled in comparison to what had happened in the past three months. After brief persuasion from Dad, Maria didn’t come to Kserton. Being a simple person, it was dangerous for Mom to be near me. At least that’s what Kostya thought, and no matter how much it irritated me that Dad decided again from his high horse how others should live, there was no point in arguing. I knew too little about the creature inside me that had yet to even hint at its existence. Either I didn’t see the obvious or simply didn’t want to give up and accept the fact that my plans for a university future had collapsed like a house of cards as soon as fate’s little prank struck the table with a slap.

"In short," Kostya’s voice pulled me back when I drifted away, "I’m taking you to the Karimovs now, and you’ll see the consequences with your own eyes."

"To the Karimovs?" I asked again, hoping I’d misheard. "Nick’s parents?"

"Yes. Nikita won’t be there, of course. No one’s seen him since that ill-fated night, and neither the pack nor the twins have any idea where young Karimov could have gone. You probably already know that Maxim and Viola are hereditary hunters?" Dad glanced briefly at me for the first time on the road, and I nodded.

"Not just know," unpleasant memories flashed in my mind of the twins dealing with Lyudmila’s accomplice. Every time I remembered that day, I felt Gleb’s arms wrap around my neck from behind. How a wet cloth, smelling sharply, was pressed tightly against my face — a smell I would never confuse with anything else.

My first date with Nick ended with my k********g, and in hindsight, it was disgusting to realize that Karimov had deliberately led me into my mother’s clutches for punishment. It was only in the hospital that Vladimir told me about vampires’ ability to manipulate human emotions, though among purebloods, it was considered bad form. Nick, probably at his mother’s behest, saw no problem with manipulation and eagerly played on the strings of my soul, deceiving me, turning every “no” into a “yes.” A week into the hospital stay, I started noticing that I remembered many things differently than before that Halloween night. Small details returned to me twisted by my own feelings. It felt like I was slowly going mad, confused in my thoughts, not knowing for sure where reality ended and fiction began. Despite my distrust of Dr. Smirnov, he was sensitive to changes in my mood and suspected something was wrong, which led to a painful conversation about false love that Nick easily imposed on me from the outside, and I was only too glad to be deceived...

"I’ve seen the twins in action," I clarified, noticing how hard it was to keep my thoughts on track. There must have been too much visual noise around after the hospital walls. It was unusual and difficult to focus on just one thing.

"I hope you won’t have to again."

"They have peculiar, but effective methods."

You couldn’t describe it better.