Chapter 40

“I don’t know!” Lola said, nearly shouting out the words. She was frustrated, angry, and still coming down from the emotional distress of everything she and Russel had just been through. She had been pushed past the edge of terror over and over again and she still wasn’t back to being okay. The added pressure of knowing that two different werewolf kingdoms wanted her dead wasn’t helping.

She stopped bathing him and took a step back. Tears sprang to her eyes and her body started shaking with the force of her sobs.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. She looked at him with pleading eyes. “You have to believe me. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m a nobody. An unimportant girl from a village so small it doesn’t even show up on maps. Why would your father want me dead? Why did Drake kill all of my family and friends just to get to me? None of this makes any sense.”

Russel gingerly pulled himself out of the bath, most of his hideous wounds nearly fully healed now. His face was still a horror show but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it had been after the fight with his father.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Russel said, pulling her toward him and hugging her close.

She felt the strength of his arms around her and took immense comfort from them. She leaned in closer to him, still crying despite hating herself for being so emotional. There was nothing she could seem to do to stop herself. The tears just kept coming. WIth everything that happened to her, it was a minor miracle that she hadn’t broken down before now. The images of her parents burning to death, of her friends being slaughtered, of Russel nearly dying at the hands of the ghouls, and then his own father all bore down on her mind almost every second. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

“None of this is your fault, you hear me?” Russel continued, still trying to soothe her.

“It has to be,” she murmured. “Why else would all this be happening?”

She looked up at him.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on either or why you’ve been targeted but I am going to find out. Somehow. And you’re not just some girl, Lola. I’ve been with you long enough now to know that’s definitely not true. You’re special.”

“What would be special about me?” she asked.

“You can…do things I haven’t seen anyone else do.” He smiled down at her. “At first, I thought it was my imagination. I thought my mind was making me interpret things that weren’t there but the more time I spent with you, the more I became sure. You know it too, don’t you?”

She didn’t say anything at first, and if she was honest with herself, she really didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

I’ve done things he hasn’t seen before? she asked herself, wondering what he could’ve been talking about. She didn’t remember doing anything out of the ordinary. Although, admittedly, she had gone through so much that she hadn’t had a lot of time to think straight.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, still crying a little but trying to figure out what he meant was distracting her from all the emotional feedback from the trauma. She was actually starting to feel a little better.

“Think,” he encouraged. He wasn’t being pushy or making her feel stupid for not knowing. He genuinely wanted her to see what he’d seen for herself. To come to terms with it on her own. “Just think back to the last few weeks. Do you remember anything out of the ordinary?”

It didn’t come to her. Not at first anyway. Then she remembered the icy sensation she felt crawling along her spine almost every time she encountered something supernatural. Well, something supernatural with a murderous intent directed at her. Or, maybe it wasn’t just creatures meaning to kill her. Maybe it was any supernatural creature that meant to hurt her in some way. When Russel had snuck up behind her and she’d gotten that sensation, he wasn’t trying to kill her.

“Are you talking about the times when I’ve felt supernatural creatures coming to hurt me?” she asked.

“I mean, yeah, that was one of the things I was talking about. Is that how you’ve been doing that? You feel something?” He seemed genuinely fascinated by the idea that she could sense something or that she had an actual, physical reaction to creatures.

“Yes,” she told him. “It’s like ice water being poured down my spine. But it only happens when something is trying to hurt or kill me. When you first found me, I didn’t feel anything. And I think it’s because you meant me no harm.”

“That is incredible,” Russel said, eyes gleaming. “Having some kind of extra sense geared toward the supernatural would definitely make you important, even more so than I originally thought. I was also referring to the fact that you are immune to ghoul poison. I have never encountered anyone with a natural immunity to the stuff. I wonder now, though, if that has something to do with your ability to sense supernatural creatures. How long have you been able to do that?”

“It started in Gloucester when Drake came,” she said, her voice a silent whisper. More images and flashbacks bombarded her mind. All of them full of fire, blood, and corpses. “It’s one of the reasons why I managed to get away. I got that feeling and it drove me to visit this spot in the forest I loved to go to. At the time, I didn’t realize what was happening, only that something inside me wanted out of Gloucester and quickly. When I came back, the whole town was on fire.”

“And it’s just grown since then? When did you realize the sensation wasn’t some kind of fluke?” he pressed. He felt like he was finally getting somewhere. A human that could pinpoint supernatural creatures, even if they were disguised as humans, was dangerous to them. It meant they wouldn’t be able to hide behind any masks. But how did she acquire that ability? Was it bred into her? Some kind of spell maybe? If so, why use a spell on a human girl out in the middle of nowhere? That would be senseless and damn near useless.

“It hasn’t really grown. I just finally…noticed it, I guess. Once things weren’t as crazy anymore, and I could think straight, I realized it was there.”

“Don’t mention that to anyone else but me,” Russel said. “I’m not sure if my father knew about it but if he did, he kept it close to his chest and didn’t say anything about it to anyone.”

“Do you think he knew?” she asked. “I don’t know how. I didn’t even know.”

“I’m not sure but if you didn’t know, then it isn’t very likely,” he answered. “But we are going to figure everything out. I promise.”

He gently pulled her face up and kissed her. She embraced his kiss and let the sensation of it sweep away all the horrors of the past few weeks, at least for a little while. When they broke away from each other, she guided him back to the bath and he finished getting clean. Ten or so minutes later, he got back out, toweled himself off, and the two went back into the bedroom and laid down on the bed.

Exhaustion took over the both of them and in just seconds, they were asleep.