from having slain one of my own kind, almost knocked me off my feet, and it was possible I was the first one ever in history to have experienced it.
Evil just doesn't exist in the Fangborn. At least, it hadn't before now.
I threw my head back and howled, my inhuman blood singing, the completeness and rightness of my triumph dizzying.
But somewhere in the back of my brain, the part that stays human, I knew it was the last time I'd feel that way.
On Christmas Eve, Claudia found me down in the basement of my house. It's finished with mats on the floors and walls so we can train in private.
"That's some sweat you're working up there," she yelled. She was wearing her T-shirt with the bull's-eye printed over her heart, the one that says, GO AHEAD AND TRY IT, BUFFY.
I was flaked out on the floor in three layers of sweats, my headphones on, music turned to eleven. I considered her statement, then showed her a finger.
She came over to the stereo, cranked it up to fourteen or twenty so I had to pull the headphones off, then she switched off the CD. She glanced at the player.
"Disintegration. Nice. And have you been down here since yesterday, moping out to The Cure? I'm going to take my old CDs away from you if you're going to behave like an adolescent."
"I am an adolescent." And I am, by my people's standards. Just a pup.
"I get that. Gerry, you peed on Weems's car!"
I shrugged. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.
After I'd returned, still wolfself, to the school, Claudia had sold most of the story to a suspicious Weems. She was out walking her dog when she saw the school bus. Not wanting to feel like a fool if it wasn't the missing children, she'd explored, then found the kids. The kids, still under her chemical thrall, had confirmed it: the scary man's dog had attacked the nice lady's doggie, who chased both the bad guys away. Weems later found Smith's body at the wharf, dead, without a mark on him save for his stitched-up arm.
She knelt beside me. "Gerry, Smith is a shock; I buy that. I was rattled, too. It's scary as Hell. The family computer lists have been lighting up with the discussion, and none of the historians have anything like this. Ever."
"I'm not scared, Claud," I said. "And I get that this is major. It's just that . . ."
I took a breath; it was even harder to say out loud than it was to admit to myself. "I liked knowing that we Fangborn were the righteous ones, and that whatever we hunted was always wrong. No doubts, never. I always thought it was the payoff for the work we do." It also meant, no matter what my opinion, that Weems was at least nominally on our side.
She cocked her head. "You mean, in addition to the super-strength, healing, and longevity?"
"Yeah."
"And the rush that comes after the Change?"
"Well . . . yeah."
She frowned. "You're young and you're being greedy and you're forgetting the First Lesson."
I scowled. "'The work is the reward.' You sound like Grandpa."
"There's a good reason for that. He was right." She hunkered down against the wall next to me. "Look, everyone reaches a crisis of faith at some point in his life. For me, it was trying to figure out if we had the right to live outside human law, learning the difference between law and justice. It's part of the life. It makes us understand what it is to be human, why that's precious and to be protected. Normals never get half of what we have, and go through life in doubt."
"We're not human, Claud. Never will be. And now we get the doubt, too."
She shook her head. "We're closer to them than anything else. Biologically and spiritually. We need that connection. And you know that killing Smith was right, even if he was one of us."
But no Fangborn had ever killed Fangborn before. No Fangborn had ever manifested pure evil before . . . I couldn't turn off the voice in my head.
Claudia talked for a long time about the community of the Fangborn, duty, honor, and all that crap. I listened. A lot of it made sense.
I nodded. "You're right. I need time, that's all. Thanks."
"No problem. I'm just glad I got here before you got into the Nine Inch Nails." Relief flooded her features, which told me exactly