Chapter 3

“We’re having a special dinner tonight,” my father’s voice was big and hearty, but the look my mother shot him wasn’t nearly so cheerful. Still, she nodded her head and gave me a small half smile when she turned from the kitchen sink to face me.

“Your father’s right, darling. Tonight we’re having a…a celebration.” The word seemed to stick in her throat, and she swallowed hard before she continued. “So I made your favorite dinner.”

“Mmm! I can smell it!” I lifted my nose high to catch the tantalizing scent of bloody raw steak that permeated the air. I knew that other people cooked their meat before they ate it, and I even ate cooked meat myself, as did Richard, for lunch at school. My mother didn’t dare send raw meat in our lunches for fear of attracting attention. But even though I could stand the burned, flavorless lumps of animal flesh I had to eat at school, I never really enjoyed them. Not the way I relished the raw delicacies my mother prepared for us at dinnertime.

“Filet mignon. Your favorite cut, Rache,” Richard had slipped silently into the big sunny kitchen and was leaning against the door jam with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Yours too, I thought, son.” My father smiled at both of us and then became serious. “Do you know what we’re celebrating tonight? What we’re going to be doing after supper?”

I looked at Richard at once. I had no idea what my father was talking about, but Richard was never without an answer, even to the most confusing question. My big brother was silent for a moment, his pale green eyes very serious.

“The bonding ceremony,” he said at last. “Is that what we’re celebrating? But…isn’t Rachel a little young for it, Dad?”

“She’ll be fine,” my father said, a little too heartily, cutting off whatever my mother was about to say. “Rachel’s a trooper. And besides, it’s better you were bonded young as you’re the only two of our kind left. Alone among the humans with no other outside Amon-kai besides your mother and I to curb them, your, ah, instincts may rise hard and fast.” My father sounded almost embarrassed, as though he was talking about grown-up matters that were hard to say. I saw Richard’s face get red as he nodded briefly. Then my mother dropped the knife she’d been using to carve meat in the sink with a clatter, breaking the strange silence.

“I’ll not have her taken before her eighteenth birthday, Nathanial,” she stormed at my father. “I don’t care what you say or how fast and hard his instincts rise. He’ll just have to wait to take her!”

I looked at them, confused and concerned. “Take me where?” I asked innocently. “Where is Richard going to take me? Why can’t we go now?”

Richard was so red now he looked like the delicate cuts of raw meat my mother had arranged on her best china platter. “Never mind, Rache,” he mumbled, tugging at my hand. “C’mon, let’s go set the table so Mom can finish making dinner.”

I let him lead me into the dining room with its wide, dark oval table topped with my mother’s best lace tablecloth, but I still didn’t understand the strange fight that had just gone on in our kitchen. Only one thing was certain—both my mother and father thought they knew what was best for me, but clearly they disagreed on what that was. Was there any way that both of them could be right at once? I didn’t see how that was possible, but my life was becoming more complicated all the time. I decided that the safest thing to do was to just stick close to Richard, no matter what. Let my mother and father fight over me and my confusing future all they wanted. As long as they let me stay with my big brother, I didn’t care.

Dinner was a silent meal, a strange kind of celebration if you asked me. Christmas and Thanksgiving, which we celebrated just like the normal kids at our school, were always times to gather at the table and laugh and talk together. Usually my father and Richard tried to outdo each other with corny jokes and my mother and I laughed until tears stood in our eyes. But tonight there was a tension in the air I didn’t understand, and that no one, not even Richard, would explain it to me. It caused a knot of fear to form in my stomach and kept me from enjoying the tender, bloody delicacy my mother had prepared. What exactly was the bonding ceremony, and what lay in store for me?

Looking at Richard, I wasn’t surprised to see that he seemed to have lost his appetite too. He was barely picking at his plate, but when he looked up and caught my eye, at least he tried to smile at me. That was more than my mother or father seemed willing to do. Both of them ate in stony silence, never once looking at Richard or me.

As soon as we all finished eating, I got up to help clear the table, but my father shook his head. “Leave it, Rachel,” he told me. “The moon is rising in the sky outside—I can feel it. It’s time for the ceremony to begin.”

When I thought about it, I realized that I could feel the moon too. It felt like icy fingertips skating along the nape of my neck, raising prickles and goosebumps all along my spine. I had never stopped to ask myself if other people—normal people—could feel that too, but I guessed that they probably couldn’t. Like seeing in the dark and eating raw meat, feeling the moonrise was just another peculiarity reserved exclusively for the Amon-kai.

“Where are we going?” I asked, but Richard already had me by the hand and was leading me out into the large garden that filled our backyard. The cool air was perfumed by the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine and the green, growing smell of the grass and trees. And, as always when I was with him, I could smell the warm scent of the Amon-kai. It was on nights like this that my father sometimes took us hunting, an event both Richard and I looked forward to even though we didn’t use guns or nets the way a human hunter would have. We ran down our prey on foot, delighting in the chase. But tonight was not for hunting, it was for the mysterious ceremony I didn’t understand.

I held on to Richard and stepped carefully. My mother loved to plant new flowers but wasn’t too particular about getting them in any certain order or keeping them in check. So the garden was a tangle of vines and bushes, some with thorns that would snag your skin if you weren’t careful. But despite the roots and clumps of flowers in the way, not a single one of us stumbled once or made any noise at all. Not a twig snapped under our feet, not a leaf crunch under our shoes. It didn’t occur to me that a normal person would have been crashing around in the darkness, trampling the delicate blossoms my mother cared for with negligent grace. I only knew that this was normal for us—for the Amon-kai. We were silent in the darkness because we were at home in its velvety depths. At home in a way that only wild animals can be.

At last, we reached the clearing in the middle of the sweet-smelling wilderness, a little bare spot left free of flowers where only the soft, whispering sweet grass grew. Richard stopped there and stood, still holding my hand, in the center of the grassy circle. My parents came to face us and for the first time, I noticed that my mother was holding the sharp silver knife she had been using earlier in the kitchen. My heart started to beat triple time and I squeezed Richard’s fingers hard. He squeezed back reassuringly and murmured in my ear that everything would be all right. I wanted to tell him I was scared, but just then my father began to speak.

“Tonight as the full moon rises, we gather not as a family but as a pack. In the old days, there would have been hundreds of us here instead of only four. But numbers do not matter to us now. We gather as Amon-kai to bind this male to this female,” he intoned in a deep, solemn voice. “It is a night for promises made, promises to be kept in the future when you, Rachel, and you, Richard, are ready to fulfill them. It is a night of oneness. A night of magic. And on this night only, until years from now when you are grown and the time grows ripe for you to seal the bond between you, will you feel the pain and pleasure of the other and know that you are one. Richard.” He turned toward my brother, his pale green eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. “Do you wish to take Rachel as your Lana-zeel?”

Richard nodded, as solemn as my father. “I do, pack leader,” he said, still gripping my hand in his.

My father nodded and turned to me. “And do you, Rachel, wish to take Richard as your Lanor-zur?”

I knew what was expected of me, but I couldn’t help seeing the anger and resentment in my mother’s eyes, the almost palpable warning that I was doing something I might regret forever.

“I…what does that mean?” I asked at last. “Does it mean that Richard and I can be together forever?”

Richard smiled at me and gave me a quick, brotherly peck on the cheek. “That’s exactly what it means, Rache,” he promised me. “Forever, we’ll be together forever after this.”

“Then yes,” I said at once, feeling relief flood me. I hadn’t been sure what the ceremony entailed before, but if it gave me a foolproof way to stay with my wonderful older brother until the end of time, I was all for it. “Yes,” I said again, nodding at my father eagerly. “I want that—that’s exactly what I want.”

He smiled at me warmly. “I knew your mother and I chose well for you, Rachel. Very well, since both parties are agreed, let the ceremony continue. Hold out your hands.”

Richard dropped my hand at once and held out his palm. I noticed that his arm was shaking ever so slightly, but the calm expression on his face never wavered.

My mother stepped forward, the unwilling look still stamped on her face. She raised the sharp kitchen knife, the moonlight shimmering on its silver blade, and stepped towards Richard.

“Born light and dark, yet of one breed, if one is bitten, the other will bleed,” she intoned. Her voice was flat and expressionless, but on the last word she swept the knife down in a glittering arch as though she would stab the blade right through the meat Richard’s palm.

I gasped and would have thrown myself between my brother and the knife if only I could have, but before I could even move, I saw my mother steady the knife and draw a long, shallow scratch down his palm instead of stabbing through it. As she cut, I saw Richard stare stoically ahead, not even flinching. I clenched my own hands in sympathy for him, and that was when I felt it—the warm liquid dripping from my right palm.

I looked down in disbelief, spreading my fingers to see that, yes, I was bleeding. I was bleeding from the exact same spot that Richard was, my blood black in the moonlight. The cut stung faintly, like the echo of a pain I almost felt, but it was the blood that bothered me the most. The more I stared at it, the stranger I felt. My eyelids fluttered, and I think I would have fallen if Richard hadn’t caught me.

“Wake up, Rache,” he said anxiously, patting my cheek with his uninjured palm. “Wake up—we have to finish the ceremony or we can’t be together forever.”

That got my attention, and I forced myself to open my eyes and nod for my father to go on. He nodded back, gravely, as though my reaction was not unexpected. Stepping forward, he waved one large hand over us in a strange kind of benediction and spoke softly.

“Joined as one, their bond to seal. If one is wounded, the other may heal,” he murmured and nodded at Richard.

Without asking, Richard took my hand and licked carefully along the long, thin cut in the palm of my hand. I watched him uncertainly, wondering why he was doing this. It wasn’t until my palm was cleaned of the blood that I saw what he had done—the cut was gone, gone completely, leaving not even a scratch. I caught my breath at the ease with which he had accomplished it.

“What…? How…?” I breathed, but Richard shook his head and nodded at my father who was speaking again.

“Lanor-zur has deadly wrath. Subject to the full moon’s path,” he said.

Then my mother stepped forward again and said, “Lana-zeel has wisdom’s flower to help contain the killing power.”

Then, my parents spoke together, their voices blending in the cool night air.

“Without the other, each will die. Thus join they must as Amon-kai.”

Richard grabbed my hand again, and I noticed that he had stopped bleeding as well. When he wiped his bloody palm on his jeans and held it out to me, I saw that his cut was gone, just as mine was. It was as though neither wound had ever been.

“It is done,” my father said, and I felt a strange, warm tingling flowing between Richard and myself, a feeling I had never had before when he touched me.

“It is done,” my mother echoed, but she sounded much less happy about it than my father. Just at that moment, I didn’t care though. All I knew was that the frightening ceremony was over, and now I could stay with my brother forever.

“Richard,” I said and hugged him close.

“Rachel,” he murmured. “I’m so glad.”