Chapter 2 - Chapter Two

“Jax,” Arianne asked him from the backseat. “Where are we going?”

Jaxon hesitated. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “How’s Kieran’s throat?”

Arianne glanced at Kieran beside her and lifted the bag of ice she had been gently pressing on to his’ throat.

“It’s bruised,” she announced.

Kieran groaned.

“Shut up. You’ll hurt your throat again,” admonished Arianne softly, stroking Kieran’s face. She hesitated, and then she asked him, “Does it hurt?”

“Like hell,” Kieran rasped.

“How’s your arm, Kieran?” Jaxon asked, looking at him from the rear view mirror.

Kieran tried to lift his right arm. Kieran said a bad word. “I think it’s broken.”

Jaxon swore. “Luca, are you okay?”

Luca, who had been silent the whole time, looked up from his arm, which lay forgotten, around Ari’s waist. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine.”

Kieran laughed softly, “If you say so.” Then he winced, and held his hand out for the bag of ice.

Ari handed him the bag of ice, and feeling her eyes droop, lay down, putting her head on his lap and yawning. Just before she succumbed into sleep, she felt Luca reach down and lift her legs into his lap, and she considered kicking him, but she gave up on the idea as she was too sleepy.

Kieran stroked her hair and watched her sleep. She looked so peaceful, like an innocent angel.

“When we stop for gas I’ll have a look at your arm.” Jaxon said suddenly, interrupting Kieran’s thoughts.

Kieran, annoyed at being cut from his train of thought, said “what, you’re a doctor now?”

Jaxon smirked at him, “I happen to have studied medicine for quite some time.”

“Yeah, like five hundred years ago.” “A hundred and seventeen ago, actually.” “Well, let me tell you something. A lot has changed in a hundred and seventeen years.” “But the basics are still the same. They may be more old-fashioned, but they are just as effective.
Luca cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help overhearing a part of the conversation. Did you just say a hundred and seventeen years ago?”
Kieran exchanged a look with Jaxon and swore silently. Cover blown. Jaxon shifted his gaze onto Luca on the rear view mirror. “Ah, it’s…difficult to explain,” he said.

Luca leaned forward to take a good look at Jaxon’s reflection in the rear view mirror. Jaxon flashed him a smile. Luca took note of the red eyes, and slid his gaze down to Jaxon’s slightly pointed teeth. Then he smiled. “A vampire, huh.”

Jaxon and Kieran looked at him, open-mouthed.

Luca sat back and smirked. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Then he turned to Kieran and sniffed, and then frowned. “I never could get used to the smell of werewolves.”

Jaxon smirked. “Me neither.”

Kieran rolled his eyes. “Ah, you—how…how do you know what we are?”

“His eyes,” Luca explained. “They’re red, and his teeth are a bit sharper than normal human teeth. And you…you just smell bad.”

Jaxon laughed while Kieran protested. “But these things don’t exist!”

Luca raised an eyebrow. “If you say so.”

Nobody said anything for a while. “Thank you,” Kieran said, breaking the silence. “For helping her.”

Luca smiled briefly. “No problem.” He paused. “You know, you need tell her some time.”

“Tell her what?” Kieran asked.

“That you’re not human.”

“How do you know that she doesn’t already know?” Jaxon asked, looking at him from the rear view mirror.

“Because you looked at her to see whether she was asleep before you started talking about what you did a hundred and seventeen years ago.”

Kieran raised an eyebrow. This was one observant kid.

“I don’t want to scare Arianne,” Jaxon said, shifting his gaze back onto the road.

“What, do you reckon she won’t know one way or the other?” Kieran challenged. “She should know about us. How else is she supposed to trust us?”

Silence. “I don’t know,” Jaxon admitted. “But she’ll be terrified of us.”

Kieran snorted. “If she’s going to be terrified of us, what she will think when she knows what she herself is, I don’t want to know. She still thinks she’s human, you know.”

Luca looked at Kieran again.

“She’s…not exactly human, either.”

“I see.”

“We’ll tell her when the time is right,” Jaxon said.

“For you, there never is a right time,” Kieran snapped.

“Well, that’s probably because you only do stuff at the wrong time and leave all kinds of shoot for me to clean up,” Jaxon said bitterly.
Kieran tried to come up with an exception, but couldn’t. He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. All I’m saying is, if we wait for the right time, or at least, your definition of the right time, we might just as well wait for another five years, when she finds out herself.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“That we tell her as soon as we find a place to stay.”

“No. It’d be too big a shock for her. First Elliot comes looking for her and then she finds out we’re not human?”

Silence. “That was Elliot?” Kieran asked through gritted teeth.

“Yeah.” Jaxon replied, his expression grim. “Did you not recognise him?”

“Oh crap.” Kieran groaned.

“As I said, it would be too big a shock for her.”

“But how can we protect her without letting her know what we are?”

Jaxon didn’t reply.

“So we’re going to tell her when we find a place to stay,” Kieran concluded. Jaxon offered no comment.

“Ari told me that a woman came to talk to you before Elliot came…was that Laura?” Kieran asked, finding it uncomfortable when Jaxon shuts up and goes all weird.
“Yeah,” Jaxon finally said, much to Kieran’s relief. “Turns out Elliot found her a week ago, and had somehow kept her in his house and wouldn’t let her go until she told him where Ari was. She never told, of course. But one of Elliot’s friends saw Ari with one of us—I assume that would be you—and told him where we were. “Laura worked out that I would be keeping her this month and she escaped and came to warn us before Elliot could come. You know, so we could be prepared or make a head start or something.” Kieran snorted. “Yeah, a head start of two seconds does help quite a lot.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back onto the seat.
God, he was tired. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days. “You should get some sleep kid,” he told Luca, who was looking at Arianne. “We’re going to be in this car for a long time.

Luca nodded and looked out the window.

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