Page 67 of War Games

“I did that for you!” I was shaking, unable to handle the abuse, every word cutting deeply into my soul. Every small whisper over the years was coming home for me now. “You never did it for me!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to ruin our family, then,” Gwen whispered, the malice in her tone like a poison. “But that’s just a bad habit for you. You do it to everyone.”

“No, I don’t!” I cried out. Tears were falling now.

“You don’t even save anyone. I do it every day. I tried to be like you once, and look at what it did to everything. Your way doesn’t work. You couldn’t save your lover’s own children… either of them. The daughter or the son. She got taken from you and will live with that trauma for the rest of her life. You killed him. And your friend… Well, you weren’t paying enough attention, and you know it. It led to even more destruction.”

“Please stop…”

“You’re useless to your family. They sent you out to waste your time, knowing you can’t help them at all with solving that boy’s death. Well, we all know who killed him, don’t we? Couldn’t even tell it was a teenager. You just killed him.”

I was falling apart. It was like every nightmare I had since I was a child was playing out at the same time. Every deep, dark, depressing thought. I couldn’t breathe.

“It would be easier if you weren’t in everyone’s way anymore. Maybe then they could move forward, and no one else would get hurt,” Gwen whispered, so gently, her hand rubbing my head. “Lie down and stop fighting, Jacky. Stop fighting because it only hurts everyone around you.”

I started to slip, wondering how nice and comfortable it would be to just go to sleep. Gwen sat next to me, rubbing my hair.

“I’m sorry that the truth hurts so much,” she said. “I am. It’s hard to have to face these things, isn’t it? We both know it’s the truth, though. Look, there’s reality.”

I kept my eyes open to see the gold eyes light up in the darkness.

“A monster. You are what you are. You and the curse were made for each other. What did your new mother say? It was a woman who cursed her brothers. Another broken family, huh? That’s what the curse is, isn’t it?”

The gold eyes were distant, but I could feel the ground shake with each step the cat drew closer. Every slow step.

“It is,” I agreed softly, understanding that fundamental thing. Subira had explained it to me in the very Subira way she did everything. An ancient witch had looked at the moon and turned her brothers into monsters. Those two brothers made the rest of them. A broken family. Cursed to be broken. Cursed to break new families.

“I know you want so badly for you and Heath to make a new family, but it’s never going to happen. It can’t happen. You’re on the wrong side of things, and even if you weren’t… you don’t know how to have a happy family, Jacky. You never have.” Gwen was so gentle, so kind, and calm that I knew she wasn’t lying to me.

I didn’t know how. I had never really had one. Every minute I’d ever enjoyed of almost happy was just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Always waiting for the next moment I would have it all ripped away from me. Parents who didn’t accept me, siblings who despised me for ruining the happiness of the home, and one day, if I was lucky or unlucky, children who would blame me for all their troubles.

The cat drew closer, the gold eyes growing larger in the darkness as the watercolor paintings of my memories slowlyfaded, turning black and grey, no longer my problem. Just a history I was ready to forget now.

“It’s sad to watch you fight the losing battle, Jacky… If your five-thousand-year-oldparentscouldn’t bring peace and unity between the cursed, what really makes you think you can? You and I both know you aren’t that arrogant. You’re stubborn, but even you have to see reason at some point. They couldn’t even keep all of their own children alive. How do you expect to succeed where they failed?”

The cat drew closer and closer. Eventually, I could see it in all its detail. The gold eyes were mine. The tawny form with some light spotting and striping very faint on the coat. The massive paws, the claws it kept extending and retracting.

The fangs, several inches longer, going below its bottom jaw, the sign of every werecat.

A beast made for killing, a predator that destroyed no matter what else it wanted.

A curse.

“That’s you. There you are. You just need to accept you for what and who you really are, Jacky. You’ll be happier if you just play the role assigned to you and stop fighting the inevitable. You know what’s coming for you. Every moon cursed does, don’t they?”

The werecat growled and started to shift and morph into the vision of a creature I had once seen in the flesh.

Bipedal, monstrous, and the end of all the cursed.

It entered the Last Change.

And it kept approaching.

I knew if I just closed my eyes, it would devour me, and all the pain would end. I wouldn’t have to keep fighting the inevitable, as Gwen said. It would just be over. No more hoping for a family that loved me, just acceptance of the truth. No moreruining others lives while trying to help them. No more being disregarded.

Just me in my rawest form.

“That’s enough!” a voice boomed in the dark.

---