Vanessa White, blue-gray-eyed and with a preference for long lacy dresses, used to be someone I could care about.
In the first few months following my inoculation with werewolf venom, while my body still felt like living every new day in a stranger's skin, Vanessa was there, lurking just beyond the fringes of my house, as in my head at that time as Dean was; he, because he was my alpha, and she, because she was telepathic, even if I didn't know it at the time.
Too often had there been times when her eyes grew cold, suggestive of something long frozen and obscured, buried under thick layers of ice, interred so deeply that it rarely ever saw the light or felt warmth. That was a different Vanessa, a once-long ago alpha who had carved the awe, respect, and wariness of the White name into every heart, even lycan ones. But as Dean's luna, she would look at me in some of those strange moments and her eyes would thaw; and whatever was trying to claw its way out from the deep darkness would once again be buried—this beautiful, lovely Vanessa who let me love Dean in my 'growing-up' moments.
I stare into Vanessa White's eyes. Or what are almost her eyes—for this is not exactly Vanessa.
'I am sorry,' I say, cradling the girl in a hug even if it is just telepathically, 'for Dr Simone, for Lauren, for myself.'
The girl holds me in return. 'I get to call you mom,' she sniffs.
I comb my fingers through her hair in our embrace. In the intersection of our minds, time is stilled: frozen for us while the world spins or tumbles outside of our mental reaction.
'How much of Vanessa's memories do you remember?' I question after sometime in our moment beyond time.
This child looks like Vanessa: almost the same sheet-white skin, tar-black hair, and blue-gray eyes; despite that her hair is now wooly white from the stress of using her telepathic powers. This colour change is something I have come to realize as the signature attribute of all Whites: our hair bleaches white when we use our powers too much. It is like a physical manifestation of the stress of our minds on our bodies.
'Bits and pieces,' the girl answers sadly. 'But enough.'
She is right; I can tell. What is truly Vanessa in her is shattered, like into tiny pixel bits. There are other pieces too, relics from someone else: probably even Dr Simone herself. Needful to say, these pieces are dead, locked, crumbly; awaiting final obscurity.
This seemingly twelve-year-old girl who is in my telepathic space, her arms encircling my waist even as she wastes and fades away, is not Vanessa.
But she comes too close in semblance.
With no other option, I decide that she is Vanessa. She comes close, the closest any child will ever again be to a true White, for, in the inhumanity of Dr Simone's brilliance, when it was clear to her that Vanessa was surely fading into the light without any remedy or recourse—a White like all ahead of her, as the best shot that she believed she had in advancing her research, she had painstakingly evacuated all the nuclear material in an ovum and reintroduced a new one into it: Vanessa's.
But Vanessa had been so far affected by the White malady that all her ova had reacted unpredictably in initial procedures where Dr Simone swapped out haploid nuclear egg material in Vanessa's own ova for diploid ones. Whenever one such ovum, as a true Vanessa clone—both nuclear and mitochondrial genetic materials being purely Vanessa's, was created by Dr Simone, the egg cell experienced accelerated aging and demise, worse affected by the decay plaguing Vanessa so that it shrivelled up and died in barely a day.
To overcome this challenge, the doctor had used an ovum from a different person—not Vanessa's; the original nuclear material having been evacuated but which still had its original mitochondrial genes retained. Into this ovum, Vanessa's nuclear material had been introduced.
Even with the improvisation, the White curse had still persisted; and the implanted egg had nearly killed its surrogate mother by its sheer explosive growth. And, beyond just the unavoidable Cesarean Section that had brought her into the world, this child had aged at an all-out sprint towards oblivion, hounded by the White curse that had been the bane of Vanessa's life, except even more devastatingly.
So it is that the girl, this new Vanessa, is sound of mind, sounder of telepathy, but sickly of body.
Simone used to say to me, little Vanessa starts telepathically, 'We cannot choose how we are born, but we can choose how people remember us. And if conditions are right, we can influence a little of what happens after we leave'.
Her mental voice is unbelievably strong even if she is all gasps and breaths in reality. But the implication of her words is not lost to me. Oh no, don't you dare! I shout in a sharp sob. Vanessa!
She just smiles as I acknowledge her origins, reaching a mournful hand to my cheek. We both know she won't make it: Lauren made certain of that. Her smile is perfect: half-Vanessa's and half-mine. Mom.
As she gifts me her memories and powers, which is something only the alphas of the White family could do—thereby proving her connection to Vanessa, she expires, leaving me with the last, parting secret she had pointed out in her final word.
Mom.
The egg had come from me.
***
In all my life, I have known only one White.
And I have lost her twice.
Tears spill from my eyes as my rage peaks. In the time that I was connected to little Vanessa, I was also having a conversation with Augusta Lycaone; talking with the child had not stopped me from having a conversation with the Imperial queen, my mind stretching and swelling in the meantime, especially when little Vanessa bequeathed me her powers.
I have managed to rouse both our emotions: Augusta Lycaone's and mine. A rumble splits the air beyond the Imperial queen's room. Whether it is my influence or the lycan's is not easily discernible. If my rage is a thick, cutting blizzard, Augusta's is a wantonly destructive inferno. And even our auras are at war, so how much more our minds?
What gives you the right to take a life! I roar at Augusta Lycaone.
'You are playing with powers you don't understand, child!' The queen contemptibly hisses. 'You become more of an abomination with every report we hear of you, and we see it now.'
I will take from you because you have taken from me, Augusta. Where is Dean?
'In the Tombs of the Fallen, where even no White can find him by telepathy, is where!' Augusta snaps.
Let him go, I growl in malevolence.
'Or what, fool-child? We have enough suffered your testy insolence. Now, we have our own testimony and report. The Elderwood family with Dean will die gruesomely for this, the measly Olligranders too. Too bad all the Whites are already dead, or we would have ordered to have their pelts added to our personal collection, including that new, abominable recreation of the White girl! Now, be gone!'
I set my jaw and pit myself against Augusta Lycaone's Voice of Command with the full weight of my powers, old and new. The command seeks to erase my mental presence from Augusta's mind.
No. Not only from Augusta's mind but all Europe actually.
It is really no surprise that she knows about Little Vanessa: Augusta Lycaone is as much in my mind as I am in hers. And I am the telepathic one.
A huge spear of lightning flashes down in the window outside the Imperial quarters, unimaginably huge and so persistent that it is a snaking column of lethal energy that doesn't immediately fade. The lightning is attended by a wailing like a roar as our powers clash. I strain with agony against Augusta, who looks unfazed. She watches me as though measuring the strength of a grossly inferior predator. Against her one command, my skull feels like it will split opposing. There is a colossal, world-bending pressure I can't explain clamped against my mind; and my Olligrander powers can't even resist.
After she decides she has made me exert myself enough, 'Be gone!' She commands again.
My powers wink out. My mind nearly follows suit. I slam back into my body in Dr Simone's underground facility as Lauren withdraws her claws from the doctor's chest. I can't believe this information from my senses: that Lauren used the distraction of my mental face-off with Augusta Lycaone to kill Dr Simone. My anger at the doctor is as abysmal as any ocean, as well as the questions I have for her. But I never once wished to see her die, especially not at Lauren's claws.
Dr Simone holds my gaze all the while that the consciousness fizzles out from her bright eyes, testaments of the brilliant brain that has been her superpower. All her plans, all her dreams, and all her ambitions exit with her; though she spares me an explanation in form of mental images flung at my telepathy to catch.
After all the drama with the Imperial queen, I can't even sense outside the room if I try, not to mention expanding my telepathic bubble across the whole town or all the way back to Europe. The proximity to Dr Simone is just enough for my mental powers, like limbs bound tightly to my body by chains of Augusta Lycaone's edict, to receive.
Dr Simone was obsessed with what Vanessa could do, so much so that she could not bear to lose the only source of so much power: Vanessa's body. Having encountered the inexplicable sickness at every twist and corner of cloning Vanessa, Dr Simone had decided on using one of the few egg cells she had taken from me on a whim in this very facility nine years ago.
The doctor had been able to successfully mature and prepare an ovum, after having lost a couple in the process, though she had been able to succeed in cloning Vanessa eventually.
As the child grew, Dr Simone had learnt to link with Little Vanessa and share information with her telepathically, a little like how my mate bond with Mason allows for perception transfer between us. The result of this was that the doctor had been able to indirectly influence people's mind and talk to them, as she had with me.
She had gained indirect telepathy.
I take a huge step forward, claws out and fangs bared. A red haze tints my vision: the rage of an alpha.
Lauren chuckles as if in disbelief. 'Don't tell me you are mad about some deaths,' she says offhandedly. All the laughter suddenly vanishing, 'I have not even started yet,' she threatens.
I force myself to smile in mockery like she does. 'Well, neither have I.'
My Olligrander powers finally shake off Augusta's authority, which had only weakened each passing minute. My slimy telepathic claws grow out of my bubble, enveloping Lauren. I have a better idea now what I did to Mirabella, I say casually—conversationally into Lauren's mind. I think I broke something using a combination of my powers as you feared, Lauren. The smugness flees from her features at my words, replaced by trepidation and awed fear. I broke her powers at a fundamental level. Better still, I broke it, then probably stole it. I wouldn't be surprised if she can't bend a lycan, werewolf, or human to her will in the near future. Or never.
'You don't sound sure,' Lauren muses afterwards, a glint in her unique werewolf eyes.
I don't dare dream of beating you now or ever, Lauren. You will always be a lycan, and I will always be an ordinary werewolf, less than a lycan. My tone in her head is reflective, contemplative, But I am alpha of my own pack, and heiress to three great werewolf families—a composite wolf, as you were so quick to label me. I chortle in pure, sinister joy, my tone darkening next; What I want to say is, I may not be able to defeat you in physical prowess. But your Eyes of Knowing, Lauren, I think I will take them.
I think I will drown them in darkness.