Ascension Read Free

that wouldn’t help your cause, would it?"
    Jeremy only gave a half-shrug and took off his boots, then turned to me. "Go into the kitchen and we’ll fix dinner." He glanced at his father. "We’re having sandwiches. Can I make you one?"
    "Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about."
    Jeremy tugged off his coat, hung it on the rack and steered me toward the kitchen.
    "How’s that new truck working out for you?" Malcolm said, sticking at our heels.
    "It does the job," Jeremy murmured.
    "Dominic must be pretty pleased with you these days. Taming stray pups. Training the boys. Learning emergency medicine. What’d he call it? Initiative. That’s right. Showing initiative. The question is: what do you hope to initiate?"
    When Jeremy didn’t answer, Malcolm swung in front of him and brought his face to Jeremy’s.
    "You get in my way, boy, and I’ll squash you."
    "I never doubted it," Jeremy said, and sidestepped into the kitchen.
     
    Malcolm’s next extended stay came six months later. It was early December, a month away from my eleventh birthday.
    That weekend Antonio and Nick were coming up to take me Christmas shopping for Jeremy. Although the Pack didn’t really celebrate the holiday the way humans did, we would have a Pack Meet and exchange gifts. The original shopping plan had been for me to go to
New York
and stay with the Sorrentinos, but then Malcolm showed up, and seemed prepared to hang around until the holidays, so Antonio decided they’d come to us, minimizing the time Jeremy would need to spend alone with his father.
    On Wednesday night Jeremy woke up from a nightmare. When I heard a muffled cry from his room, I bolted upright and nearly fell out of bed in my haste to get up. As I scurried into the hall, I heard the click of his door handle, and backed into my room. I listened, heart thumping, almost certain it was just a nightmare, but unable to shake the fear that someone had attacked him in his bed. When I heard his soft footfalls in the corridor I knew it had just been another bad dream. Staying behind my door, I waited until he passed, then slid out after him.
    Normally after a nightmare, Jeremy would fix himself a sandwich, or pour a glass of brandy, depending on how bad it had been. This time, though, he walked into the study, passed the brandy decanter and headed straight for the desk. He stopped in front of the phone, and stared down at it, as if expecting it to ring. For at least five minutes, he stood there. Then he sighed, picked it up, moved it to the table beside his chair, and sat down.
    He picked up a paperback mystery novel he’d left by his chair, but after ten minutes of staring at the same page, he tossed it aside and he eased back in his chair. A few minutes later, he started to nod off. His eyes were only half-closed when he jerked up, mouth forming a silent "o". From my post outside the door, I swear I could hear his heart pounding triple-time. His gaze shot to the door and I pulled back farther out of sight. He tensed, listening, as if afraid he’d cried out and alerted Malcolm. He listened to the silence for a minute, then looked back at the phone, swore under his breath, and rolled his shoulders.
    "Call, damn it," he whispered. "I can’t help if you don’t call."
    The phone didn’t ring. After glaring at it for a few minutes, he sank back into his seat.
    Twice more, he began to drift off and twice more a vision startled him awake. It was a vision, not a nightmare. I knew that now.
    Jeremy saw things. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. I can’t explain it any better than that. I’ve never understood much about this side of Jeremy’s life. I don’t know because I don’t ask. I don’t ask because I don’t want to intrude — no, that’s bullshit. I don’t ask because I don’t really want to know.
    Wolves like conformity. They understand it. In the wild, a pack will drive out a member who doesn’t fit the accepted standard of wolf