Another Half
BLADE -- Chapter 1

November 2011

In principle, poisoning someone and drugging them to sleep is essentially the same thing. Blade’s grandfather taught her that both require the same skill set and—most importantly—stealth. The difference between the two is that your subject will either eventually wake up or die.

See? There isn’t much difference.

Blade had been around five when her grandfather Felix had started training her. He had been determined to have Blade follow in his footsteps as their pack’s spymaster. He had once secretly told her that Joaquin, her older-by-five-minutes twin brother, was the backup trainee, thus confirming once and for all what everyone already knew: Blade had been Felix’s favorite grandchild. He would do anything for her.

Now, several years later, Blade stood in front of the kitchen sink as she tapped a few crystals of a coarse white powder from a tiny black envelope into an empty wine glass. She then poured one drop of water from the faucet into the glass, and waited for the granules to dissolve, then congeal, and finally dry into a clear substance at the bottom of the glass, where the stem met the bowl of the wine glass. This all took seconds but it was enough for Blade to continue to remember her grandfather’s words. How she missed him!

“Abuelo, why can’t we use a cute little pink envelope instead?” Blade had asked when she was nine. Talon, her wolf, had enthusiastically agreed. “Pink instead of the black one, and lavender instead of the white envelope.”

Her grandfather had laughed until tears streamed down his brown face and into his dense salt and pepper beard. “You can use whatever colors you want when you have your own kits and you’re doing your own poisoning,” he had said with a wink. “Just don’t get the envelopes mixed up, mija. Do you understand why that would be bad?”

Blade quickly nodded. “I don’t want to kill someone when all I want is to knock them out.”

After all these years, not for the first time did Blade wonder how many grandfathers taught their granddaughters how to poison people.

Blade dismissed the memory and looked up at the clock on the wall. 7:40 p.m. Ten minutes ahead of schedule. Nick would be home soon. As the beta in charge of the pack in the alpha’s absence, Nick was busy all day and would arrive at dinner at around eight. More importantly, the alpha and his family took Nadine, the alpha’s sister, with them on their weekend trip.

Blade clenched her jaw until it hurt so as to not clench her hand that held the wine glass. The mere thought of that bitch made Blade’s stomach turn with nausea. It was Nadine’s fault that her mating bond with Nick never flourished. Nick and Blade never had a chance as a mated couple.

She raised Nick’s wine glass to the light, focusing on the bottom, and saw--nothing.

Perfect.

She placed the wine glass at Nick’s usual place at the end of the table.

He was useless as a mate anyway, Talon said in her head, and he’s useless as a beta, too. We don’t need that level of incompetence in our lives.

Blade smiled at her wolf’s unflinching loyalty and she put away the black and white envelopes in her stuffed backpack in her bedroom. She made sure Andy was still comfortable and asleep in his car seat before closing the door.

She checked her makeup in the mirror and tugged at the brand-new black and gold-sequined dress she wore. It was too tight across the chest and too gaudy for her taste, but it was the most appropriate dress she found in Nick’s closet. Several months ago, Blade had realized that Nadine kept clothes, including sexy underwear, in Nick’s second-floor master bedroom. Meanwhile, Blade had been a permanent tenant of the guest bedroom in the basement, a detail Nadine never failed to mention. As a result, Blade felt no guilt in borrowing one of Nadine’s brand-new fancy dresses and its matching shoes.

Gold sequins. Gross.

At exactly 8:10, Blade heard Nick’s car and she went into the kitchen. This would be their last dinner together, and she prepared his favorites: Grilled salmon, creamy mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables. Everything was ready. The deep red tablecloth was perfect for this occasion. She even borrowed fine china from the Pack House. She took a quick sip of her fine California chardonnay and hid it behind the coffee maker.

“What’s this?” Nick said as he entered the dining room.

“Happy anniversary, my darling,” Blade said with her sweetest voice. Talon gagged.

You worthless piece of shit, Talon murmured in the privacy of Blade’s head. You’re a horrible mate. You never even Marked us, much less completed the mate bond. I hope your dick falls off and rots!

“Anniversary? Whose? Ours?” Nick said, confused. “And what’s with the cheap dress?”

Blade’s throat contracted painfully and tears threatened to form in her eyes. She blinked rapidly until they disappeared. Of course, he doesn’t remember. Why would he? And she was sure the gaudy dress would be elegant if Nadine were wearing it.

“Of course, my darling,” she said with a patient smile. “We met exactly one year ago today, remember? At the Mating Festival. Do you want to get the wine in the fridge while I light the candles?”

Nick sneers. “Where’s the fucking brat?”

Blade felt cold suddenly, but she managed a gentle smile.

“Andy is asleep. He will not bother you.”

Nick shrugged and turned on his heel towards the kitchen. “Which wine? What goes well with salmon?”

“Whichever you like will work,” Blade said. She felt she had coached him enough on fine wines for his question to merit no other response.

Nick soon came back with a wine bottle and a corkscrew.

Blade stared as he popped open a bottle of port, aghast that he would choose a heavy dessert wine to go with a fatty dish such as salmon. She wanted to say something, but she watched him pour himself half a glass of wine and then walk over to her side of the table to pour wine into her glass. Nick didn't look at her, which was just as well. He sat and raised his glass.

“What should we toast to?” The quaver in his voice betrayed him. He gulped and shakily raised his wineglass.

“To our long happy life together. Of course,” Blade raised her glass and Nick followed suit, his lips pressed together.

“Of course,” he said, smoothing out the tablecloth with his hand.

"Maybe by this time next year, we'll be properly Marked and Mated," she said.

"Blade," he said, his voice thick with warning. "I already told you, I'm not ready to be Mated yet."

Blade shrugged and took a sip of the overly sweet red wine while Nick drank all of his in one gulp. She smiled and glanced around the room. The curtains were drawn and the rest of the house was dark. No witnesses, she heard her grandfather’s voice in her head from many years ago.

Well done, mija, Blade could hear her grandfather’s voice whispering. He won’t know what happened until it’s too late. You learned well. Proud of you, Baby…

If only her grandfather was still alive to tell her this for real.

Despite her sadness, Blade began to eat, and she enjoyed the salmon and mashed potatoes she had prepared despite not touching the ghastly sweet wine again. She only looked up when she heard a hard thump on the table. Relief washed over her.

Nick was slumped on the table across from her. His face had landed on his plate of food. Blade got up and retrieved her glass of chardonnay from the kitchen. She sipped her white wine as she ambled toward Nick. She grabbed him by the hair and turned his head until he was cheek-to-cheek with the baked slab of salmon. Blade took Nick’s empty glass to the kitchen sink and rinsed away any remains of the drug. She then poured some more port before placing it near his hand, and drank the rest of her chardonnay.

“We could have been so happy together,” she whispered in Nick’s ear. “I’m sorry I was not good enough for you. I’m sorry you hate Andy. And someday I’ll figure out how you got my grandfather’s knife.”

Blade wiped the tears from her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat. She blew out the candles before going into the bedroom and changing into her signature black jeans, leather mid-calf boots, and black tee. She wiped every bit of makeup off her face and did her long thick black hair into a loose four-strand braid. And because she isn’t ungrateful, she returned Nadine’s dress and shoes to Nick’s closet.

She went to Nick’s bedroom and grabbed an old knife scabbard hidden under the mattress and sat down on the bed, which stank of Nadine and Nick together. The knife was in a worn black leather scabbard. She had found it several weeks ago when she was snooping through Nick’s belongings, something she had never done before. Blade slid out the mate black blade her grandfather had loved so much: it was a well-crafted tanto knife designed to do one thing and one thing only: stab and kill. It was a magnificent knife, one of the best Blade’s late father, Emilio, had ever forged. Her father had carefully burnt the knife’s handle with dark cursive letters: Nunca olvidaremos, Papá. Always, EZ

Why?! Why did Nick have her grandfather’s knife? How did Nick get it? It was EZ’s last gift to Felix before passing away, and her grandfather always kept it in his right boot. Except, her grandfather didn’t have it on him when he died, and Blade had searched everywhere among the house rubble for it. And now both men in her life were gone. All of them were gone.

Blade looked at her watch. Twenty minutes ahead of schedule. It was time to leave. She slipped the knife with the other knives she kept tucked in her black boots. Once back in the dining room, she fished out Nick’s car keys from his pocket. She scowled at Nick’s keychain. The red metal heart had Nadine written in gold letters.

The moonless night was chilly. As she had predicted during the planning phase, it was completely dark outside, but she stayed hidden while she peered all around the empty street. Nick’s house was tucked in a cul de sac in a quiet part of their pack’s town. There were no eyes looking out any neighboring windows, but she kept to the shadows as she loaded her backpack and heavy diaper bag into Nick’s car. Next, she retrieved six-month-old Andy, still sleeping in his car seat. She snapped the car seat in its base. The last thing she did after putting on her black leather jacket was to pour a gallon of diesel fuel into the gasoline tank of her car parked in the garage.

Her grandfather and her mother had bought a brand-new Prius for her birthday two years ago, but she couldn’t take it with her. She and Andy had to disappear. Her flashy red car would be the first thing they would track down. It hurt her heart to turn her car into a giant paperweight, but she didn’t want Nadine to claim it for herself either. It was the one thing Blade had that Nadine could never match. Well, that and the skills Blade possessed. Nadine had screeched in frustration when Blade, a lowly omega by birth, had bested every wolf of better and stronger wolf lineage and had become the pack’s undisputed Training Master.

Once all the lights in the house were out, Blade drove out of pack territory knowing that if anyone saw the blue vehicle they would assume it was Nick making his rounds. She sped up once she hit the highway and an hour and half later Blade and Andy arrived at a small parking lot several blocks away from the airport. She chose this particular parking lot four weeks ago because it did not have any surveillance cameras, giving her enough privacy to cover her dark brown hair with a wig and put on an oversized pea-green sweater over her leather jacket. She also changed Andy’s soiled diaper and covered him with a pink blanket, stowing his blue blanket away into his extra-large diaper bag.

Blade managed a tight smirk as she placed Nick’s keys on the soiled diaper. Next, she put her cellphone on the floor and crushed it with the heel of her boot. She found the SIM card and ran cut in half with a knife from her boot. Blade added the phone’s remains to the diaper and then wrapped the soiled diaper, which she threw away in a garbage bin on their way to replace a cab.

Blade knew that if anyone found and interviewed the cab driver about that night in the following days, he would say that he picked up a woman with short blonde hair three blocks away from the airport. She didn’t talk much, but she wore a pea-green sweater and carried a baby girl. He might remember that the woman’s name was Mary and that her husband was waiting for them at the hospital where the cab driver left them.

Once the cab left her on the curb and turned two blocks down, Blade ducked into an alley with a garbage dump. She threw away the blonde wig and the pea-green sweater and pulled on a black knit beanie before heading out to the bus station. She turned over Andy’s pink blanket so it was now a flowery yellow, and used cash to buy a couple of bus tickets while keeping her face in the dark and away from the old security cameras. When Blade had done her recon several weeks ago, she realized they were old dummy cameras, but she was careful just in case they had recently exchanged them for the real thing.

Once Blade and Andy were comfortable in their seats on the next bus heading west, she looked at her watch: ten minutes to spare. She let out a long, silent breath.

Blade was free. No one would ever replace them.

More importantly, Andy was safe.

She looked down at her baby and kissed his chubby red cheek.