When We Were Still Human by Vaughn Foster (mobi reader android TXT) 📗

“I realized then that I couldn’t hesitate any longer. Not only that, but I had to take Ligel with me. I couldn’t curse my husband to raise a son that wasn’t even human. I’d be leaving him alone with a child that had my disease, but no discipline or self-control. I wrote a note explaining what I had to do and why I had to go. I was going to leave it on my pillow when I realized that would be far too cruel. He would know we were alive and that we were out there somewhere. He would know that I still loved him and knowing would breed false hope. I had to make him forget…”

The last word lingered in the air like a weight. Val wanted to pry, but she knew the other woman was done talking. But regardless of what Crystal meant by “forget,” she had gotten her point across. This thing that had happened to her— this disease— had completely changed her life. If Crystal had known going in what she was and had to give everything up for the sake of her family, what hope did Val have?

Val dropped her gaze to the floorboards. “Where do I go now?”

“You’ll stay with us,” Crystal said. A small smirk spread across her face. “You’re a ghoul now, and that means you’re family.”

Chapter 5

Months passed and seasons changed. By the coming of Autumn, the ghoul had accepted her new life; her new home. Unfortunately, acceptance couldn't soothe the longing for her old life. What she wouldn’t give to see her friends, or her family, or to even go for a walk in the city. The little things she had hated, like Dr. Peterson’s three-hour lectures on physiology, or arguing with her father about politics, she now desired more than anything. But she— the part that was still human, that was still Valerie Stephens— pushed it back. Crystal and Ligel had shaped her control and abilities far beyond what she could have done alone. When she fell, they were there to catch her.

“Again!”

“Crystal!” Val pleaded, throwing her head back. “We’ve been at this for hours!”

“And?” Crystal placed her hands on her hips, a small smile still on her lips.

Before Val could blink, claws swiped in front of her face. She had barely flipped out the way when Crystal charged her again, firing a flurry of punches and kicks.

Val countered each of them, scanning for an opportunity to take the offensive. Crystal moved to knee Val in the stomach, which exposed her own flank. Val rolled away and fired a punch at Crystal’s abdomen.

It was futile.

Crystal had caught the punch with her left thumb and index finger, then flipped Val onto her butt.

“This is why we’re not done yet,” Crystal said with a smirk before helping Val up.

“Ligel!” Exasperated, Val stomped over to Li, who was still absorbed in his punching bag. “Why didn’t you help me?”

“Mom’s a badass,” he said, not losing concentration. “I’m not an idiot.”

Almost a year later, things were no different. A black belt apparently meant nothing; neither Val nor Ligel was any closer to taking Crystal, one-on-one. At the very least, however, the woman had given them Thursdays off.

Correction: Crystal had given them Thursdays off from combat.

Val stood atop a hemlock, scanning the forest for movement. "Ligel," she breathed.

She wasn't sure when he became a surrogate brother. Maybe it was when she got lost three months ago; he had brought her food and spared her the horror of slipping away into the beast. Maybe it was at two months, when she killed the bobcat that had cornered him in a narrow ravine.

There.

Val spotted the blond blur in the leafless treetops a few hundred yards away. The instructions were to practice evading and blending; either she was simply a fast study or Ligel was losing his touch.

She ran across the branches with the dexterity of a squirrel until she was smiling down at him. He was carefully looking side to side, confident that he had properly hidden himself.

“Hey, Li.”

Ligel jumped, then stumbled back until his foot slipped. He futilely grasped the air, but his sharpened nails just missed the branch he’d been perched upon. Looking up, he could clearly see Val smirk, accompanied with a small wave. Returning her wave with an extension of his middle finger, he closed his eyes and spread his arms before crashing into the ground.

Taking a less direct route down, Val waited at the base of the tree for him to get up. She couldn’t help but shake her head at the bloody mess lying in front of her. A few seconds later, Ligel sat up and started pulling himself back together. He turned and smiled, the disgustingly gory wounds already sealing shut. Within a minute or two, all of his bones and muscles had reset and grown back like new. That was another plus to being a ghoul: they could regenerate until there wasn’t even a scratch.

According to Crystal, the only things that could legitimately kill them would be decapitation, or complete destruction of the body. Li once said there were disputes in the scant remains of the ghoul population of whether or not a beheading could still be survived, but Val was content with not testing that theory.

Once Ligel had fully healed, he walked over— obviously not upset about losing the match. Val looked down at his bloodstained shirt and smiled, still amazed at how much they connected. He was only fifteen and certainly acted his age, but there was something different about him. She could casually talk to him the way she had been able to with her friends. As an only child in her past life, this was