Salem Snippets: A Collection of Silver Society Shorts

JESSE JOINS THE SILVER SOCIETY

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a snippet that heavily features Alex and Jesse, with appearances by several others. It contains some potentially disturbing and triggering content, including thoughts of suicide, mentions of child abuse, and other trauma. This is the story of how Jesse ended up joining the Silver Society.

JESSE JOINS THE SILVER SOCIETY

The scroll was glowing. Alex sighed, but dutifully picked it up and read the words which appeared on its surface.

Jesse Rodriguez. Fourteen, but nearly fifteen years old. Ninth member. Silver wolf talisman. Son of Rhiannon. Slayer. Currently in a hospital for the criminally insane.

Alex frowned. "Seriously? The newest member of the Silver Society is in a psychiatric hospital?" He asked aloud. "And for the criminally insane? What did the kid do?"

The scroll didn't bother to answer him. Alex sighed and decided to pay Cassandra a visit. If there was a slayer who was in that situation, chances were that Cassandra knew who he was. Being one himself, Alex knew a lot of the slayers in Salem, but he certainly didn't know them all.

Cassandra was easy enough to find. She was in the middle of a battle against several vampires.

"What is it, Alex?" She asked in a bored tone as she staked one of the vampires in the heart.

"You look busy," he replied. "I can come back."

"Give me a minute."

Alex watched as Cassandra increased her efforts against the vampires. She really was a slaying machine, and true to her word, she finished them off in sixty seconds.

"Impressive," Alex said as she walked over to him.

"Not really," Cassandra replied with a shrug. "Why are you here, Alex? Is something wrong?"

"Do you know a slayer named Jesse Rodriguez?"

She tensed. "Why are you asking?" She asked.

"He's our ninth member."

Cassandra frowned. "He's in a psych ward, Alex."

"So the scroll was right about that... What happened?" Alex asked.

"It's really not my place to tell you."

"Cassandra, if he's one of us, I need to know the details."

"He killed his foster family," she finally admitted. "He mauled them to death."

"He's a lycanthrope?"

"Yeah... Jesse's a wolf. It must be part of his soul, because it happened naturally. He wasn't infected."

Alex supposed that made sense. Rhiannon was the ruler of all lycanthropes. Her children being lycanthropes was only logical.

"Why was he in foster care?" Alex asked.

"His father murdered his mom a few months ago. Jesse tried to protect her and damn near got himself killed in the process."

"I heard about that case... Those were his parents? Poor kid..."

"He's not a bad guy, Alex. He's just had a really crappy life. We all suspected, but Jesse refused to admit his dad was hurting him and his mother, so we couldn't do much for them. Aideen and Arnie barely got to the house in time to save Jesse's life."

"They didn't tell me about that."

"I think it traumatized them. Arnie hates that Jesse's in foster care because he knows how much it sucks, and Aideen felt guilty that she couldn't fix his mom."