Shadowkissed (A Hemlock Grove fan fiction)

upirs and werewolves and wiccans, oh my!

Half an hour later, Jeremy and Cornelia are sitting on Macy’s living room couch with their hands folded in their laps. Roman and Macy are standing at opposite sides of the room, making a conscious effort not to cross gazes with one another. “So there are werewolves?” Cornelia asks quietly.

“Yup,” Naomi says, popping the p.

“And witches?” adds Jeremy. It’s the first thing he’s said since coming inside the house.

“Many different variations of the term are used in all different areas of the world, but yes, in a sense.”

Macy herself exhales in awe. Even after seeing these things in action, it’s difficult to feel the truth of them—she can’t imagine what it must be like for her friends, hearing these tales for the first time. Never in her wildest dreams had Macy ever expected Tyler’s theories to ring true and feels terrible for having discounted them so quickly. She feels a lot better now that the panic and horror have subsided, though she still isn’t sure of her feelings when it comes to Roman. Maybe she never will. Just looking at him brings back a whirlwind of emotion: the feeling of his absent heartbeat beneath her palm, the flicker of pain in his eyes when he told her he would never let anything happen to her again.

“So what are you?” Macy asks. “Supernatural, I assume.”

“Something like that. But mostly I’m just human,” Naomi answers placidly.

Macy shoots her a doubtful look. “Can everyone stop lying to me? I can handle it.” She pushes forward onto her elbows. “So what? A wizard, then?”

Naomi groans. "I am not a wizard. I am a Wiccan. This isn’t Harry Potter," she mutters under her breath.

"Well excuse my mistake!" Macy exclaims. She rubs her face tiredly. “Three days ago my life was perfectly normal, or at least as normal as anything can be in Hemlock Grove. And now there's vampires and werewolves and witches, and God only knows what else. I feel like I just got warped into an episode of Twin Peaks.”

Ivana rolls her onyx eyes in pure boredom. “You aren’t pretty enough to be Audrey, sweetheart.”

Before an argument can ensue, Jeremy cuts in, “So the rumors are true? All that stuff people were saying about you, about how you were crazy and hearing stuff— That’s true? You can read minds?”

“I try not to,” Naomi admits. “But it’s hard, and it takes a lot of concentration to keep myself out of other peoples’ heads.” Out of the corner of her eye she catches Cornelia pursing her lips tightly. Naomi sighs. “It’s not as though I asked for this, you know. I’m shadowkissed because I died and got a second chance somehow.”

Cornelia doesn’t say anything.

“It could happen to you,” Naomi continues, giving the other girl a sharp look. “To anyone, really. One false move, and you’re dead. If by some miracle you come back to life, then your vision is muddled. You’ll be forever tainted by it.”

Cornelia shakes her head. “But that’s the thing,” she says. “If I die, then I die and that’s the end of it. But you came back. Your entire existence is unnatural in itself.”

“Why don’t you just lynch me now and get it over with?” Naomi rolls her eyes. “Life just isn’t that cut and dry. There’s a lot to it that you don’t understand yet.”

“So I’m beginning to realize.”

Macy gives her old friend a stern look. To Naomi she asks, “So what is being shadowkissed, exactly?”

Naomi exhales. “I’m not exactly sure. I just know that I can hear what others think sometimes, depending on the type of person they are. Sometimes I get stuck in other peoples’ dreams, which is probably the worst thing on the planet. I’m still working on that one. And I— I can see the dead.”