Lunacy Page 12

  His eyes looked haunted at the prospect and he backed away, going to sit on the couch without a word, even looking away from me. I let a tear slip from the careful control I had over it, masking it by grabbing those tweezers and preparing myself. Taking a deep breath and with slightly shaking hands, I started the slow process. Grasping the end of the broken glass protruding from my flesh, and exhaling slowly to focus on something other than the encroaching stab of pain that followed as I yanked it loose. Over and over again, each time setting the blood coated pieces of glass on the towel. Many other small rivers of blood joined the few that were flowing slowly, like an icy stream through the forest in winter. Down my pale flesh in weirdly intricate and turning patterns.

  My hands weren't getting any steadier as it went on. If anything, they were definitely getting more tremulous. I knew it was a bad sign, but I'd be damned if I was going to stop before I'd gotten all of the foreign objects removed. I didn't want to risk infection. I almost chuckled for a moment as I thought that maybe I wouldn't even have to worry about that now. Immunity to colds, any bacteria, viruses... For all I knew, maybe I was going to stop aging. Not a bad thing, in theory, but it brought so many more questions to my mind that...

  "Kacea... You're spacing out." This from Teigan, the slender young man was always the voice of reason.

  It drew me back to the fact that I still had a few shards stuck in my right arm, which were going to be a bitch to pull out since I was so not left handed, and the ones buried in my chest and stomach. I hoped that my heavy breathing hadn't driven any of them deeper. I tilted my head from one side to the other, hearing a satisfactory pop on each side that helped relieve some of my tension.

  Another deep breath in, and I held it as I tugged the remaining five pieces of glass from my forearm in rapid succession. Finally letting it out slowly, it shook and trembled as badly as my hands did. Only a few more, then I could slather on the Neosporin and hope it stopped all of the bleeding. I started talking to Elomina as I leaned back and assessed the few shards embedded in my chest and abdomen.

  "Shouldn't I have stopped bleeding by now with this freaky new Goddess possession thing?"

  She shrugged. "Perhaps. But to be honest, healing herself may not be a trait of Skadhi's. Either that or you're still more tapped than you thought you were from changing the boys earlier. Even though you had a meal, you likely won't have the energy to properly heal yourself with shape shifter quickness until you've had a decent night's rest."

  I nodded. That made sense. Two down, two more to go. If they'd been a bit lower, it would have been catastrophic. Getting my nipples pierced wasn't something on my list of life goals. "This is absolutely fucking ridiculous..." I groaned, holding my breath once more and yanking the last two shards from the right side of my chest.

  A heavy sigh of relief, and it made me see sparks a little. Light headed, with floaters at the edges of my vision. Probably not a good sign. Make that definitely not a good sign. I ignored it anyway, determined not to pass out like I nearly had on my way to the nurse's office from the gym. Conner handed me a second towel and I wiped my arms clean as best I could, forcing my mind to focus on putting salve on all the wounds. The ointment cooled the heat immediately and I winced a little as I dabbed it into some of the deeper wounds with a cotton swab.

  Finally finished, Conner took away the towel and glass, putting them in a plastic shopping bag and tying the handles together before tossing the whole bundle into the trash. He came back from the kitchen and handed me a glass of orange juice. It felt awesome and cold, so I held it against my forehead. "You know... it might do you better if you drank it."

  I waved a hand at him, eventually taking a few sips. "Why orange juice?"

  He shrugged. "I know they always give it to you after you give blood. Something about upping your glucose levels back to normal after you've lost some. Iron too, I think."

  "I wasn't bleeding that badly," I countered immediately, finishing the rest of the glass in one long swallow. Now empty, I went back to holding the cool glass against my face before it had time to start absorbing my heat.

  "Maybe not, but you're still shaking like a leaf. That usually means dehydration or low blood sugar levels. Both of which are nothing to mess around with." Teigan spoke again from his place on the couch a short distance away. When I gave him a confused look, he shrugged. "I've got some diabetics in my family. And I've been prone to some blood sugar issues of my own, from time to time."

  "You're diabetic?" I asked, distracted and a touch perplexed by that one.

  He shook his head with a little laugh. "Thank Goddess, no. I don't have to shoot up with insulin or anything. But if I don't eat properly, I can faint and get shaky just like you are now. Depending on the when, passing out could be a danger to others as well as yourself." Those pretty eyes looked away from me and he seemed lost in a memory. "I'd skipped a few meals, and was driving home. Crashed into the side of a car with a mom and her little girl in it. Luckily no one had anything but a little whiplash and some bruises, but I could have killed them both. If I'd taken the life of that child with those innocent big blue eyes..." He didn't need to say aloud that it would have haunted him for the rest of his days.

  "What do you have here that I can nom on quickly, then? It's getting to be closer to dark, and I don't wanna risk almost running any puppies over on my way back home."

  Conner helped me to my feet, careful to only put his hands on my upper arms that had escaped the deluge of glass that tried to cut me to ribbons. "I can show ya. I'm the one who spends the most time in the kitchen, anyway."

  I nodded and let him lead me into the kitchen, feeling horribly drained all of a sudden. He pulled out a chair from the table and gently shoved me into it, not bothering to give me time to protest about him being too gentlemanly for me to stand his presence. Almost like our minds were still linked up, he smirked and just shook his head at my expression with a little chuckle. "How hungry are you, Kacea? Sandwich hungry? Or 'So fucking hungry I could eat a horse, and therefore whatever you give me should come from a package because speed is an issue?'"

  I blinked, needing a moment to process how quickly he'd spoken that last sentence. "Uh... You do realize that you could have finished making a sandwich already in the amount of time it took for you to spit that out, yeah?"

  He stuck his tongue out at me and opened the fridge, leaning down to look inside and giving me a pretty good view of his backside once more. "Lunch meat preference?"

  "Ham. Any variety will do, if you've got some. Otherwise... I dunno. Anything, really." He chucked something at me without even looking, and I somehow managed to catch it. Slightly fumbling, having to cradle it against my chest before it came to a full stop. It was a cup of strawberry yogurt. The awesome kind that actually had bits of fruit in it. I knew what was coming next, so I held my hand up and caught the projectile that was an ancient silver spoon, too. I cracked open the yogurt and dug in, shaking my head. Silver spoon... At least it hadn't burned me like it likely had done to Conner.

  He made two sandwiches in rapid succession --ham, lettuce, and Swiss cheese like he'd been reading my mind-- plating them like a pro and setting them before me while I licked the spoon clean. "What would you like to drink?"

  "Well, I am driving. So vodka is unfortunately not an option." That one made him laugh a little. "Water will be just fine. Thanks."

  The glass appeared before me, and I glared up at him incredulously as I saw that it was not, in fact, glass. It was plastic. He must have been nervous after my incident only a few moments ago. "Really, dude?"

  He patted my shoulder. "No worries, your highness. My duty is to ensure your safety!" he said with overly done bravado.

  I rolled my eyes. "Then why did you pelt me with a silver spoon?"

  He shrugged. "I wanted to see how you reacted to silver. Apparently it doesn't bother you, which is both a good thing and a bad thing."

  "How could that possibly be a bad thing?" I asked, truly intrigued
and curious. I couldn't see a downside to a lack of silver allergies.

  "We know it won't hurt you, but that doesn't mean that our enemies will. If you were to be taken by them, for any reason, they might assume that silver will hurt you. It tends to be more than enough for torture all on its own. But once they discover it doesn't touch you... They might have to get more inventive."

  I'd finished the first sandwich while he was talking and downed half of the glass of water to chase it. "You keep talking about enemies, Conner, and I just don't get it. I mean, you all lead fairly normal lives. School, jobs, social lives... How dangerous can these pretenders to the throne possibly be?"

  He just shook his head. "That's not really my place to say, Kacea. If you really want to know, ask Elomina. Or even Teigan. He's a little older, so he's dealt with this whole werewolf thing longer than we have. But I do know this: all of the monsters you were always afraid were under your bed or in your closet when you were little pale in comparison to some of the things out there hiding in the shadows, waiting for the sun to set to sink their teeth into your heart and mind."

  Chapter 15

  I was glad to be back in my own clothes, but for the whole drive home, I couldn't stop thinking about what Conner had said. His revelation about monsters was enough to set anyone's nerves on edge. Driving home by myself down all those darkened country back roads didn't do much to help put my mind at ease. I'd cranked the stereo so loud that my entire car shook, hoping that the heavy bass was enough to deter most deer and smaller woodland creatures from coming anywhere near the road as I passed by. I sang along loudly to distract my mind, hoping to cover it all with the crunchy guitars and the amazing bass line of the song "Gorgeous Nightmare" by Escape the Fate, one of my favorite bands of all time.

  "Is it the way that you feel against my body? Is it the way that you act so damn naughty? Is it the way that you shake when your hips move to the bass, the bass, the b-- Holy shit!" I slammed on the brakes, braced the wheel, and ducked as a large wolf - no doubt in my mind now that is was a werewolf - bounded out into the road in front of me and stopped in the center of my lane.

  The music was still raging on in all of its metallic glory, so I pounded the power button with my fist to turn it off. I rolled the window down and yelled at the giant canine. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, huh?!" It had scared the hell out of me, and that pissed me off royally, and my brain doesn't exactly function on rationality when it comes to rage.

  It looked at me then, and I saw the coloration of it bathed in the brightness of my headlights that cut a swath through the thick darkness of the cloudy and moonless night. It was mostly a very dark grey, almost black, with white ears and a lighter patch on the top of its head. Those eyes knew me, and even though they were the wrong color, I knew them as well. It was Alain, who the boys had said was the son of one of the wolves who was the very reason Jynxx's parents had made tracks.

  I was too angry to bother feeling scared anymore. I shifted the car into neutral and revved the engine, wanting him to move because I really didn't wanna fuck my car by running over a dire wolf that weighed almost as much as my vehicle did. No response from the wolf but a slow, lazy blinking. "Bad move, punk..." I growled, shifting back into gear and pressing the pedal to the floor. Rather than getting run over, Alain did what I was always afraid of a deer doing. He hopped up onto the hood, the metal under him screaming in protest as he leaned down to peer into the windshield at me, our eyes locking for a moment. The things I saw there made me shudder, knowing that I'd been on his agenda since we were children because his parents could sense in me what no one else could. He licked the windshield and broke eye contact before he sprang off and into the woods on the other side of the road.

  "Son of a bitch..." I snarled, driving the rest of the way home as quickly as I dared. I wanted to inspect the damage to the car, and I didn't give a damn what else might dart out in front of me. For tonight, I said to hell with Mother Nature.

  The rest of the ride home was quiet, and I rolled into the garage, happy to see Mom and Dad weren't home from work yet. It was shaping up to be an early night. I'd had a long day full of stress, but when I got out and saw that my car was in good shape aside from a few small indentations in the hood that I could easily pop out with a plunger and some soapy water, I heaved a sigh of relief. Locking everything behind me as I went, I entered into the house through the breeze way, dropping my jacket in the kitchen on the back of a chair and grabbing myself a drink from the fridge. The bottle of cherry flavored UV Vodka sang to me, but I ignored it. Just in case anyone else tried to ambush me, I needed to be as ready as I could possibly manage.

  I chugged the whole can of Mountain Dew in record time, knowing that my stomach would hate me for the sudden injection of caffeine, and not caring. I was torn between wanting to zonk out on the couch that very second, and never wanting to sleep again. Being this on edge couldn't be good for the heart. I inspected my wounds from the failed success of the ice making incident, happy to see that they were healing faster than they normally would have. Conner was right, the extra food was working.

  The remote for the stereo was chilling on the kitchen table, so I picked it up and turned it on, cringing when Dad's country music emerged from the speakers with ninja stealth, punching me in the eardrum like a pack of rednecks in a bar fight.

  "God damn, Dad..." I groaned, quickly hitting the button to change it to a metal station. If I heard one more song about a pickup truck, someone's dog, a cheating woman, and moonshine, I was gonna claw my eyes out with a rusty spoon.

  I turned the volume down some and went scavenging through the cupboards and fridge for something tasty to cook up. My parents were more into getting take-out, but I liked to cook. Much better for you, much cheaper - not that money was really an issue for them anymore - and you never had to worry about what surprise grossness might be in store for you. I was the one cooking it; I was in total control of my ingredients. It was the best way to have it, really.

  So I danced and sang around the kitchen while I threw together some amazing scrambled eggs, complete with sliced pepperoni and shredded cheese, half a rasher of bacon, and some toast. I paused in the fridge, debating on what sort of jam I should use on my toast when I heard the door open. "Hey, Mom and Dad!" I hollered, not looking up. I was slathering thick gobbets of raspberry preserves on my toast and had one piece half gone when I turned at footsteps that sounded totally wrong to me. Not Mom and Dad.

  A few guys I recognized but didn't know stood side by side with Alain Reece, apparently the guys from his band Blunt Trauma, and I was brandishing a sticky butter knife at them. "State your business here, before I call the cops." I said simply, my eyes flicking back and forth between them. Five of them, altogether. Big enough that I knew I couldn't take them in a fair fight, much less with five on one odds, and I was damn sure that none of them were human.

  Alain shrugged, his hands up to appear non-threatening. "Is there anything wrong with wanting to pay a visit to an old child hood friend of mine?"

  I laughed incredulously. "Yes, actually. There's a lot wrong with it. You and I were never friends, especially during our childhood. Considering I could have run you down with my car, and should have, and now you're here... Your demeanor is threatening, you're trespassing, and according to New York State penal law, I can legally defend myself with deadly physical force because I fear for my life right now." The boys all seemed a touch taken aback at my lawyerly babble. "Sound reasonable enough to you, Alain?"

  He crossed his arms over his chest, bare chest, with a smirk. I'd been so busy pondering the quickest way to get rid of them all that I hadn't noticed they were all standing there naked as they day they were born. They must have come here in wolf form and then shifted to get into the house. I ignored it as best I could, although it was a touch distracting. He really had filled out in all the right places since we were little.

  He took a step closer and I lifted the knife higher, held it more steadily, feel
ing the cool metal heating beneath the warmth of my fingers. "Come on, pretty boy. Want me to mark up that face of yours with this knife? It is pure silver, so it's gonna fuck your world if you keep coming closer."

  Alain snorted, tossing his head back with laughter so all that black and platinum blond hair mingled in a weird mixture of contrasts. "You won't do it, Kacea. You're all talk. You think that throwing around threats about legal repercussions and permanent scarring frighten me? You should know better than that by now." He stepped closer and I took a step back. Two more times this happened, until my back bumped into the cabinets and I was cornered. There wasn't really anywhere I could have run where they couldn't catch me, anyway. But I was right next to the sink...

  Alain was just out of arm's reach and then he took that final step so he was within swinging distance. I struck, faster than I should have been able to, but he still managed to move enough that I didn't have the chance to hit anything vital. The silver sank into his flesh like a blow torch through butter, complete with smoke and the hissing, sizzling sound of burning meat, like bacon in a frying pan. He exhaled sharply at the pain, but leaned into me closer, trapping my arm between our bodies with the knife shoved into his stomach just beneath his ribs. I tried to give the blade a twist, but there was hardly enough room for me to wiggle my fingertips.

  He reached down and wrapped my whole wrist in his much larger hand and started to squeeze. I felt my bones starting to flex under the strain, but I did my best to stay silent. I got the feeling that he'd be more encouraged by my pain. But once the joints started to pop and things started to crackle like Rice Krispies in a bath of milk, I couldn't maintain my silence any longer. I gasped, but bit down hard on my lower lip so I wouldn't scream.

  His whole body vibrated with heat and his breath was like the fetid gusts of a wind storm in the desert against my ear. “Come on, Kacea... You've got more than that for me...” He practically purred, just barely flexing his fingers a touch more so the bones in my forearm shattered under his touch like dry tinder. Multiple fractures. I could feel each and every one shooting agony through me, worse than any pain I'd experienced in my life.