by Bob Dattolo
Lacie looked shocked as the nurse nodded towards me. “That would work as well. I’ll leave you both alone now.”
Lacie continued to stare at me as the nurse left. “Why would you help me? I attacked you!”
That made me shrug. “Honestly? I’m not really sure. I don’t know why I decided to come here this morning, but when I saw you alone and saw that you didn’t even have a crappily made get well card, I knew I had to sit with you. And, yeah, you attacked me and had Connor attack me, but you were sort of looking out for your friend. Granted, I don’t think he deserves to be looked out for, but at least you meant well. Or something like that. If I had a clue what the hell I was doing, I might have even been able to help him. I’m not sure I would have, but it’s not even like I had an option to do it. Heck, I have no idea why I’m not dead right now. Between you and Connor, my guts were basically hanging out. You tore up my shoulder when you bit me and your claws really messed me up. I lost a shirt and a bra because of that.”
She stared at me and then gave me a partial smile. “Well, at least I messed up your shirt and bra? What did I get out of it? A few dozen broken bones?”
“I’d apologize for that, but I can’t really say that I’m sorry. I didn’t want the fight to begin with. From what I understand, we’re lucky that the outer wall stopped you, but that’s probably where most of the damage came from. I’d think it’s a toss-up as to if it’s better or worse that the brick didn’t shatter.”
“What? What do you mean? I remember biting and clawing at you, then you pried my mouth open. After that I remember…I think you threw me? Then that’s it until I woke up here.”
“That’s sort of what happened, just not all of it? When you hit me away from Connor, we started to fight. I was actually trying to get away, at least in my head, but my body wanted no part of that. I didn’t mean to jump back at you, that’s for sure. Anyway, you had bitten me and were just tearing up my shoulder with your teeth and my stomach with your claws when I broke most of your ribs. That stopped your claws, but you were still ripping at me with your teeth, so I pried your mouth open and threw you, then I sort of hit you with this energy wave and shot you through the wall. Uhh, all of them, apparently.”
“All of what?”
I shrugged. “The walls? You went through all of the interior walls until you hit the outer wall. They had to do a bunch of spells on the outer wall to repair the brick and strengthen it because it was pretty cracked, from what I understand. The headmaster said he thought the only bones you didn’t have broken were in your tail. I’m not sure if he was exaggerating or not, but I’d have to think that there were more than a few that were messed up.”
She shook her head. “Wow. The nurse mentioned that I was broken up and that I was depleted. I guess it was pretty bad if I’m still here after this long?”
“I guess so? I’m not really sure why you’re this drained, honestly. Connor recovered pretty quickly, even after I drank so much of his blood.”
We fell silent for nearly a minute before she swallowed. “Uh, are you going to kill me?”
“What?” My voice came out nearly shrill from my shock.
“Are you going to kill me? Is that why you’re here?”
“No? Why would you even ask that?”
She stared at me as if I was missing something obvious. “You beat me? Fuck, you beat Corey like he wasn’t even competition, then I went after you. That has to mean you’re here to kill me.”
Rubbing my face didn’t change what I’d heard. “No. No, I’m not going to kill you. That was an option when you attacked me, but I’m not going to kill you. Now, if you come after me again, I might change my mind, but for what happened? As far as I’m concerned, it’s done. Heck, Renee, one of the freshmen, tried to put a spell on me to make me throw up. I confronted her on that and then Dawson basically crushed most of my face. I left him impaled on the table in the cafeteria with a bunch of cutlery rammed through him. That’s done too, unless he comes after me again.”
I let that sink in. “I’m not sure how much everyone heard about me, but my life has kinda sucked in a big way. Until coming here I literally have never had a friend. Ever. So much of what has happened to me since coming here is new for me. As in brand new. Having new clothes that I picked out? New. I’ve literally never done that. Riding in a car? Riding in a car with the FBI is the first time in my entire life that I was ever in one. Going to a store? Same thing. Going to a school? Meeting someone that my parents didn’t allow onto the property? It’s all new to me. I don’t even know what the heck I am, although I know it’s coming on strong. That being said, I’m pretty sure Corey’s going to come for me at some point. I don’t think he can trust that I beat him fair and square. Putting it all on the table right now? I don’t care about ranking. At all. I don’t even know what I am, so I sort of need to worry about me rather than my ranking in something that I didn’t even know was a possibility a few days ago. You want to be number one? Go for it. I’m not about to buck you. I’m not about to buck Corey. But I won’t be forced into something. The first thing I experienced with him was his threat to rape me. To me, unwanted sex is rape. Could I say yes, I guess I could. Now. I couldn’t then, but I could now. My life has changed so much in the past few days that it’s an option now where it wasn’t before. Then again, I won’t ever say yes to force. Ever. I may accept an offer, now that I’ve done it a few times, but force? Either they’ll be having sex with a corpse or I’ll be walking away. You don’t even want to know what my options are for if things go south.”
She didn’t say anything, so I continued. “Ms. Darvel mentioned that she thought my threats were weak when I threatened to find his family and kill them. Here’s the thing, I wasn’t bluffing. That wasn’t a threat that I didn’t plan on following through on. A week ago I never even would have thought about that as an option. Now? Now, if he messes with me enough, I’ll do exactly what I said. Put it this way, I didn’t know that anyone could heal his eyes to begin with. I thought I blinded him for life. Same for the teacher. I never knew you could heal that with magic or shifter healing. Never. That’s how much I mean what I say. If people want to ignore me? I’m good with that. If they want to be my friends? That’s even better. If they want to hurt me? Then the thoughts that keep running through the back of my head will come out.”
More silence.
“So no, I’m not here to kill you. I came because I started wondering why I hadn’t seen you and thought that maybe you were alone. I never really thought you would be. You stood up for Corey and attacked me trying to help your friend. That’s huge to me. The fact that he’s not here waiting for you to wake up is just a sad testament to how messed up this world is that I find myself in. Where recreational rape is accepted by everyone. Where fighting someone you just met is okay. Where letting your friends recover from brutal injuries without anyone to keep her company is apparently something that is done.”
I rubbed my face again. “No killing. I decided to stay to keep you company and study. I’ve literally never had a Saturday where I didn’t have chores to do or a baby to look after…so I decided to come here for now. I’ll leave if you want. It’s not like we got off on the right foot. But it’d be a shame to push me away when the alternative is to sit here alone waiting for friends to appear that don’t seem to care that you came close to dying.”
Her mouth fell open somewhere in the middle there, but I didn’t stop. When I was finally done, I sat back and waited.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. “I’d like it if you stayed?”
Why did I stay? I’m not sure. I only asked myself that at least every two minutes for the first half hour. She attacked me. Heck, she had someone else attack me as well! If I’d have been human as I thought I was only a few days ago, I probably would have been killed when he hit me and I flew over the table. Frankly, how hard do you have to hit someone that they literally fly through the air? No idea. I just know it hurt.
Not as
much as having your throat torn out by school silverware I’d bet. Poor Connor. Man, he tasted fantastic.
Then Lacie…she tore me apart. Granted, the pain there wasn’t as bad as it should have been, but it was still pretty bad. I can still feel my intestines against my arm where I held them in until they healed. That’s a weird feeling, let me tell you. While I was eating ravenously on the outside, I was screaming rather incoherently on the inside. All of this is just too surreal for me. Way too far beyond on what I expected to even be remotely possible for my life.
And yet I’m here, sitting in an empty recovery room with the girl that attacked me.
Why?
I guess because she’s alone. Maybe my view of friendship is warped by the television shows I’ve watched, or maybe it’s because I have never had any until coming here, but I expect friends to stand by each other when it’s needed. And if someone confronts someone else for you, you need to freaking stand by them if they get hurt.
I don’t quite remember that from an after-school special, but that has to be true, right?
Without planning it, the question finally popped out during a lull. “Why isn’t Corey here with you? Or Connor? Or any of your other friends? They watched you get shot through a freaking wall and I don’t even hear them talking about you. Although, I can’t hear like you guys can, so maybe every conversation is about you, but no one has said anything where I could overhear them.” She stared at me with a sad look on her face as I ran my hand through my hair. “I don’t get it. Granted, I’ve never had friends before, but someone should be here with you. I mean, geez, Corey and Connor are wolves too, right? You’re a wolf? Aren’t you guys supposed to be like crazy close that way? If I understand correctly, you’re not part of the same Pack, but shouldn’t you be like, I don’t know, bosom buddies or something? You attacked someone for Corey to try and help him, why isn’t he doing even the minimum of sitting here with you?”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she shrugged. “It’s weird to be sitting here with you. It’s hard to imagine that you don’t have a clue what it’s like to be us. Like at all. In my Pack? At home? Yeah, people would be here waiting for me to recover. That’s expected. A Pack is family. Closer than family in some ways. Or a lot of ways for others that can’t form one. Other shifters don’t necessarily create the types of groups that wolves do or the other pack shifters. Like tigers. Or bears. You room with Steph, right? That’s what I heard?”
“Yeah, she’s my roommate.”
“Has she told you how she’s separate from everyone? She’s part of your group, but not quite in it? She’s not even the alpha in your dozenal, Tom is. I would put money on her taking him in a fight, although he’s fucking tough, so it’s not a guaranteed thing. It’s just that, to her, her position doesn’t matter.”
“She mentioned that. I’m not sure I get the separate thing, but I understand not caring about position.”
She grunted. “Yeah, most mages are like that, although not all of them. Last year we had a mage that was just below Corey, and he loved it.” She obviously remembered something she didn’t like. “Anyway, here in school, we’re not quite a Pack. We’re gathered together, but it’s not the same. Corey is the alpha of the school and our dozenal. He’s firmly in charge. It’s expected that people beneath him will support him. It’s not quite as expected that he’d support others beneath him. Does that make sense?”
I outright laughed at that. “No. No it doesn’t. Why would you support someone that doesn’t support you back? You nearly died trying to get me to help him. Connor came very close as well. I don’t even know what the heck I was doing, but I knew I wasn’t going to stop. We’re all lucky you were out of sight, because if you bounced from that wall, I’m not sure what would have happened.” I sat forward in the chair, waiting for her to continue.
“It…it would have been nice to have someone here. Someone that I thought cared about me. Fuck…Corey fucked me the morning everything happened, so you’d think he’d do something…anything.” When she shrugged, it was sad and lonely. “I just didn’t expect it from him. From really anyone. As much as I wanted to wake up and find someone here…I’m not surprised. When you have a group of kids that are structured around the strong ruling, it doesn’t really make for good friends, you know? We all pretend that it does. That we’re all best of friends and that we have each other’s backs, but in reality, the rest of us only have as much as they think is required or that they can be forced to provide.”
“So why did you come after me? Did you really think that you could take me, even after what happened to Corey?”
She shrugged again. “I figured that with two of us, we could at least hold our own. I wanted him helped. I honestly had no idea what it was like to go against you. You’re this tiny girl and you seem weak. You smell weak. You hit almost every button in me to want to be in charge of you, yet you fucking destroyed Connor. You took everything I could give and threw me away like trash. It was like clawing at a wall, even though I was tearing into you.” She fell silent again.
“I only wanted him to be helped. I guess I figured that if we confronted you, you’d cave and help him. It’s hard to imagine that you did what you did, yet you have no clue how you did it.”
I turned my hands up. “I don’t have a clue. None. I literally didn’t know I was a mage or that my parents were mages until a few days ago. Zero clues. I’ve been told my entire life that I was a human and supernaturals are evil and even talking to them will taint our souls and we’ll go to hell. We had to spend hours and hours each week in fasting and prayer, flogging ourselves to remove the stains on our soul so that we could ascend to heaven.” She stared at me, open-mouthed. “Well, it seems that my parents are like 400 year old mages. They lied to us and kept us locked on the compound. Almost everything I’ve been taught about the world is a lie, at least when it comes to supernaturals. Now, on top of basically being an orphan, I’m told that I’m whatever I am and, oh, by the way, no one knows what it is. Or, if they know, they can’t tell me.” I shook my head and sighed. “Until coming here I’ve quite literally never met anyone my age that wasn’t a sibling. Never. I’ve probably only ever even seen…wow, under 20 people that weren’t part of my direct family. None of this makes sense to me.”
Thinking back through everything, I fell silent for a minute. “I was in such a bad mood when Steph brought me into the cafeteria. Such a bad mood. She had just told me that, basically, I should expect to get raped by this weekend. I doubt you can imagine what that did to me. I’ve been told my entire life that masturbation is a horrid sin and premarital sex is a straight-line to hell. I’d never had an orgasm. Nothing. I won’t even try to explain what they did to my brother the one time they caught him masturbating. I woke up screaming for almost a year after that.” The thought made me shudder. “To…to think that someone here would force me put me on edge. When we went in, Corey was basically telling Rachel that he was going to have sex with her. She didn’t want it, but he was going to force it. That hit every button in me. I honestly had no reasonable expectation of making it out of the confrontation alive, but I was okay with that. I really was. To me, it’s worth dying to not give in.”
She continued to stare at me.
“I know you probably can’t understand that. No one in my dozenal really understands it either other than Rachel. I can see everyone’s viewpoint just a little better right now. Whatever is happening in me is changing things that way. Pretty heavily. I’ve managed to have sex with everyone in my group. Something I never, ever expected to do. Or even contemplate. I’d still stop Corey from forcing someone, but not for an honest offer or request.”
“Back to what you said? I’m as lost as can be about what’s happening to me. I’m lucky things happen without me really directing them and that I seem to heal really, really well, but it’s all a mystery.”
She was mute for a long time after I stopped talking. “I don’t even know what to do with that informati
on. You’re right, I can’t really understand some of that. We’re considered old enough for sex at 12, but I’ve been getting fucked since I was nine. That’s the case for most of the shifters that I know. Not usually from adults, since that tends to get them killed, but from other kids? Definitely. It’s part of our world. Our lives. So to have you come in as a virgin at 16 is, yeah, unheard of from what I’ve seen and heard. Mages aren’t quite like shifters, but it’s pretty close. No one wants to piss off someone that is going to come back after them in 100 years for something you don’t even remember.” She started playing with the hem of her sheet. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we attacked you. I didn’t intentionally go down that path, but once we started…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure what to do now. Everything in me tells me you’re going to kill me. Or come back after me. I don’t know how to stop it if you do or stop the train of thought. It’s what happens in my world.”
“Wow,” I groaned, “this is such a strange world I’m in now. I have no plans, none, for coming back after you for what happened. I didn’t want the fight to begin with. I didn’t want it with Corey or with Dawson, either! Renee tried to put a spell on me as a practical joke, and I let it go once I understood what she was trying to do. Sure, she was crying rather badly by the time I really understood it, but that was mainly from fear, not from pain. From my viewpoint, it’s done. Don’t get me wrong, while I wanted to kill myself not that long ago, I’m the only one that makes that decision. The only one. I will fight back with everything I have if someone comes after me, but I’m not about to go after someone just for the heck of it. I’m fine with letting it go. I don’t expect Corey to do that, at least based on the looks he’s been giving me, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, you know?”
She didn’t quite relax at my words. “I don’t plan on doing anything else. I…I’m not sure if Corey will try to force me to do something, though.”