“Did you ever think that it sucked, being the third wheel all the time? Knowing that your best friends were meant for each other, and that all you’re good for is one night stands?”
I felt a strong pang of guilt. It was something I didn’t want to recognize, but her words carried a lot of resonance with me. Tears made their way down her cheeks, and though I wanted to hate her, to shake her and scream, I hugged her.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, feeling her shaking sobs wrack me. “I’ve been so selfish lately.”
“I’m…I’m sorry too.”
I held her as the sun set, her tears soaking through my shirt. I hadn’t meant to make her take a backseat. Still, my head was reeling with her admission.
“Let’s go watch that movie, huh?” I said once her heavy sobs subsided. She nodded into my shoulder, and pulled back to look at me, revealing her red-rimmed eyes. All the questions that were brewing through me left. I took her hand in mine and squeezed it.
“Hop on the back of my moped. The extra helmet’s in the scooter trunk as always,” I tugged her hand over to my little bike. She had probably walked to the house from work since the coffee shop was close by, and I wondered, with a sinking dread in my stomach, how often she had done that. But I forced myself to push the thought out of my mind. I just couldn’t deal with that just then.
We drove through the dreary streets, the rain giving us a break as we zipped through puddles and wet pavement. As we passed by the old cemetery, something caught my eye.
“Hold on,” I said, following this strange instinct I had to pull over.
“What is it?” Sierra asked me as I pulled up along a side street parking space.
“I don’t know…do you mind if we pop in the cemetery for a sec?” I peered past the iron fence to see a figure by a headstone, the back of the person’s head covered in a black hoodie.
“Um, that’s really weird Bailey…” Sierra said, but I was only half-listening. I knew it was weird, but something about that figure, the hoodie, and it being in the cemetery, triggered something in my memory.
“Just for a second,” I murmured, walking around the block to the Old City Cemetery’s gate. It was wide open, as it usually was during visiting hours.
I approached the person, who seemed to be about Sierra’s height, and felt a strange mix of apprehension and excitement.
‘If you know this person, then why don’t you know their name?’ I thought.
“The new mate of Deston’s pack, fascinating,” a woman’s voice came from the hooded. I stepped back in surprise and bumped into Sierra, who was only several paces behind me.
“Bailey, right?” the woman turned around, revealing a surprisingly youthful face. She pulled down the hoodie, revealing a short afro and a face riddled with piercings. She was fiercely beautiful and horrifying all at once. Plus, she knew my name, which was more than a little creepy.
“Who are you?” I could feel Sierra’s body tense behind me.
“You tell me,” she laughed, “you’re the one who came over to say hello, didn’t you?”
Her eyes were dark and almond-shaped, and I could have sworn I had seen them before. I searched my mind, desperately trying to remember when and where, but couldn’t.
“You just…look familiar…really, how do you know my name?” I said again, my heart pounding furiously as I asserted myself.
“Bailey maybe we should just go,” Sierra hissed from behind me.
“And who’s this?” the woman laughed, looking past me at Sierra. I suddenly grew very protective, and held my arms out without even realizing it.
“Bringing an innocent into this, are we?”
“What?” Sierra scoffed, but I could tell the fierceness on the woman’s face put her on edge too.
“Listen, girlie, I’m pretty hungry, and while I’m on specific orders not to hurt you, no one said anything to me about the redhead…”
“You lay a hand on her and I’ll rip your throat out.”
The woman laughed. “Ooh, your precious.” I dug my nails into my palms I may not know what that woman was capable of, but she was asking for an ass-whooping, supernatural forces be damned. Still, the idea of eating someone put me on edge. How many freaky people-creatures actually existed in the world?
“Listen to me, Bailey,” she hissed sarcastically, taking a step towards me. She smiled, and that’s when I saw it. She had a pair of sharp canine teeth, like she had sharpened them to twin points.
“I’m here with very specific orders. To tell you to stay in line…”
“You can’t tell her what to do!” Sierra snapped, moving in front of me before I could stop her. “I don’t care if you are some weirdo goth or not!”
And as much as Sierra’s kickass, I-don’t-take-shit-from-nobody attitude is awesome, I could tell right then and there it was getting us into a shit load of trouble.
The woman’s dark eyes shifted—like actually moved, and her pupils expanded into slits as her irises turned a dark, red-purple.
“What the—”
But before Sierra could say anything else, I threw myself in front of her, taking the brunt of the strong charge. We fell to the ground, my body on top of Sierra’s, and the monster-woman poised above me.
“I’d move if I were you,” she hissed, in a nearly inhuman voice.
“You’re on orders not to hurt me,” I spat, even though every nerve in my body was alive with fear. Even if I wanted to move, I was probably too terrified to do so just then.
“I’ll tear her apart,” the woman hissed, raising her hand up in a threatening claw.
“Over my dead body,” I spat. That may have been a mistake, because she did not look too pleased just then.
And by ‘did not look too pleased’ I mean, completely, hell-bent on turning me into a corpse not too pleased.
She growled and brought her hand down towards my neck. I flinched, wondering what in the world made me think I could take this otherworldly crazy person when I heard a loud “smack.”
I sat up quickly and opened my eyes. The hoodie woman was laying on the floor ten yards to my left. Hovering over her was Brandon, and he was snarling and growling like a rabid dog.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. Dark hair burst from the back of his neck.
“Bailey…” Sierra muttered beneath me. I quickly moved myself off of her and offered her a hand up. I murmured an apology and quickly scanned the area.
Trent was there, as was Nick, Allison and Mac. The whole pack, poised with their arms up and unforgiving daggers in all of their eyes, focused straight on Brandon and the freaky goth.
“What the hell is going on?” Sierra’s green eyes were as round and big as dinner plates.
“Um…not sure,” I answered truthfully. I caught Trent’s eye and he grimaced, walking up to me and touching my elbow. The deep look of concern on his face made my knees go weak, even while Brandon was wrestling that strange woman on the cemetery floor.
“Are you okay? Did she hurt you?” he asked as Allison pounced over to Brandon and helped him wrestle the insanely strong woman. I caught a flash of Brandon’s hand as he wrestled her down, and long, claw-like nails protruded from his otherwise normal human hand.
“Um, yeah…”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” I promised.
“I’m going to call the cops,” Sierra said, her shaking hand reaching into her pocket.
“It’s best if you don’t do that, Ms. Sierra,” Mac grimaced. It was weird, seeing him in this context. I hadn’t known him as anything more than Trent’s landlord, who I only saw in passing when something was broken in the house. Here he was now, with his bicep muscles flexed and his jaw taut, watching the struggle with a piercing gaze.
“Why not?” Sierra was clearly panicked. Nick put his hand on hers, pushing the cell phone down, and I saw something strange flicker on her face.
“Ok, what are you up to, Lark?” Brandon snarled, suspended over her body with his hands p
inning hers to the ground above her head, his long nails embedded into the earth. Allison was crouched down, holding down her legs. The woman named Lark stopped writhing and just smiled. She had a look of pure venom in her eyes.
“I was just warning your friend here, little Miss Bailey, to stay in line.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Brandon snarled.
“I’m just acting on orders, chief,” she laughed.
“Whose orders? Who are you working for now you sleazy creep?!” Brandon yelled into her face. I had never seen him that angry before, his face was wild and livid with rage.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she snickered.
“Brandon,” Nick warned, looking around. There was no one else to be seen and the trees did a pretty good job of shrouding us, but it looked more and more like Brandon was transforming, hair now covering the front of his face.
“Listen here, Brandon. I’m not going to give you all the details of my life. I’m just going to let you know that Bailey better watch herself, and know better than to use any magic that doesn’t belong to her.”
“Get out of here!” Brandon hissed, his face bunching up into an unrecognizable anger. She laughed once more before disappearing beneath me. Sierra screamed and I took a few steps back, as something black and small flew away from us up into the air and vanished.
“What the hell—” Sierra gasped, her jaw hanging open as her wide eyes followed the fluttering dot in the sky.
“I think we should go for a walk, Sierra,” Nick said quietly, offering her his arm. She looked at him for a minute, confused by his extended elbow. She finally nodded solemnly, as if there was some sort of unspoken communication she understood, and slipped her arm through his, keeping a comfortable distance.
“When will you be coming back?” I gave Nick an apprehensive look. I was already concerned for Sierra’s safety, and while I trusted Nick, I still felt a familiar knot of dread as they trudged towards the iron gates.
“I’ll have her back at the apartment in a few hours, I promise,” Nick gave me a small smile, as if trying to put me at ease.
Sierra gave me a perplexed look. I just nodded at her as they walked away, wondering if Nick was going to catch her up on all the things he wiped from her mind.
“Who was that?” I asked, quickly turning around to face Trent and Mac. Trent took my hand into his and squeezed, and I couldn’t help that my heart skipped a beat at his protective touch.
“That was Lark Reed,” Brandon said from behind me. I turned to see he and Allison, approaching us with a nasty scowl on his face.
“Sorry,” he said, clearly aware of his sour disposition. “She puts me in an awful mood.” He groaned a little as his nails shrunk and his hair pulled itself back into his skin. It was kind of a morbid thing to watch.
“We should go to the house,” Mac said. “Do you need a lift, Ms. Bailey?” he asked, his perpetually sad face turning towards the road beyond the iron-gate fence.
“I’ll meet you there, I have my moped,” I said. “Thanks though.”
“I’ll go with you.” Trent held my hand tighter. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Thanks.” I gave him a wry grin, hoping to ease the tension. “But I’m still driving.”
He laughed and nodded, and as we walked out of the creepy graveyard, the gray headstones staring us down, I felt a small sense of relief.
Back at the house, Mac put on the tea kettle and we sat around in the living room around the old, beat-up coffee table that they had bought from Goodwill a few years ago. I curled up on the couch next to Trent, trying to feel calm and casual while I watched Brandon shake his leg nervously, his eyes flitting around the room. Allison looked unhappy, but she kept still and quiet. She was an unusually stoic girl, with long blonde curls and thin lips that seemed to be perpetually glued together.
“Here we are.” Mac broke the silence with a silver tray balanced on his right hand, a kettle, sugar bowl and several mismatched mugs on it, the tags of the tea bags hanging down the sides of the brightly colored ceramic.
“They only have Earl Grey,” Mac said, shaking his head as he placed the tray down on the coffee table. It was pretty amusing, seeing such a buff, rugged man like him placing down such homey, domestic things. I couldn’t help but smile—I appreciated his uniqueness.
He sat down in the chair directly across from us, between Allison and Brandon. “Well, help yourselves,” he smiled kindly, a sadness still twinkling in his blue eyes. “I don’t care for tea myself.”
“Thanks,” I cleared my throat as I leaned over to pour myself a cup. Trent and Brandon followed suit. Allison didn’t stir.
“So, that woman…” I said once we settled with our mugs of piping hot tea. “How did she know my name? Or Brandon’s, for that matter?”
Mac grimaced. “Do you want to explain this one, Brandon?”
“Not really,” Brandon sighed, blowing on his tea. “But I will. I met Lark way back when I started middle school. She was one of the older chicks who would hang around the rock venues. I thought…I thought she was super cool,” he admitted, looking down into his mug. “I mean, I was really impressionable then, so it’s hard to blame me. But yeah, she’d talk to me, throw me a bone and stuff. Then one night…” he took a sharp breath, and I could feel Trent tense next to me.
“One night, I was hanging out after a show by myself, like an idiot kid, waiting for her to bum me a cigarette. And she came with a werewolf friend of hers. They took me behind an alley and…well, you know.” He finished quietly. I could hear the fear and hurt in his voice, like the trauma had scarred him, and still ran deep within him.
No one spoke for a minute. I looked down into my tawny colored tea, and finding it unappetizing, took a hesitant sip. I could hardly feel the hot liquid running down my throat—instead I was imagining a young, middle school Brandon being attacked by a wolf in an alley. It just wasn’t fair, and while I knew that life wasn’t fair, that it couldn’t be, I couldn’t help but be absolutely horrified by it.
“Is she a wolf?” I asked.
“No,” Brandon replied. “Her friend was the wolf. She’s a vampire.”
“So…” I processed the bizarre information, “she could have sucked your blood, but instead had someone else attack you?”
“Yeah…” Brandon looked up at me, resentment on his normally gleeful face. He wanted revenge—it was palpable. “She’s twisted. For her drinking someone’s blood isn’t nearly as pleasurable as watching someone’s life be destroyed. For her, it was just as interesting to see a thirteen-year-old get beat up as it was to imagine the possibility that I would live and be cursed with this.”
The bitterness in his voice took me by surprise. For some reason, I guess because it seemed (with the exception of Trent and Lola’s drama) that they were pretty well-adjusted to being werewolves. I had forgotten that this was a curse.
And I suddenly became hyper-aware that I was a part of it.
‘No wonder Trent feels so guilty,’ I thought.
“The big concern,” Mac said, looking over at each of us, “is why she’s meddling with you. And her warning. It’s just cryptic enough to make me wonder if she’s actually on orders not to say anything, rather than to warn you.”
“She’s trying to stir up trouble,” Trent spoke up beside me, his lips in a terse, thin line.
“Probably,” Mac nodded. “But that doesn’t mean we should dismiss her. She most likely wants to get a rise out of us, but only because she’s very impatient. There may be some trouble coming our way,” he said, and then looked at me.
“Bailey, from what I hear, you have some sort of relationship with the Veisi boy, from the Neo-Knights of Cyrus?”
“Well,” I avoided looking at Trent. The word ‘relationship’ felt heavy, incriminating even. “I know him, yes. But I didn’t know who he was when I met him. Or about any of this,” I said quickly.
“Well, we may need to be careful. I’m sure Nick told
you already but they don’t take kindly to wolf packs. It would be just like Lark to associate with them out of boredom.”
I took another sip of the tea, again having a hard time paying attention to the warmth or flavor. The information was spinning through my mind once again, and I was having a hard time trying to make sense of the cloud of strange knowledge I had accumulated recently.
“So I can’t just tell them to leave you alone?” I could hardly force my voice above a whisper. I already knew the answer.
Mac shook his head. “I don’t think talking to that fella would be a good idea right now. You’re just going to have to be on your toes. We’ll have to stay in this general area, and I’m going to have to ask you don’t go leaving town for any reason. That way, if trouble comes up one of us can help you out. Like we did just now.”
“That was insane,” I said, recalling how they showed up in such great timing. “I don’t even remember calling any of you…did you…transform or something?”
“We can just run that fast,” Allison said quietly, looking up at me through her bangs for the first time since we sat down.
“A lot of our supernatural strength is just a part of our daily lives. We have to work hard to keep it a secret though, so don’t go shouting about the little things,” Mac teased and winked. “We can’t go zipping down the street just cause there’s a spider in your drain.”
“I’ll make a mental note.” I was glad to smile for the first time in what felt like days, even if it had only been a few hours.
Just then, the front door slammed open, and I heard heavy, thundering footsteps.
And I could feel it. The feeling of lightening in my bones that I only identified just then—it was Lola.
“She’s here,” she hissed from the hallway, before even seeing my face. I wondered if she could sense me like I could sense her, or if she could smell me or sense me in some other way.
I stood up, placing my mug on the coffee table and trying to appear calm as she appeared in the doorway. She looked wild-eyed and crazy, her white blonde hair tousled in all directions and her shirt torn up and covered in mud, like she had thought last minute to throw it off as she transformed. She was wearing thick, black combat boots that were dragging mud into the sitting room.
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