by Lauren Dawes
‘You’re James,’ she replied, knowing how confused she must have looked.
He kept his sharp eyes on her as his hands patted down his pockets. Eventually he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his pants pocket and lit up; breathing in deeply then pushing the smoke through his nostrils. ‘Nope. Not James,’ he replied in the same slow drawl.
‘What’s your name then?’ she demanded.
He flicked the ashes off the end of the cigarette before placing it between his lips. He raised his hand and crooked a finger at her, beckoning her to come a little closer. When she didn’t, he inhaled deeply on the cigarette; the end flaring to life like a heartbeat then dying again. Wisps of acrid smoke drifted lazily around his face as he exhaled.
‘I go by Buddy,’ he said, little puffs of smoke coming out with his words. Taking another deep pull, his eyes narrowed as the smoke he had pushed through his nose drifted past his face like white flames licking at his skin.
Indi inched a little closer to him; his eyes always watching her. They were two predators watching one another. Indi started to circle him, but Buddy stood his ground, giving her his back like a giant fuck you.
‘Are you brothers?’ she asked. Her anger was still bubbling just under the surface, but when she looked at Beth against the dumpster, the giant cat growled in displeasure.
‘I don’t have any brothers.’
Buddy suddenly dropped the cigarette and coughed. He looked around the alleyway with scared, wide eyes. ‘W-w-where am I?’ he asked in a softer voice.
‘James?’ she asked incredulously.
‘I-I-Indi?’ he asked in a panic. He looked at her like she could give him answers, but before she could say something to him; he blinked rapidly and squatted down to pick up the smouldering butt.
‘Wasteful,’ Buddy spat and crushed the cigarette in his palm while it was still lit. He grinned up at her eerily. ‘James can be a little pushy when he wants to be,’ he drawled. She took a step back from him, but he was too quick. Taking her by the wrist, he jerked her into his grip and spun her around; moulding and pressing himself into her back. His arms were tight against her stomach and across her chest.
‘Get the fuck off me!’ she screamed.
‘All you whores are the same. You use your bodies to tempt me, but as soon as I give you what you want, you scream that you don’t want it.’ He brought one of his arms up to her head, restraining her effortlessly with his arm around her throat and his palm on her forehead. She struggled as he placed his lips next to her ear. ‘Well, it’s too late,’ he whispered, running his tongue along the edge of her earlobe. ‘I’m just going to take what I want from you and you’re going to enjoy it.’ Indi’s heart pounded against her ribs until she felt her entire body throb in time with her pulse. She could feel it pushing against her skin on her neck, and she was sure that he would have been able to see it too.
‘You’re the Buxton rapist, aren’t you?’
He laughed at her; a dark, menacing sound like the promise of a thunderstorm rolling in over the ocean. ‘Women aren’t worth the dirt they walk on.’ He spat. ‘I was protecting what’s mine,’ he said in a voice as dark as midnight. He started pushing her towards the brick wall, using the back of her neck to steer her exactly where he wanted her to go. She felt helpless until Beth moaned softly. Buddy looked away for a moment, leaving Indi free to slip from his grip.
She reached for her knife, pulling it free and holding it in front of her defensively. Buddy’s blue and gold eyes slid down to the blade before gravitating back to her face.
‘Are you going to cut me, little girl?’ he asked in a sneer.
‘You bet I am,’ she breathed back. All she could hear was the roaring of her heart in her ears. It was too distracting. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the sound, but that was when Buddy rushed her. He kicked her hand, disarming her. But no matter how hard she clung to the handle, there was no way that she could keep hold of it. The knife sailed through the air, landing in amongst some garbage left abandoned next to a dumpster. Indi’s eyes swung back to see Buddy smiling maliciously at her.
Grabbing her by the hair, Buddy pulled her closer to the front of his body. Through the blinding pain, Indi’s hand snaked up and took hold of his. She pulled down, dragging him off balance and forcing her knee into his solar plexus. She landed three punches to his ribs before he managed to pull free. Staggering back a few steps, his face clouded, his eyes taking on a darker shade of blue; the gold flecks glowing. He spat before approaching her again slowly, circling her.
Remembering her self-defence classes, Indi drew in deep breaths, forcing the air down to the bottom of her lungs before exhaling. She shook her arms and legs out to ensure they stayed loose and limber. The last thing she needed was to let the flood of adrenalin that her body was dumping into her bloodstream make her arms and legs feel heavy. She thought about where the next attack would come from.
Indi saw his next move before he even made it. There was a tightening in the muscles in his arms and shoulders, but it wasn’t enough for her to miss the hook punch he landed to her jaw. Her head snapped around; her brain rattling around in her skull. Her vision started to grow fuzzy, blackening around the edges. She staggered backwards until she felt the cold wall of the alleyway behind her and drooped down to the ground like a boneless sack, losing consciousness a second later.
Cold air singed her lungs, bringing her back around suddenly. When her eyes focussed again, she was staring at Buddy stalking back towards her. She must have only been out for a few seconds. With clumsy, lumbering movements, she used the wall to get herself back up again and prepared for the next onslaught.
With a hard look in his eyes, Buddy curled his hands into fists and jabbed. Bringing her hand up between them, she stopped his jab and counterattacked with her left fist, landing a hit of her own to his ribcage. Buddy grimaced, but let out no sound that it hurt, although she was sure that she had heard bones shattering. He lurched away from her, clutching his right side and breathing hard through his mouth.
Indi careened towards the dumpster to find her knife and to check on Beth during this brief reprieve. But as she bent down, her head began swimming, buckling her knees. She fell side-on into the pile of restaurant waste in big, black sacks. Nausea weakened her stomach and she gagged uncontrollably. ‘God. Not now,’ she whispered to herself. A hand came towards her, hauling her up and spinning her around.
‘I’m tired of playing around,’ Buddy growled through clenched teeth. Wrapping both his huge hands around her throat, he started squeezing the breath from her lungs. Indi kept her head, looking for weaknesses she could exploit. She brought the blade she’d found up to his body, swinging it into the side of his ribs. She’d hoped to hit a lung so the bastard could drown in his own fluids, but she hit bone instead.
Still blood sluiced from the wound, pouring over Indi’s hand. It was hot on her skin as she twisted the knife before pulling it free to maximise damage. Bone peeked through flesh; the wound at least five inches long. The blood on her hand only felt warm now, slowly becoming tacky as the freezing air dried it on her skin. Buddy was sucking in shallow breaths through his teeth as he lifted his hand from the wound. Blood poured through his white Oxford, dripping in slow hypnotising splashes onto the frozen ground.
Indi’s jaw suddenly started to throb. She looked at his blood escaping his body, fighting an indescribable urge to place her mouth over the wound. She swallowed down hard and tasted blood. Her throat felt as if it was on fire, like she was swallowing molten metal, and something inside her, something primal told her that the only way to make the pain go away was to drink his blood down.
‘You bitch!’ Buddy bit out, charging at her again. She looked at him from under hooded eyes and smiled. He swung at her again, Indi catching his fist in her palm and squeezing until he screamed. He brought his other hand up, but Indi swiped it away like it was nothing and caught him by his throat. Buddy went still under her fingers, under her firm grip. She
could still feel his pulse hammering against his skin though. His fear was palpable as she rode a high she’d never experienced before.
Bending her head to his neck, she ran her nose along the length of his skin, sampling the bouquet of his blood circulating just beneath the thin surface. His blood pumped against his skin like a caged bird. She wanted to take his pulse and roll it around her tongue, to put it in between her teeth and bite down on it so it exploded violently in a mass of hot, delicious blood.
Indi’s mouth was aching again, the pain hitting a crescendo that jerked her head away from Buddy’s neck. She looked into his eyes once the pain was over, and in the reflection she saw a pair of two-inch long fangs where her canine teeth used to be. They hummed quietly, vibrating in time with the ebb and flow of blood in Buddy’s body.
Only deep-seeded instinct drove her now. Positioning her mouth over his carotid, his body jerked violently when her new fangs slid into his skin and Indi went numb. All she could concentrate on was the taste of his blood; the saltiness of it, with a slight sweetness as an undertone. It poured down her throat in hot waves. His pulse beat against her tongue, the vibration running through her fangs and into her body like they were a giant tuning fork. Every thud of the magnificent muscle hummed through her body until she wasn’t sure which heartbeat was hers and which was his.
Indi drew in mouthful after mouthful, swallowing down on the sweet saltiness. The burning in her throat lessened as her stomach filled with the warmth that she now knew only came from opening someone’s vein. His blood soaked into every muscle and cell in her body, and she knew that she was killing him. She could hear his heart starting to stutter in his chest, but she didn’t want to stop sucking on the wound. She pulled more and more of the hot liquid into her mouth. The ache in her stomach that she hadn’t realised was raging before was weakening, releasing its grip on her. She realised that when she thought she’d been hungry before, she had been; but it wasn’t for food. It was for this.
With his heart slowing in her ear, she wanted to pull his heart from his chest and squeeze every last drop of blood that he could give her. She swallowed her last mouthful of blood, finding it potent and rich, as Buddy gave up his fight for life. His cold body grew slack in her hands, his heart beating for the very last time.
Indi let go of his body. It fell to the frozen ground with a sickening thud. She stared down at him and felt no remorse, no guilt: just nothing. Wiping her hand across her mouth, it came back smeared with blood. She could feel him in her body now; in her stomach, in her muscles. He was everywhere within her and she felt better than she had ever felt in her entire life. She was dripping in his bloody sacrifice and she felt like laughing with a joy she had never experienced. This was what life was supposed to feel like. This was what Indi truly was.
It took only a moment for her to slip back. She started to panic. Looking down at her hands, they were stained with blood—her arms too. Her heart began beating hard against her ribcage. What had she done? Why had she done it? She didn’t understand what had happened, and why it had felt so right. Indi tried to stand, but her legs gave out under her, dumping her onto the cold ground next to a corpse she was responsible for.
A fine tingle started creeping through her body like a cancer. It started in her chest, radiating out like a stone being thrown into the centre of a still pond. She thought she was having a heart attack, or a stroke, or a nervous breakdown. Her breathing quickened, pushing in and out of her lungs in short, sharp pants. Her pulse pounded against her eardrums. She bowed her head, trying to slow her breathing, to draw in deep, long breaths. The beast of her anger pushed against the side of her body—not with anger this time though. This time it was with fear.
She needed help. Her instincts told her she needed Rhett. With gritted teeth, she tried to stand again, but the tingling turned into excruciating, spine-bowing, shrieking pain. Indi had taken a lot of beatings in her life, but the pain she was experiencing now was nothing compared to that. She screamed, but couldn’t hear her own voice over the pounding of her heart in her ears. She slumped against the alleyway wall like a boneless sack and waited out the pain. The agony played through her body like her bones were the keys, but she was tuned all wrong. She screamed again as the torture her body endured burned like acid eating through her muscle and bone. Her blood was on fire.
The sound of her hammering heart broke through the pain first, knocking against her ribcage, wanting to escape her body through her chest. She gasped, trying to get more air into her lungs. But as she fought her inner struggle, her body gave up its. Her lungs didn’t bring in air and her heart just stopped beating.
Clutching her hand to her chest, Indi clawed at her skin, waiting for the returned thud. Her breath rippled out of her mouth in a soft, even pattern, and she couldn’t help but frown. Should she still be breathing if her heart had stopped beating and her lungs had stopped working?
Then she felt it. Blood pulsed through her ears, around her body, through her limbs. The floodgates had been opened one more, the blood crashing through her body, through her veins like swollen rivers about to burst their banks. It was all too much for her. She passed out—her breath easing out in a soft pillow of white over her mouth and her body curled into the foetal position on the filthy, freezing ground of an alleyway.
Chapter 29
Rhett had finished his day by helping Jerry close up. A wave later, he was on his way back to the farmhouse, to take his punishment for saving his pack and—in a small way—the entire species too. Happy-fucking-days. He’d parked his Jetta around the corner from the café that morning, cursing when he saw all the leaflets and advertising crammed under his wiper blades as he rounded the corner. Pulling them all out, he balled them up in his fist and threw them onto his passenger seat as he slid into his car.
Out of habit, he drove around to Indi’s apartment block to check up on her. He didn’t like the idea of being away from her for so long, because he would be away from her for a while. Being lashed a few times may sound like a walk in the park, but it wasn’t. He’d have to shift to heal, but he would be in so much pain that he wouldn’t be able to. What a fucking catch-twenty-two.
Rhett drove on autopilot after leaving downtown Buxton, turning into the gravel drive of the farmhouse without having to even think about what he was doing. He thought he would have been nervous about this; coming face to face with his uncle and the pack—the admission of guilt. But the only thing that fazed him now was Indi’s safety. He parked the car and got out, climbing the few steps up to the porch before pushing through the front door.
‘Pack gets here in an hour,’ Antain rumbled from his office as he passed.
Goodie! ‘Thanks,’ he replied in a flat tone, shuffling to his room. When he finally shoved open the door to his room, Brax was already front and centre playing their Xbox. His tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth concentrating on shooting the fuck out of something that was shambling towards the screen.
‘Hey,’ Rhett said, slouching into the other beanbag set up in the middle of the room.
‘Hey,’ Brax replied; his fingers twitching spasmodically on the controller until the screen turned red.
‘Playing this game too much will make you sterile,’ he muttered. ‘I should know,’ he added under his breath. That earned him a rare pause in the game-play.
‘Are you ready for tonight?’ he asked earnestly. Well, that was an oxymoron if ever he heard one: “Brax” and “serious” just didn’t go together. Rhett answered with a shrug. ‘You know—if you wanted me to—I could take the punishment for you.’
‘Why would I want you to do that?’
‘Because you’re my best friend,’ he shrugged and looked back at the TV. ‘What’d you do anyway? Antain hasn’t told us anything.’
‘I guess he’s waiting for everyone to get here to tell them all the juicy deets.’ Rhett said, looking back at the TV screen. He sighed. Brax might as well hear it from him. ‘I gave Indi my blood to survive.
She’d been attacked by a Sicarii and was drained to the point of death.’
His best friend’s head cranked around. ‘Fuuuuuuck,’ Brax breathed. ‘Why’d you do that for? We would have found another half blood eventually.’
Rhett shook his head. ‘She’s the last of her species. There is no other one. Indi’s it.’ Rhett silently added And I think I’m in love with her. Rhett scrubbed his face with his hands. When he dropped them, Brax was staring at him with his mouth wide open.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘She’s the last félvair? The last one in, like, forever?’
‘Wow, you catch on quick, B.’
A line formed between Brax’s eyes then his face split in two with a wide grin. ‘You’re like a fucking hero! You saved the species!’
‘Shut. Up,’ Rhett hissed after Brax raised his voice enough for the other wolves in the house to hear. ‘You can’t say anything to anyone about this, okay? The stakes were just upped. Every pack is going to want to have a piece of her now.’
Brax made a gesture of cramming words back into his mouth and locking his lips with an invisible key.
Rhett’s eyes narrowed. ‘Good,’ he said, scrubbing his face again roughly.
And silence ensued. That was just what Rhett wanted—to be alone with his fucking thoughts right now. He stood up not really sure what to do, or where to go. He was going to be judged and punished in an hour, and he had no fucking idea what he wanted to do in that time. Running was an option, but he wasn’t chicken shit. He’d take his punishment with his head held high.
‘—Rhett?’
Rhett’s head cleared and he looked over at Brax. ‘What’d you say?’
‘You weren’t listening at all, were you?’
‘No. Sorry,’ he replied, not sounding the least bit apologetic.
‘I said I bet I can kill you ten times by the time it takes you to kill me once,’ Brax challenged, knowing that Rhett would take the bait. B was a cocky fuck.