by PM Drummond
I didn’t realize I’d stopped to gawk until Bader cleared his throat. His face beamed with pride.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” he said.
“That’s an understatement.” I pointed to a Plymouth-size barbecue. “Expecting visitors?”
He laughed. “Yes and no. Fifty to sixty of us live here at any given time. It’s easier and more economical to cook en mass.”
“Makes sense.” I tore my gaze away from the tree and scanned the rest of the so-called compound. Eight large cabins, four on each side, lined the left and right. Two cabins sat in back, but one of them was larger than the others and lined with screen instead of wood.
Work trucks and vans were parked at the side of each building. I couldn’t tell how many vehicles there were because they were parked two and three deep in spots.
“Marlena?” Bader stood fifteen feet from me.
“Huh? Oh, sorry.” I caught up with him, amazed at how stiff my body felt after a few seconds of inactivity. “I think I’m crashing.”
“Mentally or physically?”
“Yes,” I said. He snickered as we made our way to the screened cabin.
“Where is everybody?”
“We had a party of sorts last night and since today’s Saturday, most of them will be asleep till noon or after.”
Long wooden tables and benches filled the screened cabin, making it a dining tent or meeting area or maybe both. Bader ushered me inside and told me to make myself comfortable while he went to his cabin and put on some clothes.
I sat at a table in the center of the room and pulled my suitcase across the rough surface of the tabletop. I rested my head and arms on the suitcase and smiled. Bader had paraded around naked in front of me for the last half hour, but he needed privacy to dress. My eyelids drifted down as a myriad of worries and thoughts fought for dominance in my brain. I kept shoving the ugly ones back under the cerebral carpet and tried to find something innocuous to think about. Just before sleep took me, I wondered what I’d wear if the compound turned out to be a nudist colony.
My neck hurt. The pain nagged me awake. I woke as I had since I was a child. I lay with my eyes closed listening to my surroundings. In an alcoholic family, it sometimes paid to feign sleep while getting the lay of the land.
Voices whispered near me in a quiet but heated argument. I recognized Bader’s voice, but the husky female’s voice was unfamiliar.
“I had no choice,” Bader said.
“Why, because that blood-sucking bastard told you to?” the female said.
“You know it’s not like that. We owe it to Griss and Rune, and she was in trouble.”
“She’s an outsider. When have we ever owed them anything?”
“We’re just keeping her safe for a few more hours until they come for her.”
“And how do you suggest we do that? What were you thinking bringing a female who’s in season to the compound?”
“I didn’t know.”
The female chuffed. “Jesus, Bader, I could smell her as soon as she entered the compound. We have too many young males here and only five females. She’s in season with no mate tonight of all nights and she’s helpless.”
In season? Sure it was my time of the month, but she was talking about me like I was a bitch in heat. And what did she mean she could smell me? My face warmed and my energy level spiked.
Bader and the woman fell silent.
“What the hell was that?” the woman asked, and I heard her rub her arms.
The jig, as they say, was up. I raised my head and tried not to wince as my neck muscles fought me.
“That was me.” I looked up at Bader and a short, curvy brunette. She faced Bader, her whole body ram-rod straight.
Good, I’d startled her.
My short-lived cockiness faded when she turned to look at me. Two things struck me at once. She had the same high-level, raw energy that Bader possessed, which was elevated because of her anger, and her eyes were two different colors, brilliant green and ice blue. The wolf’s face from earlier that day flashed in my mind. The eyes and the energy signal were identical.
How could that be?
No, I refused to entertain the thought that—
Her eyes locked on mine and unspoken words carried across on her prickly energy.
Intruder. Kill. Protect the pack.
I pushed away from her, my heart slamming in my chest. My hair crackled as it rose. Desperately, I tried to rein my fear.
The female backed away, too, eyes wide, one hand held out as if to block the energy radiating from me.
Bader held one hand toward me and grabbed the woman’s shoulder with his other hand.
“Marlena, no. It’s okay.” He turned to the woman. “Jesse, calm down. Don’t move.”
But Jesse moved. She took a step toward me and bared her teeth. A low growl rumbled from her chest.
Survival instinct clicked in my brain, but this time instead of uncontrolled reaction, a part of my brain warmed and took command. I lifted my hands and spoke two firm words, “Go away.”
Bader and Jesse shot off their feet and hurtled backward. A loud rip split the air as they sailed through the screening. Their journey ended with the two of them on their butts ten feet from the cabin.
Outside energy warmed my skin. About thirty people rushed to the cabin. A few helped Bader and Jesse, the rest stood and glared at me.
On some unseen signal, the watchers advanced toward me.
Screen walls provided no protection. I searched around my table for a more secure hiding place.
What I need is walls.
As soon as the thought flashed into my mind, power flowed through me and chaos ensued. All the wooden tables and benches except the ones I sat at launched into the air toward me.
I screamed as I ducked under the table and threw my arms over my head. The clatter of wood continued for a few seconds, which seemed like an eternity, while I expected death by picnic bench at any moment. When it ended, an odd silence fell.
I uncovered my head and peeked out. Through the dim light, I saw nothing but piled wood. I crept out from under the table and turned a full circle. The newly formed enclosure I now stood in was round and roughly the size of my kitchen back home. Stacked tables and benches formed walls from floor to ceiling.
I had barricaded myself without any conscious thought of doing so. This wasn’t flying books or wiggling office plants, nor was this a planned telekinetic event. Some part of my psyche heard my wish for solid walls, turned that wish into action, and executed the command.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Fear, anger, awe, and curiosity radiated from outside my makeshift refuge, where stunned silence erupted into noisy bedlam.
“Shut up! People, shut up,” Bader’s voice rang out.
The crowd quieted. Footsteps neared my enclosure.
“Marlena, are you all right?” he shouted.
“I’m okay. Are you and Jesse okay?”
“Yes. A few scrapes and bruises, but we’re all right.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “It felt threatened, and it got away from me.” And did whatever it wanted without my say so.
“We’re sorry, too. It was no way to treat a guest.”
“I’m not sorry. She attacked us,” Jesse said.
Jesse’s anger wafted through the spaces in my table-stacked wall.
“Hey,” I shouted, “you’re the one that went all rabid dog on me.”
“That’s it,” Jesse said. I heard her throw herself at the wall of my enclosure and grunt as she tried to pull a table or bench away. “I’m going to dig her out and kill her.”
My body sucked energy from the crowd. The enclosure walls shook and tightened. I crouched, ready to duck back under the table, but the walls only constricted a few inches.
A struggle lasted several seconds then receded. From the sound, it took several people to tear Jesse off the enclosure and out of the cabin.
“Everybody out,” Bader s
houted. “If I see any one of you within twenty feet of this cabin, I’ll tear your hide.”
Footsteps shuffled across the wood floor and out of the cabin.
“Marlena?” Bader said. “They’re gone.”
I sat on the table, plopped my feet on the bench, and covered my face with my hands.
“Marlena?”
“What?”
“Open this thing and come out. I’ll keep you safe.”
I laughed.
“No, really. You’ll be safe.”
Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. All the memories and thoughts I’d been trying to block crowded through. I’d killed or almost killed between two to six people. The fact that I didn’t know the exact body count depressed me further. I’d assume five people, unless I counted Aunt Tibby. I hadn’t killed her, but she wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t visited her. So, okay, I’d count her, too. That made six. I was right up there with Dahmer and the Zodiac Killer. And oh yes, I couldn’t forget that an honest-to-God evil scientist was after me, and now werewolves were trying to kill me.
I pulled my feet up on the table and wrapped my arms around my knees. My head fell forward and clunked against my knees. I was as close as I could come to a fetal position without lying down.
“If I only had my ruby slippers, I could click them and go home,” I mumbled.
“What?” Bader said.
“I said I want to go home.”
“Rune and Griss will be here in about seven hours, but you can’t stay in there that long.”
“Why not?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“You need to eat and don’t you have to go to the . . . uh . . . ladies’ room?”
He runs around naked in the woods and he’s embarrassed to say ladies’ room? Men!
I shifted on the tabletop. Now that he mentioned it, I did have to go. I shifted again. Okay, I had to go pretty badly.
“Aren’t you hungry? It’s past five in the afternoon. You’ve been asleep all day,” he said.
My stomach growled as if on queue.
“Damn,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I said, I’m not going to get eaten by Ms. Cujo out there just because I’m hungry and have to pee.”
“Come on, Marlena.”
“Marlee. My name is Marlee.”
“Sorry. Come on, Marlee. Open up and come out.”
Crud, he was right. I couldn’t wait for Rune to get there. I could do without food, but I needed a bathroom and something to drink. Using my telekinesis always left me thirsty.
“Is she out there?” I said.
“No, I sent her back to our cabin.”
“Our cabin? What is she, your girlfriend?”
“She’s my mate, yes, but we share the cabin with eight other people.”
“Werewolves you mean.”
He sighed. “Werewolves are people, Marlee. We just have a virus that makes us different from common people.”
“Makes you dangerous, you mean.”
“Jesse just talks big, Marlee. She’s never killed anyone. Neither have I.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. That was certainly more than I could say for myself after yesterday. So who was the biggest monster?
Hot tears escaped onto my cheeks, and I swiped them away with a shaky hand.
I hated crying. Leaving my enclosure and being torn limb from limb was preferable to sitting here and blubbering. The only thing more pathetic would be to cry and pee on myself, which was what was going to happen if I didn’t get to a bathroom soon.
“Okay. I’m coming out, but keep those people away from me, or we might have an accident. I don’t want to hurt anybody else,” I said.
“Great,” I muttered. “I’m going to walk out into a pack of werewolves, and I’m worried about hurting one. What a loser.”
“I’ll keep them away,” Bader said.
I looked at the walls of tables and benches. Now that I’d decided to leave, I wasn’t sure how.
I lifted my hands and pushed energy toward a spot that faced away from where Bader stood. The wall creaked and moved a few inches, and the areas on either side of where I pushed wobbled. I stopped. The enclosure popped and swayed.
I ducked back toward the table behind me, and the enclosure tightened again. My “gift” was weird enough, but this new habit it had developed of moving things before I specifically asked it was downright creepy.
“What happened?”
“I can’t just make an opening and walk through. The way this thing is stacked, it’ll collapse on me.”
“Can’t you just put them back like you brought them here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure how I got them here in the first place.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Good question. I climbed on top of the table and jumped on it a few times. It was sturdy and stable.
“Okay,” I said. “I need you to leave the cabin and make sure no one is around it.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to try something, and I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
“Anyone else?”
“Bader, just do it,” I shouted.
“Okay, okay.”
I heard him leave the cabin and walk several feet away in the crunchy gravel.
“All right, I’m out,” he shouted.
“Are you behind something?”
“Yes. A truck.”
Relieved and annoyed that he realized how unpredictable my abilities were, I jumped off the table and crawled under it. Kneeling, I curled my head down as far as I could and held both arms out.
I gathered so much energy into my shoulders, they felt like they were going to explode. I pushed the energy down my arms and out my hands. As the jolts of power hit the walls, another pulse left my body unbidden. The result equaled wedging a foot against the bottom of a door and trying to open it—nothing moved. I tried again with the same result.
I remained crouched for a few seconds just to make sure, but finally gave up and crawled from under the table.
I propped my hands on my hips.
“Huh,” I said.
“Marlee, what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“I blasted it out and pulled it back in at the same time.”
“Why?”
“I. Don’t. Know. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
I rubbed my throbbing temples with shaky fingers. I jumped at movement near the top of the table-wall, but it was just a bright green moth landing on a jutting table leg. Footsteps entered the cabin and stopped outside, and I felt Bader’s energy fizz against my skin.
“Could it be that you don’t really want to come out?” Bader said.
“What, like I subconsciously sent the second pulse?”
“Could that happen?”
I laughed through a knot in my throat. “I usually can’t get this to work the way I want it to, or it acts on its own, so yeah, it could happen.”
“Do you think it would help to try again?”
“Already did. No go.”
“Oh.”
I pulled my feet up on the table and curled into a ball, wrapping my arms around my bent knees. I relaxed my grip a little because I had to go to the bathroom very badly at this point.
My abilities had reached a new high point in weirdness. I couldn’t stop using them or the power bursts would get out of control, but it seemed the more I used them, the more unpredictable they became. But what was the answer? At this point, I wasn’t going to make it to my twenty-seventh birthday. Heck, at this rate, next week was looking iffy.
I’d been wavering about getting involved further with Rune, but if he could help me learn to control this gift of mine, maybe he was my answer—for now at least.
“Marlee?”
“Yes?”
“I may have a solution. There is a crawl space under the floo
r. If you can pry up some of the looser floor boards, maybe you could crawl out.”
Flashbacks of the hiding hold under my aunt’s house smothered me. I felt the dirt walls closing in again as my lungs constricted. A popping noise rent the air.
“Marlee, is that you doing that?” Bader’s voice was high and cracked.
The noise stopped.
“I don’t think so. What was that?”
“The screen door to the cabin slamming open and closed with no one touching it.”
“Is it windy outside?”
“No.”
“Crap. Then it was probably me.” I let my head fall and bang against my knees. “I think that was a big no on me crawling under the cabin.”
His footsteps traveled around the enclosure away from the cabin door.
“So what now, wait for Rune?”
“I’m not going to be able to wait until midnight to use the bathroom.”
I crawled off the table and pushed on the wooden floor with my feet. A few of the loose boards squeaked in protest.
“I hate to say this,” I said. “But I might have to pry up a few of these boards and . . . you know . . . relieve myself.”
My face heated.
“Hey, what if I crawled under and passed a chamber pot through the hole?” Bader said.
The screen door banged back and forth a few more times, then stopped.
I sighed. “I think that’s a no.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” My voice rose in exasperation. “I’m sorry, I guess maybe I don’t want a werewolf popping his or her head through the floor.”
The door had acted up before I’d even consciously formed that thought.
Bader paced back and forth a few times, then stopped.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” he said. “Pry up the boards, I’ll pull a few facing boards on the front near the door. I’ll place the chamber pot and a box of food in the opening, and you just pull it to you with that thing you do.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“I can’t see them. How am I supposed to move them?”
“You didn’t have any problem with the screen door.”
I hadn’t, had I? Maybe I could move the boxes without seeing them.