Dark Veil

by S. L. Naeole

  But this wasn’t a movie.

  And there was no hero just waiting for his cue to come and rescue me.

  That meant that unless I wanted to become the next deposit in this cat’s litter box, I had to save myself. Which of course meant that the cat would choose that moment to attack. It moved faster than I thought it would considering its size; it wasn’t bigger than the enormous black cat that I’d seen, but it was big enough that I could feel the ground shake as it pushed off on its hind legs to turn me into dinner.

  It was completely a reflex when my hand lashed out in self-defense, bringing my helmet with it. What had saved my head from being turned into jelly now became the only way I could save the rest of me. As the helmet crashed into the side of the cat’s head, it reached out with a dangerous paw.

  I could either pull away or keep the momentum and hope that would be enough to knock the cat out. Either way, I knew I’d only get one chance, so I let the helmet hit home just as the paw did. The solid sound of bones and fiberglass cracking came second to the jarring sensation that shot up my arm and through my shoulder. It landed at my throat and stayed there, as if it got lost and decided that was as far as it needed to go.

  My body twisted on the ground, and my aching legs followed until I had done a complete rotation, stopping in the middle of the road, closer to my bike, and further away from the cat that staggered on shaky legs, its head wobbly, its eye bleeding black tears in the dark. I didn’t know how long I had before it steadied itself so I bit through the pain, and got on my hands and knees.

  I pushed myself up to my feet and hobbled to my bike. It took every curse word I knew to get the bike upright, but even cussing wasn’t gonna get the bike started. It hurt. There was nothing but pain burning paths through my body as I stomped on the kick starter over and over again, looking back at the cat with each attempt because I’m a glutton for punishment.

  Finally, the bike grumbled its return and I twisted the throttle like strangling it was the only way to get it to live. I didn’t look behind me again.

  The ride home was probably even colder than it had been when I left the pier, but I couldn’t tell. All I felt was the fire that was eating me alive. My legs were already going numb, but my right shoulder and neck were throbbing with heat and something else that I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get home.

  That porch light looked like heaven as I pulled up the drive. The trees even seemed relieved that I was back since none of them cast a shadow that blocked the house and that wonderful light from my view. I rode to the porch and then stumbled off the bike, my knee hitting the first step and causing me to yelp out in pain.

  Only the yelp wasn’t really a yelp. It was more raspy, like I’d just chain smoked an entire tobacco farm or something. I saw dark blobs appear on the wood and finally reached up a hand to my neck, feeling softness and stickiness where there shouldn’t have been.

  “Oh crap,” I said. Or…didn’t say. In my head I said it. But nothing came out of my mouth. Not anything that sounded like words, anyway.

  The front door flew open wide, and I saw my Dad’s bare feet. I didn’t think it was weird that it was so cold out but he had no socks on; I was used to his weird ways. But I wasn’t used to hearing him yell the way he did when he saw me. I wasn’t used to the sound that his voice made when he grabbed me and turned my face to him.

  I probably said something to him but again, nothing came out of my mouth that could be heard. A pinging sound was starting to fill my ears as I watched with fuzzy eyes the way Dad’s mouth moved, slow and almost cartoonish, while his eyes grew unnaturally wide. Mom’s face appeared beside his, her eyes huge and frozen with fear.

  Mom was never scared. That’s the last thing I remember before everything else shut off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  LIAM

  It was just past dawn when I finally made it back to the rock. The first fishing boat out was captained by a human, but I didn’t care. I even ate the lousy tuna melt he offered me for breakfast. In exchange for the ride, I helped him with his nets and pots. If he hadn’t been human, he might have been friends with my dad, and I might have spent some time working on his boat to make extra money.

  But he was human, so I stayed at a safe distance. I didn’t want to get too close in case my stomach decided to overrule my brain.

  The docks were busy as usual when we arrived. The captain went off to speak to Jameson’s dad about some crates, and I went by Dad’s slip. It was empty, which meant that Audrey was probably home alone. I hurried home and found her in the kitchen, crying.

  “Aud? What happened? What’s wrong?” I was on my knees in front her, gripping her chair and looking into her eyes as much as she’d let me. She was a complete mess, and I worried that at any second, she’d have an episode.

  “Fallon was attacked,” she said, her eyes hard and cold.

  A month ago, those three words wouldn’t have meant anything at all. But I knew now that I cared about what happened to Fallon. I liked her.

  I liked her.

  I liked Fallon Timmons.

  I cared about her and wanted her to be safe.

  More than that, I wanted her to be safe and know that I liked her.

  But someone had attacked her and I didn’t know how badly. I didn’t even know if she was still alive.

  “How bad is it?” I asked carefully.

  The look in Audrey’s eyes couldn’t have been any clearer: she blamed me. “Why do you care? You wanted this. You wanted this to happen,” she accused.

  “I didn’t want this to happen. I was gonna tell her today that I…that I…like her.”

  She punched me. “Of course you like her. You’d like her on some toast. You’d like her fresh and bleeding on the floor. You’d like her filleted and served with a side of ‘ding-dong the witch is dead.’ I hate you, Liam. I hate you for this.”

  There was no point arguing with her anymore so I stood up. “Where is she?”

  “Where do you think?”

  She probably heard the door slam before that last word left her mouth. I was running. I was moving down the road and past the buildings, past the faces of the early risers and the late sleepers. I didn’t care what I looked like. I didn’t care what anyone was going to say about what they saw. In my head, the only thing that mattered was finding out what happened to Fallon and making sure that she was okay.

  The curtains were closed, but the vet clinic’s door was open and I pushed my way in. I saw Fallon’s parents both sitting on the bed where she slept. She was pale. Her olive skin looked more like a bleached banana would, and she had blood-soaked bandages taped across her neck and right shoulder.

  “What happened?” I said, not caring who answered me, only that someone did.

  I should have known better than to ask; Fallon’s dad stood up and charged toward me. His hand wrapped around my throat and he squeezed. He could have crushed me without a second thought, but he needed answers, too.

  “That’s the same thing I want to know. What the hell happened to my daughter? What did you do?”

  It was hard to speak, but I managed to find enough breath to tell him that it wasn’t me. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but he let me go and I started coughing. It felt like there were needles in my throat, sticking and jabbing deeper and deeper with each swallow. Mr. Timmons didn’t look sympathetic.

  “Why should we believe you?”

  “I was on the mainland all night,” I gasped between coughs, the prickles growing more and more intense with each constriction of my throat. “I missed the last ferry and came in on a fishing boat this morning. I just found out and came straight here.”

  “If it wasn’t you, then who was it? We brought her here as our daughter. She’s no different than you are-”

  “She’s plenty different,” I yelled.

  “Only because you refuse to look her as anything but food.” Fallon’s mom was now in my face, and I realized with a gulp that her husband had protect
ed me from her because just standing, she was terrifying. Her eyes were bright and almost feral, her teeth already sharp and bared though the rest of her remained human in form. She had such control over her body, I couldn’t be anything but impressed.

  “She should have been welcomed because she’s our daughter.”

  I admit it. In that moment, a wave of absolute stupidity came over me. I don’t know why I said it, but I did. “But she’s not your daughter.”

  And, of course, I paid for it.

  ***

  I woke up in a bed next to Fallon’s, my head feeling like it had been torn off and then stapled back on. Fallon’s parents were again sitting on the bed, but they didn’t look at me. Mrs. Timmons had a smile on her face while her husband looked worried. I sat up slowly and tried to remember what happened.

  “She kicked your ass,” Dr. Phan informed me.

  “I didn’t ask…”

  “It’s written all over your face,” she said with a shrug. “I just thought you’d like to know that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  With a groan, I turned around, putting my legs on the floor so that I could face Fallon’s bed. She was still asleep, but I could’ve sworn that she’d gotten paler. “What time is it?” I asked groggily.

  “Noon,” Fallon’s dad replied.

  “How long has she been like this?” I moved forward and then grasped my head in my hands as a sharp pain blasted through it.

  Ignoring my pain, he responded. “She came home like this at around midnight. I don’t know how she managed to get away or even get home. She’s lost so much blood…she might not wake up.”

  I felt the heaviness of worry and fear fall right against my chest. “Why won’t she wake up?”

  Dr. Phan came to stand between the two beds and gave me a glass of water and a small cup with two small pills inside. “Because she was mauled by a big, dumb cat, that’s why. Take this. It’ll help with your headache.”

  I grabbed the glass and cup and downed them both. “How bad is it?” I asked the doctor quietly after I handed them back.

  “It’s not as bad as it could’ve been. She lost at least three pints of blood. You guys don’t normally leave any survivors so she’s pretty lucky. Or unlucky. Whoever attacked her left a gnarly wound; her days of wearing tank tops are over, but then again she’s not exactly in California anymore, is she?”

  Fallon’s mom rumbled, and I twitched. She looked at me, her voice threatening as she spoke. “You’d better tell me who did this.”

  I looked away, focusing on Fallon’s chest as it rose and fell with each slow breath. “I wish I could. I wish that it had been me that attacked her because then you could do something, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Fallon said that a cat chased her on the road a few weeks ago and that another helped her. Do you know who they were?” Mrs. Timmons demanded to know.

  My head bobbed and I hissed at the resulting pain. “It was me and my best friend. He was trying to scare her. I stopped him.”

  “Why?” This time, her voice was calmer.

  The medicine must have chosen right then to kick in. Or maybe my brain felt that it didn’t need to warn me about her anymore. Either way, I answered without fear. “Because I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I care about her.”

  “You care about her?” Mrs. Timmons huffed. “I know it’s been a long time since we’ve been home, but I don’t think things have changed so much that showing that you care about someone means treating them like garbage.”

  “I…I didn’t know how to treat her,” I said honestly. “It’s not…natural to care about a human like that. I mean, you gotta understand that.” I wasn’t looking at her when I spoke. It was weird. I felt like the only person I could look at was Fallon.

  “It’s only unnatural to care about humans if you can’t care about anyone.”

  My eyes didn’t leave the soft rise and fall of Fallon’s chest when I responded, “I care more about my sister than I do about anyone else on this rock. I would rather skin myself alive than see her hurt.

  “But that doesn’t mean that when I look at your daughter that I don’t see food, because I do. But I also see someone I don’t want to hurt, and-” I gripped my forehead in my hands “-I gotta tell you, I’m all kinds of confused here. How can you hunt and feed and then look her in the eye afterward?”

  Fallon’s dad answered me this time, his voice carrying over like a heavy fog. “We haven’t hunted since we got her. We both realized that we couldn’t raise a human as our own if we were also killing and eating them. She had to learn to trust us, to be able to depend on us, which meant that she had to be safe with us.”

  A hand grabbed my chin and forced me to turn my head. I was looking into Mrs. Timmons’ eyes, her own narrow and searching. “You haven’t fed for a while, have you?”

  I shook my head. “The last time was a week after you guys came. I tried hunting last night but stopped. I couldn’t go through with it.”

  Suspicion painted her one word question. “Why?”

  I probably shouldn’t have, but I chuckled. “Because of her. I just couldn’t… I don’t know why.”

  The hand that had been on my chin was now on my shoulder, comforting if not firm. “We know.”

  I could see that she was telling the truth. She understood. And it was incredible. I thought I was alone in the way I felt. I mean, I knew that Audrey was her friend, but being someone’s friend was different than what I wanted.

  Wait…

  What the hell did I want? It’s not like I could just ask her out. We’d already drawn the lines between us and I was pretty sure she didn’t want either of us to cross them. And then there was Brenda. She was barely keeping her claws in already; she’d tear Fallon limb from limb if she knew how I really felt about her.

  “You’ve got a lot to think about, Liam.” Mrs. Timmons’ voice wasn’t exactly soft, but it wasn’t about ready to cut me either. “We had nothing to lose but our past when we adopted Fallon. You have a lot more.”

  I reached across the gap between my bed and Fallon’s and grabbed her hand. It was cool, and limp. I turned it over and felt the lines against her palm with my thumb. Audrey liked to say that the lines on a human palm were their past, their present, and their future. I put my own next to hers and the difference was like night and day. Or human and Panthus.

  While her palm was marked with a bunch of lines and creases, mine was blank. Her nails were pink and smooth, and they were chewed down to the tip with what looked like grease beneath a couple of them. Her skin was an odd combination of smooth and rough, as calluses marked the ends of each finger.

  I squeezed her hand, feeling the way it felt in mine, the shape, the fit, the weight, and liking it. But it wasn’t enough. There wasn’t any difference between her hand right then and there and a fishing pole. Hands were supposed to feel warm, and squeeze back.

  At that moment, I’d have given my tail to have her squeeze back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  FALLON

  Dizzy.

  How is it possible to be dizzy with your eyes closed? My eyes…they were closed. I think. Right?

  “Mmm…”

  Well, that was me.

  I was lying down. The bed was uncomfortable, and it was cold. And it smelled like wet dog. Or cat.

  “Fallon?”

  So many hands…one more than there should be. My eyes opened and then shut at the bright, fluorescent light that hung directly above my head. “Turn that off,” I grumbled.

  “Cut the light,” I heard Mom order.

  It took a couple of seconds before the darkness my lids should have offered finally appeared. My mouth felt stiff, the corners around my lips cracking and I groaned with embarrassment; I’d been drooling. “Where am I?”

  “At the vet’s,” Dad said softly. His voice was so…tired and weak.

  My eyes opened more slowly this time and, though fuzzy, I could make out the wired cover of the light
above me and the flat, gray ceiling. “Mmm…why am I at the vet’s?”

  “Because we didn’t-”

  “Because the ferry was out and we couldn’t get you off the island,” Mom interrupted Dad.

  I turned toward her voice and saw her sitting beside me to my left, her hands clutching mine, her face looking almost gray in the dim light. Dad knelt beside her, his hands holding my arm and shoulder, his chin resting on my elbow. There was relief in his eyes, and he smiled almost sheepishly at me, as if he felt embarrassed that he’d been worried at all.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Like a human scratching post,” I said with a light laugh.

  A pressure built in my right hand and I felt pulled toward it. A hand gripped mine tightly, like a vise, and my eyes followed the arm it was attached to until they reached that scarred and worried face that seemed like it never left my thoughts now. His eyes were hooded, his expression too difficult to read.

  “Why the hell are you here?”

  He looked hurt by my question, which surprised me. “I…I heard about what happened and I wanted to help.”

  Hurt or not, what he said pissed me off. I pulled my hand out of his. “I don’t want your kind of help.”

  Mom sounded confused, her anger forced when she chastised me. “Fallon, I know you don’t want him here. I’m still not sure I want him here. But Liam’s been by your side since he found out. He hasn’t left-”

  “So what? He’s probably only here for Audrey. Or to get a good look at me and then tell his friends all about how the stupid trog got scratched up by the big cat.”