Dark Veil

by S. L. Naeole

  Dad was also just as unconvincing when he argued, “He’s been here for the past two days, watching you so your mom and I could get some rest and something to eat. Give the boy some credit.”

  Two days? I’d been unconscious for two days? I swallowed, feeling the tightness in my throat, and reached up with my free hand. My fingers found the bandages at my shoulder, and as my hand moved up, the bandages continued until I felt the gauze and tape stop just beneath my chin.

  “I want a mirror.” I announced as I began to pry the tape from my skin.

  “Fallon, all you’re gonna see are bandages; leave them alone,” she chastised, grabbing my hands to keep them from removing the bandages.

  “I want to see what’s underneath them,” I told her, fighting but having no success; she always had been stronger than me.

  “Let her see,” Dad said quietly. “It’s better that she sees the worst of it now. It’ll make the scar easier to accept.”

  Sighing, Mom stood up and walked away. She disappeared into another room. Muffled sounds of metal scraping and things falling onto a tiled floor followed before she returned, a large, rectangular mirror in her hand.

  “Is…Mom, is that the mirror from the medicine cabinet?” I asked as I saw the bent hinges hanging from one side of the metal frame.

  “No,” she said with a straight face.

  Dad took it from her and handed it to me. “It doesn’t matter where the mirror came from. You wanted to see your wounds and your mom got you something to see it with.”

  I began to sit up, and then realized I wasn’t wearing any clothes. My hands slapped against my chest to keep the sheet that had been covering me from falling down. I eyed Liam, who had not moved from his spot. “Excuse me!”

  His face turned a deep shade of cherry red before he turned around, his back now facing me. I looked at Dad, who turned away as well. Mom knelt on the bed in front of me and helped me up, pulling the sheet tight behind me and then taking the mirror with her other hand, leaving me with two free hands to peel away the bandages.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and saw dark, circular shadows framing my eyes. My lips were dry and cracked, and a stream of white crust trailed out from the corners of my mouth down my cheeks and toward my ears. Drool. Gorgeous.

  Below my face, hidden by my chin, were the bandages. They looked new, as if they’d been changed recently. Gently, I picked at the edge of some of the tape that kept the white gauze pressed against my skin. As I lifted each scalloped edge free, I could feel the tugging of something tender and raw; I knew that the bandage was sticking to my wounds.

  “Go slowly,” Mom cautioned.

  “Ya think?” I squeaked.

  The caution in her voice became replaced with irritation almost at the speed of light. “I don’t care how much pain you’re in. You don’t talk to me like that, little girl.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered before pulling the bandage down, inch by slow, painful inch until it was hanging like a flag from the top of my chest over the sheet. I had tried to close my eyes before I saw anything to let my eyes take it all in at once, but the minute I saw the reddened, angry skin, I couldn’t look away.

  The bandage covered up the ugliness of the wound the way a mask would hide someone’s tortured face. My skin was puckered as small, dark blue stitches kept what looked like deep gouges from opening up and exposing what hid underneath. The cool air felt like tiny needles on skin, telling me just how sensitive the area was. I pressed gently on some of the reddened flesh between the rows of stitches and hissed; I might as well have branded myself with the word “idiot”.

  “I don’t have any of that surgical glue that they’re using on the mainland so I went old school.” A woman wearing a stained, white coat appeared behind Mom, her eyes watchful. “You don’t need to keep the bandage on for that long, but I think a couple more days are necessary to keep the skin from drying out and pulling at the stitches. You got a nasty swat there, young lady; you’re lucky you’re still alive.”

  I saw a small line of stitches just beneath my collarbone, right above my heart. “What’s this?”

  Mom was quiet, and Dad looked both scared and clueless. But the woman held her own hand up in the air, her fingers spread out and curved like a claw. She pointed to her thumb with her other hand.

  “It’s called the dew claw. Whoever got you was trying really hard to make sure they got you good. If they’d succeeded, you’d be beyond dead right now. You’d be lumps under some sand on one of the beaches and-”

  “That’s enough, Dr. Phan,” Mom barked.

  Dr. Phan huffed. “You’re gonna have to tell her sooner or later. This won’t be the last time this happens, you know.”

  Confused, I looked at Mom. “Tell me what?”

  “Fallon, you don’t need to worry about that right now.”

  I snorted and then pointed to my chest. “When exactly am I supposed to worry about it? I got mauled, Ma!”

  “Don’t call me ‘Ma’. You know I hate that.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  Mom glared at Dr. Phan, and I heard a sharp intake of breath follow. I don’t know if it came from Dad or Liam, but both of them seemed to freeze, not breathing, not moving, just….sitting there like statues with their backs toward me.

  “We…we lied about the island. We…lied about the cats attacking people.”

  “No, really?” I said acidly. “I couldn’t tell, what with all these stitches in my neck.”

  I pushed the bandage back over the wound and pressed the tapes down, rubbing them until they stopped trying to peel back off. Mom eased away from me, her hand letting go of the sheet. I grabbed it quickly and clutched it to my chest lying on my side. I realized too late that I was facing Liam.

  He’d already turned around, his face so much softer than I’d ever seen it before. It was different and I didn’t know if I liked it this way or not. When he was angry and defensive, it was…fun figuring out what he was thinking, feeling. I could doubt the real reason behind his scowl and instead make up my own. When he looked so defenseless, like he did right now, I couldn’t lie about what I saw. I couldn’t avoid it.

  And not avoiding it meant that I had to admit that what I saw was as close to concern as it could get. He really was worried about me.

  No. How stupid was that? He wasn’t worried about me. He was worried about the damn island and its reputation. I was a “trog.” I wasn’t his friend.

  But then he spoke. His mouth opened and words that weren’t insults or dripping in hate and sarcasm came out, slowly and thoughtfully. “Do you remember what the cat looked like? Do you remember what color it was, or how big it was?”

  My mouth began to let words slip out, descriptions that were full and vivid because even though it had been dark and I’d been too cold to think straight, I would never forget the copper cat who’d taken a swipe at my life. Liam’s reaction was like lightning exploding right in front of me. Light seemed to reflect in his eyes, bright and golden. His face hardened as rage took away the softness and replaced it with sharp angles and dark corners.

  “Liam,” my mother said to him, the word carrying a warning, but he was already gone.

  He ran past us and out of the clinic. I heard a bell that was probably attached to the door clang angrily. “What’s he gonna do?” I asked nervously as I saw the worried faces on Mom and Dad.

  Mom said nothing, just looked away, anger and disappointment plain on her face, but Dad mumbled something that sounded a lot like “start a war”.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  LIAM

  What did I expect? What had I expected? Did I think it would have been someone else? I’d hoped it would’ve been. I’d hoped it would’ve been someone else, someone who didn’t really matter. But I knew that life wasn’t like that. I knew that life was never gonna be easy for me. The scars on my face and body told me that every day.

  But you’d think that the people you trusted the most would care en
ough about you to not piss you off. And I was pissed. I was more than pissed. I was ready to kill.

  I couldn’t explain to Fallon what had happened to her, or who had attacked her. I couldn’t even at least tell her why, and neither could her parents. The truth had to be kept from her. I understood now more than I probably ever did why Fallon’s life was built on a foundation of carefully constructed lies. She didn’t know anything about us or about her parents to keep all of us safe until she was ready. Now she’d never be ready.

  How could she trust any of us after what happened to her?

  How could we expect her to trust us?

  Maybe being a monster would have been okay if the monster had never hurt her. But it was too late now. The monster had done more than hurt her; the monster had destroyed her innocence and I knew better than most that you never got that back. The monster…was us.

  So when I opened the door to the beauty salon, I didn’t see faces of people. I saw monsters and trogs. I saw myself.

  “Baby! What are you doing here?” Brenda asked with a fake smile.

  I grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the register. I walked past the chairs filled with trogs getting their hair…whatever. I pulled Brenda into the back storage room and slammed the door. Her pickup wasn’t that great because she misunderstood what I was doing and wrapped her arms around me.

  Her mouth was against my ear, her voice deep and sultry. “Baby, if you wanted some quickie hatesex, all you had to do was say so.”

  I gotta admit it. The invitation was…well, it made my thoughts kind of skid to a stop. My body had always reacted to her; the smell of her always sent my common sense into a nosedive straight into a pile of stupidity and horniness, and this time wasn’t any different. When she purred, the vibration went through my skin and into my blood.

  She put her nose to my neck and nibbled, nuzzling me and licking, her tongue rough against my throat. We’d never done this before – have sex in the shop – and the excitement was like a storm. Roughly, she pushed me against a shelf stocked with dozens of bottles and jars. They scattered on the ground, some splattering open and spraying us with what was inside.

  “Oops,” she laughed.

  The force of her nibbling intensified as she gripped my shirt in her hands and pulled, tearing the cloth until she exposed my bare chest. She began to bite across the tops of my shoulders, her fingers raking down toward my abdomen. I felt her fingers fumbling at the button on my jeans. My brain said to make her stop. Heh…stupid brain.

  Her mouth was hot, and she used each breath to whisper the things she was planning on doing to me. She began to sink, lower and lower until she was on her knees, her mouth hot on my navel. She looked up at me and I felt the rate of my breathing increase, deep breaths came in, fast and hard, while shallow breaths pushed out, hot and moist.

  “I know what you need. This always makes you feel better.”

  Her words were a promise that my body remembered, and she knew it. She knew it and she worked it. “Do you want me to lick it and make it feel better?”

  No. No, I don’t. No, no, no…

  I could feel my jeans growing tighter; feel the familiar pressure build between my legs that grew when I heard her chuckle. She was smiling. She was smiling because she knew what she was doing and what kind of affect it was having on me.

  …work, brain…work!

  My hands went in front of my jeans as her fingers moved to pull down my zipper. She laughed and grabbed my hands. Her voice was thick as she whispered, “Don’t stop yourself from feeling good, Liam. You know you want to.” She brought them to her face and licked my palm. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at me.

  “What the hell is this?” She stood up, my hand still in hers. “What the hell is this, Liam?”

  The look in her eyes was murderous. “What the hell is what?”

  She pushed my hand into my face, my palm crushed against my nose. “This. Why does your hand smell like it’s been shoved up that skank trog’s snatch? Is this what you’ve been doing the past couple of days? Have you been boning her at the clinic?”

  I shoved her away and watched her crash into the shelf across from us. She stopped a bottle from falling with her hand and then, wrapping her fingers around it, threw it at me. I ducked but whatever was in it splashed out onto my face as it shattered.

  “You’re crazy, Brenda. I’m not boning Fallon. I’m not doing anything with Fallon and never will. Not after what you’ve done.”

  She cocked her chin up and only then did I notice the bruising and swelling around her left eye. Her eye was half-white, half-bloodshot; it looked like it had been dipped in red paint at the corner, and I half expected her to blink blood red tears just for the attention it would get. She turned slightly, and I could see a dent and several poorly-done stitches. I smiled.

  Well done, Fallon.

  The corner of her mouth picked up with a smug smirk. “You mean that’s all it took? What’s the matter, she allergic to cats?”

  “You could have killed her!” I shouted, my voice rattling around the small room.

  Her eyes flashed with disappointment, her voice feeling and sounding like ice stabbing my ears. “I know. I’m going to have to try harder next time.”

  I charged, her words too filled with promise to ignore and my body too gripped with fear to control. My hands found the shelf right beneath her shoulders. I gripped them and pressed myself in as close as I dared, the wood cracking beneath my fingers. “I warned you once to stay away from her. I told you to leave her alone. She’s not like the other humans-”

  Her voice was sharp and almost crazed. “Tell me something the whole island doesn’t know. If she’d been anyone else, you’d have torn out her throat. Instead, you shoved your tongue down it.”

  “I told you why I did that,” I reminded her but she laughed.

  “Yeah, and it’s still bullshit. You didn’t kiss her to keep our secret; you kissed her because you wanted her to know yours. And now I know it, too. But I’m not going to let you screw us over like her parents did…or like your mom tried to do.”

  My fingers were moving on their own, my brain and my hand completely disconnected. They moved like a snake striking at her throat. Quick and determined, my fingers wrapped around her neck, squeezing. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she wheezed out, her smile never leaving her face. “Adopting a human kid? Losing your mind and then going and getting pregnant with some mutant half-breed? We stay on this rock because we don’t want to mix with humans, and her parents and your mom went out of their way to get crotch deep into them.

  “They turned their back on their own kind and you’re very close to doing the same thing.”

  Suddenly, I let go and stepped back. The things she said weren’t lies. But that’s because she saw things differently. She didn’t see things the way my mom saw them, or Mr. and Mrs. Timmons did. She didn’t see things the way that I saw them…at least, not the way I saw them now.

  And looking at Brenda, I realized that it wasn’t just humans that looked different to me. I’d always thought Brenda was the best looking girl I’d ever seen. She still was.

  She was always going to have the perfect body and the perfect smile. She would always be protective over us, to the point where she’d do stupid things like attack Fallon. She loved me, she loved Audrey, and I was always gonna love her. Every single part of me loved her and would never stop. I’d done things with her, shared things with her, that I’ll probably never do or share with anyone else ever again.

  But none of that mattered because looking at her, at her bruises and her smirk, her green eyes and her thick, brown braid, I saw something that I didn’t like.

  My head shook in disappointment and I walked back toward the door, stepping over the bottles that had fallen on the floor. I didn’t look back at her, but I did pause before leaving, looking at a poster of a girl with bright red hair grinning back at me, her teeth biting down on
her finger. Someone had written the word “yum” next to it, and I surprised myself when I didn’t smile.

  I heard my voice, and then the sound of the door close as I left, unsure which one made more of an impact on Brenda.

  “I didn’t turn my back against our kind, Brenda; you did that the minute you attacked Mr. and Mrs. Timmons’ daughter.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  FALLON

  I went home the day I woke up. I wasn’t allowed to walk to the truck. Or to the house. Or to the sofa. Dad carried me pretty much every inch I moved, even though the doctor said I could walk, and the only things that needed attention were my stitches. My legs still had some nasty black bits of asphalt stuck inside them, but a nice hot bath would take care of that.

  Mom carried me that time.

  I had dinner on the couch with Mom and Dad watching over me like hawks. We watched some corny talent show rerun together, and then I was carried into my room and tucked into bed like I was five and the invisible monster under my bed had attacked me instead of some ginormous cat with day-glo eyes. I slept like a baby.

  That is, until I rolled over and my shoulder felt like a bomb had gone off on it and my legs turned into two four alarm fires. Then I was up, and hurting. And maybe it’s not this way for everyone, but for me, when I’m in pain, my brain starts coming up with ways of making it hurt worse. Random things began to flash through my mind, things that I’d pretty much sworn on my life and the lives of my fictional great-great-great-grandchildren that I was never going to think about again.

  Which meant four-letter words started spilling out of my mouth.

  Including the worst four-letter word ever invented.

  “Liam.”

  Ugh.

  I must have taken too many pain pills.

  I sat up in bed and stared at my door, as if he was there and I could eye him out and stare him to death. But the more I stared, the more I could see him, his face, his eyes, his mouth. Even his scar. I loved that scar.