“I’m not exactly an advocate for suicide, but even I would contemplate it. It must be sheer agony having to go through this. That guy at the police station never even finished changing and he looked and sounded like he was in so much despair.”
“Maybe he really did get off easy, getting killed like that.”
I leaned forward in my seat and placed my face into my hands. “Do you think I should tell my grandma about this?”
“No,” he said promptly.
I was surprised at how fast and sure he was in his response. “Why not?”
“As soon as you let people in on something, it’s all they can think about.”
“But I want her to be able to protect herself. She’s going to be all alone on Saturday, and what if something happens to her?”
“Just tell her you’re nervous about the animal attacks, make sure she stays inside the whole time, and when you’re done doing what you have to do, you slip out of the party and go home to her.”
I let his idea sink into my brain for a moment, and it wasn’t bad. I suppose he was right to a certain degree. The werewolves were always here, and when I didn’t know about them I roamed the woods and streets freely, and then as soon as I knew the truth my own backyard became terrifying. Then again, me not knowing is what put me in the danger in the first place. I didn’t know what was out there and it nearly cost me my life.
“What if they try to get into the house?” I asked.
“Why would they do that?”
“We don’t know what these things are like. We don’t know what they’re fully capable of. Maybe they like the hunt.”
“She’s a grandma, she probably goes to bed early, anyway. If she shuts off all the lights when she hits the hay they probably won’t even notice the house.”
“That’s if Grandma doesn’t have one of her movie marathons and falls asleep on the couch with every light on in the house.”
“I don’t know, slip her a sleeping pill.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You want me to drug my grandma?”
“Is it really such a bad idea?”
“It is if she’s in a deep sleep while one of those things are gnawing and clawing at the front door and she ends up eaten while unconscious.”
“Nobody is getting eaten.”
“Tell that to Joe.”
“All right, you’re gonna have to stop using Joe as a response to everything,” he said with annoyance. Maybe I did reference Joe a lot, but he knew something was up and I thought he was just being weird, the same way Max was initially with me. And we know what happened to Joe—he ended up missing.”
I folded my arms, not out of a pouting protest, but as a means to comfort myself. “I’m just worried about my grandma,” I admitted. “What if something happens to her and I’m not here?”
Max saw the sorrow and dread in me and actually softened his voice. “Wendy is scrappy. If something did happen, she could probably take care of herself.”
“I just wish I could cancel.”
“Then don’t go.”
“I have to. I owe Owen.”
He nodded one very big nod. “Owen, right,” he said in a deep voice. He sounded weird when he said his name and I wasn’t sure why. I had figured it was the general dislike of him peeking through, but his lack of eye contact toward me suggested otherwise. Call me crazy, but I sensed jealousy. Max being jealous of Owen seemed ludicrous, especially when the only reason I could think of involved me.
The mention of Owen was like a bucket of cold water being poured on me, and I was immediately snapped out of the conversation and into thinking about my daily routine. “Speaking of Owen, I need to get home. He’ll be waiting for me.”
“Still painting?”
“We’re onto fixing the shutters now,” I replied. He didn’t say anything, but again, nodded. “I’ll see you later,” I told him and then scooted out the door.
My mind was a weird cocktail of thoughts as I drove home. I could have gotten seasick from the different ideas I kept bouncing back and forth between. If I wasn’t thinking about how I was going to survive, I was thinking about Grandma, and if I wasn’t thinking about all of that madness, I was wondering about Max and me.
I know Max had been a little flirty before, but did he actually like me? Sometimes, I can be completely oblivious to when a guy is attracted to me and other times completely misunderstanding the signals. It’s why I usually wait for the guy to make the first move. If his tongue is down my throat, it’s a safe bet that he probably likes me.
Owen and I had a really short day with the shutters, just nailing them back into one piece, painting them and then fastening them back onto the house. It was a lot quicker than I thought it would be, so I had a lot of remaining hours. Hours I wasn’t exactly looking forward to, because I know how my brain works. If it has spare time to think, it will, and most likely about the most vile, unproductive things imaginable. Like my death, Grandma’s death, Owen’s death, Max’s death, hell, even the mailman’s death, all at the hands—or should I say claws—of a vicious werewolf; one that looked like a fusion between the one I had seen and the one Scott had turned into.
It was weird how Scott had essentially turned into the same thing that I had seen, yet there were some differences. The hair coming through his skin was a lighter shade and his ears weren’t as long. It made me wonder if they were all unique in some way while still having a similar overall look. Kind of like cats.
The one thing that grated at me the most was wondering where it all began. Where did this werewolf disease come from and why? Was there some kind of horrible mutation turning wolves rabid and they began feeding on everything in sight and infecting people? Hell, were wolves even what they descended from? Maybe it was bears or even dogs. Christ, it could be a giant rabbit for all I know.
The book said that werewolves were, apparently, a breed of animal and their bite was infectious, but why? And it made me wonder if the werewolves in our woods were the normal breed or a bunch of tormented souls cursed to an eternity of being slaves to the moonlight. Which is the more horrible concept?
Before Owen left, I asked him, “Do you have any scrap pieces of wood I could borrow?”
“I have some I use for a bonfire. They’re all kind of gnarly looking, though.”
“That’s fine, I don’t need it to look good.”
“You having a bonfire?”
“No. I need it for a project.”
“Can I ask what kind of project?”
I shrugged and tried to do my best to seem nonchalant. “Just a photography thing. I need to make a stand.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll lend you a few pieces then.”
“Make it a lot of pieces,” I corrected him, and his forehead creased with suspicion. “I have a lot of projects,” I lied.
Luckily, Owen wasn’t the intrusive kind, so he ran back to his place and, with his car, carried several pieces of lumber back to the yard. I kept up with my project story and did my typical rambling until he either believed me or just wanted to get away from the talking and left. Once I knew he was gone, I began to work.
I nailed several pieces of lumber across the outside of the windows, gently tapping the hammer against the nail so there wasn’t a lot of thudding for Grandma to hear from inside. I was hoping her TV addiction would aid me in masquerading what I was doing. I didn’t have a lot of wood to work with, so I angled every piece from corner to corner of the window frame diagonally—just enough to create some kind of blockage and protection for the glass so no werewolves could get through. The way the wood was arranged, it looked like I was preparing for a hurricane or a zombie outbreak. The gaps between each piece of wood made me think of old scary movies with zombie hands and fingers creeping through and grabbing.
It suddenly dawned on me that I was living a horror movie.
Standing out here with a hammer and piece of wood, making my house werewolf proof, was so strange and comical I almost didn’t know what to do
with myself.
“Dear, what are you doing out there?” Grandma asked. Her face was pressed up against the glass, and I could only see her between the two pieces of wood.
“Uh... nailing stuff?”
“What for?”
I had to think quickly. “There’s gonna be a bad wind storm and I don’t want the windows getting broken.”
“Wind storm?”
“Yeah. It’s like a rain storm only with...wind.” Smooth, Cora. Real smooth. “It’ll save you from having to replace all your windows. Trust me, Grandma.” Oh, yeah, trust me indeed. I totally didn’t sound like I was making this up. Note my sarcasm.
“The weatherman didn’t say anything about a wind storm.”
“You know you can’t trust them all the time.”
She thought on it and said, “You’re right, the bastards...” Grandma always went Clint Eastwood when she thought she had been done wrong or lied to. She even had that squinted up face he always did.
“I’m not bugging you, am I?” I asked.
“A little, dear. I can’t hear my programs.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a bit.” And I was. There weren’t too many windows to block off, since I didn’t have that much wood, so I stuck to the living room and kitchen windows and threw one scrap piece on her bedroom’s. For my room, I figured I’d just lock up and hope they left it alone.
I couldn’t believe I was actually preparing for a werewolf invasion, as Max put it. I couldn’t tell if junior high me would have thought this was really cool or just would have wet herself. Probably a mix.
That night, I tried to sleep, but with the fundraiser two days away and the blue moon looming like some horrible flu you realized you were inevitably going to catch, I could barely get a wink of sleep. When I did, I dreamt of nothing but werewolves and all the ways I’d get torn apart. I had been having so many nightmares about this, that when I woke up in a cold sweat, I was neither surprised nor uncomfortable. It was what it was. But there was no way I was going to fall back to sleep.
The barricades on the windows were comforting, I will admit, but it didn’t stop my mind from going haywire over what could and would most likely happen on Saturday.
I went out into the living room and turned on the TV, thinking a little late night television would maybe get my mind off things and help me fall asleep. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much on that I could watch. Grandma didn’t have a satellite and all she had were the local channels, so my options were infomercials on hair loss, the praise and hallelujah hour, some dreary talk show where the host did nothing but shout at his guests for paternity results, and then some movie. I chose the movie.
It’s always fun watching an R-rated flick on a local channel and watch the hilarious editing that ensues. It was a gang movie, and at one point two gang members were having a heated fight where one told the other to forget yourself and then the other rebutted with go treat yourself. Yep, something tells me guys in gangs don’t talk this way. Why this movie was shown edited was beyond me. It looked pretty violent, so much so that one notable character just randomly disappeared and I had to learn ten minutes later that he had been murdered. I laughed and wondered what the point of this moving being shown was if they had to take eighty percent of it out.
I went back to my room and tried to not only forget my problems, but the movie as well. I lay in bed for five minutes until I heard a very slow, soft scrape coming from my bedroom window. My eyes popped open, but my body remained frozen. It sounded like someone was taking one long fingernail and slowly dragging it down the screen to my window.
It wasn’t a full moon, damn it. Why was this happening?
I was ready to jump out of bed and grab my nearest werewolf repellent, until I heard a “Psst.” Someone was outside my window. I was glad it wasn’t a werewolf, but now I feared it was some kind of creeper. I sat up in bed and looked to the window, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust in the dark. When they did, I saw a male figure standing outside. Once my eyes became clearer, I realized it was Max.
“Max? What the heck are you doing?” I crawled off the bed and came to the window, but kept my bedroom light off. “You’re not going to, like, recite poetry to me, are you?”
He was standing out there with his hands in his pockets, slightly bouncing like he was cold or nervous. “Christ...” he said under his breath and shook his head. “I’m being impulsive.”
“Why?”
He moaned and groaned. “You want to meet me out on the porch?” He didn’t even wait for an answer and took off.
He was already standing on the porch when I sneaked out. He was in a loose fitting white t-shirt (the kind he wore under his flannels), and his hair was tousled like he had been dragging his fingers through the portion on the top of his head. It gave him this I-don’t-care sexy look, Why is it only men can pull off this look? I end up looking like a wet rat when I try it.
Before I could even ask why he was here he said, “I can’t sleep.”
“I thought that was normal for you,” I noted, as I slipped my arms into the sleeves of a jacket I had carried out with me. It was summer, but the night air was surprisingly cold.
“It is. I figured you probably weren’t doing a lot of sleeping, either, so I was thinking we could be awake together.”
Stop thinking dirty things Cora, stop thinking dirty things.
“How’d you know I’d be awake?” I asked him coyly.
He tilted his head ever so slightly to the left. It was that damn sexy head tilt. “Come on,” he said gently, “No way are you sleeping with what you’ve told me.”
“I did sleep at one point.”
“But nightmares woke you?”
“Pretty much. Being awake at night has its perks, though. I now know what I want to get Grandma for Christmas. It’s a little thingy that stirs your food for you.”
“People can’t stir their own food anymore?”
“Well, they can... they just don’t want to.”
“Typical city talk,” he scoffed and then walked to a beam on the porch so he could lean against it with his arms folded.
“What’s the real reason you’re here?” I asked.
“I can’t sleep.”
“I know, but why come here? You’re not grooming me, are you?” It was the most subtle way I could ask if he was getting me ready for a short relationship like he had with Molly where, apparently, he’d rock my world and leave me a jilted ex-lover.
“Grooming? For what?”
Suddenly, it was hard to make eye contact and my face felt on fire. I was praying he would know what I meant. “I’ve just heard things...about you and...women.”
“How I’m a pig and I use them,” he responded, as though he had heard it one too many times.
“Maybe not the pig part. Only that you get interested in someone and then get bored rather quickly and no longer have use for them.”
He chuckled. “And where’d you hear that from? Molly? I thought we talked about this already.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t involve me then.”
Max’s face softened and he did another head tilt. Why did he have to keep doing that? “Are you implying that I’m after you?”
Some weird laugh practically exploded from my nose and I almost choked on my embarrassment. I cleared my throat and tried to regain my dignity. “I never said that.”
“It’s what you’re implying,” he said with a long smirk. He was getting a lot of entertainment over watching me squirm. “You think I’m trying to seduce you.”
“Why else would you be playing Sir Lancelot outside my bedroom window?”
“It’s Romeo.”
“Yeah, him too.”
He came up to me real close, and I found myself swallowing hard like there were rocks growing in my throat. I was backed up against the outside of my house and out of nowhere, Max planted his hand flat against it, entrapping me between the wall and his body. It looked like he was merely relaxing and leaning i
nto the wall, but it didn’t feel that way with his chest just inches away from mine. It was like he was getting off on making me blush.
Then very softly he said, “Maybe I like being around you.”
“I thought I annoyed you.”
“You did. Still do, actually.”
“Aren’t you a charmer? Is this how Molly became obsessed with you?”
His eyes went cold and he dropped his arm down from the house and walked back a few steps. “You know how to set the mood,” he huffed and puffed.
“I guess I just feel like there’s still some unfinished business between you two.”
“How?”
“Like... if Molly’s parents hadn’t died, do you think you two would still be together?”
“Hell, no,” he urgently responded.
“Really?”
“We were just a stupid fling. Not every relationship is supposed to end with a marriage.”
“Yeah, but most relationships end naturally. Yours just kind of exploded.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There was obviously something there that drew you into her. You couldn’t have seen it growing deeper?”
“Nope.”
“Honestly?”
He squinted his eyes at me. “What does it matter? We’re not together now and with good reason.”
“Yeah, but what if she hadn’t gone weird?”
“I thought she was good looking,” he said, as though it pained him and he was merely saying it to shut me up. “I was curious what she was like and now I know. Molly has a way of making outsiders think she’s a lot more pleasant than she actually is. I wasn’t going to get caught in that web, though.”
“I guess I was just curious.”
“Why? You think I’d actually hook up with her again?”
“No.”
“Then why do you care?”
“Hey, you’re the one that came to my house in the middle of the night. It’s me who should be asking the questions.”
“Go for it. I’m an open book.”
I folded my arms and frowned. “I can’t think of any.”
“Miss chatty lost for words? I’m shocked.”
Lunar Rampage (Lunar Rampage Series Book 1) Page 21