by Sarah Bailey
“Hi, Hannah,” she said.
“Izzy, where did you get to last night? I was worried when you didn’t text me to say you got home,” Hannah replied.
“Um, well…”
What the hell do I tell Hannah? I can’t exactly tell her the truth.
“Look, babe, can you do me a favour? If anyone asks, I stayed at yours.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just… you know what he’s like.”
“When are you going to break up with that prick? He treats you like shit.”
“Han, you know I have nowhere else to go.”
She popped the phone down on her vanity table, putting it on speakerphone. She needed to finish her make-up. Alan would kill her if she was late.
“You can crash at mine until you get on your feet, babe.”
She sighed. If only that was an option. Alan would never let her leave.
“Han, please, we’ve had this conversation too many times. I can’t leave him.”
“I just worry about you.”
“I know, but there’s nothing you can do. I doubt he’s going to let me go out again for a while.”
“Izzy…”
“Hannah, just drop it. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you soon.”
“All right love you, babe.”
“Love you too.”
She hung up, shaking her head. Hannah didn’t seem to understand her predicament. She had no idea how dangerous Alan really was or what kind of things he made Izzy do. She’d been fooled by his outward charm when they’d first met. By the time she’d realised, it was too late. They were already living together, and he’d begun forcing her to sell her body. It had started out with his friends, but now he had several regular clients. He had other girls, but she was the only one he was abusive towards. The only one he considered to be his property to do with what he pleased.
“Isadora, you better be ready in five minutes,” Alan called through the door.
“I’m just coming,” she said.
It was a miracle she was ready after the interruption from Hannah. She tugged on her coat and slipped on her heels. She checked her appearance in the mirror. She hated caking on all the face paint, but it was expected of her. Sighing, she left her bedroom. She couldn’t keep the client waiting.
§
Izzy sat on the edge of the bath, staring at her feet. She’d finished up with a client five minutes ago, but it was only the first round. He’d want to go again. She felt sick to her stomach. Her skin was damp with sweat. Something weird was happening to her. She’d wanted to have a shower before they went again, but she couldn’t stand up.
She gripped the rim of the bath, trying to stay upright. Something in her body shifted. Her bones started to ache. She slipped down onto the floor as her skin rippled. What was happening? Why did she feel like something was on the inside, trying to tear its way out of her? Her bones cracked. A wave of pain drove through her body. She stifled a yelp.
There was a knock at the bathroom door.
“Destiny, honey, are you okay in there?”
She bit down on the side of her cheek as her bones shifted again. It hurts! It hurts so much!
“Yes,” she called. “I’m fine, Bart.”
“All right, honey, you take your time. I’ll be waiting.”
She stifled another scream. Her bones cracked again, contorting as her body started to shift. It was too soon, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been keeping track of time. Had it been two weeks or three? Why hadn’t she got in contact with Rex? How could she have thought she could deal with this on her own? She looked down at her hands, but they weren’t hands any longer. She had paws.
“What the fuck?” she whispered.
The change assaulted her frame, causing an inordinate amount of pain as her body transformed into its animal form. The agonising pain was worse than the night she’d been bitten. She lay there for several moments after her body had shifted. She stood on all fours, whipping her tail back and forth. Another knock sounded at the door.
“Destiny, I’m waiting.”
She growled. Who is this and why do they smell so good?
“Destiny? Is that you?”
She stalked towards the door on all fours, her paws silent on the tiles.
“I’m coming in, honey.”
It opened. The man standing in the doorway looked terrified. Izzy didn’t care. He smelt good. She leapt up, her paws connecting with his chest. He let out a yelp as they crashed to the floor before she silenced him. Izzy’s human mind shut down when she tasted blood in her mouth.
Izzy felt groggy when she awoke. It was cold. She wasn’t wearing anything. When she opened her eyes, she was lying on her side on the floor of the hotel room. Shifting into sitting position, her body aching with every movement, she looked around. There was a pool of blood soaking into the carpet. She looked down at herself. She was covered in it.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she whispered, beginning to hyperventilate.
What the fuck happened? Why is there blood everywhere? What did I do?
She got to her feet, walking towards the bed. She stopped dead. Next to the bed was Bart. His throat had been ripped out. She put her hand to her mouth, preventing a scream from emitting.
Oh, fuck! Was… was that me?
She remembered the shift, she could never forget that pain, but everything else after it was a blank. What the hell was she going to do? She’d killed someone. She hadn’t meant to. Why hadn’t she kept track of time? Rex had told her at the full moon she would shift for the first time. She hadn’t wanted to believe it was actually happening to her.
Rex. He’d given her his number. What else could she do, but call him? She turned away from the body, unable to look at the horrific scene any longer. She couldn’t believe she’d been capable of doing such a thing.
Finding her bag and fumbling with it for a moment, she got hold of her phone. There were missed calls and texts from Alan, but she ignored them. She searched her contacts, finding Rex’s number and dialling. The phone rang for what seemed like a lifetime.
“Hello?” said a groggy voice.
“It’s… it’s Izzy, the… the girl who got bitten.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sure you’d actually call.”
“It happened,” she whispered.
“I see. I did warn you. You should’ve called me sooner.”
She didn’t have time to discuss what she should and shouldn’t have done. There was a dead body next to her and she had no idea what to do about it.
“I know. I… I think I need your help. I don’t know who else to call.”
She looked back at Bart, shuddering. A tear leaked out of her right eye. He hadn’t been a bad client. He treated her well unlike some of the others. She hadn’t meant to do it.
“What’s up?”
“I…” she hiccupped on a sob. “I…”
“Izzy?”
“I killed someone,” she whispered.
There was silence for a long moment. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
“Where are you?” he asked.
She gave him the address of the hotel and the room number.
“There’s blood everywhere. I don’t know what to do.”
All of it was insane. It was a small mercy she couldn’t remember doing it.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully. Don’t touch the body or anything else in the room. I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let anyone else into the room except me.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll bring you something to wear. You should take a shower.”
“Okay… thank you.”
He hung up without responding any further. She looked down at her phone. There were a couple more messages from Alan. She looked at them.
‘Isadora, answer your fucking phone! I did not say you could have a sleepover with Bart!’
‘You are going to regret this. Don’t think I won’t puni
sh you for this shit.’
She shuddered. He was going to kill her. She dropped her phone back in her bag and placed it on the table before shuffling into the bathroom. She turned the shower on, waiting until it grew hot before stepping in. The water ran red. Her hair was caked with blood. She shivered despite the warmth.
How could she have been capable of killing someone? She’d never wanted to hurt another soul in her entire life. If this is what being a shifter was, then she didn’t think she could deal with it. I’m an idiot. I should’ve just called Rex before. I shouldn’t have ignored what was happening. She grabbed the complimentary toiletries with a shaky hand. She had to wash all of this blood away. Scrubbing herself clean, she washed her hair four times to make sure.
She sat on the edge of the bath when she was done, wrapped in a towel, unable to stop thinking about Bart. She didn’t want to remember what she’d done when she’d been in animal form. How could she live with it?
She padded out into the room again, keeping her eyes averted from the bed. Taking one of the robes from the wardrobe, she dumped the towel and slipped it on. Careful not to step in the blood, she sat on one of the armchairs, curling her legs up to her chest. She felt sick to her stomach. There was too much blood.
A knock sounded at the door. She got up, going to it and looking through the peephole. Standing outside with two plastic bags in his hands was Rex. He was wearing a leather jacket and black jeans with those scruffy boots again.
“Izzy, I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing. Let me in.”
Chapter Four
Izzy unlocked the door, stepping aside to allow him in. He looked her up and down before he moved into the room and handed her one of the bags.
“Here,” he said.
She took it from him, closing the door behind him.
“Where is the body?”
She pointed towards the bed. She couldn’t look at it again. The image was already branded into her retinas. He walked towards where she had indicated, stepping around the blood. There was a moment’s silence.
“Well, fuck,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“No shit.”
He ran a hand through his hair. She looked in the bag he’d given her. A pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper along with a change of underwear and a pair of ballet flats were nestled inside. She took the bag into the bathroom, unsure of what to say to Rex. She pulled the clothes on, finding that everything fit perfectly. She wasn’t going to ask how he knew.
When she walked to the door and looked out, he’d put a sheet over Bart and was talking on the phone to someone in low tones. He noticed her standing in the doorway. He finished up his conversation, slipping his phone into his back pocket.
“Come over here,” he said.
She approached him slowly, minding the blood still soaking the carpet. He stood by the window, looking out at the street below. He took her hand, pulling her wrist up before he inhaled. His eyes went wide for a moment before he dropped her arm like it burnt him.
“Just fucking great.”
“What?” she asked, unsure of why he’d done that.
“We’ll talk about it later. This is a fucking mess.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“You have no control over it. This is why I said you’d need my help. You should’ve had one of us there when you shifted for the first time.”
She was silent. He wasn’t very happy with her, and she could hardly blame him for that. She should’ve listened. It was her own fault.
“Look, Dalia is sending a team over to clean this up. We need to wait until they’re here.”
“Who’s Dalia?”
“The Alpha of the local pack.”
“Alpha?”
He rolled his eyes, frustration appearing on his face. It was all very well him being irritated, but she knew nothing of his world.
“Werewolves, Izzy. The Alpha is the pack leader. They’re the only organised shifter group in London.”
Werewolves. Right. He mentioned them before.
“Why is she helping?”
“You’re a shifter now. What do you think the media will do if they got hold of this?”
“But… I killed a man, surely you can’t just cover that up.”
“You’d be surprised. The supernatural community doesn’t like humans prying into their lives. There’s a lot which happens under the radar.”
She swallowed. There was so much she had to learn. She looked down at the street. People going about their day to day lives whilst they stood there with a dead man in the room. The whole situation was surreal.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his expression softening.
“Not really. I don’t know how to process any of this.”
“Do you have any more questions?”
“Is it painful every time it happens?”
He looked her over for a moment.
“I’ve heard the first time for the bitten is excruciating. If you embrace your animal, the process becomes easier.”
Embrace my animal? Is he for real? I didn’t want any of this. How does he expect me to just accept I now have another form?
“What is different about being bitten?”
“Not all of them ever achieve the full transformation. Some of the born shifters look down on them, but I personally don’t give a shit. A shifter is a shifter regardless of whether you were born one or bitten.”
“I think I shifted fully. I didn’t feel human. I remember paws and a tail, but I don’t remember anything after I attacked him.”
She knew she’d changed entirely when she’d become her animal. She still had no idea what type of creature she was.
“Your animal took over. Often the way when you first shift, but you can learn to control the beast within you. It won’t always be like that.”
She didn’t want to experience it again. She wanted to go back to being a normal girl, but she knew it was impossible. Her life had been altered irrevocably. They stood in silence for a long while. She had so many questions, but her head hurt and exhaustion was beginning to set in.
There was a knock at the door. Rex moved away from her to open it. In walked two men with long hair.
“Rex,” one of them said, nodding.
“Dan, Gerry,” Rex replied, nodding back. “You two can take it from here?”
“Dalia still has us in the dog house over some shit we did, so yeah,” the one with blue eyes said.
He looked over at Izzy, eyes widening.
“Is that the girl?”
“Yes,” Rex said.
“Didn’t expect her to be all… well, doesn’t matter. You should take her out of here. Dalia said she’d call later to go over what to do about the girl.”
Rex turned to her, indicating she should follow him with a nod towards the door. She picked up her bag from the table and followed him from the hotel room, not daring to look back at the two werewolves and Bart.
He fiddled with his phone on the way down in the lift. By the time they’d gotten outside the hotel, there was a taxi waiting for them. He made her get in before sitting next to her.
“How are they going to get rid of… it?” she asked.
Rex looked at the driver.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Can I ask you something?”
He nodded, eying the driver again. She knew she couldn’t say too much in front of him.
“What did that guy mean about me?”
“Dan?” He snorted. “He was surprised by your appearance.”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
His lip curled up at the side.
“He thinks you look like a blonde bimbo.”
“Excuse me? I’m not an airhead. I have a brain.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I never said you were.”
“Men,” she muttered. “All the fucking same.”
It was so typical, those guys think
ing she was stupid just because she was blonde. That stereotype got old very quickly.
“Dare I ask why you were in that hotel in the first place?”
She didn’t want to admit to him that her so-called boyfriend was also her pimp. It felt wrong. She hated it, but she couldn’t say no to Alan. He would just beat her until she gave in. It wasn’t worth it to argue with him.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know, he didn’t really seem like your type.”
“Bart isn’t… wasn’t a bad person.”
“And I suppose the envelope full of cash was just a tip?”
She turned to him with a frown on her face. How did he know that? Wait, did he…?
“You went through my stuff?”
“I wanted to know what you were doing there.”
She turned away, looking out the window. She didn’t need him judging her. It wasn’t her fault Alan made her do these things. She couldn’t imagine what he was going to do to her when she finally returned home. I don’t even want to think about it. Nothing good can come out of any of this. Nothing at all.
The rest of the journey was silent. She didn’t want to talk about anything else in front of the driver. She followed Rex into his flat. He indicated she should sit down before he ambled over to his kitchen and flipped on the kettle. A few minutes later, he placed a steaming mug of tea down in front of her along with a bowl of cereal.
“Sorry, I don’t have much else in the flat,” he said, shrugging.
She took it, digging in, realising how hungry she was now the adrenaline had faded. He sat down, watching her whilst she ate.
“Look, I didn’t mean to be a dick about the whole… escort thing. I’m not judging.”
She put the bowl down, turning to him.
“It’s not like I have a choice, okay? Can we just drop it?”
“What do you mean you don’t have a choice?”
His brow furrowed. She could have smacked her hand on her head. That was the last thing she meant to tell him.
“I just don’t. It’s complicated.”
It wasn’t. It was really very simple. Alan was an arsehole and controlled every aspect of her life.
“Right.”
He didn’t look like he wanted to drop the subject, but he leant back, watching her with a strange expression.