Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (202 page)

Her
empty desk in first hour made my stomach drop. The only plus side
of the day was Damon’s absence as well. I trudged through classes
optimistic I might see Grace after school… only to be
disappointed.

I drove
home after school, parked in the driveway and locked the door. I
had no intention of driving it again. After the incident last
night, returning the car without being asked didn’t seem likely.
There was no way I would go to the house without being
invited.

Neither
Michael nor Grace contacted me through the week or weekend. Three
weeks past, and Jim and Sally began to grumble about me hanging out
in the house. For the first time since moving in with them three
years ago they didn’t want me around. I avoided them by staying in
my room.

In the
darkened bedroom one evening, I lay staring at the cracked ceiling
and wondered how to bring Grace’s car back. Did I have enough
courage to drive to their house, knock on the door, and hand the
key back? No way. I thought about parking it at the school and
mailing the keys back but my luck, it would get towed
away.

“
Get to the point, dipstick,” I mumbled to
myself. I was pretending to wrack my brain only as an excuse to see
Michael. It killed me that he hadn’t tried to contact me.
No effort.
Whatsoever.
The guy spilled his guts and told me to leave.
So much for liking
the good guy
.

It’s all
I had been thinking about, night and day for almost a month. Now I
just didn’t want to think anymore.

In a huff, I jumped off the bed and
grabbed my backpack off the floor. I’d bought a calendar for the
New Year. Flipping to January, I stared at the box with the number
seven in it. My birthday.
Eighteen
. All that was left after that would be
graduation, and then my freedom from the system.

Which
meant I’d be on my own.

Slapping the calendar shut, I turned away
and tapped my fingers against my leg. I needed distraction,
something to do which didn’t require thinking about the future.
Staring at the walls around my decrepit room, my eyes rested on the
mess inside my closet.
Perfect
.

I
dropped to my knees and began tossing dirty clothes into one pile,
others that needed to be hung into another and shoes to be paired
to the side. While digging, I grabbed something rectangular and
soft half buried in the clutter. I pulled it out and
gasped.

The Beast book.
Grollic Monstrum.

The worn leather felt comforting against
my fingers. I flipped it open to the beginning. The first pages
were written in some foreign language so I skimmed them, simply
glancing at the drawings.
Funny, I thought the first page had said something
in English…like a definition or something.

The
closet mess forgotten, I crawled onto the bed. About a third of the
way through the book, the words turned to English. It talked about
a war between Grollics and their worst enemy, and how it all began.
It turned into a narration and the beast in the forest seeming like
a distant memory now, I settled into the pillows to
read.

An aged
Grollic tried to help a young woman lost in a forest looking for a
cottage. She seemed afraid of the beast but dainty as she may have
appeared, the woman had strength inside of her beyond any human
ability. She threw the old man aside and attacked the others with
him, killing all but him. She claimed she’d spared him as he’d
tried to aid her, even though she had no right to save
him.

The eye for the eye.
The old Grollic planned his
revenge. He watched the woman and learned where she travelled. He
waited for the day when the white-caped girl returned to the
cottage on the other side of the woods. He raced ahead to the
clearing and easily killed the unknowing man inside, then waited
for the girl.

The girl
approached and the moment she entered the house, he attacked. Claws
reaching to rip her neck just missed, but as the Grollic stumbled
he sank his teeth into something warm. The girl grabbed a chair and
smashed it over the Grollics back. They fought through the small
cottage, breaking almost everything inside, including
themselves.

Near
death, the girl barely managed to escape through a narrow window.
How she managed to race away in to the forest, the Grollic thought
he’d never know the answer. Her now red cape –covered in blood—
flapped behind her as if nodding it knew the truth. The Grollic had
killed because of what she had done to his family.

The
stunned Grollic stared. What he had thought was a cape, had
actually been wings. Weak and shattered, he fell back against the
wall. The fight between the two had nearly killed them both. He
then understood their bloods could not mix. They shared unique
powers, but those powers could never be blended. They each had the
ability to destroy, as if they’d been born to battle against each
other.

Thus
began the war as both vowed to never find peace until either race
was obliterated. The Grollic may not have understood what he met
that day, but he did learn the blood running inside his body could
poison hers and vice versa.

Holding the book between my fingers, I sat
back, eyes wide. My favorite nursery story as a child was Little
Red Riding Hood.
Boy had this story changed from the original
version.

I turned
the page. Both sides of the book had hand written, in point form,
notes about the girl and possible ways to kill or stop her. Other
questions asked if there was more than one girl and how they came
into existence. Simple sketches filled the pages. I couldn’t make
heads or tails of those any more than the handwritten
stuff.

Bile
rose in the back of my throat when I flipped to the next page. The
right side displayed a crudely hand drawn Grollic. A disgustingly
ugly one. A series of diagrams showed a man turning into the
Grollic. Each picture had detailed anatomy and notes along the
sides. Interesting, the Grollic’s heart was actually on the right
side of its body, higher up than on most animals or humans. In
human-form, the heart rested on the left side but as he shifted
into Grollic-form, the heart would also shift.

It was
the last picture my eyes kept flitting back to - the mammoth size
of the beast, the ferocious face with yellow eyes and snarl of
sharp teeth. The drawing so life like, it kept bringing me back to
that night in the forest.

I
shivered, and tried to swallow. An eerie scraping noise against my
window nearly had me screaming. I closed my eyes, willing the noise
to stop.

It
didn’t.

Inhaling a long, slow breath, I then
opened my eyes and focused on the window, too scared to get up and
look outside.
Don’t be such a freakin’ wimp.
Squinty, I realized the wind had
picked up and a broken branch hung onto another limb. It scraped
against the window as the wind blew the still connected limb. A big
gust knocked the loose branch down and the ting against the roof of
Jim’s car told me it’d landed.

My heart still in my throat, I shook my
head in disgust.
Wimp. Loser.
I chided myself.
Get back to reading.
Except I now had to put my hand over the
monster’s picture to focus on the other side of the book. I stared
at the human drawing. A small marking caught my attention, above
the right aorta of the heart near the collar bone. It showed a
detailed drawing of the tattoo on the corner of the page. I
squinted. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled seeing it
before. Scratching my scalp, I couldn’t place
where.

The remainder of the book switched back
into the weird foreign writing. I shut it and tossed it onto my
nightstand.
Enough stupid monsters for one night.
The clock radio read 1:30 a.m.
Before switching the light off, I glanced at my messy pile on the
floor. It would give me something to do, a reason to get out of bed
since tomorrow was Saturday.

Weird
dreams visited me throughout the night. Grollics and angels killing
each other, cutting themselves and letting their blood drip into
the enemy’s cuts. Girls in red dresses and capes running through
forests, with white monsters in pursuit. Tattoos on everyone to
mark if they were Grollic, angel, or human. Angels morphing into
beasts scarier than a Grollic.

I woke
early with the feeling I never really slept. Covered in sweat, I
threw a pillow over my head and tried to fall back asleep. The sun
had not yet risen, and I didn’t want to get up with nothing to do
but put my shoes and clothes away. After forty minutes, a few tiny
little rays of light began peeking through my window.

Throwing on my red-hooded sweatshirt and a
clean pair of jeans, I turned to leave. I ran back to the
nightstand to grab a ponytail holder and saw the Grollic book. I
grabbed it too. If I was going to go see the sunrise, I might as
well have something to look through.
Less scary in the
daylight.

It was cool enough that no fog or mist had
come in during the night. I walked to the cemetery-park Michael and
I had met, buying a latte at a Starbucks along the way. At the park
I sat on a bench, drinking, as I watched the sun make its way over
the horizon.
Beautiful and peaceful
. The world kept turning even when it felt like
mine had stopped.

After an hour my bladder told me it’d had
enough. I jumped up to throw my empty cup into a garbage on the
path when a sudden realization hit me like a punch in the gut. I
stumbled back to the bench and sat dumb-founded.
The
mark!

I’d seen
it before on somebody. That day in the courtyard.

Could
the beast be human?

Damon.

Damon’s a Grollic.

When he’d threatened me during Halloween,
he thought I was the same thing as the Knightlys.
Impossible!
Michael, Grace or
Caleb would know.
Right?

I thought back to my encounter with Damon
in the school parking lot. I’d worn the necklace. Michael’s
Siorghra
had blood inside
which could kill him. He thought I could kill him. Another thought
hit me like a wave of nausea.
It was Damon in the woods the night on the
beach
.

He said
there were more of his kind.

Michael and his family must know.
But what if they
didn’t?
What
if Damon’s pack was ready to attack Michael’s family?
What if they already
had? And I’d done nothing.

Running
home as fast as I could, I took the stairs two at a time and
grabbed the keys to Grace’s car. Jim hollered something at me as I
raced out the door. I ignored him. There wasn’t time to argue or
explain.

I
unlocked, tossed the book on the seat and stuck the keys in the
ignition. The car started and revved as if it knew I had to hurry.
I shoved the gearshift into drive and flew down the roads, fingers
crossed for no police. They were the least of my worries. Hopefully
Caleb wouldn’t kill me and ask questions later.

Or
maybe, he would and I’d find out I’m one of them.

The car slowed to a crawl when it came to
their driveway. My foot could not press the gas pedal.
Maybe this is a
mistake
. How
could a simple human figure out something useful to a family,
especially one like Caleb? If they were okay, they probably were
planning some counter-attack.

“
Stop being such a wimp,” I hissed at my reflection in the
review mirror. “Just go up to the house and bang on the door. Hand
the book to whoever opens and tell them Damon’s a Grollic. Then
leave.” I’d have to walk home but at least I could return the keys
and necklace and try to forget them and move on with my
life.

I parked
beside the mustang and marched towards the house, forcing through
the urge to run away. Hand in the air, ready to bang on the door; I
realized I’d left the book on the passenger seat. About to turn
around to grab it, the door swung open.

Michael.

My body
froze, but my heart hammered at record breaking speed. Dressed in a
white shirt, his tanned skin looked perfect. I couldn’t stop myself
from staring. My thoughts over the past few weeks had left so many
details out. The rush of feelings caught off guard.

If he
was surprised to see me, he didn’t let on. “Hello,
Rouge.”

Stuffing
my hands into my jean pockets, I cleared my throat and tried to
sound normal. “I know you told me not to come, but there’s
something really important I need to tell you.”

“
Has something happened?” He stepped onto the porch and glanced
behind me, most likely scanning for hidden monsters.

“
No…Yes...Maybe.” I blinked a bunch of times, ticked my eyes
burned.