Feral (4 page)

“You don’t really expect me to believe this.”

“Look at your hands Thaleia.”

I did.  The dirt had been scrubbed from my hands, but evidence of the incident remained under my nails.  They were impacted with dirt and blood.  Yet, flipping my hands over to look again at my palms, I was bewildered to find them unscathed.  Hours before they were covered in abrasions, my skin torn and jagged and bleeding.  Moreover, my arms were unmarked, free of any
bites and scrapes inflicted during my fight with the dog in the dark woods.

Collecting my attention, Icarus
retrieved from the dresser, a small silver hand mirror.  This he kept facing his chest as moved in front of me.  Watching me carefully, studying my frame of mind, he sat on the edge of the bed, his knees brushing mine.  It was an impulsive reaction, but I reached for my neck.  Icarus seized my hand in his, before I could touch my wounds.  He didn’t let it go as he raised the mirror upright.

I stared for a stretch of time, silent.  Several emotions washed over me.  Shock.  Disbelief. Horror.  Confusion.  Returning to horror.  It was overwhelming.  Tears sprung from my eyes.  I struggled to keep my breaths even, inhaling deeply and out again.  I even closed my eyes, but when I reopened them, nothing had changed.  Ribbons of pink tissue and silvery sinew ran the length of my neck and into my shoulder.  Peeking from between several jagged flaps of loose flesh, I could see my clavicle.  I even glimpsed my carotid artery, a deep, rich blue against the bright red blood escaping a much smaller
capillary in the deepest cavity of my wound.

I looked like Jack fucking Goodman.

Having seen enough, I pushed the mirror away.  My whole body began to shake.  My face grew cold.  Beads of sweat broke out across my forehead. “I’m think going to be sick,” I murmured, lips pinched and white.  I dragged the back of my hand across my face, squirming in the chair as my stomach wavered biliously.  Icarus dropped my hand to offer the wastebasket beside the bureau.  I glanced at the basket and back at him, shaking my head.  There was no way I was going to retch with someone watching.  “Bathroom.  Please.”

Nodding in assent, he led the way to the bathroom, stepping aside and swinging the door open.  I brushed past, pushing the door shut behind me.  As I dropped to my knees, curled over the toilet, though careful not to touch it, I noticed Icarus had followed me in. 
Staring down, he stood over me like a Greek Adonis.  Or the devil himself.  My frown sank deeper.

“I
can’t puke with you watching me.”

“I don’t think you have much choice in the matter.”  Pushing the door closed, he opened the linen closet behind it and retrieved a washcloth, doused it under the faucet and wrung it out.

“Can’t a girl have a little dignity,” I muttered.  Had he undressed me—seen me naked?  Did he know I had a birthmark on my left hip shaped like a quarter moon?  Apparently, I couldn’t—have dignity that is.  Crouching beside me, he pulled my hair back, knotting it in his hand at the back of my head.  With his opposite hand, he ran the washcloth across my face.

“Everybody pukes,
Thaleia.”

“Everybody dukes too, but I’d rather not bear witness to it.”

Icarus chuckled.  “Not quite the same parallel I’m afraid.”

“We’ve a difference of opinion then.”  For several long minutes we sat, waiting.  I refused to retch in front of him, prudish as it was.  Some lines were not meant to be crossed.  In my book, anything involving bodily fluids, voluntary or not, was meant to be done in private.

“You’re resisting it, aren’t you?” he asked with disapproval.

“With all my heart and soul.”

“You’ll feel much better afterwards.”

I shrugged.  I seriously doubted it.  My recently disavowed boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend, and then chased me through the woods and nearly mauled me to death.  My neck looked like a strip steak.  My clothes were missing.  I was in a house full of strangers—boys for the most part—who wanted to ‘keep me’ a
s if I were some stray animal.  Oh, and the cherry on top, while I wasn’t dead, I suspected that I was now a werewolf thanks to said mauling.

“
Thaleia Llorente,” Icarus said in that voice that made my skull tickle.  “You will stop resisting the urge to vomit this very moment.”  My stomach rolled and I lurched forward, nearly falling into the toilet had Icarus not reached his arm across my chest to support me.

“Bastard!” I cursed between heaves.  “What the hell is that that you keep doing?”  Disperse, rest, speak, sit, vomit.  That tickle I was feeling wasn’t merely a tickle.  In every instance, it was backed by a command that I was powerless to ignore.

“Power of the Alpha, Thaleia.”

I heaved again, repulsed and indignant.  “So what—you’re asserting your dominance over me? Oh Holy Christ,” I gasped, glancing blearily into the toilet.  I was vomiting blood.  “That can’t be good at all.”

“It’s nothing, Thaleia, your esophagus was punctured during the attack and you swallowed a lot of blood,” Icarus dismissed.  Pressing the lever, he flushed the toilet divesting me of the horrid sight.  “You’ve no need to worry.  It’s healed already.”

“God, my mom’s gonna freak,” I said.  Delirium was creeping up on me.  While the nausea had passed, I felt disconnected and the room whirled in dizzying circles around me, spinning and turning, rising and falling.  My head grew heavy and fog hazed.

“The rest of your wounds will have healed by morning.  Your mother won’t know a thing about them.  You’ll be as good as new.  Better, truthfully.”

“Wounds?” I murmured in amusement, sinking to the floor.  It was cool against my back, but left me with vertigo, staring up at Icarus who stood towering over me, arms folded across his chest.  “You’ve taken my free will!  Oh Lord, she’ll have a cow when she finds out!”

“I exercise my authority judiciously, Thaleia.”

“
Thaleia Llorente,” I mocked in the best Icarus imitation I could muster.  “Sit.  Speak.  Vomit!  Resistance is futile!”  A delirious bubble of laughter escaped me.  “Real judicious!”

I could hear snickering coming from the hall.

“Are you feeling better?” Icarus asked austerely.

Closing my eyes, I put my index finger to my lips, whispering.  “Shhhhh, they’re out there again.”  I giggled.  “They’re so curious.  Why?”

“You survived,” he answered, lifting me off the floor and standing me back on my feet.  I swayed, watching him fill a small glass tumbler with water from the faucet.  He placed the glass in my hand, making sure I had it before he let go.  “Rinse, but don’t drink.”

“I take it that doesn’t happen often,” I said, trying to place the glass back on the vanity.  Irritatingly, it kept moving, the vanity that is.  And then it split in two, both moving in opposing directions. I fished blindly with both hands then married the glass to the composite sink.

“No, it doesn’t.”  And for some reason, perhaps the tone of his voice, he didn’t seem totally pleased with the aspect.

Grasping my upper arm, he opened the door and ushered me into the hall.  Tottering to and fro, I clutched the bulk of the sheet so that I wouldn’t trip over it.  For the most part, my eyes
remained slivered, heavy with fatigue as I staggered across the hardwood floors and back to the bedroom.  Most of my weight rested on Icarus’s side, using him to balance myself.

“Balls!” I heard.  “Would you look at that!”

“Jesus effing Christ.”

“Can we kill him now?” another petitioned fervently.  I was able to peel open one eye.  It was the boy who begged to keep me.  He was cute.  Dimpled.  Brotherly.  He had shaggy
black hair that curled up on the ends.  His face still has a bit of youthful roundness. Ingenuous blue eyes.  Flushing, he smiled sheepishly.

“Kill who?” I asked, eyeing the wonder twins on either side of him.  Wholly crap they were hot.  Coppery hair.  Green eyes.  Matching biceps and washboard abs.  They eyed me back with the same appreciation.  The slightly taller of the two rolled his eyes, snorting at the boy, but the shorter one lifted my chin.  While managing to scrutinize my gaping wounds, his fingertips trailed gently down the other side, bringing a fresh flush to my skin.

“You couldn’t harm a fly, Runt.”

“Shut it, Caius,” the boy pouted.  “I don’t know why we let him go anyway.  We had every right to end him right there.  He was on our property.  Freakin’ rogues.”

“Are you talking about…
Marcus
?” I murmured, shaking off the invading darkness.  Was that a growl behind me, from Icarus?  Why—because I mentioned Marcus’s name?  Or was it because of the way the twin touched me?  Silly, I didn’t even know these boys.  What would Icarus care?  While he was hospitable, I got the impression I was a nuisance.

Shaking my head
didn’t dislodge the shadows plaguing my vision.  Instead, it made my head swim woozily.  Lord all mighty, I was going to faint.  The world suddenly tilted off axis, spinning profusely.  Yep, definitely, I was.  I was going down for the count.  I could feel myself slipping as my eyes rolled back.  I tried to warn them, but my tongue grew thick in my mouth.

“Calling dibs Icarus?” said the twin, not Caius, but the one who touched me.  His lips curled in a wolfish grin.  It was the last thing I saw, his resplendent smile in all its godly glory.

“No!” Icarus snapped, catching me as I blacked out.  His words echoed in my head from down a long corridor, marred and darkened by his bitter tone.  “I just don’t want anyone getting attached.  I still haven’t decided if we’re keeping her.  I’ve told you already, she’s trouble.”

ΑΒΩ

For what could’ve been minutes, but felt like hours, I floated in that half-conscious haze of morning, hidden beneath the layers of linens and homely quilts.  Any chance of last night’s recollections having been a horrid nightmare was quickly dispelled by the spicy masculine scent lingering in the cotton sheets shrouding me.  That and the square of gauze taped down the side of my neck and shoulder.  The adhesive pulled at my skin reminding me of its presence.

Daring a peek from under the comforter, I was relieved to find the room empty.  I sat up slowly, testing my equilibrium.  My head felt fine, amazing to be honest. Other than my fetid ass-breath, I felt no mark of a hangover.  To top things off, I espied a pair of sweats and a ratty tee neatly folded on the nightstand.  I snatched them from the table and dragged them beneath the covers, quickly pulling them up and over my legs.  They were baggy, but long enough to reach my ankles.  I cheered mentally and shrugged the tee over my head.

Now to find a way out of the house…

While Icarus was irresolute on whether to keep me—whatever that meant—
I was set on leaving. Sunday was too far away.  Lamentably, sneaking down the stairs was out of the question.  From what I could ascertain, there were at least a half dozen boys gathered in the kitchen, bantering idly over their breakfasts.  I had a better chance of sneaking a bull into a china shop than escaping the house unnoticed.  My best bet, I determined, was the window.

I said a silent prayer that it wouldn’t stick from disuse.  Carefully, I slid the latch over and curled my fingers beneath the lip of the sash.  I counted to three and slid it slowly open, cautious not to make a sound.  When it opened without a hitch, I had to restrain myself from doing the happy dance.  I quickly peeked out, checking the lower floor.  There was a small window below, but it was offset and wouldn’t be a problem.  I slid my legs out first, rolled carefully to my belly then shimmied down until I held on only by my fingertips.  Taking a deep breath, I let myself drop.  My toes touched the ground below.  I bent my knees, absorbing the shock, and landed in a crouch.  I listened for a moment to see if anyone heard, but when I detected no pursuit, I sprang back to my feet and sprinted through the woods.

I had fully anticipated on running all the way home but when I recognized Jack’s house, mainly because the tell tale garbage littering the yard, I deviated from my course, hoping to beg a ride.  I had no shoes after all, and my feet were numb from the frost covering the ground.

Jack’s house was completely trashed.  Bottles and butts covered the patio.  The Jacuzzi hummed off to the side.  Wisps of steam rose from the water
, dissolving into the chill, fall air.  Someone’s bra lay draped over the side of the tub, dripping.  Vomit puddled beneath the patio table, reeking of alcohol and stomach acid.  I breathed through my mouth, suppressing the urge to gag.

Opening the sliding door, I called for Jack, but received no answer.  He was probably still sleeping.  I wasn’t sure of the time.  As I made my way through the kitchen, I closed the fridge.  It was devoid of food, and the glass shelves were fogged and dripping with condensation into a puddle on the floor.  I left footprints on the slate tile as I continued
into the living room.

Picking my way through the house, I was careful not to step on anything.  The fish tank was busted.  The once ivory carpet was saturated with fishy water.  Guppies and gourami lay across the carpet, their round
, glassy eyes staring vacantly as I passed.  I continued up the stairs, sporadically calling for Jack.  I found him passed out in his bed.  From the looks of him, he was down for the count.  Crap, I sighed dragging my hand through my hair.  Crap. Crap. Crap.