The Tempering (The Mackenzie Duncan Series) (2 page)

 
Time seemed to slow in those last few seconds before Mackenzie reached the light-filled break in the trees. The noise she heard was growing stronger, louder, and she didn’t know what to do. She began walking backwards, trying to keep an eye on the tree line, but in doing so, she tripped over a large rock.

A menacing growl sounded from the trees and when she turned to look behind her, a giant wolf leapt at her from the darkness. The fear overtook her, making her feel trapped within her own skin and unable to move or scream.

The wolf had a large head with strange yellow-green eyes. Its brown fur was matted and for some reason, its size reminded her more of a bear than a wolf. When Mackenzie realized the wolf’s mouth had opened and she could see the razor sharp teeth, she flew into protective mode. Her arms rose up to cover her face and she tried to push herself backward, away from the beast. Within seconds, the pungent aroma that was the beast’s hot breath seeped around her arms and over her face. Her stomach wretched but before she could heave what little lay in her stomach up, the beast bit down on her arm. The sharp teeth pierced her flesh and she could feel the tearing of her skin as the beast flung his head back and forth.

As Mackenzie’s blood filled the wolf’s mouth, she finally let out a blood-curdling scream. She tried to pull away. She pounded against the side of the beast with her free hand while kicking her legs about hoping to make contact, but everything she did was useless against the giant monster as it continued to tear her arm apart.

Mackenzie had to do something, or she knew she was going to be killed by the wretched wolf. Her thoughts swirled around, trying to think of anything she could do to free herself. She pushed and pulled at its muzzle with her free arm, trying to dislodge the teeth embedded in her flesh. The sharp pain in the mangled limb became an incredible burn, but the wolf must have severed a few nerves because she could no longer feel anything but numbness from her shoulder down to her fingertips.

Remembering what had put her in this position to begin with, Mackenzie reached behind her and grabbed the damn rock and swung it at the wolf's head. With a loud crack, the rock connected with the top of the wolf’s skull. Briefly shocked, the beast’s grip released  as her arm fell from its mouth. Before he could go in for another bite, Mackenzie gouged her thumb straight into its freakish yellow-green eye. With a loud yelp, the wolf retreated and snarled once again, baring his teeth. She had angered it, and she was suddenly more frightened than she had been when her arm was being shredded in its mouth. Pure rage marred its face. She quickly threw the rock, hitting it square in its bloody snout. A loud crack resonated through the park before the beast turned and ran off.

~*~

As she lay on the cold grass in the middle of the moonlight unable to grasp what had just happened to her, the numbness in her arm began to dissipate. The pain did not slowly creep back in, but came with a vengeance, and was like no other pain she had ever felt before. The cold air surrounding her stung her skin and when she tried to pull her coat closer to her body, she looked down at her arm. Before her was a tattered mess, from her shoulder to her wrist, of fabric all stained a muddy red from the blood pouring from her wounds. Her skin and muscle were ripped apart, with bones showing through. It looked as if she had been made up to look the part of a zombie for one of those horror movies.

Mackenzie tried to stand, but was hit with sudden dizziness and collapsed. As soon as her injured arm collided with the ground, a slight burning sensation began to emanate from the middle of her wound. As if her torn flesh were kindling, and catching fire inch by inch, the heat grew in intensity and size until it engulfed her entire arm. Screaming out in pain, tears streaming down her face, she brought her arm against her chest, cradling it, hoping it would help with the pain long enough for her make her way home. She moved to her knees and then slowly, using all the strength she had left, she stood up carefully as not wanting to end up on the ground yet again. She took a sluggish step. Each one harder than the last, she began chanting to herself to keep going.

“Don’t stop. Just a bit more. Keep going. Don’t stop.” There was no one around to hear her and honestly, she was speaking aloud just to hear her own voice, to know that she had really made it out of that encounter alive, even if she may never have use of her mangled arm again. Daring to look once more, she moved the tatters of her coat back to reveal the gaping hole in her arm. Not only was her flesh torn to the point of seeing bones, but also she was able to see the long marks from the wolf’s teeth etched distinctly in her bones. Dizziness began to cloud her vision again, and she forced herself to look up at the street just ahead.

Mackenzie fell to the ground as soon as she stepped onto the lit sidewalk. She could hear the partying from the few blocks away. Just a half hour before had seemed like the worst possible choice she could have made. She laughed to herself due to her sheer stupidity. Then she laughed at the fact she was laughing when she desperately needed a hospital. Then she laughed until she sobbed. There was nothing funny about the situation in which she found herself. Nothing funny at all.

It was then she felt a harsh painful tingle throughout her body. It wasn’t a feeling of limbs falling asleep but something else. The fire that had been stationary in her arm flamed hotter as it crept up over her shoulder and began to lick at her collarbone, then down her chest and up her face, seemingly at the same time. The tingle grew more intense deep within her bones, as a buzzing rang loud in her ears, also. The burning, tingling, and buzzing all rushed through her body until she was entirely consumed. Then, as if it had never happened, the flames were extinguished, and all was quiet. There wasn’t a rush of cooling relief, nor was there a grand finally of pain. It just stopped.

She looked back to her arm, through water-laden eyes to see what couldn’t be. She slowly lifted her arm higher to get a better look. Before her, Mackenzie watched as her muscles and tendons and veins began to re-grow and knit back together. Her skin sealed itself over the newly healed muscle tissue, starting at one end and working its way to the other. It almost looked like a piece of fabric being zipped up, leaving no trace of any wrongdoing behind.

Not knowing what else to do, she stood, and then forced herself to look away from her now perfectly healed arm. Totally confused but not wanting to be in the dark any longer, she walked home hoping a good night’s sleep would put everything in perspective.

 She was fooling herself. Nothing would ever make sense in Mackenzie’s life again.

Chapter 2

It had been a rough night for Mackenzie. Not only had a ridiculously large wolf attacked her, but also something strange had happened to her, and she hadn’t a clue what. Follow that with a sleepless night and the music from her neighbors pounding through the walls, the few hours of sleep she did get did not leave her rested. In fact, she felt worse that morning than she had the night before.

Mackenzie groaned as she tried to roll out of bed. Everything inside of her was aching. She had never felt so sore not even after her first 10k back in high school. She may have been overweight, but she loved to run as much as she loved to eat. Just the thought of eating sent a wave of nausea through her. Knowing she wasn’t making it into work, let alone class, she decided to call the manager.

Rolling over just enough to reach the phone on the bedside table, she squinted at the tiny dial pad before punching in the number to the coffee shop. Her hands were trembling so that just holding the phone was difficult, let alone pushing the tiny little buttons.

The phone rang at least 10 times before it was answered. Worrying that the length of time it took them to answer meant they were swamped, she braced herself for a bad conversation.

“Cafe Crimson, Can you hold please?” Susan, the manager, answered. She sounded stressed as she put Mackenzie on hold before the question could be answered.

Mackenzie listened to the school’s fight song play on loop for at least five minutes. She could feel her eyes growing heavier with each passing moment and continued to shake her head to wake herself up.
Just a few more minutes, then I can go back to sleep.

“Thank you for holding, How may I help you?”

“Hey, Susan, it’s me. I am not going to be able to make it in to work. I’m so sick, it isn’t even funny.”

“Sick? Mackenzie, we are swamped and it is not my fault you decided to go to the game and party last night. Hangovers are not an excuse to call out of work. If you’re not here in the next hour, you will have to look elsewhere for employment.” With that, she hung up the phone.

Mackenzie lay in bed for a few more moments, trying to process what had happened. It wasn’t as if she called out of work often. Hell, she had never called out of work before. But she knew that finding another job half way through the semester would be near impossible and she relied on that paycheck to survive. Sure, she had some money squirreled away, but it would only last so long.

Deciding she needed to go to work, but knowing she would never make it through the whole day, she dialed her friend, Jordan’s number.

“Do you know what time it is?” Jordon whispered in a groggy voice.

“Sorry, would you mind taking notes for me in Lit? I won’t be making it.” Mackenzie knew her voice sounded horse. Her throat was sore and scratchy.

“You won’t be in class? Really? You’re missing class?”

“Yeah, I’m sick and I have to go into work but I can’t see me making it much passed that. I will call you later tonight. I can probably pick them up tomorrow.”

“Okay, no problem. Feel better and try not to cough in anyone’s coffee.” Mackenzie hung up the phone and lay in bed a moment longer.

Finding the strength to stand up and walk to the bathroom to get ready for work seemed harder than climbing Mount Everest for the amount of energy she had to use. Opening the bathroom door, she rested against the frame for a moment before slowly moving to the sink, holding onto anything that could bear her weight. From there, she half-walked and half-fell onto the closed lid of the toilet. She tried to turn on the water in the tub to clean herself up using a washcloth. 

Before she could complete the task, a wave of nausea passed through her. Flinging herself onto the floor, she opened the toilet seat lid just in time to expel the small amount of water that was left in her stomach from the previous night before promptly collapsing to the floor. Then everything turned dark around her.

~*~

A loud banging sounded throughout Mackenzie’s small apartment, startling her awake. Taking in her surroundings, she realized she had fallen asleep in the bathroom, lying on the floor in front of the toilet.

Standing, she felt whatever bug had invaded her system must have gone because now she felt wonderful. More than wonderful, she felt better than she ever remembered feeling. She was well rested, and she felt like she had so much more energy than normal.

“Be right there!” She went to the sink to brush her teeth to rid herself of the foul taste in her mouth. She paid little attention to her reflection when she opened the mirrored medicine cabinet to grab her toothbrush. When the cabinet door clicked shut, she did a double take.

Dropping her toothbrush into the sink, Mackenzie grabbed both sides of the reflective glass and pulled her face as close as she could while still able to focus on herself. Staring back at her were not the blue eyes she had looked at every day for the last twenty years, but the same yellowish-green that she had seen reflected in the wolf’s eyes the night before.

Not able to look away from her eyes, time lapsed without her realization. The knocks on the door resounded through her apartment yet again. Pulled from the magnetism of her eyes, Mackenzie began to exam the rest of her body. She could find nothing else that was out of the ordinary, except that she had full control of her arm, and there wasn’t even so much as a bruise left from the horrifying attack.

Her gaze returned to the mirror and her curious-looking eyes. She began thinking of any illness she may have ever read about, heard about, or had seen on those crazy doctor shows. Nothing could account for a change in eye color and what she could only assume was regeneration of her arm tissue.

The banging at her door hadn’t stopped, reminding Mackenzie that someone had been waiting for a while now. Leaving the mirror and the question of her mysterious eyes behind, she ran to the door to stop the incessant pounding.

Swinging the door open revealed a very irritated looking woman. She stood a good five- foot, ten inches and her long blond hair swung behind her. Jordon’s hands were on her tiny hips as she waited to be let in.

Stepping back to allow her friend to pass through, Mackenzie noticed for once she wasn’t looking up at Jordon.

“Where have you been? I only agreed to take notes for you once, so you’re welcome for the extra notes, even though you weren’t considerate enough to ask for them.” Jordon looked around the apartment, as she always did. Jordon grew up with the best of everything, even though her parents didn’t have anything themselves. Her family would eat on less than fifty dollars a week just to make sure she had the designer jeans she wanted, or let their car be repossessed just to buy her a two thousand dollar prom dress. Jordon never saw anything wrong with it. In her opinion, parents were supposed to provide and sacrifice for their kids. She just didn’t understand how anyone could have parents like Mackenzie had. That’s why she befriended her to begin with. Part of her felt bad for the girl, the other part really just wanted to study the effects of such a horrible childhood for a psychology paper. After the paper was complete and Jordon had her A, she just couldn’t walk away. Mackenzie knew it was because she felt bad for her, but she didn’t really care. She was used to that kind of friendship, but at least she had someone to talk to.