Claimed by the Beast Bundle (22 page)

Chapter 11

“Take it all,” Clover said as she offered Crystal the bowl.

She eyed the steam coming off the milky soup and said, “It’s hot.”

“It must be,” Clover said. “It will burn, but you will heal.”

“This is stupid,” Crystal muttered.

Clover’s eyes narrowed. “You ask for help; you must do as I tell you.”

Crystal dropped her eyes to the bowl again and frowned. She glanced over each shoulder and received a nod from Ember. Hank’s cheeks were red but his eyes met hers and he smiled. She wondered if she’d almost caught him looking at her cheeks. The bottom ones that were on display now that she was standing nude in the witch’s hut.

She lifted her hand that was pressed over her crotch and took the wooden bowl. She felt the heat and glanced at Clover again. The witch watched without change. Crystal took another breath and lifted it to her face. The aroma overwhelmed her. Spices and onion and something that made her think of fresh cut grass. There was a musky odor hidden beneath the others. It reminded her of the girl’s locker room after the gym teacher decided they needed to run a mile.

Crystal squeezed her eyes shut and touch the edge of the bowl to her lips. She tilted it and sipped, and then jerked her head back as the hot liquid spilled over her lips. She panted to cool it down and swallowed by reflex, warming her throat and stomach. She swallowed again and stared at Clover. “This is too hot!”

“It must be,” Clover said again. “Now drink it. There is pain in your future, pain you cannot imagine. This is only a sample of it.”

Crystal turned her head to look back and saw the solemn expressions on the face of her friends. Her pack. Her family. “Does it hurt?” she asked them. “When you change?”

“Every time,” Hank said.

“You get used to it,” Ember said. “It’s over in an instant.”

“This will not be,” Clover promised.

Crystal turned back to her. “What won’t be? Oh, this pain? Great.”

“Before it cools too much, hurry,” Clover said.

Crystal bit her lips and sighed through her nose. She nodded. “Okay, I can do this. I’ll heal. Just like falling off a bike.”

Crystal put the bowl to her lips and opened them. She tilted it up and leaned her head back, spilling the hot liquid into her mouth and sending a hundred sparks of agony into her brain. She opened her throat and swallowed, desperate to get the heat out of her mouth and off her tongue. It seared her throat and made her chest seize up. She tried to cough the fire out of her chest but couldn’t get the air out.

Crystal’s body trembled. Her shaking arm spilled the soup across her lips and burned her chin as it ran down. It dripped onto her arm, covering her chest, and ran onto her breasts from there. Her belly warmed as the witch’s brew pooled in her stomach and then it spread the heat through her. It was worse than right before she’d vomited up blood.

She dropped the bowl, spilling the last few drops on the floor. The bowl hit less than a second before she did. Crystal tried to cry but the agony in her throat made noise impossible. Even worse was that she could barely breathe. Her throat was swollen and closed off.

Clover squatted down and picked up her bowl, pausing long enough to study Crystal and say, “Breathe. It will pass.”

Crystal’s lips were puffy and red. She moved them and made a few choking gasps but couldn’t find the air to tell the witch that she couldn’t. She groped at her chest and then her throat, digging her fingers into her skin, trying to find a way to pull the burning away. She felt her fingernails ripping skin but instead of hurting worse, it felt almost therapeutic. It lessened the intensity of the hurt inside.

She managed to roll up onto her knees and shoulders, forcing her cheek into the ground. She twisted her head until her forehead was resting on a vine and her arms were clutched tight across her chest and belly. They felt hot and slippery against her skin. She lifted her head and drove it down, desperate for a release. She did it again, striking the spongy flooring harder and driving a spike of agony into her brain that failed to knock her out. She reared back to do it a third time when somebody grabbed her from behind.

Crystal thrashed, wiggling and yanking on her arms. Her right arm slipped free and she used it to grab the arm that went under her shoulder and across her chest. She buried her fingers into the limb, no longer caring who it was, and pulled against it while she twisted her body.

Crystal rolled free and swung her other arm around, connecting with the man grappling with her. Her hand swept across his side; her fingers curled into claws. Blood sprayed from her nails, spattering the woman next to him. Crystal stepped back and crouched down, breathing hard and fast, and set herself so she could defend against the next one to attack.

“Crystal!”

She shook her head after the word pierced the clouds in her head. She relaxed and straightened. That was her. She was Crystal. And these were her friends. She blinked the madness out of her eyes and saw Hank cradling the torn flesh on his side. His shirt, once stained with swamp water and vomit, was now a dark red with his blood. Ember stood beside him, spattered with lines of blood across her chest, neck, and face.

Crystal looked down at her hands and saw only that, her hands. They weren’t weapons of war and didn’t possess any amazing metal claws or vicious talons. How could she have done that? She turned to looked behind her and saw Clover had backed up several steps. She turned back around and staggered. She didn’t understand. Her legs wouldn’t support her anymore.

“She did good. There is hope,” Clover said from a thousand miles away.

Crystal blinked and stared up, her tongue too thick to move in her mouth. She was panting again, her nose pulsing as she breathed in frantic breaths.

“That was good?” Hank snarled. “She almost tore me in half!”

“That wasn’t the Hunter,” Ember said. “Was it—is she cursed to be a beast?”

“The change hasn’t come yet,” Adrian said from where he stood in the open doorway. He shifted his gaze to Clover. “Has it?”

“No,” Clover agreed. “We have to bring it out yet.”

Crystal could feel her strength returning. Her stomach was clenching and twisting. Was the stew doing this to her, or was it something else? She gasped anew and managed to lift her head up. “I’m dying,” she groaned.

“Perhaps,” Clover admitted. “But I think you have more strength than you realize.”

Crystal managed to shake her head. “Not like this. No more. Please. Just kill me.”

“No,” Adrian barked.

Clover ignored him and dropped to her side. “Is that what you want? To die? I can use your blood and your body in many spells. If that’s how you will pay your debt, just say the word.”

Crystal stared into the witch’s brilliant green eyes and found herself unable to speak. She clenched her jaw and drew several intense breaths before finding the resolve to pick herself up. She shook her head. “I’m better. It healed.”

Clover nodded and glanced at the others. “Take her outside and bind her. Lash her to the platform.”

Crystal swallowed. Her throat was still sore but it didn’t feel like she’d swallowed glowing charcoal briquettes from a barbecue anymore. Clover was spooning more of the stew into a larger bowl. “I don’t have to drink anymore stew, do I?”

“No,” Clover said.

“Then what—”

“Timing is important,” Clover snapped. She nodded to Ember before turning and walking towards Adrian. He backed out of the doorway and let her through without a word.

Ember reached down gently, but firmly, grabbed Crystal’s arm. Hank was there a heartbeat later to grab her other arm. They helped her stand and then walked her after Clover. Guntar and Gwen stepped out ahead of them and moved to take positions at the end of the deck.

“Be strong,” Hank whispered to her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered back. “I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t even know who I was!”

“This is nothing,” Hank said without even a glance at his injury. “Your first love bite.”

“Second,” Crystal said. “Remember the bike?”

Hank stiffened and smiled. She’d bit his back while riding behind him on his bike last week. It had been playful, before she knew what they were. Instinctive. Even then she’d known she wanted him to be her mate.

Clover was staring at the stars growing brighter in the sky above them. The sun was nearly set in the west. “Bind her,” Clover repeated once they joined her outside.

Crystal looked down at the coffin-sized shelf made out of limbs lashed together with vines. It hadn’t been there when they’d arrived at Clover’s hut, but she couldn’t remember when the witch had taken time to build it. Hank and Ember guided her to it and helped her lie down on it. She winced as knots in the wood bit into her skin.

When she felt the first vine wrap around her wrist and pull tight, she forgot all about the knots and shorn branches. Ember tied her other arm and then both of her pack mates moved to tie her ankles to the wood. She looked back and forth, breathing fast again as she tested the vines and found they wouldn’t let her move. She whimpered and stared up at Hank.

Hank met her gaze with a haunted look in his eyes. He looked away as Clover moved closer and began to place small clay pots beneath the hollow box she was bound to. She turned and went back inside the hut, giving Crystal a long moment to consider her situation. Her eyes went to Hank and she realized there was nothing hidden from him anymore. She was bound, naked, on a table within arm’s reach.

“You’ll be fine,” he said when he saw her looking at him. “Better than fine. I believe in you.”

Crystal’s lip trembled and she had to glance away and suck her bottom lip between her teeth. Her lip felt tender now that it had fully recovered from the witch’s brew. She saw Gwen staring at her from across the dock and earned a smile and a nod from the platinum-haired woman.

“Remember who you are,” Ember said, startling her.

Crystal stared up at the redhead. “Who am I?”

“That’s up to you,” Ember replied. “Figure it out and hold to it, though; don’t lose yourself again like you did in there. We might not be able to bring you back.”

Crystal’s breath caught in her throat. She licked her lips and nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Don’t just try.” Hank took over the pep talk. “You matter to us. To me.”

“You don’t even know me,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter. We both feel it. Don’t lose what makes you special.”

Crystal blinked back tears. “I’m not special. I’m just a stupid fat girl in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ember growled but Crystal kept her eyes on Hank. After a long moment, he broke his gaze with hers and let his eyes rake over her body. She burned, from head to toe, with shame. Where was Clover at? She was ready to die and donate her body to the witch.

“I see a beautiful young woman,” Hank said, pulling her back from the edge. “Beautiful. Like the kind of woman I’d pin up on the walls of my room and use as wallpaper on my computer.”

Crystal wasn’t sure what was worse, hearing his compliments or hearing people tell her she was fat. “Stop it. Stop telling me what you think I want to hear.”

“You make it through this and I’ll show you what I mean,” Hank said.

“And if I don’t, you’re off the hook.”

“If I don’t, I’ll—”

Crystal felt the wings of hope that began to lift her up start to falter when he hesitated.

“If you don’t, he’ll spend the rest of his life jerking off to his memories of seeing you naked like this,” Ember said.

Hank’s cheeks flushed red. Crystal stared at him and got him to nod. The wings beat stronger and lifted her heart out of her stomach. She opened her mouth to tell him she loved him when Clover emerged from the doorway with a flaming branch in her hands.

Crystal’s breath caught in her throat again as the witch walked over. She stuck the fiery log beneath her and lit the kindling in the clay pots. The smoke released a potpourri of smells around her. She kept watching, desperately hoping the flames wouldn’t leap into the rickety structure she was tied to.

“This will hurt,” Clover told her as she picked up the large bowl filled with stew.

“What are you doing?”

“First this had to be put into you. Now it will be poured over you.”

“That’s hot! You’ll burn me!”

“You will heal,” Clover promised.

“No, I’ll blister!”

“What comes next will be worse,” Clover promised.

Crystal shook her head. “No, I can’t! Please!”

Clover lowered the bowl a few inches and tilted her head. “The price must be paid. Will you pay it in blood?”

Crystal whimpered and saw Hank out of the corner of her eye. She could tell how tense he was without shifting her focus to him. She shook her head. “Do it, but if I end up turning into something horrible, I’m going to come after you first!”

Clover lowered the bowl a little more and laughed. “You are a fighter. That is why you have a good chance.”

Crystal nodded. “Do it already. I’m tired of waiting.”

Clover nodded and lifted the bowl up. She tipped it forward without hesitation and let the scalding liquid fall. Crystal watched it in slow motion. It hit her on the thigh first, spattering and startling her. The pain came a split second later as her body reacted to the bubbling liquid.