Claimed by the Beast Bundle (25 page)

Chapter 4

Crystal climbed into Beth’s car the next morning and then screamed when Beth attacked her. The smaller girl pushed herself across the seat before Crystal could react and wrapped her arms around her, hugging her so tight Crystal’s scream was choked off. “Beth,” she wheezed. “Stop it, you’re crushing me!”

Beth backed away and twisted back around. She stopped halfway through, thinking better of it, and turned back to face Crystal so she could punch her in the arm.

“Ow!” Crystal hollered. “What the hell?”

Beth glared at her and finally resumed her seat and buckled her seatbelt. She put the car in gear and backed out of Crystal’s driveway before she responded. “I’m glad you’re alive and okay, but I’m mad at you for leaving me in the dark all weekend. I was worried!”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Crystal said. She shook her head. “I didn’t have my phone until last night, though.”

“Where was it?”

“Ember’s bike.”

“Ember?”

Crystal glanced over and saw Beth’s white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. “They wouldn’t let me alone with Hank, even on the back of his bike.”

Beth snorted. “So what did you do?”

“Beth…” Crystal trailed off, waiting for her friend to glance at her. When she finally did, Crystal summoned up the strength to grin and said, “I did it.”

Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Did what? Fucked Hank?”

“Jesus! No, I meant the poison and everything going on with me? I’m cured! Or free. Healed. Crap, I don’t know how to say it, but I’m not going to die!”

Beth’s eyes widened and she breathed. “You’re not?

“No.”

Crystal yelped as Beth slammed on the brake and pulled the car to the side of the road. She unbuckled and threw herself across the car to hug Crystal again. Crystal laughed and returned the hug. “Okay, okay, I get it. Now get back over or people are going to start getting the wrong idea.”

“Fuck them,” Beth muttered into her hair. “Besides, I don’t even get a kiss like Stephanie did.”

Crystal gasped and pushed Beth back off her. “What? That was—you know that was a mistake! Oh my God! Are you jealous?”

Beth bit her lip and repositioned herself in her seat before putting the car in gear and pulling away from the curb.

“You are!” Crystal groaned. “Beth, you know I’m not into girls. Especially not Stephanie! If I was ever going to be like that, it would be with you, not her.”

“Ember?”

Crystal hesitated and saw Beth’s eyes narrow. “No, not Ember,” she tried to say in a rush.

“You had to think about it?”

Crystal frowned and tried to explain. “Ember and I have a special relationship.”

“Special? Jesus, Crys. Do you know how worried I was? I even went to church and prayed for you! I don’t go to church, and I almost never pray! Then Steph and I spent the entire freaking day together and all I heard was Ember this and Crystal that. She even told me she saw you guys riding Saturday morning. Together, like you said.”

“See, my story checks out.”

Beth let out a squeal and punched her steering wheel. “Damn it! That’s not it! I’m not trying to catch you in a lie!”

Crystal leaned back and nodded. “I’m sorry. Look, the thing with Ember is hard for me to explain. It’s weird. She likes to screw with me still, but she cares about me. And I care about her.”

Beth’s jaw tightened and her arms trembled from the tension she kept in them.

“Not like that,” Crystal added. “More like a sister.”

Beth spared her a quick glance and asked, “I thought we were like that?”

“We are, it’s just…” Crystal trailed off and stared at the trees and houses they passed by. She turned back to Beth and said, “Look, it’s different because Ember and I are pack-mates. We share the same blood.”

Beth blinked and nodded. “Oh.”

Crystal watched her drive in silence while she processed what Crystal had told her. Finally, when she couldn’t take the silent treatment any longer, Crystal said, “Oh? That’s it?”

Beth said in a neutral voice, “Yeah, that’s it.”

“That can’t have made sense to you,” Crystal rambled on. “I don’t even think I understand it and I’m living with this.”

Beth shrugged. “It doesn’t, but I give up. I don’t know what else to say or do to prove that I’m here for you. I’ve been trying since middle school, but whenever anything comes up for you, you get wrapped up in it and forget all about me. Then when you get bitten, I have to be there to pick up the pieces.”

Crystal’s heart lurched in her chest, filling her with a dull ache and warming her cheeks. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I know how much you care. And this is different. This isn’t something I got wrapped up in—this is something that happened to me.”

Beth snorted. “And I guess you’ll be the one doing the biting now instead of being bitten.”

Crystal stiffened. “Did you just call me a dog?”

Beth smirked and shot her a glance out of the corner of her eyes. “Well, maybe you can be a bitch sometimes…”

“Oh hell no,” Crystal muttered.

Beth laughed. “So what happened? I mean, how did you, um, get better?”

“You don’t want to know,” Crystal said. “It hurt. I mean it hurt a lot. Boiling soup and being tied down while I had to figure out how to get the Beast out of me.”

“Boiling soup? Get it out of you? What do you mean?”

Crystal glanced out the window and saw that they were about to turn in to the school parking lot. “Hang on,” she said and then waited until Beth parked her car. She unbuckled and glanced around to make sure no one was nearby.

“What are you—holy shit!”

Crystal lifted her butt off the seat and pulled her sundress up past her hips. She pulled the front of it up, showing not only her Hello Kitty underwear, but her stomach. She ran her fingers across the scars on her belly to draw Beth’s attention to them. “This is what I meant by getting it out of me.”

Beth leaned over and stared at Crystal’s flat stomach. “This is new? It doesn’t look new.”

“Beth, you’ve seen my stomach before,” Crystal reminded her.

“Yeah, when you were bigger.”

“Two weeks ago? Maybe three?”

Beth clamped her mouth shut. “It seems like longer,” she mumbled and reached out to trace the scars with her fingers. Crystal shivered, tickled by the touch. “Sorry,” Beth said and snatched her hand back. She glanced up at Crystal and grinned. “I guess you don’t like having your belly rubbed?”

“Stop it!” Crystal said and pushed her dress down and shimmied in her seat to get it under her butt again.

Beth laughed. “Sorry. But wow. So, um, did Ember do that, or one of the others? The witch?”

Crystal shook her head. “I did it.”

“You did it!”

Crystal nodded. “I don’t remember a lot of the night, but it took all night. I got out of the vines they tied me up with somehow and I knew I had to get the Beast’s blood out of me so I—”

“Wait!” Beth held up a hand. “They tied you up with vines? Like, from a tree?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

Crystal thought about Clover in her simple loincloth outfit and smiled. There was a lot about the witch that would leave Beth saying wow. Fortunately for Beth, she’d never have that chance. Crystal was not going to introduce the two of them, ever. Bad enough she had to take Stephanie and she didn’t even like Stephanie!

“You need to tell me everything,” Beth said.

Crystal grimaced. “There’s not much more I can tell, honestly. I was out of it for most of it. It hurt so bad, Beth, that I was in and out of it. I kept passing out, I think. Or at least I’m blocking a lot of the memories.”

Beth frowned. “You bullshitting me?”

Crystal shook her head.

Beth frowned and then shrugged. “All right. Let’s get to class. At least I get to keep you around awhile longer now!”

Crystal laughed. “True. I don’t know what’s going to happen down the road, but for now it’s back to a normal life.”

“Yep, normal,” Beth said while staring out the window.

Crystal followed her gaze and saw Chad heading straight towards them. She groaned and said, “You might want to wait.”

“What? You can’t—I thought he tried to—”

“I got this,” Crystal said. The flush of heat she felt pushed the soreness that wouldn’t leave her body into the background.

“Crys!”

Crystal was already opening her door and climbing out. She smoothed her dress, making sure it was pushed down and turned to face Chad as he half walked and half ran up to her. “What do—”

“Crystal!” he gasped and stumbled to a stop. “I’ve been looking for you!”

“Well, you found me. Congratulations.”

He hesitated and glanced around. He was breathing heavy, almost panting, and his clothes and hair looked disheveled.

“What’s wrong with you?” Crystal asked him.

He sniffed and glanced around. “You smell different.”

Crystal froze.

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking about you. About that night in my car. I’m sorry about what I did. Um, really sorry. Want to get some coffee or grab something to eat? My treat—to make up for it?”

“No.”

His eye twitched and he glanced around the parking lot. “Look, I can’t stop thinking about you,” he hissed. “I don’t know. Is it because you did that to me? You’re in my head.”

“Go talk to the counselor,” Crystal advised. She shut her door, making it harder for Beth to hear what was going on. She didn’t want to hide anything from Beth; she wanted to protect her. Even if she felt that a stiff breeze might be able to knock her over.

“I don’t need a counselor,” he spat. “I need you!”

“That’s not happening.”

He clenched and unclenched his fists. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been jerking off five or six times a day and I still can’t get my dick to go down! And it’s your fault. What did you do to me?”

“Whoa.” Crystal took a step back and held up her hand. Her eyes darted to his crotch without meaning to and she noticed how his shorts were bulging. “TMI! I’m sure there are plenty of girls who will take care of that for you.”

“I don’t want them,” he said before taking a step forward. “I want you!”

Crystal glanced around the parking lot again. A few students were walking through it but nobody was close enough to help. Just Beth. Fuck. “Okay, after school. Think you can hold out that long?”

He grunted and nodded. His nostrils flared again. “I can use the bathrooms if I need to.”

“Gross!” Crystal snapped before she could stop herself. She stood straighter, towering over the deranged jock, and said, “No, you won’t. Hold it.”

He blinked and glanced down at himself before looking back at her. “Hold it?”

Crystal nodded. “I want our first time to be extra special.”

He nodded and grinned. “Okay. Okay, I’ll do it. You won’t regret this! You’re not like the other girls. You’re special. I’ve been looking for you all my life! I’m glad you turned into a babe so I could find you!”

Crystal fought to keep her smile on her face as he turned and stumbled away. Crystal watched him go and then turned to see that Beth had lowered the windows of her car so she could follow the conversation. She rolled them back up and climbed out of her car. “What the hell?”

“He’s infected,” Crystal said.

“Infected?”

“My blood,” she explained. “In his car—somehow he got it in him.”

“In him? Whoa!”

Crystal nodded. The Beast was gone and she was free. Except now it looked like she had a new beast to deal with.

Chapter 5

Crystal looked at her phone and frowned. Beth was calling her. She glanced around and answered. “Hey, look, there’s no way I’m going to risk running into him at lunch.”

“What are you doing?” Beth hissed. “You can’t just skip eating.”

“Like I can’t afford to miss a meal!” Crystal snapped.

“Crys, stop it. And no, you can’t. You said you were exhausted. You’ve lost what, fifty, sixty pounds since this started? You need to eat!”

“I’m done changing,” Crystal said. Or at least she thought she was done changing. Other than changing into something that ran around on four legs. She still didn’t know how to do that.

“So eat something to get a little strength back. If you have to deal with him later, you’ll—shit, I have to go.”

“Chad?”

“Not yet.”

“Stephanie?”

Beth didn’t have to answer; she heard Stephanie in the background. “Hey Beth! Wow, love your eyes!”

Her eyes? Crystal frowned and tried to remember what was different about them.

“Hey! Um, thanks,” Beth said in a voice muffled by her palm held over the phone. Her voice cleared up as she put the phone back to her face. “Okay, if you can’t get away I’ll hook up with you later.”

“Um, right,” Crystal said. She shook her head and was about to lower her phone when she heard Beth explaining the call.

“You know Crys—she’s caught up on her grades. I told her senior year’s almost over. But she’s checking on some extra credit with a few teachers. Crazy bitch missed a point on a test or something.”

Crystal gasped and stared at the phone. Who was the crazy bitch? And why was having good grades a bad thing? She lifted the phone back to her ear to see what else she could hear.

“She’s smart. Smarter than me,” Stephanie responded. “If she can use her smarts to get out of here, good for her! Doesn’t seem fair though, her brains and a rocking body?”

Beth laughed. “She’s been working hard on it, that’s for sure.”

“She looks good in that dress today. So much better than that dark frumpy Goth shit she used to wear.”

Crystal rolled her eyes but couldn’t resist glancing down at her dress. It was a little baggy in her midsection but all in all, it was a nice fit. After what Ember had forced her to wear yesterday, she began to see that she could wear tighter clothes and it wasn’t a scary thing.

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday,” Beth said after a few moments. “Your dad’s not what I expected. He’s got his head on straight.”

“My dad?” Stephanie laughed. She lowered her voice and said, “I thought you meant, you know, the other stuff.”

Crystal could hear the blush in Beth’s voice. “That was good too.”

Stephanie giggled in the background.

What the hell? Crystal frowned. Had Beth and Stephanie—

“Anyhow,” Beth continued, “we knew your folks were holy rollers but you aren’t like them. They’re not scary Bible-beating holy, though—they just really believe it.”

“Yeah, they’re cool about it. They can be a pain sometimes, but usually it’s not too bad. Definitely old-school religion though, if you know what I mean.”

Crystal stared at her phone again. Did they really do it? She shivered and shook her head. Beth said she wasn’t a lesbian. But, if they were talking in code like that—and if Stephanie had told both of them she wanted to mess around sometime…

She couldn’t believe it. She hit the End Call button and dropped it in her purse; she didn’t want to hear any more. She had too much other shit to deal with. Crazy Chad who was turning into something deadly was bad enough. Having a dyke of a best friend who had the hots for her was too much. Especially if she was already screwing Stephanie.

She let out a growl of frustration and started to reach for her phone again. She had to call Hank and tell him. Or maybe Ember? Hell, if it was as bad as she feared, maybe she should talk to Adrian or Gunter?

Crystal stopped and sniffed the air. She smelled him. Why wasn’t he at lunch? She turned and looked, listening closer and hearing the air in the ducts and the distant sound of students laughing. She sniffed the air to get a better idea. His scent was stronger on her left, towards the main lobby and the parking lot. That meant she had to go the other way, towards the lunchroom and the main offices.

She could escape out the front of the school if she had to, but she was too tired to run very far. She could try to change but then she’d have to kick off her sandals and take off her dress. And even then she might fail. Not might—probably would. She had no idea how to do it. So far she’d shifted her hands into claws and that was it, and she had no idea how she’d done it.

“Crap,” she muttered before turning from her locker and hurrying down the hallway. Her sandals scuffed the floor, making too much noise. She paused to take them off and held onto them so she could hurry down the hallway in only her bare feet.

She rounded the corner and saw some students walking through the hall. It was lunchtime; there was nothing wrong with that. She smiled and hurried to get closer to them. They turned again at the next intersection, heading towards the lunchroom. Being there would help—strength in numbers and all that—but then she’d have to face Beth and Stephanie and pretend that she didn’t know they were screwing each other. Her face twisted up like she’d bitten a lemon at the image of the two of them naked and rolling around on a bed.

Crystal turned and headed past the main office towards the guidance counselor’s office. She stepped into the office and paused to glance over her shoulder before letting the door shut behind her. Chad was nowhere in sight. She slipped her shoes back on and turned to see the secretary looking at her with confused wrinkles on her brow.

“Shoes are making my feet sore,” Crystal lied.

The secretary smiled and glanced at them. “New?”

“Yes.”

“What can I help you with, dear?”

Crystal hesitated. She didn’t need any help. At least not any from Mrs. Dowden. Then again, if she turned and left she ran the risk of running into Chad again. She’d managed to keep him at bay this morning but that had been hours ago. Now he might be feeling different. Especially if he’d done as she’d told him to and hadn’t jerked off.

She grimaced and stepped closer to Mrs. Dowden. “I wanted to talk to a counselor about my future.”

“Your future?”

“Yes, you know, whether I should go to college or not?”

“Oh, okay. What’s your name, dear? I’ll see if Mrs. Vedder is available.”

“Crystal Davis.”

Mrs. Dowden’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “Crystal? Oh my goodness! You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

Crystal smiled. “Good food and exercise.”

“I’ll say! Good for you! I’m so proud of you. Tell me, how did you do it?”

Crystal’s smile widened. She’d found a great way to waste some time until her next class started. That didn’t help her with what was going to happen after school, but she still had three classes left. There was plenty of time to worry.