Feral (26 page)

“Let him go,” Bacchus told Caius.

“You sure?” Caius asked.  He looked at his brother, Icarus and then me with uncertainty.

“Yes.”

“No!” Crispin shouted, coming through the back door.  Lucius grabbed him, holding him from behind.  “He’s gonna hurt her!”

“She’s suffering!” Bacchus shouted.  “Let him go!”

Yes, I agreed.  I couldn’t take the pain anymore, or the pity of their anguished stares.  I wanted it over.  Icarus should’ve done this long ago.  Yes, let him go.

Caius lifted his knee first, restraining Icarus by the scruff of his neck.

“No!” Crispin cried, his legs kicking out.  Lucius lifted him off the ground.

Hailey stepped out the door, her face smug.  She would enjoy this.

Freaking imp.

Releasing Icarus, Caius stood, making the sign of the cross.
  Funny that that small gesture I had once dismissed as frivolous could give comfort to me now, when I knew the end was near.

As Icarus’s teeth met my throat, I didn’t fight him.  I closed my e
yes and waited for the end.  I felt at peace, free of pain.  I embraced the dusk of life, welcomed death with open arms, released from the curse I had become.

Chapter 14

Hmm.  Phones in heaven.  I imagined JC would’ve gone with thought transference for means of communication, but maybe he chose to stick with the familiar.  It would certainly be a comfort to the recently deceased, attached as we are to our technology.  How considerate.

He even got Bennie’s ringtone right
, an infinite loop of ‘In One Ear and Right Out the Other.’  Bennie’s personal joke.  He set it himself a few weeks ago.

Gosh,
I was going to miss Bennie.  I wonder if we were allowed visitations.  I could go back and haunt him until he painted evocative portraits of me that would make him a renowned artist.  He could immortalize me on canvas, trapped timelessly in oils and pastels.

“Answeeerrrrrr ttthhhhhheeee ppphhhhooonnnneeee!” 
droned Crispin’s voice.

“
But she’s still zonked out.  B-B-B-Benny and the jets.”  Caius.

“Oh but she’s feared when ireful.”
  Max.

“Oh, Bennie she can really scream.” 
Bacchus.

“She
put on her dog hair suit, and chewed up my shoe.”  Caius.

“Let me tell ya she can get really meeeaaannnn
-een-een-een!”  Lucius.

“BENNIE!  BENNIE!”  Caius.

“B-B-B-Bennie and the jets.”  Bacchus.

“Idiots.”  Hailey.

I knew it was too good to be true.  Groaning over my current life status—which unfortunately was living—I fished my phone from under my pillow.  “It’s too early for facetime, Benny,” I grumbled, pushing the nest of hair from my face.

“It’s twelve, Thale.”

“It was a long night.”

“Tell me about it.  Peyton stopped by
last night.”

“Peyton
?” I blurted, lifting the phone to see Bennie’s face.  He now had my full attention.  Or at least the attention of my dilating right eye.  “What did she say?  Where’s she been?”

“Well that’s the thing,” Bennie said u
nsurely.  “She was all Salem’s Lot like—scratching at my window in the middle of the night.”  He coughed, garbling his last word.

“
Wait a minute—did you say
naked
?”

“
Yeah.”

“What did you do?”

“I took a picture, Thale!  What the hell do you think I did?  I screamed like a girl!  She scared the shit out of me!”  Bennie’s face dropped from view, but I could hear a muffled choke.  When he lifted his head again, he had tears in his eyes.

“Bennie!” I hissed.  “This isn’t funny!”

“Oh my God, you should’ve been there.  It was great.  When I screamed, she jumped like ten feet in the air, and then slipped and rolled off the roof.  It was straight outta Loony Toons, I tell ya.  The only thing missing was the crate of T.N.T to break her fall.”

“BENNIE!”

“What?  Geez!  I didn’t get to talk to her.  Mom and Dad heard me scream and they pushed the panic button, and set off the alarm.  She took off through the Anderson’s yard.”

“Naked?” Caius inquired
from his bedroom on the floor below.

I rolled my eyes
toward the ceiling.  “If you like little boys, she might appeal to you,” I said in response to Caius’s question.  “Besides, if you care for the health of your pecker, you’ll stay away from her.”

Bennie’s face grew distorted as he put the phone to his face as if he could peek around the corner of his screen
and see into my room.  “Who are you talking to?”

“Everyone.  There
’s no such thing as privacy here.  With our heightened senses we could hear Jiminy Cricket fart.”

“I didn’t
really
scream like a girl.  I screamed, but it was more like ‘Ahhhh,’” Bennie demonstrated in his deepest tone, realizing he was on speaker.  “It was a very masculine scream.  Deep.  Baritone.  Oh, hey Icarus!  How’s it going man?”

Icarus?  Glancing over my shoulder, indeed, it was Icarus.  In
my
bed.

“You’re sure she was bare?” he inquired to Bennie.
  Tugging at the blankets, he loosely covered himself, obscuring only the darkest patch of hair below his waist.  I did likewise.  As Icarus had mentioned before, clothes didn’t come with us when we transformed.

“No doubt about it.
  Not that I was looking.  Thale’s right.  She’s built like a boy.  Fried eggs, ya know?  Not much to look at.  Besides, she’s like the skanky sister I never had.”

I barely registered Bennie’s prattling. 
My mind was busy gaping at the nude alpha in my bed.  He was all lean muscle and smooth olive skin with a light dusting of dark hair.  He was the Barberini Faun in the flesh.  Lounging on his back.  The picture of leisure.  Admittedly, it took several moments before I found my tongue, inebriated as I was with his very presence.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Just leaving,” Icarus said, brooking no argument.  Rising from the bed, he dropped the covers, revealing all his masculine splendor.  Glorious he was, rigid at this fine hour of morning.

“Thale,” said Bennie, gathering my attention.
  Icarus turned and smirked, catching me gaping at him, slack-jawed.

“
When you’re finished here, get dressed and come down.  We need to talk.”  Borrowing my bath towel from the floor, he folded it around his waist.  I turned my head, ignoring the tent pitched below his hips.  No matter.  The image was burned permanently into memory.

Flipping from facetime to phone call, I pressed the phone to my ear.  “Bennie, I gotta go.”
  I ran for the bathroom, escaping my rampant desires.  A cold shower would do me good.

“I knew it!” Bennie hissed.  “I knew you liked him!”

“Shut up Bennie.”

“You can’t deny it.  You just did the deed with him.
  You’re both neked.”

“I did not.”  Sliding from the bed, I stepped into the bathroom and flicked the light on. 
I gave my eyes a second to adjust before I looked in the mirror, examining my teeth.  They had returned to normal, better than normal.  And I’d worn braces when I was younger.  The slightly sharper cuspids glistened like lethal weapons. “I changed last night.  Like into a
wolf
.”

“Holy shit! 
You did?  What was it like?”

“Horrible.”  I started up the shower.  “
It was excruciating.  I don’t remember anything after that.  I blacked out.”

“See—you did sleep with him!
  You just don’t remember.  You had mad animal sex—didn’t you?”

“I
didn’t
sleep with him!” I snapped.  “This isn’t fun and games, Bennie!  I’m not here playing tiddly winks with my boyfriend!  I have much bigger things on my mind!”

“Geez, Thale, no need to get snippy.”

He was right.  I felt bad.  We’d barely talked the few days I’d been home.  Between my infirmity and my short temper, he’d kept his distance.  Before I knew it, I was moving out.  I missed him more than chocolate.  I was loath to spend our time on the phone arguing.

“Sorry, Bennie.  It was just a really
,
really
horrible night.”  Loading a stripe of toothpaste onto my toothbrush, I wet it under the faucet.  “I don’t mean to take things out on you.”

Pleased to see my teeth were back to normal, I jammed my toothbrush in my mouth and began to scrub
while I waited for the shower to warm.

“I just want you to be happy, is all.  Icarus
seems like a good guy.”

“
Yeah, well, I have to disagree.  He knew about Marcus and he didn’t do anything to stop him.  It’s his fault I’m here in the first place.”

“You’re wrong, Thale.  It’s Marcus’s fault you’re there.  And you can’t blame Icarus for not getting involved.  His had six mouths to feed.  What if something happened to him?”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, but I’m not going to pat you on the back and badmouth him just because it’s what you want to hear.”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“I call it like it is.”

“Look Bennie, I’ll call you later.  Water’s hot and I can’t let it go to waste.  There are seven of us living here.  Just do me a favor.”

“Shoot.”

“Stay away from Peyton if you see her.  She might be dangerous.”  If she accidentally bit Bennie, he’d forever be a lanky, pubescent thirteen-year-old.  I couldn’t take that chance.

ΑΒΩ

Pancakes with sausage and orange juice awaited me at the table.  They smelled heavily of MSG and preservatives.  I was seriously reconsidering the notion of fresh game.

“You went to McDonald’s,” I observed
, eyeing the oval hash brown and the perfectly shaped sausage patty with suspicion.  They tried to pass them off as homemade by plating them on stoneware.  Fools.

“I would’ve cooked,” Lucius apologized, “but we were out of everything.”

One box of pancake mix didn’t go quite as far between five lycan males and two females as it did at home.  Nor did the sausage, bacon, eggs, milk, cereal, bread, butter or hash browns.

“
Whatevs.”  Using the edge of my fork to carve off a traingle of sausage, I popped it in my mouth, and perused the curious stares around me.  “What?”

“You don’t re
member anything from last night?” Crispin prodded. “Anything at all?”

“
No,” I said, returning to my breakfast.  I crushed a springy pea of fat between my molars and pushed my plate away, disgusted.  “Except that I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

“Dude,” said Crispin, beaming.  “You were
insssaaaannnne
.”

“Are you gonna eat that?” Max asked, gesturing to my
breakfast.

“No.”  I pushed the dish his way, watching him inhale the pancakes in four large bites
.  Max could eat anything.  Any time.  Anywhere.  He had no discrimination against food whatsoever.

“Do you wanna see pictures?” Caius
offered.

“You took pictures?”

“Totally!  Baby cut her first tooth!  Had to take a few shots to remember the milestone,” he enthused, pulling his phone from his pocket.  The glass on his screen had a few cracks and holes pocking the surface.  It looked like he used it for target practice.

I stroked the screen, bringing it to life.
  An image popped up of a stark white wolf.  The only coloring was the pale, fleshy pink of my nose.  My irises remained the same bold blue as my human eyes, lurid against the soft white of my coat.  I was a ghost.  A beast.  Magical.  Mystical.  Oh, and I owed Caius a new phone because apparently, I was the source of the damage when he tried to snap a picture during one of my more savage moments.  And he caught it all on camera too.  Right up to the point where I mangled the device with my pointy canine teeth.

“You can really run,” Lucius commended.  “Icarus was fighting to keep up.”

“But what is all that white stuff?” I asked, still scrolling through the images.  I was in the Porsche, my front paws against the window, bearing my teeth at the bystanders outside.  I could see little white icebergs resting in the dash and on the ground outside the passenger side door.

“My seats
,” answered Icarus.

“Oh…Oh God.”  I handed back the phone and closed my eyes, dispelling the image from memory.  It didn’t help.  Tucking one arm against my stomach, I dropped my head into my hands feeling as though I might be sick.

“It’s repairable.”

Not without costing a lot of money. 
“It’s a fifty thousand dollar car.”

Crispin snorted.  “Fifty thousand?  It’s a GT3.  Try one hundred and fifty.”

“Oh Jesus.”  I was rocking now like a baby in the corner.  I ate the seats from a hundred and fifty thousand dollar car.  Replacing one seat probably cost fifty thousand dollars alone.

“Crispin!”
Icarus scolded.

“Sorry!” Crispin exclaimed,
throwing his arms up in the air.  “The difference between a Honda and Hyundai I could understand, but this is a GT3!  I swear!  Girls have no appreciation!”

“Thaleia,
it’s repairable,” Icarus reaffirmed, bizarrely understanding.  Personally, I would’ve dragged me outside by the scruff of my neck and rubbed my nose in it, while affirming and reaffirming with a stern voice that it was bad to eat cars.

“
I think I should go back to bed and start today over.”

“No,” Icarus refused, placing a restraining hand on my shoulder as I
rose from my stool.  “We need to discuss a few things.”

“I can’t be held accountable for anything that I can’t remember.”

“
I
am accountable for anything you do.  It’s my pack.  It’s my job to keep you in line, especially until you’re able to remain lucid after the change.  Last night, I made the wrong call.  I thought it would be better to confine you until after you calmed down, somewhere where you couldn’t hurt yourself, or anyone else.”