Thorne Bay

by Jeanine Croft

  Delirium

  The fever took me that same night. Or was it daytime? I had no windows and no reliable concept of time. Whether from exhaustion, trauma, or mental shock I’d become severely ill, and that was all I knew. My flesh burned and raged without reprieve, and my bones ached as I tossed and shivered on my sweat-soaked sheets, clawing at my skin, my own blood seeming to excoriate my veins like blades. The walls themselves seemed to skulk closer, threateningly, as though to devour me. The darkness shifted and coalesced into monstrous shapes and nightmares as I screamed and tried to escape them; tried to run from the fierce blue eyes. But I always faltered, always fell under the heavy weight of deadly claws and teeth. Those were the times my shoulder ached the most.

  I was in my death throes and that was all I perceived through the fog of an excruciating pyrexia. Sometimes I’d see shadowy faces above me, indistinct mouths moving wordlessly as I moaned and writhed. Hands moved to restrain me—the monster pinning me to the floor as it ripped mercilessly at my shoulder, its midnight fur invisible in the darkness of my cell. Other times its grim blue eyes became suddenly pale green and flecked with gold—Tristan’s familiar gaze, solemn and keen, from atop a protracted black muzzle. His whiskers were bloodied, and he was begging me not to hate him.

  Delirium consumed and ravaged my mind. I called for my mother. I called for Tristan. But it was always the nightmarish thing that answered me from the bottom of the basement stairs; from the hinterland of my battered mind. “You’re dying,” it taunted. “I’ve killed you.”

  “No!” I shrieked.

  “Run.” Its eyes glowed a murderous inhuman blue as it licked its lips. “Run away.”

  I obeyed Death’s warning, tripping up the stairs away from the yawning darkness that hunted me. Then, suddenly, there were hands on my brow and voices murmuring from afar. Blurry faces hovering again. Help me! Another sting in my arm and they faded as I drifted helplessly to the bottom of the basement where the thing waited to gorge itself on my tired flesh.

  A cold wet cloth was suddenly pressed to my brow. I twitched. I moaned. I begged for water. I felt the saliva fill my mouth like bile; felt the tears spill helplessly over my cheeks. Water instantly materialized at my lips to quench the fire there. I drank it thirstily. It felt cool and refreshing. Was I in the shower now? Who was washing me with loving strokes? “Tristan?” I croaked, my words lost in moans and tears. “Is that you? Where have you been?” More tears stung my eyes, rills burning over my furrowed temples.

  “Shhh,” he murmured, “save your strength.”

  I sobbed, turning towards the voice. “I called out for you, but you never came!”

  We were in his shower again, his soapy fingers swirling over my wet back. But when I turned around to face him he was gone. In his place, the black thing sat panting ravenously, its eyes a luminesce, eerie citrine. A monstrous canine leer framed long white fangs.

  I ran from it. I was naked and running, my skin turning black with coarse fur, my own fangs pushing past my bleeding gums. My throat was raw from screaming, but the nightmare always found me; it always caught me in its snapping jaws. Each time I felt the sharp press of teeth, the darkness swallowed me.

  Then, suddenly, I was awake again. This time I knew I was awake, and alive, the bed felt solid beneath me. There was no vicious voice in my ear daring me to run. I was in the same spartan room as before, but I felt different, as though I was wearing someone else’s skin. This body felt nothing like mine—my brain felt swollen, my tongue was sandpaper, my skin felt too tight, and even my teeth throbbed in my gums.

  The bite! I groaned as I lifted a shaky hand to my numb shoulder. That was why I’d been dead to the world up till now—rabies! I’d been attacked by some freakish black wolf thing. I’d been infected.

  “Run, I’m coming for you.” The echo from my nightmare had me jolting up from the pillow with a yelp, my weight on my elbows.

  I couldn’t be sure anymore what was real or what I’d dreamt, but I was sure I hadn’t imagined the monster in the basement. I knew I hadn’t imagined the bite. Or the sickness that followed. But had I conjured the cruel black veins spread ominously over my flesh? Had my mind evoked that strange conversation with Aidan? Was Aidan even real? My life had become a phantasmagorical slideshow of bizarre and frightening things. My world had spun completely off its axis.

  Groaning, I pushed myself up to sitting and then gasped when the sheet slipped down to reveal my pale naked breasts. At the very same moment, the door flew open. I shrieked and lifted the sheet right up to my chin.

  A tall man entered as casually as if, by all rights, he slept here and I was the intruder. “Have a good nap?” he asked, looking anything but solicitous.

  I glowered balefully at the man. “Don’t you knock?”

  “I knocked the first few times, but you were comatose.” He came over to my bedside with a stethoscope, paying my glares no mind as he pressed the cold metal diaphragm to my back. Then he did the same to my front, smirking when I gripped the sheet harder around my chest. A sportive black curl drifted across his forehead as he studied my face.

  I was studying his just as intently. I found myself slightly distracted by his mismatched eyes—one grey and one a golden brown. I was relieved when he finally moved away, my sigh far more telling than I’d intended.

  He gave a sardonic grunt. “Relax, you’ve got nothing I haven’t already seen before.”

  “You haven’t seen my parts though.”

  “Haven’t I?” His lips curled like a jackal.

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “God, you humans and your precious modesty.” He sounded bored. “Even if I was into mongrels, which I’m not, you're a little too lippy and scrawny for my taste.”

  “Mongrel?” I blasted him with an affronted scowl. Scrawny? I knew I wasn’t beautiful, not like Aidan or Nicole, but mongrel-like? What a bastard this guy was. “And what do you mean ‘you humans’? Are you an alien then?”

  “Oh, I’m otherworldly all right.” He leaned a hip against the end of my sad little bed. “Technically so are you…as of today.” He dragged his gaze critically over my body as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “And how the hell you managed to survive…”

  “The rabies.” I gave a shuddering nod, probing at my bandaged shoulder again. That accounted for the fever and delirium, as well as the muscle spasms and paralysis. Hadn’t Owen made some comment or another about the area being overrun with wolves? Or had that been Dinwiddie? Either way, I’d been attacked by something rabid. “But I’m okay now.” My tone was more hopeful than certain.

  He grunted and shook his head. “Not even close.”

  I licked my lips, unnerved by his attitude. “It’s f-fatal, right?” Once the virus was established there was no cure; no treatment. I’d learned that when our neighbor’s dog had been bitten by a rabid raccoon.

  “Usually.”

  I felt lightheaded just thinking of how close I’d come to death. “I’m stronger than I look, I guess.”

  Another disparaging sweep of his eyes.

  “Even for a human,” I added scathingly.

  “Well, check again—” he lowered his eyes pointedly to my bandage “—coz you ain’t even that anymore. And you’re not out of the woods just yet, Lippy.”

  Climbing gingerly from the bed, I stepped cautiously around him and headed to the mirror to remove the gauze, looking over my shoulder, aware suddenly of a strange sense of deja vu. I knew that most of the damage was close to my spine and that I’d need a mirror to inspect it properly. When I peeled the layers away, I drew in an abrupt breath that hissed past my teeth as I stared, stunned.

  The wound had healed almost completely. There were only a few pink marks to attest to the fact that I’d ever been attacked at all, and there was no sign of the black veins and bruising I’d noticed before. Part of the nightmare, maybe? An agonizing and stuttering breath rent my lungs as it rushed from my lips. “H-how long h-have I been ou
t?” Months? Years? The scars were pale and silvery smooth where there should have been stitches and scabs; these scars looked months old already.

  He came to stand beside me, peering thoughtfully down at the healed marks. “It’s been five days since you spoke to Aidan.”

  “Impossible!”

  He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Oh, Lippy, you’ve barely even had a taste of the impossible.”

  I backed away from him, his words feeling heavy and foreboding. “My name’s Evan, not Lippy. And you are…?”

  “Augustus,” he answered, pulling his phone out of his pocket to scroll through his contacts.

  That was a mouthful. I listened as a disembodied voice answered his call. Augustus immediately reported my condition to the stranger, his eyes affixed to mine.

  “Yeah, no side effects. Completely conscious. Uh-huh. Rabies.” He rolled his eyes and gave a few nods, as though the other interlocutor could see him. Then he hung up. “Get dressed.” The last was addressed to me with a finger pointed at my soiled and discarded clothes lying beside the bed. “Aidan wants to have a little chat before the council meets.”

  I glared at the blood-spattered shirt and ruined jeans. “I can’t wear those, that’s biohazard now!”

  He shrugged. “I figured it was a wasted effort to wash them.”

  “Hygiene is a wasted effort?!” This guy was something else.

  “You weren’t supposed to survive.” The sides of his eyes tightened with something between regret and confusion. “We hadn’t expected you to.” He gave a tight shrug. “Why wash a dead woman’s clothes?” With that, he turned on his heel and left me standing there as though I’d been punched in the gut (except no punch would have winded me more than his words had). “Get dressed, I’ll wait outside.”

  The door slammed shut, the noise precipitating me to scramble into my dirty clothes, my shirt still torn and stiff with blood. Furious tears spilled from my eyes as I marched to the door to confront my ill-mannered jailor. I yanked it open to see him leaning casually against the wall opposite my door. “Where’s Nicole?” I growled. I didn’t particularly miss the woman, but hers was the only familiar face I knew and I wanted even that small comfort—seeing someone I recognized from my old life. The life that seemed so surreal now.

  Augustus, however, ignored my question and pushed himself off the wall, gesturing for me to follow him into the dimly lit corridor.

  Maybe this was some sort of old hospital, I thought as we passed by a deserted transport stretcher, my rubber boots padding noiselessly along the vinyl flooring. His footsteps, though, produced a hollow and unwelcome echo. The light was impersonal, and so was the peeling grey paint on the walls and the brown leak stains on the ceiling. Everything smacked of desuetude and abandonment, like a post-apocalyptic ward. He lead me through one set of swinging doors and into an empty, featureless laboratory, then into another antiseptic corridor with more empty stretchers, the blue leather stained and rotting.

  “Where are we?” I asked. “What is this place?”

  “The clinic,” he replied dispassionately, glancing over his shoulder to catch my dubious look. “It’s usually empty, we don’t get sick very often.” He left it at that.

  “Are you a doctor?” I recognized his voice, and my mind, for some reason, had identified him as such.

  “No.”

  I glared at his back, resenting his curt answers. “I need to call my mother.” She was probably already in Alaska searching for me, beside herself with worry. Alison, Owen, and Melissa likely were as well. Maybe even Tristan? Bitterness and longing instantly filled my chest as I thought of him and what Nicole had said that morning she’d knocked on my door; that morning that already felt like a lifetime ago. “Everyone will be looking for me by now.”

  “No one’s looking for you, Lippy.”

  “But Tristan—”

  He halted suddenly and whipped around to pierce me with a harrowing glare. “You have no fucking idea how much shit you’re in right now, do you? Forget Tristan. Forget your old life!” Gone was the smirk and irritating aloofness, and in its place was a thunderous incredulity, his grey eye stormy and the brown one molten. “Anyway, he’s apparently the reason you’re in this godforsaken mess!” And then he was marching off again, seemingly unconcerned whether I followed or not.

  “Tell me what’s going on. Please!”

  “It would have been better for you if you had died.” This he muttered as he turned a corner, but I heard him loud and clear.

  For the second time today, he’d wounded me, his words cutting like a sharp lash. The bastard hadn’t even brought me food or water either. The latter of those needs, however, I was able to quench at a drinking fountain that, thankfully, still worked (if a bit feebly) despite its obvious lack of maintenance. Once I’d siphoned off as much water as the fountain would surrender, I hurried off again to catch up to Augustus.

  Like a dark angel, his movements fluid and his figure imposing, he shoved a pair of large double doors aside, the light rushing in like a celestial halo to blind me as I squinted in his wake. An angel or a demon? Worse! He’d proved himself to be nothing more than a devil in disguise. Maybe this shitty town really was full of devils.

  Once my eyesight had adjusted to the daylight I noticed him waiting impatiently by a black Land Rover. Black—the color of his heart, if he even had one. A short while later we were speeding along a deserted country road. The houses that were visible from the road were sparse and unassuming. The silence that pervaded was almost suffocating. Fortunately, it was disrupted a moment later when Augustus’ phone rang over the hands-free system.

  He hit a button and uttered a curt, “What is it Shenton?”

  “Aidan called for a conclave?” a male voice said excitedly. “And Nicole’s back in town? What’s this all about, boss?”

  “Can’t talk now,” was all Augustus replied before hanging up, eyes darting accusingly to me.

  “Did he just call you boss?” I asked nervously.

  “I’m Aidan’s lieutenant.” After that explanation—which was hardly much of an explanation at all—we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence again.

  It was getting darker now, the sun sinking lower and the shadows lengthening as we passed a dilapidated sign that read, Red Devil Ranch. Private Property. Do Not Enter. Shortly afterward, the lieutenant steered the SUV over a ramshackle old bridge that protested loudly beneath the tires and then continued along a narrow road, the woodland becoming denser as it strangled the dirt track. Finally the headlights cut through the twilight and landed on an unremarkable rectangular building. Unremarkable except for the large pair of oaken double doors with a wolf’s head guarding each side, and an iron ring latched between each set of serrated jaws. It all looked sinister enough to deter even the most indefatigable trespassers. The building itself was cloaked in shadows, situated in a small clearing over which the backwoods encroached with subtle menace.

  Just as Augustus shifted the Landie into park, the doors swung open and Aidan strode out confidently, her expression as remote as I remembered it. The last of the natural light lit the chestnut in her hair as she jogged down the stairs towards us in a scarlet shirt. There was the red devil herself.

  “What is this place?” I asked him, my eyes still fixed to Aidan.

  He killed the engine and turned to me. “This is where the pack council gathers for conclaves.”

  “Conclaves?”

  “Pack business,” he said, getting out.

  When I hopped out of the SUV, Aidan took one look at my shirt and shot Augustus a withering glare. “Really, Gus? You could’ve at least given her a clean shirt?”

  “Hell, I thought I was heading to the clinic to find a corpse.” With a last meaningful look at Aidan, he then shot into the woods at a brisk jog.

  “Where’s he going?” I wanted to know, purposefully disregarding that last shitty remark of his.

  “I’ll show you,” she said, also heading into the forest after him, but at
an unhurried pace. “follow me.”

  “Do I have a choice?” The woods seemed to be glaring darkly at me.

  Without glancing around, “You want answers, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said to her back. Yet what if there were more of those monsters in there? If there were, I really didn’t want to be here alone in the gloaming. After an indecisive minute, in which I chewed my bottom lip and scanned the shadows for movements, I shoved away from the SUV and sprinted after her. I was tired, dirty, starving, miserable, and scared as hell, but if she had answers then into the woods I’d go. What other choice did I have? I was in the middle of nowhere and the only shelter in sight was some creepy old building that looked about as welcoming as the woods I was entering.

  When I slipped past the thickets, Aidan was waiting for me with a preternatural stillness, her striking green eyes unblinking as she watched me scurrying towards her. I faltered suddenly, my eyes wavering over an odd shape in the damp earth—a frightening imprint. My nails dug into my palms as I recognized the large simian contours, so bear-like and unnatural. I’d seen a print like that before. “What—”

  “I don’t have all night.” Though she hadn’t raised it, her voice was crisp and clear, drawing me instantly from my morbid abstraction.

  I dragged my eyes away from the sinister footprint and, with a shuddering sigh, I moved to where Aidan stood statue-like.

  “So you think some rabid dog bit you?” she asked with sudden glaring irony. It seemed we were down to brass tacks. After I’d given a wary shrug she continued on, “You think the worst is behind you and that now you get to go home and pretend this was all some inconvenient little nightmare.”

  The last was not a question, but I answered anyway. “Yes.”

  “Wrong.” Her face clouded as she set her teeth. “You were bitten, Evan. Your life as you knew it is over. The Evan you were no longer exists.”

  Suddenly the fever was back and I felt my brow break out in a cold foreshadowing sweat, my hands trembling as she began to circle me. “What bit me?” But I was almost too frightened to know.