by S. L. Naeole
But I didn’t turn around and go home.
Instead, I waited until the ferry had pushed away from the pier. I waited until the aft of the ferry was as empty as I felt. Then I ran. And then I jumped. My feet hit frigid water, but my hands clasped the rail as tightly as they would a human throat. I pulled myself up quickly and shook the water out from my shoes without missing a beat.
The bow of the ferry was crowded, everyone’s eyes looking forward instead of back. Of course; no one ever wanted to look back at the rock. No one ever wanted to look back at us. We were forgettable in the dark. Too easily forgettable…
“Yo, Liam. Hunting again?”
I looked up. One of the guys who worked the ferry was leaning against the rail on the upper deck, his eyes watching me. “Hey, Bo.”
“Liam. Out for a late-night snack?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my eye on something good.”
His head turned toward the crowd and nodded. “Me, too. Saw a nice, fat beast that’ll taste really good with some of that local beer they sell at the pier bar on the mainland.”
“Bo, let me borrow your cap.”
“My what?” Bo’s hand went to his head, where a wool, brimless cap sat. “What for?”
“To keep my head warm. Duh.”
Slowly, he removed the gray scrap of wool, his dark blonde hair stringy and dirty beneath. “Just make sure you give it back before we get back to the rock,” he said before tossing it down to me.
I nodded as I pulled it down over my head. With my hands shoved into my pockets and my head down, I walked into the crowd and began to inhale. The scent of her, the smell of her was heavy in the air among these trogs. She could have been standing right beside me and I would have known no different.
But her scent was only to lead me to him. He was leaning against the front rail, his back to me, his head tilted up toward the sky. What was he thinking about? Was he thinking about her? Was he thinking about kissing her? About the way she had tears in her eyes because he was leaving her?
Jerk.
I backed away from him, never taking my eyes off his head; I needed to keep my distance. There was plenty of time left before the ferry made its last stop on the mainland, and I wanted to study him like I’ve never studied a target before. I wanted to see what it was about him that made him what she wanted. What was it about him that made her cry when all I ever got was spit and blood?
He carried himself as though he was the only person on the ferry. The crowd bumped against him as they all tried to get a closer look at the black sea and the far off lights ahead, but he remained still and unmoving. Did he miss her that much already? Did his feelings run that deep?
For the next few hours, I watched him. He could have been a corpse. To the trogs around him, he could have been as dead as sound. But I could hear him breathing. And I could hear his heart. It was slow and beat with a sadness that I hated to admit I recognized and worse, shared. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that this made me hate him even more.
When the ferry finally docked on the mainland, I stalked him like any other prey. He left the pier, staying in the light like any good Boy Scout would, and walked with his back straight and his head facing forward. He didn’t look at the people he passed. The calls of the prostitutes went ignored, and the drunken slurs of the bums who hung around waiting to rob some unsuspecting trog of the last of their vacation money might as well have been whispered. He did not pay attention, didn’t waste a single second on the sounds that demanded he notice them.
He walked with a purpose.
So did I.
Up ahead was a bus stop. It was empty with just the pale orange glow of a street lamp keeping it from being swallowed completely by the darkness. He stopped there, dropping his duffel on the old bench before turning around.
“I don’t bite; I’m not like you…Liam.”
He stood there, his eyes mocking as he stared at me in the shadows. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You don’t know what I am.”
“If you think so. What do you want.”
I stepped into the light, feeling my insides rumble with agitation and excitement. Did I have the courage to tear his throat out right here? Of course I did. But first…first I wanted answers. “What’s going on between you and Fallon?”
“We love each other. That’s what’s going on between us,” he answered with smug satisfaction.
My teeth met the stale air that filled the space between us as a snarl crawled up my throat. My lip pulled up to expose my gums and my growing fangs. “What else?”
He laughed. He looked at me with clear eyes and laughed at me. “Look at you. Do you think I’m scared of you, with your…teeth and your…fishy funk? If you want to know, I love Fallon and she loves me, but we’re as much a couple as you are an angel.”
His laugh grew softer. So did his face. “She’s been my best friend for as long as I’ve ever really had friends, and when I’m nothing but dust in the ground, she’ll still be my friend.”
“She’s…just your friend?”
“What, did a diet of sardines and punches to the face make you deaf? Yes, she’s just my friend.”
There’s no explaining how those few words made me feel. I’d wanted to tear his gut out, feel his flesh grow cold in my mouth before I ate him, piece by piece, until the only thing that remained of him besides his bones was a stain that people would walk all over without a second thought. I’d wanted to peel his skin off of him while he still breathed and feed it to him while telling him in insane detail what I would do to him after.
But with just four words, my own gut became full of something else.
“Why do you care whether or not we’re friends?” he asked as my head swam with a swarm of so many possibilities.
I looked at him for the first time as something different. Not a threat. Not even food. “That’s none of your business.”
His hand found my shirt, his fist pulling and tightening the fabric around my neck. “If it involves Fallon, it’ll always be my business. If anything happens to her, if you or anyone else on that rock of yours hurts her, I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are.”
There was a lot to admire in the way he looked at me as if he really wasn’t afraid. He loved her. I always knew that. Any idiot with eyes would know that. But it was something different, his love. It was the love I’d seen a thousand times before. I recognized it. I knew it.
“Nothing’s going to happen to Fallon,” I said quietly.
We stood there under that orange light, staring at each other with silent threats passing between us as the minutes flowed like sweat dripping off our foreheads.
“Promise me. Give me your word as best as one of your kind can give it. Swear that nothing will happen to her.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Fallon,” I repeated.
The hissing and piercing squeal of brakes was where the standoff had to end. “I’m holding you to your word. Nothing happens to her or else I’m coming after you.”
With one final glare, he was on the bus that had stopped, his head passing by the windows, one after the other, until he was all the way at the back. He watched me, just as I watched him. Even when the bus disappeared down the road and the fumes had faded away, leaving nothing to mask the stink of piss and failure, I stared after it.
A rumbling argument sounded, loud and violent. I turned around and frowned at the emptiness that surrounded me. I was alone. But the rumbling continued. It was, I realized with a laugh, my stomach. This was the second time in as many days that I’d given up my prey.
Because of her.
“Damn you,” I cursed out loud. “First you starve my brain of common sense and now you’re starving my damn body of food. Why the hell can’t I just be normal around you?”
And why couldn’t I get the taste of her blood out of my mouth? Why did its iron tang cling to my tongue? Even now, hours later, it was stuck in my mouth like a film refusing to let go, refusing to let me go. One small glimpse of w
hat her flesh would taste like within me and now it wouldn’t leave. Fallon was a cancer. That’s what she was. She was a cancer and cell by cell, she was eating up what made me…me, and I couldn’t let that happen.
“Aaaaarrrggghhh!”
I turned and ran back into the darkness, quickly shifting, changing into something the night liked more than my arrogant human body. Hunger and raw, blood-thirsty need drove me, and I didn’t care if I ate a greasy bum or some virus filled hooker; I was going to eat before the sun came up or else. I was going to get rid of the taste of her.
Paws against pavement were a lot quieter than feet, and no one keeping safe in the blobs of light beneath each individual street lamp could hear or see me. They might sense me. They might even smell me, hot and hungry in the dark, already feeding off the scent of their fear. But they could not see me, and this was the thing they were afraid of the most.
I knew what they were feeling; for once I knew every single thing they felt as I made my way toward them and I didn’t know whether to be glad for this change in me or hate it. Just by breathing I knew that the hairs on the back of their neck had turned into tiny spikes of fear. The air around them felt several degrees colder because their blood had chilled. They pulled their jackets around them tighter, but it wasn’t working. Suddenly, they began to breathe faster, not knowing why, only that they had to.
I licked my lips, my tongue curving around my wide mouth and tasting the air for their breaths. There were three humans hiding near me. One was too old and thin to bother with – I’ll leave that one for the dogs. One wasn’t as scared as they should’ve been; drugs would make anyone brave. But one had just the right level of fear, with a heartbeat slipping and jumping to its own rhythm as it sensed that something was wrong.
The ground was sticky as I made my way closer. My prey was a female, with coffee on her breath. She was moving slowly, her shuffles loud in the dark. I huffed, my breath misting in the cool air and forming a cloud of dusty white.
“Wh-who’s there?” her voice called out from the shadows she thought she could hide in.
We were so close to the harbor that the air was filled with salt, and yet her breath still tasted sweet as I grew closer and closer to her. My eyes adjusted to the shift in light and dark as I made my way through the break in light to the complete emptiness that my prey hid in. I could see her, trembling against a wall with her hands pressed flat behind her.
With a swipe of my paw, she was on the ground, the breath knocked out of her and her scream trapped in her gut. I moved over her quickly, my front paws pinning down her arms while I sat on her legs, the weight of me causing her to force out a painful groan. I pushed up against her throat with my nose, feeling the warmth of her skin and smelling her through her fear and her dread. She smelled like…apples.
I let out a strange sound and pulled away to look at her. Her face was dirty, and frozen in a silent scream. There were scars marking her face as used, damaged, even broken. Nothing about her was worth giving a second look, except I did and caught the brown stare of her eyes.
Apples and brown eyes…
What the hell was I doing?
Forgetting the frightened hooker, forgetting the angry grumble in my stomach, I kept on moving down the pier. The ferry was docked for the night, and the last fishing boat had left back for the rock. I was stuck on mainland Maine for the night with an empty stomach and a suddenly guilty conscience that was going to eat me alive, even if I never hunted again.
Well…at least something was gonna eat tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FALLON
Josh’s ferry was gone, and I’d sat on my bike for twenty minutes, watching the town fall asleep before I decided to head home. It had turned cold pretty quickly, and I regretted driving back to exchange the truck for the bike while Josh was watching the movie with Audrey. I thought it would be smarter, faster.
Now I realized it was just stupid.
I was shivering, my teeth close to cracking they were chattering so hard, but I knew that I couldn’t go back to the house by myself. I didn’t want to accept the idea of another month with having to either hide inside my room, or face having to see Liam again and deal with what that would do to me. Josh may have given his blessing for me to screw myself up, but that doesn’t mean that I wanted to, or that I was going to.
Nothing sucks more than being chased by a nightmare. That’s what this was, a freaking nightmare.
So the monster had stalked me until it was past its bedtime and everyone went to sleep so I could ride home in peace. My pocket started vibrating, and I reached in to grab my cell phone.
“Peace my butt,” I grumbled as I pushed the answer button.
“Fallon? Where the hell are you?” Dad’s voice blurted through the phone before I’d even had a chance to press it against my ear.
“I’m coming, Dad. I guess I lost track of the time or something.”
“I’m gonna come and get you. Where are you?”
I looked around at the empty pier and sighed. “I’m still at the pier. Don’t worry, Dad. I’m leaving now.”
“Tell her she needs to get her butt home now,” Mom yelled out over Dad.
“You heard her. Take the safe road-”
“There’s only one road, Dad,” I reminded him.
“You know what I mean, Fall. It’s late, and dark. Are you sure you don’t want me to come and pick you up?”
It was hard not to smile. “It’s okay. I know the way home.”
“Are you sure?”
I found myself nodding, and then I laughed because he obviously couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m sure. Look, the longer I stay on the phone, the longer it’ll take for me to get home.”
“Okay, kitten. Want me to wait up?”
“I know it doesn’t matter if I say yes or no; you’re gonna wait up anyway.”
This time he laughed. “You’re right. So hurry up. Ride safe.”
“I will.”
The line clicked and I returned the phone to my back pocket. I pulled my helmet on and as I stomped on the starter, the quiet of the pier, the silence of being alone made it sound like the bike was eating the world as that loud, grumbling roar lashed out with each rev of the engine. I couldn’t help it. I felt almost…powerful. Like I was some kind of jeans and sneakers wearing beast master or something.
But of course, because everyone was asleep, no one would be impressed. Or frightened. Or care.
“Beast Master,” I snorted. “More like housecat master. Ugh…I need to go to bed; I am so not funny.”
If I thought I was cold before, I was absolutely frozen by the time I was halfway home. I started fantasizing about warm things, things like hot baths and cocoa, blankets, and freshly used bowling shoes.
I closed my eyes for just a moment, just long enough to see sunlight and feel the imaginary beginning of a tan creep across my skin. It felt fantastic, like being in Cali again. Like being in the real world again, where real people lived and not these mannequins with their stupid diets and their instant message-like gossiping system, and their kisses.
Oh God, especially their kisses.
It felt so real, it felt so familiar that I opened my eyes, positive that everything would still be there. And it was. The sun was there, though not as bright, and definitely not as inviting. And it was a lot hairier…with teeth.
And then everything stopped. The bike stopped. I stopped. It felt like I was crashing into the sun. Or, maybe the sun was crashing into me. I stopped feeling cold. It was instantaneous, the way my skin grew hot and everything beneath my skin and above it seemed to feel like the bottom of a fireplace. The world was spinning.
No. I was spinning.
Rolling, actually. I saw my bike, shaking to a stop in front of me as I rolled away from it, further and further back until my body hit the prickly edge of grass. When I stopped moving, I was facedown, nose-deep in old, broken asphalt. Was it broken because of me? Or had it always been that way?
A gigantic cat, something that looked like a lion on steroids or a cougar that had been fed on fertilizer and probably the souls of little children, was crouching just a few feet away from me. In the dark, its fur glowed like a new penny, shiny and smooth. As it breathed, the copper color shifted back and forth, looking like it was on fire, almost…molten. And its breath…it puffed through its teeth like slivered clouds, the heat from deep in its throat meeting the cold air in an almost explosive way.
I was surprised that I could see the color of its eyes. The green was probably richer and more vibrant in the daylight, but in the dark it glowed an almost neon green, like antifreeze. That should have been enough to frighten the crap out of me, but blame too many horrorfest Fridays or an imagination that was way more creative than real life because instead of scared, I was curious. I tried to sit up to get a better look but a pain rocketed through my leg and sent me slamming back down.
The cat laughed. Or, at least, that’s what it sounded like. Maybe I was hallucinating. I was in so much pain the cat probably wasn’t even a cat. Maybe it was just a really big, really mad rabbit. Something cuddly and cute. With fangs.
“Is that it? Are you really a mutant rabbit or something?” I asked through gritted teeth as I managed to haul myself up all the way. My jeans pulled against my legs, and I reached down to feel bare skin. I yanked my hand back at the way my leg stung, and at the gritty, rough feeling that met my fingers. I knew what it was; I’d had enough experiences with road rash to know that my legs were torn up and digesting asphalt.
“Well? Are you gonna eat me or just watch me die from tetanus?”
The cat snarled. It didn’t sound like one of those special effects you hear in the movies, high-pitched and hollow. It was deeper, lower, and it reached into you, found whatever it was that made you feel nothing but scared, and it clawed at it until you bled with fear. In the movies, this was the part where the hero jumps into the scene to save the day. This was where the hero and the cat would fight some kind of epic battle and the hero would emerge victorious.
