by C C Solomon
He slipped his tongue into my mouth and his tongue played upon my own. My body awoke as a tingling heat began in my stomach. I nipped his bottom lip, which seemed to set him off. He gave a startling, low growl and leaned in farther, forcing me to lay on my back again.
He pulled away and gazed down at me, balancing on his hands, which were stationed on both sides of me. His normally hazel eyes were again the yellowish-orange color of a jackal. They were distinctly inhuman and yet I wasn’t scared.
“Uh, when’s the full moon?” I asked, slightly breathless.
“Tomorrow,” he answered, his voice thick and deep. He lowered his head towards my collarbone.
“Your eyes have gone all jackal,” I stated, trying to maintain control and ignore the way his lips felt on my skin. Weres so close to a full moon were like animals in heat. I had to be careful.
He was back to kissing me again, this time focusing on my neck. I closed my eyes, forgetting what exactly I was talking about for a moment as further nerves in my body started to wake up. I let out a soft moan as his tongue coated my skin in tiny circles. I internally screamed with excitement. One of his hands slowly rubbed up my arm. The feel of his hard hands on my skin felt warm and protective.
Guilt suddenly spread over me. Phillip. We weren’t a couple. He hadn’t professed his undying love and most importantly, we hadn’t really met yet. Still, having sex with Erik would make things way too messy. Especially when I wasn’t even sure he was into me or just going for the closest cute gal around. Not to mention, having sex with a man I was just getting to know with my brother in the next room felt kind of inappropriate.
I sighed, tapping Erik on the shoulder.
He looked back down at me again, face questioning. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.
I shook my head quickly. “Oh, no. You did everything right. Very right. It’s just…my brother is right next door with a bunch of other people in the house and these walls are probably super thin.” That technically wasn’t a lie. It was a valid concern. Not a huge concern but still the truth. “And with the full moon and all, maybe you aren’t making the best decisions… I don’t do random hookups, even though dating is dead in the supernatural apocalypse. Although, who are we kidding, it was dying before then too, am I right?” I let out a nervous giggle that annoyed the inner me greatly.
He lips turned up slightly at the corners and he kissed me on my forehead before moving to lay beside me. “Despite the full moon coming, I have all my senses, Amina. And I want you. Not because you are close by, but because you are you. If I just wanted sex with the closest willing woman there is a soldier here who was flirting with me earlier. I could have gone over to her,” he said.
I elbowed him in the side, a surprising bout of jealousy waving over me. “What’s stopping you?” I growled.
He chuckled, moving me closer to him so that I could lay my head on his chest. His well-defined chest with a rippled stomach that felt chiseled from stone. Get a grip, girl. “It might be the fact that it’s not her that I want,” he replied.
He gently grabbed a collection of my curls again and twirled them on his finger. My pulse slowed as I relaxed.
I opened my mouth but had no idea what I would say. I was a bundle of hormones and confusion.
He kissed the top of my head. “Come on, tough girl, let’s get some shut eye,”
We rested for a few hours until a soldier banged on the door waking us up. As short as my sleep was, it was the most restful sleep I’d had in years.
Chapter 14
In the morning we headed back to town. Thoughts of my night with Erik raced around in my head, bringing a smile to my lips. Charles kept looking over to me in the truck with suspicious eyes but I didn’t care. I felt a little like a teenager who’d found out her longtime crush liked her back.
However, my reminiscing was cut short. The ride to Hagerstown was anything but smooth. Thirty minutes in and we were stopped on the highway by something big.
It was a troll to be exact.
The troll was humanoid, wide and tall. It was large, the size of a monster truck and almost fifteen feet tall. Its head was the width of its body and it barely had a neck. The troll was the color of sand with thick, calloused skin. It had dense, bushy, black eyebrows, which almost covered its beady, black eyes. Its mouth took up the length of the bottom half of its face, which held two sharp, protruding lower canines. It wore clothes. I could only assume clothes it made, because nothing human ever came in a size that large. On its head grew coarse, spiky, black hair.
I looked over at Charles who was already looking at me with a question in his eyes. We both wondered if this was the same troll we’d escaped earlier. I had to believe that it was. There weren’t that many trolls in the world but they typically didn’t move locations.
“Anyone got a missile?” joked a soldier over the phone.
“We have to keep shooting it. Only way to get it down,” said another soldier.
“How many bullets do you want to lose on this guy?” I asked, leaning towards the front seat. “Or for that matter, lives.”
“He’s on the move!” shouted another soldier over the com.
I strained and looked out of the window. The troll had squared up and was stomping towards us. His large hands were in fists. The car shook and I threw out my arm as if that would steady myself.
Trolls were odd creatures. They were generally territorial and didn’t go about seeking out humans. Trolls didn’t eat humans for sustenance but would gobble up a person just to be rid of them. We tended to annoy trolls.
Of course, all I knew about trolls was what I learned on the internet, so my knowledge was pretty faulty. Maybe instead of being in a mountain or forest or…under a bridge, this troll thought the highway was his? This was a brave, new world and it was possible.
“We’ll surround him and fire,” said a soldier over the com.
“He just wants us off this road,” I stated.
They ignored me.
“We have to kill it, Mina,” Charles stated. “He’s not a big, friendly, giant.”
“He’s wearing clothes. He’s a conscious being who doesn’t pray on humans,” I replied. “Look at him.”
The troll stopped walking and stomped its car-sided foot into the pavement, causing a crack. His face was in a scowl, mouth upside down, bushy eyebrows connected.
“Erik was right, you are way too trusting, sis,” Charles muttered, shaking his head.
“He’s angry. He just wants us to leave.”
“How do you know that?” the driving soldier asked, looking at me through the rearview mirror.
“Gooooo!” bellowed the troll in a deep, thunderous voice.
I gave the soldier a pointed look in the mirror.
“We should still kill it,” said the passenger seat soldier.
I shook my head. “His name was probably Bob nine years ago. He worked as a chemistry teacher at the local high school. He was dating the home ed teacher, Martha.”
The three men in the SUV turned to me. “How do you know all that?” driver soldier asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t, I’m just guessing. But not every monster just came up out of the ground or sea or caves. Some were turned, just like us.”
The soldiers frowned and looked at each other.
“Let me put it to sleep.”
Charles nudged me with his elbow and leaned in. “Remember what Erik said about showcasing too much of your powers,” he whispered. “Plus, we’ve got to help the next people who come around. They might not be able to just sleepy time him.”
“Fire!” came a command from the walkie-talkie.
“Sorry,” the driver said. The soldiers jumped out with their automatics and commenced to take down the large beast in a blaze of bullets.
Bob the troll let out inhuman cries as he was hit. He kicked a soldier and the poor man went flying far down the highway, like a football. If that soldier was human, he wouldn’t survive that.
/> Bob slowed his kicks and stomping but he wasn’t down for the count. I covered my eyes just as he stomped on a female soldier who was in werebear form. Even in her paranormal shape, I didn’t have hope that she would survive such a crushing.
“He’s not bleeding out. How are they going to kill him?” Charles asked, hanging his arms off the seat in front of him.
A supernaturally large animal jumped high onto ‘Bob’s’ right side. A jackal. He was huge. Not the size of the troll but he was probably eight feet tall. His furry body was wide and it moved on two feet. The fur was a golden beige and his back had a thick, black-and-white strip of fur. His eyes were a rusted orange color and they looked almost demonic coupled with a mouth full of monstrously sharp teeth. One bite from him would mean the loss of a limb. He looked almost like the Egyptian god Anubis. Except his body was less human and much larger. He also didn’t have any clothes on so I tried not to peek below.
“Crap, Erik’s out there.” I opened the car door and jumped out just in time to see Bob the Troll drop to his knees. He sent a mini earthquake down the road and I fell forward, landing on my hands and knees.
Erik the Jackal was struggling with Bob. Thankfully, the soldiers had ceased fire to avoid harming Erik and a few focused on dragging the injured female soldier away from the troll.
Erik bit into the troll’s shoulder, taking out a large chunk. Bob punched him in the snout and Erik fell back onto the pavement.
I sucked in a sharp breath, fingers itching to help but having no idea how.
The troll got back on his feet as soldiers began to fire again. Erik the Jackal looked slightly dazed but he got back up right before the troll could stomp on him.
“Fall,” I commanded in a scream, having no idea if my one-word order would even work. A burst of pain ripped through my head, causing me to dry heave. It felt like the worst migraine ever. But as quickly as it had come, it left
The troll stumbled but seemed to struggle against gravity to avoid hitting the pavement. Eventually, my power won and the troll fell to his knees, bloodied, and battered.
At that moment, Jackal Erik took the opportunity to punch a hole through Bob’s chest. Bob swiped a hand out at Erik and missed as Erik took a large leap in the air, almost soaring. Bob eventually fell sideways, causing another rumble on the ground.
Erik lowered his jackal hand and I could see him holding what I could only determine was a bloody heart the size of a basketball.
“Damn,” Charles called from behind me.
The scary thing that was Erik lifted the heart and…bit into it with his monstrous mouth. My stomach churned.
“Dude…” Charles cried out.
None of the soldiers spoke. Some were in shock and others were unaffected. A large gray werewolf, a foot shorter than Erik’s jackal, walked over on two feet to Erik who handed him the bloody heart before turning and heading back to the car. The werewolf walked over to the injured werebear and fed the heart to the solider, who was lying on the side of the street with two human soldiers.
“What the fuck…” Charles murmured, sounding as freaked out as I was feeling.
I walked over to Erik’s car where he was now human and standing, a bit bruised and battered, in sweat pants and a T-shirt. He wiped his bloody mouth with a rag and I bit my lower lip, trying to control my frenzied emotions. It was easy to forget that he was part animal. He ate things that would make me gag or even sick. He kissed me with the same mouth that he used to tear the flesh off of various things.
Do not freak out, Amina. He is still a man. A paranormal man but you are paranormal too.
Don’t make him feel bad, said Left side Amina
But he ate a heart! said Right side Amina.
Yes, that is a new thing, said Left Side.
I know, right! said Right side.
“You ate a heart!” I blurted out.
Erik observed me with cool eyes. “Yes,” he said, voice neutral.
I paused for a beat. “Is that… Normal?”
He gave me a weary look. Then walked closer, stopping inches from me. My body screamed to step back but I was a tough girl and I held my ground. He wasn’t the nightmarish Anubis-looking creature anymore. He was hot and moody Erik. He was good.
He reached out and put a hand on my chest above my left breast. “Your power is in your heart. That’s the source. When a were eats a heart, we gain strength.”
I looked in his eyes, understanding taking hold. “So, eating part of the troll heart gave you more power?”
He nodded and moved his hand away. It now made sense that the soldier werewolf fed the heart to the other were soldier to help her heal. I took the rag from him and wiped at the remaining blood he missed on his face. “I’ve never seen weres do that before.”
He gave a quick shrug. “Some might not know about it.”
I nodded slowly and gave him the rag back.
“You okay?”
I forced a smile on my face. I would be. “I’m still learning. Bear with me.”
He brushed my face with the back of his hand in a slow, gentle caress, then abruptly stopped as if catching himself. “Damn it, woman,” he muttered before turning to head into the truck. “I didn’t think I’d care this much.”
I frowned. “About what?”
He stopped before getting in the car. “About what you thought of me.”
My heart did a silly skip-a-beat thing and I smiled. “It’s because I’m awesome,” I called back.
Before he got in the truck I swore I heard him say, “That you are.”
When we got back to New Hagerstown, Charles and I were given a clean bill of health to fight another day. We had the full backing of the government to find and end David and his cohorts, now that there was proof that the prison existed.
In the meantime, my thoughts were on Silver Spring.
“We’re not going,” Charles said two evenings later.
I was in the kitchen, cooking for real. A roast chicken, collard greens, and mashed potatoes from the local grocery store, which was really an indoor farmer’s market now. I was feeling quite domestic. We had invited our new gang over for a potluck dinner.
“Come again?” I said, stirring the mashed potatoes.
Charles reached into a top cabinet and pulled out a few wine glasses. “You said we’d leave when we freed the others. We haven’t done that,” Charles answered, walking to the dining area next to the kitchen.
“I think I said we’d stop at Hagerstown first because it was closer. We did. We got them to help. All we can do now is try to find the others, which the government is doing.”
“Right, so why would we leave before then? We can keep trying the locator spells or something.”
I stopped stirring and put the lid over the pot, turning off the stove. “Charles, we can go to Silver Spring and then come back. We aren’t giving up.”
The doorbell rang then and Charles went to answer it as I checked on the chicken in the oven. I was feeling unsettled. I knew Charles hadn’t wanted to go to Silver Spring in the first place but we had no idea how long it could take to help the others. I had to get at least one thing resolved.
“Hey, Mina,” Felix greeted me. “I brought homemade lasagna.” He placed two covered containers on the round kitchen table behind me.
“No, you didn’t.” I smiled at him, hands on my hips.
“And, I baked a chocolate cake. Boom!” He threw his hands in the air.
“Aw, shucks. Felix trying to make me gain weight in the supernatural apocalypse.” I laughed, moving my neck around.
“I made salad,” Faith announced, coming into the small kitchen.
“Aww snap, Faith trying to make me lose weight in the supernatural apocalypse.”
Faith laughed and put her large bowl of rabbit food next to the real people food. “I figure we should have a few more vegetables on the plate tonight.”
Lisa called from the dining room. “I brought wine!”
“I brought whiskey,
” Erik added, also in the dining room
“I brought my love and affection!” Charles cracked.
“I can’t eat that,” Felix muttered with a frown.
“The food’s ready. So, this is buffet style, eat where you like! Happy Friday, we’re alive!” I exclaimed, feeling, for the moment, genuinely content.
Faith headed out of the kitchen. “Get me to the liquor.”
I smiled. I was surrounded by people I’d only known for two weeks, but we were already like old friends. I couldn’t explain the chemistry we seemed to have with each other. Sure, hard times could make people closer but we all knew there was more to it. We were connected by more than shared dreams of Silver Spring and I had hopes that by going to that town we could find out about those ties.
“Felix and Lisa, can you both help me convince Charles to head to Silver Spring now?” I asked, peeking out of the kitchen.
Lisa, grabbing a plate off of the glass dining room table, turned to Charles. “Why don’t you want to go?” she asked.
“What if we go and the place is nothing but trouble? Now we have a new issue to resolve taking us away from our main goal, which is to free our friends. I say we resolve one thing first before going to another,” Charles answered, giving a slight shrug.
“But what if Silver Spring can help you find your friends? I mean, it’s a town full of supernaturals,” Felix pondered, walking in the kitchen with a plate.
“Yeah, Phillip found me and helped me escape. Maybe he can do the same for one of our friends who is still captured,” I offered, taking the chicken out of the oven with some mittens I found in the nearby drawer.
“That’s a lot of guessing. We know we have a good thing here. And this town could use our help,” Erik stated.
I placed the chicken on the stove top and looked over at Erik with twisted lips. I’d foolishly thought he’d have my back. He looked at me and shrugged and I narrowed my eyes. We hadn’t had any alone time since our make out session a couple of days ago and I was beginning to think it was a one-time deal.
