Chapter 15
I opened my eyes and saw nothing but indistinct shapes and lights. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. It hurt too much. I tried to press my hand against my throbbing forehead, but I couldn’t. I tried again but something was keeping both arms from budging even an inch. This time my eyes flew open, and I fought past the urge to close them again until things came back into focus.
The room was dark, save for the 40 watt hanging over my head. It hung still, no movement or sway whatsoever, telling me whoever had turned it on had done so some time ago.
Rope scratched across my skin each time I tried to move. A rag rubbed painfully against the corners of my mouth. I cried out but the sound was muffled. It took a minute to realize I’d been gagged.
I twisted my body, testing the mobility of whatever I was tied to. It rocked, the sound of metal scratching across itself broke my skin out into gooseflesh, but it didn’t move. Another jerk of my body, this time backwards, and I could feel it shift slightly in the same direction before settling back into place. It was on wheels, but by the looks of it the front wheels were taken off. In fact, the raw edges next to my feet looked like the metal had been cut through. After a little more inspecting, I realized I was sitting in a dismantled sidecar.
My heart climbed into my throat.
Everything had happened so fast. Why did I let my guard down? How could I be so stupid? I knew exactly what kind of man Frank was, and yet I stupidly let him make a fool out of me. Again.
My eyes searched the darkness beyond the light bulb’s reach, looking for a way out, a sign of rescue... hell, even Frank. I had no clue what he wanted from me, but maybe I would be able to stall him until help came.
But what help would be coming for me?
No one knew where I had been when he'd taken me. Liz still wasn’t speaking to me; she wouldn’t even know I was missing. How long had I been unconscious? An hour? A day? If I hadn’t been gone but a few hours, then no one at work would think anything of it. This is what happens when I make a point to not have a social life of any sort. No one knew I was in trouble.
No one.
I heard a boot scrape across the sawdust-covered floor and the panic rose again. He was coming. Coming to do what, I still didn’t know, but I was pretty damn certain it wasn’t to kiss and make up. If the fact that he had me immobilized wasn’t indicative to something much worse than a friendly chat, then the gag in my mouth was the nail in the coffin. People don’t normally gag their friends. It’s bad manners.
A door opened behind me, the hinges sighing with years of neglect. It was probably safe to say, wherever he’d brought me was just as forgotten.
I listened to the heavy footsteps approaching behind me. I knew the swagger, the rhythm of that stride, quite well. One, two, three... He kept coming without even a pause. Eight, nine...
Nine steps and he stopped. His heat beat against my back. How close was he?
"Sorry 'bout the R-2. I just needed to get you somewhere to talk. You haven't exactly been cooperative, you know. Are you comfortable?"
I pulled at my restraints again, my wrists jerking painfully against the scratchy fibers of the rope. R-2, I thought. He fucking roofied me.
A few months before I took off, Frank procured a shipment of Rohypnol for a local frat house. I guess he’d kept some of it for personal use. Lucky me. It all clicked into place, then. Why he had looked so relieved when I took the water, the exhaustion. But he had drunk it too. So why wasn't he effected by the drug?
His breath caressed the side of my neck, sending a shiver of warmth along my skin. I turned my head but he wasn’t there. Fingers traced along my other shoulder, and I turned to find him smiling down at me with that ever-cocky grin. I breathed for a moment. Just concentrated on filling my lungs and letting it out. I wanted to slow my pulse, to keep that satisfaction from him even if he couldn’t actually tell the effect he was having on me. Sometimes, I wondered if he could.
"You know, I really didn’t want it to come to this. I mean I’m all for tying up a beautiful woman, but I usually like to keep it in the bedroom. You just left me no other options, Harls," His tone was soft, calm, and completely out of place for the situation.
He moved his hand from my shoulder and stroked the back of his fingers along my jaw line. "I told you and told you. I just wanna talk. We have a lot to discuss and now, thanks to your stubborn ass attitude, we don’t have a lot of time."
Don’t have a lot of time? What did he mean? Was he going to kill me? So many questions ran through my mind as I sat there, completely stripped of my ability to voice them. His fingers found the gag and traced along the edges of it, giving the barest of touches to my lips. I had to close my eyes to keep from seeing his face as he did. There was something wrong with how much he seemed to enjoy what he had done to me.
"I know you’re not as stupid as you like to make people believe. I mean, at first I thought you were. Sure," he smiled. "But you are so much more than even you realize."
His hand dropped back down to my shoulder, and I felt his fingertips grip over it. Not painfully. Just firm enough to let me know he was there. I opened my eyes then, feeling it was better for my health to not make him feel like I wasn’t listening.
"I’ve had plans for us for a long time, Harley. I was going to open your eyes to a world you could never imagine. Give you power you never, in your wildest dreams, thought you could have. But I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until you were ready. Then you stole that opportunity away from me," His gentle massage of my shoulder grew harder as he let his frustration out on my skin, his fingertips digging in with bruising force now and I whimpered into the rag. "You surprised me. I haven't been surprised in a long time. I had no idea you had the guts to take off like that. To lie to my face and tell me you weren't going anywhere. But I gotta ask. Did you really think I wouldn't find you?"
I stared up at him. He gave that rich yet raspy chuckle of his.
"Sorry. Forgot," he said, and for a moment I thought he might take off the gag.
No such luck. His hand snaked into my hair, rubbing fingertips almost possessively against my skull before he grasped a handful just in the back. The yank pulled a soft, distressed sound from me, and he maneuvered my head so that I was looking up at him, his face barely an inch from mine.
"You really should learn to close that beautiful mouth of yours more often. Take a minute to listen. Maybe it wouldn’t have had to come to this." His breath danced over my lips, and he tapped a finger against them.
I didn’t dare break eye contact. A gleam of darkness I’d never seen before, not even at his worst, filled his eyes. Something violent and dangerous was moving just behind the surface of those beautiful brown eyes, waiting to be freed.
"Now be a good girl, and cooperate, and I’ll take it off." He let go of my hair and moved to the knot holding the rag in my mouth. "You can try and scream, but it won’t do you any good. No one is close enough to hear it. So do yourself a favor and save that voice of yours."
My head tugged back a bit as he worked the knot, but after a few moments, the gag loosened. I leaned my head forward and let the thing fall away from my mouth as I stretched my lips and moved my jaw around.
I didn’t scream for help. Goodie for me. Mostly, it was because I knew he had no reason to lie about us being secluded. He wouldn't waste the energy on lying over trivial things like that. If Frank Essex wanted seclusion then he found seclusion. Was I scared that his plans were something absolutely horrible? Of course!
But underneath that fear was the desire—no, the need—to understand why he was doing this. I wanted to know what drove him to kidnap me and tie me up, what fueled him to treat me the way he had been these last few years. He’d opened the door, and now I wanted to peek inside.
"So? What are you going to do?" I asked breathlessly. I'd settled for a direct approach. If I gave him direct, maybe he would do the same for me. "I mean you keep telling me about these big plans, but you've yet to act."
"You didn’t know, did you?"
I wrenched my chin away from him. "Know what?"
"Interesting," he said softly. He stood for a moment and mulled something over. "I'd only met one other like you before. I figured you could feel it or sense it or something, but you really don't know what you are, do you?"
"What I am," the words came out in a desperate raise of my voice, "is sick and tired of your bullshit. In every way, I am done with you. With all of this. So, if you are going to kill me then fucking kill me. Grow some fucking balls and finish—"
The back of his hand crashed against my mouth, silencing me. I breathed, deeply and evenly, as I reigned in the surge of fury coursing through my veins. Lashing out would, obviously, get me nowhere but hurt. My tongue darted out and I hissed at the stinging pain on my lower lip.
"How long?" I whispered so softly even I barely heard.
"What?" Frank asked.
"How long?" Louder this time, my eyes rolling up to stare at him through my lashes. "How long have you been a werewolf? From the start?"
He stared down at me, rubbing the back of his hand as if trying to rub away the feel of his knuckles crashing against my face.
"No. Not really. When we met I was still human."
So I had gotten to see Frank, the real Frank, without the monster. Was it time as this animal that had driven him to become the monster he was today? If that were true, Liz couldn't have been the sweet and kind girl she was. She'd been this way since birth, according to her. She was a werewolf longer than Frank and she wasn't a raging bloodthirsty psychopath.
"So you were turned," I said. It wasn't a question. "Who turned you?"
His eyebrows rose slightly. Maybe it was a personal question, like asking a woman how much she weighed. His brow relaxed again and he shook his head, a strained smile forcing itself on his lips.
"We're getting sidetracked. We don't have much time, babe. I told you there's a lot I want to tell you. That little nugget will just have to wait for another day."
He moved to me once again, this time lowering down closer to my level. I just stared at the man I thought I knew. Two years. I had been with a werewolf, sleeping next to a dangerous blood-thirsty animal, for two years. Without a word, he lifted the rag up again and wedged it into my mouth before I could argue, sliding his hands along the cloth to tie behind my head again.
When he had me effectively silenced once more, he crouched down—elbows resting on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his mouth—and just stared at me. The rag in my mouth tasted dirty, like engine oil. It was suffocating and infuriating, and I let him know just how pissed I was as I stared into those brown eyes.
"I’m gonna do something for you I don’t do for anyone. Take it as proof of what you mean to me. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened that night. You know, the night you ran out on me. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so listen up."
Like I had a choice.
"I got a call from some guys down in Atlanta. Been talking to them for months, discussing the pack’s future. They were supposed to join up. Fall in line behind me and mine. The brothers you saw lead the hunt, Levi and Jordan. They were part of that pack."
There was something in his eyes then. Someone had made a fool of him. No one gets away with that. They just don’t. Hell, I thought I had managed to. Apparently, I was dead fucking wrong.
The silence stretched on for a moment, and I thought maybe he was just going to stop. Leave me with a magnificent lead up and then leave me dangling like a hooked fish. I wanted him to keep going. I was ready to hear, after all this time, what had driven him to murder a friend in cold blood.
"Turns out," he continued, "I wasn't the only one talking. Theo knew we were gonna take them on a hunt and got in touch with D'Angelo. See, D wasn't exactly thrilled about Chuck. In his mind, when Chuck died the wolves should have been loyal to him. So he used the hunt, and you, to ambush me. He wanted to take the wolves with blood."
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Instead he focused on the scarred and calloused knuckles on his hands, running thumbs over each knot and scar. I remembered how D’Angelo’s head looked little more than a gelatinous pile of meat when Frank was finished. There was so much blood it had been hard to tell what was Frank’s and what had belonged to the corpse.
"Hijacking packs ain’t exactly a new trend. You beat your challenger down until they cow to you, they depart with their tails between their legs, and you just wait for the next challenge. But it was what that mother fucker said..." He took in a deep breath. The air between me and him got hotter. "He said, ‘You’re gonna give your wolves over, or I’ll take everyone you ever loved and make them one of us. In fact, I’m gonna start with that pretty little piece outside. She’ll be my bitch in every way by the time I’m done with her.’ He was a dead son of a bitch."
His eyes darted up to meet mine, and the blood draining from my face. Those eyes were aflame with rage, pure unadulterated anger burning like amber fire. I had never seen such a look of murderous intent before. I thought I had, but I was so wrong.
"I wasn’t going let him take you from me," he growled through gritted teeth. "Not after I had put so much time into you."
I stared at him in disbelief. If I was to believe what he was telling me, then he killed that man to protect me. Trying to take over packs was normal for werewolves. That hadn’t been what pissed him off. It was the thought of this guy doing, whatever it was he’d meant to do, that sent Frank over the edge.
But this wasn’t some romantic hero saving the damsel in distress. This was something deeper. Something I was not yet ready to understand. Frank had laid claim to me on an animal level. Put time into me, he said. Time for what? What were his plans?
He stood up, breaking my train of thought. Was that it? He had explained himself, explained his actions, and now what? Kill me? Why would he do that when he had gone so far as to kill a man over me?
A pop, a hiss, and a yellow light erupted from the other side of the room. A cloud of smoke swirled up and around his head as he took in a drag of his cigarette. I found myself wanting one. What an odd thing to think while strapped down and gagged.
He took another drag, and his eyes slid back to me before he plucked the cigarette from his lips, sucking air in through his teeth and pushing the white smoke out of the corner of his mouth. God, I wanted to talk, to ask him the millions of questions floating in and out of my head.
"So, I took care of business. As usual," he started again before letting loose a bitter laugh. "I killed that son of a bitch to protect you, and you just took off on me. I’ll admit, I was impressed. Pissed... but impressed. I didn’t think you had the balls to take off like that. To steal my bike and ride away. You surprised me, Harley. I've said it before. Not many people manage that."
And he'd killed the last guy that did.
While that unspoken truth hung in the air between us, I watched him. He took another drag of his smoke and rolled his shoulders. He was on edge. I recognized the body language. Something was distracting him from his thoughts, a persistent niggle in the back of his mind that he was trying to push aside.
He spun around quickly, his eyes tracking something unseen and unheard by me. He shushed me with pursed lips even though I had said nothing. I couldn't, but he still found it necessary.
Frank walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the hanging light bulb and a tangle of emotions in my head. His movements were so careful as he slipped out of the door that he reminded me of an animal stalking prey. Maybe he had heard something outside? Werewolves had super-hearing or something, right?
I realized I really had no idea what werewolves could do. Other than what little L
iz had explained, of course. I wrestled with the probability of getting whoever’s attention. I could scream, or try and rock the sidecar around until they heard me and came. If our visitor could hear me, then Frank could too and it would bring him right back here.
That was the last thing I wanted.
The door eased open, and my eyes snapped over to it, expecting Frank to waltz in. Instead, another figure moved silently into the room.
"Shit," he whispered when he saw me.
He kept his body partially crouched and stepped out of the shadowed doorway. It was Detective Sheppard. I growled against the rag in my mouth.
"Shhh," he demanded as he slipped behind me, resting his gun on my shoulder and training it on the door across from us. His free hand worked the knot behind my head. "I got you, Harley. We're getting out of here, I promise."
He was trying to be reassuring. Bless his heart, but I wasn't completely assured. Not with an obsessive, werewolf ex-boyfriend lurking around. The rag dropped from my mouth and I spit out the grease and grime that plagued my tongue.
"Untie my wrists," I said in a harried whisper. I tried to look at him over my shoulder. "He'll be back any second. You need to get me undone and get out of here—"
A heavy clunk rang out behind me, and I watched the detective drop to the floor like a sack of flour. I twisted around as much as the chair allowed and saw Frank staring at me, eyes wild.
He disappeared for a second before I heard something dragging over the concrete floor. He pulled Sheppard's body around me by his ankle until he lay completely in view. His other hand held an old, metal, dented gas can which he dropped to the ground next to the cop's head.
His eyes bore into me, a wild jealousy burning in that stare. They screamed his outrage at the detective trying to take me away from him. That was not allowed. Me leaving on my own terms was apparently one thing, but having another man steal me away was something completely different. It was a call for violence of the worst kind. He pulled his gaze away from me and looked down to the offender for a few heartbeats, visibly trying to keep his temper in check.
"Pack or prey, Harley," Frank finally said, nostrils flaring with his deep and measured breaths.
I stared at him, completely swallowed by my fear. Afraid to say something. Afraid to stay silent. I was afraid to make the wrong move or give him the wrong answer. Not only was my skin on the line, but now Detective Sheppard's was as well.
"What?" I settled for simple, honest ignorance.
"I said," his voice was edged with impatience, but he paused to swallow it down, "pack... or prey. You have a very simple choice to make. Let me turn you. Let me bring you to the life you were born for. I know I haven't been the easiest guy to be with. I'm not an idiot, Harls. I know what I've done to you. You need to believe me that there was a purpose to it. I needed to be sure. I needed to know you were strong enough to handle this."
I stared at him in stunned silence. He wanted me to turn into a werewolf like him. That’s what all of this was about? But why? I guess he took my silence to heart because he continued then.
"Or if you don't want to be pack, then you'll be prey. Whether it's by me or by your... mystery admirer... the result will be the same. Something is coming for you Harley. So you can either take the strength and backup I'm offering or you can continue to be the weak little human. Fragile and always afraid."
I watched him carefully. His intentions were laid on the table, and now he was waiting for an answer. Pack or prey. Not much of a choice if you ask me.
Sure, Frank. I think I am going to go with being eaten to death. The problem was I really did not want option A, either. My choices were pretty much to die or to be a monster for the rest of my life. Could I pick door number three?
The detective groaned, and it drew both mine and Frank's attention back down to him. Frank whispered some obscenity under his breath and reached to his hip, drawing out his knife.
Shit. He was going to kill him. Or maybe he was going to toy with him a bit first. Make him suffer. The different scenarios played in my mind as Frank made his way over to the still body and bent at the knees to get closer. He moved the knife towards his face and the glint of light reflecting off the blade made me cry out to him.
"No!" I shouted. "Please Frank, don't kill him!"
He looked at me over his shoulder as he hovered over the detective's unconscious body.
"Why shouldn't I? He’s trying to take you from me. Just like D’Angelo. Just like that pretty boy outside that restaurant."
I choked on my pulse, my stomach dropping at the mention of Braedon. It had been Frank. Somehow, I already knew but I hadn’t wanted to believe it.
"He found us, didn’t he? It's only a matter of time before he connects you to me. Why would you let him live knowing you're probably going to go down for all the shit we've done?" He asked with an air of genuine curiosity. It was like he couldn't understand why I wouldn't let him kill the detective to make sure I didn't end up in handcuffs.
"He's trying to save me." I wasn't exactly sure how to get him to understand.
"And as soon as he's got you safe and sound he's gonna slap a metal bracelet on you and cart you off," he argued as he swiveled a bit on the balls of his feet. He wasn't moving away from him, but he had lowered the knife. One victory at a time.
"You killed a man, Frank. If you would kill a man just for threatening me, then why would you kill a man for trying to keep me safe? Please..."
Something shifted in his eyes. I wasn't arguing or telling him what to do. I was pleading, asking him for a favor. The fact that he had pulled back enough to hear me out was a good sign, but he was still too close. Still had his blade in hand. He was considering it... but I needed more. At that moment I came to an understanding. I understood why he had killed before. I even found myself agreeing with it. If someone intended to hurt someone I cared about then what would stop me from doing everything I could to stop it?
D had invited death by threatening Frank's loved ones, and realization dawned on me that I was the only one who fit the bill. Frank's definition of love may have been warped, twisted even, but in his own way he cared about me. And it was enough to drive him to kill for me.
But Detective Shepard had no intent to harm me. It was nothing more than the fear of being caught that put the knife in Frank's hand now, not the instinct to protect someone he loved. I couldn't watch him kill another innocent man. Wouldn’t.
"Pack," I said. My jaw clenched tight, and I tried to breathe past the rising strain in my chest. "I choose pack. Turn me, but only if you let him go."
His eyes stretched wider. He honestly hadn't expected me to cooperate. Whether or not he would have turned me regardless of my consent, I will never know. He probably would have, but now I owed him. Instead of having me hate him for doing something against my will, I would be indebted to him. My life for the cop’s. I couldn't put blame on him now that it was my choice. My decision.
My fault.
"Alright," he said, sliding the knife back into its sheath on his belt and standing up once more. The wide-eyed surprise slid into that all-too-familiar grin. The grin that said he won, once again. He made his way over to me and leaned forward, resting hands on the sidecar behind my elbows in order to hold himself eye level with me, "I'll let him go. This time."
His breathing was labored, his breath fiery as it beat against my face. The room lit up as the moon slid closer to the height of its ascension, breaking the clouds to filter moonlight down through the holes in the roof. The energy in the room was strangling me. A thick blanket of heat that flowed from the man in front of me and from the moon above had snaked its way down my throat, coating my lungs.
His body jerked violently, almost pulling the sidecar off its wheels. When he opened his eyes again his face was paling, his brow slicked with sweat. While he didn't appear to be doing much of anything on the outside, the exhaustion in his eyes and sweat on his brow told me there was much, much more going on inside of him
.
It hadn't been like this with Liz. Her shift had been fluid, easy, natural. Frank looked as if he were boiling on the inside, waiting to explode from within.
And that is almost exactly what happened.
He staggered back away from me, his fingertips digging into the sidecar and my arm as they slid across. He was fighting to let go, not hold on. His arms, all taught skin and flexed muscle, cradled in against himself. The veins in his neck throbbed so large I could see them from my seat.
The first thing to change was his eyes. That burning amber fire spread further, taking over the near entirety of his eye, his pupil shrinking. He turned those monstrous eyes, those wolf eyes, to me, and a fleeting sense of panic and desperation pleaded in them before an inhuman scream threw his head back and broke our gaze.
His jaw pushed out, his teeth elongating to curve over his top lip. The bones and muscles moved beneath his skin with a life of their own, stretching and bulking in all the right places and shrinking in others. He grew six inches between his spine and legs, the calves snapping backward with a sickening pop. The urge to scream was very much present as I watched his body contort and disfigure. A body I knew very well, or used to think so anyway.
His upper lip and nose caught up with his lower jaw, stretching in a rounded snout; protruding much further than a human's should but not quite as long and narrow as a wolf's. A succession of cracks and crunches beat along his spine, the vertebrae pushing out of his back, revealed as he grew out of his shirt. He had shredded most of his clothes and now stood before me completely nude. As nature intended, if nature had meant to make his bones longer than his body and his form a strange mix of man and beast.
I was thankful, so thankful, that I hadn’t eaten today. I was afraid I might lose anything I’d eaten.
When all movement finally stopped, he stood in front of me silent and breathing heavily. He was unlike anything my mind could imagine. Unlike Liz, who had shifted into a slightly larger version of a common wolf, Frank remained on two long legs. His neck was long and thin holding up a head that was man in the skull and wolf in everything else. Sandy fur covered him from his football-sized feet—or were they paws?—to the tips of his erect, pointed ears. Only his torso and... other regions... appeared to be bare flesh.
I wanted to scream, to let loose as it forced its way up my throat and begged to shoot out around me, but my throat tightened around it and wouldn't let it free. All of the wolves I'd seen so far looked like real wolves. He wasn't a man anymore, and he wasn't wolf. He was a monster.
His eyes zoned in on me, and we locked eyes. His shoulders, if werewolves had shoulders, rose and fell deeply with each breath. I could barely breathe.
The detective screamed as he scrambled on the floor. He looked like a small animal scurrying away, trying to run from the big bad meat-eater coming for him. Apparently I was not the only one that thought it, because Frank shifted his weight and stepped towards him.
"No!" I shouted, turning his attention back to me instead of the midnight snack on the floor. "We had a deal."
This stopped him, though he didn't look at me just yet. He stared down at the detective for a heartbeat, his face turned so that I couldn't see it, but I didn't need to. The sudden paleness in the man's face told me everything.
"Hey. I'm over here," I felt like he wasn't listening to me. Could he control his instinct to hunt while in this body? It made me wonder just how much of the wolf took over when they shifted. "Come on, baby. I'm all yours. Leave him alone."
He turned and looked at me. Relief swelled in my chest as his attention was redirected away from Detective Sheppard. I just tried not to dwell on what it had redirected to.
He took a step towards me, and I could feel my spine recoil. He was so much bigger than I thought and seemed to grow even bigger the closer he got to me. Or maybe I was just feeling very, very small tied down to this seat. Either way.
His nose pushed into my hair and breathed in. It made my skin crawl, but anything was better than him turning on the detective again.
A metal click focused my attention on the man in the corner again. Sheppard held up his gun, training it on the wolf at my side. His grip was shaky, much shakier than it should have been for a trained marksman.
For a moment I felt like maybe this would all go away. If he shot Frank now, then I wouldn't have to do this. I would be free of all the bullshit that came with him. I would be free of everything. And then I remembered Liz and her wounds when she revealed herself to me.
They’d been deep. Killing blows for any normal human, and yet there was nothing to show for it now. Just smooth, unmarred skin where she’d been torn open.
"Don't shoot him! It won't help!"
Sheppard’s gaze flicked from the monster to me, and I didn't miss the indecision in his eyes. I couldn't believe I was saying it myself, but I just couldn't live with myself if he shot Frank only to have him react in the bloodiest way possible.
"Please," I said to Sheppard's unspoken question. "You shoot him, he'll kill us both. I'll be fine."
I almost believed it.
Frank had moved behind me while I was dealing with Sheppard and brushed his fingers up my shoulder, tracing up the side of my neck to push my hair aside. The heat of his breath followed in the wake of his sharp nails, his muzzle hovering over my shoulder as the hand continued to move around the back of my neck and curled around the other side.
"Flesh to fur, Harley. The moon will bind us." The words were hot against my neck and were coated in a deeper growl than I’d ever hear in Frank's voice. "As beast is one with man, so you will be one with me."
His teeth sank into my shoulder and tore a scream from my throat. Dozens of razor-sharp blades ravaged skin and muscle. Heat spread through the bite, setting my blood to boiling as it ran out of the wound and over my shoulder. My screaming stopped when my throat grew hoarser and I crumbled into hysteric sobs.
It hurt. It hurt so badly. I had never, in my life, felt anything so horrible, so all-encompassing and complete as this. Pain became the only thought, the only feeling my body could wrap itself around and it didn't stop there. A deep burning sensation spread throughout my muscles and through my veins, reaching every part of my body until I was enveloped in white-hot agony.
I used the detective as my focal point to anchor me and keep me from succumbing to the void that tugged at me. I stared at him while he stared at Frank, or what used to be Frank, and watched as he mirrored what I must have looked like when Liz revealed herself to me. Every muscle in Detective Sheppard's body was tight as steel, frozen in place as the overwhelming shock took control of him.
The last thing I felt, other than the sharp suck of his teeth pulling from my body, was a large, hot, disfigured hand sliding over my hair and then I released my tether from consciousness, giving in to the pain.
A distant voice called my name. Once. Then again. It sounded far away, like someone was standing at one end of a tunnel with me at the other. It took far too long for me to connect Sheppard’s voice with his face as it hung over me. He stared down at me and he was saying something but sound didn't quite seem to match with his lips.
I'm here, I thought. But my arms couldn’t move. My mouth couldn’t form words.
I heard him say, "Stay with me," but didn’t understand. I was right there. Where did he think I was going?
Deny the Moon Page 28
