Chapter 17
July 14th 2011 7:35 a.m.
The first sound that found me, after the wolf's howl, was a strange mechanical beep. It was slow and drawn out. A rhythm that promised nothing and kept me waiting even still. Slowly, my body came back to me. Or maybe I came back to my body. I am not quite sure which.
My eyes fluttered open to an attack of bright fluorescent light and slammed shut again. Don't make me look at that bright light again. I want to go back to the woods, to the wolf and the scent of fresh rain. I thought, maybe, if I just could keep my eyes closed then I could find my way back, but a shuffle of feet drew me back to that damnable light.
"She's waking up," a soft voice rasped, and I heard more shuffling on the other side of me.
"Harley?" a deeper voice said, and I could cry at the hopelessness in it.
"Harley, wake up babe. That's right just wake up. We're here. We're waiting for you," the softer voice said again. A woman. Something about that voice made me want to jump for joy, but I still couldn’t control my body.
My eyes fluttered open, fighting against the harsh white light. I moved my head to the side of me from where the woman's voice was coming. She was a blur of yellow and pink. I tried to ask her something, but the words garbled together in my throat and refused to come out.
"Shit, she really is waking up." The deeper voice sounded panicked, and then I heard a louder, "Nurse! Come on, angel. You can do it."
Something shifted at the other side of me and another light shone suddenly into my eyes. No, I want to see Liz! Get that fucking thing away from me!
"Ms. Rayne are you there? Ms. Rayne, you're at St. Theresa's. You're in the hospital, honey. Can you open your eyes all the way for me?" She sounded different than the first voice. Louder, like she was shouting at me.
"Fff... li..." I tried to will my lips to move. "If..... ligh..." The lights, I screamed in my head. Turn the damn lights off and I will!
"Is she going to be ok?" Liz asked.
"She should be, now. We didn't get the labs back before she was taken into surgery, so we didn't know about the Rohypnol before we put her under. It could have been a very bad complication, but it looks like she is trying to come out of it. This is a good sign. Ms. Rayne can you squeeze my hand?"
What I wanted to do was flip her off, but I couldn't lift my hand. I did, however, try and squeeze her hand when she slipped her fingers into my palm. I didn't do much, but whatever I managed to do brought an outburst of relief from one of the people around me.
I opened my eyes a bit more, trying to make out the yellow and pink blur to my right. The other woman told the man in the room some things I didn't quite hear. I was too busy trying to focus on the woman now holding my hand.
My vision sharpened, and after a few moments I could make out Liz. Oh, she looked like hell, but there she was.
"Liz," I finally managed, and the single word made Liz fall over me. Ouch.
"Harley, oh Jesus! I've been here all night. We weren't sure if you were going to wake up at all the way they made it sound..."
I was slowly coming back to full consciousness and could see the back of a very large, bald man at the foot of my bed speaking with a woman in a white coat. Jackson, too? I watched him over Liz's shoulder as he turned around and moved towards us, his hands not going to me but to Liz. He pulled her off me and chuckled a bit, though it seemed empty. Nervous.
"Girl, are you crazy? She just had surgery and you’re going to bust her stitches."
"Oh, shit. Sorry." She looked at me again and her eyes looked even bluer than usual with the red skin rimming them. "Sorry Harley."
Jackson draped an arm over Liz's tiny frame and hugged her into him as he looked down at me. I couldn't tell if it was to comfort her or to protect me from another over-enthusiastic hug.
The doctor left the room with the nurse after a few moments. Apparently, she had been asking me some questions, but I hadn't really been able to focus. It wasn't that I didn't want to answer whatever questions she had for me. I just needed to talk to Liz. I needed to find out what all happened after I passed out.
Liz sat my bed up, and Jackson tried to get me a small glass of water. The dutiful nurse outside stopped him. I wasn't allowed to ingest anything yet. Not until they were sure I wouldn’t vomit it back up. I had vomited, or nearly vomited, enough in the past week that I was grateful for the precaution.
"How did I get here?" A natural question to start with. It was Jackson who answered.
"That cop that came by my house after I was shot? When you were visiting? He found you and brought you here. God, I am so sorry, Harley. I knew something was wrong, I just couldn't find you." His thumb ran over my hand.
"It's okay, Jackson. No one could have known what happened. It's not your fault."
I tried to reassure him but he looked so ashamed of himself. I couldn’t understand why he was beating himself up about this. He wasn't responsible for me. He couldn’t have stopped it.
"No, I should have known that asshole had something to do with this but," he stopped suddenly and shook his head. It was Liz who offered him a one-armed hug.
"Is the detective okay?" I finally asked.
"A bump to the head and a couple of bruises, but he's good. He was checked out and released yesterday." This from Liz. "He just left about an hour ago."
This bit of information surprised me. "He was here?"
"Yeah, he was hoping you would wake up. Seemed really shaken up about it. He didn't say a word except when he asked the docs about you. I guess he was afraid you wouldn't wake up. We all were."
"And Frank?"
"Gone. Slipped away while Detective Sheppard was trying to keep you from bleeding out is my guess."
My gut twisted painfully. Frank was still on the loose. And why would I have expected anything different? It was just me and the detective there when it all went down. I could only imagine he was still trying to wrap his head around what he’d witnessed while Frank made his grand escape.
"I guess I owe him some explanation."
"You don't owe him anything, Harley." Jackson spoke up, his eyes intent on me. "Nothing more than a thank you. Anything more and he might start to dig into things he doesn't need to know about."
I looked at him for a moment. What an odd thing to say. Jackson didn't know Frank or anything about my past. What did he think the detective would dig up? Liz's hand patted Jackson's shoulder and his face softened a touch. What was going on?
"Harley, I think what Jackson is trying to say is we don't need him trying to figure out anything about our kind. That bite is pretty vicious. The hospital has it on record as an animal attack, but I don't think a man like Detective Sheppard is going to be convinced."
"You know about Frank?" I asked.
"I do. I have since he came into the club. I could smell him from the bar. If I had known this all would have come from that I would've asked for Jackson's help sooner, but—"
"Wait." My hand moved away from Jackson's and I looked to him. "Why would Jackson matter in this? You know about... about what Liz is?"
He didn't say anything. All he gave me was a slow, uncertain nod.
"And... what would you be able to do to help about all this?"
My question hung in the air for a good while as they turned their eyes from me to each other. Neither one of them wanted to answer, which only made the realization I was having that much more concrete. I closed my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.
"Jackson, are you a werewolf too?"
I opened my eyes and watched as he nodded again, his eyes swimming with apologies.
What could I do? The truth of all of this was too much to fight against anymore. Werewolves were real. My ex-boyfriend was one. My best friend was one. Another close friend...yeah, he was one too. Apparently, werewolves were not only everywhere but a lot of them were a part of my life. I would just have to accept it and move on because I sure as hell couldn't replace Liz and Jackson.
Ja
ckson took Liz home a little bit later. And when I say that, I mean after about six hours and not without generous amounts of protesting and coercion. She didn’t want to leave my side, but the doctors and Jackson all thought it best if I had as little excitement as possible.
I was completely on board with that.
I managed to talk a nurse into detaching my I.V. leash long enough for a bathroom trip and was getting back in bed when my room phone rang. After an hour of sterile silence, it nearly startled me out of my hospital gown.
Poor Liz. She felt even more guilty that Jackson. No matter how much I tried to argue, she felt that her giving me the silent treatment was the tipping point in all this mess. I hate to break it to her, but this was a volcano just waiting to erupt and she had very little hand in it. Still, she seemed to be trying to make it up to me by calling me every ten minutes.
Jackson might have been able to usurp her from my room, but I would like to see him try to pry her cell away from her.
"Hey, Liz. I’m still breathing," I teased into the phone, finally settling back into my pillow.
"Good to know," the voice on the other end countered.
It wasn’t Liz. In fact, I would have never anticipated this particular caller. Her cool, emotionless voice chilled the playfulness I had been feeling seconds before.
"Lori?" I asked.
"Yes, Harley. It’s me."
"What- How did you know I was here?"
"Well, it was really just a matter of time before you wound up in the hospital, really. The kind of life you lead..."
I pulled the receiver away from my ear and blinked down at it. Forgetting the fact that that had been a really bitchy thing to say, Lori had made it clear our family was done with me. How did she hear about me being here? And why did she care enough to call?
"Look, let’s not make a thing out of this. This isn’t a social call," she said as I put the phone back to my ear again.
I was still wrapping my head around the fact that she called me. "Alright, then why did you call? Were you checking the morgue? Haven’t quite made it down there yet. Sorry to break the bad news to you."
Her sigh echoed in my ear. Hey, I hadn’t been the one to start with the bitch Olympics, but I could be a contender if she wanted to push it.
She didn’t say anything. Neither of us did. I could still hear her breathing on the other end. After about three minutes of nothing, I couldn’t take it anymore.
"Alright, well, this has been a lovely chat but—"
"Mom's sick," she blurted out. "Really sick, Harley. You need to come see her. Before..." She trailed off, unable to finish what I honestly didn't want to hear her say anyway. It was a small mercy.
"Mom and Dad made it pretty clear that it didn't matter if I was around. Why would she want me there now?" I asked through the dull aching in my chest.
"Things change. Mom and Dad never wanted to keep you in the dark, but it just wasn't allowed."
I never really understood the whole "gut feeling" thing before. In the past, I would just chalk it up to someone trying to save face by pretending they knew something before it happened. I don’t know why. Maybe they got some sort of validation from it. Maybe they just didn’t like the idea of being just as clueless as the rest of the world. I could sympathize with that.
For the first time, though, I realized that it was a very real thing. I could feel it deep down in my belly. A twisting anxiety in my gut that was telling me something wasn’t right; that I was about to find myself knee-deep in something.
"What wasn't allowed?"
She sighed again. "Mom wants you to come home. She wants to see you become a part of the pack before she dies."
I hung up, but not before getting an address from Lorelei. I had yet to process any of it and was instead moving on autopilot. Lori hadn’t gone into any detail after she dropped the bomb on me, but then she never felt she owed anyone—me especially—any explanations. Those would have to wait until I was home.
Home. Was there even such a thing?
All I ever wanted was to belong somewhere. I wanted a home so badly that I spent years looking for it. The house and family I was born into treated me like an afterthought. The man I thought I loved had brought me nothing but pain and death and violence. Even the friends I held dearest to me had been lying to me about what they were. Anytime I thought I’d found a home, I had only found lies.
And monsters.
A stinging pain shot through my shoulder. The bite was covered by a thick white bandage, but I knew it was there. Frank had turned, he had bitten me, and I’d told him to do it. I couldn’t pretend everything was normal anymore. There was no such thing as normal. I’d fought against the reality of my life for a while, but there was no going back. I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. I needed to start believing in the monsters because now I was one of them.
Deny the Moon Page 31
