Lunacy (16 page)

My hands weren't getting any steadier as it went on.
If anything, they were definitely getting more tremulous. I knew it
was a bad sign, but I'd be damned if I was going to stop before I'd
gotten all of the foreign objects removed. I didn't want to risk
infection. I almost chuckled for a moment as I thought that maybe I
wouldn't even have to worry about that now. Immunity to colds, any
bacteria, viruses... For all I knew, maybe I was going to stop
aging. Not a bad thing, in theory, but it brought so many more
questions to my mind that...

"Kacea... You're spacing out." This from Teigan, the
slender young man was always the voice of reason.

It drew me back to the fact that I still had a few
shards stuck in my right arm, which were going to be a bitch to
pull out since I was so not left handed, and the ones buried in my
chest and stomach. I hoped that my heavy breathing hadn't driven
any of them deeper. I tilted my head from one side to the other,
hearing a satisfactory pop on each side that helped relieve some of
my tension.

Another deep breath in, and I held it as I tugged the
remaining five pieces of glass from my forearm in rapid succession.
Finally letting it out slowly, it shook and trembled as badly as my
hands did. Only a few more, then I could slather on the Neosporin
and hope it stopped all of the bleeding. I started talking to
Elomina as I leaned back and assessed the few shards embedded in my
chest and abdomen.

"Shouldn't I have stopped bleeding by now with this
freaky new Goddess possession thing?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps. But to be honest, healing
herself may not be a trait of Skadhi's. Either that or you're still
more tapped than you thought you were from changing the boys
earlier. Even though you had a meal, you likely won't have the
energy to properly heal yourself with shape shifter quickness until
you've had a decent night's rest."

I nodded. That made sense. Two down, two more to go.
If they'd been a bit lower, it would have been catastrophic.
Getting my nipples pierced wasn't something on my list of life
goals. "This is absolutely fucking ridiculous..." I groaned,
holding my breath once more and yanking the last two shards from
the right side of my chest.

A heavy sigh of relief, and it made me see sparks a
little. Light headed, with floaters at the edges of my vision.
Probably not a good sign. Make that definitely not a good sign. I
ignored it anyway, determined not to pass out like I nearly had on
my way to the nurse's office from the gym. Conner handed me a
second towel and I wiped my arms clean as best I could, forcing my
mind to focus on putting salve on all the wounds. The ointment
cooled the heat immediately and I winced a little as I dabbed it
into some of the deeper wounds with a cotton swab.

Finally finished, Conner took away the towel and
glass, putting them in a plastic shopping bag and tying the handles
together before tossing the whole bundle into the trash. He came
back from the kitchen and handed me a glass of orange juice. It
felt awesome and cold, so I held it against my forehead. "You
know... it might do you better if you drank it."

I waved a hand at him, eventually taking a few sips.
"Why orange juice?"

He shrugged. "I know they always give it to you after
you give blood. Something about upping your glucose levels back to
normal after you've lost some. Iron too, I think."

"I wasn't bleeding that badly," I countered
immediately, finishing the rest of the glass in one long swallow.
Now empty, I went back to holding the cool glass against my face
before it had time to start absorbing my heat.

"Maybe not, but you're still shaking like a leaf.
That usually means dehydration or low blood sugar levels. Both of
which are nothing to mess around with." Teigan spoke again from his
place on the couch a short distance away. When I gave him a
confused look, he shrugged. "I've got some diabetics in my family.
And I've been prone to some blood sugar issues of my own, from time
to time."

"You're diabetic?" I asked, distracted and a touch
perplexed by that one.

He shook his head with a little laugh. "Thank
Goddess, no. I don't have to shoot up with insulin or anything. But
if I don't eat properly, I can faint and get shaky just like you
are now. Depending on the when, passing out could be a danger to
others as well as yourself." Those pretty eyes looked away from me
and he seemed lost in a memory. "I'd skipped a few meals, and was
driving home. Crashed into the side of a car with a mom and her
little girl in it. Luckily no one had anything but a little
whiplash and some bruises, but I could have killed them both. If
I'd taken the life of that child with those innocent big blue
eyes..." He didn't need to say aloud that it would have haunted him
for the rest of his days.

"What do you have here that I can nom on quickly,
then? It's getting to be closer to dark, and I don't wanna risk
almost running any puppies over on my way back home."

Conner helped me to my feet, careful to only put his
hands on my upper arms that had escaped the deluge of glass that
tried to cut me to ribbons. "I can show ya. I'm the one who spends
the most time in the kitchen, anyway."

I nodded and let him lead me into the kitchen,
feeling horribly drained all of a sudden. He pulled out a chair
from the table and gently shoved me into it, not bothering to give
me time to protest about him being too gentlemanly for me to stand
his presence. Almost like our minds were still linked up, he
smirked and just shook his head at my expression with a little
chuckle. "How hungry are you, Kacea? Sandwich hungry? Or 'So
fucking hungry I could eat a horse, and therefore whatever you give
me should come from a package because speed is an issue?'"

I blinked, needing a moment to process how quickly
he'd spoken that last sentence. "Uh... You do realize that you
could have finished making a sandwich already in the amount of time
it took for you to spit that out, yeah?"

He stuck his tongue out at me and opened the fridge,
leaning down to look inside and giving me a pretty good view of his
backside once more. "Lunch meat preference?"

"Ham. Any variety will do, if you've got some.
Otherwise... I dunno. Anything, really." He chucked something at me
without even looking, and I somehow managed to catch it. Slightly
fumbling, having to cradle it against my chest before it came to a
full stop. It was a cup of strawberry yogurt. The awesome kind that
actually had bits of fruit in it. I knew what was coming next, so I
held my hand up and caught the projectile that was an ancient
silver spoon, too. I cracked open the yogurt and dug in, shaking my
head. Silver spoon... At least it hadn't burned me like it likely
had done to Conner.

He made two sandwiches in rapid succession --ham,
lettuce, and Swiss cheese like he'd been reading my mind-- plating
them like a pro and setting them before me while I licked the spoon
clean. "What would you like to drink?"

"Well, I am driving. So vodka is unfortunately not an
option." That one made him laugh a little. "Water will be just
fine. Thanks."

The glass appeared before me, and I glared up at him
incredulously as I saw that it was not, in fact, glass. It was
plastic. He must have been nervous after my incident only a few
moments ago. "Really, dude?"

He patted my shoulder. "No worries, your highness. My
duty is to ensure your safety!" he said with overly done
bravado.

I rolled my eyes. "Then why did you pelt me with a
silver spoon?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to see how you reacted to
silver. Apparently it doesn't bother you, which is both a good
thing and a bad thing."

"How could that possibly be a bad thing?" I asked,
truly intrigued and curious. I couldn't see a downside to a lack of
silver allergies.

"We know it won't hurt you, but that doesn't mean
that our enemies will. If you were to be taken by them, for any
reason, they might assume that silver will hurt you. It tends to be
more than enough for torture all on its own. But once they discover
it doesn't touch you... They might have to get more inventive."

I'd finished the first sandwich while he was talking
and downed half of the glass of water to chase it. "You keep
talking about enemies, Conner, and I just don't get it. I mean, you
all lead fairly normal lives. School, jobs, social lives... How
dangerous can these pretenders to the throne possibly be?"

He just shook his head. "That's not really my place
to say, Kacea. If you really want to know, ask Elomina. Or even
Teigan. He's a little older, so he's dealt with this whole werewolf
thing longer than we have. But I do know this: all of the monsters
you were always afraid were under your bed or in your closet when
you were little pale in comparison to some of the things out there
hiding in the shadows, waiting for the sun to set to sink their
teeth into your heart and mind."

Chapter 15

I was glad to be back in my own clothes, but for the
whole drive home, I couldn't stop thinking about what Conner had
said. His revelation about monsters was enough to set anyone's
nerves on edge. Driving home by myself down all those darkened
country back roads didn't do much to help put my mind at ease. I'd
cranked the stereo so loud that my entire car shook, hoping that
the heavy bass was enough to deter most deer and smaller woodland
creatures from coming anywhere near the road as I passed by. I sang
along loudly to distract my mind, hoping to cover it all with the
crunchy guitars and the amazing bass line of the song "Gorgeous
Nightmare" by Escape the Fate, one of my favorite bands of all
time.

"Is it the way that you feel against my body? Is it
the way that you act so damn naughty? Is it the way that you shake
when your hips move to the bass, the bass, the b-- Holy shit!" I
slammed on the brakes, braced the wheel, and ducked as a large wolf
- no doubt in my mind now that is was a werewolf - bounded out into
the road in front of me and stopped in the center of my lane.

The music was still raging on in all of its metallic
glory, so I pounded the power button with my fist to turn it off. I
rolled the window down and yelled at the giant canine. "What the
fuck do you think you're doing, huh?!" It had scared the hell out
of me, and that pissed me off royally, and my brain doesn't exactly
function on rationality when it comes to rage.

It looked at me then, and I saw the coloration of it
bathed in the brightness of my headlights that cut a swath through
the thick darkness of the cloudy and moonless night. It was mostly
a very dark grey, almost black, with white ears and a lighter patch
on the top of its head. Those eyes knew me, and even though they
were the wrong color, I knew them as well. It was Alain, who the
boys had said was the son of one of the wolves who was the very
reason Jynxx's parents had made tracks.

I was too angry to bother feeling scared anymore. I
shifted the car into neutral and revved the engine, wanting him to
move because I really didn't wanna fuck my car by running over a
dire wolf that weighed almost as much as my vehicle did. No
response from the wolf but a slow, lazy blinking. "Bad move,
punk..." I growled, shifting back into gear and pressing the pedal
to the floor. Rather than getting run over, Alain did what I was
always afraid of a deer doing. He hopped up onto the hood, the
metal under him screaming in protest as he leaned down to peer into
the windshield at me, our eyes locking for a moment. The things I
saw there made me shudder, knowing that I'd been on his agenda
since we were children because his parents could sense in me what
no one else could. He licked the windshield and broke eye contact
before he sprang off and into the woods on the other side of the
road.

"Son of a bitch..." I snarled, driving the rest of
the way home as quickly as I dared. I wanted to inspect the damage
to the car, and I didn't give a damn what else might dart out in
front of me. For tonight, I said to hell with Mother Nature.

The rest of the ride home was quiet, and I rolled
into the garage, happy to see Mom and Dad weren't home from work
yet. It was shaping up to be an early night. I'd had a long day
full of stress, but when I got out and saw that my car was in good
shape aside from a few small indentations in the hood that I could
easily pop out with a plunger and some soapy water, I heaved a sigh
of relief. Locking everything behind me as I went, I entered into
the house through the breeze way, dropping my jacket in the kitchen
on the back of a chair and grabbing myself a drink from the fridge.
The bottle of cherry flavored UV Vodka sang to me, but I ignored
it. Just in case anyone else tried to ambush me, I needed to be as
ready as I could possibly manage.

I chugged the whole can of Mountain Dew in record
time, knowing that my stomach would hate me for the sudden
injection of caffeine, and not caring. I was torn between wanting
to zonk out on the couch that very second, and never wanting to
sleep again. Being this on edge couldn't be good for the heart. I
inspected my wounds from the failed success of the ice making
incident, happy to see that they were healing faster than they
normally would have. Conner was right, the extra food was
working.

The remote for the stereo was chilling on the kitchen
table, so I picked it up and turned it on, cringing when Dad's
country music emerged from the speakers with ninja stealth,
punching me in the eardrum like a pack of rednecks in a bar
fight.

"God damn, Dad..." I groaned, quickly hitting the
button to change it to a metal station. If I heard one more song
about a pickup truck, someone's dog, a cheating woman, and
moonshine, I was gonna claw my eyes out with a rusty spoon.

I turned the volume down some and went scavenging
through the cupboards and fridge for something tasty to cook up. My
parents were more into getting take-out, but I liked to cook. Much
better for you, much cheaper - not that money was really an issue
for them anymore - and you never had to worry about what surprise
grossness might be in store for you. I was the one cooking it; I
was in total control of my ingredients. It was the best way to have
it, really.