Bad Storm (5 page)

“I don’t know…do
you mind if we pop in the cemetery for a sec?” I peered past the iron fence to
see a figure by a headstone, the back of the person’s head covered in a black
hoodie.

“Um, that’s really
weird Bailey…” Sierra said, but I was only half-listening. I knew it was weird,
but something about that figure, the hoodie, and it being in the cemetery,
triggered something in my memory.

“Just for a
second,” I murmured, walking around the block to the Old City Cemetery’s gate.
It was wide open, as it usually was during visiting hours.

I approached the
person, who seemed to be about Sierra’s height, and felt a strange mix of
apprehension and excitement.

‘
If you know this person, then why don’t you
know their name?’
I thought.

“The new mate of
Deston’s pack, fascinating,” a woman’s voice came from the hooded. I stepped
back in surprise and bumped into Sierra, who was only several paces behind me.

“Bailey, right?”
the woman turned around, revealing a surprisingly youthful face. She pulled
down the hoodie, revealing a short afro and a face riddled with piercings. She
was fiercely beautiful and horrifying all at once. Plus, she knew my name,
which was more than a little creepy.

“Who are you?” I
could feel Sierra’s body tense behind me.

“You tell me,” she
laughed, “you’re the one who came over to say hello, didn’t you?”

Her eyes were dark
and almond-shaped, and I could have sworn I had seen them before. I searched my
mind, desperately trying to remember when and where, but couldn’t.

“You just…look
familiar…really, how do you know my name?” I said again, my heart pounding
furiously as I asserted myself.

“Bailey maybe we
should just go,” Sierra hissed from behind me.

“And who’s this?”
the woman laughed, looking past me at Sierra. I suddenly grew very protective,
and held my arms out without even realizing it.

“Bringing an
innocent into this, are we?”

“What?” Sierra
scoffed, but I could tell the fierceness on the woman’s face put her on edge
too.

“Listen, girlie,
I’m pretty hungry, and while I’m on specific orders not to hurt you, no one
said anything to me about the redhead…”

“You lay a hand on
her and I’ll rip your throat out.”

The woman laughed.
“Ooh, your precious.” I dug my nails into my palms I may not know what that
woman was capable of, but she was asking for an ass-whooping, supernatural
forces be damned. Still, the idea of eating someone put me on edge. How many
freaky people-creatures actually existed in the world?

“Listen to me,
Bailey
,” she hissed sarcastically,
taking a step towards me. She smiled, and that’s when I saw it. She had a pair
of sharp canine teeth, like she had sharpened them to twin points.

“I’m here with
very specific orders. To tell you to stay in line…”

“You can’t tell
her what to do!” Sierra snapped, moving in front of me before I could stop her.
“I don’t care if you are some weirdo goth or not!”

And as much as
Sierra’s kickass, I-don’t-take-shit-from-nobody attitude is awesome, I could
tell right then and there it was getting us into a shit load of trouble.

The woman’s dark eyes
shifted—like actually
moved
,
and her pupils expanded into slits as her irises turned a dark, red-purple.

“What the—”

But before Sierra
could say anything else, I threw myself in front of her, taking the brunt of
the strong charge. We fell to the ground, my body on top of Sierra’s, and the
monster-woman poised above me.

“I’d move if I
were you,” she hissed, in a nearly inhuman voice.

“You’re on orders
not to hurt me,” I spat, even though every nerve in my body was alive with
fear. Even if I wanted to move, I was probably too terrified to do so just
then.

“I’ll tear her
apart,” the woman hissed, raising her hand up in a threatening claw.

“Over my dead
body,” I spat. That may have been a mistake, because she did not look too
pleased just then.

And by ‘did not
look too pleased’ I mean, completely, hell-bent on turning me into a corpse not
too pleased.

She growled and
brought her hand down towards my neck. I flinched, wondering what in the world
made me think I could take this otherworldly crazy person when I heard a loud
“smack.”

I sat up quickly
and opened my eyes. The hoodie woman was laying on the floor ten yards to my
left. Hovering over her was Brandon, and he was snarling and growling like a
rabid dog.

“Holy shit,” I
whispered. Dark hair burst from the back of his neck.

“Bailey…” Sierra
muttered beneath me. I quickly moved myself off of her and offered her a hand
up. I murmured an apology and quickly scanned the area.

Trent was there,
as was Nick, Allison and Mac. The whole pack, poised with their arms up and
unforgiving daggers in all of their eyes, focused straight on Brandon and the
freaky goth.

“What the hell is
going on?” Sierra’s green eyes were as round and big as dinner plates.

“Um…not sure,” I
answered truthfully. I caught Trent’s eye and he grimaced, walking up to me and
touching my elbow. The deep look of concern on his face made my knees go weak,
even while Brandon was wrestling that strange woman on the cemetery floor.

“Are you okay? Did
she hurt you?” he asked as Allison pounced over to Brandon and helped him
wrestle the insanely strong woman. I caught a flash of Brandon’s hand as he
wrestled her down, and long, claw-like nails protruded from his otherwise
normal human hand.

“Um, yeah…”

“Don’t lie to me.”

 
“I’m not,” I promised.

“I’m going to call
the cops,” Sierra said, her shaking hand reaching into her pocket.

“It’s best if you
don’t do that, Ms. Sierra,” Mac grimaced. It was weird, seeing him in this
context. I hadn’t known him as anything more than Trent’s landlord, who I only
saw in passing when something was broken in the house. Here he was now, with
his bicep muscles flexed and his jaw taut, watching the struggle with a
piercing gaze.

“Why not?” Sierra
was clearly panicked. Nick put his hand on hers, pushing the cell phone down,
and I saw something strange flicker on her face.

“Ok, what are you
up to, Lark?” Brandon snarled, suspended over her body with his hands pinning
hers to the ground above her head, his long nails embedded into the earth.
Allison was crouched down, holding down her legs. The woman named Lark stopped
writhing and just smiled. She had a look of pure venom in her eyes.

“I was just warning
your friend here, little Miss Bailey, to stay in line.”

“What the hell
does that mean?” Brandon snarled.

“I’m just acting
on orders, chief,” she laughed.

“Whose orders? Who
are you working for now you sleazy creep?!” Brandon yelled into her face. I had
never seen him that angry before, his face was wild and livid with rage.

“Wouldn’t you like
to know?” she snickered.

“Brandon,” Nick
warned, looking around. There was no one else to be seen and the trees did a
pretty good job of shrouding us, but it looked more and more like Brandon was
transforming, hair now covering the front of his face.

“Listen here,
 
Brandon.
I’m not going to give you
all the details of my life. I’m just going to let you know that Bailey better
watch herself, and know better than to use any magic that doesn’t belong to
her.”

“Get out of here!”
Brandon hissed, his face bunching up into an unrecognizable anger. She laughed
once more before disappearing beneath me. Sierra screamed and I took a few
steps back, as something black and small flew away from us up into the air and
vanished.

“What the
hell—” Sierra gasped, her jaw hanging open as her wide eyes followed the
fluttering dot in the sky.

“I think we should
go for a walk, Sierra,” Nick said quietly, offering her his arm. She looked at
him for a minute, confused by his extended elbow. She finally nodded solemnly,
as if there was some sort of unspoken communication she understood, and slipped
her arm through his, keeping a comfortable distance.

“When will you be
coming back?” I gave Nick an apprehensive look. I was already concerned for
Sierra’s safety, and while I trusted Nick, I still felt a familiar knot of
dread as they trudged towards the iron gates.

“I’ll have her
back at the apartment in a few hours, I promise,” Nick gave me a small smile,
as if trying to put me at ease.

Sierra gave me a
perplexed look. I just nodded at her as they walked away, wondering if Nick was
going to catch her up on all the things he wiped from her mind.

“Who was that?” I
asked, quickly turning around to face Trent and Mac. Trent took my hand into
his and squeezed, and I couldn’t help that my heart skipped a beat at his
protective touch.

“That was Lark
Reed,” Brandon said from behind me. I turned to see he and Allison, approaching
us with a nasty scowl on his face.

“Sorry,” he said,
clearly aware of his sour disposition. “She puts me in an awful mood.” He
groaned a little as his nails shrunk and his hair pulled itself back into his
skin. It was kind of a morbid thing to watch.

“We should go to
the house,” Mac said. “Do you need a lift, Ms. Bailey?” he asked, his perpetually
sad face turning towards the road beyond the iron-gate fence.

“I’ll meet you
there, I have my moped,” I said. “Thanks though.”

“I’ll go with you.”
Trent held my hand tighter. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Thanks.” I gave
him a wry grin, hoping to ease the tension. “But I’m still driving.”

He laughed and
nodded, and as we walked out of the creepy graveyard, the gray headstones
staring us down, I felt a small sense of relief.

Back at the house, Mac put on the tea kettle and we sat
around in the living room around the old, beat-up coffee table that they had
bought from Goodwill a few years ago. I curled up on the couch next to Trent,
trying to feel calm and casual while I watched Brandon shake his leg nervously,
his eyes flitting around the room. Allison looked unhappy, but she kept still
and quiet. She was an unusually stoic girl, with long blonde curls and thin
lips that seemed to be perpetually glued together.

“Here we are.” Mac broke the silence with a silver tray
balanced on his right hand, a kettle, sugar bowl and several mismatched mugs on
it, the tags of the tea bags hanging down the sides of the brightly colored ceramic.

“They only have Earl Grey,” Mac said, shaking his head as he
placed the tray down on the coffee table. It was pretty amusing, seeing such a
buff, rugged man like him placing down such homey, domestic things. I couldn’t
help but smile—I appreciated his uniqueness.

He sat down in the chair directly across from us, between
Allison and Brandon. “Well, help yourselves,” he smiled kindly, a sadness still
twinkling in his blue eyes. “I don’t care for tea myself.”

“Thanks,” I cleared my throat as I leaned over to pour
myself a cup. Trent and Brandon followed suit. Allison didn’t stir.

“So, that woman…” I said once we settled with our mugs of
piping hot tea. “How did she know my name? Or Brandon’s, for that matter?”

Mac grimaced. “Do you want to explain this one, Brandon?”

“Not really,” Brandon sighed, blowing on his tea. “But I
will. I met Lark way back when I started middle school. She was one of the
older chicks who would hang around the rock venues. I thought…I thought she was
super cool,” he admitted, looking down into his mug. “I mean, I was really
impressionable then, so it’s hard to blame me. But yeah, she’d talk to me,
throw me a bone and stuff. Then one night…” he took a sharp breath, and I could
feel Trent tense next to me.

“One night, I was hanging out after a show by myself, like
an idiot kid, waiting for her to bum me a cigarette. And she came with a
werewolf friend of hers. They took me behind an alley and…well, you know.” He
finished quietly. I could hear the fear and hurt in his voice, like the trauma
had scarred him, and still ran deep within him.

No one spoke for a minute. I looked down into my tawny
colored tea, and finding it unappetizing, took a hesitant sip. I could hardly
feel the hot liquid running down my throat—instead I was imagining a young,
middle school Brandon being attacked by a wolf in an alley. It just wasn’t
fair, and while I knew that life wasn’t fair, that it couldn’t be, I couldn’t
help but be absolutely horrified by it.

“Is she a wolf?” I asked.

“No,” Brandon replied. “Her friend was the wolf. She’s a
vampire.”

“So…” I processed the bizarre information, “she could have
sucked your blood, but instead had someone else attack you?”

“Yeah…” Brandon looked up at me, resentment on his normally
gleeful face. He wanted revenge—it was palpable. “She’s twisted. For her
drinking someone’s blood isn’t nearly as pleasurable as watching someone’s life
be destroyed. For her, it was just as interesting to see a thirteen-year-old
get beat up as it was to imagine the possibility that I would live and be
cursed with this.”