Marked (The Pack) (20 page)

He spun the Jeep up the hill and grinned at me. “Yeah, I think you do. But you’ll get around to it.”

“Well, you live in your little traveling commune with a lot of people you know. You have no idea what it’s like where I live, at my school. I had no friends, no life, nothing except my mom until I learned to be friends with people like Channing. Then everyone wanted to know me. Sure it has some pitfalls. I’ll admit it. But it’s still better than what I had before. Now that my mom’s remarried I don’t even have her, not like I used to.” I stopped, wishing I hadn’t quite spit out so much information, wishing the words I’d said didn’t make a knot in my throat. But they did. “Take me home, okay. I’m getting a headache.”

When he ground to a halt in front of my house I got out then looked back over the door as I closed it. “Thanks for taking me, Myles.”

He leaned across the passenger seat. “Anytime, and don’t be mad at me. We’re still friends right?”

“Yeah, we’re friends. I just don’t expect people my own age to try and play therapist with me.”

He shrugged. “I thought that’s what friends were supposed to do.”

I frowned at him for a few seconds, my hand rubbing the top of the door. “I guess, maybe, I haven’t had any real friends.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

I smiled at him before turning toward the house. “Later, Myles.” I called over my shoulder.

“Later, wild girl.” He shouted as I trotted up the steps. From the porch I watched him drive away. Neither my body nor my brain felt normal, the effects of the drugs no doubt. I was really getting irritated with Channing and the whole drugging people unknowingly thing. It was wrong, plain and simple. As I reached for the doorknob, I paused. What was that flash at the edge of the woods, a pair of glittering eyes in the trees? I shivered and tilted my head trying to get a better look. But whatever it was had gone, if it had even been there in the first place.

I found Louise still up watching television.

“You’re home earlier than I expected.”

I sat on the sofa. “See, I’m not such a bad girl.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad girl. I’m worried that something will happen to you while I’m supposed to be responsible for you.”

“You worry too much.”

Louise snorted. “I imagine I do. But hopefully I’ll get past it.”

“Good. You never know when my mom will decide to take off on another trip with her new husband and you’ll get stuck with me again.”

Crossing her arms in front of her, Louise sat quietly for a moment. “I won’t mind. I’ve enjoyed the company.”

I pulled my legs beneath me to sit Indian style. “Yeah, I guess it’s been better than I thought it would. It certainly hasn’t been boring. Sorry if I’ve given you a lot of trouble.”

“No, it hasn’t been boring and remember, it isn’t over yet. There’s no telling what will happen before your mom gets back.”

“Now that’s kind of scary.”

Louise smiled. “It is, isn’t it? Oh, and I hope you didn’t sit like that at the party because your skirts entirely too short for it. I believe it’s really too short, period.”

I stood up and stared down at the skirt. “You know what, I think you’re right, Aunt Louise. It’s ridiculously short.”

Louise turned her attention back to the television. “Yep, ridiculously.”

Deciding that Louise was in as strange a mood tonight as Myles had been, I headed for the stairs. “I’m going to bed now.”

“I’ll be up soon. Try to get some sleep.”

I didn’t answer but escaped to my room. Myles and my aunt weren’t the only ones in a peculiar mood. I tossed the skirt and t-shirt in the bathroom garbage before I stepped into the shower. My previously clear brain had begun to get fuzzy again. I wanted to get a hot bath and go to bed. I hadn’t mentioned the pains in my body or the feeling that my hair had begun to stand on end. Louise might think I’d been taking drugs and rush me to the hospital for a pee test. Of course, I had taken drugs, unknowingly again. But how often could I claim I’d been tricked before Louise thought I was some kind of addict. I didn’t like being deceived like this. I needed to regroup and start this whole summer all over again.

Thirty minutes later I’d showered and lay in the dark, staring at the shadows dancing across the ceiling. They reminded me of the people dancing at Channing’s party, like they weren’t real or at least weren’t people anymore, but liquid bodies in motion. The sound of a howl pulled me from the bed to the window. The wolf was there again, the one with the blue collar. It sat on the ground and laughed at me. I shut my eyes and banged my forehead against the glass. What an idiot I had turned into. A dog couldn’t laugh and it certainly couldn’t laugh at me. I went back to bed and covered my head with the sheet, ignoring the occasional howls I heard.

***

My eyelids refused to part and I rubbed at my mouth in an attempt to wipe away a terrible taste. Tangled in the sheet, I kicked wildly trying to get up. Dried sweat made my skin feel sticky and uncomfortable. This time I really did have the flu. Still trapped by the sheet, I rolled off the edge of the bed, my hands and knees banging against the hardwood floor. The crust gluing my eyes shut broke open. I stared at the mud on the floor, lots of mud. Another color on the glossy wood caught my eye, dark and sticky. It was blood. Running my hands over my arms and legs, I frantically searched for an injury but couldn’t find one. Blood caked to spots on my skin, but it wasn‘t mine. I tried to stop it, but the scream burst past my lips as I stumbled across the room, banging against the wall. The blood, the mud, the leaves, oh God, what had happened. The sickness in my stomach rolled harder. I forced my legs to work, racing to the bathroom. I’d never been this sick in my life. Holding the porcelain, I heaved and imagined my entire body was being turned inside out.

With gasping breaths, I stared at the mess I’d made and shivered, my fingers pressing against the sides of the toilet until I couldn’t feel them anymore. Behind me the door opened.

“Are you okay, Alexis?”

I shook my head not able to get words past my lips yet. My body trembled convulsively and I couldn’t stop it. My brain told my eyes to close, but they wouldn’t. They kept staring.

“What… What is that?” The garbled question was the only thing that could get past my swollen lips.

Louise’s t-shirt brushed against my shoulder as she stepped closer and bent over to examine what had been the contents of my stomach. She pulled my hair back with one hand and sighed as though she did this every day.

“Chicken foot.”

I scrambled, crab-like, backwards across the floor until my back pressed against the wall and still I kept pushing. Aunt Louise wet a bath cloth, rung it out and tossed it to me.

“Wipe your face.”

“What is that, really?” I choked.

“I told you. It’s a chicken foot. You obviously went out again last night and did some things you shouldn’t have. I tried to tell your mother if we didn’t start teaching you some self control this would happen.”

“Myles said I might have eaten some brownies laced with drugs at the party. Is that why this is happening? Is it some kind of voodoo?”

Louise snorted. “It’s not voodoo and no drug caused this. The drugs simply make you have less control of yourself. Something you don’t have much of anyway.”

“Where did that thing come from?” I pointed to the toilet which she had flushed.

“I’d say it came from the chicken you ate.”

Tears welled in my eyes. Myles had been right. The drugs had fried my brain. I’d never be normal again. I should have stayed away from Channing. I should have listened to all of them, should have listened to Aunt Louise. They tried to warn me.

“Why would I eat a chicken’s foot?” The tears rolled over my cheeks uncontrollably.

Louise stood in front of me not at all sympathetic or even shocked. “You didn’t just eat the feet. You ate the whole bird, feathers and all. Look at yourself. Can’t you tell something happened to you last night? That it’s been happening to you for months?”

I studied my hands and feet, dirty and covered in dried blood. “What’s happening to me?” I whispered.

“You’re becoming. You’re at the age for it. It’s time.”

“Becoming what?”

Louise crossed her arms and shook her head. “A werewolf. You’re a werewolf, Alexis. Now get cleaned up and come to the kitchen. We’ll talk.”

Chapter Twenty

With now clean fingers, I lightly punched the numbers on the phone. I sat in Louise’s office facing the door. I’d left the bathroom door shut and the water running, even though I’d finished my shower. The ringing stopped. At last I heard my mother’s voice on the other end.

“You’ve got to come home now. It’s an emergency.”

“Alexis, is that you?”

“Yes,” I hissed. “You’ve got to come get me. I can possibly hide for a few days with some friends here, but I can’t stay with Aunt Louise. She needs professional help. She’s losing her mind, okay. I think she may have even killed someone.”

I heard the sigh on the other end. “Why do you say that?”

“This morning I was sick and threw up. She said I threw up a chicken’s foot and that I had eaten a chicken whole, as in feet and feathers, everything. Then she told me I was a werewolf. Is that psycho enough for you?”

Silence. I expected outrage, fear, the phone to drop and the sound of my mother’s feet running to the closet to pack her clothes. But only complete silence came back to me across the phone.

“Mom, are you there? Did you hear me? I’m in danger here.”

“You’re not in danger, Alexis. Maybe we should have gone about this differently, not waited so long.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your aunt’s not crazy. She’s a werewolf. And so are you. It’s a gene. I didn’t inherit both genes required to make a person be a werewolf, but I carried one. When I met your father he had the gene, too. I was hoping that somehow it would skip you, but it didn’t.”

“Mom, are you on drugs?”

Then she laughed. I knew at that moment I was doomed to handle this without my mother’s help, because she was laughing. “I’m not on drugs, though I imagine it does kind of sound that way to you, hearing it like this for the first time.”

“So you’re not coming home right away.”

“No, your aunt is the best one to help you with this. It’s why we took this trip and sent you to stay with her. I saw it coming with the nightmares and sleepwalking. You were changing and it had to be dealt with.”

“Bye.”

“Alexis, wait. I…”

I dropped the phone to its base, not bothering to hear what else my mother had to say. They were all insane. I’d moved to the land of pure crazy and now they wanted to make me crazy too.

The office door creaked and opened slowly. I rolled the chair backward until it bumped the desk. Louise stood in the open doorway.

“Alexis, it’s going to be fine. I know you don’t understand this and think we’ve lost our minds.”

“What did you do to my mother?”

“Nothing.”

“She says we’re all werewolves.”

“Technically, she’s not. But yes, you and I are.”

My hands closed tightly around the arms of the chair. “There’s no such thing. That’s made up stuff.”

“Many myths and legends are based on fact and this is one that happens to be that way.” Louise leaned against the door facing and raked her fingers through her slick black hair. “You may have never seen or read about it in the newspaper, but we’re out there. If you think about all the things that have happened to you lately you’ll start to understand. The dreams of running with wolves, the wolves coming here and the way your arm healed so quickly after you were attacked that day. All signs of your becoming.”

“A werewolf.” I stated flatly.

“Exactly.”

“You’re nuts.”

She straightened and stepped into the room. A swirl of fear shot through my insides.

“I’m not nuts,” she said. “You’ll get used to the idea. Give it some time.”

Time?
She thought time would fix this. Help me understand something that was so certainly unrealistic? My anger suddenly swelled much larger than my fear. I got to my feet and walked past my aunt. “I want to go for a ride on the four-wheeler.”

“That’s a good idea. Let it all blow through your hair for a while. Then we’ll talk.”

I picked up my tennis shoes from my room and hurried to the front porch to put them on. I wanted out of this house, out of this town and especially out of this nightmare. I started the four wheeler then sat with the engine idling. I tried to think of a way to fix this. I was probably too young to have adults committed, so going to the sheriff wouldn’t work. I couldn’t even imagine the look on his face when the word werewolf came out of my mouth. I started toward Channing’s house then stopped. What was I thinking? I couldn’t trust her with the news that my entire family had lost their mind.

No, Channing wasn’t a person I could share this with. My gut instinct told me that. I had nowhere to go and no one to take me in now that my family had so obviously gone insane. Spinning the four-wheeler around, I took another path that led to the road. I wasn’t supposed to ride on the road, but there wasn’t a path big enough for the ATV that went where I wanted to go and hey, what could my crazy aunt say. Besides, other people around here did it all the time. Mr. Branton would know what to do. I did trust him and Myles. They’d help me.