Rising Tide: Dark Innocence (The Maura DeLuca Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

He wiped the back of his right hand
across my mouth.  The left came up right after to cover my mouth and nose,
attempting to sweep away the bloody mess with his fingers.  I heard from
that small, not-in-control part of my mind again.  A tiny voice wondering
exactly what was happening.  The part in control didn’t care about
anything except his exquisite scent.  He smelled better than the pizza,
better than the boy’s blood…I struck at him, precipitously, like a viper. He
narrowly avoided the sink of my teeth into his skin. 

I’ll give Ron credit; he only looked
frightened for a moment.  In the slice of an instant, he composed the look
on his face, bravely took another spit-laden swipe at the corner of my mouth,
and jerked the door back open.

He hauled Shane out by the front of
his shirt and then slammed it shut—this time in Merina’s astonished face—once
again. 

Shane’s eyes slid toward me, then
flicked quickly back to Ron’s face.  They stayed there.

“Shane.” Ron said his name with
calm and quiet.  “This guy fell and hit his head.”  He inclined his
own toward the figure sprawling before us.  “Maura was trying to help him
by cleaning up the wound.”  He said these words with such weight, as if he
were burning them into Shane’s head with a branding iron.  “You got
that?  She was helping him.”  When Shane didn’t respond he shook him
firmly, as he had me, before.  “Do you understand?”

Shane snapped out of the trance
he’d seemed trapped in.  He looked from Ron’s face to my own, blinked a
couple of times and then nodded his head.  He licked his lips before he
spoke, “Yea.  Yea I ‘ve got it.”  He shook his head to clear it and
Ron released his grip on Shane’s shirtfront.

At that moment my head snapped
around to the left corner of the house at the sound of approaching
footsteps.  Caelyn glided into my view, as smooth as silk in her tight
black, leather jacket.  The expression on her face was enough to render my
knees incapable of supporting my weight.  I slid toward the ground, but
Ron hauled me back up immediately.  I tried to form words, but my vocal
cords didn’t seem to be working.  My head was starting to clear to the
fact that Caelyn was going to kill me, slowly, painfully…I looked up to Ron,
fully mindful he had no power to save me.

“Shane!  Ron!” Merina had
pushed her way out to us.  “What
is
going on?!!  Is Maura
ok?!  I thought I saw blood!!  Where’s that guy that took
her…Oh!”  Her eyes had found the unmoving figure on the ground. 

I was still half-hanging, limply,
from Ron’s grasp.  My ears pricked up at Merina’s frantic questions. 
Answering her was impossibility, though.  My head was a chaotic
jumble—remembering my horrific behavior, wondering what Ron and Shane could be
thinking of me and gauging the monstrous shock of my mother somehow finding her
way to where I was tonight.  Was there any way to slink away and hide
somewhere?

Merina took a couple of steps
backward. “Oh crap…Maura’s mom!!”

Oh crap, yes, my mom.

“Come on Maura, Honey, on your
feet.”  Ron struggled with me again.  Even with the sheer horror of
my mother’s presence looming I took a millisecond to enjoy the first time Ron
had called me Honey.

I forced myself to obey him and met
Caelyn’s gaze at eye level.  I realized I hadn’t noticed growing that
extra bit that made my height on par with hers.  The look in her eyes was
very calm, but that could be deceptive, because Caelyn could be the razor’s
edge when she was angry.  Very sharp, very clean.   And I was
still reeling at the fact that she knew I was here!  How?  How
possibly
? 
Had someone ratted me out?

I think the whole group of us
nearly fainted when she reached her hand out to lay against my cheek and asked
softly, “Mink, are you okay?” 

Well, despite the supreme annoyance
of having my irritating nickname spoken in front of my friends, I thought I
might be dying from shock at the lack of screams thrown in my face for lying,
escaping the conditions of my grounding, being at a college party where alcohol
was being consumed….oh yea, and trying to make a meal of some mystery boy’s
head wound.  I felt my jaw drop and my eyes stretch to saucer
proportions.  Perhaps I should be asking her the same question.  Or
maybe, “Who are you and what have you done with my mother?”

I looked at her closer and noticed
a
very
strange look in her eyes.  They were muted and misty. 
My head started to question whether she’d been drinking?  Was she
depressed and lonely in my absence?  I started to worry less about myself
and feel heavy guilt for leaving her alone. 

“Y-y-yea, Mom,” I managed to
stammer.  I turned to look at Ron and he looked just as astonished. 
I think we were all expecting to get it from both barrels.  Both he and
Shane had experienced it firsthand. 

“I think I’d better take you
home.”  Her voice even sounded like it was coming from someplace far away,
like underwater.  “I don’t want you to worry.  Just go and sit on the
porch steps, ok?  I want to talk to Ron for a minute, and we need to get
this young man some help.  Merina, do you want to go sit with her for a
minute?”

Oh, so that was it.  She was
going to yell at Ron and blame him for all of this.  All this quiet was
the calm before her storm.  I started to protest, “Mom!  This isn’t
Ron’s fault, I’m the one…”

She cut me off immediately and the
mist in her eyes cleared just a little.  The razor blade came out slightly
too, “Maura.  I thought I told you to go sit and wait for me, didn’t I?”

I could see there would be no
arguing.  “Yes, Mom.”  I sighed and took the hand Merina offered so
we could skulk off to the front porch, together.  Shane didn’t wait to be
dismissed and disappeared back inside the kitchen.

“Is she going to let Ron have it?”
Merina queried. 

“I’m not exactly sure,” I
replied.  “I have to hear this, though.”  When we rounded the corner
of the house I stopped to flatten myself against the side, and crept as near to
the edge as I dared.  “If it gets too bad, I’ll have to run rescue.” 
I gave her a small smile, hoping my maniacal terror over the last ten minutes,
wasn’t leaking into it.

The acoustics must have been
perfect in this position, because although Merina shrugged her shoulders in
frustration, I could hear my mother speaking to Ron just as if I were standing
next to them.  I put my finger to my lips, signaling Merina to stay
silent, and she nodded in response.

“I heard what you said to Shane,”
my mother was saying, “I really appreciate that.  I appreciate you trying
to protect my daughter.”  She hesitated a moment, then added, “She really
needs that right now.”

“Ms. DeLuca, believe me it’s no
problem.  I care about Maura a lot.  But I have to ask, why
does
she really need that right now?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t explain that,
not tonight.  You’ll just have to trust me that she does.  To be
honest, I didn’t want Maura to get involved with anyone, especially now.” 
He started to interject at that, but she kept going, dismissing whatever he was
going to say.  “Maura
is
going to be ok, I do want you to know
that.  But she’s going to need a lot of support.  I thought an
outsider would only make things worse, but I can see that you are the kind
of…friend she needs.  You don’t ask too many questions, you’re very
accepting and…..open minded.  I am, however, worried about what the
distance of our move is going to do to her, now.  My daughter,” she sighed
heavily, “she would pick the worst time to decide to get close to someone. 
But, despite my best efforts, you two used every day since you’ve met to get
closer, and it’s too late to undo what’s been done.”

“I’m sorry.”  His voice was
full of pain, “But not for meeting and getting close to Maura.  I couldn’t
help myself.  I am very sorry to have made things harder for her.  I
should have thought about that before being so selfish.”  That almost made
me bolt around the corner to protest, but thankfully, Merina had a death grip
on my hand.

“No!!” she whispered urgently.

“Now see.  It’s just your
saying something like that.  It makes me wish Maura had met you in
Vancouver.  Because there is no undoing this move.  Believe me when I
say it’s completely necessary and is the best thing in the world for her. 
But I’ve been thinking, and I was hoping you would consider going to college
there?  I would like to help out with the tuition, of course.”

Merina and I jerked our heads
around to look at each other in fresh astonishment.  Frankly, I hadn’t
known my mother had that much money lying around.  But this train of
thought passed quickly, and I bent my head toward the conversation once again,
so that I could hear Ron’s answer. 

Their voices sounded farther
away.  They must have switched positions, or maybe the wind was carrying
differently.

Ron was making a choking kind of
sound like he was
trying
to say something.

Caelyn cut this off with, “Now, now
I won’t take no for an answer.  It’s nothing, really.  And I look at
it as an investment in Maura’s future, too.”

Ron finally managed words .
“Wow!  That is incredible, but even if I could let you do that, I can’t
leave.  My mom…she’s sick.  I can’t leave her.” 

Oh…I hadn’t known that. I guess
that explained why she’d been home the other day.  I wondered why Ron had
never said anything, but he definitely was the suffer-in-silence type.

“I see,” Caelyn sounded genuinely
disappointed.  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see what the future
brings.”  Her voice had that far-away sounding quality to it again, and I
barely caught what she said.

Her words started a whirlwind of
worry in my head.  I’d somehow known there was something wrong with
me.  Mom saying the weather in Vancouver would help my ‘condition,’ I
should have realized it was something far beyond a sun sensitivity.  I was
craving strange, raw things, and I wasn’t about to chalk that up to her anemia
excuse.  I seemed to be even paler these days, a sign of bad health. 
But my hair was lustrous with shine…more a sign of good health, but not enough
to nullify the negative changes. And there was that thing with my teeth
possibly rotting from the inside out—definitely
not
a good sign. 

I was so confused.  Happy my
mother seemed to be far more accepting of Ron, but a little angry she would
confide in him rather than me.  She’d practically told him something bad
was happening to me, but wouldn’t admit it to her own child.  Didn’t I
have the right to know what was happening to my own body?  Was it so
horrible she couldn’t bear to say it to my face?  Or did she just want to
keep me from losing hope?

“Maura!” Merina’s harsh whisper and
frantic pulling broke me out of my reverie.  “They’re coming, Maura! 
We have to get over to the porch!”

I followed behind her numbly,
letting myself be dragged along.

I’d had to go home after that,
walking wordlessly beside Caelyn down the two blocks back to our house. 
There were a million questions swarming in my head, but the only one I asked,
as we walked up onto our front porch was, “Mom, how did you know where I was
tonight?”  I decided not to push my luck with inquires as to how she got
there at precisely the right moment.

She pulled me into her side, in a
clumsy hug.  “Maura, Sweetie, family is a special thing.  There are
times when we can really feel each other, when we know one of us is in
trouble.”

It was creeping me out the way she
kept saying ‘we,’ and not really answering my question with any tangibility.

I tried to focus on the fact that
Ron got to come over later.  Of course he couldn’t leave in the middle of
their first, real gig.  He’d wanted to, but I’d insisted that he
stayed.   I refused to be responsible for ruining their reputation
and the chance at future opportunities word-of-mouth referrals from this gig
might present.  Besides, someone had to wait until the ambulance got there
to help the boy I’d inadvertently hurt.  I’d wanted to do that, but Ron
was insistent I go home, promising to come over as soon as the show was
over.  It made me wonder briefly if he was embarrassed by my behavior
tonight.  If he wondered what was wrong with me as much as I.

We went into the living room and I
sat beside my mother on the couch.  Now that we were away from all other
eyes, I could feel the vibrating resounding throughout my body.  I finally
had to ask the hardest question of all.

“Mom, why do I like the taste of
blood?”  It came out barely above the volume of a whisper.  “Why did
I do what I did tonight?”

“Maura,” she took both of my hands
into her own, “you were only trying to help that boy.  You were out there
all alone and didn’t have anything to press against his head to make it stop
bleeding, did you?”

“No.” I answered weakly.

“See there?  Panic took over
and you were trying to stop the bleeding any way you knew how.  Ok?”

I wanted to believe her, wanted to
just give in to her words, but I wasn’t quite there yet.  “But Mom, I
remember being so….so hungry.  I wanted to eat that…”

She cut me off, not allowing me to
follow that line of thought any further.  “You didn’t have dinner before
you left did you?”  She had that scolding mother tone to her voice.

“Well, no, but I did have some
pizza at the party.”  Oh!  The party.  Surely some reprimand and
more grounding was coming in penance for that.  Great.  I was going
to start Vancouver life off grounded.

Caelyn snapped me back to the
previous point of conversation.  “See, you were hungry, in a strange place
and had an unexpected accident happen.  You just panicked, Maura. 
That’s all.”  There was a definite finality to her tone.

“I guess I’m in a lot more
trouble.”  I decided to accept her explanation, for the moment, since I
wished for her words to be true.  And I had to find out just how much
trouble I was really in.  My last few weeks with Ron were on the
line.  He might not even be allowed to come over now.

I looked more closely at Caelyn,
meeting her eyes, and couldn’t help but notice the strange, wistful look in
them.  Their green had a brightness about them I couldn’t remember ever
seeing before. 

“Well, as much as I’m very disappointed
in you for lying to me,” she shot me a stern, but fleeting, look, “I have to
wonder if this isn’t partially my fault.”

Ok.  I
had
to be
dreaming.  All I could do was wait for her to continue…until I possibly
woke up in my bed.

“Now that I’ve had time to think
about it, I realize that keeping you away from a boy you obviously like very
much, when you’re about to move a country away from him, is pretty
unfair.  Don’t get me wrong, I expect that this kind of behavior will never
happen again, right?”  Her expression was dangerous.

I promptly agreed by vigorously
nodding my head and proclaiming, “Never!”

She continued, “So, for the rest of
our time here, I’m going to suspend the grounding.  And you will let me
know exactly where you’re going and when you will be home.”

I was ecstatic.  “Thanks Mom!”
I sprung over the extra few inches between us to hug her.

She pulled back to look at
me.  “I
do
remember what it’s like to be your age and love
someone.”  She flinched at her own remark; as if she were as surprised as
I was she would broach that topic of conversation.  Strangely, that soft,
dreaminess returned to her eyes.  She sighed and picked up the
remote.  “Let’s watch a movie until Ron gets here, huh?”

“Sure!”  I wasn’t going to say
anything further, afraid that the wrong word would make her somehow change her
mind.

“I’ll make the popcorn!”  I
rose to go into the kitchen while Caelyn flipped through the action and horror
choices on Netflix.