Like a Fang to the Throat
Needless to say, there’s no going to sleep after that.
There’s no doing anything except checking and rechecking my throat about a thousand times in the next two hours as I wait for the last of the drugs—and what I’m hoping is some kind of bizarre hallucinogen—to wear off.
Because if this isn’t some drug-induced hallucination, then nicked arteries and aliens are the least of my concerns.
Part of me wants to get up and go for a walk to clear my head, but memories of what happened the other night are still fresh. After the day I’ve had, and what I just saw in the mirror, I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my shit completely if anyone tries to hassle me tonight. Especially when a glance out the window reveals that the moon is still high in the sky.
Not that that should matter in a normal world, but “normal” has pretty much been a distant memory since I set foot in this place. Just the thought has me running my fingers over the bandage on my neck, my mind racing all over again as I try to figure out what could possibly have caused the puncture marks on my neck.
I mean, sure, if I was living in a horror novel, there would be an obvious explanation for those perfectly placed,
perfectly spaced punctures. But I’m not Bram Stoker, and this isn’t Transylvania, so there has to be another reason.
A snake? Two shots to my neck? A really mean practical joke?
It has to be something. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.
The fact that I can’t help but remember Jaxon’s warning about the full moon and his sneered comment about Marc and Quinn being animals doesn’t make it any easier to be logical. Nor do Macy’s warnings that Flint and Jaxon come from different worlds, that they’re just too different to ever get along.
It has to be the drugs, right? It has to be.
Because what’s skating around the edges of my mind is totally absurd. Completely bonkers. There are no such things as monsters, just people who do monstrous things.
Like this.
If Marise didn’t give me a couple of shots in the neck, then this has to be a practical joke. Jaxon has to be messing with me. He has to be. There is no other reasonable explanation.
This is the idea I hold on to all through the next couple of hours, the mantra I repeat to myself over and over and over again. And still, as soon as the clock on my phone hits six a.m., I’m up and in the shower—being careful, as instructed, not to get the bandage on my neck wet.
After all, what do I know about vampire bites? The last thing I need to do is aggravate the thing…
Not that this is a vampire bite or anything. I’m just saying, at this point I’m taking nothing for granted.
After I’m dressed in a black skirt, black tights, and purple
polo shirt this time, I arrange my hair so it covers both my neck bandage and the cut on my cheek, grab my lined hoodie, and sneak out of the bedroom before Macy’s alarm even goes off. Part of me wants to wake her up and ask her the question burning itself indelibly within my mind, but I don’t want her to lie to me.
I’m also not sure I want her to tell me the truth.
Jaxon, on the other hand… If he lies to me, you’d better believe I’m going to stake him through his fangy black heart. And yes, I know that makes no sense. I just don’t happen to care at this exact moment.
I march through the school like a woman on a mission. The fact that I’m also still a little dizzy—just how much blood did I lose, anyway?—makes things particularly interesting, but there’s no way I’m lying around in bed, waiting to talk to him, for one second longer.
I make it up to the tower in about five minutes flat, which pretty much has to be some kind of record, considering it’s all the way at the other end of the castle. But when I rush through the alcove to pound on Jaxon’s door, there’s no answer.
I keep pounding, and when that doesn’t work, I text him. And call him. And then pound some more. Because this can’t be happening right now. He can’t really not be here when I most need answers from him.
Except apparently he can. Damn it.
Frustrated, pissed off, and more worried than I’d like to admit, I drop down on one of the overstuffed chairs in his reading alcove and stare at the now-boarded-up window that started all this so I can pretend not to notice that the
rug that was here yesterday is now gone.
Then I lean back and prepare to wait Jaxon Vega out.
Fifteen minutes later and I’m pretty much climbing the walls. Half an hour later and I’m firing off more than a few obnoxious texts to the raging jackass. And forty-five minutes later, I’m contemplating burning down the whole freaking tower…at least until Mekhi walks in, sleepy-eyed and amused.
“What are you smiling at?” I demand none too politely. “You look cute when you’re grumpy.”
“I am not grumpy.”
“Oh, right. You’re pissed off beyond belief and more than capable of ripping Jaxon’s fat black heart out of his chest and stomping on it?” He quotes my most outrageous text back to me, I assume to embarrass me. But I am beyond being embarrassed. I mean, I have fang marks in my neck. Fang marks.
“Exactly,” I answer with a glare. “Not to paraphrase Sylvia Plath or anything.”
“Not to paraphrase her badly, don’t you mean?”
“Keep it up and I’m going to get pissed off at you, too,” I add. He smiles, but before he can say something that makes me want to punch him in his ridiculously pretty face, I demand, “Where’s Jaxon? And why is he hiding from me? Or showing you my texts?”
“He’s not hiding from you.”
“Oh, really?” I walk over and ceremoniously knock on his door. Once again, there’s no answer. “Pretty sure he is.”
“Really? And why would he be hiding from you exactly?” Mekhi crosses his arms over his chest and grins at me,
brows raised and head tilted.
“Because of this.” I reach up and rip the bandage off my throat, turning my head so Mekhi can see what I saw.
I take a perverse kind of satisfaction in watching the grin drop from his face. In watching his eyes widen and his face go slack with shock. “What the hell! Who bit you?”
Oh God. My stomach revolts, and for a second, I think I’m going to throw up as nausea washes through me. He didn’t deny someone bit me. He just asked who bit me, like it’s perfectly normal that I have two puncture wounds on my neck.
Like it’s perfectly normal that there might be someone or, judging by his question, a lot of someones at this school who walk around biting people.
Fear skitters up my spine at the implication, has the hair on my arms and the back of my neck standing straight up.
“Grace?” Mekhi prompts when I’m too busy trying not to hyperventilate to answer him. “Who bit you?”
“What do you mean, who?” I nearly choke on the words. “Jaxon bit me. Obviously.”
“Jaxon?” He shakes his head, a little wild-eyed. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s not how that went down.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is. I was up here, got cut by glass, and Jaxon bit me. I’m sure of it.”
“You remember that happening? Just like that? You remember him biting you?”
“Well, no.” I’m pretty sure I’m as wild-eyed as he is at this point. “But if it wasn’t him, then who the hell was it?”
“I have no idea.” He pulls out his phone and fires off a series of texts.
My head is swimming. Because of everything he’s said and everything he hasn’t. The only things that bite people are animals and— No. I’m not ready to go there yet. Not ready to actually think the word. My brain might explode.
“I swear to God, if you’re messing with me, Mekhi… If this is all just some great, big practical joke you guys cooked up, I’m going to murder you all. Like, disembowel you while you’re still alive and feed your entrails to whatever poor, starving polar bear I can find. We’re clear about that, right?” “Crystal.” His phone vibrates with several return texts, and his face gets even more grim as he reads them. “It definitely
wasn’t Jaxon.”
The shiver along my spine turns into a violent chill, one that makes it hard for me to think. Hard for me to breathe. “How do you know he’s not just saying that?”
“Because Jaxon doesn’t lie to me. And because he is currently freaking the fuck out.” His phone buzzes again, and he reads the newest messages before continuing. “He wants you to sit tight. He’s on his way back. He’ll be here in a few hours.”
“On his way back?” My head is actually threatening to blow up. Like, it seriously might just explode right here, right now, and then it won’t matter who made these marks on me or why. “Where exactly did he go?”
“The mountains.”
“The mountains? You mean Denali?”
Mekhi doesn’t look at me when he answers. “Farther than that.”
“Farther than… How much farther are we talking about here?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t you tell me not to worry about it.” I poke him in the shoulder. “I’m the one with fang marks in my neck from some asshole’s practical joke, and Jaxon is the last one who saw me besides the medical professional. So I’m going to worry until he gets back here and explains this to me. Okay?”
“Okay, okay!” He pretends to rub the spot I poked. “Jeez, woman. You definitely know how to make your point.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to pass that along to your mountain-traversing friend. And by the way, why aren’t you freaking out that I have fang marks in my neck?”
“I am freaking out! Jaxon’s freaking out. We’re all freaking
out.”
“Yeah, but you’re freaking out because you don’t know who bit me. You’re not freaking out because—oh, I don’t know—someone bit me!”
“Oh yeah.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, looks anywhere but at me. “I think I’m going to leave that for Jaxon to explain.”
“Because he’s just so talkative.”
I’m completely fed up with both of them at this point, not to mention the entire situation, so screw it. Just screw it. I push off the chair and head for the door.
Except Mekhi gets there before me—the boy sure can move fast when he wants to—and blocks my path. “Hey. Where are you going?”
“Back to my room to get my stuff. I have class.” And a cousin who I am totally prepared to torture the truth out of if I have to. I move to go around him, but he shifts to block my
path.
“I told you Jaxon wants you to stay put. Just…I don’t know, grab a book and a blanket and curl up by the fire.” He gestures to the empty fireplace.
“There’s no fire.”
“I’ll build one. It’ll take me five minutes, I promise.”
“Mekhi.” I speak slowly and in the most reasonable tone I can manage, but I can see that just makes him warier. Smart boy.
“Yes, Grace?”
“If Jaxon wants me to stay put, maybe he should have done the same. As it is, he’s on some mountain God only knows where doing God only knows what, and I’m here with inexplicable fang marks in my neck that happened when I was unconscious.” The terror is back, so I focus on the anger. It’s so much easier to deal with. “I assume you can see why I don’t actually give a damn what Jaxon wants right now.”
“Um, yeah. I absolutely can see that.” He gives me the grin that I’m sure normally gets him everything he wants in life and more, but I refuse to cave. Not now and not over this. “How about we compromise? You go back to your room and chill until Jaxon gets here. That way you’ll be safe, and then you two can figure this out together.”
“You really think I need to hide from some moron with a staple remover or a pet snake?”
“A staple remover didn’t make those marks, Grace. And neither did a snake. I think you know that, or you wouldn’t have been up here pounding on Jaxon’s door at six in the morning.”
His acknowledgment of the elephant in the room—or should I say the monster—brings a calmness washing over me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Maybe it’s the medicine, maybe I’m going into shock, or maybe I’m just relieved to finally have someone being real with me.
Whatever it is, I take a deep breath and hold on to it as my first conversation with Jaxon plays through my head. “There are more things in heaven and hell, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And then I ask him—because I have to hear it out loud: “So what did make these marks?”
For long seconds, he doesn’t answer. Just when I’ve given up on him speaking at all, he says, “The truth is, Grace, sometimes the most obvious answer really is the right one.”
