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SIXTY-FOUR | SENIOR PARTY (PART 3)
My eyes widened, and I span around, gesturing wildly but silently at Skye. He frowned at me, confused, and then I heard a thud.
It sounded heavy, meaty, and then: “Alfie?”
I launched myself towards Danny, sprinting through the dark, damp foliage as fast as I could. There was something else in the wood, something faster, black on black, a shadow of a shadow, and then there was another, terrible thud.
“Danny?” I whispered, trembling. I put my arm out to steady myself – the darkness was too thick, I couldn’t see – and then I screamed.
I was leaning on a white birch tree, and, just below my hand, was a tar-like smear that looked like a handprint.
Then my eyes adjusted, and, face down in the dirt, were two bodies. Danny, and, I assumed Alfie. My hands flew to my eyes, desperate to shut out the image. I couldn’t deal with another –
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Though Aradia was, for all intents and purposes, to the outside world, my mother, I was in the fortunate position of being able to put my own phone number down when the police officer cornered Skye, Rowan, and I as we were leaving the senior party.“You three were the ones that saw it, yes? The ones that called it in?” She’d asked impatiently, one hand on her hip.We’d nodded slowly. I’d struggled to comprehend why they’d ask that. The monster had got away, Danny and Alfie were in an ambulance, and we’d failed. I’d failed.Rowan, seemingly exhausted from finding Kathrena, had shrunk against my side.“I called it in,” Skye said, and I’d never felt acute relief at hearing someone else take charge of a situation before. Sweet, shy Skye had spoken, and, though his voice had wobbled with emotion, he’d stood up straight and looked the
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The police station was on the outskirts of town, and was set against the forest in a miserable grey block building, with a faded sign over the electric front doors. It looked like an afterthought in an otherwise beautifully constructed town, and even less fitting than the suburban houses that ringed around the old English centre.It looked like the sort of place that people went into, and never came back out of.I rolled my truck into an empty space – of which there were a surprising number, though it was a Sunday, after all, and Hawthorn, despite the recent attacks, still wasn’t exactly a bustling city with a new crime to report every hour. The drizzle didn’t help the muted grey exterior, and I slunk inside, my hood pulled up over my head to keep the rain off my face and hair. I wondered where Skye’s little car was – I couldn’t see it anywhere, even though his slot had been right before mine.
She Runs with Wolves SIXTY-SEVEN | GREY AND GREEN
I passed Rowan on my way to the car park. She, like Skye, had dark bags under her eyes, and with her pale complexion, and probable hangover, they looked deeper and darker than his had. She smiled at me, a nervous, questioning smile, and I offered her one of the same kind back.We had a lot to talk about before we could be friends – real friends – again. This time, I knew, there would be no lies, and no deceit. Amongst all of the pain, and all of the fear, and all of my regret, I couldn’t help but feel a shock of glee at the thought of having a real friend again. It had been years since I’d been able to be so open with anyone, and part of me – tucked beneath everything I was holding back – there was a glimmer of hope.Falmer had been my only friend for the last four years, and I would be eternally grateful to him for that. But I was changing – I could feel it in myself, with every new day, and every new challenge, every new threat that I faced – and his brand of lazy sarcasm didn’t suit
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“Uh,” I said, wanting to buy myself more time, but wanting to get it over with, too. Torn between my options, I realised that they were both, at their core, the same. I had to tell him, whether it was right now, right this second, or in another ten, another twenty. “No. Vampires don’t age,” I said, taking my foot off the accelerator as I looked at Skye, my eyes narrowed, not harshly, but curiously.He nodded to himself, his expression steely. His hand stayed steady on my thigh, though, and I slotted that reaction into a neat pile, marked ask Skye about later.“Okay,” said Rowan. She’d caught the slight tension between us, her lip caught between her teeth, a tiny smudge of red lipstick on her rabbit-like front tooth. “But you said you drink animal blood?”“Yeah. And if a human willingly offers their blood, then I would drink that, too. But I would
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There was a beat of horrible, brittle silence. We were frozen in place: Rowan with narrowed, accusing eyes; Skye with a wild, desperate gaze, his lips parted; and me, torn between the two of them, scared to even breath.Then Skye reached up an awkward hand to scratch at the back of his neck, and I inhaled a tiny, shallow breath. The tension broke, and Skye let out a nervous bark of laughter.“I mean, we need your help, Rowan. And that of your Grandmother, too. You’ll find out soon enough, and we need you to trust us.” He sounded as though he was listing off reasons to tell her – and, I had to admit, all of them were good, sound reasons for him to share his secret – but it also sounded as though he was stalling.Beneath the table, I squeezed his knee gently. He sighed.“I’m a werewolf.”Rowan shook her head in disbelief, looking betw
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“Not Toby?” I frowned.She shook her head, and then tucked her hair behind her ears. “No. He’s only just woken up. Like I said – I like him. I’m not his girlfriend. The Pumpkin Fayre was our first date,” she added quietly, chagrined.“It was?” I gasped, clutching at my near-empty cup of tea.“I was going to tell you afterwards. Like how you told me about you and Skye, you know? I didn’t want to get my hopes up if nothing came of it. Anyway,” she sighed, “his family will want to be with him. It’s not my place to go running over there, no matter how worried about him I am.”“Okay,” I said, deciding that a change of scenery – and a distraction – were in order. I swilled the dregs of old tea around in my mug, and glanced into it.My breath stilled in my
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“You snuck out,” Aradia sighed, settling back into her chair. My hair dripped onto my shoulders, trickling down my back, beneath my coat. I shivered.“I’m really sorry–““Don’t be sorry, Ellis. I only make these rules to keep us safe. We’re not a traditional family by any means, but we are all we have.” She sighed again. “We’ve already lost David. I’m not angry with you, I’m just… worried.”She’d sounded more than just worried on the phone, but I chose to let that slide. I’d had to leave Skye at Rowan’s – I’d felt awful, but he’d said that he could just shift and run home, no harm done. I’d also felt a pang of sorrow that I still wouldn’t be able to hear what he had to say to me, though that had been dwarfed by the age-old fear of a parental telling off as I’d driven home.
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