Can't Fight the Moonlight

So A.J left and the room got quiet, everyone stood as the minutes passed, and I’m not sure why. I shift in my seat, and as I do I feel pings of pain through out my back. It didn’t hit me until now and boy did it hit me. I wince slightly, causing four sets of eyes to turn their gazes upon me.

“What’s wrong?” Padge asks almost under his breath, from nearly across the room. But I could hear it as if he was standing right next to me.

“Nothing,” I reply, shaking it off. The guys take seats around me a few minutes later and El continues to stand in the middle of floor, behind us.

“Do you guys want anything?”

“Don’t s’pose you have any beer?” Moose asks her from his seat, playing with the new plastic he tore from his cigarette pack.

“Actually, we do.” She replies, trotting off towards the kitchen to get just that.

The tension in the room is starting to get to me. It’s knocking at my temples and playing with my eyes, making me terribly dizzy.

“Are you okay?” The words bounce uncontrollably around in my head, they’re loud and heavy. It’s El that asked, holding a beer out to Padge, who took the seat next to me. “Do you want me to get you an ice pack or something? You look pretty clammy…”

“Yeah mate, yeh’ do.” Jay agreed, taking a pause before snapping open his beer. That sound too reverberated in my head, bouncing off all areas of my skull, staying trapped inside until the echo burns out.

“Nah, I’m fine…” I don’t know what else to say… All of a sudden it feels like someone turned up the heat in this building and its getting hotter by the seconds.

“I’m going to make a phone call real quick, if you need anything help yourselves.” She’s trusting that they won’t attempt to get me out of her, nice girl.

“Maybeh’ you should lay down or something.” Moose says, and I wince at the sound of the beer flowing down his throat. I drop my head into my hands; they’re so warm against my face.

My eyes are closed tightly and I can hear every word from the other room perfectly. Every mumbled, whispered, hushed word perfectly.

“Ivanna, hey it’s El-“

“Did AJ check in-“

“She did, and she brought home a werewolf-“

“So she caught him-“

“No, she brought home someone who has been turned by the guy that got away, or at least we’re thinking he did it. How many wolves can be in this city anyways?”

“Another one?”

“Yes, and oh my god, do you know it is? It’s the freaking lead singer from the band we went to see the other night!” She couldn’t hide the surrealness in her voice…Or the excitement. “He’s here right now with his band mates, we let him call them. And A.J. is out right now looking for the one that got away.”

“Do they know her secret?” The other voice was shrill and almost upset, thinking as if these things could be controlled.

“Well yeah…she had to tell them why she had their friend pretty much held captive. But that wasn’t why I called-“

“Has she lost her mind? Not only has she told civilians about the things that go bump in the night in this damned town, she told them her secret? Does that girl know-“

“Take it up with her later Ivanna, right now I need to know if the changes have any effects on the person who is changing.”

“Well of course, the first few times they have get use to the heightened senses and the new blood lust. There’s new animal within that is now living inside of them twenty-four seven.” Way to blunt.

“Is there anything I can do for him? He’s looking really ill.”

The person on the other end sighs heavily, and almost reluctantly answers “He’ll just need to rest. I take it she’ll be storing him in the basement?”

“Yes.” El replies like a child who just got caught, I could almost feel the cower in her word.

“I’m going to consult my books further in werewolves, you know as well as she knows that there isn’t a cure.”

“I know, and he knows this.” With that she hangs up, leaving the deafening click ring throughout my head.

“Okay, sorry, I had to call A.J’s Watcher.”

“’Er what?”

“Her Watcher, the person who taught her how to be the Slayer…I guess that’s how you describe that… Anyway, I asked her if there was anything we could do-“

“Yeah I heard it all,” I tell her, not bothering to keep that a secret, I don’t think my head can take hearing that all over again…

“Why don’t you go in our room and try to get some rest? Do you want me to get you some aspirin or anything?” She sounds so sorry. I nod yes against my palms, taking a moment before getting up to go to their room. She leads me there, taking slow, light steps. I think she has a sense of how heightened my senses are. “You can lie down in here,” She whispers, dropping her voice lightly as she pulls the window curtains closed, to make the room dark as it can be.

“Thank yeh’” I say to her as I take a seat on one of the two beds. It’s soft, and looks barely touched. The pillows are still full as I lean back on them, my back absorbing the softness immediately.

“I’ll go get your aspirin and some water,” She says before leaving.

And now it hits me, how strange this really is starting to be. As I’m looking around their room for a second time, taking a good look; noticing all of the clothes pilled high in stacks, and all the books identical to the wardrobe, the posters and pictures covering the peeling paint. It’s quite intimate to be in someone’s bedroom, or at least I think it is. You get to look at a different side of the person, a side that’s really underneath the person you first meet.

El walks back into the room and I fall awkward, my knees bend up into my frame as she walks over with a bottle of water and palm that has pills spilled in the middle of it. She hands them to me and I take them quite quickly.

She nods a goodbye and her eyes tell me to call if I need anything, and then her body falls out of the door and into the other room, she closes the old door as quietly as possible before she rejoins the mates.

I fell asleep, because for a short while the aches subsided. The noise of laughter pokes at my ears as I break consciousness and wake up. The television is on; I can hear the cartoons of the early afternoon playing.

I’m tangled up in the blankets as I get a good look around myself, its still daylight, I can feel the warmth of the sun and see the light pour in through the curtains. In wake-up routine I scratch at my hair and pull my fingers through it. I touch my face and rub my eyes and then untangle myself from the mess I’ve made of the covers.

I can smell food from the other room; the smell lingers against my nostrils and stirs the noises from my stomach. Like poking fingers from the inside, my stomach gurgles and I realize just how hungry I am.

“Did you get any sleep?” Jay asks as I emerge from the bedroom, taking in the full smell of food and people-almost like two of the same.

“Yeah,”

“There’s food if you’re hungry,” El quietly calls from the kitchen, and I let my feet follow her voice.

My eyes unravel the food that’s sitting in the kitchen, burgers with cheese and burgers plain, fries, and a couple sorts of salads. I can smell the blood of the freshly grilled burgers, she cooked them. I can smell the blood under the grease in the pan and it blends something up inside.

“Help yourself,” She says, and I now notice she is at the sink washing a couple of dishes.

I blink, trying to remove my eyes from her neck but I can’t look away. I can almost see the blood that is flowing under her skin and it’s unnerving. She takes notice in my staring and asks if I need anything, I shake my head and she goes back to her dishes. I step a little further by her, as if in control of someone else. I shouldn’t close the distance, I should back away and get-her heart beat fills my head and every pound strikes at a string that just wants me to rip it out of her chest…How can I be thinking these things?

She turns off the hot water; the steam rises from her hands as she turns at the spot, looking at me intently, like she is trying to read my mind. Her mouth moves but I can’t hear her over her heart beat, its going faster, louder, heavier, filling up my head and leaving no room to hear anything else. I can see the steam leaving her redden hands as she dries them in the towel, holding onto it even after her hands are well dried.

I can’t stop myself and I see it in my head for a split second before I act on it. In one stride I close the gap between her and I and I swoop her up in my arms. I bury my face in her neck to tear at the warm skin that covers the even warmer blood beneath its surface. I bite and tear, ripping at anything in the way of what I want. I can feel her body go limp but I keep going. The blood is just dripping so effortlessly but I can’t get it all up at once, my shirt and arms are getting soaked as I quench my hunger that rapped my insides.