Filed to story: Kissed by Claw and Fang
The fact that I can’t help but remember Zane’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 Sebastian and Zane 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. Zane 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.
Zane, 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 Zane’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 Zane Vale 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 Zane’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 Zane? 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.
“Ivy?” 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. “Zane bit me. Obviously.”
“Zane?” 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 Zane 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.
