Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 47: Non-belligerent

Chapter Forty-Seven
Non-belligerent

The first thing I'm aware of is that I'm awake. The second is the tilting, weightless world around me.

I jerk suddenly when I lay eyes on the man scooping me up off the ground. He's rugged and mature, around the same age as dad, dark stubble covering the lower half of his face. His hair is longish, dark, pushed back from his line of sight. Everything about him is foreign; an almost stranger. Except his eyes are familiar. It's always the eyes.

I squint up at him. "Raoul?"

"Hold on, kid."

His voice sounds much like it did when he was a wolf but maybe just a twinge deeper now that it's coming from the vocal cords of a human being.

“Diabetic? Epileptic?” he asks.

“Not anything.”

He looks as if he wouldn't agree with that. “Inside?”

I shake my head. “The car.”

He carries me over without question, taking the keys from my hand when I hold them up. He opens the drivers door and lowers me down into the seat.

“Are you sure you can drive?” he asks.

I nod.

He's wearing a pair of too big pants around his waist that I think he might have snatched from somewhere before picking me up. Now, though, he starts to back away from the car as I close the door. When I peer out the window the pants are lying on the pavement and a dark wolf is bounding away from me, already searching out the cover of the forest.

The pain is still inside my skull and chest but it's intensity has subdued enough for me to concentrate on driving. Blue sits beside me in the car, watching closely in case anything else happens.

Morna may be a Seer but she stopped the blood curse when I was dying. Maybe she can fix whatever this is, too.

I drive to Lochton in record time and get out of the car, shaking off the blur in my sight as I run across the road. When I knock against the front door and it pushes open, the world around me is already starting to warp out of reach again. It feels like pieces are crumbling off my psyche, slowly laying me bare to something much worse than a cruel headache.

Morna comes running out of the back room just as I come barreling in.

“I'm–“

“I know.” she says. “I saw it. Come here.”

She beckons for me to follow her into the back room. Blue morphs into that towering panther I've seen before so I can lean against him for support. I open my mouth and my thoughts scatter out around me. I struggle to gather the lost words again.

“Saw it? How?” I'm aware that my voice is beginning to change; my syllables sloppy and the end of my sentences slurring like I'm drunk.

“In a vision.” she grabs the few remaining items off the surprisingly clean center table and motions for me to lay down. “Quickly.”

I let go of Blue, relinquishing the feel of his fur from my fingers, before pulling myself onto the uncomfortable wooden table. He jumps up beside me and presses his head against my hip. He can't stop this from happening.

“You've been hexed.” Morna tells me.

“Hexed?” I balk. “By who?”

I don't know if she answers, or even if she can, because fire burns over my ribcage, flames licking across the tender flesh of my heart and scorching through my lunges. I curl in on my side, grasping uselessly at my chest. “Oh god – make it stop.”