Hell Flower

||16||

I needed more information.

"What's going to happen tonight?" I finally asked, keeping my voice low so only Alex would hear me. "The exorcism . . . what's it like?"

Alex frowned as he retrieved a few bandages from the first aid kit. "Put these on your hands."

I took them from him while he cleaned grit and dirt from my skinned knees. I placed the first bandage over the scrape on the palm of my left hand. "How does it work?"

Alex finished bandaging my knees and clicked the first aid kit closed. "When we get to the clearing, we'll perform a ceremony to evict the wolf from your mind." He stood, retrieving the first aid kit and stowing it back in the cabinet.

"Will it hurt?" I asked.

"We'll have to take some of your blood," Alex said. "That will hurt a little." He paused. "Other than that, I don't know. It's hard to predict how the experience will feel."

"It's very similar to the ritual we use when we shift to a new body and join souls with them," Liz cut in. "First, using a pure silver blade, we slice the skin of the body that houses the wolf."

I winced.

"It doesn't have to be a very big cut," Reggie assured me from the other side of the bus.

I nodded and turned back to Liz as she continued explaining. "The blood that is drawn must be fed to the flames in the center of the clearing as an offering to the forest. This evicts the wolf's soul from the body."

I ran my hand through my tangled, sweaty hair, taking it all in.

"When we usually perform the ritual," Liz continued, "the souls of the human and wolf have been so closely merged that one cannot be evicted without taking the other along with it. For you, though, that won't be the case. Since you haven't merged consciousness, the spirit of the wolf in you will be exorcised, and you'll be cured."

I closed my eyes, tilting my head back and exhaling heavily. I had to prepare for the worst. I had to make sure this exorcism failed. I couldn't let that happen to my wolf.

"But it didn't work last time you tried it." My hand found its way into the pocket of my jean shorts, and my fingers fidgeted with the plastic hand grenade. I ran my thumb over the ridges of the cap. I needed any luck it could give me. "It didn't work with James."

Both Alex and Liz tensed when I said his name. Alex clenched his jaw and Liz straightened in her seat. I was hitting them where it hurt. Good. If I had any chance of convincing them not to do the same thing to me, that was what I needed to do.

"Why didn't it work with him?" I pushed on.

Liz opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out, a wail of a siren cut her off.

Everyone in the bus froze.

The spell broke with the second scream of the siren.

"Fuck," Alex spat under his breath as he glanced out the window.

Outside, red and blue lights flashed as a black, unmarked cop car pulled up alongside our bus.

"Shit, shit, shit," Liz muttered. She slinked out of her leather jacket as we slowed and pulled off to the side of the road. "Put this on." She tossed it to me.

Instinctively, I caught it and did as I was told, shoving my hands through the sleeves and shrugging it over my shoulders. "Why?"

"You need to hide the rope burns on your wrists." She mimed rubbing her wrists. Then, she glanced over to Alex. "Alex, your neck."