The three days of rest that Dr Kratis had mentioned turned out to be accurate. Upon waking up in her dungeon bedroom at The Conservatory, still battered and bruised and fuzzy but in nowhere near as much agony as before, Hysteria initially thought she'd had a bad night out somewhere and stumbled home drunk. That she'd never had a chance to do such a thing didn't occur to her at that moment in time. Powerful drugs have a great side-effect of temporary amnesia.
But then it came back to her. She'd been out for three days. Her phone, when she picked it up off her bedside table and checked, confirmed it. It was now Tuesday, nighttime. Fucks sake.
She swung out of bed gingerly, stood up, felt wooziness threaten to take her out like a rugby tackle, and sat back on the bed again. Everything was shit. Maybe she hadn't had a normal teenage life, but this was a truth so universally acknowledged that even she'd picked up on it.
She felt her neck. The bandages were still there, the pain still throbbing, but it wasn't totally immobilising. When she tried to speak and test her vocal cords, she managed to talk to herself with a certain degree of croakiness. It wasn't perfect, and she certainly wasn't going to be doing any voice-over work in the near future, but she could probably communicate in full sentences at least. What the hell had happened?
(Branches scraping fur, eyes focused in on the prize, shimmering in the moonlight.)
Oh, yeah. The werewolf. The one she'd been running towards through the streets, then the forest. She guessed that there'd been a fight between them. Not that hard to work out, really. Just look yourself over in the mirror opposite the bed, easy marks, question one's a doozy, Hysteria Scorn. If she'd been facing down another wolf (with really not-that-great fur, she thought to herself; he should take much more care of himself, keep grooming properly) then more than likely it was a trip out of town. Which meant...
"House arrest for a whole fucking month?!"
Hair a mess, eyes blazing, saliva dripping from her teeth, she stumbled across her granny-flat to the door. It was locked, of course. Three attempts to open it didn't stop Hysteria from giving it a damn good kicking, however. Hell hath no fury like a she-wolf scorned. Yet, it seemed, Heaven hath no resistance like a locked reinforced-steel door.
She stormed to the TV screen through the fuzz and turned it on. Went through the options and called for Persephone's office. When there was no reply (of course there wasn't), she went back to her phone in the bedroom portion of her cell and dialled Persephone directly. Ring ring. No answer. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200. Hysteria was about to throw her phone at a wall when it vibrated and started singing noughties pop-punk to her. She answered. "What the fuck's this about house arrest for a month?"
"You're awake, then," Persephone answered. Her voice was calm, flat, with just a hint of satisfaction pushing through the vowels.
"Course I am. I..." Hysteria coughed, a raking, hacking cough that went on for ages as phlegm got caught in the wound in her throat. Twenty seconds later, eyes streaming, she resumed her tirade. "You can't keep me in here. This is bullshit."
"Of course I can keep you there. With Raven not fully up to speed as your fully qualified handler, and your last guardian in an unmarked grave out back, I'm responsible for you."
"I'm twenty-one!"
"And The Conservatory doesn't take that into account. You're a weapon as far as they're concerned and should've been put down as soon as they laid eyes on you."
"This has nothing to do with them," Hysteria growled. "You did this."
"I did. You decided to go against a direct order out in the field, and we almost had a bloodbath as a result. As it is, thankfully, only one dead."
Hysteria thought about going in for a good, well-deserved rant about how they had needed a werewolf out there to take the other one down, how they didn't have a bloodbath, how she'd proven that she was capable of controlling herself plenty of times, or else she'd be in one of the freezer's downstairs herself. How the mission, such as it was, had been accomplished in the end, regardless of how it had been done.
But there was no arguing with Persephone because, unfortunately, as much as Hysteria hated to admit it, she was right. There were procedures in place, as unfair and archaic as they were, and she had agreed to follow them. Technically it was on pain of death.
"You going to say something about how lucky I am to be alive?"
"You've got free board and lodging, gym access, all the Netflix you could want, and all we ask for is a few small science tests and very controlled use in the field."
"I'd like to have a fucking boyfriend. To go out. Have a life."
Persephone sighed. It was the same sigh a mother makes when they're really upset that they have to be cruel to be kind. Not that Hysteria would recognise it from real life, but she'd seen enough on that free Netflix to get the gist.
"It's the best I could do," Persephone said. "Work with me, here. I'm trying."
"You sound like them," Hysteria said.
"Ouch. Stick another one in me, why don't you?" She said it with great dollops of typical British sarcasm, but Hysteria thought she sounded as though she had actually scored a hit on her boss. She thought she might feel bad about it after she hung up, but at this point in time there was too much blood boiling for her to care.
"What do you want me to do whilst I'm stuck here then, boss?"
"The usual. Keep working out, keep the brain sharp. Do your primal exercises. Allow the doctors to do the usual. We still need you fighting fit for when you come out next."
"And when will that be?"
"Depends on what happens in Whaterly."
Hysteria frowned. Scratched a large gash stitched up behind a bandage on her left arm. "We didn't kill the thing then?"
"We did. But Raven's been sent back."
"Why?"
"Classified. I'll send you the redacted reports from our previous visits across now. Maybe that'll satisfy your curiosity."
It wouldn't, but Hysteria knew Persephone enough to know that she wouldn't be likely to get anything better than that.
"Is there anything else, Hysteria?"
"A metric ton of stuff."
"Wonderful. Rant about it to the wall. I've got to go."
"You going to drop in at any point during my incarceration and say hello to me in person?"
"Not on your life. I'm not that brave."
Hysteria hung up. She went to the kitchen and grabbed a can of coke out of the fridge. Sat down in front of the TV, screen off, and drank. It was cold. Just how she felt.
The more she sat there, the more vague memories came back to her. The more she remembered fighting the other wolf. The more she remembered salivating, smelling flesh nearby, meat. Blood.
She shuddered. Suddenly the coke didn't taste so great, and she put it down.
She double checked the date on her phone. Tuesday. Waning moon, only a few days from full. Not terrible, but enough to be an influence, even tucked away inside with no windows. And, according to the weather app, a clear night. Moonlight directly overhead, shining down on her, no thick cloud cover in the way.
Her anger starting to cool, she started to feel it. Feel her insides begin to churn. She slowly drew her legs up, bare feet on the sofa, and hugged herself. Nights like tonight were always long and hard. She wondered if she should use the TV to ask Dr Kratis for something to knock her out, but she knew he'd say no. The protocol was to have her learn to deal with the lunar influences down here, to learn how to control herself. That was what the doctors ordered, what was prescribed, what all the exercises were for.
She could feel it. If she sat still enough, even as the moon was just rising, she could sense it inside, drawing on her energy. She could feel whatever it was in her bloodstream, microbes or cancerous cells or whatever the scientists hadn't quite identified yet, growing animated. Feel them start to fizz, to bubble, to get lively like schoolchildren cooped up in a bus with piles of sweets and chocolate. It would get worse as the night drew on. Her bones would ache and her skin would prickle with hairs trying to push through. More than that, her mind would begin to ache. Show her things that couldn't be there, whisper to her. Her focus would lapse. Her thoughts would become disjointed. The wolf would try to take over and worship its mistress.
In the corner of the room was a large upright slab of metal. Cut into it was an indentation specifically designed for her. All she had to do was step into it and restraints would automatically lock around her wrists and arms, fixing her in place. She wouldn't move, bite, or kick; she would be tied down until the system told someone it was all over and she could be unlocked.
Hysteria refused to look at it. Too many nights locked up in it, of her own volition, of sometimes being forced into it. It was her beast's straitjacket, as cold and harsh and medieval as anything belonging to witch hunters of bygone ages. The wolf in her wanted it destroyed, smashed into a thousand tiny pieces, but she wouldn't. She had tried, of course. Smuggled in a crowbar and gone at it. Screwdrivers even, to take the manacles off it. But they'd put it back together again every time.
The beast inside her wanted to run wild and ravage.
The Conservatory wanted her lucid and logical.
Hysteria was both Jekyll and Hyde at all times, subservient to anger and reason, to benefactor and slave master, to the primal and untamed. She rocked on the sofa, banging the heel of her hand against her head, calling for it to stop. Of course it wouldn't. She knew it wouldn't. She tried breathing exercises, counting to ten, all that bullshit that never helped because it had been designed by people who had never gone through it. They were human. She was not.
The night drew on. She turned on the TV and hoped it would drown out the pain as her head throbbed and her jaw ached as it tried desperately to stretch out into a muzzle.
Find moonlight. Let me out. Just for an hour.
"I can't," she whimpered. "I'm sorry. I can't help you."
The faces tattooed on her arm watched her. The girl, her inked ghosts, and her ravenous demon, fought against each other in the silver glow of 21st century electronics. All were bound together, and all were utterly alone.