Chapter 25:
They say that curiosity killed the cat, but it is always unclear exactly how. Well in my case the cat waltzed across the street, got hit by a truck load of stupid and then had its dead corpse chewed on by a werewolf.
“Norma Avery Rodgers?” I felt my voice asking before I could restrain myself. The only reason I knew her middle name was the fact that I could hear her mother screeching it from five houses over whenever the girl was in some sort of trouble…she was in trouble a lot. The Monster’s face flickered with a confused emotion while he still had his phone raised to his ear.
“Do you know Norma?” he asked. My head nodded without my permission and my voice mumbled an answer before I could think about what I was doing.
“She used to live down the street from me.”
The look that crossed his face then made me want to smack myself repeatedly in the face for being dumb enough to respond to his question truthfully.
He was beaming at me, his eyes alight and his large teeth as luminous as toothpaste commercial. And the emotion that was in his eyes it was… hope?
Ah hell.
“Hey Craig.” He suddenly started talking into the phone, the foreboding smile still stuck on his face. “Yeah, that’s why I’m calling you. Would you mind eating at my place instead?” he asked.
I wanted to groan.
Wasn’t one monster enough?
“Yeah we can order in from Oliver’s.” He said happily. “Ok see ya in a few.” He concluded before handing up the phone and looking at me with another toothy grin.
“They’ll be over in a few. Let me grab the Oliver’s menu so that you can pick out what you want.” He announced to me, reaching toward me. I flinched back involuntarily and saw his eyes flash a darker color of black right before I covered up my fear and disgust of his touch as confusion.
“I thought you were going to cancel.” I stated, trying to make myself look even more irritated. I didn’t want to deal with another weird meal surrounded a bunch of monsters, especially a monster that had ‘mated’ a girl that was only a child at the time. His smile returned but it was softer now, like he was trying to make me see something.
“I thought it might be nice to eat dinner with someone you know. You know, from where you lived.” He told me.
How nostalgic.
Or it would be if where I had lived for the past four years of my life hadn’t been a shit hole.
And yet that shit hole just keeps looking better and better.
The Monster didn’t seem to notice my off put attitude though because if he had he wouldn’t have smiled back at me and she sure as hell wouldn’t have grabbed my hand to bring me with him back into the prison cell of an apartment.
******
In the few moments that the Monster and I spent in the apartment before the arrival of the Monster’s newest attempt to get me to like him, he had practically read the entire Oliver’s menu to me. Read it to me. Like I was a freaking toddler. I was on track of a Physics PhD damn it.
I had been so annoyed by the whole ordeal that I was about to swallow my fear and call him a pretentious asshat when the doorbell rang.
I was really tired of that damn doorbell. The Monster quit reading and set down the menu before he practically bounded off to get the door. Was if bad that his behavior reminded me of an obnoxious Chihuahua pug mix named Bart that my step mother owned when I was a kid? God I hated that dog. It bit me on the ass at least five times before I was six years old.
Before I could even really finish my extremely random reminiscence about my begrudged childhood pet the Monster came back into the kitchen with his friends in tow.
My eyes immediately landed on Norma’s face like it had a homing beacon strapped to it.
I had never really known Norma. She was a neighbor but not a close one, she was younger than me and she had the wisdom not to be friends with my bratty little sister. But I knew her face and I knew what she had looked like before she had been taken at the age of sixteen.
She had been a typical hard core punk kid. Dyed black hair, makeup clouded eyes, and dark clothing that draped like a scarecrow’s clothes off of her slim frame. She had spent a lot of time trying to be badass and even more getting in trouble for it.
So it almost made me sick when I looked into the dull eyes a mousy looking girl that stood draped under the arm of an auburn haired monster that I assumed was named Craig.
There was no fire in her eyes, there was no devil may cry slant to her shoulders that I remembered her for. There was only a subservient looking shell of a person standing in front of me…with a very noticeable baby bump.
“Craig this is my mate Juniper.” The Monster announced, motioning toward me. “Juniper this is my friend Craig, he serves on the Gamma committee with me.”
The auburn haired monster named Craig looked at me with what I guess was meant to be a warm smile before extending a hand to me.
“It’s nice to meet the gal that snagged Sean’s heart.” He joked.
I narrowed my eyes at his hand in disgust before looking up into his eyes with an expression that made him actually flinch. He didn’t say anything though, just lowered his hand.
“Juniper already knows your mate Norma.” Sean suddenly interjected in an attempt to rid the room of the tension that had filled the air. “apparently they used to be neighbors.”
Norma’s eyes, which had previously seemed to be ignoring everything including me snapped with enough alertness to look at me. Recognition flitted over her face and it drained of more color…if that were possible.
“Juniper Olden?” She mumbled, her question barely audible. I nodded and she looked at me with eyes as wide as a startled thirty pound cat.
The auburn headed monster man seemed to notice her distress and he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the side of her head in an attempt to sooth her.
“Are you ok?” he whispered. “Baby you are trembling.”
I could see the way she went limp when he held onto her and how her lips trembled with fear as he rubbed one of his monster hands over her infested belly in a motion that would have been thought soothing by the werewolves in the room.
It made Norma look pained and made me want to be sick or break something. Maybe be sick and break things at the same time.
“M-may I-I.” she stammered, her voice barely cracking out of her throat. The monster named Craig drew his arms back to her shoulders to rub them with his creepy ass soothing shit as well.
“Use your words honey. Deep breath” He cooed to her, trying to help her stammer. It only seemed to make it worse as her face paled and her mouth moved but no sound came out.
This was the girl that would flip anyone off, would tell my sister to go to prissy bitch hell every time they passed on the street and came home with a busted lip and a school suspension every third Friday?
I felt like someone was trying to rip out my stomach.
“Hu-hu-gg.” She struggled, looking at me with a pleading look that made me somehow understand what she wanted.
“Yes. Yes you may.” I blurted standing up out of my chair just in time to see the girl clamor out of the werewolf’s arms and slam into me like a sumo wrestler. I staggered a step back from the force of the impact as her arms wrapped around my torso like a person who didn’t know how to swim hung onto a floaty.
I could feel her shaking, trembling so hard that her teeth chattered and her abnormally large abdomen press against my hip. Before I could even really realize what I was doing I had wrapped my arms around the frightened girl and returned her terror filled embrace, patting her back and shushing softly.
I lifted my gaze back up to the red head werewolf to see him standing awkwardly, his hands outstretched toward Norma and a look on his face that seemed to be concerned, pained, angry and worried all at the same time.
I looked over at the Monster and saw that he had a soft expression on his face, his black eyes glinting at something he must have seem on my face with a emotion that could only be described as longing.
Longing for what I have no earthly idea.
Norma’s trembling started to subside and freeze for a moment as she took a deep breath.
“I-I-It’s j-j-just so n-nice ttt-ooo.” She tried to say as I felt that she was realizing exactly what she had done. She was trying to pull herself back together after almost slide tackling a near stranger just because she recognized them and they were human. Heck I knew the feeling.
“It’s good to see you too Norma.” I replied to her stuttering, still holding her as if she were a small child in need of a protective momma hug. I had never really been very maternal. Heck the neighborhood children used to see me coming and take of running in any direction but toward me. But for reasons that I didn’t even understand I knew exactly what kind of hug this broken girl needed. She needed her mother’s.
The red head monster stepped toward us and reached for Norma’s arm calmly.
“Honey, please don’t cling to her like that. “He asked of her. “It may be hard on our pups.”
Norma’s hands fisted in my shirt in a sharp reflex and she started to tremble again. She was frightened and distressed.
I was livid.
I was about to open my mouth to tell him to take his dog shit and go to hell when Sean suddenly stepped in front of me and clasped his monster friend on the shoulder.
“Pups? With an ‘s’? As in pleural?” he asked with the biggest goofiest dog toothed grin I had ever seen plastered on his face.
Well it was the goofiest until I saw the returning smile that the Craig monster gave him.
“We just went to see Ile. We are having twins.” He informed Sean with the happiest tone I had ever heard. The Monster grinned back at him and practically slapped him on the back once again.
“You dog.” He told his red haired friend, still smiling like a damn fool.
What a bunch of freaking jackasses. Sick twisted freaking jackasses that were making our lives living hells.
Norma seemed not to be paying attention to the hormonal monster male life wreckers. She had begun to stammer again, trying to ask me something.
“M-my mo-moth-er?” she finally managed to asked me. Her voice was so desperate, so scared.
“Still hanging in there.” I whispered to her, not wanting to tell her how badly the whole situation had altered the poor woman’s whole life. But she was still alive and that was at least something I could give her. He seemed to relax then, as if a vice grip had been taken off of her head.
“Thank you.”
The first clear words she had said since she walked in the door.
And apparently I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
“Honey, you didn’t stutter.” Craig praised in a happy tone as he immediately returned his attention to getting his nasty little paws back on the traumatized girl in my arms.
“You don’t let her see her mother?” My voice suddenly barked. I hadn’t meant to do it but the sudden rage that I felt that Norma had obviously not even known if her mother was alive made me kinda loose it. I knew exactly what it felt like to think your parent was dead. I didn’t wish that kind of trauma on anyone.
Craig’s face seemed to go still with confusion at first but it quickly turned to possessiveness.
“She didn’t want Norma and me to be together. Norma suffered from the lies that woman told her about our kind for almost two years.” He snapped at me, seeming to lose some control as well. I could see the beast inside of him just below the surface of his face, trying to intimidate me. Norma cowered from it but for some strange ass reason fear never entered my suddenly suicidal mind . Maybe I did need to stop hanging out with Red so much.
“Family is family. Sometimes you just have to quit being a manic dumbass and let a girl have her momma-”
A hand slapped over my mouth then and suddenly I had become sandwiched between Norma and the Monster. Norma still hugging my front while Sean stood behind me.
“Mate you will watch your tongue.” He snapped, making the overly brave part of me shrivel back into a spineless jellyfish that lived in a tinny wennie fish tank. Norma, seeing that Sean was suddenly so close to the both of us, let go of me only to be collected into the arms of her werewolf captor.
“I apologize Craig.” Sean told him, still keeping my mouth shut. “Juniper has had a pretty disappointing day.” He covered for me, trying to smooth things over. Craig’s face seemed to soften at his friend’s tone and the feeling of the terrified shell of a Norma Rodgers in his arms.
“It’s alright man.” he assured him. “Let’s just get some grub before we have to resort to eating each other.”
Was it just me or did he just raise his lip and snarl at me a little as he said that?
******
I sat out on the balcony the next evening still reeling over the events of the previous night. To say that the dinner had been awkward would have been a sickening understatement. The whole time Craig was attached to Norma in some fashion. Cooing at her stomach, spoon feeding her the meal that she had no say in ordering and constantly kissing her like a love sick…I don’t even think there is a creature on earth that can match his particular brand of downright clinginess. But apparently I was the only third party that was offended by this because when I stole a glance at my particular brand of Monster he was looking at them in a dreamy sort of way like the situation was totally precious and sweet.
It turned my stomach. How could the Monster be so damn blind? How could be not see the dull look in Norma’s eyes or the petrified tremor in her hands?
But the worst part of the whole thing was when the Monster would look at me.
Or rather, my stomach, and smile softly with that shitty longing look on his face.
And I knew exactly why he kept looking at me like that.
He wanted to infest me with his demonic spawn.
There wasn’t a lot in this world that could truly put me off of food, but that longing look made me want to never eat anything ever again.
I had been out here on the Monster’s balcony patio all day. I didn’t want to be in the prison like apartment anymore. It was making me crazy. I sighed and closed my eyes again. Kyrie was the only one who had broken my solitude today, coming to check my stiches. Unfortunately Ile had been with him and he was unable to really explain the whole ‘flunk your hearing and stay on house arrest forever’ command. He only gave me subtle hints of how he would like to get the ‘I’m the supposed mate to a bat shit scary werewolf’ support group back together and how I should act more “civil” around Sean in the meantime.
Yeah. Civil.
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to pull that one off.
I leaned back against the back of the patio chair I had been sitting in practically all day and put my hands over my face. Why did I have to go and open my large freaking stupid mouth and tell him I knew Norma?
After they had left I had wisely decided to make a beeline to sleepy time land. I could feel his eyes on me again like they had been before he went all crazy and about ripped my guts out.
He kept looking at me with lust.
I raked my hands down my face and stood up to lean over the railing of the balcony. Just three more weeks Juniper, I told myself. Just three more weeks and I would have my chance to escape these monsters, escape this hell. I looked down at the copy of the Arabian Nights that I had left open on the patio table. I felt terribly like that woman that was put in the glass box covered in chains by her dragon demon husband. All I had to do was get out of the box while the Monster was sleeping. I wanted to be out of the box like the woman except instead of doing all that revolting key collecting nonsense, just run the hell away. I flipped the book shut and looked out over the horizon toward the river and the lower districts.
I had to get out.
We all had to get out.
I heard the bedroom door open but I didn’t turn around.
I knew exactly who it would be.
The Monster was home from work. He walked up behind me a wrapped his arms around my waist an nuzzled his nose into my hair without my consent.
“I’ve missed you mate.” He told me, kissing my temple.
I didn’t say anything. What was there I could say?
I didn’t freaking miss you? Go the hell away? Touch me again and I’ll rip off your arm and beat you to death with it?
Nope. None of those would go over well.
“I was thinking about what you said the Craig last night.” He whispered to me softly. “About family.”
I swear to God if he says “let’s make one baby” I am seriously going to throw myself off of this balcony. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something in response so I swallowed my pride and did what Kyrie had asked me to do. Pretend to be civil.
“And what did you determine?” I asked, my voice failing to come out of a monotone.
“That I’m not going to separate you from yours.” He told me, turning me gently in his arms to that I was facing the door.
Who I saw standing there made my heart wrench and a sob of fear and denial fill my throat.
“Cheyenne.”