AN
GUYS, GUYS- For the trailer of TEETH, the second book, I was thinking Delta Rae, Bottom of the River- what do you think? Especially the part where it says "It's a long way down to the river," TELL ME SOME GOOD TRAILER MAKERS, cause I need a g'one. Link me to them below
OR Barton Hollow by the Civil Wars, it really fits it too- where it goes: "Devil's gonna follow me wherever I go, can't no preacher man save my soul," and "When that full moon forced my hand."
OR I Will Never Die by Delta Rae, it's pretty kick ass too- go listen to them and report back to me and tell me whatcha think.
My new ship is Jezebel and Schuyler. #NORAGRATS
It's late afternoon when Schuyler's eyes flicker open.
The moon's light has been replaced by dim sunshine pooling out from the curtains, the light hum of rain tapping on the window; she stretches out her hands, half-expecting to find Lennox already gone.
He isn't.
The man is wrapped with sheets down to his waist, his stomach to the mattress and one heavy arm is tucked tightly beneath his pillow and the other won't let go of Schuyler. He's humming, so softly that she can barely hear it, and his eyes are closed.
"You up?" She whispers, even if she knows the answer.
The duvet is tangled in her legs, twisting her up with Lennox where both of their ankles hook together.
"For a while," he tells her, grinning, and even if it's beginning to be late October, Schuyler swears it feels like a cool Summer morning, waking up feeling like the sun is shining just for your own pleasure and not exactly needing the blankets in fear of freezing.
She nods, turning into him with her nose burying into the slope of his shoulder. "Last night about wore me out," Schuyler's entire body is marked up with pretty little bruises where Lennox held her skin like handles, his own freckled, scarred skin is ripe with angry red trails from scratches, they curve around his back, to his shoulder and down to the pearls of his spine.
His hand droops to her waist, touching softly at the pink skin. "S'gon rain tonight," he drawls it out, that strange accent of his coming out in his heavy tone.
"Little rain ain't gonna hurt me," Schuyler whispers to her mate, staring at him through her lashes. There may be an echo of hesitance at the mention of a downpour, but with Lennox, she won't fear the angry skies as long as he's right next to her.
"Ain't a little, though," Lennox tells her. "Going to pour and apparently the skies aren't feeling any mercy."
"Tessa is going to murder me," Schuyler replies, changing the subject because she doesn't want to focus on her worst fear that is inevitably coming for them: the rain.
"That Volvo out there hers?" Lennox asks, sitting up just enough to see through his second floor window, where it has the view of the front of the house. The silver car is parked beside Quin's Ford, it must be an earlier model- he guesses late '90s.
"Hers, stolen by me," she tells him, her hand moving to feel the nape of his neck. "Actually, can you take a look at it? When I parked in your driveway it started coughing up a storm."
He nods. "Yeah, I'll look up under the hood, after I make sure you eat."
"Depends, what's for breakfast?" His mate asks him, a sly grin on her features.
"Doesn't matter what it is, we have the best cook in a seventy mile radius underneath my roof," the stub on the Alpha's chin brushes on Schuyler's forehead as he reaches down to peck her hair, lips soft in the wild ginger curls.
"Better eat then, yeah?" Schuyler tells him, trying to hide her ruddy red cheeks and reaches to wrap her hand into Lennox's, he takes her smaller palm into his and intertwines them immediately, like it's second nature; it is.
Lennox nods, a hint of a smile in the stubble of his cheeks, his hand moves to her waist. His calloused fingers brush against the soft, tinged-pink-and-purple skin there, where he left his fingerprints in her skin like a note to any outside force to them who she was and who she belonged to.
*
Schuyler is not one to care about how she looks, or the way she presents herself to anyone. She isn't picky about the condition of her hair, and she doesn't think smudged-eyeliner is her worst look, considering it's eleven in the morning and she's completely free for the day.
Her schedule are classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday- pepper the days out instead of prolonging them, that's what her daddy said- and it paid off. Her work schedule- on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday- only once in a blue moon does she work the weekends, today is Thursday, a blissfully empty day to laze around contently in the arms of her oversized mutt of a mate.
But when she looks up into the mirror of Lennox's bathroom, her hair is in knots, pulled in all directions and it's blatantly obvious that she did something, not quite everything but something note-worthy, last night.
She's been left to her own devices in the restroom; in one corner is the crystal clear shower that looks like a mechanism from the future, and to her right is the toiletries, toothpaste promising minty freshness only a few feet away from the full length mirror/pantry door.
She grabs it, spins out a rag and uses the old trick she'd been doing since she was old enough to go to sleep-overs but forget her toothbrush.
It's easy enough, wetting the rag and then putting a dollop of toothpaste that, trust her, she needs. She scrubs the filth away from her teeth, can still taste the granola bar from last night...and Lennox in the crevices of her mouth.
It takes a while, the toothpaste- considering Lennox seems like he had violently popped the cap open and just dump the paste into his mouth mornings before, she can tell- because he had obviously tried to straighten it out.
But there is nothing else untidy about the bathroom, it almost looks more untouched than the bedroom was, had been. Hardly lived in, it seemed- the towels were all carefully folded and tucked into the pantry, the soap was Dawn hand soap, lavender.
When she had stepped into the shower, it was steaming hot and just the right temperature, but the soap was hardly there- the sharp cinnamon that she could smell on Lennox was over halfway gone, like he had scrubbed at his skin days before with it.
When she gets out of the hot spray, she wipes herself off- and in the process, she searches in the drawers by the sink for a brush or hairdryer.
She doesn't mean to stumble upon the toothbrush- but when she does, curiosity begins to pump in her veins, shooting straight to her brain as soon as her fingers accidently knock against it.
Beside this toothbrush, the kind that comes in one pack, is a newer, more pristine one- and beside that one, is two more toothbrushes that seem to be the exact replica of the other she had found thrown in the drawer.
The three abused brushes are atrophying at the bristles, squished to the head of the brush like they were pressed down for hours. Two of them are cracked, like Lennox had brushed so furiously, so desperately, he hadn't even noticed they were broken until he put it down.
She only presses her thumb to only one that isn't cracked, and looks back to the brand new toothbrush, that could only be days old.
Weird.
Maybe her mate is just obsessed with dental hygiene, considering he hadn't even had that bad of morning breath. There had to be a flaw in her Lennox, and maybe it was just OCD about having clean teeth- it wasn't that bad, if anything, she was lucky to have a fresh-breathed boyfriend.
Something rubbed her the wrong way, it felt like he was trying to cleanse himself within the walls of his bathroom.
She tries to ignore it.
*
When she walks downstairs, she hadn't expected the entire house almost boiling over with life. It was full of it, reminding her of the first day of college- when the dorm hallways were filled with excited teenage girls saying goodbye to their families but greeting their new life with open arms and wide smiles.
That had been the day Tessa and her met seven girls on the same floor they lived on and, inevitably, became the usual Friday hang-out, either in her own dorm room or one of theirs to watch stupid horror movies. They were the polaroid for the college poster child, the girls that colleges would ask to be in their 'Why YOU should attend OUR campus' brochures and commercials.
It was hard enough for two girls to meet a sudden herd of teenagers from different parts of the USA, but what was even harder? Or maybe even...more intimidating, was being blinked at by four pairs of new eyes, plus Giles, who was waggling his eyebrows at her from the bottom of the stairs, and Lennox pouring what seemed to be pounds and pounds of sugar in his coffee, and crème, and Coffee-mate.
Her mouth went dry, but she let a smile slide on her features- he didn't take it black like he said he did. That was alright. Cute. But Schuyler felt humiliated, a rookie mistake she felt like she should've known.
Oh God, the entire time he was chugging down that black coffee in his truck was just a way to get that bitter liquid down his throat faster? Had their first ten minutes of their first date been total hell to Lennox? When he had grabbed three mints at Roody's Catfish and Chicken because he was gagging on the taste of her gross Starbucks coffee?
She kept the grin on her face though, smiling at Lennox, and then she was passed around each member in the house- one by one.
There was Quin, who Lennox had talked about the first time- and now that she thinks about it, the only time they went out, but she had been welcomed in those warm arms as soon as she got to the first level of the house. And then she was served a pile of pancakes with sunny-side-up eggs and sausage patties.
But, those sausages were passed to the two pairs of eyes that begged at the other end of the table like puppies, the two girls- Emilia and Bridgit, were basically waiting for her to give them something. She had a feeling that if she dropped something on the floor, they'd be there in a second to scoop it up in the five-second-rule, which she can relate to- she was seven once too. Schuyler had caved in, gave them her untouched sausage- even though she had been saving them for last- and taken the girls appreciative hugs with a blush.
Emilia's mother, Jezebel, had literally ceased Schuyler's breath. Schuyler was straight, at least she was pretty positive she was- but when she gave the little subconscious whistle, she wondered if that could be counted as hitting on someone. The beautiful woman had been dressed in nothing special, an old leather jacket that had gone through years of wear and tear and a pair of holy jeans that were more loose than tight, but damn- was that woman stunning.
Schuyler, recognizing that she could be the presence of a goddess, had given the woman a handshake that had been turned into a hug by Jez. She was hugging the pretty lady. She was pretty sure she was fangirling, like Tessa would have a heart attack every time Scarlet Johansson would come on the screen of the television and start wheezing, "My girl! My goddess, turn in that dress, roar you lioness roar, you're stunning, stunning."
When she had pulled away from the hug, she looked into Jez's eyes and saw the flame that was healthy and alive in her mocha eyes. This was a woman no one would want to get on the wrong side of, and Jez assured Schuyler with honorifics like 'Luna', that if she got into trouble she couldn't handle, to come to the big bad Beta of the pack, her.
She felt welcome, took the pat on her back and wink from Giles and easily slid into Lennox's arms into the scene of the home.
It was calm here, in the kitchen, being introduced to Lennox's pack members. Even with Emilia and Bridgit jumping around Schuyler's legs, tugging on her pants legs like their newest toy. Even with the storm raging on from outside the windows. A fragile kind of calm.
*
"I'm goin' to check out the Volvo," Lennox says, it's only five o'clock at night, but the sky is already close to black and the storm is absolutely hammering the outside world, sometimes shaking their duct-taped peace inside the house.
Jezebel is sitting on the ground, her pants rolled up to her shins as she stares seriously at the two giggling girls beside her. "Go. Fish."
Emilia and Bridgit explode in laughter at the Beta's false seriousness, the cards clutched in their hands as they try to contain their laughter. Giles is beside them, rolling his eyes and staring levelly at the Beta. "Think you're lying, I do," he says in a Yoda voice, making the girls scramble over to each other as they get over their laugh-attacks.
It makes everyone crack a smile, even Quin, who has been religiously watching the news since one o'clock to see when the road that attached to the highway to get to the college campus would drain of rainwater.
A laughing Emilia looks up at her mom, and with a whisper, she asks if she can be excused to the bathroom- because if she doesn't, she will pee her pants. She goes with squinting eyes and warns the three on the floor not to look at her cards, because she will know.
Schuyler was holed up in Lennox's home, but she didn't mind- the last few hours were better than sitting in her dorm room waiting out the storm with Tessa.
"No, you don't have to, Lenny," Schuyler answers him. "Wait tell tomorrow morning."
He shakes his head. "I'll park it in the garage and just check it out, get prepared for tomorrow to get that thing resu- resurr-"
"Resurrected," Giles supplies for him, cracking a small smile.
"Son of a- that word," Lennox rolls his eyes, because the reoccurring theme of Giles helping him fill in the blanks is occurring.
A dry laugh comes from Giles as he shakes his head, "Get to work then Lenny boy, I'll be out in a few minutes to help, after I come out victorious in this game," Giles assures his friend, eyes going back on his cards as Lennox walks to the front door.
Even from the living room, Schuyler can hear the downpour from outside, all senses being drowned out by the sound of pouring rain. She turns around to tell him he forgot an umbrella, he shuts the door just as she begins to sound like a mother-hen.
Then, the lights go out.
*
Quin huffs, the house is just as black as it is outside. Jezebel stands up at once to get her daughter from the bathroom, sitting down her cards and taking one last sip of her sweet tea that Quin made before she sets out to drag Emilia downstairs from Lennox's bathroom- it's her favorite apparently, Jezebel told Schuyler this with rolling eyes but a good-naturedly smile she could see in the dim light.
Giles sits where he's at, frozen, like he can't move.
"Still sleeps with a night-light," Quin shrugs, but assigns Bridgit to stay guard next to him, who takes up the job with Quin's phone in her hand as the only light and shines it in the werewolf's face to get a reaction.
There is a reaction, one with Giles growling lowly in his throat before he opens one of his eyes and wrestles the girl onto the ground, trying to forget the dark as Bridgit growls along with him and begins the play-flight of the century- one where the lights are off, a thunderstorm is the background music, the two contenders are full-blooded werewolves and the prize? Who gets to look at Emilia's cards, which apparently should be Bridgit.
"C'mon, flashlights are upstairs," Quin tells her, and Schuyler wishes that she had thought to bring her phone's charger- she wouldn't be stuck with only flashes of lightning as the guides to their destination.
But Quin knew her way, she ventured ahead of Schuyler and talked about how this house is so old, and they have power outages all the time. Schuyler nods with the words, hanging onto everything she has to say because she's actually so damn scared of storms that it's taking all of her not to run to the nearest closet, lock herself in it, and wait until she's dragged out of it.
They make it up to the second floor, and Quin outright yelps, making Schuyler scream in response.
"What? What is it?!" Schuyler says, hurrying to catch what Quin is staring at.
There, where Lennox's room is, the door is peaking open. It looks like a scene from a horror movie, like something is waiting for them to foolishly walk into its trap.
"Damn boy left the window open again!" Quin tells her, shaking her head, and Schuyler had a feeling that if she had a spoon in her right hand, she'd be hitting it against something- preferably Lennox's skull.
"Oh," Schuyler breaths, so there isn't a crazy axe-murderer on the second level.
"Go down the hall, to the cupboard, fish out a couple of flashlights on the top drawer, I'm going to shut that window and see what is taking Jez and Em so long," Quin replies to her future Luna, giving her a rub on the arm as a goodbye and a gentle smile.
*
"Quin?" Schuyler stares up from the cupboard, the pedestal she stood on squeaking as she turned to stare down the hallway.
It's empty, the hallway. Nothing but a stray laundry basket that she had tripped on along the way was in the middle of it, sticking out like a sore-thumb. Her hands are elbow deep in the drawer, patting on every available surface of the drawer she was instructed to search in. Even with her standing on the stool, she has to get on the tips of her toes to even reach the top drawer.
"Quin, I can't find the flashlights," Schuyler says, her voice echoes down the empty hallway as flash of lightning illuminates itself down the hallway, the light coming from Lennox's room. The lightning surrounds her for only a millisecond, ringing around her before disappearing back into the dark.
She lets her hands try another time around the drawer, one last time before she runs down the stairs back to where Giles is, she doesn't care if she'll look like a pansy. After all, pansies aren't that bad- they inspired Shakespeare to write the epic love stories of his...that ended in tragedy.
She gulps, shut up, mind.
Her hands feel something cool underneath her grasp, but it isn't a flashlight- just an old home-phone that was uprooted probably years ago.
Schuyler can't take it- she can't, and when another strike of lightning makes the house flood with a quick second of light, being followed by thunder that seems to shake the house, she decides this is it. She's going downstairs, with or without the flashlights. She isn't going to pee her pants because the need for flashlights was stronger than the warning signs that were popping up in her mind.
She stepped carefully off of the stool, and then froze.
Like she suddenly woken up, like she had ice poured down her shirt- she realized something vital.
The window wasn't open this morning.
*
Her legs are like jelly, like they've forgotten to move- like nineteen years ago, she hadn't learned how to walk.
This feeling is new to her, every step she takes, no matter how little or long in stride, it feels heavy and light and then heavy and then light. It's as if her legs can't remember how they're supposed to feel.
Schuyler takes the hallway one step at a time, each time her bare feet slip on the hardwood floor. There is no measurement that can tally the fear she felt in her chest, her stiff-upper lip almost trembled, but she kept it paralyzed by crushing it between her gritting teeth.
Her fingers feel the wall, treating it as a guide to the window- it's still open. It's still open.
The rain is pouring in through it, that much she can tell, the door is wide, where Quin walked in and didn't bother to close it. There is no Quin, where is Quin? Schuyler's heartbeat is so erratic, she feels as if it's atrophying, rotting away because of how much scared-shitless it's pumping through her.
The silhouette she sees in the bedroom is not Quin, or Jezebel or Emilia- where are they? Where are they?!
She drags in a breath, one that is ragged and out of time with how fast her heart is beating. She needs something to arm herself with, but there isn't anything- if she moves away, the silhouette will most definitely see her, and she'll not only be defenseless but stealth will not be on her side.
Giles, maybe the silhouette standing in what felt like the eye of the storm was Giles.
She didn't dear take another step, staying where she was in as much silence as she could keep to herself.
*
Everything has a fatal flaw, something that ruins them- this is what lightning is to thunderstorms. Another flash of lightning erupts from miles up in the sky, where the thunderstorm is trying to desperately keep it's fatal flaw in, but ultimately becomes a girl thousands of feet below's downfall.
Paralyzed, she is handicapped by being a human, not having advanced senses, but now she can't find the strength in herself to even twitch her fingers, her jaw slacks just as she sees the icy grey eyes level to hers, and the puckered scar that nicks his dark eyebrow.
The lightning bolt that has crashed to Earth's surface has started a fire somewhere, miles and miles away, and it's only a small spark of flame that will last for a few minutes and burn only four square feet of land, but it's longtime effects on Schuyler will be much worse than a couple feet of charred land.
This lightning bolt was like a flashlight for the man in bedroom, his eyes automatically found her in the second of finite light.
Fear doesn't even cover it, there aren't words of how wrong it felt to be near this man, watching him being in the bedroom of Lennox, knowing that he's walked on the same surface Lennox had- it turns something in Schuyler's stomach. How dark and wrong and out of place he was, thick arms bare to the world, scars marring up his bare chest.
This man is definitely not Giles.
Her mouth feels like cotton. Her throat is tight, it almost aches. Her eyes haven't blinked, but there are fat tears in the ducts as she stares back at the pair of eyes that have absolutely nothing reflecting in them.
There is no light in the house, she doesn't know if she counts that as a disadvantage to be just as blind as the man, or as a way of evening out the impossible odds between the human girl and the man that stood in her mate's doorway.
When people get punched, in the movies, it's shown in slow motion- in books, it's described in impeccable words, of biting down your tongue to keep the pain down and carefully calculating your next move because you have only one shot to get the upper hand.
This is not how it happened.
Schuyler doesn't even remember getting a fist to her face, what she focuses on is the pain that implodes in her temple.
It hurts, it hurts so bad. So much worse than what Tessa told her it wouldn't, and her friend had nursed plenty of cat-fight wounds, plenty getting-her-hair-pulled and busting her lip open on the concrete when she'd wipe out from a fight.
Schuyler's never been violently punched, and if this the opening act, she will never ask for an encore.
She wishes it knocked her out, but it only made her fall to the ground with an unhealthy 'clunk' that told her she definitely had a concussion. And then there are feet smashing into her rib cage, unbearable pain shoots up her body, and it feels like it's the only thing she's ever known- can't even remember the softness of her fathers' touch, never knew the light petal-perfect kiss of Lennox, only the pain that is merciless channeling her mind to scream, but her mouth won't move. Her jaw is locked in place.
Everything hurts, everything hurts and she wants to scream but she can't.
The only thing that escapes through her lips is a moan, dry and gasping for breath as she feels blood seeping from her mouth, climbing up from her throat like it has arms and legs, trying to escape the pain before it gets to them.
"Heard you didn't like storms," The easy tone crawls up her spine like an itch she can't scratch, he has a strange accent- like Lennox's, the man bends down to her- finally, he stops kicking her, she thought she would die on Lennox's bedroom floor with his footprints on her guts.
Remember to breath, remember to breath- don't think about the storm, just think about the pain. She tries to tell herself, but she can't seem to channel the thoughts to her lulled mind, it's still trying to figure what to do with all this pain and fear and blood.
"Actually, I know you don't like storms, your heart has been going- what do you call it- hard-wire, on hard-wire- haywire, that's it," the man says, and her mouth would've felt like arid cotton if it wasn't for the blood that was seeping out of the cracks of her lips. She stares at the man, hard to see him in darkness, but he's tall and broad shouldered, she focuses on that before the cut above her left brow begins to blind her eye.
He only laughs at her silent reply, the one that she is clearly saying with her eyes- fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
The man shakes his head, grasping at her wrist and bringing them together, the pain of being moved so quickly makes her wonder if he ripped her arms out of her sockets.
And then he drags her over the wood floor, she sees her own blood streaking the real wood, the hundred year old floor and how it's staining it. They'll never get this out, when they find her dead body, they'll scrub at the floors, but she'll always be here like a whisper of how evil sometimes conquers.
They stop early, she had thought he would've just toppled her out of the window as the final blow, but instead, she finds herself on cold tile. "Now, you just sit in here for a little while 'til your boy finds you, and I-" the stranger is interrupted by thunder and her heart is beating erratically in her chest. He smiles tight at the fear the roll of thunder pumps out of her, she's just food he's playing with.
He doesn't bother to finish what he was saying, the man sits her down on the bathroom tile in Lennox's own restroom. He gives her a grin before pulling the curtains away from the shower's tiny, thick window, and props it open.
The storm from outside drones inside, what was the only barrier between her had been removed. She's being forced into the bathroom, listening to her nightmare while feeling like she's two seconds away from dying.
The man crouches down to her, where she's splayed out on the tiled floor, and he grins.
She feels bile in her throat, or it could just be a thick pile of mucus and blood.
His burning hot finger pinches at her eyebrow, he laughs dryly- like glass is in his throat, and touches the skin there, where he had landed that first blow so quick she had no time to react. Her left eye is almost blinded with blood, and the split skin above her brow is screaming at her to call for help and wash it out with cold water.
"An eye for an eye, right?" The man's smile deepens, and she stares up at the puckered skin above his own left eyebrow.
Seely.
AN
How did I do?
Believe me, everything in this chapter is important, even the weird toothbrush scene- if you guys caught on.
TELL ME HOW I DID
WHATS GONNA HAPPEN NEXT?