I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. My mind raced all night long with this thing that seemed to be set on keeping me from a normal night’s sleep the closer we got to the full moon. Levi had me run longer and chop extra wood, I think so I would calm down, but nothing worked.
He had me swim again as well, and for a while in the water I was able to forget about my impending doom. I found myself walking back to my favorite tree while Levi unpacked the cooler. For some reason, I felt calm being around the tree. My fingers traced a set of initials, L. L. T. and L. B. T. This thing in me came closer to look, almost as if she was cocking her head in the back of my mind.
“Charlie!”
Levi had sandwiches out with a big bag of salt and cracked black pepper kettle chips. I walked over and dove right into the bag, shoving a mouthful in.
“You look like a damn chipmunk.”
I didn’t care. I chased down the chips with some water then picked up a turkey sandwich and started to devour it. Leaves that were turning shades of red and orange were starting to fall off the trees. The only trees that stood strong in the fall were the evergreens. Levi told me no winter wind could sway them.
“Well, you’re awfully quiet today. Not that I’m complaining.”
I leaned back and shrugged. “What if I don’t make it?”
“Then you don’t make it,” he said simply. “We’re not invincible. We all have to die one day. You and me included.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and swallowed it.
“And if I do make it?”
He snickered. “Then you got a whole lot more wood to chop, Charlie girl.”
This thing in my brain scratched at me some more but I shook it off. Right now, I didn’t want to think about the thing that could very well kill me tonight.
I walked back to the tree one last time before we left. My fingers wandered over the initials again, winding down the lines of the letters L. L. T.
I heard the boat shove into the water then a long breath being released. “They’re mine.”
My fingers froze. My head snapped around. “What?”
“Let’s go, you need to rest,” he said, walking back into the water of the swollen stream.
She rushed forward with a million other questions, all trying to vomit out of my mouth. I swallowed them, knowing once I saw the look in his eyes that there was no more discussion on the topic. Which was bullshit. Of course he would tell me this today of all days. Probably an easy cop-out for him. Although, if anything, it was reason enough for me to push through tonight; someone had to pester his grumpy ass about this, and I doubted Derek was going to do it.
Derek did, however, feed me until all I could do was fall asleep in my room with the sound of the wind whispering in the background. When I woke up, it was dark. I peeked outside and saw only lonely stars looking back at me. My heart dropped into my stomach while inwardly I cursed myself over and over for sleeping away the last few hours of a day that could very well be my last. I looked out into the night again and spotted something tied to the bush. I looked closer and spotted what seemed like a rabbit’s foot—still bloody on top from where it had been torn off the poor animal. But it was definitely the foot of a rabbit. Shaking my head at a gift that had to have come from my new “friend,” I stumbled into the kitchen, where Derek had me eat a bowl of stew, but my nerves had me throwing it up in my bathroom before I could even get the third bite down. I tried to splash water on my face to calm down, but my face was already hot.
“Shit,” I hissed. It couldn’t be happening yet. It was too early.
I turned on my heel and ran into the kitchen. “Derek!”
Levi stepped onto the front porch with a dead white dove in his hand. He let out a sigh and waved me over with his free hand. “Come on.”
I approached carefully as he pulled a knife from his pocket. He set the dove down on an end table and unfolded the Swiss Army knife then offered it to me. “We need blood.”
“I thought you didn’t really believe in this stuff.”
“You need all the help you can get.”
Reluctantly, I took the knife, then sliced my palm, hissing as the sharp blade drew crimson from my skin. I held my hand over the bowl and squeezed while he slit the neck of the dove then let it hang over the side of the bowl, neck facing the pool of my blood at the bottom so it could bleed out.
A hand touched my forehead. “You’re hot.” I could feel my own cheeks heat when he said the words. They felt warm and were probably pink. “Go wrap your hand up. Get in the tub.”
“Tub?”
“Use Derek’s.”
I didn’t bother to grab a rag. I just walked straight to Derek’s bathroom, where he was filling the tub with cold water and ice. “Hey.” He breathed out with a smile. “You’re going to want to strip. Do you want to wrap that up?”
“It’s fine,” I mumbled. I peeled my sweatshirt and leggings off, leaving just my sports bra and bikini underwear. I wasn’t a fan of being so unclothed. I could feel every blemish, every scar, and every bruise on my body as if they were glowing traffic signs, but I was also burning up. The heat easily won the war with my insecurities.
I was too fucking hot already. Sweat was rolling down the back of my neck and my forehead. I struggled not to pant and to breathe through my nose, but my heart pounding in my chest made that near impossible. “Here.” Derek offered me his hand and helped me into the ice bath.
I sat down with a hiss as the frigid water nipped at my skin, but after a moment, I felt some temporary relief. “Holy hell,” I groaned, leaning back in the water.
Derek poured a bucket of ice over me. “Thank you,” I huffed.
“Lean forward,” Derek told me. I complied and felt him slip a bath pillow behind me. “Better, yeah?”
I swallowed as the heat picked up. “It’s hot, Derek.”
“Do you want more ice?”
I shook my head. The water was cold enough. It stung my skin and I wasn’t sure if more ice would be painful or helpful. That and we probably needed to save it for later.
Levi walked in with a chair and dragged it over next to the tub. He put his bottle of scotch down then reached forward to feel my forehead. “Go get the flowers and open the blinds up in here.” He looked back at Derek with a wordless expression that sent a chill down my spine.
Derek nodded then zipped out while Levi poured himself a glass. “How bad?”
I shrugged. “Like a bad summer back home. You can cook an egg on the sidewalk sometimes.”
He breathed out a laugh. “Is that right?”
I rubbed my eyes but only got salty sweat into them. I could hear Derek fussing in the room while I tried to blink the perspiration out of my eyes. But the hot drops were streaming down my face in tears, almost rendering my vision useless.
Levi picked something up then reached toward my face.
I felt a towel brusquely rub over my eyes and forehead. The sweat was gone for now and my vision cleared. “Thanks.”
He reached down again and poured another bucket of ice on me. I gasped and jumped an inch out of the tub. He nodded to me. “You’re welcome.”
The big window in the bathroom was open. Moonflowers dripped in the blood mixture were hanging from it. There were clouds in front of her—hiding her. This angered the beast. She was clawing at me to see what we both knew was hiding behind the clouds.
Something wet started to draw along the edges of half my face. Levi’s eyes were starting to glow, pupils growing wider. “Don’t let her out.”
He leaned back and wiped his fingers on his jeans. I looked back at the moon as a wave of heat rolled over me. I could feel her pawing at me—scratching harder. I wondered if Nate was watching the moon too. If he was up late smoking his favorite cigarettes with a glass of vodka. I wondered if he was looking at the moon and thinking of me, like I was of him. I wondered if he even cared.
The beast snapped at those thoughts. She snapped, and I jumped again. My head rolled and the clouds moved, curtains unveiling the moon shining brightly in the black sky.
Levi’s eyes flickered to a steady glow. There was a strange voice in the back of my mind, a howling. It was a song, a sweet serenade that turned into a cry for death or war.
Nate was laughing in the back of my mind now. His laughs were turning to howls, howls that were turning to growls, growls that sounded too real to be my imagination.
Were they mine?
I felt someone shaking me, but it was so hot and my mind was so foggy. I couldn’t see through it to find my way, but when the fog parted, all I was met with was pain.
It was like her claws were ripping against the inside of my face. A slap to the brain that was blending that place between pain and lucidity. Something cold was thrown on me. Something started to pierce my gums, ripping through the flesh. Levi took another sip from his cup and offered it to me. I snatched it and gulped down as much as I could until I started to choke. Derek was wiping the sweat off my brow when another wave hit me. A wave of needles.
It felt like she was stretching to stand inside my skin.
Someone pulled me forward while my legs felt like they were going through a year’s worth of growing pains. “Charlotte—
Char!” Derek shook me while Levi watched the moon.
He looked back at me, dark pupils bleeding into the silver. “Don’t let her out.”
I fell back against the tub while every fiber of me tried to reel her in. Yet each time I pulled, she pushed back with a brute force I didn’t think possible. Blood-curdling screams were coming from my mouth. My fingers clawed at the tub until something started to pierce my nail beds.
I opened my eyes and looked at my fingers, at the claws that were replacing my nails. I wanted to scream as they kept pushing through my fingers, but the feeling of my arm breaking had me actually screaming my head off. Levi snatched my chin and forced me to look at him. Something behind those silver eyes was pacing back and forth. “I don’t want to have to chop my own damn firewood, Charlie girl.”
And I was drowning.
I was clawing at the shore in waves of pain. I was trying to pull myself from the tide but it kept dragging me deeper.
I blinked, and Derek was pouring ice over me; Levi took another long drink from his cup before he poured more scotch into his glass. The pungent smell of it cut through the fog and pain. I tried to hold on to it when another wave of pain smacked me.
My mother was right next to me.
The car was filling up with cold water and it was dark all around us. She was beating at the windows but nothing was budging. “Charlotte,” my mother said as she looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” she told me, like she knew that it was a lost cause.
“Charlotte!” Derek slapping my cheek brought me back.
I opened my mouth but a sharp cry rang through the air as something pierced my gums. He gave me a cold cloth to bite down on as Levi rested his chin on his hands, which were folded in a praying position. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to pull her back. I could feel the way she was inching closer, closer to the moon who kept calling to us from the deepness of a water I didn’t want to drown in.
The car was filling up. My mother was looking around her until she found me. She smiled at me and pushed some of my hair back. “You can’t let her out, baby. She can’t come out.”
“Mom?”
“Pull her back!”
I snapped my eyes open to find that Derek had gotten into the tub with me. He was sitting behind me, holding me steady so I wouldn’t slip under the water. Levi offered me the bottle again. I shook my head as another wave hit me into darkness.
I was looking at my mother again. The water was up to her neck and she looked like she was praying. I never thought she was that religious, but in that moment, she seemed just like an angel to me.
The beast in me cried at the sight of my mother’s last moments. She clawed at my skin and snapped at my hands to move but I was frozen in a frantic fear mixed with paralyzing pain. All I could do was scream. All I could do was cry out as my bones started to ache and my skin started to stretch. I clawed at the bathtub, but nothing was easing the feeling of my body beginning to contort in ways it shouldn’t.
“Pull her back, Charlie girl,” I heard my mother say.
My head rolled to see her clearly in the calm water. It was at her chin now. She had lifted her head up so she could get the last few breaths of air left in the car. “Pull her back, Charlotte,” she pleaded desperately.
Something snapped me back to reality, and I was pulling the beast back as hard as I could. I thought my teeth would shatter from how hard I was grinding them together.
Something kick-started to life in me. Resolve was building and slowly seeping into my veins. I wasn’t going to let her win, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to die in a fucking bathtub. I closed my eyes and focused, carefully holding her back with everything I had until the prickling on my back stopped and the piercing in my gums felt like it was ceasing.
“That’s it—you’re doing good, just keep holding her back,” I heard Derek say to me.
Levi leaned forward while I pulled harder at her. It was like she was snapping my soul apart, severing the fabric of it in her rebellion. For a moment I thought I had her until another wave hit me. Then I was under the water. I was looking at my mother from outside the car. She was floating with her hair like a halo around her head. Her palm touched the windshield and I found mine reaching out for her. She smiled at me, a few bubbles leaving her mouth before she looked around the dark water and shook her head at me.
“You shouldn’t be here, Charlotte,” she whispered.
“Mom?”
She smiled and shifted away from the windshield. “Go, baby. You shouldn’t be here.”
Someone was shaking me as I gasped for air. Water splashed around me while Levi pulled me out of the tub. He laid me on the cool tile while pain still hummed through me. It felt like the beast was starting to fall back from her battle.
“I think you’re done with the tub.”
“I think I am too.” I found myself laughing.
He smirked and sat back beside me, then looked at the moon. “Rest while you can,” he said before he looked over at me. “It’s going to be a long night.”
