Part Eight
Coalise had no fucking idea where she was or why. Her left shoulder hurt - that was for damn sure - and her coat was soaked with blood, and she was in some sort of pitch black meat locker.
She figured she was either going to freeze to death or bleed to death. Either way, things didn't look good.
The worst part was, she had no idea how she'd gotten here. That morning she had gotten in her car to go see Professor Willihnganz, stopped by Mike's house so that they could have another fight on his front porch with half his family listening, and then…
Then what?
She didn't know what was wrong with her shoulder. Moving her left arm felt like driving shards of glass into her muscles, and the side of her face was sore when she opened her jaw. Moving, she discovered that the soft, fuzzy thing she was sitting on was her jacket. It was partially wet - with blood, no doubt - but she pulled it around herself anyway.
With her right hand, she groped through the pockets. She came across a bottle of water, which she drank greedily, and her calculator. Also some Life Savers.
Where the hell were her keys? Her key ring had a mini flashlight she could use to see where she was. And where was her wallet?
Coalise had been in a lot of weird situations. Once, she had been trapped in a hotel room for thirty-six hours after the computer controlling the electronic locks crashed. The hotel had given her five hundred dollars afterward as an apology.
If I can remember that, she thought, why can't I remember how I got here?
Yes, she had been on a lot of warped adventures, but this was the first time she'd ever forgotten how one had begun.
"Hello!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. It made her shoulder ache, but the way the sound echoed off the walls gave her an idea of how large the room was. "I'm trapped in here! It's really cold!"
Floorboards creaked above her. Was she in a basement? That would explain the lack of windows and the temperature.
"Hello!" she yelled again. "I'm hurt, I could use a hand! Unless you want to kill me, in which case I'd probably rather stay here."
There were a lot of footsteps now, so many they sounded like rain on the roof. Then a stunning rectangle of light appeared high above her. Her eyes stung and burned and she threw a hand up in front of her face.
"Isis shat," a man said, "there's something down here."
"Hello?" Coalise replied, blinking at his silhouette. "Hi. I think I've been in an accident, I can't remember-"
"Law, do you smell that?" a woman asked, stepping beside him. "It's a human!" Suddenly she slammed the door shut.
Coalise trailed off. She wasn't getting a good vibe here.
She climbed to her feet, sending jolts of pain through her shoulder, and limped stiffly in the direction the light had come from. Her shin hit something and she doubled over, hurting her shoulder even more.
Her hand groped in the darkness. Was that a step? It felt like a wooden step, and there was another and another, leading up.
She could hear people talking above her. She climbed the steps carefully, keeping one hand on the wall. The voices grew louder until her fingers brushed a door at the top of the stairs, and she was able to make out the words.
"-only proves it," a woman was saying. "She's been keeping a human in her basement for who knows how long!"
"Thursy didn't do anything," a male voice said. Coalise thought for a moment that she recognized it, but the memory failed to connect. "She's isn't a traitor, you know that."
"I never thought it was a good idea," the woman told him, "leaving those two alone in this house after their parents died. They should have had someone to watch over them."
"Hey," the guy said, "my parents were here all the time."
Ignoring him, the woman continued, "And now look what's happened."
Another woman said, "It's as much our fault as anyone's. We all should have realized how unstable Thursy was."
"She's not unstable!" the guy said, but no one was listening to him.
"She's always over-reacted to things."
"Remember the time she threw a lamp at Preza?"
"And to think, it could have been any one of us."
"Excuse me," a woman who hadn't spoken before cut in. "Let's not forget ourselves here. We have one child dead and another who is too hysterical to form a coherent word. Now is not the time to whine about what danger we might have been in."
"Good grief, Narsa, don't get all high and mighty on us," someone began, but they were interrupted when Coalise accidentally leaned her weight on the door and it fell open.
She landed on her knees in a brightly lit hallway full of people, who abruptly fell silent. Now she could see the blood caking the front of her shirt and all down her right hand.
Unnaturally beautiful people stood all around her. One of them in particular caught her attention, a guy about her age with very focused blue eyes that at that moment were fixed on her.
His expression for her was intimate, as if they had known each other for a long time and he was trying to communicate with her silently. But she was sure she had never met him before.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," Coalise told them all, in a voice that was not as steady as she would have liked, "but I've been in some sort of accident. My shoulder is hurt and I'm bleeding."
The people - there must have been half a dozen of them, with more crowding in at the mouth of the hallway - glanced at each other. The guy, still holding her eyes, leaned close to her and gently knocked the jacket off her left shoulder. She had to grit her teeth to stop from pushing him away when he carefully peeled the torn shreds of her shirt off of the wound.
"She's been bitten!" a man gasped.
"Pan's prick, Thursy must have been planning to eat her!" a woman cried, and then another said, "Watch your mouth, Wen."
"Pack members!" someone called from the room at the end of the hall, "I've found something! I think it might explain all of this!"
The group moved so quickly toward him that Coalise was nearly knocked over. The guy who had looked at her stayed behind as she stood up. So did the woman called Wen.
"Come this way," Wen said to her. She was looking at her strangely, too, but in a negative, almost disgusted way.
As they walked down the hall, the guy whispered to Coalise, "I'm going to get you out of here."
His breath was warm on her cheek. "What should I do?"
"Just hang on." They reached the end of the hall and found that it opened to a disaster area that had once been a living room. "I'll take care of you, Coalise," he whispered, and then he was moving away from her, across the room.
Coalise stared at him as he walked to where a bloodied, auburn-haired girl was sitting on a couch with her arms wrapped around herself.
How the hell did he know her name?
She had no idea what his was. Nor could she guess what that frightful stink was, like rotting meat.
A handsome man with a potbelly had called for the attention of the three dozen people packed into the house. They formed a circle, cutting off Coalise's escape routes.
The guy who knew her was sitting on the couch next to the hurt girl and had his arm around her. She wore a dazed, shell-shocked expression, and Coalise knew that something terrible had happened to her that night. Someone had hurt her.
"I found this," said the potbellied man - Coalise had never imagined that a potbellied man could be attractive, but somehow he managed - and waved a piece of paper. "It's a note. It reads as follows: 'Dear Yared, I know that my writing this is going to become one of the tragedies of our friendship, but I'm writing it anyway. I'm sorry, it's eating me up inside.
"'Quite simply, I love you. How I feel is every bit as pathetic as that sentence, as this whole note and the way I've acted the last two years. I'm a pathetic person, I know that and so do you. I can't imagine any reason in the world why you would want to be with me, but if I don't write this down and give it to you, I'll end up shouting it from the top of Mount Aurora, and you've always liked your privacy. So if you want me to stop thinking of you every time I breathe, just say, "Fuck you," or not even that. Kiria.'"
The room fell silent. The man slowly folded the note up and then addressed the crowd. "I found this in Thursy's room. Kiria must have left if here for Yared, but Thursy found it first." He shook his head. "I suppose she felt that her brother deserved better."
"Shut up, Galdwyn," the boy on the couch said darkly. The girl in his arms had begun sobbing. "Thursy doesn't even remember what happened, and besides, she loves Yared and she loved Kiria. If anybody wanted the two of them together, it was Thursy."
The crying girl, Thursy, nodded furiously, unable to speak.
"I know it's tempting to believe that," Galdwyn said, "but the facts speak for themselves. Thursy's bite marks are on the body, her skin is under Kiria's fingernails, and she had a motive."
"What motive?" he burst out.
"She was being possessive of the only family member she had left. She went too far."
"You're insane," the boy said. "You are all insane. Thursy grew up right in front of you, you have to know that she couldn't have done this."
"Then who else did?" someone asked.
He shrugged, baffled. "I don't know. I hate to think about it. Maybe Yared, where was Yared when this was going on in his living room?"
"Yared can't even touch his fingers together, he's so traumatized," Preza pointed out. "Thursy doesn't have an alibi."
"She doesn't remember what happened!"
"I think the pack needs to decide what to do about this," Galdwyn told them. "Additionally, it appears that Thursy was keeping this human girl in the basement. She's already taken a bite out of her."
Murmurs went up from the crowd, and a man stepped forward. "I know that Thursy is pack, and that her parents were wonderful people, but the fact remains that she murdered Kiria, and she did something that drove her brother out of his mind. I don't see what choice we have. She can't be allowed to put the rest of us at risk."
Thursy pressed her face into the guy's shoulder and he closed his eyes, holding her close. Coalise's heart went out to them.
"I agree," said a woman. She pushed forward until she was standing in front of two men. Her stomach was heavy with pregnancy. "I would never feel safe here again."
"Don't do this," the guy on the couch said softly. "Please, don't do this."
"The motion has been made and seconded," Galdwyn announced, "but we need pack approval. All opposed, raise you hands."
Only the boy on the couch lifted his hand. Even Thursy didn't. Coalise didn't understand what was happening, or why no one was calling the police, but after a moment she raised her hand, too. Someone behind her batted it down.
"Everyone but Scotch agrees," Galdwyn said. "The sentence is passed. Tomorrow at dawn, Thursy West will be executed for the murder of Kiria Rhoas."
Thursy collapsed in Scotch arms and Coalise bit her lower lip, wanting to reach for them both. She barely heard Galdwyn's next words.
"I guess while we're at it, we'll kill the human girl, too."