“Hey, I’ve got to take a leak,” said Aiden. “I better go now, before the fireworks start.” He stood up after kissing her cheek.
“So what do you think of The Purge?” Jem asked her.
“Bunch of whiners,” she answered. “They should be drowned to put them out of their misery.”
One of the gigglers shrieked indignantly and Quince roared with laughter. This started a whole new round of the argument. The rum made Vivian feel lazy and indulgent. She actually agreed with Kelly once.
A firefly bumbled past Vivian on a mission of love and the brightness of its tail announced that night had arrived. As if everyone realized this at once, the crowd hushed in expectation. Men scurried around the field, making last-minute checks.
Aiden had been gone a long time.
In the sudden quiet, a chorus of howls echoed like a distant song in the trees beyond the portable toilets.
Bingo smirked. “Someone’s having fun.”
“Yeah,” Vivian agreed, and the fine hair on her spine prickled. She stared grimly over the heads of the crowd. Aiden was out there alone. The blood in her veins turned cold. “I think I need to pee, too,” she announced to no one in particular. She set her bottle down and hurried off in the same direction Aiden had gone.
She wove through the islands of families and friends stretched out with their coolers and hampers and kids, and tried not to step on the fingers and drinks that spread into the paths that led through the mess. Then she was out the other side.
She could smell the toilets before she even came close. They’d been used all day, and now the rank stench of chemicals mixed with urine and feces made a battlefield of the air. Her nose pinched in distaste as she skirted the metal booths stenciled with the word
Port-o-let in luminous orange, looking for signs of Aiden, or of the Five.
Someone’s cough echoed inside one of the putrid sarcophagi, but it was too deep to be Aiden’s. The door of a toilet opened, then crashed shut behind a stranger. The rest of the toilets didn’t seem occupied.
She heard faint movement in the woods. What if he’d decided that the toilets stank too badly and had gone to piss in the woods? She’d have thought it sensible any other night, but tonight, with the Five on the prowl…
Vivian slunk silently into the trees, her eyes wide and luminous.
He’d better be safe, she thought. Without even thinking, she lengthened her nails, and the muscles of her limbs clenched with power.
The moon was only a sliver in the western sky. The woods were deep with shadows. Somewhere behind her was an eager crowd, waiting for the night to bloom with fire, but somehow their voices were muffled by the dark. Even the crickets held their breaths.
A staccato crackle came from the river-firecrackers. A dog barked far away. Sweat trickled from Vivian’s armpits down past her breasts. She trod on tiptoes, her feet remembering paws.
There was a rustling off to her right. Someone was pushing between the rhododendron bushes. He hummed cheerfully. She almost breathed a sigh of relief, but then she recognized the voice.
“Rafe.”
He froze in the shadows. Something almost as big as he was was flung over his shoulder. He clutched it possessively.
Vivian placed the tune he’d been humming. It was an Oingo Boingo song. The words went walking with a dead man over my shoulder.
“What have you got there?” she demanded, fear fluttering in her belly.
Rafe’s arms tightened around his load. “Nothing.” He backed away a step.
“You shithead.” She advanced on him. Her heart thumped with dread.
“It’s mine,” he growled. He slid his kill from his shoulder and let it crash into old, dead leaves. He crouched, ready for combat, in front of it.
Great Moon, I’m right, she thought.
It’s a body.
Not Aiden, she begged. She’d kill Rafe if it was.
“I’ll share if you’re nice to me,” he added, a new note of cunning in his voice.
“Show me,” she coaxed. “I want to see if it’s worth my time.”
“Ha, you’re lying, Viv,” he spat. His eyes glittered and narrowed with malice. “Want to see if it’s your meat-boy, Viv?”
The asshole was toying with her. She took another quick step forward but he blocked her, laughing.
She darted to the right, but Rafe was in front of her again.
“Does Vivi want her plaything?” he taunted, and she wanted to shove his pointy teeth down his throat.
She feinted to the left; then, before he could recover, hit him head-on and knocked him down. Distantly the crowd cheered with the first thunder of fireworks. She scrambled over Rafe as he thrashed, elbowing his neck, kneeing him in the stomach, and crawled into the bushes.
In an orange burst of light she saw brown eyes already glazed over with an opalescent sheen. Brown eyes in a furred face. A large dog with its throat torn open lay on the ground.
Rafe scrambled to his feet, laughing. “Had you going, didn’t I?”
His laughter was echoed from the trees, and the rest of the Five slunk into the clearing-Finn, Willem, Gregory, and skittery Ulf. Their faces flickered with multicolored light for a moment, etching them with ghoulish shadows. Had they all been out there watching, laughing at her?
The gaping throat leered up at her, black and clotted.
“Smell yummy, Viv?” Rafe mocked. “Think you might like a little taste, since it’s not your boyfriend?”
She spat a curse at him as she stood up. It was punctuated by another crash in the sky. She walked right up and knocked him flying with a cuff to the side of the face that left claw marks.
Willem gasped, and Ulf ran back to the bushes giggling hysterically.
Finn helped Rafe up while Gregory glanced back and forth between Vivian and Rafe, nervously licking his lips.
Rafe wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “You think you’re different from us,” he snarled. “But you’re not. We know who we are, Vivian. And we know what we want. We don’t run away from it. You’re sick, Vivian, if you think you can play human.”
He snapped his fingers. “Ulf, get your ass back here and help Greg carry this.” The Five fell in silently behind Rafe and followed him into the woods. Only Willem looked back.
“I’m so impressed,” she yelled after them.
I know who I am, she thought.
How dare he say I don’t? I love being loup-garou.
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