I made myself slow down. A lot. Because about the only way this could get worse was if I outed myself as a vampire. Humans could not run at forty miles an hour. Slow down. A lot. Get Lara away from there before she—
“She’s littler than you.” Another shake. “And not as strong.” Another shake—sort of like when a terrier kills a rat.
Jason had both his hands locked around her wrist and, from his strained, reddening complexion, was trying as hard as he could to pry her hand off him. “You’re supposed to watch out for her,” Lara the Terrifying was saying. “She’s your ’sponsibility and you hurt her on purpose! You don’t ever do that!”
“Put me down!”
“ ’kay .” I didn’t even have time to groan and cover my eyes; Lara pulled Jason toward her, sidestepped, and threw him about six feet. He skidded nose-first into the gravel, sat up, and started howling. His nose was bleeding and the rich, heady scent went straight to my head.
Well, this was just swell. On top of everything else, I’d popped my fangs. Way to stay off the radar, Vampire Queen.
I reached Lara, veering around the mother who had instantly rushed to her son’s side when things stopped going his way.
“Argh, Lara, thith ith awful! Why’d you do that? You can’t be throwing bullieth around like that. Are you trying to get me eaten alive? Your father—”
Lara was ignoring me. I had, in fact, stopped existing for her at all. She had gone to the girl, helped her out of the dirt, and brushed her off. “Are you okay? We have Band-Aids at my house. Do you need one?”
“Nuh-uh.” The girl rubbed her cheeks with grubby fists, mixing dirt with tears. “How’d you do that? That was really cool. I want to do that. Can you throw him again?”
“I better not,” Lara muttered, giving me a wary look. Not like she was scared of me; more like she was calculating how much of a threat I was to her at that moment.
I had a flashback to what her mother—her human mother—had told me earlier.
A werewolf cub is not a human child. And what else had she said? She’d looked so strange when she said it. That look on her face—a mixture of pride and sorrow. It wasn’t an expression I’d ever seen before.
They’re faster. Stronger . . . crueler.
Jeannie had known her shit; Lara was no more human than I was. She hadn’t responded to Jason like a little girl who wanted to play on the monkey bars; she’d responded like an alpha who saw weakness and pain and instantly acted to put an end to it. She’d seen someone who needed protecting and she hadn’t hesitated—never mind the consequences to her, or me.
Which was a lot more than I had done.
Great. Shown up by someone who didn’t weigh more than a bag of dog chow. Who was already more of a leader than I could ever be.
“—because we could go up to my house and—”
“You!” Oh, terrific. The Thing That Birthed Bullies had marched over to us, dragging her bawling son behind her. “You think I didn’t see what you did? I saw what you did, and you’re going to—”
Okay, that was just about enough. I locked gazes with her and said, “Go thit down.”
The anger—all animation, in fact—left her face and she turned and walked like a robot over to the bench. Good old vampire mojo; there were times when I was more than pleased to use it.
“What’s wrong with your voice?” Lara asked.
“You jutht never mind my voith. Letth get out of here.”
“Hey, your teeth are all pointy! I don’t think you should bite him, though.” She looked at Jason, who was so bewildered by the events of the last twenty seconds he had stopped crying. Then she smiled at him, the flat, fake smile of a store mannequin. “He wouldn’t taste good at all.”
Jason was now backing away from her, wiping the blood from his nose with a swipe of his sleeve. I couldn’t say I blamed him. And the farther away he got, the less crazy the smell of his O-positive goodness made me.
“Your mom underplayed it, if anything,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s get out of here.”
“Okay. I’ve got what I wanted, anyway.”
We started heading out of the playground, back toward Lara’s house. “What, you wanted to throw a bully fifteen feet?”
“It wasn’t even close to fifteen feet. Boy, you really like to exaggerate, don’t you?”
“It’s one of my weaknesses,” I admitted.
“Besides, I just wanted to get another look at you.”
I stopped so suddenly she took a couple more steps before she realized she was walking alone. “You wanted to what?”
“To get another look at you. If you and my daddy become enemies, you’ll be my enemy. I might have to kill you someday, to protect the Pack. Why wouldn’t I come see you?”
“But you and I met already.”
“Yes,” Lara explained patiently, “but now you’re in my lands. I’m not in yours.”
I stared, struck speechless—which is not a normal thing for me, better believe it. “So, if I’ve got this right, you didn’t want me to take you to play. You wanted to—to—”
A werewolf cub is not a human child.
“—to size me up?”
“Uh-huh.” She brightened as the mansion came into sight. “D’you want some ice cream? I’d love a dish of chocolate.”
Okay. Now I was getting a genuine case of the creeps. Because I could see that, for her, the situation was over, done, resolved. She could move on to other things now, and would.
In other words, she was behaving exactly like she was taught and bred to behave: to worry only about the Now. Tomorrow was a thousand years away. Yesterday was even further away.
I sighed and surrendered. “Yeah. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
“Hey! You’re not talking funny anymore.”
“Let’s thank God for small favors, okay? Also, if you could not mention this little fracas to your folks, that would be peachy.”
Lara laughed. “You’re funny.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I followed her up the drive to the mansion. “I’m a barrel of freakin’ monkeys.”
Chapter 20
Dude,
Well, I definitely picked the right time to keep a journal. Because it has been an interesting couple of days. Who knows? I might actually keep writing the thing.
When Laura called me away during my last entry, I had followed her into the kitchen. But not as her friend . . . I was more than a little alarmed at the symptoms of intense stress she was exhibiting. Since unpleasant things had a way of happening when she was angry or frightened, I had a more than passing interest in her state of mind.
I was able to sit her down at the kitchen table and get her to drink a Snapple. The act of doing something nice and mundane seemed to calm her. That’s when I realized she was more humiliated than angry.
“Marc, I am so sorry you had to see that. I just don’t know what to say.”
“Laura, it’s not your fault. Hey,” I joked, “how do you think I’d feel if my old man showed up? You shouldn’t feel bad about something beyond your control.”
“Maybe it isn’t beyond my control.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “It’s fine, Laura, I don’t mind. Satanists showing up in the foyer certainly add some spice to my day. Nobody likes the pop-in. And like I said, it’s not your fault.”
“No. It’s my mother’s.” That last was practically spit out. “I was going to ask you something and now I can’t, because of her.”
“Ask me what? Drink your tea. So. Ask.”
“Um.” Laura gazed into her bottle of Snapple, which I doubt held any answers. “It’s just, I told Betsy I’d look after you and Tina while she was gone. So instead of coming over when I can, I was hoping I could move in. Just for a little while,” she added, misreading my expression. “I won’t get in the way, I promise.”