Wild (25 page)

“But Vargulfs don’t learn that,” she mused. “Nick didn’t give me a crash course on looking after the wolf, he just got excited about how many more drugs we could take and what cool stuff we could do.” And she didn’t think anyone had helped Nick either, from what he’d said; he’d just been left to figure it out for himself. Didn’t seem fair, although it probably explained why he was such a cock. “How many Vargulfs d’you think there are?” she wondered. “Just trying to stay low and figure things out for themselves because they’re too scared of you lot to ask for help.”

“Probably more than we know about,” he admitted, looking troubled. He stared past her, chewing his lip. “We try, you know? We try to find them and help them out, but it’s impossible to find everyone. If we hadn’t walked into each other on the street, I’d never have known about you.”

Lizzie had to smile then. “I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones then.”

He focused on her again, eyes brightening. “I’m not sure I believe in luck.”

“Fate?” She shuffled closer to him and he leaned across the table to brush his fingers across her cheek. “Destiny, maybe?”

He cupped her face, delicately drawing her in closer to kiss her. “Destiny sounds better than fate. Fate sounds … maudlin.”

She returned the kiss, forgetting Nick and stray Vargulfs for a second. Forgetting everything for a second, the noise of the restaurant fading away, the pulsing music dying down, everything vanishing except Seth…

Until the waiter interrupted, anyway. They parted with a sigh, smiling ruefully at each other and linking fingers across the table while they ordered their food. When the waiter left, Seth raised her fingers to his lips, sending a shiver of bliss through her. Alright, she was smitten. Stupid, really, when they barely knew each other, but she didn’t care. How well did you have to know someone to know you liked them anyway? Clicked with them, had that chemistry that charged every touch with electricity, fuelled every kiss until it was smoking hot? That kind of connection was instinctive, alchemical, and Lizzie didn’t need to analyse it to enjoy it.

****

A couple of hours later, full of chili and drowsy with warmth, Lizzie stepped outside to find the rain had started again. “Great,” she muttered as Seth joined her. “I knew I should have driven in.” The Mazda was languishing outside her house, tank empty. She wished she’d scraped the money together to fill it.

Seth took her hand. “I parked on Leece Street, near the church,” he said.

Only a five minute walk then. They set off quickly, Lizzie torn between running to get out of the rain and walking in deference to all the chili she’d eaten. The bombed-out church, a few metres further up Leece Street, glowed in the rain, the pale stone ghostly and luminous. She wondered if Harris was taking shelter in there tonight, if he remembered enough to remember it, and the times they’d holed up there together to get high.

As she and Seth crossed the street to head to his car, a group came the other way, barging past. Lizzie would have simply swore under her breath and ignored them, except she noticed one of the girls had pink hair, and then she couldn’t help but look and of course as soon as she turned her head, she locked eyes with Nick.

She froze, pulling Seth to a halt. She didn’t mean to, she just couldn’t help it. This tidal wave of fresh anger just hit her, and when Nick stopped too, letting his friends drift on without him, she knew she was in trouble, knew it the second Nick laid eyes on Seth. She should have kept moving. Why hadn’t she kept moving?

“Lizzie,” Nick said, raising his voice over the sharp splatter of rain on tarmac. “So this is your new best friend, is it?” He looked Seth over and smiled sourly. “I see you’re running with the big boys now.”

Seth rested his hands protectively on her shoulders. “Is there a problem?” he asked, an ever-so-slight growl in his voice.

“Maybe,” Nick replied.

“No,” Lizzie snapped at the same time, backing up against Seth until her back was against him.

“It’s Nick Doyle, right?” Seth asked, managing to sound polite despite the snarl underlying his words. “Off to abuse a few ghouls, are we?”

“Fuck off, posh boy,” Nick said. Rain water flattened his hair to his skull, hiding his eyes and giving him a sinister look Lizzie had never noticed before. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Seth, let’s just go,” Lizzie said, fear creeping down her spine. Nick was high, she was sure of it. His pupils were dilated and he kept rubbing his nose and shifting his weight from foot to foot, edgy and restless. It had to be coke, probably enough to kill a small elephant, knowing what she knew about Nick.

“And where are you off to, Lizzie? High tea with the Kurtadam, is it? Flower arranging and piano forte?” Nick laughed, kicking a puddle at his feet and splashing water all over her. “Sure you wouldn’t rather come to my gig? Have some real fun?”

“Don’t be a prick,” she told him.

“He can’t help himself,” Seth said. He shook his head. “We don’t need this. Come on, Lizzie.” He turned away, gripping her hand as he did, and she felt a flush of relief. Walk away before somebody said something they couldn’t take back, or did something they regretted, that was the mature thing to do. She had no real quarrel with Nick, did she?

Alright, yeah, she did, but she didn’t want Seth to see that side of her, didn’t want him to regret getting involved with her. So she turned her back on Nick too, prepared to walk away.

“Seen Harris lately?” Nick shouted, stopping her dead again. “How’s he adjusting to life on the street?”

Here came the anger again, a tremor building up inside her, waking the Other. The wolf liked her anger, licked its chops and sucked it up. Anger was good, hot and tasty. Lizzie spun to face Nick. “Shut up,” she said. “Don’t you dare, Nick…”

“What?” he asked, kicking rain water at her again. “You mean you didn’t tell the Kurtadam about poor Harris? Didn’t tell your new boyfriend what happened to the old one?”

“Shut up, Nick!” she cried, pleading as much as ordering. There was no need for this, this was just spite and coke, and she hated him for it, absolutely loathed him. “Please, just –”

“What happened?” Seth was beside her, still holding her hand, but eyeing Nick warily, like he was a bug Seth had never seen before and might turn out to be poisonous. “Lizzie?”

“He’s talking crap,” she said quickly. “He’s high as a kite, Seth. Come on, let’s go –”

“She killed him!” Nick cried, slapping his thigh like it was the best joke ever. “First night she changed, she ripped his fucking throat out. Can you believe that, Seth? Better stay on her good side, mate.”

The world bled red, and Lizzie felt the Other surge up inside her, taking hold for a split second, just long enough for her hands to shift and her to slap Nick across his stupid laughing face. Her claws, nice and sharp, drew blood. The rain washed it away as quickly as it spread across his skin, but it was satisfying anyway.

“You bastard,” she hissed at him.

“Lizzie!” Seth yanked her back, alarm vibrating through him. “For God’s sake!”

His voice restored her senses a little, pushing the Other down so Lizzie could see straight again. See with human vision the wicked cuts across Nick’s pale cheek. Horrified, she shoved her hands in her pockets, her claws receded back into human fingernails. “Oh God, Nick, I’m sorry…”

He pressed his hand to his cheek, scowling. “I would have looked after you, Lizzie,” he said, all the bluster and spite gone. “He’ll dump you as soon as he’s bored – you’re just a bit of fun, a bit of rough for the posh boy.” He stalked away, disappearing into the rain-lashed night.

Lizzie sobbed, not sure whether anger or misery trigged the tears. Probably both. That was it, wasn’t it? Seth knew now, and he would dump her. How could he do otherwise? The Kurtadam were human first, wolf second. And the night she killed Harris, she’d been nothing but wolf, inhuman, unthinking. Why would Seth want anything to do with her now?

She looked up at him. A street lamp shone on his face, highlighting the look of disbelief there. “Lizzie, you didn’t… You haven’t…”

She couldn’t help herself; she laughed. It wasn’t funny, it was the least funny thing since … since she’d woken up to find Harris’s corpse in the living room, but all she could do was laugh. She wasn’t supposed to have a better life, obviously. She was supposed to stay in the gutter where she’d put herself. So much for destiny.

twenty two

T
HEY SAT IN
Seth’s car, the rain lashing on the roof with a tinny rattle. The bombed-out church loomed over them, giving Lizzie and the Other a strange sense of being judged. Or maybe that wasn’t strange, given the look on Seth’s face, the heavy quality to his silence as she tried to explain.

“He’s a ghoul now,” she said. “I saw him just today.” She ran her hands through her sopping curls, wishing she could say something that would make it all better. “We were fighting over something – drugs, probably, or me wanting to break up, I don’t know. I can’t even remember. And I just snapped and everything went red, and the next thing I knew…” She closed her eyes, reliving the horror-movie moment when she’d found his body, realised what she’d done.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Seth asked. His tone was cool, detached, like he’d already put a wall between them. It cut her to the quick. “How could you keep this secret?”

“I didn’t know any better!” she cried. “I only had Nick and he told me you lot would kill me if you found out.”

“You couldn’t possibly believe that after you met us all though!” Seth thumped the steering wheel, his icy veneer cracking to reveal hot frustration. “D’you think we keep a guillotine in the basement for beheading Vargulfs, or something? D’you think we would have turned you in to the police?”

“I don’t know! How was I supposed to know? I didn’t even know I was a werewolf until it was too late and Harris was already bloody dead! And then there was just me and Nick, and I was scared and freaked out and fucked up, so I listened to him. And then when we met…” She spread her hands out, palms up in supplication. “I’ve cocked up so much of my life in the past year, Seth. I’m a junkie drop-out. I thought… I didn’t think…”

“You thought I’d judge you, decide you were scum and get rid of you?” Seth finished for her. “Christ, Lizzie, is that really what you think of me? That I’m so shallow and spoilt, I wouldn’t understand?” He twisted in his seat, catching her hands. “I get that it must have been terrifying, okay? You had all this weird stuff happening to you and nobody to explain it and help you through it. What happened with Harris…” He sighed, as if the words were painful. Probably they were. It was painful to hear them. “I don’t know what we can do about that.”

The word “we” would have given her a little hope, if she didn’t think he meant “we” the Kurtadam, rather than “we” Seth and Lizzie. “Do?” she echoed stupidly.

He laughed, the sound tainted with misery. “You killed him, Lizzie. Accidentally, provoked, whatever. You still killed him. That’s… that’s not a small thing.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t spend every waking moment feeling guilty and shitty about it?” She wrenched free of his grip, wanting to escape, to launch herself out of the car and into the night, vanishing like Nick had. Except that was cowardly and wouldn’t solve a damn thing. So she did her best to quash her growing angst and unease and stay in the car.

“I need to talk to Nuala,” he said after a long, heart-wrenching pause. “I just don’t know what we do here, Lizzie.”

Tears burned her eyes and she hurriedly scrubbed them away. “I don’t want us to…”

“I know.” He reached out to stroke her hair, but didn’t look at her, and that stung more than anything else. “But this is just exactly the kind of thing the Kurtadam don’t want. Ghouls popping up everywhere endangers us, puts us at risk of exposure. Sooner or later, people are going to start looking for Harris, aren’t they? Friends, family, whoever. And when they find him, they’ll know something’s wrong and from there…” He trailed off, rubbing his eyes. “I need to talk to Nuala. I should take you home.”

And that was that. Without another word he started the car, spinning away from the bombed-out church to head for Smithdown Road. Lizzie stared at her hands, at the ruined red nail varnish, chipped by the quick change back and forth. She felt like she did on a particularly nasty come-down, like gravity had flipped on her, leaving her crushed and lethargic, without the energy to even cry for herself. A cruel little voice in the back of her head whispered,
what did you expect? Junkie drop-out, remember?

Yeah, yeah, she was getting what she deserved. That didn’t make it any easier to bear.

When they pulled up outside her house twenty minutes later, she didn’t have the heart to say anything to Seth. She unclipped her seatbelt and opened the door, prepared to walk away without looking back, just in case the sight of him driving away made her break down. But Seth reached out as she exited, grabbing her wrist and tugging her halfway back into the car.

“You should have told me, Lizzie,” he said. “This could be a real shit storm, you know.”

“Thanks, Seth. That’s really reassuring.” She pulled away, unable to bear his touch now she knew it might be the last touch.

“This isn’t my fault,” he said sharply. “Don’t get angry with me because you can’t control yourself.”