Bitch: Puncture (book 2)

It’s always darkest before the dawn or so they say. I couldn’t help it. I quivered with excitement.

I felt like we were mere hours away from cracking this wide open.

He knew Stinger.

He knew where to find him. And if that creep had been the one to make the false police report, I would have paid money to be there when these lies came back to haunt him. (‘Paid money?!?’ What was once so important to acquire, now I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even had any.)

He probably knew the guide shop, where he worked. I felt myself salivating at the thought of tearing through Stingers throat with my teeth. Feeling that soft flesh rip and tear in my mouth as my canines punctured. And then the rush of exultant delight as I shredded his neck beyond repair. His scent returned to my nostrils filling them like fetid mud, like the smell of rotting flesh. I could smell that coonskin cap in my memory, that desiccated stench that seeped through his scalp and was floating in his very blood. The carrion that oozed from his pores, I would never be able to forget that smell.

And once I had Stinger, I’d get Shen. I wanted to kill Stinger, but Shen... Shen I wanted to destroy. A thrill shot through me, as if I’d just crested the top of a roller coaster and I’d just begun to free fall.

I smiled as I reveled in the memory of biting Shen’s hand. I could feel my teeth puncturing his flesh again. His whiny little shriek of pain. It was only a bare shadow of the pain I’d endured, but you wouldn’t know that from the look of agonized surprise splitting his face. The shock, the surprise, the indignation and the flare of anger all slithered across his normally expressionless face. Suddenly, he was there, present in the moment, pulled by the pain in his hand to be totally present in the moment, no longer able to see the future therapies, no longer cataloging the success and failure of the past, just totally in the moment of realizing that he could be touched and that he could still feel pain. In that moment the safe detachment he’d always maintained was rent in two.

Then I remembered the satisfying sound of his head hitting the door when he stumbled back trying to pull his hand from my mouth. I wished he’d hit harder.

Shen had hit me, but I barely remembered. It was out of sheer terror and surprise so his blows hadn’t had any design or target.

And then I was in the air, bounding down the hall to freedom. All the way to the electronic door. And I stopped, and looked at Apoc. The first time I really looked at him. I looked at him, it seemed that everything slowed down and got quiet. I could still hear the dogs, but they were a million miles away. I don’t think I blinked. And his eyes they glowed in the dark. Shimmering discs of iridescence imprisoned in the half dark.

I could hear Arlene snoring quietly. I glanced over at Apoc, he was awake, watching me, with those eyes. It was like he knew what I was thinking. How could he know that I was thinking about him?

‘Do you have ESP? Telepathy?’ I thought at him. He stared back unblinking.

And I just felt my insides go warm and runny, like a teenage girl being blinded by her first crush. I wanted to feel, to touch, to be touched. And then he started nibbling on his thigh, biting after a flea or something. I rolled my eyes.

Nope. No ESP here. I thought mentally shaking my head at myself.

‘Oh Apoc, I wish so much that I could hear what you were thinking. I wish I could just talk with you,’ I thought at him sadly.

Slowly he looked up at me as if he could hear his own name in my thoughts.

Those eyes stopped me again. And again my vision started to tunnel. All I could see was Apoc. Again a warm flush washed over me and my eyes closed to enjoy the drowsy heat bubbling out of my core.

He licked my nose, and my eyes flicked open and I was back... again.

His head tilted to the side as if to say “What?” with every once of innocence he could fabricate and then before I could think of anything else. He proceeded to lick his paws and clean himself from head to toe.

I lay my head down and tried unsuccessfully to get back to the dream about killing Stinger and then Shen. But I couldn’t hear anything over the licking... and somewhere there I fell asleep.