Scratch That:, Judy Colella [best thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

guys to chew me to death.” He was almost weeping.

“Sounds painful.”

Mack threw his head back as far as it would go without becoming one with the fibers of the upholstery. “Ack! My whole life should be flashing before me, but I’m too terrified to remember any of it! Goodbye, Vec and Deva! Goodbye life! Please don’t be too harsh when you remember me…”

“Remember you? Who wants to do that? Hey, Deva, are you hungry?” Vector, his tone turning matter-of-fact, nodded toward the front door as he ignored the quivering mass of Mack in the chair.

“Well, yeah. Thirsty, too.”

Vec looked at his watch. “Coffee and something raw sound good to you?”

She grinned…wolflishly….at him and nodded.

Without another glance at Mack, they headed out the door, chatting quietly about what might happen later on when the moon was shining.

-4-

 

 

Mack opened one eye in time to see their departure. He frowned, not sure if he could trust that they were really leaving, but then he heard Deva laugh, and opened the other eye. Relief fought briefly with outrage, and outrage would have won had not despair bitch-slapped it and told it to take off. Despair, however, was shortly kicked in the head by fury, which swaggered around for a few minutes before settling down and becoming a slow boil.

“Ha! They think they’re so cool!” He got to his feet and went into the kitchen. “Think they can terrorize me like that, then take off like nothing happened! Ha!” He went to the refrigerator where he found (to his delight) a bottle of beer. Grabbing it angrily, he said “ha” a few more times before plopping down at the table, determined to drink the hell out of that beer, by god. Oh, yes. That’s what he was going to do, all right. Make a mountebank out of him, would they? As he struggled with the cap, it occurred to him that “mountebank” was probably not the right word. Cuckold? No, that would only be appropriate if he and Deva been dating or were married.

The cap clung with determination to the bottle as he continued trying to twist it off. Well, for Pete’s sake, what was the word he was looking for? Something that was synonymous with “fool” or “butt of the joke.” Sucker? Boob? Woah, not a good place to go, especially in light of Deva’s unexpected tendency to get naked and stay that way.

The cap finally quit being obstinate and came away with a tiny “pop!” followed by what Mack considered an unreasonable amount of foam. By the time he’d gotten himself, the table and the floor dried off, very little beer was left in the bottle, and what there was, tasted luke-warm and flat. And now that her apartment smelled like a brewery, maybe it would be an excellent idea to be elsewhere when she and Vec got back.

He dumped the rest of the beer down the sink, wondered if she knew the faucet was leaking, and headed for the door. If the way things were going this early in the day was any indicator, the night was probably going to be intolerable. He shook his head and opened the door.

He shrieked and shut the door. A second later, he realized that the person standing on the other side was neither Deva nor Vec; he swallowed a few times, composed himself, and opened it again.

“Hello.” Mack gave the young woman a polite smile. “May I help you?”

“What the hell are you? The butler? Where’s Deva?”

“Out with Vector.”

“I see. And why does it smell like brewery in there?”

“That’s me, I think. I spilled beer foam on my coat.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It wasn’t on purpose. Look, Deva’s not here, like I said, so if you want to leave a message or something, I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“Who are you?” She was clearly as exasperated as he by now, but like the Sneeches, neither was giving way to the other.

“A friend of Vector’s.”

“And what – you live here, now?”

He looked horrified for almost a second. “No!”

“Then why are you answering her door and taking messages for her? And why are you drinking her beer and hanging out here when she’s not home? Come to think of it, why did you scream like a little girl when you opened the door the first time? May I come in, please?”

What the hell. “Sure.” He stepped back, and she swept past him into the living room where she tossed herself onto the sofa, which seemed to be getting more action lately than Mack.

“Okay, I give up,” she told him, defeated. “What’s going on?”

Sitting across from her, he decided a little dry wit would be just the thing. “Er, which of those questions would you like me to answer first?”

She gave him a blank stare.

“I mean, you asked…never mind.” So much for the dry wit. A dry martini would have been better. “Okay, listen – I’m the drummer for The Empty Wallets, the same band Vector’s in, and I came over the other day because something happened to Deva that I…” Damn! How was he going to explain any of this without telling this young lady that he was a werewolf?

“Shit! Are you a werewolf?” She’d sat bolt upright with alarm.

Mack heh-hehed a few times, waved a dismissive hand, shook his head “no,” and sat back with exaggerated nonchalance. “Ah….hahah! Yes.”

“Oh, crap.”

“No, please, it’s all right. I’m not going to change until the full moon is up.”

She gulped. “Is that supposed to make me feel safe?”

“Yes, actually. How did you know? About the werewolf thing, I mean.”

“Maybe it’s the hair on the back of your hands,” she replied, pointing a finger that was none too steady. “Besides, Deva never mentioned you before - ”

“She didn’t?” That hurt.

“No. Yet all of a sudden you know something happened to her, and now you’re hanging out in her apartment like you guys are all cozy and stuff – it made sense.”

Cozy. And stuff, too. He could only wish… “Uh, right. About the hands, you’re right. It’s the first symptom to show up on the day of the full moon, and I’ve gotten so used to it, I forgot all about it!” He uttered a silly, high-pitched laugh that made him sound more like a giddy chipmunk than a wolf. Chagrined, he nearly slapped himself in the face. “The, uh, really bad changes don’t occur until much later. At night. In the dark.”

“When the moon is out,” she added, snatching dry wit from the jaws of stupidity. The conversation was eroding quickly. “So tell me, why did you scratch her? You ruined her brand new shirt, by the way.”

“I’ll buy her a new one – really. As for the scratches, well, I was afraid that a bite would kill her, and I didn’t want that.”

She gave him an odd look. “What did you want, er, what’s your name?”

“Mack. I wanted to…” He stopped, realizing how desperate he would sound if he told her his real reasons. “But hey! What’s your name? I gave you mine.”

“Rochelle, and don’t change the subject.”

He groaned and stood up. This made her flinch back into the sofa cushions, but only for a moment; he began to pace, making it obvious he wasn’t going to attack her or anything. Still, she watched him warily, one hand going slowly to the silver smiley face pendant at her throat.

From the corner of his eye Mack observed this and wondered if it was real silver. She had little chance of kill him with the tiny disc (death by smiley face…nope), but she must have thought it was possible since she maintained her grip on the pendant.

He sighed. This was bad, he told himself. This was really bad. Another attractive young lady he would have the opportunity to cheese off…that’s two in one day. Then again, he normally couldn’t find two girls in one day, never mind talk to them and – ha! He’d even dealt with unabashed nudity from one of them! Now that was a record for anyone, never mind him.

“Are you going to pace me to death, or is this just your way of stalling until you get wolfed out?”

“What?” Mack stopped as her words registered. “Oh. Sorry. No, I was trying to come up with a way to answer your question without sounding pathetic,” he said, his own honesty shocking him.

Rochelle nodded, smiling. “You like her, don’t you.”

He reddened and lowered his gaze to the floor. “Yeah. Guess I do.” Hey, did Deva know she could get that stain out with –

“Well, gee, why not just tell her instead of jumping out at her in parks and scratching her?”

“I wasn’t exactly human at the time,” he pointed out, meeting her eyes. To his relief, she wasn’t giving him that poor-baby-but-what-a-loser look. “I mean, that’s not something I would ever do under normal circumstances.”

“I would hope not! Still, you’d have at least avoided all this…hold it. You said she was out with Vector, right?”

He nodded, wondering where she was going with this. He found out with her next sentence.

“That means he knows you’re here, soooo…..he might know about the scratch…”she was speaking slowly, drawing out her words as she seemed to put two and three together and come up with pi. “And you seem to be pretty nonchalant about all this, but you were…drinking beer, yes? Which means you were upset….huh. Okay. Vec knows….Vec and Deva know you’re a werewolf, right?”

He almost applauded, would have, in fact, if her lengthy ruminations hadn’t almost put him to sleep. “Uh, yeah. They know.”

“And they’re okay about it?”

“Not exactly. You see – mind if I sit?” He waved at the chair behind him. “I – okay? Yes?” He sat. “See, because I didn’t bite her, she won’t be turning into a werewolf like me.”

Rochelle nodded. “Ah. I sense something traumatic is about to be revealed, and for Deva’s sake, I think I need to know what it is. Well?”

“Okay. See, because I scratched her, there’s still some kind of oh, effect, I guess you could say.”

“What kind of effect?”

“She says she has a craving for raw meat.” Then he told her the rest. Everything. About Deva’s sudden revulsion toward clothing, about her biting Vec, about what that was doing to him, about the fangs they were both sporting -

“Wait! Wait!” She got to her feet, frantic as she interrupted him. “You said they went out?! With fangs?! And for god’s sake, was she dressed? Oh my – ”

“No! I mean, yes! I – look, I was in fear for my life when they took off, so – and don’t look at me like that! I thought they were going to eat me, okay? I had my eyes closed and I wasn’t exactly thinking about their teeth, except for the fact that they weren’t using them to chew on me. And yes, Deva was totally dressed.”

“This is insane! You’re a nut job, you know that?”

“What? I didn’t ask to be a werewolf, you know!”

“How sweet, but did you have to scratch Deva? I mean, look at how this whole thing has spiraled out of control, and all because you had to be such a, such a, a guy!”

He nodded. “Yup, I sure did.” He was getting angry now.