As she drew closer to her mother’s grave, she saw someone was there ahead of her. No. Not someone. Something. Some thing. It dug with bare, clawed hands at the ground near the headstone. Pale gray skin seemed to glow in the meager sunlight that filtered through the clouds. Clods of grass and dirt flew. It muttered something, though whatever it might have said, it didn’t sound like English.
“Hey! Get away from there!” Suddenly as angry as she’d ever been, Elora ran toward it, as it spun toward her, red eyes glowing with malevolence. Streaks of dirt and mud and grass stained its naked body. Its arms were too long for its torso; she couldn’t tell if the legs were too, not the way it crouched. Then, in the blink of an eye, it leapt atop her mother’s headstone and from there launched itself straight at her.
Without thought, Elora raised her arms and braced herself for the impact that never came. The thing never reached her. A scream cut through the wind, and a golden-brown blur knocked her attacker out of the air. Elora forgot all about the certainty of a heartbeat before that she was going to die.
She focused instead on the freaking cheetah mauling the glowing gray whatever it was. Tail lashing and claws flying, the cheetah sank its teeth into the meat of the creature’s thigh. Black ichor oozed from the wound. More of the viscous stuff streaked its chest and arms where the cheetah’s claws had torn though skin and muscle. Finally, with a screech of frustration, the thing ran. The angry cat let it go, slipping back into the woods.
Wary, Elora held her ground, staring after the cheetah. The woods in that one small spot, not ten feet away from where she stood, shimmered like waves of heat on a desert road. Something that in no way resembled survival instinct pushed her to that spot.
“You’ve got some secrets, haven’t you, Pretty Eyes.” Ripley grinned at her and spat black ichor, wiped it from his chest and shoulder, his hip. Angry red welts remained wherever the stuff had touched. He was stark naked, not even wearing his glasses.
“You… you’re a cheetah.” She felt the world tilt. It shrank, closing in on her. Buzzing filled her ears growing louder and taking on the cadence of her heartbeat. Her vision turned white at the edges, fuzzy.
Ripley shrugged. Smirked. “Believe it or not.” His voice echoed, melding with the buzzing sound.
Elora passed out.
Chapter 12
The world convulsed. No. Wait. That wasn’t right. Frowning, Elora opened her eyes a crack. She bounced again, and Angela’s face swam into view.
“Wake up, sleepy head! You’re going to be late for your History class.” Elora growled at her and turned over, pulling the covers over her head. Angela pulled them right back off, exposing her to the much cooler air of their room. “What happened yesterday, anyway? You disappeared from the funeral.” She sat on the corner of Elora’s bed, watching her with an expectant expression.
“Stop.” Groggy, still half asleep, Elora pulled the covers back up to her chin. “Leave me alone.”
Angela’s face went slack. Her eyes lost focus. She stood without a word and left the room, her movements stiff and bordering on unnatural.
Oh, no. It’s happening again.
Elora stared up at the ceiling, her mind a blank as the wind outside howled around the eaves. It promised a chilly morning. Tree branches outside their window scraped against the glass, tap-tap scree, tap-tap scree.
Elora sat up with a glance at the gray morning sky and opened the top drawer of her nightstand. She'd set the box that held her mother’s – and now her – necklace on top of the photograph of her and Sophia. She pulled out the photo, studied their laughing faces.
Elora had spent a year and a half with the Whites; Sophia had been there for months before Elora’s placement. The same age and with similar interests, the two girls had become instant friends. Sophia was the only true friend Elora could remember. She hadn’t been around anyone else long enough for lasting impressions. She snorted, ran the tip of her finger along the smooth, flat surface of Sophia’s face. She hadn’t even liked any of her other foster-sisters.
But then she and Sophia had gone to that carnival in the parking lot of the local grocery store. It was close to the Whites’ house, so they let the girls ride their bikes there and even gave them money for food and games. It had been a great afternoon.
Early on, they had flirted with the cute carny boy who ran an “archery” game. Both of them fancied themselves a Katniss Everdeen and wanted to impress him. The prize for hitting the target was a fluffy stuffed animal. If you hit the bulls-eye, you won a bigger stuffed animal. The boy had let them play a few times for free. After Elora hit the bulls-eye, he had let Sophia trade up to one of the better prizes, too, because he “liked her smile.” And that’s what started the argument.
Elora, who had scored a large blue and green dog, lashed out at Sophia when they walked away. “He only gave it to you because he feels sorry for you!”
Sophia had laughed. “You’re just jealous ‘cause he thinks I’m prettier than you.”
At fourteen, the hurt feelings had been intense. They had ridden home soon after, and Elora hadn’t bothered to take her prize. She didn’t want it anymore. The girls had sniped at each other all the way home and all through dinner. Elora had gone to her room and shut the door to escape. Sophia had followed, taunting her and shoving her huge pink teddy bear in her face.
“God, you suck! Just kill yourself already!"
Tamara White had called up the stairs for them to knock it off. Glaring at Elora, Sophia had dropped the bear and walked out without another word. Elora had flung herself onto her bed. She stuck in her earbuds, turning up her music loud enough to drown out any other sounds. Or so she thought.
The music still played, though Elora had fallen asleep. Tamara's scream cut through the noise and woke her. Elora rolled off the bed, still half asleep, and ran toward her foster mother. Tamara stood in the hallway outside Sophia's room. Adam White got there a couple of seconds before Elora and tried to keep her out of the room. He didn’t want her to see Sophia's body hanging from the light fixture.
But she did see it. She still saw it sometimes when she slept. The Whites were quick to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault, but Elora knew better. She had tied the sheet around her friend’s neck as surely as if she’d held the length of it in her hands and pulled it tight around the light herself.
That wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, either, though it was the worst. Elora had always been different. Sometimes when she told someone to do something, they did it without hesitation and no questions asked. It didn’t happen every time, but often enough it made her careful.
Most of the time, anyway. Since that night with Sophia, Elora spoke to other people as little as she could get away with. She always thought about what she did say, trying to never phrase things as orders or directions to do something. A lot of people assumed she was slow, since she chose her words so carefully.
It had seemed to do the trick, but things had changed somehow. These last few weeks she sensed something different, stronger lurking inside. What if she couldn’t stop it? What if she hurt someone else?
She put the photo back under the necklace and closed the drawer. Angela was right about one thing – Elora would be late for History.
When Elora took her usual seat in the back of the room, it was a good fifteen minutes after class had started. She didn’t recognize the man in front of the class. Professor Goggins’ assistants had taught since his death, but it looked like the college had finally hired a replacement. The words “Dr. Peter Grant” were a scrawl across the top of the chalkboard. Office hours along with office and cell phone numbers were in a box below. He didn’t say anything to Elora when she walked in, but he noticed. He raised one eyebrow and looked right at her but never paused in his lecture.
Dr. Grant looked like he was in his mid-40s. His black hair had a military cut, the harsh edges at odds with his widow's peak. There were gray streaks at his temples. His pale skin looked like old
ivory, the kind of complexion that resisted burning and tanning alike. It was only after making mental note of all that that she realized his lecture held the room spellbound. He spoke of Central Europe and their traditions of vampires and werewolves, ghosts and goblins and Fairies with a capital 'F.' Elora missed Professor Goggins and his humor, but maybe this Grant guy wouldn't be so bad.
A flash of Ripley from the day before blindsided Elora. The odd shimmering as the cheetah melted and reformed into a naked Ripley replayed in her head. Had that really happened? And that thing digging around her mother’s grave.
What the hell was that?
For that matter, how had she gotten back to her dorm room? She must have passed out. She couldn’t remember anything after Ripley’s “believe it or not” shtick when she’d called him on that cheetah thing. What the hell is going on? That couldn’t be real! Could it? Grant’s voice broke through Elora’s confusion like a church carillon.
“If you look at the legends of shape-shifting creatures, of werewolves, in particular, you'll notice several groupings of patterns throughout the world. Two of those stand out above all the rest." He turned his back to the class to write on the board. He didn't erase his name. "I'm using broad strokes here, you understand." He put the finishing touch on his written notes and turned back to face his students once more. "The devil is in the details." His gaze met Elora's, and he grinned. Elora couldn't look away. She shivered and gripped the arms of her chair, an instinctive fight-or-flight response. What did Jane call that? It felt like someone walked across her grave.
“So is that second example like in Teen Wolf?”
Grant turned toward the girl who had asked the question as the rest of the class laughed. Elora laughed, too, but at herself. She could already see that Dr. Grant was the kind of guy who made a person feel like they were the only one who mattered. Jane had been like that. That was part of why she missed her so much where she didn’t care about any of her other fosters.
The class discussion swirled around the room. It reminded Elora of Professor Goggins’ coffee klatch, only on a much larger scale. As she listened to everyone else, she read Dr. Grant’s chalkboard scrawl. His first grouping was a bulleted list.
- turn into wolves
- must have full moon to turn
- violent predator
- result of a curse or infection post-bite
The second list – the Teen Wolf list – reminded her of Ripley.
- turn into wolves or other animals
- can change at will
- not necessarily violent
- hereditary
Elora held her breath. Oh, my God. Someone asked Grant about silver bullets, but she tuned out his answer. Am I buying into this shapeshifter crap? But she had seen Ripley change. It wasn’t as though cheetahs were an everyday sight, not outside of a zoo, anyway. Dr. Grant seemed more than happy to answer any questions on the subject anyone in the class had. Maybe he really did know something about it. With the left turn her life had taken, that sort of knowledge could be a good thing to develop.
The buzzer sounded, announcing the end of class. She jotted down Dr. Grant’s contact information. Once her life settled down a little, she’d either visit his office or give him a call.
Chapter 13
English Lit was a pop quiz. They had to write an essay about their favorite character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and why they thought it still resonated in the modern world. Elora hadn’t read them all, given the circumstances of the past few days. The last time she had was her junior year in high school. Instead, she chose one of the ones she had reread and wrote about it until the period ended.
For lunch, she baked a potato in the microwave in her dorm room. It was not her preferred method, but it worked. She ate it with butter and sour cream while she studied for her Russian vocabulary quiz.
The best part of the day came when she went to her fencing class. It, too, had a kind of pop quiz, but it wasn't anything written. Coach Varga had them suit up in protective gear as soon as they walked into the gymnasium. He paired them off according to a similarity of reach and stride for the first half of the test, the disparity for the second.
Elora let herself sink into the rhythms of lunge and parry, attack and riposte, advance and retreat. She did as well when Coach paired her with a person of the same height and weight as she did against someone a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.
With the masks and the padded suits, she had no idea if they were male or female or one of each. Varga told them no talking during the test, so there was no banter or taunting. She had to wait until the bout ended and they took off their masks to find out both her opponents were male. The one closer to her in size was a freshman like her, the other a senior. She aced the test, beating them both.
On the way home, she picked up a burger and fries for dinner from a local hangout. She planned to take the evening off from studying after so many tests. It was Friday, after all. She had nothing due in any of her classes until Tuesday.
Angela was there, sitting cross-legged on her bed, talking on her phone when Elora walked in the door. The welcoming smile slipped from Angela’s face as soon as she recognized Elora. Before Elora had a chance to come through the door, Angela got up and went into the bathroom. That door closed with a sharp snick.
“Well, crap.” Elora stared after Angela for a long moment. With a sigh, she set her bag of food on her dresser to shrug out of her jacket. She tapped on the bathroom door. “You don’t have to do that, Angela.” No response. She didn’t even hear any hint of her roommate continuing her phone conversation. Shaking her head, Elora gave up for the moment in favor of eating her burger before it got cold.
Chapter 14
The next couple of weeks blurred one into the other. Elora did laundry, studied, and relaxed on the weekends. She didn't go out much, and when she did, it was by herself. She still hadn't made any friends. Professor Goggins' coffee klatch continued to meet on Thursday nights at the diner, but Elora didn't go. Goggins himself had been the draw for her, and without him there, she saw no point. Her relative popularity, sparked by the coma incident, had long since waned. With one notable exception, the only time anyone on campus talked to her beyond please and thank you was in class.
That exception came on a Saturday evening. Elora was in the basement of her building doing laundry. She preferred doing it at that time of day because usually, no one else was around. She could read in peace while her clothes did their thing. That particular Saturday, the laundry room was pretty tight. Several girls she'd either never seen before or only in classes were there.
They chatted, complained about classes, talked up boyfriends or girlfriends. She heard someone mention burst water pipes at one of the sororities and how awful the timing was. Elora kept to herself in the corner.
When she went to move her wet clothes to the only empty dryer, she discovered she’d run out of dryer sheets. The dispensers were empty, too. No one else seemed to be waiting for a dryer, so she thought nothing of leaving her clothes where they were. She literally ran to the convenience store around the corner. She was gone for less than half an hour.
When she returned, her clothes lay on the floor, and the dryer spun away with someone else’s things. The only other person there was a girl Elora had seen around on campus, usually as part of a larger group. All she knew was the girl was a senior and that the others deferred to her. A lot.
At a loss for words, Elora looked from her clothes to the other girl. With a flip of her hair, the girl went back to leafing through her magazine. “You left. The other dryers were running.” She licked the tip of her finger and turned a page.
“Fair enough, I guess." Elora's voice fair snapped with anger. "But you didn't have to dump my stuff on the floor." She kicked one of the wheeled laundry carts toward the girl. It wasn’t hard enough for it to hit her, but it still made Elora’s point.
Gray eyes focused on Elora for a moment before she shrugged and flipped an
other page. "You don't leave your stuff unattended." Without looking up, she pointed to a sign hanging from the ceiling. It wasn't a direct quote, but it was close enough.
Take the high road, Snow.
Dragging the laundry cart back, Elora picked up her things and wheeled them to the other side of the room to wait. She didn’t point out that several of the other girl’s friends had left their things unattended. She didn’t emulate the brunette and remove someone else’s laundry and replace it with hers.
Not five minutes later, three people came in with fast food and freed half a dozen dryers.
For those couple of weeks, Angela didn’t talk to her at all. It was a little less weird when other people were around, like Greg, Angela’s boyfriend from the campus bookstore. Greg was a friendly guy. He always talked to Elora when he came by their room to pick Angela up for a date. Sometimes he stayed over.
When he stayed, Elora took her books or her laptop to the floor’s common area to study. She wouldn’t come back until she thought it might be safe. More than once, she fell asleep on the couch, waking in the wee hours of the morning.
Even with Greg around, she didn't see much of her roommate. Whatever Elora had done that morning to make Angela “leave her alone,” she couldn’t seem to make it stop. One morning she tried commanding Angela to talk to her and was kind of happy it didn’t work. If commanding her to leave her alone meant Angela wouldn’t stay in the same room as Elora, the opposite might unleash a never-ending flood of words.