Chapter Eleven - Good Boys Don't Bite

Rowdy, Benny, Muse, and Justice trudge along the worn path from Locke House toward the mess hall in silence. There are two guards in front of them, the remaining three taking up the back. Benny has to keep hold of Rowdy’s shoulders to keep her upright.

None of the guards speak. Them going through the mind always, in theory, seemed like quite a neutral thing, but experiencing it has her feeling like her underwear are permanently on the outside of her jeans.

When they get half-way, red eyes appear between the trees. There are a few pairs, varying in height, but it’s unmistakable. She immediately pictures Jen, Hannah, and Jackie crouched between the ferns first, then figures whoever else is with them decided this probably beats the impromptu social event happening in Curie. Rowdy guesses the boat house cleared out to come see what the holdup is.

Her toe hits a pinecone, and the ground comes up fast. Benny makes a choking sound as she tries to save herself, but they both go down with a thud—Rowdy on her back and Benny on her knees.

Rowdy’s head sings. Her vision sputters, clears, and sputters again. She blinks hard, and everything starts moving in jerky slow motion. The greens and browns of the forest under the dim moonlight turn violent. Sickening cold spreads through her stomach.

“I think I’m done for,” she groans.

Benny tries to ask what the hell she’s talking about when the sky melts. The tops of the trees curve around in tight spirals. All of the eyes in forest blur and spin out into red, pinprick stars.

“—needs to drink. It’s been hours. Look at her face, for fuck’s sake! Nothing has healed since he did this to her.”

A silent conversation must take place because the ground disappears out from under her for a second before her feet find it again.

Benny and Justice carry Rowdy between them the rest of the way to the mess hall. Half the lights are off, only the tables closest to the kitchen illuminated in their own yellow spotlight.

They deposit her there, and the guards surround the table until the others come back with armfuls of mugs.

“We’re hoarding,” Muse says.

True to form, the girls set down six mugs on the table, all of which get pushed toward Rowdy.

“Do you need help drinking?” Benny asks.

“I’m all right, thanks.”

Her hand shakes, but she manages to bring the nearest one to her lips.

The first sip explodes across her tongue, and she nearly chokes. The human blood rips through her so quickly that she feels wired and sated all at once. The wounds in her face start to stitch themselves closed with annoying, itchy prickles. The bruises heat as the underlying vessels repair themselves. Even her teeth stop aching. Blessedly, the button in her head firmly clicks off. If it didn’t suddenly feel so good to be up, she would have sunk face first to the tabletop in relief.

“Jesus. A warning would have been nice.”

“Oh, sorry. We found this in the back of the walk-in and”—Justice talks a little louder as she faces the guard—“we have no idea what kind of blood it is or how it was sourced.”

As if an invisible, noiseless breeze goes through the room, the Guards’ cloaks shift. Rowdy imagines them communicating between themselves whether or not it’s something worth challenging.

Rowdy downs the rest just in case they do decide to confiscate it. Her mug barely touches the table when one of the Guard members steps forward and nods toward the kitchen.

Rowdy Dawes and Benedetta Baker, you are called forward by the Pacific Council of Elders to undergo questioning regarding the death of a human girl. We will take you to a secure area for mental review.

The paper-thin voice in her head creeps up the back of her neck. She glances at Benny, and then at the twins.

“They’re taking me and Benny somewhere else.”

The kitchen.

“The kitchen,” she echoes, though it’s only an echo for herself.

The twins nod as Benny stands. Her eyes stay on the mug in front of her, and Rowdy can’t fault her. The mutilated faces of the guards are more than enough excuse to not stray too far from safe surfaces.

Rowdy pushes herself to her feet and sways as the blood sloshes in her belly. Even though everything stays where it should, the power from her meal spreads through her. It reminds her vaguely of the last coffee she had before being turned, a vanilla red eye with two pumps of caramel. Despite being so full, her mouth waters at the memory before she accidentally catches sight of the chin of one of the guards and remembers herself.

They’re taken into the kitchen where Tami’s scrubbing the big blood pot in the wide, metal sink. At the sight of them, she blurs and disappears. She’s long gone by the time the pot’s hollow clang hits the sink and echoes off the tiles.

“I swear we didn’t do anything,” Benny says. “Honestly, we were just going to go for a swim when we found that girl. We do that every year, you know? Swim out to the dock in the middle and sit around for a bit then come back. We’d never—”

Enough. Words are not what we’re here for.

Their cloaks whisper as they’re removed. Rowdy finally looks up from the front of the black tactical gear all three of the Guards are wearing underneath. Their faces send her stomach around like an old washing machine.

All of their teeth are visible; their lips and most of the cheeks having been removed. Their eyelids sit flat and sewn shut against the round bones beneath. Rowdy still can’t shake the feeling that all of them are staring directly at her and Benny as they encircle the two of them.

“You know, I don’t really want to ask what happens next but I feel like you’re waiting for me to,” Benny says.

Guard Matthias will find the truth.

“I don’t want to know how,” Benny whimpers.

“If she freaks out, she’ll blow this kitchen up.” Rowdy tries to sound unaffected. “Just in case you don’t want to have to foot the repair bills.”

We are aware she is a forcer.

“Your funerals,” she mutters.

All at once, breathing is impossible. Cold, bony hands take hold of either side of her face and the pain that cracks through her knees as she hits the floor shoves the rest of the remaining air out of her.

It will hurt if you do not drop your defenses.

Somewhere outside the voice in her head, Benny makes a lot of noise, and then there’s nothing at all. There’s tension all through the back of her eyes as the room goes black.

It’s like fast forwarding through a movie as her brain starts to light up. There are other eyes on the endless reel, like she’s suddenly split her visual cortex two ways.

The few memories she has from humanhood zip past, and the movie slows as they get closer to more recent ones. Matthias goes through the past two and a half weeks over and over again. She watches herself meet Jackie four times. Her body reacts as if it’s happening again, butterflies on fire and a promising buzz in her lips that shouldn’t be so strong.

Matthias seems particularly interested in the night she and Jackie hid from Frankie and his human girlfriend in the boathouse, but Rowdy can only focus on Jackie’s face as she leaned in and bit her palm. A thrill goes through her, stronger each time Matthias replays the memory.

He forces her to watch through the rest of the night and well into the next morning. They watch the moment in the showers when she was certain she was alone right before daybreak until her hand slides down the front of her body. As if she’s in his mind too, Rowdy feels him mentally recoil from the memory.

Serves you right, perv, she thinks sharply.

The next memory fades in quickly, a conversation she and Benny had right before they woke Jackie up to go swimming.

“I think she’s cool,” Benny whispers.

“She’s not Leena,” Rowdy whispers back. Benny, exasperated, shakes her head and blows out a harsh sigh from her nose. “She doesn’t need to be. I like Jackie, and if we ever want to get better at dealing with the Leena stuff then we need to let other people in.”

Matthias replays Benny’s last sentence twice before the memory freezes.

What does this mean?

Rowdy feels her eyes roll somewhere inside her body. What does what mean?

Matthias plays it again. “...get better at dealing with the Leena stuff...” memory Benny repeats.

The Leena stuff?

Yes.

Something fiery and angry roars in her chest. Rowdy lets it stomp around inside her for a few seconds before she scoffs. Leena killed herself this past summer. It’s been four and a half months.

Matthias withdraws what feels like half a step, and there’s a hum of conversation that sounds more like papers shifting together than actual words, but Rowdy doesn’t chase it. The furious beast inside her starts doing terrible things to her insides.

Why?

The question is so simple it makes Rowdy want to break something. Outside of her mind, her body starts to shake.

Why does anybody ever do it?

Matthias seems to ponder this for a while. Do you know why she did it?

Because of him. Everything’s really well documented, you just don’t have the fucking eyes to see it.

Show me.

Rowdy’s throat constricts as she grunts out loud. The memories that want to come up first are the ones that hurt her the most, but she shoves them aside and shows him the first night Leena told her what Etienne had done. How, even in the foggy memory, her tears twinkled and glowed on her face as the two of them sat out on the floating dock in the middle of the lake while the night bugs sang around them.

She showed him the way Leena’s face lit up when she laughed, how the crinkles formed in the corners of her eyes until, after a few autumns, she got quiet. The skin around her eyes grew pale and thin as dust.

Matthias sends out a torrent of whispering sheets of paper and then the kitchen snaps back into view.

Rowdy screams as the pain finally breaks through the crush of having somebody else in her head with her. The entire lower half of her face is wet and the grotesquely contrasted red mess under her on the mustard, tiled floor solidifies the ruin of her evening.

“You made me throw up my dinner,” she chokes.

I told you it would be painful if you resisted.

The other Guards remain silent, though their empty sockets twitch with the memory of vision. While they twitch and shift around like nervous animals, Rowdy tries to put herself together. She forces her breathing to even out and waits until she’s feeling back in control before she looks around. No Benny.

“What’d you do with Benny?” she asks, finding her feet.

The silence stretches, so she asks again, louder.

There have been developments. You will stay here.

With a sound like the crack of a whip, the three Guards disappear in a swirling black hole of smoke.

“Fucking dicks.”

Rowdy slips on the mess but then heads for the main room. The second she makes it past the kitchen doors, she shoves the button in her head all the way on and takes the cascading wave in stride as she stills. Her eyes slip closed and tries to feel where Benny might be. The thought of stumbling through the woods trying to find the others without her sends a jolt of panic right through her.

It isn’t until she fully pictures Benny in her head that the wants start to change texture. Some of them are soft, closer to requests, and she thinks maybe most of those are from everyone hiding in Curie Cabin. It’s easy stuff: a fresh mug, a more comfortable place to sit, more information about what’s going on. Each one glides over the surface of her brain one at a time, lazy and smooth.

Rowdy forces her awareness further. It’s tactile, moving her consciousness through the mess hall, where more wants start to trickle in. Somebody wants to hide, another wants something they know they can’t have. Rowdy feels it in her chest, but it’s still not too much effort to move past these.

She imagines the office coming into view as her mind walks the familiar path. Something dark echoes through her but she forces herself to sidestep. The darkness is faster, and all at once, Rowdy gets choked by wanting to listen to The Guard. Her mind shrinks back down to the mess hall, then the kitchen, and finally only the space her feet occupy.

Another wave crashes through her, and this time, she recognizes that darkness. The want is strong enough to be her own, but she knows better now. There’s nothing that will ever be stronger than her will to protect Leena, even though she was too late the first time.

As if a lighter is flicked in a dark room, Rowdy feels something just before her mind cracks in half: a want so strong, it’s almost as if somebody is sending it directly to her.

Revenge.

Leena is screaming in two directions, half of the voice pointing toward the woods and the other toward the office. There’s a tug in her body, the opposing directions fighting until she leans far enough in one for the other to ease.

Why the office? she asks Leena.

Her mind snaps like a rubber band as the image of Etienne sitting at his desk flashes and then disappears. The memory of a smell stings in the back of her throat, burning like nettles. It was a smell she only ever encountered once before when Etienne left her alone in his office during one of their many questionings. It reminded her of hot plastic at the time.

What am I looking for?

All she can picture is the back of Leena’s head, her blonde hair flouncing in the moonlight as she skips up a path overgrown with weeds and ferns.

Without anywhere else for her mind to go, Rowdy sucks in a breath. It’s a war getting her feet to move, to break through the desire to stay still until somebody comes to find her.

The crash as she runs out of the mess hall should alert somebody, anybody, but nobody arrives to stop her as she clears the mud mat, and then the awning.

She goes to the office first, finding the windows dark and the drapes drawn. The front door stands ajar, and she ducks inside. Etienne’s office door, open. The drawers in his desk, unlocked.

Shaking, Rowdy starts yanking at drawers. One by one, they fall to the floor, contents spilling out across the wood. It’s normal stuff, pens, notepads, and her anger flares.

Leena! What am I looking for? she seethes.

Leena only shows her the same scene of her bouncing along on the path to the boat house.

Her knees slam into the floor as she drops down and climbs under the desk. Nothing.

As she starts to back out, something reflective catches her eye. Rowdy turns her head the rest of the way and taped to the underside of the desk is a gallon-sized freezer bag. Her nose recognizes the smell faster than her eyes can register the sight.

It’s a relief that her stomach is empty. Her fingers brush the bulging plastic. It comes loose and drops into her waiting hands.

Rowdy gets to her knees and sets it down on the desktop.

Locks of hair, taped in neat loops at the tops.

She doesn’t dare open it. The scent of fresh flowers is powerful enough with it closed, even though she’s half convinced she’s hallucinating it. Other scents, too, that she doesn’t recognize seem to waft up into her face. The strongest ones are honey and brown sugar, something that reminds her of bottles of bubbly soap. A hint of minty lemon tea.

I’m sorry I got mad at you, she whispers to Leena. You showed me how you could.

The Leena inside of her squeezes her lungs harder. Rowdy decides as her eyes start to burn that it’s a hug.

Even though she’s almost certain the bag won’t go anywhere if she leaves it on the desk, Rowdy hides it back in its place. Her fingers linger on the outside of it, and she promises to come back for them.

The night air is welcome on her tongue as she makes it outside, one hand on her chest and the other wrapped around her stomach. Leena swims back and forth in her head, and the pressure of her presence makes it easier for Rowdy to refocus.

Her feet find the path and she launches herself toward the trees.