Page 20 of Bloody Bones
“She will turn up here?”
Blue’s green eyes narrowed. “Of course she will. How do you think she's getting there? I'm the gatekeeper.”
* * *
“How much longer?”Raze shifted uncomfortably next to me. And I couldn't say I blamed him. I hated waiting as well. I had never been very good at it. Which was funny seeing as all the tales about me had me hiding and waiting for naughty children under the stairs and in dark cupboards. Personally, I couldn't think of anything worse than being trapped in a tight, enclosed space with nothing else to do but wait.
“Just be...” I didn't finish. The door swung open and my head swivelled in that direction. Outside, the sky had grown dark. It was much later than I had realised.
A woman swept into the room, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. She looked just as out of place as we did. In her pants suit she looked like a middle-aged soccer mum in a seedy bar on the wrong side of the tracks.
It had to be her. She screamed principal. It was like she had seen a picture of a principal in a children’s book and styled her whole wardrobe on it. It was so cliche, it was almost comical. At least it would have been if she wasn't the one who was selling her own kind to the monsters.
I was many things but I had never sold someone, human or paranormal, into slavery. I looked like a monster in my other form, but I wasn't one. The woman in front of me was.
“That her?” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, but I needed to make sure it was her before I made a grab for her; it wouldn't do any good to grab an innocent woman.
“Ready?” Blue ignored me totally, raising his voice as he turned towards the woman who made a beeline straight for him, a wide smile on her too thin face. “I've been waiting for hours.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “The damn teacher’s brothers won't leave it alone. I probably shouldn't have taken her. But she just…” She trailed off as she caught me staring at her, too late she realised the danger she was in.
My hand caught her around the bicep before she could even think about running. “Why don't you take a seat?” I kept my voice low and even, as non-threatening as I could manage. Not that it mattered. The moment we touched, her instincts kicked in. She wanted to run, but with my grip on her arm, it was impossible.
“Get your hands off me, I’ll scream…”
Laughing, I pulled her closer. “No you won’t. You’re not going to draw any attention to us whatsoever. What you are going to do is take me to Briella.”
She looked at me dumbly. “Who?”
Was it possible that she was so heartless that she didn’t even know the names of the people she had sold? Her students and her staff. Did they really mean so little to her?
“They want the teacher,” Blue added helpfully. His face was impassive.
“I don't know what you mean. I don’t know any teacher.” She was trying desperately to wrangle her arm from my grip. I tightened my fingers.
“Fine, Acco then. You are going to take me to Acco.”
“I don't know…”
I sighed heavily. So, this was the way she wanted to play it. She was going to deny it to the very end. Glancing up at Blue, I nodded. “Can you hide my true form from the room?”
He nodded once; his face was thoughtful. Leaning forward, his eyes never left my face.
I let the change happen. I let the monster out. And I knew the moment she saw it. Her eyes filled with fear, her mouth opened in a silent scream as I grinned at her.
I knew how monstrous I looked. My skeleton face dripped with blood. My other form was how I got my name.
I was Bloody Bones.
And for the first time in my miserable life, I didn't hate my form. This once it was going to come in handy.
The woman was petrified. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.
“Now, are you going to play nice?” I smiled a grotesque, bloody smile at her.
She nodded rapidly, a gargled noise rising from her throat instead of words.
“Good girl.”
