Crushing Gravity

Chapter 24

Tap... Tap... Tap... Tap.. Tap. Tap tap tap tap taptaptaptaptaptap- snap!

I give a furious snarl and throw my broken pencil onto the short table where one end bounces, flips, and falls off the other end with another tap tap. The other end rolls slowly to the very edge and then stops, teetering there.

"Hey, hey, hey," Kim materializes at my side with hands on her hip in an unconscious impersonation of Emily. "What do you think you're doing? Pencils don't grow on trees you know- wait..."

If my blood wasn't simmering and I wasn't already beyond frustrated, I would have snorted at her beginning look of dawning realization. As it is, I'm only marginally amused.

Kim shakes her head, shaking the thought away with it.

"Anyway, what's going on; I thought you were understanding this stuff better?"

"I don't know!" I growl swiping my arm at the table and sending the papers and books on it flying. The crisp sheets fall in different directions, cutting through the air and then sliding a few feet more across the wooden floor. The book doesn't go far, just landing on its edge and tipping over, face down on folded pages.

I rise to my feet, the familiar need to move aching in my back in a way that makes me shudder and grip my hair in both hands, tugging.

"Well, what's wrong?" Kim asks calmly from her seat on the couch, used to dealing with werewolf anger.

"I can't concentrate!"

I've had these tantrums before, at least once a week, sometimes twice, towards the end of the school year, but usually they are less violent. It's already a month into sophomore year, and I feel like I'm about to implode.

My body feels so hot, like I'm about to erupt in a fiery inferno.

Kim tilts her head and glances out the window where the rain pounds unrelentingly. Even though it's only five o'clock, it looks like it's the middle of the night out there.

Quite disorienting if you're not used to staying up till morning many times a week every other month.

"You miss Leah," she says, not moving her searching eyes from the groaning glass.

"No," I lie. Ever since school started, I haven't seen as much of her. She graduated last year and now has a job at the local stop and shop grocery. She hates it there. She's always wanted to go to a University and get out of this town, but she's wolf now. She has responsibilities.

A distant howl rises making my hair stand on end, and I glance out the window myself.

"It's okay," Kim continues, narrowing her eyes like she can see straight into the darkness and through the trees to the thing she's searching for. "We all worry when the get called out like that. It's only natural."

I suddenly realize that she wasn't talking about school at all, and I pause in my pacing.

Only an hour ago, before the sky decided to drop all its water at once, a long and chilling howl had rattled the windows. Immediately, the pleasant afternoon snack had turned tense. Every wolf leapt to their feet and charged out the door in the direction on the woods. Leah disentangled herself from me, apologizing with her eyes, and very softly said, "It's okay. I'll be back in a bit." And then she was gone.

It then started raining like a bad omen, as something didn't quit feel right.

Right then, a bright flash makes outside look like day before it once again drops to darkness. All the lights in the house flicker out.

Emily shuffles into the room, just a ghost of a form as shadowy hands seem to reach out to her, trying to steal her into their world.

There are two flicks of a lighter before an orange dot of flame illuminates her face.

"Well, I guess the storm blew the power out," she comments, going around the room and lighting candles that I didn't even notice were there. Slowly, the room is visible again with a soft warm glow and rain as a distant harmony.

"How about I find us some board games while we wait for it to come back on?" Emily suggests.

My stomach wrenches, heart racing fast. My fingers tingle with almost a sense of...excitement?

I glance out the widow again, but it's useless to see three inches beyond it.

"Sam?" Kim asks slowly, drawing Emily's attention as well. I lean forward on the very tips of my toes, balancing precariously there.

Another distant howl reaches my ears followed by yips- and I fall into a jog toward the front door.

"Sam!" Kim calls over the wind as a blast of air and water slam the door against the wall with more force than intended. "What are you doing?!"

"I'll be back!" I call, slipping down the steps and taking off toward the trees as my pulse races the further I go.

I don't hear any response or look back as I go in search of Wolfe. My shoulder suddenly pickles with pins and needles, so I swing it furiously as I stumble over roots and branches.

I can hardly see anything in this dark day and sheets of rain, and I'm still squinting through water even as I constantly wipe it from my face.

I need to find Wolfe. But I know that she will be the one to find me. She always finds me. She'll come.

I suddenly stop. I don't know why; I didn't even realize that I had dug my heels into the muddy earth. But then there is a shape in front of me, a pale boy that might be old enough to be in college, with bloody red eyes that stare with a hint of surprise at me.

All noise seems to abruptly cut off to just a ringing in my ears. For a moment, for a long moment that seems to last a lifetime, we just stare at each other with no expression or thought. Then a strong wind with an extra blast of water whips my sodden hair across my face and every sound and feeling is back, only reversed.

I'm being grabbed by ice sickle hands that spin me and tighten painfully.

One arm wraps around my waist, the other has a firm grip on my neck and jaw. He pulls me flush against his marble body.

It's a very different contrast that I'm used to; it's all very unnatural. He doesn't even feel like a person. He doesn't shake or waver or even twitch; it's like I'm being held by a statue.

In that same second that I'm spun, a dozen wolves burst out of the trees on all sides.

"Wolfe!" My cry is gurgled because of the hand at my throat. Wolfe, who I had immediately recognized, snarls, teeth pulled back over gums and looking more ferocious than I've ever seen her. I also notice her favoring her left leg.

"I wouldn't come closer if I were you," the vampire says softly, and I briefly think he's speaking to me, but the wolves halt in their progression, hackles struggling to rise with the sodden fur plastered to their massive frames. "Unless you want this human to die."

His fingers press harder against my flesh to prove his seriousness of the threat.

For a second, it seems to be a stand still. The wolves unwilling to move and the vampire with the prisoner.

Then the mood shifts. The cold one chuckles.

It's a dark ringing laugh that is a beautiful sound, yet sends terror down my spine. This is the thing I've always been scared of. The monster under the bed, the reaching hands from the shadows, the beings I was so sure that lurked when the lights went out.

"Maybe," he croons, lowering his mouth to my neck and kissing it. "I should just kill her here..."

Wolfe meets my gaze, and I can see all the fury and panic and protectiveness in it. I try to convey just as much how sorry I am.

"Or maybe, once I take her away..." The arm across my waist slithers lower, like a cold serpent, and his delicate looking fingers firmly cup me between the legs. "I'll do something else."

My mind numbs, placing me out of my body to watch with a familiar detachment.

Wolfe's eyes widen and, in a speed with almost an unnoticeable delay, all the other wolves recoil. And that's it. They all know now.

Desperation snaps my mind back, and I wrench my head with everything I have.

I would have snapped my own neck if the vampire hadn't snatched his hand back in surprise, and before I even hit the ground, wet fur brushes past me at an untraceable speed, falling on the shocked cold one with a vicious savageness. Wolfe is the first to have his head in her jaws.

I fall to my hands and knees splashing water onto my jeans, though it makes no difference. I notice my arms braced against the ground, trembling so hard that they hardly hold me up. My whole body is shaking.

A/N: Geez, I'm having a rotten day. So, first I have to drive to school, on my motorcycle (and this isn't the bad part) because we have a field trip today, you know? But on that field trip I realize that I'm missing my key. Gone, poof, just not there.

So, I'm sitting there stressing out, waiting for when I'd be able to text a friend still at school to see if I just left it in the bike, and then stressing some more while I wait for her reply. She replies 'no' and I was like 'fuck' (except I don't ever cuss out loud, only when I write). But then she said that there was no key in the keyhole on the gas tank, and I felt relief again.

I told her the keyhole to start the bike was on the side so I had to wait another whole hour for her to get out of her next bell, still stressing, before she could look again. It was't in the keyhole.

So, not only that, but the bus was almost late getting back to school, so I was stressing about not catching a bus ride home from school and I left my helmet in the classroom expecting to be able to retrieve it the next day with the other key, and drive my motorcycle home then. It felt like my luck was looking up because my dad was home and could pick me up from the bus stop a mile from my house, meaning I didn't have to walk home in the sweltering heat in my long sleeve shirt and leather jacket.

But then he decided we had to drive back to school to take my bike home right then, but it still felt like my luck was looking up because I then found my key on the ground next to my bike.

Only, on the way home, my bike started doing this jerking thing with the engine, slowing down, then speeding up, then slowing down, so I pull over to the side of the road and dad stop beside me. I tell him that my bike is acting funny. He tells me we can't stop there and drives away. Only my bike wouldn't start again. And I left my phone in the car because it was dead.

Eventually, I figure that maybe it ran out of gas, even though I shouldn't have gone enough miles for it to be out of gas, and flip the reserve valve that saves some gas for those kinds of situation. After a few tries, it stared and I made it to a gas station.

And that is the conclusion to my rotten day.

If you had read this entire authors note, then you have way more patience than me and I applaud you. Thank you for reading my rant and please leave a review to continue making my day better.

~Silver~