Chapter 8: Boston SPCA
Annie held her hand over George's hand while he quivered on the living room floor. He was covered in a blue hotel towel, large patches of blackened blood pooled in spots around him and they outlined his wounds in a dark red. He was still awake after this whole ordeal, and he locked his steel grey eyes on hers. He was clinging on to the one thing in this whole mess that made sense.
A friend. A sister. A ghost.
The skin over his face was starting to cover some of his exposed flesh, and parts that were scabbed had begun to peel off revealing healthy pink skin. She was thankful for his curse that he could heal from such a thing. She was thankful for his curse that he could see her crying for him.
"It's okay. They're going to leave us alone. You're going to get better right quick," She tried to brush a trail of blood that trickled down his temple but she only felt the aura; his aura, and nothing more. "See, your colour is looking so much better."
George didn't respond, though the specter didn't expect him to. She clawed at his hand hoping somehow she could pass the feeling of her love to him despite having no physical powers. He must have seen her trying for he shaped his fingers around her hand pretending that he held it. He couldn't feel her, but she could feel him and she squeezed his aura back.
George managed a tight and seemingly painful smile in response.
The relief took over the little ghost girl and she laughed to hid her fears.
"I'm not going to be the one to tell Nina that you almost died," though she tried to joke, she felt a tear escape from her and she quickly soaked it up with her wrist. Her voice was choked and her breath was uneven. She wasn't even sure why she was the one crying when it was her housemate that lay butchered in this stranger's house.
"Don't be mad at them," he rasped. The pain made Annie spill tears anew. "They're just trying to help."
"Well taking you away isn't helping anyone. We're going to get you back to Bristol where you belong. Just you see, Mitchell will come and then you, he and I will walk out of that door together," she willed him to hang on.
But George just laughed again, before his throat ripped open and he coughed wetly. He continued to chuckle once the episode is over, "Imagine that, Annie: being comforted by a spectre about walking through strange doors."
"I'm serious George," Annie pouted. She felt the color rise to her cheeks and a tiny angry edge of embarrassment slipped through her façade. "I'm serious!"
He held his chuckle, evidently the pain in his throat kept him from laughing more than her irritation was. "I know you are, Annie. That's what makes you so amazing."
He brushed the air about her face, and she sighed into his hand. She wished he could feel her—or at least know how comforting it was to feel his energy. He closed his eyes a moment, and his breathing was regular; which is why she was startled to hear a small exhale of breath come out from somewhere in the bright living room. She had jerked about suddenly, not sure what to expect.
Surely not Thom, as he watched them from the foot of the wooden staircase. He had put on a jacket and was carrying a plastic bag with something orange in it. His clothes most likely.
They locked gazes for a minute, as if he was seeing her through a haze of emotion.
But once the stun had worn off, Annie had the right mind to be angry at him. All the sadness and tenderness she had felt toward her 'wolf-touched housemate was put on the backburner.
He must have lost sight of her, for he started to look around a bit surprised before cautiously, and suspiciously sneaking around the living room to the kitchen where Hope was washing what towels she could.
Alda was already packing the dishes on the drying rack and wiped the pinkish water on the sink.
"Ready to go?" Sally had asked the trio, though she was looking at the young man as she said the words.
Obviously she wasn't trying to speak to that monster. Annie wondered for a moment if the little American apparition remembered what these people were capable of. "He can't hear you, you twitt."
The little ghost girl smiled back at her houseguest brightly.
Despite being called names, her face showed no evidence of insult. For some reason this made Annie even more irritated.
From what little exposure the British ghoul had of the other, Sally seemed like a nice enough spirit. She was a very thin girl with very sharp features. Her smile was as wide as her face and her deep brown eyes were bright and soulful. Her long brown hair was tied back and windblown. That made Annie a little bit jealous and she found herself wishing she had the foresight to die with a hair tie on.
It's not that Annie had particularly low body image; she knew she was a pretty girl with a pretty face—but Sally had a presence to her. And what she didn't have in her looks, she made up for it in her spirit. So she may have been a bit jealous and insecure about herself in her presence.
But then again, Annie always had been a bit insecure about herself.
"Are you ready?" Alda repeated the question to Thom.
The 'wolf made no verbal response but instead stood ready in the path to the door.
"How do you add time to the laundry machine, Sally?" Hope hovered over the buttons and tried to decide if she needed to actually push one to get it working. The little girl seemed to think about it, then she opened the lid of the washer and dumped an extra cup filled with liquid detergent in the soiled towels for good measure.
Annie, this time, did make a face. That creature was parading around like a little child. How could someone with so little heart pretend to be such an innocent thing? Of course logically it made sense that a werewolf crazed by the moon would have no discrimination as to who he turned. But still, the little ghost couldn't help but imagine that every werewolf in existence out there was at least old enough to drive.
Annie didn't know that the werewolves in her presence were born of that curse. And when the little Hope brought it up, the thought of mating wolves with wolves just to produce more werewolves sickened Annie.
It just sounded so perverted and unnatural.
'But I'm allowed to have feelings,' thought the specter. 'And George is allowed to love.'
"Let's get out of here," Thom grunted, "Seems we aren't welcomed" He looked back in the direction of the invalid werewolf, and coincidentally, in the same direction that Annie stood. She knew he was implicating her attitude—and though she knew he couldn't see her, she still made a rude face.
"No, no, not unwelcomed! Just not right now," Sally said so sharply and she looked unpleased. "Tell Thom he's allowed back in the house any time," she turned to Elda and Hope, who only looked at her blankly. She then repeated lamely, "just… not right now."
Annie rolled her eyes and decided to ignore the homeowner's invisible flirtation. She mustn't have been a very old ghost if she didn't get when people couldn't see her. The other two wolves did not pass the message and somehow Hope discovered how to turn the washing machine on. So with nothing else to keep them, and Annie's unwelcoming aurora permeating the entire atmosphere, the trio headed to the door.
"We'll come back tomorrow," Hope told Annie. She just glared at the little girl. "Just to talk."
"Whatever," the grey ghost said. And she didn't watch them as Sally saw them to the bus stop.
Instead, Annie stayed by her housemate's side.
He had been listening, so he must have known the predicament. But he hadn't chosen to respond to anyone in the house bedside's Alda as she scraped clean his shotgun silver.
He was dead quite the whole time since, and she had to watch carefully to see if he was breathing.
"Is he alive?" Sally approached them, ducking around the chairs. She sat on the displaced coffee table and peered in to see under the blanket.
"I think so. I would guess if he did die he'd look in better shape than he does now," Annie looked up at Sally. When she wasn't trying to entertain guests, she was quite a pleasant person to be around.
It was likely she put on the chipper front just to brighten the mood, and not because she herself was very happy in it. The ghost could relate. In some ways, Sally reminded Annie a lot of herself.
Herself before she died. Herself before she gave up her door. Herself before she went to purgatory.
Herself when she was oh-so fragile and the world was so very big.
Oh, How a few months can change how one can understand the world.
Sally let go a broad, toothy white grin, "Suppose so. We can have a party if he does."
"George will probably be the type who has his door waiting for him."
"That's not true," George whined.
Sally jumped a little, she didn't realize her stray was awake.
"What unfinished business is there for you, George? You're the most honourable man I know."
"Uh, I'm only thirty. I still go the better half of my life in front of me." He struggled to sit up and for a moment he looked like a little bloody blue hill. Plastic tarp stuck to his shoulder and he peeled it off, slowly.
Sally and Annie both winced while trying not to react. But the shoulder had set and was healing nicely. He was a sickly red, but he was quickly on the mend.
"How's the leg?" Annie asked, putting her hands over his thigh.
He jerked back a bit and said: "Don't touch it!"
Sally giggled, and responded, "it's all mental."
"Not with this ghost, it isn't." Obviously the werewolf had some more energy, for he sounded shrill enough, "She kicks hard, when she puts her mind to it."
"I haven't been able to do that for months," Annie replied, irritated. But before she could get mad at him, he fainted backward and it took all of the ghosts' combined energy to slow his decent. He fell back to the ground and barely had the state of mind to brace his fall.
"It's like I'm drunk," he stated, a bit giddily.
"Can we put him in a room somewhere?"
"You don't expect him to walk up the stairs do you? And if he gets blood on the couch, Josh'll flip shit."
"Oh right," she seemed to just remember, "Your vampire friends…"
"Vampires are not my—" Sally gave up, "Once Josh and Aiden get home, we can ask them to move him to my room."
"You have a room?" The two guests asked, simultaneously.
"Not a bedroom, it's a study with my old couch. Not the most comfortable, but we don't have a lot of other options. Unless you want to sleep with Aiden," she seemed to think about this arrangement, then disappear into a short little day-dream. Finally she went to check on the progress of Josh's towels.
"The blood is gone."
"Just rest George, you're beginning to hallucinate," Annie brushed his aura and he just said 'oh.'
When Sally returned to the living room, Annie finally looked up to her and promptly said, "The blood is gone!"
"ah HA!" cried the werewolf triumphantly. He must have blacked out for half a second for he rocked a bit when he said so.
"When did that happen?"
Sally looked around and said, "Just then."
"How did they get this way?"
"I just cleaned them."
"But how?"
The ghost didn't know how to respond. The house was a part of her, as easily changed as she could move. She just assumed that any ghost who haunted a house could control the home and her own contents. The only time she could interact with anything outside of her house was that time she was a poltergeist. But otherwise, connecting to her home was so natural to her.
"I… uh… just … pulled the paint over the blood?"
"So… the blood is embedded into your drywall?"
"… I guess so?"
Annie, who had for a moment felt superior for being able to physically interact with her housemates, suddenly felt very stupid for not trying to psychically interact with the house when she and the boys still lived in it. It was true though; despite having followed George, Nina and Mitchell to the suburbs, she still felt a connection to the home she left behind.
Haunted by her past, as it were.
The front door made a scraping sound and all the occupants of the living room jolted stiff.
"Shit! My roommates!" Sally pulled the last of the blood through the floor panels and quickly materialized to the small foyer. "Hide!"
"You're joking, right?" George replied, looking somewhat lost.
"Damn," Sally had forgotten. "Okay, well then—"
But she was cut off by swinging of the front door through her whole being and she was suddenly nose to nose with her tall vampiric friend. But she wasn't sure if her sudden proximity was what made him jolt back, or the smell of an entire gallon of 'wolf blood in the air. But he took a huge step back and into the trailing brunet. The smaller man just shouted 'hey!'.
"What is that smell?" His fangs had dropped; his eyes were a solid black. "Is that werewolf blood?"
"Aiden! HI! I meant to warn you but we got caught up in the moment and you know how it is when you don't have enough time for anything-"
"I know this smell…" Aiden, now acclimated to the surprise, launched himself in in and peered around the corner to his dismantled living room. He was battle read, blood driven, ignoring Sally to deal with any threat. A thousand werewolves if need be. Instead he stared point blank and dumbstruck at the couple on the floor.
"But I don't know you."
"Josh, he's going to pounce, hold him," Sally said to the other as he hopped back into the house. If Annie had to guess, Aiden had stepped on his toe when he took that shocked first step back.
"I'm so sorry. We really shouldn't have come," the little gray ghost tried not to panic. For some reason, when Sally had mentioned she was living with vampires, it never registered to her that they would be so powerful, nor did it register that they would see a weakened werewolf as a threat in his house. She wished she could wrap George and his towels into her shawl and teleport them both as far away from here as quickly as possible.
Aiden snarled at the intruders, before the third room mate stepped in.
"Hey. Hey! Aiden, put those away," Josh was a very skinny man, short in comparison to the black haired undead. And he was obviously no match for him in a test of strength, but at the slightest intrusion, the older room mate's attention faltered when he looked down at the dirty blond.
Josh took this moment of confusion to scuttle back to the front door, and closed it hard. The whole room shook.
"It's the aroma of the 'wolf blood. It's making you high."
"Blood," Aiden ducked his face in his hands, to shake his bloodlust off. When he turned back, his fangs had retracted but his eyes took some time to pool back to their normal color. "You're that werewolf! George Sands."
"You know me?" the wolf asked palely.
"John Mitchell has been looking for you. We spent the whole evening looking through the pens."
"Oh!" Annie shot up and covered her mouth with both of her hands, "Mitchell! I totally forgot!" She looked to George then desperately to the others.
"Go. I got this here Annie," Sally waved toward the boys.
"Where is he?"
"We dropped him back off at the guest house in Southend. About half an hour ago," but even before Josh could say, 'check there,' Annie disappeared with a wink.
"You were looking for me?"
"With some speculation whether or not you were actually anywhere to be found. Whose towels are those?" Josh pointed to the motel towels around the guest and the other just shrugged.
"I thought they were yours," George peeled the larger one off of his leg to show the homeowners, and was instantly reminded that his leg skin was still only half attached to his flesh. Part of it came painfully off with the cheap towel.
"Holie-e- " and Aiden went in a flurry to go find his emergency kit.
Josh jumped up, and instantly stopped the other from pulling more skin from his leg George would have dropped the towel. Who knows where it would have fallen.
"Sit still. Don't move. I went to medical school."
George was about to make some comment about vampires picking professions close to blood, when Josh leaned forward to get the other corner of the towel. A single inhale and the British boy gasped, "You're a werewolf."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"But your room mate is a vampire —"
"I said something that I don't know."
"How do you live together?"
Josh just smirked at the odd questions in such an odd time, "It's a long story." He thought about it then added, "It's probably not too different from yours and Mitchell's situation."
George tried not to make any comments about the assumption. They must have already met Mitchell. He would have had to trust them a lot to tell them that a werewolf was his housemate. It wasn't a fact that his vampire friend liked to market; especially not to other vampires.
If Mitchell trusted them with this open secret, then George figured he could trust them for a few hours. Trust them, at least, till he could get some real rest.
Aiden returned with a blue paper prep bib, and an oversized first aid kit. He skittered to Josh's side and started pouring hydrogen peroxide generously on a cotton gauze. Josh took it then wiped down the skin from the towel.
It bubbled and bit when it contacted the raw flesh, but the moment it did it peeled itself quickly off of the motel towel. Josh tossed it toward the corner and Aiden, like a practiced nurse, rinsed the access acid off of the invalid with water. The stinging went away immediately.
"How the hell did you treat this?" Aiden was not pleased, "With your hands?"
"Basically," George responded, hissing as they started carefully dabbing the corners of his uprooted skin.
"Alda treated him," Sally contributed. She braced herself to watch wolf ER for the second time that night.
"Alda treated—" Josh whipped about "What were they even doing here in the first place?"
"Where else were we to go?"
"You brought them here?"
"Makes me wish the vampire's curse upon werewolves," Aiden groaned.
Despite the predicament, George and Josh managed to give the vampire identical looks of distain. For a moment, Aiden felt hopelessly out-numbered and went away half bashfully to measure out thin black thread.
When Sally pointed out they had been to the house several times this week without incident, Aiden added, "Well at least we could un-invite them every time they left the house."
"Then I wish that upon all creatures who have tried to tear through the haunt in the last three years," mentioned Josh.
Aiden snapped on a pair of sterilized gloves then started stitching George's skin together, his hands confident and determined. The other werewolf marveled for a moment how the vampire could easily treat him like he were not some mangled beast sitting on his living room floor.
Aiden wiped his stitching hand on the front of his shirt then kept at the sutras. And just as he was done, he wiped more of George's blood off of his hand. "That will have to do for now. We can put butterflies on the other cuts."
He scratched his palm then tried to wipe it on his shirt again absently. "Do you have any allergies to any medication?"
"Penicillin."
"Erythromycin?" Aiden started scratching.
"That's fine."
"I'll see if I can find some tomorrow. Get this infection slowed a bit. How did it—shit."
"Why, what's up?" Josh was putting the butterflies on the smaller wounds as Aiden wandered hastily to the kitchen then scrubbed his hands thoroughly with the sponge, then with soap.
"I don't know. It's like a rash or something. Itches like a bitch."
"Oh right," George said as if he just remembered he had left the water running in the bathroom. "I'm sorry, I wasn't even thinking. I guess I was just so surprised that you have this skill for stitches."
"You did this?"
George looked quizzically at the other werewolf before he explained, "Wolf blood, so yeah."
Josh and Aiden exchanged blank glances then said nothing. So George continued, "Really? No 'They're coming out of the walls!' acid for blood, 'Ripley I'm scared'." Still no response, "Werewolf blood is deadly to vampires. Come to think of it, I'm surprised you still have your fingers."
Again, Josh and Aiden exchanged glances, but this time full of understanding. And neither of them wanted to point out that Aiden, had on several occasions, quelled a undying thirst for human blood with a drop of werewolf every month or so. Not the healthiest alternative, but effective enough to buy him time. So far, no acid.
"It's not?" George jerked when Josh continued pinching closed his wounds.
"Well, it's not the case with Josh. But obviously I'm not having that good of a time with yours."
"Could be a part of the inherited differences between regional werewolves."
"What?"
"Something Hope explained to us earlier. I'll explain it to you guys later," Sally contributed.
"Ahh." Josh packed the unused supplies back into Aiden's first aid kit. "You spoke a bit with the wolves from the reserves."
"I didn't ask much. I was still a bit bitter that they decided to dig my thigh up with their fingernails."
"Seriously?"
"I like this way better."
Josh chuckled at George's matter of fact statement.
"But I still don't understand how you can withstand the blood."
"Regional differences between vampires maybe?" but Aiden did consider it could be a side effect from feeding off of Josh during moments of panic. He'd gotten to the point where he could tell before he overdosed. That must mean his body was acclimating to the blood as a sustenance. He did not say so. He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel, miraculously not much more soiled than it usually is despite the fate its unused brethren suffered.
In fact they didn't have the time to even continue the topic of conversation for that moment, Annie appeared in the room in the panic that Sally was beginning to associate with her. Then with a shrill, unhappy voice, she squalled:
"Mitchell is gone."