(Free To Read) Bad Moon chapter 21; prophecy

When Jaylin woke, it was not to the face of a different Tyler, but the sound of Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger, hush through the sound of a distant car radio. His back was sticky with sweat, his stomach heavy and hollow. Sitting up from his bed was an effort he couldn’t fathom.

The room he found himself in was but the bare bones of a queen size bed and an oak dresser, where Lisa Sigvard was folding clothing into the proper drawers. When she heard his rustling, she turned to him with a pleasant smile and a half-folded shirt in her hands. “Good evening,” she said lightly, dropping the shirt into an open drawer. “I thought you’d never wake up.” She started on a new one. “Do you remember anything?”

Jaylin remembered the mud, the wolf. Those orange eyes, that bloody mane. The man who looked like Tyler.

He wiped the sweat from his face and lingered on the scent of the soap film on his skin. He furrowed. “Did someone bathe me?”

“Ah, yes,” said Lisa. “You were filthy. Covered in mud and tree sap.” When she caught the look on his face, Lisa guffawed. “Child, please. I’ve had two babies of my own and all the practice in the world cleaning drunken vomit off of a teenage boy. A bit of dirt on a young man doesn’t hold a candle to those horrors.”

Then Jaylin noticed the shirt he was wearing. A t-shirt from a band he’d never heard of. A pair of sweats with a word up the side in a different language.

“They’re Alexander’s,” Lisa explained. “There’s pot roast downstairs. Go have yourself a bite.”

The famine he felt was beyond words, so Jaylin decided the questions were best left for after the gnawing in his stomach had been satisfied. But as he stood from his bed, his knees went weak. He gripped at the nightstand as he found his legs again, carefully rounding the bed toward the open window where Oasis whispered. Outside, a story below, Quentin and Felix stood before an idling engine, deciphering a problem in the Mustang.

Before he even made it to the foyer, Jaylin could smell the pot roast. He put that gnawing in his stomach aside and stepped out on the veranda, where the man that looked like Tyler stood, arms crossed and back pressed against a wooden post. In this light, he looked nothing like Tyler at all. He was a gangling boy with hair that looked cut by a pocket knife, and a slender shape to his face that made him seem like he was glaring, even if he probably wasn’t. He turned his attention to the car and Jaylin followed to the sight of Quentin and Felix, both hunched over the hood.

“It’s not the fuckin’ coolant pump,” Felix grumbled. “Look, ye’ can see the liquid move.”

“Maybe there’s a leak,” said Quentin.

Felix rubbed his face with filthy hands. “Quen, if there was a leak, there wouldn’t be any coolant in the tank.”

“Fine,” Quentin conceded. “Then what about this—”

“Don’t touch that. For god’s sake, lad. Just let me do it. Ye’ don’t know shit about cars.”

“I know enough,” Quentin said. He reached inside and ripped his hand away with a hiss.

“I told ye’ not to touch it. The engine’s hot, dickhead.”

“Fine, what can I touch?”

“Don’t touch any of it.”

“How can I fix it if I can’t touch it?”

“You can’t fix it!” Felix gave the hood a slam to keep Quentin’s hands away. “I need a goddamn beer.”

Jaylin swerved out of the way of his oncoming aggression, watching Felix take extraordinarily loud steps up the veranda.

That was when Quentin finally noticed him. His hands were covered in grease and he let them hang by his sides as Jaylin approached, bare feet on cobble stones. “Jaylin.” He said it like he wasn’t expecting him awake so soon. Like he wasn’t really expecting him at all.

He stood there, quiet for a moment. Watching the red Mustang rumble and rattle.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

“Engine overheated on the way back last night. Can’t figure out why.”

“The way back from getting me?” His throat felt dry and his words stuck to it, but Jaylin knew this was the case. He’d seen the wolves. He’d heard their breath, their battling sounds. He watched one stand bloody while the other laid defeated.

Quentin selected a rag from a tool kit, rested on the chassis. He wiped his hands, then folded it over in his fingers. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

“Yeah, no shit,” remarked the boy with the slender eyes. He stood with a natural slump that made Jaylin think he must always have his hands in his jean pockets. It was strange how he said nothing after that—just disappeared inside, probably for the same reason Felix had.

Jaylin turned his eyes back to Quentin. That gnawing in his gut was starting to feel like a knife and he was nearly too tired to stand, but he refused to sit. He wanted to look Quentin in the eye. “What happened to me?”

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving town,” Quentin said. “I didn’t have eyes focused on you and—”

“A scout? That was a scout that was after me?” Jaylin felt a sting between his eyes. “How did I get there, Quentin? I was at a party. How did I end up alone in the middle of the woods?”

“That’s the part we need to talk about,” Quentin said.

Jaylin wiped his face on the inside of Alex’s shirt, hoping any chance of tears and sweat went with it. God, that pain in his stomach was something. “How long was I gone? I need to call Tisper. My mom—I need to call my mom.”

“There’s one problem with that,” Quentin said. “Jaylin, when was the party?”

“Friday. Why?”

Quentin leaned back against the hood of the Mustang and rapped his knuckles on the metal. “It’s Tuesday.”

Tuesday. The word wasn’t setting in. Tuesday. It was Tuesday. Four days. He’d been gone four days

“It can’t be Tuesday. I was just at that party.” He searched around in a panic. “My phone—where’s my phone?”

“You must have dropped it at some point,” Quentin said. He tossed the dirty rag atop the toolbox. “Stay the night tonight. We need to keep an eye on you.”

“But my mom—”

“We’ll figure it out,” Quentin told him. “Right now, the rest of the world thinks you’re missing.”

“Missing,” Jaylin tested the word.

“For all they know, you’ve been abducted by aliens. We’ve got to get our story straight before we drop you back down on Earth.”

“Our story?”

“Can’t just tell them there are werewolves after you,” Quentin said with a laugh. “I learned that the hard way, didn’t I?

–

By the time they’d stepped inside, a bowl of the pot roast had already been prepared—a giant lump of shredded beef breached the surface. And Jaylin ate like he’d never eaten before, that chunk of beef dismantled in an eager second. He ate until it hurt him to eat, and only then did Jaylin realize that Quentin wasn’t there. He hadn’t dined with Alex, Lisa, and himself. 

“He’s got some matters to attend to,” Lisa had said. “But he’ll be with you after dinner.”

It wasn’t ten minutes later that Jaylin heard the piano keys, raining down soft in the distance. Not the song he’d walked in on before, but simple scales. Up and down. Up and down.

“He’s having trouble focusing,” Alex commented, gnawing on a carrot. He gestured the vegetable toward Lisa. “I voted against the piano, so this is on you.”

“Needed something to occupy himself with,” Lisa said. “For a man in charge of so much, he has all the time in the world to talk your ear off.”

“But the room with the piano,” Jaylin began. “It’s an office, right?”

“It was Richard’s office,” Lisa said with a deep sigh. “I suppose it is Quentin’s now.”

“What happened to him?” Jaylin asked. “To Mr. Sigvard?”

Lisa didn’t skip a beat. “He left us.”

Jaylin bit his lip and found Alexander’s face from across the table. The dark lines under his eyes—the pallid, dead sort of look he didn’t have before. Not in the pictures on the wall and not in the way Jaylin remembered him that Halloween night. He had lost more than just a sister.

“My dad left me too,” Jaylin said. It was quiet, nothing but the sound of rattling silverware. But after a moment, he felt Lisa’s gentle hand reach over and give his shoulder a squeeze.

“Sometimes there are men too weak for the shadows of this world,” she said. “We just don’t know how weak they are until we’re all forced to face the darkness together.”

–

Sleep came quickly after that. Lisa took him to the bedroom he’d been in before—the one just to the left of Quentin’s room, where he could see the Mustang still parked out front. He’d nearly fallen asleep before she could even shut off the lights, but the part of him still slightly conscious could hear her deep sigh from the doorway. “Sweet boy,” she said to herself. “God help you.” But Jaylin was too tired to care what her plea meant. Too tired to care about God much at all.

And it was within this deep, careless sleep that Jaylin dreamed of his forest. The eagles, careening from the treetops. The sound of snow, pelting the ground. And somehow, standing alone in that icy clearing, Jaylin felt warm fingers on his arm.

Then he snapped up from his sleep, blankets flinging from his arms. Fist to face. Jaylin heard the pelt of his hit before the pain struck his knuckles. He clenched his hand, still heaving with breath as he took in the shape of the shadow he’d struck.

Quentin sat there at the edge of the dresser, with his face in both hands, nursing the pain of Jaylin’s punch.

“Quentin,” Jaylin gasped, scrambling upright. “Jesus, I’m sorry!”

“I really wish you’d stop doing that,” Quentin grumbled into his hands.

“Stop… appearing!” Jaylin hissed back blearily. It had to be the dead of night; even with the door cracked open and the light from the hall bleeding through, Jaylin could hardly find Quentin’s eyes in the darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin whispered, hands wiping up his face. “But why is your first instinct to punch me?”

“Just is.” Jaylin sat up some, his face still thick with sleep. The pain in his knuckles numbed away. “Why is it so cold in here?”

“It’s an old house with new parts,” Quentin said. “The heater hasn’t been upgraded in a decade.” In the darkness, Jaylin could see him shed something away from his arms like a second skin. Then he tossed a bundle of gray to Jaylin. “It’s mine. You can keep it.”

Jaylin unraveled it until a warm cotton sweater shown in his hands, still burning with body heat. It ached to pull the sweatshirt on and Jaylin was once again reminded of the pain in his stomach—like his insides were being squeezed in a fist. He curled into himself, clutching it. “It hurts.”

Quentin reached for the nightstand, into a grocery bag that hadn’t been there before. “It’s the hunger,” he said, passing the box to Jaylin, who was more than excited by the smell of grilled chicken, oozing from the cracks in the styrofoam.

His stomach beckoned with an audible growl and Jaylin cracked open the box, stabbed a piece of chicken with his plastic fork and swallowed the first piece down. “I’m not hungry at all, but I’m starving at the same time.” He said it all with an unattractive mouthful, spearing another piece. “Why am I so hungry?”

“Well, you were dehydrated when we found you. You probably haven’t eaten in those four days.”

“We?” Jaylin asked. “How did you know I’d get lost like that? That a scout was after me?”

Quentin rubbed at his jaw, and sat there with the same nervous look on his face he’d had when he first asked how do you feel about werewolves? That anxious bounce in his knee was all the tell Jaylin needed to know this wouldn’t be a pleasant discussion.

“How are your feet?” he asked.

“My feet? What are you talking about? Don’t change the subject.”

“I won’t. But—here, come here.” Jaylin followed the beckon of his finger to the edge of his bed. His grocery bag hit the floor as Quentin knelt and lifted up the right leg of Jaylin’s sweats. Then he flipped on the bedside lamp

Jaylin hadn’t noticed it before, but deep bruises wrapped the base of his toes. The flesh on the sides and the bottom of his feet were shredded, like he’d walked for days, barefoot on concrete. He wondered how he hadn’t felt any pain in them, walking around the halls of the Sigvard Manor all day.

“They were worse when Bailey found you. Looks like you walked a stream for a while…tore yourself up on the rocks.”

Quentin took a jar from his bag and unscrewed the lid. From it, he applied a paste, so cold from the night air, Jaylin jumped when it touched his skin.

“It won’t hurt,” he said. “Leave it on tonight and you’ll be better by morning.”

Jaylin tried not to linger on how gentle Quentin’s touch was, and lifted his eyes to the shadows that crawled atop the guest room ceiling. “Okay,” he said. “Now tell me how you knew.”

“I was meeting with someone for coffee,” Quentin explained. Another dollop of cold paste touched Jaylin’s skin. “There are some assets in LA that I’m trying to sell off. I can feel things sometimes—Lisa calls it intuition. It feels a lot like dread. We hadn’t even gotten our order yet and I felt it. I didn’t even say goodbye to the poor guy, I just left. Got in the nearest cab and called Bailey to meet me here.”

“A cab? But you have a car.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. He dug through the bag again and came up with a roll of bandage wraps. “Kind of realized that when I was in the cab.”

Jaylin laughed—too loud at first. He had to snuff the sound out into his palm, but by then Quentin was grinning up at him. That smile was a stunning thing. At least that explained why they’d taken the Mustang.

He took Jaylin beneath the heel and started to wrap the bandage around his toes. “Don’t you want to know about Bailey?”

“He doesn’t seem to like me much,” Jaylin commented.

“He doesn’t like anyone much. But he can track a scent from miles away. It still took three days to find you. You wandered so deep into the forest, he lost all trace of your scent.” His gentle fingers led the gauze around his plum-colored pinkie toe. “Sniffed around for you for days, then at some point, he caught a whiff of the scout that was on your trail and took off without a word. That’s the only reason he got to you in time.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jaylin asked. “What does it matter to you if the scouts get me?”

“If someone needed your help, wouldn’t you help them?”

Jaylin hated the honesty in his voice. “People don’t just do things like that for no reason. What is it? Why are you helping me?” Quentin slowed his hands, his focus lost somewhere on the wound and the paste that dressed it. When it was obvious the question was too profound to answer, Jaylin asked instead, “Why do they want me to begin with?”

Quentin took a deep breath. Jaylin could feel it against his knee when he exhaled again. “The lichund. You’re known as the lichund.”

It made Jaylin uneasy how hard his expression had turned. That beautiful smile had died, been buried, and crawled out from its grave as a glum, decaying version of itself.

“What is that?” he asked. “I’m not a wolf like you and Felix?”

“No.” Quentin wound the last of the bandage around his foot and pinned it into place. “You’re what we call a lichund. To our people, it’s like a cryptid. Something we didn’t think existed a decade ago. It was just a creature from folklore, then, one day, it did exist. Then another and another. The scouts think you’re dangerous, Jaylin. That’s why they want you.”

“Do you?” Jaylin pulled his leg away and tucked it beneath him. He suddenly felt so much colder than he had before. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”

Quentin still knelt there, scraping a bit of paste from his palm with the nail of his thumb. “I don’t think you’re dangerous, Jaylin.” When he looked up again, there was just enough moonlight to strike an ember in his eyes. “I think you’re a prophecy.”