Beasthood (The Hidden Blood Series) (31 page)

~
Chapter 28-
Burn~

Friday June 10
th
, 12:49 a.m.

             
It was just after ten that night that she began to feel very ill.

             
It was as though the room was spinning. Like a severe case of vertigo.

             
Then she began shivering, sweating and panting. Her muscles pinched and twisted all over her body. Then she felt so hot she thought her brain would explode. She laid in bed with a bag of frozen peas on her head.

             
For once, ironically, Edda wasn't there. She had spent the day with her family. She had a husband that Jaz had never seen let alone met before. At least as far as she knew anyway. Edda was quite secretive. She never talked about her personal life. Jaz was surprised she'd introduced her to her daughters.

             
At first Jaz had been glad she wasn't there. But when it got worse she wished she'd tried to find her before she'd become too weak to stand. The burning, stabbing, stretching, cramping pain got worse and worse. She muffled her cries with her pillow.

             
Edda came back at midnight. Jaz heard her and pretended to be asleep -with great difficulty- when she came in to quickly check on her. She didn't know why, but at that moment she wanted to be alone.

             
If Edda hadn't been so tired herself, she would have noticed the sweat patches on the bed, the scent of sickness, hot skin and sweat in the air. Instead she gazed a moment inside, saw Jaz in bed and then closed the door quietly, heading back to her room across the hall.

             
Over half an hour later of tossing and turning, the pain eased off into a stiff, dull ache. But Jaz couldn't take the heat anymore. It was already hot inside; the windows were wide open but there was no breeze. Even if her body hadn't been frying from the inside out it would still have felt very warm to her. Surrounded by the trees, the cabin became suffocated in a pocket of hot air, and she was swimming in it. She needed to get out of there.

             
But there was a rule.

             
One amongst a long list that Edda had told her the first day she'd arrived.

             
Never go outside beyond the cabin grounds after eleven. Especially, -she'd emphasized- e
specially
, never into the forest.

             
So the curfew rule was confusing and a little disconcerting but when you feel like you've stuck your head in a pit of hot coals and are drowning in it, that becomes the least of your worries.

The river.

              The thought came to her loud and clear from amongst her muddled, feverish thoughts and the images of drowning in hot air swiftly turned into leisurely paddling in cool, refreshing water. The idea of bathing in the soothing water was too alluring to resist.

             
All she had to do was cross the fields, dodge the vegetable patches and she'd be there within minutes. It gave her the strength to lift herself out of bed.

             
She didn't bother putting on shoes and as stealthily as she could, she climbed out of her window, landing a few feet from the edge of the nearest field, which rose slightly higher than the path. The faint thud as her feet hit the dusty, gravelly path was loud in the night air.

             
It was cooler than inside her room but still humid and sticky. Her white vest and bed shorts clung to her uncomfortably.

             
She breathed in the air; the smells of the night clogging her sinuses, making her dizzy. She panted, listening to the sounds of crickets and calls of the forest wildlife. The sound of a field mouse scuttling by made her flinch. She sniggered under her breath, shaking her head at her jumpiness. Then she scanned with her tired but sharp eyes across the fields to her right, towards the main building that was as black as ink with only a faint outline against the sky. She then panned back across the fields focusing momentarily on the greenhouses that reflected the light of the moon. She gazed up at it.

             
Over half of the luminescent moon was visible in the midnight-blue sky. The stars were out in all their shining glory; the night curtain abundant with them.

             
She flashed another look around the fields until she was sure it was safe to move. She wasn't sure what she expected but she knew that any sign of people would mean she might get caught and that meant possible punishment for her. The thought of the totem poles made her walk faster. She was unable to jog or run with stiff limbs.

             
It took her just over five minutes before she reached the lake. She could just make out the inky blob from the shimmers of light reflecting the moon. The sound of the small river filled the air with raucous splashing as the water crashed against rocks. Here the current was stronger. It overpowered all sounds making her uneasy, though she wasn't sure why. The idea of being caught didn't exactly sound like a picnic, but there was something else.

             
She ignored her paranoia and dipped her toes into the huge stream. It was cool but not freezing. She sighed with delight. She bent down and cupped her hands, pouring the water over her face. She imagined steam hissing off her skin and snickered. The fever made her a little giddy.

             
She leant forward and, holding her breath, she dunked her head into the water. She stayed under for no more than half a minute before a loud, sharp vibration reverberated through the water coming from somewhere above.

             
She jumped back and gasped, her wet hair flopped back splashing water across her chest and back.

             
She darted her eyes at the border of trees. Nothing. She looked nervously across the river, then the lake. Apart from the splashing, trickling, crashing water there was nothing. No sounds. No crickets, no wildlife. She listened hard, forcing her hearing to penetrate through the distracting cacophony of the river.

             
She'd heard something. It had been loud and sharp enough to vibrate the water. It had sounded like...

“
A growl,” she whispered. She tensed. Her blood turned to ice water.

             
As if the creature had sensed her fear another guttural growl thundered through the air. It was boisterous and clear and it was coming from her side of the river.

             
Right behind her.

             
She saw movement in the trees to her north-west, distracting her. She could see the shadow wasn't human.  She tried not to squeal, clamping her lips tightly. 

             
She heard something prowling through the grass at her back and swung round. The field behind her was overgrown, the grass reached up to her knees.

             
She could see a huge shadow crouched down about fifty feet away. Between the shards of grass there were two dark, piercing eyes, the whites reflected in the moonlight, staring straight at her. She was paralyzed with fear.

             
She saw a flash of white, her mind processed it as sharp teeth before she had time to realize it herself and her legs reacted so fast she stumbled forward. She fell onto her knees, her right one landed on a sharp rock, sending a shooting pain through her leg. She gasped.

             
She heard a loud bark that she knew was the creature breaking into a run and she jumped up, wheezing in panic. Her knee cried out in anguish but she forced herself to move, feeling the trickle of blood down her leg.              

             
She sprinted across the shallow area of river and crashed through it to the other side. If the predator couldn't see her, it could definitely hear her.

             
She ripped through the trees knowing it was a bad idea but was desperate to get away. The need to get away was fueled by panic, all sense had been stripped off her.

             
She dodged the enormous trees and protruding roots, weeds, and bushes,
all the time aware of how much closer the creature was gaining. She looked back, defying the screaming voice in her mind ordering her not to and saw the gigantic, muscular Beast of death rampaging towards her.

             
How had she made it this far?

             
That didn't matter to her when she saw two more pounding towards her, not far behind this one, and closing in. Then another three. She couldn't look back anymore, nearly getting whipped in the face by a low hanging branch as she turned. She sprung forward so fast as she increased her speed that she was leaning almost parallel to the floor.

             
Growls lashed the air, rabbits and other rodents scurried away, hiding in their little hidey-holes in the ground and under tree roots. At that moment she wished to God to be that small and disappear into the ground.

             
She shrieked when she sensed the Beast was inches away from her. She could feel its hot, damp breath on her back, hear it panting and snarling, its claws chillingly clicking on the ground as it ran.

             
She couldn't help but look again but she misjudged the level of the ground, and fell into a pothole, twisting her ankle. Her body whipped round, just escaping being lashed apart by the Beast's claws and fell flat on her back.

             
A screech got lodged in her throat as the ground winded her. She felt a sharp waft of air as the Beast jumped over her rather than risk tripping and landed a few feet past her head.

             
She sat up, grasping her twisted, throbbing ankle as she gaped at the Beast.

This is it? This is how I'm going to die?
She thought, horrified and oddly disappointed.
I'm gonna be eaten alive...by my own species...?
If she hadn't been so frozen with fear she'd have probably laughed at the irony.

             
The Beast snarled at her, his small, piercing eyes skewered her in place.

             
His brown coat was like the colour of tree bark. He had fine hair all over his body and face. His body was enormous, stocky and a cross between a wolf and a bear. His face however had human features. His eyes were human but glazed over with blood-lust and barbarous superiority. Jaz could see his disdain at her weakness and his eyes laughed evilly at the expense of her terror.

             
She felt around the ground with one trembling hand but there were no rocks or branches to use as a weapon.

             
The Beast crouched, ready to attack. She gasped half a second before it dived straight for her. Without thinking, she lashed out with her right hand, which was swiftly followed by a sharp yelp hacking through the night air. Then she realized she wasn't being used as a chew toy.

             
She opened her eyes, saw the Beast with one paw clutching his bloody face. He snarled when their eyes met and didn't give any warning before pouncing on her. Before his claws slashed her insides, a whip of cold air hit her face and the elephantine weight of the Beast was suddenly lifted from her, followed by a smack of two solid bodies above her and then a thunderous crashing through the trees.

             
Jaz laid frozen on the ground, too terrified to move. The sounds of growls and then one Beast's pained whine made her jump up to sit. Her breath was ragged and jittery as she listened, her wild eyes darting from tree to tree. The growls suddenly stopped dead and the forest was ominously silent. Jaz didn't know whether that was her cue to run, scream or just let them eat her and get it over with.

             
Instead she waited, and waited, for what seemed like hours before there was movement in the -now cracked and damaged- trees ten feet or so to the left of her. A Beast appeared, moving very slowly with his head down. It wasn't the same one who'd attacked her. She saw no sign of that one.

             
Jaz held her breath but as she watched it, seeing how it moved cautiously, not making eye contact with her, she knew somehow it wasn't going to attack her. She still couldn't stop shaking with fear.

             
This Beast was longer than the other, slimmer but with broad shoulders. It had less hair on its head and had strong features from what she could see. It hid most of its face from her as if anxious, though she was sure she was only imagining that.

             
As she watched it, somehow knowing again that the Beast was allowing her to observe it, she saw how the skin was crinkled up on the nose like a gorilla or a canine when it bares its teeth. The nose wasn't quite a snout and still retained most of its human-like form. The jaw was the most canine feature of its face. The chin was long, pointing downwards allowing for the teeth of the Beast to fit in the slightly human face, giving it an under-bite.