Crescent Wolves - G. Bailey Page 0,13
creeping, haunting sensation that I’ve done something terrible. “Why did you do it?” he asks me, slamming his hand down on the desk. “Why? People are dead because of you, Millie. Innocent people. All because you were too selfish to think of anyone but yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I begin, desperate to explain myself, even though I don’t even know what I did to end up here. “I didn’t mean to. You have to believe me.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t mean to,” the detective says, “but that doesn’t change the fact that you did it. You thought you could mess around with things you can’t control and look at what’s happened. You’re a murderer.”
“A murderer?” My eyes widen. “No, that’s not true. There has to be some mistake.” I lift my hand to try to placate him, and that’s when I notice two things.
The first is that my hand doesn’t look human. It’s red and scaly, with razor sharp claws where the nails should be.
The second is that it’s covered in blood.
I sit bolt upright on the cardboard, gasping for breath. There’s sweat staining my clothes, and my heart is pounding out of my chest. I look around as I try to collect myself after the nightmare and notice that light is streaming in through the window. I’m still in the warehouse, it’s morning, and the storm from last night finally seems to have let up.
There’s a lump in my throat, and I’m filled with the sense of guilt, terror, and unease that always comes after a bad dream like that. Relax, I tell myself. It was just a dream, probably because you were still thinking about all this shifter stuff. You’re fine. You didn’t hurt anybody.
No, the other part of my mind argues, but you could. You know that, don’t you?
“Damn it,” I mutter, raking a hand through my dirty hair. I can already feel the stubborn resistance I had to the women from the academy melting away, the dream having planted a paralyzing seed of fear and anxiety in my chest. Who am I kidding, anyway? It’s not like I have any other options. Even if the dream doesn’t end up coming true, even if these abilities don’t cause a disaster, I’m still alone, jobless, and friendless. How long will I last on the streets, anyway? Maybe before I turned into some kind of supernatural being, I could have made it work. It would have been hard, sure, and I might not have been cut out for it, but I could have at least given it a shot. But things are different now, and there’s no denying that. The scope of my world has been changed, whether I like it or not.
I let out a long sigh, feeling the resignation wash over me.
I don’t have a choice--I never had a choice.
Stretching, I grab my phone to check the time, and my eyes widen. It’s a quarter to nine. If I’m not at the dock in fifteen minutes, Samantha and Josie will be gone forever.
Chapter 6
The fact that I’m not at all familiar with this part of town isn’t doing me favors, and by the time I’ve scrambled to my feet, gathered up my stuff, and bolted out of the warehouse and back into the bright sunshine, I’m almost positive I’m not going to make it. Frantic, I pull out my phone, feeling half-insane as I bring up the maps app. If I miss this chance, I’m screwed, and it’s rapidly going up on nine.
Yeah, I think dryly, and whose fault is that, exactly? Okay, fine. Mine. Point taken. But can you blame me?
I’m in luck; the marina Samantha mentioned is close--less than ten minutes away, if I run. Not wasting another minute, I jog down the street. The passersby are still giving me dirty looks, but for some reason--whether it’s the fact that I’m in such a hurry or the fact that I now know I have the ability to breathe fire--they don’t scare me as much as they did last night. All I care about at this point is heading those two witches off before they take away my only chance to make sense of this new situation.
Rounding onto a busier street, I pick up my pace, nearly crashing into a couple that’s walking in my direction. I call an apology over my shoulder as I go, feeling the necklace that Mollie gave me digging into my heel against the sole of my boot. There’s no time to adjust