Blood and Chocolate

"Vivian, my darling," said Aunt Persia. "It would help me if you took on one form or the other."

Vivian gathered that inner force she couldn't name and tried the secret squeeze. Wolf, she thought, naming her animal shape with its imperfect name, but nausea ripped through her. The thought of her fur form disgusted her. Human then. She tried again, but nothing happened. She tried again and again and again.

I can't change, she thought, her gorge rising. I can't change.

She was stuck in between.

SEPTEMBER

Harvest Moon

Chapter 29

29

Vivian held a brush in her clawed hand and swept fat strokes across the mural, obliterating the forest and the wolves on her bedroom wall with patchy white paint. This is no longer mine, she thought. It hasn't been mine for a long, long time. It will never be mine again.

She hadn't been out of the house for more than two and a half weeks, she barely spoke to her family, and whenever Gabriel visited she retreated to her room. Why would he want to see her now?

Aunt Persia had come by twice with herbal potions she had concocted. Nothing worked. "It's up to you now," she had said. In other words, it was useless. Over and over again Vivian had clenched her muscles and willed herself to change one way or the other, but she was like a rusty lock stuck in between - no matter how hard she forced, the key would move neither forward nor back. The full moon had come and gone, and she had stayed the same - immutable, unchanging, frozen.

It's all my fault, she thought as she roughly wiped a furred arm across her forehead, pushing up the sleeve of her loose silk robe. I tried to be what I wasn't, and now I can't even be what I should. I'm a freak.

She splattered the paint in a sudden arc of anger. "A freak! A freak! A freak!" she screamed. And because of her an innocent boy was dead.

The newspapers had already forgotten Peter Quincey, but police cruisers still crawled the neighborhood at triple the usual frequency, concerned civic groups met at the high school, and kids were told to be off the streets by eleven o'clock. No one was sure a detective wouldn't show up on their doorstep. The whole pack was relieved at the news that Gabriel had approved the purchase of a property in Vermont. The parcel included an inn and land right next to the Green Mountain National Forest. They could go back to the family business and be isolated enough to run free. In a week or so Gabriel was going up to sign the papers. They could make plans. They could think of the future.

"The future." Sputum shot between Vivian's fangs and joined the paint on the wall. What future did she have? I'm not going, she decided. How long would the pack be kind to her? What would she be but an ugly reminder of their year in the suburbs? And how could she bear to pretend to live a normal life when she could never run with the pack again? She belonged with the freaks in a carnival, but she'd stay here, in this room, hidden.

There was a scratching out back and one of her tufted ears tilted in the direction of the window. Damn them, she thought. Willem and the others had spent many a night on the porch roof outside her window. They refused to let her be alone. "We're still the Five, Vivie," Willem had said. "Yeah, you're one of us," Finn had agreed. If the night had been cooler she could have closed the window and ignored them, but she didn't feel like suffocating just to spite them.>A ripple flowed through her, but she forced her limbs to stay straight, although every molecule screamed that the best way to protect Aiden was to change. The effort gave her cramps, and the sweat of panic broke on her brow. She skidded around the rocks on loose scree. There he was, crouched in the rubble.

Aiden leaped to his feet as she ran toward him, his face etched sharply in the light of the moon.

Vivian reached for him. "We've got to get out of here." He jerked out of her grasp. "Come on," she pleaded. "I can't explain now." A twitch in her back and a stab of nausea made her stagger; maybe she'd have to chase him after all.

"Don't touch me," he cried, and brought up his arms. He aimed a gun at her with both hands like a cop on TV. He would shoot, she knew by the look on his face.

"Oh, Aiden." Her words were a broken sigh.

"I've come to release you from your torment," he said.

Chapter 28

28

"I've got a silver bullet," Aiden said, and the gun trembled slightly. "I made it myself with my dad's equipment."

"Out of what, the best knives and forks?" Her derision was hollow. She remembered the silver crucifix in his room, and his father's gun collection.

He looked surprised that she had questioned him. "I made it out of stuff I had, like the necklace you threw back at me."

Blood rushed to Vivian's face; the necklace at Kelly's wasn't hers. But this was worse. He had saved his love gift to kill her with. She shivered. "Only one bullet?" she asked.

"That's for me to know." His dark eyes were glassy with fear in the moonlight.

"Well, you'd better have more," she told him, "because the real killers will be here any second." Poor Aiden, she thought. He hates guns.

"Stop lying, please," he said, the sadness in his voice matching the way she felt. "The killer could only be you."