Moonscorn

Chapter Four

The three days of rest that Dr Kratis had mentioned turned out to be accurate. Upon waking up in her dungeon bedroom at The Conservatory, still battered and bruised and fuzzy but in nowhere near as much agony as before, Hysteria initially thought she'd had a bad night out somewhere and stumbled home drunk. That she'd never had a chance to do such a thing didn't occur to her at that moment in time. Powerful drugs have a great side-effect of temporary amnesia.

But then it came back to her. She'd been out for three days. Her phone, when she picked it up off her bedside table and checked, confirmed it. It was now Tuesday, nighttime. Fucks sake.

She swung out of bed gingerly, stood up, felt wooziness threaten to take her out like a rugby tackle, and sat back on the bed again. Everything was shit. Maybe she hadn't had a normal teenage life, but this was a truth so universally acknowledged that even she'd picked up on it.

She felt her neck. The bandages were still there, the pain still throbbing, but it wasn't totally immobilising. When she tried to speak and test her vocal cords, she managed to talk to herself with a certain degree of croakiness. It wasn't perfect, and she certainly wasn't going to be doing any voice-over work in the near future, but she could probably communicate in full sentences at least. What the hell had happened?

(Branches scraping fur, eyes focused in on the prize, shimmering in the moonlight.)

Oh, yeah. The werewolf. The one she'd been running towards through the streets, then the forest. She guessed that there'd been a fight between them. Not that hard to work out, really. Just look yourself over in the mirror opposite the bed, easy marks, question one's a doozy, Hysteria Scorn. If she'd been facing down another wolf (with really not-that-great fur, she thought to herself; he should take much more care of himself, keep grooming properly) then more than likely it was a trip out of town. Which meant...

"House arrest for a whole fucking month?!"

Hair a mess, eyes blazing, saliva dripping from her teeth, she stumbled across her granny-flat to the door. It was locked, of course. Three attempts to open it didn't stop Hysteria from giving it a damn good kicking, however. Hell hath no fury like a she-wolf scorned. Yet, it seemed, Heaven hath no resistance like a locked reinforced-steel door.

She stormed to the TV screen through the fuzz and turned it on. Went through the options and called for Persephone's office. When there was no reply (of course there wasn't), she went back to her phone in the bedroom portion of her cell and dialled Persephone directly. Ring ring. No answer. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200. Hysteria was about to throw her phone at a wall when it vibrated and started singing noughties pop-punk to her. She answered. "What the fuck's this about house arrest for a month?"

"You're awake, then," Persephone answered. Her voice was calm, flat, with just a hint of satisfaction pushing through the vowels.

"Course I am. I..." Hysteria coughed, a raking, hacking cough that went on for ages as phlegm got caught in the wound in her throat. Twenty seconds later, eyes streaming, she resumed her tirade. "You can't keep me in here. This is bullshit."

"Of course I can keep you there. With Raven not fully up to speed as your fully qualified handler, and your last guardian in an unmarked grave out back, I'm responsible for you."

"I'm twenty-one!"

"And The Conservatory doesn't take that into account. You're a weapon as far as they're concerned and should've been put down as soon as they laid eyes on you."

"This has nothing to do with them," Hysteria growled. "You did this."

"I did. You decided to go against a direct order out in the field, and we almost had a bloodbath as a result. As it is, thankfully, only one dead."