(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 22; mine

"There's a lot we don't know about the lichund. What we do know is the turning process is heavily instinctual.  I can tell you that the pain in your stomach will spread," Quentin had told him. "Unlike a wolf, who turns all at once, the lichund transitions from the inside out. Starts in your stomach. Spreads to your lungs."

"So it's like a disease," Jaylin replied with an ache in his stomach.

"We'll be here." Quentin was looking up at him. Though sober now, that strange want moved in his eyes. "I'm here."

All his life, Jaylin had worried. About his mother, from the moment David left to her first treatment, and for every hair that fell from her head after that. He worried about Tisper and every piece of shit she'd ever let into her life. He worried about Olivia, despite how hard he tried not to. And he worried about Tyler. Not about his well-being, but that somehow, one day, he'd find a way to crawl back under Jaylin's skin. He'd find a hole right to his heart, and he'd open once more every progressive scar that had finally begun to callous over.

But when Quentin knelt before him in the light of the moon and nothing else, Jaylin didn't know worry. Worry was a name he'd heard in passing. A forgettable stranger on the street.

Worry was nothing when those hands touched him.

-

The next morning, Jaylin didn't wake to the pain in his stomach. He didn't feel any pain at all. He'd eaten every bite of chicken and it seemed "the hunger" Quentin spoke of was satisfied. What he did wake to was the sound of shifting furniture, dragging across wooden floorboards. Banging and rolling, and loud voices reaching to one another over the raucous.

It was difficult to walk with the bandages on his feet, but Jaylin fumbled out of the room and into the hall, where sunlight saturated the pale walls and stung his cornea like wasps.

"Jay—Oh, Quentin was supposed to take those off."

After blinking a few times, Jaylin could make out the slender shape of Alex, jogging down the hall. His usually curly hair had been trapped beneath a baseball cap, his slim shape clad in a loose tank top and basketball shorts. Behind him, a handful of men dragged an old antique dresser through an open door.

"Did the noise wake you up? Come on," Alex said, "I'll help get those things off of you."

Jaylin followed him past the upstairs bathroom and down the suede staircase, passing by a man in a mover's uniform who had taken a break to fan with his sweaty baseball cap.

"What's going on up there?" Jaylin asked, fumbling down the steps, one bandaged foot at a time.

"We're getting rid of some things." Alex hopped himself up on the railing while he waited for Jaylin to catch up. Once they were on the same step, he loosened his grip and let himself slide down the banister.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Alex hopped off the handrail. Jaylin followed him into the hallway, where the height of Alexander's childhood-self remained scrawled into the door frames, same as the night he'd found it with Tyler. This place belonged to Alex and Anna. Jaylin felt like such an impostor here.

Alex gave the kitchen doors a shove and Jaylin followed through. It felt like his feet had been dipped in cement, his toes inflexible and itchy. His step was so numb, his legs buckled once or twice on the way in.

"So, you want some more proof, right?" Alex asked, reaching for a knife block and drawing out the smallest of the serrated blades. "Proof that you're not human?" He gave the counter a pat. Jaylin pushed himself up on the ledge and swung his legs over, feet rested in the empty sink. Alex reached forward with the knife and Jaylin flinched as the blade slid down his ankle, breaking the gauze that melded the paste to his skin. Beneath was a lump of green-brown clay—dry, cracked and caked around his toes. Alex gave the faucet a twist and the water rushed out in a single upright stream.