Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

11; {Jaylin}: the sick

It had been so long since Jaylin dreamed about his snowy mountaintop and the fir trees that bristled his shoulders when he tried to part his way through their branches. He remembered Quentin telling him one time that they each had a place like this—a world dreamed up not by themselves but by the wolf in them. He said that he himself dreamed of the mountains in spring, when the rivers and streams that veined the earth had just begun to thaw and the sun shown down on the mountain caps in a blinding bright that often had him wishing for overcast when there was none. But Quentin loved his place too, loved it more than anything.

"Even Felix has one," he told Jaylin one time. It was New Years—they'd stayed up talking, long after the fireworks had stopped. Jaylin had a bit too much cider, and when it had gotten so late that neither of them could speak a proper sentence without drunken dribble or sleep dragging the edges of their words, Quentin offered to go. Jaylin had been daring enough to tell him, "I'm not tired yet, stay." So Quentin stayed, and he told Jaylin of Felix's place. A field of tall green grass, freckled with thousands and thousands of wildflowers. It was always night in Felix's world. So dark, he couldn't pick out the colors of the petals. The moon paled everything, but it lit the hills of grass around him in a dusty sage, and Felix had told him that it felt like he was walking on glacial-green pearls.

Jaylin asked him why they dreamed of these places and Quentin told him it was often believed that when the werewolves inherit their curse, what they receive is the soul of a wolf. One that lives within them, takes over on occasion. These places they dream of were the places those wolves had spent their lives. The places they lived and died.

Jaylin understood after that, why he loved his snowy world so much. Because the wolf—the lichund in him loved it. But those recurring dreams hadn't come to him in so long. He wished for them some nights—prayed for the escape and the isolation, but they never came. Not until now.

He was stolen away to a place where the wind kissed his face and the cold numbed his feet and he could run—run as far as he wanted to run without ever losing breath or slowing down. So Jaylin did. He ran and ran through his wintry haven.

But it was fleeting. And after what only felt like moments in this place, he was ripped away from it by the sound of wailing wind.

He woke on a blanket, in the back seat of a car—the stench of blood so strong he could gag on it.

But there was another smell contending it. Fresh grilled steak, in a takeout box on the seat beside him.

As hungry as he was, Jaylin put it out of his mind for a moment and edged himself closer to the window, where nothing but a boundless stretch of sand and the swell of ocean waves shown and shimmered in the dark shroud of night. And Quentin was standing there, wind tossing his hair in every which direction, his hands in his slack pockets. He was looking off toward the horizon, so Jaylin couldn't make out his face. But he knew by the slack in his shoulders, the relaxed posture. Quentin was in a different place.

His stomach groused, keen on the smell of beef beside him. And Jaylin didn't notice the blood in his fingernails and the creases of his knuckles until he'd gnawed down half of the steak in the box. By then, he was too set on the taste to stop.

He only partly remembered turning—but this time, things were more vivid than before. The sharp splintering pain, the adrenaline that burned in his stomach. The strength and the speed and the hunger. This time he hadn't been bathed—not even dressed, as he noted the hotel robe draped over him and the fleece blanket he'd been laid down on to keep the blood off of the car interior. He wrapped the robe around himself and shoved the door open. It clapped shut behind him, but Quentin didn't waver to the sound.