Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 52: Now

Chapter Fifty-Two
Now

My throat is so dry that I can't swallow properly.

My left eye has swollen shut and my ribs are alight with pain that shocks me into sudden pits of agony. I never cry though. Not while Raina's here, at least. It's something that I decide I need to hold against her; if I don't cry, it means she doesn't win.

After she leaves at dawn she doesn't come back for hours. The midday sun beats down on the shed, turning the inside into a sweltering oven.

I feel more alone now than I have since I found Blue.

I wonder where Raina's gone. Where can she really? Her scent as well as Blue's blood has probably flooded the Crane home. Any Werewolf that goes there will know what she's done.

The aching in my head and battered face is unbearable.

I twist my hands, wriggling them under the rope, trying to loosen it enough to pull my wrists free. The rough surface only helps with scraping away my skin, leaving it looking red and angry. When Raina comes back there's blood soaking into the rope.

She dumps a bag beside the door and looks up at me with a beaming smile that I can just see in my peripheral vision. I otherwise ignore her arrival though, staring at the dirty cement a few meters ahead of me.

“I have water for you.” she says. She walks over, a plastic bottle in hand.

I'd salivate if I had any saliva left. It would be smart to take her offer but I'm so full up with brimming rage that I can't move an inch.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” she asks. “No? Feeling less defiant today, I suspect.”

She throws the bottle back to her bag. It hits it, bounces off, and rolls onto the floor. Her knuckles are bruised and red like my wrists. I don't think she'll hit me again with her hands so tender.

“You should use this time to speak, Parker.” she tells me. “You are going to die here. You should say as much as you can.”

I will not die here.

Raina sighs and walks away from me. I stare at her back and stretch against the ropes as she bends down to grab her stuff.

“You asked me if I ever hated someone so much that it felt like venom in my veins.” I say, my voice quiet and dry.

She pauses with the bag over her shoulder.

“I didn't before.” I tell her.

I lift my head and look at her, meeting her brown eyes.

“I do now."

-
-

When I'm alone I try to use the only thing I can; magic.

But no matter how long I stare at the bottle across the room, no matter how hard I focus, no matter how many times I throw that same command at it of move, it doesn't budge.

I spend what feels like a lifetime trying to keep from falling asleep. My eyelids droop, my head falls, and I jolt awake again in starts. I'm half-way through this process when the door to the shed is yanked open and Raina stomps in. The moonlit night floods in behind her.

I can practically smell her anger. She yanks open the backpack in her hands, reaches in and draws out a knife, then throws the bag against the wall.

“Bad day?” I inquire.

She storms across the shed to the chair where I'm tied up. She grabs my chin and puts the knife against my collarbone, not giving a second for me to voice my plea before she draws the blade through my skin.