Hell Flower

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I didn't know how anyone in Make Them Scream got any sleep.

Jake's snoring sounded like someone'd tried to shove a chainsaw through a woodchipper. Even covering my head with my pillow didn't stifle the sound. I clenched my teeth, pushing myself up on my elbows in the bunk the band let me borrow.

There was no way I was going to be able to sleep with the noise. The fact that my twenty-four-year-old semi-immortal parents were spooning each other in the tiny bunk across from me didn't help.

As quietly as I could, I climbed out of my bunk. It creaked as I shifted my weight, and Liz's eyes snapped open.

"Everything okay?" she whispered.

"Just having trouble sleeping." I tilted my head towards Jake's snoring, unconscious body.

Liz gave a light chuckle. "You get used to it."

"No, you don't," I heard Alex mutter under his breath.

Liz rolled her eyes and shook her head, giving me a light smile.

I smiled back. "I think I'm going to sleep in the other room."

She nodded as I grabbed the pillow and blanket. I tip-toed out of the room and into the main section of the bus, clicking the door shut softly behind me.

I curled up on the crinkly leather bench and pulled the blanket over me. The air in the bus was cool and dry, but I liked it. The stink of old sweat and stale beer were less oppressive when it wasn't humid and hot.

"Can you at least let me take a look at it?" a soft, muffled voice echoed quietly through the divider of the bus. I recognized it immediately. Liz.

"I'm fine," Alex's voice replied.

"You don't have to always act so tough," she said. "You're hurting. I can tell. It's okay to admit it. It's okay to let someone care for you."

There was silence for a moment.

"Do you think you cracked a rib?" Liz finally continued when Alex said nothing.

They were quiet again, and I pinched my eyes closed, trying to block out the voices I didn't want to overhear. I felt terrible about what I'd done to Alex.

But not nearly as bad as you should feel about what happened to Blake.

Cold sweat broke out over my chest. I knew the voice had come from within me, but yet it didn't feel like it was me. Like it had formed somewhere deep within my mind— a place that I was not able to control.

I shook myself, trying to clear the thought.

Stop thinking. Stop thinking.

"Did you really hear nothing when you tried to listen to her?" Liz's voice continued, but there was something eerie and distant about it. It wasn't muffled like when I'd heard their voices resonating through the wall. Instead, it sounded like it was coming from all around me—from every direction at once.

There was a long pause. "It was like James," Alex's voice finally came through with the same haunting omnipresence. "She's like our son."

My heart pounded as his voice echoed through my mind. Chills rippled down my arms and legs.

"No, she's not like that," Liz growled back. There was something animal and aggressive in her tone. "She can't be. I refuse to believe that."

"When I tried to read her, her wolf threatened me." There was a pause, and I held my breath, like when I was a child and I listened in to my parent's phone conversations on the land line through another handset, worried they'd hear me breathing.