The Reluctant Read online

  The Reluctant

  By Aila Cline

  Copyright 2011 Aila Cline

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

  * Poem excerpt that Will gives to Emily in the form of a note is from e.e. cummings 1958 poem “i carry your heart with me.”

  *Quote in Author’s Note is from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

  This novel contains mature content and should only be read by adults who understand that graphic content is present.

  *******ENJOY THE STORY*******

  Emily

  “Bar the fucking door, Emily.”

  Thump. Will’s body slammed against the locked door. My arms shook as I folded my hands to keep a tremor from dominating my body. Will had never lied to me before; I could not imagine him lying to me about something so serious now.

  Another thud against the door, and it splintered. He burst into the room, naked and ready, grabbing my arm and yanking me up to him. He did not even bother to speak to me before coming at me.

  I screamed.

  This is not where the story begins of course. Aha, I’ve teased you into thinking that the tale begins with debauchery. It does not. Instead, like all real stories, it starts with a normal night in my normal life. The blood and the hurt come later. But don’t worry, you’ll get your story. I experienced plenty of both blood and hurt. This is not just a love story. It’s one of revenge, of passion, and of pride. This is the story of us, two creatures bonded by hate and love and blood and hunger. It began with the hunt for a killer, and it ends quite similarly.

  Will

  No moon tonight. Slight, crisp breeze—a perfect hunting ground. Everything with sense has figured out that the large animal padding along the path bears caution. Unfortunately for the man who holds the hand of a four-year old girl while fingering the machete strapped to his belt, he has no sense, and the red haze which coats the practical part of his mind will soon be splattered all over the softly-dewed grass. The little girl, allergic to cats, sneezes.

  As my best friend Luka would say, Let the hunt begin.

  I watched with wry amusement as the cougar crept closer to the old sex addict and his prey. The hunter becoming the hunted. It is always my favorite game to watch, especially since I’d tracked the old bastard for so long. Thankfully, the wind shifted and the big cat caught my scent, causing him to creep away in silence. There were bigger things in the woods than that night. Now I could focus on the target without side distractions.

  Brandon, forty-eight years on this earth, all spent cultivating pedophilic tendencies with manners that could embarrass even the most ardent Lycanti. Luckily for the little girl he has chosen, I am the most reluctant Changeling I know. That doesn’t really say much about me, especially when I’ve lost control again, but you know I’d never do anything like that while Changed. It’s like the human comes out of me when I’m a monster, and the monster comes out when I’m a human. My English classes taught me that this is called irony, but I’ve moved on from that phase in my life. There are other things that I can’t let go of quite as easily as a few literary terms.

  I knew one day I would have someone who realizes that I hold onto what’s human.

  Don’t you remember the story I told you? “You’ll be mine,” that old bitch said after the Change was over. “Forever.”

  I ripped her apart as soon as I was fully Changed. She might have thought me hers, but she was never mine. You are. You were, even then. From the first moment I saw you, I knew it, Emily. She wanted to teach me to kill, but that wasn’t what I needed to know. I needed to know when to kill. I had to find that out on my own, through my acquisition of you mostly. But you don’t want to know about that. The first night’s importance can’t be underplayed.

  The idea to hunt this scum hit me when Luka gave me the news clippings about this guy who had been a suspect in five different murder cases of children under ten, but without bodies of the children, no one could find enough evidence to indict him. Something burned in me, a feeling that I knew his kind. I’d followed him, knowing he’d do it again. After all, we monsters have a taste for blood that has to be quenched. I wasn’t dramatic about it. I don’t skulk. I stalk. His smell lingered for days at the back of my throat, the odor of too much sweat and not enough soap. This is the smell of one who has lost his humanity.

  I did not give him the chance to draw that machete. This was not the movies and I’m not some great, noble guy who wanted to give him the chance to fight for his life. I simply trotted over and stared at him for a moment. He stared back at me, obviously wondering what I was doing out without a master. The shadows hid my very human eyes and probably some of the more…frightening parts of me, but he knew me for what I am.

  “Go away, mutt. You have no reason to be here,” he said clearly. I’m sure that most people think that a man needs to be drunk or mentally incompetent to commit horrendous murder. Not true. He knew exactly what he did and had become very good at it. That’s why it’s so damn wrong.

  I growled and leapt. There was no reason to give him a split second to take out that bushwhacker. I’ve had my fair share of cuts and nicks, nothing serious yet, but they’re quite annoying and hard to explain to normal people.

  Teeth to the throat will kill all but the most obstinate, thick-skinned bastards. Thankfully, his skin gave easily and the blood sprayed out. Unfortunately, though, the little girl got the biggest shower of it. It’s amazing how kids trust animals more than people. She did not cry or scream; rather, she smiled and came up to me, petting me and nodding. She was so tiny. She held tight to me during the silent walk back to a police station where I left her. She waved as she walked in. I wonder if they believed anything she told them. What a brave little girl. It’s sad, but I never even knew her name.

  Do you sometimes wish you could be like that, Emily?

  Emily

  I ran down the path, out of breath but loving it. Pushing my body like that always paid off. I would look less like a doughnut in my bathing suit that summer and more like a doughnut stick. The ocean would be my coffee. Ahhh, I could feel that salty breeze now. And men. Delicious men who would look at my tan body and want me. Yes, all that running on dark nights in November would pay off when the weather turned in March—or at least I hoped so.

  An Ipod fueled my muscles with the hard-hits of Disturbed. Their series of albums had almost played through. Alphabetical order-me would have The Exies to listen to next, The Fray after that. Predictable was good. Being nineteen and taking a gap year between high school and college, also good. My folks believed in a privileged childhood—childhood being defined as however long I decided it to be. My friends had all gone to college and left me to rot from boredom, but at least I wasn’t buried beneath the books like I’m sure they were. Boarding school in the east had burned me out on school for awhile—and parents. I had returned with an attitude and a tattoo. I had learned to live without them and enjoyed it. Being back wasn’t so bad though. They gave me whatever I wanted mostly. I had to admit:

  Life was good.

  I stopped to catch my breath. Usually background noise of crickets and birds punctuated my run. I could always tell when I’d arrived at the last quarter mile of the track because an owl would usually make slow, sad sounds of mourning. Sometimes I’d even talk to him, trying to console him.

  That was the last quarte
r, but my sorrowful buddy wasn’t around. Instead, I heard a low growl and an exclamation of pain. Some idiot had let their dog loose again, I was sure of it. Probably bit one of the other regular runners. Hesitantly, I started towards the sound. Something made me pause though. A chill went through me. Then I heard the strangled choke coming from that direction, but I could not make my feet move. To this day, I’ll never know what made me hesitate. Maybe Will was right. People just know when to stay away from him. I certainly did that night.

  I ran to slim down my body, not to build it with clunky muscle. I could not help, so I turned on my heels and ran. Something dangerous was out there. I would call the police when I got home.

  I didn’t know how helpless I really was that night, for I had been spotted and marked by the killer in the darkness.

  As teenagers are apt to do, I completely forgot about my uneasiness in the park. I told myself the next morning that my mind had been playing tricks on me. I do have an overactive imagination sometimes. Things that seem so ominous in the dark become a laugh the next morning. Most likely, I convinced myself, someone had fallen while walking their dog. The wet gurgle was only a muffled exclamation at pain. He or she had probably fallen on the dog’s foot or something.

  Imagine my surprise when I watched video footage of a slashed body being removed from the last quarter-mile of the track the next morning. The preliminary reports claim that an animal attacked the man, but the bites and scratches had hit debilitating areas: the jugular, the groin artery, and a lung. A very deliberate animal, the police chief claimed. Californian rednecks took to the woods to find the culprit, delighted with the idea of a hunt.

  My parents forbade my running there, instead buying me an expensive treadmill that had a dozen or so run options with incline. I did not want to admit that I could have been wrong by turning and walking away from the threatening sounds. I did not want to face my own cowardice. Obviously I know that now, but as a silly little girl then, I decided that the treadmill was better for my knees and that justified my staying home. I thanked my parents and resigned myself to a life of indoor exercise.

  Will

  That night in the moonlight I felt you across the park. Something tugged at me. I took the girl through the woods instead of the path, knowing that anyone who saw a golden-haired child with a monster would shoot first and ask questions later. I had been human up until about three minutes before I killed the pedophile, and it would be a long while before I was human again. Tension sparks it in me, and I do not relax so easily. When I’m wound up, I Change. My clothes and hunting knife remained in the brush, no doubt found by the investigators of Brandon’s death.

  But still, I returned to the running trail and inhaled your delicate scent that filled me with a longing to touch you as a man. You smell like a woman should, soft and vulnerable. I knew then that I had to have you. I tracked your scent home that night. I could have overpowered you as a monster, but nothing should ever happen that way. Sexuality dominates the Change, but I have morals. So I had to wait. I haunted the shadows, listening to the cycles of your breathing as you watched television, ate, and ignored whatever dribbling advice your parents presented you. The musical tones of your voice wrapped around me, the different timbres of you intoxicating me. I knew I couldn’t forget you now. That voice would have clung to me for the rest of my life.

  The anticipation of tasting you kept me so on edge that I couldn’t change back while your presence swirled around me. The longer I waited, the more frustrated I became. But sensations in that state are like dulled edges of a knife. They prick at the core of me and can’t be fully expressed until I’m human again. Even with my condition dampening the emotions, my claws scratched grooves into the dirt; my tongue lolled and I salivated, imagining in carnal terms what I would do to you. Even with my rigid code I could not help but be aroused in that state. I just would not allow myself the blasphemy of touching you while a monster. Imagine how trapped I was in my bindings of lust for you.

  I hungered, as a beast and as a man. It took two days for me to become human again, agonizing over how to obtain you in the confines of my house.

  Thank whoever you believe in for lucky things that the monster in me retrains himself in my animal form.

  However, I found you irresistible, and as a man I am not so good at controlling my passions.

  Emily

  Even with the new treadmill, I felt trapped at the house. I wanted to run where I could smell the grass, so I disobeyed my parents in the usual fashion and left for a run along the lonely park path again. After all, the police had said that an animal killed the man. Then, just this afternoon, a cougar was found prowling that spot of the park. Case solved.

  Stopping at my usual quarter-mile cool-down spot, I took a swallow of water. My friend the owl cooed his approval of my break. The night’s heaviness felt good compared to the chilly sweat on my body. I did a few stretches to get the kinks out of my hamstrings. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the bright green eyes of a handsome stranger running towards me. He was dressed in running shorts and a tee, jogging along from the other way. Well built, massive across the shoulders but lean in the waist, and a rugged, sculpted face that would make Brad Pitt’s aging jaws look like sagging pottery on a wheel. As he approached, he slowed to a stop, not saying a word, not even smiling at a fellow runner.

  “Can I help you?” I asked with no inflection, taking another drink and looking straight into those bright, burning eyes.

  The phrase seemed appropriately sarcastic for a man who had said nothing.

  He had been staring at me for a solid moment, and it began to grate on my nerves. Appreciation is one thing, ogling quite another. I did not let my glare falter, and he did not look like he would speak. His eyes never left my face, not even when my hand slipped into my pocket to grab the extremely tiny can of Mace kept there for such creeps.

  It was over in minutes and done wordlessly, and not worth space to explain in detail. Really, I recall it as if I experienced it through someone else’s body.

  He came closer, whipped out a syringe, and ignored my cry of protest. I tried to stop his actions by spraying him with mace, but he swatted away my attempts, injected an unknown substance into me with the syringe, grabbed me by the waist, then swung me over his shoulder like some piece of luggage. I didn’t even feel when the rhythmic trot towards wherever began.

  The unused Mace on the grass melted into soft waves of black and red that swam over my fading vision. It had only been two days since the murder in the park, and my last thought was that I had stupidly made myself the next victim.

  I woke, I guess like most victims of crime do if they wake at all, in the dark. My body had a strange lightness about it, as if my muscles were too bored to awaken with my mind. A voice leapt through the darkness.

  “Good evening.”

  The voice flowed out, a rich, light tenor, nonthreatening with an undertone of a very slight Spanish accent, lazy but fiercely intelligent. I wondered If it was indeed the green-eyed stranger from the park speaking so softly in the darkness.

  A tremble raced through me despite my flaccid muscles. The tiles cooled my bare feet and the air closed in comfortably around me. Prickles of apprehension cascaded across my flesh, and with a start, I realized I was naked. It’s strange to suddenly be aware of myself like that. And even with the night between us, I felt he could see me. I hugged my body close, using my arms like a shield. Finally the fear set in. The murderer from the park stood a few feet in front of me, unclothed and disoriented. His heavy breathing came out in even streams, but almost too even, as if it were controlled by mechanics.

  “My name is Will,” he said to the silence between us. The breath tickled my breasts and I realized just how close he had come. My throat felt tight and hot. I could not speak. How does one respond to her potential killer?

  It did not matter if I spoke, apparently, for there were suddenly hands on my upper arms, squeezing hard and desperately. He pulled me toward
s him.

  My body exploded into a frenzy of motion as I cried out and threw my arms forward, throwing his embrace off me. I stumbled backwards in the darkness, hoping to find anything to use as a weapon. Instead, I backed sharply into a wall.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said. Terror had quickened my breathing, and my chest rose and fell with the great gasps. If I could only see him, know what was coming. And I could not even hear him move. He took no shuffling steps across the tiled floor, nor did he flee the room at my words. All I heard was that steady breathing.

  His silence shifted to movement, caging me in with his arms against the wall, pressing his body against me. Oh God, he was naked. His harness rubbed insistently against my sex and I felt a thrill shoot through me. My body became a traitor in that very moment. My skin drank in his touch. I was no innocent, but surely my body should have fought at my motivation instead of wetting itself like an experienced whore?

  “Tell me your name,” Will breathed.

  I looked in vain for his face. Even though it was less than two inches from my mine, our noses touching, the darkness had swallowed and enfolded us in its womb. It unnerved me.

  “Don’t hurt me,” I blurted out.

  Lips found my neck, meting out rough kisses and buffing the tender skin. Electricity raced down my spine and to my thighs, making me instantly wet. When his mouth made it to my ear, his quick and fumbling hands traced me, his manhood pressed unrelentingly at the crevice between the thighs that tingled with suppressed excitement. He reached around and grabbed two handfuls of me, pinching hard and slightly lifting me to nudge his swelling member between my legs.