Ch. 47: Days Later

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The rest of the week went by the same way. I was trapped in my mind. I took the bus with Jake sitting next to me in the morning. He would look very serious and try to keep my spirits up. I would get to school early and sit with Ally in the library until Sean came. He would try to distract me. But it didn’t work. I just kept shutting down. I was in control of less and less of myself. Every day Vance cornered me at lunch and brought me to the dark hall. Every day he pressed against me, made threats, and cornered me. But he never kissed me. The only thing I could be grateful for. He would just repeat how I needed to give in and that he wanted me to give myself to him willingly. But repeated that he wouldn't wait forever.
Then every day I would be let free by something giving me a few minutes to cry in the bathroom before heading to my last class. After school I would walk with Ally and wait for the bus. Sean stopped fighting me about driving me home. He was clearly frustrated but there wasn’t anything I could do. Then I would ride the bus, walk home, and try to get anything done. But I really couldn't. I rarely did my work. I would just sit there and try to figure out in my mind any way out of this. Before it got worse.
I would intend to ask my mom if I could stay home or pretend to be sick. But I couldn’t. I fought every morning. But nothing changed in a positive way. I could only say less and less. It didn’t help that I couldn’t sleep. Every time I started to feel sleep pull me, I was immediately ripped into the middle of a nightmare. The themes were the same. Dark forest. Hands all over me. Sometimes I would nearly see my salvation, a pair of silver eyes, but other times I wouldn’t.
By Saturday morning I was bone tired. Dead tired. Living exhaustion.
My phone buzzed, it was from Jake.
<< From Jake to Rachel >>: Morning, Killer. Hope you finally got some rest. Any chance we could meet up today?
<< From Rachel to Jake >>: A little. I don’t know
I fudged a little, I hadn’t gotten probably more than an hour of sleep last night. But I wanted to downplay it. Didn’t want him worrying. I was also exhausted and didn’t think I could muster the energy to go outside.
<< From Jake to Rachel >>: Hmm… Well we’ll be in town later. I’ll check in then?
I didn’t respond. I felt like everything I was was withering away. I curled back into my blanket and sighed.

Ally ~
I was now resorting to scouring the internet. Kyle was still totally MIA and it looked like I was on my own. I had to do something to help Rachel. Something horrible had happened, or was still happening to her, and she wouldn’t - or couldn’t - communicate it. I had been trying to channel Kyle in my dreams but it didn’t work. And every day I spent every free second reading through witchcraft and wiccan websites trying out spells. To my surprise, two had worked, but were totally not at all what they were labeled.
My mom helped me out and the two of us braced for impact every time we said one, or mixed a potion. We had accidentally made my cat glow in the dark and I wasn’t able to reverse it. I also had found my missing baby blanket, but nothing so far to help us. Because things were mislabeled twice we were going back again, and retrying every spell. In all this trial and error we did learn that while I could say the glowing cat one, my mom couldn’t. She was able to do the missing baby blanket one, but nothing happened when I said it. I wondered if this was because we weren’t full witches. It would’ve been great to ask someone about this, but we were on our own. I did worry we would do something horrible, but when I continued to explain to my mom what was going on with Rachel, we resolved to keep moving forward. We needed to help her.

Evan ~
Xavier was throwing a fit. This whole week he had been riled up and I didn’t know where to direct my energy or attention. I was running and working out more than I ever had. In both forms. Nick spent hours researching, and I spent hours trying to expel energy. Most of the time with Jake. If Xavier was bad, Jake was just awful.
He hadn’t been sleeping well and his face was starting to hollow with dark circles under his eyes. He matched Rachel, really. She was looking worse every day. Xavier would whine every morning when we saw her. I begged him to tell me what was going on with her but he said he couldn’t. Which irritated me because it meant he did know what was happening.
“Head in the game Ev!” Jake barked.
We’d been wrestling for three hours. Jake was sweating some, but keeping up easily while I was feeling my muscles start to burn. I wondered what he would be like when he turned.
“Ugh,” Nick exclaimed and threw a book down on the table he was working on.
Nick had been on edge these past few days too. Always muttering to himself and pulling his hair with his head in a book or box. He was scouring the library, and every personal effect from wolves past he could get his hands on. We still had no clue what was going on with Jake’s eyes, let alone his relationship with Rachel. We couldn’t find anything more about mating between werewolves and other beings, and nothing on demi-demon wolves. It didn’t stop Nick from continuing to search for any crap of information that could point us somewhere.
Jake had me in a headlock and I tapped out. He was up again bouncing on his feet while I sat on the mat.
“Let’s go!” Jake jumped on the balls of his feet.
“Dude!” I yelled back, “Can’t we take a break? I mean I’m stir crazy too, but, Goddess!” I flopped down on my back, arms spread out.
He bent over me, eyes narrowed. “Tired already? Wow.”
“I’m not tired,” I grunted, “I just don’t think this is solving anything! Nonstop wrestling can get so boring!” I exhaled. “Plus, I know our heads just aren’t in it.”
“Of course they’re not,” he said above me. “But I have to do something. Everything in me is screaming at me to move. I don’t know where so I’m doing this. Well - I do think I know where I want to go. But I can’t just go over there.”
Nick looked up from yet another book, “You know, maybe you could?”
I sat up.
“Yeah, I mean it is Saturday. Maybe we can head to Melbourne and see her?” I turned to Jake, “Have you talked to her this morning yet?”
His eyes flashed and he looked at the time. “No, it was early. I guess I can now…”
He moved over to a bench and rifled his pants pocket for his phone.
“Still nothing?” I asked Nick.
He shook his head.
“I just don’t get it. How can there be nothing? Especially about the likely witch-wolf pairing your grandmother wrote about? How could no one else have written about it? I mean it must have been all anyone could talk about then,” Nick sighed, exhausted.
“Maybe my grandma heard it wrong? Maybe she made it up?” I offered.
“I just don’t think that’s true… It feels like there’s something else that happened. Maybe if we could get into the library of another pack? Or if we could get someone’s grandparents to talk to us? Someone who lived here then? I think that might be our only move now,” Nick resigned.
“Okay, let’s head out soon to Melbourne. She didn’t promise anything, but maybe it’ll work out,” Jake said as he stretched and stood.
I sighed and stood. Nick was right, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Jake’s grandparents and Nick’s were killed in a huge battle back when, along with my grandmother. My grandfather was still living but was in a full time care facility a few cities away. Losing your mate like that and living so long without them made werewolves more susceptible to dementia. And my grandfather was rarely in his right mind these days. It didn’t help that this pack was filled with new people post-war. I didn’t know of anyone that age who actually had been in this pack then.
“Come on, let’s get going!” Jake exclaimed, excited. It seemed even the idea of possibly seeing her was helping him somehow.