Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 35 - October Blood

The bed was soft and warm beneath her. The sheets were a little rough against her skin, clearly a much lower thread count than she had grown accustomed to growing up. Still, anything was an improvement to grassy fields, like the ones she had been waking up in for what had to be the better part of two years now.

The room was still dark, but she could almost sense sunlight creeping in somewhere around the edges, and when she opened her eyes she saw why. The room she was in had no windows, but a giant hole gaped open on the wall to the next room, and the light burned brilliantly into that room, spilling just soft edges through the gap to the room where she lay.

On a far wall, positioned strategically to face her, the hole in the wall, and the door to the room all at once, sat a familiar figure. Despite his vigilant positioning, though, he was clearly fast asleep.

Something moved in the corner of her vision and she jerked her head toward the door. The figure standing there met her eyes and raised a finger to her lips with one hand and pointed to the sleeping figure sitting against the wall with her other hands. From somewhere downstairs wafted up the scent of cooking, and Daina's stomach growled in response to the smell.

Zahra smiled, though Daina couldn't be certain she had actually heard the noise, and waved her over. Daina tried to move and instantly regretted it. A jolt of pain flashed through her body. Lifting the sheets she saw that most of her upper torso and some of her belly was wrapped up in tight gauze, much of it stained a rust color.

The flesh below was still tender, but to her surprise, given the amount of blood she had clearly bled, she didn't feel that injured.

Moving a bit more gently, she pulled the covers off her and raised herself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. It hurt a little, but not enough to keep her down. She raised her gaze back to Zahra, who pointed just off to Daina's left. She turned and looked and saw some clothes that looked like they would fit her hanging from the back of a chair. She rose and dressed as quickly but as quietly as she dared, and then followed Zahra out of the room and down the stairs.

She had expected the cooking to be in the kitchen, but instead Zahra had apparently built a small fire in the fireplace and had done her best to cook a small stew in a pot in there. She served Daina a bowl, and she accepted it graciously. She brought it up to her face and breathed in the delicious scents and the steaming warmth. It relaxed her tightened muscles a little, and she sat down on the nearest couch and curled up around the bowl.

She looked to Zahra, who was already digging into her own bowl of stew. "What... happened?" she asked the child.

"You became a werewolf," Zahra explained, surprisingly nonplussed by the whole concept.

"Uh," said Daina, unable for a moment to say anything more than that. "That... that doesn't bother you?"

Zahra shook her head while she took a long drink of her soup. She took a big gulp to swallow it all down and clarified, "Eli explained it all to me. You're a werewolf now. That's why you were afraid to hang around us."

Daina stared at the child for a long moment, unable to process how calm she was in delivering this news. "But... you're not afraid of me?"

Again Zahra shook her head. "You came to our rescue last night. From the evil lady."

Ice crawled down Daina's spine, wriggling around her ribs and grabbing at her heart. The evil lady. Flashes of the night before came back to her suddenly, as they sometimes did. The memories of the wolf, somehow existing inside her, contradictory to sense and reason. Brief images of streets lit only by moonlight, bursting through a doorway, struggling with a dark, pale figure in the shadows of an unlit room.