Uncaged

Chapter 20

We settled into a routine over the next few weeks. Nikki's dad had come to accept that he had lost the battle, and that Nikki should be able to live her life as a normal teenager. That meant that we'd been able to have a few sleepovers, both at her house and mine, though we had been behaving when we did. We didn't want to abuse the privilege, and just being able to spend time together had been enough of a bonus that we didn't mind.

The biggest issue was getting an agreement on what to do on the night of the upcoming attack. Mr. Garrison was afraid of Phillips and his gang, but he didn't have any plans better than ours. I didn't even tell him about my parents being bitten, just that we wanted our families to work together to stop the attack. Sam and Leon were more than happy to help defend the house, and I was going to have Fran with Jasmine, Jane and Nikki to do first aid.

As much as I wanted Ben and Adam to help, they were our backup. If everything went to shit, we needed them somewhere safe to go rescue Nikki. I told Adam where the salvage yard was, but we kept Ben in the dark about the exact nature of things, trusting Adam to break the news to him if he didn't hear from us after the attack.

In the meantime, I spent a lot of time making new weapons. We bought 4 crossbows online, and we disassembled part of the cage to make some silver tipped traps and weapons. Once the silver had been melted in a crucible, I was able to make silver coated crossbow tips for the crossbows, silver coated nails to hammer into frames to cover windows and floors, and even some barbed wire that we had purchased at a farm supply store that we then dipped in silver. As much as he didn't want to have an attack, Mr. Garrison was gracious enough to foot the bill to help protect his daughter. Everything I made, I brought over to the house in the truck. There was a lot of it, and we expected that we'd need it.

The best part about these few weeks is the change in my mother. It wasn't like she was up and running marathons, but she was needing less pain medication, and even better had been able to wiggle her toes. She did start complaining about whispers in her head though, and my dad is hearing them as well. We finally had to have a talk with my mom to tell her about the whole 'hey you're a werewolf now' thing, and she was surprisingly fine with it. Being on the receiving end of all the pain, and seeing the rapid improvements certainly made her get on board with it quick. When Nikki told her and my dad that the voices that they hear are their inner wolves, they had silly grins. Nikki told me afterwards that their voices would get stronger as we got closer to the full moon, but already they're feeling the mate bond between them.

I have to admit, it never dawned on me that they could have not been mates after becoming werewolves, but I guess it is a moot point now.

I'm not sure how long it will take for my mom to get completely better, or if she even will. But we're all hopeful that she will, and she's already more lucid throughout the day than she has been in years. I think Fran is the happiest about all of this because all she has known through most of her life is mom being sick. As the only girl in the house, I think she really wanted mom to be able to be there for her to talk to and give her advice, but instead she was the one helping out mom instead. Now, she might get that chance, and she had a lot of happy tears seeing the improvements.

The long-term repercussions were too staggering to even consider. Could mom get her job back? Could dad stop working himself to the bone? Could I drop one of my jobs? Did I have a chance to go to college now beyond the local community college? I guess that the last one didn't matter, I'd never even sent in any applications, and so I'd probably do a couple years local before doing anything else. I bet if I talked that over with Nikki she'd like it, it still fit in with the RV trip after all.

But first we had to survive the attack.

In the days immediately leading up to the full moon, I spent a lot of time over at Nikki's place, setting everything up. Every window on both the ground floor and second floor had rows of the silver dipped barbed wire strung up across it, and a board with silver nails sticking up on the sill. It may not stop all the wolves, but Nikki assured us that it would hurt a lot. We made a wooden lattice of similar wooden slats and nails that we would lay on the stairs to the second floor, as well as the floor in the hallway leading down to Nikki's room. Each of the boards were wrapped in the silver barbed wire, so they couldn't be easily picked up. If anyone wanted to get to her, they'd have to run that gauntlet. I had a little barrier at the end for me to hide behind with one of the crossbows and a bunch of ammo.