Pawn Among Wolves

PAWN AMONG WOLVES CH. 02

Gemma curled herself carefully back among the bedcovers, eyes unfocussed on her book as she listened for the click of front door closing behind her parents. There. Gone. A morning alone. Well, almost. Her 19 year-old brother Adam had been left on nominal nurturing duty downstairs, but he was on his PS3, so unless she really shouted, this counted as alone. As good as. Good enough.

Time to think. It wasn't that she hadn't needed, didn't appreciate all their care, but there was never time, space to think over -. It wasn't something she could bear her parents watching her think about. Or listen to her dream about. So she'd blocked it all out, to the best of her ability - and she was quite impressed, somewhere, internally, how good the mind actually was at blocking things out.

Initially it had been a huge relief, not remembering, not dwelling on it. It wasn't that she didn't know what had happened - she thought - but the black and yellow warning "not now - do not enter" mental tape she'd stuck over the memories had worked, had held - mostly. Now the barrier was fraying, and the images and questions that shot through when she was unprepared were driving her nuts. Had that really happened? If it weren't for the wound on her neck and the other sore or raw spots, she'd begin to think she'd just imagined it all. Let's face it, she must have imagined it.

Lurid, ludicrous imagination? You should be ashamed of yourself, girl, she thought. A light tingle of unease down her spine followed her self-sarcasm. She suspected this was a bit too far-fetched even for her own fantasies. Suspected - that some of it was true. All?

She had denied rape to the police. And she hadn't appreciated the look in the female officer's eyes when she'd given the quick, nervous negative, but the assault charge had been bad enough to deal with. Gemma had had to describe that dark, elegant, predatory stranger she'd found in their flat to the authorities, and explain that Mac - it had been strangely hard to say his name - had been injured too. She hadn't mentioned a spear. Or asked if they'd found strange hairs on the rug.

And the weirdest thing was, for a split second when they initially asked how she'd got the wound on her neck, she honestly couldn't remember. Mind blank, she'd tried to find a reasonable reason. Neck? That hadn't been the centre of attention at the time, and it had all happened so fast. She'd thought she must have banged hard against something - it wasn't like she hadn't been - banging- hard-. She blushed, sitting alone huddled in her bedclothes. She still didn't really believe how good she remembered that feeling then, either, considering how that part of her had felt after.

Good? Good? Come off it - understatement of the century - it was-. She cut off her own thoughts.

Describing the stranger had been difficult, as the clearest things she could recall were the feral grace and that wild glitter in his eyes -- like in Mac's. Black eyes. Another memory that didn't make sense, Mac had green eyes, but she clearly remembered the hollow black glitter when he'd told her to go. Green usually, except when -, she slammed the mental brakes on again. She did this wearisomely often at the moment, especially around her parents. Better not to think about - stop it.

The cuts on her back and inner thigh, where the stranger had ripped her clothes off, they were healing fine. The police described them as knife wounds, but after thinking back through all the happenings of that night, Gemma had her doubts. She'd seen the claws on one huge paw only inches from her face, and they had looked fairly sharp and lethal. She shivered, and tucked the covers slightly closer around herself.

The unmentioned rawness at the mouth of her vagina was also easing, the pain not so noticeable now, the third day on. But although they'd asked her again, she still hadn't found a satisfactory explanation for the nastiest injury - the raw contusion on her neck. The doctor was pretending not to be worried, but after two days it had started to fester. And he was clearly a bit bothered that she 'couldn't remember' how she got it.