His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 3: When Crimson Becomes Amethyst

I felt warm breath on my cheek. When I sniffed lightly, carefully attempting to figure out who I was dealing with and where I was, I detected the slightest scent of blood. But luckily, with that scent came the vague scent of dog, signifying that I was in friendly company...hopefully.

"I see you're awake," came a soft, raspy voice, which I quickly recognized as that of Hale's girl, the one who had come to my rescue in the basement. Slowly, I opened my eyes and turned to look up at her.

"Are you all right?" I asked the moment I saw her face. Down her left cheek was a pair of deep gashes that could only have come from a set of fangs, and her right cheek sported a small, dark bruise. If just her face had sustained that much damage, I couldn't imagine what the rest of her body looked like.

She laughed lightly, the sound gravelly and almost painful to hear. "Yeah, I'm fine. Still conscious, unlike a certain someone," she teased with a playful little wink.

She was an odd one, I decided, at a loss for words. Her kind was foreign to me. Optimistic, humorous, seemingly carefree...She almost reminded me of Kyrianna, but she was actually...well...useful.

"Er...Well...that's good," I finally said, unable to think of anything more meaningful to say. Before she could say something else to puzzle me, I asked, "Where's Elyria? Did she make it back?" I was curious as to how I had made it here, where I was, what had happened while I was out, but Elyria's safety was a much more pressing matter at the moment.

The girl, Bethany, nodded, though her smile didn't fade at the change of subject. "Of course. She was our top priority, after all. You're actually lying in her room, if you haven't noticed."

Actually, I hadn't noticed. Even now, as I looked around the dimly lit space, I could barely tell. It had stopped feeling like Elyria's room long ago. Her clothes weren't lying around anymore, the sheets weren't suspiciously bloodstained, and her scent had completely vanished from everything, even the pillows. This was Elyria's room, but it wasn't.

"Where is she, then?" I asked, turning my gaze back to the werewolf. "Shouldn't she be the one in here instead of me?"

"She's not the one that had a chunk of skin torn out of her throat, is she?" the girl countered. "And she's also not the one who nearly died during her rescue, now, is she?"

"But she-" A slender finger to my lips hushed me.

"She's fine where she is. Kyrianna needed more space to work that spell or ritual or...whatever it is she's doing." For the first time, a frown interrupted her normally smiling expression. "I don't really understand what's going on."

I sat up quickly, a shock of excitement surging through me. "Did she figure out how to turn her back?" I asked, already leaping off of the bed and starting for the door.

"I guess so," she answered, getting to her feet behind me. She didn't follow me into the hall, the use of strange magics likely making her uncomfortable, so I was alone when I entered the living room, alone when I received the shock of my life.

Elyria stood by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows to one side of the living room, her back to the view of the sparkling cityscape below. Blood spatters decorated the front of her baggy white tank top, streaks of the same red creating dark lines on her chin, beneath a pair of bloody lips. She was leaning against the window, crimson eyes widened in fright, and the tips of her perfectly manicured nails were pressing into the glass as if she wished she could clutch onto it. I noticed that her chest was rapidly rising and falling in a terrified pant to match her terrified eyes.

What the hell is going on?

When I followed her gaze, I found Kyrianna lying on the floor behind the couch, blood rushing from the various gashes along her neck and right arm. She was conscious, slowly blinking at Elyria. In spite of her heavy bleeding, she seemed perfectly calm.