The Unseen

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

The moment I opened my eyes the next morning, I groaned and then winced in pain. I had rolled onto my bad arm.

Sitting up, I checked the once-white bandage. Now, it had a thin red line pressed into it. My wound had yet again began bleeding. 

When I had gotten home last night, I had no choice but to lie to my mom. I had to have immediate care to the arm, and I didn't think I could do it to myself with only one hand. Besides, she would find out about it later and wonder why I didn't come to her right away about it.

I had told her I had been sleep walking and got caught by a barbed wire fence. In any other case, she wouldn't have believed me for a second. But I did sleep walk once in a while, and once or twice I had gotten out of the house. At least, the times I hadn't gotten out of the house were the times I really did sleep walk. The other times were just excuses for getting caught outside of the house when meeting up with Rashal.

Crawling gingerly out of bed, I pattered over to the bathroom. I carefully removed the bandage and gazed at the long cut. It was pretty deep, and it was soaked with blood.

I grimaced; The Wolf must have had really long claws, and now I knew that he was definitely a long jumper. He had caught me when I had already started to run, and that seemed impossible. At least, I had thought it was.

Wincing in discomfort, I applied some medicine that would help the gash heal and gently pressed another bandage to the wound.

I knew that The Wolf was vicious...but I never figured he was vicious enough to actually hurt somebody. I guess he wasn't such a minor villain like I had thought. Now I knew I would have to watch out for him. He was dangerous.

Rubbing my eyes, I exited the bathroom, donned some jeans and a t-shirt, then stomped noisily down the stairs. If my mom didn't know I was awake before, she did now.

"How is the arm, sweetie?" my mom asked, without even glancing my way. She must have heard my noisy entrance. She had her eyes glued to the TV, watching the morning news.

"Fine, I guess. I'm going to go get a donut at the coffee shop."

Mom smiled at me. "You're going to walk there, or do you want me to drive you?"

"I'll just walk there." It was only a block away or so. I also needed some fresh air to think about last night.

I walked to the coffee shop as I had told her I would and was in line, when I saw Quinn and Hunter coming in. They were laughing with each other and I realized they were going to be standing right behind me in line.

I really, really hoped I didn't have another vision around them. I was pretty worn out, but I wouldn't have been surprised if Hunter's ability to make my visions come overpowered the will of my body.

Quinn walked up behind me, Hunter right after him. Hunter caught sight of me, and I suddenly felt embarrassed that I had walked away from him when he was talking about The Unseen - in other words, me. But I guess the anger towards Rashal overpowered the need to talk and be around him.

Most the time, after a night's sleep, I would have had time to get over my anger. But Rashal had really made me upset. She didn't even try to acknowledge me when her fan club had surrounded her. Even though she had been telling them that The Unseen was great and all, she could have said, "I wish my friend Nikkia here could have been there to see The Unseen."

Or something close to that.

"Hey, Nikkia," Hunter said, smiling warmly at me. Those dark eyes and straight white teeth clouded my mind for a second. It almost felt odd to hear him saying the right name, after all those years of hearing him mess up.