Wild Side (Dark Side Series: Book 2)

Two

Blood stuck thick on my lips. Copper flakes rolled off my tongue as I stretched in the dappled glow of a summer morning, though in this tropical climate there wasn't much of a difference from one season to another. Temperature didn't concern me here, nor did the blood in my teeth. It wasn't the substance caked around my lips and throat that unsettled me, no: it was the leeches.

There were always leeches.

Slick, fat creatures, some over a foot long, burrowed into my body where I lay fallen and naked among moist leaves and complex root systems. Many species called the Amazon their home, hiding where the earth was soft and never quite dry, clinging between leaves wider than my head, waiting where the ferny undergrowth multiplied faster than you could hack a narrow path. Ectoparasites, the university researchers had called them when I'd hitched a ride on the back of their jeep to the small village hidden in the vast, dank nowhere. The researchers loved the bloodsuckers. Evan, I think his name was, came specifically to this fetid hellhole to study them. I hated leeches, and hated the humidity. I thought maybe even a parasitologist like Evan might if he ever woke up nude, drenched in sweat, and covered in a writhing mass of the hefty invertebrates.

The only good thing about leeches was that you didn't feel them biting you, not much anyway. I'd grown used to it. I felt the other insects something fierce, and the itching, God, I'd been itching since the day Zakar had ordered me here to find some ancient black mirror, itched so much I'd scratched my own skin off. Even now I rubbed at the scabs on my forearms, sending small flies scattering.

A thick, black mass squirmed against my upper thigh when I sat up. Taking a deep breath, I dared look down.

Working quickly, I slid my nail along the mouth of the leech and pushed it off. I'd flung three more into wet leaves, listening satisfied to the thunk of bodies hitting a nearby trunk, when a purr rolled through the golden haze. From the brush ahead emerged a squat-nosed feline with long legs and a cinder pelt. In its jaws, held daintily, was one of my leeches.

Good morning, Zakar said, depositing his catch at my feet. For a moment he picked at the fallen worm with his claws, then lifted it in a quick snap and crushed it. Thick juices dribbled down the refined chin he lifted toward me. His long tail swished against colorful ferns. Looking a little pasty, aren't you?

I wiped my chin with the back of my hand. Tiny red chips of dried blood fell into my palm. I frowned, then continued removing the rest of the leeches. "I thought werewolves remembered who they were when they turned. And I thought they could control the shift. Why can't I?"

Zakar was silent, the corners of his lips pulled into a pointed grin. He padded closer, the wet of his black pawpads touching my thigh. Whiskers tickled my leg as his rough tongue licked the blood away from the first leech bite. I shoved him away, trying hard to ignore the pleasurable surge through my spine at his touch. Zakar, the wendigo, demon, familiar—whatever he fancied to call himself, was above all else a twisted, perverse creature.

"Answer my question," I repeated. After months of trying to determine the answer, nothing I read and no one I talked to made sense of my monthly blackouts.

Green eyes watched mine, then the cat yawned, flashing red-stained teeth. For a cat that liked to invade my mind with his chatter, he was oddly quiet this morning.

"Fine," I huffed. "Just tell me what disgusting thing I ate this time."

This—his paw gestured at my face—isn't so much due to what you ate as it is due to what you, shall we say, disturbed?

In that moment I listened hard to the buzzing air. "What did I do?" I asked softer now.

The cat stretched in one smooth motion and stepped within the dense greenery. Only a few feet in and he was already a difficult shadow to notice. If I hadn't known he was there, I'd never have spotted him. Better going. You miss your ride and it'll be a week before another one rolls through.