Tomorrow Never Dies (Moonlight 3)

Chapter 19-Lead

The days since the incident at the hospital quickly passed. Thankfully only a few days later Kaylee was discharged from the hospital and could return to school. She was the centre of attention on her return, many of our classmates showering her with questions about her absence. She answered each of them politely, but I could tell by the end of the first day that her patience was wearing thin.

We'd talked about it only yesterday about her fears of what would happen to her when the next full moon rose. Everyone's questions about whether she was a werewolf or not were only fuelling that fear.

Since that day in the hospital our friendship surprisingly hadn't changed all that much, yet there was an underlying sense between the two of us now that we both knew how the other felt. We seemed to steal glances between classes, and I felt slightly less anxious around her now. I was looking forward to when this all blew over and we could go out of a date. We were still trying to decide between going ice-skating or seeing a movie.

Kaylee wasn't the only person I was worried about though. Kyle was still being kept in the hospital under close watch by the doctors. They'd been monitoring him and doing tests to determine what they could about his condition, but all the tests were coming back strange as if all their equipment was malfunctioning.

The only explanation we'd come up with was that he was neither wolf nor human. Calum had decided that after what Kyle had done to his hand. Michael had suggested that it had even had something to do with that red gem that perhaps even that had affected him somehow. No one had really been happy with either of those suggestions though. It was scary not knowing though especially after what had happened.

School had been different too since the dance. Every day I could feel student's eyes on us as we walked down the corridors. Harsh insulting whispers echoed down the corridors wherever we went. Words like filth, monsters and mutts had been thrown around repeatedly, the only thing I could do was pretend as though they weren't bothering me. Yet deep down the words still hurt as much as the first time I'd been called them.

Even some of the teachers had been cruel to us. I was certain that we'd had extra detentions, were called on more often and were the subject of many of their piercing glares even when we weren't doing anything wrong. One of the PE teachers was cool about it though, she wanted to know exactly how fast we could run and show off for the class. Calum politely declined her offer, and I saw Michael's face fall but promised we would once things calmed down a little.

Then there had been the local news, they'd been publishing stories for days about the night's events. It seemed the stories hadn't left Rosetta Park like a town legend. I think the hunters had a lot to do with that. Still it didn't stop the intolerant people from voicing their opinions all over the town, they wrote in angrily to newspapers and television stations. There were even angry posters on a few of the local shopfronts, with people blaming the werewolves for the incident at the petrol station. I'd frowned when I'd seen them knowing that they weren't entirely wrong

The four of us had been coming up with suggestions all week as to why those werewolves had crashed the school dance. We thought that maybe it was a way for them to increase their numbers considering they bit so many students. Maybe in the hope that they would turn and join them. We wondered just why they had called Calum out like that? Was it to draw him out to fight? Surely, they would want werewolves to stay under the radar no matter what their purpose was. You'd think there would be a less attention drawing way to do what they did.

Lauchie had said that the hunters had been reviewing the footage from people's phones from the dance to try to determine just who they were. Yet most of the footage was blurry or dimly lit due to the hall's dark lighting. People's descriptions of them varied too. All we could do was hope that just like the service station that some sort of new evidence would come to light.