The Purest Heart ii

~ Obsessive.

That was what she had become, over a complete and utter stranger no less. She couldn’t help wondering if the man—Lochlan—had been alright after she bolted from the diner like a scared rabbit. Her reaction made no sense to her. He hadn’t been rude, he hadn’t threatened her, yet she had felt... threatened. Guilt nagged her, as she wasn’t the kind of person to see someone else in need and walk the other way. Or in this case, run the other way. His eyes haunted her. They had started a pure emerald green with flecks of gold, and as she stared into them they changed. Peculiar and intense were the words she would use to describe his eyes. Beautiful was another.

Her obsession with him led to paranoia. Penny thought she was seeing the man everywhere she went. It wasn’t bad enough that his eyes followed her into her dreams, but she could have sworn she saw him a few times, following her on the street. On the train, she had thought she saw him, but when she walked towards where he had been standing, he wasn’t there. Penny attributed her hallucinations to guilt. Guilt-induced hallucinations. It wouldn’t have been the first time her guilt had manifested into what she thought was flesh and blood. She had a habit of obsessing over things, and whenever she did, they only got larger than life.

She stepped out of her apartment looking around her. She needed to let it go. The man was fine. If he hadn’t been, there were dozens of other people in the diner who would have helped him. Penny didn’t allow herself to remember the slashes in his seat. There was no way for her to explain it, and with questions and no answers, all she would have done was obsessed. Maybe they had been there before he had sat down. Maybe she had missed it. It didn’t matter. The man was gone, she was fine, and he was fine too. At least, that was her hope.

Now it was Thursday, another week was almost over and she was behind on work. As soon as she went through one pile, another pile started. Working as a technical writer at Write Tech Inc., she had all the solitude she needed. It was only her, some file cabinets, a sturdy desk, and stacks of papers in her office. An eternal stack that had grown considerably since the new Managing Supervisor was brought on board. The woman had it out for Penny, and she wasn’t certain why. Penny had never thought to apply for the position though she had all the experience to qualify. To be Managing Supervisor meant long meetings and mandatory socializing. She wasn’t cut out for that.

After months of it, Penny was growing numb to the passive-aggressive inklings of Caitlin Crashaw. The woman wanted her to step out of line, or mess up so she could have something to say, but Penny never did. She was good at her job and thrived like a cactus in hostile environments.

To get most of her assigned work done, Penny was the last to leave. She had also been the first to arrive that morning. The last bus was due at 11 pm. Coat wrapped tightly around her to stave off the late-night chill, Penny made her way to the bus stop a block in the opposite direction of the train station. She preferred the bus to the lonely underground station at this time of night.

The bus stop was in sight on the opposite side of the road, when a van pulled up on the curb cutting her off. Penny stopped, frozen as the side door of the van opened, and two men came out. She turned to run and collided into a third. Her scream was muffled by a big hand that not only covered her mouth but her nose, making it hard for her to breathe. She dropped her bag as she fought, scratching with her nails, and kicking with her feet to get free. It was useless. Powerless to stop them, Penny was dragged into the van, and before the door closed it was speeding off. There were other men in the back of the van.

From a nearby roof, Lochlan watched, snapping his teeth together.

Penny managed to get the man’s hand from over her mouth as another started to tie her feet. Her scream for help was met by a slap across her face. Penny thought she heard her brain rattle, spots popping up in front of her eyes. The last thing she remembered was her body being tossed around the inside of the van.

“Hey, hey.”

“Hey,” Penny heard herself responding. She was dazed, the side of her face throbbing. Her entire head throbbed. Her body ached in so many places. All the pain drifted into one wave that moved over, and through her, as her body moved. Penny shied away from it, seeking the solace that nothingness promised.

She sought relief from the pain, but the voice kept her anchored. Penny felt something on her lips. It was warm and sickly sweet on her tongue, thick as it rolled down her throat. The taste was intoxicating. Penny had no idea what it was but she craved it, tried to get more, her mind momentarily distracted from the pain radiating through her entire being.

“I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? Sorry for what? She wanted to ask, but the pain. It was back.

“Black, stay with her.”

The voice was starting to drift away now.

Penny had so many questions but everything refused to work. What happened? Where was she? Who was the person talking to her? Who was Black? Why was she in so much pain? She felt trapped in her mind. Along with the pain, there was a warm sensation burning its way through her body. 

Trapped in her mind she screamed, the sounds of her pain echoing, for her alone to hear.

“Lochlan McQueen, did you kill her?” Cormac asked, pointing a finger at Penny. He could hear her heart beating, and it was weak, barely holding on. He stood a few feet away with his men, all of them healing from various degrees of injuries where they stood. “You’ve certainly made a mess of a situation that I would say was going very well.”

Lochlan stood between the men and Penny who was unconscious on the ground. She was broken in so many places. There was no way he could move her without causing more pain, or making matters worse. He growled at them though he was angrier with himself. Penny was not going to die, and neither was she going to be taken from him. He just hoped he had given her enough blood to keep her alive. To give her more would have left him too weak to fight.

“Skipping all the formalities then,” Cormac said to Lochlan’s reaction. “We saw her first.”

“You never laid a claim.” He didn’t bother to mention that he had seen Penny long before they had. Or that he had laid a claim altogether different from what he was openly referring to. Lochlan was still trying to figure out the intricacies of it. He was still trying to process the whole thing.

“Did you?”

Cormac’s question was met by another growl. The wolf was in charge now, the man stepping back to let it loose. Cormac’s casual stance was anything but. The two had butt heads before. Equally matched, neither had lost, but neither had left unscathed. Cormac was well trained, a scout for one of the oldest vampires Lochlan knew. Stepping back, his henchmen moved forward to do the dirty work.

Lochlan kept his eyes on Cormac. While he was distracted fighting the men, Cormac would undoubtedly make a move to go after Penny. She was still alive—though barely—which meant she was still valuable to them. As his body expanded his clothes fell away in tattered bits. They were outside of the city at an abandoned power plant. No one was close enough to see or hear anything.

The men came at him from all angles, even overhead, at preternatural speed. He caught the first in midair by the throat, squeezing until he fell to the ground in two pieces. There was a skill to killing vampires and ensuring that they remained dead. As long as the head was severed there would be no healing. He needed to get them down, and he needed to get Penny away. He couldn’t get the sight of her broken body out of his mind. The distressing image distracted him for a split second, giving the enemy the upper hand.

He knew the second Cormac left them. Sometime during the fight, they had corralled him away from Penny blow after blow. Their tactics had been smooth and efficient. Unless he detached their heads completely they kept coming back at him, kept him busy so Cormac could snatch Penny, and make a break for it. Black would fight to hold the vampire off, but Cormac was stronger. He had to get the others down—permanently—and fast.

Black sent him the warning that Cormac was getting through his defenses. At top speed Lochlan ran in their direction the two vampires remaining, streaking after him. They landed on his back, moments after his teeth went sinking into Cormac’s shoulder. He dug his claws deep into the man’s side, and with all the energy he had, and the two men pounding and scratching at his back, Lochlan ran. Lochlan shook his head from side to side, his teeth still clamped into Cormac’s shoulder. His claws caused maximum damage as he did. The vampire’s scream of sheer agony echoed through the night.

He threw Cormac to the side. With his neck half severed, and this torso in bad shape, the man was almost in three pieces. Badly wounded, but in better shape, Lochlan knew the other two men would abandon their fight with him to help their leader. That they did, holding Cormac between them, keeping his pieces together as they took off into the night. Loss of blood made Lochlan too weak to stand. In seconds, he couldn’t see the men any longer. Despite his best efforts, he succumbed to the nothingness that swallowed him.

With a jolt, gasping for air, Lochlan woke up. Pain ricocheted through his skull when he tried to get up. He had lost too much blood to heal himself properly. To heal himself at all. With a hand over a particularly bad wound that left a gaping hole in his side, Lochlan made several attempts to get to his feet. It was a hard-won battle. His body, badly beaten, wanted to surrender but he couldn’t allow it. Penny needed him. She was vulnerable out in the open. To conserve the little energy he had, he had cut his link to Black. Lochlan had no idea if she was alive, and that made him anxious.

When Lochlan rounded the corner of a shed, holding the walls for support, he saw her. She saw him. He had not changed into human form as the pain would have been worse. And he hadn’t expected her to be conscious. With every step he took forward, she dragged herself in the dirt away from him, and his wolf. He could see the pain etched in her face. The sweat formed on her brow from the effort it took to move. He could also smell her fear. It left a sour taste in his mouth. This was not the way he wanted her to find out about what he was.

Penny’s head was ripping off, but she was sure she was seeing what she was seeing. She had only just had time to process waking up to a massive wolf standing over her - now this. A much, much larger version of the already unnaturally sized wolf and the new one was standing on two feet. If Penny could have felt her own two feet she would run. The first wolf, the one she had woken to, went to the second as it dropped to its knees. Penny was far past shock. Every movement she made to escape was accompanied by pain. It was more pain than she had ever felt in her life. More than she would have ever imagined possible. She tasted blood in her mouth. Felt her body going weak.

It had been the sounds that had jarred her awake. Horrible sounds. Like wild animals fighting. Men screaming, the sounds turning her blood to ice. Then that—creature. He had killed those men. No one was coming to help her. It was coming for her. It was coming, and there was nothing she could do. Lying there broken she was as good as dead. She could do nothing to hold back the tears burning hot in her eyes. Wet drops rolled unchecked down her swollen cheeks.

Penny thought she had passed her threshold for shock until the beast turned into a man. Her sobbing stopped as she stared at him. His body shifted, replacing his thick pelt of dark fur with skin. One hand was wrapped around his torso, the other holding up his body from going flat on the ground. The first wolf used its body as a lever to help the man from collapsing face-first into the dirt as his arm grew weak.

It—he looked up at her. Their eyes met and Penny felt a curious pull of familiarity. With his face covered in blood, all she could see were his eyes. At that moment, she forgot that she was horrified, and trying to flee for her life. Not that she really could. Half of her body felt twisted. Penny looked down at her legs, her attention more focused now on her situation. She was moving her legs, but looking at them she realized that they weren’t moving. It wasn’t that they were too weak to keep her weight under her so she could stand and make her escape, they just weren’t moving.

Panic swelled in her chest as she realized she was paralyzed. Fighting against the knowledge of this she tried harder to move. Her stomach roiled, and the ground pitched towards her, tilting away. A low, keening whimper had her looking towards the wolf pacing anxiously between her, and the man as if he was unsure where he should be. Any rational person would have screamed at the top of their lungs even if they knew there was probably no one there to hear them, but instead, she wanted to comfort the wolf. She was badly injured—paralyzed—in the middle of nowhere, seeing things she could not rationally explain, and that was her reaction. To comfort. Penny wanted to laugh.

“Penny.”

Startled, she looked from the wolf to the man. Covered in blood, he was trying to get to his feet. The most he could do was sit back on his knees swaying. He was a gruesome sight to see. How was he still alive? Because he was something else, not a man, she thought.

It was the eyes though that gave her pause. She recognized them. How could she not when she had been seeing them for weeks. When they haunted her whether she was asleep or awake. The brush of fur against her skin had her moving back causing pain to shoot through her entire body.

“Come to me, Penny.”

She wished she could. Because if she could do that, then she would be able to leave this place. Leave him, all she had seen, and all she had heard behind her.

“I—can’t.” Penny collapsed coughing, spitting blood onto the ground. Was this how she was going to die? She had faced death before but it had been nothing like this. It was becoming harder and harder for her to breathe. Penny was drowning in her blood.

“Penny.” She heard him but could not reply.

Lochlan shouted at her as he forced his body to move. Her heart stuttered, her breathing now hollow gasps. “Penny!” So close he was to her but he might as well have been miles away.