Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [40]
I jogged out of the main gym and grabbed the phone just as it was about to go to voice mail. “Hello?”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
I slumped on the bench next to my gym bag, sweaty back and butt sticking to the wood. “Trevor.”
“Where have you been?”
Standing so that I didn’t get a cramp, I paced back and forth, swinging my free arm. “I was working.”
“You said you’d call me after my set was over.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember saying that. Although I did incur blunt-force trauma to my head a few hours ago…”
Trevor heaved a sigh on the other end of the line. I could hear a quiet burble of conversation in the background and knew he was probably in the Poe Bar, a hipster drinking joint he and the rest of the Exorcists used to unwind after their gigs. “Babe, this isn’t like you. Is there something you need to tell me?”
Just that my old boyfriend is back with his large-breasted new woman and I’m harboring homicidal desires toward them both. “No. Look, I’m sorry I forgot but I’m really tired. I had a bad night.”
“Yeah, listen,” he said. “The band got an invite to play a two-nighter in San Romita. It’ll be kinda dead because tourist season is almost over but the club owner has major connections on the East Coast.” He paused and I heard him sip something. “I’d like you to be there.”
My already-thumping heart went to warp speed at the mention of San Romita. I hadn’t set foot in my hometown for fifteen years, not since I’d gotten the bite. I still wasn’t sure if I was lucky or unlucky to have escaped a dead-end, off-season life with my nutso family and nonexistent future.
“Babe?” Trevor sounded impatient.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
Trevor gave a sharp sigh. “What do you mean? You never take any vacation time. You work twenty-four/seven. For forty-eight hours, you can’t take time out and support me for a change?”
The teeny logical part of my brain that hung on tenuously, no matter how damaged I got, pointed out that a few weeks of dating was hardly enough time to have the “You don’t support me” talk. The rest of it was screaming, No no NO!
“It’s not that. Honey.”
“Then what is it?” Trevor snapped.
The only way to tell him the truth would also tell him that I was a were. “I don’t expect you to understand, Trevor, but please believe that I just can’t.”
“Yeah, I believe that,” he said, the acid in his tone cutting through my panic to land on the wound Dmitri had opened. “You know what? You’re selfish. You take from me and you never manage to give anything back. You wonder why everyone in your life holds you at arm’s length? That’s why, Luna—because you never stop and consider anyone except yourself.”
I opened my mouth to start yelling, then snapped it shut again when unexpected tears brimmed in my eyes. He was so right it hurt me physically. I’d alienated Sunny because I didn’t think about her safety. I’d driven Dmitri to Irina because I demanded a sacrifice he couldn’t make.
“Listen … this is too intense for me right now. I’ll call you later,” said Trevor.
“Don’t bother,” I whispered, but he’d already hung up. I deliberately set the phone back in my gym bag and walked back to the main room, flexing my hands. The were filled my mind with cloying rage and frustration, always demanding a release. Always, every time I got angry or hurt or scared, that would come. The thing that hid in the dark places that were mine would always drive the people I loved away, if it didn’t drive me insane first.
And right now, it was hungry for satisfaction.
I walked in a straight line, picking up the pace as I angled for the heavy bag I’d been working, setting my arm and letting my momentum carry me through the left cross. A sound like a shotgun blast filled the gym and the bag snapped free of its hook, flying a good ten feet away from me under the impact of my full were strength.
Mort’s head snapped up from his paperback. “Jesus Christ, Wilder. A little decorum.” He took in the dismembered bag, insides oozing from where I’d hit it. “Jesus,” he said again.
“I’m so sorry!” I said reflexively, coming down from my rage-induced