The Awesome by Eva Darrows Read Free Book Online Page B

thickest one in the middle split so wide I wondered if she needed stitches.
    “Oh my God. What happened?” I stared at the injury, feeling faint that the top part of the longest cut was less than an inch from her eye.
    “Werewolf. Help me clean it in a few? Not yet, though. Kinda want to sit around and eat Doritos with my daughter for a minute. Unless she’s going to be a bitch and pick a fight because she’s in a bad mood, in which case I’ll go eat Doritos in the kitchen and have a beer.”
    I twitched. She was right. This was the second person I’d taken my bad mood out on today, and she was the second person who didn’t deserve it. Well, Ian kind of did, but not totally. “Sorry. Point taken.”
    “Good. So what do you mean ‘tried’ to get laid. That sounds ominous.” She crunched on a Dorito and offered me the bag, like I wasn’t responsible for half of it being empty already.
    I waved her off. “Well, he got kinda in and then passed out so I dunno if it counts. I mean, it was flesh in flesh but... ya know. That was it.”
    “... how’d he...”
    “Drunk.”
    “Ouch. Sorry to hear it. That’s not on you, okay? Nothing to do with you.”
    I listened to her crunch on chips, thinking about Julie’s offer to go out tomorrow night and whether or not I wanted to take her up on it. The idea of a date with a guy who’d only be going out with me because of some sense of duty bugged me. He was still into his ex if he called me by her name, and that didn’t lend itself to happily-ever-after. I supposed I could go on the off chance that we’d get more alone time, and maybe he’d take care of the questionable state of my virginity, but did I want to put either of us through that again? He was Julie’s cousin and I liked Julie. I wanted her to like me the next time I talked to her.
    I must have looked miserable because Mom slung her arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “It happens. I’m sorry it happened to you. Look, I’ll cut you a deal. Let’s get my face cleaned up, and later when it gets dark, we’ll park up the street from Plasma. If someone comes sniffing around, we’ll know whether or not we can do a vamp job, okay?”
    Plasma was the local vamp bar, and vamp bars were loaded with fledgling bloodsuckers looking to show off their powers. For newbie fangers, it was a great place to get a snack and a lay. The old ones had too much dignity to be seen in such poorly-lit clichés. Their progeny, though, not so much. They flocked to them, dressed in their tight patent leather and fishnet shirts, calling their style ‘goth chic’ which translated to ‘poser douches.’ But, hey, truth in advertising for once. At least we knew where to go if we wanted a spaz-out for virgin blood.
    “That sounds awesome. Thanks, Mom.”
     
     
    A N HOUR LATER, I had my mother handcuffed to a kitchen chair, her ankles strapped to the legs with a pair of bungee cords. Her good cheek lay flat on the dining table, and she gripped a belt between her teeth in case. I’d positioned my body in such a way that, when necessary, I could lunge on top of her and hold her down.
    This was gonna blow.
    Injuries sustained while hunting were always bad news, but nothing was worse than monster claws or fangs because on top of the normal damage, they tainted the wound. It was better to be slammed upside the head by a monster holding a crowbar than it was to be directly attacked by them, or in the case of my mother, cut by them. It was like being hit with a hypodermic needle; whatever the monster had, you had now too, except instead of disease you got their curse. No, that didn’t mean Mom would grow furry—she’d have to be bitten on a full moon for that—but it did mean if we left the scrapes unattended, they’d fester and never close. It was worse with vampire wounds. If they DNA’d all over you, they could find you later, like their curse magically tagged you. That was a fast track way to having your insides become