Scratch That: by Judy Colella (most read books in the world of all time .txt) 📕

Her cell phone began making electronic music sounds.

“Shut up!” She wanted to slide all the way under the water, but couldn’t because of the bandages.

Bap-bapbap-bapity-baahhh!

Someone really needed to talk to whoever had come up with some of those stupid ring-tones, an irrelevant brain sector noted.

“What the hell.” She rose from the water, shaking, trying not to cry, and grabbed the towel she’d tossed on the toilet seat – at least she’d remembered to close the lid. Wrapped but still dripping, she sprinted into the bedroom and grabbed the phone from her purse at the same time it stopped making its annoying alert.

“Of course!” She checked the screen – the caller had been her old, dear friend Anonymous Caller. “I hate you,” she grated at the device.

Finishing her bath seemed futile at this point; by now the water would have gone from lovely-warm to tepid-yuk, so she dried off and got dressed again, choosing a loose-fitting shift dress instead of more confining jeans and a tee shirt.

The doorbell rang. She jumped, startled for some reason she couldn’t explain, and went out to the front hall.

“Who is it?” The landlord had promised to install one of those peep-hole things, but then, he’d also promised to fix the leak in the kitchen sink, the rattle in the air-conditioning unit, her dishwasher, the cracked window in the living room…

“Hey, Deva, it’s me.”

Me. Everyone was “me.” This “me” didn’t sound like a “me” she knew, didn’t have a “me” voice she recognized. “Right. Me Who?”

Silence.

Since she was still holding her phone, she raised it, planning to call 9-1-1.

But then – “I can’t believe you asked that! I mean, it’s only been three days since we talked and you’ve already forgotten me? Hell, sweetheart, we’ve been dating for almost two months now!”

Vector. Yeah, not Victor, Vector. He should have been an engineer or pilot with a name like that. Maybe a rocket scientist. Instead, he was a musician – a bass player – in a local rock band. If he hadn’t been so talented and so – so – sexy, she would have snorted derisively in his face when he’d asked her out. Never mind that she had been in the front row at their concert that night, waving her arms and woo-wooing with everyone else. She knew he’d seen her almost as soon as they’d come out on stage, and had directed his attention at her exclusively throughout the entire performance. When the show ended, he’d come to the edge of the stage, crouched down and beckoned to her with one hand. When she was close enough, he’d said, “Have dinner with me, please?” She’d liked the fact that he hadn’t asked her if she came there often, or if she knew how beautiful she was, or used one of the zillions of other clichés from “Pick-Up Lines For Cute Broads,” that unwritten pamphlet that most guys had somehow memorized. So she’d agreed, met him backstage, and that had been the start. So far, their relationship had been odd but not unpleasant.

“Hey, sorry.” She unlocked the door and opened it, her look not as apologetic as her words had implied.

“May I come in?”

He even had decent grammar. “Of course.”

She stepped back, registering his scent as he passed her. Not, she realized with a horrified start a moment later, his cologne (he didn’t wear any) or soap or deodorant. His scent. That freshly-brewed testosterone aroma that was suddenly making her tingle. How come she’d never noticed it before?

“Something wrong?”

She gave herself a mental shake as she realized she’d been staring, open-mouthed, at him. “Er, no. No, nothing. You, er, I was about to make myself some lunch. Hungry?”

A tiny crease appeared between his dark brows. “What happened to your shoulder? Did you know it was bleeding?”

“What?! Aw, hell, I forgot the medicine.” She rushed into the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets, removing a glass that she filled at the dripping sink. “I hate this.” Ignoring Vector’s large presence behind her, she sprinted for the bathroom to get her pills, gulped one down followed by a long swig of water, and turned.

He was standing in her personal space, arms crossed, giving her a questioning look.

“Oh. My shoulder.” She bit her lip. “Yeah, well, I got attacked by a wolf the other evening.”

“A wolf.” He nodded and took a step back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What could you have done?”

“I don’t know – driven you to the hospital, maybe? Comforted you?”

“Com- what? I didn’t need comfort, Vec, I needed stitches. Stitches and a strong drink.”

“Okay, so I could have driven you to the hospital, then taken you to a bar.”

“How romantic.” She stepped around him and went back out to the living room.

“Hey.”

He was right behind her again. She flounced down onto the sofa, feeling a major snit coming on. “Hey, what.”

He sat next to her. “How come, if this happened a few days ago, it’s still bleeding?”

“Because it is.” The last thing she wanted was a discussion that might lead to one of them mentioning werewolves. Too bad barracudas or octopi weren’t involved. That, at least, would have made sense. Sort of. Except for the snarling-clawed-clad cephalopod part.

“Well, gee, aren’t you perky today!”

“Um, ‘perky’? How about a perky jab in the eye? I’m freaked out, Vector, okay? No one knows why it won’t heal, and I’m so not happy about any of this!”

“I can see that.” He touched her face with one finger, his eyes softening. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt a whole lot?”

“No. In fact, it doesn’t hurt at all, which is just as bizarre as everything else about it.”

“What do you mean, bizarre?”

Uh-oh. “Yeah, um, well, like the fact that the wolf didn’t freakin’ kill me – that’s pretty bizarre, wouldn’t you say?”

“So, what, it just bit you and left?”

“Scratched, not bit.”

“You sure it was a wolf and not some kind of cat?”

“Not a cat, Vec. Not a Jerry Springer guest, or a random roll of barbed wire flying through the park, either. I was there, remember? It was a wolf. A really huge, growly, in-your-face wolf!” She was almost yelling by the end of the sentence, causing Vector to slide back a few inches toward the other end of the sofa. “And the bastard scratched me!!”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “A wolf. Bizarre. Got it.”

“And if you say anything about werewolves, I’ll hurt you.”

“Of course I won’t. Why would – woah! You think it was a werewolf?!”

“No!”

“That would explain it.”

“No, no, no!”

“The not healing and all. Hmm.”

“Vector Smythe, it – ” (yeah, his last name wasn’t very normal, either) “ – wasn’t a bleeping werewolf!” She picked up a convenient sofa cushion and bapped him over the head with it.

“Hey! You’re the one who brought it up!”

“So of course, you had to run with it!” She hit him again.

“Stop that! I’m just – ow!” He stood up, clearly tired of being shock-and-awed by furniture accessories. “You need help, Deva, and I don’t mean – ow!”

She stood, too, pillow cocked and ready. “You have no idea,” she grated. Then, without warning or any semblance of sanity, she whacked herself in the face with the pillow, sat down again, and burst into tears.

Vector pried the pillow out of her grasp, tossing it across the room, and put an arm around her. “Aw, hon, it’s okay.” He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll figure it out together, all right?”

She turned toward him, burying her face in his shirt, and cried harder. He held her a little tighter. “Looks like you might be suffering from a delayed reaction to the attack,” he murmured, and said nothing more until she stopped sobbing, had taken a deep, shaky breath, and relaxed a little. But then he moved away from her again and gave her a weird look. “Did you just lick me?”

“Huh?” She lifted her face, confused.

Vector pointed at his front with his free hand. She had unbuttoned his shirt somehow and his smooth chest gleamed with moisture. “You licked me.”

“Oh.” She brought her gaze to where he pointed, and giggled. “Sorry. You taste good.”

“Hmm. I’m thinking this might be the beginning of something more stimulating than a discussion of fantasy creatures.” He smiled and kissed her again – not on the head.

Which would have been quite lovely, and under normal circumstances could have ended with a highly satisfying afternoon of intimacy, had she not suddenly bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood.

“Aaahhh! What the – ” He jumped up, putting a hand to his mouth. “I’m bleeding! And why are you smiling at me like that? Deva, what the hell is wrong with you?!”

She stood slowly, her movements almost sinuous; in a deep, husky voice she said, “You look good enough to eat, Vec,” and licked his blood off her own lips with the tip of her tongue.

“E – excuse me a mo-moment…” Before she could react, he was out the door, slamming it shut behind him, the thunder of his panicked run fading as he did an Elvis.

“Damn,” said Deva, feeling detached and a bit floaty. “Now I’ll have to make a stupid sandwich instead.”

The words, “Save a human – eat a vampire” glided through her mind, and she burst out laughing. “As if there were any such things as vampires! Ha!” She pulled a raw steak from the refrigerator, sliced it, put the slices between two pieces of rye bread, took a bite, threw the bread away, and tore into the red, uncooked, juicy meat with her teeth.

When she was done, she sat back, satisfied, telling herself it didn’t get any better than that. At least, not until she could enjoy a fresh kill……

Mack had been staring at his e-calendar for so long he was no longer seeing it. He’d been checking for full-moon info, but his mind had drifted and now, ten minutes later, he still hadn’t moved, had hardly blinked.

What had happened to that luscious chick his band-mate was seeing? Would the scratch thing have worked by now? Would it work at all? He really should have bitten her instead. Ah, so many questions, so few answers, so little sanity.

His full name was Matthew McCoy, but when he’d signed on as drummer for The Empty Wallets, they’d given him a stupid nickname – Mackie-Mack. He’d told them that if anyone ever called him that to his face, there would be bloodshed. So they’d settled on “Mack,” and left the nickname usage up to their promoter-slash-manager. No one cared too much if he experienced drumstick wrath, especially since the gigs he’d been finding them lately had been lame.

Of course, Mack wasn’t the only victim of this cruel habit of assigning idiotic stage names – the current object of his intense jealousy already had laughable one, but was that enough in this business? Oh, no, they had actually needed to make it even worse – accordingly, poor Vector Smythe had been reduced to Vecto Vicious. Murder had narrowly been averted that day.

Then there was the lead guitarist, Mike Standish. For reasons only the promoter and an obscure god or two understood, he was renamed “Lovefingers” Mike. Lucky for the promoter, Mike had been out of town at the time, and didn’t find out until the band was