Read Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) for Free Online Page B

back and forth motion when I saw what he was carrying.  I arched an eyebrow and he held the laptop out to me.  Wary, but more than a little curious, I took it from him and sat down in the chair he’d abandoned.
    “ Just push play,” he instructed me softly.  “I believe this will help you to understand better than I could.  Afterwards, I will try to explain.”
    Yeah, that didn’t sound good, did it?
    I had to force my shaking fingers to open it—and even then I lifted the top so slowly you would have thought the demons of Hell were waiting to jump out and get me.
    After pushing play, I decided that wasn’t so far off the mark.
    “Okay, this is kind of creepy,” I whispered with a shudder as the very room I was sitting in came into focus on the screen. 
    The scene itself didn’t look all that bad—at first.  I was sitting at the end of the bed, apparently staring at the wall.  That wasn’t what sent shivers of dread down my spine, though.  It was the look on my face.  There was no emotion at all.  It was like all that was there was a shell that resembled me.  An empty shell. 
    Until I heard a door open and close, that is.
    That’s when the real creepy factor set in.
    “Em?  Are you okay?” Nathan asked as he moved into camera range.
    “I’m cold,” the shell said, a weird little smirk turning up her lips. 
    “I know you are.” 
    Nathan walked a few steps closer and I saw the shell thing take a deep breath.  Her smile got a little wider, a little scarier, just before she dropped her head.  The fire red curls I’m famous for fell forward to cover her face, keeping me from seeing her expression any longer.
    “I need to give you a shot, Em,” Nathan said softly as he moved closer.  “It’ll make you feel better.  I promise.”
    I wanted to scream at him to run.  Seriously, couldn’t he see that thing wasn’t me?!  Sure, she looked like me, but he had to be able to see the difference, right?  Whatever that thing was, it was dangerous! 
    I wanted to look away when the thing lifted my head again, but I was frozen in place, my gaze fastened on the thing’s eyes.  They were glowing!  Like, glowing !  My pretty blue eyes, always my best feature, had turned into ice-blue orbs that were lit up like a couple of LED lights.  The smirk was no longer a smirk, but a sinister smile that would have stopped my heart if I’d still had a heartbeat to stop. 
    I had never seen anything so blatantly evil in my whole life.  I slammed the laptop closed, unable to watch, just as it launched itself at Nathan, snarling like a wild animal. 
    “He’s all right,” Tyler said, answering the question I hadn’t been able to ask myself.  “It was close, but I was able to restrain you before you fed.”
    “Before I fed, ” I repeated in a horrified whisper.
    Fed.  Though Tyler must have said the word a hundred times in the last couple of hours, I guess it really hadn’t hit home what he was trying to tell me.  Suddenly though, I was getting the message loud and clear.
    Humans ate . 
    Monsters fed.
    It wasn’t me, I tried to tell myself.  It wasn’t.  I would remember.  It was somebody else.  It was some thing else.  I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.  I don’t.
    But if that was true, why did I feel so awful?
    Tyler barely flinched when I picked up the laptop and flung it across the room, but the impressive thud it made when it hit the wall wasn’t enough to represent the pain and anger eating at me.  I wanted to scream myself hoarse and then start all over again.  I wanted to rampage through the room, breaking everything in sight, until it resembled the shattered, desolate thing I’d become.  But, more than anything, I didn’t want to feel any of that. 
    I didn’t want to feel anymore, period.  
    “I can’t do this,” I whispered, another dry sob lodging in my chest.  “I can’t, Ty.  I’ll screw up, I always do.”
    “Em, look at me,” Tyler said softly,