*CHAPTER 8*
"You!" I ground out between my teeth. Everything came back to me in that moment, a dam of memory breaking. The fight. The yellow-eyed creatures. Fire. My car. My poor car. "You almost killed me!"
Malcolm had the audacity to smirk. To smirk! I'd never been a violent person, but at that moment I had the intense urge to smack that infuriating look off of his face. I leaned forward, not sure what I was planning to do. Fight him maybe. I'd never gotten into a fistfight before, but I was willing to give it a try against this guy who had destroyed my car. For poor Fergus.
I struggled to wrestle my way out of the blankets. The murderous look on my face must have tipped Malcolm off because he took a step toward the couch. With a single finger against my forehead, he pushed me back onto the cushion where I landed unceremoniously in a pile of pillows.
"Easy there," The smug smile on his face only made me angrier. This idiot had almost gotten me killed, set my car on fire, kidnapped me, and now he had the audacity to look arrogant about it. Angry tears threatened to spill over.
"Malcolm." The woman admonished.
He shrugged, "We all know she shouldn't be moving right now. She probably has a concussion."
Did I have a concussion? It definitely felt like it. Nausea rolled through me in waves from where I lay against the couch. Things weren't looking good for me right now. I didn't even know where I was. And there was no one who would even realize I was missing until the morning. These people were probably psychopaths—fire-shooting psychopaths. Hot, unbidden tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
"You burned up my car...you...you shot fire out of your hands. Now you've kidnapped me. Oh, God." I babbled, a hot tear escaped my eyes and trickled down my cheek and I rushed to brush it away. "Please, you can let me go, I don't have any money. And I don't think I'd sell for much money on the dark web--"
"Who in their right mind would want to kidnap you ?" Malcolm muttered under his breath, but I still heard him. It didn't do anything to alleviate the angry tears trickling from the corner of my eyes and down my cheeks.
"Malcolm, please tell me you didn't burn up this poor girl's car."
His silence said it all and the woman let out a long-suffering sigh.
She leaned forward, real regret twisting her face, "I'm so sorry. We'll try to explain everything to you. What's your name dear?"
I looked up into her face, brushing the tears away from my cheeks with the back of my hand. She was wearing a floral bathrobe, her brown hair in a messy bun on top of her head. She looked normal, her brown eyes flashing with what looked like real regret as she stared down at me.
"Kassie," I told her, throat scratchy and I cleared it gently, "Kassie Montgomery."
"I'm Jenna, and this is my husband, Richard," she gestured to the man with the glasses and the tweed coat. "And you already know our nephew, Malcolm."
On shaky arms, I managed to pull myself back up to a sitting position. I looked between Jenna and Richard, doing my best to ignore Malcolm where he stood beside the couch, arms crossed over his chest, "What happened?" I asked.
Richard cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses along the bridge of his nose, he looked like a stereotypical professor from any movie I'd ever seen, "You were in something of an accident earlier this evening."
An accident? The memory of that creature attacking me outside of my house sent a shudder running down my spine me.
"We'll explain everything to you. But first, we need to make sure you're okay," Jenna leaned down to pick up a black duffel bag, setting it in her lap. "I know I don't look it right now, but I'm a doctor," She reached into her bag, showing me her badge from work. I recognized the hospital name on her badge. It wasn't too far from where I lived.
"If it's alright with you, I just want to take a quick look at you to make sure we don't need to take you in." I swallowed hard and nodded. "Richard, can you go boil us some water for tea?"
She pulled a stethoscope from her bag, listening to my heartbeat before switching to checking my blood pressure.
Jenna pursed her lips, glancing up at me, "Any vision changes that you've noticed since you woke up?"
"It's fine."
While she worked, Malcolm had moved around the living room stripping out of his leather jacket, revealing a dusty black t-shirt beneath, before coming forward to lean against the fireplace, eyes bored, "You might want to check the back of her head, that's where she kept landing on it. She also has a pretty bad cut on her knee."
I glanced down in shock to see that he was right, my arms and knees were covered in scrapes from when I'd rolled around the driveway. The pain in my head had been bad enough that I hadn't noticed them.
"Can I take a look at the back of your head?" Jenna asked.
When I nodded, she pressed cool fingers pressed against the back of my skull, "Let me know if this hurts." I winced a little at the brush of her fingers as they grazed the place I'd connected with the concrete.
"Tender?" She asked.
"A little."
She nodded again, before reaching into her bag to pull out a small light. She went through the motions of flashing it in front of my eyes before pulling a container of pills from her black bag, "I have something you can take for your head. Just let me know if anything changes with your vision."
Jenna took her time dabbing at the wounds on my skin. Thankfully there was nothing that would need stitches. Just as she finished tucking her supplies back into her bag, Richard came through the arched doorway that must lead to the kitchen. He had a tray in hand with four mugs that he set on the coffee table between us.
"This is my special blend of herbs that I grow myself in the garden out back," Jenna explained kindly as she mixed up a mug for me, pouring in a little honey. "We're pretty big tea drinkers around here. It'll help you relax after the evening you had."
I was fairly certain the only thing that could calm me down at this point was a full-on bear tranquilizer, but I gratefully took the mug she offered me, anyway. The hot porcelain warmed my icy fingers, steam wafting up into my face as I took a small sip. The tea was unlike most of the teas we served at the cafe. Smooth and sweet. I couldn't tell what the herbs were, though I thought I smelled a little bit of lavender. It was delicious.
Somehow as the hot tea went down, I did feel my shoulders, which were tense to the point of being by my ears relax a notch. Taking deep breaths of the steam billowing into my face helped to slow my hammering heart rate to a dull thud.
Malcolm came around the back of the couch to lounge in the seat across from Jenna and me, taking the mug that Richard offered him. The white mug looked strange in his dirt-streaked hands. In the yellow light of the lamp, and through the dust and smoke marks on his face, the faint line of a scar cut through his left eyebrow.
Feeling the warmth from the mug seep into my fingers, I concentrated on that, as I asked, "That thing that attacked us earlier, it wasn't human...was it?"
Mug in hand, Richard turned to me, adjusting the glasses on his nose, his deep accented voice soothing. Calm. Like he was used to explaining things to people, "You're correct. The creature that attacked you earlier, we call them Rafkas, but most people might recognize them as wraiths or ghouls."