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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2016 13:59:33 GMT -8
Sheri left Stix that night, upset. Everything Alec and Victoria had said sounded insane, yet it made sense of a lot of the strange shit that had been happening to her since the attack, from how fast her body had healed to how acute her hearing and sense of smell now was. She even felt a little stronger, though she'd just attributed that to the fact that she'd fully recovered. Shaking her head, she released her hold on the wheel just long enough to swipe at her eyes with the back of one of her hands. She hadn't cried in front of them, but now that she was alone, the tears finally came.
That night would be a restless one for the redhead. The motel was cheap, but it was clean and comfortable, and given the cross-country drive she'd just come off of, sleep should have come easy, especially after a hot shower, but she just couldn't turn off all the thoughts that occupied her mind. She just laid there, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks, and when she did shut her eyes, all she could see was the shape of the creature that had come at her that night in the swamp. It had been dark and she'd hardly been able to see straight, but to this very day she believed she encountered a wolf. That they all had. What else could have torn two grown men to shreds like that?
By 6am, Sheri gave up. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but a tank top and panties, staring down at the napkin in her hand. It was crumpled now, but the phone number Alec had penned across it was still legible, and she just kept looking at it, all the while wondering what she should do. Beside her, on the nightstand, was her cell phone, and that's exactly where it would stay for another two-plus hours before she was picking it up. Despite the fact she dialed, it would take her a good four or five tries until she found the courage to hold it firmly to her ear and even then she was shutting her eyes and holding her breath as it continued to ring...
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 8, 2016 16:48:05 GMT -8
TC was up and clearing deadfall. The sound of the chainsaw drown out the sound of his phone, but by the time he took a break, Sheri would have been on try four. He picked up the phone, only to have it stop ringing. The number wasn't recognized, so he blew it and the previous three tries off as misdials. He dropped the phone to the seat of the Jeep and moved to the water cooler to pour himself a cup of water, which he downed swiftly only to refill it.
He was just setting the cup upside down on top of the water cooler, when the phone rang again. Picking it up, he took the call with a gruff, "Yo."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2016 18:48:07 GMT -8
Sheri hadn't realized she was holding her breath until she heard his voice and tried to speak.
"Hi," she said suddenly, like the gust of air from her lungs had shoved the word past her lips.
Panic settled in soon after, building in her chest because she honestly had no idea where to go from there. She hadn't rehearsed any of it -- then again, that wasn't Sheri's style. She was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kinda gal, but that was when someone wasn't apt to think she was batshit crazy. Seconds ticked by and she squeezed her eyes shut, knowing she had to say something before her silence led the guy to think they'd been disconnected or something.
"I got your number from Alec," she said, praying silently to a god she wasn't sure even existed that he knew who she was talking about. "I met him and this woman...Victoria. We got to talking last night and they kept saying I should call you."
That's right, Sheri. Make them sound like the crazy ones. Just in case.
Rising from the edge of the bed, the willowy redhead padded across the worn carpeting over to the small fridge and opened the door, hoping to find some small liquor bottles (liquid courage!) like you would in the fancier hotels, but it was empty and the light didn't even go on, suggesting that it was out of order. It figured. With a scowl, Sheri straightened and lightly kicked the door shut with her foot.
Pacing the foot of her bed, back and forth, she said, "Victoria said I was..." Infected.
She couldn't bring herself to say it. She laughed instead, the soft, nervous kind that said she knew what she was about to say was nuts and that she needed another approach, hence why she paused, pulled herself together with a deep breath and said instead, "They said you know about wolves."
There! She'd done it. Sorta. With that, she not only shut up, but she literally stopped in her tracks, just standing there in silence, holding her breath yet again with her heart hammering in her chest as she waited for him to respond.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 8, 2016 19:05:41 GMT -8
TC listened to the woman on the other end, and knew just how difficult it had to be for the woman. He'd seen it before. "Sheri, right?" Putting his feet into motion, he plucked up the chain saw on his way by and headed for the shed to put it away.
"I'm going to pick you up. We've got work to do." No, he wasn't going to have her chopping and stacking work, but he was going to have to help her through the transition, so that when the moon rose full later in the month, she'd be ready.
"Where are you at?" TC put the chainsaw away and closed up the shed, before he headed back for the jeep, his shirt plucked up from the back of the seat where he'd draped it and slid his arms into the sleeves before he climbed into the Willys and cranked the engine over. Putting it into gear, he rolled down the drive and toward the highway as he listened for the answer as to where he was picking her up.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2016 20:41:57 GMT -8
It was indeed difficult for her, more so because she was having a hard time believing it all, but when he said her name Sheri couldn't deny the wave of relief that washed over her, nor the worry that crept in when he said he was going to pick her up.
"Yeah," she said, still sounding nervous as she combed her fingers through her hair. "Sheri Meadows."
As for where she was located, she struggled with it, unsure of what to tell him. "I...uh..." She looked around the room she was currently calling home. It wasn't that she was ashamed of it -- the place wasn't really that bad, but after what happened to her, she was a bit gun shy when it came to strangers, and with good reason. A reason she would eventually have to share with him if they were ever going to come to an understanding.
"I'm staying at..."
She didn't know why, but she decided to go against her better judgement and put her trust in TC. She didn't know him beyond what two other strangers told her -- to her he was nothing more than a name and a voice, but right now he was all she had and according to everyone she came across, if they were correct, she was quickly running out of time. It was why she let him know the location of her motel and told him that she'd be waiting for him.
Soon as they hung up, she tossed her phone on the bed and disappeared into the bathroom for what would be the quickest shower of her life, all the while wondering what he'd meant when he said they had work to do as well as hoping all of this didn't turn out to be another nightmarish mistake.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 8, 2016 21:37:11 GMT -8
TC hadn't bothered with a shower, so when he arrived, he was still covered in sawdust from the chainsaw, that had clung to him, thanks to the sweat which had now dried. His skin itched, but that wasn't important. The girl was newly turned, and had to be taken under wing, so to speak.
TC's one concession to grooming was to run a hand through his hair before he knocked on the door. It was hindsight that had him dusting the sawdust off and buttoning his shirt up. He then lifted an arm to give his pit a whiff, but it was too late to do anything about that now. The odor of sweat and fresh cut wood clung to him, as well as sagebrush and greasewood that underlie everything else.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2016 23:06:09 GMT -8
While he was dusting off and buttoning up his shirt, Sheri was pulling hers over her head. It was a black cotton T-shirt and when she opened the door for him (after stealing a peek at him through the peep hole and hesitating because she had no idea if she was doing the right thing), she was tugging it down over the faded blue jeans she wore.
"Hey," she said, offering him a small, seemingly shy, smile in greeting.
Sheri typically wasn't a timid person -- far from it, in fact, but she also wasn't accustomed to meeting strangers at her motel room, either. Having just gotten out of the shower, her hair was still damp, but it was wavy and would remain that way since she was letting it dry naturally. She was sweeping it out from inside her shirt as they stood there, face to face for the first time, and she couldn't help but feel a little foolish.
"This is crazy, isn't it?" She asked it as if she expected him to agree with her.
Shaking her head, she briefly dropped those baby blues to the ground between them as her fingers tightened on the door, almost as if she was considering closing it. It had nothing to do with TC, though. Honestly, he wasn't at all what she expected. Then again, Sheri didn't really know what to expect when it came to werewolves. After all, she was supposedly one now, wasn't she? And he was one, too.
That thought had her lifting her gaze again, studying him a bit more closely this time around and if she'd known he was worried about the way he looked or smelled, she would have put those concerns to rest right there and then. The man was as easy on the eyes as they came and while Sheri had yet to learn about the scents associated with shifters, there was nothing about his that she found repulsive. The situation as a whole was just surreal. Though she knew she hadn't slept a wink all night, Sheri looked back to the bed, half expecting to see herself in it, out like a light, which would mean this was all a really bad dream, but her bed was as empty as it was when she left it.
"I just need to throw on my shoes and grab my bag. Will only take me a minute." She broke her silence before it became awkward. Well, anymore than it already was, at least.
"Want to wait out here, or...?" And with that, instead of closing the door on him, she opened it wider, stepping back to let him in if that's what he wished. It should have spoken volumes about the woman who clearly didn't know what she was dealing with, yet decided to let him into her life, the same way him showing up at the drop of a hat said plenty about him.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 9, 2016 2:19:12 GMT -8
TC watched her as she studied him, and he gave her that languid smile. "I'll wait out here, Freckles." TC paused and moved to lean against the doorframe, taking a moment to light up a cigarette. "Make sure you check under the bed. It's the number one spot to lose things in a motel."
God knew he'd seen a good many of them. In fact he'd spent the majority of his adult life in one dive motel or another. He would have still been living out of them, were it not for his windfall after crossing the state line from Oregon to Washington. It hadn't made him rich but it had allowed him to live comfortable and actually stay in one place. Not that he still didn't long for the open road, because face it, he did, all too often, but he'd taken on a responsibility that no one else seemed to have the mettle to stick with, and he wasn't going to pull up stakes and leave as so many others had.
Taking a last drag from the smoke, he crushed it out on the sole of his boot and then tossed the butt into the nearest trash can before glancing over his shoulder into the room. "How ya doing there, Freckles?"
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2016 9:46:56 GMT -8
That smile...those dimples...yeah, he definitely wasn't what Sheri expected. Unless this was what they meant when they warned of wolves in sheep's clothing. Goddamn. When TC chose to wait outside, she seemed okay with that. More than, in fact. It made her feel better about the whole meeting in general and whether or not either of them realized it at the time, it earned him more of her trust. She also didn't seem to mind his nickname for her, though one might wonder if it had more to do with the man versus the measure of comfort in said freckled skin. Maybe it was a little of both.
"That's usually where my cell phone ends up," she said, calling out to him as she turned on a heel to finish dressing and collect the rest of her things. Under the bed, she meant. She didn't know how or why, but it just did. Probably had something to do with the way she just tossed the damn thing around, like it was made of rubber or something. It usually bounced off the mattress, slid across the floor, and voila! Like TC, Sheri had seen her fair share of motels like these. On her own since she was sixteen, she'd moved around a lot and hadn't set down anything resembling roots until three years ago when she found herself in New Orleans. They didn't run deep, though -- her lease was monthly and there were no real relationships to speak of save for a handful of friends that knew the redhead to be a free spirit, none of which would question her absence for very long when the recent turn of events had her packing up a duffel bag and tossing it into her pickup with no real plans of where to go except to see the Pacific.
"Fine." It was her response to him asking how she was doing, but when he peeked into the room, he'd find she really wasn't.
Sheri had hoisted the straps of her bag over a shoulder and was about to head out when she stopped and looked all around, like maybe she lost something. Her mind, perhaps?
"I swear, this thing feels lighter than it used to." Yes, it sounded crazy, but that was par for the course lately. Besides, she said it more to herself than him, obviously bemused because she didn't realize she was getting stronger. In her mind, she just thought she maybe forgot to pack something, but the room wasn't that large and there wasn't anything left of her in it with the exception of herself and what little she was carrying.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 9, 2016 15:01:35 GMT -8
"You're stronger than you used to be. Faster. More agile. Better senses." He shrugged. "Comes with the territory." Pushing from his lean, TC headed for the lot, and that Willys parked there. Pausing, he looked back at her. "You can ride with me or follow if you got your own wheels. I wouldn't leave them here, there likely wouldn't be much left when you get back." Between the possibility of being towed and impounded, and the more likely option of it being stripped down to the chassis... TC didn't leave anything, anywhere unless he was willing to lose it.
"So you got wheels, Freckles?"
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2016 16:20:37 GMT -8
That wasn't necessarily what she wanted to hear and Sheri grunted low, giving him a look that said just as much before dropping the aviator style sunglasses that had been sitting atop her head, holding her hair back, down over her eyes. While some people wished for super-human strength, all the news meant to her was that -- and we're quoting Alec here -- shit was getting more real by the second. Of course, she wasn't angry with him. She was just angry, in general. She was moodier lately and while she attributed it to the attack, it ran deeper than that, and over the course of time (as in, the closer they got to the full moon) it would put her usual PMS to shame.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think I was still laying in the swamp somewhere, unconscious." Or worse. She could have died and this could be hell, after all. Though the words were muttered low under her breath as she closed the motel door behind her, he'd be able to hear her without any problem and perhaps it would give the man a little insight into what happened to her.
When he asked if she had wheels, she nodded, lifting a free hand to point at the all black lifted Chevy pickup that was parked a few stalls down in the lot. For a vehicle that was thirty years old, it was in pretty good condition, though Sheri was almost certain it would need a tune up after the trek she'd just put it through.
"She ain't much to look at, but she's mine," she said with some semblance of pride. It was the one thing in the world the redhead owned outright and had literally worked for rather than obtaining it in some underhanded fashion, like hustling someone for the pink slip.
"Okay," she said when he suggested she follow him. "But first we need to make a pit stop." She was talking to him while opening the passenger door of the truck, tossing her purse and sweater onto the seat and then hefting the black duffel bag onto the floor in front of it. Only when she shut the door with a resounding slam, would she turn around to face him again and finish what she was saying. "I need coffee." Like it was a matter of life or death. Who lived or died all depended on his answer.
"Unless there's some wherever we're going?" She stood there, hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans with her head tipped to the side as she looked at him from behind the tinted lenses she wore. Up until now she'd been running solely on blind faith, not really asking any questions, but this had been the perfect segue and now she was waiting for him to tell her where they were going.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 9, 2016 20:16:46 GMT -8
It was insightful, and TC took it all in as he followed her down to the lot and her truck. His gaze flicked around the area, and then he gestured to the coffee shop across the street. "Reckon we'd better make that pit stop, because it's a good two hours from here to my place." He looked back at her as he spoke, and then he was heading for the street.
"And no, you're not still laying out in the swamp, unconscious." He didn't say it any louder than she had spoken the words that precipitated his own comment, TC had no doubt that she would hear him. Checking traffic, he crossed the street and made his way to the café, pulling the door open and holding it for her as he glanced back at her.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2016 23:13:40 GMT -8
"Wow. Two hours." He wasn't the only one taking things in. Sheri nodded, noting that they were headed to his place and how far away it was from the city.
"So, do you like..." She paused, trying to think of the best way to phrase it. "...live in the middle of nowhere?" She was trying her best to sound nonchalant about it all, not wanting to let on that it unnerved her a little. Okay, more than a little. A lot.
As hot as he might be and no matter how nice, it still didn't change the fact that one, he was male, and two, he was a stranger to her. That alone was enough to put her off, but if he could really change into a wolf, how could she be certain he wasn't going to go all fang and fur on her when they were alone in the wilderness? It was why she was watching him like a hawk right now, trying to get a read on him, watching his every reaction to her questions, looking for some sort of a clue as to what she should do.
When he started moving toward the cafe, she followed. Being a couple feet behind him as she was, Sheri never would have thought she'd hear him as clearly as she did when he assured her she wasn't still passed out in the Louisiana swamp, but she heard every word and it gave her more than one reason to pause. First, she was slowly coming to realize he really wasn't shitting her, and second, she needed to explain. But how? And when?
Those were the questions she was pondering as she came up on him. He was standing there, holding the door open for her, and when she passed, she offered him a soft word of thanks. Once inside, she peeled the glasses off her face and perched them atop her head the same way she always did, allowing her to see the menu that hung above the counter they were moving towards. If they really had that long of a trip ahead of them, she may as well as order some breakfast to go with her coffee -- something simple that she could eat on the road, like a burrito. And what about him?
"Want something?" she asked, looking over a shoulder at him.
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Post by TC Beckwith on Jun 10, 2016 4:46:07 GMT -8
"Oh hell yeah." He nodded to the wanting something as he followed her to the counter. TC settled onto one of the stools, glanced at the menu, and then smiled at the waitress. "Coffee, four eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon, sausage and ham, with toast, and a side of biscuits and gravy." He glanced to Freckles as he waited for her to give her order. Once Sheri'd given her order and the coffee was set before them with the waitress having gone on about her business elsewhere, TC looked back at Freckles, a sip of his coffee taken, before he spoke.
"Werewolves and werewolf lore has been kicking around since the middle ages." TC glanced around, making certain as he spoke low that no one was paying them any undue attention, before he looked back at Freckles and continued. "Started in Europe and came over with the pilgrims, when the colonies were settled. There was widespread belief that lycanthropy and witchcraft were tied together. Who knows, maybe some crazy, pissed off witch cursed some asshole that did her wrong." He shrugged. "Bottom line is, it's better that the further you stay from people on the moon, the better. Which is why I live in the sticks. Got a place up in the mountains, we all meet at for the shift."
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2016 11:50:04 GMT -8
Sliding up onto a stool, Sheri waited for him to order before placing hers. Seeing as he was in no rush to get on the road like she originally thought, she changed her mind regarding the burrito and went with steak and eggs, instead. With it, she requested hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and, of course, the coffee she'd been craving since she crawled out of bed.
"I've never been much of a breakfast person, but that sounded really good," she said as the waitress walked away. "Going to need to join a gym at this rate," she added with a snicker. Normally, Sheri would just have beignets and chicory coffee for breakfast, but as of late, she'd been waking up really hungry and seeking out meals with more substance. Hell, she even found herself hungrier at various throughout the day, hence how she ended up at Stix.
Speaking of which...
"So...Alec and Victoria are..." Sheri couldn't bring herself to say it. Not out here in public. But it would explain how they knew what she was, though if that was the case, why hadn't Sheri's radar picked up on them? Or even TC for that matter? Was it because she just wasn't in tune with it yet?
"Like us?" She looked around like she expected all eyes to be on them, but the truth of the matter was no one was really paying them much attention, save for the woman who set their coffee down in front of them. It gave the redhead something to do as they talked. She'd been listening to him explain the history of their kind and how it came to be that he lived so far out, and she found that it actually made sense.
"Probably why the one that bit me was way out in the middle of nowhere," she said quietly while tearing the tops off twin packs of sugar. She poured them both into the steaming mug of coffee at the same time, stirring the contents, before adding a few creamers as well. The silence that fell between them then suggested the redhead to his left knew she'd opened up a can of worms with that statement and was now contemplating spilling them completely. After casting him a few sideways glances, she drew in a breath and stared down into her drink, speaking as quietly as she could without whispering.
"I honestly don't know why the thing didn't kill me the same way it did the other two." It was something she wondered about ever since she picked herself up and saw what became of the two men. "Not that they didn't deserve it," she grumbled, obviously still angry, with them as well as herself for getting herself in this mess to begin with.
Picking up the mug, she took a small drink from it before holding it there in the air between both hands. Her elbows were on the counter, supporting her weight as she leaned forward on them. After another quick glance around, she said, "They were two guys I met at a bar. We played pool. I won. They weren't happy about it." While it was an explanation, it was the condensed version and it would be up to TC to either read between the lines or ask Sheri any questions he might still have.
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