Chapter 68: 6

Tyler was driving through the streets thinking about the informant he had just spoken with when he spotted a car that looked suspiciously like Aster’s. Hoping he was wrong, he pulled into the parking lot and blocked the car in question from being able to back out. Using his onboard computer, he ran the plates, and he shook his head when Aster’s registry information popped up on the screen. He was ticked off. She was drinking again and was going to drive her car home after she promised him she would not.

Tyler called for a tow truck, and when it arrived fifteen minutes later, he gave the driver Aster’s address and had the driver take it to her place. He then called a buddy of his who worked in traffic. He had the night off, so Tyler asked him to head out to Aster’s place and put a boot on her car. He would save her the impound fees and the jail time, but he was going to make that girl earn her vehicle back.

Once her vehicle was dealt with, he got out of his car and headed into the bar. It was like any bar; dark and a little dingy. Aster was sitting at the bar with some fat biker hitting on her. She was doing her best to deflect his clumsy advances, but the man didn’t get the hint. Tyler might have intervened if he had not known for a fact that Aster of all people did not need his help. She could easily tear this drunk to ribbons if he annoyed her enough.

Tyler walked up to the bar next to her. “So much for your word.”

Aster turned her attention away from the drunk hitting on her to see Tyler. “Fuck.” She groaned. “I only came in for one drink.” She said. Tyler looked at the bartender, who held up nine fingers, telling him her words were yet one more lie. “Rat.” She hissed at the bartender.

“You promised me you weren’t going to drink anymore.”

“You know it doesn’t matter what you think. You are not my boyfriend, you are not my father, and you are not my keeper.” She said, picking up her drink once more.

Tyler took the drink from her hand, preventing her from finishing it. “Dude, the lady told you to fuck off.”

The biker growled. And Tyler flashed first his badge and then his gun. The biker put up his hands and backed off. “Right, none of my damn business. The girl is all yours, bro.” He turned and walked away.

“I got to get me one of those.” Aster chuckled.

“I might not be your keeper, but I am the law, and you will show me respect,” Tyler growled.

“When did I not show you respect?” She growled.

“When you looked me in the eye and lied to me.” She had no reply. “Give me one good reason why I should not just arrest you and let you do jail time?” He challenged her.

Aster smiled flirtatiously and leaned in so close she could almost kiss him. “Because it would be awfully difficult for you to screw me through the bars of a jail cell.” She purred.

“I am not joking.”

“Neither am I.”

“That’s it.” He growled, grabbing Aster by the bicep and forcing her to get off her barstool. “I am taking you home. Are you going to come willingly, or do I have to put the handcuffs on?”

“Kicky, Detective.” She made a sexy growl as she pressed against him.

“That’s your hormones and the booze talking. I’m just taking you home, and then I am going to put you to bed.” He said, walking her out of the bar to his car. Tyler opened the back door and urged her to get in.

“I’ve never done it in the backseat of a cop car.” She said, flipping her tongue over his earlobe.

“And you aren’t going tonight.” He urged her to sit back and then shut the door. God damn, the woman was going to drive him to drink.

Tyler drove out to Feral. On the trip, he called into the station and explained he had a personal emergency and would need the rest of the night off. His supervisor was not impressed. By the time he reached Aster’s house, she had passed out. He searched her four keys and then took her inside and put her to bed. He then grabbed an extra blanket and went to sleep on the couch. He was going to have it out with Aster in the morning when her head was clear of alcohol.

***

Aster twitched in bed; her sleep restless. A sound startled her awake. She opened her eyes and looked around the darkness of her bedroom. Slowly she sat up. She couldn’t help but feel she wasn’t alone.

That was when she noticed the shadowy figure in the corner by the open window. The thing white curtain flapping ever so slightly from the breeze coming in. the shadowy figure standing ominously just behind the sheer fabric of the curtain.

Aster tried to get up out of bed, but she couldn’t. It was as if she were invisibly tethered to her bed. The eyes of the figure lit up a bright amber, and Aster’s fear grew. She could smell her mother’s perfume wafting on the breeze. A second later, the figure shot across the room and was on Aster before she could scream. Aster was pinned to the mattress with her mother on top of her. Her mother’s hands were wrapped around Aster’s throat, her claws digging into Aster’s flesh. Her lips twisted in a snarling smiled with her fangs bared.

Aster struggled against her mother, but she couldn’t get her off. Then her mother leaned forward and sunk her teeth into Aster’s throat. Aster screamed out in pain. She had to kill her mother before her mother killed her.

***

Tyler heard a scream, and he fell off the couch. Scrambling to his feet, he ran through the house to Aster’s bedroom. He found her thrashing around the bed violently. She let out a blood-curdling scream.

He rushed the bed and bracing one knee against the mattress. He took Aster by the shoulders to wake her. As soon as he touched her, Aster’s eyes flew open and were glowing. Oh, he had a bad feeling.

Aster growled at him, and Tyler rushed the door as she jumped out of bed and came after him. Tyler pulled the bedroom door closed in the hopes of slowing her down. He ran back to the couch where he had left his gun and other weapons. He didn’t want to shoot her, so he grabbed his taser. He heard Aster rip the bedroom door off, and a loud snarl echoed through the house.

Turning around, he saw what he assumed had once been Aster come around the corner. Her beautiful human form had been replaced by a large hairy snarling nightmare of a beast, all teeth and claws. “Oh fuck me.” He panicked and started to back up with his taser drawn. He had no idea if it would be enough to stop her. Tyler began to back away into the kitchen. “Aster, please wake up. Please don’t make me shoot you. Wake up!”

Aster dropped to all fours and came at him. Tyler tried to run, but Aster got close enough to swipe at him, her claws slicing deep across his chest. The pain was tremendous, and she knocked him to the floor. Tyler quickly crawled away, trying to distance himself from her. She had left him no choice. He turned his taser on Aster and pulled the trigger.

The electrodes shot out from the end of the gun and imbedded into Aster’s chest, delivering a massive charge stopping her short and causing her body to jerk violently for a few minutes before she reverted to her human form and collapsed unconscious on the floor. With her rendered harmless, Tyler collapsed and lost consciousness himself.

***

Aster groaned in pain as she slowly woke on the living room floor. She was naked, and two metal prongs attached to long metal leads were embedded in her chest. Everything hurt. Did someone taser her? Aster coiled her fingers around the prongs and pulled them from her body, swearing in pain as she did so. There were burn marks on her skin, but in a few hours, there would be no evidence of a wound at all.

Where were her clothes? Aster got up on her knees when she spotted Tyler a few feet away, unconscious and covered in blood. “Oh no.” She crawled over to him to find the taser gun in one hand as he lay their limp. Aster checked his vital signs to see if he were dead. She couldn’t recall what had happened, but it didn’t take much to put two and two together. She must have changed during the night, which explained why she was naked. Then she must have attacked Tyler, which accounted for the taser and his wounded state.

His vitals were strong, so she got up and went to her bedroom, where she got dressed and then came back to collect Tyler. Given her superior strength, Aster was able to lift Tyler off the floor and carry him to the bedroom, where she laid him down on the bed. She stripped off his bloody shredded shirt and tossed it on the floor. She collected some clothes and water then came back to the bed trying to clean him up. He had lost a lot of blood, and Aster worried he might need blood; she very well might need to take him to a hospital. Only she could not explain his wounds. She knew Tyler wouldn’t heal, not as she did. He was human, and he needed medical attention.

Aster decided to take him to a hospital. She dressed him once more and carried him out to the drive, where she saw her car booted. Things couldn’t get any worse. She looked at Tyler’s department car. If she took his police car, would she be charged with stealing it? She had no choice. She had to call for an ambulance. They didn’t like having any kind of sirens in the area. It made the pack nervous, but she had no other way of getting Tyler the help he required.

Aster laid him down on the driveway and went inside. She found a phone and called an ambulance.

Then she cleaned up as much of the mess from the confrontation as she could in the short time it took for the paramedics to arrive. She didn’t want anyone to realize that she had done this to him. She couldn’t hide the broken bedroom door, and there wasn’t enough time to wash away the blood on the floor, but she moved the furniture to hide it.

When she heard the siren approach, she was at Tyler’s side once more. When asked what happened, Aster told the paramedics that Tyler had spent the night and had gone out to investigate a noise when he was attacked by an animal. Around Feral, “attacked by an animal” was a standard complaint. Every few months, wildlife officials would search the area, trying to find the animals that “terrorized” the area, but they never could. The pack was cautious and was never caught.

Aster climbed into the back of the ambulance with Tyler and went with him to the hospital. She wanted to make sure he would be alright and to be sure that no one would suspect her animal attack story was a lie. Reaching the hospital, the nurses and doctors hooked Tyler up to an IV bag of blood and set to work. They stripped him down, assessed his wounds, then cleaned him up and began to stitch the horrible gashes closed. Aster felt horrid. Tyler would forever be scarred, and it was her fault.

While Tyler slept, Aster paced. She wanted to talk to her father. She needed advice, but she knew that the prison phones were tapped, and pack business was one conversation they couldn’t afford to have documented. Aster had no idea when Tyler would wake, so she left the room and headed down to the cafeteria to get herself some much-needed coffee.

***

The steady rhythmic beep of the heart monitor drew Tyler back to the waking world. As he came to, the pain hit him like a freight train. It was so intense. Tyler looked around to find himself in a hospital. An IV of blood in his arm. Tyler pulled down the front of his hospital gown and saw the long deep gashes in his chest, which had all be stitched closed and dressed. That was going to leave a mark.

He had no clue how he had gotten here. All he remembered was tasing Aster after she attacked him, then nothing after that.

About ten minutes later, Aster came in with a paper cup of coffee. She looked at him, and he returned the look. He could see the remorse in her eyes. He wasn’t angry. He knew she hadn’t been in her right mind, but it looked as though she were taking his injury harder than he was.

Aster put her cup down and came to his bedside. “I am sorry.” She told him. “I don’t remember doing this.” She confessed. “But it must have been me. I am so sorry, Tyler. I told the doctors you were attacked by an animal.” That was probably a good lie.

“I’m not angry.” He told her. It was clear to him this woman had some deep invisible scares which were far worse than the ones he would now bear.

“Look, I like you Tyler, that is why I don’t want you coming around anymore. I am dangerous, and I don’t want to hurt you again. So just stay away, ok.” She then placed the coffee by his bed and walked out.

The common sense in him told Tyler the smart thing to do was avoid Aster. Yet, the detective in him refused to walk away from someone with a problem. He wanted to help her. He didn’t know what was bothering her, but he wasn’t giving up until he found out what it was. However, he needed to recover before he confronted Aster once more.

***

Aster knocked on the door of her childhood home. Her mother dead and her father locked up. She hadn’t come to see her parents. She had come to see her stepmother Makenzie. The human woman for whom her father was now serving a five-year sentence. Makenzie opened the door with her son in her arms. She smiled when she saw Aster. “Hi, what a surprise.” Makenzie’s expression became concerned when she saw the fear and pain in Aster’s eyes. “What is wrong?”

“I hurt someone. I need someone I trust to talk to.”

Makenzie stepped aside. “Come on in. I’ll make coffee.”