Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Preface

"(one)
this story begins
as all good stories do
he's a boy
and he's in love
you're a girl
and you're in love
this story begins
as all good stories do -
with pain"
—r.m. | On Loving Leander

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W A R N I N G (Graphic Content) (of the violent variety) 18+

• • •

Blood wet the floorboards slick as Sam and Jared walked across them. Their shoes squeaked beneath their feet whilst their hearts beat rapidly in their chests. They walked slowly because they were scared.

They walked slowly because they were terrified of what they might see.

In the den of his own home, Quil knelt beside the couch with tears dripping down his cheeks. Heart-wrenching sobs left his lips and shook his very body, and his hands dripped with the crimson consequence of his actions as he stared down at them in disbelief. What did I do? He thought to himself frantically, repeating the question over and over and over again as if his brain might eventually come up with an answer. What did I do? What did I do? What the hell did I do? He couldn't believe it. Quil had never so much as hurt a fly. Surely he wouldn't hurt one of his best friends. Surely he wouldn't attack one of the only people who had ever truly cared for him. Surely he wouldn't be the cause of so much carnage. Surely.

Right?

Meanwhile, the evidence laid weakly on the floor. Bailey's breaths were shallow and slow, tired, and laced with lethargy. The only proof that her lungs even retained function was founded in the steady rise and fall of her chest. However, beneath the blood-soaked cotton that covered it, wounds marred her tanned skin. Four lines ran diagonally from the top of her left hip to the bottom of her same thigh in an angry, jarring display of mangled skin and torn flesh that appeared as violent as it did harrowing. The scratches were gruesome -terrifying as they pulsed in tune with her heartbeat whilst blood spilled from the opened flesh like water from a flowing tap. It puddled beneath the spot her still body laid, and all across the walls and the floor, it stained the wood and Sheetrock with crimson handprints and signs of struggle. A murder scene at its finest, one might have claimed. However, for the two Quileute boys who stood witness to it, the truth remained overwhelmingly clear. This was no matter between mortal men.

Rather, this was a matter between beast instead.

"Call an ambulance," Sam ordered Jared as his heart skipped a dreaded beat in his chest. His eyes met those of his wolf brother's and glinted with tumultuous fear and worry -the range and scale of emotions breaching an intensity Jared had never before seen present in his Alpha apart from, possibly, the moment he realized what he had done to his beloved Imprint in an accident just the same. "Call the pack too," Sam murmured, momentarily frozen as he only stared. "Call everyone." Then they sprung into action.

The skirt of pale blue encircling Bailey's hips now rested against her skin in tattered strips stained nearly black with blood -it's cotton material having long since given up on retaining the liquid life as it seeped ever-flowing from its point of origin. The image brought Sam back to that moment in time wherein he had seen a picture just as similar- wherein he had dealt with blood just as dark. But the difference between past and present was unmistakable, because while Emily Young's wounds spanned a far greater surface area and scarred much of her face, the wounds running the length of the seventeen year old Swan girl's thigh were far more aggressive, far more deep, and far more life-threatening in the long run. It was obvious that the claws of the wolf who had attacked her had sliced through her flesh with ease. They tore through skin, through muscle, through vein. Sam could even swear he saw bone.

The flash of off-white when he knelt down next to her only confirmed it.

But Sam knew what he needed to do -after all, he had seen the way the very girl in mention had bandaged her arm all those weeks ago through Paul's eyes. He knew of the tourniquet, knew of the necessity in staunching the bloodflow -though, at this point, he wasn't entirely sure how any more blood could continue to spill from her anyway- and knew of the tightening of the knot to ensure it. So with shaking hands overshadowed by a faux facade of calm, he summoned Jared for strips of cloth, a belt, and gauze. He set to work soon after, carrying out the only medical assistance he knew how to perform as he awaited the arrival of the ambulance with a churning, sinking feeling in the pit of his gut. I warned her, he thought to himself furiously, shaking with a sick sort of sorrow mixed with a violent sort of determination. I told her he was dangerous. Why didn't she listen? He soon asked himself. Why didn't she listen to me? And a part of him was terrified he would never come to know the answer.

"Quil," he suddenly remembered, calling his name as he listened to the boy sob on an endless loop as he finished bandaging the wounds said boy had inflicted. "Quil."

"I'm sorry," the boy cried, ripping his gaze from his bloodied hands only to stare at the blood covering Bailey's instead. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry! I -I didn't- I never- I swear I-"

"It's not your fault," Sam interrupted him sternly, all the while applying pressure to the bandages covering Bailey's thigh in an attempt to stop the blood from further leaking out of them. "We should have warned you. No. I should have warned you; I'm sorry that I didn't." He lamented. "But you're one of us now," he reassured him. "And we take care of our own."

Then as the red and blue lights of Forks Paramedics flashed down the road through the window, Sam proceeded to do just that.