Claimed by the Beast - Part One Read Online Free

with
the marks on the inside. There were two of them that were more than
just an angry pink: they were crusted over with dried blood.
    Crystal went to pick at the scab with her
fingernails and noticed how chipped and ragged they looked.
Yesterday’s paint was scraped off and ruined already. She scowled
at the waste and refocused on her heel. She peeled the scab away,
drawing a hiss as it pulled at the living tissue beneath. She
watched as a spot of blood welled up and started to run down the
bottom of her foot.
    She grabbed some toilet paper and blotted it
up before it could drop to the floor. She kept the paper pressed
against the wound, enduring the sting until it faded. When the
bloody paper was pulled away, her eyes widened. It looked like the
other spots on her foot, the skin pink and unbroken.
    “What the f—” She trailed off and remembered
more of her aches from last night. It brought back more memories.
The bikers and the one in particular who picked her up like she was
a kitten. Then there was the source of the strange marks on her
foot.
    “Oh my God,” she whispered as she remembered
the growl and saw again the flash of teeth and eyes in the
darkness. “It bit me!”
    She twisted her leg and stared at her knee.
It was bruised and dirty, but that was it. Hadn’t she rubbed it raw
on the road last night and bloodied her pants? She turned to look
at her arm but no amount of twisting let her get a good look at her
elbow. She pouted and tried straightening it and bending it. It was
stiff and felt a little sore, but it worked.
    Crystal reached across and pushed her
fingers against her shoulder. It felt tender when she poked it. She
stood up and pulled her nightshirt off so she could twist her head
and look at it. Her skin was tinted with a faded yellow and blue
from a bruise. A bruise that looked a couple of days old.
    She shook her head and stepped in front of
the mirror. Her foot was tender now but the pain from earlier was
gone. The girl looking back at her in the mirror gasped. She was a
wreck! Her left eye looked puffy and bruised, the colors spreading
down to her cheek. Her hair was a tangled mess and her makeup had
run and was smeared all over her face from all the crying she’d
done.
    “What happened to me?” she wondered.
    Well, she knew what happened. She’d been
there, after all! But it didn’t make sense. She’d cut her cheek and
her knee—she knew it! But now they looked fine? Other than the
bruises. She let her eyes drop in the vanity mirror and sighed.
Some things didn’t change. She still looked like she could refer to
herself as Shamu’s mama.
    “But I can’t heal that quick,” she argued
with herself. “Wouldn’t I have to eat or burn a lot of calories or
something?”
    She turned to the scale in the bathroom and
stepped on it. She held her breath and willed herself to be
lighter. Just like every morning, except this time she knew it
would be different. She knew she would be changed. Something had
happened to her. Something scary and maybe, just maybe,
wonderful!
    The digital readout flashed a final answer
and she let out her breath in a disgusted sigh. She was down a
little, but still closer to two hundred than one hundred. Sure, she
was a tall girl, but not that tall. In her wedges last night, she’d
probably been six feet tall. The dark stranger who saved her had
towered over her and made her feel like a little kid.
    Crystal was jerked from her thoughts by her
phone ringing back in her bedroom. She turned and started to dash
for it when she realized she was only wearing her underwear. She
looked back at her nightshirt and shifted her balance to go for it
when the second verse of the Lady Gaga song that was the ringtone
she used for Beth started. She turned and dashed down the hall. Her
leg felt funny but it did what she told it to and kept her from
planting her face on the floor—again.
    She made it to her phone and answered with
an angry, “Ow! This better be worth