The Tempering (The Mackenzie Duncan Series) Read Online Free Page B

simple tee shirt and jeans that were slightly too short due to her sudden and unexpected growth spurt.
    She walked quietly over to a table in the back of the medical section and put down her bag. Looking around at all the stacks of books, hoping that one of them held the answers she desperately wanted, she pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the table.
    When she went to lift the screen, her thumb broke right through the casing with a resounding crack that echoed through the silence. Blood droplets splattered against the broken computer and when she turned her thumb to see the damage, she let out a shriek as the inch long cut slowly sealed itself right before her eyes. She hadn’t been hallucinating the night the wolf attacked her. She really had watched her arm heal itself just as she watched her thumb return to a perfect state.
    The other students surrounding her looked around wildly before seeing no immediate danger. They threw scowls at her with a resounding “SHHH!” Mackenzie ignored them. She was still in utter shock and terrified. Her thumb just crushed through her laptop. Her skin looked like it zipped itself closed, sealing the slice in her finger as if nothing had happened, not even a scar remained. And to top it all off, she didn’t even feel her skin being ripped open.
    Even though she wanted to run away and hide in her little apartment and pretend that the last few weeks had never happened, she knew she couldn’t. She had to find an explanation.
    Carefully opening the lid of the broken computer and hoping for the best, Mackenzie pressed the power button and waited for the hum that would tell her it wasn’t headed for recycling. More than two minutes passed before she gave up, slamming the lid closed and watching it shatter beneath her hand.
    “SHHHH!” A small girl with a stack of books and a million papers in front of her said while glaring at her, “This is a library!”
    Mackenzie could feel her blood boiling. How dare that girl speak to her like an idiot? She knew it was a library. What kind of dumb ass wouldn’t know they were in a library?
    “Mind your own damn business,” Mackenzie growled out. She was pretty sure it was an actual growl after seeing the girl’s eyes widen in fear and scamper away. Reminding herself that she was not her father and did not need to lose her cool, she took a deep breath. Breathing deeply for a moment allowed her time to collect herself, and to feel bad for snapping at the girl. Sort of.
    Stowing her broken laptop away in her bag, Mackenzie headed over to the computers available for student use. Sitting down while eyeing the keyboard warily, she wondered how on earth she was going to use the keyboard without destroying it. As she hoped the surge of strength had passed, she placed her hands ever so lightly on the keyboard and began to type.
     
    ~*~
     
    The library’s medical database wasn’t much help. Not one medical text had each of the symptoms she was presenting. Mackenzie was about to give up when a group of girls walked by, giggling and talking about some new movie and how gorgeous the actors were. It would have been a completely irrelevant conversation to overhear, except when she heard the name of the movie, it was as if everything clicked.
    “So, are you going to see Beneath the Moon with me tonight or what?” The girl whispered to her friend.
    “Absolutely, I mean, who wouldn’t want to see half naked men who just happen to turn into wolves?” Then they both giggled and disappeared between the stacks.
    Wolves. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She was a mythology major after all! Could the myths actually be true? Could she really have encountered a Werewolf? Frantically, Mackenzie opened up a different search program, one that found books from the schools complete catalog, not just the medical journals she had been searching.
    A quick search on Lycanthropy produced seven book results and three online journals. Writing down the