Could I Be a Werewolf? Second Book in the Peaches series (excerpt)

I slipped, and Bane’s arm wrapped around my waist. I puffed out a breath. “I’m fine,” I screamed the last bit because I was suddenly flying in the air and then crashing back down. My stomach rolled, everything clenched, and I wanted to puke.
Casper was beside us. I pushed away from Bane and almost stumbled, but whatever I was standing in felt like quicksand. I struggled and looked down but all I could see was darkness. Bane had flown/jumped us far into the cave. I could barely even see the opening anymore. “What is this stuff?”
“Bat feces,” Luther said matter-of-factly.
I just barely swallowed my scream. But on swallowing that scream I also took a deep breath in and actually gagged. Oh yeah, that was shit all right. I pinched my nose. “We need to get out of here. I can’t … ” I gagged.
Bane sighed and wrapped his arm around me again; then we were jumping high. I closed my eyes tight and held on to him like a baby koala. I didn’t care that I might get poop on him, as long as I stayed attached A few more jumps and the air cleared, the cold wasn’t as biting, and we were falling.
I screamed. Full blown, there’s-a-man-with-an-axe-behind-me screamed. Bane hit the ground with a thud, and it reverberated through us. I shook for a good few minutes.
I couldn’t help what I did next even though I tried. I threw up. All that delicious, fattening food came rushing up and out my throat. I thought it was going to be acid so I could spit it at Bane, but I turned my head away and saw chunks flying. Instead of letting me go, however, the dreadful man stroked my hair away from my face and whispered that it was okay. I wanted to be angry at him, but he was being gentle. Damn his hide.
When I finally stopped, I blinked away the tears and looked around. We were in a meadow, or something. It was grassy with yellow flowers everywhere. But the weirdest thing, but not weird in comparison to everything I’d seen, I guess, was the big ass mansion about three hundred or so feet from us. There were mini houses around it, but only a couple that I could see.
My eyes widened as I wiped my mouth, and then they narrowed and I slowly, like snake slow, turned and faced Bane. “Is that a fucking helipad?”
He shielded his eyes from the sun, and looked at the mansion. “I believe that is.”
I balled my fist and stepped away from my mess. “Do you mean to tell me we could have just taken a helicopter here, instead of jumping and falling?” My pitch was so high at the end, it hurt my ears.
I saw Bane wince. I smiled, all teeth. “I ‘ope that ‘urt, ya blime fecker.” My cockney accent was back and better than ever. I totally sounded wicked pissed and British. Thank you, BBC America.
“No, love.” Luther came up to us with Samantha by his side. “You still sounded like a Yank.”
Samantha pulled a pack of gum from her pocket and handed it to me. I accepted it gracefully, and took two pieces. I chewed the first and tried to get all of the junk out of my throat and then I spit it out and popped in the next one. “You’re British? You don’t sound like it at all.”
He shrugged, and I noticed some of that red was back in his eyes. I wondered how long vamps could go without eating. I felt like every time I saw them their eyes were either red, going red, or clear. Couldn’t they just keep it one color.
“Only if we eat constantly,” Casper chipped in, as he came up behind me. “When we use our powers, we use our energy, and we get energy from the blood we ingest.”
Oh. Well, that made a lot of sense actually. My stomach growled when I was hungry, his eyes turned red when he was hungry. Twisted, but that reasoning worked. I looked at Bane and noticed that his eyes also had red bleeding into them.
“And we couldn’t have used a helicopter, Georgia,” Samantha said softly, laying a hand on my arm. “This is the Pheehan Pack’s territory. We have to follow their rules; and one of those rules is that vampires come through the caves.”
“Why?” The caves were disgusting, I wouldn’t have gone through there by choice. I was dragged.
Than the answer dawned on me. “It’s a test, right? See how badly someone wants to see the pack, and how far they're willing to go?”
Samantha inclined her head. Supernatural beings and their stupid tests. I whipped my head to Luther, side tracked yet again. “You did not steal your name from the British show Luther, did you?”
The kid smiled and wrapped an arm around Samantha's waist, then pulled her back to him. I waited for him to answer, but the kid just kept smiling at me. I so wanted to read his mind, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had bat poop on me, my jacket was starting to get warm, I had just thrown up, and there was a mansion within walking distance that I was sure had some sort of hot water. Finding out where Luther got his name was the least of my worries.
“Can we move it? I want to get in, get changed, and get something to fill my stomach back up.”Now that I could see the place, I was jonesing to get there. But before I could even take one step, a pack of wolves came charging out of nowhere at us. I gawked at the sleek animals, at least twice the size of normal wolves. I hate to say it, given how unreliable movies and books have been for me, but these things seriously looked exactly like I imagined werewolves.
Of course, fear and panic shot through me a second later. I could deal with dogs, pet them on occasion, but become one? Nau-ah. Not in this lifetime. What was I thinking? Werewolf. Why couldn’t I be like a were-pony? I liked ponies.
I was reverting back to my six year-old ways, but Bane snapped me out of it. “Peaches!” His voice was in my head again, and for once I wasn’t annoyed by it. “Ground rules.”
I mentally snorted and physically rolled my eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause that worked so well last time.”
I watched his eyes flicker at me. “Well, at least listen to this one. Kneel.”
The wolves were almost near us, but I was a tad bit more focused on Bane. “Kneel? Do I look like a girl who gets on her knees. Don’t answer that.”
“It’s a wolf thing.” I watched Bane actually get down on one knee, but he wasn’t facing me. “I can’t help you out with this, habibi, and I can’t force you. Kneel or they’ll consider you a threat.”
I felt my knees give out as if my body was saying, “screw you. I ain’t dyin’ today.”
I watched the wolves close in around us, circle, and then tighten until I smelled dog breath. Yeah, okay, I was freaked out. Even more than I had been at the vampire party. At least vampires looked like humans, but werewolves? Whoever said that you could see humanity in something's eyes obviously had never looked at a werewolf. Guess what? They looked like wolf eyes.
I tried not to freak out. Couldn’t animals smell fear? I must’ve reeked of it, took a bath in Eau de scared-for-my-life, all the rage in Peaches's head and brought to you by the verb “fuck” and the pronoun “me.”
I was talking to myself in third person again. I really need to stop that.
I watched a black and grey wolf break away from the pack and come towards us. I thanked my lucky stars that I’d gone to the bathroom at that rest stop, because I was pretty sure I would have peed myself. Would peeing make me less appetizing? Maybe it would. I tried really hard to pee myself.
All three vampires were suddenly in my mind screaming the same thing “Do not pee yourself!”
Luckily for them, I couldn’t.