Free Wild by Naomi Clark Page B

wreck either.
    In the uncompromising glare of the mirror, she saw dark, sunken eyes, lank hair and dull skin. She saw a woman who was verging on gaunt. She saw someone aging before their time. She lifted her hand and touched her face with quivering fingers. Her skin felt dry, her lips cracked. Her eyes glittered with tears as she studied herself. When did this happened?
    How could she stop it?
    Slow-burning frustration exploded within her, transmuting into a quicksilver mixture of rage and fear. “Dammit!” She slammed her hands down on the dashboard and leapt out of the car.
    She walked without direction, shoving through the throngs of shoppers and students making their way towards the city centre. Normal people, heading towards Liverpool One to buy designer shoes, or maybe skipping their lectures and waiting for their favourite clubs to open. Girls with orange tans and white jeans, boys in hoodies and Everton shirts. Normal people. Lizzie didn’t feel like one of them anymore.
    It didn’t really surprise her when she lifted her head to discover she was outside the Barfly.

ten
    I T WAS HOURS before Nick’s gig, but the Barfly was open anyway. Tucked away down Seel Street between a building site and a second-hand clothing store, it was a typical student dive: scuffed red leather seats, fruit machines, low lighting, and cheap vodka. Lizzie had come here a lot in her first few months at uni. She’d met Harris at a gig here, taken her first pills here with him a week later.
    With a heavy sense of morbidity, she ordered a vodka and orange at the bar and sat down at a corner table. The place was mostly empty; just a few lads playing pool across the room. One of them stood at the jukebox, flicking through the song choices with a frown of concentration.
    She nursed her drink, didn’t have enough money for a second, and wondered if she was just going mad. Maybe she’d broken her brain, one too many pills, one too many k-holes.
    Someone slid into the chair opposite her and she looked up with a start to see Nick. They started at each other silently for a second, Lizzie pumping her broken brain for something to say.
    He simply watched her with keen eyes and said nothing. His silence heightened her nerves and she found herself dragging her nails along her legs, scratching herself through the denim.
    “Alright?” he asked eventually.
    “No.” She slumped down in the worn leather seat, gazing at the cuts in the wooden table top. She felt about five years old under his cool gaze, clumsy and outclassed. “Something’s wrong with me and I don’t know what.” She fought the urge to scream and wail. Nick’s studied calm wasn’t doing anything to relax her. “So I came to see you.”
    “You got scratched,” he said, reaching for her drink and taking a swig. She glared at him but he continued drinking anyway. “You got scratched by a wolf, and now you’re craving red meat, and everything pisses you off, and you feel like you might explode any minute.”
    She glanced around the bar. Nobody was within earshot, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone was listening in. “Yes,” she hissed, voice hoarse with the relief of saying it. “Yes, that’s exactly it. I don’t get it. I … I saw the wolf that attacked me today. At the park.”
    He drained her drink and pushed the glass aside, reaching for her hands. She pulled them away automatically, but he was faster than her and he caught her fingers with his. His touch was as warm as his eyes were cool, his grip firm and gentle, restraining her without hurting her. But memories of her fight with Harris made her want to struggle, want to fight his grasp, and raw anger rose up in her, tinting the world blood red for a spilt second.
    And in that split second, her world ripped wide open.
    It was like being high, all her senses magnified, everything around her given new importance, new brilliance. She could smell the ginger shampoo in Nick’s hair; smell the fusty odour