The Frenzy Series (Book 2): Frantic by Casey L. Bond Page A

you happen to find the cow? You just happened to come upon your brother while strolling about the Colony?” Roman asked.
    “No,” I replied indignantly. “I smelled it from the basement, I guess. Though I didn’t know exactly what I was smelling when it first hit me. I just knew I wanted it.”
    “You wanted it?” Roman confirmed. Again. He was getting very repetitive, like one of those parrots I’d read about. Talking birds. I would have thought them a myth, but at one time who would have imagined vampires were real? Roman and Tage were straight-up vampires, and now I was a night-walker myself.
    “Can I go inside?” The sun was terrible, and I blinked until tears slid down my face. Roman finally released me.
    “Yeah.”
    Tage followed me into the house. I knew it was him, because I could hear his footsteps. His were lighter than anyone else’s. He was nimble, like a cat, yet he called me tiger.
    I trudged down the steps, loathing the dreadful bars I knew Roman would make me fix. “What’s wrong?” Tage asked.
    “I’ll have to go back into the cage.”
    His lips formed a pout. “Oh, kitten doesn’t like her cage?”
    “How did I go from kitten to tiger, and then back to kitten again?”
    “You aren’t all psychotic right now. You ate, and so far you’re holding it down. I’d say you’re ready to curl up and take a nap.”
    “Did you sleep a lot after you turned?”
    He shook his head. “No, I barely slept at all and barely do now. But each person is different.”
    “Roman says I’m not a person.”
    “Roman’s a dick,” was his quick response.
    “Shh. He can hear you!” His eyes flicked from the metal cage and back to me.
    “He knows I think he’s a dick,” he whisper-yelled. I rolled my eyes. “Don’t bother with those.” Tage flicked his head toward the bowed bars.
    “Why?”
    “What’s the point in fixing them if you’re just going to break them again? We know you can do it, and it’s no longer an effective means of controlling your crazy. You’ll have to learn to rein it in, but I actually think you can do this pretty easily as long as you aren’t provoked. You bypassed thirty or so colonists on your way to bovine breakfast this morning, and no one lost their throats.”
    I smiled. “I did?”
    “Yep. Colonists, colonists everywhere. And you didn’t have a drink.”
    “No, I certainly didn’t.” I puffed my shoulders out. “Maybe I can do this.”
    “You don’t have a choice, so suck it up, buttercup.”
    Roman came down the steps and entered the door. “You’re a dick, too, Tage. And don’t bother with the bars. We need to hunt tonight. If you hold down the cow today, you can have more fresh meat later.”
    Fresh meat. Mmmm . My mouth began to salivate.
    “Shit!” Tage jumped away from me.
    “What?”
    “Your eyes just got like, eight shades darker somehow. What were you thinking about?”
    “Food.”
    “Have you ever seen anything like that?” Tage asked Roman over his shoulder.
    “Not like that. That was…different.”
    I giggled. I was definitely different, and for once in my life, it looked like it might actually be a good thing.

 
     

     
    I didn’t bother going to the pavilion. I knew the night-walkers wouldn’t bother feeding from me, and no one else was likely to show up. I didn’t know what they would do, but one thing was certain: they would have to eventually feed. I hoped they at least talked to the Elders and gave them a chance to fix this mess before they went to find breakfast on their own.
    Mrs. Dillinger’s house was dark, but I could hear an occasional thump from upstairs as I walked toward the door. Some of the planks on her porch were spongey and needed replacing. I tested my weight and shook my head. Poor woman didn’t go out much, so people tended to forget about her.
    I knocked twice and waited. “It’s open,” she yelled from what sounded like upstairs. Her voice was muffled, yet it carried.
    “Mrs. Dillinger? It’s