Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  The others may have come expecting to find three bodies, but Max knew better. He knew I was still alive. And he wanted me back.

  That familiar ache swelled inside me, the conflicting draw of home and the dark wood threatening to pull me off balance. I felt caught between two worlds, not fully at home in either, and—

  “She’s out there,” Romy’s mother whispered, drawing my focus back to the pups sitting on either side of me, their little frames trembling with tension. “Whether that was her or not, she’s out there, Philip! She needs—”

  Romy whined and started toward her mother. Panicked, I lurched after her and bit carefully into the scruff of her neck, then I carried her with me, Tom close on my heels. When she began to struggle, I stopped and set her down, growling a gentle warning. Then I nudged her forward, deeper into the woods, because while I could return to Oakvale if I chose—albeit, under a cloud of suspicion—the pups could not, under any circumstances, go home.

  And I was not yet ready to leave them.

  As we headed back into the forest, I turned for one last look at Max.

  A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. And his lips formed my name in silence, as he stared out into the darkness.

  STAY WITH THEM, the breeze whispered to me, as skeletal tree limbs rattled overhead.

  Yes. I would just take the pups a little farther. Find some place safer. I had little choice about that, since I wasn’t willing to abandon them, but I had to admit, as I raced through the forest with my small charges, that they weren’t the only reason I was still out in the dark wood. It was easier to think about protecting and providing for the pups than about what my life might be like when I left the forest.

  My home would not be the same as when I’d left it, but Oakvale was not my only option. A clean slate awaited me in Ashborne, along with the Bernards, and I had certainly come to care for Max. And yet, despite the suspicion that would be heaped upon me in my own village, I had no desire to abandon my neighbors. To leave the only home I’d ever known.

  In my attempt to help my neighbors, I had put them at risk. I had cost one man his hand and one family their daughter. Didn’t I owe them safety and protection now, even more than before?

  Romy whined, drawing my attention from my own thoughts. She was upset about having lost her parents all over again, and when Romy was upset, Tom was upset. So I distracted them by making a game of tracking the scent trails left by various monsters. We would come just close enough to identify the beast we’d been tracking, but not close enough to alert it to our presence. I’d once used a similar technique to convince Sofia to keep churning butter, despite the ache in her arms.

  By the time the pups needed another nap, I’d caught a familiar scent.

  Food.

  I hadn’t eaten enough the day before, and my stomach felt like a gaping, aching vacuum. So I hunted.

  Sleep.

  Again, the need couldn’t be resisted. The command couldn’t be ignored.

  Hunt.

  Defend.

  The hours began to blur together. The demands of my lupine form began to blend into each other, forming an existence I’d never intended to indulge. They became a life I hadn’t even realized I was capable of living until I’d killed for the pups. Until I was feeding them and playing with them. Until I was defending them and sheltering them, both awake and asleep.

  Until the days passed and I began to forget that I’d ever had another life. Another form. Another . . . option.

  YOU BELONG HERE, the breeze whispered to me, in quiet moments. And slowly, I began to believe that.

  Then one day—or night? They were much the same in the dark wood—the tired little pups began to snap at each other, fighting over the rabbit they’d found. Worried by their vicious jaw snapping and snarling, I snatched the rabbit and gave them the signal to sit and wait. Then I lay down on my side in a bed of moss and reclaimed my two-legged form.

  Human again, I sat up, shivering violently in the frigid air. Without clothing, I would only be able to stay in that form for a few minutes. Hopefully that would be enough time to impart a lesson they needed to remember, in whatever form they took.

  “Come here, you two.” I waved the pups forward, and they piled onto my lap, scratching my bare stomach with their claws as they cuddled. We’d slept curled up together for so long that I could hardly remember slumber without two squirming little bundles of fur pressed against my side and splayed across my stomach. I couldn’t stand the thought of abandoning them, either to the dark wood or to their own monstrous instincts.

  “You two know better than to fight with each other, don’t you?” Romy gave me a hesitant bob of her muzzle. I didn’t really expect a response from Tom. I rarely ever got one, other than either his refusal or acceptance of my instructions, when I gave them. But to my surprise, his little muzzle bobbed up and down. “Good. Romy is your sister now. You’ve each lost family, but you’ve found each other, and I want you to promise me that you’ll stay together. No matter what. Okay?”

  That time both pups nodded, and Romy whined softly—a guilty sound she always made when I scolded her.

  “Good. You’re both going to be fine if you stick together. If you protect each other. Do you understand?”

  Tom nodded. Romy nuzzled me with her cold, wet nose.

  A twig snapped behind me, and I shoved myself to my feet, dumping the pups from my lap, to find a lantern bobbing toward us with each step its carrier took, accompanied by the clank of a sword. For a second, the unexpected light blinded me. Then my eyes adjusted, both to the light and to the ambient darkness my human eyes couldn’t cope with as well as my eyes in wolf form could.

  The carrier’s face came into focus, and I gasped.

  Monsieur Colbert. Grainger’s father. What was he doing alone in the dark wood?

  Confused, I glanced past him and saw the edge of a narrow dirt path. I’d taken the pups deep into the wood—far from Oakvale—but there were several paths traversing the forest in different directions, leading toward neighboring villages.

  Had Monsieur Colbert come looking for us? Maybe he was part of another search party and had veered at a less-traveled fork in the path to widen the search. Or maybe he’d come alone, convinced that the captain of the village watch would fare better on his own than with a group of terrified villagers.

  Either way, he’d clearly heard us and had ventured from the path, a bold move, even for the captain of the watch.

  “Who’s out there?” Monsieur Colbert demanded, and I realized that his weak bubble of light hadn’t revealed us yet. “Adele, is that you? I heard your voice, chère. Is that . . . ? Is that really you, or is the forest playing tricks on me?”

  My pulse raced, my teeth chattering in the cold without the furry pups to help warm me. I took a step back, and a twig cracked as it bit into my bare heel.

  Run. I could outrun him, but I’d only make it so far, naked and in human form. And running wouldn’t make him un-hear my voice. If he reported what he’d heard, would anyone believe him? Would they redouble their efforts to find me or assume the dark wood had stolen my voice from his memory?

  If they believed him, would they know there was only one way I could have survived this long, alone?

  Romy whined, hiding behind my left calf, and Monsieur Colbert stiffened, holding his lantern higher. Squinting into the dark beyond the fragile fall of his light. “Adele? There’s something out there with you. Please come forward. Let me help you.”

  A rope of darkness slid across the ground near his foot and he jumped, startled when a vine slithered across his boot. He stomped on it, and his lantern swung, casting swaying shadows that he probably couldn’t see well enough to notice.

  I took another step back, waving the pups behind me with a one-handed gesture. Then I turned, resigned to running—until a vine snagged my ankle and pulled.

  I landed on my face in the leaves. My impact with the ground knocked the air from my lungs, stunning me for a second. An
d as I sat up, pulling at the vine, trying to saw through it with my ineffectual human fingernails, Monsieur Colbert rushed forward . . . and his bubble of light fell over me.

  Grainger’s father gasped, his gaze quickly raking over my naked form, then snapping back up to my face. “Adele. What’s happened? Where is your clothing? Are you okay? Are . . . are you real?”

  “I—What are you doing out here?”

  “Grainger’s wound is festering. I’m on my way to Oldefort to bring back a physician.” His frown deepened. “What are you doing out here all alone? Here, take my cloak.” He started to remove his outer layer, and I jerked backward. His eyes narrowed as his surprise gave way to suspicion. “Adele?”

  KILL HIM. The order came from the dark wood itself, carried on a viciously cold gust that somehow stoked the flames of a ravenous fire burning in my gut. The forest had never spoken directly to me in human form before, and its command compounded an urge my body already felt—an ache in my bones to let them reassume my wolf form. To sink my claws into his skin and my teeth into his throat.

  To taste his blood. To devour his flesh.

  No.

  Monsieur Colbert had seen me with the pups. He’d seen me unscathed by the dark wood. Eventually, he would understand what he was seeing, and when that happened, he would be a threat to me, and by extension, to my family. Which would make him a threat to the entire village. But that threat had nothing to do with the dark urge burning in me as I ripped the vine free from my ankle.

  KILL HIM. NOURISH THE GROUND WITH HIS BLOOD. SATE YOUR HUNGER WITH HIS FLESH.

  The dark wood taunted me with unspeakable possibilities. Violent pleasures. Gruesome indulgences. And I wanted everything it was offering.

  God help me, I wanted it all.

  Tom jumped in front of me, growling fiercely, for a pup, and Romy was right behind him, snapping at the intruder’s shins. They’d decided I was vulnerable. That this man was a threat. And the little monsters were determined to protect me.

  Startled, Monsieur Colbert kicked out, his lantern swinging again, and his boot slammed into Tom’s left side. The pup whimpered as he thumped into the dirt a yard away, and I was on my feet in an instant, snarling at the watchman, my lips curled back from human teeth, spittle flying from my mouth. “Don’t . . . touch . . . him,” I growled.

  Monsieur Colbert’s eyes widened as he took in my shameless nudity. As he heard the guttural quality of my command—my defense of a wolf pup. Then he took a single step back, his hand going to the pommel of his sword. “It’s true . . .” He started to draw his weapon, and Romy advanced on him, growling bravely.

  KILL HIM.

  My fists clenched with an effort to resist the command.

  “Is that . . . Tom?” The watchman’s focus landed on the fierce little pup as he stood, favoring his left side. Then his gaze slid toward the other pup. “And this is little Romy?” His voice cracked, broken by the discovery. “Grainger was right. The devil take you all, he was right, and you lied. You let them—”

  A flash of guilt sliced through me, and the pain brought with it a moment of disorientation. A brutal doubt.

  What was I doing? How long had I been in the forest?

  Then he took another step backward and started to draw his sword, and alarm surged in my veins.

  Romy looked back at me, whining. Asking permission to obey the forest’s command. To eliminate the threat.

  KILL HIM.

  “I’ll have you all burned in the village square, your ashes sprinkled on unhallowed ground,” he swore, carrying his bubble of light with him in his slow retreat. “Your whole family, and the Pagets.”

  Romy’s whining reached a frenzied pitch as my pulse began to roar in my ears. Tom growled, his tiny claws digging into the dirt. They both looked back at me just as Monsieur Colbert turned and ran for the path.

  If he made it back to the village, my entire family would die. So would Romy’s.

  I nodded, my jaw clenched, my fists opening and closing at my sides. And the pups raced after him.

  They caught him in seconds, and I closed my eyes as they pounced, driving him to the ground.

  KILL. KILL. KILL.

  Monsieur Colbert screamed, and both pups snarled. I heard the ripping of cloth and the clatter of a sword still in its scabbard. Then the screaming stopped.

  I opened my eyes, and at first I couldn’t make any sense of what I saw. Of the blood splattered across trunks and roots. Dripping from branches. Both pups’ muzzles were slick with it. The entire forest suddenly reeked of it.

  EAT, the dark wood commanded. INDULGE THE YOUNG IN THEIR VICTORY—A CUSTOM AS OLD AS TIME.

  The pups stared at their kill, heads cocked, as if they were studying it. As if they couldn’t quite understand what had happened. Then Romy lunged at Monsieur Colbert’s corpse and tore a hunk of flesh from his neck.

  “No!” I shouted. My teeth clattered together, and this time my chill had as much to do with what I’d just seen—what I’d just let them do—as with the cold. “No, spit that out!”

  Romy turned to me with another curious cock of her head, but she’d already swallowed her bite. She’d already eaten part of Monsieur Colbert. Of the man whose family I’d expected to join. Whose grandchildren I’d thought I would bear.

  What have I done?

  Grief crashed over me. Shame burned in my gut.

  “Stop! Come away from him.” I waved the pups toward me, still shivering, and reluctantly, they came. “We don’t eat people,” I whispered. “We don’t eat people, ever. Rabbits. Deer. But no people. Do you understand?”

  Romy nodded, but Tom only gave me a confused look. “We aren’t just wolves. We aren’t just monsters,” I told them. “We’re people too, and people don’t eat people.”

  Tom glanced back at the body still leaking blood onto the ground—the dark wood seemed satiated by that, at least—and I could hear the question he couldn’t ask.

  We can kill people, but we can’t eat them?

  “No,” I said in response to his unspoken query. “I shouldn’t have let you do that.”

  Monsieur Colbert had to be stopped. In that moment, he’d been as much a danger to my family—to the entire village—as the dark wood was. But how could I explain that to two young children? To two young whitewulf pups, struggling not just with immaturity and inexperience, but with monstrous lupine urges I was just beginning to truly understand, having felt them myself.

  Why now? I’d been in the woods several times since my trial, and I’d never felt the urge to kill a human before. Certainly, the forest had encouraged me to kill monsters, but that was my destiny. My responsibility.

  Yet it was now clear that the dark wood didn’t care what I killed, only that I did kill. That I nourish its soil with blood—be it human or monster—in the absence of nurturing sunlight.

  I’ve been here too long. There was no other explanation. Living in the forest had eroded my resistance to its grisly, homicidal urgings. Living in the dark wood had tipped the balance—the scale in my soul, measuring how much of me remained human and how much became monster. In favor of the beast.

  With sudden, terrifying clarity, I realized that if I stayed in the forest for too long, in the company of monsters and two pups who demonstrated less and less human compassion with every passing day, I would become one of the very beasts I was charged with protecting Oakvale from. That under the influence of the dark wood, the difference between redwulf and whitewulf might actually be reduced to the color of our fur.

  But how was that possible, if my mother was right? If I was a human who also had a wolf form, while the pups were wolves who also had human forms?

  So far, the children had obeyed my commands. They’d learned from me when it was acceptable to hunt and what it was acceptable to eat. But if I left them—if they survived, only to be raised by the dark wood itself—I would someday have to kill them to protect Oakvale.

  There has to be another way. There had to be some place whe
re they could live without being threatened by the village. Where they could grow up without becoming a threat to the village.

  “Give me a minute to change,” I whispered, my mind racing while I tried not to look at the man they’d killed. The loss I’d just dealt to Oakvale. To Grainger and his family. “Then follow close behind me. Do you understand?”

  Both pups nodded. So I knelt in a bed of leaves and let my body reassume a form it had become frighteningly comfortable in. Then I stood and headed for the only sanctuary I knew that might take in three lost wolves.

  Twenty-Two

  Gran’s door opened the second I entered the clearing, as if she’d been expecting us. Or maybe she’d heard us coming.

  “Adele!” She blinked, surprised for a second when two whitewulf pups followed me out of the woods. But she beckoned all three of us with a wave. “Come in, child. Children,” she corrected, holding the cabin door open for us.

  The pups scampered inside, and though they seemed to welcome the warmth, Tom shied away from the roaring blaze in my grandmother’s fireplace. Romy whined at him, and when he wouldn’t join her by the hearth, she reluctantly joined him on the other side of the bed, her head hanging in disappointment.

  Gran plucked a long, cracked deer bone from the stew she was making, and the pups licked it clean. And by the time they began gnawing out the marrow, I had changed into my human form again.

  “Oh, Adele . . .” But instead of asking the questions I could practically see behind her eyes, my grandmother handed me a clean rag and a bucket of water, so I could wash up by the fire. “Your mother’s gone out in search of you every night for the past week. Since the search party came back without you. And without bodies.”

  A week. I’d been gone a week. Somehow, the time I’d passed in the woods had felt like a lot less—yet also much, much more.

  I dipped the rag in the bucket, then wrung it out. “Max was with the search party.” My voice was hoarse, either from neglect or from the cold.

  “Yes. He told your mother he thought you were out there. With the pups.” I followed her gaze to see that the children had fallen asleep in the corner, one end of the bone tucked beneath Tom’s left paw. “He said you would come back. He never doubted it.”