Hunted

by Quinn Blackbird

  Colton roars.

  I gasp and swerve my gaze to him; he rounds on me, polished-lemon eyes burning bright for my head. But then, Dante hurls himself over the couch and swings out his sword. It slices down Colton’s arm. The wolf gives another savage howl, and turns on him.

  Dante glances at me. “Go!” he bellows. “Get to your Grandmother’s! Now!”

  I listen.

  The pair move in a blur that my hooded eyes cannot follow. Consciousness is drifting from me. Blood leaves my face. I am bleeding out. I am dying.

  I manage to climb onto my feet and stagger out the rear door. A final glance back churns my stomach. Dante is knocked off his feet, the sword flies from his grasp, and Colton leaps over half the house to land before him. If I had the energy, I might’ve called out for him, helped him in some way.

  Dante then proves, he needs my help not. A knight’s son he is.

  He is on his feet, another blade in hand—longer than my forearm—and hitting out at Colton with ease.

  I turn my back on them and stumble up the lane to the wall. I head straight to the woods, and stop only when I am through my secret passage and on my knees in the snow.

  My blood-stained hands pack snow before smacking it against my cheek. It should numb the pain a while. Then I am staggering through the woods to the cabin, with a single prayer to the Goddess of Nature, the true Mother—

  Let me make it to Grandmother.

  21.

  I am floating somewhere. Or nowhere.

  Dark space is all around me. I lay flat on eternal space and gaze up at nothing.

  It’s calm here.

  Not peaceful, not soothing. It just…is.

  I might like it here, if I remembered what ‘like’ was, how it felt. But I don’t. I have forgotten.

  Then, it dawns on me. I am not floating in nothing.

  I am nothing.

  I find it is rather serene.

  22.

  A face breaks through the darkness.

  Grandmother.

  Her lips move, she speaks to me, but I hear muffled sounds rather than her voice. My shoulders rattle and I suspect she is shaking me.

  Grandmother’s face turns cross and snaps in a distant, far-away voice; “Wake up, girl. Wake up, wake up—now, Ella!”

  A breath tears through me.

  My body arches up as my lungs suck in as much air as they can hold. Grandmother pushes me back down with all her might—and she is mighty. With a grunt, I am still again on a … mattress.

  I jerk up once more and scan the room. Darkness is gone, replaced by Grandmother’s cabin.

  She slams me back down. “I said wake up,” she snaps. “Not sit up.”

  My dazed vision finds her, perched on the mattress edge.

  “Grandmother,” I utter. “What…happened?”

  With a tut, she grabs a goblet from the bed-table and forces some down my throat. I am practiced enough not to retch, but it tastes worse than the magic-transfer goop she served me last. Bitterness clings to my tongue, but at the back of my mouth a sour tang settles. A shudder runs through me.

  Yet, each drop of the pungent brew wipes away a wisp of the fog in my head. It is slow work, but effective. Only once I have finished the entire goblet’s fill does Grandmother answer me.

  “I found you on the path,” she says.

  It might be her mysterious brew that confuses me, but she almost sounds concerned. If I had the energy within me, I would scoff at my foolishness.

  Grandmother rests her hand on mine. It feels odd to the pair of us. She pulls it away and touches it to her chest instead.

  “Your death came to me,” she says, tapping her fingers against her breastplate. “Here—Your pain filled me and grief blossomed. So, I ventured out to the woods to find you. A good thing I did, too, or you would have bled out in the snow. I have been feeding you brew all day.”

  I let my eyes flutter shut as the morn’s pain consumes me.

  Grandmother wipes my forehead with a damp rag. I wince when she dabs down to my sore cheek. Then I remember what I did to the one who cut me there.

  My eyes open and find Grandmother. “I killed her. The other witch.”

  “Dearest Ella. Did you think I did not know? Her energy passed by me hours ago. You would have felt it too if you hadn’t fainted in the woods.”

  “Grandmother, this is nothing to dismiss.” I look at her as she wipes at my throat sweat. “Her son, Colton…he’s the wolf. To avenge his mother, he will come find me.”

  My gaze follows her as she wrings out the rag in a bowl of water, then places it on a flower-patterned dish. “Colton has been a wolf of sound mind since his birth,” she tells me. “Never has he killed anyone. He hunts under the moon in the woods, but no more than he needs to.”

  Shock almost takes me. It begins to seep into my veins, but then I frown at her. Of course she would know Colton is the wolf. She knew Silas, who he married, who Catherine gave life to. For nineteen years, she knew and never once did she tell me.

  She reads my thoughts: “I never thought it necessary to tell you, Ella. A wolf’s identity is not mine to share, and he kept to himself. Your dislike and mistrust of him was solid enough without my meddling.”

  Despite her words, a sting of betrayal cuts behind my chest, as sharp as Catherine’s blade to my cheek.

  “How could you not warn me?” I ask, stunned. “All this time, you could have at least told me to be wary of him.”

  “Warn you,” she repeats, a smile of pity on her lips. “Warn you of what, Ella? A peaceful, forest-dwelling wolf? Colton never sought revenge for his father. He came to me for answers one day. I offered them, he listened, then he left.” She shrugs and looks at the drapes that separate the bedroom from the front area. “The hunter is a wise wolf, ruled by his human mind, not his animal one. Emotion has no drive in him.”

  “I killed his mother. Granted, she tried to kill me—” I gesture to my wounded face. “—But it’s his mother. Colton wants revenge. You did not see him when I did… when I took her life. He was going to tear my head off my body, and would have done if Dante hadn’t stopped him.”

  For once, Grandmother truly listens to me. Her eyes rinse me over a long moment, then she nods firmly. “I will prepare. You, stay a while in bed. We have some time.”

  Grandmother rises from the mattress and gathers the cleaning dishes and rags from the bed-table. Before she leaves, I stop her at the drapes:

  “Grandmother…” I swallow; the sour tang still lingers at the back of my mouth. “Catherine spoke of another wolf before her death. A made wolf, she called him.”

  Grandmother looks at me over her shoulder. “Colton must have bitten someone,” she says. “To make another wolf takes great restraint, yet a great loss of control.”

  “This made wolf … I think he is my lover. Dante Bennett.”

  Her eyebrows lift at the arches. “The Knight’s son?”

  Stiffly, I nod and shift in the bed. “The very one.”

  Her gaze is firm on me. I frown at her knowing look. Then, Grandmother tells me to rest and leaves through the drawn drapes.

  I roll onto my side and hug a pillow.

  An emptiness carves itself inside of me, a hole in my gut where my organs should rest. The times I laid with Dante, I can forgive. Those were transactions, simple business. Last night was neither of those things.

  A part of me blossomed a feeling last night, though I only realise it now. It is one I don’t understand or recognise, yet I feel it as fresh and strong as my wounds. It could be what causes the empty sensation inside of me.

  I wonder, is this pain?

  It is stronger than the pain of flesh and bones, yet different in some way.

  I shake off the thoughts, but they do not leave my head. They are stuck to inside of my skull, where they nest and breed tenfold.

  Isn’t it so wretched that I know not of his fate? Colton could have well killed him. Dante could have escaped. Perhaps they are both on my fl
oor like Catherine.

  There, but gone.

  Either way, Dante is in my head to stay.

  23.

  Grandmother gave me a half-hour in bed before she forced me out. “Sunset is within the hour,” she told me. “Reasonable or not, wolves will be here tonight if either survived. While I hope for the best, we must prepare for the worst.”

  Soon after, I am dressed in a corset-less dress and I paint blades with wolfsbane. Grandmother fills a bucket with the poison, then we coat the windows and doors with it. We finish these chores with ten minutes to spare.

  I stand by the window and watch the orange seep into the sky behind the clouds. Sunset is near. Ten minutes…

  The longest ten minutes I have ever suffered.

  Colton plagues my mind. Despite Grandmother’s assurances, the glow of his wolf-eyes haunts my mind. There was murder in those eyes, bloodlust. If he lives, he seeks revenge.

  At the end of it, he is a wolf. A wolf can only be so rational, so reasonable.

  Does the same apply to Dante?

  He is a made wolf, I suspect. What that means for me, I cannot imagine.

  Still, I know our times were of the Witch Lure, not of real desire, not of natural want, and not of our bonded minds. I loathe to think why that pains me so, but it does.

  This isn’t love.

  At least not the sort that rattles one’s mind, body and soul. To Dante, I shall never fall to pregnancy. I could kill him to save my own life without hesitation. What I feel for him is not a Hemlock woman’s love. But should that mean it isn’t love at all?

  Grandmother shatters my thoughts to pieces. At the window on the other side of the fireplace, she stands and looks through the drapes. Her voice is a whisper when she speaks and ends the ten minutes we waited through:

  “Someone is coming.”

  My fingernails dig into the wooden windowsill.

  A man, hunched in a fur coat, limps up the path. He moves quickly for an injured man. One of his hands disappears behind his coat, as if to press against an injury.

  Heart beating in my throat, I study him hard. It could be Colton, it could be Dante. It could be a complete stranger. Then, he comes close enough to the cabin and I notice the golden hem of his gloves.

  I rush to the door, and before Grandmother can stop me, I shove it open.

  The cold beats against me, but I race down the stairs to meet Dante.

  “Heavens,” I say and touch my hand to his cheek.

  He tries to turn away from me, but my grip hardens. Blood smears over his jaw, dries his hair together in clumps, and coats his lips.

  “Come inside, quickly. The sun is setting.”

  Dante leans against the stairs’ barrier. His fingers curl around my wrist and peel my hand from his face.

  “Red.” He breathes my name as if it will be his last word. “I need you to listen to me a moment. Please—” His grip on my wrist tightens as I make to speak. “Please, Red. If I do not survive the night, I must have you know the truth.”

  My gaze tries to find his under the drawn hood. He avoids me on purpose, to hide his eyes from mine.

  “I did not mean to,” he says from behind his veil of shadows. “I am sorry—I am the one who killed the widow.”

  I yank my wrist from his grasp, then tug down his hood.

  My breath catches at the sight of him. Before, even with the hood drawn, I could see the blood on the lower half of his face, and on the hair that curls at his temples. Now, I see the gash across his forehead, the cut down his eyebrow, the swelling of his left eye.

  Gently, I cup his face and guide his ashamed gaze to mine.

  “Dante, I know.”

  The pad of my thumb brushes over his cut lip.

  I am afraid of him, but in this moment as he stands before me in a sickly state, I am suddenly flooded with warmth within.

  These injuries befell him because he chose to fight Colton—to save me.

  “It was something Catherine said about another wolf,” I tell him. “I figured … it came to me that you are the other wolf, as though a part of me had known it all along.”

  Dante brings his hand up to mine, and rests it there a moment. “Never did I wish to frighten you, or harm you, or in any way drive you from this place,” he says. “The widow…”

  His eyes drift down to the snow at our feet.

  “The widow began a petition among the villagers to have you exiled. I feared she would gain support—enough to summon a witch hunter to our parts. I couldn’t…” He shakes his head and touches his gaze to mine. “I could not allow such a horror to befall you, Red. I killed her, knowingly and willingly, as the beast that I am.”

  “You are no beast,” I spit. “You are a brave Knight.”

  Dante’s lips lift to the side, as though he means to smile. But before the smile can settle, his face soon twists in pain and he shoves me away from him.

  “Go inside,” he groans. Something snaps inside of him, a rib I think, and the agony brings him to his knees. “Inside!”

  I watch, horrified, as his head throws back and out from his bloodied lips comes a howl, so charged with pain that I feel the echoes of it run through my aching bones.

  “Dante, you will not hurt me.” I step closer to him, but he swipes at me—with a hairy hand and claws. “You are yourself in wolf-form, no? So what danger could you pose to m—”

  “Colton.”

  The name is hissed through his clenched teeth; his eyes roll back as another snap brings him closer to the snow.

  “Colton is coming … for you, Red.”

  He spoke the words too late.

  A savage roar tears through the woods. I jerk back and look, wide-eyed, to the path. A wolf, brown and thick-furred, charges up to the cabin. There is blood on its jaw, its lemon-yellow eyes glow with the hunger for my blood, and it bounds toward me as it would a fleeing deer.

  Before I can reach for Dante, a burst of fabric explodes in front of me. A confetto of clothes smothers the air—scraps of Dante’s clothes. In his place, is a wolf, the same primitive glow in his eyes and teeth bared at the one coming up the path.

  I gasp and scramble up the stairs. Their roars send chills down my spine.

  Grandmother snatches me inside before I can run in myself, and the door slams shut behind us. All that’s left are the sounds of teeth tearing flesh apart outside.

  Dante, fighting to protect me again, has been abandoned by the one he tries to save.

  24.

  Their battle rages on for hours. There are times when silence blankets the cabin, and I move to approach the window and look outside. Those times pass by so quickly that I wonder if they were in fact dreams that took me away in the long night.

  Howls call out, rich with the pain of torn flesh. Whimpers are high-pitched enough to pierce through the walls of the cabin. At each sound, I flinch and pray to the ultimate Mother that none of those cries belong to Dante. Fear flows through me for him, but for myself too.

  Should Colton come bursting through the door I face, my first thought will not be of Dante and his sacrifice. It will be of Grandmother—and myself. Just as she sacrificed much of her life to me, I shall sacrifice all of my life to her.

  So, I stand at the wall opposite the door with a phial of wolfsbane in one hand and a dagger in the other. Grandmother chants by the fire, whispered words to our Mother to bring unto us protection.

  This is our night.

  Hours of chanting, hours of waiting, hours of gurgled sounds outside—howls choked in blood. Until the howls are no more, and there is only silence.

  It takes a good while before I decide to look through the window. Dawn is not yet upon us—whatever wolf might still be outside could break through with ease. Yet, the silence calls to me.

  “Ella, no.”

  Halfway to the window, I stop and look at Grandmother. On the armchair, she sits in her prayer position (hands above her head, palms upwards, wrists overlapped, and her knees drawn to her chest with her an
kles crossed). She pauses her chants to stop me.

  “Stay inside until dawn touches the earth,” she tells me.

  I hesitate, my whole body still with the silence outside these walls. Grandmother knows best. It’s what I’ve always believed. Yet, there is a twist of unease in my stomach, a tug that wants me closer to the window.

  For once, I obey myself over Grandmother.

  I rush to the window and peel the curtain to the side.

  The garden looks like a wonderland in the dead of night. That is the first thing I notice as I drag my gaze over the snow. Moonlight floods the ground with a glow—pools of blood shimmer in the light.

  Two wolves lay apart, both are down. Both are unmoving.

  I’m out the door before Grandmother can stop me.

  The closest wolf to me is dead. I kneel at its side and check for a heartbeat. Nothing. Only eyes that stare ahead, empty and devoid of any glimmer of life. Much of its brown coat is dusted in snow.

  I rush to the second wolf. Like the other, its coat—as brown as fresh soil—wears the damp spots of snow. But this one breathes. It lays on its side, and an unsteady rise and fall of its ribs catches my attention. I look into its eyes. It sees me, barely. But when it does, it gives a whine so faint that my heart writhes in my chest.

  There is no way to tell which wolf is who. For all I know, the wolf at my knees is Colton. But then, it could well be Dante. Though he is dying, he not yet dead. Perhaps I can save him. Perhaps I can tend to him.

  Can I risk myself to save the wolf before me?

  The creak of the door pulls me from my thoughts.

  Grandmother leans against the doorframe, pale under the moonlight, shadows in her eyes. “If you must,” she calls to me, “be quick about it.”

  That’s all the motivation I need.

  I run into the house for supplies, then drag them to the wolf outside. Once I wedge a board beneath him—which earns hoarse, choked sounds of pain from him—I coil a rope around the board and heave him to the house.