Sera held up a hand for me to be quiet as she closed her eyes to listen.
I listened too but didn’t know what we were listening for. The forest sounded normal to me. Animals were waking for the day, and some had already been up since before the sun had risen. Yes, I had heard those birds that chirped when the sun wasn’t close to the horizon, but I was used to ignoring them.
“We need to find Grace,” Sera told me as she went back to her bag and began packing up everything from the night before.
“What do you mean, find Grace?”
Sera looked up at me and rolled her eyes but didn’t explain.
“Pack up everything; we’re leaving,” Sera told me.
Orders. I hated being ordered around. I did much better with reasons, and Sera knew that. Why did the old Sera have to come back? I was doing perfectly fine with the friendly Sera that was showing Grace what an excellent last day meant. I wanted to protest, but the thought of Grace stopped me. It wasn’t the time or place to argue with Sera.
I honestly was lost as to what to do. Grace still wasn’t back with us. I’d assumed she just got up for a few moments and would be coming back through the bushes in no time. I had listened to the forest with Sera. No human was anywhere nearby. Did Grace leave already to change and not tell us? Was she not wanting to tell us goodbye? Sera was much easier to get along with when Grace was there to balance out her crazy.
It wasn’t hard to pack my stuff as I hadn’t brought much to begin with. I pushed the sweater Sera had thrown over to me and the blanket that had been covering Grace into my pack. Sera had less to pack as they ate half the stuff she had carried. She finished her bag as I finished mine.
“I’ll take Grace’s bag if you make sure the fire is fully out,” Sera told me.
I nodded as I took my canteen and poured it on the fire. It only made a small sizzling noise as the fire was almost out anyway. I wanted to refill my canteen but could tell Sera was ready to run.
Without anything more to say, Sera stood and took the lead. She picked a direction and started a slow jog into the woods around us. The forest blurred by us as we picked up our pace to a full run, but I was getting more and more anxious as we continued away from our camp. I really couldn’t picture Grace running off without us. Was it possible that she was back there, and we just left her? She didn’t know this area of Elder. Sera was sure about where we were going, and if it had been the old wolf-hating Sera, I wouldn’t have gone with her, but this Sera seemed more concerned than anything. She wasn’t leaving Grace behind but looking for her as I was. The only question was, where was Grace. The only thing I could think of was that Grace didn’t want to say goodbye to us.
“This way,” Sera finally said as she took off running at a different direction.
We wove through the new trees and growth as we ran farther from our camp. There wasn’t much the direction we were going but Aboria. The wolves were north, and the farm fields were south. We were heading due east. I knew we didn’t need to run that direction and into another kingdom if Grace had wandered off to head home without us, but Sera was tracking something.
Within seconds of me wondering if we were going to make it to Aboria on our run, Sera turned sharply towards the south and the farm fields of Elder. I didn’t stop to try to figure out what Sera was seeing as I kept my eyes glancing around the forest while she concentrated on the ground. If Grace was around, I wasn’t going to have us run by her looking at the ground. My eyes needed to be looking up while Sera ran. I might not like to follow her orders, but I trusted Sera. She wasn’t about to leave Grace alone in the woods, wolf or not.
As we neared the edge of the forest and I no longer needed to look around since the trees had thinned and I could see for longer distances, I finally saw what Sera was following. A trail of blood.
My heart began to hammer in my chest. Was Grace hurt? Was she taken from us while we both slept, not that she just left to transform on her own?
Sera finally stopped and reached down to touch the blood. There was more now. I didn’t see it immediately in the woods, but in the fields, I could see it plain as day. Something was bleeding and bleeding a lot.
“Animal blood,” she told me as she smeared it on her fingers.
Seemed her Red powers were more than a bit handy, but they still didn’t explain why Grace was gone and there was a blood trail left.
“What kind?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a wolf.
Sera took another breath of the blood and closed her eyes.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “This is one of the new things I’ve learned this moon cycle. Your mother is better at this.”
So human Grace wasn’t hurt, but that didn’t mean wolf Grace wasn’t hurt. Sera didn’t wait for us to speak further as she gave me the only answer she could and took off tracking again.
Sera led us on the run into the southern half of Elder. There was nothing but farmers and farms fields, so I wasn’t sure why Grace would have gone this direction. Even as a wolf, she would have known to go north. I was glad to see she didn’t continue east into Aboria, but it was still confusing. And then on top of it, if she was hurt, how did that happen? Did a farmer see her?
Sera paused as she looked around for the trail. The spots of blood were getting further apart, either the blood of whatever we were tracking was clotting, or the animal was running faster.
“When did you last see Grace sleeping?” Sera asked as she looked around.
She stopped and stooped down to touch the blood on the trail we were following. She rubbed it between her fingers again as she looked around.
It was harder to track and find clues in the rows of a cut-down corn crop.
“She was there the last time I put a log on the fire, but I don’t know when that was,” I replied as I looked around too. How in the world did Sera and I both miss Grace leaving us? Neither one of us could have kept sleeping if there was a predator close enough to take Grace from us.
Sera stood and circled around again, where we were standing.
“The trail just stops,” she said, confused as to why it would suddenly end. We didn’t find anything in the cornfield. “Like the animal just disappeared.”
I looked around and walked back to the last drop of blood. I finally saw a good imprint from the animal that was running. It was a wolf. Reaching down, I touched the print. Was it Grace or another wolf? There was only one other wolf I would suspect would follow us so far south. I looked harder at the print and knew it wasn’t Nikkan. I had seen more than enough of his prints to tell him from other wolves. This print was smaller than his, and a little wolf would likely be female.
The animal we were tracking was very likely to be Grace in her wolf form, but why would she run from us? And this animal was running. If it was Grace, then it wasn’t instinct but an intelligent mind running that animal. We had to not look at it like we were tracking a random animal but rather tracking a human. And it was different. If Grace thought she was being tracked, she would have been smart and backtracked to lose the hunter chasing her.
“We have to go back,” I told Sera, certain that Grace was sending us a message. Maybe she was running from something. She would know enough that we would track her, but anyone else might get confused.
Sera looked at me like I was nuts, but I didn’t care. She only saw the wolves as animals, but I knew better. They weren’t animals but a human in animal skins. If this wolf was Grace, then it would be smart.
Sera took a moment to catch up with me as I left her. Instead of running and following the blood, I carefully followed the tracks and looked all around. We hadn’t gone more than five or ten saplings when I saw the barely visible trail of the animal leading in a different direction. She had run into the field to confuse anything following her and carefully headed back into the woods.
Without a word to me, Sera took the lead to follow the trail again. I smiled at her back as she started a slower jog this time. She would never admit I had done something
she didn’t do, but we both knew it was me that found the trail to continue on. Someday she was going to have to see the truth that the wolves weren’t just animals. They were smart and still the same human inside them.
I know the curse had people thinking that the wolves were terrible and monsters, but the wolves I knew were different. They weren’t rabid animals; they were people. They could think, feel, and carry on a one-sided conversation as I had done many times over the winters with Nikkan. Maybe I had a better understanding from living with him, but I knew the wolves weren’t what Sera thought. Maybe Grace could get Sera to understand that.
We continued to track Grace. This time, the tracks traveled almost entirely due west. That was a good sign that the animal wasn’t heading to Aboria, and The Vale was too far for an animal to run to in one days’ time. If we had been tracking for days, I would have been worried, but this was actually good. The wolf was going towards the center of Elder, at least for now.
Sera and I kept the slow pace, making sure the trail never veered from the direction we were heading. It was getting easier to follow the blood as the wolf had seemed to slow considerably, and the blood splatter was closer together. I followed behind Sera as she ran but tumbled into her as she came to a sudden stop.
We were standing in a clearing in the forest, the new spring growth already had the grass past my ankles, but that wasn’t the surprise. There in the middle of the clearing was a naked body, covered in so much blood I didn’t know who it was.
I didn’t see a human anywhere and tried not to feel crushed. Grace would never forgive herself for attacking a human.
“Grace,” Sera gasped.
There, in the middle of a field, coated with blood, was my friend. I ran over to her at the same time as Sera. We both knelt down by her and searched for any injury that could cause all the blood. Had a wolf taken her in the middle of the night? It seemed impossible, but right now, human Grace was lying before us in the woods. We never saw a human track on the whole run.
Sera patted over her friend and then had her bag open, pulling out the towel she had from the day before and their swim in the spring. She began to wipe Grace down while our friend didn’t move.
I placed my fingers on her neck, feeling for her pulse. It was there and strong as ever. Whatever wolf took her, they didn’t kill her, at least.
“She’s alive,” I told Sera.
Sera got more of the blood off Grace and finally noticed she was naked. She quickly placed the towel around her and covered her up as she reached forward and tapped her face.
“Grace,” she said quietly at first and then tapped a bit more. “Grace,” she said a bit louder.
Grace’s eyes fluttered as she finally opened her eyes.
“Grace, what happened?” I asked as I kneeled next to her.
Pieces started falling into place. The blood was animal blood. There wasn’t a wolf around. She was naked.
“Happened?” Grace asked groggily.
“And why are you nude?” Sera added, not helpful in the least, as I was coming to my own conclusion.
Grace’s eyes shot open as she sat up, grasping the towel around her. She frantically looked from one side of her to the other side. Her mouth hung open in shock.
“What happened?” I asked as gently as I could. I could see the fear in her eyes as she took in all the blood. The new grass of the clearing was painted red.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off the blood around her. She wiped her face with the towel and spat blood out of her mouth.
“Are you hurt?” Sera asked, still not putting two and two together.
I bit my lip as I wished for her to answer yes. I had only one reason floating in my head as to why Grace was lying in the woods naked covered in blood.
Grace patted her arms and legs before finally turning to look at Sera and me. Tears were welling up in her eyes. She’d come to the same conclusion I had. Neither of us wanted to admit it to Sera, who still seemed a bit clueless.
“I’m not hurt,” she answered as the tears began pouring down her cheeks. “And I don’t remember last night.” She stared in horror at the blood all around her.
I sadly shook my head. That only meant one thing. Grace was cursed.
Throne of Night
1
11th March
Grace was cursed.
I never once imagined saying those words, let alone, thinking them. She’d already decided to spend her life as a wolf. We had run away. We had given her a perfect last day. She couldn’t be cursed. She was going to beat it. But it was too late. Now, she didn’t have an option.
We had put so much hope into Grace turning into a wolf to live out her life uncursed that we never imagined the horrible reality of Elder would take Grace. She was way too sweet and kind to be turned into a rabid monster with no control and an insatiable hunger. It was the complete opposite of her in real life. It just wasn’t fair. The curse alone was bad enough, but this wasn’t something Grace should have ever had to deal with.
While Sera reassured me that the curse took time, and it would be days before Grace turned back into an uncontrollable monster, it didn’t matter. There was no cure. There was nothing I could do for her.
Grace fainted from the shock right after we all realized the truth. We took her unconscious state as a sign we needed to head back, and Sera and I managed to make a cot to carry her. It took us the rest of the day and into the night to make it to my place. Thankfully, Grace had been out the entire time.
The tree people of Elder had spent many seasons afraid of the wolves and the curse. While the wolf people always had the ability to shift into wolves, they had previously had control over when they shifted to their animal form. The curse, on the other hand, made them unable to control the monster they became.
None of the wolves wanted to be cursed, even wolves like my best friend Nikkan, who was currently not speaking to me. He preferred his wolf form, but he never wanted to be cursed. They wanted to be part of Elder like everyone else. To most of them, their wolf was just another side of them, like hair color. It wasn’t a bad thing until you got the curse that took away your control. No one wanted to lose control when they could easily kill any human they came across.
My mother had told us that wolves that shifted before being cursed could live out their lives as wolves. Grace was prepared to give up any hope of living her life as a human to do just that. She was ready, but it was too late. She was now infected with the same thing that had turned countless wolves into monsters of the night. Actually, they were the reason the people of Elder fled to the trees to live in the first place. Now, Elder would be divided again. The tree people in their treetop homes and the wolves roaming the ground below, trying to eat anything they could find.
I honestly don’t know what I would have done without Sera. I expected her to turn on Grace once we figured out Grace was cursed or maybe say, I told you so, but none of that happened. Sera was actually level-headed and helpful the whole time we worked together to get Grace home. I had a feeling that Grace had won her over, and even though Sera was raised a tree person, she was now seeing the wolves differently than she had been taught. Grace had shown her that light.
After making it back to my cottage situated right between the land the wolves currently lived on and the land the tree people lived on, we put Grace to bed. She hadn’t woken the whole trip and was still out. Sera explained that the curse would be draining, but it was harder to watch than I could imagine. Grace already looked sick and exhausted to the point she was sleeping through the day.
I needed to rest before deciding what to do next and lay down to sleep as soon as we had Grace situated. Sera refused to leave me with Grace and kept guard all night. By the time the sun rose, Sera looked exhausted and almost as bad as Grace. Either it was the knowledge of being cursed or the sickness taking over as Grace’s skin had paled a bit since the day before.
With me now awake, Sera finally lay down to get
some rest herself. I tried my best to be quiet for both their sakes as I started to prepare breakfast and got lost in my own thoughts.
My mother, Red, was the leader of the people of Elder. While I had gone to her for help breaking the curse, she said she didn’t have the answer. Part of me wanted to yell at her. She was the Red, and she had broken the curse before, but one thing I always knew about Red. She didn’t lie. If she didn’t know how to break the curse, then she didn’t. I was left having to think about it on my own.
It would have been nice to have my friend Nikkan to help me come up with ideas, but he was still not talking to me due to a misunderstanding with Grace. She was my friend, but he thought there was more going on between me and his long unrequited love. If he only could open his eyes for a moment, he would see that Grace was as crazy for him as he was for her.
“Castiel,” Grace said weakly to me from the couch as I was getting breakfast made.
I turned to her and found she was struggling to sit up. Sera was asleep on the floor as I made my way past her.
“Save your energy,” I replied to Grace quietly as I kneeled down by her. I tucked her back into the couch comfortably. “I’ll have breakfast done in a few. Just rest.”
“Castiel,” she called my name again as I moved to stand. “You should have left me in the woods. The farmers would have taken care of me for everyone. I don’t deserve to live.”
Sinking back down to the ground beside her, I grabbed her hand and stared into her eyes.
“You deserve to live.” I put every ounce of truth I had behind that statement.
Grace bit her lip as it began to tremble.
“But all the blood. I’m dangerous. I killed someone.”
Tears began trickling down her face.
“It was animal blood,” I told her, but that didn’t seem to stop the tears that were now running rivers down her face. “You didn’t hurt anyone but an animal. Just a normal meal, right?” I gave her a smile and a wink to try to lighten the mood.
Castiel: Son of Red Riding Hood (Kingdom of Fairytales Boxset Book 3) Page 16
