Shifted Redemption [The Cursed Wolves Series, Book Three]

by Holly Hook

  "That's good," I say, mouth dry as I eye the sun setting between the tall pines. "I suppose we leave Sarah here. It's a beautiful spot."

  Tyler looks right at me, with those very human eyes. And he nods the best that a wolf can.

  Yes. Sarah can rest here.

  And one by one, the wolves gather beside her form and begin to dig. Snow flies, and then they reach dirt and that flies, too. Gavin takes his shovel and slowly pushes in beside the wolves to work, and I gulp and force myself to step closer to the body. Sarah is on her side, her grayish-brown hair hanging over her face so that I can't see her open, blank eyes. But brownish blood is all over her front, barely missing her leather pack that's still slung over her shoulder.

  "Wait," I say, leaning down to grab it. "I need that. We might get some clues about the curse in here."

  Tyler and Valerie both snort at once, giving their permission. I take the pack, hating that I have to maneuver it off Sarah's stiff shoulder and arm. I'll never forget this. Don't think, Beckah. Just sing a song or something. Just focus on the pack.

  I yank it off, glad no blood has made it onto the strap or the pack itself. It's full of rattling stuff when I shake it a bit. I shudder, thinking of the poppet with Tyler's hair that fell in the snow somewhere outside of Gia's cabin. The dagger must have done the same, the one she tried to stab me with. The scratches and cuts on my side and wrist burn as if reminding me that they exist, and I pull on my gloves over the scratch on my wrist.

  And then I sling the pack over my own shoulder and help Gavin with the digging.

  It's a job I hope we never have to do again.

  I'm sweating under my coat when we're done, and the wolves shake themselves off of dirt and snow, and then Gavin and I stand back as the wolves, working as a unit, pull Sarah into the grave. She lands gently and Tyler is the last to jump out of the four-foot-deep pit of earth, and then he backs off, ready to kick the dirt back into the hole.

  "Wait," I say, stepping forward. "I want to do something nice. I think Gia will appreciate it." I twist some pine needles off a tree at the edge of the clearing, not sure what I'm doing at first, and then I drop them next to Sarah's head, forming a crown. Tears gather in my eyes as I take in the blood and the smell of iron that I've somehow shut out until now. Sarah did want to save Tower, at least at first. Maybe she even wanted to make it a better place for Gia. "There. We can bury her now." I back away. "Sarah, we'll fight for Tower. We'll finish what you tried to do, but we'll do it right."

  The wolves back off, forming a ring, and Tyler is very still before he turns his head to the heavens and lets out a long, mournful howl.

  * * * * *

  The mood is somber but also relieved on the trek back to the cabin. We've gone so far out in the woods that it's almost dark by the time I spot Gia's cabin through the trees, with all the lights on inside. Best to cast away the shadows, I suppose.

  I've still got Sarah's pack over my shoulder and I dread what's inside, and debate on whether I should let Gia look through it. But I decide she deserves the truth about what her mother was doing, and I'm resigned to having another tough conversation with her and everyone else. Gia already knows her mother tried to stab me and worse. She'll be ready for this.

  I lower my weapon as we get close to the cabin, and Gia opens the back door while the Rose Pack goes behind their trees to change back and dress. The smell of food wafts out and I know she's made scrambled eggs for everyone.

  "It's done," I tell her.

  She hugs me again. "Thank you, Beckah. I don't think I could have done it myself. I made you all dinner. I'll have to go feed my mother's chickens tomorrow and make a missing person report within a few days."

  "You made dinner in all of this?" I ask.

  Gia nods with a faint smile. "Of course. You've all done a lot for me." She lets go of me and shakes her head. "And this whole time, a curse has been keeping these kids outcasts in town."

  "Well, our nature also helps with that," Tyler, now shifted back into human form, says from just behind me. "You know, I feel better right now. Maybe the curse has weakened a bit. And I definitely feel more in control around Beckah."

  Sarah's leather bag still feels heavy on my shoulder. "Maybe. We don't know everything about the curse, so we can't be sure." I look at Tyler. He's stunning in the blue light coming in through the back door. His shoulders have dropped and I sense his relief that what he's done is now lying far in the woods, away from his immediate sight.

  We all need a break now, and dinner is amazing. I set the leather bag down on the floor and no one bats an eye at it as we all eat. Turns out that fighting a beastly werewolf pack and burying someone on the same day are exhausting. Even Marion chows down and more color floods into her cheeks as she chews.

  Only when we're done do we retreat to the living room and light the fireplace. And I take the leather pack in with me.

  "Gia, I suppose this is yours," I say, holding it out as she sits on the old leather recliner.

  She looks at the bag as if it's crawling with worms. "Thank you." But she takes it. "I need to see the entire story. And so do all of us. I should open the bag and dump it out."

  My cousin feels like she has her own penance to pay and that's not right. "Gia, don't put yourself through this if you're not comfortable."

  "We have to see what my mother was doing and what she planned to do. I should have known she was murderous long ago. She was never happy."

  "Lots of people are never happy but don't murder," I say.

  Gia undoes the strap. "Okay. If you want to do this, then you may." She hands me the bag and rises. "You're all welcome to stay as long as you want, but I need to go to bed."

  "We understand," Tyler says with a nod. "It was good to meet you, Gia. Beckah likes living with you and I've only heard good things."

  Gia doesn't react to the compliment. She walks past me and Tyler on the couch and goes into her bedroom near the back of the cabin. The door clicks shut and I wonder if Gia is losing it, but she needs alone time away from the Rose Pack, since the curse works on her, too.

  Me, Tyler, Gavin, Marion, Valerie, Cammie, and Chaz move to a circle on the floor of the living room while the fire slowly burns down. Now we can talk about Sarah without setting off Gia or forcing her to listen to us discussing how awful she was. I sense Gia's giving us this time so things aren't as awkward as they would be with her around.

  "You're great to your cousin," Tyler says. "This part of your family is amazing."

  And he kisses me on the cheek, sending happy bubbles down my spine.

  How has the day flipped so much? Marion looks at me as if my skin has turned green. I'm letting a killer kiss me. After we fought and broke up, too.

  "This part is," I say, turning over the leather bag and letting the contents spill out. I'll think of one horrible thing at a time.

  I blink.

  Resting on the carpet are two daggers that I haven't seen before and I'm pretty sure that one of them has a carved bone handle with skulls decorating it. The other has a plain brown, wooden handle. Bags of herbs, tied with red and green twist ties, fall out on top of the daggers while two poppets fall out last, neither with hair attached. Old receipts and a pack of cigarettes fall out on the magical equipment, plus a keychain that says Florida and a notepad with a simple grocery list.

  There are no other contents to the leather bag, and I gulp as I stare at these things that belong in a horror movie.

  "She was into voodoo?" I ask.

  Marion crawls forward on the rug. "No. I think voodoo is something else entirely. Looks more like folk magic to me. I've read a lot about this kind of stuff because, you know, Tower is boring."

  I can believe it. "But these things look like voodoo dolls." I pick up one of the crude, featureless dolls tied together with thick string.

  "I think that whole thing is a myth," Marion says, picking up a blank doll. It's got nothing attached but it's stuffed with herbs, and some of them land on the carpet as they
leak from the tan fabric holding the doll together. An acrid smell makes me wrinkle my nose, and the members of the Rose Pack all recoil.

  "Wolfsbane," Tyler says, tightening his grasp on my hands. "Toxic to everyone, but especially when arrows are tipped with it."

  "Shit," I say, realizing the herbs must all be toxic, and probably used in curses. "I know that's poisonous. We should get rid of it."

  "No. Keep it," Valerie says. "You and Gavin are werewolf hunters and you need to have that in your arsenal."

  "Fair enough, in case those other wolves come back," I say, tucking the herbs back into the bag. "I'm not sure what they all are, but we'll keep the wolfsbane."

  "We might find a way to use it, if Alan or the other wolves come back," Marion says, getting up and looking out the window. She cups her hands over her face and looks into the darkness for a long time.

  "I smell Alan, but he's not coming near the cabin," Tyler says. "He's been around for a few hours now. But I don't sense any aggression. If he was going to do something, he would have by now."

  Then I get off the floor and face Tyler. "He's around?"

  Chaz stands up, unfolding his legs and joining Marion at the window. But he pats her back. "He's been watching the cabin for a while, but his footsteps don't sound aggressive. I don't think he wants to hurt us right now."

  Marion wraps her arms around herself. "Well, I'm not walking to the truck until daylight."

  "No. Really. It's safe," Valerie says. "I think he's just thinking about things. Oh, and now he's leaving." She cups her ear.

  I know why. From where Alan is standing, he can probably hear us talking about him. What is he going through right now? "Well, without him, we might not have stopped Sarah in time," I say.

  "Sarah double crossed him," Tyler says. "They were friends, and then she voiced her intent to kill him right along with me."

  "True," I say. "But maybe there's hope for the guy?"

  Valerie sighs and remains at the window with Marion. "I sure hope so." She cups her hands to the window and uses them as a microphone. "Alan, if you can hear this, we want you to come back."

  A long pause drags out. We have a moment of silence for Alan, and I wait for a knock on the cabin door, but none comes. At last, Valerie pulls herself from the window and returns to sitting, and I know he's gone.

  "Marion, I'll walk to the truck with you. I've got one evil werewolf slain under my belt," Gavin says, flexing his biceps. "Alan won't try anything with all of us here, anyway. So even if he wanted to hurt us, he'd have no chance."

  But does anyone else want to hurt us? "How are all of you feeling?" I ask, panning my view over the Rose Pack.

  A dark look comes over Valerie's face. "If we felt any bad urges, we would remove ourselves immediately and go into the woods. But since...but since what happened today, things have been pretty smooth."

  Yes. Tyler affects the rest of the pack, being the first to get cursed.

  And now that he's sated, so are they.

  "So," I say, picking up a plastic baggie that I now realize has a few locks of dark hair. Tyler's hair. "How did Sarah get this?"

  Tyler shrugs. "I imagine when she cursed me and I passed out after having my finger pricked by that rose?"

  I almost ball my fist around one of the blank dolls. "Then she anticipated having to do this to you."

  Tyler paces around the room, unable to stay still. "I was really hoping she got me by mistake. There's no way Sarah could have gotten my hair after I was turned. My senses got too sharp after that and I'm not a heavy sleeper. Never was, even as a kid."

  "What about these other dolls?" I ask. "I don't know much about curses or anything like that, because my dad didn't like any horror movies and we never had them in the apartment back home. They don't have anything attached to them."

  Marion frowns. "Then they're probably not targeting anybody. I've read about something called sympathetic magic, and something that belongs to the victim is attached to a doll, or used alone to do magic on someone."

  I gulp as Tyler and I stare at each other. Then Gavin and I do the same. The room goes very quiet. "When Sarah was threatening me, she was holding a blank doll. Are you saying that maybe she couldn't have cursed me?"

  Marion pales. "It could have been an empty threat."

  The meaning hangs.

  Sarah wanted one of us to kill her.

  As the thought hits me, Tyler lets his face lower to his hands. And I rise and put my arm over him.

  "If she wanted to die," I say, "she wanted to die. She tricked all of us."

  * * * * *

  We all stay at the cabin overnight, after Tyler insists again and again that he feels normal. It's odd, but maybe normal werewolves have a killer instinct they have to satisfy every once in a while in order to function somewhat like humans. I fall asleep in my room while Gavin lies down outside of Gia's door, crossbow beside him, and Marion gets a spare pillow and crashes on my floor. Yeah, with Alan out of hearing range for the Rose Pack, they've decided to stay the night in case Alan has decided to lie in ambush for either of them.

  When we wake, Gia isn't up yet.

  She doesn't get out of bed as I make my way to the kitchen and cook breakfast. Gavin frowns at me and tells me she hasn't gotten out of bed all night, so after we get done eating, Tyler peeks in and checks on her.

  "She's still sleeping. I bet she's exhausted after yesterday and we should let her sleep," he tells me, closing the door with a quiet click. "And yes, I'm still feeling pretty normal. We're still werewolves, but that nastiness seems to have backed off. Maybe Sarah was part of the curse, and now that she's gone—"

  Gia groans inside her room and turns on her bed with a shuffle. Then she's quiet again.

  "That could be it, but shouldn't we check on the rose bush?" I ask, looking outside at the snow coming down. It's not as heavy as the first storm, and we seem to be on the side of the storm where the flakes get small and become more like a falling haze than anything. But a fresh layer has covered the ground, masking what happened last night. "We should also feed the chickens at Sarah's place." I'm not sure where she lives, only that it's in another cabin not far from here.

  Tyler shakes his head. "We can't leave prints going back and forth. There will at least be a small investigation."

  True. "Sorry."

  Tyler smiles. "There's still some of that old Beckah in there."

  "Is that a bad thing?" I lean in for a kiss. Maybe things are mending. "We should go check on the rose bush, then come back and get Gia up. She'll have to go feed the chickens since that won't look suspicious. She can always tell the cops she was getting eggs since she always does that."

  "We could go as wolves, but the chickens wouldn't appreciate that," Tyler says, thinking.

  "And we'd be naked as we throw seeds to those horrible birds," Chaz adds from the living room. "Sorry, but I'm not signing up for that."

  Gavin laughs. Yeah, that wouldn't be a good idea. "So we check on the vacation house first and then come back. Sounds good."

  "Are we all going?" I ask.

  "I think that's a good idea. Gavin, you drive most of the way there just in case," Tyler instructs. "And bring weapons, since I can't tell where Alan or those other wolves are right now. I think the rose bush will be okay since we've got a tarp on it, but things could change at any moment."

  We all pile into the truck, with Marion in the front and Tyler and me in the back with the Rose Pack. Everyone rides calmly as Gavin slides around, trying to get his truck down the unplowed roads. Geez, Tower could at least clear the main drag, but they don't seem to have the resources for that, either. We pass a car trying to get itself unstuck from the Tower Market, and I know why Gia walks to work.

  Gavin turns down the hidden road that leads to the vacation house, and there are no tire tracks here—just a white space between trees to follow. We get stuck twice, and Gavin has to rock the creaky truck out of the snow. He cusses about drifts but at last, the old vacation house sta
nds like a small castle in front of us, frosted with snow on the roof. He stops and remains in the truck as the getaway driver in case things get bad, and I get out, circling immediately to the front of the house.

  "I'll stay in here," Marion says from the front seat of the truck.

  I'm glad she's seeing reason. I wave to her as I follow the Rose Pack to the house.

  The rose bush is under a blue tarp, looking like a weird troll under the plastic as we approach. Tyler takes a breath and stands back, hands behind his back, as Valerie approaches, gulping. Fear fills her blue eyes as she exchanges a look with her sister. Chaz also hangs behind, and I hold up a hand.

  "I can do the honors. We'll see what state it's in," I say. Already I can feel the tingling sensation the plant gives off, though it's muted with the tarp over it.

  Tyler lets out a breath.

  I slowly pull the tarp off the rose bush.

  A few tiny snow crystals land on the green leaves, and brilliant red greets me. My heart pounds as I study the petals and the leaves, which still have tan blight spots in places, but overall—

  "It's no better and no worse," I say.

  "I smell something on it," Chaz says, stepping forward. "Beckah. Step back."

  I do, and Chaz looks down at a greenish substance that's been sprayed around the base of the rose bush, which is free from snow. Potting soil has been added to the base.

  "It's plant food," Chaz says. "Someone put plant food around this for us. The rose is holding on."

  Tyler wraps his arm around me as we survey the scene, and I know why the rose bush is holding on.

  Alan is out there, and now he's changed. He's just as desperate to keep his humanity as the rest of Tyler's gang.

  Maybe, just maybe, I reached him after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tyler and I go inside the vacation house, and Gavin and Marion come in as well as the rest of the pack shifts to go hunt for Alan. Valerie most of all wants to talk to him, to see how he's doing, and even though he once tried to kill me, I'm not nervous about that.