by Kyla Stone
Vlad’s spray had a distinct stink. Zachariah had always said it smelled like hot buttered popcorn. “Hungry?” he’d quip, elbowing her with a grin.
“Very funny,” she said to Vlad, blinking hard.
He chuffed at her, making a sound like a throaty cough, obliging and playful again now that he’d adequately punished her.
He was so beautiful, so majestic it made her heart hurt. How incredibly unfair it was to imagine the world without this magnificent creature in it, without any of the animals in it.
She’d spent her life resenting these animals for stealing the time and attention of her father. But she was fond of them, too. More than fond. Her feelings for the animals were a tangled mess, much like her feelings for Haven, her home, and for her father, her mother. In this was the dichotomy of her life—that she simultaneously loved and hated the same things.
“What do you want from me?” she said to the tiger. Then her throat thickened, and she had to finish her work and stride away, fast.
She passed one of the peacocks strolling the grounds, a strutting male who went about pouting and preening, showing off his sapphire-throated elegance and flamboyantly-plumed jewel-green tail feathers. He squawked at her, annoyed.
“I’ll get to you,” she said as he shimmied his feathers at her.
She decided to cross the grounds out of order to feed the bonobos next. They had been screeching their indignation since yesterday.
The six bonobos lounged in the roped netting strung between three trees inside their habitat; some sleeping, others combing nits from each other’s fur. Pepper and Newton chased each other over a tightrope, nimble and sprightly, hands and feet clinging to the rope as they enthusiastically attempted to shake each other off.
Cousins of the chimpanzee, bonobos were the smallest and most intelligent of the apes. Her father had bought them because they were a female-led society, mostly peaceful and less aggressive than chimps. They’d been extinct in the wild for two decades.
Zephyr was the matriarch, the oldest and wisest. She was a patient and calm leader, looking out for the others, breaking up arguments, and protecting her small son Gizmo from the taunts of Pepper and Newton, both four-year-old juveniles. Pepper was particularly calculated and cunning. She would distract the other bonobos and steal their food—especially lettuce, her favorite.
Gizmo bounced on his branch, swinging his arms and offering Raven energetic screeches and hoots. He grinned, his top lip pulled over his teeth, his leathery face relieved and joyful. Finally, he seemed to say, you brought dinner!
He reached toward her, gesturing with his fingers, his eager, black-licorice eyes gleaming. His black hair was parted in the middle on top of his head, giving him a distinctly human look.
He tugged a grim smile from her. Seeing him so exuberantly happy made her chest constrict with a hollow ache. “Nice to see you too, Gizmo.”
Next were the red foxes. Zoe, Zelda, and Magnus were as energetic as puppies—and almost as tame. One of her favorite things was to go in and rub their bellies and brush the burrs and twigs from their fur and lush red tails.
The Zebra, Sal, was beautiful and vain about keeping the oily black and gleaming white of his coat pristine. But he would sneak up and bite her as soon as her back was turned. He also liked to kick, so she always locked him in his night house when she needed to go inside his pen.
The bobcat, Electra, was ancient at nine years old. She was cute and cuddly-looking with her charming bobbed tail, luxuriously spotted coat, and perky, black-fringed ears, but she had fast reflexes and a predator’s instincts. She was still capable of killing a grown man with gruesome efficiency.
Raven’s father went right into her pen and scratched her back every day. Electra was known to flip onto her belly and bat playfully—and a little too forcefully—with her razor-sharp claws. Raven’s father just shrugged and wrapped whatever scratches she’d left on him.
Or, he used to. He’d never again enter this pen. He’d never again sink to a crouch and crawl around with the wolves or watch Vlad tear into his dinner with serene satisfaction.
Raven sucked in her breath at the memories. She tossed the bobcat the whole, plucked chicken she loved to eat—bones and all. Electra growled appreciatively as she pounced on it.
It was early evening by the time Raven reached the rear of the park, where the wolves reigned over two large, forested enclosures. The first enclosure was the largest, and held the six timber wolves. Behind a tall chain-link fence topped with electrified wires, the wolves prowled through a copse of trees in the center of their enclosure.
She knew these wolves the best of all the animals. Because they were her father’s favorites, they were hers as well. She remembered long, sweltering afternoons of hunkering down before the fence to watch her father inside the enclosure with the wolves.
He would sit with them, frolic with them, sleep with them. It had taken months of patience, but little by little, the pack had accepted him. Raven had watched it happen with a bitter mix of envy, awe, resentment, admiration.
Normally shy and wary, the wolves usually kept to the cover of the trees during the day. But they knew her scent and the smell of food. One by one, they appeared between the trees and drifted into the clearing a few dozen yards from the double-fence line.
Titus and Loki were the closest, Loki coming right up to the fence, tongue lolling, ears pricked. Loki, god of mischief, was aptly named. He was the smallest of the wolves, but made up for it in abundant energy. Curious and mischievous, he always had a spring to his step, was always the first awake and ready to play. He was the first to come to her father when he started spending time inside their paddock.
Titus stood tense, ears pricked, fur raised, tail stiff behind him. Not aggressive, but protective. He was the beta. Four years old and in his prime, he was a bruiser; tall, thick-chested and bulky. The beta was the bouncer of the pack, the alphas’ enforcer, the first to snap at any wolf out of line.
“I’ve brought dinner,” she said.
Suki whined eagerly and took a tentative step forward, her tail lifting. She was the shyest wolf and the youngest, a yearling. Suki was sweet and gentle, the peacekeeper, the one who always broke up arguments before Titus or Aspen had to get involved.
Her name was Japanese for “beloved.” Her dad named her when he nursed her from a pup after a she-wolf from another zoo had rejected her young. It was the only sentimental thing Raven had ever seen him do.
The last three wolves hung back.
Echo was spindly, with a straggly, uneven grey coat, a chunk bitten out of his right ear, and a perpetual slinking manner, an air of cowardice. He was the omega, the lowest wolf on the totem pole.
The other two were the alpha pair, Shika and Aspen. A brindled she-wolf, Shika came to them unnamed, so Raven’s dad gave her the Japanese name that meant “as a deer,” fleet-footed. She had a savage, restless beauty about her. And she was fast, easily outpacing her lifemate, Aspen.
Aspen was six years old, with a magnificent shaggy ruff and a single dark stripe down the center of his muzzle. He stood close to Shika, both of their yellow eyes fixed on Raven.
The alpha wolf wasn’t the bold, aggressive, take-charge type like most people thought. That was the role of the beta, the alpha’s second-in-command. The alpha was the brains behind the operation, the central nervous system that kept the pack together and working properly. The alpha was wary, cautious; he protected himself and the critical, hard-won knowledge and experience that kept his family alive.
The male never led alone; it was a partnership, like the parents of a family. That was pack.
After she’d lured the wolves to their den, Raven hauled the deer carcass from the wagon and dumped it in their enclosure. In the wild, wolf hierarchy was established by who ate what, so her father preferred to feed the wolves a whole carcass instead of joints of meat. Sometimes they fed the wolves a calf carcass, but her dad liked to hunt deer when he could instead of purchasing meat from
the slaughterhouse or renderer.
Memories lay thick and heavy over every inch of this place. Everywhere she looked, she could see him: lounging beneath the sprawling oak with the wolves; striding along with flagstone pathways, trailed by a peacock or two; bent over the fences, checking for breaches; driving the electric cart everywhere, hauling water and food and hay.
Her chest tightened. For a moment, it was hard to breathe. She pushed the feelings away. She had too much to do to waste time feeling sorry for herself.
She released the wolves to their dinner.
It was a bizarre and sometimes frightening thing to watch wolves eat. They snapped and snarled at each other, fangs bared in a frenzy of furious excitement. If one tried to take a bite from a section that wasn’t theirs, the other wolves growled and bit at him.
It seemed savage from the outside, but her father had explained that the higher-ranking wolves were giving lessons, teaching the lower wolves, ensuring every wolf remembered their place in the pack.
A wolf pack used food as a way to maintain order. Each wolf had a spot—prized organs, neck, flank—earned depending on its rank and role within the pack. The meat they ate affected the distinct smell of their urine, which they used as a signal of identity, status, and role.
Her dad had told her once of a pack in the wild whose natural prey had been so depleted, they’d been forced to catch salmon from the river. With every wolf eating the same thing, their urine lost their markers. Each individual wolf lost its identity. The pack descended into chaos and collapsed.
The sun was sinking below the treeline by the time Raven moved on to the next enclosure. She was tired, her arms aching, her belly rumbling, but she forced herself to keep moving. As long as there was work to do, she could force out the pain, the memories, the hovering darkness threatening to devour her the second she let her guard down.
This was also a wolf enclosure, but these wolves were kept separate from the timber wolves. They were too dangerous.
Her father was adamant that Haven only house real wild animals; he’d refused the genetically modified exotic animals most zoos used now. Called mods, they were engineered to be meek and docile.
By law, scientists were required to ensure the mods didn’t breed, and only very specific, qualified companies were allowed to create mods. But as always, a black market sprang up, driven by the elites’ desire to acquire the most exotic pets to accentuate their chic designer outfits and fabulous mansions.
There were those who desired the size and strength of a mod, but with extras for certain nefarious activities. Both wolves had been rescued last year from an underground exotic animal fighting ring. To gain the advantage in the ring, their owners had illegally bred them to produce a hybrid with the size of a mod and the cunning intelligence of the wild-born wolf.
No other zoo or refuge in the area had been willing to take them. Finally, her father had relented, and they were brought to Haven.
“Stay away from them,” her father had cautioned. He had never warned her about any other animal in the park—not Kodiak, not Titus, not Vlad.
No one went inside this enclosure other than Dad. Last summer, Zachariah’s teenage nephew was sent to the hospital after he reached through the chain-link to scratch Luna when she rubbed her back against the fence. Luna had whipped around and chomped down on two of his fingers. He almost lost them both.
Zachariah had warned him, but the boy thought he knew better. Wolves weren’t dogs. And hybrids weren’t even wolves. They were some nebulous other—beautiful but terrifying.
Raven stepped up to the fence, peering through the maple, elm, and ash trees, searching the shifting shadows. She felt their presence, knew they were watching. They were always watching.
“Come out now,” she said softly.
Luna appeared like a ghost between two trees at the rear of the enclosure. She was huge, easily over two hundred pounds, her coat as pure white as driven snow. Standing still, her amber eyes fixed on Raven like she could see straight through her.
A shadow separated from the deeper shadows beneath the trees, forming into an enormous wolf, this one the ink-black of a night devoid of stars. His broad shoulders and chest rippled with muscles beneath his thick fur.
The black wolf raised his regal head, his muzzle long and narrow, his gaze intelligent, cunning. He’d been named Shadow for the way he seemed to merge with the darkness, appearing and disappearing at will.
For a long moment, the hybrid wolves stared at her, and she, at them.
Abruptly, Luna’s ears flattened against her skull. Her eyes slitted and she growled, her jowls pulled back to reveal sharp, gleaming teeth.
Shadow snarled, hackles raised, tail stiff behind him.
The hairs on Raven’s arms stood on end. Instinctively, she stepped back, fear surging through her. Logically, she knew there was a double fence between them, that she was safe, but her brain buzzed with alarm, screaming that two enormous predators were intent on devouring her.
Both wolves growled savagely, their jaws snapping, backs arched, hackles bristling. Raven took another step back. “Easy now. Just calm down for a second—”
That was when she heard it.
The rumble of motorcycles.
10
It took Raven a moment to place the sound. She hadn’t heard a car out here in almost a month. Even then, almost every vehicle on the road was electric. The motorcycles were aggressively loud, their unmuffled engines revving, crashing through the stillness like thunder.
She stilled, rooted in place. Her mind whirred with terrible possibility after terrible possibility, each one worse than the last. They could be looters or vandals, criminals or serial killers.
She already knew who they were—the bikers from Clay Creek, from the pharmacy.
But what the heck were they doing here?
She couldn’t stick around to find out. She fought off the panic closing around her throat. She wasn’t sure what to do, but standing here, waiting like a sitting duck, was a monumentally bad idea.
Maybe she could hide in the crawl space beneath the lodge, wait it out until they left. She couldn’t head for the car—it was in the parking lot, right where the bikers were headed. Besides, it was uncharged.
Maybe she should just flee like she’d planned all along, make a run for it. Though her pack with her supplies was in her bedroom in the lodge. She needed the supplies in that pack to survive alone for days in the woods. She couldn’t run without it.
Maybe she should find a weapon, prepare to defend Haven and herself from whatever these thugs planned to do. The maintenance shed was located between the lodge and the food prep buildings on the northeast side of the park. The tranquilizers were kept in there. And her father’s guns.
Either way—run, hide, or fight—she had to go the same direction: toward the oncoming motorcycles. The evening light was fading fast, the sky deepening to indigo, crickets beginning their night songs, but it was still bright enough to see clearly. No matter what she did, right now she had to get herself out of sight.
Raven broke into a run. She turned and sprinted left, abandoning the exposed flagstone path for a worn-in trail through the weeds and bric-a-brac behind the exhibits. At the back end of the park, she had to race past the bears, the ostrich pen, the smaller porcupine, eagle, and otter exhibits, the bonobos’ house, and finally the reptile house to reach the storage buildings nestled out of the public’s sight behind a screen of poplar, oak, and maple trees.
The motorcycles grew louder. They were still obscured by the trees. A nine-mile gravel road winding through heavy forest brought visitors to the main parking lot and the front entrance, which was gated—and locked.
At best, it would only slow intruders down. Though electrified top wires were strung along the exterior perimeter, the wrought-iron fence was more for looks—and keeping wild creatures in—than protection from outside threats.
The gates wouldn’t deter them for long.
Even inside the
grounds, there was plenty of foliage to shield her as she raced between the storage buildings. Her father had insisted the park keep as many of the natural trees and bushes on the property as they could. She hesitated for a moment before bypassing the maintenance shed.
A gun didn’t seem like a good idea. She knew how to use one, had hunted deer with her father dozens of times, but this was entirely different. She wouldn’t stand a chance against a gang of experienced, strong, violent fighters.
The motorcycles roared into the parking lot. The engines switched off. Loud, raucous voices filled the air with shouts and jeers and curses.
She pressed herself against the rear wall of the lodge. Her pulse thudded against her throat. Run. She needed to grab her gear and escape to the woods.
Except that her window was located on the west side of the building, directly in the line of sight of the bikers. And the ground dipped along the rear of the lodge, making the back windows—a bathroom, her father’s room, a guest bedroom—over ten feet from the ground. There were no nearby trees, no way to reach them.
She needed a plan B, whatever that was.
She eased around the corner, cautiously scanning the front of the park. She counted ten bikers gathered outside the gates, including the ones from the pharmacy. She recognized several: burly, blond Scorpio; Damien with the sharp fox-face and the piercings; Ryker, the dead-eyed one who’d shot Carl in the face. And the gaunt, pony-tailed one, whose name she didn’t know.
Of the half-dozen bikers she didn’t recognize, one stood out—partly because he stood at least half a head taller than the others. He was huge, with a barrel of a chest and blue tattoos squirming across his bulging arms. She was close enough to make out his square, stubbled jaw and chestnut-brown hair shorn close to his skull. He sauntered through the gates with one hand on his rifle butt, his shrewd gaze assessing everything as he scanned his surroundings.
The others blended together—tough, brawny, terrifying. They carried various weapons—rifles, knives, and guns. Most wore gloves, with masks tugged down around their necks. And they all circled around the tall man, waiting on his orders. He was clearly their leader. This one must be Cerberus, the name Scorpio had mentioned at the pharmacy.
