Howl for Me

by Lynn Red

  “Revenge,” he said, turning those horrible eyes to me fully, for the first time.

  The word was cold and slick, like ice frozen solid over steel.

  My breath froze in my chest. Everything about him was cold, dead and empty. For a moment, I wondered what it was like to be driven only by a single emotion.

  Then I realized that I was.

  And then, I realized that I couldn’t sit there and keep talking to the giant face in the sky.

  “You’re gonna need another body,” I told him, as I forced myself lower, forced my soul back toward my body. “You don’t get this one.”

  “Silly child,” he laughed, again. “To think that Joram Blight needs your body. I’ve already got my own. You’ve seen it. Oh, have I surprised you? The old wolf told you I could sense your meddling. I know that, because I heard him tell you. I heard him, through you. Between you and the simple idiot I charmed, finding the Skarachee has been easier than waking up from my eternal dream. Easier than murdering the Carak. And that,” he said, turning his gaze to Damon. “Wasn’t very hard at all.”

  Immediately, I watched Damon wrench to the left, and then to the right, and one of the ghostly riders ripped into him with a wild swing of a chain.

  “No!” I shouted. “No, you can’t!”

  With every ounce of power I had, I pushed against Blight. I forced myself lower and lower, until I felt my body tingle as my soul returned.

  “Look to the east, child,” Blight said, as I slipped back inside myself. “The body you think I lack? It rises.”

  His voice faded like a dream. It got fuzzy, and then it was gone. I opened my eyes just in time to see Damon take another lash across the back.

  “No!” I shouted, driving my fingers into my temples, and forcing the rider away with an invisible wave of force. “Leave him alone!”

  Damon looked at me, perplexed for a second, and whipped the creature, snapping it in half.

  “What do we do?” he said. “Did you see anything?”

  “Blight!” I shouted back. “He’s here!”

  I pointed off to the east, where maybe a hundred yards away, something so big, so horrible, and so twisted, that I could hardly believe it was real, shambled forward.

  The black blizzard from earlier resumed, but it was following Blight. With every step he took, the winds whipped harder, the sand stung worse. With all that happening, it took a few seconds for us to realize the wraiths were gone.

  Blight was walking, one foot in front of the other, and we were the only four things standing between him and the rest of the world.

  We just stood there, looking back and forth, as the lumbering giant, well, lumbered toward us.

  “What the hell do we do now?” Cat asked, in a reasonably terrified voice. “What—”

  “Cat!” Hunter shouted, reaching for her, as she floated into the air and started thrashing around. “Cat! No!”

  He took three halting steps, stuck out his hand, and immediately got blown right off his feet by a huge, purple bolt, of what looked like static electricity. He lay on the ground, twitching, convulsing, and gasping.

  “Can’t… breathe,” Cat sucked in. “Can’t… breathe. I…”

  “Leave her alone!” I yelled into the distance, and then looked at Damon, who cocked an eyebrow at me. “Go away!”

  “Worth a shot,” I said.

  “Lily,” he said, reaching for me. “Whatever happens, you keep yourself alive, okay? If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to…”

  “To what, Damon?” I asked, looking back and forth between him and Blight, who wasn’t fifty yards away. “Damon?”

  His mouth was moving. It was opening and shutting, like a fish gasping for air.

  “Damon? What is it?” I shouted, grabbing at his hand.

  In the split second before I realized my mistake, a purple crack popped hard against my fingers. I heard Blight laugh in my mind, and then, something blasted me backwards.

  My head hit the ground. My vision went brown, then as it went black, and I saw Damon scratching at his throat. Seeing his suffering, his helpless squirming, and knowing that I was the last one of us able to move made my mind race.

  My whole body was one giant, aching bruise, but that didn’t matter. I strained to keep my head up, and then clenched my eyes shut, sending my spirit west, toward Poko’s cave. I couldn’t fight this thing on my own, I knew, but maybe, if I could somehow call to him, he’d know what to do.

  I felt the desert brush underneath whip past me on every side, and then, just as I reached Poko’s cave and made my way back to his fire, something tore me back, yanked me, violently, back to my body.

  “Poko,” I choked. “Help.”

  I clawed to keep my spirit where it was, but there was no fighting the force. Blight was pulling me back, and I couldn’t resist.

  But then, just as I slipped out of the mouth of the cave, I saw Devin lying on the ground, curled in a ball.

  Using the very last shred of concentration I had, I sent out a wave that brushed him. All I could manage was a breeze, a gust of wind that woke him up.

  “Help,” I whispered, and hoped that he heard me.

  Back in my body, Blight was upon us.

  Somehow, Hunter got up off the ground and charged him. Hunter got in one swing of his ninja sword before he was thrown backwards fifteen or twenty feet by some unseen shield that surrounded Blight.

  Damon dangled there, feet kicking pitifully in the air, silver, fur-covered muscles straining, pointlessly. He twisted, he thrashed, but before long, he didn’t have anything left. Hanging in the middle of the air, he looked so helpless, so completely defeated, that I couldn’t watch.

  Suddenly, I was fading too. My head throbbed where it had hit the ground, and when I reached back, then looked at my fingers, they were red.

  “No,” I said into the air. “No, no, no. Not like this. Please, someone help us. Poko, Devin, anyone, please… Someone, please hear…”

  I blinked twice, trying to clear my head, trying to concentrate, but it was useless. I had nothing left. The world was fading, and fading fast.

  Even in the worst of times, even facing death before, I’d never been so completely helpless, so hopeless, as I was right then. I blinked one last time. I had nothing left. Nothing at all.

  As I slipped into a waking nightmare, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, the earth had heard my begging.

  With my vision fading, two four-legged bullets, blasted across the desert. One of them was huge, black, and wild, snapping at the air, thrashing, as it ran. The other was pale yellow, tipped with white. His fur was like a snow-crusted pile of hay.

  “Po… Poko?” I said, as I watched the smaller, golden wolf hobble up beside me. “Is that…?”

  “No time,” he snapped, his voice very obviously hurting. “When you can move, you must go quickly. Blight is pure darkness, pure hate and rage. Use whatever you can think of to counteract that. Do it, or we’re all dead, and worse – our souls are forfeit. I’m fading,” he said, a cough shaping his lupine jaws. “I can’t keep this up, but… Now go. You’re the only hope.”

  He curled up beside me, and I felt power radiate through my body, two pulses of white heat gave me one last burst of life.

  I looked back, but he was already gone. Was it a ghost I’d seen? A spirit? Or…?

  No time, he’d said. I couldn’t waste this chance.

  When I turned to Blight, the crazed black wolf was latched onto his arm, thrashing violently. It’s jaws were locked, and even Blight’s strength couldn’t detach him.

  “What is this?” he said, with a mocking laugh. “What is this pup? Oh… oh.”

  His dry, humorless laugh was resonant, and sent a shudder through me.

  “Oh,” Blight said. “You’ve come back to me, is that it? Trying now to save your brother, and your pointless packs?”

  “Devin?” I gasped. “Is that you?”

  When I spoke, Blight turned to me for just long enough, that
Devin was able to grab at his throat.

  As soon as those dagger-like teeth sunk down into Blight’s neck, I thought for sure that we were safe, that he’d crumple over dead. Instead, the ancient gray half-wolf plucked Devin off his neck, and held him at arms-length.

  Blight just watched him kick like he was some kind of oversized, lupine baby.

  “Ridiculous child,” Blight said.

  The crack was fast, horrible, and brutal. Even though Devin’s head only moved a few inches, it moved in the wrong direction. When Blight threw him to the ground, I knew he wasn’t getting back up.

  He turned his eyes to me, and, as the life left his body, and his skin started to harden, Devin whispered, “Don’t let him win, Lily… You know what to do.”

  “Devin!” I screamed. “No! No!”

  Blight took another step forward, picked Devin up, again, and something long and silver flashed in his hand and disappeared into Devin’s stomach.

  I ran forward. I’d just jump on him, it wouldn’t do any good, but I wasn’t going to let him just murder the rest of us.

  I screamed again, but it was too late. Devin looked at me, a smile crossed his lips. He nodded, and when I was three steps away, closed his eyes.

  With the next step, the fang Damon gave me all those months ago thumped against my chest.

  Pure darkness. Pure hate and rage.

  Poko’s words ran through me.

  You know what to do, Devin had told me with his dying breath.

  I leapt at Blight. He turned and grabbed my throat with his cold, crystalline hands, squeezing my neck. I thought about what he’d done to Devin.

  He had a glimmer in his eye.

  “Your turn, child,” he said, in that hollow, monstrous voice. “Say goodbye. You’ll make a very useful thrall.”

  “No,” I croaked, grabbing the fang and ripping it off my neck. The chain broke with a soft snap. “We are not yours.”

  The only resistance I felt was when the tip of the tooth went through his leather skin. It broke like cellophane. It stretched, then it popped, and then the entire length of the dagger-like fang sunk deep. I let go of it, and watched as the fang fell into him.

  Damon fell to the ground, and I heard Hunter gasp, and Cat cry out, like they’d all been released at once.

  Blight’s hand went to the puncture, and he began to shake, to twitch, as his fingers circled the hole.

  “You… But… But how?”

  He released me, and I fell to my knees, grunting as I hit.

  I felt Damon’s arm around my waist, pulling me away from the falling giant as his gray face distorted and twisted in a silent cry.

  I clutched him tighter than I ever imagined hugging someone, squeezing to make sure he was really there, and not just an illusion. He turned my face to his, kissed me deeply and sweetly, and stroked the back of my head, calming me, as the tears came.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” I said. “You were just hanging there and… And then, Devin came, and I thought I saw Poko, and…”

  “Shhh,” Damon whispered, smoothing my hair. “Everything’s okay, Lily.”

  “Thanks to you,” Hunter added.

  Blight’s gasping turned to a gurgle, and he fell to his knees, then to the desert floor, face-down.

  “I expected a little more than that, though, especially after the entrance he made,” Hunter said.

  A huge peal of thunder ripped through the desert, and for about five seconds, a monsoon erupted. Rain pelted us, beating down on the desert, and lightning exploded across the sky.

  Then, just as suddenly as it started, it was over.

  “All right, that was a fitting exit,” Hunter said, pulling Cat to him and grinning.

  “We did it,” Damon said. “We did it, and we’re all alive, and…”

  Just then, he happened to look at Devin, lying limp on the ground, back in human form.

  “He did it,” I said. “Blight had me. I was pinned down, and helpless. Out of nowhere, Devin…”

  Cat was the first one to his side, and then the rest of us crowded around. His eyes were wide open, until Damon slid his fingers down his brother’s face, putting him at rest.

  “I wanted to… to tell him that I was okay,” Cat said, her voice halting and punched with near-sobs. “I think underneath it all, he was just scared.”

  Hunter wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe this was his way of making it up to you? To Damon?”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “He wasn’t trying to make anything up, to anyone. He knew that couldn’t ever happen. He just wanted to do what was right. He… I guess, this was his last chance.”

  Everyone just stared, the tension between us thick and heavy. I happened to look over to where Blight had been. His body had vanished, but lying there, wedged between two cracks in the desert, was the fang. I went over and got it, balling my fist around the tooth. When I came back to everyone else, Damon had his hand on Devin’s chest.

  “It’s over,” he said, although it was more of a question. “Right? It’s all finished.”

  I flattened my hand on Damon’s back, massaging his shoulder gently.

  Cat’s lip trembled, and she bent over, touching Devin’s cheek.

  “I knew there was good in you,” she said. “When everyone else couldn’t stop talking about how awful you were, I knew the truth. I wasn’t gonna put up with your shit anymore, but I knew you weren’t all bad.”

  She turned away from him, grabbing Hunter and pulling him along.

  “What do we do?” Damon asked me, and I could tell he was fighting back his own tears. “We can’t just leave him here. No matter what he did before, he sacrificed…”

  “We take him back to Poko. Wilton, the shaman from Scagg’s Valley, he’s going to be there.”

  “Wilton?” Damon asked. “Why? What for?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. But we take Devin back to Poko. Devin did what was right, so now we have to pay him back. He deserves the rituals. For everything he did, all the horrible shit he did, he deserves to be remembered for fighting back against his fear.” I choked back a hitch in my throat. “In the end, that’s what saved us.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Damon said, kneeling down and picking his brother up off the ground.

  “Wait a second,” I told him, with a hand on his forearm, stopping him from turning back toward the car that Hunter just shoved back onto its wheels. “I think he should have this.”

  Resting the fang on Devin’s motionless chest, I tied an ugly knot in the chain.

  “Is that okay?” I asked. “For me to give that to him?”

  Damon gave me a quick smile.

  “I was wondering where that thing went,” he said. “Maybe this is for the best. Let that be a memory of everything that’s happened. Let’s send Devin to the spirits with it, and let it be.”

  We turned back to the car, where Hunter and Cat were standing, watching us.

  Everything had changed, I thought. Every single thing I thought I knew about the world was different. But, it was a good kind of different. This was the only life I wanted.

  I hooked my fingers in the waistband of Damon’s shredded jeans and followed him, looking back where Joram Blight fell – where the old world broke, and the new one started.

  It was ours now. Not just the pack, not just Fort Branch, or the desert, or anything physical.

  Our future and our fate were ours.

  Every step we took, was a step away from the past.

  Every step we took, we were taking it together.

  -20-

  “I felt him die,” Poko said. “I felt the spirits shudder, as my son fell.”

  There were tears in his eyes that dried halfway down his cheeks.

  “I wish this was not the way it had to be, but… I feared this was the end. Almost knew it was. Some things,” he said, “can only end like this.”

  “Lily? Damon?
”

  Wilton entered Poko’s cave after us, his beard jingling with trinkets and bones. “I wish we were meeting again under better circumstances, but I’m glad to see you nonetheless.”

  He stuck out his hand, which Damon took and held. They watched each other’s faces for a moment, and then Wilton pulled away, intent on the business at hand.

  “Is this the place? Good Lord!”

  My Grandpa Joe’s voice came from the cave’s entrance, and I smiled, despite myself.

  “Back here, Grandpa!” I yelled.

  When he appeared, Poko extended a hand to him, and my grandpa helped him up.

  “I’m glad you came, Joe,” Poko said. “I’ve had no closer friend than you for the last half a century, or… however long it’s been.”

  Both of them looked like they were trying to remember for a second before they both quit bothering.

  “Why’d you want me to come?” Grandpa asked. “I mean, I have an idea, but I kind of hope I’m wrong.”

  Poko hobbled over to me, weaker than I’d ever seen him, and put his hand on my belly.

  “You keep that one safe,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “He’ll be a big, strong boy. He’ll keep the pack, when we’re all dusty memories.”

  Outside a howl pierced the dusky sky.

  “Lily?” Grandpa said. “You mean to tell me…?”

  I grinned, sheepishly, and then looked at the ground.

  “Oh damn!” he said, his voice a mixture of shock and amazement. “I… Sorry for yelling, but that’s…”

  Poko patted his shoulder.

  “I expect he’ll be a big one, too.” Poko chuckled softly. “She’s going to need about as much help hobbling around as I do right now. Only hers will end with a new life. Mine too, ends with life, but a different sort.”

  Grandpa took off his baseball cap and ran his hand over his bald crown. There wasn’t a dry eye in the cave, but the smile on Poko’s face told us there was no reason to be sad.

  “We’re eternal,” Poko said. “Every one of us is part of the universe, part of the earth, and the sky, yes?”

  “I… Yes,” Damon said, with a little shake in his voice. “But, I don’t want to see you go.”