“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I promise that I won’t eat your heart unless I’m starving or you give me a reason to break my word. But you have to leave tonight.”
“How kind of you,” the Wolf snarled. “Do you expect me to be grateful?”
“If you’re not, then you should be.”
Her voice had grown hard, and he saw the tiny muscle twitching in her jaw again.
“I’ve wanted to eat your heart since the day I met you,” she continued. “So for me to make such a promise is rather significant, don’t you think?”
The Wolf kept pacing, his gaze straying to her long throat. His mouth watered when he thought of sinking his teeth into her neck and ripping apart the veins. He could feel his muscles hugging his bones, readying him for the attack, but the man in him would not be silenced.
“I don’t understand any of this!” he shouted. “We lived together for weeks.”
“I didn’t exactly want you there, Wanderer.”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
“You mean that’s not your point,” she retorted. “I went against my desires and my nature trying to spare you. You brought this on yourself. Even you have to admit that.”
“I don’t have to admit any such thing. I never did anything to deserve this.”
“I didn’t say you deserved it. I said you brought this on yourself.”
“Don’t you have any decency?”
Ella Bandita was silent for a few minutes, as she slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry you see it that way. I’ve never gone to so much trouble trying to spare anybody as I did you, Wanderer. What do you have to tempt me to give you what you want? I don’t bargain with those who have nothing to offer and I already gave you plenty of chances.”
“I wasn’t just some rogue you seduced!” the Wolf protested. “We cooked together and shared our food, bathed together and shared our bodies. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“Of course it does,” she said. “I gave you my word I wouldn’t eat your heart. That is an exception I’ve never made for anybody.”
The Wolf stopped pacing and stood before Ella Bandita. She still lay back, propped on her elbows, her eyes fixed on him until he spoke.
“You can justify yourself all you want,” he whispered. “But how can you do this?”
“You grew up on your grandfather’s stories, Wanderer. You already know how I can.”
The Wolf couldn’t hold back any longer. He lunged, pinning her to the ground. She pushed him away in time, his teeth snapping just above her neck. She held his jaws the best she could, but he wrung his head from her grasp. His hollow space pounded and pulsed the hate through him, and his lips quivered at the thin muscles lining her throat. Ella Bandita could only fight him off for so long. Her icy gaze seared through him.
“If you kill me, Wanderer, then what do you have?”
The Wolf heard his heart beating from her tent and the pain in his hollow became intolerable. He still had the urge to tear her apart. But if he gave in, he knew his heart would never be a part of him again. He stepped off her.
Ella Bandita was shaking. Her blouse was torn and blood seeped from the wounds on her chest. She bowed her head between her knees and heaved for air. The Wolf couldn’t stop stalking back and forth. He had no remorse for what he almost did. His fur stood on the back of his neck and the growl rumbled in his throat. She pulled her head up and glared at him.
“I can only forgive that once,” she said. “My promise still stands, but you better leave before I change my mind.”
Ella Bandita stood and turned her back to him. She strode with an even gait to her camp, the moon shining upon her. The Wolf could scarcely breathe from the fury and loathing coursing inside him. But he had no choice. He ran along the western ridge of hills above the valley, away from Ella Bandita. He howled as he went. The Wolf was certain his grief would destroy him every time he thought of his stolen heart and his lost manhood.
About the Author
Montgomery Mahaffey is a fantasy writer who has told her stories all over the country. Alaskan winters shaped Mahaffey as a writer, and her work is built off of the myriad of personal and collective experiences formed underneath that mystical landscape. Born in the south to a family of storytellers, Mahaffey has developed her own voice that is suffused with the temperament of the wanderer instinct. Set in a world where magic is at once subtle and pervasive, her novels bring to life symbols and stories of the old fairy tales told with wry humor and passion. In 2005 she was granted the Individual Artist Project Award from the Rasmuson Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska. Ella Bandita and the Wanderer is her first novel.
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