by Annie Bellet
* * *
Roane didn’t take her to town with him. He said it was too close to the full moon, even though the moon had waned to nearly half in the last week. Janie didn’t argue with him, she knew she’d never win anyway.
She spent the morning cleaning, setting the little cabin to rights. By noon boredom set in and Janie grabbed a book on wolves, which were just about the only books Roane kept around, and climbed up to the sleeping loft to read. Her foot came down on something hard and slightly sharp.
She rubbed the sore sole and then lifted the little metal object that had hurt her.
It was a key, an old fashioned style brass key. Janie sucked in a breath. The top of the key had worn through, which is how it had come off Roane’s keyring. Her heart started to beat faster and faster, the wolf within pushing at the surface, curious.
This key opened the forbidden room.
When she’d come to live with Roane he’d given her a few rules. The most sacred of these was that he had a room she must never enter. He told her that a man needed a private space and she should respect him enough to stay out. Janie hadn’t tried to go in the room, and Roane never went in when she was in the house. The door taunted her, smooth dark oak with rubber around the bottom creating a seal. She’d only asked about it one other time and Roane’s cold look had quelled any further questions.
But now she had the key.
“One peek, I’ll touch nothing,” she whispered and then immediately felt silly for doing so. She was home alone, no one around for miles in any direction. Roane wouldn’t be home for a couple hours yet.
Janie slipped the key into the lock and slowly turned it. She heard a click and then pressed the door open. The room beyond smelled of cedar and old blood. It was dark within and Janie hesitated at the threshold. She felt along the wall with her right hand and found the light switch, hearing the far off hum of the generator in the shed as it kicked in. A lamp overhead flickered on and Janie blinked at the tracers the sudden light left in her eyes.
The room was longer than it was wide, with a desk at one end and a bench built into the wall at the other. Resting on the bench was a set of thick iron restraints, like handcuffs with chains attached to both them and metal rings set in the wall. The desk had a bookshelf above it, with journals on them labeled neatly by year in Roane’s plain script.
She considered just closing the door and putting the images from her mind. But Janie felt a pull. She needed to understand this secret room Roane had forbidden her to enter.
Janie left the door open behind her and walked into the room. She moved first to the bench and the restraints there. The heavy iron was cold under her fingers and the scent of blood strong. She saw no blood, however, just deep gouges in the cedar paneling around the bench, as though someone or something had tried to claw its way free of this place. She shivered and backed away.
The heavy oak door shut suddenly with a clear click and the key pinged on the cabin floor. Janie darted back to it in a panic. She’d left it in the lock on the outside. The door had no handle, just the flat brass face of a lock. A lock that required the key now out of reach, hidden behind thick wood and rubber edging.
She sat down hard on the floor and chewed her lips, trying to take even, deep breaths. The wolf within shifted and stirred, roused by the smell of old blood and her racing heart. Janie knew she needed to think, to work out what this place was. After a moment she rose and went to the desk. If there were any answers to be had here, the journals would be her best shot.
The current year was on the desk. Janie opened it to the first page and her name jumped out at her. They’d met just after Valentine’s Day, but this was dated back to January. He’d been watching her. Her life, her small routine of work and home and work again, was laid out neatly on the page in careful observations. He’d even followed her when she went away on the full moon, followed her up into the hills and tracked her wolf back down again.
Phrases like “young and strong” and “likely to go into heat in the next couple years” leapt off the page. It hadn’t been chance, his truck breaking down while he returned home from visiting a friend. Roane had stalked her, waited for her to go into heat, and then made her his own.
Janie put a hand to her belly, feeling the little lives within. She felt sick the way leaning over the side of a tall bridge made her feel sick. Staring down into all that open air, that nothing staring right back up.
She reached for another journal.
There had been others. Others going back almost fifty years. Roane had told her their kind were long-lived, but Janie hadn’t really thought about what he meant. He looked no older than mid thirties, but she guessed he was more like seventy or eighty from the journals.
Each journal was just like hers. He hunted down and stalked a woman of their kind until she went into heat. Then he either abducted her or got her to go with him like he had with Janie. He’d been so sweet, so sure of himself. He told her his secret with that knowing look in his eye and she’d finally found someone who understood, who could show her how to control the wolf within.
Staring at the evidence of his methodical betrayals, Janie felt heartsick. She scrabbled in her mind for an explanation. Roane was a wolf as well as a man, maybe this was normal. Maybe she didn’t understand.
When she finally made herself read more, even that rationalization was taken from her.
Roane had explained to her about babies and their kind. Sometimes a wolf woman gave birth to pure wolves, sometimes to pure humans, and only sometimes to wolf people like Janie and Roane.
She saw his face in her mind, eyes brown-gold in the sunlight. “You’ll have good babies, babies like us” he’d said. Babies like us.
He killed the ones that weren’t. And the mothers, too. It was on the page in cold, careful script. He didn’t say killed, just “had to put down”. Like an animal past its use. He even noted where he’d buried them. Hot tears slid from Janie’s eyes. She loved the great spreading oak out beyond the barn. But death lay beneath it. Murdered women and their children. Her chest felt as though it would collapse.
Then she found the one journal that had multiple years. One woman, Sarah, a good twenty five years back, had born him two sons. Both wolf people, Isaac and Jacob. Sarah had been allowed to live, for a while. She’d threatened to take his children away when she discovered his journals, much as Janie had done. So Roane had put her down.
The sons had left him, Roane’s writing here grew very terse and he didn’t describe why but Janie could read between the lines of tight, even text. The boys recognized their father was a monster. They’d found out, somehow. Roane kept track of them; they had a ranch about a hundred miles from his own. It was why he’d moved here, eight years ago. Keeping tabs.
Janie shivered. There’d been two wolf women in those years, both giving birth to healthy, normal human babies. Both killed with their young. She dropped the last journal and choked back a scream.
Her head pounded with blood and the wolf within sang against her skin. There was only one thing she could do to protect her babies.
Flee.
She had to get out, get free of Roane. Desperately she scraped at the door, then threw her body against it again and again. Even though she was strong, the door stayed closed and locked.
Janie knelt on the floor and dug at the rubber seal. Slowly it gave way and she caught enough of an edge to peel it back. Her back and arms ached and she didn’t know how much time she’d used. Roane was due back from his town trip in the early afternoon. If he found her here . . . Janie shook her head. She needed to get out, to focus, not dwell on the what if. She couldn’t face the man she’d thought she’d loved. Not knowing what she knew now. She wasn’t sure what was scarier, that he might hurt her or that he might convince her to stay.
The rubber peeled back and Janie pulled and pulled until the rubber stretched and a length tore off. Cool air came in under the door. She laid down on the cold stone floor and looked out. There, just
beyond the door, lay the key.
She tried to get her fingers under the door and only succeeded in skinning her knuckles. She licked at the spots of blood and clear fluid that rose on her damaged hand and turned to the desk.
Inside it, Janie found a ruler, the wooden kind with a strip of metal in it. She lay back down on the floor and slipped the ruler under the door, stretching it out to try to catch the key and bring it in.
The ruler wasn’t long enough, the wood falling just short. Hot tears slid down Janie’s cheeks. She sat up and brought the ruler to her mouth. She gnawed at the wood around the metal, softening it with her spit until she could scrape it with her teeth.
Slowly the metal strip worked loose in its groove. Janie’s teeth hurt, her mouth tasted like cheap pine wood and copper.
She slid the metal out a few inches and then lay back down on the floor. Carefully she inched the lengthened ruler out the door. The thin metal touched the key, pushing it a bit further. She grit her teeth and lifted the ruler as best she could, slipping the metal bit over the key. It inched back toward her.
Slowly, so damn slowly the key and ruler scraped across the cabin floor. It was close now, almost close enough to grab.
A large brown work boot stomped down onto the ruler.
Janie swallowed a scream and scrabbled back from the door as Roane’s large hand picked up the brass key. The key turned in the lock and the door slid open.
She’d been so focused she’d never even heard him come in. Janie’s wolf within growled, fear coming off her in waves.
Roane’s handsome face was as hard and cold as stones in moonlight.
“Bitch,” he said, “I told you never to come in here. Why do you have to disobey?”
“Why,” Janie started to say, her voice coming out high and tight. She swallowed hard and continued, “those women. Those babies. Will you hurt our babies, Roane?”
She didn’t know why she asked that. She knew the answer. It was there, plain as pie, right in Roane’s own handwriting.
He stepped through the door and Janie fixed on the daylight behind him. She called to her wolf, begging it to come forth, trying for the change. It wasn’t something she’d ever done, not so far out from the full moon. But she had to be stronger now, and that bright space beyond was her only chance of ever leaving this room alive.
The wolf within answered and Janie felt her body shift within her sundress. Desperate, terrified, she leapt right at Roane, snapping her jaws as she dodged beyond him.
His powerful arms caught her body and slammed her into the far wall. She’d never dreamed he could be that strong. As a wolf, perhaps, but not as a man. She felt the heartbeats of her unborn babies flicker and heard the sick crack of ribs. Hot, salty blood flooded her mouth and pain jammed darkness into her eyes.
She had to get up. Had to fight. Freedom was there, just beyond this killer of kin and wolf. Janie tried to rise and the blackness took her down.
