by Lynn Red
It all flooded through me at once. His setting me up for heading off after the girl who didn’t exist; the wolves almost killing me; the bears taking me in as one of them… I coughed again and this time, I got to spit blood straight in Todd’s face.
He snarled and recoiled. I heard him begin to froth and fume and stomp, just like he had so many times before. “You gonna hit me?” I asked, almost hoping he would. “Or are you just gonna sit there and—“
“I’ve already got what I want,” he said, the coldness returning after the short splatter of fury. “I’ve got you, and they don’t. They’ve got no mate, they’ve got no clan. And do you realize who I have to thank for it?”
The footsteps retreated again. The instant before the door swung open, the overhead lamp shut off with a decided clanking sound. I saw the back of the man I’d thought I loved for years step through a cell door, only now he was shaved bald. No more curly black hair, no more ever present cologne, nothing but his raw essence remained.
“Is something different?” Todd asked, turning to face me. He was pale, but that was nothing new. Only now there was no color in his eyes, they just sort of glittered with a sickly blue so light it almost seemed white. “No,” he said. “I don’t think it is. Things are just real now.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “What’s it like?” he stepped closer as he spoke. “Having your entire world… no, your entire reality shattered? What’s it like to learn that everything you thought you knew is a lie? What on earth is that like, Ade?”
“You don’t get to call me that, whoever you are.” I thought for a moment. “Whatever you are, more like it.”
He laughed again, chilling my blood, though I managed not to react. “What are you, anyway?”
“Me?” he said softly. “You met my daughter, we’re the same thing. Shape shifters. Born leaders.” He was silent for a moment. “Born rulers. Nothing like those backward, half-savage bears. We’re going to be part of this world in a big way, and soon. We’re going to rule it from the shadows, and I’d just love for you to be a part of it.”
I spat again, but he just laughed, so I’m guessing I didn’t hit the mark. “No?” he asked. “Well, don’t say I didn’t try to help.”
“Oh, on top of being the world’s most boring boyfriend you’re also a megalomaniacal dick? I sure know how to pick ‘em.” I clicked my teeth together, hoping to provoke Todd into… something. In the past, calling him boring was just about the only way to get a rise out of him, but now he was far too into his own weird charade to fall for it.
“Oh, Ade,” he said with a smiling snarl that revealed his teeth were much longer than I remembered. “I wasn’t ever the boring one.”
He turned on a heel and took a few steps away before freezing where he stood. Over his shoulder, he called out, “Oh and thank Grave for me when he wakes up. Let him know that since he lived up to the deal, I won’t kill off his useless clan just yet. Sometime, eventually, we’ll probably have to remove them for… sanitation purposes.”
I’d known, somehow, that Grave had meant to bring me to Todd. I mean, I hadn’t been sure, but the thought had occurred to me. And now as I sank back to the cold, hard ground, nearly naked, and completely vulnerable, the fact that I’d been played by both sides really hit me. Tears came as freely as blood had earlier from my laid open hands.
“Why? Why? Why?” I repeated, feeling stupid at both my own almost willful ignorance, and at having been fooled again. I’d let my heart go first and my head took the toll. I curled myself up in a ball as best I could with my ankles shackled and on a short chain. The overhead light clicked on again, and it wasn’t ten seconds before the heat had me sweating as heavily as I was sobbing. I couldn’t stop, even if I’d wanted to. My nerves, still frayed and raw, had reached that point where there was no going back.
Somehow though, the intensity of the light burning down on me from above isolated my fear. It was almost like it highlighted the worst thoughts I was having, and burned them away until there was only one thing left that my brain had any capability to think: I had to get out. I had to get Grave, get out, and if I could take a piece out of Todd’s ass on the way? Well, what the hell, a girl can’t be picky all the time, can she?
The light had burned me for so long, and so hot, that my sweat had run out. I felt waves of cold surge through me, followed by the pulse of heat that reminded me of having the flu. Heatstroke, flu, desperation, hunger, anger, the lies…
I climbed to my feet, and for the first time in my life, I roared so loudly, so fiercely, that I almost scared myself.
And then, despite everything, I stood there in the spotlight with a smile on my face.
“If there’s a camera in here, Todd,” I said with my smile turning into a wry grin. “If you’re watching, then you better kill me. If you want your ridiculous world domination, Blofeld bullshit plan to work, then you should probably come back down here and bring some friends to make sure I’m dead.”
By then, I was so pissed that I was frothing wildly at the mouth. I felt almost like one of those slavering wolves that I’d run through. “If you don’t? If you don’t come back and kill me, you’re never hurting a single bear cub or otherwise. You’re never gonna walk out of this place alive, you lying sack of garbage!” At some point I began to feel like I’d started channeling my own inner professional wrestler and I was staring down a camera ten minutes before a world title match.
“Ade?” the voice coming from Grave was weak and helpless. And anyway, I was on a roll. “If you’re listening, Todd, you better come back down here and stick a knife in my chest. Shoot me, blow me up or something, because I’m telling you right now—if you don’t? If you don’t kill me? You’re not keeping me in the box! You’re not keeping me anywhere! I’m getting out, and then I’m coming back for you. Unless I gut you on the way out, that is.”
“Ade?” Grave called out again, but was too caught up in venting years of frustrated angst. “And how dare you call me boring? Who the hell are you? I doubt you even know. Some kind of werewolf royalty? Whatever you are, I don’t give a shit. You come back down here and take off these chains and I’ll—“
“Take the belt from him? Maybe give him a few bodyslams and a piledriver?”
Grave laughed, but so weakly that hearing his sad little puffs of air immediately shut me up. “Grave!” I tried to go to him, but of course, got yanked right back. “What did… how did you know?”
“I’ve been in motels once or twice,” he said. “And what do you think bears do for fun? We have our own championship. Anyway, you’re brave. You’re probably braver than any of us, but there’s something you have to know.” He took a deep breath, air whistled as he exhaled. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing any of us can.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You went from cold and calculating, dangerous and wild, to cowed by some pale-faced, pucker-ass? And no I don’t know what that means.”
Grave had gotten infinitely more sullen in the intervening moments and ignored my charm and wit. “I’ve killed them, pup,” he said. “I’ve killed all of them and I did it because I wasn’t sure of you.”
My ears pricked up. “You… what?”
He took a deep breath. “I thought the only way to save the clan was to sell you out. I,” he sounded like he was running out of air, but wasn’t going to stop. “I knew Todd lured you here, and so I… I went to him.”
“You… you’re supposed to be their leader! You’re supposed to be our leader!”
“Listen, pup,” he said, cutting me off. It was almost reassuring to have his gruff, no-nonsense personality return, but there was a turn to what he was saying. There was vulnerability, a weakness, that I’d never sensed before. There was humanity to him that I’d never noticed.
There was desperation.
“But why? I thought there was supposed to be some magical mating ritual that would make sure the clan was safe. I thought—“
“There is,” he said. �
�But it’s too late. There’s nothing we can do. They’ve poisoned us all with that smoke. It takes bears and it…” I could see just well enough to notice that he dropped his head and was staring at the ground. “We can’t do anything.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, gesticulating as wildly as I could with my hands locked together and chained between my ankles. “Hold on just a goddamn second. That smoke, that nasty, acrid smoke, it somehow prevents the ritual? It keeps us from mating?”
He heaved a very heavy sigh. The kind that only comes when you’re too tired to stay awake, but have to anyway. “Yes,” he said. “Well, in a way. It poisons us, it makes us weak. That’s why—“
“Oh my God,” I said in a whisper. “That’s why you only stayed shifted for a couple of minutes. That’s why those wolves were able to capture us.”
“Yes, pup,” he said. “It’s some kind of drug that weakens us. It weakens our, er, vigor.”
“Holy shit, you just called your sex drive your vigor. We’re in 1783. I’ve been locked in a cage, imprisoned by my boring ex. My werebear lover just revealed that the smoke that some magical werewolves have been flooding the forest with makes them impotent, and here I am, chained to a wall.”
“Not impotent,” he said defensively. “Maybe a little. But it takes everything we’ve worked for, everything that you are to us, and makes it impossible.”
I took a deep breath, collecting my thoughts. “Okay well, I’m not sure anything you said makes any sense at all, but I do know one thing.”
“We need to get out of here,” Grave said. “We need to get Craze and Wild and I need to,” he fell silent, and I heard a faint thumping sound. “I need to… apologize. I need to be a leader, not a tyrant.”
“You need to trust yourself,” I said, not terribly sure what I meant. “You need to step up and be the leader that everyone else already thinks you are.”
I heard him grinding his teeth. His jaws were popping with each clench. I knew that even if what I said didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, at least not on the surface, it must’ve gotten through to him. But, he wasn’t saying anything so I figured, what’s the harm in prodding a little more? “You need to do what you know is right, even if it’s harder than turning me in and buying some time. That’s why you did it, right?”
Honestly, I had no idea why he’d done what he did, but that was as good a guess as I had. Next thing I knew, there was a bear gripping the bars between our cells. “I know that, damn it,” he hissed. “I know what I’ve done and I know that I need to fix it. I didn’t trust you, but now…”
“You do?” I asked. “You’re sure you even can? I’m not one of you Grave, I’m just a human who fell into the world you’ve known forever. Are you sure you can believe that I’m stronger than that?”
He stuck his arm all the way through the cage, up to his shoulder and turned the palm of his hand up, fingers outstretched. I knew what he wanted, or at least I thought I did, but try as I might, I couldn’t stretch that far. “Can you do that, Grave?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and pushed his shoulder partway through.
I managed to strain just enough to get my hand into his. He squeezed tight enough that it felt like he was holding on for dear life. “But I know I’m willing to try as hard as I can,” he finally said. “I know you’re the only hope we’ve got, and dealing with this criminal isn’t going to do a damn thing. Every deal I make, he changes, every time he says one thing he does another.”
“Then we need to get out of here,” I said, squeezing back, even though the cuffs were biting deep into my wrists, “and I’ve got an idea.”
I lurched back and forth, and began to unleash such a wild, crazed, desperate moan that I was honestly surprised I managed to be so dramatic. I paused for a second. “There are guards, right? Or… something? I’m not just doing this for fun, you know.”
Grave shrugged. “Must be,” he said. “But I don’t know what you’re hoping to—“
“Oh God!” I screamed out, so loudly and so piercing that it actually hurt my throat a little. “I can’t breathe! I’m sick!”
I shot a glance toward Grave, only to find him looking at the floor, shaking his head. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying. Either way, he had a look on his face when he lifted his eyes that told me whatever it was he thought, that we were there together. And just that was enough to give me a warm feeling that coursed from my core outward to my fingertips. Just knowing that no matter what happened we had each other was enough to give me the courage to continue my comically awful production. I felt like a complete idiot, but when I started croaking again with the faux-phlegm coughing I started up, it just made me feel… excited.
It was that moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’re about to have a terrible date. I mean a really, really bad one. The guy picks you up and smells like he hasn’t showered in a week, and starts slicking down his eyebrows with his thumbs as he grins at you. That one, singular moment when you know that you can just accept that you’re going to either be the jerk that cancels a date after the guy shows, or you’re gonna have a night worth remembering only for the stories.
Or, you can just make the best of it. Try your damndest to laugh with the guy, not at him. Try to honestly love every second of the Pizza Hut buffet experience he treats you to, and then the protracted conversation about his model train obsession that you can either try to weasel your way out of or just enjoy for what it is.
That’s where my mind was. I was alive in the apex moment of giving up or getting on with it.
“He’s coming!” I hissed toward Grave. “At least I think that’s him.”
Footsteps clomped heavily toward our cages. “Should I keep going? Or do you think that—“
I saw the flash before anything else. The only thing I remember from that split second in time when the world blew up, when the entire new reality I’d settled into erupted in white hot explosions, was that the light came through a window between where Grave and I were staked down.
The blast of light gave me my first glance of the place that we were tied down, and when it hit, I just happened to be looking toward the giant gray bear I’d met first. He lifted his head and in that singular, impossible moment, opened his eyes.
We didn’t know what the explosion was. Hell, we didn’t even know it was an explosion. Not until the floor shook and the walls groaned. And when all of that did happen, it didn’t seem real.
“What the hell was that?” I heard myself whisper. My voice seemed to reside outside my being, about eight inches above and to the left of where I actually stood. In between the flash and the shaking, heaving, roiling of the floor, more footsteps approached. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but it was certainly more than just the two feet that could be Todd. “A bomb?”
Laughter came from the direction of the hall. Cold, cruel, awful laughter that made my skin crawl and my guts twist. I didn’t need to ask again.
“A test,” Todd’s voice wafted through the bars of my prison to my ears.
“Of what? Did you somehow build a big wad of dynamite?” To my left I heard Grave growling deeply. I had the feeling that if Todd got anywhere near him, the bear would rip the chains off the wall and then get a mouthful of Todd’s throat. I kinda wanted to see that, thinking back. “Knowing you,” I added, “it’s all show and no go. Probably rigged up some big flashbang bomb to convince me that you had enough power to do whatever you wanted, and I should just do what you said instead of fighting. I’ll tell you something…”
Todd held a small screen a few inches from my face. At first I couldn’t tell what I was looking at; the flash had done something to my eyes. Tracers wobbled around whatever I tried to focus on. The brightness of the screen didn’t help much either.
The device he held in front of my face resembled and old-style portable television. It was boxy, gray and emitted an almost musical humming sound from the vibration of the picture tubes. “This is your future, Adriana,
” he said, taunting me. “This ancient world you gave up your whole life to join is going up in flames as we speak.”
“I didn’t give up anything,” I hissed. “You tricked me into it, you… you know what you did, why do I have to keep defending myself?”
“Because!” he threw his hands into the air. “You forgot me! Or you never cared in the first place! Either way, this didn’t have to end like this. You didn’t have to fall into their claws, you stupid, stupid woman!”
Grave issued another soft, dangerous growl. It didn’t take long for Todd to keep ranting, but he was so incensed that he hardly made any sense at all. He spluttered as he rambled, angrily saying things I’m not sure even he believed about how it was all my fault that he lured me in. He said the only reason for my involvement was how weak and selfish I was. He tried everything he could think of to get under my skin. The things he said grew more and more vicious as I didn’t respond until finally he said something I couldn’t ignore.
“The only reason they’re suffering like this is because you won’t do what you know is right,” he hissed. “You could end all this if you just gave yourself up, you could save the clan you claim to have fallen so deeply in love with. Of course,” he brought the monitor back down and stuck it in my face again. “You couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know with you, I never did. I never could understand why you did the things you did.”
“Really? Like what? What sort of things did I do that so confused you? Now that I know you’re some kind of super-evolved werewolf genius, I’d like to know what a stupid human woman could possibly do to so confuse you.”
He stood there shaking his head, slowly, back and forth. A smile crept across his thin, ugly lips and for a moment I wondered how I ever found him attractive. “You know,” I said slowly, “I used to love you. I used to wake up every day, kiss you and go to work. You know what I did there? I’ll just go ahead and ruin the surprise, I spent most days thinking about how I wanted to get back home and see you again.”
