by H. D. Gordon
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Goldie snapped, and the look on her face indicated she already regretted what she was about to say. “Keep her here tonight. In the morning, we’ll figure out our next move.”
The air rushed out of me, a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Before I could profess my gratitude, Goldie knelt before the child where she was curled up against the washroom wall and asked a question I’d been avoiding since I’d intercepted the pup in the woods.
“What’s your name?” Goldie asked, her voice gentle and almost… motherly. Unlike I’d ever heard it before. For whatever reason, it made my cold heart ache.
The child was silent for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. But her hazel eyes met mine as she said, “Amara.”
She was so small, her voice so young, that something I’d long suppressed reared its angry head within me. At the horror of it, at the injustice of it all. It was such an ugly world we lived in, and I cursed the gods who’d created it.
“That’s a pretty name,” Goldie said, still using that soothing voice. “This is Rook, and my name is Goldie, and we’re going to try to help you, Amara… but you’re going to have to trust us. Can you do that?”
Amara’s eyes darted between the two of us. At last, she nodded her little head.
It was cowardly of me, and I knew it, but I almost wished she hadn’t. I almost wished I’d never come across her out in those woods.
Because it felt like the start of something, like the first yank on a thread that would lead to an utter unraveling.
And some instinct within me knew that once unraveled, this was not a tapestry that could be rewoven, but rather, something that would need to be strung anew.
7
We left Amara in Goldie’s cabin, making the child swear upon the gods that she would stay put and remain silent until we returned.
Goldie would conduct her night’s work in the rooms above the Blood Moon Bar. This would cost her a percentage of her earnings (on top of the percentage our Master, Bo Benedict, already took), but it was a sacrifice Goldie made without batting an eye. If I hadn’t already loved the young lady, I would have done so just for this.
After my friend double-checked the lock on the cabin door, sealing Amara inside, she turned to me, her pretty face grave. With so many prying ears, she only dared to speak mind-to-mind. While Wolves were not mind readers, we had the ability to speak to each other telepathically as long as the communicating parties let their mental shields down enough to do so. This, of course, required a certain amount of trust, but it was an ability that came in particularly handy when in Wolf form.
“We have to get her out of Dogshead. Maybe to one of the coasts.”
I considered this. “But where?” I asked. “Where can she go that she won’t be picked up by one of the Collectors or Sellers?”
“Perhaps that is something you should have considered before you decided to assist a runaway.”
I swallowed at the tone, and was too aware of her correctness to respond in kind. “I’m sorry,” I said. It sounded lame, inadequate. And that’s because it was.
Overhead, the nearly full moon had risen, casting its bluish glow over the countryside, dimming the stars in its brilliance.
Goldie sighed through her nose, her red lips pursing. “No,” she said. “Don’t be sorry. What’s done is done. And this wretched world needs more acts of kindness, so don’t ever apologize for adding to them.”
“I’ve put your life in danger,” I said. “I’ve put both our lives in danger.”
The sound of Goldie’s sultry laugh echoed in my head, though there was no humor in it. “Wake up, love. We’re always in danger, and if we’re being honest, our lives aren’t so great as to matter should we lose them… Where would you rather die, in The Ring, or in the attempt to commit a kindness?”
A real smile formed on my face, as rare as a snowstorm in summer. My head tilted in a manner I knew was Wolf-like.
“If I liked females that way,” I told her, “I’d probably ask you to be my mate.”
Goldie’s pretty face lit up in an answering grin. An image of her linking her arm through mine passed through my head; a display of friendship that we’d never been allowed in our lifetimes, not with so many eyes and gainful people around. To love in this world was the ultimate weakness, and one that could get you killed.
Goldie’s response was the last of the evening as we slipped through the double doors of the Blood Moon Bar, soon to feign total indifference for each other.
“And if I liked females that way,” my friend told me, “I’d probably say yes.”
On the nights before a big fight, Dogshead turned into a place that gave definition to the saying howling at the moon. With Reagan Ramsey, Master of the West Coast Wolf Pack, in town with all of his slaves, servants, and lackeys, the shear number of new faces alone was enough to set the town in frenzy.
The Midlands Region, where I had been born and slaved, and which Dogshead was the center of, did not have major cities, as there were rumored to be on the coasts. This meant excitement was hard to come by, with the land being mostly fields of lavender wheat or forests and rolling hills of vibrant green. The Midlands Region was the vastest amongst the five Regions, and people whispered tales of great beasts and wicked creatures roaming the lands that made those from outside stumble and hesitate before entering.
In the late spring and early summer months, mighty tornados ravaged region, ripping trees from the roots and houses from the foundations, claiming the lives of those too poor or too stupid to have prepared and taken cover. On the coasts, Mother Nature pillaged with roaring waters from the surrounding seas and tremors on land. Here, She purged with mighty winds and raging fires started by lightning striking down from the heavens. Fires that burned for days, wiping large slates bare and clean.
I had never been beyond the borders of Dogshead, knew nothing about the world save for what I’d heard in whispered stories. Odds were, I would die before ever going beyond this dreadful place, but this was a fact I’d accepted long ago.
Around midnight, I stumbled out of Blood Moon, bleary-eyed and more than a little drunk on moonshine. It was not a habit I was proud of—the drinking, but it was one almost every Dog and working lady acquired by the age of ten. It was how we dealt with the reality of our lives. Our addiction was part of the poison that kept us chained to our stations, same as the moon-shaped brands on our shoulders and the collars around our necks.
The world was swaying, the dusty street outside the bar tilting as I made my way into the moonlit night. I hadn’t seen Goldie for the last three hours, as she’d disappeared up those stairs with two hungry-looking Wolves with leering faces. My friend was no doubt in the throes of her own liquor-induced stupor, the burning drink likely the only way she got through these long nights.
My boots trudged over the dirt street, kicking up plumes of dust and sending pebbles tumbling out of my path. A cool night breeze swept through the square, kissing the sheen of sweat clinging to my forehead, my neck.
My vision adjusted to the gloom with more of a delay than when I was clear-headed, my eyes at last adapting to see in the dark. The sounds of fighting, laughing, arguing, and fucking rose up into the night, creating a symphony alongside the night bugs and creatures that occupied the surrounding fields.
Both Wolves and Vampires prowled about the town square, the latter no doubt in town for the fights tomorrow evening, their faces among those that would look upon me when I faced down the Bear. They would place bets, shout praise or vulgar disappointment, and thrust their arms into the air with excitement. The eyes of the Vampires would dilate, going so dark as to appear wholly black when the irony tang of Dogs’ blood rent the air.
When the Territories had been divided among supernatural kind nearly five centuries ago, the Wolves and Vampires had been allotted shared lands, but there was no love lost between the two races. Both felt inherently superior to the other, though Wolves s
eemed to hold the lower station within the culture.
I passed a group of Vamps huddled around the circular fountain that depicted a pack of howling wolves and marked the center of the town square. One of the males turned to watch me as I did so, but I met his gaze with the predator in my own, and he soon found his companions once more appealing.
Snorting and stumbling, I rounded the corner of a three-story inn and sauntered down the alley beside it. I was exhausted, but figured I should go check on Amara before crawling back to my own hut near the kennels and passing out cold.
The thought of my warm pallet of straw and old horse blankets beckoned me, the idea of escaping into dreamland beyond alluring. Even in my drunken stupor, I was distantly aware that this could be the last night I did so.
And it was this thought that kept me from realizing I was being surrounded by three Wolves on a mission until it was already too late.
A familiar voice snaked out of the shadows, the words somehow simultaneously sharp and slurred.
“Just the bitch I was looking for,” it said, and Mekhi the Hound stepped into a shaft of moonlight that illuminated his Wolfish grin.
8
I went utterly still.
My stomach twisted, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Mekhi took another step forward, standing directly before me, legs spread wide and arms folded over his perpetually puffed out chest. “You’ve found yourself in quite the predicament,” the Hound said.
With a smirk on his ugly face, Murphy appeared out of the shadows to my right. “A predicament, indeed,” the Gravedigger said.
To my left, a third Wolf whose name I didn’t know, but whose face I recognized from the bar earlier, slipped into the moonlight.
A curse clanged through my head, but I tilted it to the side, feigning indifference. “You shouldn’t use words you probably can’t even spell,” I replied.
From the look that took over Mekhi’s square-shaped face, I knew the insult hit its mark. He reached for his belt and snatched up the baton attached there, holding it tightly but letting it dangle down by his thick leg.
“You know what I’d like, brother?” Murphy said, drawling my eyes toward him for a moment. He held a long metal shovel in his dirty hands, the head of it made of iron and forged both sharp and flat. “I’d like to see what else that pretty little mouth is capable of besides all the talk.”
With these words, I felt a lethal sort of calm settled over me. It was always the same, one of my oldest friends, perhaps. The killing calm that became me, the monster that awoke and reared its head. My inner Wolf was aware of impending death at every moment, and unlike the human side of me, it did not fear it.
I spat at the ground between Murphy’s feet, my lips pulling back from my teeth in a snarl. “I would bite your puny dick clean off if it came anywhere near my pretty little mouth,” I said. Rolling my shoulders, I added, “Get on with it, then.”
My invitation was instantly met. The three male Wolves began to circle around me, decreasing circumference inch by inch.
Three sets of eyes glowing Wolf-Gold stared back at me, three sets of teeth bared in grimacing snarls. The smell of sweat, anticipation, and unchecked testosterone rent the air, and my jaw clenched in revulsion.
Before Mekhi lunged for me, there was only a handful of heartbeats, and within them, the world slowed. In that short space, I was intensely aware of the air in my lungs and the blood rushing through my veins. The fog that had been over my mind cleared, leaving my stomach tight but my mind sharp and focused. I likely would not walk out of this alley, but I would drag at least one of these bastards to hell along with me.
Mekhi moved first, as I’d known he would, the black baton clenched in his fist sailing through the air aimed right for my temple. I ducked, my movements fluid and balanced, and slammed the heel of my palm as hard as I could into his solar plexus. A sound like vacuumed air gasped out of him, but as it did, Murphy the Gravedigger swung that flat-headed shovel hard enough to knock the life out of me.
I danced back only fast enough to avoid the brunt of the damage, the metal making a clean incision through the air and similarly slicing the tender skin of my right cheek along with it. Oddly, I didn’t feel the pain, but I did feel the warm trickle of blood as it slid down my face.
The third Wolf was moving. Instead of the baton, he’d chosen the whip that was the partner to the baton; two weapons every Hound always carried. There was a special compartment in my black heart where I stored my hatred for those whips.
And I accessed that compartment now.
Moving faster than Wolves of their size were capable, I spun around the third Wolf and launched into a leap, running up the side of the wooden inn, using the surface of the building to propel myself high into the air. This move put me behind the whip-wielding Hound, and I slammed my fist into the back of his neck, driving him to his knees as though I’d used a hammer.
A small crunch echoed up through my hand, but I did not have time to watch the Wolf slump to the side, paralyzed.
Mekhi’s face was a mask of cold fury, his eyes glowing like vengeful golden suns. Spittle foamed between his slanted teeth, and he barreled at me in a way that was more bearlike than Wolf.
As he did this, Murphy the Gravedigger charged in from my opposite side. I dropped into a roll and thought for a heartbeat that I had escaped the collision, but was yanked up hard by the back of my shirt, the fabric constricting to choking-tight around my throat.
In the next moment, I was sailing through the air. Then I was colliding with the wall, my body striking the old wood hard enough to tremble the structure. My teeth rattled in my head, the breath going out of me in a rush. I hit the ground a second after, choking on the cloud of dust my body sent up from the dry earth.
When I lifted my head, my vision was fuzzy and I spat blood onto the dirt. It was thick and hot and dribbled down my chin.
I pushed up onto my knees, gripping that unforgiving wooden wall for support, but as Mekhi and Murphy prowled closer, I knew that my body had lost the edge of speed. The Hound had tossed me hard enough to kill a mortal. I had no doubt a weaker Wolf would have been knocked clean unconscious.
Mekhi’s knuckles were bone white as he moved in for the kill, gripping that baton as though it anchored him to the realm. My hands went up to block his blow, but instead, he slammed his knee into my midsection.
This time blood sprayed from my mouth in a thin rain of crimson. I sputtered. For what felt like an agonizing eternity, my lungs could not grab hold of a single atom of air.
My body hit the earth again, and I moved slowly—too slowly, trying to pull myself back to my feet. With a sudden rush of panic I realized that I did not want to die here—not like this, not this way. After all the fights I’d faced to still be here, after all of the things I’d overcome, and the narrow escapes I’d made from The Ring over the years… Dying like this, at the hands of these sadist males, just seemed so… tragic.
I shifted.
One moment I was woman, the next I was Wolf. It was a skill I’d honed over the years, the ability to shift in the space between heartbeats, and situations like this were precisely the reason why. It took most Wolves nearly a whole minute to make a full shift, and a wise mentor had once told me that a whole lot could happen in a whole minute.
I was not most Wolves, however, and I hadn’t lied about taking one of these bastards with me. Both Mekhi and Murphy paused at my sudden changing, but my back was against the wall, both figuratively and literally, and so the two did not back down.
Mekhi only said, “What a neat trick,” before raising that heavy baton back into the air.
I released the power coiled in my canine muscles and launched myself at him in a flash of fur and teeth.
The taste of Mekhi’s blood filled my mouth as I latched onto his leg. I’d been aiming for the soft spot of his lower belly, but he’d twisted to the side at the last minute, and I’d been forced to clamp my powerful jaws down on his leg or
risk not making contact at all.
Blinding pain shot through my back, rippling all the way down to the pads of my paws, like a strike of lightning through my veins. I whipped my head to the side, taking a good chunk of his thigh with me.
But that blinding, lightning strike of pain fell down upon me again, this time the blow aimed directly at my temple. A high-pitched whimper escaped my throat, swallowing the growl I would have preferred to bellow.
This time, as the blackness swirled in my head, my vision, and devoured up the world, the scene did not fade fully back to reality. I was slipping away into unconsciousness, or worse. And once that blackness fully consumed me, there would be no escaping it.
Despite the inner protest that occurred at the thought of this, there was nothing I could do to shake out of the fog that was encasing me, steady tightening its grip.
There was a brief image of Mekhi’s leering grin, and then that of Murphy hoisting that heavy shovel over his head.
Right before the darkness claimed me, I thought I heard a familiar male voice break through the gloom.
But there was no way to be sure as my grip finally loosened on the ledge of consciousness and I slipped smoothly away.
9
Pain greeted me upon awakening.
It was a familiar train to ride out of unconsciousness, and I was a frequent passenger.
My eyes peeled open slowly, and it took me a moment to recognize that I was still in my Wolf form, sprawled out on my side, the smell of blood caked into my fur. I tried to lift my head, and sharp pain soared through it like a star across a night sky.
A sound to my right had me lifting my head too swiftly, but I clenched my jaws against the pain to assess where I was—and who had removed me from that alleyway.
Because I wasn’t dead. And I should have been. Even with the fog that was slowly lifting from my mind, I was sure of this fact.
