“Nowen?” She raised her head. Benjamin stood near, holding out a plate with rough-cut hunks of meat on it. “How’s this?”
She dragged herself upright. “Good job, Benjamin. Toss them in the pot.”
The pieces of rabbit slid into the water with a splash. Nowen stoked the fire as Benjamin went back to the kitchen and returned with a plastic ladle and a large bowl. He tipped the bowl towards Nowen; it was full of corn and glistening white lumps. She poked one. “Canned potatoes.” he said as he poured the contents into the pot and stirred. He handed the ladle to her and headed back to the kitchen. This time he brought back a shiny copper kettle that sloshed with his every motion. He set the kettle at the edge of the fire and dropped down next to the fireplace.
Nowen stirred the pot, glancing over at Benjamin. He met her gaze evenly, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. The kettle whistled and the young man moved it back from the flames as he spoke.
“What do we do now?” His words were steady but an undercurrent of anticipation ran through them.
Nowen watched the liquid in the pot swirl around, meat and vegetables rising and falling with the motion of the ladle. She could feel Benjamin’s eyes on her. “We get Everett awake and eating. Then you stay here with him and I go after Sage.”
“By yourself.”
“We’ve been over this before. I can travel a lot faster by myself.”
“And I can drive. I can also get closer to whoever is in charge where ever it is we’re going. They don’t know me.”
Nowen tilted her head and met the young man’s eyes. “Not true. People saw you at the hospital, right?”
Benjamin slapped his thighs with evident frustration. “Why don’t you want people to help you?”
She ran her free hand through her spiky hair. “It’s not that I don’t want help. It’s that I’m the only one I can trust.”
The young man’s face grew still. “Wow. Thanks a lot.” He stood, nearly falling into the fire with the quickness of his movement. “Do you really believe that? After everything?”
Nowen just looked at him.
An expression of pure disgust crossed Benjamin’s face, and she found herself on the edge of apologizing, an urge that came as a surprise to her. Benjamin turned and stomped away to the kitchen. Nowen was left with the silent wolf and her confused thoughts. She looked down at the shaggy grey head and ran a hand over the dirty fur. “I am the only one I can trust.” she whispered. “It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.” In her mind amber eyes gave her a look very similar to the one that Benjamin had. Oh, what do you know? You’re as wary of other humans as I am.
Nowen looked up from Everett’s body at the sound of footsteps. Benjamin, a scowl pasted on his face, came up to the fireplace, bowls and cups in his hands. He took his previous seat and passed Nowen the bowls. As she portioned out the soup Benjamin poured hot water into two of the cups and then dropped a tea bag into them. The third cup got a smaller amount of water and was set aside to cool. He handed Nowen a cup as she passed him a bowl. “I don’t know if the tea is still good, and there wasn’t any sugar. Sorry.” Finally he looked up at Nowen. “Do you like tea?”
She had to think about it. “I don’t know.”
“Let it sit for a few minutes before you try it.”
Nowen set the cup aside. She slid closer to Everett and dragged his head to her lap. Carefully she spooned some of the soup from her bowl and brought it to the cracked, black lips of the wolf’s muzzle. Some of the warm liquid made it into his mouth; more spilled on her legs. Not enough-
Hands, dark-skinned and strong, wrapped around Everett’s muzzle and lifted it off her lap. She glanced up at Benjamin as she finagled another spoonful of soup. “Press against the corners of his jaw - that’ll help to get his mouth open.” she said, and then quickly poured the liquid down the wolf’s throat.
There was no response.
“Again.” Nowen said, and again the process was repeated. This time she dropped a few slivers of rabbit down Everett’s maw, rubbing his neck in an attempt to encourage swallowing.
The grey wolf’s front leg twitched.
Benjamin gasped. “Whoa, did you see that?”
Nowen nodded silently and plucked more small bits of meat from her bowl. These she fed to Everett, massaging his neck after each bit. Then, she waited. The grey wolf lay unresponsive once more. “Hmm.” she murmured, more to herself than to Benjamin. “Maybe raw meat would work better. Or blood.”
The wolf’s eye snapped open. In the copper orb Nowen saw only wildness, an animal hurt and surrounded by strangers. A vicious growl rumbled through the skinny chest.
Benjamin flinched and pulled his hands away from the wolf.
The crazed eye rolled from Benjamin to Nowen. She could almost see the wolf’s thoughts, such as they were: go for the enemy closest. With another chest-rattling growl the wolf made a weak lunge at her, jaws spread wide.
Nowen slapped him, hard, across the muzzle. “Stop that.” The wolf yelped, a sound that turned into a pitiful whine. She grabbed his heavy head between her hands and leaned over until they were eye to eye. “Everett. I know you are in there. You’re safe now. Come back to me.” Her words carried the authority of her own wolf.
The grey wolf blinked rapidly for a few seconds. Nowen studied the single eye and saw Everett return, saw the human intelligence and confusion and understanding of the world flood back into the copper depths. The wolf’s body jerked violently, and then the fur was sinking into the skin and the limbs were reshaping themselves. After a few last ‘pops’ as bones settled back into place a human lay were the wolf had been.
Everett looked up at her, his head still in her lap. “Hello.” he whispered.
In the bottomless silence of the night the snap and pop of embers in the fireplace were like little firecrackers. Nowen stared at the glowering red wood chips, letting her mind drift aimlessly. She had slept for hours, a deep sleep that had left her feeling foggy. Now she sat up, pulling her legs under her, moving away from the tempting warmth.
A low snore drew her attention to her companions. Benjamin was the culprit, lying flat on his back with his mouth wide open. Everett was sprawled out in the wide space between her and Benjamin. Nowen started as she realized he was awake, his solitary eye staring at her.
Nowen reached for the kettle of water that sat on the edge of the fireplace. She filled a large mug then awkwardly crawled over to Everett. He was struggling to sit up; she slid her body next to him, supporting his weakened frame. His hands trembled as he brought the mug to his lips but he drained it completely. As Nowen took the empty mug back she noticed that Everett was already looking better than he had earlier that day. It seems vukodlak do recover quickly from anything. A twinge of pain raced along her still-healing head wound. Well, almost anything.
Nowen refilled the mug and passed it back to Everett. This time he just cupped it in his hands, taking small sips as he stared into the fireplace. “Thank you for getting me out of that place.” he said abruptly, glancing at Nowen from beneath a forelock of grey hair.
She sat down next to him. “Well, thank Benjamin, too. I almost ran off and left you both, trying to get to Sage.”
A bemused grin spread across Everett’s mouth. “Really?”
She nodded. “I can’t even pass it off as my wolf being in charge. It was all me.”
Everett took a sip of water. “I’ve heard you talk like that before, as if your wolf form was a separate being.”
“That’s how it is.” Nowen caught the startled look that flashed across his face. “Right? It’s like that for you, isn’t it?”
Everett set the mug down, carefully, before he looked at her fully. “No. Nor any of the admittedly few other werewolves I’ve known.”
An unexpected desire to know more sank its sharp teeth into Nowen. The only other vukodlak that she had spent any time with was Sage, and with the girl’s reticence to even change the thought of talking about it had ne
ver crossed her mind. Now she crossed her legs and leaned forward, resting her arms on her thighs. “Tell me. Who changed you, and what was it like?” She watched Everett’s eye shift from her to a spot over her shoulder as he sifted through his memories.
“It was about four months after Flux had sent everything to hell. I was trapped in Denver, still stuck in my hotel.”
“Where you alone?” Nowen interjected, remembering her similar experience in a hospital in Colorado.
“Mostly.” He snorted a laugh and then looked quickly in Benjamin’s direction. The young man slept on, and Everett picked up his story. “I was in Denver for a week-long series of conferences. It was interesting stuff but bad timing. Flux was reaching its peak just about then. And with the news stories about people dying or going crazy and killing other people - well, by the last couple of days a lot of presentations were canceled and the ones that continued were held in half-empty halls. It didn’t matter to me at that point, because I had the flu.”
He glanced at Nowen. “Obviously it was just a plain old everyday flu.”
She found herself smiling. “Obviously, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Everett took another drink of water before he continued. “So, there I was in my rather nice hotel room, sick as a dog. I remember hearing news reports on the television about the craziness going on everywhere. When some talking head started babbling about dead people getting up and running around, I figured I was hallucinating, shut the set off, and went to sleep.” He fell silent, and Nowen studied his face. A deep and wrenching sadness was etched there.
Another sip from the mug. “I was woken I don’t know how much later by screams from the hallway outside my room. I scrambled out of bed, thinking - oh, hell, I don’t know what I was thinking. Terrorist attack? Earthquake? Mugging? At the door I reached for the knob...and then something made me look through the peephole first. I don’t know what it was that made me do that, but it saved my life.” Everett turned to face her and now Nowen saw horror. No matter how many months or years had passed, she knew, what he had seen would always feel as if it had just happened.
“What did you see?” Her voice was as soft as snowfall.
“A little boy being eaten alive.” Everett drained the mug, but this time when she reached for it he shook his head, tightening his hands around the ceramic container. “A little boy, no more than six or seven years old, sprawled on the carpet. Screaming. Two old women with hair as grey as mine were crouched over him, pulling...things from his abdomen. I couldn’t think clearly. I half-hoped that I was still asleep, maybe dreaming some kind of horrific fever dream. I banged on the door. The two women looked up at the noise, and that’s when I saw their strangely-colored skin, their bright yellow eyes. Just then I heard more screaming, coming towards me, and I saw a couple of either police or security guards jump on the women. They were whaling away with their nightsticks, but it didn’t bother the old women. They got the two cops down on the carpet and then...”
Everett was staring into the depths of the empty mug. “Anyway, after that, I locked myself in the bathroom and caught up on the news on my tablet. The reports coming in got crazier and crazier. I saw one, right before the internet went down, that claimed Russia had nuked one of their cities in an effort to stop the Fluxers.” He smiled, a thin smile that didn’t reach his eye. “Sorry, that was a long detour, wasn’t it? To answer your question, I was mostly by myself. I was lucky in that the hotel was close to empty because so many people had fled the city. I was unlucky in that the hotel was just a block away from the conference center. The center was turned into an emergency medical facility, and was chock full of Fluxers. Those undead bastards filled the streets around my hotel for blocks. I was trapped, and so were the few other people who had stayed. We tried to make a go of it, banding together and all that, but things fell apart.”
“Like what?”
Everett shook his head slowly. “The usual human stupidity. A couple of survivors decided to hit the streets and try to get out of town. They didn’t get far. The rest of us inevitably fell to choosing sides and forming camps. Once the realization that our food supply wouldn’t support everyone it turned into all-out war.” He raised his gaze to Nowen. “We killed each other in the halls of that hotel. There were close to ten survivors, and when it was done I was the only one remaining. That’s how I lost my eye. And, that’s how I nearly lost my life. The cut became infected. I was in terrible pain, and the thought of what I had done to survive was driving me crazy. I decided to end it all. I staggered down to the lobby and outside onto the street. For once there were no Fluxers nearby. I heard loud music a block or so away. Loud, thumping music, and I remember thinking-”
“ ‘Is that Metallica?’ “ Nowen said.
Everett looked wide-eyed at her. “Yes, exactly! Then a caravan of big trucks and cars came around the corner at the end of the block. One of the vehicles pulled up right in front of me, the window slid down, and a beautiful woman with long white hair asked me if I needed a ride.”
“Hmm. And that’s how you met Vuk.”
He nodded. “Looking back now, and knowing what I know about Vuk, I can see how he manipulated me. Even half-blind and sick with fever he saw something in me that made me a good candidate. Maybe it was because I was covered in the blood of the people I killed. I think - no, I know - that he would have driven on without hesitation if I didn’t meet his ‘criteria’.” He nodded again, thoughtfully. “So, they offered me a ride, they saved my life, and a week later Vuk draws me aside and says he has something to show me.”
“A vukodlak.”
“Yep. The white-haired woman changed into a white wolf. I was scared, disbelieving...and intrigued. Vuk told me that the wolves were the only ones that could survive the Fluxers. He wove a fantastic tale of how we could reclaim the earth from the undead and create a whole new civilization, a whole new culture, a whole new - well, suffice it to say he fed me a bunch of bullshit and I swallowed it down. I think what motivated me most was fear.”
Nowen eased the mug from his hands and filled it from the warm kettle. “Fear of what?” she asked, taking a sip of water and wrinkling her nose at the flat taste.
“The Fluxers. Seeing day after day what they did to people; I would have done anything to avoid that. I told Vuk he could change me.”
“Was it Vuk?”
Everett accepted the mug when she held it out to him. “I keep this up and Benjamin is going to have to help me to the bathroom again. Uh, no, it wasn’t Vuk. It was the white-haired woman.” His eye grew distant, his voice softened. “She changed, and then she bit me. On the arm. It was almost...sensual.”
Nowen arched an eyebrow.
Everett laughed, and she though she saw him blush, but in the dim light it was hard to tell. “Well, it was. There was very little pain. There was a sensation of heat moving through my body, and then it felt like something was - the closest thing I can think of is ‘expanding’ - in my mind. Everything was overwhelming, and I could see and hear and smell and taste like never before. I passed out, and when I woke Vuk was standing over me, smiling. And welcoming me to his pack.”
“His pack?” she asked.
Everett snorted. “Yeah, he kept saying that I was a member of his pack, and I was bonded to him, and other stuff. I never felt bonded. I felt grateful, and the first time I changed and experienced life as a wolf...hell, I would have married Vuk if he’d asked me. But ‘bonded’? No.”
Nowen tossed a couple of small sticks on the dying embers in the fireplace. As the new flames licked over the wood she turned to Everett. “He tried the same thing on me. I still have idea what he was talking about.”
“I’m not sure he does either. There’s a mystery there. I never saw him change. Is Vuk a werewolf? Can he change? And if not, how does he know so much and what is it he’s really up to?”
Nowen looked back at the fire. “Tell me what it’s like when you change.”
There were a few moments of silen
ce. When Everett began to speak Nowen could hear a kind of hushed awe in his voice. “It’s incredible. The world opens up, and I feel more alive-”
“No. I mean, how do you change?”
“I just do. I will it, I guess. I mean, it’s just a simple choice. I decide to change, and then I do.”
She could feel his gaze on her. She kept her own gaze on the fire. “You just change. You never lose control? Your wolf doesn’t fight you to change or change back?”
“No. Nowen, what is it like for you?”
Now she looked at Everett. “I’m not alone in my head. The wolf, my wolf, is separate from me. We work together now - mostly - but it hasn’t been like that always. I’ve been lost in the wolf before, for months. And still, sometimes, it’s a struggle to keep her in check.”
Everett stared back at her in silent shock. “My God, Nowen. Who changed you? I mean, what the hell happened?”
Silent minutes passed as Nowen stared into the fire. Bright sparks showered across the fireplace as a piece of wood snapped in half. Absently she fed a handful of tinder to the flames as she organized her thoughts. “When Zoe shot me I passed out. I had...not quite a dream, but a memory. Something that got rattled loose.”
She looked at the grey-haired man. “In this memory I go to an abandoned rail yard to meet my sister. She’s strung out on something, and needs money. I give her all I have and...it’s not enough. She stabs me.”
There was a quick, indrawn breath from Everett.
“I’m bleeding. My sister takes my purse and I try to make it back to my car. I don’t get far. She knocks me down and stabs me in the back. Again and again. And as I lay in the bloody gravel I know I’m dying.” Nowen took a sip of water. “Then a monster appeared.”
“What?”
“A monster. A big, wild, ferocious wolf that came out of nowhere. He pulled my sister off of me. She screamed as he killed her. A man started speaking to me, telling me that this was necessary, that if I could survive the next hours I could survive what was coming.” Nowen turned away for a moment to feed the fire. “I know now that the man bit me on my leg. At the time, all I knew was that the pain from the knife wounds was like a paper cut compared to the pain that his bite brought me.”
Wolf Hunting (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book Book 3) Page 19
