Red

by Kait Nolan

  C’mon, heal, damn you! Desperation bound me surely as any chains, waiting for the impossible.

  He wasn’t getting up from this.

  Rage burst through me, an atom bomb of fury lighting up every cell. It burst out of me in a sound of raw anguish that bore no resemblance to a human voice.

  Patrick stumbled back from the sound, for the first time apparently sensible of the monster in the room.

  He wanted to hunt a monster. I’d give him a monster. I stopped fighting my wolf. At last we were of one accord. My bones popped and lengthened, my body hunching, straining toward four feet.

  Patrick was lifting the gun, face grim and full of purpose.

  I charged him. Halfway between forms, my loping, limping gait sent me crashing into him. But I was off balance, unable to fully control my body. Patrick was scrambling after the gun that had gone flying, and I had a split second to make a decision.

  I could try to kill him here, now, while not fully shifted and not at my peak of speed or strength and risk failing. Or I could do as Sawyer had asked me and escape so that his death was not in vain. So that I could live to survive transition and come after Patrick in full force.

  One look at his too still body decided me. Sawyer always wanted me to live.

  Before Patrick could get to the gun, I sprang through the door and into the night.

  ~*~

  Elodie

  I don’t know how long I ran or even where. There was no thought to laying a false trail or doubling back. No careful walking up the river bed. There was just running. Every step was an agony because my body didn’t have time to finish shifting to one form or the other, and I didn’t stop to let it. I had to put as much distance between me and Patrick as possible. And a part of me desperately wanted to escape the reality lying back there in that cabin because if I let myself think about it, let myself voice the thought, I would break. So I kept running, kept tripping over my feet and falling, picking myself back up and running some more because the pain kept truth at bay.

  Until I fell again and just couldn’t make myself get up. Couldn’t make myself care about the smell of my own blood or the physical aches of shifting and exertion. Breath sawed in and out of my throat, my chest rising and falling in great gusts. And in my mind I saw Sawyer’s chest. Blood-soaked and still.

  My clawed fingers curled deep into the dirt and leaves, hanging on for dear life, as if the earth was going to give up its gravity and I’d go spiraling into space without some kind of anchor. Lost. Because Sawyer had been my anchor. And now he was dead. Because of me.

  Oh God.

  If I’d gone back when he asked . . . If we’d consulted his dad . . . Jesus, how had they worked with Patrick all this time and Patrick not known what they were? Why was he only after me?

  Sawyer was dead.

  It should’ve been me. Never him. It should have been me.

  My claws dug in deeper and I hung on as the world started to shake. Great rolling heaves that left me nauseous and dizzy and wondering what fault line was acting up. Then I realized it wasn’t the ground shaking, it was me. I curled my knees to my chest and held on, helpless against the onslaught of grief.

  I was alone. Before him I’d thought I was prepared. I’d thought I was made for this. But it was a lie. Solitude had never been a choice for me. I’d accepted him as part of my life, part of my future, with joy. To know that he wouldn’t be there to see me on the other side of transition, to teach me what it meant to be wolf, was a stunning sort of pain.

  My limbs convulsed and popped, stretching, shortening, my wolf unable to decide whether to retreat or burst free. She could escape the truth of Sawyer’s loss no more than I could. Sharp, hitching breaths gave way to a keening wail that fell somewhere between a sob and a howl. It echoed, long and loud, and I knew it was as good as giving away my location, but I couldn’t hold it in. With each breath, the sound continued to roll out of me. An audible manifestation of denial. Of mourning.

  When the first howl joined me, I barely registered the tone, harmonic with my own wail. But the second and third got my attention. I choked off my cry, listening as a chorus of four or five other wolves joined in my mourning song. I recognized the voices. The red wolves. The ones I’d been hearing off and on for the last few years. But close. So much closer than I’d ever heard them before. Or maybe that was my own newly acute hearing.

  I howled again, waiting for the replies. The next ones were closer. Again. Even closer. They were coming toward me. Answering my call for . . . For what? Comfort? For pack? For all I knew they were coming to evict me from their territory. But I didn’t think so. As I listened to the chorus of howls, I wasn’t afraid. They didn’t sound aggressive. They weren’t hunting. They were very specifically responding to me.

  When the first wolf appeared over the rise, my heart leapt. Not in fear, but in a moment of joy, of conviction that I’d been right. But the emotion was fleeting, swallowed by the knowledge that if I’d never pursued this, if Sawyer had never met me, he’d be alive now.

  Another cry tore free of my throat.

  The wolf on the rise lifted its head and howled in answer, a long ululating cry of mourning. I’d always kind of thought that wolf howls sounded sad, but this was somehow different. This was . . . acknowledging a loss. My loss.

  He was beautiful. I could only just make out his markings in the dark, but his golden eyes were clear as he came nearer. Different from Sawyer, of course. Smaller, but still broad in the shoulder. Others came from the surrounding woods, approaching me with caution but not aggression. Five in all. Two males. Three females.

  The next wail I made was softer, exhaustion catching up with me. Their replies blended with my voice. A beautiful, haunting lament. It didn’t make things better, didn’t make things easier, but somehow still, it helped.

  I expected the wolves to keep their distance. I was not pack. I was not even really their kind. As the howls morphed into far more human tears, they didn’t scatter but came closer. I gasped at the bump of the first head against my back, hardly daring to move. One by one they came to me, head-butting, rubbing, and nuzzling me, offering comfort through touch. I was pathetically grateful for the contact and just cried harder.

  At length they lay down around me, backs pressed against me in a cocoon of fur that should have been stifling in the heat of the night. But in the midst of my grief, I was still feverish and chilled, and their warmth helped ease some of the ache.

  I relaxed into the pile of warm bodies, exhaustion taking its toll, though the last thing I wanted was to sleep and dream. I didn’t know why they were accepting me. But I was too tired and too overcome by the events of the night to question it. I’d run for miles. I had no supplies, no maps, no compass. Nothing to rely on but myself. Except, it seemed, this small pack of wolves that shouldn’t even exist.

  ~*~

  Sawyer

  A six ton elephant was sitting on my chest. It wasn’t particularly interested in moving so I could breathe and it certainly wasn’t helping the burning pain radiating out from the hole in my chest. At least it was probably staunching the blood. What was left of it. I was pretty sure I’d been bleeding out when I’d lost consciousness.

  It was hard to think past the pain. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was cognizant enough to recognize that pain was actually a good thing. Something about not being dead. I wasn’t sure how long that would be the case. But my body was trying to repair the damage. Healing was painful business, and I was stuck between forms. Mostly human, but my insides felt scrambled. I was pretty sure that was the only reason I was still alive. My heart had relocated, shifting over in preparation for becoming a wolf. So instead of a one way trip to hell, I got a collapsed lung. Peachy.

  I took the fact that I could hear the whistle of my breath in and out as a positive sign. Not that the accompanying gurgle was good thing. I wondered if there was anyone else to hear the whistle-gurgle of my breathing. I listened for the span of ten shallow breaths. But I
was alone.

  No one left to finish me off, then.

  I paused at that thought, my brain circling around the idea that someone had tried to kill me. I’m sure I should’ve been alarmed at the notion, but instead I was gripped by a deep sense of unease that I couldn’t remember what had happened. Patience was never one of my strong suits, but there was something at the edge of my consciousness that left me simmering with a need to act, to move to do . . . something. Instead I waited for the whistle-gurgle to stop, for my lungs to heal enough for me to draw a full breath and not feel like I was drowning.

  I opened my eyes. At least, I thought I did. The pitch black didn’t change any, so I really wasn’t sure if I’d managed it. Eventually my eyes adjusted enough to see the hint of light coming from a window across the room. It seemed to be mostly obstructed. A bush or tree or something. But I could tell enough to know that it was night.

  How long had I been here?

  That question lodged in my brain and began to swell with importance. I needed to know how long I’d been here. There was something I was supposed to do.

  My body wasn’t quite with the program when I tried to sit up. It took several tries, and then I only managed to roll over on my side before I had to rest. I cast my eyes around the room, trying to see if there were any clues in this new direction. Then I saw the tranquilizer dart. It lay beside some rubble on the floor, gleaming very faintly in the dim moonlight.

  The dart hadn’t worked.

  In my mind I saw it lodged in the neck of my opponent as we grappled on the floor, struggling for control of the gun. He hadn’t been the one to weaken. I had. Because he’d been wearing wolfsbane. I hadn’t been able to kill him.

  Then I saw his face as he stood, gun in hand, watching me bleed out on the floor, regret etched in every feature.

  Patrick.

  Betrayal was a fresh wound as I struggled to remember why we’d been fighting. Why I’d been shot.

  Elodie.

  I jack-knifed up, then collapsed again with a wheeze and grunt of agony.

  Patrick was trying to kill Elodie.

  “Elodie.” What I’d intended as a shout came out at barely a whisper. Half a lung’s breath wasn’t enough to make myself heard. I tried again. “Elodie.”

  There was no response, and panic had me pushing through the weakness and onto my knees so I could survey the room. It was empty but for the puddle of drying blood where I’d been lying. There was no other body, which was at once a relief and a terror. Where was she?

  Inch by painful inch, I dragged myself to the threshold of the other room, nose tuned to try and pick up her scent. It wasn’t fresh, and there was no other source of blood, save mine. I collapsed in the doorway when I saw she wasn’t here.

  So she’d made it out of the cabin then.

  But she’d been changing, caught halfway between forms again when I’d last seen her. How far could she have gotten if she didn’t run until after I’d been shot?

  I needed to get outside to check the perimeter of the cabin, but my body refused to obey. so instead I slumped against the doorjamb and listened outside for any sign that she was near. That she was alive. But there was nothing beyond the raucous noise of the crickets and cicadas. We were not yet into deep night, then, when all fell quiet. Unless, it was the next day.

  How long had I been out? Regenerating from a gunshot wound was no small feat. In all reality, it could take days. She could have been out there, running from Patrick for days. In pain from transition for days. And I wasn’t there to stop him or ease her or protect her.

  Mother fucker.

  I thought about shifting, but it wasn’t magic. It wasn’t like in movies or books where shifting miraculously cured all ills. If I tried to go wolf now, I could rip stuff that had already started repairing and speed up my own demise. And shit, being stuck as I was, I hoped like hell things were repairing the way they were supposed to. So as much as every atom of my being wanted to go after them, to find Elodie, and to kill the son of a bitch who’d left me for dead, I needed to sit tight. I wouldn’t make it ten feet in the shape I was in now.

  Which left me with a whole lot of time and a very vivid imagination that was all too happy to supply the various and sundry ways Patrick could maim, torture, and kill Elodie.

  I was half mad with rage and desperation within fifteen minutes.

  And why the fuck wasn’t I healing? I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t hearing any kind of change in the whistle-gurgle. The wound should be fucking closing by now. I was struck by a moment of blind panic. What if it wasn’t going to heal? What if just not dying had sapped my body’s healing resources? What if I was stuck here, lingering and completely useless until . . . until what? My body gave out and died? Until I starved? Until Patrick came back to clean up my body?

  My wolf reared up at that, demanding action I couldn’t perform. But my nose sharpened and I smelled the bittersweet, evergreen scent of wolfsbane. I shoved back the panic and tried to focus, my nose twitching, searching for the source because it was something active, something that kept me outside my head and all the crazy-making going on there.

  Collapsed in the doorway, I scanned the floor, which I could see better with my wolf so close to the surface. The moon had risen, giving me a bit more light to work with, and now that I looked, I could see what I’d taken to be grit before scattered over the floor. Not grit, I realized. Dried petals of the plant. Everywhere. It must’ve fallen out of Patrick’s pockets or something as we fought.

  Shit.

  I had to get out of here.

  Moving hurt like a sonofabitch, but that was good. Pain kept me focused on the task at hand. I was too weak to crawl again, so I had to drag myself, shimmying in some parody of a commando crawl across the floor. I damn near passed out again at the halfway point.

  Oh no you fucking don’t. Get up.

  The mental whip didn’t get me on my knees, but it got me inching forward again. At one point I had to stop for a coughing fit, spitting up the blood flooding my lung. Maybe it was making more room for oxygen. The notion of a full breath was like the idea of winning the lottery. It felt like an appealing, if distant, possibility. Once the coughing stopped, I was moving again, dragging myself through the fresh blood and toward the door.

  Of course it was closed. That in itself presented a whole new challenge. Because getting myself vertical enough to reach and work the knob was like my own personal Everest.

  Elodie was waiting.

  More importantly, Elodie probably thought I was dead, and given her predilections toward suicide, I needed to get the hell out of here and find her before she decided to go after Patrick and take him out with her.

  It took a full five minutes to work my knees under my chest, and another ten using the door as leverage to get myself sort of vertical. But when my hands closed over the iron handle, I felt like crowing. Except, of course, that required more air than I could mange.

  I twisted and pulled, falling backward as the door swung inward. The night air rushed in, hot and humid and clean. I flipped myself over and made like the tortoise for the open doorway.

  The moment I was fully outside, my head felt clearer. I dragged myself around to the side of the cabin and leaned back against it, already feeling my body beginning to work faster, harder at repairing the damage. Outside at last, feeling progress, at last, I could wait with grim purpose, until my body was well enough to hunt.

  I had a murderer to track.

  Chapter 13

  Elodie

  I woke up human with visions of blood and death still etched in my mind. I was prevented from shooting up by the warm, furry bodies draped over mine. The pack had stayed. Some of the blood lust eased as I came fully to consciousness. My body was filthy, covered in blood and scrapes and bruises. But it was mine. My arms. My legs. My aches. The fever, it seemed, had passed for now. I felt raw, inside and out, as if a great claw had reached in and scraped out anything of substance, leaving behind an empty shell.
>
  When I opened my eyes, my entourage was rising, stretching in the dark. The forest around us was cloaked in the relative silence of deep night. I rose with a series of pops and creaks as joints realigned. The pack watched me, but my pseudo-transformation during sleep hadn’t phased them. The large male I had seen first gave a yip and the others began to mill around him, restless, making small yaps and growls.

  My friends were readying for the hunt.

  As much I wanted to do the same, albeit with different prey, my top priority was food, shelter, and figuring out how I was going so survive through transition.

  The alpha looked at me with an expression that could only be deemed invitation. Though I felt completely ridiculous doing so, I bowed to the pack. “Thank you. But I have my own business to settle.”

  I have no idea if they understood me or if my notion of wolf whisperer held outside of my own kind. But the alpha gave a howl of farewell, echoed by his packmates, before they all spun away and disappeared into the dark.

  A gibbous moon rode the tree line, lighting the way for my dark-adapted eyes. But there were clouds rolling in. I wasn’t going to have light for long. Rousing my wolf, I circled my position until I found my scent trail. Our packs were back at the cabin. While I could survive with no supplies, no nothing—I was certainly in better shape with supplies. Even if all I could nab was my map and compass, that would enable me to get back to my cave faster. My best chance was if Patrick had left the packs behind when he came after me.

  It was a risk. If he had any decent tracking skills to speak of, I could run into him on the way. I was in no shape to fight him right now. I was in no shape for anything right now. I wasn’t even sure if I’d hear or smell him coming. Yet I couldn’t just stay where I was. If I wanted to stay hidden, I needed to keep moving.