Wild Winter

by Amelia Wilson

  They took their time burying Holly, digging a deep hole in the woods, close enough to where you could still see her home. They laid her in gently, said some words, and then covered her up.

  For Seth, they weren’t nearly as gentle or careful. The man was grotesque, thick hair jutting out of his body, his jaw, and nose in the process of stretching into a snout. He was hardly recognizable as a man, but not nearly wolf like enough to be left behind with the others. They dug quickly, well away from Holly’s grave, and when it was deemed deep enough Hunter kicked the body in with his foot. They threw dirt unceremoniously over it, letting it fill his open eyes and gaping mouth.

  “What now?” one of the men asked Hunter as they returned to their vehicles.

  “We have to get back to Tall Tree,” Hunter said. “We have to find Kurt.”

  Chapter Ten

  There weren’t many windows in the hospital, so when the power shut off suddenly, despite the fact that it was still light outside, Sasha was bathed in inky blackness. Then there was a hum and the backup generator kicked on, but it was tasked with running the life-saving equipment and not the lights, so instead emergency lights came on, cold and blue and spaced well apart.

  “What’s happening?” Sasha asked a nurse as she cut through the waiting room. It was dim, and her eyes strained to see.

  “I don’t know, everything will be fine though, this place can run without regular power for quite some time.”

  Sasha nodded as the woman continued on her way. She thought then to go to her grandfather, to make sure he was alright, and she grabbed her coat from a nearby chair. It was one of those Chicago habits. You could leave your belongings in Tall Tree, and no one would take them. She went from the waiting room and out into the hall.

  She was only steps from her grandfather’s room when she heard a scream. Sasha paused, one foot held up off of the ground, and she swiveled her head.

  “No!” someone screamed, a woman, from a hallway over. “Leave me alone!”

  Fear gripped Sasha’s heart within its icy hand, and the beautiful young woman realized she hadn’t taken a breath. She sucked one in, ragged and too loud. Setting her foot on the floor, she spun away from her grandfather's room.

  Somehow Sasha knew it was Kurt. It was him, he had come for her, or for her grandfather, or for both of them once again. She also knew she couldn’t fight the wolfman off. And neither could her grandfather or anyone else in the hospital. Hunter and his friends had seemed to think that Kurt wouldn’t have dared attack a place with so many humans, but they had been wrong.

  She had to keep him away from her grandfather. She had to keep Kurt busy until help could arrive. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, and she dialed Hunter.

  “Sasha, what is it?” he asked. He sounded tired.

  “Kurt is here, at the hospital.”

  “He wouldn’t!” Hunter said.

  “He did. Well, people are screaming. I’m going to check now. I think it’s him. I know it is.”

  “No, stay away from him!” Hunter said.

  “I have to keep him away from my grandpa,” Sasha argued.

  “No, you can’t!” Hunter said.

  “I have to do this, Hunter,” the young woman said. She smiled then, to herself, as she thought of the man she had fallen for. He was so handsome, and gentle, and loving. She thought of his shaggy hair, his charming smile and those perfect teeth. She thought of how he held her, and how he had turned into a wolf, giving her that part of him, letting her in on the secret just before the first time they had made love, and then how she had taken control and rode him the second time.

  “Hunter,” she said after a small pause. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Come save me,” she said, and then, before he could respond, Sasha hung the phone up. She put it on silent and slipped it back into her pocket. And then, with a part of her brain practically screaming at her not to do it, she turned and rushed towards the sound of screaming.

  As she neared a corner, she heard gunshots, and she peered around the corner and into the hall beyond. The nurse’s station was there, looking otherworldly in the soft blue light of the emergency lights. A wolf, the same one who had attacked her a couple of nights ago, Kurt, was on the station, blood dripping from his jaws. A nurse lay dead by the station, another injured and crawling away. Near where Sasha was peeking stood the one guard the hospital employed. He had a gun, and it was trained on the wolf. Without a word, he fired again, but the bullet missed.

  Kirt leaped down from the station and ran for the guard. The man was overweight and old, and he began to backpedal as he fired two more shots. Both tore up chunks of linoleum, missing their mark, and then the man stumbled and fell back, and the wolf was in the air, leaping upon him.

  On the wall next to Sasha was a fire hydrant. She grabbed it as the man and the wolf skid into her view once more, and just as Kurt was about to rip the poor guard’s throat out, she swung the hydrant and caught Kurt right in the side of his canine neck, hitting him hard enough so that he fell sideways off of the man.

  Sasha turned and ran, betting that Kurt would forget the guard and follow her. She had never been sorrier to be right, screaming as she heard the wolf paws pounding on the glossy floor behind her.

  She ran away from her grandfather’s room, attempting to lure the wolf outside, seeing the entrance down one hall, stretching impossibly far in front of her.

  Wham! The wolf hit her from behind, his front paws slamming into the small of her back, knocking her forwards and to the ground. She didn’t bother to see where the wolf was, she knew she had to just go, she knew she had to always keep moving, or she would be an easy target for Kurt.

  There was an opened door to her right, and she scrambled through it, sliding onto her back as she slid into the room and using both feet to slam the door shut behind her. Just a second later there was a thump against the door, Kurt having leaped after her before he knew she was closing it.

  Sasha looked around, taking in the room. It was a patient room, empty, the bed sitting made nearby. There was a sign nearby, cabinets underneath, and Sasha moved to him, throwing the doors open and checking inside. There was a box of syringes, and she pulled three out and tore them from their plastic just as the door was pounded on again, and this time it opened, and the wolf came flying in, skidding to a stop on his paws.

  Kurt had been looking towards the bed, so he didn’t see her in time, and Sasha jumped forward and slammed her fist down, the fist that held the syringes, and the steel needles embedded themselves into Kurt’s neck, and he roared and shook the girl off.

  She was up and running once more, out of the room, and she heard someone yell for her to stop, and she did, spinning to see the old security guard coming towards her, his gun drawn.

  “Watch out!” she screamed as he neared the open doorway, and Kurt jumped out, but her warning had caused the old man to pause, so the wolf missed and slammed into the wall opposite the empty room. The old man swiveled and fired and this time his last two bullets found their mark, slapping into the wolf’s side with loud wet smacks.

  Kurt growled and turned, stumbling just for a moment, and then he jumped at the guard, and Sasha didn’t wait to watch. Instead she turned and ran, feeling shame course through her body as the man screamed a hideous high pitch scream.

  She hit the exit like a bat out of hell and kept running. The parking lot was small, and she had no car there, but luck was on her side and just as she was running out a man was pulling in, driving a station wagon. She ran to his car, and he rolled the window down.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Go!” she was screaming, running around to the other side of the car and wrenching the door open. The man was confused.

  “Now wait just a minute, who the hell do you think you are?” he asked, looking at her. Sasha’s eyes went wide, for over the man’s shoulder she could see Kurt charging at top speed.

  “Watch out!” she said
, but it was too late, the wolf jumped up, it’s front half going through the open window, its jaws closing around the man’s shoulder, and with a great yank backward the man’s seat belt tore and he pulled out into the parking lot.

  Sasha was running on pure instinct and adrenaline, and she slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the car into gear and punched down on the gas.

  In the rear view mirror she saw the wolf finish the poor man off and then take chase after her, but as she watched and pulled out onto the street it seemed to think better of it. Instead, the wolf began to shift back into a man. Kurt stood watching her go, naked, his penis inexplicably hard, and he waved to her with a smile on his face.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sasha had no idea where she was going. She just drove, tearing through the tiny downtown area of Tall Tree, no stopping for the few stop signs she passed, as always hardly anyone else was out on the road.

  The window was still down, the chilly air whipping at her hair, hurting her face, but she didn’t dare slow down to roll it up, and so she heard the roar of the motorcycle before she saw it crest a hill behind her and come speeding up to her.

  Kurt was on the bike, now dressed in jeans and his leather jacket, his hair whipping out behind him as he rode.

  Sasha pushed the gas pedal down as far as it would go, but the motorcycle caught up with the station wagon easily. Kurt came up beside her, and he reached through the open window, his fingers gripping at Sasha’s hair.

  “No!” she screamed, and she jerked the wheel sideways, forcing Kurt to back off. Then he gunned the engine again, but she was ready for him, and she jerked her wheel over once more. As soon as Kurt had gunned the engine on his motorcycle he had hit the brakes, leaving Sasha to swerve on the road. She tried to correct herself, but swung the wheel too far back, and then the station wagon was sliding off the road. It caught on the dirt and rolled sickeningly, once, twice, and three times, before it slammed into a tree. Kurt stopped and couldn’t help but smile.

  Hunter was racing home, leaving the SUV and his friends behind. His cell phone buzzed, and he was relieved to see it was Sasha.

  “Hello?” he said as soon as he put the phone to his ear.

  “I have something you want,” Kurt said, making Hunter's blood run cold.

  “If you hurt her,” Hunter began, but the other man cut him off.

  “Oh, I’ve already hurt her. The question is, does she need to die?”

  “Damn you, Kurt, why are you doing this?”

  “Come to the firepit. We’ll talk. Come alone.”

  And then the line went dead.

  The fire pit was where the pack often met, it was in the middle of the woods along a dusty dirt trail. Hunter turned onto a new road and raced for his destination.

  The sky was beginning to grow dark when Hunter reached the firepit. The pit itself was rimmed in heavy gray stones, right in the center of a large clearing. Hunter could see Kurt, human and dressed, and Sasha, tied up and on the ground next to him.

  “Far enough I think!” Kurt said, holding his hand up to stop Hunter. Hunter took another step, and then Kurt pulled a handgun from his jeans and pointed it at Sasha, forcing the other man to stop.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to die. I want to take this pack in the direction it needs to go. I don’t care about this human slut. You die, and I let her go.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Hunter said.

  Kurt laughed. “I guess I wouldn’t either. No, I probably will kill this bitch. Here’s the thing, I never wanted this to turn out this way. We were family. I’m all about the pack. I just want the pack to go the way we need to go. We’re facing extinction if we don’t change. You know what’s coming.”

  Hunter was shaking his head. “We don’t know that it’s coming. You only think you do.”

  “And what if I’m right? What if I’m right and we aren’t prepared for it? Don’t you see I’m trying to make us survive.”

  Sasha was awake at Kurt’s feet. She could hear everything they were saying, but she had no idea what any of it meant.

  “So I just let you kill me, and then kill her?”

  “That’s what I would like,” Kurt said.

  “Have you no honor?”

  Kurt rolled his eyes and laughed. “Don’t start with honor. I have the drive to survive. That’s what I have.”

  Hunter glanced down a Sasha. She had been waiting for him to look at her, and now she winked. Hunter gave her a half nod, even less so Kurt wouldn’t see, and then she was moving, shifting to throw her bound legs upwards, knocking the gun away from Kurt.

  “You bitch!” he yelled as the gun flew away, and he looked down, making a mistake. He took his eyes off of Hunter, and Hunter made him pay. One step forward, and Hunter was still a man, two and he was a wolf, his clothes ripping and trailing behind him. Kurt was smart though and knew the attack was coming, he knew he had messed up, and he began to change.

  Hunter hit him just as he finished, and the two wolves went spiraling end over end. The fight was vicious, and neither wolf had an advantage. Hunter bit at Kurt’s flank, drawing blood, but Kurt just turned and sank his teeth into the side of Hunter’s neck.

  Neither wolf could keep the furious pace up for long, and Hunter felt himself begin to fade. Whoever tired quicker would be the loser, and Hunter was sure it would be him. He only had one thing he could do, one thing he could try, a hail mary, something he wasn’t even sure he believed in.

  Some shifters, it had been said, had another form. A further form, something bigger, something stronger. Hunter pushed his mind, pushed himself to the limit, begged the form to come. For a moment, he was sure he had failed, and Kurt took advantage of his lapse in concentration, and he had leaped upon Hunter and was ready to tear his throat out.

  But then it happened. That ancient magic made itself known to Hunter, and he began to shift further. He got bigger. He threw Kurt aside and stood. He was on his hind legs, his front legs growing in size, the paws becoming hands.

  Sasha watched this, shocked. Hunter looked less like an overly large run-of-the-mill wolf, and more like a horrific werewolf from a bad B movie.

  Kurt seemed unsure of what to do. He didn’t attack, he didn’t run. Not at first.

  Hunter moved forward. Kurt threw caution to the wind and met him.

  Hunter grabbed his foe with both hands, one of Kurt’s front legs in one hand, and one of his rear legs in the other. He pulled, stretching the smaller wolf to the limit, and he bent his head. Hunter’s long jaws snapped on the soft flesh of Kurt’s stomach, and when he pulled his head back, innards came with it. Blood sprayed down to the ground. Hunter felt it, hot and sour, in his mouth.

  Kurt was howling, the pain unbearable. As much pain, as much trouble as Kurt had unleashed against the pack, Hunter was no sadist. He finished Kurt off quickly, pulling with his arms, ripping Kurt in half. The scream which had been issuing from Kurt’s wolf mouth was cut suddenly and terribly short. He tossed the two halves of his enemy away, and then, exhausted to a point he never had been before, he changed back into a human.

  He crawled to Sasha, helped free her. She went and found his shredded clothing and helped him dress. And then, together, arm around one another, they made their way back to his truck.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sun was still hours from coming up as Hunter pulled up to Sasha’s grandfather's house. The old man himself was still in the hospital of course, and Sasha had been hesitant to leave him. But with Kurt dead, she had let herself be talked into getting a good night’s rest in her own bed.

  Hunter killed the engine and looked to Sasha. He was tired too, and bloodied, his right eye a mass of soft purple flesh.

  “You look like you’ve been hit by a bus,” Sasha said, and it made both of them erupt into laughter.

  “Thank so much,” Hunter replied dryly when he had stopped laughing. “You look great yourself,” he added.

  “I always look great,” Sasha sa
id.

  They sat in silence for a moment. “I’m sorry all of this happened,” Hunter said finally. Sasha reached over to him and took his hand.

  “It’s been really shitty,” Sasha said truthfully, and they laughed again. “But at least it’s brought you to me.”

  Hunter smiled and leaned over and kissed the woman he had fallen in love with.

  “Come in?” she asked him.

  “If I come in there, I’m taking a shower, and I’m going to sleep, you got it? Don’t try any funny stuff,” the young man said. Sasha grinned.

  “Try and stop me wolf-boy.”

  “And you’re not allowed to call me wolf-boy,” Hunter added with a grin.

  “I think I just did,” Sasha said. “Now, you going to come in or what?”

  “Shower. Bed.”

  “Fine,” Sasha agreed.

  They got out of the truck and went inside. Hunter stripped off his clothes in the bathroom and ran the water hot. When it was steaming, he stepped inside and closed his eyes as he let the water rain down on him, pelting his scalp soothingly, and running down his toned body. He was still standing like that when he heard the shower curtain move, and he stepped back and looked to see Sasha there, naked and as sexy as ever, stepping into the tub with him.

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t shower too,” she said, and she stepped in behind him and wrapped her arms around him, her plump breasts pressing against his back.

  She reached for her soap, lathering up her hands and then running them over Hunter’s muscular body, her soapy fingers running along his well-defined abs, up over his strong neck, and then down once more, to his now rigid member.

  She washed him slowly, paying extra attention to his manhood, bringing him to climax with two soapy hands. When it was her turn, they moved so she was under the water and he soaped his hands up. Hunter washed her body, starting with her large breasts, feeling her rosebud nipples harden against his slick palms.