Holiday Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  I mean, we’re on the way to rescue her sister from the animal shelter. That’s not your normal, run-of-the-mill Christmas Eve. Paige probably has a lot on her mind right now, first and foremost being her sister.

  But when Paige casts me a sidelong glance just then, her mouth is curling up at the corners mischievously. I look away quickly, hyper-aware of how red my cheeks are. “You’re quiet,” she says, her voice soft.

  “Sorry,” I tell her, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear self-consciously. “I was just...ah...thinking...” But I return the smile, feeling my heartbeat intensify with joy. If my heart beats any faster, actually, I may be in need of a hospital.

  “Ah,” she says with a small smile. Then she glances up at the street sign, jerking her thumb toward the direction we were headed. “You actually live pretty close to the animal shelter, so we should be there in a block or two.”

  “And...have you made any headway on your plan?” I ask her as I shudder against a particularly cruel blast of arctic air.

  “Oh, you know...” She drifts off, waving her hand. “I thought I’d just pick the lock.”

  I cast a sidelong glance at her. “Are you a professional thief?”

  “Believe it or not, I’m actually a veterinarian,” she says, grinning sidelong at me and wrinkling her nose. “So, ah, yeah...this would be my first time picking a lock.”

  “Wow,” I say, a little stunned. “A vet?”

  She laughs at that, the rich sound of her laughter snatched away by the cruel, buffeting wind. “What were you expecting?”

  “Goodness, I don’t know,” I tell her, a little abashed. “Something, I guess, a little more--”

  “Wolfish?” She chuckles at that, shaking her head. “We all have to make a living, and I obviously love animals, so it worked out pretty well in my favor to become a vet. I can’t really communicate with other animals, but I have a sixth sense, because of my genes, on what’s bothering an animal and can calm them pretty well, so I’m perfectly suited. I really love what I do,” she says, her voice soft.

  “That’s inspiring,” I tell her, shivering as we lean into the wind. “I’m glad you found something you love so much.”

  “What about you?” she asks, then. “What do you do?”

  I feel my heart warm a little at that, and I can hear my smile in my words. “I’m a chef at the Green Planet--it’s this little organic restaurant near the waterfront,” I tell her. “I love what I do so much...I was always cooking up crazy concoctions as a kid, I’m surprised I didn’t kill my parents, so I knew from a pretty young age my dream, and I just...went for it. But, yeah...I found my dream job. I’m doing what I love, too.”

  “So, Mandy, you have the world in front of you. That’s pretty spectacular,” says Paige, a brow up.

  I stop short at that, my levity evaporating. “No,” I tell her quietly. “Not the world.” I think back to earlier this evening, to Angie’s disregard of our dinner, of our Christmas dinner. It seems like such a stupid thing to think about in the circumstances, and I don’t know why it came back to me so clearly right now, right at this moment. Maybe it was the way Paige said the world, like I’m one of those have-everything-together women who know exactly what they want out of life and achieve all of their goals effortlessly.

  I’ve never been one of those women. It took me a long time to pay my way through culinary school, and even longer to find a job that I loved working at. Not all restaurants are alike, and finding the Green Planet and convincing them that they should hire me had taken everything I had.

  So no, I don’t have it all together. My love life currently in shambles is proof of that.

  As if Paige can hear my thoughts, she reaches out across the space between us. My hands are in front of me--I’m rubbing them together in their gloves, trying to keep warm, but she takes my right hand in her left and we both stop walking.

  Even through the glove’s material, I can feel the heat emanating off of her, like she has some sort of internal heater that is not at all bothered by the cold. She squeezes my hand tightly, catching my gaze. “Do you know how impressed I was when you broke up with that woman?”

  I stare at her, eyes wide. “You mean Angie?” I manage.

  “Whatever her name was,” Paige says, a brow up. She shakes her head ruefully. “I know how much that must have taken, but yet you did it anyway. It was impressive,” she tells me. She drops my hand then, replaces her hands in her pockets as she shrugs. “I’ve never seen someone break up with someone else, in my defense,” she says with a soft chuckle. “So it’s not like I’m a breakup judge giving out gold stars. But I was honestly impressed by you.”

  “Impressed,” I mutter, feeling my cheeks burn. “I don’t know how impressive it was...more like pathetic, sitting there waiting for her to show up and then her just...forgetting. Again.” I take a deep breath. “I want...” I bite my lip, wondering how much of my guts I should spill out to this woman who is practically a stranger. But there’s just something about her. Something that’s very, very easy to talk to. I take a deep gulp of cold air. “I want...I want someone who’s excited to see me. Someone who looks forward to our dates and doesn’t try to think of a million excuses to get out of them. I want someone who enjoys the food I cook for them, who wants me.” I shut my mouth at that one. I feel so vulnerable right now, like I’ve let Paige into the deepest parts and most secretive layers of my heart.

  But she watches me carefully for a long moment before she replies. “You’ll find the woman who can give you all of that, and more, Mandy. I know it.”

  Her certainty is solid, unmovable, unquestionable. She reaches out across the space between us again, and she wraps her arm protectively at the small of my back, just like I did with her a few moments ago, her heat pulsing through the thin fabric of her sweater, and through the bulk of my coat. Her arm is strong, but gentle--a small, warm sanctuary on this frigid night. Together, her arm around me, we hurry down the street again, angling toward the animal shelter.

  I’m freezing, but my heart is warm and full. It’s an odd combination.

  Thankfully, we don’t have to trek anymore--we’ve finally reached the animal shelter. Ever since Angie was assigned her community service, I’ve had occasion to come help her out, and even before then, I’ve passed the building quite a few times, and every time, it pangs my heart to see it. I know that inside its doors are hundreds of animals who are patiently waiting for their forever homes, amazing animals who were dealt a crappy hand in life, who need love so much.

  I take a deep breath and look up at that impressive brick structure. It looks so utterly solid and immoveable.

  And it really, really looks like it’s impossible to break into.

  The animal shelter is situated on a block of mostly warehouses, which means that because of the hour and where it is, there is blessedly no traffic on the street, and no pedestrian traffic either. Not that we saw anyone else out in this snowstorm, but it’s still nice to know that we’re in a sort of deserted section for what we’re about to do.

  The main door of the shelter is a big metal affair with a very heavy-duty looking doorknob. Paige crouches in front of this now, peering at it this way and that as she bites her lip. She takes a bobby pin out from beneath her hair in the back, and then she’s jimmying it into the lock.

  Since the lock is so old, there’s hope that this might actually work. But after a few, long, freezing moments of watching Paige crouch there and finangle a bobby pin around and around in the immovable lock, I’m beginning to wonder if picking a lock is really as easy as all that. After all, if it was so easy to pick a lock, wouldn’t a lot more people be criminals? I grimace, wrapping my arms around me as tightly as I can manage. I don’t think I’ve ever been colder.

  After several moments more while I stamp my feet and try to maintain body heat, Paige sighs in frustration and stands, dusting the snow off her knees.

  “No dice,” she tells me with a grimace. “We’ll have to try the ba
ck door.”

  “If I remember correctly, the back door has a deadbolt,” I tell her as she begins to walk down the street toward the alley between this building and the warehouse next door.

  Paige sighs again for a long moment, runs her hand through her hair again. The inky black strands fall in messy cascade around her shoulders. “God, I didn’t want to damage anything, but I don’t know how much more time we have, and I can’t spend that time trying to pick a lock. Honestly, I think we’re running out of time.” She glances to the sky. I can’t tell if there’s any difference in the lightness of the clouds, but she grimaces when she looks up, and she begins to walk a little faster toward the alley. “We have such a narrow window of time tonight, and it’s closing,” she tells me briskly. “I need to get that door open.”

  What’s behind the shelter is a small-ish fenced in yard that’s now completely covered in snow. There’s tall chain-link fence around the yard, about my height, leaning in rusty disarray around the perimeter, and on the top of that chain-link fence is barbed wire. At least, I think I remember that it’s barbed wire--it’s currently all clumped over in snow, but beneath the snow, there’s a coil along the top of the fence.

  Even though the fence is as tall as I am, Paige takes a single glance at it, as if gauging it, then she looks back at me. “Meet me at the front door, all right? I’ll be just a minute,” she says, her voice low.

  And then she leaps over the fence.

  She doesn’t do a running leap. She simply crouches, like one single, coiled muscle, and then with a spectacular bound that even though I watched it, it’s difficult to believe, she’s up and over the fence, like she’s starring in a production of Peter Pan, and she’s just learned to fly.

  I don’t know why it shocks me in this night full of shocking things, but watching someone who looks very human clear that fence in a single bound...I’m kind of speechless for a long moment. She landed gracefully on the other side, and with a glance at me over her shoulder (grinning in a very satisfied sort of way), she trots toward the back door. I belatedly nod at her in a daze and trundle back around the side of the building again.

  Werewolves, I think to myself. They’re pretty darn extraordinary.

  I hear a muffled sound of something hitting metal very, very hard from back the way I came. And then the relative silence of the winter storm again, the winter storm that, in this side street, has only a dull roar.

  I stomp my boots up and down in the alcove by the front door, waiting, trying to keep myself warm. After a long moment of rubbing my gloves together, I hear a lock click, and the doorknob turns. I watch as the door opens about a foot and Paige sticks her head out to look at me, a long tendril of black hair falling over her shoulder. She’s smiling in a self-satisfied way, her mouth curling up at the corners smugly.

  “Come on in,” she tells me, and I pull the door open just a little more to squeeze myself the rest of the way into the shelter, shaking mightily. I’m so cold that, at this point, I know I’m never going to be warm again. I pull the door shut behind me, and it clicks closed.

  At night--and illegally breaking into the place--the shelter looks very, very different from how it does when I volunteer here or when I would come to visit Angie when she was volunteering. This animal shelter building was built in the fifties, and it has the oppressive air of a school about it, with its long, linoleum-covered corridors, stucco walls and fluorescent lights that are, at least currently, mercifully turned off. To add to the oppressive air, I can already smell the cats and dogs, even though the dogs were probably walked only a few hours ago, and picked up after, the cat litter boxes were probably changed last on Christmas Eve, but the scent of the animal shelter never bothered me.

  It’s the sad, unhappy whining and meowing that cuts me to the core of my heart.

  I know, I know--I’m one big bleeding heart. But there’s something so utterly sad about breaking into an animal shelter on Christmas Eve and finding all of the animals still there...still waiting patiently for that one person, or persons, to fall in love with them and take them home. We walk briskly down the corridor, and the first ward we enter is the adoptable dog section. This is the section of dogs that the shelter has spent a lot of time reconditioning, or who were already pretty lovable and good natured. Spaniels and mutts and collies and tiny, adorable dogs, and really big ones with sad faces and jowls that make their expressions a permanent sad face, watch us from their cages--some patiently, but others are exuberantly happy to see us, and begin to spring at their gates, desperate for attention, to be let out, for a treat...or maybe a combination of all three.

  “Anna’s not in this room,” mutters Paige, and then we’re walking quickly through the far door, and on to the next room.

  This is the room of “problem” dogs, the dogs that the shelter is currently working with, the trainers who volunteer their time spending a great amount of sessions with these dogs to get them to adoptable status. This, of course, doesn’t mean that they’re bad dogs, and we’re greeted just as exuberantly and enthusiastically as we were in the adoptable dog room. One dog, a hound mix in the far corner, begins to howl as we trot past. I think I remember his name is Augie, and he’s such a sweetheart...he gets aggressive with his food, though, which is why they’re working with him so much--I know he’ll be adoptable soon.

  I talk quietly to him as we pass. “You’re a good boy, buddy--I’ll see you soon!” and that quiets him. He watches us as we head through the far back door, into the next room.

  This is the unadoptable room of the dog ward.

  And it’s heartbreaking.

  Here’s Max, the Doberman who fear-bit a woman who was harassing him over the top of his fence. Here’s Emmie, the terrier-mix who’s been adopted out six times, but keeps coming back because she’s too clingy and a submissive wetter. Emmie, by the way, is a dog I love, and if I had more time and money and a bigger apartment, I would adopt her in a heartbeat.

  Most of the dogs in this room are quiet, or very sleepy as I they glance up, lifting their heads from their paws, to watch our progression into the room.

  And, at the very back of the room, in one of the biggest pens, is a dog I’ve never seen before.

  Well...not really a dog.

  More like a wolf.

  This wolf-dog lies in the far back of the pen, on a scrap of blanket, sprawling out like she was hit over the head with an anvil, and is lying where she fell. She’s massive, her limbs long and gray and shaggy, just like Paige’s, her head about as long as my forearm, with a dainty, tapering nose. She looks a little more fragile than Paige’s wolf.

  “Anna!” Paige hisses, racing across the remaining space between us and that cage. She falls to her knees on the linoleum floor and wraps her fingers through the chain link wall of the pen. “Anna,” she hisses louder this time. “You’ve got to wake up!”

  The wolf struggles to raise her head, blinking blearily in the dark at us, but her head lolls to the side and falls to the blanket again, the whites of her eyes showing. She looks like she’s been heavily sedated, which she just might have been.

  “When were you guys taken in by the pound?” I ask Paige in alarm as Paige rattles the door of the cage, testing its strength. All of the cage doors in this room are locked by a padlock, but I think I remember one of the volunteers storing the ring of keys in the dog wash room. It’s around the corner.

  “We were captured three days ago,” Paige says tightly. “She shouldn’t still be this out of it. They must have sedated her.”

  “That’s not good,” I mutter, fear beginning to make my heart pound harder. If Anna’s sedated, does that mean she can’t transform into a human? Probably. And, either way, how would we be able to get her out of here if she can’t move on her own? I try to shove down the million worries that immediately surfaced, and turn around, intent on finding the keys. I trot over to the dog wash room door and try the knob. Mercifully, it’s unlocked, and the ring of keys is just on the inside of the door, hanging
on one of the coat hooks, just like I remembered it being.

  “I have to get her adrenaline up,” Paige tells me when I come back into the room. She’s still kneeling down in front of the pen, sitting back on her heels, her palms spread on her thighs. “Werewolves don’t work like regular animals--if I can get her adrenaline up, I think the sedation will wear off almost immediately, and then we can get out of here.”

  “You’re not sure the sedation will wear off? Any how are you going to get her adrenaline up?” I ask her, fiddling with the set of keys as I try to find the right one for the lock to Anna’s pen. All of the keys have a tiny piece of paper taped to them with the number of the kennel that they open, but the room is very dark, and it’s hard to make out the hand-writing on the little scraps of paper. Anna’s pen is number thirty-four, but I try the key for eighty-four into the lock by mistake.

  “Anna, you have to wake up,” Paige is muttering to the almost unconscious wolf. Paige’s voice is low, a growl, and those few words are said so fiercely and with a knife-edged sharpness that it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up to hear her speak them. I finally manage to find the key with “thirty-four” scrawled on it, and shove the key into the lock. The lock falls away, and the pen door opens.

  Paige is inside in a heartbeat, picking up the wolf’s massive head from the floor and peeling back her eyelids, peering down into the depths of her eyes which, I realize not that I’m able to see them clearly, are just as blue as her sister’s.

  “I can probably do this much better in my wolf form,” says Paige, glancing up at me with a raised brow. She begins to unbutton the buttons of my sweater with swift fingers, giving a furtive glance back the way we came into the building. “Can you go make sure the coast is clear?” she asks me. “I need to get her up and running and out of the building very quickly if this works, and I want to make sure we’re not going to run into anyone.” She peels the sweater off her shoulders in one fluid motion.