The Altering (Coywolf Series Book 1)

by Abby Tyson

  The branch she was holding onto snapped but clung to the trunk by a tough strip of bark. She regained her balance and put one foot into a hole in the trunk and linked her arm with a nearby branch. As she pulled several splinters out of her hands, she realized that if she was going to get out of this tree alive, it wouldn't be slowly and cautiously. The branches were too brittle to hold her for that long. The girl with the amber eyes had practically run up the tree and back. Savi would have to do the same.

  Peering at the ground below, Savi's stomach lurched. She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against the cool bark.

  "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree."

  Before she could scare herself out of it, Savi charged downward, grabbing at any branch she saw.

  "A tree whose hungry mouth is prest against the sweet earth's flowing breast;"

  She lost her hold and fell another few feet, whacking her forehead, but landed on another branch.

  "A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray;"

  A cracking below pressed her onward. Clearing her mind of everything but the words she spoke, and hoping that the tree would appreciate the flattery, Savi made her way around and down. Sooner than she expected, she was miraculously on the lowest branch, in one piece, the ground tantalizingly close.

  "Poems are made by fools like me."

  She was still a good seven or eight feet from the ground, so she needed to switch herself around until she was no longer standing on the branch but hanging from it. That way the drop wouldn't be more than a couple feet. She'd have to do it quickly though. The branch she was standing on -- white as a skeleton with loose, dangling bracelets of bark -- wouldn't last long.

  The ground was littered with debris from her descent. The short branch from her first fall had landed upright, sticking out of the soft ground like a flagpole. Holding on to nothing but the rough bark of the trunk, Savi squatted, lowering herself into a sitting position on the branch. As delicately as she could, she turned her body around and lay on her stomach.

  "But only God can make a tree."

  Savi felt the branch snap off before she heard the crack that accompanied it. She fell with it, at last on the ground, but she couldn't move. An excrutiating pain in her side made it difficult even to breathe. When she cried, the pain was so consuming that it shocked her into silence. She lay across the fallen branch, stuck to it, staring at the brown leaves. She wanted to pass out so she wouldn't feel the pain, but consciousness refused to release her.

  Through a numb haze that finally settled across her body, she thought she felt someone grab her bandaged arm, but she saw no one. All she could see was a line of ants that appeared from under the decaying leaves that blanketed the forest floor. The skittering insects diverged from their single file expedition to explore the sticky twigs, one clamping onto a dead moth and dragging it toward the tree.

  Somewhere past the buzzing in her ears she heard voices, fragments of sentences.

  Bitten... Marcia's spy... you touched her?

  A voiceless cry of pain opened her lips as she was pried from the branch. Soon she was on her back, faces looming above her. The girl with the amber eyes was there, and a woman she didn't recognize was asking her something, but Savi couldn't hear her. Her hands went to her stomach, where the pain was emanating from. When another hand pulled hers away, she saw her palm, red with blood. She tried to speak, but could still scarcely breathe.

  Her limp body was lifted from the ground and carried away, the pain in her stomach sending shockwaves through her with every stride. But even then her awareness refused to release, although the trees whizzed by so fast Savi assumed she was hallucinating.

  Only when her transport had slowed, when she had been dragged through a dark hallway into a dark room, and an unseen hand poured something in her mouth, only then did the blissful darkness win the fight. Before she succumbed completely, a voice with no body whispered two words that meant nothing to Savi, and that she'd forget by the time she awoke.

  Veru malar.

  In her dreams Savi watched herself fall from the tree over and over. Each time she opened her mouth to warn herself not to linger on the branch, but no sound would come out. Inevitably, she would fall onto the wooden spike below. Blood dripped from her stomach down the spear, puddling on the ground. Then she would vanish, appearing above in the tree once more. At last, when she was about to fall yet again, Savi found her voice.

  "No!"

  Reaching out, she awoke. Instead of herself, the ghostly face of a girl rose before her.

  Savi bolted upright. Even though the light was dim, she recognized the ghost as the albino girl from the coffee shop, the one who had accompanied the werewolf couple but said nothing.

  "Where am I?" asked Savi, looking around the tiny room.

  Perhaps room was too generous of a word. They were in a hole. The top of the girl's white head grazed the earthen ceiling, bits of it perpetually crumbling around her. The only light in the room was a flickering lantern on the floor, too weak to reach the rounded, windowless dirt walls. The damp smell of earth was suffocating in the space barely big enough for the two of them.

  Make that three of them. A woman dressed all in black, with long white hair and leather skin, sat on the dirt floor. Although she was against the opposite wall, Savi could have touched her leg. Her eyes were closed, but she was too still to be asleep.

  "Where am I?" Savi asked.

  Too quickly for Savi to react, the girl pulled out a knife and dug the tip into Savi's neck.

  "If you move," the woman said, her eyes still closed, "or say any words other than answers to my questions, you won't live." Her voice was stronger, younger, than she looked.

  Savi started to nod, but the sharp point stopped her.

  "Why were you in our woods?"

  Mind racing, Savi considered her answer. If these were werewolves, then they must be part of Marcia's crew. But then, the girl werewolf who put her in the tree had called her a spy, and hadn't been keen on the idea of Savi working for Marcia. So maybe they weren't in cahoots after all. Could she risk giving away her element of surprise?

  The knife digging deeper into her throat said yes.

  "I'm on my way to Marcia's barn."

  "You admit that you're a spy? A weapon against us?"

  "No, I'm not a spy," said Savi.

  "Explain yourself."

  "I'm going to save my friends who are being held captive there and turn them back to humans."

  "Any ona can smell Marcia's animals on you. Tell me why."

  Savi was about to ask what an "ona" was, but the knife reminded her to keep her remarks on point. The albino girl hadn't said a word, just stared at Savi with cold eyes.

  "Two of my friends and I were kidnapped by Marcia's gang yesterday. I was able to escape, but they weren't. I was going back to save them and turn them back when that girl put me up in a tree."

  At the memory of her encounter with the amber-eyed werewolf, Savi's hand went to her ribs. This small movement resulted in a searing pain at her throat.

  Ignoring Savi's cry, the woman continued her interrogation. "How did you escape?"

  "From the tree?"

  "From Marcia." There was no impatience in the woman's voice.

  The knife dug into her flesh with every movement of her jaw. Savi kept her answers short. "The wolf bit me, they put me in a cage and left. I opened the cage and ran."

  For the first time, the woman's eyes opened. One of them was veiled with a thick cloud of white. "You let them submit you to the bite?"

  Fixing her gaze on the woman's good eye, Savi said, "They forced me."

  The woman's voice was suddenly harder, sharper. "And the ona that bit you? What happened to it?"

  "Ona? That means werewolf?"

  Sizing Savi up with her clear eye, the woman asked, "You know nothing of your enemy?"

  "Enemy? You mean Marcia?"

  The woman studied Savi. "Werewolf. Ona. What happ
ened to it?"

  "They put a blanket over its cage."

  The woman's stoic demeanor was cracking, her voice laced with frustration. "The hollowing. How quickly does it take effect? How do you do it?"

  "Hollowing?"

  "I'm not a fool," she snapped. "Tell me about the hollowing."

  The knife dug deeper. Savi's hand twitched with the impulse to wipe at the tickle running down her neck.

  "I don't know what that is, I swear," Savi cried.

  "Then how were you going to undo your friends' altering?"

  "The silver wolf -- it would bite them again."

  At the mention of the silver wolf, a look of shock passed between the woman and the girl, and the air in the den became heavier.

  The woman closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the dirt wall. "Marcia has a silver ona?" she asked, her tremulous voice belying her calm exterior.

  "Yes."

  The woman said nothing, but took a piece of white paper out of her breast pocket. As the woman unfolded it, Savi saw that the paper was ripped in half, but she couldn't see what was on the other side. The woman hugged the paper to her chest, whispering something under her breath.

  Without opening her eyes, the woman said, "She is ignorant. Let her go." The burning at Savi's throat ceased, and the albino girl sat back against the wall beside the old woman.

  Savi wiped the itchy trail of blood away, and saw that her hand was covered with not only fresh blood, but crusted with dark red flecks of dried blood. Looking down at her side, she realized that the t-shirt she wore wasn't hers. She looked at them both quizzically, but the girl remained impassive, and the woman's eyes were still closed. Pulling up the shirt, Savi could see a faint scar in the middle of her side.

  "I was hurt." She spoke to herself, as a confirmation of the memory, but the woman responded.

  "You were lucky I told Amber to go back for you."

  "Amber -- that's the werewolf who put me in the tree?"

  The woman nodded. "That's her shirt."

  Savi flinched, remembering the fall, the pain, trying to separate reality from her nightmare. It wasn't a tall spike that had speared her, but the jagged, broken end of the branch she'd been lying on. She rubbed the scar on her side and stretched. She felt better than she had all day. Other than the sensitive spot on her neck from the knife, the aches and pains that had plagued her earlier were gone. Even her arm was completely healed, the bloody bandage nowhere to be seen.

  "It's not even sore. How did they both heal so fast?" A sudden fear gripped Savi. "How long have I been here?"

  "Two hours."

  "Hours? How is that possible?"

  "We have our ways." The woman smiled at her enigmatic answer. "The scar will heal as well within the day."

  Savi's stomach dropped. "Wait, that means it's 5:30?"

  "About."

  "I've got to go." Savi nodded at the only opening in the room, a hole in the wall beside the woman. "That's the, uh, door?"

  The girl moved between Savi and the exit. "We have more to discuss," the woman said, putting her head back and closing her eyes yet again.

  Savi waited for her to say something. After nearly a minute of silence, Savi took the lead. "Do you know why I didn't change?"

  The woman said nothing, and Savi feared she wasn't going to answer. But then, without looking at Savi, she said, "Yes."

  Savi's heart raced with anticipation, but the woman didn't expand upon her answer. "Why?" Savi asked, trying not to sound too impatient.

  "I will tell you everything I know," the woman said, "and we will help you save your friends. But you must help us first."

  "How?"

  "You are right to want to save your friends from the fate of the ona. Our power comes at great cost."

  "Right," Savi interjected, anxious to prove she wasn't entirely ignorant of werewolves. "You mean the painful transformations?"

  "Among other disadvantages," the woman said, not pleased by Savi's interruption. But then, with a long, slow breath, the woman's cloak of hostility fell away, and she gave Savi a warm smile. "I apologize for our shoddy welcome."

  Savi bit the inside of her lip to keep from scoffing.

  "We are a band of dissidents -- nearly all victims of Marcia's plot. At first we were taken in by her promises of power and purpose, but each of us grew disillusioned and voiced our desire to return human. Marcia refused, so we formed our own pack. She has since sought to prevent us from finding a way to change back on our own. My mate and I travelled the world in search of the answer." She looked down at the paper once again.

  Savi leaned forward and followed her gaze, her breath catching in her throat as she recognized the torn picture.

  "That's my father," she whispered. From her dad's closed eyes, she knew it was a photocopy of the picture that was in her keepsake box at home, and not George's photo. A smoky dread filled Savi's chest at the half that had been ripped off.

  The woman's face mirrored Savi's shock. Then her eyes narrowed. "You're Midnight's daughter?"

  "How did you get that picture?" But as soon as Savi asked, she made the connection. "Yejoon accidentally gave it to Amber when she robbed them." The woman's question finally reached Savi's brain. "Midnight?" she asked. "His name was Montgomery."

  With her good eye the woman searched Savi, the struggle within apparent on her weathered face. Finally relaxing into a sad smile, she said, "He was Montgomery when he came to us. He was Midnight when he left."

  "You mean..." Savi didn't want to say it out loud, but the woman remained stubbornly silent. "You turned him into a werewolf?"

  The woman's laugh was low and humorless. "I? No. It was Marcia."

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Marcia turned my father into a werewolf?"

  "She did." The woman's eyes were a mix of hunger and fear, but her voice was flat. "He's dead then?"

  Her words pulled Savi's reeling mind back into the conversation. "You don't know?"

  "He left me before it became crippling. He said he had somewhere to go, alone. I didn't ask, but I suspected he returned to you."

  The detachment in her voice affected Savi more than if the woman had broken down sobbing. Savi knew firsthand how much emotion an emotionless voice could hide. She felt a sudden kinship with this woman who hid her grief from the world, who had also been abandoned by Montgomery Drake.

  "He died five years ago." It felt like a lie, like she didn't have a right to say the words. "He never came back though. I never met him."

  The old woman took a long, ragged breath before speaking. "I will join him soon, unless you help me."

  Savi wanted to respond, but her mind was cluttered with questions about her father, leaving her speechless.

  "The silver wolf," the woman explained. "The silver wolf is the key. It's a torra, an origin, the first and only true ona. Torra can cure any ailment, including the curse that we bear. You can help us bring the torra here, and save our pack from certain death, like the one Midnight -- your father -- met."

  One of Savi's questions broke free. "That's why my father died so young? Because he was a werewolf -- an ona?" The word felt strange on Savi's tongue.

  The woman nodded. "Most ona don't live to see fifty. Some live longer because their altering is painless, like Midnight. But he was altered too young, and it shortened an already short life."

  "Hettie," Savi muttered. Meeting the woman's questioning eyes, she said, "My friend, the one I'm trying to save, she altered without any pain. Why is the altering painful for some and not for others?"

  "We have yet to solve that mystery."

  "How young was my father when he was altered?"

  "Eleven."

  Savi's hands curled into fists. How could Marcia do that to a child? There was no way for her to know that he would alter easily. She had condemned him to a life of agony.

  "We're running out of time," said the woman, her clear eye filled with hope. "Will you help us?"

  Savi wanted to keep talki
ng about her father. Every detail she learned about him was another grain of sand filling the chasm within her. But the woman was right -- her father was already dead. Saving Hettie and helping these people had to be her priority.

  "What do you need me to do?"

  "We need the silver wolf. You can help bring it to us."

  Everyone needs this wolf.

  Savi fumbled under the weight of the woman's gaze. "I, uh, I need the silver wolf to change my friends. And there are these two brothers -- I met them last night. They need it too because it bit their father a long time ago. They're planning on getting the wolf tonight so it can bite their father tomorrow in human form, at the same time it bites my friends."

  "These brothers," said the woman, "they are helping you to save your friends?"

  "Not exactly. They're pretty focused on helping their dad."

  "Do they have the knowledge you seek of yourself?" Savi was about to answer when the woman continued. "Did they heal your body, bring you back to life? Can they fill the void in you, heal your soul, by helping you discover your father?"

  Although the answer was obvious, the woman was now silent. Savi's muttered "No" hung between them, a door the woman waited for Savi to walk through.

  "But their dad is in pretty rough shape." As she said it, Savi wondered why she was defending them. Sure, they helped her escape, but she had helped them first. And other than carrying her to safety, they really hadn't helped her at all. They had in fact outright refused to help when she asked. A wave of self-disgust passed over her as she realized she was thinking of Marley, and how he had been so upset with her when she'd unintentionally insulted his dad. His happiness had no bearing on her. He was out of her life as far as she was concerned. Savi owed them no debt.

  Hettie, on the other hand, Savi owed her everything.

  Before Savi could say so, the woman held up her hand. "There's no need for conflict. The ritual we will perform happens at night. You and these brothers can have the wolf when we're done with it."

  Savi glanced at the exit, then at the white-haired girl, still sitting beside the old woman. "If I say no, will you still let me leave?"