Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  “Easy, tiger,” Randy laughed, and Lexie relented just a bit before pressing into her again. Randy gasped, “You’re stronger than you look.”

  Lexie smiled and traced paths with her tongue that she followed with her teeth. She caught sweat and sex in each taste, rolling it in her mouth, swallowing, and making it hers.

  Lexie grasped at Randy’s groin, which bore the same salt and pepper coloring as her hair. Lexie felt Randy’s warmth move into her hand. Randy squeezed her eyes shut, looking both nervous and enraptured.

  Lexie bit and scratched, gripped and pinned, searching out where Randy’s muscles relented and where they resisted. Randy’s small sounds became words: Shit, shit, shit, she repeated like a mantra. Then the words cycled back into sounds: Shuh, shuh, sh, uh, uh, uh, uh, in time with Lexie’s stroking.

  Lexie loved feeling the tiny muscles in her hands work so hard, as though she were learning to use them for the first time. The muscles fatigued but then re-upped to offer more cycles of pleasure and tension.

  Lexie expected a burst, a scream, a singing moan. Instead, Randy’s sounds faded to silence, and even her breath stopped. Her body clenched from head to toe, shaking like a seizure before falling into lassitude.

  Lexie’s hand didn’t stop until Randy reached for her wrist. Randy’s eyes were still squeezed shut, and she had yet to exhale. At Randy’s touch, Lexie relented. Randy exhaled, a long, hissing sigh.

  The weak sun had barely moved when Lexie eased into the driver’s seat of her truck.

  “We good?” Randy asked, squinting.

  Lexie smiled weakly. “Nothing’s good, Randy.” The truth nicked her like a razor. “I’m a mess; you’re a mess. I’d like to just survive the next month, and we can figure out where we stand after that, all right?”

  Randy flinched, but she nodded.

  “Just no more drunken aggression, okay?”

  Randy reached into her pocket and pulled out a white AA chip.

  “Good girl,” Lexie said with a smile.

  “Let me know if I can help in any other way, all right? And … thanks.” She winked. Lexie returned it with a flirty smile and a nod. She eased her truck out of the gravel drive, the cage clattering in the bed like a steel skeleton.

  25

  Tranq, muzzle, and cage. That was the plan. They left the cage in the woods near the cave where the Pack would take their half-blood prisoners. It was accompanied by Hazel, Jenna, and the assembly instructions. Corwin had the topo maps and a satellite phone, GPSing as they went. Renee lubricated the spring mechanism of her crossbow. Lexie followed the new highway until it became the logging road it had always been, then they kept on going. She turned left into the woods and bounced for fifty yards until they were out of sight from the road.

  Mitch stayed with the truck, awaiting Corwin’s call for the pickup. “Double check with Hazel and Jenna that they’ve got the cage together,” Lexie said.

  They hiked in from there, up around the burnout, to the north face of Needle Ridge where Sharmalee had been herb hunting. Renee ran point, Corwin navigated while carrying the gear, and Lexie followed with the tranquilizer gun at her shoulder. All she had to do was shoot.

  They followed a hunch and Sharmalee’s memory of her path. Forty minutes after they entered the woods, the hunch paid off.

  There was a scent trail of a full-blood, with faint dispersed scents of others.

  They headed upwind and around the scent, like circling a stream.

  The group came to a small clearing where the brush was as dry as the rocky soil. A small cave sat between some broken boulders, the scent of the full-blood thick in the air. They’d found one.

  Corwin put down her cache and recoiled, stifling a yelp. A thorn embedded itself in her palm and she shook it without making a noise.

  Renee grabbed her hand and walked her further back into the forest while Lexie watched the cave. She could see the shadows moving evenly, the deep sleep of a Morloc full-blood.

  “What a weird-looking thorn,” Renee whispered, yanking the brown star-shaped piece of plant from Corwin’s palm.

  “That looks familiar,” Lexie said, also keeping her voice low. “Isn’t that the goat’s head thingy?”

  “What goat head?”

  “The plant Sharmalee was looking for. The herbal testosterone thing Mitch wanted.”

  “Seems appropriate,” Renee said, “that a bunch of it would be growing up around these dudes.”

  Corwin sucked on her wound and dug through her bag for some work gloves.

  “Hold up. Let me grab some. For Mitch,” Corwin said.

  The girls crept back to the edge of the treeline. The Morloc’s den sat beyond, cold and quiet.

  Lexie crept ahead, her tranq gun pointing the way.

  “You smell him?” Renee whispered.

  Lexie nodded. “He’s sleeping.”

  In the clearing, Renee kept her eyes fixed on the cave opening, while Lexie scanned the setting for escape routes and cover. The only clear shot into the cave was from a small rise two yards from the opening.

  Renee pointed to the rise and whispered, “On my signal, shoot from there, then bust a move back to the treeline. I’ll cover you if you need a second shot.”

  “Let’s hope one is all it takes.”

  Corwin waited near the trees with a coil of jute rope.

  Lexie crept to the opening of the cave, where the earth dipped, eroded away by the full-blood’s comings and goings. His fur rose and fell slowly with the rhythm of his snoring.

  Lexie felt her heart in her throat. She swallowed twice against it. She braced her right foot and brought the gun to her shoulder. It felt too light, more like a toy than a weapon. She took two slow breaths through an o-shaped mouth and adjusted her position. She had about eight inches of exposed body to work with, and each step back reduced her window. Finally, at seven feet from the cave, she stopped and centered her sight.

  The Rare’s grizzled fur moved in the same steady rhythm. She only hoped she wouldn’t hit a shoulder blade.

  Renee stood off to the side, her nose in the air and her crossbow at her side.

  Lexie took another three long breaths, trying to relax every muscle except for the ones gripping the trigger.

  Lexie remembered this place, where her mind would go when she lifted a rifle to her shoulder, the straining calm that gripped her body, the gratitude for finding patience when faced with motion, and the small space of calm amidst a storm of panic.

  One more breath, and she took the shot.

  The tranq canister caught the Rare’s trapezius. Lexie and Renee ran to the trees where they recouped and turned back to the cave. They sniffed and scanned for motion, their senses sharpened by adrenaline.

  Nothing came. The wolf remained in the cave. They waited for the requisite twenty seconds, and the Rare’s breathing settled into a slower, deeper rhythm.

  After nearly a minute, the girls crept toward the cave, weapons still drawn. At the mouth of the cave, the beast still snored.

  “No shit,” Renee said.

  Lexie shrugged.

  Corwin dropped the rope and unfurled the tarp on the dirt. “All right, so now we just have to get him onto this.”

  The girls crept to the cave mouth just in time to hear the snore become a growl.

  “Shit,” Renee said.

  “Shit. Shit shit fuck.”

  “Run!”

  In a burst of snarling and slavering, the Rare leapt from the cave, skidding onto the tarp with four paws.

  Renee fell back and raised her crossbow to release a bolt. It sank into the Rare’s haunch and lodged in the beast’s hip bone.

  Lexie raised her tranq gun, trying to find a shot. The full-blood spun in circles, snapping threats at each of them.

  “There’s no flesh on this fucker!” Lexie cried. The Rare’s skin was stretched like old leather over his bones. Fur was missing in chunks, replaced by scar tissue and fresh pink welts.

  “Go for the neck!” Renee
screamed.

  “We don’t want to kill him.”

  “Come on, Lex. Over here by the ribs!” Corwin shouted.

  Lexie saw only more mangy fur stretched over bone. The full-blood leapt for Corwin, knocking her on her back. She screamed and threw punches. He grabbed her by the shoulder with his jaws, shaking her and tossing her onto the rocks. She fell like pruned branches, a broken crumple.

  Renee loaded the next bolt and fired it, burying into his shoulder; the bolt jutted out like a gruesome piercing.

  He roared and turned on Renee, staggering. All his movements were graceless. Jerky. At least the first dart was having some effect.

  “Find a shot, Lexie!”

  I’m trying! Lexie screamed in her brain, but her voice wasn’t the first thing on her mind. She watched the arrow bob with the Rare’s movements. Fuck, the dude’s all leather and bone.

  Lexie found her shot, eight square inches between the Rare’s sharp shoulder blades. But the creature was taller than her, and she couldn’t hit it from her vantage. She needed height.

  The Rare snarled at Renee, who cranked the crossbow mechanism to load another bolt. “Lexie!”

  “I’m climbing!” Lexie darted past the Rare’s back legs, throwing the rifle on her shoulder and diving for the first boulder that comprised the Rare’s den. The jagged pieces of broken stone scraped at her palms when she grabbed it.

  She yanked herself to the razor’s edge of the rock and leapt again to another ledge just above. The Rare dove for Renee. She jumped. The wolf caught her legs and sent her careening over his back. She landed hard on her side and groaned.

  Lexie saw the flat point she needed on the boulder that formed the apex of the formation. She holstered her tranq gun and leapt over the gap, missed, then grasped frantically for a handhold as she slid. She dug the rubber of her boots into the rock, but it only slowed her fall. She flung her arms wide, the whole of her body pressing against the rock. She clung with every muscle, finding any tiny point of friction and dedicating her life to gripping it.

  She pressed her fingertips down, but the rock slid like sandpaper beneath them. She curled her fingers, her nails dragging now. She cried out when her nails peeled from her skin. Her legs scrabbled for purchase. Her right foot caught on a tiny spur of rock.

  She gritted her teeth through the pain in her hands and clawed her way up the rock, sliding on her chest and face until she caught the plateau she needed.

  The Rare snatched Renee’s shoulder in his jaws. Renee screamed and kicked at his throat. Lexie slid onto her belly and pulled the gun from her shoulder. She could do this. Like hunting from a duck blind, she thought, with a bigger, slower target, she told herself. Piece of cake.

  Lexie put another tranq round on the tip and cocked the rifle. It sucked the air as the pneumatic engaged. Lexie took another breath, aiming for the flesh between the Rare’s shoulder blades.

  She exhaled and shot. The dart whizzed through the air to lodge in the tender flesh shielding the inside of his shoulder blade. The Rare released Renee and barked once. Renee scrambled for her crossbow. Lexie loaded one more dart, but she didn’t need it. The Rare swayed, his heavy head lolling on his neck. Its weight disrupted his balance, and he staggered to the right. He tried to control his muscles, but his legs folded beneath him.

  His nose hit the dirt, and he toppled to his side, eyes rolling into his skull and red tongue lolling to the ground.

  One huge snuffle, and he was out.

  Renee rushed to Corwin. She rubbed her head and stumbled to her feet. They all turned to the Rare, watching him warily for one long moment before rushing toward him. Corwin wrapped the rope around his snout, a tight muzzle, then bound his paws.

  She favored her injured shoulder, and blood stained her sweatshirt. Renee retrieved the tarp, and they eased it under the bulk of his body. “We need better weapons,” she said, through heavy breath. “Crossbows suck.”

  “Call Mitch and have him hightail it up here,” Lexie said to Corwin. “We’ve got maybe an hour.”

  26

  The girls couldn’t stop staring. The beast didn’t pace like Lexie expected. He merely stood, heavy skull hunched below sharp shoulders, glaring. A makeshift leather muzzle fashioned by Jenna bound its jaws. Corwin enjoyed buckling the muzzle onto the Morloc. She punched him across the nose before the tranquilizer wore off.

  Now, awake again, his yellow eyes tracked Lexie, fidgeting behind the wall of her friends. No doubt he knew they were all half-bloods, but she prayed he couldn’t divine more.

  They’d erected the cage next to the cave where the Pack, under Blythe’s rule, had brought half-blood males to beat into shifting. Where Lexie had seen the violence these women were capable of, and the hatred. She shivered and zipped up her hoodie.

  The cave was too small for the cage, so they stood beneath the haggard pines. They’d have to be extra careful keep the Morloc from howling for his friends.

  Gripping her knife in her left palm, Lexie stepped out from behind her friends.

  The Rare went ballistic, throwing his weight at the cage with a horrific clatter. She held the knife in front of her, catching the Rare’s reflection in the blade, praying both its metal and that of the cage wouldn’t buckle. His yellow eyes glared back in the reflection of the blade. She looked back at him, squinting, trying to catch the sunlight, or maybe the shadow. She didn’t know which.

  Lexie stepped closer, and the Rare rolled a low growl. Despite being bound and muzzled, the beast intimidated still. His eyes were a putrid yellow, matching his teeth as he snarled. His ears were missing chunks of skin, and open wounds wept from his neck and back, two from the day’s wrangle, and more from earlier fights and bites.

  Lexie reached the knife into the cage, but it still didn’t show a shift. The Rare was a Rare, no man to be found.

  His growl fell to a steady roil. She placed the blade on his patchy fur. He shuddered like a horse deflecting flies.

  She slid the knife under his fur, along his shoulder, and he snarled. Blood oozed beneath her incision, but his fur and fangs remained.

  His eyes cursed her as she focused on the wound.

  “Yeah, there’s more where that came from,” she said, wiping the knife clean on his fur and returning to the Pack.

  “Well that’s new,” Lexie said.

  “What is?” Hazel asked.

  “When I wounded Blythe with the knife, she shifted back to human form. And when I held it on the full moons, it kept me from turning.”

  “So the knife should turn a wolf human?” Mitch asked.

  “I thought it would, but it didn’t.”

  “One test doesn’t prove much,” Corwin said.

  “Maybe the knife makes them shift into whatever they are,” Hazel said. “You cut Blythe and she turned into a person. You touched Archer with it, and she turned into a wolf. You cut mean animal over there, and he stays that way.”

  “Which means he’s a wolf and not a man.” Lexie sheathed her knife. “Which we knew. Or thought we did. Now what?”

  The wolf’s gurgling growls continued, rising and falling in tone, like the Pack’s chatter, but muffled and incomprehensible.

  “We’re doomed,” Mitch said, part question, part resignation.

  “We can assume this guy was one of the Rares who killed Bree,” Renee said.

  “And attacked Sharm. If we can’t get to the whole pack, at least we can kill him,” Corwin said.

  The girls continued debating what to do with the Rare now that their plan had fallen apart.

  Lexie turned her ear to listen to the continued guttural noises from the Rare. She walked back to the cage, reached in, and ripped the muzzle from his snout. She snatched back her hand just before he snapped at her with his teeth. He bared them at her fully now, yellow against the black of his gums. He snarled once.

  “What did you say?” Lexie said.

  The wolf narrowed his eyes and snarled.

  “What did you say?!”

&
nbsp; His throat trembled, a chirping kind of growl. The pattern was familiar, strings of syllables with no breaks except when he took a breath. She had heard this language before, though she didn’t know where.

  Humans. This world is not for you.

  Lexie jumped back. “Say what now?”

  The syllables arranged themselves into lucidity in Lexie’s mind. She struggled to stay present as fear flooded her, screaming at her with each shallow breath to run, to hide, to find Archer and dig a hole and wait out the rest of time together. She stammered, “We just want to know why you’re killing us.”

  The wolf stopped growling.

  She struggled to flex her throat around the awkward syllables, choking on the first, and dropping the second. Finally, she found the right tension to create the high-pitched gurgled note. She listened in her head to the words she sounded out in English while hearing her throat work on the unfamiliar. It felt like nonsense at first, or some trick from the freaky church down the road. Then sounds croaked from her throat without any analysis. They merely sprang forth.

  “Uh … ” Hazel said. The girls had fallen silent when Lexie ripped away the muzzle. Now they exchanged wide-eyed glances.

  Lexie chattered until she could complete the awkward and stumbling sentence, a repeat of the question, “Why are you killing us?”

  Does need motive spider to kill?

  We are human, Lexie chattered.

  The wolf stared at her.

  You attack humans … she struggled to find the correct word … not deserved.

  Who was here first?

  Why two hundred years to… Another hole appeared in her lexicon. She stumbled. Revenge, she chattered.

  We make attempts. We try new method.

  Lexie scoffed.

  Cities. Walls. You build to shield, to defend. But you bleed outside, on us, he growled.

  Humans came from woods, you cannot banish us, Lexie said.

  Not banish. Remind. Where human live in hierarchy.

  “Why did you kill Bree?” Lexie spoke in her human tongue.

  The wolf blinked in response.