by Apryl Baker
“I can’t have it, then.” Sadness swarms me. “I can’t have sugar.”
“Oh, but you can here!” She stands up and hugs me. “Here, you can have anything you want.”
“Really?”
“Yes! Would you like to stay with us and play?”
“I would.”
But something is niggling at the back of my mind. I can’t stay here.
Cecily.
“But I can’t stay. I have to get back to my sister.”
“She can come, too, and we can play all day.”
“I…”
A blinding white light blots everything out, and I’m thrown against a wall, the light blazing with the force of a thousand suns.
Hissing comes from all around me, and I blink as my surroundings come into focus. The once beautiful playhouses are now rotting hunks of wood, the smell so bad, I gag. It’s all I can do not to throw up.
Eli picks me up, and then he’s running. I can hear the cries of so many children behind me. My heart aches for them, but before I can say anything, he shoves my head down and runs out of the house.
The little village of homes is an abandoned relic from a past long gone, but the haunted, gaunt faces staring at us from doorways are not quite human. They look hungry.
Eli keeps running, and I’m aware of the two massive wolves lumbering along beside us. It’s not until we’re completely out of the fenced area that Eli stops. He falls to his knees and then I notice he’s bleeding. He’s covered in dozens of tiny scratches, some deeper than others.
“You’re hurt!”
“So are you.”
I look down to see he’s right. I’m bleeding. Everywhere. The same tiny cuts and scratches mar my own skin, soaking my shirt and jeans.
“What happened?”
“There are things back there, things that put you in some kind of happy, euphoric state. You ignored them swarming you like rats, ignored the pain where they bit or cut you. You were smiling, Ella.”
Oh, my God. Horrified, I look back, and I can see the little girl just at the edge of the trees. She looks so angry.
“I told you not to go there,” Selena says as she reappears. “It took the effort of your guardian and myself to free you from the feeders’ hold.”
“Feeders?” I whisper, suddenly dizzy.
“I have no other word for those things.” Selena shudders. “Never go back there, Ella. Those things, they feed on us, especially us.”
She’s bleeding herself, only it’s a dark blue goo that oozes from her wounds.
“You’re hurt, Selena.”
She waves off my concern. “I will be fine. You need medical attention. Both of you do.”
There’s a shimmer of freezing energy, and the wolves start to growl when she appears.
“She’s okay,” Eli assures them. “She’s Ella’s teacher. She means no harm. At least not in this moment.”
“Neither of you can drive. These beasts will need to get you medical attention. Those are deep, metaphysical wounds. You need a healer as fast as you can.”
The wolves shimmer, and the sheriff and his deputy reappear in a mess of bleeding fur and wet, slimy ooze. It’s nasty to watch.
“I’ll take Ella and Eli with me. Allen, you drive Eli’s Jeep, and remember it’s bugged. Don’t say a word.”
We get into the sheriff’s SUV, and that’s the last thought I have before another wave of dizziness overtakes me and I black out.
Chapter Fifteen
Hank Mendoza
Day 4
10:27 p.m.
He yawns and yells at the dog to shut up its yapping. Fool thing had been barking for over an hour. He’s sick of it. All he wants to do is enjoy his beer and watch Magnum P.I. This remake is pretty good.
“Maybe Boomer needs to go out, Hank.” His wife, Marie, sticks her head around the corner. “You’ll be the one who gets up at three in the morning to let him out to pee if he don’t go now.”
Grumbling, he pauses the show. Thank God for DVR.
“Come on, Boomer. Get your butt in gear so I can go back to my show.”
He opens the front door, but the dog doesn’t come. His barking just gets louder.
“I ain’t got time for your shenanigans.” He grips the dog by his collar and hauls him out the door. “Now, go do your business.”
The dog tries to get back inside, but Hank closes the door. They’re not playing this game tonight. “Go on, boy. Get your business done.”
Hank leans against the railing while the dog ventures out into the yard. The rain last night had brought a fog with it that hadn’t dissipated all day. Tonight, it was thicker than it had been during the day, making it hard to see even his old Chevy truck in the driveway.
He snorts. Some driveway. He lives in a trailer set back from the road. His “driveway” is just a patch of dirt that no grass grows on. He’d had hopes of grandeur when he married his wife, but all he could afford was a rundown trailer on less than half an acre. And he doesn’t own it either. They rent. Bless his wife, though. She never complains and tells him she’s proud of him for providing. He cuts grass and does landscaping most of the year and scrapes enough to save to get them through during the winter months. Marie helps out, too. She cooks for the high school. Doesn’t pay much, but it helps.
Rustling sounds to his right, and he sniffs the air. All he can scent is the cold wetness of the fog. Which is strange. He should be able to smell the dog, the earth, the dying grass that clings to the lawnmower blades. He takes in a lungful, and still, he can only smell the fog.
He’s a wolf shifter. Granted, he’s not that high up in the pack, but his sniffer works as well as the Alpha’s. Something isn’t right here.
The cold ground feels wrong when he steps down off the porch. It’s summer. The ground should still be pretty warm. Why is it so cold?
Boomer starts to growl, and he looks around. Maybe it’s time to get back inside. “Boomer, let’s go.”
If the dog has an accident tonight, he’ll clean it up without complaint. Best not to push his luck during the Reaping Season.
The dog’s growl grows deeper, more vicious, and it’s then he realizes he can’t see the dog. He can only hear it.
“Boomer!” he calls sharply.
Boomer makes a sound that cuts through him. The same sound he made when the car hit him last year. Pain. That’s the only word to describe it.
His fight or flight instinct kicks him, telling him to run.
But Marie loves that dog something fierce. If he goes inside without finding him, she’ll never forgive him. And making her happy is his only goal in life.
“Boomer!” He slowly walks to where he heard the dog cry out and finds him lying on the ground, whimpering in pain. A deep gash runs from his shoulder to his hip. He gently picks the dog up and carries him to the porch. The vet bill is going to be a doozy and might blow through a good bit of the money he’d saved up for the winter.
But Marie loves this dog.
“Hank.”
His head whips around, searching for the raspy voice.
“Don’t you want to save them, Hank?”
Save them? He puts the dog down and turns around, searching the fog for any signs of life.
“Come, Hank. You can help your abuela.”
Help his grandmother? What nonsense is this? He and his family had crossed the border when he was just a little boy, but his grandmother hadn’t survived the trip.
“She’s waiting for you to help her. Don’t you want to help her?”
Hank steps down off the porch, but his feet don’t hit the bare ground like he’s expecting. Instead, they feel the metal of the box they’d been thrown in. It’s dark and hot, the smell of sweat and urine enough to make him gag. He’d lived in this smell for days, and it’s one he’ll never forget.
“Abuela?” he calls softly, his fingers finding the walls of the truck as he tries to orient himself.
“Hank?” The weak, feeble voice that reache
s his ears is enough to make him cry. He loved his abuela more than anyone, even more than his own mother.
“Abuela, where are you?”
Coughing echoes in the enclosed space. “Come, niño, I don’t have long.”
“No, abuela, don’t say that.” He’d just found her; she couldn’t go away again. Stumbling, he slowly made his way to where she sat against the back of the truck, coughing and wheezing.
There she lay, her skin wrinkled and so pale. Her snowy white hair is slicked back with sweat, and the smell…it is the smell of death. He knew it even as a small child. They had hoped to get across the border and find a doctor. Doctors in America were supposed to be better, and they treated you whether you were illegal or not.
Her thin hand cups his cheek. “My niño, so strong. You be a good boy and take care of your mama.”
“Don’t go, abuela. Please stay with me.”
“I can’t. My time is gone here.”
Tears leak unabashedly out of his eyes. “I love you, abuela.”
Her smile turns brittle. “If you loved me, niño, you wouldn’t have let them put me on this truck to die in squalor.”
“No, we were trying to save you.”
Her laugh is bitter. “Save me? No. You weren’t trying to save me for me, but for you. You and your mama, you were selfish, only thinking of yourselves and your pain. I could have died at home, in my own bed, surrounded by family.”
Each word feels like a bullet ripping through his chest. She hates him. His abuela can’t stand the sight of him. She blames him for bringing her here, for letting her die in a foreign place surrounded by filth.
He hangs his head in shame.
Sharp pinpricks of pain pierce his cheek, and he tries to rear back, but he can’t. Her fingernails had grown and were embedded into his skin.
“It’s time to come home to abuela, niño.”
Her voice isn’t hers anymore, but that raspy one he’d first heard. He looks down into glowing red eyes.
“No…”
“Come, niño. Feed your abuela and be a good boy.”
Laughter fills his ears as he bends down and her weathered lips latch onto his throat. He cries out when she bites down hard enough to draw blood.
Duermete Mi Niño fills the night. His favorite lullaby from when he was a child. Only he’s not comforted by the sound of his abuela’s voice. He’s terrified as this monster in the guise of his grandmother slowly drains the life from him.
And there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
Chapter Sixteen
Eli
Day 5
12:02 a.m.
Jacob’s Fork Memorial Hospital
All I’ve managed to do is piss off the staff, but I’m worried. Ella hasn’t woken up, and they can’t explain it. We both came in with about a hundred cuts and scratches on us. We were treated, and they admitted Ella earlier because she won’t wake up. They’ve done a CT scan, and there’s no brain injury. But I told them she didn’t hit her head. I thought she passed out from shock.
And the questions.
Major Banks showed up with his supervisor almost as soon as we arrived. I told them we went hiking and got tangled up in some barbed wire. It’s all I could come up with on the fly. Our wounds are bite marks from tiny teeth, but looking at one on my hand, it could be a wound from a barbed wire cut. Neither one of them believed me, but the doctor, being a Supe, verified my story. He adamantly said our wounds were consistent with barbed wire wounds, which they see all the time around here since people have livestock.
But when they asked me where exactly it was, I gave them misinformation. Because let’s face it, you’re not gonna find barbed wire in the woods. I said we got lost, and by the time we managed to find our way out of the woods, it was getting close to dark. We cut through someone’s property and tried to climb over the barbed wire fence and got tangled up in it. It took a long time to get us untangled.
I flagged down Ethan when I saw him driving down the road. He brought us to the hospital. He backed up my story and even told them where he picked us up. I’m sure by that time, he’d already sent people out to make sure there was blood on scene.
And that’s an issue I plan on yelling about as soon as I see him. He took our blood from the hospital. I know he did it because he wanted to make the facts line up with the story I told, but you don’t take someone’s blood like that in our world. Blood is the most powerful thing in the Supernatural world. Ethan knows this, and I swear to all that’s holy I’m going to beat him black and blue.
My nostrils flare when I see two Army soldiers walk down the hall. I slip around the corner and directly into Ella’s room. They pass by, glancing inside. I’m sitting in the chair by her bed so they’ll see me in here. No one is taking her on my watch. My whole being vibrates with anger just thinking about them locking her up in some room to do experiments on her.
Gramps comes in, followed by Mrs. B. Neither of them looks too happy. They have to have seen the soldiers. They’ve been crawling all over the hospital.
“We have to get her out of here.” Gramps hands me a cup of coffee. “Drink that, boy. You’re going to need to stay awake.”
Mrs. B calls to the nurse and tells her Ella’s awake and then shuts the door. The soldiers may or may not have been within hearing distance of the door.
She comes over and pushes the hair back from her daughter’s face. “Ella, honey, how are you feeling?”
I notice the door is opening and closing when she says that, and the nurse who comes in has this grim look on her face. “I don’t agree with this, but they can’t get their hands on her.”
So, she’s in on the breakout.
The doctor comes in next. “I’ve spoken with Hattie, and she agrees. The reason she’s not waking up is because she has a metaphysical wound that needs to be healed in a manner modern medicine just can’t.”
“Hattie?”
“Hattie McPhearson,” Gramps explains. “She’s a healer, for lack of a better word. She’s part of the local wolf shifter pack. She’s agreed to treat Ella. We just need to get her to the pack compound.”
“How do we do that with those guys patrolling?”
The doctor’s eyes light up. “I have a plan.”
Right about then, there’s a commotion and yelling outside.
The doctor grins.
“What’s going on?”
“The soldiers are being escorted off hospital property. They have no reason to be here and have been told they are not to come back unless they’re injured or visiting family. Our security guards will escort them off the property.”
It’s a full five minutes before said security comes back and informs us of the all-clear. The discharge papers are prepared, and Mrs. B calls her husband to tell him Ella is awake and she’s fine. The hospital is releasing her, and she’s taking her back to Gramps’ to be with her and Cecily until the vampire is found.
We bundle Ella into a wheelchair, and she’s tied to it to keep her upright. Her head lolls to the side, but the way we’re surrounding her, you’d never know it. We have no doubt we’re being watched as we leave the hospital. They might not be on the property, but with high-powered equipment, they’re definitely watching.
I’m on edge the entire drive to Rose Hill. I keep imagining an Army vehicle pulling us over and them taking Ella from me. I’m vibrating with rage. Gramps keeps looking at me through the rear-view mirror. He’s worried. More about me than Ella, I think.
When I first came to live with him, I was angry. At anything and everything. I hated my life. I’d given up everything to come back. Not for Mattie, either. I felt something in my bones, something that called me back from the oblivion of death. I don’t remember anything from my time in the land of the dead. I’d been gone for over a year before they brought me back.
It was this fierce need to protect that ultimately forced me to say yes to their restrictions. Giving up my family was a hard blow, and I’d raged at everyone. Gramps
didn’t give up on me, and neither did Jordan. He’d understood I needed a friend, and even though I’d tried my best to alienate him, he stayed around. I don’t know what I’d do without him. He is the one who ultimately changed my mind on the Supernatural world.
I’d basically just started to calm down when Ella came into my life, and I understood where the need to protect came from. She’d been pulling me to her from the moment I was brought back to this plane. I have an overriding need to keep her safe.
Even Mattie doesn’t bring about this insane urge to keep her safe. Granted, she did when she was trapped with the crazy psycho vampire, and I’d almost died myself trying to save her. But when it was over, I knew she’d be okay, and I could go on about my life until she needed me that badly again. With Ella, she’s always foremost in my mind.
I don’t understand why I feel so differently about my two charges. And that plays into my frustration sometimes, but even when I’m angry, I never take that out on Ella. I don’t want her to look at me as anything but her friend and Guardian Angel. I want her to know I’ll always keep her safe.
And it pisses me off when her father and his job get in the way of that.
“We’re here, boy.”
Gramps snaps me out of my dark thoughts, and I carefully get Ella out and take her inside. I knew we wouldn’t go straight to the wolves’ compound in case we were followed. I smile darkly, thinking about how much the Army must hate that they can’t see inside our land.
“Put her on the couch.” Gramps locks the door behind him, and Mrs. B starts fussing over her daughter the minute I lay her down.
“Where’s Cecily?”
“Asleep.”
“You sure?” I remember Ella telling me her concern over Cecily wanting to romanticize the vampire. Gramps frowns and goes upstairs to check on her.
“She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?” Mrs. B unfolds a throw and covers Ella with it.
“She does.”
Mrs. B reaches out and pulls me to her in a hug. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” I brush off her concern and scratch at the bandages on my arm. They’ve been itching like I’d rolled around in poison oak or something.
