by D. N. Hoxa
It cost him to say this, but I appreciated it that he did.
“If you really turn into a wolf, just a really big wolf, I’d think you’d want to know why, wouldn’t you?”
Well, when he put it that way…
“How do you plan to develop my senses?” I asked instead. He was right—ultimately, that was what I was going to need most. To find Haworth. To find Izzy. To make sure I was never, ever caught by surprise, ever again.
“If we understand how advanced your sense of smell is, my team can design exercises and find spells to make you better than you already are. You have a lot of potential, Victoria. Imagine what a little more work on your gift could do.”
I smiled. “You think I have a gift?”
“Absolutely.”
He wouldn’t have thought so if he’d had to live with my wolf for as long as I had. If he’d had to kill people and blame it on bears.
“What kind of tests are you going to run on me?”
“Simple ones. It’s like going to the hospital for a checkup, really. We’d examine your blood, your heart, your pressure, your brain waves and your receptors. It wouldn’t last longer than a couple days, if that.”
He made it all sound so simple.
“And what happens after?” I asked, surprisingly excited at the idea of finding out exactly what I was. There had to be an explanation for my condition. I couldn’t be the only person in the world to turn into a wolf. What if there were others? My heart beat like mad at the thought of it. Maybe I should have sat down and talked to Finn a long time ago.
“After, you’ll follow a training program with a friend of mine while you do jobs I assign to you. Slowly, at first,” he said.
That was okay with me. “What about the ECU?”
Finn had been the one to tell me how my father, the man who raised me, betrayed me to the ECU, and now they were looking for me. They wanted to question me. At first, I’d been afraid of what my father had told them, but Oscar Hogan knew nothing about my wolf. All he knew was that I had a very powerful sense of smell.
“Leave the ECU to me,” Finn said. “As long as you stick to the rules and don’t make a mess, you’ll be fine. They’re still looking for you, but you’re far from a priority. For now, keep your name to yourself.”
“Don’t you think it’s better if I just go talk to them? You said they wanted me for questioning.” I didn’t want to be under the constant pressure of being followed or caught.
“Oh, no. At least not until we know what you are exactly. They’re going to want to test you for themselves, and we’re not sure you’ll want them to know,” Finn said with a laugh. “So, if we’re done with that part, I need to know now what happened with Haworth. How did you find him?”
My blood froze for a second. “I didn’t. A friend of mine did.”
Mandy—but Finn didn’t need to know that. I trusted he wouldn’t even suspect her because he knew she was human.
“So what happened?” he pushed.
“Well, he—his men actually—caught us and brought us to his house. He tried to get me to shift so he could do to my wolf what he’s done to others. I…resisted.”
“Resisted, how?” Finn asked.
“I’m not sure. He had a lot on his hands. His daughter stabbed him in the back. I guess he was distracted.”
Or maybe the Reaper String helped. The way it had burned me, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lessened the effect of Haworth’s spell somehow, though as far as I knew, that kind of a thing didn’t exist.
Immediately, Finn opened a notepad and wrote something down. “He has a daughter?”
“Had,” I corrected. “He killed her.”
The werewolf flinched and dropped the pen. “What else?”
“There was a fight. I tried to stop him when the ECU arrived, but he just disappeared. Into thin air, together with his daughter’s body. I have no idea how.”
“Black ravenstone, probably,” Finn said under his breath.
“Black what?”
“Never mind.” He waved me off. “Do you remember anything he said? Something that could help us locate him? How did your friend find him? Can they do it again?”
“They can’t. It was pure luck, nothing more. And like I said, they found us. And all Haworth said was that he was invincible, that nothing was going to stop him. That’s all, I’m afraid.”
Finn shook his head. “He didn’t say why he’s doing this?”
I shrugged. “Why would he tell me that?”
To be honest, I didn’t care why. All I wanted to know was how to stop him. And maybe, when Finn helped me develop my sense of smell, I could.
“I don’t know. Why do bad guys do bad things?” He shrugged. “Are you certain that he said nothing else?”
“I am, but I did hear rumors. I haven’t confirmed them, but people are saying that Haworth has been spotted with demons.”
I had no idea if that was accurate or not, but if Finn and the ECU could look into it, if it could help them catch Haworth, I was all up for it.
“Who told you this?” Finn said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he got a lot paler suddenly.
“My friend,” I said, thinking of Red. His face, his eyes, his smile—they all fell like rocks in my stomach, making it harder to breathe.
“Can we find your friend? I’d like to have a word with them.”
Tears welled in my eyes, but I stopped them. “I don’t know where he is.” It was easier to say that than the other word.
Finn didn’t believe me, but it was okay. With a nod, he stood up on his one leg, and I followed.
“This relationship is based on trust,” Finn said as he showed me to the door. “But it’s trust between us. You and me, kid.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t trust anyone else here?”
His answer was a grin. Not that I intended to trust anyone—even Finn, for that matter—but he sure knew how to make me uncomfortable. Now, as we crossed the hallway, I began to feel a bit panicked.
Only when Finn opened the door did I notice the low growl sounding in my head.
My wolf. She was warning me.
Taking in a deep breath, I tried to ignore her and walked into the room. It was bigger than Finn’s office, with a large table right in the middle and shelves on both sides, while across, there were three computers on a big U-shaped desk. It resembled a lab, with microscopes, machinery I couldn’t name, and lots of plastic bottles with stuff I didn’t recognize in them. The three people in there were sitting in front of their computers, and when Finn walked in, they all stood up.
My wolf howled. She froze me in place. This was not something she wanted to do. She didn’t want me to get tested.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed forward with all my strength. I didn’t care what she wanted, just like she didn’t care what I wanted when she killed those men. I wanted to know what I was, and I was going through with this.
She heard my thoughts all too clearly. And she howled again. The squeezing began by the time I reached the table in the middle of the room. Thankful to have something to hold onto, I pressed my palms onto the cold surface and inhaled deeply. She was not going to do this. She couldn’t come out now and ruin this for me.
“Guys, this is Vicky,” Finn was saying to the others. “I’ve sent a list of tests you need to do on her.”
“Vicky?” one of the two guys said. “Vicky who?”
“Just Vicky,” said Finn, but I didn’t have it in me to look at the man’s face.
My wolf was fighting me. God, she was strong. I could practically feel her clawing at the inside of my brain, squeezing my heart and my lungs, trying to slip into my bones so she could change them. It was all I could do not to scream my guts out.
Stop it! I shouted in my head. I wouldn’t allow her to do this now. She needed to stop, but she had different ideas. She held onto me, suspended me in time until my body could no longer hold me and I fell on the cold grey tiles on all fours. Somebody called my name,
but I hardly heard it. I was more focused on the voices inside my head, the battle I was fighting against my wolf to shut her down. Squeezing my eyes shut, I held my breath and tried to control my own body. She couldn’t have me, not today. She fought me every step of the way. She clawed at me, growled and howled, snapped her teeth in front of my mind’s eye, but I knew exactly what would happen if she came out. She was going to kill someone here, and she was going to run. She was going to hide in a forest somewhere, and then what?
How long until Haworth finds you? I asked. How long?
Picturing Haworth’s picture-perfect face was hard. It went against my very instincts, but I had to. My wolf needed to be stopped. And at the sight of that monster’s face, she did slow down. She howled, and in it I heard pain. I heard anger. I heard regret.
I knew she didn’t want to, but she understood. I could hide among others but her? No, a wolf her size would be spotted instantly. We couldn’t risk getting caught by Haworth.
So she gave up.
I hadn’t eaten a thing that morning, but the pizza from the night before came out of my mouth and nose. Somebody was touching me, holding my hair back, watching me throw up until there was nothing left in me anymore. I tried to stand, to hold onto the hand in front of me, but my body was too weak. She’d done this on purpose. Now, I had no more energy left.
While they called my name, I tried to tell them that I was okay. That I was going to stand up.
“Just one…just one s…” I collapsed on the floor on my side and welcomed the numbing darkness.
2
Things are bound to go to shit when people get to meet your vomit before properly meeting you. I sat in one of the swivel chairs with Finn on one side and the other three people of his team on the other. The woman, possibly in her thirties, with dark hair cut close to her chin and frameless glasses hanging low on her nose, was holding the second bottle of water in her hands to give to me once I finished the first. Everybody was watching me like a hawk. The need to be anywhere but in my own skin was overwhelming for a few seconds.
Once I drank all the water, I put the empty bottle on the table behind me, and smiled.
“All right, guys. Time to get to work.”
Yes, they’d witnessed me at my weakest, and they’d seen what was inside my stomach—or had been until a few minutes ago—but I was just about ready to be done with this and leave.
“You sure you’re okay, kid?” Finn asked me, raising a brow in question. If his team hadn’t been there, he probably would have asked me what the hell that was. For once, I was glad for the three strangers.
“Perfectly fine. It must have been my breakfast,” I lied. I hadn’t had any breakfast.
Finn hesitated, but he wanted this done even more than I did, so in the end, he agreed to leave. The other three continued to behave weirdly around me, like they expected me to double over and puke my guts out all over again, but I wasn’t about to. At least, I didn’t think so.
“What do you need from me?” I asked when all three of them separated into different corners of the office to look for God knows what.
“You just hold still. We’ll take some of your blood and then proceed with the rest. It’ll be done in a few hours,” one of the guys said.
A few hours. I could do a few hours. Just as long as my wolf stayed as quiet as she was now, I would be just fine.
Aidan was the leader of Finn’s research team. He was also the guy who personally did all the blood tests because his vision was different from the rest of us. When I asked how, he said, “Imagine my brightness and contrast are at a much different level. Everything looks sharper for me.”
I couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad, or at least whether he felt like he was blessed or cursed for being different. I had no idea how I felt about my difference. My sense of smell. My wolf. My whole damn life so far.
Terra, the only woman on the team, was kind enough to take me outside once Ethan was done taking all that blood from me, and after he laid me down and stuck pads all over my head and chest to “measure” me. She showed me how to use the coffee machine in the third office—which was some sort of a lounge room with a round dining table and a small, grey-colored kitchen in the corner.
“It’s normal if you feel lightheaded,” Terra said. “Here. Eat this.” She got a power bar from one of the drawers and put it in front of me on the dining table. I wasn’t hungry at all, but I did feel a little dizzy—Ethan took a lot of my blood—so I unwrapped and ate it in three bites and finally got to the coffee.
“How long until the results come in?” I asked Terra.
She was eating a small portion of a fruit salad with lots of kiwi in it. I didn’t like kiwi. Its smell was too strong.
“Depends. The initial reading will probably take an hour or so, but we should be done with everything by tomorrow morning, tops,” she said. “You want some?”
The smell of kiwi assaulted me when she pushed the plastic bowl closer to me. “No, thanks.” She took the bowl back, pleased that I’d refused. “So how does this work? What exactly am I looking at here?”
Terra shrugged. “The basics. What you are, how powerful your magic is, the usage level, your heart rate, your healing speed, and your growing potential. After these are done, we’re going to put you in a machine, kind of like an MRI, to read your brain waves to make sure you’re stable, too.”
My wolf growled as I imagined being stuck in an MRI. I wondered if she was going to try to break me out of here before I got to that point.
“So, what do you do, anyway? Finn said you’re a werewolf,” she continued.
“Work for him, I guess.” How sad was it that I couldn’t even answer that simple question?
“Where are you from? I feel like I’ve seen you before, but I have no idea where.”
I looked into her wide brown eyes. She analyzed me like she couldn’t wait to find out what my deal was. Silently, I smelled her once more. I very rarely forgot smells, but I was sure I’d never encountered hers before. So I shook my head.
“I’m good with faces. I would have remembered if we’d met,” I said.
She gave me a tight smile. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her where I came from, but Finn had made it pretty clear that he didn’t want me to tell anybody anything about me. It was safer to keep my mouth shut. Soon enough, she was probably going to know more about me than I did.
“What exactly do you do here, aside from testing people?” I asked Terra, trying to make up for my secrecy. I liked her. She had an easygoing nature, and she didn’t make my wolf uncomfortable in the least.
“Oh, this and that,” she said, eating the last of her salad. “We test objects and spells mostly, but sometimes people, too. Most of our work is for the ECU, but we get the occasional strange request from clients. People are weird, you know?”
I nodded. “That they are.”
The silence that followed was comfortable for me but not for Terra. She looked like she was trying to pull off her own fingers, and I hated that there was nothing I could do to relax her. I was drowning in anxiety, too, though for a completely different reason.
I tried to clear my mind, to think about anything else except where I was and what I was doing there. I failed miserably, but I didn’t have to pretend for much longer. Finn opened the door with a jolt and stuck his head inside.
“My office, now.”
He definitely didn’t sound happy. I stood up from the chair, my legs already shaking. Terra watched me leave with a “sorry” look in her eyes. Finn was the kind of guy who always looked and sounded angry, but the look in his eyes just now was mad. I don’t think I even breathed properly until I made it across the hallway and to the half-open door of his office.
He wasn’t alone. Aidan was standing to the side of Finn’s desk, one hand wrapped tightly around his chin as he looked down at some documents, and when he heard me come in, he was shocked at the sight of my face. That’s when I knew that things weren’
t good. At all.
Swallowing hard, I walked over to the desk, too nervous to consider taking a seat. Nobody asked me to.
“We’ve got the initial results,” said Finn, looking at Aidan instead of me. “Why don’t you tell her what you have?”
“She’s a—“ Aidan stopped and cleared his throat. “You’re a witch.”
Not that I didn’t expect this…okay, I should have expected this. It wasn’t the first time I was hearing it. Red said it, too. He thought it—believed it with his whole non-beating heart, but I didn’t.
“I’m a werewolf.” That was something other people had seen, too. I shifted into a wolf. Maybe not a traditional werewolf, but nobody could deny that I shifted. Into an animal.
But Aidan shook his head. Before he could speak, Finn slammed a hand on the desk.
“There’s not a single drop of werewolf blood in you.” He raised his index finger at my face. “Not a single one.”
Numbness began around my neck, like invisible fingers closing tightly, and spread up to my face. I sat down in the metal chair without realizing it.
“Your tests are wrong. I’m a werewolf. People have seen me. I have seen me.” My wolf’s two front legs counted, didn’t they? They were wolf legs, and nobody could convince me otherwise.
“Blood never lies,” said Aidan. “I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Your blood gives off such mixed signals, it’s hard to be sure of one thing or the other—except that you’re a witch. A Green witch, to be precise.”
My blood ran even colder. “A mistake.” As simple as that.
“It’s not a mistake, kid. You’re a witch,” Finn said. “And not even a full witch.”
Suddenly, Finn’s office disappeared. The whole world disappeared, and only Haworth’s face existed in my mind. His cold beauty, his mocking smile, his words…you’re only half. That’s what he’d said. I was only half.
“It makes sense,” said Finn, scratching the top of his head, unable to look at me. “Humans can see you. They can speak to you, they remember you.”
