by D. N. Hoxa
Or rather, try to tear the witch standing next to me apart.
The man was chanting desperately, his body covered in blood. The pain on my arm was breathtaking, but I forgot all about it when the same wolf who’d attacked me jumped. His friends were suspended in time, probably by the witch’s spell, but he wasn’t. He jumped and he aimed for the witch with his jaws open.
Without thought, I stepped forward with my arms wide open. You’d think I was looking to hug that animal—and I did. He fell right on my chest. His balls may or may have not touched my cheeks, but the thought didn’t register then. I just wrapped my arms around his body and pushed him back with all my strength, until we were both down on the ground.
I barely had a second to draw in air when ice-cold pain grabbed me by my ankle. I screamed, but the sound wasn’t nearly powerful enough to describe what I was feeling. I really, really, really hated pain, and the wolf who’d bitten me was dragging me off his friend, toward the middle of the room while I watched.
I tried to grab something, anything to attack him with because my knives had slipped from my hands, and their blades were too small to cause damage anyway. When I finally reached a piece of wood, probably from the broken table, I turned around and almost passed out from the pain. But I hit the wolf on the head with all my strength until he let go of me with a growl.
By then, the witch was on the ground. I sat up, trying to get a better look at the room to find a weapon to fight with, when I realized, the wolves had stopped attacking. They watched the both of us, their teeth bared, neither of them even wounded too much, and slowly, they began to walk backward to the door.
Finn came to my mind then. He’d said that somebody was using animals somehow to do things. Could he have meant this? Because those wolves weren’t normal. No, normal wolves would have never attacked me. There was a gleaming in their dark eyes, and judging by the heavy smell of magic lingering around them, I'd say it wasn't natural. All I knew was that they’d attacked me when no other animal ever had, and now they were leaving because they’d killed the third witch, too.
My ankle was a mess of blood and torn flesh. It was going to heal—I healed as fast as any other werewolf—but it was going to hurt a lot while it did.
And then somebody coughed.
I looked up at the door, sure that other people had come to find us here, but there was nobody there. And when he coughed again, I realized it was the witch with his chest torn open.
Getting to my feet was impossible, but I dragged myself on one knee and my hands closer to him. His blue eyes were half open, stuck to the ceiling, and his hands were trying to press on the tear on his chest, but he was still coughing blood. Taking off my jacket, I put it on his chest and helped him press onto the wound harder.
“Heal yourself,” I said, breathing heavily. “Come on, heal yourself.” He was a Blood witch. Blood magic had some of the most powerful healing spells in the world. He could conjure one, and he’d be as good as new in no time.
“Not…not…” he said, but another cough, and he sprayed my face with blood.
“Use your spells!” I shouted at his face. “Do you have any Pretters?” Maybe he couldn’t chant. He was barely breathing.
But instead of speaking, the man moved his hands. He moved them until my jacket was no longer covering the mess that was his chest.
And he raised his hand. He hadn’t been trying to press onto his wound like I’d thought. He was just holding onto something. Something covered in his blood.
“Not find it,” he said, his voice weak. He was shaking, blinking fast as tears streamed down his temples. His eyes met mine, and for a second, it felt like I knew him. It felt like I’d known him all my life.
He reached out his hand, and it looked like he was reaching for me, so I gave him mine. The round-shaped piece of steel was cold against my skin.
“They cannot find it,” the man whispered, but he didn’t say the whole words. I just guessed. “They can’t have it.”
He pushed the piece of steel into my palm and then tried to make me close my fingers around it. He wanted me to have it.
“Please, just heal yourself. Come on, you can still survive!” I shouted. He was wasting unnecessary time with saying things I didn’t understand when he could be working on himself instead.
“Don’t let them find it. Please, they cannot…” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes. Strength left him and his hands fell away from mine. The steel piece remained between my fingers.
“Chant!” I shouted. “Chant, damn it!”
He finally did.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited for the words of his spell to knit him together, to close the wound on his chest. As long as he stopped losing blood, I could get him out of there. I could take him to a hospital. I could find a Pretter so strong, he’d be on his feet by sunrise.
But his wound didn’t react to his chanting. His skin and flesh didn’t move closer together like I expected. It was like…it was like he wasn’t chanting a healing spell. I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t a witch, but the spell was so long.
The witch ran out of breath, and his head fell to the side. I thought for sure that he was dead. Why hadn’t he chanted a healing spell?
But he wasn’t dead. At least not yet. Two more words left his lips in a whisper.
And my whole body convulsed.
The fire began between the fingers of my left hand. It spread up my arm too fast to comprehend, and before I took in the next breath, it had consumed all of me. My every cell was burning in flames. My chest was opening, much like the witch’s. Breathing was no longer possible. My body was paralyzed and I collapsed. I tried to scream, but my throat was closed. My eyes turned in their sockets. It felt like death. I knew it was death. Whatever that witch had chanted, it had killed me, which was strange. From what I knew, there was no spell that could kill you on the spot. Not like this.
But as strange as it sounds, and as surprising as it was to me, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t regretful. I wasn’t even panicked.
I welcomed the sense of nothingness with arms wide open, and then I was gone.
4
A terrifying sound woke me up. It took me a second to realize that it was coming from inside of my head.
It was my wolf. She was growling a horrible sound, clawing at my brain, urging me to get up. I remembered the pain, especially in my ankle from when that wolf had bitten me, but now, when I tried to move, I found it had faded to a dull throbbing.
But wait a second…hadn’t that witch spelled me? Why wasn’t I dead?
When I raised my head, I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming. My face had been right on the witch’s chest. His blood was stuck to my cheek, and the smell! Oh, the smell was enough to make me want to die all over again.
I pushed myself away from him as fast as I could, but my body didn’t cooperate as well as I’d have liked. My muscles were still numb. How long had I been out?
My wolf growled again—the sound definitely a warning. I sat up and wiped the blood from my face with the back of my hands and looked around. Three dead witches. The wolves hadn’t returned.
But something was moving outside the door, and the sound was growing louder with every second.
Numbness forgotten, I jumped to my feet and tried to think. Whoever these people were, they were coming through the front door. Were they ECU soldiers? I hadn’t done anything wrong, but every instinct in my body said that whoever they were, they could not see me here.
I looked at the dead witches for one last time and headed for one of the two doors on the other side of the room because there was nowhere else for me to go. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, the light was off, and I left it that way. The smell said that nobody was in there. I closed the door and walked deeper into the room, but it was too dark. With shaking hands, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket, only to see the screen broken to pieces. But when I pressed a button, the light turned on at least. I was in a bedroom with a queen-
sized bed to one side, a dresser with a TV on top of it, a small bedside lamp on a nightstand, and only one door on the wall opposite. No windows. Shit. We were in the basement.
I made for the other door at first, but then I stopped as if somebody had pressed a button to cut off my movement. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, just as the first footsteps sounded in the room where the dead witches were. By the sound of it, there were three of them. And by the smell of it, all three were werewolves.
Too distracted to notice much else, I continued to breathe through my mouth. Slowly, I moved to the door, and like a fool, I pressed my ear to the wood.
One of the werewolves was whistling.
“They really did a number on them,” he said, laughing. I recognized his voice. He was the driver of the truck in the alley.
“Man, they literally tore them up,” said another I didn’t recognize, not nearly as excited.
“Don’t tell me you feel bad about them.” It was the guy who’d locked the back door before getting in the truck. The one with the strange animal smell, the same smell that had come off the four wolves who’d killed the witches.
“It’s going to take ages to search this place,” said the driver.
A clap made me jump in place. “Let’s get to work, boys.”
My heart beat like mad, but my wolf no longer growled or tried to warn me as I listened to the werewolves moving things around. I looked at the door by the bed. Where was it going to lead me? Probably into the bathroom. What were the chances that the werewolves didn’t search the rest of the apartment?
Very low.
My two remaining kitchen knives were useless. I didn’t know what else to do but try to…reach out to my wolf. I’d never needed her before this night. I’d always dreaded feeling her inside of me, and I always wished she’d disappeared.
Not tonight. Now, I wished with all my heart that she’d hear my thoughts and know that, on my own, I was as good as dead. I wasn’t going to survive three werewolves, and they wouldn’t even have to try hard to kill me. They could just shoot me from a distance and be done with me. My wolf was the only one who could save me.
But she was as quiet as when those wolves had attacked me. She still refused to come out.
It didn’t make me angry. It made me sad. It was just another reminder of how little control of her I had and how much control she had of me.
“It’s not here,” one of the werewolves said, making my heart skip a beat.
“It has to be. These guys had it,” the other said.
“Maybe they hid it?”
“No, man. They had it! It’s here somewhere. It’s just small so we can’t see it.” The man with the strange animal smell sounded panicked. Very panicked.
“I’m telling you, that thing isn’t here,” the driver shouted.
“What about this?” said the third.
“No! I told you, it’s round and made of steel!”
A cold shiver washed down my back. Round and made of steel.
Suddenly, I was aware of my left hand. I turned my phone’s screen on and looked at what was still stuck between my fingers, right where that dying witch had left it. Round and made of steel. The werewolves were searching for the thing in my hand.
Don’t let them find it. That’s what the witch had said. Had he meant these werewolves?
Probably. Nobody else was looking for it, was there?
“This is bad. Haworth is going to be pissed!”
“Check the rest of the apartment. We’re not done yet,” the driver said then.
And I knew I’d screwed up.
It was a second’s decision. I could either wait for them to come find me, or I could try to make a run for it.
The latter option won. Putting the phone and the piece of steel away in my pocket, I inhaled deeply and ran to the door next to the bed without caring if the werewolves outside could hear me.
Behind it wasn’t a bathroom—it was another bedroom, identical to the one I was in. And it had another door on the opposite wall. My only goal was to survive. All my thoughts had melted and reshaped into that single word as I ran to it and tried to open it, but it was locked.
The door to the room where I’d been hiding opened.
I stepped back and kicked the one in front of me with all my strength.
“Go, go, go!” one of the werewolves shouted. The door didn’t give, so I kicked it again. And again.
“Stop!” they called, but I kicked the door again, and this time, it did open.
It took me to a corridor similar to the one that led to the apartment.
The gunshots nearly made me pass out, but the adrenaline rushing in my veins made sure I kept on moving, even when my mind was blacked out. The werewolves were running after me, shooting at me, calling for me to stop, but I didn’t. I followed the corridor to wherever it led me, and I never looked back.
I pivoted from left to right as fast as I could. I’d seen in a movie somewhere that I could distract the shooters that way, but a bullet still caught me on the left side of my waist. The pain didn’t register as the impact pushed my entire left side forward, and I slammed against the wall. I caught my balance and began running again, then live flames poured down my hip. Logic said that that kind of pain should have stopped me in place, but somehow, my body kept on going. The stairway was narrow, and there was no light to guide me, but I had my nose and I relied on it. Hot blood slipped down my leg, soaking my jeans, but I knew that if I looked down and saw what that bullet had done to me, I wasn’t going to be able to continue. The werewolves were still behind me. I couldn’t afford to stop now.
I went through a door and out another. My vision had tunneled and I had no idea where I was, but I could smell the outside, the cold air and the River, so I followed that smell until, by some miracle, I slammed against a door and it opened.
The night air filled my nostrils, giving me a sense of freedom. But the sound of the werewolves’ footsteps propelled me forward.
My car was…where the hell was my car? It was dark. All the lampposts had been turned off, probably by the werewolves, and I had no idea in which part of the complex I was. I had come out of building number two. How the hell had that happened?
It didn’t matter, though. There was no time to look for my car now. I needed to get away from there, and fast, before the werewolves got to me. I considered jumping in the river, but I wasn’t sure how deep it was or if I could swim fast enough, so I continued on foot. When I finally saw the wide road that led back to Jersey City, I almost cried. My car was there somewhere, but to find it, I’d have to search. My best bet was the city. I could hail a cab or hide in a building. And those werewolves couldn’t shoot me in front of the whole world. They couldn’t turn off the lights of the entire city like they’d done with that apartment complex.
No, searching for my car was a waste of time, so I continued to run as fast as my body would let me.
Two of the werewolves had stopped somewhere. Only one was running after me, still shooting at me every now and then, but that was okay. I was halfway there, and in a few seconds, I was going to be safe.
But just as I thought it was all over and the shadow of the first trees shielded me, another bullet caught me on my right thigh. I screamed at the top of my voice and held onto the tree trunk to keep from falling. Tears left my eyes in a rush. I already knew I wasn’t going to make it, but hopping on one leg, I crossed the narrow street to what looked like a parking lot half filled with cars.
The werewolf was still after me, and another car was approaching fast. Probably his friends. I jumped against the hood of the first car in the parking lot and slid to the side. I thought moving on all fours was going to be easier, but I was wrong. My waist hurt and my leg was a mess. I couldn’t even feel it anymore—just its absence, like it was already cut off from the rest of me.
I continued, dragging myself with my hands and elbows, until the werewolf was just a few feet away from me. The desperation drained the la
st of my strength and my chin hit the cold asphalt. My eyes squeezed shut, and I tried to keep calm. I was lying between two cars. Maybe they would miss me. Maybe they’d think I ran ahead, and they’d do the same.
The lie made me smile. I was good at fooling myself. Very good.
But right now, even I couldn’t believe that there was a way out. My body was too badly hurt. It was going to take time to heal, and even then, what could I do against three werewolves?
Laughter behind me. The werewolves had spotted me.
A growl in my head. My eyes popped open.
Could it be?
“Who the fuck are you?” one of them said.
I smiled when my heart stopped beating for a second, squeezed by that familiar feeling. The next second, my bones began to shift.
It was the first time in my life that my wolf claimed my body and made it her own without pain.
Pain.
So, so much pain.
Had I died and gone to hell?
No, flames couldn’t hurt this much.
“Stand still!”
The left side of my body was paralyzed. Something was moving inside of me, something foreign, like a snake slithering under my skin. I could feel it, but I couldn’t move away because there was something pushing against my chest, holding me down.
My eyes opened with a jolt. Darkness greeted me. The smells didn’t tell me anything. I was too distracted by the pain to listen—or care.
“Stand still, for fuck’s sake!”
I looked down and saw the hand holding me. The arm attached to it was really wide, the budging muscles strained. The man was holding me down with all his strength, and my rib cage was threatening to break any second now.
“What…what…what—” I was cut off by my own scream when whatever was slithering inside me pulled out.
A hand clamped over my mouth. A wet hand. A drop of blood slipped through my lips. A lump formed in my throat, calling out everything that was in my stomach. I don’t know how I managed to push the arm off and turn my head to the side, but when I threw up, the contents didn’t spill on my chest.
