Sisters Red

by Jackson Pearce

  "Oh, yeah. Fenris." As soon as I say it, hair starts to sprout on the arms of one of them, but he gets the transformation under control and the hair dissolves back into his skin. They begin to walk away from us, and the panicky feeling rises. More of them are getting away.

  "From around here, then?" the young Fenris asks Rosie, his voice barely audible over the sound of traffic. I can't hear Rosie's answer at all. "Ellison? Nice place, I've heard. I'm from Simonton."

  "Lett... you should go after them," Silas says, pulling at the leathery-thick magnolia leaves as cover. He reaches to his back and pulls the ax out of his backpack in preparation.

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  "Wait, what about Rosie?" I hiss.

  "I'll stay with her. You're faster than me--you can take that group a lot more efficiently than I can. I'll protect Rosie, I promise."

  "Silas--"

  "Lett, it's me! Come on. Nothing will happen to your sister."

  I meet Silas's eyes for a long time, warning, threatening, then nod curtly. I can't just let three Fenris walk away. Silas is my partner. He can be trusted with Rosie's life. I slink away, crouched behind some azaleas, and Silas slips through the magnolias in the other direction. The pack turns toward the sound of my encroaching footsteps, their heads tensing forward in a very canine way, but they brush the sound off and continue talking.

  I'm about to stand all the way up when they move toward me, still talking, and a word catches my attention: Potential. I sink back down in the azaleas, curious.

  "I'm just saying, he's been here, I can smell it. That means we've got to be closer than Arrow, right?" a physically old Fenris grumbles, glancing at his hands anxiously--they're covered in greasy, matted fur. He shakes them with a frustrated expression, and the fur vanishes. Without the fur, he's handsome. He looks as if he could be a doctor or a lawyer or something, with speckled gray hair and deep-set eyes that look almost steel colored in the moonlight. I wonder how many women in the midtwenties crowd he's lured away.

  "That doesn't mean we can eat whenever we want to.

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  It's our night to look for him, not to hunt," another Fenris answers. He looks worn almost, as though he's irritated and tired--and hungry. "Come on, we've got to go get the kid. Alpha will kill him if he finds out he went after a girl on our patrol night. We can hunt tomorrow--hell, it's not like there aren't five million more where that chick came from. We're running out of time; the Potential's phase has already begun. If we miss out on this one again ..."

  "Whatever," the third Fenris grumbles, a younger one who looks about Silas's age, with sleek black hair and biceps that show through his T-shirt. "If the jackass would stop wandering around the entire fucking city... are you sure someone scented him in Atlanta? I'm still saying, the guys we've got out in the country think--"

  "You tell the Alpha that, then," the second Fenris growls, his voice hardly human. "Want to explain that you were too busy skirt chasing and gave the Potential up to Arrow, when they're already growing? They took over Sparrow. You want them to take control of us too? Just let them get more powerful, steal our members, find the Potential for themselves?"

  The other Fenris says nothing. They glare at each other, like dogs waiting for a fight, until the gray-haired Fenris turns sharply and storms away. The others follow suit, and I see the young Fenris that had been following Rosie scurry out from a side path and join them, an apologetic look on his face. His nose contorts in and out of a canine snout, and I see him glance back longingly at the spot where my sister is.

  They're going to run. Any moment now, they're going to

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  disappear--they're going to leave me standing alone again with a hatchet and nothing accomplished. I'm not the bait, not anymore--I'm just a hunter. I stand up, my red hood falling away from my face. The wolves turn toward me, curious. I take a few strides out of the leaves and into the moonlight.

  "What have we here?" one hisses. His eyes jump from the red cloak to my face, drawn to the color but repulsed by my scars. Forcing him to change out of lust won't work, but he'll change out of anger.

  I charge forward, hatchet raised. The Fenris who was after my sister can't control the transformation, and he bolts forward to meet me. Before he gets too close, I release the handle of my hatchet. It whizzes through the air and slices into his arm, deep enough that he falls to the ground. He flips back and forth, human eyes becoming a beast's, always holding on to the darkness, the hatred. The other three Fenris seem to snap out of their confusion. They transform in one fluid motion.

  They won't escape me--not this time. They won't fold into the night because I'm unable to bait them. The scent of their fur fills the air, and I dive forward to grab my hatchet from where it lies beside the youngest Fenris. My shoulder dips into a pool of his blood, and he lunges at me through the pain, jaws snapping. Won't be long till he's shadows, with his veins open like that.

  I hear a growl behind me, followed by an angry, roarlike bark. The three Fenris gather, the largest in the center--I don't know which wolf was which human anymore. They

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  take slow, even steps toward me, heads low and teeth bared. The two flanking the outside branch out. I grip my hatchet and unsheathe the hunting knife.

  Can't let them get behind me. I take a sharp step backward, let them think I'm running. The two outside wolves jump forward, one at my throat and the other at my legs. I lean out of the way, allowing one to sail by my face, but a claw manages to sink into my shoulder with a ripping sound. I cringe, but the lower wolf is already on me, his mouth stretching open around my thigh, eyes wide and teeth yellowed and razorlike, and I barely have time to jump out of the way as his teeth chomp together. Before he can try again, I sink the hunting knife into his back.

  The largest wolf slams into me on my blind side. My hatchet is knocked away, and for the first time I wonder where Silas is. Rosie, he's with Rosie. She's safe. I feel something crack in my chest and hear the scrambled sound of claws on pavement as the other wolves stand up. The largest wolf pants, lines of saliva dripping from his mouth onto my neck. His eyes are yellow, vibrant, and there's so much white around the irises that he looks almost insane. With a deep, low growl, he presses a paw down onto my chest and slowly begins to drag it downward, slicing through my skin.

  I want to scream. But I won't, not with the way he's looking at me, with joy, with anticipation. A breathy, raspy sound chokes from his throat--a laugh? It seeps into my skin, makes me angry, makes my blood feel hot.

  I swing my right fist toward the wolf's face. It makes

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  contact with his lower jaw, and I see several teeth flung into the night. My fingers open up, begin to bleed from the impact, but it's enough to have distracted the wolf for the tiniest moment. I draw my feet in and kick hard into his lower abdomen, a soft spot that sends him skittering off me and gasping for air. I stagger to my feet. There's only one wolf left unwounded.

  Only there isn't just one wolf.

  All four--even the two I hacked into--are looming before me. Their shoulder blades roll as they lurch forward. What's happening? They're ready to continue.

  But I'm not sure if I am. I press a hand to my chest to try to stop the bleeding and try to see my hatchet and knife without taking my eye off the wolves. The wolves are actually healing somehow. They're stronger, stronger than me, stronger than most Fenris. I harden my stare, try not to let the all-encompassing fear show on my face. I can't take them alone.

  A knife whizzes through the air beside my head but misses the largest Fenris. Rosie's knife. She and Silas run up behind me, alarmed, confused. The knife is the beginning of an avalanche of motion. The Fenris spring forward as a single unit. The youngest wolf, the one who was the blond boy, heads toward me, while the others lunge for Rosie and Silas. I kick the Fenris's back legs out from under him, buying myself just enough time to grab my hatchet. His mouth opens; he's coming for my head this time, for my face.

  I wait until the last in
stant before his jaws will close

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  around my cheeks, then heave the hatchet around. It sinks into the blond wolf's neck with a cracking sound. It's severed his spine. The wolf falls to the ground, tremors for a moment, and dissolves into shadows that hurry away in the moonlight.

  I turn to Rosie and Silas to see there's only one wolf left--the largest. Silas and Rosie are both fighting it, Rosie with only one knife left and Silas with the blade of an ax. The handle has somehow been broken off and thrown aside. Silas swings for the wolf, but it sidesteps out of the way. The animal paces and begins to circle them as they back up to each other, ready for a second pass.

  I grab Rosie's second knife from the ground. One shot. I try not to gasp for breath despite the fact that I'm dizzy. Every movement feels as if it's ripping my chest apart. I don't have Rosie's aim, but the wolf is going to wear us down if someone doesn't get a hit. Rosie meets my eye briefly, and I see her grab on to Silas's wrist, ready to yank him out of the way should the knife near them instead of my target.

  The blade spins through the air just as the wolf moves--instead of hitting his head, it slices through his ear. It's enough, though. The Fenris turns, dark eyes wide, and Silas leaps toward it. He sinks the ax blade into the wolf's head before the beast can react, and the motion throws Silas to the ground as the wolf twists in pain, jaws open and claws flecked with my blood. Its legs buckle beneath him and finally it explodes into shadows.

  Silas exhales and drops his head to the ground while

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  Rosie races toward me, yanking her cloak off. She presses it to my chest, trying to stop the bleeding, then urges me to sit. I breathe deeply as Rosie pulls my hair away from my face, freeing it from sweat and blood.

  "We need to get home," Rosie says under her breath.

  "We aren't going back to Ellison until--" I choke, trying to calm my temper--every time it flares, the pain increases.

  "Not Ellison," Rosie cuts me off gently. "The apartment." I hear Silas's footsteps but can't quite focus enough to look up at him. Rosie stands and the two of them help me up. I take a dizzy step forward, but the movement makes the skin on my chest feel as if it's tearing in two; I sink back to the grass. I grit my teeth, prepared to stand again despite the pain, but instead Silas's hand squeezes my shoulder.

  "Let me carry you," he says lowly.

  "I can make it," I mumble, pride eating away at me.

  "I know you can, Lett," he says.

  I mean to argue, mean to sigh, but instead I turn to him and close my eye. Silas is strong--he pulls me from the ground as if it's nothing, and Rosie takes my hand.

  It doesn't take long to get back to the apartment. Silas turns away while Rosie pulls my shirt off and flushes my wounds with soapy water. The scars that were already on my chest seem to have done some good--they prevented the wolf's claws from cutting tremendously deep. Still no scars over my heart--the skin there remains smooth and perfect. Rosie bandages the four thick cuts, then wraps gauze around my body to hold them together.

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  "They were strong," I say, trying to pretend that speaking doesn't hurt. I lie back on the couch. Silas is sitting in one of the wooden chairs while Rosie kneels beside my waist.

  "Stronger than normal," Silas adds. "Three of us, only four of them, and..." He shakes his head. "You think they were just a particularly powerful group?"

  "No. Even that young one was strong. I hit all of them once. I thought they were down, but then..." I sigh. "They were talking about the Potential. I think that's it--that's how they're getting stronger, how they're staying so focused. They weren't going to attack you, Rosie. They were going to walk away, go hunt for the Potential instead of girls. Apparently they've lost this specific Potential before, and they're... motivated."

  "So you're saying... we stop?" Rosie asks, shock in her voice.

  I shake my head. "We've always played the part of bait before--it's just not going to work this time. We need better bait. We need the Potential if we want to lure them in."

  "Scarlett," Rosie begins slowly in a voice that's meant to comfort, "I get that, but... we're only three..."

  "You think we aren't up for it?" I snap at her harshly. My chest throbs in pain. "Sorry, Rosie." She nods, unhurt. She's borne the brunt of my anger before, learned to let the meaningless bits of it roll off her back. "If we can find him, we can bring them to us. We can be prepared for the new strength, and we can do more damage to the packs as a whole. But only for another twenty-eight days. And then they go back

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  to hunting, killing like normal. Yes, the murder blitz ends, but so does our chance to really bring them in without using ourselves as bait."

  I don't need to say it. They know it and I know it. Without the Potential, I'm useless in this city. Sure, I can hunt a rogue Fenris or small pack that wanders out toward Ellison, but here, where the real danger is? I am nothing. And I need this--I need him, whoever he is, to make a difference, to be the change I want to cause in the world. I can feel the pleading in my face, in the hoarseness of my throat, afraid I'll have to beg them to help me.

  But I won't. Of course I won't. Rosie reaches up and takes my hand, squeezing it gently. We have the same heart. Where I go, she goes, and where she goes, I go. Silas looks at her and nods as well.

  "Of course, Lett. We're in this together, all three of us. What can I do to help?" he says.

  I sigh in relief and happiness and fear, every emotion mixed into one bursting inside me. "For starters, you can help me figure out how to find the Potential."

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  CHAPTER TEN

  Rosie

  My sister thrives on goals. The martial arts belt system was perfect for her. She set her sights on the yellow belt, the green, brown, black. When she'd learned all she could there, she trained the same way: run two miles, then three, four. And now, with the Fenris, she seems happy that she has a goal she can act on: find the Potential.

  "We should start with the city. I mean, it's a decent jumping-off point, since there are more people in Atlanta than in the country. And the packs seem to be congregating here--the bigger, older ones, anyway... I imagine it won't be long before the smaller packs show up too. And if nothing else, we've got more access to information here," Silas says as we return to the apartment after a quick run to the convenience store.

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  "Right." Scarlett nods. "Let's start here. So how do we find him?"

  It's silent for a moment.

  "Okay, we can figure this out." Silas interrupts the quiet and drops down beside me on the couch. "They track him by some sort of calling or scent or something, but there still has to be something unique about this guy that we can find."

  "We know it's a man, for starters. And we know it's a specific man, that he's got some specific trait."

  "And we know he's not a child," I add. "I mean, it's not like a Potential was just born. They aren't turned till they're at least what, early teens? That's the youngest Fenris I've ever heard of, right?" I ask, and Scarlett nods.

  "Great. So what is the trait that makes him a Potential during a random moon phase?" Silas asks optimistically, as though he thinks one of us will blurt out the answer.

  More silence. Each of us starts a sentence, causing the other two to look on hopefully, but then we grimace and stay silent. We've got nothing. The moon phase--our deadline--ends at eleven forty-one at night in twenty-eight days.

  Over the next day, my sister plunges into a flurry of research, writing notes and jotting down ideas that she leaves throughout the apartment. She can never verbalize them terribly well to Silas or me, leaving us mostly to ourselves.

  Which is both good and bad.

  He and I return to the diner, and then we venture to Goodwill together. He helps me hang the tropical print curtains that I found at the store, where I also managed to find

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  an entirely too-lilac area rug and a decent clock radio as well. Scarlett immediately programm
ed it to the news radio stations. I keep waiting for the fluttering feelings for Silas to stop, but they merely subside a little; I still feel them whenever he brushes against me for too long or brings his face close to mine.

  I've never kept a secret from my sister, and now I have two: the community center pamphlet that I keep flipping through, and the strange buzzing feeling that I get when Silas is around. I try to pretend that both are nothing she'd want to hear about anyway, but some deeper part of me reels in excitement and fear at them. The Tuesday after our failed I'm-the-dessert hunt is no exception--community center classes are supposed to start today, and the anticipation wakes me up long before my sister. Or maybe it's the tinny church bells crying out at six in the morning.

  I slide out of our bed and tiptoe to the doorway in slippers--I'm afraid to walk around this place barefoot. The bedroom is lavender colored, and streaks of orange sunlight are crawling their way up the horizon. My eyes run across Silas's form huddled in blankets and sleeping soundly. I smile despite myself and slink toward the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator for some eggs.

  The noise stirs Silas, who sits up suddenly, hair flying wildly around his eyes. Screwtape hisses at him from under the coffee table.

  "Good morning to you," Silas grumbles. He lifts his eyes to mine and smiles as he rubs the back of his head. I grin

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  back and toss the eggs around with a fork before pouring them into a frying pan.

  While Silas disappears into the bathroom, Scarlett rises as well, padding out of our bedroom in a T-shirt and pajama pants. I know before she speaks that she has a plan. That bright-eyed look is back, despite the circles under her eyes and the still-fresh chest wound. She hides pain well.