Cursed

by Brent Miller

  “Aldric, there was something else,” Garrick started cautiously.

  “What is it?”

  “You try to teach us about wolves, right? Everything you can?”

  “Yes, of course. I see no reason not to share all I know about what we are. Where are you going with this?”

  “What do you know about a wolf transforming outside of the full moon?”

  Chapter 12

  Fourteen months ago

  Garrick had tears welling up in his eyes by the time he got home – but seeing Hayden sitting on his porch, he quickly wiped them away and attempted to compose himself. She was sitting on the top step, with her feet on the step below her. Her elbows were on her knees, and her head in her hands. She hadn’t looked up, so it was safe to assume she hadn’t seen him. Unprepared for the conversation, Garrick tried to stay silent and avoid detection for a moment. He’d had the entire walk home to decompress, but he still wasn’t completely in control of his emotions. Finally, he sat next to her as quietly as possible, and she didn’t flinch at all. Garrick wondered how she’d managed to arrive before him, and how long she’d known he was there, but he decided there were more important questions to ask at that moment.

  He was still limping from his fight with Cailean as he grabbed the rail of the steps and tried to ease himself down quietly. His body ached, and he knew he would have quite a few bruises the next day. That wasn’t what he cared about, though. He couldn’t stop thinking about Hayden. He’d outlined this conversation a dozen times, accounting for every type of emotion or response she could give. He thought he was ready for yelling, for crying, or just for neutrality. Now, there she was, sitting on his porch, and he knew all his planning was for naught. He didn’t know if he should be hostile or try to give her a chance to explain. He was in too much pain to start off the conversation angry, though. Instead, he resolved to sit in silence and allow her to start the conversation.

  “I love you,” she mumbled into her hands, still avoiding eye contact. Finally, she looked up and took a deep breath. “I want you to know that.”

  “I… I love you too,” he responded, caught off guard. Still, he kept his defenses up – Garrick couldn’t let himself fall for anything. Anyway, given her tone, he didn’t like her start.

  “It’s just –”

  “I know,” he interrupted, unwilling to hear the rest of it. Garrick decided that he didn’t want to hear an explanation. There was no good to come from that – he’d rather just get it over with. “I heard you and Cailean.”

  “What?”

  “When I left. He said you couldn’t tell me about you two.”

  “What? No! It’s not like that!”

  “Then what is it like?” he snapped, raising his voice in anger. As much as he didn’t want to hear the words, he felt like he needed to. He wished at least she would have the decency to admit when she’d been caught.

  “There are things that I just can’t explain,” she muttered, turning her eyes away from him. There was a genuine sadness in her eyes, but Garrick couldn’t find it in himself to have any pity for her. “I’m sorry. Please, I need you to trust me.”

  “I don’t think I can anymore,” Garrick said. He stood and walked to his door turning his back on her as he steeled himself – concealing any emotion.

  “Garrick,” she cried, following him with her eyes. Tears streamed down her face, and she choked up as she called to him, but he turned his face away, trying not to be affected.

  “I think it’s best if you leave,” Garrick told her as he unlocked his door.

  “Please, at least talk to me about this,” she begged.

  “I just… need time,” he sighed, the anger slowly giving way to sadness in his voice. “I need to figure out what I want.”

  He walked into his house and closed the door behind him without looking back. He knew she didn’t leave – he could hear her on the other side. But he didn’t open the door; he just sank to the ground and cried.

  Present

  29 days until the full moon

  “It’s impossible, right?” Garrick continued. The silence which had filled the air after his last question was uncomfortable. He’d never actually seen Aldric appear speechless – caught off guard.

  “Why?” Aldric questioned carefully. There was unease in his voice. Almost fear.

  “It happened to me.”

  “When? I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Okay, so I have this theory. You know how you always said wolves mate for life? Well, there was this girl who was really friendly after… Everything. And I didn’t realize it, but I invited her over for dinner. Then, I ended up transforming. I think the wolf was angry with me because it thought I was trying to move on.” He felt bad not giving any credit to Tyler, who really came up with the idea, but he wanted to procrastinate telling Aldric about Tyler’s knowledge of them for as long as possible. He wondered if it would be better to just come out and say it – Aldric may be able to help keep Tyler safe. Maybe he’d try to somehow work it into the conversation.

  “That is completely ridiculous,” Aldric muttered. There was still something he was hiding, though.

  “I know, it sounds weird. But the second time was after she kissed me, it was about a week later. I didn’t want her to!” Garrick felt the need to defend himself, but it was clear Aldric didn’t care about his relationship drama. He was focused on the, admittedly more important, werewolf aspect of his story. He sighed and continued, “And it never happened other than those two times.”

  “Who is this girl?” Aldric asked, an unusual sense of urgency filling his voice.

  “Oh… Uh…” Garrick fumbled for his words. Although the question was a completely logical one, Garrick hadn’t been prepared with an answer. “Her name was Samantha.”

  “You need to stop talking to her. Get away.”

  “She…”

  “Is a hunter.”

  “No! No she wasn’t. They must have gotten to her, tricked her or something. I don’t know.” This was the first time Garrick had actually allowed himself to think about it. There had to be a better explanation. Could she possibly have been using all of that time as cover? Spending years working in a coffee shop just to find werewolves

  “Hunters live normal lives, Elliott. They’re still human beings, depending on your definition. They have jobs and friends and families. But by night, they kill our kind. Where does she work?”

  “She worked at the coffee shop.”

  “Worked,” Aldric mumbled, thinking the word over for a moment. He was clearly putting all of the pieces together in his head, and Garrick was impressed. He didn’t have too much to go on. But he’d known about them much longer than Garrick had, so he had no idea what to expect.

  “Oh,” Aldric sighed. “She was the other hunter. You knew this, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I…” Garrick searched for a defense for himself, but there wasn’t one. He wasn’t sure if he’d been afraid to share the details or if he’d just wanted to pretend they weren’t true, but he knew he should have divulged everything to Aldric days ago.

  “Look, Elliott. As you know, wolves are most vulnerable during the change. Your body is trying to heal, but it’s also breaking apart in an attempt to transform. If they hit a wolf in the right moment, your body won’t know which form to heal into, and it will just continue to deteriorate until you finally can’t fight anymore. They have a variety of weapons to use during that brief window. They’ve found a way, though, to avoid waiting – and to catch us off guard. Have you heard of wolfsbane?”

  “Yeah, I thought that was just legend. Well, I know the plant exists. But I figured the effects it had on us were a myth.”

  “They are. Mostly. Wolfsbane brings the beast out. It forces the change. They use that in order to test people and find out if they’re wolves. Small amounts are typically unnoticed by humans, but it would cause a wolf to change for a few minutes. That’s long enough for them to stab you, and
you won’t heal.”

  “But how…” Garrick truncated the question as he racked his brain for an answer. He knew Aldric would be able to understand exactly what he was asking.

  “She cooked for you. That’s pretty obvious.”

  “And the other time?” Garrick knew he shouldn’t have to ask these questions. He could tell, even though his mind was spinning, that the answers were obvious. It felt like when a word was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite find it. His answers were in his mind, but didn’t seem to be attainable.

  Aldric, looking only slightly annoyed, pointed to his lips. Of course. She had kissed him. She must have had it on her lips. And the first time she just put some in the food.

  Garrick laughed nervously and leaned back in the chair. He stared blankly at the ceiling above him, trying to process the new information. He felt stupid for believing in his own theory for so long – but this one made so much more sense to him. It didn’t require him to wonder if he was subconsciously experiencing feelings he knew he wasn’t.

  “I left you all so unprepared,” Aldric said sadly. Garrick barely heard him, but he got the impression that he wasn’t talking to him anyway. He was just saying the words, probably unable to believe what he had done, and clearly blaming himself for everything which had happened. Garrick understood the feeling all too well. How had he fallen for a trap which was, in hindsight, so blatantly obvious?

  He had known that he could never love Samantha, but he’d still allowed himself to be tricked by the idea. Garrick’s phone beeped, pulling him from his self-pitying mind and back to reality. As he looked up, he noticed Aldric set his own phone down on the table. Garrick hadn’t even noticed him retrieve it.

  “Aldric,” Garrick cautiously added, swallowing hard as he tried to find the right words to say. “There’s something else.”

  “What else could there possibly be?” he groaned, exasperated, but no longer sounding angry.

  “The first time I turned, I had people at my house. The first time outside of the moon, I mean. I’d asked Tyler to bring his girlfriend and make things less awkward, so it was the four of us.”

  Aldric looked at Garrick intently, but it seemed that he already knew where Garrick was going. There was understanding mixed with some confusion in his eyes, which was an odd blend to see. Garrick continued, trying to break the news as lightly as he could.

  “I ran to the bathroom when I started turning. I didn’t know what was happening. Tyler came back to help me, and I told him to get everyone out of the house. I had to do it to protect them. I might have killed them all.”

  “You told him?”

  “He saw me.”

  “How much does he know?”

  “Pretty much everything that I do. He’s been helping me try to find a cure or control the change. He also helped me find the place to turn.”

  “Is that how they found out?”

  “What do you mean?” Garrick hesitated, completely shocked by the answer. It took him a moment to realize that Aldric was actually asking if Tyler had tipped off the hunters to the location. Garrick couldn’t believe that Aldric even thought it for a second, and he was offended by the thought.

  “No, of course not. I have complete faith in Tyler. Anyway, he’s been working too hard at helping me to even be considered to be a hunter.”

  Aldric paused for a few minutes. Garrick understood that his word didn’t mean much when it came to the character of people at that moment, so Aldric really had no reason to believe him, but he knew that Tyler wasn’t working with the hunters. Still, he tried not to respond too harshly. Tyler had been Garrick’s best friend since first grade, but Aldric didn’t have that history with him. It only made sense for him to be skeptical.

  “Bring him.”

  “Where?” Garrick asked. Aldric nodded toward his phone that still sat on the desk. Garrick pulled out his phone to see that he had a message from Aldric. The text was a group message between the remaining five members of the pack.

  “I have failed all of you as an alpha. I’ve warned you of a threat, but never prepared you for it. The hunters are here. All of you report to my house at seven o’clock tomorrow, and every day until further notice. We have a lot of work to do. Now, we begin training for this threat.”

  “Hey Mom,” Garrick called absently as the front door opened. He sat in the living room, skimming through yet another book on werewolves, and didn’t look up. “I made pizza, if you want some.”

  “That’s the first thing you have to say to your mother when she gets off work? Not ‘I love you,’ or ‘how was work?’” She laughed as she closed the door behind her and hung the keys up. Garrick tried to finish his page, but all the sound distracted him, so he sighed and set the book down next to him.

  “That should always be the first thing anyone says to anyone,” Garrick responded, looking toward the kitchen.

  “Well, thanks.” Despite her joking, she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of pizza before sitting next to him on the couch.

  “So how was work?” He smiled as she fell onto the couch.

  “Well, no one got murdered today, so that’s a plus,” she laughed. She always made vaguely morbid jokes like that, claiming that precincts in larger cities would get calls about murders or armed robberies weekly. This time, though, the joke made Garrick sick to his stomach.

  “I guess that’s a win,” he choked weakly. He tried not to sound unsettled, but he had never been a good actor. Or a good liar, for that matter.

  “Hey, Garrick, I wanted to ask you something,” she said, straightening up as she took another bite of pizza. She set the slice down on the table and rubbed her hands together as if that would actually clean them.

  “What?" He questioned – his heart racing. Garrick knew that when someone did something wrong, they assumed everyone else knew about it. However, in this case, it wasn’t an unrealistic expectation. His mind raced through everything she could possibly ask about – ranging from werewolves to hunters and to Chase – in the brief second before she verbalized her question.

  “Have you heard from Chase?” she inquired. Garrick’s heart sank as his fears were confirmed. At least he wasn’t being completely paranoid thinking that she was going to ask about something he didn’t want to talk to her about. That wasn’t much comfort, though, as he tried to search for a convincing answer.

  “Not today,” he admitted, feigning a nonchalant attitude as well as he could, but failing miserably. “Why?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I shouldn’t say anything, I just wanted to know,” she shrugged. She reached back to her pizza and took another bite. She clearly wasn’t concerned about anything, but it had been brought to her attention. She’d just been conditioned by the years of being a detective in a town with minimal foul play to assume that cases like this didn’t point to the worst possible outcome.

  Garrick didn’t know how to respond. He was trying to act normal, but in his frenzy of trying to hide information, he didn’t know what that meant for himself. He felt like he should ask her if he was okay, but he also didn’t want her to have any follow-up questions. Garrick wondered what he would do if he found out Chase was missing without knowing why. Would he ask her about it or just text Chase?

  “I’m sure everything is okay,” she comforted, picking up on the very clear distress on his face. “I’m sorry for scaring you. His parents came into the station today and said they hadn’t heard from him, but I’m sure they’re overreacting.”

  “Did they try calling him?” Garrick scrambled for the right question to ask. He knew that Aldric had destroyed the phone, so there was no way they could have reached him, but he thought that would be a question that would throw suspicion off him a bit.

  “Yeah, they said his phone is dead. Hey, it happens all the time, honey. He probably just stayed at a friend’s house without saying anything, and his parents overreacted.”

  “I guess,” Garrick conceded.

  “I just thought
maybe he’d gone camping with you, so I figured I’d ask.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Garrick lied. He could try to pretend like he was telling the truth, because technically none of his words were lies, but everything hidden under them was. Even if just a lie of omission, he hated misleading his mom. He was grateful, though, that she took the clear discomfort in his voice as concern for his friend rather than the typical reaction of Garrick trying to lie.

  “We’ll find him,” she assured him. She was trying to comfort him, but it just made Garrick feel even worse. All he wanted to do was tell her the truth – that there wasn’t a chance that they would. But Garrick bit his tongue, letting her think that she was making him feel better.

  A few hours later, the pack was gathered around in Aldric’s living room. Everyone sat there in complete silence. Garrick had convinced Aldric to allow Tyler to come. After all, he’d lost a friend as well. Clearly unsure of how to interact with them, though, he just sat on his own, eyes downcast. It was the worst funeral service Garrick could imagine. He felt like someone should be sharing memories or something, but no one was speaking up. Aldric had set up a slideshow with pictures of Chase, which was a nice touch, but it just felt impersonal.

  Garrick didn’t feel like he really deserved to say anything, either. He was responsible for what had happened to Chase. Everyone in that room knew it, but most of them didn’t know exactly how responsible he was. Aldric had told Garrick that he shouldn’t say anything. They should just believe the hunters had killed Chase. Garrick had already told Hayden, but Brooke and Cailean were completely in the dark. That didn’t feel right, either, but Garrick was at a complete loss. He didn’t know what was right anymore, and everything about the situation felt broken, so he just decided to do whatever Aldric told him. After what had happened last time he tried to disobey him, he couldn’t see a reason to try again.

  After a few minutes, though, a few words slipped out of Garrick’s mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said. Tears were building up in his eyes, but he tried to keep them back. Garrick couldn’t stop thinking about the family Chase left behind. His parents were frantically looking for him, asking the police for any leads. His little sister was probably at home, wondering where her brother went. Nothing felt right, and he had to apologize for it, but he knew it didn’t make anything better.