by KT Strange
We break into the clearing near the beach, and I lift my nose. The scent of water rushes right up to me, filling my lungs and it makes me sneeze with how green it is. Kyron nudges my shoulder with his head and licks my snout, checking on me for a brief second before he runs right up to the water’s edge, staring into the lake. Beau paces the edge of the clearing before looking at us both, giving a soft, low bark. I pace over to him, and then it hits me.
Lacey’s scent hovers here, so thick I can almost taste it.
She was here, and her t-shirt stayed behind while she left.
That thought makes me feel sick. Beau’s nose is to the ground, before he looks forward, eyes narrowed. He gets it before I do, the thin band of smell that I know has to be a trail.
He takes off at a quick trot, nose to the ground. It’s old enough that it isn’t a few feet above in the air. I can feel Kyron behind me, trailing at my tail as we quick-walk, three by one. The earth flexes under my paws, branches brushing along my fur, but I barely notice them because her scent is becoming thicker, more recent. How come Beau hadn’t noticed this before?
Beau growls ahead of me, and stops short. I round his shoulder and stare at what he’s looking at.
The bushes ahead of us, the grass, is broken. Like someone ran through here earlier in the day. And on the nearest branch? The end is dark red. I lift my nose to it. I don’t need to lick it to know what it is.
Copper, bitter copper. Lacey’s blood. Behind me, Kyron gives out a panicked yip and darts past us. I follow, her scent thick around us now, swirling through the air. I don’t even need to have my nose to the ground. I’m going to find her.
We’re going to find her.
The relief, and excitement, surges through my whole body, and my jaw parts, as the howl is pulled out of me. Kyron ahead, answers with his own long, loud cry.
She’s nearby.
Finally.
Answers.
We’re at a full out gallop, loping along the ground. The dirt is sloping up, toward the mountain, and it’s getting harder to continue at the same speed although I push for it.
I don’t care that all my muscles are burning.
I need to find her.
The ground is a blur, and I gulp in large lungfuls of air, rich in her scent. Beau shoulders beside me, the thud of his paws over the increasingly rocky ground echoing down the slope behind us.
Kyron lets out a strangled yelp, and I surge past Beau, skidding up into a bare clearing, the side of the mountain a steep jut above us, and in front-
Kyron stands at a cliff edge, his paws right on the slice of rock as it ends into nothingness. He’s staring down, as if he can’t believe it.
Her scent is here, all over, and I circle around, trying to pinpoint the direction it’s going. There’s fresh ATV tracks, and the scent of diesel here. I step over them and nudge up next to Kyron. His fur is bristled, and I follow his gaze.
The drop ends in water, the lake licking at the base of the rock face we stand on. Lacey isn’t here, and the scents are confusing to me, I shake my whole body, fur settling as I sit and close my eyes, trying to sort everything out, one smell at a time.
Kyron smells like irritation and damp paw-pads, wet with sweat, beside me. He turns, walking back from the edge. I hear Beau bump up against him, head-to-head, as the darker wolf tries to comfort the fiery one.
It makes no sense. She was here. Recently, too, which means she’s alive, and that’s the best news we’ve had in months when it comes to these disappearances. But it ends… there’s no way she would’ve jumped.
I open my eyes and glance down.
Or could she have? The thought unnerves me and I shift back from the cliff, pebbles bouncing off of it to fall down to the water as I move.
Kyron is laying, sniffing at a patch of grass, looking forlorn. Beau stands nearby, tongue out, trying to catch his breath.
He looks me right in the eye and gives a dip of his head before turning it away.
She’s not here.
That is obvious, but I don’t snap at him. Instead I nudge Kryon with my snout, trying to urge him up. He snarls, then snaps at me, making Beau tense. He lets out a short, sharp bark and Kyron gets to his feet, circling the clearing once more.
There’s nothing here but us, and I notice that her smell is dying slowly, along with the linger of diesel.
Did she ride an ATV up here? There’s so many questions, and this little outing has brought up more than it’s found answers. It’s like an itch under my skin, but I have some small relief, some tiny, little piece of it. She’s alive.
She’s somewhere in the mountains, but she’s alive.
Beau stiffens, and I cock my head, trying to hear what’s got him on edge all of the sudden. Then the sound carries to me, whipping up from down by the lake right to our ears.
Someone is riding a bike in the woods, and starting to climb the embankment. I can hear the brush of branch on painted metal, the grind of rubber wheels over gravel and dirt, and there’s no accompanying hum of an engine to make us think it might be that ATV we can still smell here.
Kyron surges to his feet and takes off, down the mountainside and out of few in a split-second. Beau growls, and follows.
Whoever it is, we’re going to find them. Something tells me they’re going to be just as surprised as us when we get to them, too.
9
Cordelia
Their cabin was dark when I set off, not a hint of any life inside of it.
And that’s what got me so worried in the first place. So now here I am, biking along the quiet back roads, the night having fallen down all around me. I shiver and stop at the base of a hill, glancing up it. The electric bike is a godsend, just one more confusing thing about the guys and how they treat me. Gifts, and shelter, and then arrogance and threats. Maybe they’re just not used to dealing with people all that much. That’s the only way to explain why they’re just so shitty at being decent human beings.
An owl hoots, his call haunting and I take a deep breath. I know the guys are out here. I just know it, in my bones, somehow. I’d even gone so far as sneaking peeks in their bedroom windows, the curtains cracked, and beds empty. So either they were somewhere deep in their house all watching a movie together, or…
They were out here. Doing… something. Things just didn’t add up on how they knew so much about what I’d been doing, meeting Kat in the town, and with Lacey’s disappearance…
I was beginning to feel a little crazy.
“C’mon, Blueberry,” I say to my bike affectionately, kicking the pedal. The little engine gives a whine and tumbles into gear, the wheels turning and pulling me up the hill. My lungs never would have let me make the trip on my own power. As I crest the top, the trees parted and I can see the lake. A fat moon hangs, resplendent and glowing, casting her glitter all over the water. It looks beautiful and chilly. I tug my sweater tighter around me, cursing the open weave that lets every little puff of air through the yarn.
Still no sign of the guys, but then they are experienced woodsmen. I am losing my mind, thinking I’d be able to track them down on my own.
The night makes for a pretty dramatic viewing of the mountain at least. Its hidden top is surrounded by a milky film of cloud. The scenery is pretty, at least. Auntie C would have loved it. My heart squeezes at her memory and I take a deep breath before peddling outward. I’m near the lakeshore where I nearly drowned. I can tell from the parting of the trees, and I wonder if Grady is regretting hauling me out of the water.
It seems like I’m nothing but an inconvenience to them. And now I’m spying on them. Awesome. Right? Exactly the kind of guest you want straying on your property.
But I can’t get it out of my head, and my heart, that there is something going on they aren’t telling me about. Lacey is missing, and they seem so… put off by it. Like they’re not just grieving her loss. Like they’re… well, whatever it is, I can’t quite put a finger on it, and they’re acting suspicious.
The guys didn’t tell me there were wolves in the woods.
Except it should have occurred to me. Of course there are wolves here. It’s a forest.
Kicking myself I sit there like an idiot, until a second howl breaks through the trees, reaching me. It sends three thousand trails of ice down my back and I yank my bike around and power out of there. The motor whines and my feet fly on the pedals. A howl races behind me, like it’s chasing me down, and it’s so close…
The wolf is close, in the woods behind me, and just over the rush of wind in my ears I can hear it thrashing through the bracken.
My heart shoots into my throat, my pulse tattooing between my ears as I pedal hard, my lungs gasping for every cubic inch of air that my mouth snatches from the wind.
I’m on the upswing of a hill and having to pump hard. My throat is thick with phlegm, and I try not to cough, suppressing the urge that is aching in my chest. If I cough, it’s all over. I’ll never stop, my lungs have been pushed too far. I reach the apex, and glance behind me.
Three smudges of shadow are fifty feet away, fleeting along the ground.
A cry breaks out of my throat and I turn back, throwing myself down the hill. The wheels spin, spitting gravel that hits my legs as Blueberry and me race to avoid our fate. Do wolves even chase and hunt humans?!
In a cloud of panic, the road forks and I veer off left, toward the lake. There’s a wooden bridge in the distance, and the glow of a light. People. Humanity. I need to get to them. My breathing is coming like a gasping wheeze, groaning out of my diseased lungs, but I have to push onward.
A howl cuts through my skull, jarring down my spine just as I’m reaching the bridge. In the second second, Blueberry’s front tire hits a rock, and the world falls away beneath me.
I am flying.
Headfirst, I hit the water, the cold enveloping me, and when I thrash out, I hit Blueberry with my hand, sending a shock of numbing pain up my arm.
The lake is really determined to claim me and make me its own. And just like that, I sink down, my eyes closing, my whole body feeling weak and like I can’t even get the energy to fight. My lungs gave up five minutes back.
At least the wolves won’t eat me.
Something pulls around me, grabbing my wrists, and I break the surface, gasping for air. My lungs feel compressed and my eyes are filled with water. I go to cough and sink under again, but my fingers scrabble on what grabbed me, the thick plastic slippery. It’s a savior’s rope, I realize as I get an arm through it, although I haven’t seen one since I was a little girl and my auntie had taken me to a swimming pool.
Meant to rescue the drowning, to wrap around them and pull them to safety so they can’t drag a heroic rescuer down to drown as well. My head pops up above the water, and I get another arm around the rope, the plastic coating making it float.
“Hang on,” a man calls, and I’m being reeled in. My eyes are blurry, but I blink away lake water for the second time in a week, bobbing after the rope. A lantern hangs low over the side of the boat. His must’ve been the light I’d seen, although when I first saw it I didn’t realize that he was on the water. His arms wrap around me and he pulls me up, over the side of the boat. The metal scrapes my hip but I can’t even cry out as I fall into a pitiful heap of wet clothes and coughing on the bottom of his dinghy.
“Shit,” he says, as my lungs explode with a fury. I grab onto the edge and put my head over it, trying to breathe, trying to will my body to be calm. It hadn’t been this bad before, but then… when I last tried drowning, I hadn’t just biked a mini-marathon on the run from a pack of wolves.
The wolves!
I lift my head, and there, at the edge of the lakeshore, I can see their eyes glinting at me, the lantern reflecting off of them. They’re in the brush, watching me. A curdling shiver rolls through me. Two very close calls in a matter of minutes. My breathing is easing off, and I sit up properly, looking at my savior.
“‘Thank you’ seems a little underwhelming,” I say, the words croaking out of my abused throat.
“Here,” he says, pulling a blanket out from behind him. He sits, feet planted on the bottom of the boat, dressed in denim and thick flannel, a black beard marching across his face from ear to ear, sprinkled liberally with silver. He passes me the blanket. “I’d bundle in that, and get out of those clothes if I were you,” he says. “My daughter’s a bit younger than you, and no bigger, and that lake water cuts right through her at this time of year.”
He has a daughter. I look closer. The silver in his beard is matched by the threads in his hair, and there’s thick lines cut into his face by either eye. Time has weathered on him more than I first realized.
“I’m Cordelia,” I say, and he smiles, white teeth shining in the dark.
He doesn’t seem to notice the wolves.
“I’m Logan,” he replies then glances away. “Get comfortable, I’ve got an extra shirt in here somewhere, Cordelia-of-the-lake.”
I snort under my breath at the nickname and shroud myself in the blanket. When I sneak a peek at the lakeshore, the brush looks just like brush again, with no sign of the wolves at all. They’re gone… like they weren’t even there to begin with. It’s such a weird feeling, my heart finally slowing it’s rapid beats.
Ten minutes ago I was being chased from wolves.
Five minutes ago I was being fished from the water by a passing boater.
I’m either incredibly lucky or I should pack it in because it’s obvious that Fallen Mountain has it out to get me. I pull off my wet shirt.
“Would you believe this isn’t the first time I’ve nearly drowned in the lake?” I ask, trying to make light of it under the muffling of the blanket. Something soft pokes my knee through the fabric. I reach out blindly and Logan pushes a shirt into my hands. It’s big enough that’ll it fall to my knees, and I squirm into it, shucking myself out of my wet jeans.
“Here,” he says as my head pops out of the top of the blanket. I am chilled. The water is cold during the day, and at night it’s downright hostile. The flannel of his shirt soaks up the droplets of water on my skin, but the blanket insulates me. Logan grabs my jeans, along with my soaked shoes and the rest of my clothes, putting them behind him. “Tuck your feet up on this,” he says, putting a hand paddle under my feet so I can get them out of the lake water that’s pooling in the bottom of the boat. I shiver, grateful.
“Thank you so much,” I say. He shrugs and waves a hand.
“What were you doing out so late anyway? Anyone with sense doesn’t wander around here at night.” He twists back and yanks the starter on his little outboard engine. It roars to life, echoing off the shore. I hope it scares the wolves.
Rude jerks.
“Well I guess I don’t have that much sense,” I say with a smile, that he matches as he turns back to me.
“I’ll take you to the docks,” he replies, “won’t be five minutes and we can see if we can get you a ride home to-”
“I’m staying up at the Raven Brothers,” I reply. He raises his eyebrows in surprise at my words and I file that away in my brain. It feels like everyone I’ve met here in Fallen Mountain has an opinion about me staying at the Ravens’. Or maybe it’s just that they have an opinion of the Ravens. Not sure.
A howl cuts through the night, echoed by several others, and Logan looks toward the shore.
“I haven’t heard the wolves this close before,” he says, looking uneasy. His hand rests on the steering arm of the outboard and we turn in a half circle before heading along the shore. I try not to glance at the bushes and trees, wondering if the wolves are following us… tracking us? Hunting us?
Just the sharp, crisp memory of them bearing down on me makes me feel like I can almost sense their teeth at my ankles, ready to pull me down a
nd devour me. I try not to shiver any more than I already am, bundled into the blanket and in a strange man’s clothes.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“All my damn life. Seen three kids grown, two of them have left for better things, at this point,” he says, having to lift his voice to go over the motor. “There’s a lifejacket behind you,” he says, “but we’re almost there anyway.”
Still. With the way things have been going with me and the water lately… I twist to look. It’s my size for sure, the fabric stiff, wet and cold when I touch it. It presses moistly at the back of my neck when I shrug into it and I make a face. Logan laughs at me, the wrinkles at his eyes threatening to overtake them altogether.
“Almost,” he promises me, “then we can get you home.”
I hunker down, the breeze passing by my ears and whistling along the tops of the life jacket’s shoulders. Something about the bob of the boat and the fresh air off the water lulls me into a bit of a trance, and I find myself fading in and out on our journey back to the docks. My eyes feel heavy, and my legs and arms are weak. The cold has bitten into my core, and it feels like I’ll never get warm.
“Hey,” Logan calls out to someone, and I jerk, eyes popping half-open from where I’d closed them. Someone is waiting at the dock. Ugh. It’s the asshole from the grocery store. Kat’s cousin. He’s glaring at us both as we pull up, but Logan seems to ignore it, instead reaching for his rope, his other hand extending to grab the first pole off the dock. The boat bumps, rocking us both, and he tosses the rope to Derrick. His hand shoots out and Derrick grabs it, still glaring at me. I don’t know what his issue with me is, but I’m ignoring him.
“Caught something while I was fishing,” Logan jokes, getting out of the boat and then offering me his hand. His skin is as warm as his smile as he pulls me up, lifting me without me needing to do much at all. “You’re skin and bones, aren’t ya? I’d invite you over and have my daughter cook a real meal for you, if you’d like. I can’t imagine those Raven boys do much in the way of home cooking for their guests.”