Through the Woods

by Cassandra Johnson

  Tipping her fingers at Elle, Harriet motioned for her to follow.

  “Before you go you’re going to need some clothes, it won’t be any good to get where you’re going and then be sick as a dog,” Harriet said digging into her closet once more and dolling out clothes.

  “What did you mean when you said that I am a gypsy,” Elle asked, nervously glancing around Harriet’s bedroom as she took the clothes she laid out on the bed and began to dress as warmly as she could.

  “You don’t know what that means? You have a power inside of you that is only starting to bloom. You’ll understand when it’s time for you to understand. All I can tell you is what you are, and that’s a gypsy, or the more universally known term, a witch.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Four o’clock came quickly once they were all in the battered F150 headed south towards New York.

  They had to get out of Connecticut, but they didn’t have any forms of identification. Before leaving Harriet’s, Gaerik spent hours on the landline calling in favors to some contacts he had in the city. Getting a plane ticket would be a lot easier once they had money and passports. Gaerik also managed to arrange to have Harriet’s truck delivered back to her.

  The cabin of the truck was quiet; Ellie stared out of the window with her laptop and part of the guardian’s body across her legs, silent no one realized she was asleep until they heard a faint soft snore. Gallen’s eyes leaving the road to look into the rearview mirror at the sleeping blonde. The older Alpha had to wonder if he would ever see his home again, fear was gnawing at his gut.

  But, of course, he would, Gallen told himself this. They would set things right.

  ~

  Elle wasn’t sure how long she slept, but she was aware that the light in the sky was changing from the inky black of night to a muted gray that said there was more snow on its way. She also realized that the truck had stopped.

  “Where are we?” Clearing her groggy voice as she sat up in her seat.

  “We’re a few miles from the airport,” Marik replied.

  They were parked in an almost empty parking lot in front of a dingy motel. Elle rubbed her face, fidgeting in her seat.

  “I need to stretch my legs.”

  Grunting, she pushed the door open and swung her lower body out, the freezing temperature ceased her sore muscles as she looked around at the motel and looked to the sky, the sound of planes landing and taking off was loud in the distance as Gallen and Gaerik came out of the office carrying cups of coffee.

  “Why are we here?” Elle asked accepting a cup of coffee from Gallen.

  “We’re meeting someone,” Gaerik told her, looking at something in his hand. It was a keycard. Turning his back to them, Gaerik slipped the card into its slot pushing the door open and turning the lights on. The room was musty smelling as if no one had stayed in this room for some time, but Elle didn’t care, she was making a B-line for the bathroom.

  “How did you rig all of this?” Marik asked closing the door behind him before finding the thermostat and turned the heat up to eighty.

  “Who do you think I was on the phone with at Harriets?” Gaerik looked at his brother a moment as he then turned his attention back to the window. “She should be here any minute.”

  Elle came out of the bathroom as the sound of a large vehicle was heard pulling up. Gaerik closed the curtains again.

  “That’s her.” He told them, stepping outside as the driver parked the Dodge Ram pick-up truck.

  It was too cold to go back outside, but Elle moved to the window, wrapping her arms around her body for warmth.

  At first, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. In the dim haze of morning the individual looked a lot like Danny Devito, only there was a lot of hair –like beauty pageant hair. Until she realized that the short round man hugging Gaerik was, in fact, a woman. Or a man dressed as a woman because she was wearing a black sequined dress, big hoop earrings. The hair, the heels, the pancake make-up it was the whole nine yards. Elle immediately had to stifle a giggle. This was Gaerik’s contact?

  “Good-mornin'.” The accent was purely southern, Tennessee maybe? That was if Elle was guessing correctly. “Sorry I’m late, darlin’ but I got held up at the club. I don’t know how much longer I can stay in the game. In my day, it was a catfight over one queen stealing another one’s song, now it’s all twitter and Instagram and who has the most followers on their youtube channel.” Elle heard her saying to Gaerik as they made their way into the room.

  She was less than five feet tall, big false lashes fluttered when she blinked, giving a smile to all of them like she had just stepped out on stage. Yep, a true pageant queen.

  “I hate to be rude, but mama’s gotta use the little girl's room before we can get to the introductions.” Pivoting on her heel, she trotted off into the bathroom.

  As soon as the door closed all eyes were on Gaerik, casually drinking his coffee.

  “Gaerik, is there something we should know?” Marik asked his brother curiously.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea, I helped Danita out of a couple jams a few years ago and to both our surprise, we have a lot in common.” Gaerik shrugged.

  “A lot in common?” Elle felt herself laugh a little, trying to speak softly so that Danita wasn’t offended if she heard their conversation. She looked at Gaerik with a slight lift to her brows. Elle also remembered some of the texts that she read on his phone. He wasn’t gay, but it was too comical not to imagine. Gaerik chased way too many women, but it did beg Elle to wonder what he and a drag queen had in common and what kind of jam had he helped her out of?

  Before Gaerik had a chance to make any further comments Danita returned from the bathroom wiping her hands dry on a towel.

  “Now, children, my name is Danita Saint James. I know Gaerik of course and this nice stack of muscles has to be his infamous twin, Marik. Don’t worry sweetheart, I don’t believe a word he told me.” A girlish giggle escaped Danita’s lips as she took Mark's hand in a friendly greeting.

  “He isn’t that good looking.” Gaerik murmured.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Marik smiled cutting his eyes at his brother, their blue hue holding a hint of green mischief in them.

  “And who is this silver fox?” Danita asked moving toward Gallen.

  “Danita this is my dad, Gallen,” Gaerik told her.

  “Well, now I see where you and your brother got your good looks from. Hello, sir, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “And you as well.” Gallen smiled patting the top of Danita’s hand as they shook.

  “And this lovely peach?” Danita gently released Gallen’s hand and turned to Elle.

  Smiling, Elle extended her hand, feeling Marik’s arm move around her shoulders.

  “Hi,-“ Elle began.

  “This is Elle Marchall, she is a close family friend,” Marik said giving his brother a rather closed off stoic stare.

  “Nice to meet you, Danita,” Elle said glancing between the brothers for a second.

  Danita also picked up on the tension that followed their introduction.

  “The pleasure is all mine, darlin'. Gaerik would you be a gentleman and help me get my bag from the truck. We've got a lot of work to do.”

  Gregory jumped up onto one of the beds as Elle took a seat, moving the curtain aside to look out at Gaerik and Danita. It only took a few minutes to return to the room and set up Danita’s laptop at the small dinette table.

  Danita strolled over, picking up the television remote. Most hotels now had wifi service in the room available to their guests, and sure enough, as the television came on, there was a service channel with the wireless password.

  In all the excitement, Elle found herself wide awake and itching to do something productive.

  “Gallen, can I have the truck keys? I’d like to get my laptop.” She told him, glancing around the room.

  Nodding he found them in his coat pocket, draping the heavy material over Elle’s shoulders.

/>   She was out of the room less than a minute, but she noticed as she clutched her laptop to her chest that Gallen never left the door, watching for her safety from the truck and back. Gallen’s concerned eyes following her, Elle didn’t know if it was safe, but the way he stood watch reminded her not to let her guard down.

  Inside, Danita was busy taking her camera from her bag, soon followed by a laminating machine and a transparent box full of blank credit cards. Danita also brought out another device that Elle could only assume was used for the credit cards.

  Soon, Elle, Marik, and Gallen were all standing behind Danita as she worked on her laptop, utterly fascinated by what she was doing.

  “This is all highly illegal, isn’t it?” Elle asked her.

  “Honey, if you didn’t move outside the law of man occasionally you’d never get anything done.” She said looking at Elle over her shoulder with a cheeky smile. It made Elle laugh somewhat as she sat her laptop up on the bedside table, Elle supposed that when you looked at it that way, she was probably right.

  Gallen went first, sitting beside Danita in one of the plastic chairs, answering a few short questions which pretty much summed everything up for everyone. Danita took their pictures, loading them onto the photoshop program on her computer, working feverishly with her ear-buds in.

  Elle had fifteen new e-mails from her publicist Julie, each one getting more and more frantic that she had not responded. Of course, the latest book was phenomenal, and it was sent to her editing team two days after Julie finished reading it. There were some discussions of book signings that Julie knew that Elle would say no to, but she still wanted to ask just in case she had finally gotten over her fears of public speaking, then there was only one that was updating her on the editing process, and another with just a question mark in the title heading. Elle wasn’t sure if Julie was asking Elle if she was okay or if she was merely typing her thoughts. The one after that message said Julie had called her, but that Elle hadn’t picked up the phone. Elle’s heart was beginning to drop as she read one e-mail after another.

  “Is everything okay?” Marik sat down on the other side of the bed, sensing the rate of her heartbeat quickening and he leaned closer to look at the screen of her laptop.

  “My publicist is going nuts. She went to my house. She’s filed a missing person report.” Elle announced as she looked up at the group.

  “That might pose a little bit of a problem, darlin’.” Danita looked up suddenly from her laptop, tugging her ear-buds out as she turned in her seat. “Now, I’m sure these lovely gentlemen didn’t snatch you from your bed in the middle of the night like a couple of sex fiends, but if you go into an airport looking like you do and they run this license I am making for you, you might be detained.”

  Danita had an excellent point, they didn’t have time to be questioned by the police.

  How was she going to explain to her publicist what had happened? It all seemed like a crazy scheme that she cooked up for one of her books.

  “Danita, you wouldn’t happen to have a phone that I could use would you?” Elle was squirming in her seat as she tried to figure out how exactly she’d explain her having gone completely MIA and her house being turned upside down.

  “Sure, honey.” Danita went to her purse, pulling out the latest version of the iPhone and held her thumb against the fingerprint scanner before handing it over to her. For the moment, all work on the ID’s and passports had stopped entirely.

  Dialing the number, Elle was surprised she even remembered Julie’s home phone number, she sat on the edge of the bed praying that she didn’t ignore the unknown number and just answered the phone.

  ~

  Julie Lansiker was at her wit's end. It had been three days since she finally gave up on getting a return e-mail from Elle and drove from her home in upstate New York to Elle’s house in New Haven, Connecticut. Julie had been there many times before, she’d even spent the night a couple times after meeting Elle face to face to discuss one of her books, but the place was almost unrecognizable when she found the door unlocked and the house in shambles. What the hell happened to Elle between the morning she got her newest book and the time it took to get back to her?

  Julie went through the house calling Elle’s name afraid of what she would find relief flooding her when she didn’t see her bloody and broken lying on the floor, of course then an entirely new fear crept into her veins like ice water. Elle always told her that she didn’t do book signings because she didn’t want to be easily recognized. She liked her privacy and preferred to live her life inconspicuously among the public. It also added a touch of mystery to her novels, no one ever knowing what LRR Hood looked like.

  Elle once told her that meeting fans felt a bit like online dating. You could spend hours getting to know someone through a computer screen, they made you laugh, they could make you cry, but some people were still growing. What if her fans expected someone who looked more like Elle’s heroin, Delilah? Even Elle had admitted that she adored the Sookie Stackhouse novels and until she’d seen a photograph of Charlene Harrison she had half expected her to look like Sookie Stackhouse herself. But no, Charlene looked like a regular person, a mom you might run into picking out good produce at the grocery store. Apparently, sometimes people’s imaginations could be a little unrealistic and Elle often feared that by making herself visible to her fans, she would somehow let them down in some way.

  When Julie didn’t find Elle anywhere in the house she checked the garage to find that her car was still there, then she called the police. She had no idea how long Elle had been missing, the neighbors hadn’t seen anyone coming or going from her home, but they all worked during the day, and few of them were home and those that were didn’t report any strange things happening outside because they didn’t look outside very often. The police didn’t have very much to go off, and they asked Julie all the usual questions. How did she know Elle Marshal, what did Elle do for a living, had she been acting strangely, did Elle express any fear of being watched by someone, did she have any enemies? Julie could only tell them what she knew. She was her publicist, Elle was one of her top clients, and she was a writer, she didn’t have any living relatives that Julie knew about, and no, she’d never expressed any fear of being watched or harassed by anyone.

  Rolling over, she was trapped in another nightmare, one of many she’d been having since Elle disappeared that they might never find her, or worse they did find her, dead.

  “Hello?” Julie asked groggily, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

  “Julie?” Elle asked nervously.

  “Elle? Oh, my God! Where are you, what happened? Are you okay, are you safe?” Sitting upright in bed immediately, Julie threw the covers back and turned on the lamp as she stuffed her feet into her house shoes, headed straight for her closet. “Tell me where you are, I’m coming to get you. Do you have any idea how worried I have been?!”

  Inhaling a hiss of air Elle looked up at the ceiling, how was she supposed to explain this?

  “Julie, take a deep breath, okay? I’m fine. I’m sorry that I worried you. I needed a break, so I just left. I’ve been on a bit of a disconnect from the outside world.” Technically, that part wasn’t a lie. Elle had been knocked out healing from being impaled by a fireplace poker.

  “What?” Julie stopped what she was doing as she had one leg inside of a pair of sweatpants, struggling trying to hold the phone and get her leg into the hole of the pants with her house shoe still on. “But what about your house?”

  “What about my house?” Elle asked her, mocking concern. This was the time when her storytelling gene was really going to have to work overtime to get her out of a missing person’s report.

  “Oh my God.” Julie cursed softly as she shook her foot out of her sweatpants and walked back over to her bed. “Ellie, someone must have broken into your house. After I didn’t hear anything from you, I went down there looking for you and found it in a mess. I mean, someone really did a number on the place.”
Julie said sitting down on the edge of her bed, pulling her legs up Indian style. “I called the police because I thought someone kidnapped you.”

  “Oh Christ, what did they get?” Elle played along, giving the group surrounding her the go-ahead to continue working.

  “Well, it was trashed, to say the least, I didn’t really catalog everything that was missing,” Julie replied before glancing at the face of her phone. “Hey, where are you calling me from? Are you in New York?” Recognizing the area code.

  Elle glanced around the room for a second pressing her lips together. “Yeah, I sort of met a guy and well,” She trailed off once more. “We got a motel together, and we’ve really hit it off, plus I’ve been feeling homesick, so I thought why not take a break from writing. We’re going to visit my home in Arkansas.”

  Gaerik had moved into the bathroom, of course, all the werewolves in the room plus Danita were listening to the conversation, though hers was more one-sided. Everyone could hear Gaerik in the bathroom pissing like a racehorse.

  “Is that him!?” And apparently also Julie. Damn that woman and her eagle ears. Julie was calmer, although there was anger now slowly simmering below the surface. When she finally saw Elle face to face again, she was going to get a very strongly worded ear full, but for now, she was just happy that Elle was okay and hopefully getting some much deserved sweet, sweet lovin'.

  “Yeah…” Elle tried to bite back the slight tone of annoyance that her voice carried as she sighed.

  “Good, listen. I’ll call the cops and let them know that you contacted me and that you’re ok. I’ll also have someone go to clean up your house and put a new lock on. When you get back to town, just call me, and I’ll bring you the key so we can talk in person.” Julie told her before adding. “Oh, and Elle? Don’t ever disappear on me like that again without at least sending me a text that you’re going to be dropping off the face of the earth for a while.”