The Better to Bite

by Cynthia Eden

  His hand came through the window and caught my chin. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I’m stuck!” He had to leave me. There wasn't a choice. As much as I wanted to grab him and hold on tight…that wasn’t an option. “I’ll be okay.” I hoped. “Just—”

  His hand fell away from me, and he stepped back.

  I lifted my chin, and my voice trembled when I said, “Th-thank you.” I didn’t know how he’d found us, but I was so grateful, even if he was about to leave me alone in the dark.

  But I’m not afraid of the dark. Or at least, I hadn’t been afraid before.

  Rafe’s right hand shoved glass away from the window, and he gripped the door. His left locked around the handle.

  “Rafe?”

  Metal groaned and screeched and the door—it just seemed to fall back against him.

  No way.

  I realized I wasn’t breathing.

  “Must have been loose from the crash,” he said as he shoved the door to the ground. “I just had to get it at the right angle.”

  I still wasn’t breathing.

  Then he leaned into the vehicle and put his hands against the dashboard. “I’m gonna push,” he said, “and when I do, you pull your legs up, got it?”

  I nodded.

  He pushed. No, shoved, and that dash dented in a good foot.

  My legs flew up, and he had me. Rafe locked his arms around me and pulled me out of the truck. I held on to him as tightly as I could. I was probably bleeding on the guy, but I didn’t care. He was strong and warm, and he’d gotten me out of that twisted wreck.

  He hadn’t left me alone.

  His hold was just as tight on me. “You have to get out of here,” he told me, his words whispering into my ear.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Oh, wow, that truck was totaled. I couldn’t believe that I’d actually gotten out of that tangled heap alive.

  “Brent,” I said, shaking my head a little. “We have to help…”

  Rafe’s head lifted, and he stared down at me. His eyes were hard, glittering.

  I swallowed.

  “I saw Brent when I came for you.” Rafe pointed toward the cluster of trees. “He’s alive, but out cold.”

  My shoulders sagged, and I tried to pull back. Rafe’s hold tightened. “Rafe?” Worry or fear or something had me tensing.

  After a tense moment, he let me go.

  I hurried over to Brent. He lay sprawled on the ground, a good fifteen feet from the truck. His shirt was torn, almost ripped away entirely. I touched his arm. “Brent, wake up!”

  He didn’t stir.

  I shook him. “Brent!”

  His eyelashes fluttered. “Wh-what?” He blinked. “Anna? Why are you bleeding?”

  He could tell I was bleeding in the dark? It had taken me a while to be able to see anything.

  Rafe stood behind me. I was glad to have him close. Right then, I was totally subscribing to the safety-in-numbers idea.

  “She’s bleeding,” Rafe snapped, “because you drove your truck off the side of the road and nearly killed her, you asshole.”

  Brent’s eyes widened. He shoved up in a flash. A really fast move for a guy who’d been dead to the world a moment ago. He swore and touched the back of his head. This time, I was the one to see the blood that stained his fingertips.

  But he just wiped the blood on his jeans and pushed to his feet. When he tried to take a step, he stumbled as his right leg seemed to give away beneath him. Very bad sign. I caught him before he hit the ground again. Rafe didn’t move to help Brent.

  “You’ve got to get her out of here,” Brent said, wincing, and I knew something was wrong with his leg. The kind of something that would make getting out of there extremely hard. “Rafe, man, take her back up to the road.”

  “There are wolves out here.” I looped his arm over my shoulders. “No one is staying behind, got me?”

  Rafe and Brent looked at each other. Okay, what was up with that almost angry look? If I hadn’t been bleeding and hurting and scared, I would have yelled at them both. Oh, why not? “We’re all moving!” My voice was definitely close to a yell.

  “Let me have him.” Rafe gently pushed me back and pulled Brent’s arm away from me. “Is it your ankle or knee?”

  “Both,” Brent gritted. “But just give me some time, and I’ll be fine.”

  Right. Some time, a doctor and a hospital stay. “Tell me your motorcycle is close by,” I said to Rafe.

  He shook his head. “Not close enough.”

  What? “Then how’d you find me? How’d—” Never mind. I was bleeding, wolfie could come back at any moment, and priority one was to get to safety ASAP. “Tell me who owns the closest house or the name of the closest gas station or—”

  “What?” Brent sounded lost.

  Good. Soon, I wouldn’t be. “Tell me.”

  “Brent’s house is the closest,” Rafe told me. “It’s up to the—”

  Brent’s house. I closed my eyes for just a second. “I know.” Then I scrambled back to the truck. Found my trusty mace—a girl couldn’t leave home without it—and I started walking. “Come on!” My voice definitely snarled then. Couldn’t help it. I was running on fumes. “Follow me!”

  “She doesn’t know where she’s going,” Brent said, his voice low. “You need to take her—”

  I glanced over and met his stare. “I know. Now just trust me, and come on. I bet I know how to get there faster than you guys do.”

  They didn’t speak.

  But Rafe inclined his head. Good. Relief had me feeling a little light-headed. Or maybe that was the blood loss.

  I took up a position under Brent’s left shoulder, wanting to help, and we started moving.

  My breath seemed too loud in my ears as it sawed from my mouth. Rafe and Brent were almost too silent. I glanced at Brent and saw the lines of pain on his face.

  I guided them, taking them up higher, higher, as we twisted through the trees.

  “How do you know where to go?” The question was Rafe’s. I didn’t answer. Just kept walking. Explaining then would have taken breath and energy that I just didn’t possess.

  Soon we could hear the faint beat of music and see the lights from Brent’s house through the trees. I called out, yelling for help, but no one came rushing toward us.

  “They won’t hear you,” Rafe said. “Not with the party going on.”

  I yelled for help anyway. There’d been no sign of the wolf again, but I’d sure been looking over my shoulder a lot. The goosebumps on my arms told me that I was being watched.

  No, not just watched, hunted.

  We burst from the trees. Brent’s house—more like a mansion with glass walls that overlooked the mountainside—seemed to light up the area. I could see people through the glass. Jenny, Troy…about thirty more kids. Dancing. Laughing. Paying no attention to us as I screamed, and we hurried forward.

  Then we were at the door. Rafe kicked it open, and we pushed inside.

  The laughter stopped. The music kept blaring, but all eyes turned to us.

  I didn’t even try to wipe away the blood that dripped down my cheek. What was the point? By now, I was covered in blood and dirt.

  “Call an ambulance!” Rafe barked.

  Troy grabbed the nearest phone.

  Guys rushed toward us and took Brent. They put him on the couch. Jenny stared at me, her eyes so big they nearly swallowed her face. “OhmyGod! What happened to you?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, back at the dark woods. No wolf howled now. But you’re close, aren’t you?

  I could almost feel him.

  I looked down. I’d bled on Brent’s expensive white carpet. The drops littered the floor.

  “Come here.” Rafe took my arm. “You need to sit down before you fall.”

  Brent had been placed on the couch. All the football players were huddled around him, and they look scared.

  “Don’t worry about him.” Rafe guided me to a chair. He bent in front of me
, blocking me from the others. “Trust me, Brent will be fine.” He licked his lips. “Look, you need to be careful what you say—”

  “Anna!” Jenny’s head popped next to Rafe’s. “Tell me what happened!”

  I swallowed to ease my dry throat. Desert dry. Probably from all that useless screaming. “W-wolf.”

  If possible, Jenny’s eyes got even bigger. “No way.”

  “A big, black wolf.” My voice came stronger now as I clenched my hands. Now I’d gone and bled on the chair, too. I was leaving my mark everywhere. “It charged at us. Brent swerved, and we crashed.” Then the wolf came to take a bite out of me.

  Silence. The really, thick, uncomfortable kind.

  My gaze darted to Rafe. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “She hit her head,” he said into that silence. “She doesn’t know what happened. Just give her some space, okay?” His voice cracked harder than any whip.

  Jenny jumped back.

  I frowned at Rafe. “I know exactly what I saw.” I wasn’t confused or hysterical. Scared, yeah, but in control.

  He leaned toward me and brushed back my hair. His mouth hovered over my ear and he whispered, “You need to be very careful what you say.”

  I blinked. But then other people were talking.

  “Wolves…”

  “Man, you think it’s true?”

  “What about the story, did you—”

  The voices around me droned on and on.

  Rafe pulled back, and his eyes were flat and hard. He didn’t speak again. Not until the scream of sirens filled the night. He pulled me up, kept a good hold on my hand, and led me to the open door.

  “You never said…” His voice was pitched low, “how you got us to Brent’s house.”

  My dad jumped from his car and ran toward me. “Anna!”

  I pulled away from Rafe and rushed to my dad. Only when his arms closed around me—only then—did I finally feel safe.

  An ambulance roared onto the scene. The attendants loaded Brent up, and my dad forced me to get inside the vehicle, too. I tried to tell him that I was fine, but he gave me the look.

  “You’re gettin’ checked out, baby.” I could hear the worry in his voice. “Then you’re telling me what the hell happened out here tonight.”

  I found myself in the back of the ambulance. I looked up, and Rafe had two deputies standing on either side of him.

  I hadn’t told Rafe about my difference. I’d run to escape him and that truth. He’d ask again, I knew it. But he also hadn’t told me just how he’d wound up in those woods.

  I shivered as the ambulance doors slammed shut.

  Chapter Six

  The nightmare came to me again. I was in the woods, running. Brent’s truck lay crumpled behind me, and the growls and snarls of wolves were around me.

  Wolves. Not just one. Two this time. They came from the darkness, and their glowing yellow eyes locked right on me. The first wolf leapt at me with its bloody fangs bared.

  I didn’t have my mace, and the wolf’s teeth sank into my arm, tearing and ripping into the flesh. The white-hot pain cut through me as blood poured from the wounds. The teeth tore—

  My eyes flew open, and I jerked my arms free of the tangling cover. My hand swiped out and hit the lamp on the nightstand.

  I stared down at my arm, expecting to see torn flesh. But, no, I was fine.

  Everything was—

  A light tap sounded at my window. I shook my head. Maybe I was still asleep.

  But the tap came again.

  I yanked open my nightstand, and my fingers wrapped around my trusty mace.

  Second floor. Second floor.

  It was probably just a branch scratching against the window. There was an old oak tree pretty close to the house on this side. I didn’t want to call my dad in the room for a loose branch. I could so handle this.

  A few nightmares weren’t going to turn me into a total coward.

  A few more wolf attacks—maybe.

  As I crept toward the window, I kept my fingers wrapped around the mace. I peered through the blinds and gasped when I saw a pair of eyes staring back at me.

  Rafe’s eyes.

  I shoved away the blinds and yanked up the window. “How are you—”

  He’d climbed up the oak tree beside the house. Its top branches nearly reached my window. Rafe was still standing on those branches as he leaned toward me.

  “Lower your voice,” he told me even as he raised a brow. “Or the sheriff will come in here and haul my butt to jail.”

  Probably. Definitely. “What are doing here?”

  “I needed to see you.” He wore dark clothes and seemed to blend in with the night around him.

  I realized that I was wearing old jogging shorts and a faded concert t-shirt. Whatever. I hadn’t been dressing to impress at—crap, was it really 4 a.m.? Cause that was what the glowing clock on the wall said the time was.

  “Let me come in,” he said, his voice whisper soft.

  I shook my head and put the mace down on my dresser. Then I crossed my arms over my chest and met his gaze with a shake of my head. “Not happening.”

  His hands curled around the windowsill. “We need to talk.”

  “Then come see me in the morning, like a normal person.” I started to close the window on his hand.

  He caught my fingers, stopping me “Are you okay?”

  “Y-yes. Just a bump on the head and some scrapes.” Apparently, I was a bleeder. The doctors had patched me up pretty fast. “Nothing that won’t mend.” I felt like I’d gotten beat up or run over by a bus…or, um, a truck.

  I took a breath and caught his scent. It was a crisp scent, masculine. “Aren’t you going to ask about Brent?” As far as I knew, Brent was still in the hospital. I’d tried to see him—no dice. The doctors had barred my way.

  “No.” Flat.

  I frowned at him.

  “Brent will be fine.” He seemed absolutely certain of that. Strange, but that certainty made me feel better. Then his gaze raked me and he asked, “Did you get bitten?”

  “By the wolf?” The wolf he hadn’t wanted me to talk about. Why not?

  “Yeah, by the damn wolf.”

  So he admitted the wolf had been there. Progress. “No, I didn’t.” What was up with his obsession with me and bites?

  I thought his shoulders seemed to relax.

  “What is going on in this town?” I demanded. “This isn’t normal, you know that. I mean, yeah, I’m from the city, but even I know wolves aren’t supposed to charge at trucks.” Everyone knew that. “We’ve got hikers missing, bodies turning up—and a wolf who likes to attack too often.” A two-year old could connect those dots.

  His fingers tightened around the windowsill. “You really don’t know about Haven, do you?”

  “Um, I know it’s supposed to be a quaint small town.” A place for me and dad to escape. From the outside, the place had almost looked postcard perfect. From the inside… “It’s not supposed to be some wolf’s all-you-can-eat-buffet.”

  “Your grandmother didn’t tell you?”

  Now that made me pause. Carefully, with no inflection in my voice, I said, “My grandmother didn’t exactly talk to me. Like, ever.” There it was again, the gnawing ache in my gut that came whenever I thought of the woman who’d never even once contacted me in sixteen years. Not once.

  Hadn’t she ever been curious about me? Wanted to see me? Talk to me?

  Her belongings had already been gone from the house when dad and I arrived, so there’d been nothing for me to see of hers, and I’d been…disappointed by that.

  Who had she been? And why hadn’t she cared enough to at least meet me?

  I hadn’t talked to my dad about her. I’d tried that once, a few years back, and he’d shut me down fast.

  “She’s a bitter, mean-spirited woman, Anna. She’ll regret what she’s doing one day. Trust me. You’re so good, you would have been the best thing in her life.”

  Would have, right.

>   “Lamb to the slaughter,” Rafe muttered and he yanked his hand through his hair.

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  A knock sounded at my bedroom door. “Anna?” My dad’s voice.

  “Go!” I whispered to Rafe even as I yanked down the window and the blinds. I spun away, just as my dad opened the door.

  “Baby, are you okay?”

  He was in his faded robe and pajama pants. The pants with smiley faces all over them. A gag gift from me last Christmas, but a gift that the guy wore all the time.

  I nodded. “Yeah, sorry, Dad.”

  His gaze swept the room. I knew suspicion when I saw it. “I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

  You did. I exhaled. “I had a bad dream.” I never liked lying to my dad, so I usually just avoided the fake stories all together. He could see through lies too easily. Evasion worked better for me.

  “A dream about the wolf?”

  I’d told him about the attack. Brent hadn’t been able to remember anything, so it was just my word that a big, crazy wolf had charged at the truck.

  My dad had believed me. He always did.

  “Y-yeah.”

  He came toward me. Put his hands on my shoulders…and moved me away from the window. So much for a comforting hug. “Dad!”

  He pushed up the blinds and peered outside.

  So busted.

  I craned to see over his shoulder. I only saw the empty tree limbs. Rafe was already gone.

  I exhaled.

  Dad looked back at me.

  I didn’t give him a fake smile. It was too late. I was too tired.

  But he gave me a hug now. The kind that I needed.

  I got back in bed. He checked the lock on my window, then he picked up my mace.

  My eyes narrowed on that leather case. “Dad, where’d you get the mace?” I know I’d asked before, but he’d just given me a smart ass answer then.

  He shrugged now. “From the station.”

  My hands curled into the covers. “When I sprayed the wolf, the mace burned its eyes.”

  He dropped the mace. “That’s what it’s supposed to do, you know that—”

  “No.”

  He frowned.

  “Not burn as in…it hurt his eyes and made them water.” Not even close. I licked my lips. “I mean smoke was coming off the wolf. Its eyes looked like they were bleeding, and the wolf was burning.” I pressed my lips together, waited a beat, then asked, “Just what, exactly, is in that mace?” What’s happening? Tell me!