My chest squeezes and adrenaline knifes through my veins. Without wasting time on goodbyes, I begin to climb, leaving my harness bunched around my thighs. Harmon sprints towards the edge of the house, whipping his hoodie off as he goes. His skin gleams in the moonlight, his tattoo outlined against his shoulder. A second later, I hear racing footsteps that are not human, and snarling in front of the house. I yank myself up over the third knot, my hands burning and my thighs aching.
Snarling and growling come from the front yard, and I try not to worry about Harmon when I hear the yipping of an injured wolf. If he was hurt because of me…
I haul myself over the ledge of the windowsill, the broom clattering to the floor with me. Jerking at the knots, I slip from the wad of sheets around my legs. I must have looked like I was wearing a diaper out there. But I don’t have time to worry about it long, because I hear more snarling and fighting. With shaking hands, I throw my sheets over my couch and dive under, trying to calm my heart rate so I can pretend I’m sleeping when Mother comes.
Soon, a smile forces itself onto my lips. Harmon is coming back. I’ll have someone to talk to. The thought is so wondrous, such a relief, that tears spring to my lashes. God, I’m pathetic. But just imagine—a friend. A real friend. I’ve never heard a sweeter word.
16
To avoid lifting it, I roll a section of log to the flat rock where I’m working before heaving it onto its end. It would make a nice end table, flat and just big enough that I could wrap my arms around it. It was a healthy tree when it died, too. I wonder what felled it. But I don’t dwell on that. I use a hatchet to make a notch in the yellow wood, then jam the iron wedge in. Stepping back, I shake my hair off my face and heave the splitting maul up, up, over my head. When it reaches its peak, I let it fall with all its force onto the head of the wedge. With a chink!, it drives the wedge an inch into the stump. I sigh.
I’ve seen Mother do this, and the log splits cleanly in two, all the way down. But for me, it takes longer. I’m stronger than I used to be, certainly stronger than when I lived in Oklahoma. No model would dream of having arm muscles like mine. In the past years, I’ve built a fence, a bed and a couple end tables, and done a million chores. I’ve carried trays of food up to my sister for the last month, once she was well enough to return to her room upstairs. Better than being her constant slave for the two months before that.
And I’ve learned things from her. I’ve learned about the tattoo they all have on their shoulder, a symbol of their pack. I’ve learned that there are other packs all over the world. Not just wolves, but shapeshifting animals. Many are persecuted, most are in hiding. Secret networks connect the supernatural world, bringing people here from dozens of countries. They call this pocket of the Ozark Mountains the Three Valleys, and it’s secluded enough to be the perfect hiding place.
Each day, I bring Zora her food and she tells me something. And though she’d never admit it, I think she likes sharing her secrets with an outsider, one who doesn’t know the old wolf tales by heart. She likes watching my eyes widen with shock when she whispers that a witch chopped off Fernando’s arm for crossing into their valley, or that Elidi had to spend three nights in Zechariah’s special wolf-proof jail cell when she finally admitted she’d lied to him. Zora especially likes refusing to give me further details after dropping a bomb like that.
But despite all I’ve learned, I haven’t found the weakness of wolves, not from her and not from Harmon. True to his word, he’s been visiting at least once a week. But it’s not enough. Sometimes, my family is there, and all I get is a wave from below, a secret smile that has to tide me over for a whole week. Once, he came over during the day, when they were out, like the day he kissed me the first time. I waited for him to do it again, but he only talked to me. At last, after thinking my body would explode from wanting his touch, I found an excuse to touch his fingers. But I wanted it to so badly, for so long, that my nervousness numbed me and I hardly felt it.
Now, chopping wood in the backyard isn’t so bad. Slowly, I am being absorbed into the pack, finding a quiet, unobtrusive place as an outsider on the inside. I lift the maul and drop it again. The iron wedge sinks into the log, inch by inch, blow by blow, until it’s nearly buried.
“With one that big, you’ve got to take your time getting it in,” a gruff voice says behind me. I spin around, towards the fence. There’s a man standing there with what looks like a quiver of arrows on his back and a bouquet of dead rabbits dangling from one hand. He’s smirking as he slowly drinks me in with his squinty hazel eyes.
I don’t know him.
I don’t know anyone here, either, but I know what they look like. I’ve watched them out my window for a year and a half, have seen everyone come and go. My heart stammers in my chest. An outsider. Like me.
“Work your way in,” he says, still smirking at me like he’s telling a joke that I don’t get. “Don’t just pound it in the middle. Though, on occasion, I myself can’t help but do exactly that.”
My heart is beating so hard I think I’m going to pass out right here. He looks so…normal. But then, so do the wolves. What if he’s not normal? Why is he staring like that, like he’d like to eat me up? Where did he come from?
I shake my hair back again and stand taller. He’s outside the fence. I could run into the house and bolt the door. After all, if he was a wolf, he wouldn’t need arrows and the bow I can now see poking up from behind his other shoulder. So he can’t be one of ours. I’d have remembered him, anyway. He’s big and broad-shouldered, good-looking in a rough, motorcycle-guy kind of way, with tattoos running up his bare arms and into the sleeves of his t-shirt.
I watch his workman’s hand as he runs his fingers along the top of the fence, stroking my handiwork with the gentleness of a lover. “Need me to show you?” he rasps in his gravelly voice. “There’s a lot I could teach a little thing like you.”
“No. But thanks for the advice.”
“What are you going to do, now you got it stuck in there?” he asks. “You’re going to have to wait until she loosens up to pull it out.”
I hear someone walking around in the house behind me, but I don’t know how to get their attention. Or if I want to. This wasn’t my escape plan, but it’s here, now. If I don’t take it, will I regret it? “Thanks.”
“Sure I can’t show you? I’m very good at it. Years of practice. You really ought to start with a smaller one. That’s an awfully big one for someone so obviously inexperienced.”
He leans against the fence, which is just at chest-level for me but falls a little lower on him, so he can rest his elbows on it. Though it’s an icy day in early March, he’s wearing a white t-shirt that shows off his ripped chest and shoulders, along with a pair of red jeans, which seems a strange choice for hunting. From the stubble on his face, I can tell he’s older than me by too many years. This is not a guy who should be making suggestive comments to me. He’s a man.
“Who are you?” As I say it, I take a step back, hoping if I speak loudly enough, Mother will hear me.
“I’m your savior,” he says, still smirking. “Want to get out of here? I can take you places you’ve never been.”
My head starts moving back and forth as I retreat another step. What am I doing? I should say yes. I should be throwing myself into his arms and sobbing with relief. I still want to leave, don’t I? So why am I saying no?
“How do you know where I’ve been?” I stop moving towards the house and watch his face for clues that he’s lying, that he’s trying to trick me. Mother could have sent him to test my obedience. “How do you know I want to get out of here?”
“I know you don’t belong here,” he says smugly. “There’s a whole world out there you can’t see from here, a whole world you can’t even imagine. I can show you things.”
My eyes narrow. I remember what Mother said about the Enchanted Forest. About how there are magical things. Not all magic is bad, though, right? “Why would you do that?” I ask.
<
br /> “I like to save little girls from the big bad wolves.” He winks at me and raises the dead rabbits. “That’s what the huntsman does.”
“What do you know?” I whisper urgently, glancing over my shoulder at the house, this time hoping they won’t come out. Not yet. I take a step towards him, and I can see by the slow smile starting to form on his lips that he noticed my change in direction.
“I know a lot more than you do, sweetheart,” he says. “And I’ll tell you everything. But first, we should leave. I don’t think your mommy would like you talking to strangers.”
He didn’t say my dad. He said my mom. Does he know? Has he been watching? Or was that a coincidence?
Harmon said that people have come around trying to spy before.
“First, tell me who you are,” I say. “Then maybe I’ll come with you.”
“I’m Efrain,” he says, reaching down to adjust his pants. I can see him, the outline of him, through his pants. A flicker of fear and excitement passes through me, and I swallow hard. I wonder if that is the price for freedom.
Efrain is smirking at me again, and I know he caught me looking. My face flames with heat. “Why should I trust you?” I ask.
“Do you really want to live your whole life in this same house, in these same woods, with these same…people? There’s so much more in this world than you’ll find here. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
Just as I’m about to point out that he hasn’t given me a reason, the hair along the back of my neck prickles like someone is breathing that close. I turn slowly, but there is no one there. I shiver and turn back to Efrain, my hand going to my necklace as it does when I’m scared. Wrapping my fingers around it, I call on my father’s strength before opening my mouth.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
“Excellent.” His smirk spreads into an all-out grin. He’s missing the tooth right behind his canine on one side. When I reach the fence, he wraps one thick arm around my waist, hoisting me over with seemingly no effort. He sets me on my feet and smiles down at me hungrily. I try to push away from him, but he holds tight for one long moment, as if making sure I know I’m under his complete control, before he releases me. “Come on,” he says with a wink. “Daddy’s waiting.”
My heart folds in on itself. “What?”
Just then, his head whips around to the left and his nostrils flare. A chill of dread crawls up my back as I turn. At the corner of the house, Zechariah stands watching us with his cold, hard eyes. I shrink inside my sweatshirt, but Efrain grabs my elbow and drags me forwards, into the woods. His long strides are too big, and I struggle to keep up. “Run,” he growls, shoving me forwards, hard. I scramble ahead, adrenaline tearing through me, barely keeping my feet under me.
Pain rips through my shoulder, but I can’t tell if it’s from Efrain wrenching it when he pushed me, or if I’m about to have one of my fits. With my luck, now would be the time I’d have one, when my life literally depends on staying clearheaded. I sprint forwards, biting back the pain. Somewhere close by, I hear a wolf howl, and I can’t help but glance back.
Efrain is crouched in a fighting stance, his muscled shoulders tensed, his fists in front of him and his feet set wide. Zechariah moves like a man much younger than he is, streaking from the corner of the house and slamming into Efrain with an animal snarl. He doesn’t fight like a younger man, though. Not like Efrain does. Efrain looks like bar fights might be his favorite pastime, and he joins the occasional brawl just for kicks.
Before I can blink, Efrain has thrown Zechariah to the ground and dove onto him. In a burst of supernatural strength, Zechariah shoots out from under him, his body spasming as he peels off his shirt. He’s going to transition and rip Efrain to shreds with his teeth. Should I warn Efrain or does he already know?
“Wanna get naked with me, dog-boy?” Efrain snarls, grabbing the neck of his t-shirt. He rips it straight down the middle, his tattoo-covered pecs bulging as he tears the shirt from his body in shreds and tosses it aside. Zechariah is now a wolf, ripping his jeans off his back legs with his teeth. But something is happening to Efrain, too. Brown fur ripples along his back as he drops to all fours.
The back door of the house flies open and hits the side of the house with a loud, Crack! My entire family flies out, along with Harmon, the black girl, and the boy with one arm, Fernando, who has taken to spending a lot of time with Zora. Harmon clears the fence in a single bound and tackles Efrain, slamming him to the ground, though Efrain must outweigh him by nearly half. Fernando and Elidi vault over the fence and start kicking.
“Run!” Efrain screams at me, wrestling with Harmon, who is taller but lankier, quick enough to dodge Efrain’s every thunderous blow. I’m frozen in place, unable to look away as Zechariah darts in and rips a chunk of flesh from Efrain, who bellows in pain.
Another wolf howls, and I swallow my screams, my face cold with tears I didn’t know were coming out of my eyes. I clutch my necklace, willing myself to step behind a tree, where they might forget me. Harmon has straddled Efrain and is beating the life of out him, punching him over and over while the other two kick him. But with another roar, Efrain transitions, all at once. I’ve seen the wolves do it, the ripping and wrenching of their bones. But he does it so fast it startles a cry from me. One moment he’s a man being beaten to death, and the next, he’s a hulking grizzly with my tiny sister clinging to his back.
“Don’t hurt her,” I scream, racing back towards my sister as Efrain tosses her across the yard. The black girl and Zora are on all fours, writhing around as they transition. Zechariah rips a chunk of thick, matted fur from the grizzly, which sinks its teeth into Fernando’s thigh. A second later, the little brown wolf who is now so familiar bounds over the fence. Snarling, she sinks her teeth into Efrain’s shoulder.
She rips away a chunk of fur and flesh. Blood sprays across her, the ground, Harmon. An animal roar of pain echoes through the air. I vault back over the fence and dive for the only weapon I see. In seconds, the hatchet is in my hand and I’m running for the fence. I don’t know who I’m going to hit with it until I see Zechariah’s wolf, hanging from Efrain’s throat. His solution to everything is to get rid of the intruder and say it’s on someone else’s hands. Get rid of me, get rid of Efrain. What’s one more death to a predator that kills every time the moon is full?
How long until I mess up again? One of these days, he’ll make the call to get rid of me.
Unless I get rid of him first.
I draw back, taking a second to aim before letting the hatchet sail through the air. Before it hits, a wolf slams into my back, and I’m flat on the ground, the air knocked from my lungs, my mouth full of dirt. Through my tears, I see the big brown grizzly retreating through the woods, a pack of wolves hot on his tail, ripping bits of fur and skin and flesh from him as he tries to escape. All around us, I hear the mournful, spine-chilling howls of the entire pack. And closer, I see Harmon, still in human form, hunched over a grey wolf, speaking frantically as he cradles its head in his lap.
His father’s head. Zechariah lies on the ground, blood gushing from his head. The hatchet lies on the ground beside him.
A deafening howl rips from my wolf mother’s throat as she stands over me, and I throw my arms around my head and scream. I scream, and scream, and scream, and scream.
Some time later, my mother flips me over onto my back. “Get hold of yourself, girl,” she snaps, giving my face a swift, sharp slap. She’s back to her human form, but still naked. I draw a ragged breath, gulping down the scream that doesn’t want to stop. My raw throat aches. I don’t know how long I was lying there, screaming to block out their howls, or when my mother-wolf got off me, or when they abandoned the chase and ran to Zechariah. And then I see the big brown heap of fur and blood that must be Efrain’s body. It’s lying in the woods, encased in some kind of…bubble. I blink, sure I must be hallucinating, but it’s still there.
Well, that’s something wolf people don’t have. Or
maybe they do. I’ve never seen one of them die, never thought to ask Zora about it in all my questioning.
“What were you doing, talking to that man?” my mother demands, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me, hard.
“Nothing,” I croak, searching the yard for Elidi, ashamed that I forgot her until this moment.
Apparently unharmed, she’s with the rest of them, kneeling around Zechariah, a circle of humans and then a circle of wolves. The humans lift him to his feet, supported between Harmon and another boy. My mother shoves me back and leaps towards the fence, but Harmon holds out one hand. His eyes are colder and harder than solid ice.
“Stay,” he commands, his voice flat and firm.
For a second, my mother’s shoulders tense, as if she’s about to spring over the fence and challenge him. But he stares her down, and after a moment, she slinks back a step. Harmon turns back to his father like my mother doesn’t exist, like he didn’t just cut her out of taking care of her leader.
Zechariah is back in human form. As they step forward, his head flops lifelessly on his shoulders, and blood trickles from his face onto his bare chest. His body is filthy with dust and blood. My stomach lurches. Zechariah’s feet drag behind him as the boys walk forward, carrying his weight between them. At the corner of the house, though, Harmon turns back to look at me. My throat closes when our eyes meet. I’ve never before seen such raw, pure hatred.
My blood crystalizes, clogging my veins with ice. I shrink back, towards my mother, who might snap at me and give me an occasional swat, but she doesn’t want to kill me. From the look in Harmon’s eyes, I have no doubt that if he didn’t have to take care of his father right now, he would leave me as dead as Efrain or any outsider. I don’t have to hear him speak to hear what he’s saying with his eyes, more readable than Elidi’s.
You killed my dad.
I drop my gaze, but it falls on the black puddle of blood spreading in the dirt outside the fence. Zechariah’s blood. Bile rises in my throat. Did I kill a man? Am I just as much a monster as my family? In that moment, when I saw him about to kill my savior, I wanted to hit him with the hatchet. I didn’t think ahead, didn’t think that with one motion, I’d become a murderer. It’s no wonder Harmon thinks it was intentional. He told me he’d give me an important position in his pack, once his father was no longer the Alpha. And I’m pretty sure I just made that happen.
Unlikely Magic: A Cinderella Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 1) Page 13