“But tell me one thing,” he said. “Who is this guy? Really?”
Biting my lip, I quickly thought of something believable to say, “He really is a family friend. He knows my dad and I was hoping he could tell me about him. I don’t know that must seem silly.”
“No, I get it. Why do you think I wanted to move back up here? I want to know more about my mom. If someone said they had information about her, I’d want to get to know them too, and it really is going to be dark soon and you shouldn’t be driving on snowy roads in the dark, so I’m gonna go,” he said, standing. “Is this guy safe? Like if the roads are too slick, you’d feel comfortable staying the night with him and his family?”
“I think so,” I said, smiling not only at the irony, but also comforted by his concern when I should actually be the one concerned about his safety the stronger I became the more fragile he appeared.
I walked him to the door and kissed him. My brothers appeared behind us whining that now Reign was leaving too. I stood in the doorway as I watched him walk toward the woods. I noticed how he walked at a fast pace, a pace almost equal to mine. He had always been an annoying slow walker. I had to drag my feet to keep from waling half a mile ahead of him. Where did his new speed come from?
I didn’t have long to dwell on it because I heard Phoenix’s agitated breathing. I turned my head to the left to see him leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets waiting for me. I groaned, and stepped back inside to grab my coat, keys, and purse and then yelled at Mom that I was leaving. She appeared with rectangle plastic Tupperware of left overs and a smaller square plastic Tupperware of pecan and Michigan cherry pie. After I took hold of both Tupperware, she set Boggle on top and then patted my cheek and wished me a Merry Christmas.
We were silent the entire drive. I tried filling the silence with Christmas music which he turned off before I had a chance to staring singing along. I threatened, mentally, that I’d pull the car over and make him walk the rest of the way, but I reminded myself it was Christmas and to be nice, but the longer I drove and we sat with the awkward silence festering between us the more I thought about how rude he was at lunch and for what reason? Reign was the sweetest, friendliest person I knew and to be so mean to him without any explanation made me mad, but I knew I couldn’t get mad so I focused on my breathing and clearing my mind. This caught Phoenix’s attention.
“What?” he asked.
I held up my finger for him to stop talking and said, “I’m clearing my mind.” He respected this and after parking the car at the dead end and trudging through the two acre pasture and then disappearing into the woods and walking five miles until reaching his cabin, I finally was calm enough to try to have a conversation with him.
“Would it have killed you to be nice today?” I asked.
“I brought pheasants,” he said. He pulled his white shirt over his head. Then he loosened his hair from the hair tie and ran his fingers through his shaggy dark hair.
“I meant to my boyfriend. Why couldn’t you shake his hand at least,” I said.
“I don’t like him.”
“Why?” I said growing cross.
“My instincts are telling me not to trust him,” he said. “Aren’t yours?”
“No, my instincts are telling me that he is a wonderful person and a great kisser.”
His lips curled in disgust as he shook his head and stepped away from me. “Look, the only other time I’ve felt like that around someone was a Hunter.”
“What do you mean? Like a hunter who hunts for fun?” I asked, trying to disguise the change in my voice.
“No, this isn’t your typical hunter that you think you know,” he paused then gathering some wood in the corner of the cabin he motioned for me to follow him and led me outside to the front where he directed me to sit in front of the fire pit he started tending to. We had started moving our training to outdoors since this provided me more room to transform. I sat on a log and waited for him to continue, but I knew I was weary of what he was going to say. I didn’t want to hear it, but also I already knew deep down because I had already met one of these not typical hunters.
“It’s time for another history lesson,” he said as soon as the fire picked up and the pile of logs became enflamed with orange and yellow light. “Around the time our first ancestors came to be, a tribe of shamans in Paraguay, did the hocus pocus magic and summoned the Hunter—a warrior spirit that was breathed into man. Finally, the wolf had met its match. The Hunter has strength and speed like us and we were slaughtered. Hunters believe that we are wild, savages and unable to control ourselves. They see fit to kill us before we are able to kill them and kill us they do and will. There are a lot of them and sometimes difficult to spot because you could confuse one with an amateur hunter, but they are a serious threat. They have heightened senses like we do. They’re a super human, you could say. They work in partners, they track, they kill, they celebrate, it’s disgusting,” Phoenix said, staring into the fire. “And they’ve discovered how to become even more powerful by stealing a Morphic’s.”
“How do they do that?”
“If they eat the heart of a female wolf, they obtain her power and strength. Her ability to regenerate. Everything you are, they become, except for morphing. It doesn’t last a lifetime though. Every ten years or so they have to eat another heart. It only works if the heart is a females. Once they do, they’re almost impossible to defeat.”
I stared silently into the fire, shocked.
“When I was a kid two Hunters tracked and killed my mom. They broke into our home in the middle of the night and shot my dad with a silver bullet and then with a silver blade cut out my mom’s heart while I hid under the bed, helpless.”
“What did you do?” I asked, quietly, near tears.
“Wondered between packs for a while. Then met your dad and he . . .” Phoenix cleared his throat. His vulnerability, embarrassed him. “So about a year ago I found the hunters who killed my mom, and I decided to follow them closely to make sure another innocent female wolf doesn’t die. Last summer I heard them talking about moving up here because a girl wolf was about to awaken. When I told your dad what I had heard, he knew they were talking about you and he sent me here to mentor you and protect you until you can protect yourself.”
“This is a lot to process. I don’t want to die,” I said, scared.
“You’re not gonna die. Not as long as I’m here.”
I was speechless. I remembered what Mom had told me. That wolves don’t live long and now I wondered if this was why I never knew my grandmother, the one I was named for, Michelle, had her heart been cut out and eaten? And what about Viktor? I wondered what kind of trouble he was in.
“They can’t hunt us,” I said, “We’re human. I’m just a girl-a teenager. They can’t hunt a kid. They can’t cut out my heart! That’s so barbaric.”
Phoenix shrugged as he threw a splintered stick into the fire. “To them we’re savage animals with no souls. They’re afraid of us because they can’t understand who we are. That’s how it’s always been. You can’t even trust other packs. Everyone’s out to get you. That’s why I’m a lone wolf. In the end you can only trust yourself.”
“Oh, great. That makes me feel real safe,” I said.
“You can trust me,” he smirked. “I trust me so you can trust me, but back to your boyfriend . . .”
“He’s not a Hunter,” I said, quickly then added. “What do you do to them? To Hunters?”
“Eliminate them before they eliminate us. It’s not a fair world, Mickey. We’re all just doing our best to survive,” He said, still staring at the flickering hot flames.
“Is that what you did to the Hunters you followed here?” I asked.
“No, I lost their scent. They keep moving. I don’t know. They have new tricks to keep us off their scent . . . but I will find them. I’ll get them before . . .”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing what he meant. “Look, you can trust me too and I’m
telling you, Reign is a good guy,” I said this more for myself than anything. I had to hold on to this and believe it because I knew what his father did and after hearing what Phoenix had to say. I was scared. I couldn’t tell Phoenix because I was worried he would harm Reign and I wasn’t even for sure. Orgon could be just an amateur hunter. I didn’t know. I didn’t have proof that he hunted wolves like me. According to the deer head, mounted on their living room wall, he hunted all types of animals . . . or Morphics,—all I had was that nagging instinct that Phoenix told me to trust and all of this made my emotions bubble and escalate. I forgot about breathing deeply, I forgot about clarity and before I knew it my blood was pulsing, hot, my stomach tightened and my bones ached as I heard something pop and soon I was on all fours staring at Phoenix who stared back at me with his mouth open in surprise and his hands up as he shushed me.
I could see clearly. I could hear even clearer. I felt light and free and as if I was floating. I felt amazing. I wanted to run and jump and fly and then I heard another pop and I was on the ground with my face in the snow. I groaned and rolled over.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Do you remember any of that? You just changed,” he said, kneeling over me.
I sat up, hugging him, I squealed. “I did it! I did it. I was conscious.” He briefly hugged me back before jerking away and moving to the other side of the fire where he remained all night.
My heart, my powerful heart that held all my strength and was desired by this new enemy, thudded in my chest. I was happy, excited. I had made great strides in my training and I felt safer than just a few minutes before. I felt more in control of myself and I felt strong, and I challenged any threat carrying a silver blade. I’d be ready.
27
School started back up the same week of Reign’s seventeenth birthday. My brothers were officially moved out of our cozy cabin and into my grandparents split level home in Saginaw, Michigan. They didn’t put up much of a protest when Mom informed them of what I still believed to be a rather impulsive decision. They, like my grandparents, believed the lie they were told that Mom would be expanding her company of log cabin homes and working with clients all over North America. Because of her new clients, she would be gone a lot traveling and didn’t want me to take on the responsibility of taking care of my brothers longer than a weekend. I also think they went easily because they had each other. This was something that made me a little envious of Josh and Eric. As a twin, they always had the other and I often thought, especially now, how nice it would be to have someone who knew me that well and could be there walking through life with me. That was, I suppose, what Reign was supposed to be, but how could he be, when he didn’t even know where I went at night.
Regardless, I did have Reign, and I also had Phoenix. They were yin and yang. Both provided something different, but positive to my life. Reign was still the boy next door who I was falling even more in love with every day, and Phoenix was quickly replacing Kristen as my new best friend. I felt like it was time to find a new person to fill the slot and although I regarded Reign as my best friend also, Phoenix was someone I could connect with differently and the only person I could connect with in this way. I couldn’t talk about wolf stuff with anyone else. Mom still refused to admit I was Morphic and she continued staying up all night searching the internet and tracking people down, daily. She told me she was close to a breakthrough, but it was effecting her. She stopped sleeping and eating. Her weight dropped, her hair went unwashed, her face appeared longer and pale, her spine curved, and she rarely changed out of her purple robe as she continued dropping clients and taking off from work, but she wouldn’t listen to my concerns, so I focused more on my training.
Phoenix and I had especially grown closer now that I was consciousness every night for longer periods of time. It was an amazing, exhilarating thrill. Tt felt similar to going upside down on a roller coaster, and I couldn’t get enough of it, but this was what Phoenix warned me of, especially in the beginning wolves can get addicted to the euphoria of the wolf state. They can get trapped as a wolf, and lose their soul, so it was important to only try to gain consciousness around Phoenix who could monitor me and introduce me to it a little bit at a time.
I spent my days like this: Reign while the sun was out; Phoenix while the moon. Now, school was starting and we were headed into our last semester of our sophomore year, and I was struggling to keep up with my studies. I kept my struggle as best I could from Reign. I kept a lot from him. He noticed little things like during our drive into school, I’d fall asleep with my head resting on his shoulder, or at lunch I’d lay my head in my arms and doze a little. This confused him as to why I was so tired all the time and I blamed it on stress with my brothers leaving. I felt guilty, and I couldn’t meet his eyes when I told him these excuses. If he knew how much I lied to him, I didn’t know how he would take it.
The first Friday we were back at school, we were walking out of Geometry together when Mrs. Gus called me to her desk. Reign waited by the door for me as I walked with my head down over to the short woman wearing a green cardigan and black pants covered in white cat hair.
“Mickey, is everything okay?” she asked, folding her hands together under her pointy chin.
“Yeah,” I said, reddening a little. I knew what this was about.
“Because you failed the last two quizzes, and since November, your grade has slipped dramatically. Are you doing the homework problems I assign?” she asked as she adjusted the round, horn rimmed glasses on her nose.
“Yeah, every night. I’m just not very good at math, I guess,” I said.
“I help students after school from four to five. You should start coming,” she said, firmly.
I frowned. “I really don’t think I can,” I said.
“Why? Because of a job. School comes first, Mickey. I’m sure your mother would agree with me, but alright if you really, really can’t make it I suggest a tutor.” She turned in her chair and pointed to Reign who stood with his back to us. “Perhaps Mr. Meyers can assist.”
I nodded and left her desk with my head still hung. I was humiliated and ashamed, but I remained calm. In the past, the public scolding by someone other than Mom may have caused me to cry, but I was becoming really good at controlling my emotions and remaining in a constant peaceful, tranquil state such as Phoenix had taught me, My only concern was that I was going to start appearing like an emotionless, blank statue like he did at times.
I grabbed Reign by the elbow and led him out of the room and into the hall. We didn’t speak until we reached our lockers. I opened mine as he leaned against his and said, “So you’re failing math?”
“What? You heard that?” I asked, slightly surprised. Mrs. Gus had a very soft voice and she was speaking quietly to me so that the other students wouldn’t hear as they left the room.
“Yeah, I did,” he said, kind of surprised at himself. “But really what’s going on? A couple months ago you were helping me with my homework and now I’m supposed to tutor you?”
I dropped my Geometry book. It fell to the bottom of the locker with a loud thud. “It got hard.” I shrugged.
“Come over tomorrow and we’ll study for the test,” he said.
I had been avoiding his house since Phoenix told me about Hunters. I still wasn’t positive Orgon was a Hunter. Before I worked myself up, I needed solid evidence and even then I wasn’t sure what my action would be? He was my boyfriend’s father. Would Phoenix really “eliminate” him and I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to someone Reign loved because of me. It was hard enough accepting and moving on from the fact that I had hurt a helpless, innocent teenage boy who had just been on a camping trip with his family. But if what Phoenix had told me was true and my life was in danger then what? What if Orgon was the Hunter Phoenix followed here? Did that mean Reign was a Hunter too? No. I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t jump to any firm conclusions. I would remain skeptical. W
hat added to my skepticism was the fact that he was tracking something in Canada, but he was back from the North and I didn’t want to be around him anyway whether he was a super a human Hunter or just an amateur one, he was searching for the animal who was responsible for the attack months ago and that animal was me. Since Mom liked Reign so much at Christmas, I kept inviting him over to my house and we spent most of our time in my attic hanging out or we went cross country skiing in the woods.
“Why don’t you come over to my place,” I offered. “I’ll even bake you a cake for your birthday.”
“My dad won’t be home,” he said. “I know he freaked out when you met him.”
“He didn’t,” I mumbled.
“It’s okay he does that people,” Reign said with a somewhat proud smile. “He can be intimidating. Will you come over tomorrow though?”
I nodded. We were interrupted by the bell ringing through the now empty hallways which meant we were both late for our next class. Leaning forward, he kissed me on my forehead.
“You can still bake me cake,” he said, smiling, and then ran down the hall and disappeared into the gym for his PE class while I turned in the opposite direction for Health.
So Saturday at noon I walked through the woods carrying a German chocolate cake that Mom and I made that morning.
It took a little longer for me to make the walk just because there was so much fresh snow on the ground and it was still snowing large, fluffy snowflakes from the grew sky above. I wondered if Reign was sick of winter yet or if he still found the snow as beautiful and enchanting as the first snow fall when he held each other in the courtyard at lunch. January in Michigan meant about three more months of winter and soon all the beautiful white snow would turn to disgusting, depressing grey slush.
When I arrived, I was disappointed to notice that next to Reign’s red truck was Orgon’s black truck twice the size of Reigns and behind both trucks was a green Eldorado that I didn’t recognize. For a few moments, I stood with my feet disappearing in the snow and wet snowflakes collecting on top of my head staring at the front door of the Gothic white and black house wondering if I should turn around and go home and make up an excuse to not come over, but as if my thoughts could be heard, the front door opened and Reign stepped onto the porch waving at me, smiling.
Memoirs of a Girl Wolf Page 22