Thorne Bay

by Jeanine Croft

  “Nicole!” I shouted down the stairs. “If you’re down there please answer.” Nothing. “This isn’t funny…” You crazy bitch.

  Again there came no answer. There was only that crawling at my nape again as though an evil eye had slid over me. The hairs leapt up from my skin, alert with dread. Well, I’d definitely heard something down there, but if it was just the sound of a bunch of humping rats then I seriously didn’t need to investigate that badly. However, I wouldn’t be able to sleep in the house unless I satisfied my fear with an investigative look around. Resigned, I lowered one foot to the first step and held my phone out like a ward against the evil darkness. I could only just make out what I assumed was the halfway mark. Carefully, I descended a few more steps. And then I froze, a cold terror slicing instantly through my gut.

  There was something moving in the shadows below. My heart ground abruptly to a halt and my limbs palsied as I glared into the shifting darkness. Or was it my imagination? Fuck this! This was how horror movies started. Obeying my fear, at last, I began to back away slowly up the steps, looking briefly over my shoulder at the door to see how much further I still had to go. But when I dropped my gaze back into the murky stairwell an involuntary shriek was ripped from my throat.

  A large black toothsome face reared up from the darkness. With a feral growl of snapping teeth, it lunged up at me. Reflexively, I kicked out and felt my heel connect the thing’s throat as I stumbled backward, jarring my elbows. Screaming, I scrambled up the remaining steps, my phone now surrendered to the stairwell. Pure adrenalin surged into my blood as I clawed my way through the doorway. I bolted down the passageway, too horrified to look back in case the monster was at my heels.

  I was no longer a thinking creature at this point, and later I would have almost no recollection of this moment except for long teeth and ghostly blue eyes. Everything blurred past me—the brown walls, the scuffed floor, and the dying fire in the wood stove. I had suddenly become a frightened animal, trusting my body’s primordial instinct to flee without question. There was only a sharp awareness of terror and snarling. My hands lunged at the front door. I tried to yank it from the wall, but it was locked. “Heeelp!” I shrieked. “Tristan!” But the rest of my screams were snuffed by a violent blow from behind. It sent me hurtling face first into the locked door.

  My nightmare had caught up with me. Its fangs thrust deep into my shoulder. The sound of ripping flesh and snapping bones drowned out my hysteria. I was going to die here, mauled to death by a rabid bear. That was my last cogent thought before I slipped into oblivion.

  26

  Red Devil

  I was pulled gradually from a bloodless oblivion by the steady rhythm of a car engine, the blind agony of torn flesh throbbing mercilessly at my shoulder. Was that John Fogerty singing about “trouble on the way”? My lips were parched, and my throat made no sound as I tried to discharge the searing pain with a scream, but it came out as a gurgling whimper. My chords were as damaged as my shoulder felt.

  My body was heavy, my muscles atrophied. I couldn’t force even my eyelids to move. There was only the fire at my shoulder, the roar of an engine, and wetness at my cheek. Suddenly, I remembered the thing in the basement. I’d been attacked! Was I even alive? Flashbacks of stark blue eyes against stygian fur and bloodied fangs and whiskers induced a violent trembling in my broken bones. I’d been mauled by Gmork from The Neverending Story! For a blissful moment I told myself that I’d only had another nightmare, this wasn’t real, but the merciless pain was quick to disabuse me of that.

  I couldn’t bear the dark anymore, I forced my eyes open into slits. Through the blur of tears and pain, I could make out very little detail except that dusk had fallen outside. Why was I outside? All I could see were shadows and the vague shapes of black trees speeding past the window. I willed my eyes to focus and blinked rapidly, panicked, until finally my vision cleared enough for me to confirm that I was spread across the back seat of an unfamiliar car, my cheek plastered against the leather seat by tears and cold sweat. And blood. The car reeked of awful coppery bloodshed. At the wheel was a dark shadow with muted blonde hair. An angel? The ruts in the road pummeled the tires, but I saw her clearly through the pain. Nicole.

  I must have said her name, must have groaned because she suddenly whipped her head around to me. Then to the road again; then back at me, her eyes twitchy with panic. Even through the tears and darkness, I recognized what was still afflicting me—horror. Had she also been attacked by that thing in the basement? I wanted to reach out a hand and thank her for saving me. But how had she done it? I gritted my teeth as another pothole slammed my brain against my skull. It didn’t matter how, I thought tiredly, I was alive and that was all I cared about now. What exactly she’d saved me from I didn’t know. It was nothing I had the energy or courage to contemplate right now. I was safe. As long as that monster was far far away, I didn’t care what the hell it was.

  With a grateful sigh, I succumbed to the darkness again, sure that she would get me to the hospital before I bled out completely.

  “There’s a bad moon on the rise…” If I’d had the strength I’d have begged Nicole to turn the radio off. God, why did that song make me want to wretch?

  * * *

  “Are you sure?” said a man, his voice steely and authoritative as it cut through my coma.

  “I’m positive!” Nicole’s voice I recognized instantly, her usual cold lilt replaced by something desperate. “I saw him myself.”

  “That’s unlike him.”

  “Well, he’s been pretty unpredictable lately! I mean who abandons a presidency to follow his rogue brother?! C’mon, the guy’s clearly got a few screws loose.”

  Then a harried sigh. “Speaking of which, we should call Max. This should be his problem, not ours.”

  The voices were muffled, then clear, then muted again. I drifted back and forth between awareness and a numbing abyss. The audible grinding of my own bones as I twitched involuntarily yanked me back to awareness. My blood was saturated with chills, yet I couldn’t move to curl into a ball and conserve heat; I was paralyzed.

  “How long has she been out?” asked the man, sounding gruff. It was him, I presumed, that was dabbing at my shoulder with something that felt ice cold and stung like a bitch. The doctor maybe?

  “Since we left Thorne Bay,” Nicole answered him. “More or less.”

  Moments later I felt the tug of a needle at my ragged flesh as the doctor began to stitch the wound.

  “Does it always smell like that?” Nicole again. There was a sweet-smelling rot permeating the room. A festering sort of odor that sickened me.

  “How should I know?” he answered tersely. “Never seen anything like this before. But I know a kill bite when I see one…”

  I felt my body twitch again as I struggled to open my eyes.

  “Give her a shot of Ketamine,” he commanded, still plying his needle, “she’s waking up.”

  Hot strong fingers obediently gripped my arm and then a dull sting at my forearm followed shortly thereafter. My eyes had just begun to flutter open, the beam of antiseptic light stabbing through the fog. Almost immediately, I felt the drug shoot warmly to my brain till, finally, it numbed my thoughts with welcome darkness. The two shadows above me were snuffed out in an instant.

  Time passed by in dull beats of my torpid heart. Awareness seeped into my brain miasmically, and by degrees. Once again there were voices murmuring above me, but this time the pain in my shoulder was only a vague ache.

  “Why didn’t you take her to Dean? Why bring her here?” said a stern female voice I didn’t recognize.

  “I panicked!” Nicole again.

  “Clearly,” said the male doctor from before.

  “Dean or Max should be dealing with this.” The woman’s voice was low and stentorian. “This is dangerous.”

  “How dare you judge me! You don’t know what it’s like to be in love. You’re cold and—”

  “Enough,” the woman
growled. “Tell me calmly”—she seemed to stress the word through gritted teeth—“what happened yesterday. Take your time.”

  Nicole was sniffling pathetically. “I headed to Evan’s place yesterday morning to warn her off, but she’s obsessed with Tristan, so it was pointless to stay longer. Can’t fix stupid. Anyway, I left and got halfway down the road before I realized I’d forgotten my phone. When I got back to the cabin I heard her screaming inside. When I found them, Tristan had her by the shoulder. He was shaking her violently.”

  “So you brained him and then took off with Evan?” The stranger’s voice sounded dubious.

  “Yes! God, why are you putting me on trial?” There was brief, heavy silence.

  “No one’s putting you on trial, calm down.” The other woman’s voice was calming enough to relax my own breathing. “But something doesn’t smell right.”

  “And it ain’t the wound, Nicole,” The doctor said scathingly.

  “I know I should have gone to Dean, but he’d have only protected Tristan.”

  “That would have been far more preferable.” The mystery woman sounded irate now. “Now we’re involved in something that never should have been our mess to deal with.”

  “I want an unbiased judgement!”

  A tired sigh followed from the opposite side of my head. “At the risk of marriage?”

  “Do you think,” Nicole continued, seething, “I’d marry into a pack like that?”

  “Yes, that was the idea. You volunteered, remember? You wanted him.”

  “Now I want Tristan to pay! He should be punished.”

  “The girl needs to be dealt with,” said the man, swiftly interrupting Nicole’s diatribe as though he’d had enough of her.

  I felt all gazes resting on my paralyzed body and I struggled aimlessly to open my eyes or move a finger, but nothing happened.

  “Yes,” the woman said, something of weariness in her tone. “I know.” Whatever was said after that, I was unaware of it because either they moved off to whisper in a corridor somewhere or I’d fallen unconscious again.

  When the anesthesia finally wore off, and I was able to crack my eyes open, I felt as though I’d been left to rot in a desert—my mouth felt as though I’d swallowed half the Saharan sand and my skin felt desiccated and itchy. I lifted my head gingerly from the pillow, my muscles groaning with desuetude. I sat up weakly and dragged my struggling gaze towards the only source of light in the room.

  There was no window, only a faint yellow glow creeping into the darkness through the small square pane of smudged glass in the door. By this feeble light, I studied my surroundings. The space was sterile-looking and, as far as I could see, devoid of any furniture except for the spartan iron bed beneath me. No other beds; no other patients.

  An IV needle was embedded in my arm, but I was clearly not in a hospital as I’d first assumed. It was more like a cell. But something had attacked me, I remembered that much, and I’d heard my own bones splinter between its maw. Where was I if not in a hospital? I lifted a leery hand to my bandaged shoulder, the whole area feeling stiff and numb beneath the gauze.

  Something wasn’t right—the prickling along my spine told me that much, as did the fear twisting in my gut. Get out of there! I wasn’t about to ignore that voice again. I’d done that already and look where that got me.

  Spurred into action, I ripped the needle from my arm and leapt from the bed, but as soon as I’d taken one step towards the door, the deafening white noise reared up from my periphery to swallow my vision. With a panicked whimper, I gripped the bed to steady myself and ride out the waves of blindness that swept in to knock me off my feet. Finally, it ebbed away.

  “You should get back into bed,” said a quiet voice from the corner of the room.

  A scream froze instantly in my chest as I whipped my head around to the darkened corner of the room I’d so readily dismissed in my first scan. There, cloaked in shadows, stood an almost invisible figure leaning against the wall. Then, suddenly, the light burst into the room as she—the woman with the deep calm voice— flicked the switch.

  I gave a hiss as the light burned my sight. Once my eyes adjusted I gaped warily at her. The woman had, meanwhile, pushed herself off the wall and approached me.

  “Who are you?” I asked. This was no doctor in a lab coat but a woman clad in jeans and a dark green blouse, her body athletic and her posture like steel.

  “My questions first,” she said, guiding me forcibly into the bed.

  I flinched as she reached towards my neck, but all she did was peel the gauze away from my shoulder in such a way as to deny me a glimpse. Her dark brows met over solemn green eyes, and a sharp stern nose, as she inspected the wound, looking far from pleased.

  “How bad is it?” I whispered, terrified that I had contracted rabies or something.

  Schooling her features, and they were very attractive features, I noticed abstractedly, she concealed the wound again and fixed a militant gaze to me. “It’s bad.”

  “Are y-you a doctor? Can I call my mom?”

  “No and no,” she replied abruptly, folding her arms.

  I shook my head, my eyes brimming with dismay. “I need to—”

  “Your needs—” her voice was hard and her gaze indifferent “—are the very least of my concerns just now. Tell me what happened to you two days ago.”

  “Two days ago?!” Had it been that long?

  “What happened,” she asked again, ignoring my shock.

  “I…I was attacked.”

  “Yes,” she said, winging an elegant brow, “I see that.”

  I swallowed nervously. She was even scarier than Nicole. Even Nicole displayed emotion sometimes, whether her eyes were spitting venom or her teeth were bared in some parody of a smile. This woman’s silence, however, was icy and grim like an iceberg in the night—you knew there was danger, but it was cold, silent, and hidden beneath a terrible calm.

  Ostensibly done with waiting for me to volunteer information, she closed her eyes briefly, a hint of impatience stealing into the calm. Finally, she prompted me with another question. “Did you see what attacked you?”

  “I can’t be sure. A bear I think?” A bear that had looked nothing like a bear. “Or a wolf maybe?” But that wasn’t right either. “I didn’t get a decent look.”

  “Well, what did you see?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to force myself back to the cabin, tried to relive my nightmare. “Black!” My eyes popped open as I shuddered. “It had black fur.”

  “What else?”

  “Blue eyes. It had bright blue eyes, like a ghost’s.”

  This finally seemed to penetrate that cool facade of hers. “Blue?” She leaned back, her eyes narrowing to steely points.

  “Yes.” I’d never forget those eyes glowing from the black beyond.

  “Not green?”

  “No, they were ice blue. Almost white. I’m pos—”

  “Be very sure, Evan.”

  So she knew my name. I wasn’t sure I was comforted by that. “I’m sure.”

  “Any distinguishing markings?” Her eyes scared me with their desperate intensity. “Think.”

  “I-I…” I closed my eyes and the monster reared up from the hinterland of my mind. “White tips on the ears.” My body convulsed with repulsion, begging me to suppress it all forever.

  Instead of being relieved by the information, Aidan’s mouth compressed dourly as she searched my eyes. Finally, she nodded, looking away.

  Now it was time for me to get answers. “Who are you? And where am I? When can I go home?”

  “In what order shall I answer those questions, or would you like to try again? One at a time.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Red Devil.”

  Where the hell was that? My mom would be going crazy with worry. “Where’s my phone?”

  “That I don’t know.” She gave an inscrutable shrug.

  “When can I go home?” Jeez, was she even human? “I want
to go home.”

  “You can’t,” she said, her eyes flickering down to my bandaged shoulder. “There are complications to consider now.”

  “What complications?”

  Instead of answering, though, she gestured to the far side of the wall where a bleak-looking stainless steel toilet had been fixed. Beside it was a small basin, and above that was a mirror. “See for yourself.”

  Wasting no time, but careful of getting up too fast, I carefully made my way over to the mirror and made quick work of lifting the bandages away. It was disgusting. I gasped, too horrified to speak. Or breathe.

  The skin was a mangled chaos of black and green, mottled around the angry-looking puncture wounds. Frankenstein-looking. There was a strong-smelling discharge around the sutures, and even my bones looked misaligned underneath the hot mess. But none of this horrified me as much as the dark veins under my flesh, furcating from the bite marks in all directions like minacious black branches.

  I backed away, eyes starting from my head. “What’s happening to me? Am I gonna die?” I whirled around on her, noticing with dread that my horror meant nothing to her. “Who are you people?!” I screamed, finally realizing that I was in deep shit. And utterly alone.

  “We’re Athabaskans,” came the deadly calm answer, as if that meant anything to me.

  It didn’t. Tears streamed relentlessly down my face as I sank down against the wall beside the toilet, my knees pressed to my chest. “Tell me your name.”

  “Aidan,” she replied. “Nicole’s sister.”

  Aidan? Where had I heard—?

  “Aidan’s pack is the most powerful in Alaska,” Nicole had said.

  “And you’re in my territory,” she went on. “Welcome to Red Devil.”

  And my hell, I would soon find out, was only just beginning.

  27