Thorne Bay

by Jeanine Croft

  He nodded slowly, becoming taciturn himself.

  “Would you have told me that night?”

  “I would have tried to tell you, yes. I had planned to.”

  I wondered briefly how he might have expounded the impossible—what the world still naively considered impossible. I hated to think that I’d have thought he was crazy and then bolted. If he’d shifted, and showed me as he’d promised to do, would I have tried to brain him with a frying pan? Would I have been too terrified to stay? Too incredulous to listen? Too horrified to love him? I honestly didn’t have the answers.

  Tristan’s features hardened as he noted every expressive thought and every uncertain crease flickering across my face. “You would have run,” he decided finally.

  “What about being engaged to Nicole?” I asked through the bitter lump lodged in my throat. “Would you have started with that confession?”

  I could almost hear his teeth grinding together like iron. “I was never engaged to her. Part of the reason my father never forbade me joining Dean’s pack was that he considered it temporary, and because I promised him I’d spend some time with Nicole if she came down to Thorne Bay. I let him think I’d consider marriage because I wanted to get away, but I never actually agreed to it. She was always a spoiled brat even as a kid. I had no intention of taking her on. Whatever delusions Max and Nicole developed along the way were strictly their own fantasies, not mine. Their disappointment is their problem, not mine.”

  But, consequently, it had been made my problem too. “Well, it’s all pointless now—we’ll never know one way or the other how I would’ve reacted if you’d told me. Nicole stole that moment from us.” I should have told that mangy bitch to go pee in the woods when I’d had the chance. “And now it’s gone forever.”

  “I wonder—” his eyes darkened to a piercing, lustrous amber “—if that’s the only thing gone forever…” Tristan waited a beat for me to say or do anything (offer even the smallest reassurance), but I never did.

  I had none even for myself. I didn’t even know if I was going to survive past the full moon. The shadows of death weighed on my tongue and kept it frozen. Something needed to be said, but I was blank and too scared to feel anything. In the aftermath of pain there was only this cold listlessness in my chest, my heart suddenly thick with lidocaine. I had become strangely vacuous. Even his pained looks couldn’t touch me.

  “Maybe I deserve that.” Tristan closed his eyes resignedly, and when he opened them again they were remote. He rolled away and abruptly left the bed, his abandoned pillow seemingly indented with the heavy silence he’d left behind. At the door, he hesitated, as though he might say something else, but, evidently, he thought better of it and, instead, promptly withdrew from the room.

  The instant I was alone with myself, the numbness evaporated and the chill crept in. My chest was suddenly desolate with loneliness. It wasn’t the physical agony of before—not like my werewolf puberty—it was the sharp torment of a fragmenting heart. Although the tears surged from my eyes in torrents, I made no sound. I couldn’t risk Tristan coming back, I wanted no one near me. No one, especially not him, to see what a freak I was becoming. It was one thing to be a werewolf, but I was becoming another thing entirely—a disgusting rabid mongrel incapable of control. Something to be reviled. Something to be put down if she snapped.

  By the time the sun crested the horizon, however, I’d fallen into a fitful sleep, never realizing that the torture last night was nothing to what lay in store for me in the days to follow. After that night, the ‘growing pains’ came often and swiftly. At first, they plagued me only during the night, and every time I screamed Tristan came. He never spoke a single word except to whisper distractions, and he never left me to endure those miserable spasms and convulsions alone, no matter how much I pushed him away. The lulls in these nightly attacks, however, became steadily shorter and the agony only more intense. Finally, I was forcibly secured to the bed because I’d begun to gouge at my skin like a deranged thing. A violent desperation was now driving me beyond all rationale, and the need to scratch the itch burning inside my marrow was too much to bear.

  As bestial as I probably looked, Tristan, who now never left my side, looked not much better. When I wasn’t writhing and shrieking wildly, I was sobbing or being force-fed to keep up my strength. I hated everyone and everything and I just wanted it all to end! I wanted the seductive oblivion of death. Whenever the pain abated enough for me to speak, I begged Tristan to make it stop. To kill me. But I always got the same answer, the same gesture—he’d rake his hands through his hair and shake his head miserably, his eyes bleak as he begged me to stop asking.

  Each time he denied me, I growled and flung execrations till the stabbing fits began again, my rage transmuting instantly to agony once more. This suffering was nothing like the fever that had afflicted me in Red Devil. I hadn’t wanted to die in Red Devil. Now I longed for death. The delirium before the new moon, just after I’d been bitten, had been like an analgesic fog. Now, however, I was aware of nothing but the searing of my blood through my veins, the agonizing distortion of my bones, and debilitating nausea.

  Three days before the full moon, I could keep nothing down, not even water, so they hooked me up to an IV. It was now unrelenting, the torture, and my throat was so ragged that even my screaming was silent. The entire house seemed suffocated by a miasmic death pall, the silence crypt-like. My survival was no longer expected, I knew this. They thought I couldn’t hear them whispering downstairs, or they didn’t care, but I could hear everything. I heard exactly what they planned to tell my mother, listened as they discussed what to do with my body. Burned and buried in an unmarked grave—not far off what I myself had imagined they’d do.

  “I can hear you!” I wailed. “Kill me, please!” Why were they waiting? I was ready now. I welcomed death. My dignity was long since gone already.

  “No one’s going to kill you,” came Tristan’s voice in my ear, anguished. “You’ve survived this long, you’ll survive tomorrow too.”

  And then tomorrow came. Finally. With it came the awful crescendo of bones and cartilage snapping and grinding—muscles tearing and tendons severing like frayed catgut. An antiphony of agony. My heart thundered like a jungle drum all throughout the onslaught.

  “Dean!” From far away, Tristan’s subaqueous voice filtered through my fitful grunting. “Dean!” he called again. “It’s happening!”

  Running feet. Doors slamming. Fingers yanking the bindings from my chafed wrists and ankles. The IV needle sliding from my vein like the sting of a wasp. I was blind to it all, my eyes hurting too much to open them. Even my hearing was somewhat distorted. But I could feel. Everything hurt. Everything was broken. I’d forgotten what it was like to be devoid of pain. Then I gave a weak moan as I was lifted and cradled against an unfamiliar chest. This chest smelled like a lesser breed of pine and cedarwood.

  “Remember your promise.” Dean’s voice cut through the fogginess of my brain. “Get out of the way, we both know you won’t do it if she turns rabid.”

  Do it? Do what? After that, I heard nothing more, just my heart slamming against my fractured ribs. Suddenly, my brain exploded with a terrifying rending sound. My muscles came apart around my joints, my bones liquified. A deafening roar pierced the silence and I wasn’t sure if it was the sound of my dying heart or a Mack truck plowing through my skull. I was blinded and couldn’t see, though I was sure my eyes were wide open. Hours passed, or merely seconds, I couldn’t tell, but it seemed like I was aware of nothing else but the sickening sounds of my body, the burning itch along my flesh, and the ever-present throes of death. And then, blessedly, there was one last almighty crack. My spine jolted with the force. Then nothing.

  Strangely, there was no tunnel of light as I died, just the feeling of floating away on ripples. And then, as though washed ashore, I became aware that I was lying on something soft and fragrant. Everything was dark and tasted of verdure. For the first time in what
seemed an eternity, my heart slowed and the world was hushed. The pain had finally ebbed.

  Was I dreaming? Or was I now truly dead? Pain couldn’t follow a soul into death, so I had to be dead. And if I was dead, then this was one murky afterlife—light and shadow blurred around me as my eyes adjusted. From overhead, there was an intense and soothing light that washed over me and swept the vestigial memory of pain from my tired body. This then was the divine tunnel of light.

  I lifted my head heavenward and drank in that silver light, breathed in the sylvan quality of the air, dug long nails into the cool earth, and savored the redolence of shuffling leaves. The perfume of the night was like a heady drug, calming my blood. I stretched out my bruised muscles and gave a shake of my body, luxuriating in my hair as it rippled around me like a silky black cloak. Then I pressed my nose eagerly to the ground, frisking and snorting like a child before bounding away, feeling freer now than I ever had in my life. Cool wind whisked and eddied past my face as I raced through the towering woodland giants.

  Whether or not I was in limbo or just dreaming didn’t matter. The thrill of this newfound freedom and my affinity with the night was surreal and addictive. I embraced it like I would my mother and sucked in the deepest breath I’d ever taken, pulling its essence into every cell before I lifted my face back to that heavy orb above and called out long and loud.

  It was a cry of liberation, my pain now finally gone. I hailed the freedom of this strange half-existence thrust upon me. But the tail end of that howl suddenly took on a lugubrious tone. In death, I’d found relief, but I was far from happy. I mourned the short life of Evan Spencer. The pathos in my lupine moan was for the girl I’d been, and for the beautiful mother that had loved her so well. And for Tristan too.

  In life, I had loved him keenly and I loved him even from the afterlife. But I had never gotten to tell him so. That was my eternal regret.

  34

  Blood

  The deeper I plunged into the woods the more primal I became till finally I had shed my past life entirely, discarded it in the dead leaves underfoot as I ran beneath the stars. My mind was full to bursting with all the elemental rhapsodies of the forest. I could hear each shuffle of an insect’s wing and every sigh of a sleeping bird in its nest. The tang of the moss, the pine, and the frightened spoor of smaller creatures all called to me. My woodland paradise was saturated with life, and all of it was piquant. The wind itself seemed to be gathering up the variegated scents just for me, casting it into my face like a loving zephyr before stroking my whiskers back and tugging playfully at my lolling tongue.

  That luminous eye followed me over the canopy as I loped through the trees. It caressed my back with argent beams that pulsed and rippled through my blood, my exhilarated heart, in turn, synchronizing with its heady cadence. My otherworldly mother. I answered her with another howl, but this time there was none of the melancholy of before. In fact, there must have been something terrible in my song because the next instant a flash of a shadow leapt into the air and fled through the trees up ahead.

  I’d barely seen the creature, but I identified it immediately by smell alone. A startled leveret hared off madly into the underbrush in the hopes of escaping me. My reaction was immediate. Instinct-driven, I gave chase, my nostrils fluttering to draw in the nectarous spice of its terror as I fixed my eyes to my zigzagging prey.

  I was like a bolt shot from a crossbow, anticipating its moves, and delighting in its errors. I was far larger and so much faster. I drew up alongside, close enough to strike, shooting a great big paw out to trip the young hare. And it did so beautifully, somersaulting through the air and kicking in vociferous panic. The scream of my prey I hardly heard, but it lasted only as long as it took my jaws to clamp around its small head with abrupt and lethal precision.

  Once the hare was silent, once its heart ceased its trembling, I hunkered down and tore into my prize with satisfied gusto, relishing the savory warmth of the kill as it spurted, hot and salty, into the back of my throat.

  Suddenly, the wind shifted, warning me that I was by no means the largest beast in my Elysian woods. I paused my gnawing and lifted my head up from the carcass, ears cocking warily. Even my forest stilled so that I could listen. No longer enamored with my kill, I stood and backed away from it, eyes peeling back the shadows for a glimpse of what I sensed but couldn’t see. Before long, a large shadow ambled forward, the moonlight finally unveiling the monster I’d perceived. Thankfully, he kept himself well out of my personal boundary, instead settling onto his haunches in a manner that evinced only calm and respectful inquisitiveness.

  I, however, was threatened despite his clement behavior, my tail—short though it was—tucking instantly. He was far larger than me and his eyes (a gilded, radiant green) studied me with a grave intensity I didn’t like. Yet he seemed so familiar to me somehow, his scent almost tempting me forward. It was that familiarity that held me still, and hesitant, although I was barely aware that my ears had flattened against my head and my nose was rucked so that my lips were pulled back from my teeth.

  “Stay back,” I growled, trying to make myself seem bigger. My hackles rose in protest when he neither dropped his eyes nor backed away.

  In fact, he pushed himself back onto all fours so that his large head and stubby tail were held high. The fur around his sable mane was fluffed confidently, his ears were cocked forward and his mouth appeared relaxed. An unthreatening stance, yet clearly expressing his dominance. I could sense his mounting excitement as he studied me. In response, I closed my mouth and backed away.

  Without warning, I sprinted off as the rabbit had done only moments before, eager to put some distance between me and my unwelcome visitor. The male, however, shot forward and bounded after me, keeping pace no matter how fast I hurtled into the forest. After a while, he seemed to grow uneasy, his censure palpable. He gave a warning bark. Then he growled impatiently when I ignored every attempt he made to corral me in a different direction. I dodged and sidestepped him time and time again. Though he easily could have overpowered me, his size and speed far superior to mine, he never once touched me. Instead, he fell back a pace and gave me some distance, whimpering in frustration.

  The acrid whiff of bitumen stung my nostrils well before the pads of my feet suddenly hit the unnatural winding causeway that cut rudely through my forest like black ice. Skidding to a halt on the unfamiliar surface, I allowed myself a moment to inspect this strange and foul-smelling earth, half-way conscious of a queer and distant mechanical growl that was steadily growing in amplitude. Again, I was hit with an odd sense of familiarity, perhaps déjà vu, as though I’d smelled this all before and knew what it was called, but the name eluded me. A beam of blinding light appeared abruptly over the rise. It sliced harshly through my vision so that I snapped my eyes closed and gave a startled yelp. The monstrous growl was now ear-splitting and foreign, and I felt the light spill over me like a violating touch. However, before I thought to head back where I came from I was knocked to the other side of the road by the giant wolf I’d momentarily disregarded.

  He hauled me down the embankment and then, body tensed and vigilant, listened for the growling thing to pass us by. I heard the thing slow briefly, but, eventually, it moved on until the harsh sound of it was only a receding purr in the night. Meanwhile, I was struggling beneath the giant’s heavy paws, becoming ever more panicked the longer he held me down. Finally, I lashed out with fangs and claws, clamping a mouthful of his flesh and fur, desperate to dislodge him, almost convinced he’d reciprocate in turn.

  But he didn’t. Even so, he refused to let me go and the more he held firm the more violent I became. I had no idea how long I struggled, or what damage I was inflicting. I only snapped and snarled and bucked and ripped at him, but nothing I did gained my release. So, finally, I quietened down, exhausted.

  Enervated now, I was aware that even the moonbeams were seeping out of my veins. There came a strange popping and rippling of my body that was only some
what uncomfortable, as though I was stretching overexerted muscles. My spine gave two more audible cracks and then all was still as I lay panting, naked, wet, and sticky. But I was too tired to peel my lids back.

  When I woke up, the ground was frost-covered and dawn was filtering through the icy fog. I was alive! I sat up, feeling strangely revived and oblivious to the cold. Until I saw my hands. They were awash in crimson. Looking down at my nakedness, I discovered that my abdomen and breasts were just as thickly coated in blood. Then I pressed my hands to my face to inspect with fingertips what I already felt was daubed on my face. More blood, dried and flaking and tight across my chin and cheeks.

  I vaguely remembered the hare. I killed it! Shame washed over me as buried my face in my bloodied hands. Instantly, I froze. Yes, there was the unmistakable tang of a leporid on my flesh, but only a trace. Pulling my hands away, my nostrils flaring bemusedly, I tried to make sense of the predominant scent coating my fingers. Unmistakably canine!

  Confused, I turned my head to inspect the clearing, finally glancing over my shoulder. There was Tristan, as naked as me, lying deathly still, his flesh tinged with blue, and as bloodied as I was.

  I screamed his name and thrashed my way over to him, my fingers trembling in horror as I discovered all the gaping wounds in his arms, face, and torso. Fierce bite marks riddled his beautiful skin. Near hysterical now, I didn’t notice that the forest had grown silent around me. My sobbing grew louder as I gently tapped Tristan’s cheeks and begged him to wake up. I then bent my head to his chest and listened for a heartbeat. It was faint and weak enough that I felt my terror mount instead of subside. Even his usually golden skin was pallid in the grey light.