Hounded

by Marla Braziel

  Every sound in the forest caused a twinge of fear to race through my heart with thoughts that it might be Thomas and his father. I hadn’t done much to cover our tracks, and with the rain making the earth muddy, we definitely were leaving a trail. It took a few miles before I became mindful of it, at which point I tried to lead us across fallen leaves and grassier areas instead.

  By nightfall, I was completely exhausted. Never before had I walked so much in a single day, probably around fifty miles. It pained me to think of how much more ground we could have covered if Fido was in hound form, but he refused to shift.

  The night was cold, and I was unable to get warm. Fido and I sat huddled together under a large oak tree. I wrapped his arm around me, but it did little to help.

  He gave me a concerned look, and then he stood to take a few steps away from me. For a moment, I was panicked, wondering where he was going, but then I saw the flames consuming his body, lighting up the forest while he shifted into hound form.

  “Why couldn’t you have done that earlier?” I scowled at him.

  Fido nuzzled me with his nose, forcing me to stand so that he could push himself between me and the tree and lie down, leaving a perfect crook of warm fur for me to lie against. I groaned at the warmth of him, wishing I could pull him on top of me like a blanket. While it still wasn’t ideal, I was a lot warmer than I had been before.

  The darker it got, the more frightened I became. All I could think about was nocturnal predators, and every sound was a potential threat. But despite my fear, I was miraculously able to go to sleep with Fido’s massive body wrapped protectively around me.

  Something boomed in my ear, and at first I couldn’t tell what it was. I awoke to the blinding sunlight with a start, completely disoriented. Had I really slept for so long?

  My eyes adjusted to the white of Fido’s fur, laying flat from where my head had been resting. Then I looked up, and my breath hitched at the sight of Thomas’s father standing before me with a rifle in his hands, the barrel freshly smoking. Thomas was only a few feet behind him with a pleased grin spread across his face. Before I even found a voice to speak, my head involuntarily turned to look at Fido and the gaping wound in his head, brain matter sprayed across the forest floor on the other side of him.

  “No!” I screamed, thinking I might die in that moment from grief.

  Thomas came forward to grab me by the arm, and I pulled away, clinging to Fido in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening—wasn’t happening. It had to be a nightmare.

  “No!” I screamed again, shaking Fido as if my sheer desperation could will him back to life.

  “I got the beast,” Mr. Uhrich exclaimed proudly.

  “You monster.” I glowered at him, clawing my way to my feet. The wild look in my eyes must have scared Thomas because he took a step away from me.

  With all of my might, I threw myself at the rifle, fighting to pull it away from Mr. Uhrich so that I could turn it on them and shoot them both where they stood. Mr. Uhrich was far stronger than I could hope to be though. He shook me off effortlessly, throwing me into Thomas’s arms.

  “Hold her,” he yelled at his son.

  Damn my weakness. It didn’t take Thomas much effort to keep me captive, and after a minute of struggling, I gave up, melting into sobs that filled the entire forest.

  “What are we going to do with the body?” Thomas asked.

  “Skin him. I think he’d make a good rug. We’ll cut the head off to take back into town and show everyone that we killed the beast.”

  “No!” I screamed again, getting a second wind.

  Desperately, I slid around in Thomas’s arms, kneeing him in the crotch. With a gasp, he let me go, and I went for the gun again, grasping the barrel and trying to jerk it out of Mr. Uhrich’s hands. Then I felt a hard blow against the back of my head, and everything went black.

  I awoke to the comfort of my own bed. Aunt Ophelia was hovering over me, brushing my hair away from my eyes. The look on her face was solemn but loving. My head ached where I had been struck by some blunt object, and I knew that it hadn’t been a dream. Fido was dead, and Thomas and his father had dragged me back to Woodsbury.

  “I’m going to kill them,” was all that I could think of to say.

  “I’m so sorry, Claire.” Aunt Ophelia gathered me up into her arms, and despite my anger, I allowed myself to cry on her shoulder. The memory of Fido’s head blown open would haunt me for the rest of my life; I was sure of it. And I doubted that the hatred I felt for Thomas and his father would ever go away.

  “I can’t marry him,” I sobbed.

  “You have to.” Aunt Ophelia clutched me tightly.

  “I hate him.”

  “You do now,” she tried to comfort me, “but it will get better with time.”

  “He killed . . . “ I didn’t know what to call Fido. Had he been my pet, my dog, my lover? It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that he was gone forever.

  “He had to.”

  “No, he didn’t.” I pulled out of her grasp, glaring at her spitefully. “We were going to run away together. He never would have had to see Fido again.”

  “Calm down. Everything will be alright.”

  But everything wasn’t alright. Despite my wishes, I was forced to marry Thomas Uhrich. For a wedding gift, he gave me Fido’s fur. I held it with shaking hands when he presented it to me in front of a room full of people, gauging my reaction with a sadistic grin. It took everything in me to stay poised and keep the tears from falling.

  What should have been a happy marriage was marred by my hatred for what Thomas and his father had done. Night after night, he took me by force, and shortly after we were married, I became pregnant. Even the baby inside of me I detested, considering on several occasions aborting it with a knitting needle.

  Then one day, Thomas and his father went out for a hunt, and Thomas did not return. A bear had come out of the woods and mauled him to death. As I looked down at his bloody corpse, I felt no remorse. Thomas’s father was grief stricken, sobbing and shaking like no man ever had. All I could think was an eye for an eye, even though I had nothing to do with his death.

  From my marriage to Thomas, I inherited a nice home and enough money to live off of for a long while. As the time for the baby to come approached, I requested that Sara move in with me. She was more than happy to, and together, we buried the blanket of Fido’s fur that Thomas had given me as a wedding gift. It was the best I could do in lieu of the proper funeral that he had deserved.

  The baby came earlier than expected. Thankfully, Mrs. Smith was present to help with the birthing. Nothing had ever felt more painful in my entire life, and I cursed Thomas for causing me more agony even after his death.

  Even when I heard my child’s first screams, my heart was not filled with joy. Mrs. Smith looked down on the babe with a solemn expression, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she shared my sentiments.

  “Oh my God,” Sara whispered, wiping the baby clean with a towel. “It’s a boy,” she said with a mischievous grin before Mrs. Smith stepped around the side of the bed to place him in my arms.

  All of my hatred melted away as I held that small bundle, and my heart was flooded with warmth. It was an absolutely exquisite feeling that I never thought I’d experience again, being overwhelmed with love as I looked down into my son’s two glowing red eyes.

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  Marla Braziel enjoys writing paranormal fiction. Vampires, zombies, and werewolves have always fascinated her, so she brings them to life in her writing, trying to portray them in new and unique ways.

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  BONUS EXCERPT FROM A MONTH WITH WEREWOLVES

  ~

  NO CIVILIAN HAD EVER BEEN inside the Blackfoot Werewolf Reservation before. They called it a reservation, but it was more like a relaxed concentration camp where werewolves were separated from the rest of society to live out their lives peacefully until a cure was found for their condition.

  I had little interest in the subject until I was offered a chance to investigate the reservation for a journalism piece. Since no civilian had ever been allowed inside of the reservation, my report would gain worldwide recognition. It would be my big break, skyrocketing a career that I had been working hard at for the past five years.

  As I pulled up to the reservation, I took a deep breath. The outside of it looked like a prison, with a thirteen-foot-high parameter fence surrounding the one thousand acres of land. There was a small compound that I had to go through before I could get to the reservation itself. I would stay there for my first night, learning how the place was run before they took me inside to live out the rest of the month with the werewolves.

  “Identification, please,” a security guard requested as I drove up to the gate leading into the compound.

  “I’m Taya Raveen, journalist for the National News Network,” I replied with a smile, handing the guard my work badge and driver’s license.

  His body language emitted nothing but coldness towards me as he gazed down at my cards with a deadpan expression before handing them back to me. “If you’ll hang a right at the next turn and follow the road, you’ll come to the Visitors Center. There are signs leading the way. You can park your car out front, then go sign up for a Visitor’s badge at the front desk.”

  I nodded politely before putting my yellow Volkswagon Bettle in drive and continuing down the road. If it weren’t for the signs pointing the way, I probably would have driven right past the Visitors Center. All the buildings in the compound looked the same, small and tan on the outside. The only distinguishing characteristic was the Visitors Center sign next to the door.

  I pulled into the parking lot and made my way inside to the front desk. Another less than excited security guard took my identification again before handing me a plain white clip on badge with the word Visitor printed on it in bold.

  “Take a seat,” he said, gesturing towards a set of four black leather chairs that faced each other in front of his desk.

  “Thank you,” I responded courteously before flopping into one of them and pulling out my camera.

  There wasn’t much to see in the Visitors Center, so my picture-taking was short. Just a few framed photos of wolves on the walls, gazing down upon me with very human eyes. I imagined that they were images of the werewolves in their wolf form. Out of boredom and curiosity, I stood to examine them more closely. This was a part of the process that I wouldn’t be seeing since I would be pulled from the reservation before the next full moon.

  A door at the back of the Visitors Center opened, and a man stepped through it wearing a pair of starched khakis and a white button-down shirt. He looked young, in his late twenties, with slicked down blonde hair and a pair of round framed glasses.

  “Ms. Raveen?” he asked, not even bothering to look at the clipboard that the security guard offered to him.

  “Yes.” I turned, preparing to extend my hand as he approached.

  “I’m John Edward, lead coordinator. I will be your guide today.” He shook my hand firmly, giving me the warmest smile I had seen since entering the compound. “Are you ready to begin the tour?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I nodded, preparing to follow him out of the door from whence he had come.

  “Did you have a nice drive up here?” John asked as we walked through a small maze of identical buildings.

  “Yes. It’s beautiful country.”

  “That it is.”

  My eyes wandered while we walked, wondering how long it took employees to memorize the layout of the compound with so few distinguishing landmarks. Surely, there was a map that they gave new hires to help them find their way around.

  “It’s a rather confusing place,” I commented.

  “It can be, if you’re not familiar with it,” he admitted, leading me to the door of one of the buildings and then facing me to begin his speech. “This is the Containment Center. Whenever a detainee is brought in, we hold them here until after the full moon to make sure that they are actually infected. It can be a long process for some, but there’s unfortunately no scientific way to determine if someone has the lycanthropy disease, so observation is key.”

  Inside the first room was a small desk with a security guard. This man appeared to be friendlier than the last two, his eyes lighting up as we walked through the door.

  “Hey John,” he greeted in a voice that suggested he didn’t get a lot of visitors.

  “Hey Johnny,” John replied.

  My eyes darted to the security guard’s name tag. It must be interesting to have the same name as someone else, I thought, happy that my name was unique, even though I wasn’t a big fan of it.

  “How is our detainee today?” John asked.

  “He’s holding up pretty well. Would you like to see him?”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” he said politely.

  “Then come on through.” The security guard waved us towards a metal detector, taking my camera so that I could pass without setting it off.

  We walked down a short hallway that opened up into an area that consisted of three large jail cells. In each one was an uncomfortable-looking bed, a sink, a toilet with a half-wall in front of it, and a shower without a door.

  John led me inside one of the unoccupied cells for a better view. “This is where the detainees stay until we are certain whether or not they are infected. Now I know that it doesn’t seem like much, but please remember that we don’t get a whole lot of government funding for this project. Detainees are given three square meals a day, providing them with all the nutrition that they need to remain healthy. If they become ill, they are treated by our resident doctor, and they are also given books to keep them entertained during their detention, as well as the ability to watch the two provided televisions.” He gestured to two small televisions mounted outside of the cells on the corners of the walls. Then he pressed a panel on the wall to demonstrate how the detainees could operate the televisions from inside their cells.

  “Are they allowed time outside of their cells while they are waiting to find out if they have the disease?” I asked while snapping a few photos of the bathroom area. It was barely enough to give the detainees privacy.

  “Yes. We have an outdoor recreation area that they are allowed to use one hour out of every day. I’ll take you to it later.”

  I nodded, following John out the sliding glass door and down to the cell at the end where there was a young man sitting on his bed reading a book. He glanced up at us for a moment and then went back to reading as if we weren’t even there.

  John lowered his voice when he spoke this time, “This is Christopher Abbot. He was brought in about three weeks ago. He had his first confined shift yesterday. A bit later today, the medical team will come collect him for further processing before he is released into the reservation.” He raised his voice then. “You came at a good time. You’ll get to see Chris’s introduction into the Blackfoot pack tomorrow. That should give you some good material.”

  I nodded, staring into the boy’s nervous looking blue eyes, which avoided us at all costs. He was attractive, with shaggy sandy blonde hair and a tan complexion. The longer I gazed upon him, the more I could feel my cheeks growing warm, and I was never happier when John indicated that he was ready to move on with the tour.

  The next building that he took me to was right across from the first. It was about the same size, though it was divided differently, with a viewing area in the front separating an expansive room in the back. It looked like a typical interrogation room that you would see in the movies except for that th
e walls were marred with deep claw marks.

  “This is the shifting room. We bring the detainees here during the full moon to monitor their shift. If they turn, then we leave them here until the next morning, at which point we continue with their processing. If they stay here all night and do not shift, we release them back into the general public the following day,” John explained.

  “How often have you detained someone by mistake?” I asked curiously, imaging how ticked off the innocent person would be to have been put through such a process.

  “It’s only happened a handful of times. Most of the time, the werewolves are easily enough to detain. The ones that have been turned through a bite usually give themselves away when they end up at the hospital or the doctor’s office for it. Werewolf bites are almost always severe enough for the person to be forced to seek medical attention. For those that don’t contract the disease through a bite, after their first shift, they typically are reported by a person who has either seen them shift or has witnessed them in wolf form. Werewolves are about four times the size of a normal wolf, so there’s no question about the difference.”

  “Interesting. Are more werewolves detained in cities or in the country?”

  “Most of the ones we’ve detained have lived in small country towns. There have been a couple we have detained from the city. Most of those stories you’ve seen on the news. We estimate that the majority of free roaming werewolves probably live in rural areas however, secluded, and as far away from civilization as possible to avoid detainment. Shall we go inside?” He gestured to the door that led to the containment area, which was made of thick steel.

  “Yes, please,” I replied before snapping a few pictures of the viewing area.

  “As you can see, we use a one-way mirror to do our observations.” He pointed to the long panel that we had been gazing through in the other room.

  There wasn’t much to see. Just a table and a chair, typical of a regular interrogation room. I imagined that it must be horrible to be locked up inside, waiting for the full moon to rise with no indication as to when it was coming. This must be one of the scarier parts of the processing.