by Allison Moon
Jenna caught her eye and walked to her, placing one open palm on her sternum and whispering into her ear, “You’re safe. Just watch.”
The other women formed a tight circle around the man. Blythe used the rope to pull his torso straight, wrenching his arms back. With a nod from Blythe, Hazel ripped the hood from his head.
“The fuck?!” he sputtered. Blood streamed from his nose, caking in his bristly mustache.
Corwin, her fingers clenched around the brass knuckles, threw a solid fist into his already bruised jaw. He crumpled, whimpering, to the floor. His lower lip was sticky and red, split with blood and swelling.
Blythe kicked him in the stomach, forcing more blood and spit from his mouth with a cough.
“You like attacking girls, Frank?”
“What?” he whimpered.
“You heard me!” she shouted as she kicked again.
He groaned, “She came on to me!”
“That’s not what we mean, Frank.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he pleaded, his ham-hands curling into purple fists behind his back.
“You’re a liar,” Blythe growled, “and a beast.”
He shook his head, a wild panic in his bloodshot eyes.
“You don’t remember Emma? That sweet blond you took a chunk out of last month?”
“You’re crazy.” He wept, the tears carving clean paths down his bloodied cheeks.
“Her parents remember. Her sisters remember. We remember. Why the hell don’t you?”
He shook his head, drops of blood and sweat flying like water from a dog’s coat.
“Alright then,” Blythe said, delivering a solid kick to his chest.
His body heaved as he struggled to remain conscious.
“Please,” he whimpered so quietly that it was little more than a movement of bloodied lips. “I have kids. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You dug your own grave, Frank.”
The women set in on him, taking turns beating the breath out of him.
Lexie covered her eyes. “Jenna, make them stop.”
“Trust me, Lexie,” Jenna whispered, the sweetness of her tone betrayed by the blood wetting her dark clothes. “This is all part of the process. You can get rares to change before the moon by spiking their adrenaline. We need to be sure, so we have to be rough.”
“It’s too much.” Lexie winced with each strike.
From between her fingers, she watched the man cry, beg, and struggle to rise between blows.
Blythe back-handed him repeatedly across the face, and he took each hit with a grunt and a whimper.
“What the hell?” Renee muttered.
“Why isn’t he changing?” Hazel asked.
Blythe glared at them both and beat the man with increased fervor.
“Blythe,” Renee reached out, her hand hovering over Blythe’s arm, as though afraid to interrupt the violence. “I don’t think he’s going to change.”
Blythe slammed her boot into Frank’s jaw, sending him careening onto his side. His head cracked on the stone floor, and he fell limp, unconscious.
“Blythe!” Corwin said.
“WHAT?!”
The girls all froze.
“Maybe . . .” Sharmalee whispered, “we got it wrong.”
“The fuck we did!”
Blythe grabbed the man’s hair in her fist and pulled him up. His jaw hung slack, blood covering his face and shirt. “CHANGE FUCKER!” she screamed as she kicked him in the gut.
“Blythe, STOP!” Renee shouted.
Blythe ignored her, continuing to beat the limp man. No one stepped forward to stop her.
“I can’t--” Lexie pushed Jenna aside and flung the door open to the blessedly cool, clean air.
“Wait!” Jenna called.
But Lexie was already running. As the door slammed shut behind her, she thought she heard a whimper become a snarl. She didn’t stop to find out, running until her lungs and legs burned and the sky turned indigo with the impending sunrise.
Her feet carried her miles to the south, where the Rogue River widened and roared around huge boulders. The foliage was lush and evergreen here. The air smelled like fresh rain, washing from her brain the odor of that malevolent place. At the riverbank, the sky began to glow in that blessed blue of pre-dawn, and she finally stopped to rest. The earth was mossy and clean. Wrapping her sweatshirt tight around her body, Lexie lay on a soft patch of earth, letting her eyes flutter shut, feeling that, for the first time, she was safe in the sunshine.
Chapter 12
A rustle in the underbrush tickled Lexie’s ears, waking her to the full daylight and sweat-slicked skin. She swallowed hard to moisten her cottony mouth. Her stomach shuddered and her muscles clenched against her movement. The river burbled, cool and lovely, not ten feet away. She crawled across the rocks to lean over it. She dunked her whole head beneath the flow. The cold water swirled through her hair, tossing it like sea grass. Above the water, the sun baked her skin, but beneath the surface, all was fresh and invisible and quiet. Her toes curled with the sensation and the relief.
Breath expended, Lexie pulled her head out of the water, whipping an arc of droplets from her long, soaked hair. Cool water dripped down her shoulders, soaking her shirt and waking her up. For once, though, she didn’t want to be awake. She didn’t want to think about last night, the man, and what the Pack may have done to him.
Behind her, in the brush, Lexie heard a rustling, a footstep. Reaching to her hip for her knife, she whipped around to find a familiar face. Archer stood at the wood’s edge, her hair down, her sleeves rolled up and her left hand holding a dead rabbit by the ears.
Lexie’s breath caught in her throat. She tugged the hem of her sweatshirt over the knife, as though she had something to hide.
She forgot the apology she had rehearsed as she lay in bed each night. She struggled to quiet her mind, focusing instead on Archer’s hair as it framed her face, the way her hips moved as she left the protection of the forest, and her strong fingers clutching at the rabbit. Her grip on its ears raised its eyebrows in a comical expression, even as the rest of it hung morbidly like a half-stuffed toy animal.
“What are you doing here?” Lexie asked.
A smile curled at Archer’s lips. “You’re in my backyard.” She gestured down the river to where it bent and escaped the tree line, beyond which sat her cabin. Lexie relaxed and smiled at her dumb luck.
“Hungry?” Archer said finally, presenting the rabbit.
“God, yes,” Lexie sighed.
“Excellent.”
The cabin was beautiful, like a hand-made extension of the forest itself. Lexie hadn’t gotten a good look at it when she fled after her last visit. Now as they walked along the riverbank as it cut through the meadow separating the cabin from the forest she could appreciate the whole place: It was a simple cottage, made of stacked Douglas fir logs that reached sharp, perfect corners. On the second floor, where the roof reached an apex above Archer’s sleeping loft, redwood shingles covered the outer walls. The windows were paned and shuttered, the glass uneven and cloudy, as though centuries old. A simple eaved porch extended from the side door, the planks of which were splattered with dozens of muddy bare footprints. A pair of dirty work boots sat next to a sea-grass welcome mat. Just beyond the porch, a chopping block of a stump held an ax, its blade buried in a cleft on the surface. A simple woodshed held stacked logs and an array of hanging tools, hand braided fishing nets, and half-finished furniture projects.
The inside was more familiar, but no less lovely: the rough logs forming walls, the propane tank speckled with rust aside the stove, the deep tin sink, the foraged herbs drying against the window. On the counter sat two plates, two mugs, and some jars that Lexie assumed doubled as glasses. Lexie saw little food anywhere except for a pair of apples and a bunch of carrots that sat alone on the counter. The window above the sink was cracked, and thick dust caked the sill. It looked as though this cabin had been
abandoned for years, and was just now receiving a second chance at life.
Lexie wandered through the room, breathing in the memories of the previous month. Her eyes grazed the fireplace, and a shiver of delicious remembrance swirled through her body. She placed her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself. As soon as the pleasant memories flooded her nerve cells, the blood and screams replaced them. Lexie wanted to share the events of the prior night, if only to dispel their horror, like the voicing of a nightmare. But she did not yet have the words to ask for absolution. Instead she sought to dispel her overwhelm with idle chatter.
“Is it weird not living in a modern place?” Lexie asked.
“Modern, how? Like having . . . ?”
“Heat?”
“I have heat. I have a fireplace and a stove.”
“Hot water?”
“I prefer cold water.”
“Even for showers?”
“I bathe in the river.”
“What?!”
“What?” Archer said with a chuckle.
“How do you not die? It must freeze over in the winter.”
“In the winter I take showers,” Archer grinned.
“Good lord.”
An awkward silence fell. Lexie worried she had insulted Archer when she was just flirting. She would stop flirting.
Archer broke the silence. “I would love a washing machine.”
“What?”
“I would. I swear I’d twirl around like one of those housewives from commercials in the fifties. High heels, polka dot dress and everything. I would be thrilled to have a washing machine.”
“Fascinating.”
“That I hate doing laundry?”
“No. The image of you twirling in a kitchen, wearing high heels.”
“Fair enough,” Archer laughed, throwing the rabbit carcass on the countertop and filling a pot with water.
“I’m a little embarrassed,” Archer admitted. “I usually try not to greet pretty girls with a dead animal in my hand.” She moved gracefully through the kitchen and pulled out a knife and cutting board.
“I was the one crashed out in the middle of the woods,” Lexie shrugged. With her admission, she prayed that Archer wouldn’t ask why.
“You can be embarrassed for both of us then,” Archer teased.
Lexie studied the birch ladder ascending near the front door to a loft above their heads. “Is that where you sleep?” Lexie asked, gesturing above.
“Sometimes,” Archer answered, deftly carving crimson bracelets onto the forelegs of the rabbit with the tip of a knife. She wiped her mouth with her forearm.
Lexie poked around the room, sidestepping the guilt and giddiness. She removed her sweatshirt and knife, placing them both near the hearth. Lexie ran her fingers over her indented flesh where the hilt had dug in during the night.
“What happened to your sheepskin?” Lexie asked, noting its absence.
Archer ignored the question.
“Wow,” Lexie said after another silence, as Archer slid the rabbit flesh off the muscle. “That smells delicious.”
Archer chuckled. “I haven’t even started cooking it yet.”
Lexie stared out the window to the backyard, watching the trees bend with the afternoon breeze. “Do you own these woods back here?”
“In a way,” Archer answered.
“Can we go on a hike after we eat?”
“I was going to suggest the very same thing,” Archer replied, lighting the stove with a match.
The space between them was alive and invigorating, like the air after a violent storm. They entered the woods beyond Archer’s back yard, just where the river narrowed and bent south toward Wolf Creek. The sky was yellow and her belly was full. The rabbit meat wrestled happily in her guts and made her want to bound and leap and do rabbit-like things. She bounced from rock to rock like a child as they ducked through the underbrush of the young part of the forest and headed into the old wood, remembering her youth and how much time she’d spent using the woods as her playground.
The sun’s oblong rays streaked the forest in swaths of color. The two women walked in silence, save for the damp pine needles squishing like bedsprings beneath their steps.
Lexie had never been in these woods before, but she knew ones like it just down the river. She had grown up in them; her neighbors earned their livings from these trees. There was something strange, then, in the unfamiliarity of this forest. It had a richer smell--damp, like soil, dead leaves, and rainwater. The river rushed loudly, emboldened by the month’s many rains. She smelled the musk of the creatures that made their homes in the trees and dens within the forest’s perimeter: deer, lynx, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, and innumerable birds. Growing up, she would wander in the woods for hours, but she could never taste the air then like she did now, nor could she guess where the timid animals hid. Now, the smallest rustle of a creature made her ears tickle.
“Is it the equinox?” Lexie asked over her shoulder as she leapt from a felled tree trunk. Deciding to try flirting again halfway into her landing, she chose not to turn back to look at Archer, attempting a coy maneuver.
“Yes,” Archer said, grinning at Lexie’s playfulness. “How did you know?”
“The moon isn’t up yet, and the sun’s already setting,” Lexie said. “Are we going to be okay, getting back in the dark?”
Archer took a leap off a low granite wall, landing next to Lexie and taking her hand. “I know these woods really well.”
Sizzles of joy ran up the fibers of muscle in Lexie’s arm, as though all her feelings for Archer were now wrapped up along these muscles, tingling and tensing.
“I know,” Lexie said. “Just making sure. The wolves . . .” Another flash of broken flesh on stone, and Lexie shook her head to fight the memory back.
Archer stopped her, squeezing her hand tightly, fingers interlaced.
“Understand me,” she said, looking into Lexie’s eyes. “I would never take a risk like that with you.”
Lexie shrank even as warmth flooded her chest. “Okay,” she replied.
“These are my woods. We’re safe.” There was pride in Archer’s voice, and power. Lexie knew it was true.
They slowed. The web of Lexie’s fingers delighted in the attention they received from Archer’s, their hands interwoven. Occasional leaves fell from the trees like a sparse snowfall. Yellow and curled, they drifted in feathery arcs to the ground. A soft rustle accompanied each landing, and the trees seemed to sigh with the release of their shriveled burdens, each loss strengthening them. Archer’s and Lexie’s feet crunched over these leavings. Lexie’s ears tickled with each step.
Archer swung her head to indicate the direction they were headed. “C’mon. We’re close.”
“Close to what?”
“We’d better hurry.”
Their pace quickened as Archer led Lexie onto a rough deer path, over scrub brush, dead branches, and exposed roots. Archer’s increased pace set Lexie off her footing at first, but she recovered, learning what balance felt like coming through the bottoms of her feet. Through the rubber soles of her sneakers, she could feel the subtle adjustments the bones of her feet made as she stepped, for balance and momentum. Each small contour of the ground pressed into her foot. She had never felt so balanced on two legs before. Lexie thought back to the Full Moon Tribe, how awkward she felt dancing with Archer while surrounded by graceful and coordinated dancers. Lexie had felt gangly in comparison, all flailing limbs and jerky hips.
Lexie, her eyes on her feet, stopped walking. She wondered if this grace was a new development or just a new realization, like noticing she was speaking loudly in a freshly silent room.
Archer turned. “You cold?”
“No. I’m fine,” Lexie said, puzzled by that as well. She wasn’t cold, though she left her sweatshirt, along with the knife, back in the cabin and now hiked in her plain white tee. She exhaled and watched her breath swell about her face in a cloud. She should be cold--she was al
ways cold--but now she wasn’t.
Archer stepped towards her. “We’re almost there. I have a surprise for you.”
“More surprising than a dead rabbit?” Lexie joked.
“And a delicious stew. Yes, I believe so,” Archer replied, laughing.
She placed a hand on Lexie’s shoulder and led her through a small hole in the brush. They emerged into a natural cathedral. Soaring spruces with trunks like steeples shredded the waning sunlight into narrow shafts, running at severe angles between the earth and sky. A cliff thirty feet tall walled in the clearing, and more sun-licked firs stood atop it. A blanket of leaves, soft orange and crusty brown, layered the ground. Beneath them, a padding of pine needles inches deep silenced the deadfall of Archer and Lexie’s footsteps. Archer led Lexie to the river, quieter here, meandering like a crone brook, lazy and wide. Archer put her hand into the water, pulling a cup-full to her mouth.
Lexie leaned over the water with a wary look in her eyes, forgetting her own eagerness for the river water this afternoon. She grimaced as she tried to sort the constant battle of lust and logic grappling in her head.
“I’ll be okay. Hearty constitution,” Archer said, slapping her chest with a thud, like a gorilla.
“Archer,” Lexie said, finally feeling the need and the words for the apology. “I feel strange, like I might be going a little crazy.” She lowered herself to her knees, pressing her palms into the mud of the bank.
“Go on,” Archer nudged, like coaxing a fawn to take her first steps. Lexie hadn’t thought this part out and had no prepared words to explain herself. Archer’s silence prodded her. Here was a friend, eager to be of service as a sympathetic ear, or trusted advisor, or anything else Lexie might need of her. Lexie wasn’t sure what she needed and was even less prepared to ask for it. She wanted to speak, but what would she say? That she witnessed the horrific beating of a man by women who, just hours earlier, Lexie had considered her friends? Or even earlier and somehow more damning, that she had masturbated five times a day since their night together? What about the twilight visions that followed her each night into her dreams? Or that she was falling in love with a woman for the first time in her life, while being drawn to another woman at the same time?