by Allison Moon
After her humiliation waned, she took to spending more time in human form; for some reason it made her less lonely. The human body better fit a solitary life. Arms could bathe the whole body; fingers could navigate all the challenges of existence. With human hands, she could enjoy holding books and building fires, chopping wood and making art. She could have conversations with other humans; even strangers engaged in conversation with one another as a matter of course. It was not family, it wasn’t even intimate, but it salved the ever-weeping wound of her solitude.
After thousands of lonely days, Archer grew to enjoy the solitude, no longer crying when she heard her sistren howling together in the distance. She acclimated to a life with no home and no family, losing her drive to rut and sire pups. She learned to live as a migrant, loving the life so many humans pined for, one with no responsibilities nor ties to place or schedules.
Tonight, the air was cool enough for her to see her breath. The night was clear with no recollection of the storm clouds that had threatened the day. Stepping into the night, Archer was assaulted by a vision of her lost mate, Natalee, standing naked in the dark. Of a blessed night years ago, when they had found a hot spring in the cliffs near the ocean. They bathed and made love, their movements sending the water bubbling over smooth stones, cascading down the cliffside as it had done for ages, feeding the vast, black ocean. Natalee had gotten out of the natural tub and stood in the moonlight, ineffable wings of steam rising from her body like her soul ascending. Her skin was as white as the moon, a cold angel.
It was the first time Archer remembered a sensation so strong as love filling her. Her heart nearly burst with the effort necessary to catch all of Natalee’s beauty. After Natalee died, after Archer fled, she never expected to feel that swell again.
She’d been wrong. The second time she felt it was when she watched Lexie battle her terror and win after the attack at the mountain. In the moonlight, Lexie had looked so young. Her mouth and ears were too big for her body, an indication of more growth to come. Yet something about her seemed wearier than when Archer had first seen her, outside her decimated room. A heaviness dragged her shoulders as Lexie stood unknowingly on the cusp of irreversible changes, her meager softness soon to erode into the feral form of a wild animal.
A chill of recognition danced up her spine, the memory of feeling love for a small, fragile thing caught up in a complicated world. Archer bit her lip, recalling the following morning in the treehouse, when Lexie looked at Archer with clear eyes and was unafraid, when she opened her body for Archer to crawl inside. Smiling amid the loss, Archer felt a pang of guilt, that she let Lexie crawl inside her heart, replacing Natalee there, if only for a moment.
But Archer needed too much and fought too hard. She always fought too hard. And now Lexie had pushed her away.
Archer grabbed the ax leaning against the door and set to work on the woodpile, hoping that a stoked hearth would entice Lexie back into her life tonight and every night for the rest of their lives. She cleaved the pile of raw logs, stacking them into piles for burning. The rhythm of the ax soothed her. With each inhalation, she choked her grip, pulled the tool down by her shins, swung it back behind her body, and to the apex of her reach. It hung there on her full breath. With a whooshing exhalation, she brought the blade down to the wood with a satisfying crack, splitting it cleanly and efficiently. Placing another log on its end on the stump, she repeated the process, over and over, until her mind untangled from the memories of women, betrayals, shame, and the anxieties that bound them all.
She split the entire pile twice before taking a moment to rest. She dropped the ax by her feet and caught her breath, happy for the brief distraction. As she inhaled, a hint of the strange tickled her nose. She stilled, tuning her ears to the woods. Something at the edge of the forest was trying to be quiet. A footpad eased to the ground, crumpling the leaves and needles beneath it. The breeze drifted toward Archer, carrying the clues she sought. She snuffed at the air, dissecting it for the odor that piqued her senses, finding the answer in the form of a female werewolf stalking in the dark. Archer’s neck prickled in an echo of her wolf pelt.
“Blythe?” she called. The stalker froze. Archer waited, then allowed the first bits of fur to fluff and teeth to point, the first glimmer of a change. The shadowed wolf turned with a rustle of needles. Heedless of sound and scent, she dashed into the woods.
The sweat on Archer’s body chilled her as the breeze danced on her flesh. She stacked the wood, put the ax over her shoulder and walked into the cabin. She was unsure of the days to come, the events that would unfurl, and her place in it all. She wanted to run to Lexie, to run to her pack, and straighten out whatever warped situation was brewing. Only, it was out of her hands. She only had one job now. She had to make amends for her prior failures by protecting what was still hers, regardless of what old alliances were severed in the process.
Chapter 20
Lexie’s arm was nearly healed by the time she turned off the truck’s engine at the edge of the forest. Her new body seemed to take joy in surprising her. She shook her head at the wonder of it all.
Early morning light dripped through denuded trees, preparing to burn through everything. Frost dusted the edges of the leaves on the ground, cracking loudly as Lexie stepped across them. It had been more than thirty hours since the attack, and Duane was still missing. In the stillness of the woods, Duane’s lingering scent filled her head like a ribbon of light, showing her the way. It told her that he ran, at first in circles, trying to stay out of the range of the raging beast as it swiped and ripped at his friends.
She found him at the base of a tree outside the ring of the campground. Perhaps he’d fallen on his back as he fended off the animal. Next, a scuff of paw prints, a distraction, and his chance. He leapt up and grabbed a lower branch of the tree. His athleticism saved him here; paired with his adrenaline, his vertical jump allowed him to reach the lowest branch, but just barely. Blood and skin and a snapped fingernail adorned the scraped bark where he’d clung for his life on this branch. He’d pulled himself up and continued climbing. The werewolf hadn’t pursued: no claw gashes in the trunk, no broken branches. Duane climbed to a higher branch, then held fast.
Lexie climbed to this safe house, nestled in the crook between a tall branch and the trunk. The tree smelled strongly of his sweet and musky sweat. She peered through the branches to the clearing below. Duane had earned a front-row seat to the carnage. Below, the ground was crusted with blood where Michael was torn in two. Just beyond, where the tent had stood, the wolf killed Brian. No more than a few yards further, it rent Kevin apart. Duane hovered above, like a squirrel in a tree, awaiting his destruction. Saline here, tears. Duane had stayed for a while, clinging to this tree. His scent lingered as he sobbed over the corpses of his friends. Lexie dropped back to the ground and sniffed, sussing out the wolf’s next move. There was none. The wolf left. It didn’t kill Duane. It only made him watch.
Duane had climbed down, dropping as lightly as he could manage onto the soft soil--footprints so faint it was no wonder everyone had missed them. Then, he ran north. Lexie ran, too, following his scent. He was heading back to campus. Then, he changed course, turning east, towards Wolf Creek, towards home. Once away from the clearing, the footprints deepened, the stink of sweat grew stronger. Duane had run as if being pursued, if only by a nightmare. She came upon the river, frigid, deep, and slow. His scent trail ended here.
Lexie took a deep breath, trying to settle her mind to prepare for a leap. She couldn’t say she was quite used to her new body yet, and she backed up from the shore to get a running start. She leapt, landing in the shallows on the other edge of the bank. Her feet sank deep in the cold mud, soaking her boots, while she prayed his scent would continue here. She crawled out, feeling the panic that Duane must have felt, the fear he must still be feeling now. She breathed deep and desperate. Apples.
She ran for another twenty minutes, which must have been close to forty for Du
ane, when she stumbled into a manufactured clearing. Decapitated stumps stood in a broad arc at the edge of the forest. Acres around was mud, thick, brown and dead; the bones of trees long destroyed; and the sleeping machinery of destruction, red and rusty, like caked blood. It was brighter here, the morning sun refracting off a million edges of cloud, the light white and painful. Steel blades sat hibernating, disguising their fiendish nature behind a chilly, still silence. This place was a human outpost in the war against the wild.
Knowing Duane was near, Lexie tread carefully now, unwilling to blunder in and send him deeper into his nightmare.His scent trail led her to the mill house, through a broken window, jagged pane still sticky with blood. The mill was out of use, at least by the woodsmen. Graffiti scarred the brick walls.
Lexie peered into the gloomy building, as dark as the bare field was bright. The roof was high above, corrugated steel, through which needle-like shafts of sunlight drained in, casting wafting motes of dust as glowing embers. More sleeping steel sat in this space, all teeth and rust, jagged edges and spiderwebs. Sawdust covered the cement floor, inches thick in places. Broken beer bottles piled in the corner. Burnt paper and plastic sat in filthy heaps. The space smelled of charred wood, oil, and iron. Far across the room, from behind a pile of stacked pallets, Lexie heard a tiny whimper.
She approached the corner, dust tickling her sinuses, her eyes adjusting to the low light. Duane clenched in the shadow of the tower of pallets, curled on his side. He clutched his knees to his chest, his fingers digging into his flesh as if clinging the edge of a cliff. Lexie crept closer, and though she stopped right in front of him, he didn’t seem to notice her. He squinted as though he was staring into the sun.
His face twisted into a sobbing grimace, though he had long run out of tears. Blood and dirt smeared his face, streaked where tears had cut their paths. Lexie squatted in front of him and whispered his name softly. He didn’t respond.
“Duane,” she whispered again, gingerly reaching her hand to his shoulder. He did not flinch as she had expected; rather, he whimpered like an abused dog. Through his shirt, his skin felt chilly, belying the life scared stiff beneath its surface. He reminded Lexie of a child, so fragile, nearly broken, pieces of his psyche scattered like his friends’ limbs. His body was cold, but he did not shiver; his muscles were clenched as if he were already dead. Lexie watched his ribcage heave wildly and irregularly, his heart struggling to break free from his chest. His breath was shallow and sharp, as if he were still being pursued.
Lexie needed to warm him up, to find him water. She wished for a moment that Archer was here, her massive furry body to use for warmth, but she realized that the last thing Duane needed to see was a wolf.
She wouldn’t be able to move him until his shattered mind regained a sense of equilibrium, and that wouldn’t happen until he calmed down. A deep sadness expanded in her, an empathy for his broken mind. She moved slowly to Duane’s back, keeping her hand on him as she would a spooked animal, whispering the only platitudes she knew. Shhhhh. I’m here. You’re safe now. Everything will be okay.
Draping her arms around his broad back, Lexie lay down, curling her legs and body around his, following his form with hers. She wished she were bigger, so she could envelop him entirely. The scent of apples and tears swirled in her nostrils, as she whispered inches from his ear. Her warmth penetrated him, the banded muscles of his back unclenching. She caressed his skin like a lover, a mother, a healer. Shhhhhh. Duane. I’m here. You’re safe now. Everything will be okay.
Chapter 21
It was late afternoon before Lexie’s thoughts flickered back to Archer. Duane was safe, his family on a plane somewhere over Alberta, and his shattered mind quieted with heavy sedatives. Lexie reclined in the cab of her truck drifting in and out of consciousness with a head full of Archer and an apology on her lips. It seemed as though her whole life were becoming a series of flights and reunions. Lexie didn’t want to run anymore.
She had parked in Archer’s driveway and found her cabin empty. The cold light filtered through her dirty windshield as she wondered whether or not to track Archer, presumably to their treehouse. She caught her reflection in the rearview mirror and sighed, looking worse than after even her most brutal bout of insomnia. Her eyes were bloodshot, and dark circles outlined the hollows of their sockets. Fine lines spread like cobwebs from the corners of her eyes. Her skin felt tight and her jaw ached from clenching, driving bolts of pain into her skull. She had aged decades in one night.
With a groan, Lexie opened the door of her truck and inhaled the crisp, cold air of the impending winter. The full moon wasn’t far off, a couple of hours maybe. Lexie cursed the longer nights. Archer’s day-old scent traced a faint path into the woods. Its familiarity eased the trauma of the previous evening, and all she wanted was to hold her lover again and disappear from the past and the future, to stay in the simplicity of unfettered love. But that was an illusion, no more real than the hallucinations that crept in her peripheral vision.There was no such thing as unfettered love; each simple, elegant moment that Lexie tried to sear into her memory would soon fade into the morass of irrelevance. What would she find on the other side of this frenzied love affair other than the mundanity of daily life and a commitment to a woman so much older than herself? Archer no longer had an interest in college life, in world travel, in adventures and eager exploration of the world. She had done it all and seen more. Now, all Archer wanted was a family. What to Archer was solace, success, a reward earned by fighting so hard for so long, felt to Lexie like a collar. Though Lexie had once thought she wanted the same, her father’s confession made her realize it wasn’t a dream but an excuse, an easy way of filling the hole her mother left in her life when she walked out. Adding more people into the mix merely occluded the pain, making her feel less easily abandoned. What would it feel like to be alone and simultaneously complete? That was what Lexie wanted to know.
Lexie felt a fleeting sympathy for her mother, then. Did she suffer the same realization, only too late, when she had a husband and child tethering her in place? The ambivalence Lexie felt toward her mother translated to her unwillingness to follow Archer. She could turn the ignition and drive to her father’s house right now, leaving this all behind. She could turn south on I-5 and drive until she hit San Francisco. She could disappear. Run away, a voice like her mother’s whispered in her head. You can always run away. The choice was there, but the freedom wasn’t. She wondered how much more death she would have to know before this nightmare would be over and her real life could begin. Then she shuddered and wondered if this, in fact, was her real life.
Three boys were dead, and it was a mystery Lexie needed to solve. Realizing that Archer knew even less than she did herself, Lexie locked the doors of her truck and walked into the woods, heading north to the Den.
Chapter 22
“Finally!” Hazel shouted as she saw Lexie approach along the sidewalk. She jumped from her seat on the front porch. “Come on!”
“What’s going on?”
“We found him! We found the werewolf that killed those boys!” She grasped Lexie by the wrist and yanked with the full weight of her body, wrenching Lexie through the house, out the back door, down the steps and into the woods.
Lexie didn’t need to ask; she knew where they were headed.
At the sloping cave with the iron door, Lexie stopped. Hazel was impatient. “Come on!” She yanked at her wrist.
“Hey. Cool it.” Lexie glared at Hazel and wrenched her hand away.
“Ow!” Hazel said. She rubbed her hands together and pouted. “We did this for you, you know.” Hazel ran to the door and eased herself in.
Lexie breathed deep, detecting a melange of scents from the nighttime forest. She smelled herself and noticed her scent had changed. A rhythm, a cycle, perhaps. Or maybe she was indeed changing even further, into something beyond girl or werewolf. She could no longer say that she would be surprised. About that, about anything.
&
nbsp; Lexie turned in a circle, glancing to the west, to the edge of the continent, and then to the south, where she would find the treehouse, and perhaps Archer, pacing silently, waiting for her lover to return. Then she looked to the east, where her father was likely lying slack-jawed and medicated in front of the nightly news. She returned to the north to stare at the iron door and listen to the muffled voices behind it.
The girls expected her to kill whatever was chained behind that door. That she knew. She let her fingers graze the hilt of her mother’s knife. She wondered if, when the time came, she could do it. She had no answer to that question, so she let it swirl unaltered in her mind as the rusty door stared back at her. With a deep breath, she slipped inside.
Inside, the smell was as musky and filthy as she remembered. A young man sat bound to a chair, naked but for his shorts. Lexie recognized him as a student, but that was where her familiarity with him ended. His lean shoulders slumped forward, and his head hung heavy on his neck. A simple blindfold barred his eyes, as though this would protect anyone. If he were truly a werewolf, the blindfold neither hid the girls’ identities nor compromised his ability to attack. Yet, he sat still and calm. The girls stood in a ring around the perimeter of the cave. A dirty lantern hung from a rusty chain. Each movement from the girls set it swinging, shifting shadows on the rock walls.
Renee hung back, pressing herself into the rock and looking as though she wanted to disappear. Blythe was absent. Without either of those women leading the rest, a frenetic energy ruled the space.