Willing Sacrifice

by Cree Walker

  I narrowed my eyes and made my way to the small square window on the rear wall. I pulled his stuff off the hangers and tossed them out one by one into the watery dirty melting snow, and freezing rain.

  He turned quickly, catching me in the process. "What the hell are you doing, woman?"

  Though I was still stark naked I hitched my chin and shrugged a response of my own before turning and throwing the last shirt through the open window.

  He growled and ran outside, slamming the door as he went. I couldn't help watching him as he stood barefoot in the snow, scooping his wet clothes off the ground. I got dressed quickly and ran to the door and locked it before he returned. There was an exasperated sigh from the other side before he twisted it open against its will, breaking the third doorknob of the day. His face was flushed with anger as he walked through and dropped his load of wet clothes onto the kitchen counter.

  "Go away." I warned. I may not have been able to throw him out physically but I could annoy the hell out of him ’til he left. I tried to ignore that somewhere deep inside I selfishly wanted him to stay but I was going nowhere fast and I’d only pull him down with me. Add this to the fact that I still didn’t know why he was even here and his leaving was the best option.

  He looked up at me and growled. "Without a pack, we die. Where's the dryer?" He snapped.

  I felt a twinge of guilt, "You're going to have to hang them." I pointed to the contraption hanging over the wood stove for clothes to be hung on.

  I watched him work for a while before I decided to help him pin the clothes in place.

  "What do you do for washing?" He eyed the sink as if he already knew the answer. When I didn't bother explaining it to him he shook his head. "Why do you live this way? I understand you've been hurt and all but..." He looked up at me and froze having obviously gone too far. For a second he reminded me of the squirrel, he actually looked scared of me. Someone was coaching this guy, helping him enter my life. He knew way too much about me.

  I let my anger dissolve, reminding myself that he had no way of knowing everything I had gone through. From the books I had read on anger management, the key phrase was always the same. Don't react to your anger, regard it, control it and subdue it.

  "I don't trust the humans,” I answered. “So I can't live among them." I shook a chunk of ice loose from a long sleeved shirt and it landed on the top of the wood stove, bouncing and hissing on the hot surface. "I can't live among the wolves, because I don't trust them either." I pinned the shirt in place. I cleared my throat nervously, "I'm sorry I threw your clothes out the window.” With that sentence I knew I wanted him to stay.

  I realized I didn't know his name. "Maybe this isn't a good place for you." I felt regret at saying that because I was selfish enough to know it was nice to have another person around, and I didn’t know if Jack would try to hurt him too.

  He regarded me before continuing. "So you don't trust your own kind?"

  My face reddened with anger and again I squelched it. I realized he was probably trying to trigger me now; I knew my temper was somewhat legendary.

  "What's your name?" I finally asked him. It made me think of a time I found a stray cat in the park and named him. My foster mother told me that since I had given the cat a name, it belonged to me now. I hoped it didn’t work that way with stray wolves.

  "Gage."

  Wow, sexy name. "How did you know about me?"

  "You weren't all that hard to find." He skirted the question.

  I waited a few long moments before asking anything else. I hoped my silence told him I didn’t believe him. "I think you should tell me how you lost your pack."

  "Are we a pack yet?" He asked barely looking at me. I decided he had a crappy poker face.

  "No, I just want to know before any decisions are made."

  "Then, I'm not going to tell you." He flashed an annoyingly handsome grin.

  "Why not?" I whined.

  "I don't have to." He smirked again.

  "That’s a really dumb answer. What if you're a raging psychopath looking for your next victim?" I considered a Born werewolf from my past, David, and thought that it would be just my luck to end up with another crazy Born werewolf; it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  "I'm not one of them." He answered seriously.

  "I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be advertising that fact if you were." I snapped back.

  "So, how would your interrogation change anything?" He sneered.

  "I am going to be honest with you, Gage. I was married to Jack Coon for a grand total of less than a week before he died. Before that I was imprisoned and tortured by a really sick Born wolf named David. He murdered my family and took Jack from me. Then I was left alone to manage a pack. It didn't take long for me to lose that too. Now I’m exiled. I’m not exactly the most desirable eligible bachelorette.”

  I fiddled with my fingers, pretending to clean my nails. “When I first came to be... as I am, I assumed the animal in us would override the lesser human instinct to conquer and destroy. I was wrong and I don't want to the play political games any longer because they are just a really immoral carbon copy of a monarchy, hiding behind a labyrinth of bureaucratic bullshit that no one can really follow because as soon as you start to figure out what's going on, they change the rules of the game and call it a revised political directive." I paused for breath and glared at him some more.

  At this he gently sat down in the only kitchen chair making it squeak under his weight. "Those rules are in place for a reason."

  I smiled sarcastically. "Yes, some of those rules are there for a very good reason, but our Council of Elders hides behind them in order to twist and manipulate the basic concepts of those rules into their own adaptation of them. Power corrupts good men, and at first what begins as a tweaking of the vocabulary of a basic law to suit your current needs, turns into something else and before you know it, everyone who has ever led has tweaked that same law to suit their own needs and in the end it is nothing like it was when it was first developed. We are not ruled by a government of sworn peoples who follow a list of written freedoms and liberties to which they were created. Werewolves never had that option, we are too dangerous but what started out innocent enough has been perverted into a grouping of people who lead for reasons that are their own and they are hardly pure and just. They rule with trepidation and to attain that fear they make examples of those who try and buck their system."

  "So your issue is with the Elders?" He said simply.

  I rolled my eyes and hopped down off the little stool I used for reaching the drying rack. "Yeah, I'm just being paranoid, I guess. It must have been paranoia that killed Jack too."

  I felt him watching me for a long time before he went back to his book and my couch without saying another word.

  After sweeping the floor and adding another log to the fire, I decided to take another nap. Obviously I hadn’t been sleeping very well at night and during the day I did little else. If I wasn’t out running or hunting I was usually sleeping. Gage didn’t ask why I was going to bed at the other end of the couch and I didn’t think he cared so I didn’t bother explaining it to him. Especially since having another person there was the main reason I felt safe enough to sleep. Then I tried to ignore that fun little fact.

  As far as packs went, ours sucked out loud. We both had a whole mess of issues neither of us wanted to talk about and I wasn’t sure but I thought there was more to being a part of a pack than just living together.

  I felt safe though, with him sitting near my feet, reading his book in the warmth from the fire. He was a presence and whether his intentions were selfish or not, I was pretty certain Jack wouldn’t harass me while I slept, not with another person around anyway.

  Chapter Four

  It was dark when I opened my eyes and they were so blurry with sleep I couldn’t see anything, but I felt the tingle of goose bumps crawling over my skin. My body knew something my mind didn’t yet and I waited with my breath
held to find out what it was while my vision cleared along with my sleep fogged brain.

  There was a thick shadow in the corner watching me. It didn’t move at first, as if it was waiting for me to notice its presence. I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body was frozen stiff with panic. It shifted and that now dreaded feeling of static washed over me, starting with the top of my head and working its way down as if a thousand tiny spiders just hatched in my hair. I gulped little sips of air like a fish out of water. Then I screamed as Jack’s amber eyes blinked out at me from the shadows.

  Gage slammed opened the door and flipped on the light simultaneously.

  "I'm sorry I scared you." He said, thinking it had been him who had woken me.

  I shook my head as I looked into the now empty corner of the room. "Where did you go?" I asked as I swallowed hard against my fear.

  "I went for supper."

  "I was having a nightmare." I said looking around the room again.

  Gage was pasty white standing with his hand still on the light switch; his green eyes were bugged out a little and still locked on me. His strong instinct to protect was still responding to my scream, either that or he was scared of me. I swiped at the after shock tears on my face and got up on shaky legs. “I had a bad dream.” I repeated.

  He noticed my hands shaking and he backed out of my way as I walked into the brighter light of the kitchen and pulled plates down from the cupboard.

  “You want some?” He asked as he opened the paper bag he was carrying.

  I nodded absently, my gaze returning to the corner I had seen Jack in. It worried me since he hadn’t shown himself to me before, only in dreams. His attacks while I was awake were always unseen. I fiddled absently with the medallion. Jack was growing stronger.

  “Do you like Chinese?” Gage pulled the Styrofoam container out and put it on the small section of counter I had for preparing food.

  “I have a car parked just on the main road.” He explained, scraping some of the Chinese food into a small pot on the cook top of the wood stove to reheat it. I watched his hands work and realized how much I missed being around them. How much I missed how they moved and how they smelled like the woods.

  I watched him and considered whether it would truly be so bad to have another person around. So much for being independent, I already had my new recruit cooking for me. He offered me a plate of fried rice and beef. I took it and tried to smile before perching my butt on the narrow sill of the window next to the stove.

  I took a breath to ask him a question but stopped… I didn’t know if he’d think I was crazy so I just stuffed my half open mouth with dry rice and went through the mechanics of chewing and swallowing.

  “What book are you reading?” I asked pointing my fork at the paperback on the couch.

  “The Guardian, by John Saul,” He shoveled a heaping forkful of rice into his mouth and swallowed without chewing.

  “I like that book.” I played with the plate of rice and pretended to eat it. “Do you like it?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else except to point his fork at my plate, indicating that I eat. He didn’t talk much, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t like me or if it was because he was hiding something. Either way, who was I to judge?

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I blurted out.

  His eyes shot up to look at me with the fork halfway to his open mouth. “What?”

  "Well, Jack told me before he died that we don't leave this earth, that we just sort of – remain here, stuck."

  He put his plate down and stood up straight with a totally serious expression on his face. "You weren't raised as a wolf, no matter how I tell you the story you won't understand."

  I shook my head, and chewed hard on my bottom lip. “Bad dreams.” I said as explanation.

  “What about your dreams?” He asked truly interested now.

  I shook my head again. “I just have nightmares about him dying, or sometimes he's alive and hiding from me. Or sometimes he attacks me.” I kept the part about Jack kicking my ass while I was awake to myself.

  “When did it start?” Gage crossed his thick arms over his chest and I watched as the muscles of his forearms strained with the movement. God I had it bad. The first wolf I lay eyes on since being tossed out of the pack and I wanted to dry hump his leg like an ill-behaved poodle in heat.

  I shrugged.

  “Do you want my help or not?” He asked in a no nonsense tone.

  I tried to regain my train of thought. “The dreams started the night he died.” I finally answered.

  “Do you think it might be trauma?”

  “Sometimes I think I’m just losing my mind.”

  He didn’t answer me at first; making me think he might agree. “We don't normally have to deal with grief on this level." He shook his head. "Give it a little longer before you get too worried, okay?"

  His look of pity triggered my defenses. "Why are you even here? Can't you see I'm broken?" Before he could speak I continued. "I've got nothing to give you here. I don't have a pack, or the strength to lead one. I just exist." I swiped at more tears and wondered when I would finally run out of them. He watched me with that same look of pity on his face and I didn't even have the energy to argue; I was pathetic. I was just a shadow of who I used to be.

  His face changed and he seemed to consider something; with a look of resolve he sighed before speaking. “I was sent here to find you and take you back.”

  Though I wasn’t all that surprised I felt a rush of heat darken my face. “By whom? You clearly know more about me than I know about you and I want to know why.”

  He watched me for a moment considering again. “Jack’s grandmother sent me.”

  “Elder Coon,” I asked. I was feeling sick but this time it had to do with past demons, not current ones.

  He nodded sharply. “She wants you to regain control of your pack.”

  “She’s the reason I’m not in the pack. She’s the reason Jack is dead. Now she wants to repent? It’s too late; I lost the pack fair and square. I’m sure she can jimmy the Challenges in her favor and find the perfect Alpha if she’s unhappy with the current one.” I wanted to tell him to leave, after entering my home on false pretenses and then finding out he was working for the enemy, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be alone with my nightmares, more than I hated the fact that he had lied to me.

  “Sugar, you don’t know the whole story.” He glared and his own face reddened with anger. “She has to follow what the majority of the Council votes. She’s not running the Elders single-handedly.”

  “Your precious Council.” I spat like an angry kitten. “You’re just another meat puppet, like Jack had been. He put all his faith and loyalty into that Council and its wise Elders, and look what it got him; they bled him dry. They turned on him the first time he stepped out of line. They didn’t like the idea of mixing the bloods.” I shook my head in pity. “They are all a bunch of stupid, ignorant, self serving bastards!” The last part came out as an angry scream.

  The muscles of his jaw twitched. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have been a part of this race for only a couple of years, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean they are corrupt.”

  I pointed at my chest and leaned forward. “I will remind you only once. I was Born of this race. What I don’t understand is how they left me and my bitten pack to die under the hand of a madman that they created with their own closed-minded rules. David was a Born wolf who became insane because of the incest, and when they didn’t do their job and take care of him, he ran away and killed my family! I asked for help but because I was considered by your beloved Council to be a bitten wolf they turned up their noses and left me and my pack for dead. I think I understand perfectly; they need me now. Otherwise they would happily be rid of me, but for some reason or another they need me and I’m supposed to roll over and beg? I know we don’t know each other very well, but I will tell you this much, I don’t
beg to anyone.”

  Gage didn't move away from the wall and the lack of emotion on his face reminded me just how mad I really was. "Get the fuck out of my house." I pointed at the door. If Jack came for me now he’d be surprised at how ready for a fight I was.

  Again Gage didn't move with a stubborn set to his shoulders.

  "Gage whatever your last name is; I enter you into my pack, now get out. I need time to think."

  He pushed away from the wall looking smug and pissed all at the same time. The door slammed behind him and echoed in the nearly empty room reminding me that I was again alone. I surveyed my feelings, something I had learned from my books. If you can organize your emotions and the cause of those emotions then you don't need to fly into a rage. I breathed and thought them through: betrayal, old and new, and anger, an old familiar friend, caused by betrayal. Sadness, over learning I had failed my pack... then there was one tiny emotion that I had learned to pretty much eliminate over the past fifteen months...hope. I had another chance to be with my family, my exile was coming to an end. I would accept the Council’s request but I was going to make them beg for it; between us we had a little unfinished business to attend to.

  Sudden fear gripped my heart at the very thought of leaving my home and territory. I hadn’t been anywhere since I had visited the old Priest. It seemed that every time I tried to live with others something always backfired. I thought of Gage and how good it felt to be near another like myself. Maybe I had underestimated the effect my self-confinement actually had on me. I decided I would wait. If things went okay with Gage, in a month or so, I would reevaluate whether I should leave or not. Then maybe I would be ready… but not now. If Elder Coon was so keen on having me back home, she could damned well wait for it.

  I walked to the bathroom and felt my world starting to tilt at an impossible angle. I realized too late that nothing was wrong with my vision; I was falling. The last thing I remembered was the sharp pain behind my head as I lost my battle with gravity and my head bouncing off the small bathroom sink with a sickening hollow thud.