The werewolf of lowest ranking looked to Dark Staff.
“But, my lord, if it fails,” she was saying. “If the girl proves less bendable than we’d hoped. Perhaps it is well to have a back-up plan in which we break her.” The omega looked down submissively as she spoke.
The old werewolf looked at the female with some disdain. “You know the mighty Grey metal that holds so much power over most of our kind. The humans know that to shape it, it must be heated, purified, refined, molded, and then bent. To crack and break it will never form it into the tools and weapons they wish it to be. I have spent a lifetime bending humans. They are really quite pliable, my dear, and so much more useful as such. To break them is so untidy. And then they are gone before we can enjoy their full use. Think of the girl’s mother, think how helpful it would have been to have her here.”
“I was glad to see her broken,” the omega murmured.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the other female snapped. “She could have been useful. There are others much more important to break. Like she who, even as her bones stoop and her breath thins, can shift both winds and fate.” The beta looked to the staff and then her scar. “She has done much wrong to our kind.”
“My dears,” Dark Staff said softly. “We break who we must when we must. But we shouldn’t be reckless. To be so is to become as foolish as the Rogue, who endangers our cause with his carelessness.” He scowled briefly over the treetops and Sam held his breath.
“The humans,” he said, turning back to the omega. “They resist breaking, fight against it. But if we can raise the temperature gradually, soften them up and then gently, but surely, ply them to the shapes we need. Well, then they seem hardly intelligent enough to notice, much less resist. She will come. And she will come gladly. You yourself will see to that.”
The omega nodded meekly.
“Now let us celebrate our coming Change.”
Into five golden chalices, he poured a dark burgundy liquid. Each werewolf took a glass, raised it to the moon, and then—instead of drinking the liquid, threw it to the fires, which burst into explosions of red flame that shot into the sky.
The five of them linked their long-clawed fingers together around the stone altar, forming a dark star of black silhouettes—a chain of demons.
The smoke made Sam feel dizzy. It clouded the sky and his thoughts. He took a step back, pressed against a thin branch. It broke, tumbling down to where the cat had been. She was gone.
In the distance, Sam felt the wolves turn a collective face to him. Which was odd. They couldn’t have heard him—that one broken branch separated from all the sounds of the wood. Yet they were clumping together, forming a mass, ready to move. The mottled sentinel sniffed at the air—a deep breath inward, consuming.
Sam did not wait. He jumped from tree to tree—light like a bird, fast as a panther. Hawks rose up, startled in their perches. He sprang forward out of the wood, over the fence, and through the trailer park. Away from the ugliness—the ugliness of the wood with its black smoke and blood howls; and away from the ugliness of the south side—with its peeling paint and tornado-vacant lots.
Instead, he ran to the one thing of beauty he could be sure he wanted to see.
The senator dragged to the little desk in her hotel room, exhausted. She’d been up all night. Not that she really wanted to go to bed on a night like this, with the moon so full it hurt to look at it. She always felt safe when she was with Napper, but now, adding some finishing touches to a bill he’d asked her to write, she was ready to crawl into bed. Dawn couldn’t come soon enough.
As soon as the silver shootings had started, she’d hired two bodyguards. They stood outside of her room. The guards did not make her feel safe exactly, but she assumed that she would at least hear a scuffle if they were attacked.
She assumed wrong.
The senator sensed the presence as soon as she stood up. “Who are you?” she asked, not turning or moving.
No one answered, yet on that night when the moon hung fat, her senses were heightened and she could hear every sound, including the calm, even breaths of the silver shooter. She could also smell. Fire—the shooter smelled like fire.
The senator moved more quickly than seemed possible, trying to lash out at the killer, but before she could turn, the round barrel of the old gun was against her temple, pressed cold into her skin.
“You will not even give me the chance for an honest fight?” the senator asked.
“A fair fight was not given to me. Only to them whom we claim to despise,” the shooter said sweetly.
The voice. It was too impossible.
“But I’m afraid that even if I wanted to,” the shooter continued, “I haven’t got time for fairness right now, as I have other important business to attend to tonight. I’m sure you understand.”
The senator turned suddenly, pulling away from the gun, hoping to lunge at the traitor, but her attacker moved too fast. One shot between the eyes.
By morning her teeth would be gone.
Chapter 42
The light of the full moon throbbed through the gauzy curtains of Ella’s room. She tossed in bed, remembering the voice she thought she’d heard at the farm, how Loco had looked when the door had shut, Foxy’s stump of a foot. It seemed strange for the wolves to attack the dogs, especially if they weren’t after the chickens. In fact, it seemed strange that the wolves were there at all. Why was the movement of their packs changing? And what, on earth, was bringing them here?
As Ella drifted into her dreams she saw her aunt missing tennis ball after tennis ball until finally she lobbed one all the way out of the country club, through a field, and to a wolf, who brought it back playfully.
Ella’s breath caught in her throat as she heard a thump. It woke her. Ella pushed down into her pillow, shifting around and trying to get comfortable. She realized that she was listening for the noise again. Had it been real or just part of her dreaming?
Finally, she got up and went downstairs to get a drink. She turned on the faucet and there it was again—a distinct thump. She turned the water off, silence. She turned it on again, thump.
Something was acting up with the water valve in the basement. Ella had seen her mother mess with noisy valves in some of their rentals. She wondered if she could just go downstairs and adjust it so that she didn’t have to be startled out of bizarre dreams every time Vivi got up to go the bathroom.
Ella walked through the dark to the basement door. She’d only gone down there a handful of times, but she knew the water valve was in a corner near a small window. She held up her phone with its blue glow and felt her way down the wooden unfinished stairs. It got colder as she went down.
At the bottom, she clicked through her apps, trying to find the flashlight. When she did, it beamed on without much more light than the screen had had.
She scuffled toward the water valve, feeling for a light switch when she heard it again—THUMP. The noise was really loud in the basement.
She shined her light around, her heart beating harder. Had Vivi just turned the water on? Was Vivi even home yet? Was it something else acting up?
Ella hurried toward the water valve, eager to tighten it and make that noise stop. She twisted the valve and heard the noise again. But this time something became clear—the noise had not come from the pipe or the valve.
Someone’s in the house, Ella thought, afraid to move. She crouched down, hardly breathing.
Nothing moved.
Quietly, she held her phone low to the floor, trying to hide its light. She began to dial. 9-1-…. Something kicked her phone—fast as light, quiet as darkness. The phone flew out of her hand.
She gasped and tried to scream, but the intruder clamped his hand over her mouth and started to drag her to the window, which she realized was open. Ella kicked and elbowed the intruder, but he was tall with strong, angular arms that were not big, but still felt like rocks through the dark camo shirt. She couldn’t see his face, which was covered by b
lack pantyhose tied up into a mask, but his hands were lean and long—almost womanly—each nail slender and sharp, though the backs of his hands were covered with hair that extended up part of his fingers.
Until Vivi’s house, Ella had only lived in apartments in bad parts of big towns. She’d heard fights and seen scuffles. But in all those places, she’d never been mugged, touched, or followed.
Here in this sleepy little town, she’d been grabbed twice.
Still holding Ella’s mouth closed, the man in camo banged Ella against the laundry table. She bit his finger. He released her mouth for only an instant before pressing against her nose and mouth harder than before. She could breathe, but it wasn’t easy.
He picked up a rag from the laundry table and quickly wrapped it around her head and across her mouth—creating a gag that tasted like Downy fabric softener. Then he held her arms in front of her, tying them up with sticky, shiny tape.
Ella kicked back—banging her bare foot against his shin. She wasn’t even sure he felt it, though he did toss her up onto the table and tie up her ankles just as quickly as he had her hands. Then the man jumped up to the laundry table—a good four feet—like he was hopping up a step.
The man in camo lifted her up and tossed her through the garden-level window like she was a doll. He followed, shimmying through the tiny window with ease.
Ella didn’t know why in books people always fainted when these things happened. Every nerve in her body felt like it had been shot through with electricity.
Near the curb, she noticed a sleek, black car that she’d never seen in her neighborhood before. Using her bound legs, she tried to drag herself back through the window. Her attacker pulled her up as though she weighed no more than a toddler, then dropped her on the ground like a sack of garbage.
She squirmed to her knees, trying to think of where she could go and how she could get there.
On the road, the car sat with the lights off, but the ignition running—ready to drive away.
Ella’s breaths came in short, intense bursts of panic and energy. Camo Man reached down to lift her up. Ella clawed at the grass, dug dirt deep into her fingernails. The kidnapper jerked her to her feet. Ella let all her weight fall. She tried to be as heavy and useless as she could. Camo Man held up his hand like he was going to hit her, but just then, another stranger jumped from the shadows.
Ella tried to scream, and gagged on her Downy-flavored rag. She let her body go limp. Camo Man was distracted, and let Ella fall to the ground.
The other man stepped slowly toward her attacker. “You must be this Rogue I’ve heard so much about,” he said.
“Must I?” Camo Man replied, his voice a subdued tenor. “It seems that you are more of a rogue than I am—fighting for the weak whom you call your friends.”
“Lives that need protection,” the man replied. His voice was deeper, though muffled by a thick gray mask.
“Lives that don’t deserve protection,” Camo Man said. “The Alpha and I don’t see eye to eye on most things, but we can agree—at least—on that.”
“Which makes it all the more unfortunate that you are both wrong,” the gray-masked man replied.
Ella inched back toward the window—hoping she could drop back in, slam it shut somehow and crawl to her phone. She could still use her fingers to call the police. Her attacker noticed her moving away and grabbed her arm, jerking her up. It hurt, but she hung there, not putting even an ounce of weight into her feet. As she dangled like a rag doll, the other man—the one she thought might be an accomplice—punched her attacker in the face.
Camo Man dropped her. Ella gasped, but that made her gag and cough. She swung her arms up and banged her attacker in the knees. Camo Man knocked Ella down, sending little tingling shots of pain up to her shoulder.
The other man hit her attacker again, but this time Camo Man was ready. Camo Man grabbed the other man’s hand and then slashed out at his throat with those long nails.
Although the other man was wearing a ski mask, a small part of his neck was exposed and Ella could see the long bloody lines Camo Man had made.
With her clumsy taped hands, Ella grabbed at the gag, trying to get the rag out of her mouth.
“Why do you fight it?” Camo Man asked with his high, muted voice. Ella looked up, thinking he was talking to her, but he was looking directly at Gray Mask and advancing slowly. “Our kind must have the girl.”
“Because there is another way.”
Her attacker laughed. “To you there is no way at all—you love the oppressive humans. Your sister—she has married one of them. Produced offspring.”
“I am your kin.”
“You are no kin of mine.” Camo Man swung at the other man’s face and then lunged.
Ella wiggled the gag mostly out of her mouth just as Camo Man came back to her and jerked her up again.
“You will not have her,” Gray Mask said, his voice fierce and low, yet with a tone that struck Ella as familiar.
“If I do not, another will. And—frankly—I’d like to have her my way.”
“Your way will destroy more than you know.”
“My way will restore us all. And without the pretty civility the Alpha wishes to use. A civility that has too much potential to fire back in his face.”
“He has the stone,” the other man said.
“And now I have the girl,” Camo Man replied. “So maybe we can make a deal. What do you have?” Camo Man asked, laughing. “You have nothing.”
“I need nothing,” Gray Mask said. Then with a quick movement he kicked Camo Man in the side, making him crumple to the ground, dropping Ella. She rolled and wormed like a caterpillar toward the window.
“Of course you don’t need anything,” Camo Man said, standing up more quickly than Ella could imagine was possible, considering the way he’d just been kicked. “You don’t even have a dog in the fight.”
The other man laughed. “I have all the dogs in the fight.”
“The dogs are idiots. They have everything to gain—their voices, their stories, their freedom. Still they fight for your cause, loving the humans even more than you do.” Camo Man punched Gray Mask hard in the mouth.
Ella scooted toward the window as the two men fought. Her attacker punched at the gut of the gray-masked man.
Gray Mask did not double over like she expected him to, but jabbed an elbow into the attacker’s neck. “Are you,” Gray Mask said, “going to fight me on two feet like a man?”
Ella swore her attacker smiled through his panty-hose mask. “No,” he said, the word a tight sound in his throat. And then he lunged—using not his two legs, but all four limbs to propel him forward like an animal.
Gray Mask pushed against his body with his shoulders like a wrestler. Ella looked up past the maple tree in her aunt’s yard. The moon was so full, so bright, not a sliver missing.
The attacker was gaining ground—biting and scratching, while the other man, the one Ella began to realize might be there to help her, or at least did not seem to be there to hurt her—stood upright punching and jabbing until the attacker dug his long nails into his shoulders.
Gray Mask howled—almost like a dog, and sank to his knees. When he did, he seemed to grow huge in the moonlight, his eyes dark, his neck and shoulders now shadowed with gray hair. The attacker laughed, and Gray Mask leapt onto him—four limbs like legs, a quick twisting movement, and then a crack. Camo Man howled—a wolf’s howl in her aunt’s backyard. Gray Mask bit at the other’s pantyhose-covered face, then pulled Camo Man’s upper body off the ground and banged it back down.
Camo Man lay there, not moving.
Ella swung her tied legs through the window just as Gray Mask ran for her and another, much closer man’s voice spoke into her ear. Ella felt exhausted and achy, but she could swear it was the same voice she had heard in the corn maze.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said, just as Gray Mask came up and shoved a wet rag into her face; and then everything went black.
>
Sam perched on Sarah’s windowsill like a gargoyle—large and bulky, but oddly graceful in his roost. Her room was on the second floor and her curtains had been left open. The glossy moon hit the pane of the window, reflecting.
Sam had been sitting for hours. His body didn’t ache, but his hunger had grown. He watched Sarah on her bed. She slept on her side, curled into a soft ball—the hair she wore straight to school lay in clumps of messy, wavy tangle. Sam wanted to touch it, to feel the fine strands fall between his clawed fingers. Her body moved slowly up and down. He could almost feel his hand on her side—could almost taste that feeling in his mouth. She was small and vulnerable. And he could have that under his fingers because he was large and powerful.
Quietly, he slid his fingers under the edge of her closed window just as the first light of autumn dawn broke the horizon. He felt it like a kick to his gut. He laid a hand—a paw—on Sarah’s window and paused. The sun crept up and he shook his head, now fuzzy and confused. Would Sarah want him to come in? Would she recognize him? Of course not. And she’d be terrified. Just like Ella had looked in the cornfield.
Sam pulled back.
For a moment, he had felt that Sarah was his to take. For a moment, the monster had overpowered him—the same demons he’d run from on the hill. They were him—inside of him. Trying to overtake the human that he was.
Without a sound, Sam dropped from the ledge. It stung his feet a bit. When he looked down, they were still wolfish, but Sam-sized.
“I have to get home,” he mumbled, starting into a run.
He thought of his father, the bottle of Aleve by his bed. Sam had always considered his father weak—fearful, cowering, clumsy. And his father was those things. His father could have power, be power. Instead, he spent every full moon hunched over a toilet bowl, quivering.
And yet, thinking of Sarah, Sam hesitated.
The power he had felt just now—the power to take. It wasn’t exactly power at all, but impulse, urge, and a strange type of submission to that urge. Which was the opposite of power. Yet, to give up what he had felt tonight—Sam could still smell the spruce on his hands—Sam wasn’t sure that was strength either.
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