Winter Wolf

by RJ Blain

  If anything, the jolt had completely scrambled me. Made me human. Normal. I couldn’t feel anything at all—not even the car battery or the cell phone crammed into my back pocket. If a taser was all it took to render me impotent, to make people safe from me, I’d use one on myself. I’d find the courage, somehow. Even if it hurt, even if it felt like my teeth were going to rattle out of my head as I shook in the aftermath of the tasing. I managed to sit straight on my own, pressing my shoulders against the seat. I drew slow and steady breaths and tried not to think about the fact I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Fear once again smothered me.

  If I didn’t think of something else, I’d lose myself to the panic welling up in me.

  The first thing I needed to do was escape. While the ‘no killing’ comment from the driver put me at ease, a little. I had time, I hoped.

  But what did they want with me?

  The anxiety and uncertainty I usually battled in public places reared its head and stole my voice. It was like the mall all over again, before Scott had died—me too frightened to do anything except hope I wouldn’t screw something up. But this time, it wasn’t electronics I’d toy with, or being discovery by the Inquisition. For all I knew, my kidnappers were Inquisitors.

  I tried to reach out for a source of electricity, but found nothing. I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing so my panic wouldn’t take control of me. Without my powers, I was just a woman. I hadn’t taken any self-defense courses. I could scream like a champion, but who would hear me in a car headed to God-only-knows where?

  At least the driver wasn’t speeding. I cracked open an eye. We were on the highway, still headed southbound. I stared out the window at the city lights. I felt nothing as I stared out the window. It was marvelous and terrifying all at the same time. My head was clear of the constant thrum of electricity.

  The driver adjusted his mirror again, drawing my attention. For a moment, our eyes met. The coward in me wanted to recoil and lower my eyes, but I remembered something my father had told me when I had been a little girl. If you look away, they’ve won.

  It was Fenerec logic—werewolf madness, werewolf politics, werewolf dominance. It had always been about the wolves, though I had been too young and innocent to realize it then. If I looked away, I would be a victim, just another statistic.

  Despite wanting to recoil, I watched the driver of the car and hoped he couldn’t see the fear in my eyes.

  He chuckled and turned his attention back to the road, as if my defiance amused him. “Better buckle up, sweetheart. It’s a long ride.”

  The man on my right reached across me, his elbow jabbing my breasts. He leered at me, grabbing the buckle.

  My face burned. Before I thought about what I was doing, I sank my teeth into the fleshy bit of his forearm. With a vicious jerk of his arm, he broke free. I cringed as the back of his hand slapped my face. I managed to twist my head so the blow caught my cheek and chin instead of breaking my nose.

  “You bitch!”

  The car slowed, shifting lanes towards the shoulder. The driver once again stared at the back seat. “Don’t you touch her again.”

  “She bit me!”

  I cringed away from him as he lifted his arm again. There was a dark splotch on the back of his hand. I stayed silent and lifted a hand to my cheek, horrified that I had bitten him—and that my face was bleeding from where his blow had grazed my lip. I wasn’t convinced the shaking of my hand was from having been tased.

  “The bitch bit me,” the man snarled again, the muscles of his neck bulging. He looked like someone who had spent too much time at the gym while under the influence of steroids.

  Biting him had been stupid and I knew it. Why had I done it? Why had I antagonized him?

  “That’s enough,” the driver said in a whisper-soft voice that forced all of my attention to him. “If I have to pull this car over, you will ride in the trunk until I find a hole to dump your rotting carcass in. Don’t touch her again.”

  I sucked in a breath, my eyes widening at the driver’s tone. There wasn’t any threat to his words, only the promise of bloodshed and violence—death he’d bring without any hesitation.

  Steroids backed down, staring out the window and ignoring me completely.

  The driver stared at me in his mirror again. “Please buckle up, Princess.”

  Princess? My eyebrows rose at the name, but I said nothing—nor did I move. I met his gaze and didn’t look away. I don’t know how he kept the car on the road, but he engaged me in a contest of wills. I couldn’t lose, not this time. I wanted to go home alive, but not like some coward. I was always a coward. If I was going to die, I wanted to go down fighting.

  That was a role I could play, one supported by my anger and indignation at having been kidnapped and losing control of my life.

  “Your seat belt,” the driver insisted before turning his attention back to the road.

  I didn’t need to be reminded about what happened to those who didn’t wear their seat belts. I had plenty of scars to prove it. My hands shook as I reached down to obey the order.

  “Let me,” the other man beside me, the quieter one, whispered in my ear, pushing away my twitching fingers. While I didn’t want his help, I doubted I could get the damned thing buckled on my own. When I didn’t protest, he reached over me and secured the buckle, careful not to repeat Steroids’s mistake.

  “Bitch,” Steroids muttered.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t acted like a teenager who has never seen a woman before, you wouldn’t have deserved it.” If it hadn’t been for the details—like him being one of my kidnappers—I could almost like the thin guy next to me. At least he didn’t radiate an aura of perversion and violence like Steroids did.

  “Shut up,” Steroids snapped, whipping his arm out across me to hit his accomplice in crime.

  The driver slammed the brakes, twisted around, and pulled out a gun with an extended barrel. Without so much as blinking, he fired one shot. The tip of the muzzle flashed, and the weapon discharged with a more of a pop than a deafening bang.

  Steroids slumped in the seat beside me, his arm draping over my lap. He twitched. The sharp, metallic, and sweet scent of blood filled my nose.

  Had blood always smelled so strong, or was it a curse I had picked up when I had, however briefly, experienced Scott’s death? I shuddered.

  “Toss him in the trunk,” the driver ordered.

  The two other men in the car scrambled to obey. I sat rigid, afraid to move, as the driver kept the gun pointed at Steroids’s still body, as if expecting him to get back up despite having a hole through his chest. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the blood I could feel streaming with sickening warmth down onto my legs.

  “Scared now, Princess?” he asked in a cool voice.

  I opened my eyes, meeting his gaze. If I showed my fear, if I let him dominate me with his stare, I might survive for a while longer. But something—maybe an instinct, maybe stubborn pride, or maybe the fact that I was tired at long last of being pushed around—warned me that if I let him win now, I’d be nothing more than a victim.

  I was tired of feeling like a victim.

  Instead of answering him, I met his gaze and said nothing. It was hard to stay still, my body quivered from the aftermath of being tased, though the shock of witnessing someone die next to me didn’t help at all. It frightened me that I was more concerned with the dead man half sprawled on my lap rather than the gun-wielding one in front of me.

  All a gun could do was kill me.

  Steroids had frightened me, but he’d been alive moments before. With the single pull of a trigger, he was gone.

  I was starting to understand what people meant by the phrase ‘dying was easy, but living was hard.’

  A smile lifted the corners of the driver’s mouth, and his expression angered me. The frightened, hesitant me was smothered with a new mask—one who wanted nothing more than to kill the smug man who pointed a gun at my face.

  My jud
gment of him must have showed in my eyes, because his smile faded. “Maybe you should be afraid, Princess.”

  I didn’t move, not even when the two men pulled Steroids’s body out of the car to load into the trunk. The fear within me battled with my rage and if I showed either one, I doubted I’d live to suffer the consequences of them.

  So I remained silent.

  ~~*~~

  My kidnappers took me to the middle of the desert, where the stars and moon lit the night. It’d been so long since I’d left the city that I gawked at the beauty of a sky unblemished by mankind. I almost felt sorry for the man sitting in Steroids’s blood, though he was too smart to complain about it.

  The entire time I couldn’t forget that there was a corpse in the trunk.

  Sometimes, when the road was smooth, I thought I heard the corpse thump in the trunk, protesting its comrade’s betrayal. It was enough to make me want to scramble over the lap of one of my captors and make a real effort to escape the car. I didn’t care how fast we were going.

  I hadn’t read much of Among Us after Scott’s death, but the book had definitely left a mark on me. At least in the novel, the zombie infestation had started with a disease, not a corpse stuffed in a trunk.

  “Something bothering you, Princess?” The driver slowed, staring at me in his mirror.

  The corpse thumped in the trunk again. I was going to either laugh, cry, or have a fit of hysterics worthy of any Hollywood diva. Maybe laughing would lead to hysterics, but it beat crying. “You have a zombie in your trunk.”

  My smart ass commentary needed work.

  “Don’t worry about it, Princess. He won’t bother you.”

  I blinked, unable to guess whether or not he was being serious. No one could get back up from a bullet to the chest, could they? “You believe in zombies.”

  “No, but if I had wanted him dead, I would’ve shot him in the head. He’ll stay in the trunk, and he’ll like it—or the next bullet goes between his eyes. Don’t worry your pretty head about him, Princess.” The driver smiled, then turned his full attention back onto the road.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked in a small voice. I sounded tired, weary, and uncertain, but I was powerless to add strength to my words. Beneath my masks I wasn’t brave and acting like I was someone else only went so far.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I don’t know why the answer infuriated me, but it did. After being trapped in a blood-stained car for several hours with a body in the trunk, I wanted to get as far away from everyone as I possibly could, find a corner, and cry. Even if I did manage to get away from them, I was still twitching from being tased—and I still couldn’t sense anything electronic. I ached everywhere, and exhaustion weighed me down.

  I wanted to go home and that desire made me feel even more helpless.

  Without my powers, I was an insecure woman who couldn’t do anything at all. The realization scared me even more than the body in the trunk and being surrounded by my kidnappers, one of whom was armed and willing to fire. Even if I managed to get the gun from him, I didn’t know how to use it—would it fire if I pointed and pulled the trigger?

  It looked simple enough.

  Could I pull the trigger and end someone’s life, if it meant saving my own? I shuddered at the thought of someone dying because of me. But the uncertainty ate away at me.

  Was my life worth someone else’s?

  I didn’t know, but if I died, I wouldn’t be able to save my sister, my family, or any of the other Fenerec. I didn’t like their existence and they scared me, but my fear didn’t mean they all deserved to die. I didn’t want to be someone like that—someone who would turn away because of fear. I wanted to be someone strong and brave. I wanted to be someone who could make a difference.

  That was why I wore so many masks, so I could try to be someone I wasn’t, someone who wasn’t afraid and hesitant, worried all of the time about being discovered. And if I didn’t try to save the Fenerec, who would? I was supposed to be a wizard. I was supposed to be powerful. I was supposed to be someone who could do anything.

  I was good at feeling guilty over who I was, all without doing anything at all.

  I cowered because of the fear of discovery, not because I had done anything of notice—except burn down my apartment once, before I had figured out how to control myself. And ever since, whenever I was in large crowds, I feared breaking things, and I feared drawing attention. I didn’t want to be found.

  If I didn’t do anything to save myself, I deserved my fate. But what could I do?

  Until my powers returned, I couldn’t stop the car and buy myself time to get away from my kidnappers. I didn’t enjoy the idea of trying to make my way back to L.A. from the desert. People died every year testing their mettle against the heat and sun-cracked stone southeast of the city. If I did escape so far from civilization, it was likely I’d go home in a body bag—provided the scavengers didn’t find me first.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, staring at the rearview mirror. The driver glanced at me for a moment before turning his attention back to the road.

  “It’s not much farther. It’s a quiet little place. I think you’ll like it.”

  Quiet and little didn’t bode well for me making an escape—it probably meant it was in the middle of nowhere. I scowled. “I can think of a lot of places I’d rather be. Like my apartment.”

  My second attempt at smart ass commentary wasn’t much better than my first, but I kept my expression as neutral as I could. I frowned a little at the lack of reaction to my comment.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and muttered unkind, rude things under my breath. Things I wasn’t brave enough to say loud enough for them to hear me—at least, I thought was too soft for anyone to hear. The driver checked his mirror again, and in the reflection, I saw one of his brows rise. He didn’t say anything, but his expression was amused rather than angry.

  Long after my kidnapper left the highway for twisty, turning roads leading into the desert, the headlights of an oncoming car distracted me from my dilemma. It was the first vehicle I’d seen in well over an hour. I considered trying to flag the driver, but I had no way of doing it without putting them at risk. Considering how the driver had shot his own companion, I doubted he’d hesitate to kill someone else.

  My phone rang. My face paled and I leaned forward so I could reach for it. One of my kidnappers snatched the phone out of my back pocket. I didn’t get a chance to see who called. With a single squeeze of his hand, the guy who sat where Steroids had been crushed the screen. He slipped the crumpled remains back into my pocket.

  No human could crush a phone with a single hand. I doubted even Steroids could do it with his big muscles. Steroids’s replacement didn’t look like much; lithe, but toned, but not that strong.

  “You should see a doctor for that testosterone poisoning,” I said in the mildest tone I could manage. My voice came out steady while the rest of me shook.

  I abandoned the thoughts of who had kidnapped me in exchange for what.

  “There’s not going to be a lot of room in the trunk if I have to shoot you too,” the driver said with a sigh in his voice. “My apologies, Princess. Sudden noises tend to startle my friend a little.”

  “Well, I’m sure my phone won’t bother anyone ever again,” I replied, feeling the bent phone and broken screen jab me in the rump. “No sudden noises, right. Anything else I should know?”

  “I wouldn’t scream.”

  “Right. No screaming. No problem. What’s your malfunction? With the steroids-using womanizer in the trunk and don’t-startle-at-any-cost over here, what should I avoid with you?” I aimed the jab at both the driver and the guy on the other side of me.

  “I liked you better when you were quiet,” the guy next to me muttered.

  I snorted, turning my attention to the driver. I matched his raised eyebrow. “Well?”

  “You’re not scared at all, are you?”

  I open
ed my mouth to say something rude to vent out my frustrations when the car coming towards us slammed its brakes and spun out. Spitting profanities, the driver braked and turned the wheel. The car whipped around in a full rotation before coming to a rest on the shoulder, metal screeching as it scraped against rock outcroppings lining the highway.

  Terror silenced me. Memories haunted me, and for a moment, all I could see was a guardrail and feel the thud of impact as my car plowed through it. The heat of flames ate away at me. Every instinct I had howled at me to get out of the car before I burned to death. I clawed at my seatbelt, somehow managing to get it to unbuckle. I crawled over a lap and pawed at the door, my palm slapping the glass in my effort to get free.

  Someone shouted, but the roar in my ears drowned the words. Something held me in a firm grip and I couldn’t escape. It smothered me, stole my breath, and trapped me.

  I tried to scream, but I couldn’t draw the breath I needed to make a noise other than a low-toned whimper. The window was so close, but I couldn’t get out through it; I was held back, kept me in the car when all I wanted was out.

  The door wouldn’t open when I managed to grab it. In my desperation, I made a fist and pounded at the glass. It gave a little under the force of my hit. I lost count of how many times I struck it before pain shot up my arm and the window cracked.

  I cried my relief when the door swung open—not entirely, but enough for me to wiggle through. My cheek scraped against cold stone as I wormed my way out. Outside, the cold desert night air chilled my face. My fingernails tore on the rock as I climbed out and up, digging with my toes to find purchase until I was free.

  I pulled myself away from the wreck. When there was solid ground beneath me, I curled into a ball and shuddered. Something touched my shoulder. I recoiled, covering my head with my arms. If I closed my eyes tight enough, maybe the nightmare would end.

  It didn’t.

  Chapter Ten