As he entered the kitchen, he realized it felt different now. He wasn’t surprised that he felt uneasy around Aiden; he didn’t really know him. Hadn’t seen him in years. All he remembered about him was that Aiden had been a dorky little kid that he had been stuck playing with for a full weekend when all he had wanted to do was go to his friend’s birthday party.
That Aiden was staring at him now like he was some kind of freak was to be expected. He glared back at him, letting Aiden know that he didn’t appreciate being gawked at. Aiden turned his head immediately.
Scarlet sat beside Aiden at the breakfast table. “How are you feeling?”
“Are you wanting to know if I feel like a werewolf?”
“Look,” she growled, “you don’t have to get defensive. I didn’t mean anything except that you look tired. This has been a big ordeal, I know.”
“Sorry. Where are the muffins?”
Aiden jumped up and grabbed the basket of muffins off of the counter and put them on the table. He didn’t sit back down but backed up and stood behind Diesel. Diesel could hear him breathing through his nose.
Diesel picked up a muffin and examined it. Funny, it was so familiar yet so odd. He had helped his mom make the muffins for as long as he could remember. She had told him they were medicine, but to him they had looked like cupcakes. After begging for one, his mom had finally given in. He had never asked for one again.
Even though he knew exactly what it tasted like, he smelled it. He took a bite and gagged on the sweet, awful taste of grass. “How much did you put in here?”
“I followed the recipe,” Aiden said.
Scarlet picked one up, smelled it, and made a face before returning it to the plate. “We need to decide what we’re going to do. We have her upstairs, and now you’re hurt.”
“I’m not hurt. I’m a werewolf.”
He heard Aiden shuffle behind him and mumble, “I’m going to my room.”
“Stop saying that!” Scarlet stomped her foot. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t eat this, so we can find out. Do you want that?” He threw the muffin across the floor. “I’m tired of you telling me that things are not true. Open your eyes, Scarlet! You can’t be that stupid. If it hadn’t been for you, they might not be dead.” He tried to stay calm, but his voice cracked. “If I wouldn’t have listened to you, they’d still be alive.”
The look on her face told him he had gone too far. When she walked out of the kitchen, he called after her but really didn’t want her to turn around. They both needed a little space.
He picked up another muffin and took a bite, forcing it down his throat. He stared at it, the only thing giving away its powers were the wilted green sprigs that speckled the inside of the bitten area. But how much power did it have? He was bigger and younger than his grandmother. He wasn’t all that sure it would be strong enough for him.
He needed to get Scarlet as far away from him as soon as possible. But the cars couldn’t get out. And then he remembered his snowmobile. He hadn’t considered it before because it didn’t run. He didn’t know what was wrong with it and hadn’t looked at it since it had broken down the winter before. By the time he’d finished his muffin, he had decided to at least try and fix it. That way, maybe he could get Aiden to take Scarlet away from him.
Chapter 11
He Dressed Himself In Her Cap
Aiden paced the guestroom. As much as he tried, he couldn’t comprehend what had happened or focus his thoughts. He wanted to go home or, at the very least, talk to someone normal and have a normal conversation that didn’t involve supernatural creatures. He wondered if his mom had tried to call him—perhaps she was on her way, or maybe she had called someone to drive out to check on him and Granny.
He used his sleeve to wipe at the condensation on the window, looking out at the snow-covered cars and feeling like Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The world he knew had been destroyed, and he had landed on another planet.
“Things like this don’t happen. Come on! Werewolves! I’m supposed to believe that a person can actually turn into a wolf?” But he couldn’t deny what he had seen with his own eyes. He had been there, had seen it happen. Unless… Scarlet and Diesel had staged everything. What if he was the only witness to the scene of a gruesome murder plot? And now they were just buying time, trying to keep him there long enough to figure out how to kill him and make it look like an accident... Maybe Diesel murdered Aunt Rose, too. His mom had mentioned something about money, so there was a motive. Ignoring the thought that perhaps he had read too many murder mysteries, he grabbed his suitcase, which he had never unpacked, and heaved it onto the bed.
If the plan was to keep him here, then the possibility existed that the roads weren’t as impassible as they had said. They could have told him anything about a snowstorm; he wouldn’t have known the difference. After all, the neighbor had made it here. Neighbor. He tried to remember if on the drive there he had seen a house. He didn’t think he had. Just woods, though he did remember a road… more like a dirt path, but maybe someone lived out there.
After rummaging through his bag for a few minutes, he determined there was absolutely nothing he could wear that would keep him warm enough outside. All he had brought was his lightweight jacket, which was now full of rips and tears, and short-sleeved shirts. What had he been thinking when he packed?
He searched through the clothes in the closet: old evening dresses and what looked to be prom dresses hanging in crinkled, yellowing plastic bags. He did find a sweater, which had huge purple flowers, but it looked pretty warm. He placed it on the bed before searching the chest-of-drawers. He knew from snooping the day before that the top drawer contained a cluster of socks, underwear, and lacy things. He looked through the second drawer: nothing but linens.
The last drawer was a junk drawer. It reminded Aiden of the one in his kitchen back home. In this drawer there were sticky note pads, a loose key, and pens, paper clips, and lots of loose index cards. Curious, he picked up one of the cards and read it: ginger root, salt, beets… a recipe.
He shut the third drawer and went back to the first one. Shrugging his shoulders, he grabbed a pair of white tube socks, one with a blue stripe and one with a red stripe, and stuffed them in his pocket. A couple of long, frayed pastel scarves were also in the drawer. He grabbed those, too.
After he removed his jacket, he pulled the sweater he had found in the closet over his t-shirt. He wrapped two of the scarves around his head, making sure to cover his ears, and he put his jacket back on. “There.”
He took the keys to the rental car off of the nightstand and stuck them in his front pocket and put his cell phone in his back pocket. Not wanting to alert Diesel and Scarlet, he tugged at the bedroom window until it opened and jumped out.
His feet immediately sank into the deep snow. Whenever he tried to take a step, he fell to his knees. After a little struggling, he managed to get out of the drift by the window and walk, heavy-footed, to the car.
It looked as if someone had built a car out of snow; he didn’t see anything metal or glass. A snowcar. All it needed was a hat and a pipe.
The wind blew straight through Aiden’s borrowed clothes as he held his breath and dug the key out of his pocket. He’d brushed the snow away with his hands and was searching for the keyhole when he heard a loud clanking noise.
Turning his head to the left, he saw something move in front of a shed in the backyard. He squinted against the wind and walked closer. It was Diesel, and he was hunched over a snowmobile.
“Son of a bitch,” Aiden said through his teeth. Aiden’s heart jumped in his chest. Diesel had a way to get help the entire time and kept it to himself. They were planning on killing him and taking off. Well, they at least planned on leaving him there. Scarlet had probably convinced Diesel that it was the best thing to do. He had never met anyone like her before. It seemed as if her mind never stopped plotting.
Dies
el moved, and Aiden stepped back and around and flattened his back against the front of the house. “What am I going to do?” He looked at the snow-covered driveway that climbed up to the road and at Scarlet’s snowcar stuck at the bottom, blocking his way out. He shook his head. Not a chance he would be able to leave in the rental car, even if he did defrost it somehow.
He heard the motor on the snowmobile start up and slowly peeked his head around the corner of the house. Diesel stood up and walked inside the shed. Aiden took a breath, as if courage could be inhaled. He knew now was his only chance to get the hell out of here.
He darted, fighting millions of flakes and ankle-deep snow, to the backyard and jumped on the snowmobile, thinking, how different from a motorcycle can it be? Automatically, he twisted the handle to give it gas. When nothing happened, he looked down at a black lever on the right handle. He pushed down with his thumb and the snowmobile lunged forward. Startled, he let go of it for a second. He pushed it a little more gently the second time and smoothly took off.
He heard Diesel yell at him to stop, and Aiden worried for a second that his cousin would catch up with him at the hill. Fortunately, the snowmobile took the incline quite easily. Once he reached the top, he turned right on the road, looking over his shoulder to see Diesel at the bottom. Aiden didn’t stick around to see his expression, though; he was on his way out of the madness.
The deceptively delicate-looking snow felt like tiny rocks against his face and hands. His vision was almost nonexistent until he rode under a canopy of trees. The snow became softer on his face and on the road, but when the tree shelter ended, he was pelted by a waterfall of snow, and the snow depth changed on the road. A half a second later he lost control of the huge machine. A large tree trunk came into view right in front of him, but he had no time to avoid it.
When the snowmobile made impact, Aiden flew through the air, hit the tree on the left side of his body, and fell face first into the snow. He lay there for a second, wondering if death was cold, but finally accepted that he was still alive. He rolled over and grabbed his left arm when pain shot through it. The snow had no mercy as it spit in his face. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
He sat up, wiping his eyes and breathing in the now-painful cold. Lifting his hand away from his hurt arm when he felt wet warmth, he looked down to see blood on his fingers. There was a hole in the sleeve of his jacket that revealed a gash in his skin.
He stood up and staggered over to the snowmobile, which had fallen on its side. The engine made a high-pitched clatter, the sleds were mutilated, and the headlights had been fatally smashed. If it were a horse, Aiden knew he would’ve had to shoot it. He turned it off.
Aiden stared down the sheltered path that led back to the house and then looked down the white, hellish path to uncertainty. He put the scarf up around his face and took the socks out of his pocket, slipping them on his bloody hands and ignoring the pain of his arm.
Despite the fact that he felt dizzy and exhausted, he stuck his hands inside his pockets and walked. Glancing behind him, but only for second, he crept on with cold, numb, wet feet, toward what he hoped was a neighbor’s house.
Chapter 12
What Big Eyes You Have
Scarlet sat on the couch snuggling under the blankets and reading from the book Aiden had left on top of the television. Diesel had restarted the fire earlier, before saying something about trying to repair his broken-down snowmobile, but he hadn’t apologized. She thought he owed her an apology for blaming her for everything, although she had already forgiven him. After all, she knew it wasn’t her fault. He was just upset about the bite and because he blamed himself for everyone in his family dying. Diesel had needed to lash out at someone, and she happened to be there at the wrong time.
She actually felt a little relief. She had forgotten all about the snowmobile. They had played on it a little the year before. Right after it broke down, the snow had stopped for the season, so he hadn’t bothered fixing it.
Hearing a humming roar coming from outside, she jumped up. “He got it started!” She grabbed her boots and was pulling them on when the front door slammed open and then slammed shut. “Diesel?”
When he walked into the living room, all Scarlet could see were his eyes, the rest of his face was covered, but they revealed enough on their own. It looked as though he wanted to kill someone.
Diesel yanked off his hat and scarf, turned, and punched the wall under the banister. It was a soft blow because of his gloves, but the point had been made. “He jacked it.”
“Whoa. What happened?”
“What the hell? He took off on the sled! I finally got it to start.”
“What do you mean, he took it?”
“I turned around for one second, and that backstabber jumped on it and left.”
“Huh.” She laughed. “I didn’t know he had it in him.”
“This isn’t funny—”
“Calm down a minute. At least you got it to start. And Aiden’s such a grossly decent guy, I’m sure he’ll send help. I don’t think he would be able to stop himself.”
“Even if I believed that, it’s not the point. There’s no gas. I was getting the hose so I could get gas out of the cars when the idiot took off on it.”
“Oh. So he’s not going to get very far. He’s going to be stranded out there, isn’t he?”
“Idiot.” Diesel removed his coat and gloves and walked in front of the fire.
“Maybe he’ll be right back.” After they stood in silence for a moment, Scarlet sat on the couch and watched Diesel warming his hands by the fire. Why did the thought of being alone with Diesel all of a sudden make her nervous? “We should go look for him.”
He didn’t turn around.
“We can take some gas with us and bring the snowmobile back… no harm done. Not really.”
Diesel huffed. “I’ll go; you stay here.”
All Scarlet could think about was what if he didn’t come back? Worse than being alone with Diesel, would be being all alone with a dead person in the Creepy Andrews House. And what if in the middle of the night there was a knock at the door? Would she answer it? “Oh, no. I’m coming, too. You’re not leaving me here all alone. I’ll be right back. It’ll just take a minute for me to get ready. Do you still have those rubber boots?”
They saw the snowmobile tracks as soon as they reached the top of the hill. If Aiden’s plan had been to go to the closest house, he had ridden in the wrong direction. She looked at Diesel, and he shook his head in disgust.
Even though they had bundled up like they were going to trek across Alaska, she was relieved when they arrived at the canopy of trees. It gave them some shelter from the snow and the wind if not the cold.
When Diesel started running, she did her best to catch up in the big, floppy boots. She saw him on the side of the road, after the break in the trees, and ran over to him.
They both stared down at the snowmobile. Diesel was uncharacteristically calm. He dropped the gas canister and turned back around like he was going to go back home.
“Uh-oh,” Scarlet said when she saw little drops of red blood in the white snow. “Diesel, I think he’s hurt.”
He was now under the trees. She ran after him.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“He’s bleeding; he’ll die if we leave him out here.”
“He should have thought about that before he stole my sled.”
“He just freaked out,” Scarlet said. “We’re all kind of freaked out right now. Help me look. We have to at least look.” She stopped chasing him, and he kept walking. “Fine. I’ll look for him myself.” She waited a second before turning around to do just that.
When she arrived back at the snowmobile, she noticed that Aiden’s footprints and occasional drops of blood zigzagged down the road.
“At least he left a trail,” Diesel said from behind her.
She smiled, and he grabbed her hand as they walked down the snow-covered ro
ad.
“I’m getting tired of saving his life,” Diesel mumbled after they found Aiden sitting on a fallen tree trunk, phone in hand, hugging himself and shivering. “We should just let him die.”
Scarlet squatted down to meet Aiden at face level. “Aiden? Can you hear me?”
“Move,” Diesel grumbled.
Scarlet stood up, and when she looked back at Diesel she stood shock-still for a second; she could have sworn Diesel’s eyes glowed yellow. He didn’t seem to notice her stare and just nudged her aside.
Diesel grabbed Aiden and threw him over his shoulder. Aiden grunted but didn’t protest. Diesel carried him in the direction of the house.
Scarlet considered how easily Diesel had picked up Aiden. She loved that about Diesel; he was so strong. But now she wondered if he had always been that strong. Would he have been able to toss Aiden up over his shoulder like a ragdoll the day before? You would have to have some sort of superhuman werewolf strength to carry a teenaged guy on your back in the blinding snow and freezing temperatures.
The wind whipped and, despite her layers, seemed go straight through Scarlet. She trailed a couple of feet behind the boys but caught up with them by the time they arrived at the top of the driveway. She looked down to where she knew her car was located. She couldn’t tell it apart at all from the lumpy drifts of snow. She felt a bit anxious as she thought about going back inside the house. Even though it offered shelter, she wasn’t all that sure it offered any security.
They made their way down the hill and went inside to the warm living room where the fire still blazed. Diesel dropped Aiden on the couch.
“He’s shivering.” Scarlet draped the blanket over Aiden. “Do you think he has hypothermia?” She removed her gloves, coat, and rubber boots.
Diesel got in Aiden’s face and yelled, “Aiden! Can you see me?”
Silverweed: a supernatural fairy tale Page 7