by Lynn Red
Instead, the thirty year old hunk of metal just groaned and shifted before thumping off the side of the highway and crunching on the scaly, crinkled up dirt. I squeezed the wheel so hard my knuckles went white and my fingers had been aching for the last forty miles or so.
“Please tell me where we’re going.”
“Exactly where I tell you you’re going,” Devin growled from low in his throat.
I had to keep talking. If I stopped, the oppressive atmosphere bearing down on me was going to suffocate me. “Will you at least tell me what you’re going to do with me? If Cat was too weak to—”
He let out an overly loud laugh. “You’re going to break Damon for me. If the Skarachee alpha doesn’t have his mate, if I claim her first,” I watched a cruel sneer crawl across his face, “he’ll never grow.” The way he said ‘grow’ made my stomach turn. “And if he never learns to control his transformations, do you really think he’s got a chance in hell against me?”
I had my mouth open to ask another question when Devin clenched my hair again and screamed “drive!” into my ear.
Out in front of us, the mostly open desert had spit up a handful of cabins. I’d never understood why someone would bother to build something like that out here, but then again, I’d never given it much thought. We past the first pair of ramshackle little houses, and then as we neared the second, his fist tightened again.
“Stop here,” he said. “Now!”
I’m gonna smash this car straight into this building.
I gritted my teeth and stiffened my arms. My foot pressed harder on the gas. The pedal got tighter and tighter until I felt it resting against the floorboard. This was it.
Forgive me, Damon, but at least I’ll take care of...
“What are you doing?” Devin shrieked. “Oh no, oh no, no, no, this is the same crazy sort of thing Cat tried.”
The house, which I saw was a proper house and not a cabin, was made of mottled brick, brown and white. The mortar was uneven. Death rushed at me. Only a few seconds until this steel monster slammed square into it.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, grimacing as Devin twisted my hair harder.
His fingertip brushed inadvertently against my neck, and a shudder crept through me. “You’re...” I couldn’t finish, the reality was too awful.
It didn’t matter though, only a few seconds left.
“Changed,” he roared, slamming his lupine hand sideways against the Bronco’s window. The tinted glass spiderwebbed and crinkled, and on the second shot of his fist, fell away. “Don’t test... me...” he said. Those were the first words he hadn’t screamed at me which made them way more unsettling.
Opening my eyes for a split second, the house was close. Like real close. Like five seconds, maybe less close.
The steering wheel jerked in my hands, but not because of a turn or anything else.
“No,” I said hollowly. “No, not now.”
I tugged the wheel, pumped the gas.
Rattling turned into vibrations that pounded my palms harder and harder. “No, no, no,” I whimpered. “Not now Goddamn you!”
Devin let out a snort and then slammed his open fist into the Bronco’s ignition, driving the key all the way in and leaving an indentation in the side of the steering wheel where his black, hair-covered fist had met the metal. The whole ignition fell out the bottom of the steering column and hung limply down.
I didn’t give up. I pumped that damn gas pedal as hard as I could, but the ignition sputtered and stalled. Luckily the house was on a decline, so we were still going. It was still going to work. I clenched my eyes shut, waiting for death.
Instead, I got a face full of werewolf breath.
“Idiot!” Devin snarled, balling himself up and somehow shooting his body out of the back seat and through the windshield. “Remember I’m saving your life, mate.”
An instant later, he was in front of the car, right between the onrushing and incredibly ugly brick wall and the grill of my grandpa’s 1986 Bronco.
I waited for the crunch, the thick, wet sound of bone and gore, that I knew was coming. I hated blood, but this was one time that it probably wouldn’t bother me too much.
Except that instead, the only sound that I heard as the SUV jolted to a halt was a strained grunt of effort.
The back of the car pitched up in the air then crashed down, bouncing twice on the half-worn shocks before coming to a rest. When next I opened my eyes, Devin was standing there, clothes in tatters, muscles pumped full of blood, flexing and relaxing with every breath.
He wasn’t a wolf – not like I’d seen Damon, who turned fully into a beast. Devin’s face was still vaguely Devin’s face, though not like I’d ever seen it. His skin was darker, covered in a dusting of black and gray hairs that caught the afternoon sun. I looked off to the western horizon to see a fat, orange sun before swinging my gaze back.
In a way, he reminded me of Lou Ferrigno, with the torn up shorts, weird colored skin and bulging muscles, when he played the Hulk. I snickered, but quickly looked downward to avoid catching Devin’s attention – his rage – with my defensive laughing.
For about the millionth time, I wished I could just keep a straight face when something upset me.
Orange light soaked the brown house, the black wolfman, and the not-exactly-painted slate gray hood of my grandpa’s Bronco, giving it all a warm, unaffected hue.
My phone, stuck in between my thigh and the seat like I always had it when I drove, started buzzing.
“Don’t even think about it,” Devin said. When he spoke, his lips pulled back over his teeth more than his jaws moved. Four long, white, dagger-like fangs were the most apparent of his dental features, but instead of human teeth, that part of him, at least, was all lupine. “Your phone, it stays right where it is.”
“How did you—”
“No!” he shouted, shoving the car backwards. “No, no, no, no, give it to me. Give me the phone!”
If he was nuts before, this is... something else.
“What phone?” I asked. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Shut up! I’m no idiot, give me the damn phone or I’ll jump back through this windshield and take it.”
Pale yellow irises replaced his normal brown ones and when he looked at me, they flared like tiny suns exploding in his head.
“You’re not serious. You’re just trying to scare me,” I said, willing myself not to shake.
“You don’t look as surprised as you should,” he said back. “When Cat saw me like this she went into cold shock. Give me the phone!”
Glancing down at the screen as I threw it to him, I saw it was Grandpa Joe, and that he’d called about forty-three times since I disappeared. Also, I knew it wasn’t actually him. I slid my thumb across the glass and hit the speaker button in one smooth motion and threw it to Devin.
Drawing a deep, snorted breath, he laughed as best that mouth would allow. “You think you’re brave,” he said. “You think you’ve got everything under control, don’t you? You always did. But guess who really is in control? It’s me.” He held the receiver in his hand and squeezed. “I am.”
I cringed when I heard the screen crack, and then again when he wadded up the broken parts and threw the mess on the ground. He glanced down, and ground his foot into my poor, dead phone. “Try and call back,” he said.
“Did you just throw a one-liner?”
“Shut up,” he growled, pushing himself off the car and circling to my window. “Stay here. Don’t try to run or you’ll die in the desert.”
He yanked Cat out the back of the car, thrashing and squealing, and dragged her into the house. The two of them vanished for thirty, maybe forty-five seconds, before he re-emerged without her.
I knew what was coming before it hit, but that didn’t make the pain any easier to bear. Once again, he grabbed my ponytail and yanked. Craning my neck to lighten the pressure some, I looked at him, at his sharp features, his sunken eyes. Somehow, even wi
th what he was doing – what he had already done – his raw power was embarrassingly exciting. Some horrible nature drew me to him.
Shaking my head, I tried to pull away for a half-second before my scalp burned.
“Fighting me?” he said. “Keep going, I like it. I like it when you try and fight a little. Cat never fought, she just let me do whatever I wanted. Like I said, she was scared. She curled up in a ball and just cried. God I hate it when people cry. Do you like this house?”
His breath was hot on my skin. His smell permeated my nose, burned inside my head. Despite the creepy-crawly feeling I had all over me, he somehow just filled my consciousness and held me captive.
“I asked a question!”
Devin’s shouting shook me back to reality. “Uh, yeah,” I said, not even sure what he was talking about, but just desperate for him to stop screaming. I remembered that the first step to calming down a crazy person is just go along with them until you get them to a safe mental space that relaxes them.
Somehow I didn’t think he’d be relaxing anytime soon, but a little less shrieking was welcome.
“Get out,” he said. “Now!”
Again with the screaming.
“You’re going to have to let me go if you want me to open the door,” I replied. “Look, I’m not going anywhere. You’re about three times my size and obviously able to chase me down if you pushing this two ton hunk of crap up a hill is any indication. Okay?”
He looked from his hands to my face, searching for a sign of a lie. Wordlessly, he unclenched his fist and took a step back.
“Hands up!” he shouted, and then snapped his muzzle in the air like something was attacking him. “Stick your hands out the window.”
I took a deep breath and tried not to roll my eyes as I popped open my lock latch, stuck both hands out the window and then kicked open the door, slowly, so as not to startle him. “I don’t have a gun, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said.
“Shut up. Give me your hands.”
Doing just what he said, I finished opening the door, stepped down from the railing grandpa installed so I could step up into the Bronco easier, and felt the crunch of desert under my feet. Slick, hard, and breaking, they made me want to run, to claw and scratch at this monster’s face and run.
But where would I go? I was a hundred miles, maybe more – I’d lost count – out in the middle of the Arizona desert. My feet grew heavy. Each step took greater effort than the last. A palpable flush spread through my cheeks, down my chest, as the adrenaline drained out of me, and clenching, gripping, awful fear slid in its place.
Devin grabbed my wrists in his leathery, hard, callused hands and squeezed a lot harder than he needed to squeeze.
“Ow!” I cried out as his fingernails scratched the back of my hands. “Why are you doing this?”
My words were interrupted by a hard jerk on my hands that almost sent me to my knees before I caught myself. Devin strained and then smirked as he pushed me out in front of him, his hot palm on my back. When I stutter-stepped, he shoved me forward, sending me to the hard ground in a heap.
“I said move,” he snarled. “Get up!”
He grabbed my collar and yanked me back to my feet before pushing me forward again. “Go!”
My knee, bleeding slightly from the impact, throbbed. The whole thing was red, angry, and instantly swollen. Each step pumped pain through my veins. Every single time my foot met the ground, a shudder rolled through me.
The door of the nearest house was standing open and inside the air was heavy, musty, and full of some kind of sweet odor that immediately put me on edge.
“Cat couldn’t do it. Couldn’t handle me.” Devin’s voice had faded. He no longer spoke with that raspy, crazed, wild tone. Instead he sounded confused, almost hurt, as he half-heartedly shoved me through the front door into the house’s foul atmosphere. “Don’t want to do this. Don’t want to... fight... but...”
His voice then caught in his throat.
“Are you crying, Devin?”
He was.
I heard a swallow stick in his throat as he struggled to right his voice. “Get in the house,” he said softly, almost under his breath. “Just get in the house.”
My eyes scanned the half-darkness of the little shack. Nothing was on the walls, nothing on the shelves. Everything was barren, empty, just like the desert behind my back.
“Is this,” I swallowed. “Your house?”
“Mine,” he said. “Theirs. Whatever, doesn’t matter. Soon this will all be over. The Skarachee will finally be done. No more fighting, no more...”
“What is it, Devin?” I turned, for some reason emboldened by the vulnerability in his voice. Upon seeing him again, I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that he was the same Devin as always. “I can’t tell you’re not yourself. Something’s bothering you.”
Thankfully he didn’t catch my tongue slip. “If I can help,” I continued, “just say so.”
“The old man,” he growled through clenched teeth. “That old, old bastard, he ruined everything. He wants to wipe us out, to control everyone, and he wants to make sure Damon takes over for him. To... to finish his work.”
“Poko?” my eyes grew wide. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
Devin scoffed. “No wonder you didn’t piss yourself when you saw me.”
I waved my hand, dismissing him. “I’m well aware of what’s going on,” I said. In truth, it was pure fear that kept me so calm. I might laugh a lot at the wrong times, but at least it keeps me sort of level headed. “But what does Poko have to do with any of this?”
“I have to do this, I have no choice.” Damon clenched his fists, drove them against a dust-covered table top so hard I thought it would break. “He wants us all dead. He wants to control—”
“Everyone, he wants to control everyone,” I said, taking him off guard. “Yes, but why? This is a part of this whole story I’ve never heard.”
Confusion descended over Devin’s face, clouding his vision. He opened his mouth, acted like he was about to answer me, and then clapped it shut.
“I know your tricks,” he said. “I’ve been warned about them. About everything you might try to confuse me. Acting like you care, acting like you have any interest at all in the Carak or what’s going to happen to us. No! No, no, no! I won’t fall for it, I—”
“Devin,” I put my hand on his shaking shoulder. “I’m not... I don’t know how to answer you, but I’m not out to get you. I just want to know the truth. I’m caught right in the middle of all this and I’m not even sure why. Please, I’m asking because I do care.”
“No!” he snapped. His eyes darkened again, and he slumped over, bobbing back and forth like his waist was a knee joint. “No, no, I know your tricks, harpy!”
“You did not just call me a harpy.”
“Quiet! The old man killed my father.” Devin snorted from somewhere deep in his throat and threw his head back so hard that he wrenched himself. “He wants us dead so he can control the whole region. So the Skarachee will have no competition, so they can take... take...”
“Take what, Devin?” I urged. “Help me understand!”
“You want us dead, too. I see it in your eyes.”
Before my eyes, he grew, muscles pulsing and stretching, until he towered at least two heads above me. Something was fighting inside Devin’s head, almost visibly. Tearing him one way, then the other, he stood before me, terrified, but unable to contain himself. Back and forth he shook his head, then his body.
“I don’t... no, Devin, I just want to understand.”
With a snarl, and a roar, he grabbed my wrists again, wrenching me back and forth. “No!” he shouted, for about the hundredth time, as he bent to heave a huge cellar door up, he shoved me toward it.
“I won’t... can’t... let this... happen again. This is my destiny.”
He thrust me forward. I stepped down hard, concrete under my heel, and then tripped into the darknes
s.
When my knee crunched against the dirt floor, and my wrists caught my weight, all I could think was: at least it was only three steps.
The vague light from outside narrowed to a sliver and then went dark as the cellar door slammed shut. Metal scraped on metal, and I heard a clunk. Slowly, carefully, I made my way to the closest wall. Cold stone, rough stone, against my palm.
Sliding down, my shirt caught on the bricks.
A sliver of light hit the ground immediately in front of the stairs, and drew my eyes to a tiny little slat of a window, barred of course.
Above me, and outside, I heard what must have been the front door of this strange little hut slam shut.
At that sound – the heavy thunk of wood, the scrape of metal – all the emotions I should have felt since Devin nabbed me came out in a rush of hot tears that soaked my cheeks.
“Please hurry, Damon,” I whispered into the dark, squeezing the fang around my neck. “Please.”
Seventeen
Damon
“We have to do something,” Damon said, pacing back and forth along the wall of the tiny kitchen. It took him three steps to cross the whole room. “I... I have to do something.”
Joe sipped his coffee. “What does the old man say?”
“I can’t go to him. I’ve got to do this on my own, I just know it. This is part of my trial, my test.”
“It’s very hard for me to remain calm about this,” Joe said in a measured voice. “Especially considering that the girl you’re talking about having vanished is my daughter.”
“Granddaughter,” Damon corrected. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“It’s fine. But my point is, if you get all excited, you never know what’ll happen. I learned that way back when my old friend was dealing with, well, I suppose this young’un’s father.”
Damon stared at him, crinkled up forehead asking questions that his mouth didn’t.
Joe let out a whistle, then a laugh. “So I take it you don’t know that story? Calm down a second, sit. You pacing is making me tired. Back and forth, back and forth. Look, my Leroy’s missing and I’m telling you to sit the hell down. Give it a shot.”