by Vaughn, V.
Alec pushed off the door frame and rubbed his hands through his hair. “I’ll tell her we have a wildlife problem here.” He heard Brandon snort, but talked over it. “Coyotes in the woods, bears. That she shouldn’t go out at night in general, and she shouldn’t investigate any sounds she hears because it’s a hazard. That sort of thing. I can have a few signs put up around the perimeter to make it more believable. That should help with the tourists, too.”
Brandon blinked at him. “That’s not bad, but do you think she’ll believe it?”
“She’ll have to. I’ll go by tomorrow and check on her, talk to her about it.” The thought made him nervous, made his throat close up. It wasn’t a good idea for him to take on such an important conversation at this time of the moon cycle, with a woman he found attractive. But there was no choice; it had to be done. He was pretty sure he could keep control, if he concentrated and the conversation didn’t go on too long.
“Okay, then.” Brandon was watching his face, amusement in his eyes. “You gonna bring your rubbers with you, use your way with the ladies? Maybe she finds you irresistibly attractive.”
“Shut up, old man,” Alec said.
Brandon laughed, a loud cackle that competed with the pounding sound of the rain. “Just keeping you honest. There’s food in the fridge if you want some, and last I saw, the TV still works. I’m going back down to the basement.”
Chapter 5
A sound woke Raine. She opened her eyes and realized she was curled up in her bed, still fully dressed, the book in her hand fallen closed. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, wondering what the sound was and whether it would come again.
It was probably just something normal. She wasn’t used to the sounds in this new place, and any sound that came along would probably—
The sound came again, rustling outside, near the shed. She heard the creak of something bumping against the decrepit wood, the short bang of something falling over—a flowerpot, perhaps, or a shovel left leaning against the wall. Raine froze, wondering if she had an intruder. But that didn’t make much sense. What kind of intruder would be out here, in the middle of nowhere? It was probably an animal rummaging around back there.
She got out of bed. The last thing she wanted was a raccoon doing some kind of damage to her back yard when she’d just moved in. She’d go shoo it away. She left the bedroom and groped around the front door, looking for her muddy boots. She carried them through the house to the back and stepped into them before banging out the back door and onto the concrete stoop, peering out into the rain.
At first, she didn’t see anything. The shed looked quiet and dark, though the door was ajar; she was pretty sure she hadn’t left it like that earlier in the day. Past the circle of her weedy back yard the dark yawned like a black hole, impenetrable and seemingly endless. Nowhere was this dark in Seattle. She was suddenly reminded that she wasn’t in the city anymore, that she was practically in the wilderness.
Still on the stoop, she made a show of waving her arms in case the raccoon was near, unwilling to go walking out into the darkness. “Go away,” she called into the pouring rain. “Shoo. Shoo!”
There was silence for a moment, then a shadow moved through the trees. Then a growl came from the darkness, vibrating low, as if from the throat of something very, very large.
And just like that, Raine knew.
Though it was only seconds, time seemed to move slowly in that first moment. Something—some instinct that was long buried somewhere deep in her consciousness—roared to life and blew up her spine in a single, deafening message: Danger. She stepped back, pulled the door open behind her. At the same time, the shape emerged from the trees in swift silence and launched itself directly at her with unstoppable force.
Raine jerked back into the house, her feet nearly slipping on the linoleum. The thing coming at her, shrouded in darkness, was a wolf, yet not a wolf—it was massively large, and something about its silhouette, the shape of its head, was off. But she could see yellow eyes gleaming at her, focused on her with unmistakable intent and, it seemed, pure hatred.
Raine pushed the door closed, trying to shut out the thing’s oncoming face, but it was as if she had flung a piece of cardboard at it. The wolf hit the door with a deafening crunch, and the flimsy wood buckled inward, the small glass window in the top half of the door tinkling into splinters. As the wolf backed up, presumably for another run at the wood to break it all the way in, Raine ran into the kitchen and fumbled for the kitchen knife she’d unpacked only a few hours earlier.
The door smashed again, and the wolf came all the way through, its huge shoulders squeezing through the frame, its heavy head hitting the kitchen floor as it temporarily lost its footing. A long, high scream came out of Raine’s throat. The wolf scrambled on the floor, getting its massive paws under it, shards of glass and wood falling from the ruff of fur at its neck. Its incisors, long and yellow, were bared at her in a furious snarl.
If it was in fact a wolf, it was the biggest wolf Raine had ever seen. Its jaw was long and lined with teeth, its chest lined with matted fur and muscle. Its fur was a mix of brown and gray, dark now with the rain that soaked it through. Its hindquarters had not come all the way through the broken door, and as the animal righted itself, Raine darted forward and stabbed the knife into one front paw as hard as she could. Then she dropped the knife and ran from the room.
Despite the madness of the situation—What the fuck is that thing? What the fuck is that thing?—her brain scrambled for a solution as she ran into the main room. There was nowhere to hide in the little house. If she left by the front door, she’d only be running out into the night, where the beast could catch her and there were no neighbors to hear her scream. She had no idea where her phone was, and even if she had it, there was no point calling the police, who would probably take twenty minutes to get here. If she didn’t think fast, Raine would be dead in less than five.
The truck. If she could get in and drive off, she might have a chance of getting help. Where the hell were her keys? She scrambled toward the front door, looking for her rain coat, thinking she’d left the keys in the pocket. The thing in the kitchen made a hideous groaning sound in its throat, something like a howl, a wild sound that was strangely human. She heard more broken glass tinkling and something big crashed to the ground—her small kitchen table overturning. That was when she remembered she’d left her keys on the kitchen table, which was now most likely in splinters on the floor.
Nowhere to go. Except down. Or up.
The basement was no good—the wolf could follow her down there, corner her. But the attic…
The beast came through the door from the kitchen, slipping briefly in the slick of its own blood on the kitchen floor. It growled again when it saw Raine, who stood in the hallway to the bedroom, letting down the ladder from the attic. She pulled herself up as it lunged at her, her palms slick on the old wood of the ladder, her boots trying to slip, her breath sawing in her lungs. As she pushed her body through the attic door and launched herself through it with both hands, the wolf hit the ladder and splintered it, leaving her legs swinging in the air. Raine kicked wildly as the wolf found its feet again, and a burst of mad, desperate adrenalin gave her the sudden strength to pull her body all the way into the attic, folding her legs under her and rolling away from the door as the beast jumped again.
There was a hideous crack as the animal hit the frame of the attic door, but the frame held. Raine came to rest away from the opening, lying prone on the dusty floor of the attic, her wet hair in her face, her lungs gasping for air.
The room spun for a crazy minute as she stared at the ceiling. How much time had passed since she’d opened her back door? Two minutes? Three?
She could hear the wolf on the floor below, the heavy rasp of its breathing, the terrifying clack of its claws as it paced the floor. Even if it could climb—and since it was like no wolf Raine had ever seen, she had no idea what it was capable of—the ladder was snapped
off, and the wolf didn’t seem able to jump high enough to get through the attic door. So it circled below, panting. Slowly, Raine lifted herself into a sitting position and looked around.
The attic was low, cramped, and empty but for a few cobwebs and some mouse droppings in the corner. A single window overlooked the back of the house, rain pouring down the glass. The rain pounding on the roof was louder here, a relentless wash of water that seemed like it never stopped, would never stop. Raine hugged her knees for a long moment, shaking. How long would the animal wait for her? Would it leave when the sun came out? She had no idea. She had no food, no water, no phone to call for help. She was alive, but she was stuck here for as long as the deadly animal beneath her decided to wait.
Slowly, silently, Raine moved toward the gap of the attic door, leaning over it until she could see below. She could hear the wolf breathing, but there was nothing to see through the gap but a square of her living room floor. It was smeared with a thin line of blood from the wolf’s paw.
Raine held her breath.
Below her, the wolf came into view. It looked up at her with its yellow eyes, bright with intelligence and pure murderous intent. Then it opened its jaws and howled.
* * *
Six miles away, at the lumber mill, a man working the night shift stopped in his tracks as he pulled a piece of lumber from a skid. He was a big man, and tall, wearing worn jeans and a thick flannel shirt. His hard hat, safety goggles, and canvas protective gloves made him look identical to the other workers in the mill. He stood still, the length of lumber in his hands, as if the high whine of the saws and the drone of the trucks had disappeared and he was listening to something only he could hear.
One of the other workers saw him pause and punched him in the shoulder. “Hey,” he shouted over the noise. “Move it.”
The tall man didn’t seem to hear. He only stood still, what was visible of his face turning white, as if something had upset him.
The other man called his name, and the man finally blinked.
“Jesus, man,” the other worker said. “You look like someone just died.”
“I need a break,” the man managed. “I have to make a phone call.”
* * *
Three hundred miles away, in a motel, a trucker getting a few hours’ sleep before hitting the road again sat bolt upright in bed. He flung off the cheap, musty hotel bedspread and swung his feet to the floor before his eyes were fully open. He took a deep gasp for breath. Then he froze, as if listening to something.
After a long moment, he ran a hand through his thick hair and his thick, dark beard. He sat naked in the dark as the lights from the sporadic cars on the nearby highway crawled across the room, one after the other. Then he stood and started looking for his clothes.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”
* * *
In an apartment in downtown Seattle, two hours away, a man sitting at a table reading the Iliad by lamplight looked reluctantly away from his book. He cocked his head for a long moment, listening. The clock ticked on the wall.
The man was tall, handsome, and elegant in a rough, sensual way. He did not show any outward signs of alarm, but something urgent pulsed through his veins, something warning that the worst was happening, and that there was nothing to stop it. That from this moment forward, nothing would be the same.
The man glanced to the corner of his apartment, where his packed bags were already stacked, waiting for morning. That was that, then. Death was coming, though for whom, he didn’t know. He’d have to leave earlier than he thought.
* * *
Four miles away, on the other side of Freemont, the night watchman in a warehouse stopped in his tracks as he did his rounds. He stood in a wide, empty corridor, wearing a navy blue uniform, a nightstick and a can of mace on his belt, heavy boots on his feet. Being a night watchman wasn’t a hard job, but the man was the best night watchman his employers had ever seen. There was something frightening about him, something in the gleam of his eyes that gave everyone he met the secret urge to flee. It meant that trespassers who encountered him on the grounds—and there were few enough of them—fled at the sight of him, and never came back. The fact that the man scared his own employers was a selling point, from the view of those who owned the warehouse. His record was clean. He did his job, worked nights without complaint, got paid relatively little, and asked no questions.
Tonight, the man stood listening for a long moment as the silent warehouse waited around him. Then he checked his watch, thinking. Three more hours to go before his shift ended. The directive was always not to bring attention to yourself. Leaving halfway through his shift would bring attention to himself. But this was no ordinary situation.
The man thought a moment longer, his eyes still on his watch, seeing the second hand tick around in its endless circle. Then he turned on his heel and went back to the security station to use the phone.
* * *
In Brandon’s house, Alec jerked awake from the doze he’d fallen into on the sofa. The sound in his head was so loud he thrashed, his long legs kicking, his hands flying to his ears. Deep in his brain, like the blare of a siren, he heard a wolf howl.
He rolled off the sofa and onto the floor with a heavy thump that would have woken Brandon if Brandon were not already awake. Alec made a strangled growling sound, arched his back, and clutched his hands harder to his ears, an instinct that did nothing to stop the sound, since the sound did not come from outside his brain. The living room was, in fact, silent except for the low murmur of an infomercial on the TV.
Still, Alec held his head as the howl went on and on inside him. He raised his gaze and saw Brandon come through the door, wearing only his skivvies, his hair askew at the back, a heavy mat of gray hair visible on his chest and down his stomach. His eyes were panicked.
As the howl slowly retreated, Alec lowered his hands. He watched Brandon gasp for air, wild eyed, his feet planted apart as if ready to defend himself from something, even in his underwear.
“Oh Jesus,” Brandon said at last. “Jesus. We have a big fucking problem.”
“I know,” Alec managed, his brain still ringing from the sound. He felt panicked and horribly sad, but at the same time he was the Alpha, and his mind raced with possibilities, with answers, with plans. He looked at Brandon and nodded, confirming what they both knew.
“It’s Ethan,” he said.
Chapter 6
When the wolf let out its howl, Raine knew she was going to die. She’d never heard a wolf howl before, but something about the sound was as unmistakable as if the animal had spoken plain English in her ear. The wolf was not going away. It was not going to disappear at sunrise. It was not going to lose interest, or eat, or sleep, or relax its watch. It had its prey—Raine—cornered, and it would stop at nothing until Raine was dead.
She was miles from anyone, anywhere, and had no way to call for help. Help was not coming.
It took less than thirty minutes of panicked thinking before she decided the only way out of this was to help herself.
Quietly, she slid off her boots, placing her stockinged feet on the dusty floor. She looked down at them and thought it over for a minute, then removed her socks as well. She wanted no chance of her feet slipping. The cold was not a consideration.
Then she crossed to the attic’s single window and studied it. It was latched shut, though it was not nailed or otherwise sealed. There was no screen, just the windowsill, the glass, and the rain outside. Perfect.
She ran her finger over the window’s latch, studying it, getting very clear on how the window should open. She didn’t want to open it yet, in case the sound in the wolf’s sharp, intelligent ears gave her plan away. Then she tiptoed back across the floor and picked up her boots. She carried them to the edge of the attic door.
The wolf had stopped howling, but she could still hear it breathing below. It was pacing, slowly, patiently, trailing blood, its claws clicking on the floor. You’re ruining my fucking floor, Ra
ine thought with a sudden burst of wild anger. First my back door, then my kitchen table, and now my floor. I only just moved in, you asshole wolf. The anger was a relief, cleansing and pure. It was so much better and more powerful than the fear.
She waited for the wolf to finish his loop and circle away again, then she tossed one boot out the attic door, followed by the other, as far apart as she could throw them. It would buy her a few seconds at most, but a few seconds of distraction was all she needed.
The wolf scrabbled toward one boot, then the other, as Raine turned and raced barefoot back across the attic to the window. She opened the latch—it tried to stick, but she wedged her thumb under it and forced it—and swung the window open. It didn’t open very wide, but it opened wide enough. Raine squirmed through it headfirst and pulled her body out onto the roof, squeezing through the narrow opening, her back scraping the wood of the window case. She got her feet under her and stood.
She had, she figured, a few seconds to get to her target before the wolf figured out what she was doing and came out the back door after her. She scrabbled and slid over the shingles of the roof, her feet stinging as they slowly turned numb with cold. At the edge of the roof, she barely hesitated. Gritting her teeth, ignoring the fact that vertigo was making her world spin, she crouched, grasped the soaked eavestrough, and swung herself over the edge of the roof to jump to the ground.
She made her knees as soft as she could for the jump, but she still hit the grass below with a jarring impact. She kept her feet, though, and made herself run through the thorny grass to the back shed. Behind her, she heard a crashing sound in the kitchen, an angry bay from the wolf’s throat. It was coming after her.