The color of blood that painted his Moon caused all sense of time to disappear.
He threw his head back and howled, sending all of his anguish up into the air. His heartbroken cry echoed into the night, shattering the stillness. He ignored the shuffling of the birds above him in the trees. A few flew away, not wanting to stay near him any longer.
Just as well, he thought, glancing up at the trees. He wasn’t in the mood for company, large or small, on this night.
Still, he caught himself turning his attention to the big white house that sat a few yards away. The fact that he’d found himself drawn to this spot more than once was enough to make him irritable in itself.
He looked at the upstairs window. The girl had arrived a short time ago and her mate had disappeared into the forest, completely unaware of the Wolf’s presence.
The light in the window came on suddenly, shining brightly through the glass as it cast a warm glow into the darkness that seemed to surround him. He found himself wishing that the girl inside would come out and sit with him, regardless of his previous wish of being alone only seconds earlier.
The Wolf sighed. He decided it would be a night like any other, alone—and filled with vivid, painful memories.
I TURNED ON my bedroom light, and then glanced out the window. For some reason, I wasn’t surprised to see the large gray wolf sitting by the edge of the forest, staring up into the sky. I smiled and pressed my hand against the glass. He turned and looked at me for a second and then laid down, settling his chin on his paws. I watched him for a minute, and when it appeared that he wasn’t going to do anything else, I turned my attention to the heavy backpack that I had sat on the chair upon entering my room.
“There has to be something else in here,” I muttered, opening the bag and taking the book out. I flopped the Book of Skin back on my bed for what seemed like the umpteenth time. “Why make a book that doesn’t have anything useful in it? You’re a magical creature dictionary and that’s all,” I complained to the tome, giving it my very best glare.
Naturally, I didn’t get any kind of response. Not even a flickering flame of agitation.
“Oh well. At least you don’t smell anymore,” I sighed. I had run out of excuses to keep my mother out of my bedroom. Having a book that could burst into flame would hopefully be much easier to hide than one that supposedly smelled like a rotting corpse.
I pulled the book closer and did my usual stroke along the claw clasp to get it to open. But when I reached the tip of one of the talons, my index finger caught on the sharp edge.
“Dang it!” I exclaimed as a drop of blood welled from the wound and dropped onto the book’s cover.
The clasp turned loose, talons spread wide. Efflehurt’s last words echoed in my mind. Blood will bring it to life. The book flipped up in the air and hovered there, pages flipping on their own accord.
“Okaay,” I said breathlessly as my heart beat a million miles a minute. “That’s new.”
As if it decided that it was happy with my response, the book did another little flip in the air, and then slowly laid itself back down on the quilt in front of me. Pages were still flipping like mad, as if whatever had possessed the book were trying in earnest to find exactly the right page.
Then, as if it had found precisely what it wanted me to see, it stopped and went quiet. I waited for a moment—just to make sure nothing else was going to happen—and leaned forward just enough to make out the words, taking care not to touch the book. A detailed sketch of a wolf, not unlike the one outside, was what caught my attention first. This, I had seen before, but the text beneath it was somewhat different. It sparkled. The description was still there, informing me that an Indian warrior had been cursed by the Great Spirit for his disobedience. His curse was to forever roam the earth as a wolf.
I bravely reached out and touched the last word with my scraped finger.
The text shimmered and rearranged under my touch. I lifted my finger to find that the word wolf had been replaced with man. Curiosity outweighing caution, I placed my palm flat on the page, fingers splayed, and watched as the words zipped around between my fingers. When I lifted my hand, I found something entirely different.
“All right,” I told the book, “You are no longer a useless, magical dictionary. Now I’m not certain what you are.” I shook my head in awe and stared at it for a second.
A strangled cry shattered the silence and shook me out of my trance. I jumped. Something had happened and the sound had come from outside. I raced to my window and looked out.
There, where a gray wolf had sat mere moments ago, stood an Indian warrior—an identical match for the picture of a man who had taken the Wolf’s place in the book.
“WHAT HAVE YOU done to me?”
I realized, belatedly, that I had once again run outside with no thought of what could happen. And once again—no one was home. If Adam found out, he would not be happy about this.
“What have you done to me?” the Indian warrior repeated, his words sounding scratchy and rough, as if he hadn’t spoken for a very long time.
A stray beam of tinted moonlight caught his eyes and they glittered like gold, reminding me of Adam’s eyes before Wynter had brought him back. The narrow, straight nose and long, silky black hair were also a near match for Adam’s, as well as his build and height.
The hollows of his cheekbones were obscured in war paint, gleaming in the night like two dark shadows that gave his face a lethal look and accented the gold in his eyes.
“Who are you?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. Only one soul had sat in this spot to watch the Moon, and even though his form had changed, I knew he was the Wolf.
“Who am I?” he repeated, the words rasping out hoarsely, “I am one whom no one remembers...a soul trapped...forever caught in this world.” He held out his hand, palm out, and looked at it, as if for the first time, and then turned his attention back to me. “What have you done to me?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted, “But I think it had something to do with the book.”
“What book?” He took a step forward, body tensed as if he had forgotten he were human and was ready to spring like the wolf that he had been for so many years.
My heart started beating wildly and I stepped back. White mist flowed in front of me and thickened into a fog. Then, I did something that even surprised me.
I growled.
I’m not sure who was more startled, him—or me, though I was betting he was. His golden eyes rounded in surprise and he stopped where he stood, gazing at me in a mixture of bewilderment—and hope. The first one I understood, but the second emotion had me a bit worried.
“She was the only one who—” he began, but was cut off as he was tackled by an enormous black wolf. The two tumbled and rolled away from me, a ball of black fur and limbs.
Adam normally would have made quick work of disabling anyone, man or beast, but for some reason, he was having a hard time winning this particular fight. Every time he would pin the man, somehow he managed to squirm free and jump on Adam’s back—in the one place his fangs and claws wouldn’t reach.
Adam flipped him off and pinned him one more time, laying most of his weight on the man’s torso. He snarled, fangs poised over his throat.
“No! Don’t hurt him, Adam!” I stepped closer and was rewarded with a low growl, which I took as a warning not to come any further.
That growl only upset the pinned man, and a decisive look flickered over his face as his hand went to his waist. In a split second, a knife was held to Adam’s furred throat, metal glinting.
“Let him up, Adam. He’s one of the good guys,” I whispered, knowing he would hear me.
At that, he backed off and sat down in front of me, obviously not happy, but doing as I had asked. Another low growl came, strong enough to reverberate the ground under my feet, but it didn’t come from Adam. The man, who was still sprawled haphazardly on the ground sat up, white teeth bared.
“He’s the Wolf...one of your ancestors,” I said quietly, hoping only Adam would hear.
A black mist rolled over his body and the black wolf at my feet disappeared. Adam turned to me with wide eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“What happened to you?” Adam asked, turning back to the one he had been fighting a moment earlier.
“That is a question for her.” The man motioned to me with the tip of his knife before putting it back into the sheaf at his side. “But the next time you attack me, know that I will show you no mercy.”
Adam snorted, and turned back to me. “What happened to him?”
“I was opening the book and one of the talons scratched me. A drop of blood hit the cover and everything changed. When I touched the picture of the Wolf, it changed into a man,” I told Adam, and then pointed behind him. “Apparently, he changed with it.”
“So,” Adam said thoughtfully, “the book has the power to take magic away.” He looked at the man who was now gazing up into the sky with an expression of pure sorrow. “Is there any way to give it back? I don’t know that being human is a good form for him.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried. It might work...”
“No! No, I wish to stay as I am,” the man interrupted quickly, getting up from the ground. He walked toward us. “Many years I have spent as a wolf. I would stay in this body until the Great Spirit sees fit to do otherwise.”
A single bolt of lightning lit up a cloudless sky at his mention of the One who had cursed him.
He looked up at the sky, as if searching for the Great Spirit. “I shall not take my own life. You have my word. I have no desire to feel your wrath again.”
The sky stayed silent, as if content with his answer. A long moment passed.
“What is your name?” I asked.
He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he were trying to remember something long forgotten. Then, finally, he answered, “I once was known as Swift Foot. I suppose the name is still mine to bear.”
A loud caw sounded from high up in the tree above us as a black crow appeared. It bounced onto a lower limb, as if checking to see who we were.
“Why do I have the feeling that everyone is going to know that he is human now?” Adam said, watching the crow disappear into the forest.
“I believe you may be right,” I agreed. A sinking feeling started in my chest. The book lying on my bed would be in high demand if anyone knew the power it held.
Adam nodded to Swift Foot who had sat down on the ground and resumed his stare at the Moon. “Any ideas on what we’re going to do with him? He can’t stay in your yard in plain sight. Especially dressed the way he is.”
He had a good point. The man was clad in nothing but a pair of buckskin pants with a knife sheathed at his side. With the exception of an eerie blue amulet that hung around his neck on a cord, his chest was bare and pebbled with gooseflesh. It was cold out—too cold for someone who had forgotten how to be human.
“You’ve gotta take him home with you. It’s too cold for him to stay outside. He doesn’t have the warmth of the fur that he’s used to. He’ll freeze out here.” I waited a minute, and then shot Adam a grin, “Besides, he’s your family…sort of.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “I can see me trying to explain this to Dad.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem.” I shrugged, trying not to laugh. “Stranger things have happened.”
“You have no idea.” We both jumped at the sound of Swift Foot’s voice. He had been quiet to this point. “I suppose it is wise that I go with you,” he told Adam, “I’ve forgotten the ways of men, so it would be the right thing to do to be among them while I am in this…form.” The way he had worded it, I wasn’t sure that the man before us was counting on being human for very long.
“Okay, we’d better get going then,” Adam said, turning to give me a kiss. “Don’t come back outside tonight...please.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. You have my word,” I said. After telling them both goodbye, I went back inside.
I made it back up to my room and looked out the window. Adam waited until I lifted my hand up and pressed it against the glass, and then he and his new charge walked into the darkness of the forest. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and then came back and changed into my pajamas. Deciding to wind down, I went to the kitchen and fixed a cup of hot chocolate. Carefully balancing the steaming cup, I headed back upstairs and sat it on my nightstand. Then, I sat back down on my bed, curling up next to the headboard with my favorite blanket.
The book still sat where I had left it, open. I leaned over and looked at the picture of Swift Foot. His face had a melancholy look to it, visible even under the war paint. I wasn’t sure what I had done to him, really. And I was really uncertain if what I had done was a good thing. For someone who had been trapped as a beast for centuries, he had seemed to take his conversion back to human fairly well. Of course, he could have been in shock, I thought. I sat back and reached for my hot chocolate, still contemplating the events of the last few moments.
My hand had almost touched the cup’s handle when I had a clear vision of my cute Snoopy mug breaking as soon as I picked it up, shattering on the floor, and then hot chocolate seeping under my bed.
I stopped and scooted to the edge of my mattress and peered down at the thick glass. There weren’t any cracks and the handle looked sturdy enough. I shook my head. Taking the vision as a precaution to pay attention, I carefully lifted the cup and blew lightly on the surface to cool the chocolate.
Just as I was getting ready to take a sip, a loud crash startled me. The cup dropped from my fingers, playing out my vision in real time. The cup shattered. Shards of red, painted porcelain and dark liquid covered the floor.
The crash happened again, and I discovered the source to be a pounding knock at the front door that sounded more like someone was trying to knock it from the hinges than stop by for a nightly visit. My heart was beating wildly and white mist was coalescing in front of me like a fog, which made it even more eerie when the book on the bed hopped up in mid-air and did its little magical twirl and flipped to a different page.
“Okay, so who’s out there?” I asked quietly, looking down at the book as if it were a television screen to an outside security camera.
As if ready to answer, the book tilted, allowing me a better view of the creature inked on its pages.
Woodsburl.
Several more crashes erupted. It sounded as if the entire front porch was being ripped off. The book flipped a few pages over and showed me the description of the Six before returning to the Woodsburl.
If the book were telling me the truth, some of the Keepers were out there with the one threatening to destroy my front door.
“Well, let’s see if this works again,” I muttered, placing my finger on the description. The word shimmered, but stayed in place. A frantic yelp echoed from outside.
He’s playing dirty. He caught me on my blind side, Ed’s voice edged into my mind, followed by Michael’s aggravated one. Quit throwing that bird at me!
I shook my head, certain I hadn’t heard Michael correctly, and ran my finger along the backside of the book, searching for the claw. A quick, sharp pain told me that I had found it. Giving my finger a quick squeeze, I dropped a smidgen of blood on the page and flattened my hand against it.
After one more crash, silence came, followed by a single, very polite knock. Picking up the book, I skirted around the broken glass on the floor and made my way downstairs.
“Ed?” I asked cautiously as I approached the front door.
“Yeah, it’s us. Everything’s fine, Nikki. You can open the door now.”
The first thing I saw when I swung the door open, was a very disgruntled-looking Mr. Giles, who thrust a dead crow out in front of him like a strange peace offering. The bird looked as if it had been part of the battle and from the way Tommy was scowling, I had no doubt that the crow had been used as a weapon.
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��I found this bird. From the way it was cawing, you would have had all manners of magical creatures here within the hour once it told them about that book. Crows are horrible gossips and love all manner of darkness. I caught it at the edge of a Deadland,” Mr. Giles said, looking very perturbed. “It seems it was right about the magic the book holds in its pages, for here I stand as a human with my magic stolen from me.” He threw the dead bird out in the yard, and then turned back and glared at me. “I hope you are intending to undo whatever you’ve done as I came here to warn you, not harm you.” He pointed a finger behind him to Ed and Michael. “Regardless of what those two think.”
I looked at Ed and lifted an eyebrow.
Ed’s one eye narrowed, but he nodded. “We didn’t exactly ask him what he was doing here. Adam sent us to check on you when they made it back. We got here when he was pounding on the door, so we just sort of pounced on him. You know, the safe way…fight first and ask questions later.”
Mr. Giles sent them a look that made me wonder what punishment he would have had in store for the two of them, had he still held his position as the school principal.
“Okay,” I said, turning my attention back to the book in my hands. “Let’s see if it works the opposite way, too.”
Thankfully, the small wound was still bleeding, so it kept me from having to make another scratch on my already sore index finger. I placed my palm flat on the page that depicted the image of Mr. Giles, and watched as the Woodsburl reappeared both in the book—and on my front porch. As he realized his magic had returned, Mr. Giles switched back into his false human image.
He took a step forward, arm outstretched as if to touch the book that I still held.
Flames passed from the book, through my fingers, and stretched to him, threatening to burn him should he come any closer. The wind shifted and I felt the slight brush of heat the book was sending out, but it never hurt me. Mr. Giles, on the other hand, took several safe steps back and dropped his hand.
The Keeper Saga: Wynter's War, Charmed, and The One (The Boxed Set Book 2) Page 6