Weregirl

by C. D. Bell

  The seven skinny wolf forms were already nothing but marks in the distance, streaking across the open fields, headed for the cover of trees.

  Suddenly Big One stopped short. The young wolves, Mama, and Omega pulled up behind him. Nessa stopped too. As soon as she thought to ask the question, “Why are we stopping here?” she recognized that she could smell why.

  They’d been running from humans and hadn’t been careful. And straight ahead, she could smell a pack of stranger wolves. They were close.

  This made no sense. Wolves knew to stay away from one another. Had Big One accidentally led his pack out of their well-defined territory?

  No. From the way the big wolf was standing, his front legs locked, his tail straight out behind him—not up but not between his legs either—Nessa knew that was not the case. They were on defense.

  Nessa barely had time to think about her own stance, because there was movement in the trees ahead of her. Branches shaking and then a shadow passed between two trees. Another shape emerged to the left from behind a pine, and another on the right. They were wolf shapes, animals stepping silently into the moonlight where the tree cover was thinner.

  Big One growled, lowering his jaw, a sound Nessa easily interpreted to mean, “No one needs to get hurt.”

  And then the wolf facing Big One showed his teeth. They seemed to glint in the light, and Nessa took three steps closer to check whether she was seeing what she thought she was seeing: the wolf’s teeth were filed to points, just like the teeth on the wolf she’d tried to free from Joe Bent’s trap, back in September, on the night she was bitten. And there was an incision, the length of its torso!

  This was that wolf? Did he remember her? He wasn’t acting like he remembered Nessa. He didn’t look like he was paying attention to Nessa at all. This wolf’s eyes looked angry. Murderously angry. Nessa had the sudden thought that her pack may have been protecting Billy’s house from these wolves.

  Just as Big One started to push forward, the new wolf lunged. Big One bent his head down, trying to catch the new wolf under the throat as he charged, but the new wolf managed to jog to the left at the last second, and the two reared up on their hind legs, looking like they were almost hugging, except their front legs were swatting the air madly as they tried to twist themselves into the most strategic position before they fell back down.

  Mama went crazy. She spun in a quick circle, whining and whimpering; then she crouched and sprang forward, not joining the fight, but looking like she was acting it out by herself, jogging a few steps to the side, then back again. The siblings were just as agitated as Mama, running back and forth between their parents and the wolf under attack.

  Three more wolves emerged from the darkness, kicking everyone’s adrenaline up even further. Only Omega was still, his head down, his tail between his legs.

  That was probably why the new wolves knew to attack him next. Nessa didn’t see the attack begin, only turned to him when she heard him barking and saw that, like Big One, he was facing off with three other wolves, all larger than he was. All larger than Mama and Big One, too.

  The two on the outside took turns jumping in to bite Omega on the torso. Each time, he would twist his body and threaten to bite their faces, and they would back off. But Nessa could see fur in their mouths. With each bite, the submissive wolf would move backward, his tail hugged down the back of his body, his shoulders hunched down, as if begging the wolves who were attacking him to notice how insignificant a presence he really was.

  He wasn’t giving up, though. Omega was barking, growling, trying everything he could to get the other three to back off. His voice was strong and true, but his barking was not nearly as deep as Big One’s.

  Nessa felt every blow, every nip, every bark and growl in her gut and her heart, the fear both paralyzing her and feeling like it was liquefying her insides. She wanted to make the giant wolves stop, but none of the other wolves in the pack was moving. When Omega went down and the three hostile wolves jumped right on him, she ran toward them, but one of the brothers blocked her. “Somebody help him!” Nessa said, but of course it just came out as useless barking.

  The pack would not sacrifice itself for Omega; they would fight only in defense of their leader. The submissive wolf twisted his body, slid into an upward posture, slithering between the other wolves like a snake, but then they brought him back again.

  Nessa knew she couldn’t watch a minute longer. She had to get out of there. She turned to the left and the right, looking for an exit, but all she saw were eyes. Many, many sets of glowing, yellow eyes. Aside from the five wolves in the clearing, there must have been another four watching from the woods.

  Watching her.

  She began to breathe faster as she realized there was no way she could escape, nowhere for her to go, and then she turned and made a break for it anyway, panicking, knowing that there was nothing Big One or Mama could—or would—do to protect her.

  Her head was down, her eyes were focused on the ground, and then she felt the first bite. It came from behind; not only did Nessa register the animal’s jaws connecting to her ankle, her body felt the pain of the other bite—that real first bite—all over again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Nessa heard herself cry out in a wolf’s whine and then she turned, surprised by the power she was able to summon to push the other animal off her.

  Crouching, she faced the other wolf, a low growl escaping her throat, her eyes fixed on the other animal’s shoulders—in a guess that she’d see motion there not telegraphed by the animal’s eyes. The highly familiar smell of fear and something else she recognized filled her nostrils and, like it was mentholated, it cleared her head. She rolled the smell around on her tongue, tasting it, her breathing almost overwhelmed by the sense that she was meant to kill this wolf.

  She was going to do it. Even though it was larger than she was, there was something reckless about this wolf’s aggression. If she let this wolf make the first move, he was likely to make the first mistake as well.

  But two other wolves joined the one who had bitten her, and Nessa felt her blood cool. No strategy could save her. It was three against one.

  So she thought about Omega and she started to bark, the way he had, barking like she would never stop barking. She saw how the wolf who had first bitten her blinked a bit with each bark. The two who had come in to help him took micro-steps away from her every time she barked. Her barking bothered them. She could start there.

  Nessa barked louder, deeper, and as ferociously as she could. She could feel it resonating inside her chest as if it were the pounding hoofbeats of an army of wolves on horseback come to her rescue. It was happening without her intent. Was she really this powerful? Was it just her imagination, or could she hear another wolf barking with her when she barked?

  Her attacker must have been wondering the same thing, his eyes darted to one side and then the other, looking to see if she was alone. His eyes rested off to Nessa’s side for a moment, and he took a step back. Nessa kept quiet, and distinctly heard barking. Someone was coming to help her.

  Nessa wasn’t alone.

  A gray wolf with black markings came up alongside her. He was long legged, taller even than Big One and about the same height as the wolves with the filed teeth.

  The gray wolf lunged at Nessa’s challenger, and the wolf cried out in surprise—a whimper—and backed away. The two wolves who had been standing at attention, waiting for the center wolf to make his move, took a step forward and then veered off to either side, as if they had been meaning to head off in those directions anyway. The new, gray wolf then charged the wolf who had been the most aggressive toward Nessa, and he turned tail and also ran.

  Disbelieving, relieved, taking a few deep breaths, Nessa finally took a good look at the new wolf.

  He was tall. He was thin too, as though he didn’t eat much. His smell did not frighten her. It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She could only say it reminded her of the wood
s.

  The gray wolf looked over his shoulder and, as if saying, “Let’s go,” he bounded back toward the pack wolves. Nessa followed, noticing as she ran that she wasn’t hearing noises anymore. No more barking. No growling. Was the fight over?

  For a moment, she was seized with worry. What if Big One, the brothers and their sister, Mama…what if they were dead?

  But she found them standing at attention, their faces pointed toward the tall gray wolf, waiting for him.

  He strode into the clearing and immediately went to Big One.

  Big One greeted the new wolf as if he and this wolf were equals, turning to sniff each other then circling slowly and finally brushing noses. They clearly knew each other but from the way Big One was treating the new wolf, Nessa could tell they weren’t pack mates. No one in Big One’s pack got away with treating Big One like an equal.

  The gray wolf touched noses in turn with Mama and each of the three younger wolves. Nessa wondered if he’d do the same with Omega, or if that wolf was too lowly to count.

  But wait a minute, Nessa thought. Where was Omega? Had he snuck off?

  Her eyes found him lying on the ground. Nessa ran to him.

  “He needs a doctor!” Nessa wanted to say, but she knew, looking at him, that even her mom or Dr. Morgan would only be able to end his misery sooner. One eye was closed, bloody. The other stared out as if not knowing what it saw. She could see his back legs splayed at weird angles, like they’d been broken. He was bleeding from his abdomen and from his neck. But his tail thumped at Nessa, and she nosed him in the intact ear. She could hear the wet, gurgling sounds he was making as he struggled to breathe. A rib might have punctured a lung. And then his breath gurgled one last time, and his good eye closed, and Nessa realized that he was dead.

  She stayed in a crouch for a while, waiting, not moving, frozen, staring at the spot where the wolf had been alive and was now just a dead body.

  She could smell blood, as rich as warm milk—not Omega’s. The smell was mixing into her own popcorn-smelling fur. She looked at her ankle. The blood was flowing freely, bright red on the white.

  Nessa could feel the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system begin to fail. Her back legs were trembling. She needed to go home.

  The tall gray wolf pushed her away from the body of the submissive wolf. He pushed her toward the path heading home.

  She ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Nessa finally found her phone in the place where Bree had left it, her sock was soaked, and there were streaks of dried blood on her skin beneath her jeans. She could barely put weight on the leg where she’d been bitten, and after Bree texted that she’d be there soon, Nessa sat on the picnic table at the trailhead. She put her hands between her knees, shivering, her teeth chattering.

  She couldn’t believe the difference in the way she felt now and the way she’d felt when Bree dropped her off two hours ago. She’d been so cocky, so sure of herself, thinking of her transformation to a wolf as one more item on her to-do list, thinking she knew exactly what this was going to be.

  “What happened to you?” Bree said, taking a look at Nessa’s bloody ankle while the light in the car was still on.

  At the sound of Bree’s familiar voice, Nessa fell apart.

  “I just saw a wolf get murdered!” Nessa said, her voice cracking, a sob emerging. Bree looked startled.

  “For real?”

  “It was this sad wolf,” Nessa tried to explain, but now she was crying for real, her sobs getting in the way of her words. She couldn’t say the name “Omega” out loud. That would be too much. “He was so submissive and scared for himself, and somehow the big wolves—they just knew. They knew he was the one to go after.” Saying the words out loud, the horror of that moment came rushing back to Nessa. “And they went for him. They were so…big. And their teeth! Bree, it was awful. We could only watch. These four attacking wolves, they were almost scientific about it. I felt like I was watching a serial killer. Or killers. They ganged up on him. Bree, it just was so cruel.”

  Nessa was having a hard time talking through her sobs and Bree was staring. Nessa could tell she wasn’t understanding. She wasn’t getting what it was like to see the submissive wolf pulled down, to know that he wasn’t coming back. It was too much to take in for anyone who wasn’t there, but Nessa had to try to explain.

  “You’re bleeding, Nessa,” Bree said. “We need to get you to a hospital. Or the clinic. Something.”

  “And tell them what?” Nessa said. “That I was bitten a second time? What’s my mom going to say? How will I explain that I went into the woods again when she very clearly told me it was off limits?”

  “But you need help!” Bree said.

  “Hold on,” Nessa said. She took off her shoe, pulled back her sock, balled it up, and pressed it into the wound to stop the bleeding. By the time Bree had pulled up in front of Nessa’s house, it had stopped flowing. Nessa wet the cleanest part of the sock with a water bottle so she could clean the wound enough to see how bad it was. Bree was holding the flashlight on her phone so that Nessa could see what she was doing. “I think it’s just a puncture.”

  “The wolf could be rabid.”

  “I was treated for that already,” Nessa said. “I just need to go inside and soak it. It’s going to be fine. Besides, not the clinic, Bree, not now.”

  Nessa shivered, thinking of the last time she was there. The straps. The strange mention of Paravida. All the whispered references to strange numbers.

  And that reminded her. “I almost forgot to tell you. The pack took me to Billy’s house!” Nessa said. “Before we were attacked. The submissive wolf, the one who died, he led me to Billy’s window.”

  “Do you think that Billy has something to do with why the wolves brought you in?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what,” Nessa said. “I don’t see what the connection could be. I mean, it’s not like the Larks seemed particularly excited to see the wolves. Mr. Lark went to get his gun.”

  “They saw you?”

  “They saw me as a wolf,” Nessa said. “I accidentally made eye contact with Mrs. Lark. She panicked. Then Mr. Lark came out with his shotgun, but we got away. Bree, if it hadn’t been for me, if we hadn’t been running for our lives, we might’ve had more time to avoid the other pack. Maybe the submissive wolf would still be alive.”

  “Nessa,” Bree said, “you can’t blame yourself. Wolves don’t have long lives. They’re not people.”

  “I know, but…” Nessa shook her head. She wasn’t convinced, and she could see that Bree could tell.

  “I think you need to talk to Chayton,” Bree said.

  “Chayton’s gone,” Nessa said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. “He’s got his friends to take care of, remember?”

  “I don’t care,” Bree said. “I’m going to call Selena. You’re not really a wolf. None of this is your fault. You can’t keep going in there. This is getting too dangerous. You could have been seriously hurt.”

  Nessa slept fitfully, dreaming about the wolf with the filed teeth, feeling the shock of pain and surprise when he jumped her. She woke feeling almost more tired than she’d felt going to bed. Bleary eyed, she pulled back her hair, showered, and threw on clothes.

  Putting any weight on her foot was excruciating. But she couldn’t let anyone see her limping, especially not anyone connected to the cross-country team. She had put a bandage on it the night before, after soaking it, wrapped it in ice, elevated the ankle, and taken a double dose of ibuprofen, but none of that had done any good.

  Bree had had to go into school early for a student council meeting but texted:

  How’s the ankle?

  Nessa texted her from the school bus:

  I can barely walk.

  Bree wrote:

  GO. TO. THE. DOCTOR.

  Nessa didn’t reply. She knew if she went to the doctor he would say she couldn’t run on an injury, and she knew she just had to
run. Her Homecoming result alone would not qualify her for States. She was going to need one more good time. The stakes were simply too high.

  As she was limping off the bus, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Stepping behind a tree, she answered it.

  “Nessa,” she heard, and it took her a half-second to recognize Chayton’s voice. Lowering herself to the stone balustrade, she rolled her eyes.

  “Where have you been?” she said. “Are all shamans this impossible to reach?”

  “Are all high school girls this reckless? I heard about your adventure last night.” Nessa realized Bree must have called Selena. “What the hell were you thinking, taking on aggressive wolves like that?”

  “They attacked the pack,” she said.

  “That can’t be true,” Chayton said. “Wolves won’t attack another wolf unless he comes into their territory or provokes them. You must have challenged them. Wolves don’t look for fights that way.”

  “You didn’t tell me—” Nessa began, but stopped mid-

  sentence because she realized she could finish it in so many different ways.

  She didn’t know there were aggressive wolves out in the woods.

  She didn’t know if she was supposed to be following scents when she was out, the way she felt she wanted to when she was in wolf state, or to hide from other animals.

  She didn’t know how any of this worked, and even though Chayton had told her to pay attention to her feelings and what was happening when she changed, she didn’t know that there was anything she could identify as a trigger for her transformation except the moon.

  Chayton wasn’t going to let her finish anyway. “I’m out here in Wyoming, trying to get my buddy through a sweat lodge purification he desperately needs, and you’re back in Michigan, flushing wolves out of their known territory, which any shape-shifter would know to respect—”

  “Look,” Nessa said. “I’m sorry I’m not Native and you’re stuck dealing with me, but I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t do anything wrong. I did what you told me to. I was alone. It was dark. It was the full moon. You haven’t told me anything useful. You didn’t tell me we’d be snooping around people’s houses, and getting shot at and then running into a rival wolf pack. It was this huge rumble, and for your information I was in the process of getting myself out of there. And the other wolves, they wouldn’t let me go.”