Ravensong

by TJ Klune

  “All right?” Richard asked me. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It never did.

  I nodded against Thomas’s shoulder.

  “Good,” he said. “Mark, he was worried about you. But I suppose that’s what happens when someone takes your ma—”

  “Richard,” Thomas growled.

  Richard raised his hands. “Yeah, yeah.”

  My mother was shouting. My father was talking to her quietly, jabbing a finger pointedly but never touching her.

  Abel didn’t say a word, just watching. And waiting.

  “SHE’S SICK,” my father told me later. “She has been for a long time. She thinks—she gets these thoughts in her head. It’s not her fault. Okay? Gordo, I need you to understand that. It’s not her fault. And it’s not yours. She would never hurt you. She’s just… she’s sick. And it makes her do things she doesn’t want to do. Makes her say things she doesn’t want to say. I’ve tried to help her, but….”

  My voice was small when I said, “She told me not to trust them. The wolves.”

  “It’s the sickness, Gordo. It’s not her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is she sick?”

  Father sighed. “It happens sometimes.”

  “Will she get better?”

  My father never answered me.

  “MI ABUELO went crazy,” Rico said. “All looney tunes. He gave me candy and money and farted a lot.”

  Tanner elbowed him in the side.

  “She’s not crazy,” Chris said. “Just sick. Like, the flu or something.”

  “Yeah,” Rico muttered. “The crazy flu.”

  The sounds of the cafeteria echoed around us. I hadn’t touched my lunch. I wasn’t very hungry.

  “It’ll be okay,” Tanner said. “You’ll see.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  THERE CAME a scratching at my window in the middle of the night. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t.

  I got up from my bed and walked to the window. Mark stared at me from the other side.

  I pushed the window up. “What are you—”

  He jumped inside.

  He took me by the hand.

  He led me to the bed.

  I slept that night, Mark curled around my back.

  HER NAME was Wendy.

  She worked at the library in the next town over. She had a dog named Milo. She lived in a house near the park. She smiled a lot and laughed very loud. She didn’t know about wolves and witches. One time, she went away for months. No one told me why. But she came back. Eventually.

  She was young and pretty, and when my mother killed her for being my father’s tether, everything changed.

  “WHAT HAPPENS when you lose your tether?” I asked Abel one day when it was just him and me. Sometimes he would put his hand on my shoulder when we walked in the woods, and I felt at peace. “If it’s a single person?”

  He didn’t speak for a long time. I thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  Then, “If it’s illness or disease, a wolf or a witch can prepare themselves. They can rein in their wolf or shore up their magic. They can look to another person. Or a concept. Or an emotion.”

  “But what if it’s not like that? What if you can’t prepare?”

  He smiled down at me. “That’s life, Gordo. You can’t always prepare for everything. Sometimes you’ll never see it coming. You have to hold on with all of your might and believe that one day, everything will be okay again.”

  “GORDO.”

  I was still caught in a dream.

  “Gordo, come on, you need to wake up. Please, please, please wake up.”

  I opened my eyes.

  There was a flare of orange above me in the dark.

  “Thomas?”

  “You need to listen to me, Gordo. Can you do that?”

  I nodded, unsure if I was awake.

  “I need you to be strong. And brave. Can you be brave for me?”

  I could, because he would one day be my Alpha. I would do anything he asked me. “Yes.”

  He held out his hand.

  I reached out and took what was offered.

  He helped me dress before he led me down the hall of the Bennett house. The wood floors creaked underneath our feet. My father had left me here earlier. He’d told me he’d come back for me. I didn’t know when I’d fallen asleep.

  There were men in the Bennett house. Men I’d never seen before. They wore black suits. They were wolves. Betas. Richard Collins was speaking to them quietly. Elizabeth stood near Mark. He saw me and started toward me, but she put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

  Abel Bennett stood near the fireplace. His head was bowed.

  The strange men grew quiet as Thomas took me to Abel. I could feel their eyes on me, and I did my best not to squirm. This felt important. Bigger than anything that had come before.

  The fire popped and crackled.

  “I have asked much of you,” Abel finally said, “for one so young. I had hoped we would have more time. That the need would never arise, not until Thomas was—” He shook his head before looking down at me. Thomas never left my side. “Do you know who I am, Gordo?”

  “My Alpha.”

  “Yes. Your Alpha. But I am also the Alpha of all the wolves. I have… responsibilities. To every pack there is. One day Thomas will have the same responsibilities. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s his calling, much like it’s been mine.”

  Thomas squeezed my shoulder.

  “And you, too, have a calling, Gordo,” Abel said. “And I am afraid I must ask you to take your place at my side until the day Thomas assumes his rightful place as the Alpha of all.”

  My skin grew cold. “But my father is—”

  Abel looked far older than I’d ever seen. “I have a story to tell you, Gordo. One that you never should have heard in your young life. Will you listen?”

  And because I couldn’t refuse him anything, I said, “Yes, Alpha.”

  He told me then.

  About a sickness in the mind.

  How it could make people do things they didn’t want to.

  It made them lose control.

  It made them angry.

  It made them want to hurt other people.

  Mom had been kept away. Until she could get better. Until her mind could be cleared. But she’d escaped.

  She’d gone to the next town over.

  She had gone to the house of a woman named Wendy, a librarian who lived near the park.

  A woman who was my father’s tether.

  Because sometimes, the heart wanted something it should not have.

  There was a fight.

  Wendy died.

  I was drowning.

  The eyes of the strange men burned orange.

  My father had felt his tether break.

  His magic burst. It had made him do a terrible thing.

  Later, I would see the footage on the news, even though Abel told me to leave the TV off. Of a neighborhood in a little town in the Cascades leveled to its foundations. People died. Families. Children. My mother.

  My father did not.

  “Where is he?” I asked numbly.

  Abel nodded to one of the strange wolves. He stepped forward. He was tall and moved with grace. His eyes were hard. The very sight of him caused my head to spin. “He will be taken,” the strange man said. “Far away from here. His magic will be stripped so he can’t hurt anyone again.”

  “Where?”

  The man hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s for your own safety.”

  “But—”

  “Thank you, Osmond,” Abel said.

  The man—Osmond—nodded and stepped back with the others. Richard leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  You can’t trust them, Gordo, she whispered in my ear.

  “I will give you time,” Abel told me, not u
nkindly. “To process. To grieve. And I will answer all your questions I can. But we are vulnerable now, Gordo. Your father has taken your mother from you, but he has also taken himself from us. We need you now more than ever. I promise that you’ll never be alone. That you will always be cared for. But I need you now. To accept your place.”

  Thomas said, “Dad, maybe we should—”

  Abel flashed his eyes. Thomas fell silent. He looked back at me. “Do you understand?”

  I felt sick. Nothing made sense. The raven was screaming somewhere in my head.

  I said, “No.”

  “Gordo,” Abel said. “You must rise. For your pack. For us. I must ask you to become the witch to the wolves.”

  MARK HELD me as my grief exploded.

  He whispered promises in my ear that I desperately wanted to believe.

  But all I could hear was my mother’s voice.

  You can’t trust a wolf.

  They don’t love you.

  They need you.

  They use you.

  The magic in you is a lie.

  the second year/it was midnight

  JOE STARTED speaking less and less as the second year dragged on.

  It didn’t matter, though. We all heard his voice in our heads.

  WE TOLD ourselves the trail wasn’t gone. That Richard Collins was still out there, moving. Planning. We kept our ears to the ground in case anything came up.

  One night outside Ottawa, Carter disappeared for hours. He came back smelling of thick perfume, lipstick on the hinge of his jaw.

  Kelly was angry at him, asking him how he could be so selfish. How he could even think of fucking some woman when they were all so far from home.

  Joe didn’t say anything. At least out loud.

  I lit a cigarette near the ice machine. The smoke curled up around my head in a blue fog.

  “You gonna say something too?” Carter asked me after he’d slammed the motel door behind him.

  I snorted. “Not my business.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I shrugged.

  He leaned against the siding of the motel, eyes closed. “It was something I needed to do.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  I blew smoke out my nose. “What do you want me to say? That you’re right and Kelly’s wrong? You’re your own man and can do what you want? Or that Kelly has a point and that you should be thinking with your head and not your dick? Tell me, please. Tell me what you want me to say.”

  He opened his eyes. They reminded me so much of his mother’s that I had to look away. “I want you to say something. Jesus Christ. Joe’s barely talking. Kelly is in one of his goddamn moods. And you’re just standing there like you don’t give two shits about any of us.”

  All I wanted to do was have a fucking cigarette in silence. That’s all I asked for. “I’m not your father.”

  That didn’t sit well with him. A low rumble rolled from his chest. “No. You’re not. He actually cared about us.”

  “Well, he’s not here. I am.”

  “By choice? Or because you feel guilty?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what the fuck would I have to feel guilty about?”

  He pushed himself off the wall. “I don’t remember, you know? What happened when the hunters came. I was too little. But my father told me. Because it was my history. He told me what you did. How you tried to save—”

  “Don’t,” I said coldly. “Don’t you say another word.”

  He shook his head. “It’s my history, Gordo. But it’s yours too. You ran from it. From your mate. Mark didn’t—”

  I was up in his face even before I knew I was moving. My chest bumped against his, but he stood his ground. His eyes were orange, but his teeth were blunt. “You don’t know the first goddamn thing about me. If you did, you would know that I was the one who stayed behind. I was the one who was left in Green Creek while your father took off with the pack. I kept the fire burning, but did any of you ever stop to think of what it did to me? You’re nothing but a subservient child who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”

  He snarled in my face.

  I didn’t flinch.

  “That’s enough.” Joe stood in the open doorway to the motel room. It was the first time we’d heard his voice in days.

  “We’re just—”

  “Carter.”

  He rolled his eyes and pushed past me, stalking back out into the dark.

  We listened as his footsteps faded.

  “You shouldn’t have interrupted us,” I told Joe coolly. “It’s better to have it out now than to let it fester. It’ll hurt more if you don’t.”

  “He’s wrong, you know.”

  “About?”

  Joe looked exhausted. “You do care about us.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  I smoked another cigarette. It burned on the way down.

  ANOTHER FULL moon. We were in the Salmon-Challis Forest in the middle of Idaho, miles and miles from any signs of civilization. The wolves were hunting. I sat next to a tree, feeling the moon against my skin. My tattoos were brighter than they’d been in a long time.

  If I stood then and went to the SUV, it’d take less than two days to get back home.

  Green Creek had never felt so far away.

  A wolf appeared. Kelly.

  He held a rabbit in his mouth, neck broken, hair matted with blood.

  He dropped it at my feet.

  “I don’t know what the hell you want me to do with this,” I told him irritably, pushing it away with my foot.

  He yipped at me and turned back toward the forest.

  Joe came next. Another rabbit.

  “For all you know, this kind of rabbit is endangered,” I told him. “And you’re contributing to its demise.”

  I felt a burst of color in my head, sunshine bright and warm. Joe was amused. He was laughing. He didn’t do that when he was human.

  He dropped it at my feet.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I muttered.

  He sat next to his brother, facing the trees.

  I waited.

  Carter came, eventually. He was dragging his feet. He carried a fat gopher in his jaws.

  He wouldn’t look me in the eye as he dropped it next to the rabbits.

  I sighed. “You’re an idiot.”

  He nosed the gopher toward me.

  “But so am I.”

  He looked up slowly.

  “Stupid fucking mutts,” I said, and there was sunshine and pack and a tentative question of ??friendfriendfriend??

  I reached out my hand.

  He pressed his nose against my palm.

  Then his tongue came out and he drooled all over me.

  I glared at him as I pulled my hand back.

  He cocked his head.

  I cooked the rabbits.

  The wolves were pleased.

  I told them I wasn’t going to touch the gopher.

  They were less pleased.

  Their songs that night were still full of grief and rage, but they had a thread of yellow running through them.

  Like the sun.

  “WHAT ARE you doing?” Kelly asked me. Another night, another random hotel room somewhere in rural Washington. Carter and Joe were out getting food. We’d spent the past few nights sleeping in the SUV, and I was looking forward to a bed.

  But first I needed to get rid of all the excess.

  I stood shirtless in the bathroom, staring at the mirror, not recognizing the man who stared back at me. The dark beard on my face was quickly growing out of control. Black hair fell past my ears and curled at my neck. I was bigger too, somehow harder than I’d been before. The full tattooed sleeves on my arms looked stretched far wider than they’d ever been. Roses surrounded the raven, thorns wrapping around its talons. Runes and archaic symbols stretched along my forearms: Romanian, Sumerian, Gaelic. An amalgamation of all those who had come befo
re me. Marks of alchemy, of fire and water, of silver and wind. They had been carved into me by my father over a period of years, the raven being the last.

  All except for the one on my chest above my heart. That’d been mine. My choice. It wasn’t magic, but it’d been for me.

  Kelly saw it. His eyes widened, but he knew better.

  A wolf’s head, tilted back and baying at the moon.

  Buried in the design of his neck was a raven, wings spread and taking flight.

  My choice.

  Mine alone.

  Mine.

  I’d kept it covered for so long that I hadn’t even thought about it when I’d come in here and stripped off my shirt, wanting to do something to keep my skin from crawling.

  “You just gonna stare?” I said to Kelly, challenging him.

  He shook his head. “I’m just—it doesn’t matter. I’ll leave you alone.”

  Goddammit. “I’m thinking.”

  He looked startled.

  “About?”

  “I could use a haircut.”

  He said “yeah” and “me too.” He pushed a hand through the thick mop on the top of his head, blond fading darker. He had the beginnings of his own beard, like he hadn’t shaved in a week, but it was scraggly and thin. He was just a fucking kid.

  I looked down at the cheap set of clippers I’d picked up at our last stop. “Tell you what,” I said slowly, thinking of a rabbit left at my feet. “You help me, and I’ll help you.”

  He shouldn’t have looked so excited over something so meaningless. “Yeah?”

  I shrugged. “Might as well.”

  He frowned. “But I don’t—I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before.”

  I snorted. “Not cutting. Buzzing. Buzz it all off.”

  He looked horrified. I almost laughed at him. Almost.

  I said, “I’ll go first. And then you can tell me if you want me to do it for you.”

  His hands shook a little as I sat on the toilet. His knees bumped against mine. He looked down at me like he couldn’t figure out where to start. “Front to back. Top, and then the sides. We’ll save the back for last.”

  He was still unsure.