How long had Mr. Edgerton been gone? He’d left her and shut the door five minutes ago? Ten? Thirty? Where had he gone? And why would he leave her alone? To rot, more or less. Even if the police were on his side, wouldn’t his neighbors smell something?
Crystal looked at the door. It had a rubber seal around the edge that used to press against the doorjamb and keep the door insulated. Age had left some tears in it, but not enough to stop it from keeping any decomposing bodies safely hidden inside. Crystal’s lip curled up in a snarl.
She had to get away. She reached out with a paw and pulled the door open until she could stick her head through the opening. She glanced up at the sky and saw the sun was more than a quarter way to the horizon. It was afternoon. The injection they’d given her had knocked her out for hours!
She risked sticking her head out the door and glanced around. The shed was located in the backyard of a house. A well-maintained lawn with a pool took up a large chunk of real estate near the back of the house. Directly ahead of her, she saw a gate in the tall privacy fence that was wide enough for a car or truck to drive through.
The house had two back doors: French doors led into the house off a deck and near the side, closer to the shed, a normal door was standing open that led into what looked like a garage. Crystal licked her lips and focused on the garage door. Was Mr. Edgerton in there?
She heard a car driving down the road. She tilted her head and lifted her ears. By turning, she found she could amplify noises and hear them much better. It made her suck in a deeper breath than usual. Maybe it wasn’t a replacement for a thumb but between that and being able to smell things so much better, it filled her with wonder.
She let out a soft huff, irritated with how easily she’d been distracted. The car sounded familiar to her and, sure enough, she heard the tires scrape across the pavement of the driveway in front of the house. If this was Mr. Edgerton’s house, then that meant it was Stephanie’s house too. Crystal couldn't shake the feeling that Stephanie had just gotten home. School was probably over, so everything lined up.
Would he dare try anything with Stephanie home? Or was her body supposed to be left until dark, when he could sneak her out and toss her in the swamp? Or maybe he planned on burning her, like they’d done to Chad. She shivered and turned her gaze on the gate again. The privacy fence looked like it was as tall as she was. When she looked like a norm, that is.
Crystal took another deep breath before she started forward. Her shoulder bumped into the door and that knocked her other shoulder into the wall. She stumbled as she crossed her right front paw under her left and dropped to her chest and chin. She let out a yelp as she bit her tongue with her canine teeth and scrambled back to her feet. She bumped the door in the process, pushing it open wider.
Firmly on her feet again, she stepped through the shed door and turned to survey the entire backyard. It was big—bigger than hers, at least—and surrounded by the fence. Her only way out was the gate. Either she had to work the latch like she had on the shed or find another way out.
She took her first step out and noticed how different the world felt. Everything was taller, for one, but that didn’t bother her. The smells were stronger than ever, from the budding flowers in the landscaping boxes to the fertilizer used in the grass that contained poisons to kill dandelions and weeds. She snorted and risked lifting a paw to rub her nose. It tickled from all the scents in the air.
She sneezed again and started forward. The fence was on her left. Tall, plastic, and painted white. It almost matched her fur. She moved along it, keeping close and watching the garage door until she was in front of the gate. She jumped up so that her front feet were on the gate and looked at the latch. A lock hung from that latch, the bar secured inside of it and the key nowhere to be found.
Crystal snarled and dropped back to the ground. She looked around again, desperate for another escape. The garage was it. That or she could shift back and pray no one saw her. Then she could try to climb over the fence. But Stephanie was out there. She’d see her and then Steph would try to help her. She’d want to get involved because Steph loved her.
Crystal snarled again and shook her head. Why did she have to screw up and make the cheerleader fall in love with her? She’d never even believed in magic! How could she possibly cast a spell? She growled and jerked her head to the right, silencing herself instantly. She’d heard a noise in the garage.
Crystal turned her attention back to the fence. It was time to find out if she was as special as people kept telling her she was. She backed up, bumping into the fence twice before she figured out how to walk backwards in a straight line with four feet. When a dozen feet lay between her and the gate, she dug her claws into the grass and lowered herself.
She burst forward, her powerful hind legs driving her so fast she almost drove her face into the ground. She caught herself and got her balance back a few steps later but the gate was in front of her. She jumped again, using her front legs first to lift herself up before driving her rear legs into the ground. She rose up and watched the edge of the gate as she passed it by.
Crystal reached out and slapped one paw against the gate in an attempt to pull herself over. She twisted in midair and stopped moving upwards as she lost her momentum. Crystal snarled as she saw what was about to happen.
Gravity, she’d learned in physics class, was very different in real life than it was in movies. A person falling fell without hesitating. The world didn’t slow down around her. She dropped like a stone and had no time to react or even brace herself for what was guaranteed to happen.
Crystal slammed into the top of the gate and scraped along the hard plastic edge. It rubbed across her teats, lighting them on fire even worse than the impact that her ribs already felt, and then dug into her haunches when she jerked to an abrupt stop.
Crystal yelped in pain and shock. She was staring down at the ground, her front paws pushing against the gate while her hind legs were caught on the top of it. She turned and craned her neck to look back at them. Yep, they were caught. Not trapped, just hung up on the edge of it. She snarled and tried to move her legs. They moved, but it hurt since they were grinding against the edge of the molded solid plastic parts.
She pushed with her front paws again and contorted her back, twisting while pulling her leg and kicking with the other. Her leg slid over right as she realized the flaw in her plan. Gravity, again, attacked. She crashed to the hard-packed ground in front of the gate with a loud whuff of air bursting from her mouth.
Crystal lay there panting for a moment. She had to get up; she’d made too much noise. Someone was going to check. If it was Stephanie, that would be a problem. If it was her dad, it would be worse. Much worse.
She rolled onto her belly and lurched up to her feet. Her hips ached and her belly was on fire from the scraping it had taken. She wanted to curl and lick her wounds but she didn’t have time. She could deal with them later, if they hadn’t healed. She glanced around and saw that she was at Stephanie’s house. She’d seen it from the front and even been inside twice, just never in the backyard.
Crystal started at a jog. The garage was on her right and it offered cover, but that would put her closer to Stephanie and her car. She heard a car engine shut off. Stephanie’s car.
“What was—Didn’t you shut that?”
Crystal spun and heard a man’s voice behind her. It was followed by Mr. Edgerton. “Yes! I made sure it shut! Hurry up and check. Stephanie just got home.”
Crystal spun back to the front and bolted. Her fear of discovery overpowered her fear of being seen by her friend. She tore through the side lawn, kicking up dirt and grass with her feet she pushed herself so hard. Her legs stretched out and contracted like she’d dreamed they would, working in tandem to keep her moving at an impossible speed that made the pink Camaro, Stephanie, and their house, and the houses of their neighbors’ pass by in streaks of color.
“What—Hey!” Stephanie called out behind her.
&
nbsp; Crystal didn’t look back. She turned to the left to cut across the neighbor’s lawn but she was moving too fast. She lost her footing and went down, sliding and rolling half a dozen feet until she managed to get under control. She leapt back up and ran again, leaping more than halfway across a two-lane driveway and continuing across the grass until she managed to make her way into another yard. Someone shouted from across the street and a moment later a woman screamed from her front porch.
Crystal tucked her ears and ran harder, panting and desperate. A car drove along on her right and honked at her. She turned away and jumped a row of bushes that came up to her shoulders. Child’s play for her now that she was getting used to her body. She kept going and darted through open backyards, zigging and zagging until she crossed a street and then ducked through another. She bolted into the line of trees of a park at the edge of town and followed them, anxious to get away out into the country so she could catch her breath and figure out what she was going to do next.
Chapter 5
The trees led to an intersection with enough traffic to turn her away. She needed to disappear, not leave a trail of people who saw her. She slipped along the park, intending to cut away as soon as she found a safe way to do so. She was focusing on the road so much she didn’t realize until it was too late that she’d walked up on the edge of a playground.
“Whoa! Cool, check out that dog!” the high-pitched voice of a young boy called out.
Crystal froze and whipped her head around. Who was he calling a dog!
“How pretty!” a girl who looked to be eight or nine years old squealed. “C’mere, puppy!”
Puppy? Crystal snarled and then crouched down when a woman screamed. That would be the mother.
Sure enough, a woman ran onto the playground and grabbed her kids away from the play set they’d been climbing and sliding on. “That’s a wolf!” she said. “Back away slowly.”
“Mom, come on, Mr. Christianson says there aren’t any wolves in Arkansas!” her son protested.
Crystal snorted. Back away slowly? She wasn’t going to attack them! Especially children.
The snort made the woman pull her children back faster. “Your teacher can say whatever,” she argued. “That’s a wolf and it’s right here. Now go! To the car, both of you!”
Crystal stared at her and shook her head. The woman stumbled and caught herself, and then turned and ran after her kids. Crystal huffed again and turned to see the parking lot they were headed towards. The mom and her two kids weren’t the only ones there. She turned and started running again, heading away from them and paralleling the road until she couldn’t go any further.
She glanced back and saw a crowd over her shoulder. They were pointing and talking. Several had cell phones out, some being used to call and others trying to take pictures. She was dead. If Mr. Edgerton didn’t find her and kill her, then Adrian would. She dug her claws in and took off, running across the road without looking and barely avoiding a car that had to jam on its brakes and swerve onto the shoulder to avoid hitting her.
Crystal ran across a yard and had to hop another fence, this one chain link and no taller than the hedges she’d jumped earlier. She skirted across the yard and ran out the driveway before turning the corner and finding herself in the lot of a gas station. She stared up at the sign and froze for a moment. She was headed the wrong way!
A new scream jerked her attention back to the people putting gas in their cars and a woman leaving the gas station. The woman’s plastic bag hit the ground before she turned and ran back inside.
Crystal growled and ran, sending a young man jumping back and tripping over the raised concrete the gas pumps sat on. She leapt up on his Toyota and sprang from there over the fallen man and took off, running around behind the gas station and darting into the employee parking lot of the closed roller rink behind them. She started to slow down, wondering if she could find a place to hide until dark. Her hopes were dashed when she heard the first police siren.
She ran on and darted across the street in front of the roller rink, causing more cars to screech to a halt in shock at seeing her. On the other side, she ran the wrong way through the drive-through lane of a coffee shop and repeated her performance of leaping on top of cars to get past. At any other time, the shocked and frantic expressions on the faces of the people in the car would have made her laugh. Or whatever sound she would have made as a wolf.
As it was, Crystal finally cleared the last one and found the rear of the parking lot was blocked by another fence. She looked around, including a glance behind her to see the approaching sirens were approaching her now. She turned back and started again, running and leaping onto the top of a closed dumpster and springing blindly from the top over the fence. She had a split second to brace herself for the impact. It wasn’t enough.
She splashed head first into a pool. Her hind legs caught the edge but that only served to make her dive deeper. She struggled, swatting her arms and panicking as the water surrounded her. Her front paws pumped in the water; her toes spread as though she could claw and climb her way up and out of it. Miraculously, it worked!
Crystal’s head broke the surface and she started panting for breath. Unfamiliar with how exactly her long mouth worked, she sucked in some water and gagged and coughed before she managed to figure out how to turn around and find the edge of the pool. She pulled herself out of it and turned to see two women in bathing suits and four children staring at her.
She smiled, which came out as a snarl. They panicked. Screams and scrambling bodies rushed to either get out of the pool or run inside the house. Crystal rolled her eyes and looked around. This time the backyard was open and, if she ran straight through, she’d end up in somebody else’s backyard. Grateful for the small break, she started running again and made it through two yards before she came to the drive of a subdivision.
She paused, tired of being weighed down by all the water trapped in her fur, and tried to do what she’d seen countless dogs do. She shook. She got rid of some of the water, but not before she lost her balance and fell to her side. She let out a huff of frustration and climbed back to her feet. Being a wolf was hard work!
She trotted across the drive and ran through some landscaped plots of trees and flowers into another backyard. No pools, but there was a trampoline. She used it as cover and walked beneath it. With no immediate threats present, although she could hear the police sirens screaming off to her left as they raced down a street, she took a moment to plot her escape.
She crept out from beneath the trampoline and moved up beside the house. She hoped the shade would hide her white fur and make her harder to spot. She stopped at the corner of the house. She’d wandered into the yard of a house at the end of a cul-de-sac. The round drive had a landscaped centerpiece, complete with shrubs and a fountain. Not enough room for her to hide in, though. Houses lined either side of the street that stretched away from her.
Flashing red and blue lights drew her attention to the end of the street. A police car stopped while the driver and his partner both peered out the windows, looking for her. Crystal sank down, trying to hide herself. They were a long ways away, a football field, maybe? She waited, afraid to move. The longer she waited, the greater the chance of being found.
Run and be found or wait and be found. Crappy choices. She huffed and slunk back into the backyard. From there, she turned and trotted into the neighbor’s yard on her right. Going back where she came from was a really bad idea, but her only other option was trying to sneak past the cops.
Crystal moved through the yard, sticking close to the line of trees planted at the back of it. She mostly ignored the thick evergreens, other than hoping they would give her some cover if she needed it. It wasn’t until she heard something that made her perk her ear and turn her head that she really looked at them. It sounded like a piece of machinery. A tractor, maybe. She sniffed the air and smelled the diesel exhaust.
Crystal kept walking, looking for an opening throug
h the tall trees and finally decided to make one. She pawed at the bushy branches but they sprang back as soon as she lowered her foot. At a loss for what to do, she closed her eyes and pushed her nose through where the branches and soft needles of the trees had grown into each other.
She had to push hard to break through but once she did she blinked her eyes open and saw a cloud of dust trailing behind a tractor. Was it time for spring planting already? There were tons of fields and farms around Arkansas but she’d never been a farm girl so she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter; it was open ground she could run through and try to escape to the south of town.
Open ground also meant she’d be easy to spot. She turned to watch the tractor as it drove away from her near the far side of the field. She turned her attention back and judged the distance. She could cross it in seconds. Seconds that would leave her vulnerable. She pulled herself through the tree line and sat down, considering her options.
Another noise drifted over the tractor’s engine. She perked her ears up and stood. It was the sound of a motorcycle. She peered through the dust hanging in the air over the field and saw a man on a bike riding hard and fast. It wasn’t Hank or Ember, but that was okay. She recognized Adrian from his bike and the way he sat on it.
Crystal took off without a thought. She darted through the field, kicking up clods of dirt and losing her traction in the freshly tilled ground. She pushed harder and soon was all but flying across the field. Adrian was moving, too, though, and she had to change her course, which caused her precious speed in the shifting dirt. She thought of her geometry class and realized she was chasing Adrian like a dog chases a car. She’d never catch him. She had to meet him.
With that goal in mind, she changed course a final time and angled herself to meet him at the far corner of the field. She ran hard and fast, head down and teeth bared. She passed the tractor and started to cross in front of the farmer when the tractor’s engine changed pitch. He’d seen her, but she didn’t care. If she could make it to Adrian, she would be safe!
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