by Abby Tyson
"Savi?" whispered Marley.
"We probably shouldn't talk a lot in case he comes back," she said.
Marley stayed quiet.
She knew she was being rude, but the walls Savi had rebuilt within herself had started crumbling again the moment she'd seen that picture of Marley as a kid. It reminded her of that day in the playground, and how much comfort she'd drawn from that memory -- from him -- since. Of course, seeing his hot, shirtless body didn't help either. Every word he spoke in that sweet, lyrical voice of his was another blow to her defenses.
With a sigh Savi pulled up her legs and rested her head on her knees, wishing this night would end. She sat stewing in her own thoughts for some time before Marley spoke again.
"Savi," he whispered, "I need to tell you something before tomorrow, before you do this."
"But what if your dad --"
"I need to tell you. Now."
The finality in his voice reminded her of Ren. When she didn't object, he continued.
"I'm going to be different tomorrow," he said. "Well, actually, I'm different now, and I'll be back to normal tomorrow. And it's really tomorrow night, and almost every other night, that it's most noticeable."
Despite the darkness, Savi's eyes had adjusted. The thin strips of moonlight shining through the cracks in the walls striped across Marley's face.
"You look good to me," she said.
His tight lips relaxed into a soft smirk.
"Normal I mean," she mumbled. "You look normal to me."
The corner of his mouth twitched up, but there was no humor in his voice when he spoke.
"Starting at sunset the night before the full moon, and lasting until sunrise the second morning after the full moon, me and Ren are just ordinary people. We're regular guys."
Savi's mind raced with possibilities, but she forced herself to focus on Marley's voice.
"But on every other day, we're more than that." He took a deep breath. "We're stronger. We have better senses of smell and hearing."
"Like the werewolves you mean?" She grimaced at herself for interrupting.
"Yeah, except not as strong."
Savi thought of what Hettie had said about how amazing it felt to be a werewolf. "That doesn't sound so bad."
Shaking his head, Marley stumbled his words a few times before laughing at himself. "I've never told anyone this before. Apparently telling people is a really big deal -- we're not supposed to tell anyone. Hardly anyone in the world knows except others like us. But, if you're doing this for us, if you're taking this chance for my dad..." His voice faltered. He laughed again. "Ren would be really, really pissed if he knew I was telling you."
"Then maybe you shouldn't."
Marley clearly hadn't expected her to say that. He ran his hands through his hair and glanced at the cracks in the walls, about to respond. He froze, staring at something outside. Savi stiffened. She'd almost forgotten why they were there, losing herself in the unexpected line of conversation. Her skin prickled, but she didn't dare move to rub her arms.
Still staring outside, Marley put a hand on her arm. His gaze moved toward the front of the shack. In the corner of her eye Savi saw something move. A new shadow joined them.
Marley's father had arrived.
Chapter Thirty-Three
As if bringing the darkness with him, the moonlight disappeared as the wolf walked in. For a few blissful seconds it didn't notice them, invisibly lapping water from its bowl. But just when Savi dared to breathe, a disembodied growl rumbled through the shack. As she peered into the shadows, the moonlight returned, glinting off the bared fangs of a dark wolf.
While Savi had seen more werewolves within the past two days than she'd ever dreamt of seeing, none of her limited experience could prepare her for this. Marley was right. This was different than Marcia's wolves, locked safely away in cages. Even the silver wolf when it attacked Top -- savage though it was -- had still been on the other side of a protective metal partition. There was nothing between Savi and this wild, powerful, snarling animal that was driven by a primal instinct to protect its territory, and amped up on werewolf hostility.
Running wasn't an option. The wolf was directly in front of the door, so close that Savi could have touched it. Besides, this was why they were here, right? To... uh... save him.
She searched the wolf's eyes for some level of recognition, a trace of humanity. But while she had caught a glimpse of the wolf lurking behind the man, there was no sign of that man in this wolf.
A muffled chirp sounded beside her, and suddenly a dart was in the wolf's shoulder. In the same instant -- or perhaps just before, everything happened too fast to be certain -- the wolf dove for her.
The plan may have been to get wolf-Warren to bite her, but Savi wasn't about to let him rip her apart. She jerked her legs back, instinctively attempting to curl up into the fetal position, but she had barely turned away before the wolf's mouthful of daggers tore through her jeans and hooked into her calf.
This was no controlled nip on the arm from one of Marcia's trained pets. Savi could feel every single excrutiating tooth drilling into her, slicing her flesh, her bones already bowing under the pressure.
Savi's other leg was useless beneath her, but Marley was able to get the wolf off by kicking it in the throat a few times. Releasing her, it turned on Marley, but before it latched onto him the wolf lost its balance and collapsed on its side. If Savi weren't blinded by pain, she would have pitied the wolf, whining and flapping its legs around like broken wings. A piercing scream filled the tiny shack, and Savi wondered how it was possible for a wolf to made a sound like that.
"It's over, Savi. You're okay."
Marley's arms wrapped around her, and she discovered she was the one screaming. Kneeling beside her, he hugged her to him. Head pressed against his chest, she stopped crying, listening for his heartbeat.
"Shh," he whispered. "It's over." Despite his warmth, she began shivering. Sparks of pain shot up her leg, which only made her shake more. Marley started to pull back.
"No," Savi cried, grabbing hold of his strong arms.
Marley stilled, then said, "Don't worry about him. He's out. He won't wake until after sunrise."
She didn't let go, not revealing the true reason why she wanted him to keep holding her. He sighed, pressing his forehead to her temple. "I have to look at your leg, and you need a blanket." Teeth chattering, Savi reluctantly let him go, all the points on her body where he'd shared his heat now icing over.
He took out a small but thick fleece blanket from his pack and draped it over her, tucking her in until she was cocooned from her chin to just below her hip. Savi had stopped noticing Marley's scent on the shirt she wore, but the blanket filled the air around her with a bouquet of Marley and cedar that seemed to wrap her inside as much as out. Next he brought out the flashlight, pressing the power button twice to make the handle shaft illuminate instead of the head. Sliding the handle away from the bulb until it clicked into place turned the flashlight into a lantern, which he set on the ground beside her leg. The trembling eased as her own warmth massaged her spasming muscles. Marley grabbed a pair of scissors from the first aid kit he'd brought and cautiously started cutting away the bottom half of her pant leg.
The small but bright sphere of white light cast by the lantern shone on his face as he hunched over her. Watching him, Savi was struck with the same impression she'd had by the playground that morning, in that he appeared strangely different to her now. Up until now, her encounters with Marley had all been tainted by surreal circumstances: being kidnapped, her overpowering and unsettling attraction to him, learning his dad was a werewolf. Even the fact that he was the boy from the playground twelve years ago cast him in the fairy tale role of white knight.
But looking at him now, she saw a real person. Sure he was fairy tale handsome, but he was also just a guy who bit his lip when he was concentrating, a guy who fought with his brother, a guy who talked with his mouth full of food. Savi was sudden
ly consumed by the need -- not to touch him or be touched by him -- but to know him. She wanted to know why he memorized poetry, his favorite food, and everything else that made him who he was. And she wanted him to want to know those things about her.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that the fact that Marley had started peeling her bloody pant leg off didn't register until a bolt of pain shot through her.
"Sorry," he said with a grimace.
Shaking her head and trying to smile, she said, "It's okay." Although as he revealed her mutilated leg, she wanted to take those words back.
"It looks worse than it is," he said at her gasp.
"It looks like I'm never going to be able to see raw meat again without throwing up." Tears leaked from her eyes, but Savi let them fall, not wanting to take her arm out from under the warm blanket. She lay her head against the wall. "I'm totally going to be a vegetarian, starting now," she said. "Vegetarians are all skinny, right? I don't know why I didn't think of it before."
She started to close her eyes, but then popped them back open. "Oh right, bacon," she said.
Marley chuckled as he took out a bottle of water. After unscrewing the cap, he offered it to her. Savi shook her head, loathe to let any of her warmth escape.
"You need this," he said, his laughter gone.
Savi grudgingly reached out and took the lukewarm bottle. She was already shivering again as she handed it back, cold air assaulting her unprotected side.
"I'll get that," he said, leaning over to tuck the blanket back around her. "Better?" he asked, his concerned eyes meeting hers.
The blanket was warm, but it wasn't responsible for the heat that spread through Savi's body. Unable to think through the confusing haze of pain and pleasure, she gave him an encouraging, chattering, smile. He sat back next to her leg, opening the bottle of water again.
"This will hurt," said Marley, "but I have to clean it."
"I doubt it could --" Her sharp breath cut off her words as the water stung her raw flesh. Marley ripped open a package of cloth and dabbed at her wound.
"There is a courage," he said. "A majestic thing that springs forth from the brow of pain, full-grown, Minerva-like."
The poem was unfamiliar, and Savi was glad for that. She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the wall, focusing on his words and his smell, trying to clear her mind of fear and pain.
"And dares all dangers known, and all the threatening future yet may bring."
Hardly fifteen minutes earlier, Savi had been wishing for this night to end. Now, listening to the rhythms and rhymes gracefully captured by Marley's soft voice, now she wished for it to last forever.
"And Fate, the archer, passes by dismayed, knowing his best barbed arrows needs must fail to pierce a soul so armored and arrayed that Death himself might look on it and quail."
When he fell silent, Savi opened her eyes. Her right pant leg now stopped at her knee, about an inch above where the white gauze began. Marley sat, his jeans and waist visible, but his face now out of reach of the lantern light.
"You're done?" she asked.
Mistaking her disappointment for pain, he asked, "Is it too tight?"
"No, the poem, I mean."
"Oh, yeah." After a pause, he muttered, "Ella Wheeler Wilcox."
"Ah."
Neither of them moved. The shack filled with the chirps and songs of the crickets and tree frogs. Savi stared at the lantern, knowing that her dream of befriending Marley would never happen. She'd probably never even see him again after he dropped her off at her campsite tomorrow. That thought -- combined with the fact that she couldn't see his face, and he most likely couldn't see hers -- emboldened her to speak her mind.
"I'm so sorry, Marley."
For a moment Savi thought she had spoken too softly, but before she could repeat herself, Marley answered, his voice quiet also. "For what?"
Staring at the lantern, she said, "For everything. For screwing things up with the silver wolf, for basically calling your dad creepy, for being borderline rude to you most of the time."
"The silver wolf wasn't your fault, either time. And you didn't say anything about werewolves that isn't true."
"I'm not usually so emotional. The past two days have been completely insane. They're definitely not a good guage to judge what kind of person I am."
Again, Marley took a beat before responding. "I don't think that's true. I think I have a pretty good idea of what kind of a person you are."
As Savi tried to figure out how to react, he got up. Thinking he was ending the conversation, she sank into her blanket, heavy with disappointment. But instead, he moved to sit beside her, where he had been before. When his shoulder pressed against hers, he didn't move away.
"You could have just left Marcia's barn that first night. They probably wouldn't have noticed you were even gone for a while. Instead, you stayed behind long enough to create an opportunity for me and Ren to escape too. That means you're brave, kind, and resourceful, not to mention resilient, to have had the presence of mind to even function after being confronted with the reality of werewolves."
Am I hallucinating?
Savi's stomach was aflutter and her whole body tingled with the possible meaning behind Marley's words.
He's just being nice, she told herself, keeping her hope in check. He's not attracted to you, remember?
"You like poetry, which means you're thoughtful, intelligent, and have a soul," he said with a chuckle.
Too shocked to laugh along, she glanced at Marley, so close beside her. Even though they were both out of range of the lantern light, she could see his profile pretty well as he stared at his hands. When he spoke again, she watched his lips without realizing it.
"You went back to help your friend, even though you didn't really stand a chance by yourself, which means you're self-reliant, and stubborn." He smiled as he said it, dispelling the indignation that flashed across her chest.
When he didn't say anything else, Savi started to panic again. She wasn't ready for this intimate moment to end.
"What you said to me on the playground when we were kids helped me a lot when I was growing up," she said. "I know it was just something your dad told you, and neither of us really understood it at the time, but believing that I'm stronger than everyone else helped me through a lot of hard times." She breathed out a laugh. "Although things took a nosedive when I found out it wasn't true."
"What do you mean?"
Savi considered telling him, almost wanted to tell him if it meant he would stay next to her longer, but decided against it. Only Baxter knew the extent of her drinking, and she wasn't ever planning on seeing him again. "Let's just say I had some issues."
Moths, drawn by the light, had seeped into the shack, flitting around them. Those that clung to the lantern either blocked the light, dotting the cylindrical bulb with black heart-shaped silhouettes, or glowed transparent as the light passed through their thin, painted wings. Unwilling to swat at them and compromise her cocoon, Savi blew at the ones that came too close to her. Marley must have noticed, because he leaned over and turned the light off. When he settled back beside her, she couldn't see him at all.
"I've thought a lot about that day too," he said, sounding serious. "And you're not the only one with issues, trust me."
"You mean the super powers thing? I don't think I'd call that an issue -- more like awesome." With a grimace she remembered him trying to tell her about that. "Sorry for shooting you down before. I was nervous and... borderline rude."
Savi's eyes were acclimating to the moonlight, still shining into the shack. She could almost see his face. Was he smiling?
"Can we be friends?" she blurted out. "I know I've been less than friendly," she continued, desperate to fill the silence, "but I'd like to at least take you out to lunch once, as a thank you for helping me out as a kid and, you know, saving my life." She couldn't bear that he wasn't talking, even though she wasn't giving him enough time to answer. "Ren could c
ome too, if you want. It wouldn't be a date kind of thing. You must have a girlfriend who's super pretty, and I wouldn't want to make her upset -- not that she'd have anything to worry about from someone like me." She stopped talking just long enough to take a breath. "Never mind. It's fine. It's not a big deal. I'll just give you my number so you can let me know if all of this even worked for your dad. Although, my phone is still at Marcia's. Did you get your phone back?"
She finally braved a peek at Marley, but before she could discern his expression, he brought his warm hand to her neck. Savi's mouth opened in surprise, but it was closed by Marley's lips.
Savi was almost too astonished to enjoy the landslides wreaking havoc within her. Rocks tumbled down, up, and sideways, crashing and exploding against each other. Pebbles ricocheted off the walls of her body, each ping leaving her ringing with pleasure. When Marley pulled away, he kept his hand on her.
"I didn't think..." she began, in a daze. "You said..."
He bent toward her and kissed her lightly on the neck. When he spoke, his lips moved on her skin, making her quiver. "What?"
"When we were in the woods next to Marcia's barn. I said I wasn't a kid anymore, and you... you said, 'I've noticed.'"
"Yeah," he said, leaning back enough to meet her eyes. "Why'd you get so mad?"
"I thought you meant that I... I'm not skinny like I was as a kid."
"That is so not what I meant." He brought his face to the other side of her neck and kissed her again. A rush of warmth filled her from head to toe, making the blanket on her suddenly feel oppressive.
She felt his lips on her ear. "You're beautiful," he whispered.
Without thinking, she said, "It's pitch dark in here."