by Jo Raven
Leroy shrugged. “You’re just not really that important to me, little human girl. Werewolves are obviously the next stage of evolution. We don’t behave the way you humans do. We don’t have to tame nature. We can work within it. We’re superior to you. We deserve to survive, that’s why nature created us to hunt you down.”
She hit him. She hauled back and punched him right in the nose.
Leroy grunted.
Tears started to stream down her face. “Fuck you.” After what had happened to her that day all those years ago, after the things she’d seen… Well, hearing him say the things he was saying was too much for her. She needed to get away. She turned her back on him and started for the freight container. She’d go there and lock herself in, away from Leroy, away from Ryder. Away from both of them. She couldn’t handle it.
She stumbled on her way, her vision blurred from the tears that she shed.
Behind her, Leroy was laughing again.
* * *
It was hot inside the freight container, but it was better than being out there with Leroy. She hadn’t slept much the night before, so after being inside, shut away from them both in the darkness, she began to feel drowsy. She curled up in a ball and let sleep take her.
When she woke up, there was noise from outside.
Male voices yelling. The sounds of scuffling.
She got up as quickly as she could, pulling up the door.
Leroy had gotten free.
Well, sort of. His legs were free from the chair, but his hands were still tied tightly to it. He was standing over Ryder, bringing the chair down over and over on the other man’s head.
Calla screamed, fumbling to find the gun. She pointed it into the air and squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
Both Leroy and Ryder turned to look at her.
She leveled the gun at Leroy. She was going to pull the trigger again. She was going to shoot Leroy dead.
Leroy sneered at her. And then he started beating Ryder with the chair again.
“Stop!” said Calla. She was going to shoot him. She was. Except for the fact that she didn’t know. Killing someone, even someone like Leroy—one second he’d be breathing and the next…
Oh, besides, her aim wasn’t very good, and what if she hit Ryder instead?
“Stop!” she said again. “I’ll shoot.”
Leroy laughed. He clubbed Ryder over the head with the chair again, and Ryder went still. He stopped moving completely.
Calla shrieked.
Leroy took off into the woods, holding the chair above his head as he crashed into the underbrush.
Calla fired after him, but she didn’t hit anything.
She pulled the trigger again.
And again.
Bang! Bang!
Leroy was getting away. He was inside the leaves, covered over by foliage, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
She pulled the trigger again.
Click.
Oh. No more bullets. She flung it down on the ground and ran for Ryder.
“Ryder.” She skidded down next to him, landing on her knees. She shook him. “Ryder.”
He wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed. He was unconscious.
CHAPTER NINE
Ryder was dreaming about being a wolf. He was running and jumping through the woods, chasing after something tiny—a raccoon that was skittering ahead of him. He wasn’t starving, but he thought that the raccoon would make a nice snack. He was enjoying the hunt.
But something made him stop.
He had a funny memory, a feeling that was nagging at him.
He wasn’t really a wolf. He was a man. And when he looked down at his body, he realized that it wasn’t the body of a wolf after all, but instead the weak and hairless body of a human. He put his hands in front of his face and stared at them in horror.
He didn’t belong in this skin.
He gazed longingly at the raccoon, which was getting away from him, ducking under the foliage and disappearing into the distance.
No snack for him.
“Ryder,” said a voice.
He turned.
It was his father. “Wolves are not superior, boy. Wolves are just wolves. There’s no reason that we’ve been made this way. We just are, like that raccoon just is. I won’t hear any more of this nonsense.”
Ryder glared at him.
His head hurt. He swam close to consciousness for a second. He heard a woman calling his name. She sounded worried.
But then that faded, and he was watching his father walk away, glaring at the back of the man’s head.
“Don’t worry about him.”
Ryder whirled.
Enoch was standing there, grinning at him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Ryder could see his big tattoo on his shoulder—a wolf tackling a deer with antlers. “You don’t need your father to agree with you.”
“But I wanted to bring them in to the cause.”
“In time, Ryder,” said Enoch. “For now, let’s run.” He unzipped his pants and the change flowed over him. He was a wolf in one second, bounding off into the forest.
Ryder tried to do it too, to shift into a wolf. He used to know how, but now he… he couldn’t.
“Be the wolf,” whispered another voice, this one silky and urgent, right at his ear. “Surrender to the wolf. It is your true nature. Let it happen, Ryder.”
He turned again, and there was Cole Randall, the man who’d trained him to shift back and forth so easily, the man who’d shown him that there was no separation between himself and the wolf.
“I thought you left,” said Ryder, feeling confused. “I thought you left. I thought you stopped spending your time with Enoch.”
“You were always the best at this, Ryder,” said Cole. “You were always the only one who could lose himself in the change. You can do it now. Be the wolf.”
Ryder, screamed a female voice far, far away. Ryder, wake up.
* * *
Calla was afraid that Ryder had a concussion, and she knew that she needed to wake him up. She couldn’t remember exactly why people needed to be awakened when they had concussions, but she knew it was bad for him to sleep for too long.
If he had a concussion. She wasn’t sure. Maybe he didn’t.
But he’d been hit over the head with a chair, and it had knocked him out. That couldn’t be good.
She shook him violently, so violently that his teeth knocked together.
Abruptly, his eyes opened. He struggled away from her, turning over on one side and vomiting.
She sat back, unsure of what to do. Was it her fault that he’d thrown up?
He turned back to her, wiping his mouth. “Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Calla,” she said. “You’re talking again.”
“Where’s my father?” said Ryder.
“What?” she said.
CHAPTER TEN
Ryder had never seen this woman before in his life. He had no idea where he was. He was outside somewhere, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt and…
Hell, was that his body? It didn’t look quite right. It was too big. His shoulders weren’t that broad, and he seemed to have sprouted more hair everywhere. He’d never been an exactly hairy guy, and he wasn’t sure that he’d qualify for that description now, but there was more of it on his chest and stomach. He touched it, feeling panic rising inside him.
“Where am I?”
“I don’t know,” said the woman. “Jasper brought us out here, and he won’t tell me where we are, and he won’t let me live.”
“Jasper? Is he here?” He sat up, looking for his brother. But the sudden movement sent shards of pain through his head and neck. He cried out, clutching his temples.
“Shh… careful.” The woman touched him. “I don’t think you should move too fast. You got hit over the head. You might have a concussion.”
His head did ache miserably. He groaned. He let the woman help him lie down on his back, but further away from the place w
here he’d vomited all over the ground.
“Jasper will be back this evening,” said the woman. “Hopefully before Leroy comes back.”
“Leroy? Leroy Foster?”
“I… I don’t know.” She hugged herself. “I never got his last name. But he was horrible, and he said that you owed him money or service or… something.”
Ryder groaned. So Enoch had sent Leroy to collect, had he? “But… it shouldn’t be so soon. I had years to pay back the debt. Ten years.”
The woman chewed on her lip. “Ryder? What year is it?”
He told her.
She swallowed. “No. It’s not. That was ten years ago.”
“What?”
“I think you have a concussion,” she said. “I think you’ve lost your memory. It happens sometimes with concussions.” She paused. “I think.”
Ryder couldn’t fathom what she was saying. His head hurt, and he didn’t know where he was, and his last clear memory of this was… was… “I changed,” he muttered. “I shifted into a wolf. I was going to stay a wolf forever. Cole taught me how to do it. If you fall deep enough inside the animal, then it’s like you’re not even a man anymore. It was the only way to protect myself from Enoch.” He furrowed his brow. “Did you say Leroy was here?”
“Well, he hit you over the head and then he ran into the woods.”
“Shit.” He tried to sit up again.
But she stopped him. “Lie down. It’s better if you don’t move. I think.”
“Are you a nurse or something?”
“No, I’m a high school English teacher.”
“Great,” he muttered. He eyed her. “Man, I wish my high school teachers were as hot as you.” She was just the kind of woman he found attractive. Maybe she was a little old for him, but she was all tits and ass and soft curves. He could just imagine what it would be like to be pressed between her legs.
The woman blushed, as if she could tell what he was thinking.
The thought had come unbidden to his head, and now he was distracted by his attraction, by a burgeoning arousal. He shouldn’t be thinking about this. He should be thinking about… “Leroy. If he’s out there, we’re both in trouble. Leroy’s the worst of Enoch’s trained dogs. He’s like a pit bull. He’ll tear us to shreds.”
“I know he’s horrible, but there isn’t anything we can do.” She turned and peered out into the woods, her expression nervous. “Hopefully, Jasper will come back soon. Maybe I can convince him to let us go this time.”
“Let us go?”
“Yeah. If you keep talking, then there won’t be any reason—”
“Keep talking? What do you mean?” Ryder yawned. He felt tired. He just wanted to go back to sleep. He let his eyes flutter closed. Maybe he didn’t care what she said.
“No, don’t fall back asleep.” She shook him.
He opened his eyes, feeling annoyed.
“You shouldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but it’s bad.”
“You don’t know anything about it, really, do you? You’re a teacher.”
“Well, I read about concussions. And we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and we can’t get an ambulance or a doctor or anything. So, you just have to stay awake.”
He stared up at the sky. It was so blue. He felt confused. “I’m supposed to be a wolf. I wasn’t ever going to change back. I was going to stay in wolf form forever.”
“Why?” She cocked her head at him.
“Because I didn’t want Enoch to find me.”
“Did you really join his awful cause? Did you want to kill people?”
Ryder licked his lips. “You know about that, huh?”
“Leroy was talking about it.”
“They made it seem different. Especially Cole. Cole Randall.”
“The wolf serial killer?” she said, horrified.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, that was only maybe three years ago. Of course you wouldn’t know. You can’t remember anything for the past five years. I think it might be temporary, though. Maybe it will all come back.” She gave him a hopeful look.
“What do you mean, serial killer?”
“He was all over the news. He was a werewolf killing deliberately, not like most wolves that just go nuts and kill at the full moon. He was doing it all on purpose. And his name was Cole Randall.”
“Well, it could be the same person. They worked together, Cole and Enoch. Enoch recruited people, and Cole trained us to shift back and forth between wolf and human forms. He taught us to get in touch with our wolf sides. That was what was so powerful about it for me. When I was a wolf, I felt so… at one with everything. The whole world was simpler then, you know?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Of course she didn’t know. She wasn’t a werewolf, after all. He could smell that about her.
“But Cole left.” Ryder remembered that. “He didn’t want Enoch telling him what to do. He was going to do it on his own. He wouldn’t let any of us come with him…”
“How could you join something like that? The cause is just… killing people.” The way she understood it, Enoch wanted to allow werewolves to go free and kill people. Leroy had said something about saving the planet by killing the humans, restoring the balance of nature. The concept gave her chills.
“It didn’t seem like that,” said Ryder. “It seemed like a good idea when they were explaining it. Like it was inevitable, like it was just about nature taking its course. It was only when I realized that Enoch wanted us to go out and actually kill people that I changed my mind.”
“You did?” She looked relieved.
“Of course I did. I couldn’t do that, not even in wolf form. I couldn’t just kill innocent people.”
“Oh, good. I was afraid that you were a really horrible person.”
“I’m not,” he said.
She was quiet.
He looked her over again. She really was sexy. He yawned another time. “Can’t I just take a nap?”
“No,” she said. “I told you, you might have a concussion.”
“But I feel so tired.” He made a face.
“You still haven’t explained to me why you were going to stay in wolf form forever,” she said.
He felt really sleepy. He wanted to close his eyes. Maybe just for a minute…
She was shaking him. “Ryder. Tell me about it. Tell me why.”
“It was safer that way,” he said, yawning again. “That way, I didn’t think that Enoch would ever be able to find me. And it was easy. I just slipped into the wolf, let the wolf overtake everything in my mind. I shut out all my thoughts of being human, and I went deep, deep into the wolf. It was bliss and peace and joy and…” He wanted that again. Maybe he’d get that if he closed his eyes.
“Ryder, no.” She was shaking him. “Why didn’t you want Enoch to find you?”
“Because he knew that I wasn’t interested in the cause anymore.” He shut his eyes.
“Wake up, Ryder.”
He groaned.
“Why did it matter if you were interested in the cause?”
“Because I owed him, see.” He wasn’t going to open his eyes. He could stay awake with his eyes closed. It was just more peaceful this way.
“Ryder!”
“What?” He was starting to find this woman annoying.
“What do you mean, you owed him?”
“He lent me money, back when I still lived at home with my dad. He lent me enough money so that I could buy a car and leave home. Break out on my own. He said that—as long as I was helping the cause—I’d never have to pay back a cent.” He was drifting. He wanted to go to sleep, and it tugged on him, drawing him down, down, down.
“Ryder!” she was yelling. “What if you didn’t help the cause?”
“Then I owed it all with interest,” he mumbled. “So, I was going to hide. I was going to be a wolf, and he was never going to
find me.” That was all. Sleep was overtaking him. He couldn’t fight it. He didn’t even want to fight it. He wanted to rest.
So he surrendered to his fatigue and let the drowsiness have him. Everything in the world faded away, and he was snug and warm as he drifted off.
* * *
Calla shook him, her body in a frenzy. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” she screamed.
He didn’t.
Oh God, what if he was dead? She frantically felt for his pulse. It was beating away, strong and reassuring.
She didn’t know what to do. She was beginning to question herself, anyway. Maybe she’d read about that not-waking-up-a-concussed-person thing in an article about medical myths. Maybe it was okay for him to sleep after all.
She sat back on her heels, surveying him sleeping there. She was starting to piece this whole thing together now. Ryder had changed into a wolf to escape Leroy and everything he represented. He had wanted free of Leroy’s horrible ‘cause.’ But he’d stayed in wolf form for too long, and he’d lost his human side. She felt sorry for him. He’d made a mistake, and he’d been trapped, and he hadn’t had any choices.
She could see that deep down, he really was a good man. Any violence that was in him was directed against people who deserved it. She liked Ryder. She had found him attractive since the moment she’d seen him, but she was happy to know that she wasn’t hot and bothered by a man who had a bad character.
Was he cured now?
She shook him again. “Wake up,” she whispered.
Nothing.
He continued to breathe evenly, and he looked so peaceful asleep.
But what if something terrible was happening to him because of his concussion? She wished she knew what to do.
She shook him again. Harder this time.
His eyes opened.
“Ryder?”
He didn’t say anything. But when she peered into his eyes, she saw that they were dull and unintelligent again. That spark inside him was gone somehow.
It made her angry, so she shook him again. “Stop it. I know you’re in there. Say something.”
Ryder pulled away from her, and he whimpered at the sudden movement. He settled on his haunches, hanging his head. He was obviously in pain.