by Lynn Red
“Ash, wait,” I grabbed his arm. “Why don’t we just call the cops? I mean, getting a whole bunch of hyena police would probably be for the best, right?”
Ash’s jaws tightened. “Two problems with that. First of all, if the cops show up and nail Marlin to a wall, he’s going to start spouting names to get himself out of trouble. The other problem is that my phone is dead out here, and I’m sure yours probably is too.”
“Are you,” I gulped, “saying you’re involved in this somehow?”
He shook his head. “Only by association. But I have this gnawing fear in the back of my mind that even that’ll be good enough to get me in a lot of trouble I don’t want to be in. If they don’t show up until later though? We can get away.”
I took a long, hard look at him. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. There’s some other reason besides bad reception and tenuous legal reasons.”
“I want him, Violet,” Crag said in a low, dangerous voice. “I want Marlin. He’s used me, he treated me like dirt. He hurt me and my family, and these girls and I... I just want to get back at him.”
I swallowed, hard.
“If you don’t want to be a part of this, I’m not going to hold it against you. This is my fight, I know that.” Ash grabbed my hand and made me look deep into his eyes. “I won’t love you any less if you say no.”
I closed my eyes, sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down.
“I want to help these girls,” I said. “And I want to help you. I’m... scared though. It just seems dangerous and, I don’t know, kinda crazy?”
“It is,” he said, pulling me close. “A lot of crazy’s happened between the two of us. It’s all turned out pretty all right though, I think.”
When our lips touched, Ash parted mine and swirled his tongue into me. I let all the air out of my lungs, tangled my fingers in his hair, and let the taste of his kiss take me away from everything for just a second.
“Yeah,” I whispered when we parted.
“Trust me,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Not now, not ever.”
*
We got as far as the edge of the woods before I didn’t need to bother following anymore. I knew the place.
I’d known it since I was a little girl. My dad always warned me about what he called The Witch Woods. Always told me never to venture too far out into the weird forest between Jamesburg and Clinton, because he said there were dark things there, bad things – though he never went into any specifics.
I always liked the woods, but for the most part I did what he said.
Ash got off his bike and pushed it under some vines, then made his way back toward my idling car.
Watching him reminded me a little of my dad. The kind, knowing eyes, the sensitive smiles he used to give me.
But then there was the one time I did ignore what my dad told me.
A shudder crept through me as I remembered, and when Ash got back to my car, I guess I was just sitting there with my mouth open.
“You all right?” he asked. “Which way is it to this house?”
As though I was in a trance, I just started babbling. “I was drawn in one afternoon when Henry and I were riding our bikes out here. The leaves were starting to turn blue and pink and purple, as they do every year. It is woods full of witches after all. We just had to stop.”
“Huh?” he asked. “What are—”
“Henry and I poked around,” I continued. “We had a little scamper – which is totally more fun when you can ride your turtle friend’s shell – and turned back to leave a little while later. Only we couldn’t. There was no way out. It was like the woods had swallowed us up and were going to keep us inside them forever.”
I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until Ash grabbed one of them around the steering wheel and steadied me. He didn’t say anything though, instead just waited for me to finish. His calm, consistent breathing did help me calm down some, but the horror I saw wasn’t going to leave me. Not ever.
“There was this house – a square brown one – right at the end of a path we were following to try and get out,” my voice was hollow and distant, but he wasn’t letting go of me. “We kept walking along the path, but the house never seemed to get any closer. And we were just dumb twelve year olds. We didn’t know what we were doing.”
Silently, Ash stroked my hand.
I turned at looked at his face, and smiled as tears ran down my cheeks. “We saw skeletons. Hundreds of them, all along the side of the path. Squirrels, rabbits, even fo... foxes. They were just discarded like trash, all over the place. I don’t know if they were real, or if they were just illusions meant to lure us to run for that little hut, but that’s exactly what we did.”
“And it was her? This witch that’s buying girls from Marlin?” Ash asked in a low voice that was near a whisper. “Leota, you said?”
I nodded. “At the end of the path, she was standing there, motionless. We didn’t see her until we were basically right on top of her. I remember, Henry, she asked for help. Leota had this sickening, awful grin on her face.” I gulped, still remembering the smell of the place when the door opened. “It was like... sickly sweet inside the house. Everything smelled like decay. It was... it was hot, too.”
The next time I swallowed, my throat clicked painfully. “It was like a dream though, like I was wandering around in something surreal and horrible. But neither of us could turn around. There was some force pushing us deeper into the house.”
“How did you get out?” he asked, eyes wide open in shock. “Something must have happened.”
“Not something,” I said. “Someone. To this day I don’t know who it was, or how they found us, but a big, like seriously big, black bear with tattoos around his eyes just like yours... he... Oh my God,” I whispered as revelation snuck through me. “It must have been...”
Ash chewed his lip. “I’ve heard this story before,” he said. “Only, Aiden – that was my brother’s name – he left out most of the part about saving two girls. He was always kind of modest.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “He... he saved us, Ash. Me and Henry. Without him, we would have been – jeez, I don’t even know what we would have been. Cooked? Turned into potions? I can’t even imagine.”
His face got grim. “He was never the same after that,” he said. “He always had some problems, but after that... yeah he wasn’t ever the same.”
“It was just so hot and sticky and awful,” I said. “That’s all I remember until he burst through the front door, gave that witch a huge swipe with one of his paws, and dragged us back out. I remember his fur singeing, like catching on fire. I remember him shielding us from a heatwave.”
“Yeah,” Ash said. “The scars on his face.” He let his eyes look left and up, like he was searching his memory. “They were all over his face, his arms, his back. He’d never tell me what they came from, not even when I begged him to tell. He just said they were from an accident.”
I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed Ash’s hand in mine and squeezed as hard as I could manage. “We’re going to do this,” I said. It was more to comfort me than him, I guess. “For all those girls, but also for your brother, and everyone else she’s hurt. Probably doing it for her step-daughter, too.”
“Straight in,” I said, remembering the question he asked before I drifted off into my awful memories. “Go straight in and when you come to a creek, turn right. I doubt you’ll have much trouble finding the house, but there’s a square brown one with a separate cellar. That’s...”
I swallowed. Ash leaned in and kissed me, hard and deep and honestly. He sucked my bottom lip. I tasted him deep in my chest.
“Go,” he said, turning away. “Bring whoever you think you can. But...” he stood stiffly, frozen not ten feet from me.
As I turned the car back on and started to back away, I realized he said something. “But what?” I asked. “Do you need something else?”
“No,” he
said. “But don’t hurry too much. I don’t want anyone taking Marlin anywhere before I have my way with him. This has been coming a long time. A really long time. All right? This is my last fight. The last one I want. The last one I need. But it’s one I need. I won’t let this fucker control me anymore. He doesn’t get my thoughts or my feelings or anything else. And I’m going to make sure he knows it.”
I gulped. “Don’t kill him,” I said. “I couldn’t live without you.”
The words came out of my mouth before I realized I was going to say them. But once they were out there, I couldn’t take them back even if I’d wanted to pretend I never said them.
“I won’t,” he said with a gruff laugh. “But I can’t promise how close I’ll get.”
As he vanished into the woods I fished my phone out of my back pocket. No police, I knew, but if I could at least get someone on the way out here, life would be easier. I couldn’t think who though.
No reception. Zero bars. So, I was going to have to go back to town.
I needed to think of someone though. Running down the list of candidates in my head – Lex, Henry, my parents – none of them made much sense. Lex maybe, maybe, but...
Then it hit me. During one of the seventy times I’d seen Erik, our town alpha, on the news, he’d been standing around in his leather pants and open-necked shirt, and said that he wanted to be the sort of alpha people came to when they had problems.
He wanted the town to feel safe with him in the lead, he’d said.
“Well,” I said under my breath, “I guess I’m going to go see the mayor.”
-18-
Erik, Izzy and Jamie
“Something’s got to break,” Erik said, squeezing the side of his huge, walnut wood desk so hard that Izzy thought he was about to pull apart.
Without warning, a bat flittered through the window, grabbed ahold of an overhanging bar and wrapped itself up. Moments later, black hair, a pencil skirt with a long slit, and a pair of tremendously dangerous-looking stilettoes replaced the wings and claws.
“Yeah,” Jamie said, letting her hair fall down her back in an ebony cascade as her wings melded into her back. “That desk is about to, if you’re not careful. And I’m not sure there’s room in the budget for another one, but Izzy would know.”
Erik let out a sigh and relaxed his grip. “It’s just... god damn whoever is doing this!”
“What Erik means,” Izzy interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder, “is that he’s frustrated with the current events in town. He hasn’t slept much at all lately, and... just between you and me,” she pulled Jamie aside and whispered, “he hasn’t been doing much else at night either.”
“Hey!” Erik half-shouted. “I’m not sure that’s necessary information, Isabel.” His voice was mocking, but there was a little twist of a mischievous grin trailing afterwards.
Izzy shrugged and gave Erik a squeeze on his sloped, muscular shoulder. “Anyway,” she said. “I’m not telling her anything she doesn’t already know. Moving along!”
Izzy and Jamie both had a laugh while Erik faked that he was irritated. The short break of levity was just what he needed to get his mind back into something approaching control.
“Did you see anything when you were swooping around up there?” He asked, turning to Jamie, but keeping his hand nestled safely on the small of Izzy’s back. “Anything about the kidnapped girls?”
Jamie shook her head. “Nothing new. From what I hear though, there’s been a rash of kidnappings all over the place. Unsurprisingly,” she curled her tongue around the word and paused. “They seem to follow that carny asshole’s fighting promotion. But, they all seem to stop when he leaves. And the girls – that’s what they all are – never get found.”
“Have you been trailing him?” Erik asked. “If you have, then how could they keep kidnapping girls?”
Janie shrugged. “I have been, but I can’t fly as far as he can drive. I’m in pretty good shape, but that’s still a little bit of a stretch. Either way, he’s back in town. Or actually in Clinton, but that’s close enough to the same thing.”
“Jamesburg is way less Deliverance than Clinton,” Erik said.
“Yeah but only because all the brothers would be leopards here,” Jamie said, helpfully, before another round of relieved laughter broke out.
Just then, the door burst open, and a very worried Professor Duggan shuffled in, pulling up one of his suspenders as he did. He blew a puff of air upward that pushed the few hairs on top of his bald head backwards, and mussed his mustache.
“Another one is gone!” he said. “That’s two! Two freshman, both kidnapped. And both of them missed my exam! Do you realize what that means, Erik? It means I’m going to have to hold extra office hours! I’ll have to proctor my own exam! Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?”
Erik put his hands up in a defensive gesture, and stood up from behind his desk. “Look, Duggan, I’m not sure that your office hours are the most important thing here. There are missing girls and... wait, did you say another one?”
“Yes!” Duggan squeaked. “This morning! I have two classes with her, and she’s never missed a single one. She was in Greek History at nine – I always teach Greek History at nine – but then she missed the one at eleven!”
“So... you’re not actually sure she got kidnapped, right?” Erik asked. “She could have just... I dunno, decided to go out drinking? I mean she is a college student.”
“Oh no, no, no, not this one,” Duggan said. “Henrietta has never missed a class at all. And she’s not particularly the sort to go out drinking in the middle of the day. I went to the library, as I always do after that class, to check the new releases. That’s when I found it closed! Closed, Erik! The library at a college, closed!”
“Was she a librarian?” Izzy cut in, asking. “Or—”
“Oh my God do you think he kidnapped all of the librarians?” Duggan was just about to puff his head up and start stress-squeaking when Jamie started petting his back gently.
“I really doubt it, Duggan,” Jamie said softly. “But I know Henrietta – Lawson, right?”
Duggan nodded. “That’s the one, yes, the very soft spoken turtle girl. She’s one of my Master’s students. Oh no, what’s going to happen with all those essays I need her to grade? This is just getting worse all the time.”
“Right,” Jamie said. “She really isn’t one to miss class. I know her parents fairly well. She was really excited to go back to work on her Master’s, so—”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Erik asked. “A Master’s student! Much more reliable than your run of the mill college kid.”
Izzy elbowed him so hard in the ribs that he grunted and almost doubled over.
“Sorry,” Erik grunted. He winced as he straightened back up. “It’s a defense mechanism. And I didn’t know you had a good enough elbow to join the fighting circuit, Izzy.”
She cocked a half grin that looked almost exactly like one of Erik’s.
“We have to do something,” Duggan said, exasperated. “As the senior member of the town council, I officially mandate that something be done!”
“Good,” Jamie said. “That’ll probably do the trick. Anyone want to go get some lunch? I figure we’ve got nothing but time now that Dr. Duggan has professed something should—”
The door to the business office where the four were chatting blasted open so hard that it slapped backwards against the doorframe.
“Holy shit!” Erik shouted.
“Holy shit!” Jamie added.
“Who’s there?” Izzy asked, looking up from her books.
“Pffft!” Duggan panicked, squeezing himself into a ball and letting out all his anxiety by puffing.
A girl – a very small one – with reddish brown hair, a mousey look about her, and the cutest little mouth that Erik had ever seen – except for Izzy’s of course – stumbled through and blinked. “I... uh... sorry,” she stammered. “I’m not used to doing things like t
his. I just went to the biggest doors and figured I’d find you here, uh, sir. Alpha, sir.”
“Normally this is traffic court, although I like the notion of looking for me behind the biggest doors you could find. There’s something simple and brilliant about that.” Erik cocked his head. One of the leaves tattooed on his neck throbbed in time with his pounding heart. He’d never admit to being surprised, but he most certainly was. “But what’s going on? Why did you just kick my traffic court’s door open?”
“Can it, Erik,” Jamie said. “Violet? Violet Larue? You’ve grown up a lot since—”
“Jamie! Thank God you’re here,” the girl said, sucking air to try and catch her breath. “I was hoping...”
“How are your folks? Dan and Marcia still doing all right?” Jamie asked. “I used to babysit this little fox when she was a cub,” Jamie explained to the rest of them, who all nodded, as she squeezed a hug around Violet’s shoulders.
“They – uh, yeah, they’re good. Dad had a heart attack last year but it wasn’t a bad one. And mom was really upset that Clint Eastwood used so many swears in his latest movie, but other than that, they’re doing pretty well. How’ve you been?”
“Oh that’s wonderful,” Jamie said. “Personally I didn’t mind the swears, but then again, I barely listen to anything he says. That is a hot silver fox. Not a real fox, of course. But...”
She looked around at the three pairs of bewildered eyes watching her, and cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, we can catch up later. Er... anyway, why did you kick the door open like Sonny Crockett?”
“I love that show,” Violet said.
For a second, everyone in the room looked around, not really sure who was going to speak next, so Erik clearing his throat was a nice segue.
“Oh!” Violet said, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah, right, uh... my boyfriend,” she paused and gulped. That was the first time she’d ever called him anything other than his name, but goodness did it ever feel good. More than good – it felt right. “We, uh, followed some trucks and we found some things.”