by Allison Moon
Outside, the air was crisp and damp, as though the sky couldn’t tell whether it wanted to rain or snow. Blessedly, it did neither for the time being. Renee shook a cigarette out from her pack and lit it.
“That’s bad for you,” Lexie said.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“I meant that as a question,” Lexie said. “Is smoking bad for you, or does it not matter?”
“It’s bad for everything,” Renee said with a chuckle. “I’m mortal Lexie, so are you. So are all werewolves.”
“But stronger.”
“Stronger, sure. Longer life, if we’re lucky. Better lots of things. We aren’t like some vampire bullshit, already dead. We’re the pulsing, sweaty, throbbing heart of life, feeding, fighting, and fucking til we drop. We get to smell, taste, and feel more than anyone. We are more alive as werewolves than we were as humans.”
“Which also means we can get cancer,” Lexie said.
“It’s the bitch of living.” Renee shrugged and offered the open pack to Lexie. “Dulls the olfactory sensors. Might help.”
Though Lexie had never smoked a cigarette before, she was willing to try anything that promised to dull her sense of smell. Renee held the flame to the end, and Lexie took a long, thick drag. Corwin had introduced her to the glories of marijuana only a month earlier, so Lexie used the technique Corwin had taught her: she inhaled deeply and held it.
After five long seconds, Lexie exhaled with a cough. Her head pounded even worse than before.
“Hey, I want to talk to you about the peacespeaking thing. I want to try and explore your powers.”
“Now?” Nausea tugged at Lexie’s throat. She staggered, bolstering her back on the brick wall of the club.
“You okay, Lex?” Renee asked.
She nodded vigorously and swallowed in an attempt to keep the limited contents of her stomach from spewing forth. “I just … uh … need to sit down.” She slid to the ground, breathing as much of the cold, clean-ish air of the night as she could.
Renee flicked her cigarette into the parking lot. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I just … need a sec,” Lexie mumbled.
Renee gave her a wary look. “I’m going to go back inside then,” she said. “We can talk about this later back at the house.” Lexie nodded in acknowledgement.
Lexie was beginning to regret coming out to the club. She’d thought she wanted people and connection, but it only drew bold lines around how lonely and disconnected she was these days. She held her head in her hands while the thin line of smoke trailed up and away from her forehead. She thought about Archer’s cabin, and how nice it’d be to go light a fire in the fireplace, cozy up on the lambskin, and sink into a dreamy sleep there. Only, there was no more cabin, there was no more Archer. Lexie groaned and pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes.
“Can I bum a smoke?” asked a raspy voice. Lexie opened her eyes and saw a pair of black leather motorcycle boots standing in front of her. She followed the boots up past ripped blue jeans to a black t-shirt and leather jacket, all the way to the woman’s face. It was the same woman who had been lavishing so much attention on Hazel as she danced.
“You can have this one.” Lexie held her cigarette aloft, and the woman took it with that crooked grin. She squatted against the wall next to Lexie, dragging heartily on the cigarette. Lexie expected more conversation but none came; the woman leaned and smoked. She was tall and lean, her black hair cut short and shaved on the sides, where a spray of silver mingled with the black. The rest was greased back like a sloppy dorsal fin. Lexie found it impossible to guess her age, somewhere between twenty-five and sixty.
“How do you know Hazel?” Lexie asked.
“Who’s Hazel?” asked the woman.
Shit, Lexie thought.
“Oh, you mean Bijou?” the woman said.
Lexie flinched and nodded.
“Hazel, huh?” the woman said. “That’s pretty.”
Lexie knew there was some unwritten rule about sharing strippers’ real names. She hoped she hadn’t just given Hazel up to a stalker.
“I play down the road at a place called The Cat Club. I used to come here after my sets and watch my … ex, I guess, dance.”
“Which one is she?”
“Oh, she’s not here anymore. Turned out to be a cocksucker and took off for Seattle on the back of the prick’s bullshit rice rocket.” She flicked the cigarette into the parking lot with a short sigh.
“Yikes.”
“Bijou and she were buds. Nice to see her back. It’s been a bit.” The woman gazed out into the nighttime parking lot, her eyes soft and cloudy as she assessed the memories.
“I’m Randy,” she said, holding out her hand for a shake. A faded orange flame tattoo peeked out from the edge of her sleeve.
“Lexie.”
“Whoa,” Randy said, pulling her hand back. “That’s quite a sidearm.”
Lexie tugged at her t-shirt, though the leather sheath still peeked out from below it. She knew it made her look eccentric, but Lexie hoped Randy would dismiss it as a quirk of Oregon white trash. God knew, there were weirder habits among the townies. Randy must’ve seen Lexie’s embarrassed flush. She changed the subject.
“If you’re around next weekend, come see my set. It’s mellow, but good, I think.”
“I bet it is. Good, I mean.”
Randy smiled. On her sharp, long features, the expression looked sly. Her eyes crinkled deeply at their corners.
The door burst open and Renee slid out with Nina leaning on her shoulders. The scantily-clad girl was giggling and fanning herself with her hand.
“All right, Mama. Let’s hit the road,” Renee said to Lexie. She thought she heard Renee slur a bit, but she could have just been saying “lez.”
“What about Hazel?”
“She’s getting her stuff together.”
Randy stood and slapped the dirt from her thighs. “Well, nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“I wasn’t kidding about the Cat Club. Check it out. I’m there every Wednesday.” Randy held out her hand again and Lexie took it.
“Nice hands,” Randy said, squeezing Lexie’s.
Warmth flooded Lexie’s cheeks.
Hazel ran through the parking lot, her heels clattering against the pavement with sharp shocks, pummeling Lexie’s eardrums. Renee warmed up the car.
“Yay!” she shouted. “That was SO FUN!”
Lexie slipped into the driver’s seat, and Hazel leapt into the passenger’s side, bouncing like a child on her way to an amusement park. “I made seventy-three bucks in tips!” She held out the handful of wrinkled bills. They stank up the car with smells of people and their grubby hands. Lexie rolled down her window.
“You have fun, Lex?” Renee asked from the back seat.
Lexie looked at her in the rearview mirror and shrugged. Renee squeezed her shoulder before returning her hands and attention to Nina.
The grunts and moans of Renee and Nina’s love-making drifted down the hall. Lexie tried to bury her head in pillows, to stuff her ears with plugs and cotton, but nothing silenced the pleasure of others while she squirmed. Lexie cursed her own arousal at the sounds, wishing for an emptiness to drag her into the mindlessness of sleep rather than the numb tugging at her genitals and fingers. Three months since she lay with her love. Three months since Lexie felt loved. Three months since Blythe’s death and Renee’s vengeance. Her fingers crept to her groin. She rubbed herself furiously, a punishment for her poor choices. She could be lying beneath Archer’s body somewhere right now, watching the crescent moon cut the silhouette of her breast. Instead, she lay in her fume-laden bedroom, trying to forget.
But forgetting Archer’s face was easier than forgetting her own mistakes. Archer was gone, and that was Lexie’s fault. The admission made her cringe. She commanded herself not to cry, not to pity her own idiocy. She told herself that she was too young to trade in a life fo
r a lover, too disillusioned by the horrors of the fall to believe that Archer could treat her as an equal instead of a puling little beta 150 years her junior.
Her orgasm came and went. Still, she couldn’t sleep, and she wouldn’t until every last girl in the house was unconscious.
She rose and dressed. She had to get out of here, away from the stink of paint and sex and memory. Lexie was in the mood to mourn.
2
It was stupid to go running alone. Though the moon was slim, full-blood Rares still lurked. The most recent death was evidence enough of that. But Lexie needed silence. She needed peace. She needed her treehouse.
As she climbed the stoic cedar, the nausea of an eager sob clung to her insides, awaiting release. The dark blue night fogged her vision, and the scents of memories glowed in her brain like ghostly beacons. She snuffled them out of her nose like dust.
Lexie resisted the urge to inhale deeply, to take in any lingering particles of Archer that clung here. She soaked in the silence and explored the tiny differences of the space since her last visit. Frost covered every surface, including the undersides of the cedar’s needles. She reached her fingertips to one spine. The frost warmed and disappeared beneath her touch. She turned to the tree trunk, wrapped her arms around it, let warmth and wood seep into her. After a while, Lexie knew she felt it hugging her back. It was the most touch she had known in a while, but she was willing to make do with a hug from a chilly, seasonally-lethargic tree.
Lexie circled to the far side of the platform, not ready to approach the sheepskin that lay abandoned in a gray, sodden lump at the center. Instead, she sat at the edge of the treehouse and faced inward. She wanted to pray to Archer, as though she were a ghost or a god. But she was neither of these things; she was merely gone.
Lexie picked at splinters on the platform, trying to figure out what to feel. What would it be like, to see a pair of mismatched eyes looking back at her? Archer left. Archer gone. Archer driven away.
Tears would be appropriate, but she felt immune to their charms. Tears she’d had enough of. She was done with them for now. What then? Fear? Resentment? Despair?
There was something clawing at Lexie’s insides, but it was none of those things. Her upper lip quivered with the realization. It curled into a snarl. The fury of betrayal seized her jaw. Lexie was fucking angry. She wanted to growl, to howl, to shout and rage. She wanted to curse Blythe’s arrogance that demanded allegiance before cooperation, the same arrogance that led to the deaths of three boys at the jaws of Renee. She wanted to curse Blythe’s ego and her death and the tailspin it caused in everyone. Lexie wanted to curse her own passion for Archer, her willful ignorance of Archer’s fraught connections to the Pack. She wanted to tear Archer apart for thinking she knew better than anyone, and for the unceremonious way Lexie learned of her own mother’s death. But she saw herself from the outside and felt foolish. All that was in the past, and everyone seemed to have moved on. Except for Lexie. She bit her tongue until she tasted blood.
She thought this would be different, college.
A rustling in the branches pulled her attention outward. Nestled in the lowest branch, one that Lexie’s hands had once gripped in passion, was a nest. Two fluffy birds clung to each other, sharing warmth. Beneath them, Lexie saw the merest curve of an egg. A new family was repurposing this lonely place.
Lexie pulled off her shirt, the winter air slithering against her skin. She leaned back against the tree trunk, pressing back into its coarse touch. She squirmed against the velvety rough edges. Bits of wood skidded across her flesh, while other, smaller bits splintered off to lodge within it. It all felt like touch to Lexie. She couldn’t discern pain from pleasure anymore. She scratched harder, until strips of her flesh peeled away to be replaced by the tiniest shards of her tree. A moist connection followed, her bleeding skin sticking to the tree’s bark. She scraped harder, grateful and angry at the cedar for hurting her so.
She sneered at the birds’ nest. Her claim to this territory was stronger than theirs. She fell to her haunches within reach of the sheepskin. She wanted to rub it against her bloody back, to stain it with the rest of the story. She didn’t. She sat in silence, her bloody back drying her to the tree. Then, she jerked herself away, ignoring the tiny stings of reopened wounds, and climbed down to the forest floor.
She walked with eyes cast downwards, following her own scent trail back to the Den. A different scent on the breeze made her stop. She reached for her blade. No growl followed the shadows. Lexie stood still, trying to track the creature’s intent.
But there was no stalking creature to match the scent, just the odor’s own presence, clinging to the trees like sap. It smelled like power: musk and earth and stone. Vertigo assailed Lexie. The scent threatened seduction, willing her to lose control.
She ventured into the shadows, where thick boughs kept even the starlight from finding its way to the forest floor. She inhaled deeply to make up for her weak eyesight. The scent told a story of strength and solitude. She wanted to bathe in it, to take some of its essence as her own. It was ennobling and intimidating all at once.
Logic struggled against instinct—take it, flee it. She gave in, pulling it inside her, holding her diaphragm out to keep it in. She fought dizziness and euphoria. The darkness around her filled with colored shapes, as though her eyes were squeezed shut even though they were wide open. Lexie was getting high on this scent, this invisible seducer that carried her from anguish to bliss in the space of a few breaths.
A breeze cut through the brush and boughs, tugging away Lexie’s invisible intoxicant, carrying it off into the night. The thieving wind brought a new scent to replace it: sickly and strong, half putrescence and half sugar-sweet.
Lexie dropped to all fours, the sobering scent knocking her brain back into working order. She resisted taking it in, wishing to savor the last delicious remnants of the scent that teased her to this place, but the new scent bullied its way up her nose, tinny and saccharine at once. This odor she could trace back to its source, at least.
Lexie stalked the scent, letting it dance a ribbon across her face as it drifted downwind. The sugary odor expanded, becoming a lake rather than a rivulet. She knew she was close—close to the scent, and close to the Den. She crept around tree trunks and found the source in a clearing.
A crumpled corpse lay sprawled in the clearing. Lexie stared at it in ambivalent shock—run to it, or run away? She crept toward the body. It had been a quick and efficient kill: one swipe across the throat and another across the belly. The girl’s pale skin reflected the meager light of the stars and the new moon. Her tongue poked between her lips, a slice of still-pink beauty among the wreckage. Lexie leaned toward the girl’s face and recognized her. Her name was Bree Curtis, a classmate of the straight-A, squeaky-clean variety. She wore eye makeup, smeared and running from dried tears, and a heavy coat as though she had been preparing for a long night outdoors.
The fresh death fascinated Lexie more than it repulsed her. She reached out to the gash that nearly severed Bree’s head. She reached, but didn’t touch. A tickle of a sound just beyond hearing shocked Lexie’s brain back into wariness. With one last glance at Bree Curtis’ blue, bloodless face, Lexie ran.
Nobody followed, but Lexie ran as though all the Rares in Oregon were after her. She ran from an invisible foe and the dark reality of this life. Bree Curtis had been killed by a Rare. Another dead girl. Twice in as many weeks. Lexie’s present and future, laid out before her in the form of a girl’s corpse.
Lexie stopped at a dark and lonely gas station on Red Hill Road and called 911. She muffled the receiver with her hand and gave as many details as she could without giving herself away.
When the dispatcher started asking her questions, Lexie hung up the chilly receiver with a clunk. The interplay of treehouse, memories, and desire was gone; all that was left was Lexie’s shame and one more corpse. She threw it all into the cage behind her heart, feeding it to her dormant, silenced wo
lf. And when it was gone, she brushed herself off and ran home.
3
It was early dawn when Lexie emerged into the backyard of the Den. Black silhouettes of the hot tub, lawn chairs and deck reminded her of the barbeque when she first met the Pack. She’d been intimidated then. She’d thought she would do anything to be accepted, but as it turned out, she’d been wrong. Now, the patio furniture stood as ebon relics, their stoic shapes highlighted by white dusting of snow. Summer, and so much more, was long gone.
Lexie stripped in the yard and hosed off the smeared blood and saliva that marred her skin. She didn’t want to enter the Den stinking of blood, tears, and another corpse. Cleanliness would preserve the illusion of her sanity. Not that she thought any of the Pack would be fooled.
The ice water shocked her skin, but it left her feeling appropriately penitent. She climbed back in through her window. She didn’t like to take the stairs when all the girls were home. They creaked. She landed softly on her carpet and nearly jumped back out the window when she saw Hazel perched on her desk, waiting.
Lexie grabbed her chest. “What the fuck, Hazel?” Lexie said in a stage whisper, trying to express her shock without waking the house.
“I just wanted to talk.”
“Hazel,” Lexie pleaded. “I’m tired. We can talk later.”
“You always say that.”
Lexie dropped her ruined clothes in a heap on her floor and moaned, yearning only for her mattress and blankets.
She crawled into bed, folding back the top blanket for Hazel. “Come on then.”
Hazel threw off her robe and wriggled into bed alongside Lexie. She rolled over, presenting her back to Lexie. A smattering of tiny beauty marks rode high on her shoulders. She shivered at Lexie’s touch, hot skin pricking with goosebumps.
Lexie reached her arms around Hazel and pulled their bodies tightly together. Lexie was used to being the small one. She liked feeling big and strong in relation to the tiny Hazel. She nuzzled her nose against Hazel’s head. Her black hair smelled like gardenias and vanilla.