Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  17

  Lexie knew she shouldn’t be running, not with all that had happened. Not with a morning test she hadn’t studied for. Not with twelve killer wolves on the prowl.

  At the edge of Archer’s property, tiny flakes of snow began to fall. She watched them, no bigger than grains of salt. They caught and pooled on her palm. She remembered the ash and soot that drifted down from the sky when the cabin burned. Those left gray scars on her skin, visible even after she washed them away. These flakes left no impressions, gone as quickly as if they had been born to die.

  The stacked slate fireplace stood amidst a black cube of char. Though the southeastern wall still held intact, the other three walls were burned through, collapsed in awkward piles. The wood bore thick, black scales like a reptiloid demon. The gruesome scene was bisected by the fallen log that once held the roof. Finally relieved of its weighty responsibility, it had broken in half and now teetered on the cracked ends of the eaves. The remains of Archer’s dining room table lay crushed underneath. Lexie shuffled through the ash. Her toe caught the handle of a tin mug. She lifted it and held it up in the fading sunlight. She remembered the taste of nettles and yarrow, Archer’s breath, and the tea that made Lexie feel warm and safe. That first morning. The last morning before…

  She lifted her chin, brushed the tip of her nose on the wood, the hearth, anything she could reach. None of it held Archer. She wasn’t back. She wouldn’t come back.

  Lexie cursed her eagerness, her belief that Archer would somehow know the danger the Pack was in, that she would somehow help. No, she was gone somewhere far away. She was climbing mountains, fucking were-coyotes, or some such shit. The hole in Lexie’s abdomen roiled. She didn’t carry her sadness in her heart. It lived in her belly and her groin. Both wept while her heart kept beating, knowing nothing else but the mindless continued rhythm of life.

  “Archer … ” I’m scared. Lexie folded her hands over her belly. “I don’t know what to do. What I am. I don’t know anything anymore. What they want of me. I don’t know if I can give it to them.”

  This change. It hurts too much. I don’t want to be this.

  She lied.

  Lexie wandered the wreckage, stirring the ash, conjuring plumes so she could pretend there was still life here.

  You ran. I should run, she thought, drawing a cold fingertip along the slate of the hearth. “I don’t belong here.”

  She dropped to her knees and dug her palms into the ash. She hoped it would deliver an epiphany, some insight on whether she should rebuild, fight, or flee.

  She leaned her face to the ground, pushing her nose into the sooty remains of her lover’s home. Chunks of petrified wood stuck to her skin. She snuffed short and hard to keep the crud from choking her. She didn’t smell Archer, or that seductive scent from the woods. She didn’t smell power or revenge or sex or salvation. All she could smell was fire.

  18

  “Rory’s dad hated Bree,” Duane said, thwapping a wad of peanut butter onto his plate and grabbing two green apples from beneath the sneeze guard.

  Lexie loved that the dining halls were unlimited. And she loved that Duane never seemed to balk at the quantities of food she packed away every meal. Indeed, he could nearly match her bite for bite. She wondered if Duane’s sisters felt just as comfortable with him, or if it was unique to their relationship.

  “Apparently Rory wanted to propose. His dad wouldn’t let him.”

  “That sounds like jerk dad stuff, not hate.”

  Lexie hadn’t planned on eating at the dining hall. She had drained her weekly meal plan already, and it was only Wednesday. Duane just gave her a look and said “Seriously, don’t sweat it.” They walked to their favorite table overlooking the quad, in the back corner of the dining hall near the kitchen door where few other students ever sat.

  “But it’s weird,” Lexie said. “Even if Rory’s dad hated Bree, the man’s the Governor of Oregon. How would he convince—or like, train—a pack of wild animals to do the job? It’s not like it’s convenient.”

  “It’d make more sense to plant meth on her and toss her in a cheap motel.”

  Lexie pulled a face. “That’s grim.”

  “But no,” Duane said, contradicting his own theory. “That would mean a full investigation, which would clearly get back to him. There’s no quicker way to solve a homicide than say a Rare did it.”

  “No kidding,” Lexie said, shifting her gaze away as they slid into their booth.

  “Maybe he made Rory take her out into the woods and leave her there.”

  “Hansel and Gretel style?”

  “More like Jurassic Park,” Duane said.

  “That’s sadistic.” Lexie dug her fork into a mountain of mac and cheese. “Are we sure she wasn’t dead before she ended up in the woods?”

  “Not that I trust the cops in this town, or any town for that matter,” Duane said, “but the coroner’s report made it sound pretty clear. Open and shut case.”

  “How’d you get the coroner’s report?” Lexie asked, aghast.

  Duane smirked. “I called silly. It cost me, like, thirty bucks.”

  “You sure you want to be a doctor? You seem to be pretty good with the detective business.”

  Duane smiled, his eyes catching Lexie’s for longer than she would have expected or liked. She half-smiled and looked away.

  “Hey, I know this is going to sound weird, but thanks,” Duane said. “I feel like this whole thing is giving me the confidence to find out more about my own attack.”

  That dragged her attention back. Lexie swallowed and poked at her meatloaf. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, I remember things. The nightmares have been brutal, but actually thinking about the attack—remembering the details—has been helpful. It takes it out of the realm of monsters and horror films and turns it into a real thing that happened to me, a thing I have power over. It’s like how my mom used to teach me to deal with nightmares: write the story, then give it a new ending.”

  “What’s your ending?” Lexie asked.

  Duane laughed and dug into his salad. “Dunno yet.”

  “What do you remember?” Lexie asked, monitoring her voice for odd tones or breaks.

  “So much. I remember the way the Rare looked. Black with a brown chest, really intense dark brown eyes. Sentient, you know? Leggy, smart, agile. And female.”

  Lexie coughed.

  “You okay?” he asked while Lexie choked on a piece of bacon. She nodded furiously and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  She asked, “Are you sure?”

  “One hundred percent,” Duane said with a definitive nod. “Maybe we were camping in her territory or something. Like she had pups.”

  “My dad says there hasn’t been a female spotted in decades.”

  Duane bit his lip and took a long swig of his soda. “It was a female. A tall, leggy, dark-furred female with a bone to pick with frat boys.”

  Lexie tried a dismissive laugh, but she ended up squirming. “That sounds kind of silly, Duane.”

  “Lex, I know what I saw.”

  “But you were under duress. Frightened and all PTSD-y. How can you be sure?”

  “How can you?” he nearly shouted. Lexie realized she was being callous, but she knew she had to be in order to protect Renee and the Pack. It was a good excuse, anyway.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were attacked by a Rare, too. How do you know it happened the way you think it did?”

  Lexie considered the attack on the hillside, Archer’s heroics, everything she thought she knew about the Morloc.

  “Because I fought back.”

  Duane’s face dropped. “Right. I’m the victim, and you’re the noble warrior,” he said.

  Lexie sat back, mirroring him, then went one further and let her head fall back. “I’m not saying that.”

  “Sure,” Duane muttered.

  “Dude,” Lexie said. “You did what you had to. You did the
only thing you could do.” She leaned forward and reached her hand across the table, almost, but not quite, touching his wrist. “You ran, and you hid. That was a good choice. It helped you survive. You were the smart guy.”

  Duane’s eyes fell on the tiny space between her fingertips and his skin. “But you weren’t.” Lexie couldn’t tell if it was a question, and the look in Duane’s eyes said he didn’t know either.

  “No,” Lexie said, retracting her hand, hardening her gaze. “Never have been. I never make the right choices. I just take the only ones that I have.”

  Duane’s tone grew cold. “Which in your case was to fight.”

  She pulled her hand back and crossed her arms, glaring. “Because I had to, whether or not I wanted to.”

  Duane steeled his gaze to match, but his jaw clenched beneath his sharp, umber cheek. “You think I could’ve chosen?”

  Lexie jutted her chin and stared out the window, taking a sudden interest in the mundanities of the quad. “You could’ve,” she said. “But you probably would’ve died. Sometimes running away is the only right choice.”

  Duane pushed his tray to the corner. “Yeah,” he muttered. “You’re the brave one, and I’m the one who had to run away.” He packed his bag and stood. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  He walked away before Lexie could think of an apology, before she even realized what she had done wrong. As she watched him leave the dining hall and stalk across the quad, she still didn’t have the words. She was right. She did fight back. She didn’t run or hide like Duane did. Nothing she said was incorrect. It wasn’t her fault if Duane was ashamed of himself.

  Lexie looked back to her nearly empty plate and poked at her mashed potatoes. She had bigger concerns with Duane than his weird trauma-jealously. If she knew him at all, which she liked to think she did, he wouldn’t stop because she called him silly. Despite the leap in logic it would take for a guy like him to start seeing the werewolves in the Rare wolves, she worried that it was only a matter of time before he traced his attack back to Renee. The likeness was too uncanny, if one knew what to look for. She knew it the moment she saw Archer in her wolf form. There was nothing more than a thin veil separating the two forms. Once she saw it, she couldn’t ever unsee it. And Duane was smart enough to figure it out, which would be a disaster for everyone.

  Maybe it was a guy thing. Fragile egos and whatnot.

  “Hey, Lexie.” Rory stood above with a tray in his hands, looking lost. “Can I sit?”

  “Uh, sure,” Lexie said, unwilling to demean any more traumatized boys.

  Rory sat, and then he just … sat. They stared at each other for a long moment, Lexie trying to cover her reddening ears with her hair. Rory looked as though he was trying to screw up the courage to say something.

  “I was wondering if I could talk to you about …” He rubbed his fingers nervously against the frost on his glass of milk.

  Lexie sighed. “Corwin’s just going through some stuff right now. I can’t really talk about—”

  “Oh,” Rory said. “I know.”

  “Oh,” Lexie said. “Sorry.”

  They sat in awkward silence, neither looking at the other, both waiting for Rory to say something.

  “It’s about Bree,” he said. “Corwin told me you were wondering what’s up with that. She said you’d kind of been asking around.”

  Lexie fidgeted. “It’s not really what you—”

  “The night she disappeared,” Rory interrupted, “I went to her room. Something looked weird. Like there had been a struggle.”

  “Did you tell that to the cops?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t seem to take it too seriously.”

  Lexie saw anxiety in his eyes, and fear.

  “Another thing,” Rory said. “She was … ” He struggled to find the word.

  Lexie’s curiosity was distracted by a blur outside the window. She resisted looking away for a moment, wanting Rory to feel respected by her attention, but then the blur caught his eye, too. He turned and blanched, and Lexie followed his gaze.

  Outside the window raced the bent hulk of a Rare. He swung his head from side to side, lamplight reflecting off his cold, yellow gaze. He wore a snarl on his lips that turned into a growl, sending students on the quad scattering and screaming.

  Everyone in the dining hall rushed to the windows, cell phones in hand. One of the chefs rushed to the campus phone and dialed security.

  Outside, the wolf caught sight of a running student and lunged after him. The boy darted and dodged. His flight would have looked comical if it weren’t so horrifying to watch. Students in the dining hall snapped pictures and recorded video with their cell phones, though the deepening evening and florescent lighting would certainly kill the images.

  Rory looked around at the students and staff, all either ogling or hiding their eyes. He looked back outside and watched the screaming boy run. “Someone should do something,” Rory said.

  “Right,” Lexie said, ripped from her shock.

  Rory fought through the crowd to the exit. Lexie followed behind, gripping the handle of her knife, although she had no idea what help she could be.

  When they reached the doors, an alarm like an old tornado siren sounded across the campus.

  Lexie covered her ears. “What the hell is that?”

  Rory ignored her. He burst into the quad and ran in the direction of the Rare and his prey, still twenty yards away. The siren pummeled Lexie’s eardrums and she grimaced as Rory headed toward the wolf.

  “Rory!” she shouted. “Stop!”

  Rory waved his hands above his head and shouted. “Lexie! Run to the door there and hold it open for me.” He gestured to the dorm on the other side of the path from where she stood.

  He looked back to the wolf and continued to make a spectacle of himself. Finally, the Rare noticed and paused, sniffing the air. The boy he had been pursuing bolted for the student union, rushing up the steps three at a time.

  The Rare, its attention fixed on Rory, took a step in his direction. His jaw hung partially open, his tongue lolling out the front between two meathook canines. He passed a bench, dwarfed by his grizzled mass. He snuffed at the distraction Rory was creating.

  The Rare walked, then trotted, then burst into long, loping strides. Rory stood frozen for one, then two huge bounds by the wolf. Then he turned and ran.

  The Rare closed the gap between them in seconds. He leaped, his claws spread to rend.

  A sharp crack shattered the siren’s song.

  The Rare screamed as a spray of blood erupted from his haunch. From her spot in the dorm doorway, Lexie traced the vector of the bullet back to a security guard, crouched behind an electrical box near the library.

  Another shot grazed the wolf’s shoulder. He barked and ran toward the guard, who stood and unloaded two more rounds. One slammed into the wolf’s chest, but the other passed harmlessly through the scruff at his jaw.

  With a roar more deafening than the siren or the shots, the Rare dove at the guard, slamming his shoulders and skull into the grass. The wolf clamped his jaws around the guard’s throat.

  Lexie watched students and staff look away or cover their mouths in shock, silent through the glass windows of the dining hall.

  Rory and Lexie shared a look. He exhaled. Then he started to cry.

  “Was that? Was that one of the ones that … ?”

  Lexie wrapped her arms around him as he shrank. She stroked his back with gentle hands. “Yeah, Rory. That was one of them.”

  19

  Amid eulogies for Officer Stanley, new rules for curfew, and class cancellations, was a single blog in Lexie’s RSS feed that dared ask the question, “Why?”

  Why, exactly, are Rare wolves coming onto our campus? To terrorize students? Looking for a twilight snack? All I know is I’m holing up at home from now on and carrying a silver chain with me. You know, just in case. ;)

  “It didn’t seem to have an agenda,” Lexie said to the girls assembl
ed around the kitchen island.

  Renee picked at her nails, peeling black currant polish from them in tiny bits. “Other than terrorizing the campus.”

  “Well, it’s dead now,” said Hazel.

  “That one is,” said Corwin. “There are supposed to be, what, eleven more?”

  Lexie nodded. “At least, according to Sharm.”

  “So, girl dead in the woods, multiple killers, no motive,” Mitch said.

  Corwin chewed on her lower lip. “Sharm’s nearly killed, no motive. Full-blood wanders onto campus with claws out for anything …”

  “The males need a motive,” Renee said.

  “Haven’t you seen any werewolf movie, like, ever?” Hazel said. “They don’t need motives. They’re just monsters.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Hazel,” Corwin said. “How can we be so sure there was no motive?”

  “They’re males.”

  “Who told us half-blood males lose control and memory when they shift?” Sharmalee asked.

  “Blythe, obv,” Hazel said.

  “And Blythe never lied about anything,” said Renee, rolling her eyes.

  “It makes sense. I mean, look at the boys we go to school with,” Sharmalee said.

  “Stefan told me they forget because they want to,” Lexie said. “I think they could remember if they chose to. Like us.”

  “Seriously?” Renee swept polish peelings into her palm and threw them in the trash. “It’s one thing to be a privileged douche. It’s another to be a vengeful monster. We’re talking about the Morloc here. Full-bloods. There have to be differences. These guys have been living in this area for hundreds of years, and this is the first big ramping-up of violence other than the battle ten years ago. The half-bloods. They’re—we’re—amateurs. Party crashers. None of us intended to be this way, none of us knew what was even happening to us. The Morloc, though, they have to want something. Else none of this makes any sense.”

  “Then how do find out what they want?” Mitch said.

  No one had an immediate answer.