Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  The girl, why did your pack kill her?

  Not a pack, the Rare said.

  Why did you kill her? You killed child of … government man.

  The wolf stared.

  That’s important!

  To you.

  To everyone! Lexie stumbled over syntax and construction, hoping he understood, as though reason was even an option. They could burn forest. They could send in warriors.

  It we welcome.

  Death?

  Chaos. The humans destroy own walls, always. We survive, always.

  “I don’t know,” Lexie mocked in English. “You look pretty haggard.”

  The wolf responded with another long stare and a small snort.

  A flash of an earlier conversation appeared in Lexie’s mind, walking with Renee, smoking the cigarettes: I’m mortal Lexie, and so are you. So are all werewolves.

  Then, months ago, Archer’s weak joke that at 185 her age was catching up with her. These Morloc, they were older than Archer, by far. This one certainly looked it.

  Good at survival? Lexie thought. No way. The Morloc had no legacy. Archer was the only pureblood, and there had been no report of a female werewolf found, ever. This haggard wolf and his kin were likely the last of their kind—no mates, no pups. They had nothing but themselves.

  What do you plan?

  Take what is ours.

  What is yours?

  Our xouitihanou.

  Lexie shook her head, not understanding the word.

  Our blood survives after our bodies are dead. We create young to carry us on. Your females are ours as long as you live on this land.

  “Well that was weird,” Lexie said, stepping back to confer with the Pack while Mitch guarded the cage with the tranq gun at his shoulder.

  “What did he say?” Hazel asked.

  “A lot of things,” Lexie told the Pack. “He made it sound like they’re the ones on the defensive.”

  “That’s insane,” Corwin said.

  “He seems to think his territory is under threat, and he and the other Rares are merely defending it.”

  “Well … ” Jenna said.

  “Well what?” Corwin asked.

  “It’s kind of hard to argue with that logic,” Jenna said. “I mean, the highway … ”

  “They killed an innocent woman,” Renee said.

  “Who was inexplicably in the woods alone in the middle of the night,” Jenna replied.

  “That’s victim-blaming,” Hazel said.

  Jenna held fast. “It’s suspicious.”

  “You may as well be asking what she was wearing,” Renee groaned.

  “Well, what was she wearing?” Jenna asked.

  “Oh my god, Jenna!” Hazel exclaimed.

  “It could be a clue! I’m not saying she asked for it. I’m just finding it very suspicious that a pack of full-bloods felt the need to defend their territory from a eighteen-year-old girl.”

  “Because they’re lying,” Hazel said.

  The girls looked to Lexie, who just shrugged. “I could barely understand him. I don’t think sarcasm or duplicity would track with me right now.”

  “Never mind,” Jenna said, waving her palms in front of her. “It’s just suspicious is all. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Lexie chewed on her lip, her gaze falling on the dusty ground at her feet. She knew the answer to Jenna’s question, and knew every moment she didn’t answer was a new betrayal to her pack.

  “Jeans and a green turtleneck,” Lexie muttered.

  The girls shared a curious look. Renee said, “What?”

  “Bree was wearing jeans, a green turtleneck, and a jacket. Some makeup. Diamond stud earrings. Boots with a low heel. She looked nice, like she was going on a date. But not too nice, like it was the first one.”

  The girls all gaped.

  “I found her in Archer’s territory. I was the one that called to tip the cops,” Lexie mumbled. “She was in Archer’s territory.”

  Lexie looked back toward the cage. Mitch fidgeted, straining to hear the conversation, his gun slack at his shoulder. The Morloc stared straight at Lexie.

  The girls were dumbfounded. Lexie expected a barrage of questions but none came. On her sisters’ faces were merely looks of horror and disbelief.

  Renee shook her head. “Did you … ?”

  Simultaneous sounds struck them—a rifle blast, and a howl. The howl rattled their collective bones like the bars on the Rare’s cage. It soared in all directions, a tsunami of sound. Lexie and Renee ran for the cage. The other girls took cover.

  Mitch had missed; the shot gashed the metal bars and nothing more. The Rare stared at Lexie with hateful eyes. Do not mistake, peacespeaker, the Morloc said. We will kill you, your families, your progeny, your mates. We will kill everything you love. And our blood will survive.

  27

  The girls ran south across the river to scatter their scent trail, should any of the Morloc get the idea to pursue.

  Lexie stumbled on roots and rocks, wishing she was on four feet again. She let her mind slip into her wolf, even if her body wouldn’t follow. A strange solace filled her as she gave herself over to the imagined sensations of her wolf instead of resisting them. The girls waded into the icy water and followed its shallows upstream, where they emerged on the other bank and shook their feet dry. The cold water sliced at Lexie’s skin like a thousand tiny scalpels. The hideous cold faded into the brutal burn of damaged flesh. She sucked air through her teeth and rushed for the opposite bank.

  When she emerged, the girls formed a semicircle around her, arms crossed and glaring.

  “What. The. Fuck,” Corwin said.

  Lexie wiggled her toes to coax some blood back into them. “It wasn’t some nefarious plan.”

  “No,” Renee said. “It was just a dumb-shit one.”

  “It wasn’t a plan at all,” Lexie protested.

  Jenna pleaded. “Why didn’t you tell us you found Bree?”

  Lexie looked to the faces of her sisters and saw the angst of betrayal. “It didn’t seem … ”

  “Stop it, Lex,” Renee burst. “You don’t get to decide! You don’t get to tell us what matters and keep to yourself what you think doesn’t. This isn’t just about you!”

  Lexie fumbled for something to say in her defense, but no words came.

  “You are a member of this pack,” Renee said, jabbing her finger toward the other girls. “You are no longer one friendless girl skulking to class and avoiding eye contact. Every choice you make has real repercussions for the women standing right here in front of you. If you can’t handle that, feel free to run off on your own and chase down Archer. But don’t stay here expecting us to care for you when you deny us the basic courtesy of telling us what’s going on in our woods.”

  Renee’s eyes burned with fury, but more, with that maternal disappointment Lexie had grown up only hearing about. The gaze squeezed her soul in a vice of regret. She wanted to throw up or bury her face beneath the icy rapids.

  “I’ll take you to where I found her, Renee,” Lexie squeaked, looking at her feet.

  “No,” Renee said. “Tomorrow, you’re taking all of us. We do these things together from now on.”

  Sharmalee was lying on the couch when the girls burst in. She eased herself to standing. “What did you see?”

  “We got one,” Renee said.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing good,” she replied, dropping her crossbow on the kitchen table.

  “They think Milton is theirs,” Jenna said. “They want everyone out, full-stop.”

  “How do we know they won’t start with us?” Sharmalee asked.

  “Oh they will,” Renee said.

  “Here? Are we safe here?” Sharmalee said.

  The girls looked warily to one another.

  “We should be vigilant,” Jenna said, trying to sound optimistic.

  “We’ll start keeping night watch in shifts,” Renee said. “Jenna, can
you draw up a schedule?”

  Jenna nodded.

  Hazel whispered, “Don’t forget I’m at Luscious on Wednesdays and slim-moon nights now.”

  Everyone else exchanged glances. Lexie had the feeling there wouldn’t be much going out in anyone’s future.

  “We’ll talk about it later, honey.” Jenna patted Hazel’s hand, and Renee bit her lips.

  Renee’s room was a space in transition. The room hadn’t quite completed the shift from Blythe’s ice queen austerity to Renee’s own preference for bold colors and worldly artifacts. As least the smell was right—a million different spices too tightly-linked to parse.

  “I’m sorry,” Lexie said, standing in Renee’s doorway.

  Renee lifted her filthy white tank top over her shoulders, revealing her bare torso and the seven gnarly puncture wounds that encircled her shoulder. Her skin was purplish and swollen, dried blood caking on her skin like rust on bronze. While the wounds had begun to heal, she still needed some cleaning up.

  “I know you are,” Renee said, cracking her neck. “I just wish you’d start thinking like a member of this Pack instead of some free agent hanger-on.”

  “I’m trying,” Lexie said. “It’s just so new to me. I want to trust you guys; I just don’t know how.”

  “You could start by paying attention to how we trust you,” Renee said. She plucked a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bag of cotton balls from a cabinet below her mirror.

  “Would you do me a favor,” Renee asked, “and hose me down with this?”

  “Will this be strong enough?” Lexie asked, taking the cotton and dousing the first wad.

  Renee sat backwards on her desk chair, leaning her bare chest against the backrest. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Is that gonna … you know,” Lexie said, gesturing to the wounds, “change anything?”

  “Werewolves aren’t a disease, Lex. Once you’re dosed, that’s all there is. I’m not going to switch sides ‘cause I got bit by a douchey full-blood.”

  Lexie pushed aside the stacks of books next to Renee’s bed to make room for the cotton and peroxide bottle. The books formed a ladder of famous warlords and strategists. Starting with Rommel on the bottom, the spines climbed through the names Patton, Joan of Arc, Nemirovsky, Boudicca, Fu Hao, Tamar of Georgia. Atop them all, a tiny black book rested open, face-down.

  Renee leaned on her bed, and Lexie leaned over her.

  “Studying?” she asked, pressing the cotton to the first wound on Renee’s lower back. Renee sucked air through her teeth. The wound fizzed.

  “Not really. First time I’ve gotten a C since freshman year.”

  “What’s all this, then?”

  “Strategy, I hope.”

  “Could be useful. For all sorts of things.”

  Renee reached onto the bedstand and retrieved some surgical bandaging. “Could you do this, too?”

  Lexie tended to the wounds on Renee’s back, then Renee flipped over and leaned back in her chair, giving Lexie access to the ones on her abdomen. Lexie tried not to stare at Renee’s breasts, tried not to think of how she could have felt them pressing against her own if she hadn’t chickened-out at their first meeting five months ago.

  No, she focused on the caked blood and deep puncture-wounds marring the soft skin of Renee’s belly. She wiped the cotton against that damaged skin. The wells foamed over like science fair volcanoes.

  “The whole not-telling-us-about-Bree thing aside … good job today,” Renee said.

  “Thanks.” A tentative grin stirred at Lexie’s mouth. “What part? Aside from … you know.”

  “Saving my ass was a good start. But facing the Rare. That took chutzpa.”

  “Is that Yiddish?” Lexie padded Renee’s wounds, and each time Renee sucked air through her teeth.

  “Yeah,” Renee said. “I only allow myself to say four things in Yiddish, otherwise I feel too much like my grandma.”

  “What are the other three?”

  “Nah, it has to be organic. You’ll hear them someday maybe. Speaking of languages,” Renee said, shifting in her seat, “you seemed to have an impressive handle on them today. How did you do that?”

  “Speak to the Rare?” Lexie shrugged and wrapped up the cotton balls in a discarded plastic bag. “I don’t know. It felt like the words were locked in a part of my brain I didn’t know existed. As soon as I heard the Morloc speak, they just started falling out. I wish I’d had more time to talk to him before he called for his bros.”

  “Well, it’s good to know, at least. Maybe it’ll help us learn things.”

  Lexie bit her lips hard. “It already has.”

  Renee snorted. “Nothing we didn’t already suspect.”

  Lexie released her lip. She couldn’t keep this secret. Not after Bree. “There was one other thing the Morloc told me. I didn’t have the right translation for it, and I didn’t want to scare anyone.”

  “What was it?”

  “Roughly translated,” Lexie said, “all females are theirs.”

  Renee weighed the words. “What for?”

  “What do monsters ever want with women in stories like these?”

  Renee studied her hands. “So Bree was … ”

  “Supposed to bear pups,” Lexie whispered. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Why’d they kill her then?” Renee scratched her scalp and sighed. “Though it explains why they didn’t kill Sharmalee outright.”

  Lexie let grizzly images flash in her mind, trying to shake them away but only finding them compounding in flashes like a medley of slasher films. She shuddered and made a sour face.

  Renee slammed her fists down on her desk, making Lexie jump. “Why is it always fucking forced pregnancy with these assholes?”

  Lexie tore at the gauze tape with her teeth but Renee reached for her hand and held it. “You were right not to announce it to everyone. It’ll scare the girls into submission. They’ve barely coped with their own attacks, let alone the idea that these Rares are actually targeting women for rape. It’s just too grim.” Renee sighed, hard. “We have to kill them. All of them. Soon,” Renee muttered. She leaned forward and inspected Lexie’s handiwork.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Conjure a miracle?”

  “Okay, what else?” Lexie laughed and blew the stray hairs off her face as she put away the peroxide.

  “I’m not kidding. We know two really good things about you. We need to figure out if there’s anything else for us to … ”

  “Exploit?” Lexie said with a half-grin.

  “Utilize,” Renee said. “Yes. Starting with guns. You can use some of your connections to hook us up with firepower, yeah?”

  Lexie shrugged. “I can try. Though it was hard enough getting my hands on that tranq gun. I doubt my dad would pull any strings that would encourage me to get in front of any more Rares.”

  “It’d be nice to not have to use them,” Renee said, standing to assess her reflection. She picked pieces of broken leaf from her hair before tying it into a puff at the crown of her head. “God, it would’ve been nice to be able to turn today.”

  “Not for me. I’m no good as a wolf,” Lexie said. Renee’s bare chest distracted her from being too concerned about her admission. “I make a better human.”

  “The wolf is awkward at first. It almost always is,” Renee said. “There’s a part of yourself you just have to relax. It’s like learning how to belch or orgasm. There’s a tiny, intangible part of you that’s also the strongest part you have. It’s like a cage, or a safe, or the blackbox on a plane. Indestructible, but very heavy. Eventually, you figure out how to open that box, and once you do, you get a good look at everything inside. No matter if you thought it was a dream or irrelevant or healed. It’s all there.”

  “And you get to decide if you keep going back to let everything out. It gets easier as you do it, but the first times are the worst, and the best, I guess.”

  “Can’t you just bu
rn the thing?”

  “Could, but it’s also the part that keeps your back straight. It’s the part of you at the center of everything. Burn that, and what good are you to anyone?”

  Lexie thought of her dad, of Duane. She thought of the possibility of her doing right, and the consequences. She allowed herself a tiny, optimistic look down the road. It felt nice, if foolish. What good was there in hoping for a future that couldn’t be?

  “It didn’t feel good the last time,” Lexie admitted.

  “Bullshit,” Renee laughed. “You were fucking.” Renee pawed through her drawer for a clean white tee and eased it over her fresh bandages. She stood tall, stretching her shoulders, once again the gazelle of a woman Lexie was so struck by at their first meeting.

  Lexie shook her head, knowing she had to come clean. “Not last time. Last week.”

  Renee glanced over her shoulder. “What now?”

  “I did.”

  “Last moon?”

  “Last week.”

  Renee grabbed Lexie’s arms. She flinched. “Seriously, Lex, if there is anything else you’re keeping from me, now is the time to come clean.”

  Renee was right. Lexie looked to the ceiling and scanned her memories, trying to find any other secrets than needed revealing. She shook her head. “There’s just this.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Not really. Something to do with my knife holding me back. And, I guess, a bit of a freak-out.”

  Lexie wanted to take it back, to save herself from the deluge of questions for which she had no answer. But she shouldn’t, couldn’t, and didn’t. And the questions poured out of Renee. Lexie tried to answer with as much truth as she had in her, but the real question, which Renee repeated too many times to note, was beyond her ability to answer: “How?”

  She could say it was her anger, her sadness, her willingness to be something else, but none of that was necessarily true. Lexie replied to all Renee’s questions with the refrain she had been growing accustomed to: “I don’t know. I was angry. I threw away my knife. And it just spilled out of me.” Lexie wrapped her arms around her body, too confused to offer anything of worth, and ashamed of that fact.