Blood and Wolf

by S. M. Gaither

  “Go,” she commands, just as the creature falling from the sky fully materializes, taking the shadowy shape of something that resembles a massive bird with blazing red eyes. With every flap of its wings, more of that shining dust rains down. People scramble to get out of its path, shoving and screaming as they run.

  And I hate this.

  That I’ve caused this mess, and I can’t even stay and fight, because I’m just in the way and liable to make it worse. I hate every step, but I still run for the house. I pause at the front door just for a moment, just long enough to glance back and find my parents, to make sure they’re still okay.

  I don’t see them.

  I’m still searching when I feel a hand on both my arms, dragging me backwards into the house. I swing blindly, all of my pent up frustration and irritation at the situation unleashed in the form of a swift punch that lands in a hard set of abs.

  “Um, ow?”

  I manage to twist around to see Liam, just as he doubles over with an arm wrapped around his stomach.

  “What the hell was that for?” he demands.

  “Because she’s tense, obviously. I told you to warn her first,” Carys says, rolling her eyes at him as she slams the door shut. Then she tightens the grip she still has on my arm and starts to drag me deeper into the house.

  I sigh with relief to see them both safe. Then I remember my parents, and I instantly jerk free of Carys’s grasp. “I need to go to my room. I need to get a weapon.”

  “No way,” Liam says, straightening up and jogging after us.

  “Your mom has been in our head for the past five minutes, practically screaming at us in thoughtspeech to take you away and lock you up if things got bad,” Carys adds, giving me a sympathetic frown.

  “And this is bad, if you didn’t notice,” Liam says.

  A moment later something slams into the house hard enough to knock a chandelier from the ceiling, sending it crashing to the floor and into a million pieces of glass and plaster and dust. We have to jump aside to avoid the glass shards that skid in every direction. A particularly large shard of glass slides to a stop at my feet.

  I stare at my reflection in it.

  At the dried blood across my face.

  “Basement bunker, now,” Carys is saying.

  But the memory of Maric’s words is louder than her voice.

  You caused this disaster.

  I sprint towards my room.

  “Elle! Stop!”

  Thanks to his way longer legs, Liam is faster than I am, and a minute later he’s jostling his way beside me in the narrow hallway, trying to get a tight enough hold on my arm to stop me. I keep wriggling out of his grasp. Stumbling along the runner rugs and bouncing ungracefully from wall to wall. We fight almost all the way to my room like that before I finally slip up—I trip over the elegantly carved leg of an accent table and slam into the wall.

  Liam grabs my arms and pins me against that wall.

  I’m too off-balanced to slip away immediately, and he has time to get a proper grip and to exert his full strength which, as much as I hate to admit it, is more than mine.

  I keep struggling, but he’s pissed at me, his dark eyes are wild with annoyance, and so it’s useless—he’s not letting go.

  “I’m the one who brought that monster into this world,” I say, “so I should be the one out there fighting it!”

  “That thing is going to be drawn to you precisely because you’re the one who brought it here—you know that. That’s what happened both times you opened fissures before, right? It’s probably searching for you right now. So we need to get you underground, somewhere where it can’t find you.”

  He’s right, partly; the creatures I’ve released from that other world both went for me almost immediately. We assumed it was because I’m stained with the same essence of that world and its monsters, and that apparently makes those monsters really, really interested in hunting me down before they do anything else.

  But in the absence of me, there’s another person who shares that same tie to the other world—Mom.

  The thought of that beast setting its sights on her makes me want to throw up.

  “Let it be drawn to me!” I try again to struggle free. Useless. Again. “It just means I’ll have an easier shot to take it down!” I shout.

  “No, it means that if you go back outside then you will most likely die.”

  “Then let me die! Maybe I want to die.”

  An awful gasp answers me: Carys has caught up just in time to overhear this brash declaration. I wish I could take it back. Because I feel a little guilty about the distraught look on the sweet, sensitive thing’s face.

  But I also feel like those words held a little too much truth for me to take them back, as messed up as that sounds.

  Liam must have been able to hear that truth, too, because his grip loosens a bit, and he fixes me with an uncharacteristically serious look. “Don’t say things like that,” he says quietly.

  I take a deep breath. I feel tears welling up.

  How annoying.

  I widen my eyes and give my head a little shake, trying to keep those tears from falling. My voice is level when I answer him. “I have been nothing but trouble for this pack since the day I was born.”

  “That isn’t your fault—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Another deep breath.

  Keep it together, Elle.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I repeat. “It is what it is, right? And it’s only going to get worse. Things are getting harder for me to control. Maric was right. I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t hide from this.”

  As if the universe needs to remind me of that lack of control, it chooses that moment to have the beast outside let out a high-pitched, cringe-inducing shriek. I close my eyes against the thought of what the outside scene must look like. Has that creature already killed?

  Did any humans see it emerge?

  How much irreversible damage has been done?

  “Let me go,” I say, quieter now as I open my eyes and fix Liam with a determined look. “At least let me go down fighting, okay?”

  His expression softens, just the tiniest bit.

  I don’t have to ask him if he understands what’s going through my head. I already know that he does. And he proves it a second later by reluctantly letting go of my arms and taking a step back.

  “If you die, just know that you’ve killed me too.”

  “How grossly romantic,” I say, blushing a bit.

  He shakes his head. “No, I meant a literal death—as in your mother and father will kill me for letting you do this.”

  I manage to crack a bit of a grin despite the circumstances. “Then just for you, I’ll try not to die and stuff.”

  “Solid plan.”

  “I always have one,” I lie, and then I sidestep around him and wrap a still-speechless-and-distraught-looking Carys in my arms for a quick hug. “You two go somewhere safer, please?” I add.

  And then I sprint the rest of the way to my room.

  I already have a weapon in mind: English longbow. Long-range, powerful, and one of my personal favorite—and most-practiced-with—bows. I just practiced with it yesterday in fact, which makes it an even better choice; because it’s still strung, and the two dozen arrows I have for it are already neatly loaded into a quiver that’s still resting in the corner next to my closet. I grab the bow and quiver. Then I slap a bracer onto my arm and tie it in place—because if you didn’t know, accidentally getting slapped from the backlash of a string with a hundred-pound draw weight freaking hurts—and I move on to part two of my plan.

  Because I actually do have one of those, this time.

  Sort of.

  I race to Liam’s room, stumble my way over clothes and dirty dishes and several other unidentifiable objects—I swear he’s such a slob—and I throw open the window facing his bed. I climb through it and onto the roof.

  People don’t usually think graceful climber when
they think about wolf shifters, but my lycan genes make me agile and fast, and strong enough to get a good grip on even the narrowest edges as I jump from windowsill, to shingled incline, to another windowsill, side to side and all the way up until I’m at the highest point of the roof that I can keep my balance on.

  The sky is the color of a half-healed bruise. What little sunlight is left is strangled and weak. The air is drowning in the scent of blood and other bodily fluids that are sour and pungent and distinctly not human.

  From my vantage point I can see that the groups below—the ones who didn’t run away—at least seem to have managed to fall into some sort of order, and they’re fighting back against the bird-monster, whether by weapons or magic.

  None of it seems to be doing much good.

  The creature is unbelievably fast, whipping in and out of trees like it’s made of liquid.

  It’s dodging almost everything they throw at it.

  Dodging things, and then immediately circling back around and diving after the pack of wolves that seem to be purposely leading it around the yard and the woods. My pack. Trying to keep its attention on them so that the others can attack, it seems like, even if those attacks aren’t actually landing, nine times out of ten.

  The creature keeps following them, because my mom is at the center—still in her human form— and drawing it toward her, just as I’d expected.

  She seems to be moving terribly, unusually slow.

  For a moment, panic sinks its claws into me, and I have to fight off the urge to jump immediately down, to run to my mom’s side and make sure she’s okay.

  But then I see fire. Not black like Maric’s, but orange and brilliant as the sun—and I know it’s hers.

  She’s still fighting.

  There’s no mistaking the weariness in all of them, though, so I don’t know how much longer they’re going to last. I need to slow that bird down somehow.

  I need to line up a better shot.

  I look to the trees, noting the way the wind is blowing their leaves, and then I move so that wind is blowing my scent towards the creature. I carry that essence of its world in my very blood, supposedly, so I’m hoping the dried mess on my scratched face will be enough to catch an extra bit of its attention.

  It doesn’t do the trick.

  So I take one of the long arrows out of my quiver, and I add some fresh blood to the mix by tearing a path up my arm. I bite back a gasp of pain and keep my eyes straight ahead. I’ll heal faster than an average human, yeah, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell in the meantime.

  “Come on you stupid beast,” I mutter under my breath.

  It swoops low, next to several of the New England witches, who attempt to blast him with some sort of blue-tinted spell. It veers up sharply to avoid the attack, and when it settles back into hunting mode, the rest of my pack is already on the other side of the yard, panting and snarling and snapping.

  But luck—for lack of a better word— funnels a gust of my scent straight toward the monstrous bird, and it abruptly halts its pursuit of the wolves.

  It cranes its neck in my direction. Gives several slow, powerful flaps of its wings to gain altitude. Its eyes are enormous, reflecting the sun at my back in a way that makes them look like they’re a portal to hell itself.

  Hell seems like a good place to start shooting at, I think.

  It dives.

  “NO!”

  The voice screaming down below makes my hands fumble a bit, but I still manage to notch an arrow and hold it steady.

  The scent of my blood seems to be driving the hell-eyed bird as crazy as I’d hoped it would, because it’s somehow moving even faster than before. So fast and so reckless that there’s no way it’s going to be able to evade my shot, if I can aim it just right....

  I wait until the last possible second—until it’s close enough that its massive shadow swallows me up and strains my sight, and I blink and readjust in the darkness just in time to focus on the left eye.

  I draw and release in one furious, uninterrupted motion.

  The arrow slams into my target, and the bird pulls up so quickly it essentially somersaults, its clawed feet and the tips of its folded wings grazing the side of the house and busting out several windows in the process. It cries out in pain and anger. Struggles, but finds its balance and then gives a vicious toss of its head that sends purplish-red blood streaming from its eye.

  Its other eye squints, fixes on me.

  Nock, draw, release.

  It’s as easy as breathing with this bow, and I’m strong and I’m fast—but my aim is a little shaky, and my second arrow doesn’t sink completely into its other eye; it just grazes the corner of it. Not enough to completely blind it, in other words.

  Just enough to completely piss it off.

  It shakes the arrow from its punctured skin and tears after me.

  I jump to a lower part of the roof.

  It follows. Clearly off-kilter without proper eyesight; it tumbles and bounces ungracefully around, throwing up a flurry of fiery red feathers in its wake. It’s still insanely quick.

  But then again, so am I.

  I scramble to get far enough ahead to find another vantage point that I can fire from. Not a particularly easy feat with the bow and quiver bouncing awkwardly around on my shoulders, but I manage; I land somewhat gracefully on a balcony attached to one of the upper bedrooms, find my balance, and spin around.

  Nock, draw, release.

  The arrow hits the right eye dead center. And my follow-up is faster this time: a second arrow flying, and then a third, one into both of what I assume are its ears.

  “Going to be hard to evade attacks now that your blind and deaf,” I call to it—but my victory taunt is shortened by the fact that the beast is still careening straight toward me.

  There’s no direction behind its attack anymore, but it’s still attacking.

  And it’s still massive and powerful.

  Powerful enough that I don’t think this balcony is going to win when the two collide, so I fling myself over the edge and end up in a dizzying roll down the side of the house, slipping and scrambling for purchase and eventually landing on my back on the ground, hard enough that it slams the air from my lungs.

  The creature falls after me.

  Following my scent trail, maybe, however much it’s struggling to do so. I could probably escape pretty easily if I could breathe properly. But I’m still dazed from the fall, and my leg is twisted at an odd angle, and I can’t do much other than pull myself to my hands and knees and painfully start to crawl.

  I make it maybe five feet before it’s on top of me.

  But there are others converging—others it can’t see or hear or evade, now— and in a flurry of spells and weapons the supernatural council makes quick work of finishing the creature off.

  It’s death cry rings in my ears for what feels like several minutes. The scent of feathers scorched by magic is burning in my nostrils and making my eyes water, so I don’t see the golden-white wolf bounding toward me until she’s right in front of my face. My Aunt Vanessa. She lets out a low whine at the sight of me, and her voice is in my head a moment later.

  (Your father is furious with you, just so you know.)

  “Where is he? Is he okay?”

  She hesitates.

  (He’s with your mother.)

  “Is she okay?”

  Instead of answering, she kneels down so I can throw an arm around her and take a steadying grip on the ruff of fur around her neck. Her continued silence is worse than anything she could have said. Aunt Vanessa isn’t the silent type—she’s the bubbly, optimistic type that usually convinces my parents to let me off easy when I do something stupid.

  She gets stiffly to her feet, pulling me with her.

  I hobble along with her for support for a few steps. But the pain in my leg is getting worse, so after a moment I just haul myself the rest of the way onto her back and press flat between her shoulder blades. />
  She races across the yard.

  She’s still not speaking.

  We dart into the woods, and I see my dad first. He’s down on one knee, a human, surrounded by a circle of wolves who all have their ears pinned back and their fangs bared, facing anyone trying to approach. They let us pass, but they keep dozens of others at bay—dozens of different races of creatures who are all whispering, exchanging glances, peering through trees and craning their necks.

  They’re all trying to get a better look at my mom, who is lying on the ground in a puddle of blood, not moving.

  Five

  Smoke and Sorrow

  I slide from Vanessa’s back and hit the ground numbly. I meant to hit that ground running. But I feel like I weigh a million pounds, and my knees keep trying to give out under my weight.

  My dad doesn’t turn to me as I approach.

  Still, I know I’ve been noticed, because everyone around him goes quiet enough for me to hear him quietly ask, “Why are you not hiding, Eleanor?”

  I hold my breath, waiting for the rest of the lecture. Kind of hoping for it, really, because I think it would be less frightening than that still-forced calmness in his voice.

  He doesn’t say anything else.

  I don’t have to answer him, thank every deity in existence, because at that moment my mom finally moves. Finally speaks. Her words are slurred, incomprehensible against my racing thoughts and my ears that are burning with embarrassment at the wreck I’ve caused. But the sound of her voice still makes almost everyone around us breathe a collected sigh of relief. Someone runs to find my Aunt Katie, who worked as an ER nurse before Carys was born, and who is usually our calm savior in moments like this.

  The air is tense, and the sounds of scuffling and shouting matches can still be heard in the yard behind us. Mom keeps trying to sit further up, to arch her neck and get a better look, to talk someone into helping her up so that she can go address that unrest.

  Everyone insists that she be still.

  Dad looks like he’s ready to tie her down just so he doesn’t have to keep repeating the words Be still before you bleed to death, for god’s sake.