by D. N. Hoxa
“I-I-I did something,” he whispered, and a visible shiver shook his shoulders. I’d never heard my father stutter like this before. “She got very mad. At first, we thought she just wanted some time off to clear her head, but then…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.
“But then, what?” Panic raised all the alarms in my head. This wasn’t good. All my instincts were screaming. I wanted to grab my father by the shoulders and shake him until he told me everything, but I held my breath and waited instead.
“Then, she didn’t come back and we heard rumors,” he whispered, as if he was afraid somebody would hear us. “We heard rumors that she’s involved with some very bad people, Victoria.”
That sounded like nonsense. “That can’t be right. Izzy knows better.”
My sister’s sense of right and wrong was impeccable. Stay away from bad people, Vicky. Ignore the bullies. All they want is your attention. If someone shows you they’re bad, don’t wait for them to show you a second time. She’d lecture me about this every day. She was very persistent, too. She was the first to walk away from a situation if it gave her a bad vibe—even as a kid.
“God, I hope so, too,” my father said with a sigh. “But we don’t know for sure, do we?”
“They’re just rumors. Izzy is fine. She knows how to take care of herself,” I told him, but I’m not sure if I was trying to reassure him, or myself.
My father stopped breathing for a second and met my eyes. He looked like a little boy in those seconds. Like a terrified little boy, and the sight of him shocked me all over again.
“She doesn’t. She’s not like you, Victoria. She’s very sensitive,” he whispered. “And what if the rumors are true?”
“They’re not.” They couldn’t be.
“But what if they are?” he said, raising his voice. He rubbed his face for a second and took in a deep breath. “I hired a private investigator to find her. The best in the country. He told me he couldn’t, but that he knew someone who could find anything at all.” Goddamn it. I should have known. “When he told me your name, I thought he was kidding me.”
“Was it Finn from the Agency?” Everybody knew Finn and his Agency.
My father nodded. “Yes, it was.”
The fucking asshole. I’d told him my real name in confidence. If I’d known he’d tell my own father about me—and I’m a hundred percent sure he already knew who Oscar was, because Finn’s job was to know things—I would have never told him.
But that’s a lie.
The sight of my father, so broken, so scared…I never thought I’d say this, but I was glad he’d found me, no matter that that feeling flushed all those five years down the fucking drain.
Then came the words I dreaded the most.
“You need to find her, Victoria. You need to find your sister before it’s too late. Your mother and I are losing our minds. We don’t know what to do, how else to look for her.”
I stood up and went to the window, as if that was going to make me escape the situation somehow. Even though my back was turned to him, in my mind’s eye I still saw my father’s wide eyes and the desperation in them. It was like meeting him for the first time, or at least a part of him I’d never known before. Even my wolf was now curious. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about people, but this sure seemed to interest her.
“I work with animals,” I whispered, my breath fogging the glass. It’s when I realized that I was burning up, and it wasn’t even warm in the apartment. “I wouldn’t know how to…” My voice trailed off.
It was the truth. I wasn’t a private investigator. I found animals because it was easy. I’d get a request for a job, go to the address and smell the missing pet’s scent. Animals had a much heavier smell than people, and my wolf was always a hundred percent into it, so it was easy for me to track. I always found the animals—whether alive or dead.
But people were a different story.
“I brought you something,” my father said and stood up to come to me. He handed me a shirt. “It’s Izzy’s. She had this on the entire day before she disappeared. You can still smell her.”
Pursing my lips, I took the shirt. I couldn’t allow myself to breathe through my nose just yet. Too much had happened already.
“She was last seen in a tavern in Jersey City, the same night she disappeared. Here’s the address,” he said and put a folded piece of paper in my hand. “Do you think you can pick up her scent with this shirt?”
A lump formed in my throat. “Yes,” I breathed.
He wrapped one arm around me and rested his head on my shoulder for just a split second. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d hugged. When he let go of me, I felt a thousand pounds lighter.
“So Finn was right,” he said then. “He said you had the best nose in the country.”
“He’s exaggerating it,” I whispered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” my father asked. He didn’t accuse or judge me. He just…asked. And it made it all worse.
“I didn’t know how.” I’d never told anyone because by the time I’d found out that I smelled things differently from other werewolves, I’d already committed my first murder. I was afraid that if my parents found out, they could link that man’s death to me. That they’d tell the others that it wasn’t a bear who’d killed him. It was me. My wolf. So I kept my mouth shut and felt safer that way. My mother didn’t deserve to have her heart broken and her name stained because of me. The best thing I ever did for her was to run away.
“You’re going to find your sister, and you’re going to bring her home. And you’re going to come home, too, Victoria.”
“Dad, I—”
“No excuses. We’ve gone through enough, don’t you think? We’re a family and we’re going to start behaving like one.”
I bit my tongue to either keep from smiling or crying. I loved the words that left his mouth as much as I hated them. Because whether he meant them or not, I didn’t believe him. There was a voice in my head saying that the only reason he’d bothered to come for me was because of my sister. He didn’t care whether I went back home or not, just as long as Izzy did. It was a tormented existence when your own mind regularly turned against you.
I wanted to tell him that I was never going back home. That I already was home and that they were better off without me. That Mom was better off without me.
But how could I? I’d never talked back to this man, ever in my life.
I kept my mouth shut. If I found Izzy and took her home, it would be easier to tell both him and my mother then. And maybe Mom wouldn’t be so sad.
That’s what I told myself.
“And…and if I can’t?” I asked halfheartedly. For the thousandth time, I worked with animals, damn it. I’d never hunted for a person before. What the hell would happen if I couldn’t find my sister?
“But you can,” my father said. “I believe in you, Victoria. You can find her.”
Air left my lungs for a second. It felt like he sucker punched me in the gut. Here I was, going five years thinking that the man who raised me, whom I called Dad for seventeen years, thought of me as nothing. Unworthy of his name. And now he was here, and he was saying things that messed with my head and brought out an even more vicious side of me. The side that wouldn’t let me get comfortable or enjoy even seeing him for a single second. I wanted to scream and shout, I wanted to cry and tell him that he was wrong to believe me. He couldn’t put all that responsibility on me! I wasn’t to be trusted. My body wasn’t to be trusted. My wolf could come out and rip my father apart, too, at any second, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I have to go now. Your mother is expecting me. She doesn’t know who I came to meet,” he then said, pressing his lips together as if he was sorry. As if he knew what he’d just done to me, but he had no other choice.
“Keep it that way.” My mother didn’t need to know that I was searching for Izzy. She had enough on her plate already.
The beast in
side me watched as I saw my father to the door. She watched and she took note of everything—every movement, every feeling, every thought that went on in my head. She reminded me once more, while I watched my father get into his car, why I’d left home, why I lived alone, and why nobody was safe around me.
She reminded me that she was in control, and no amount of kicking the door with all my strength was going to make me forget that. All it was going to do was make my toes hurt real bad. At least my father was gone and he didn’t see me lose it. Nobody had ever seen me lose it—except my sister.
Was she really involved with bad people? It was so hard to believe that when she’d always been the voice of reason in my head. She always knew the right thing to do.
Now I wished I’d asked my father about what he’d done. How had he managed to drive Izzy away? Had he hit her? If he had, I swore to God, I was going to kill him myself, and I wouldn’t even let my wolf do it.
But I doubted it. My father might have been an asshole most of the time, but he’d never hit us. He wasn’t that kind of a man.
As soon as I sat down in front of the laptop again, intending to find the address my father had given me, I received a new email. It was from Finn. I still had no idea whether to be angry at him for telling Dad about me or thankful. There was time to decide.
The email had no subject. I opened it.
The picture took over my screen instantly.
Another wolf and a deer right beside him. The animals were cut to pieces, but this time, there was no blood. It almost looked like someone had sucked it out of them. A vampire?
No, vampires didn’t like animal blood. And this wasn’t a kill for feeding. This was a kill for magic, and you could tell by the missing organs and the missing heads. I slammed the lid shut and closed my eyes. My wolf was mad. She was clawing at the inside of my chest, trying to hurt me for…what? Because I didn’t want to know where Finn had found those animals?
“Isabelle,” I said to myself. “Isabelle comes first.” I didn’t care what the wolf thought. My sister was in danger, and my father believed I could find her. It was time to either disappoint him for good, or for once in my life, take control of myself and do something right.
3
The first man I ever killed had only one eye.
No, wait... did he have one eye before I killed him, or after?
Hmm. I can’t really remember. I was only eleven.
When I killed the second man, I was fourteen, so I perfectly recall that he had both eyes. He was perfectly intact, in fact. After I was done, all he missed was a large chunk of his neck.
For the third man, I was seventeen, but it was pretty dark in the woods so I can’t tell what he ended up missing. It got really messy at some point.
But hold on a second: should I be held responsible for the actions of an animal? Even if that animal lived in my head, used my body to hunt and kill, called all the shots about everything and pretty much owned my ass?
Because I didn’t really kill those men. I really wanted to, but I didn’t.
Your honor, the defendant pleads not guilty to all charges.
Seriously, I had no control over the wolf whatsoever. It was worse that she was so sexist, too. She’d never killed a woman before—just men.
In a normal world, werewolves learn to control their animals from birth. They learn to keep them inside, make a rational decision on when to let them out, and how to lock them in again. Not a smooth process, but it worked for the most part.
But there was nothing normal about me. I found that out five years ago, right after I’d committed my third and last murder.
Anyway, all of that is in the past now.
Unfortunately, my future wasn’t looking any brighter right now, either.
The smart thing to do would have been to get a good night’s sleep, but I couldn’t. Not when the smell of Izzy’s shirt filled my entire apartment, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face. For three hours I tried to get the idea out of my head, but when the clock struck eleven pm, I gave up.
The tavern where she was last spotted was called Moon Howl. Very original. I’d never been, but I’d heard about it. Only werewolves and certain witches allowed inside. And it wasn’t even an hour away, which meant I would be there even before midnight. No idea why that seemed like a good thing, but it did. I got dressed, took Izzy’s shirt, and got into my car. I would have never been able to sleep, anyway. I also wouldn’t have been able to distract my wolf from the pictures Finn had showed me for too long. Not unless I was doing something besides pretending to watch TV.
I’d taken a few knives from the kitchen, some of the sharpest ones, but I already knew that they’d be useless. I wasn’t a fighter. My wolf took care of that part. I just…gave her a body to do it—and not even willingly.
I turned the volume on the radio up all the way to drown my thoughts and the nasty sound of the engine and ate the sandwiches I’d made for the road. The drive was much shorter than I would have liked, but in what felt like ten minutes, I was in Jersey City, just a couple blocks from the Moon Howl. The City was mostly populated by humans, but there was a good number of paranormals here, too. Vampires, werewolves, witches, even fairies.
When I got close to the tavern’s building, I parked the car on the side of the road and continued on foot. I allowed myself a sniff to find out what I was up against, and the smells of the spells hit me hard. Blood magic, most likely. Out of all, Blood magic was believed to be the strongest. Then came Bone magic, and Green. Hedge magic was very strong, too, but mostly during nighttime.
Oh, right—and Storm witches. Nobody knew how powerful they were yet, but their magic was made of actual lightning, so I doubted the other kinds of witches were going to like what we’d all soon discover.
Werewolves can’t do magic, but they have enough in them to activate spell stones—what we called Pretters. Pretters contain spells, and the stronger the Pretter Master, the stronger the spell inside the stone. That’s why it stunk of magic in that place. The owners, like most people with money to spend these days, used spell stones to cast protective shields over their territory, but this particular place didn’t have any violent spells to throw you off if you attempted to walk in with bad intentions. Yes, there are spells that could actually detect that. This tavern’s protection was against magic, against other spells—and against shifting. The sign by the front door said it, too: No Shifting Allowed. Smart man, whoever had made that rule.
When normal werewolves shifted, they became a cross between man and beast. Basically a person-sized wolf standing on two feet. It was not a pretty sight. I had no idea if my wolf looked like that, or even close to it. But mine, as well as all other werewolves, lost it pretty quickly when shifted. Very few could fully control their animals, and even they never risked it. It’s why even the ECU werewolf soldiers weren’t allowed to shift under any circumstance.
I left Izzy’s shirt in the car, but my nose was filled with her scent. If she was there, I was going to smell her as soon as I opened the door. A couple, both werewolves, came out of the tavern. I had no idea how they could see the way when they were eating each other’s faces, but I soon forgot all about it when the smell of the inside hit me hard. My stomach rolled. Werewolves, testosterone, Green witch, two Bone witches. I swallowed hard and proceeded to breathe through my mouth only. This was going to be very interesting.
The bar was located in a two-story building, and it was bigger than it looked from the outside. The wooden floor creaked with every single step anyone took. Luckily, most were drunk and sitting. The bar to my right was packed, and half the tables across from it were taken. There were mirrors mounted on the walls on three sides, as if they wanted to make sure everyone saw everyone coming from all angles. The music was loud, an old country song that had a few werewolves singing along and raising their glasses. Boy, these people really knew how to have a good time.
Nobody watched me as I made my way to the bar. My scent was the same as a
werewolf’s, and there were plenty of them here. No reason to be alarmed by my presence.
Two people worked the bar—a werewolf, possibly in his forties, with a nasty goatee, and a Bone witch with short hair dyed bright pink. She smiled at everyone, and everybody was eager to give her their order—and a tip. I tried to decide who to talk to. The guy or the girl?
Shit. Animals were so easy to talk to, even though I did all the talking. They always listened to me. They never made me feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was because they could smell my wolf and were afraid of her, or maybe they all liked me for me, but this was terrifying. I had no idea how to get a person to tell me anything.
Undecided, I watched a werewolf stand from a barstool, and I jumped to it. Whoever came to take my order first was going to have to do.
The wood of the counter was wet and sticky and full of cigarette ashes—same as every other bar, I guess.
“What can I get you?” the werewolf said. So the guy. Maybe that’s for the better.
“Any beer’s fine,” I said and reached for a twenty in my pocket to pay him. He slid the beer bottle to me and took my money, then turned away.
“Hey, wait!” I called. Sure, he didn’t know me and he had no reason to tell me anything, but I did know how to flirt. And he was a guy. It was the best chance I had.
I smiled my brightest smile when he stopped in front of me again. “What’s your name?”
He pressed his lips together, and his goatee moved like a living thing. Ugh. “Rick,” he said. “Can I get you anything else?”
I batted my lashes at him. “Maybe your number?”
That’s when the werewolf took a second to look at me. And he liked what he saw, though I hadn’t even bothered with mascara.
So he smiled. “You didn’t tell me yours.”
I reached out my hand to him. “Gia Hall.”
Slowly, he brought my hand to his lips. My God, his goatee touched my skin. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. He thought I was excited by his gesture so he showed me all his teeth.