Chapter Twenty-three – Jack
Chapter Twenty-three
Jack
I woke alone. In the bed of a truck, swathed in darkness—just like that time in the bodybag. I thrashed and got myself free, standing up—and found a sea of wolves watching a fight.
Buster squealed at seeing me—safe inside the truck’s cab, where his mother had barred him in with rebar, his teeth too fat to pry up the doorlocks inside. I fell to a crouch, trying to figure out what was going on, while he tried to lick at me through the metal slats.
“Shh,” I warned him—but none of the wolves, if they scented me, cared.
All their eyes were on two wolves, wrestling.
One of them was huge and gray, and I had a feeling I knew who it was.
The other was also gray, but so light she was almost silver.
I knew it was Angela—and I could both see and smell the way her coat was getting covered in her blood.
Gray growled and leapt and she dodged and nipped at his underbelly, catching the spot where his hind-leg joined his torso—even as he twisted and firmly bit into her haunch.
If it was a grinding game, he’d win, his jaw had to have twice her bite-pressure—without thinking, I leapt into the fray.
“Get the fuck off of her!” Whatever promises I’d made Angela were forgotten, as I pummeled at his face. His lips rose in a snarl, unwilling to let go of his bite. “She’s not yours!” I said, kicking his stomach as hard as I could, feeling ribs break, knowing they were reknitting. “Let her go!”
Behind me, wolves growled, and I knew my freedom was about to come to an end when a huge black wolf appeared outside the circle, with shaggy hair in a leonine mane around him.
He raced in, wolves parting to let him, and he barreled into Gray, taking him away from me and severing him from Angela, sending her and I sprawling.
She whined, one leg limp, as I reached her side.
There was a furless, scarred streak on her face, from the base of one ear down to her nose.
I put a hand on her back, felt the springy give of her fur, she looked at me, and I knew—this was the creature I’d briefly seen the night prior.
And she wasn’t Angela. I’d call her Silver.
She whined at me, and then returned her attention to the new fight happening between Gray and Black.
They growled and whirled, clawing and biting, each looking for a moment that would reveal the other’s precious throat.
Gray was injured—Silver hadn’t managed to stay even, but she’d stayed alive, and in doing that, she’d gotten some bites in, and worn him down—and this new contender was fresh.
They spun like duelists, waiting, and then—Gray snapped, attacking.
Black feinted, and Gray made his mistake.
He over-extended himself, trying to attack again, and misjudged Black’s speed—because Black whirled and clamped his jaws down, on top of Gray’s closed muzzle.
Gray made an alarming sound as Black’s teeth ground in, scraping off the slender meat on either side of Gray’s snout.
Gray shook his head, but Black held him steady, his denser body absorbing each shudder as Gray fought to get free—and beside me, Silver came to attention. She ran in, and went for Gray’s throat.
The sounds he made became dramatically worse, because they were coming out the holes she was making in him with her teeth.
Then another wolf broke rank, a third, and a fourth—each of them choosing a different place on Gray to bite him.
And just like that, the tide had turned.
A wave of wolves rushed forward, all angling to get their piece of Gray, their dying leader, pulling mouthfuls of flesh from him, shredding him irreparably in the process.
The scent of blood filled the air as intestines spilled out and stained the ground.
“Good God,” I whispered, and looked back—Buster was watching from the truck cab with what I could only assume were wide-eyes, and I hoped to hell that Angela was right about their human selves not remembering.
And not long after that, Gray was gone. All that remained of him were disturbing chunks of fur and meat and bones too big to gnaw on and the remnants of a spine.
Black released what remained of Gray’s head, it hit the ground with a thump, and then he howled.
A wolf broke rank, racing into the woods—and all of the others except Silver followed.
I had a feeling I knew what they were going to do.
Silver looked at me—and then looked past me, her almost-white eyes focusing on something behind.
I turned, and saw a slender black wolf crawling up, belly against the ground, carrying a piece of metal in her jaws.
Silver growled, and this new wolf whined, twisting to offer Silver its neck and belly, letting the metal go.
It was curved…a portion of a lock. And I could see where the teeth of the new wolf were broken and the fur around its jaws was stained with blood—had it gone and gnawed through metal?
Why?
I watched Silver inspect the scene, wondering what she was thinking, and then she placed her teeth on the new wolf’s throat, delicately, almost like a kiss, before stepping back.
The new wolf, now freed, rolled over, making sure to stay low to the ground as she crept away—and then Silver came up to me.
I backed up until I was leaning against the truck, and heard Buster whining, scratching at the door.
Her limp was healing—and I thought she was coming for my crotch, until I realized she was trying to get to Buster.
I hopped into the back of the truck and reached through the cab to open up a lock with my ever-so-useful fingers, then leaped back down to pop the door.
Buster jumped out and started snuffling Silver all over, and Silver looked up at me with eyes such a light blue they were almost white.
“Thanks for voting for me,” I told her. She half-way closed her eyes and half-way rolled them, and then started licking Buster’s face.
If moonrise had been before sunrise, it stood to figure that it would end before dawn too.
I sat on the truck’s cab, listening to the wolves hunt in the night, howling, and an hour or so before dawn, they returned as humans, staggering out of the forest naked and rough looking, a little like zombies.
Their nudity was startling to me, but they didn’t seem fazed—until they saw me, and started heading my direction.
“Hey,” I started. “I’m a friend of Angela’s.”
A group of them conferred—and others looked over to where Gray’s body had been left. The bones hadn’t shifted back to human.
“Why’re you still alive?” asked the man nearest me. He was as tall as I was and lean, with a beard that circled his chin, and shaggy black hair that covered his shoulders.
“Because he’s not. Alive, that is.” Angela answered for me, coming out of the forest. My breath caught.
She was as disheveled as she’d been both above and below me the night before, and it was lovely to see all of her again.
Rabbit was at her side, and shouted my name, before running over to scramble up the truck to join me.
“Let’s find you some clothes, kiddo,” I reached into the cab, and pulled out the tatters of his jeans.
“What do you mean by that?” the man asked Angela.
“He’s a….” Angela began, and I heard her pause.
“Vampire,” I jumped in, tying a shirt around Rabbit’s waist like a kilt. “Fellow creature of the night. So maybe you didn’t eat me out of professional courtesy.”
The men—and women—looked to one another in disbelief.
“I know. I didn’t think that you all existed until very recently, either.
But you do and I do, hooray.” I stood straighter and ruffled my hand through Rabbit’s hair.
“I saw everything last night—not that I know who did what, since all of y’all were furry—but I can try to explain what I saw happening.
I have to hurry though—you all aren’t the only ones on a clock. ”
The man now nearest me snorted. “All right. Try us.”
Parsing out what had happened in the gap between them all becoming wolves but before the sun had gone down and I’d risen to witness things was a group effort.
Gray had been sprung from prison and had locked Jonah up for freeing Angela on his return.
But whatever small rebellion Jonah had started prior grew, as they realized Gray had ordered the death of someone named Wade.
They wanted to know what happened to the three wolves who’d been sent to get Rabbit, who I’d buried underground, and they took the news of their deaths better than I would have—violence seemed to be a casual part of their lives. And then we came to discussing Bella.
“She was yours?” Jonah, who was now apparently their leader, asked.
“Bella? She didn’t belong to anyone. That wasn’t her style.
” I couldn’t help but feel the weight of Angela’s attention, standing nearby.
I recognized another woman as well—Nikki, the one I’d met at Happyland’s ball pit.
She moved among their number, handing blankets out.
“And it’s not my style to claim people, either,” I said, knowing Angela would hear me. “But she did say that she loved you.”
“Was that before or after you slept with her?” His arms were crossed, and I could tell I was veering into dangerous territory.
“Actually, it was after she died. I spoke to her ghost.” A murmur ran through the collected crowd, while he didn’t move a muscle.
“Really?” he asked, his voice rich with disbelief.
“Yeah. I’m a vampire. Weird shit happens around me. Hazard of the occupation—but that’s also when she gave me your name.”
“And why would she have gone to you for protection, over me?” His voice was now like gravel, and I could sense his wolf lying just below his skin.
I eyed him steadily. “Guess that depends on what she needed protecting from—it wasn’t vampires that killed her.”