Chapter 13 #3
“There’s a dozen scent misdirects between where we were and where we are now,” he informs me. “And if you try to get out of this place by yourself, I can guarantee you will be lost in the dark until the end of your days. So stay close, and behave yourself.”
“You live here?”
“I live everywhere,” he says. “And well you know it.”
The years have not been kind to my father.
He was always mad and dangerous, but now he is mad and dangerous in a way that has a finality to it.
I think he’s doing this because he knows he can’t keep doing it.
I think he knows that the world he lives in now is not the same as the one he used to hunt in.
There’s surveillance everywhere now. Everyone has phones.
You can’t appear and disappear at will. You can’t move from place to place without being recognized.
This is his last stand. Corrupting me is how he’ll solidify his legacy.
* * *
Rex
The hunt is coming to its inevitable conclusion. We are on her trail now, and there is no way we will lose it.
We come across a small pack of strays. They scatter as my wolves and I come through the trees, but every single one of them is brought down within moments. Nicky is not here, but I can smell her. Her scent is growing stronger. We are getting closer.
I catch the nearest one and pin him down, my jaws on his throat forcing him to take his human form as he properly submits.
“He’s got her,” the boy says, whining for his life as I barely hold myself back from slaying him on the spot. “He’s taken her to his den and he’s going to feed her the special meat.”
“Can we go one day without a cannibalism scandal?” Percy says. He’s one of my prime hunters, and he’s been on a lot of jobs where wolves have gone a little too wild. For him, this is just another Tuesday.
I slide into my human form. I need information, and interrogations in wolf form are impractical for a whole host of reasons.
This is a battle for my mate’s soul. Her father has her, and he wants to turn her into the same thing he is.
A monster. He wants to make her into the version of herself she has feared for a long time.
She tried so hard to avoid becoming her wolf self because she thought she wouldn’t be able to control her nature.
And now there is a trail of blood and… I have to get her back. Now.
“Where’s the den?”
“It’s up in the old mines. He has secret paths in there, and some of the trusses are rigged up to blow. I wouldn’t go in there. He will know you’ve come. He’s counting on it.”
“Do you know why? He couldn’t possibly have known that Nicky was going to shift and run into the woods. Nobody knew that.”
The boy coughs. His throat feels raw from my jaws, I am sure.
“He knew,” he says. “He started taking us months ago, and then he knew you and she mated, and then he knew that she’d turn and he knew that when she did, she’d run.
He’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. He knows a lot of things before they happen. ”
“Then we have to draw him out. Take these strays and put them with the others,” I say. “I want all the Runaways taken to the reserve and put under guard.”
* * *
Nicky
My father keeps trying to feed me. I keep rejecting the food.
“It’s tasty,” he says, holding out a strip of dried, salted meat.
I remember him preparing his rations back in the day.
He’d slice the flesh from the bone, then set it out on a mesh rack in the desert sun with a good helping of salt to preserve it.
He used to make a lot of it. I guess that’s one habit that has not changed.
“I’m not hungry,” I tell him.
“You’re going to starve,” he laughs, tossing the dried meat down his gullet.
I watch him and I wonder why I ever thought I would turn out like him. How did I not notice how fundamentally different we are? How little we have in common past the obvious and superficial?
He really had the whole of my mind at one time.
I thought he was the world, and I thought he was my destiny.
I thought he was everything. Now, in filthy darkness just barely broken by a head lamp swinging slowly from an old rusty nail, I see him for what he is.
A freak. A pervert. A weak man who made the worst choices every time he was given the opportunity to choose.
I haven’t really had that much time with Rex. Not really. But the limited time I’ve had has let me see what a real man is like, a true alpha. Not a twisted fuck who lures the weak and vulnerable with promises he cannot fulfill.
“You’re looking at me in that way you used to when you stopped loving me,” he says.
“I didn’t stop loving you. I just wanted to have a life that didn’t involve mass amounts of murder,” I say. “Pretty reasonable really.”
He laughs. A little at first, and then far too much and I realize I have got to stop pretending I am talking to a normal man. This may be my father in shape, but whatever is inside him has been hollowed out and occupied for some time.
“You can’t murder what doesn’t matter,” he says. “We are wolves. We are creatures beyond any human cattle. The same way people run slaughterhouses, we should run farms for them.”
“I don’t think the idea is going to catch on, Dad,” I say.
“Probably not. Too many wolves belly crawling in fear of their human tormentors,” he says. “Your little pack of strays could hold the seeds of greatness if you would allow their rebellion to shine.”
I keep my mouth shut on that topic. There’s nothing I can say that will change his mind. He is a murderous zealot. The kind of person who can kill in cold blood, then consume the aftermath as if it is no different than a Happy Meal cannot be engaged in meaningful debate.
“Ow!”
There’s a sound outside. Sounds like someone just stumbled. I hear a little feminine gasping ouch, as if someone hurt themselves. A skinned knee, maybe.
What follows is a whine, a sound of pain and self-pity. A moment later, a female voice is raised in distress.
“Hello? Is anyone there? I’m lost.”
I recognize Laura’s voice instantly, of course. I stiffen in response. What is she doing here? She’s in danger. My father will take her. He will do unspeakable things to her.
My father picks up her scent immediately. Young, female, unmated.
He gets up and starts moving toward the exit without so much as looking at me, following impulse and instinct as he always does. He does not stop to consider if this is a trap. We just finished running from Rex’s pack. Surely he realizes that… no. He is too feral, too animal to care.
“Stay where you are,” he calls. “I’m coming. I will bring you something to eat.”
“Oh, I’m so relieved! I came off the trail and I didn’t…”
“Argh! Fuck! You bastards!” Those words are my father’s screeches of agony as a net is dropped over him. Silver will do that to our kind.
I come out slowly. I feel a strange sense of shame and guilt, knowing I have caused all this trouble. Rex wanted me to talk to him over ice cream, and I detonated his bedroom, killed a man, and led them all on a wild hunt. I think it is safe to say I am going to be in trouble.
My father takes their attention for the most part. I think about slinking off. I could get away. Save them all the trouble. I decide to see if I can sidle out of the mouth of the mine while they are all trying to contain my father’s feral rage.
“Do not. Fucking. Move.”
I feel Rex snarl at me.
I stop, I turn, and I look at him.
He is naked. And he is powerful. He has always had a naturally dominant presence and now he is more alpha than ever.
He glowers at me with an expression that hovers somewhere between possession and relief, and I know that every little instinct I had about being in trouble was just the beginning. I am in very big trouble.
“Let me go, idiots!” My father is flailing inside the net. “You can’t take her!”
“She’s mine,” Rex says.
“She was mine first,” my father says. “And she has me in her. You’re too rich. Too soft. Too used to the finer things. That’s not what she is. She’s a feral wolf who will kill and feed every time she shifts.”
I start to sob. I hate that he is saying these terrible animal things in front of Rex and his hunters.
They will all remember this. Laura, too.
She is looking at me with a shocked gaze.
She’s always seen me as a fashionable powerhouse.
I don’t think she knows how to deal with me this way, filthy, bloodied, wearing an old, stained hoodie that smells like dozens of kills.
This is perhaps the worst humiliation I can imagine.
“Take him away,” Rex says. “And bring the helicopter in here. I’m flying her home.”
* * *
Rex
She looks so small. So pitiful. The tears that course down her cheeks leave streaks from the filth she has been subjected to.
I snapped at her when she tried to sneak away, because she will not be allowed to avoid any of this.
She has done a great deal of bad things in the last few days.
She has made me afraid in ways I never knew I was capable of feeling fear.
I reach out and I wrap her in my arms, I hold her close and I smell the pain, the fear, and the death on her. Some of it will wash away. Some of it will remain longer than either of us want it to.
“I missed you,” I murmur into her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpers.
I soften for her in that tremulous moment. I hold her tight and I wish nobody else was here, and I wish I could give her a fucking bath because my god. The stench.
My team have cleared a place for the helicopter to land. These old mine sites had to have access points so there’s a clearing that had been overgrown until they ranged through it.
I don’t ever want to let her go again. I want to keep a physical hold on her from now until the end of time.
The helicopter lands on the roof of my building. I carry her out and down into the adjusted quarters. Straight to the bathroom we go. I run a bath, strip her down, and put her in it.