Chapter 7 #2
As soon as Darcy was out of sight, Jack slipped out the back door, threw his clothes down on the back step, and shifted, anxious to find Lela before she found Darcy.
He turned to the moon and howled, lifting his black nose to the sky to catch Julien’s scent and track it.
He was distracted by Lela’s scent too, but he ignored it.
She had probably watched them from outside before retreating into the woods.
Having Willow and Amory for dinner had been a bad idea, taking the edge off their vigilance.
Jack ran through the woods, leaping over fallen tree trunks, the jagged terrain of the forest floor no hindrance for his leather-tough, fur-protected feet. He finally found Julien about three miles from the lodge.
He howled a greeting, and Julien howled back.
Where is she? Jack asked.
Having trouble pinpointing her, responded Julien, and Jack could hear the frustration in his growl.
What’s the matter with you? First Roug you’ve ever tracked? Jack asked impatiently.
You try it. Her scent’s everywhere!
Jack breathed in, then ran full speed to the west, but her scent eventually petered out, and he returned to Julien.
He raised his nose to the moon again and ran east at a clip, finally slowing as he realized her scent was fading yet again.
He ran back to Julien, and as he did, he went by a spot that was particularly strong-smelling.
He circled the trunk of a tree, then approached it and sniffed, wrinkling his nose.
Lela’s saliva ran down the bark in a frothy stream.
Merde! She had marked the woods.
Instead of trying to hide her scent, she had zigzagged all over the woods, spitting on tree trunks and boulders. Since Roug saliva held their venom, her smell was strong everywhere. It was impossible to figure out where she was. She could be anywhere.
Jack ran back to Julien.
We’re not going to find her, he growled. She marked the woods.
Julien threw back his head and howled in anger.
Then we’ll just have to keep searching until we do.
One second, he was staring at his brother. The next, for the first time since his binding to Darcy twenty years ago, she pulled him inside.
Dark and cold. So dark and cold and misty.
His pads flexed over a pile of wet, soggy leaves, and he turned his head to the left, then right, orienting himself, letting his eyes adjust to the pitch darkness. The forest near his house. Up high. How jarring to suddenly be pulled inside.
Softly, softly enough to be very, very far away, he heard her cry and took off at a high-speed run toward her. Distress. He could hear it in her voice. Fear. Racing down the slippery hillside, he yowled and yelped, hoping she could hear him, hoping she knew he was coming.
His muscles ached with the speed of his run, but despite the hard bends and twists in the course, he didn’t slow down. She was in trouble. All he knew was that he had to get to her. He had to find her.
Her cries were closer and closer, and still he raced until he found himself in front of his house, in front of the lodge. He raised his yellow wolf eyes to the top window where he saw her looking out the jagged glass of the media room window, a single claw resting against the white of her throat.
Their eyes locked, and he whined, his tail curving between his legs, feeling the terrifying strength of her fear.
Help me!
Jack’s eyes flew back open, blazing and burning. He turned to Julien beside him, threw back his head at the moon, and howled. Then he raced back to the lodge, fervently hoping he wouldn’t be too late.
Darcy sensed that something was wrong as soon as she got to the third-floor stairs, only to find the door wide open. Had Willow misunderstood her? She’d been clear about locking the door.
“Willow? Am?” she said quietly in a trembling voice, walking up the stairs, her adrenaline starting to pump through her body uncomfortably.
Three more steps and she could see that the lights weren’t on, nor was the TV. There was only moonlight filtering into the room as far as she could tell. She took a deep breath, wondering if she should run back downstairs and call for Jack, but he’d been more than clear about her staying upstairs.
As she reached the top step, she didn’t see anyone in the long, wide, dark room that lay before her to her right, but she heard something.
Breathing. Heavy. Ragged. Her heart pounded as she took the last stair, reaching to the wall to find a plastic panel with several switches.
She flicked one, and a dim light went on across the room, over the TV.
“Hey!”
“Darce?”
Darcy’s breath came out in a rush as the sheepish faces of Willow and Amory popped up from a make-out session on the couch. Willow adjusted her blouse, and Amory swiped a hand over his lips, grinning wickedly.
“You two scared me to death!” she exclaimed.
“Scared you to—Did I miss something here? Wasn’t ‘watch a movie’ code for each couple having a few minutes alone?” asked Amory, using air quotes for “watch a movie.”
“No!” said Darcy. “It wasn’t meant to be a euphemism.”
“Could’ve fooled me. The intense way you and Jack were looking at each other, right before you told us to go watch a movie, I was about to tell you to go get a room!”
Darcy shook her head, her heart still racing.
“You didn’t lock the door,” she said, looking pointedly at Willow, who had yet to say a word.
“Yeah, I did.”
“No,” said Darcy. “It wasn’t locked. I just came up.”
“I’m telling you. We locked it, Darce.”
“Well, it wasn’t locked, Willow,” said Darcy impatiently, rubbing her hands together, that sense of foreboding returning in a rush.
“Is it locked now?” asked Willow, eyes widening.
“Yes,” said an unobserved voice in the darkness at the top of the stairs, behind Darcy. “Yes, it is.”
Lela.
Darcy gasped, turning to face Jack’s sister, then backing up until she hit the couch behind her.
Her first thought was that he wasn’t lying. She’s very pretty.
Her second thought was, she wants to kill me.
Amory and Willow stood up, and Willow vaulted over the couch to stand beside Darcy as Lela approached them slowly, a catlike stalking motion to her movements.
Amory circled around the couch leisurely, extending his hand to Lela.
“Hey, I’m Amory. You are?”
“Not interested in you.”
Out of the corner of Darcy’s eye, she saw the claws dropping. She looked up and realized that Lela’s fangs were dropping too. Before she could warn Amory to stay back, Lela reached out a claw and swiped it across Amory’s chest, slicing an eight-inch path from his shoulder to his breastbone.
Amory gasped in shock and pain, then grunted, grasping at his chest as he fell to the floor on his knees.
Willow stepped in front of Darcy.
Suddenly, Lela stopped in her tracks, inhaling deeply, a variety of emotions crossing her face: surprise, shock, disbelief. Her claws retracted quickly, and her nostrils flared as she stared at Willow with intense annoyance.
“What the fuck? An Enchanteresse? Just my fucking luck!”
Lela’s eyes glowed gold as she stared at Willow, but she didn’t advance any further.
Darcy’s mind scrambled. An Enchanteresse? What the heck is an Enchanteresse?
Watching Lela from behind Willow’s shoulder, Darcy flicked her glance quickly at Amory, who appeared to have passed out on the floor. A small, but growing puddle of blood soaked the carpet in front of his chest.
“Get out of my way, Enchanteresse.”
“No,” said Willow, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You think what I did to your boyfriend hurt? It’ll look like a kiss when I’m done with you. I could kill you with one blow.”
“Try it,” snarled. “See what happens.”
Lela narrowed her yellow eyes at Willow, uncertainty making her features weak for a moment, her nostrils flaring in frustration. Finally, she shrugged, offering Willow a thin smile.
“I don’t want you, Enchanteresse. I don’t have a fight with you. Give her to me, and I will leave you”—she glanced down at Amory’s body beside her, kicking his chest lightly—“and your meat, alone.”
“Over my dead fucking body, I’ll give her to you, you bitch.”
“That can absolutely be arranged!” bellowed Lela, fury contorting her features, taking a wild step toward Willow.
Willow raised her hands, palms out, fingers splayed. Lela growled angrily and stopped advancing.
“Find Jack,” Willow whispered to Darcy over her shoulder, her voice taut, frantic. “Now!”
“It doesn’t work like—I can’t just…”
Lela cackled with laughter, hands on her slim hips, yellow eyes bright and mean. “Like a virgin with a hooker. You have the equipment, but you don’t know how to fuck!”
You have the equipment. Darcy flicked her eyes to Lela’s face, the gut-wrenching fear making her insides swirl uncomfortably. It felt oddly like going inside.
She wasn’t in the woods.
She was in an inside room, hovering above the three women below.
She looked at their bodies for a moment.
A light-haired woman stood behind a petite, dark-haired woman, and another, a dark, long-haired woman, stood across from them with her hands on her hips.
There was a man on the floor, and he was lying in a small black stain, but she could see through his chest. His heart glowed like a red lightbulb, and she saw it pulse and pump. Whoever he was, he was alive.
She drifted to the window, but it was closed.
She could feel the black wolf. He was far away, but coming.
She felt frightened and confused, so she screamed for him in a primal, reflexive way, as a baby cries for the comfort of its mother.
She could barely hear the weak, muted sound, like she was screaming underwater.
She tried again, but it sounded hushed and strangled in her ears, like the very distant, distorted echo of a scream from long ago or far away.