9. Wolf
Iclimbed out the bedroom window, dropping to the soft dirt below and crushing a few pansies with my fall. It was just like the nasty witch to keep a flower garden in the depths of Aglonbriar. The constant shroud of misery wasn’t for her to live in, only the rest of us. I snarled with dark satisfaction as I rushed past the hastily dug grave.
I was weak against the pull of the Mist. All day, I’d felt the wolf stretching just below the surface, clawing at me to run free. Tendrils of Mist beckoned me forward until it embraced me, setting my bones alight and searing my flesh as it shifted. I fell to the forest floor with a heaving gasp and shook the tension from screaming muscles until they stopped twitching. That was better. Four legs felt more natural than two by now.
The space left by no longer resisting the curse’s demands was liberating. I had room to think again.
Senses awakened, the night brightened, and I breathed deep of the damp, cool air. My paws flexed over a soft bed of needles and fallen leaves.
I covered ground fast, leaping downed trees and skirting tangles of thorny brush. My heart drew me in the direction of the enclave, and my soul longed to go that way. I wondered what they were all doing, who had provided dinner earlier, and whether Hawk and Robin were arguing as usual or if Bear had drawn her into a card game instead. I could picture Fox sitting alone by the fire with that faraway look he got when no one was there to pull him out of it.
By now they knew I’d failed, and I couldn’t face them without something to offer. Some trace of hope.
Turning my tail to the familiar track, I flew across the woods in the opposite direction. Dinner was a plump squirrel while I wandered to nowhere in particular. Hopefully, all this running would tire me enough to keep my wits about me again, without a cursed beast clawing his way through me from the inside. I had to stop letting my thoughts be fogged by Emi’s presence.
It had been a relief to see her eyes closed when I peeked out. I was already tired of the hatred they held when that jewel-bright gaze fixed on me. My gut twisted at how her slow breaths had fluttered a lock of her hair when I tucked the blanket over her. She was peaceful asleep, like she’d finally set down the weights from her shoulders.
It was a conundrum. Logically, I should hate her and want her dead as much as she did me. She was the blood of the woman who’d caused all my troubles and was stubbornly determined not to see all the damage granny dearest had caused. But seeing her like that, it made me think she was just another victim, which was easier to reconcile when she wasn’t hurling fists and insults at me like a red-headed hailstorm.
I’d heard Emi’s stories and read the despair beneath them. She had no one. No support. So maybe it made sense that she’d believed whatever lies the Ruby Witch had fed her. Emi had depended on those carefully doled out scraps of attention from the person who deserved her trust the least. It was manipulative and disgusting, made worse by the fact that Emi had considered it love.
As pitiful as it was, I’d taken that from her. Guilt churned. I focused on the scents and sounds around me.
My paw-falls settled into a rhythm that thumped with my heartbeats. Steady. Sure. For a while, I let go of the worry and the guilt and just existed.
Not until woodsmoke tickled my nostrils did I come back to myself enough to circle around to the cottage. I still had a job to do, and for the sake of the people I’d left behind to do this, I would go back and finish it. Somehow.
The little clearing was quiet as I donned my trousers again, my body still buzzing from the transformation, but my spirit was more still now that the wolf had claimed his time in the Mist. The first hints of daylight were still elusive in the gloom. Levering myself back through the small bedroom window was more difficult than jumping out, but I managed, and I collapsed onto the bed after a quick check to make sure the door was still secure.
My muscles were pleasantly sore from my night”s activities, and I stretched lazily and scrubbed the sleep from my eyes before swinging my legs off the bed.
Guilt flashed, knowing Emi slept the whole night on the couch again, but I put an immediate stop to that. A witch didn’t deserve my regret on top of my protection, not when she’d kill me in my sleep given the chance. Let her think the worst of me. What did I care?
I didn’t need her appreciation for keeping us both safe, but I did need a way elicit her help. If I was going to untangle the reason for the Mist’s persistence, who better to assist me than the curse-caster’s own kin? But convincing that little spitfire to set down her sad weapons and listen to me…that would be difficult.
Now that I thought of it, it was eerily quiet in the cottage. Emi had been asleep long before me, so she must be awake. She wouldn”t have gone out into the Mist, would she? She’d been attacked by a fenriswulf and heard the signs of other beasts out there. Naive, vengeful, in denial…she might be all of those, but I didn’t believe Emi was stupid.
After moving the dresser blocking the door, I hesitated with my hand on the knob. Awareness prickled up my neck.
I opened the door and stepped out, letting my heightened senses direct me. Instinct had me turning to the flash of movement as Emi lunged off the wall beside the door.
The knife flashed in a plunging arc, but it was in her left hand, and she stood to the left of the door. That meant she had to turn her whole body to bring it across to stab me, which gave me all the time I needed to drop my shoulder into her solar plexus and catch her arm with both hands. My follow-through swept her feet off the ground, draping her body across my back. From there, it was all too easy to flip her around me so her arm twisted behind her back where it pressed to my chest.
I plucked the knife from her grasp. “I’m impressed, witchling. You almost had a chance for a heartbeat there.”
She gasped for breath. A shoulder to the sternum would do that. “How...did you...know?”
“That you would be there? It wasn”t much of a stretch.” I still held her left arm behind her back, and my hand holding the knife looped around her middle, squeezing her back against me. “I was worried you left me, kitten,” I said low and rough, with my lips beside her ear, “but then I remembered that adorable little scream yesterday and figured you”d be back for more.”
Her screech this time came with a wrenching motion. She was so surprised when I allowed her to twist away from me that she momentarily forgot to attack, a look of pure shock overtaking her face. I rather enjoyed surprising her.
Wanting to prolong it, I pushed her back to the wall and pinned her trapped wrist up beside her head, boxing her in gently but firmly. Then I held up the knife still clutched in my other hand. I mostly wanted to see the flash of determined fury in her lovely green eyes, and she didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, there was also fear underlying her bright glare, and I liked that…less.
“Calm down, witchling. I said I wouldn’t kill you. I probably should, but I have other plans for you.”
“The only plans you should be making are your own funeral arrangements,” she hissed.
“Ouch, honey bunny. Don’t hurt my feelings like that. Now, let”s talk about where you went wrong, shall we? Then you can use this knife for something better, like making us both some breakfast.”
“It”s midday,” she spat out, anger returning.
Drat, I”d lost her shock.
Luckily, I was about to surprise her again.
“Fine, supper. But first…” I stepped into her body, pressing us together at the hips to restrain her from a further attack, and then I reached across and placed the knife back into her hand. Gently, I closed her fingers around the handle. “Ah, ah, ah. Not so hard. Let it rest in your palm and close your whole hand around it. Don”t grip with just your fingers.”
She stared in utter confusion.
“What? I believe you, okay. If you had magic, you”d have used it by now.”
My mind flashed to Ruby, blackness in her eyes when I leaped at her, a curse already falling from her lips before I cut it off with a slash of claws across her throat. I also remembered how my instincts had howled at me to run or attack while I forced myself to listen to the three witches give me the prophecy.
I knew full well the danger of witches, but this one didn”t scare me. I didn’t want to question why that was. All I knew was it would be terribly inconvenient if this inexplicable attraction got me killed, so I was going to ignore it.
Once she had a good grip on the knife, I took a half step back, tuning out the way my body mourned the loss of contact. Down boy. None of that.
I had her arms pinned at either side of her head, but the gap between our bodies gave her freedom without endangering me. Just because she didn”t scare me didn”t mean I trusted her.
I should probably take the knife back and forget this, but this niggling urge to protect was hard to ignore. Stupid wolf instincts. Something about her fear when I held the knife to her and remembering how defenceless she’d been against the fenriswulf brought that part of me clawing forward. She was pure prey, and there were more dangerous predators than me out there, so Emi should at least know how to hold a blade properly.
“For your attack, you would have been better off with this grip. Notice how I put the knife in your hand with the blade in the opposite direction.”
She didn”t say a word, but she finally let her eyes leave my face and glance sideways to her left hand. The knife was in her fist with the hilt toward her thumb and the blade extending away from her body.
“I noticed you’re left-handed, so if you had stood on this side of the door,”—I moved her to the other side of the doorway, her back still to the wall—“then you could have stabbed much faster and with more strength by punching out and back. I probably wouldn”t have had time to react.”
“Probably?”
It was the first thing she”d said since I gave her back the knife, and I was surprised it wasn”t a threat. Or maybe it was, indirectly. I shrugged. “I have good reflexes. And like I said, you”re predictable.”
Her green eyes blazed. I grinned at her, flashing teeth. Then I released her hand that held the knife and pressed my body into hers again to keep her from turning enough to stab me. “Go on. Try it.”
Her brow furrowed, and she studied me for several drawn-out heartbeats. I felt each one, thudding harder than usual against my ribs. My face was close enough to hers to feel the scald of her angry breaths across my cheek. I swallowed and clenched my jaw.
Finally, resolve settled in her face, and she moved her arm in a shadow of the outward punching motion I described. The blade ended up in the middle of the open doorway at approximately the height of my heart.
“Faster,” I told her.
She did it again, stabbing into the empty doorway beside us.
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
This time, there was a ferocity to her movement.
“Faster.”
She did it again. Every bit of my skin ignited where I pressed against her. Hot breath tickled my chin.
“Harder.”
She glared and took a heartbeat before she stabbed the open doorway, hard and fast, with a little growl of frustration that sent heat shooting downward through my core. I should rethink my choice of words.
“Better.” I let her go, and she wasted no time proving she wasn”t nearly as affected by my closeness and loaded words as I was. Then again, I didn”t expect her to be. It”s not as if the same filthy thoughts had just rushed through her mind while I held her pinned to the wall. Her warm vanilla smell did terrible things to my focus.
I deflected her before she could turn enough to try her new move on stabbing me in the chest. “None of that, witchling. I showed you a new skill. Now thank me by chopping something useful, like food.”
“I’m not cooking,” she growled.
“Fine, starve. Doesn”t matter to me.” Except it did, for some strange reason. “I’m still not letting you kill me. Maybe another time, darling, but right now I have people relying on me to figure this out, so you”ll just have to wait your turn.”
Her face colored deeply again. “Why are you like this?”
“Like what? Sexy? Charming?”
“Infuriating.”
I grinned again. “Oh that. Comes naturally. At least, that”s what Fox tells me. You”d like him actually. He”s as impervious to my encouraging ways as you are.”
“Why are all your friends named after animals?”
It might have been the first non-confrontational thing she”d said since she found out about Ruby, so I took my time answering. Backing away, I put the length of the couch between us. Firelight heated my calves and cast my dancing shadow across the plush rug to reach Emi’s feet. Hers loomed up the wall behind her where I’d had her pinned. I stayed alert for signs of another attempt on my life, but we each held our ground. The air felt charged.
“It’s the curse,” I said finally. I might as well be frank with her. She should know what we’re up against before I try to convince her to help me. “Anyone who steps foot into Aglonbriar Forest—anyone who isn’t a witch, that is—”
“I’m not a witch and neither was my grandma, you cream-brained loon.” She snarled the insult to my intelligence with a curled lip.
I’d had enough. “Better a loon than a self-absorbed fool, looking through glass eyes, seeing only what suits you. No one is this naive, Emerald. Your sweet grandma’s curse has ruined more lives than a foison horde, yet you’d rather hurl insults than see truth. Open your eyes.”
“I—I…” she spluttered, too shocked to respond.
I forged on because she needed to hear this. “Anyone who enters loses themselves.” I tapped my head with one finger. “Nothing left. No past, no family, no names, no memories of our lives. We must have existed before the days we each awoke in this forest, but whatever—whoever—we were before is gone. I’ve watched it happen to people we couldn’t warn away in time. By the time we could talk to them, they didn’t remember walking into our woods, even though we saw it happen. This is all we know; the Mist and the beasts. So that’s what we name ourselves.”
“You lost your memory?”
Was that a hint of sympathy? Nah. “Yep. Every one of us.”
“I don’t understand. If the Mist is doing something to you, why don’t you leave?”
“And miss the chance to meet lovely little witches like you, bent on killing me? What fun would that be?”
She growled at me. It was frustratingly adorable.
“We can’t, growly kitten. Once the Mist claims someone, they’re trapped. And not the fun, sexy kind of trapped like you and me being stuck in this tiny cottage together with nothing but our body heat to keep us—Whoa, easy.” I sidestepped and retreated from a furious Emi storming forward. Feisty kitty. Knew I shouldn’t have let her keep that knife.
“Everything out of your mouth is lies, isn’t it?”
“Okay, no more jokes. But no, I’ve never lied to you. I might have withheld the truth at first, but I’m being honest. Well, except about needing body heat, because we do have a fire.”
She looked like she might throw the knife at my head. Again. Still, there was a flicker of doubt in those sharp green eyes that I could take advantage of. I needed her to listen long enough for me to turn this into a partnership, however forced.
“I mean that we physically can’t leave.” I leveled my gaze with hers. “Have you ever had your skin flayed off your body by molten metal blades while your muscles pull themselves from your bones and ice picks stab into your brain through your eye sockets? No? Lucky you.
“Taking more than a few steps out of Aglonbriar Forest results in a pain so all-consuming, only people who’d rather die even try it. The curse stole our pasts and our lives. It left us as nothing more than monsters and slaves to the Mist.”
The only times we got to be ourselves was in rare places where the Mist left a clearing. Playing to any scraps of sympathy Emi might feel, I told her a bit about the enclave and the group of us who called it home, trying to emphasize how we’d become a family, all of us just trying to live and fight off the inevitable end for as long as possible. The ever-present edge of madness called to us constantly, every heartbeat of every day, and we couldn’t resist the pull of those white tendrils dragging us back for long.
The knife dropped slowly to her side as she listened.
“Fine,” she said when I was done. “I’ll make omelettes. But only because I’m hungry.”