Chapter 30 Ripped Away
Ripped Away
The SUV’s tires hummed against the asphalt. Outside, the heat bent the horizon into a mirage. Inside, the metallic tang of blood clung to the leather.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aiden pull a blanket from the backseat, a remnant of Mateo’s nest. That’s when I realized he was naked after having shifted to fight off our attackers.
I sat tense, gripping the seatbelt strap across my chest and clutching the bag in my lap. With each mile we distanced ourselves from that lab, I should have felt relief, but instead, my chest constricted, breath coming in shallow gasps.
It wasn’t just having Aiden naked next to me, or the revelations of the Source Infusion inked on those pages, or what I had discovered; it was Mateo that consumed my thoughts. Was he safe? Was someone watching him? Had he sensed it before I did? Mateo always noticed things I missed.
Fear sliced through me, making my hands quiver, and beneath it all, guilt whispered cruelly: what if everything I had unearthed meant I had never truly been able to shield him?
Each blink brought visions: Mateo swaddled in a hospital blanket, the cold walls of the lab we had just fled, and those haunting words seared into my mind.
My lungs seized, panic blooming so suddenly it was almost physical.
“What if I’m not even his real mother?” The words tumbled out before I could cage them.
I hated how my voice fractured in the quiet of the SUV.
“What if I can’t protect him from whatever’s coming?” The silence after was suffocating.
The road blurred at the periphery as if the world outside would keep spinning regardless of what was about to happen to us. Shame settled in my gut. I was supposed to be strong for him. Instead, I was falling apart.
Aiden’s hand left the steering wheel. He reached across the center console and closed his fingers over mine. His palm was rough, grounding, and when I looked up, his amber eyes were locked on me.
“Listen to me,” he said, voice low and steady. “You are his mother. That’s not up for debate. And as for what’s coming…” He squeezed my hand. “We face it together.”
There was no room for argument in his tone. It wasn’t just a promise; it was a refusal to let me spiral into the abyss of my anxieties. The words didn’t dissolve my fear, but they gave it boundaries.
I found myself watching our joined hands in the windshield, an unlikely lifeline in a world that had warped overnight. If I let go, would I drift off into nothing? Would Mateo? Instead, I gripped back, so hard my knuckles ached, desperate for proof that I was still here, that I was still me.
We drove the next few miles in silence, but it wasn’t empty; it hummed with everything unsaid.
I tried to picture Mateo’s face, the way he sometimes wrinkled his nose at bad smells or the sleepy way he said “hey, Mom” first thing in the morning.
I wondered if I’d ever hear him argue about cereal brands again.
If he’d roll his eyes at me for hovering.
If I’d get another chance to embarrass him in front of his friends.
When the asphalt gave way to gravel, a fresh ripple of dread hit me. The farmhouse was up ahead beneath an ancient oak whose branches clawed at the sky. A wind had picked up, carrying stale hints of rain and, beneath that, the sickly scent of decay.
Something was wrong.
I could feel it in my bones.
Aiden must have felt it, too. He slowed the SUV, scanning the property with caution. I wondered if he regretted getting entangled in my mess. But then he shot me a sidelong look, one eyebrow arched in a way that said: “Ready?” I just nodded.
The gravel drive to Emily’s farmhouse crunched beneath the SUV’s tires. Even before we came to a complete stop, an unsettling tension gripped my chest. The front door stood ajar, swaying slightly, while shadows pooled in the entryway.
We scrambled out of the vehicle, Aiden pulling a pair of shorts from the cargo area, urgency propelling us forward. My boots thudded against the worn wooden porch.
My heart raced as I called out, “Emily?” The word hung in the air, swallowed by the eerie quiet.
I nudged the door open further, unveiling a chaotic scene that twisted my stomach into knots. In the living room, the couch lay askew, cushions tossed around, and a coffee mug was shattered on the floor.
I continued down the hall, peeking inside the dining room, where chairs were toppled over, and tableware from the china cabinet was scattered across the floor. Delicate plates and bowls lay cracked everywhere, and an eerie silence wrapped around me like a shroud.
Each unsettling detail clawed at my nerves, whispering of calamity that had erupted within these walls.
Aiden’s nose twitched. “Josie,” he said quietly, “there’s magic here.”
We tiptoed down the dimly lit hallway. The mid-afternoon sun struggled to pierce through grimy windows, casting long shadows that danced along the walls.
My pulse drummed in my ears, echoing the urgency of our steps.
Each creak of the floorboards beneath our feet seemed to amplify the tension as if the house itself held its breath.
As I pushed open the spare bedroom door, a sharp intake of breath escaped my lips. The room was transformed. Blue symbols crawled across the walls, faintly luminous, pulsing in a slow, unnatural rhythm. They pulsated softly, like a heartbeat that felt foreign and unsettling.
Aiden crouched beside me, his brow furrowed in concentration as he reached out, fingertips brushing against one of the glowing marks.
“These are werewolf runes,” Aiden murmured. He didn’t sound reverent; he sounded unsettled. “But… twisted. Something’s wrong with them.” His brow furrowed deeper as he leaned forward to inspect the symbols more closely.
I scanned the room for signs of struggle: blankets thrown off the bed, a lamp knocked over, a shattered bedside water glass.
But no blood. I reached out and touched the nearest rune.
It was cold, but the moment my skin brushed it, an image knifed through my mind: the memory of my son’s face at birth, blue and silent until doctors slapped life into him.
I snatched my hand back, heart hammering.
Aiden moved to the window. The curtain had been ripped down, the rod bent at a crooked angle. He sniffed the air again, and his eyes narrowed on the storm of scuffed footprints in the dust below. “There’s another scent mixed in. Not Emily, not Mateo. Not even a wolf.”
“Then what?” My voice was thin even to my own ears.
He didn’t answer at first, just followed the path of glowing runes until they converged in a tight spiral right above Mateo’s pillow. It was steady, eerily calm like the eye of a hurricane. He motioned me over.
I crouched beside him, peering into the center of the spiral. Beneath it was a single handprint, too large to be Emily’s or Mateo’s.
I reached out, then thought better of it.
Aiden’s jaw tightened. “It’s a message. Or a warning. Or both.” He stood, glancing at the door as if expecting it to slam shut behind us.
That’s when the faintest sound drifted down the hall: a soft gasp, like someone exhaling their last breath.
We bolted, skidding around the corner toward the kitchen.
From the entrance, we could see that the back door was half off its hinges.
The room wasn’t just in disarray; it was a crime scene.
The kitchen table was shattered, chairs splintered, the linoleum gouged in deep claw marks.
On the far side, slumped against the refrigerator, lay Ethan.
His chest rose and fell in a feeble rhythm, each breath a struggle as a dark pool of blood seeped across the cold tile beneath him. The fabric of his shirt hung in tatters, exposing jagged wounds that marred his side. Blood soaked through his clothes, dark and spreading.
“No… no, no, no…” I sank to my knees beside Ethan, fumbling for a kitchen rag with my shaking hands.
I pressed the fabric against his gaping wounds, each drop pooling beneath him like a dark stain that seemed to absorb the light around us. The metallic scent of blood filled the air, choking me with its urgency.
“Ethan! Can you hear me?” My voice quivered as I leaned closer, searching for any flicker of life in the chaos that surrounded us.
He flinched away, his gaze struggling to focus on my face. “J-Josie?” he slurred. “They… they took her… and… and Mateo.”
The world tilted.
I gripped his sleeve, desperate for answers. “Who? Who took them?”
He tried to say something, but it dissolved into a wet cough. His chest went still. His eyes rolled back, and his body sagged, leaving nothing but the echo of his words.
I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, tears hot against my cheeks.
Behind me, Aiden quietly scanned the scene. “The attacker wasn’t human,” he said. “Claw spacing’s wrong… and there’s a scent.” He inhaled sharply. “Sharp, metallic, pungent… like burnt wires.”
Then, he moved close to me, and his arm slid around my back, steadying me as grief threatened to send me reeling. “We’ll find them,” he said, voice hard with resolve. “I swear it.”
* * *
Time slipped away, a hazy blur since Ethan’s final breath.
I felt adrift, as if submerged in a murky sea, the world around me distorted and muffled.
Aiden was on his phone, seeking help. His brow was knit with urgency, the tension in his jaw betraying the storm of emotions beneath his calm exterior.
Each snippet of conversation reverberated in the stillness, a haunting reminder of the turmoil that had just erupted.
“We need backup,” Aiden’s voice sliced through the air, sharp and commanding.
“Something’s not right here.” His grip tightened on the phone, knuckles white against the dark case.
“More than one. And something else… something unnatural.”
He turned to me, eyes fierce with determination. “We’ll find them, Josie. I promise.”
His tone was steady, but I could see the tension etched across his features, a silent acknowledgment of the danger lurking just beyond our reach.