Clearer in the Night (40 page)

But before I found the right questions, I heard someone pick up the phone from where it had fallen, and a voice that I knew very well spoke. “I’m so sorry, Sophie can’t come to the phone right now, on account of being unconscious.” He was breathing hard, and there was an eerie sort of laughter in his voice. “If you’d like to see her again while she is alive, you should meet me at the field where we first saw each other. Before dawn, please. We have lots to talk about.”

In movies, once the bad guy has issued his threat, and he hangs up the phone, there’s a dial tone. The viewer says “Oooo, what will the hero do now?” In real life, that doesn’t happen. There are a few moments of empty hum, and then your phone shuts off. The end.

Screaming and tearing my hair would waste energy that I needed. The clock on my phone read a bit after midnight. Plenty of time to get to—where? The meadow where we’d seen each other the first time? What was that supposed to mean, the waterfall? That would be stupid, and a long drive, and—

And then it hit me. I’d met him in the club, and then just a few hours later, I’d seen him in his real skin. It was the only explanation. At least, I hoped it was. I didn’t have time to be wrong.

I started to run, that easy lope that I’d found the last time I pushed my feet into the ground. My shoes were useless, and I kicked them off, running barefoot. That felt right. Strong. Powerful. I didn’t dare look at the moon; I was too aware of it anyway, and I thought that if I looked straight at it, I’d be fascinated, and not move until daylight, after my family had been killed. Everything had an extra layer of brilliance as I moved, shifting and shimmering like I was high. I had to force myself to keep moving, and not just stop and marvel. The wolf wanted to stop and howl at the moon, see who answered her cries.

“Look,” I said aloud, “You want to be in the woods. I want to be in the woods. We can work together, here.”

She was surprised, shocked that I was speaking directly to her, and not just about her. She turned, snarling, upset at the attention, and then I felt grudging agreement from the vicinity of my belly. That sparkling overlay on everything dimmed down, just a bit, and I could think a little more clearly. Though looking straight up at the moon would still be an idiotic move.

Should I have woken Eli? I’d left because I was already out of the house, and I didn’t think, but now that I was a good distance away, I thought about calling him on my phone, seeing if he’d wake up. But how would I explain how far I’d gotten before I called? And what was he really going to do, other than get himself killed? Other than saying he was an old man in a young man’s skin, nothing he’d told me gave me the idea that he’d be any better equipped to survive whatever was going to happen than I was. And he was convinced that Sophie was the monster and needed to be killed to save me—would he even help me save her?

My energy held up as I ran back into town and towards the high school. I’d run longer distances in school, but I’d never run with my heart pounding so hard. My feet didn’t hurt. I came down wrong in a pothole, once, and I could feel the strained ligaments in my ankle fixing themselves between one step and the next.

I stopped at the path that led into the woods. A month ago, I’d faced down a monster here, and I’d lost. I’d lost badly. If things had gone differently, I would have lost my life. And now I was back here again, ready to do it all over again. This time, I didn’t think that a death would be something I’d come back from. The claws and teeth of another Afflicted. That was something that killed wolves, according to Eli’s little missive. He wouldn’t need his silver-loaded shotgun, after all.

When I’d run into the woods a month ago, I’d been in a blind panic. I’d never been to that clearing before, and I had no idea how to get there now. Ten feet past the tree line, the trail branched off into three different directions. One of them led back towards the school, the other two deeper into the forest. I stood at the crossroads and tried to decide which way to go.

That snuffling, dark, furred presence rose up out of my belly again, nudging at me. I closed my eyes and tried to understand the wolf’s intent. She wasn’t pushing at me or fighting me. She wanted to run again, and she’d have her chance soon, so until then, she just didn’t want to fight. Which wasn’t the same as wanting to help, but it would do for now. I let her into my head, let her suffuse me, and then I opened my eyes again.

Everything was flatter. Colors were grayed out, and nothing had the same depth or distance that it had before. But there was another sense overlaying my world, and calling it smell was like calling the sky big or the ocean deep. What I understood to be smell didn’t touch the corner of the world I suddenly knew. I pulled huge, rapid gulps of air into my lungs, and I knew the forest like I knew my soul. I knew the loam and the decomposing leaves, and the small animals huddled in fear of the perversion of nature that I had become. And just a little ways off, I could smell the stench of a human, and the sweet scent of someone like me—and blood, and death, and the perfume of terror. That excited her, and she paced inside my soul for a long moment before retreating. And then I started to run, that same easy lope that ate up the ground and didn’t tire me at all. The moon peeked through the canopy now and then, and I wanted to scream the ecstasy of its light on my skin.

As I came up on the clearing, I could hear soft, female sobbing, and harsh, angry words. I slowed my feet, making as little noise as I possibly could as I approached.

The body of the woman who had once been my mother was crumpled in a puddle on the forest floor. Was that how I’d looked when Eli found me? Broken, drained, my body in ruins. Blood everywhere. But her head was at an impossible angle to her shoulders. She couldn’t have survived. My guts twisted as the burning rage turned cold. Yeah, she was a mess, and yeah, she hadn’t bothered to mother me in years, but she was still my mother. My pack. Mine. Not his to take.

Sophie was near the body, but her eyes were turned away. Wes paced around her. I saw the glint of metal in his hand. Not a blade. The steel was colder than that. He spoke to her as he twisted around her, his voice low and angry, but with the breaking branches echoing in my ears like gunshots, I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

She saw me. I don’t know how, or what made her look my way, but she saw me. Our eyes locked, and she looked immeasurably sad. Worn down, broken. Like she wished I hadn’t come.

The wolf had been a calm, easy presence until now. Something—the moonlight, the woods, my stillness, the adrenaline—something, some combination was too much, and I felt her rage, flinging herself against the cage of my skin and bones, like she had back in the beginning. I clenched my teeth tight over the sounds she wanted to make, but something got through. Wes’s head shot up, his eyes searching the trees, and they clamped down on mine as Sophie started to cry. His lips bent into a grimace that was maybe supposed to be a smile. He stepped behind Sophie, and gestured at me to come forward. I looked at the crumpled heap wearing my mother’s clothes. What choice did I really have?

I stepped into the clearing. The moonlight slid over my skin, leaving ripples behind. Everything itched, everything was too tight. If I could just give in to her, let her reshape me the way she wanted to, everything would be so much better. So much simpler and cleaner, like it had been that night by the waterfall. Everything was so good then, in that other lifetime.

He grinned then, and I saw every one of his teeth. “Oh, Caitie. I’m so glad you came.”

“Let my sister go,” I said. “Please.”

His grin faltered. “You only came because of her?”

I kept my mouth shut, not sure of what he needed to hear.

“I should have known,” he said, sadly. “I should have known that bitch would have poisoned you against me already.”

“No,” I shook my head. “No, Wes, we never even talked about you.”

He grabbed Sophie’s hair and pulled her head back sharply until she made an ugly, choked sound. Her throat gleamed, white and very soft in the brilliant light. “Funny thing, Cait. I know when you’re lying.”

I forced myself to ignore the monster in my belly screaming that it wanted to tear and slash and shred, forced myself to ignore the still resignation in the line of Sophie’s shoulders. “What’s there to lie about? I only just met her, we’re not swapping stories.” I took a slow, easy step towards him, testing him.

His hand tightened in her hair, and she whimpered again, but he didn’t say anything. I took another slow step, and he said—without looking at me—“Tell her. Tell her all of it.” Sophie stayed silent, and he yanked her hard enough that she went over backwards, her hands in the dirt behind her. “Tell her. Now.”

“What do you want her to say, Wes? That she knew you in California? That you fucked her, and then killed our father so that you could run away with her? That you followed her here so you could punish her?” If he knew when I was lying, it was time to see what the truth would do.

A slow, gentle, insane smile spread across his face. “Does she think that I killed her father?”

“No,” I said. “She has faith in you. I know better. I know how quietly you move. I think you waited until she was asleep, and then you snuck out. I think you could have done it easily. And you killed him to free her, because you’re crazy, and you didn’t realize that it would just drive her away. But I don’t understand why you followed her here.”

He turned that insane smile down at her. “Because she deserves to be punished,” he said. “Because she lied to me when she said she loved me, and she deserves to be punished.”

“So when you said you were here on business?”

“It was true. I knew she’d get here eventually, I just got here faster. Finding you was…just good luck. Because you were everything she wasn’t. She was faithless. You just…got confused. Because you came here. You came here for me.”

“I did,” I said, taking another slow step towards him. “I did, I came here for you, so let her go, okay? Let her go, and I’ll be with you.” One more step. I was only a few more steps from him. I didn’t know if I could take him, but I could distract him, and maybe she could get away. She was staring at me with tired, sad eyes that were already dead, but if I could just get her away from him…

He smiled at me, at my throbbing heart, and then his hands blurred so fast that they stopped existing, and Sophie’s throat was a red ruin, dark blood pouring forth as she gagged and struggled and went limp while I flew at him, the sound in my ears—the sound she couldn’t make out loud—too inarticulate to be called a scream. I tried to hit him, but I slipped in the sudden mud, and he caught me easily, laughing.

“You’re free now,” he said, immune to my struggling. “Free.”

Eli’s words—that I could be freed from the curse if the one who cursed me died—slipped through my brain, but there was nothing for them to really latch on to. And then Wes caressed my struggling cheek, and the wolf rose so fast and hard that I gagged on her. She bowed my back, driving me into Wes, and his hands tightened as he groaned. I could feel him, hard and eager, and she wanted him. She wanted him like an animal. And like a human, always in heat. She was going to free herself. She had flipped all the tumblers but the last one, and she would turn me, and I would be this forever, nothing but hunger.
 

And then my sister died at my feet. I heard the moment her heart gave up, tired of pumping air, but still, this evil, unrelenting pressure, burning through me, turning me inside out.

Wes bent over me, ready to press his lips over mine…and then his head snapped up, and he sniffed the air. That smile-grimace crossed his face again, and he made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh. He dropped me into the bloody muck by my sister’s body, and loped away, slipping through the tree line and out of sight.

I lay on the ground and I stared at her, at her open eyes gaping up at the moon. Mesmerized by its light, like I had been. I reached out to her, but there was nothing left here but a bag of meat. I was alone in the clearing.

Except for whoever was behind me, panting. Slowly, I pulled myself around and up to my feet. My hands and knees were caked with blood and filth. The wolf was everywhere within me, taking up every inch of metaphysical space. I could barely think, barely feel human things. The wolf didn’t understand my sadness. This body didn’t smell like pack, so why was I howling? But she did understand the intruder. We turned together and saw Eli standing behind us, holding a handgun, training it on our face. Some distracted part of my mind was surprised he’d gone for the silver tips. The text had seemed almost scornful of them, in the end.