Unbound (9 page)

The wolf swallowed heavily. An ache settled below his ribcage, and his throat felt tight. A rolling nausea began to bubble low in his belly.

“When they bound the souls of Cern to the dead child, it breathed again,” Professor Seybold said. “That was what they thought would happen, but they didn’t know for sure. There has never been a god both bound and also capable of sentient locomotion.”

“He’s not bound to a location, then,” Kara, a girl with frizzy red hair who was sitting in the row in front of Sachie said. “He can go anywhere, and the old magic moves with him. How has no one noticed?”

“From what I gather,” Seybold said, licking his papery old lips as he prepared to launch into another lengthy explanation. “The people who have been tasked with His guardianship have been keeping Him in densely-populated human cities, far from nature. The Horned God gained His strength from the wind and the trees and the grasses and the wildflowers and the animals of the wild, and the cycle of life and death and rebirth therein. Being among steel and glass skyscrapers, cut off from nature, where people are kept alive by machines and operations and drugs – it throws off His ability to pull His usual strength to Him, so he cannot cause too much in the way of… catastrophes.”

The word
catastrophes
echoed around and around the wolf’s head, like a buzzing fly bouncing off a window.

“A human body will eventually deteriorate with age,” Professor Seybold was saying. “It is predicted that we still have around twenty years to come up with a suitable vessel for the Horned God’s containment in the future. Maybe thirty or forty. Perhaps we could use a hawthorn tree, like the White Wolf. Now, what else can anyone tell me about Cern? Has anyone’s parents mentioned Him?”

Hands went up. Eli got to answer.

“My Gran told me He takes the form of a deer a lot. Or, you know, things with horns, like bulls and goats and ibexes. Sometimes a man with antlers. Sometimes a woman. Sometimes a hunter with a bow.”

“Good,” Mister Seybold said. “And?”

“He’s a nature deity,” Victoria piped up. “But that’s obvious.”

“It still needs stating, though. Good.”

The wolf stopped listening properly. Professor Seybold started talking about other bound up deities, like Gaibhne, tied to a boulder out in Colorado, and Eana, bound to an oak in the middle of the English countryside. At the end of the lesson, Seybold assigned a five hundred word essay on the Old Gods, with the sole proviso that no one write about the White Wolf of the Woods.

It was beginning to rain lightly as Eli and Sachie left the school, and the wolf trailed after them, the dutiful guardian. His coat was thick and mostly waterproof, though the two boys both got wet. Sachie could only run in very short bursts, and had to stop and walk slowly, breathing hard, while Eli ran off ahead.

“It’s not that I’m really unfit. Well, I am, but not for why you’d think. It’s just that I’m going to die, maybe really soon,” Sachie told Eli, when Eli came jogging back, glancing at him in askance. “Why do you think I always have a note for gym class?”

Recently, while Sacheverell was asleep, Ranger had pressed his ear to the boy’s chest to listen to his quick, irregular heartbeat and rasped breathing. It had left him sleepless and anxious for the rest of the night, and he hadn’t done it again since.

“Oh,” Eli said, looking a bit like someone had kicked his puppy.

“It’s okay,” Sachie said, though his voice sounded high and tight when he said it, so the wolf knew it wasn’t really okay at all. “I’ve known for a really long time. Like, since I was seven, I think. I was really little.”

“Can I ask – can I ask why you’re dying?” Eli asked.

“My heart’s failing, and the meds aren’t really working like they’re supposed to. That happens sometimes.”

“Oh,” Eli said, again, as if he had nothing else to say. He probably didn’t.

Ranger lengthened his stride to nose Eli’s hand, not even bothering to nip his fingers.

They walked in the worsening rain in silence until they reached Elmwood Street and turned along it, their feet splashing through puddles already forming on the sidewalk.

“That sucks,” Eli said, at length.

“Yeah.”

Sacheverell was shivering by the time they reached the house with the green door and the rose bushes. Upon closer examination, someone had pruned the roses back in preparation for winter. Ranger couldn’t imagine Aunt Abby kneeling down in the flower beds to work on her garden. She wasn’t like Madam Watkins – she didn’t have a green thumb. Ranger had a hazy memory from a long time ago, from when he was very small, of the time she had managed to kill an indoor cactus that used to live in a pot on the windowsill.

There was a reason she was a mortician and worked with the dead, and not the living.

As the three of them crowded on the front step, while Eli searched his pockets for his keys, a gust of wind brought with it the smell of sweet rotting death, strong enough to catch in the back of the wolf’s throat and make him want to retch. He spun around, searching the darkened, rain-washed streets for something amiss, and saw nothing. Behind him, Eli finally found his keys and opened the door.

“What’s up with him?” the wolf heard Sachie ask.

“Who knows?” Eli replied. “Come on, you can borrow some of my clothes. I don’t mind. He’ll scratch on the door when he’s ready to come in.”

The wolf headed back out into the rain, trying to catch another whiff of the sweet rot smell. He hated tracking in the rain. It pulled the scent of the earth and the grass into the air, and dampened everything else, the smells swirling and running together and making it impossible to follow a trail.

He ran around Eli’s house twice, nose to the ground, but couldn’t pick up the smell of the sweet rotting death again. He ran up the street, then back down it, ears swiveling, water splashing his up onto belly when he galloped through the puddles.

An angry bellow rang out through the air. A deer, distant, off in the trees behind the houses. Ranger felt his heart lurch in his chest, and he turned and fled back towards Eli’s house, his ears pinned back against his neck.

He reached the green door and stood outside, howling and crying and scratching at the wood to be let in.

Eli came and let him inside, his hair wet, a towel hanging around his neck, but wearing clean, dry clothes.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked Ranger, closing and locking the door behind him. Ranger snarled at him. “Whoah, boy. Keep your fur on.”

“What’s going on?” Sachie said, coming out of the kitchen.

“I’m not sure,” Eli replied. He frowned, staring at Ranger, who stared back, panting heavily and trying to convey the seriousness of the situation through his gaze.

Lightning struck nearby, and the lights flickered and went out. A moment later, the rolling boom of thunder shook the house.

“That was really close,” Eli said, moving to the window to peer out into the rainy yard. “I think that must’ve hit the power station.”

Outside, something not human screamed. It seemed to go on and on forever, longer than the thunder. It was like a siren, almost, but it couldn’t be. Tamarack had no sirens, except on the police cars. Then the scream gurgled and stopped, and the evening was silent except for the patter of the rain on the windowpanes.

“What was that?” Sachie asked.

“I don’t – I don’t know,” Eli said. “I think we should go upstairs.”

Sachie blinked in confusion. Eli dithered. Ranger yelped at them, then ran for the stairs, claws clattering on the hard wood. He slipped partway up the stairs, thumping his head against the wall and banging his elbow, but the pain never even registered. He reached the upstairs hallway, barreled down it to the door that led to Aunt Abby’s attic. It had been left ajar, and he could’ve wept with relief, if wolves were capable of weeping and he weren’t in such a hurry to reach the attic.

He could hear Sachie and Eli thumping up the stairs behind him as he burst into the little attic space.

It was dark and close up here, and cold. There was a single round window set into the wall that looked out over the street. Unlike Granny Florence’s house, this attic was completely empty, except for the dust bunnies. Eli and Sachie tumbled into the attic, tripping over each other, and Eli lurched to push the sturdy attic door shut, dragging the heavy iron lock across. He fell against the door, panting, his eyes wild.

Downstairs, glass shattered. It sounded like something had crashed through the living room window. A heavy piece of furniture fell over with a crash. Outside, lightning arced across the sky, closer now than it had been before, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder. Ranger could feel the fur all along his back standing on end. He crawled into the corner and crouched down low, terror clawing up his throat, his lips pulled back in a silent snarl.

“Oh my god,” Sachie murmured, his fingers clutching at the front of his borrowed shirt, over the center of his chest. “Oh my god, oh my god.” He stank of fear sweat and ozone and rain, and his eyes seemed to glow gold-silver in the half-light of the attic.

With his free hand, he was fumbling in his pockets for his phone. When he found it, he cursed, softly. “No reception. Cell towers must be down. What do we do?”

“Stay here,” Eli replied. “We’re safe here.”

“But with
him
?” Sachie asked, looking fearfully at the wolf. “What if he mauls us?”

“He’s not going to maul us,” Eli said. “Ranger’s never mauled anyone.”

“Eli, he’s a
wolf
. Or else a really high-content wolfdog. So high-content it doesn’t even matter, he might as well be pure wolf. I read up on them, okay? Wolves are dangerous, and unpredictable, and he’s – look at his
teeth
. They’re huge!”

“Why are you suddenly freaking out about this now if you’ve known for weeks?” Eli wailed.

“Because he looks like he’s about to tear us limb from limb and in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re stuck in here with him!” Sachie cried back.

“Ranger wouldn’t do that, I’ve known him my entire life!”

There was a momentary pause as Sachie stopped to do the math, and there came the sound of a vase smashing from below them. Eli winced and muttered something about it sounding like his Mom’s favorite.

“How old are you?” Sachie asked.

“How is now the time to be asking that?” Eli said, looking wilder than anything.

Sachie threw his hands in the air, knocking his knuckles against the sloping ceiling because there really wasn’t much space in the attic. “I don’t know!”

Ranger hunkered down lowered, tucking himself against the wall.

“I’m seventeen. How old are you?” Eli said.

“Same, but how can you have known Ranger your whole life, then? He’d be, like, a hundred and twenty in dog years if he was seventeen too,” Sachie said.

“I actually think he’s about twenty-something by now,” Eli muttered. “My Mom has these family photos from before I was born, and Ranger’s in a couple of them as a puppy.”

“So he’s a
hundred and forty
dog years old?”

Eli shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but he’s older than I am. And he’s never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

“He doesn’t look that old,” Sachie said, thoughtfully.

There was a thud below them, and suddenly everything fell silent, except for the rolling of distant thunder, the rain on the roof above their heads, and Ranger’s quick breathing.

“Think whatever was down there is gone?” Eli asked.

“Or else it’s a trap,” Sachie said, darkly. “But – you have a landline in the kitchen, right? One of those really old ones that don’t need electricity?”

“Yeah. It’s vintage, or whatever. Mom says it used to be Grandpa’s. Why?”

“I know the station number! Dad made me memorize it in case I ever lost my phone or something,” Sachie replied.

The wolf didn’t want to go down the stairs. He didn’t want to see whatever devastation had occurred in the living room. He followed Sachie and Eli anyway, only baulking briefly when the hot smell of fresh blood filled his nostrils in the hallway.

Rain was blowing into the living room through the shattered windows. Broken glass and water glittered with every flash of lightening, and crunched under the boys’ shoes as they crept towards the kitchen, trying very hard not to look at the dead thing on the living room floor. The coffee table had been upended, that blue vase with the zigzag pattern that Aunt Abby had been fond of was in a hundred pieces. The couch was overturned, and the bucket of ashes by the fireplace had been knocked over, strewing stale ash across the floor.