Blood for Wolves (17 page)

Pure anguish shone on his face. “I
am sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

I wanted to comfort him, to tell
him that it would be okay, but I would just be lying again. None of this was
okay. I was still naked; going out to him might have the opposite effect. I
didn’t know how to approach him without setting him off again.

He let his hand drop and then
howled piteously. I wanted to say something, but my mind felt like it was
drowning and I hurt and my shoulder bled down my arm. I watched him spring to
his feet and sprint from the barn, headed for the woods.

I sat on the floor of the barn for
a long time. The sun was setting, sending burning orange rays through the barn
windows. I wanted to be angry, but I wasn’t. I thought maybe I should cry, but
I didn’t. I didn’t have the energy to do either of those things. I was too
tired and numb. I didn’t blame Wolf, not entirely anyway. Mostly I blamed my
own arrogance. My own overconfidence in thinking I could handle his wolf side
when clearly wolves were not the same here. After all, he’d warned me.

Finally I got
to my feet, found my clothes. I did a slapdash dressing of my bite wound,
covering it with the remaining gauze and a few squares of duct tape. As an
afterthought, I fished the pouch of money from Wolf’s jacket. Then I started
back down to the village, formulating answers for the undoubtedly pissed off
questions Alex would ask me.

“Geez Care, what the hell took so
long?”

“He didn’t know anything,” I said,
ignoring Alex’s disapproving stare.

“It took that long to find out he
didn’t know anything?”

“He wasn’t in his right mind,
okay?” I snapped. “He’ll be better tomorrow when the full moon is gone.”

Alex didn’t say anything. For a
while all we did was stare down the alleyway, trying to figure out what to do
next. Wolf’s snarling face and crimson eyes kept jumping into my head. I kept
pushing the image away. I hoped he would be better tomorrow. I hoped we could
find him or that he would come back. I closed my eyes. Wolf was beyond me now. I
had to try and help Marianne. We had to get in there somehow. We had to break
whatever magic spell was around this place and rescue her.

“Bluebells…”

Alex looked at me. “What?”

“Bluebells. Marianne. For some
reason I always think of bluebells when she’s around.”

“So?”

“So does Wolf. She said it was
because she was born in a fairy ring. I think it means something.”

“Aw, look, Care…”

“We need to find a library or
somewhere that has books. We need information about magic spells or magic
flowers.”

“Care—”

I whirled on Alex. “Look. We know
nothing about this place.
Nothing.
We’re wandering around stupid and
almost getting eaten by giants and things, and now we find ourselves faced with
magic, and we can’t fight magic without at least knowing about magic. We. Need.
Information.”

I stomped off. Alex followed.

After asking a few people, we were
directed to a large building that looked like it had stood there forever. The
Book Depository, where they kept all the old books from the town. Apparently
throwing away books was a no-no, so all unwanted titles ended up there until
they fell apart. Inside, the place was like a library in overdrive with no
librarians to tackle the mess. Books lined the shelves, sat in stacks upon
stacks, many thick with dust and yellowed with age. If there were tables or
furniture in the rooms, they’d long since been covered with books.

An old man appeared from around a
stack of coffee table-sized books. “Can I help you?” He tottered over to us in
a brown overcoat. His white hair fluffed around his head like it had a mind of
its own. “I’m the Archives Master. I haven’t seen you two in here before.”

“We’re…visiting,” I said. “We’re
looking for some information. Magic, to be precise. Primarily protective magic,
maybe some summoning and, ah, banishment.” It felt incredibly weird to be
asking these sorts of things. I half expected the Archives Master to look at us
funny and ask us to leave.

“Indeed, indeed,” he said, touching
a finger to his chin. “There’s plenty of that in here, though I daresay you’ll
have to look for it.”

I glanced around at the stacks and
towering shelves and tried not to get too dejected.

“Are they in any order?” I asked
him.

“Some. I try, but after a while
there are just too many so I set them wherever I can.”

“Great,” Alex muttered behind me.

I thanked him and made for a shelf.

“Caroline, how long is this going
to take?”

I pulled out a
book entitled
Magical Herbs, Portents, and Sigils.
“As long as it has
to.”

We spent the rest of the day poring
over dozens of books, making notes on the scratchy paper the Archive Master
gave us with old fountain pens. My fingers were black with ink, the liquid
seeping into the cracks under and around my fingernails. Every now and then,
one of us would check the building to make sure it was still there. The sun was
gone and the moon was out, full and white like a pure silver coin in the sky. So
far, nothing had changed.

I worried about Wolf. But every
time his face popped into my head, I forced it away and thought of Marianne
instead. I had to forget Wolf. I had to focus on Marianne.

I’d made notes on everything from
summoning powers to protective charms we might be able to get here in the
village. Nothing talked about smoke demons or satanic werewolves though. A town
like this probably wouldn’t carry any serious books about dark magic. I
wouldn’t have been surprised if the residents had never even seen a book on
dark magic. At least I assumed it was dark magic. It sure as hell didn’t look
friendly.

“What have you got so far?” Alex
said, sounding tired.

I sat back and looked over my
notes. “I think we can use bluebells to summon that thing since they typically
grow in fairy rings and both of those are related to Marianne. Snowdrops are
good for protection, but they only bloom in winter so I doubt we’ll find any
now. Horseshoes protect against evil spells, especially after being worn by a
horse in its seventh year, chalcedony helps banish illusions…” I scanned my
writings, “and I’ve got a whole list of other flowers and plants and things
here that we can use to try and kill it without getting killed ourselves. How
about you?”

“About the same. A lot of little
things that might add up. Found a lot of interesting potions that might do the
trick, but we haven’t exactly got a whole month to make them, and I don’t know what
half this crap is.”

“Well, let’s compare our lists and
then go see if we can find some of this stuff before all the shops here close.”

We found a flower shop and a small
store that sold knickknacks and other oddities, and bought bluebells, roses,
morning glories still on long vines, pansies, chalcedony, boji stones, an old
horseshoe, dried angelica root, fangs of a snake I’d never heard of, a vial of
juniper and clove oil, and salt. We bought two small pouches, one for each of
us, and divided up most of the objects into them. I didn’t know what the
different sizes the squares of silver money meant, so I lied to the merchants
and told them I was from a neighboring kingdom. Thankfully it worked, and they
counted out the money themselves. I hoped they weren’t screwing us over.

“I feel like it’s the 1600s and
we’re about to go witch hunting,” Alex muttered.

As we left the knickknack store, a
long howl rose into the night.
Please Wolf, don’t be getting into trouble.

“Now what do we do?” Alex asked.

We stopped outside the alley where
the small house sat with Marianne tucked away inside. I wanted to go in and
rescue her, but if there was one thing I’d learned since being here, it was
that when I did things without knowing what I was doing, I got myself into trouble.
I didn’t want to drag Alex into any stupid decisions either. We needed Wolf. Except
I didn’t know how long it would be until he was lucid again. Or where he was
for that matter.

“Three against one is better odds
than two against one, right?” I said. “Wolf knows more about what’s going on
than either of us. This thing is still resting. It’s weird, but I can feel it. We’ll
keep an eye on this place tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll check on Wolf again, and if
he’s,” I almost said
not there
, but corrected myself in time, “still not
well enough, we’re just going to have to do this on our own because I don’t
think we can afford to wait anymore. We’ll sleep in shifts in case it wakes up
during the night.”

I prayed that once the full moon
was gone, Wolf would be back to himself. He’d even said that something was
wrong this time. Something had poisoned the moon, and in turn, poisoned him. Part
of me desperately wanted to look for him, but another part of me was afraid of
what might happen if I actually found him.

Alex and I slept in four hour
shifts, and soon the sun rose again to yet another glorious day. I awoke with a
loud yawn, vaguely wondering if the Kingdom of Red ever had any bad weather and
hoping that now that I’d thought of it, we wouldn’t suddenly receive a healthy
portion of mean rain clouds. After stuffing a handful of jerky in my mouth for
breakfast and eating my last candy bar, I patted Alex on the shoulder and
headed to the abandoned barn again. I stopped off at the village well to fill
one of my water bottles on the way. If Wolf wasn’t here, then I didn’t know
where to look. He could be anywhere in the woods, and we couldn’t wait much
longer before acting.

As I ran, a shrill scream echoed
across the valley. I froze and spun around. It went on for a little longer
before more people joined in the shouting and yelling. My heart thumped in my
chest as a single word floated through the air over and over again.

“
Wolf!
”

I sprinted for the barn and slid to
a halt when I reached the doors. A deep shudder ran through me when I saw the
handles. A red liquid gleamed on them in the early morning sun. I used one
finger to gently pull one of the doors open.

A pair of bloody hands appeared in
front of me.

I screamed, but in the next moment
realized the hands belonged to Wolf.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring at
the ground, his face full of anxiety. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I smelled
you at the door…”

“Oh my God.” I stared at his hands.
“Wolf—are you hurt?”

He was fully clothed, and not only
were his hands covered in blood, but drops of it spattered his shirt as well. I’d
asked the question, but I already knew what the answer was. I just didn’t want
to believe what it could really mean.

“No.”

“Wolf,” I spoke slowly, “what did
you do?”

He turned and shuffled back to the
center of the barn. I followed, making sure to shut the barn doors behind me. Wolf
plopped down on the hay strewn floor.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice
strained. “I can’t quite remember. It was a long night.” He shuddered. “It’s
all rather muddled in my head…”

I knelt down in front of him and
put a hand on his shoulder. His entire body was shaking. I tried to look him in
the face.

“Wolf, you have to remember.
What
did you do?
”

He squeezed his eyes shut for
several long moments before opening them again. I was glad to see at least they
were a safe hazel color.

“I think…I think I ate something.”

Well obviously
, I thought. But
I wanted to know
what
he’d eaten. I prayed to God it was just sheep or
chickens. I thought about telling him about the uproar in the town over a wolf
attack, but he wasn’t in any condition to receive that sort of news. The last
thing I needed was for him to panic.

“All right, well, we need to clean
you up.”

I took out the water bottle I’d
filled and poured it over his hands, rubbing them with one of mine to wash off
the blood. It trickled onto the floor and mixed with the golden strands of hay.
If he’d eaten something, I was surprised that he didn’t have any blood around
his mouth.

This is so messed up,
a
small part of my brain muttered.

“Caroline,” Wolf said quietly,
peering into my face, “why are you here? After what I did…”

“We found Marianne,” I said louder
than I’d intended, as though I hadn’t heard him. I just didn’t want to think
about it. “We need your help to get her out. We’re going to try summoning the
thing with bluebells, and then defeat it once it reveals itself.”

I finished getting the blood off
his hands. I gazed at his shirt and wondered about the best way to get the
blood out of the fabric. We couldn’t go into the town like this, not with
everyone screaming about wolves.

He took hold of one of my hands. I
stopped what I was doing and stared back. He had misery written all over his
face, mixed with a self-loathing I’d never seen in him before. My brash wolf,
who had faced giants and a necrotic forest and slave traders, had become
nothing more than a desperate man trying to get his bearings. He wanted to say
he was sorry, but knew that the words alone weren’t enough. I leaned forward to
put my forehead against his.

Suddenly his head snapped up, his
eyes wide.

“Someone’s coming.”

The door burst open and dozens of
angry villagers armed with pitchforks and other pointed objects streamed in. Wolf
and I jumped to our feet, both of us too frightened and uncertain to know what
to do. The mob swarmed around us, men pushing me away and grabbing Wolf by his
arms. Shouts of, “Wolf! Get the wolf!” filled the room. Wolf struggled and
shouted, trying to break free. Someone cuffed him across the face.

“No,” I yelled. “Leave him alone! What
are you doing?”

I tried to jump forward, but one of
the men caught me and held me back.