Red (21 page)

Sleep. Right. I was ready to get right on
that. I tipped my back, resting against my pack and my eyes closed
against the monochrome world of night. I’d stand up again in a
minute.

I didn’t want to stand up. I didn’t want to
keep walking. I just wanted to sit down and bawl my eyes out.
Because that was such a practical response to the fact that I’d
gotten exactly five minutes of
life
before having it ripped
away in the worst possible way I could imagine. Okay, nobody died
or got shot. Second worst.

I thought it would be worth it to kiss
Sawyer. To have that memory to take out and look at, like a secret
treasure. But God,
God,
it was so much worse. To feel that
much, to know what I was leaving behind. And, thanks to Dad, to
have been denied my proper goodbye. Not that I’d been planning on
telling him the truth exactly. Before my father showed up, I hadn’t
expected to be leaving so soon. I’d thought I had more time.

But that was the theme of this summer,
wasn’t it? Every moment was borrowed. And each one had a higher
price than the last.

Whoever said it was better to have loved and
lost than never to have loved at all was smoking crack. This
sucked.
Maybe if there was a chance of living until I was
old and gray, when I could look back from the distance of years
with some kind of rose colored glasses, it would be true. But that
wasn’t in the cards. So now I just got the pain. Great.

I really needed to get going. Time was
wasting, and I was totally exhausted. How many miles had I hiked?
Twelve? Fifteen? I felt like somebody was sneaking bricks into my
pack with every step. Okay there was nobody out here left to lie
to, so if I was really honest with myself, I was weighed down by
way more than gear.

I’d felt alone for years. In so many ways,
it felt like Dad checked out once the letter came, once we changed
our life. Regardless of what he said, I was a duty more than a
daughter. But I hadn’t truly known what alone meant. Not
really.

Was this what Mom felt like when she
disappeared? Had she planned to escape to protect us and then been
crushed under the weight of the reality? Unable to cope? From the
stories Dad used to tell, Mom was vivacious. A real social
butterfly. She was used to being the center of attention, so the
prospect of doing . . . well, exactly what I was doing now, would
have been really hard for her to bear.

I wanted to think I was stronger than that.
Or at least better prepared.

But what if I wasn’t? What if I found myself
in exactly the same position where the knife started to look like a
more attractive option? And if this was even crossing my mind now,
when I’d only been gone a matter of hours, what would I be like in
a few days or weeks?

The snapping of a twig had my eyes flying
open. I twisted my head, listening hard, trying to isolate the
sound. Was it near? Far? Predator or prey? My hand curved around
the hilt of the knife I wore on my belt. The same knife I’d used
for my trial. Not among my top ten choices for ways to off myself,
but practical from a survival standpoint. Of course I’d more had it
in mind for carving spears for fishing and cutting branches, not
fighting off a bear or something.

I didn’t move from the boulder. It protected
my back. But I slowly swiveled my head to either side, scanning the
surrounding woods. Yet I saw nothing. Damn it, I couldn’t hear for
the pulse beating thick in my ears. What use was this stupid
hearing if I couldn’t control it?

Something fell on my shoulder from above. I
went rigid, hardly daring to breathe. No way was I lucky enough
that that had been a bug. Something was on the boulder above me.
Because it was the only thing I could semi-reliably control, I
widened my nostrils and inhaled, sifting through the scents. But
the wind was blowing straight toward me. No help there. I was going
to have to look.

Degree by painstaking degree, I tipped my
head back.

My wolf stood above me, pale fur shining in
the moonlight. I have no idea why I thought of him as mine. He
obviously wasn’t a pet. But it was the same wolf who’d saved me
last night. I knew that as well as I knew my own name.

My breath whooshed out in relief. I stepped
away from the boulder and turned, staggering a bit under the weight
of the pack.

“
Way to scare a girl,” I
said. I was pathetically glad to see him, grateful for a familiar
face, even a furry one.

He leapt down, huffing on the landing. I
winced for him as his right flank buckled under the weight.

I started toward him, intending to check
last night’s wound, but he bared his teeth in warning, so I stopped
short, raising my hands in surrender. Okay, good reminder that he
was a wild animal and wasn’t going to submit to my attentions
outside extreme circumstances. I would almost swear he gritted his
teeth as he forced himself to stand again.

“
Stubborn aren’t you? Well
you’re in good company.”

He blinked at me.

“
So what are you doing
here? Is there something horrible in the woods? Something else for
you to save me from?” I looked around, tuning the rest of my senses
into the night. I heard the soft flutter of an owl and the tiny
scream of something that became its dinner. I smelled something I
thought was a possum. But mostly the area was empty. No bears. No
hunter.

“
Or maybe you’re just here
to keep me company.” I took a few steps and he followed. “Thanks
for that. It’s been a long night. Long day, too.”

He gave me a look that seemed to ask why the
hell I was still up and out here at all. I don’t really know why I
felt compelled to answer. “Long story. I had to confuse my trail.
I’m heading for camp now.”

I was too tired to keep up a stream of
nervous chatter like I did last night. If he was going to come, he
was going to come, whether I babbled on or not. It’s not like I
owed him some kind of explanation for why I was out here. Either
way, there was no way I was going to be able to stay vertical too
much longer. The wolf fell in beside me with just a slight
limp.

We were moving slow, so it took nearly an
hour before we crested the ridge into the hollow. I was so happy to
see the brush screen over my cave, I nearly wept with relief. My
legs felt like jelly as I stumbled down the rise. I hauled the
screen aside. While I dug out a flashlight, the wolf went on in.
Apparently he was all about making himself at home in my space.

I switched the flashlight on, squinting at
the sudden glare. Once my eyes adjusted, I hunched and went inside.
With the extra height of my pack, I had to stoop at an awkward
angle for the first dozen feet or so. Then the space opened up. I
played my light over the ceiling and walls. Nothing seemed to have
made its way inside in the last couple of days. Thank God. The last
thing I wanted was a startled bat dive bombing my head.

I shrugged out of my pack, groaning in
relief. “Oh, thank you, God.” My flashlight caught the white flash
of fur from the back. My friend seemed to be circling around,
looking for a comfortable spot at the rear of the cave. There was a
sort of alcove back there, partially blocked off from what I
thought of as the supply area. It’s where I had planned to lay out
my sleeping bag. Well I guessed he was gonna be staying a while.
That was probably a good thing. As tired as I was, I wouldn’t be on
as high alert as I should be.

Out of long ingrained habit, I unpacked,
stacking and organizing supplies, setting up camp, though it was
only a couple of hours until sunrise. That’s when I saw the other
pack leaning against the cave wall.

Unease trickled through me. Playing the
light around it, I saw other gear. More water. More foodstuffs.
Another set of cookware. A sleeping bag.

“
What the fuck?” I
scrambled over, my hands fumbling to open the pack, searching for
some kind of identifier. But I already knew what I would find. “No,
no, no. This isn’t mine.”

My location had been compromised. It was no
longer secret. No longer safe. I had to go.

“
It’s mine.”

I whirled, dropping the flashlight. “Fuck!”
I dove for it, my hand closing around the shaft, already testing
the weight for a weapon as I snapped the beam up and toward the
back. It lit on hands fastening the button on a pair of low-riding
jeans. I drew the knife with my free hand, rolling into a defensive
crouch. The light slid up a bare, muscular chest before moving up
to land on a squinting face.

Sawyer.

“
I’m coming with
you.”

It was a dream. I was asleep on my feet and
hallucinating. It was a product of exhaustion and desperate
longing. A cruel trick of my brain. Because there was no way that
Sawyer was standing at the back of my cave. Except that he looked
pissed in that way only Sawyer could manage, with rage practically
seething beneath his skin. Really shouldn’t my fantasy be glad to
see me?

“
I’ll take that,” said
Sawyer, striding over and plucking the knife from my hand. “You
clearly can’t be trusted with it.” He flung it, without looking,
directly into a twenty pound bag of rice.

I stared at my empty knife hand, feeling the
tingling fingers, and I flashed back to that day in the clearing.
Except now that fury was directed at me. Sawyer advanced, mouth
curled into a snarl. “You lied to me.”

Automatically I retreated a step. “Excuse
me?”

“
You had every intention of
using that goddamned knife. For
no fucking
reason!
”

My own temper sliced through exhaustion.
“You don’t know anything about my life.”

“
You don’t know anything
about your
own
life. You’ve been so stupid. I can’t
believe
how fucking stupid—”

I felt a burst of adrenaline through the
anger, felt the rising within me, and I backed away from him in a
hurry as a growl began to vibrate in my chest. “Sawyer, you have to
go, “ I managed. “Just shut up and go.”

“
I’m not going
anywhere.
You’re running around thinking you’re going to be
turning into some kind of slavering monster and have to be put down
like a fucking dog.”

Shock knocked me back another step. “How . .
. how do you know that?”

“
I heard you talking to
your dad, and you’re both, like, completely insane.”

I was pressed against the rough cave wall
now. Nowhere to go. Nowhere else to escape as he kept coming toward
me. Where was the wolf?

“
Look, you shouldn’t have
heard that. You really need to go.” I closed my eyes because I knew
they must be glowing and I couldn’t bear to see him look at me with
the same revulsion my father had.

My body was trembling with the effort to
hold back the reaction.

“
Elodie, you need to look
at me.”

“
No.” I shook my head. “You
need to go.”

Sawyer stepped into me, caging me with his
arms against the cave wall. I could feel the heat of his chest just
inches away.

“
Elodie, look at me.” His
tone had softened, no longer angry.

I felt tears burn down my cheeks and shrank
back as far as I could against the stone. “I don’t want to hurt
you,” I whispered.

His hand brushed the tear from my cheek,
then tipped my face up. “Look.”

I opened my eyes and looked into his. The
same bright, glowing gold as my own.

Chapter 10

Elodie

It
was a trick of the light. My eyes
were somehow reflecting in the dark of his. Or I was straight up
hallucinating, whether from exhaustion or hereditary madness, it
really didn’t matter. I was seeing what I wanted to see, not truth.
My mind was clearly a cruel and masochistic place.

I tried to turn my face away.
It isn’t
real
.
None of this is real.

And then his other hand was there, framing
my face, wiping more tears.

“
Elodie.” His soothing
voice didn’t work this time. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?
I’m like you.”

“
You’re not. You don’t
know—”

“
I
do
know,” he
insisted. “I am a werewolf. From a very long family line of
werewolves. I know exactly what you’re going through.” His voice
had a calm, patient, talk the crazy person off a ledge
tone.

Was this a sick joke? Establish some kind of
common ground and humor me until he thought he’d talked me down
from suicide and could haul me off to the nearest mental ward?

He didn’t
know
. He wasn’t
like
me.
How could he be? How could it possibly be true and he still
be
here?
Alive? Sane? No. It flew in the face of everything
I knew, everything I was.

I clenched my jaw but couldn’t hold back the
growl. “Everyone who knows what I’m going through is dead. So don’t
pretend
you have any idea what I’ve been through, what’s
happening to me.”

The hands cradling my face slipped down to
grip my shoulders. “You think I don’t know what it’s like? Being
overwhelmed by senses that are suddenly sharper than they should
be? All those scents, the sounds. They’re enough to make you want
to vomit. For the first couple of months, you can’t control it. The
headaches? Sometimes they’re enough to nearly blind you with pain.
The night sweats and fevers? Well you probably haven’t gotten to
those yet. You’re a bit behind on the usual shifting schedule.”

They could be guesses. Good ones. He was
observant. He could easily have noticed the change in my behavior.
And my being late shifting, well I’d said that myself in the
conversation he’d apparently eavesdropped on earlier tonight.