Red and Her Wolf (5 page)

Stars twinkled like brilliant jewels above. Somewhere a snow owl hooted, seeking a meal to devour, and Violet laughed. There was magic in the woods. In the quiet serenity of nature, it hummed all around her, through her, even her blood sang with it. Fluttering with something more powerful than
herself
.

She and aunt Mir had arrived at this remote part of mortal realm a hundred years or so ago. Before that, they’d moved often, always running in the middle of the night. Her aunt had said that it was because she had an adventurer’s heart, but it didn’t take long for
Vi
to figure out it had more to do with them running away than seeking adventure. Eventually she’d stopped asking why and just resigned herself to a life of solitude. Never allowing anyone too close, never really making friends. Intuitively knowing it was verboten. Now, the lifestyle was one she preferred. She just wasn’t much of a people person.
  

Violet ran, zipping in and around twisted trees. Snow drifted in lazy curls through the breeze, kissing her nose. She didn’t care, her legs were strong and her body sure.

A gray cloud streaked slowly through the navy sky.

Her aunt always wondered about Violet’s forest romps. But now it was getting worse. Actually, for a year Miriam’s worry had increased. To the point she had even followed Violet on more than one occasion.

Lungs heaving with fire, legs burning,
Vi
pushed on. She was almost there.

The worry had probably started the moment her aunt noticed her drawings.
Sketches really.
When they’d first come to
Alaska
, Violet could barely remember her past. Her aunt had called it brain trauma. From what, she hadn’t known, and Miriam hadn’t explained. But large snatches of time had been lost to her.

A hundred yards ahead she spied the tree. Heart galloping with glee, she put on an extra burst of speed--uncaring that she sank into thick snow; nothing would stop her this night.

It’d frustrated
Vi
for years that she simply couldn’t remember a childhood, a point where she wasn’t grown. She’d asked Miriam countless times to tell her of her youth, but her aunt was always tight lipped and easily aggravated when the subject came up. So
Vi
had stopped asking. Her life was good now, and though it was strange to move so often, she didn’t think much of it. She loved her aunt and trusted that her best interest was in Miriam’s heart. But like a fuzzy television screen getting signal back, things had begun to take shape recently.

An image of an old woman.
Then more.

Apples.

Rolling like heads on a packed dirt floor.

Lots of them.

Her lip curled. She hated apples.

Innocence.

She’d been that once.
Pure joy.
The old woman--her grandmother--had once told her she lit up her life with her smile.

Violet’s heart gave a painful squeeze and she blinked back hot tears.

And then the nightmares came and the wolves with them.

A thin pine branch slapped her cheek, but Violet barely felt it. She was panting hard now, huffing from the exertion. She wondered if the tracks were still there.

Her body tingled, a slow hum at first, but the closer she got to the tree the harder it pulsed. The tracks were here, she still felt
its
magic. She smiled.

In her dreams, the wolf was black.
Big.
Frightening.
And she hated to admit, even to herself, how absurdly drawn to the beast she was. She was fixated.
Obsessed.
Sketching his image over and over.
Most of them were of him kneeling over her, over her grandmother, with a shocking spill of scarlet bathing the ground all around them.

Violet grabbed her chest, panting when she finally reached the tree. She took a moment to calm herself and then looked down.

Large paw prints circled the tree. Her entire body flared to life when she brushed her finger over the impression. It was close.

Biting her lip, she glanced both ways. Was it watching her? She cocked her head, listening for the faint disturbance of movement. All she heard was silence. But not the dead silence of fearful animals, the silence of nature at rest.

He wasn’t here.
Yet.

Grabbing hold of the lowest branch, she hoisted herself up.
Climbing from one branch to another, delicately, gently… trying to disturb nothing.
Knowing her scent would be all over the place and hoping it would attract him.

When she got as high as she could, she sat and waited, scanning the horizon for any movement.

Minutes ticked past, and then an hour.
Two.
She didn’t move.
Barely breathed.
He would come. She knew it.

They would always come for her.

Long ago Violet had suspected she was special when she didn’t age, when Aunt Mir didn’t age. Time stood still for the two of them, whatever damage had been done to her brain was now gone.
Because, last night, Violet remembered everything.
In her sleep she’d heard the growls, the screams of her grandmother being ripped apart, fear closing her throat and making her numb, stupid, and weak. Huddled under her red robe like a child thinking if she closed her eyes they wouldn’t see her, couldn’t hurt her. Violet knew who she was now.

She was the
Heartsong
, the manifestation of wild
fae
magic. She wouldn’t age because she wasn’t mortal.

Vi
tore a sturdy twig off her branch and toyed with its sharp edge, dragging it along her palm. Time had been good to her. She wasn’t only strong of mind and body, but she’d learned to do something even grandmother had said was impossible.

She rammed the twig through the palm of her hand, entranced as the pool of blood--black because of the night--welled up and began to spill. The pain had been absurdly delicious. Strange to think of pain that way, but for her it was more euphoria, a drug-like high of adrenaline and cutting pleasure.

But that wasn’t what she’d learned.

Violet focused on the twig, watching as it slowly worked its way completely through her hand before dropping to the ground below.

Grandmother had told her she was magic, but she could never do magic. But grandmother was wrong.

Violet raised her hand up to her face. The hole went completely through. Then she kissed herself, right where she’d shoved the twig through. A small sphere of light escaped her lips, like a golden drop of dew, it entered her wound. Flesh and tendon knit themselves back together again.

Something snapped.

Violet jerked her head up and smiled as a massive loping beast emerged from a dense thicket of bushes.

The creature was easily nine feet long, with its massive shoulders and gigantic
paws,
there was no mistaking the thing for a normal wolf. Its grey coat was muted in the moon glow. It stopped, taking a moment to sniff the air before padding slowly to the tree. She’d noticed it last night, the first wolf roaming these woods that wasn’t quite a wolf. Just like the wolves from her past.
 

Something gold glinted around its neck.

It was one of them.

Not the black wolf that’d almost killed her. But just like it, close enough she could pretend it was the big, black wolf of her nightmares. Close enough to make her thrill with the sharp desire of ripping into him, of watching his blood spill like he’d watched her grandmother’s.

She was easily twenty feet up. Violet smiled.
“Looking for me.”

The wolf growled, looking up, its hackles rose and mouth pulled back revealing impossibly thick canines.

Violet withdrew her knife and jumped. All breath left her on impact, needle sharp stabs of pain clawed through her thighs. She’d not broken any bones, but there would be bruises later. Snow drifted in a flurry around her face, blinding her for a brief moment. The wolf pounced, its claws gouged her legs, her stomach, and she laughed as the power of hate rose up inside her. She wielded it truer than any blade and slashed mindlessly, feeling a rush of strength she’d never known before surge through her muscles. She was strong.
Powerful.

There was blood everywhere. On her arms, her hands, her face. It coated her tongue, but she didn’t stop stabbing.
Over and over again.
The wolf lay still, no longer fighting. Little more than a carcass and still she savaged it.

“Down with the Big Bad Wolf,”
Vi
hissed, stabbing her knife down the gut of the beast; smiling as the blood painted the white snow crimson red.

Chapter 2

Danika
--fairy godmother extraordinaire--waited until the sun set fully, the last warm rays dissolving behind the sharp blue sky. All around her, the woods sang with the song of fairies deep in sleep. Actually, sang was a nice word for what they were doing. They were snoring. Like banshees.
All of them.
They’d fallen soundly asleep, dropping like flies the moment they’d left her home. Some were leaning against the wall, half slumped forward, and others were spread eagle upon rocks and mushroom caps.

Why?

Danika
whistled, patting her pocket that at that moment concealed a glass vial full of eau de dragon. Or in laymen’s terms,
dragon fart
.
Crude yes, but effective.
One whiff of a dragon’s fart, especially of the sea variety, (let’s not get started on just how impossible it is to bottle a dragon fart underwater…
Danika
shivered remembering) and a fairy was as good as drunk. Something about the noxious odor of the fumes mixing with a fairies magical make-up, and boom… a fairy was out for the count.

The serpentine dragon’s smell had been so powerful; it’d brought tears to
Danika’s
eyes, even though she’d placed an invisible pincher upon her nose prior to the tea. She’d worried a fairy might realize she was breathing through her mouth during all of tea time, but thankfully she’d been spared.
  

Her heart clenched when she heard a noise.
 

Bianca--fairy godmother of toads--scratched her tiny bell shaped rear, let out a belch and sighed happily, sinking even deeper within the grassy field. Grabbing her chest,
Danika
leaned against her door, awaiting the signal.

She hated to poison her friends. And normally she’d never dream of doing anything so awful. But she did what she must. Orange blossoms began to open, their perfume thick in the air, as they yawned loudly. It was a beautiful night and the flowers would soon notice there were no fairies to dust them. No amount of squawking or crying would wake the fairies at this point. They’d inhaled a potent amount and would be out of it for at least another hour, none the wiser, and suffering no long term effects.

Enough time for
Danika
to make it to her meeting.

Fireflies came in droves then, doing their nightly dance ritual; zipping and spinning through the mushroom homes of the
fae
. It was precisely eight thirty.
Time to go.

Rubbing her arms,
Danika
eyed the motley assortment of snoring
fae
one last time, just to ensure they were all well and truly out. Satisfied, she sailed into the air. Wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s as she flew to the edge of the woods. She zipped and sailed, dodging tree limbs, heart speeding with the aftereffects of her fear, but also joy.