Unbound (20 page)

Dawn came, and he heard movement in the house above him as Detective Bower stirred, then went upstairs to shower ready for work. Sachie got up shortly afterwards, thumping down the stairs to clatter around in the kitchen. They held a brief, slightly muffled conversation.

Ranger hurt. Dale and Yani’s teeth and claws had bitten deep, and the wounds had flowed freely on his neck and back. Now they were sticky and matted, attracting the last late-autumn blowflies, which laid their eggs in his fur. When the boy escaped, Dale had turned all of his pent-up rage from years spent locked away in a hospital loose upon his smaller opponent. He had fifty pounds on Ranger, and the fury of madness.

Ranger hadn’t stood a chance.

The bites Dale had left on his foreleg and flank were deep and agonizing, and when Dale had expended his rage, Yani had come for him.

Ranger had alternated between crawling and limping all of the way back to Granny Florence’s house, because he couldn’t find the fairy path again after he’d fallen off of it without the light of a guide. Once he reached the yard, he couldn’t even summon the energy to climb the porch stairs to scratch on the door. Instead, he crawled under the porch and lay down in the dirt with the spiders.

“Hey, Dad,” Sachie said. “Did you hear the howling last night?”

“No,” Detective Bower replied.

“Did you empty my laundry hamper?”

A pause. “Sachie, you do your own laundry. If you need help with your chores, you need to ask for it, but I’m not helping unless you
ask
.”

“I guess that’s a ‘no’ then,” Ranger heard Sachie mutter. Footsteps, almost directly above his head.

“What’s this about?” Detective Bower asked.

“I just had a weird dream. It’s nothing.”

The front door opened and closed, and there was the jangle of keys – too loud, it made Ranger’s head
ache
– as someone fumbled with the lock. Sachie headed off down the street to school, and Detective Bower got in his car and presumably went down to the Sheriff’s station.

Ranger felt cold. He shivered, and slept. When he woke, it was still daylight, and the house was silent above him. The pain was unbearable. Every little movement hurt. Even breathing pulled at the wound on his side. He panted shallowly, and waited. Time seemed to stretch. He laid there for what felt like days on that endless afternoon, flies buzzing around his ears, landing in his eyes and crawling across his parched lips. Cars rumbled past in the street. The birds that had not migrated kept chirping, shrill cries ringing in his skull. Ranger drifted again.

He woke to the sound of thunderous footsteps on the porch above him.

It was Sachie, on his way out into the yard. Ranger’s chest constricted with panic – the boy
couldn’t
go into the forest alone. But Sacheverell paused just past the vegetable patch and stared out into the trees.

“Where is everyone?” he said quietly to himself.

Ranger wanted to call out to him, to beg for –
something
. Whether he wanted to beg Sachie to go inside and lock the door, or for the boy to fetch Doctor Payne, or even to just keep him company for a few minutes so he wasn’t so alone, Ranger didn’t know. But his throat locked up, and he couldn’t make a sound.

Sachie wandered back inside, where Ranger heard him restlessly pacing around the house. He dialed someone on the phone, got his father’s answerphone, and left a message that Ranger listened to, partly.

“Hey, Dad. I guess you’re too busy to answer the phone. That’s cool. It happens. Anyway. Eli wasn’t at school today. I dropped by his house on my way home, and met his Mom. She said he was sick—” Ranger’s attention drifted to the spider in the web just above his head. It was crawling, slowly, across its web. There was something wrong with his eyesight. Everything kept slipping in and out of focus. He couldn’t work out what sort of spider it was.

“—I’m home alone. I hope that’s okay. I could go to Nan and Pop’s if you don’t think you’ll be home tonight? I think I remember where you said they lived. Call me back and let me know.”

Sachie hung up and came back outside to stand on the porch. “Ranger!” he called, loudly. “Are you out there, boy? I could really use a friend right now!”

Ranger wished he could tell Sachie where he was, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even whine.

He would never know what made Sachie check under the porch, but the boy jumped down onto the wet, muddy grass and got on his hands and knees to peer into the darkness where the wolf was lying, and then he swore, softly.

“Ranger, is that you?”

A whimper started in his chest and clawed its way up his throat. He tried to wag his tail, but only managed to make it flop on the dirt weakly.

“Oh, man,” Sachie said. “What happened to you, boy?”

Ranger twitched an ear and blinked tiredly at him.

“Can you come out? Come inside?”

For this boy, who smelt like summer rains and the earth and new life and
family
beneath the pungent scent of medication and sickness and loneliness and fear and
dying
, Ranger would try, even though his joints ached and his leg was on fire while it felt like ice had settled into all his bones, weighing him down. He rolled over onto his belly and crawled, painfully, out from under the house, mostly dragging his injured leg, then lay on the grass by the back stairs, panting harshly.

“You don’t look so good, bud,” Sachie said, a note of anxiety entering his voice. “Like, you look really
not
good.”

Ranger tried to give him a baleful stare, but his eyelids felt heavy and his eyes hurt. He blinked, and woke up to Sachie’s hands in the fur over his shoulders, gently shaking him and begging him to stay alive.

He huffed, long and slow.

“Please,” Sachie said. “Please. Don’t die. You’re my friend.”

Ranger struggled to his feet and hobbled towards the stairs. His legs wobbled, and nearly gave out on him, but then Sachie was at his side, propping him up. The boy helped him. Together, they climbed the five stairs onto the porch and made their way through the back door into the living room.

Sachie looked like he was going to help Ranger onto the couch, but Ranger didn’t want to dirty the furniture, so he took that option away by dropping to the wood just inside the door and lying down.

“Okay,” Sachie said, locking the door, and Ranger had never felt so relieved about anything in his life because his grandmother’s house was one of the best warded places in the whole town of Tamarack, after the Old Hawthorn Grove. “Okay. You stay there, then. I’ll – I’ll get you a drink of water, and then I’ll call… someone.” Ranger watched him as he moved off into the kitchen, muttering to himself. “Eli’s Mom will know who I need to call, right? I know Doctor Payne is a big animal vet, Dad mentioned him, but does he do cats and dogs as well, or is there someone else for that?”

He heard cupboard doors open and close, the tap running, and then Sachie came back with a ceramic bowl full of water.

Ranger’s throat felt like he’d been eating glass. He lifted his head and lapped feebly at the water a couple of times before it hurt too much.

“I’m going to call Eli’s Mom now,” Sachie told Ranger. “Don’t go anywhere.”

As if he could.

Ranger let his eyes slip closed. Sachie’s voice slipped over him like a soothing wave, even though the boy’s tone was panicked.

“Come on, pick up. Pick up.” Sachie swore. “Okay. No big deal. I guess she’s not home. I’ll try Nan. She’s got to be at home, right? What even do retired people do all day except, like, knit and bake cookies? Yeah, Nan’s got to be home.” The sound of pages being hastily flicked through. Sachie must be paging through the phone directory looking for his grandmother. “Found her.” Numbers being dialed, and a pause. “Please, Nan. Please.” And then— “Oh, thank god. What? No, I’m fine Nan, I promise. Look, you know Ranger? Yes, the wolf. I don’t know any other Rangers. Do you? Oh. Well, look, he’s hurt…”

The wolf must’ve fallen asleep again, because when he opened his eyes, he found Claire kneeling beside him. He hadn’t heard her arrive. She looked about as bothered as she always did by anything unexpected – not particularly bothered at all. Sachie was standing behind her shoulder, wringing his hands anxiously.

“He’s strong,” Claire said. “He’s survived much worse, too.” She touched Ranger’s chewed up left ear gently. He couldn’t summon the energy to flick it, or wrinkle his nose. Then she ran her finger across the scars on his muzzle, and he pulled back his lips to bare his teeth at her. It hurt too much to growl. “I expect him to pull through this without too much difficulty. He’ll milk you for sympathy for that he’s worth, though. Try not to give in.”

“Why?” Sachie asked, clearly puzzled, and not really comforted by these words.

Ranger knew why, though. He knew that the people of Tamarack were humoring him. They wanted him to stop playing the wolf, pull himself back together and face his responsibilities as a Guardian like a man. Only he couldn’t change back. He’d tried so many times to initiate the shift to human, tried to draw himself into the shape of a man after he felt the taint seep into his bones and the moon vanish from his blood nine years ago, weeks after the angry god touched his family with its malice. Every time he’d failed.

So he’d run away. Followed his primal instincts and gone to be what he was up in the mountains. He came down to see his grandmother, Florence, to flee to her. She understood what was going on, understood his fear of the turning weather and the boom of thunder, his terror of anything that lived in the woods that was much larger than a beaver, and she didn’t ridicule him for it.

Granny Florence was dead. He missed her. He kept coming back to her house, though. When no one lived here, and the weather turned bad, he used to huddle up under the porch and go to sleep, even if it meant he was leaving Nicole out in the rain in the woods. Alone. Then the murders started and Detective Bower and his son came.

His son, Sacheverell Bower, who had the color of autumn in his eyes and the smell of new life on his skin beneath the promise of death. Sachie thought Ranger was someone’s pet dog until he realized that Ranger was a man trapped in a dog’s body, and he didn’t care. He didn’t question Ranger’s fear of the lightning and thunder either, though, and willingly gave up the space beneath his bed.

The deer with the midnight hide was stamping at the door and no one noticed it. Ranger wondered if he was imagining it, or whether he was sick, or perhaps he was still feeling the effects of Madam Watkins’ tea. He couldn’t
think
.

“He can take care of himself, Sachie,” Great Aunt Claire said.

“That explains literally nothing,” Sachie complained.

“He
needs
to take care of himself.”

Ranger needed his pack. He needed an uncle who wouldn’t turn on him and try to tear out his throat, and a siblings who wouldn’t turn their backs, and cousins who didn’t want to snap at his face and laugh at him behind their hands. Eli was all right – he was open and kind-hearted – but he was just a child and so alone himself. And Ranger loved Alyssa with his heart and soul, but she wasn’t a wolf, would never be a wolf. It was different.

Lori wasn’t even human to start with.

He missed the dead ones. He missed his mother and Granny Florence.

He whined, pitifully, and stared up at Sachie, who gave him a crooked smile.

“Nan says you’re going to be okay, boy,” he said, turning back to Claire. “Shouldn’t he have stitches or something?”

“Wolves heal fast. He doesn’t need them,” Claire replied. “I will mix a poultice for his wounds. He should be back to himself by tomorrow or the day after.”

Sachie frowned, mulling that over, then nodded slowly. “Can you show me how to do that, too?”

Later, after Claire had applied a bitter-smelling paste to the wounds on the wolf’s flank and neck, and splinted his leg, Sachie helped him onto the couch and sat beside him, reading a book that smelled like the high school and the dozens of other people who’d handled it. He’d presumably been assigned it for English class. Ranger dozed, while Sachie scratched idly behind his ears with his free hand, and Claire made herself busy in the kitchen.

Detective Bower arrived home after dark, and Claire left, promising to come back over the weekend if Ranger took a turn for the worse.

“I didn’t know Nan knew animal medicine,” Sachie said to Detective Bower, after she was gone.

“Your grandmother knows all sorts of useful things,” Detective Bower replied.

“Huh. She cooked dinner for us. It’s in the oven.”

“I can smell it,” Detective Bower said. “Pot roast?”

“I think that’s what she said,” Sachie agreed. “You want some, boy?” he asked Ranger.

Ranger sighed.

“Maybe not right now,” Detective Bower said, as the two of them moved off into the kitchen together.

“How do you think he got hurt, Dad?” Ranger heard Sachie ask.

A pause. “I don’t know,” Detective Bower said. “An animal out in the woods probably attacked him.”

“Another wolf?”

Detective Bower hummed. “Maybe. It’s possible. I’ve heard them out there.”