Andy wiped his nose and sniffed. “Must be all that fresh mountain air in here.”
As Brad swung out the door and walked back into Daisy’s, he flicked on the extractor fan.
With a furry tongue and a dry mouth, Andy sat for a moment in the dim light—the bulb dangling above him was dead—and heard a buzzing sounds from within the confines of his cubicle. “Brad, hey… cut it out.” His pants were still furled around his ankles but he now realised the noise was coming from down there, from his beeper hanging off his belt. It was flashing red.
Andy unclipped it and brought it up close to his eyes. Shit! Gretel was at 253 bpm. What the fuck was she doing? He scrolled back to read the log. She’d been up above 240 for fifteen minutes. Why hadn’t he woken?
Was someone—or something—chasing her? Was she on a kill? Before he could answer with even more speculation, he watched as his wolf’s heart rate slumped, in the space of a few seconds, to 83, a resting rate.
And then it plunged again, to 59, a beat of sleep. Or worse.
This was wrong. Way wrong. The beat drops were too rapid. She’d been attacked, or caught in a trap… bleeding to death. It had to be.
He was buckling his belt as he raced out through the bar, his head spinning around, searching for someone to help. Paul Dawkins was in one of the restaurant booths. Paul was a local garage mechanic and volunteer fire-fighter who had assisted Andy when Gretel was first introduced into the area; they had done the radio-collaring together. “Paul, Gretel’s in trouble up there.” He held up his beeper so Paul would understand. “We gotta go. Now!”
Paul was drinking margaritas with his wife and a couple Andy didn’t recognise.
“Gretel?” his wife asked warily. Her finger wiped the salt off the rim of her glass. She didn’t know any Gretels around these parts.
“One of Andy’s wolves,” Paul responded. “The pregnant one Andy was going on about…”
“Come on, man,” Andy yelled. “I need help, like fuckin’ urgent.”
Paul’s wife didn’t hide her disgust at his language, but Andy was the only one who didn’t notice; he was already out the door and Paul was following, leaving just a shrug and his party behind him.
GRETEL kept her head low to the ground. She began to slope toward Isabel, paw by paw, the dark splotches trailing behind her being whisked into the snow by her dragging tail.
Isabel didn’t breathe. She didn’t move. She kept the flashlight beam aimed directly at the wolf’s eyes, hoping to blind it or push it back as though she were wielding a Star Wars lightsaber.
As the wolf drew closer into the long, narrow cone of light, the snow cover flared the underside of her muzzle and made the beast loom even larger.
Suddenly, Isabel spotted more blood splatters in the snow… in between her and the wolf. They were hers. The wolf had been tracking her. Sniffing her.
With her teeth, Isabel pulled a glove off her hand. Careful to avoid sudden movements she delicately pressed her arm. Her hammering heartbeats were spurting blood out of the wound—she could feel it—and saw it oozing out from under the X of the duct tape and dripping to the ground. She felt like a target.
The creature stopped... fifteen feet back from her prey. She arched her back and, snout down, nosed into one of Isabel’s bloodstains. The animal stretched out long and taut and, as though she had made a tactical decision, lurched to one side and started to circle Isabel.
Isabel was prey.
Her knife blade was ludicrously short, fine for slicing an apple not for hacking at a leaping, snarling carnivore. She feared the bottle in her other hand was also next to useless. She needed a better weapon and dropped her eyes to her backpack… The shovel. She also spied a rock protruding partway out of the snow. Staring back at the circling wolf, as though that might warn her off, she forced her shaking knees to bend, taking herself down slowly. No sudden movements. With her eyes fixed on the animal, she deposited the flashlight on top of her pack, aiming it at where the wolf seemed to be heading.
Her hand felt for the shovel and unclipped it as silently as she could. With the handle tight in her hand, her other, good arm raised the bottle by the neck and smashed it down onto the rock, shattering the brittle silence.
Isabel hadn’t expected it.
For weeks, she hadn’t had one of her flashes … but now, years of trauma welled up inside her…
She was fifteen… the gory wolf tattoo rippled on his tricep as that evil bastard lunged for her.
Her body shook uncontrollably.
But who was holding the fucking broken bottle this time! She almost screamed it out loud, but let it gag in her throat, not out of fear… out of defiance.
This time it would end differently. This time, she would be no victim. Too much depended on it.