Blood for Wolves

chapter 10

I couldn’t believe it. Alex was here. Alex. He stood against a tree, breathing hard, dressed in some strange getup; black pants, black vest, white dress shirt, and a long black coat like Wyatt Earp wore in the Wild West. The black hat of similar fashion was what really threw me off. Alex didn’t wear hats unless he was out hunting. I hadn’t even recognized him until Wolf had him backed against the tree. He held an intricately carved crossbow in one hand, a quiver of silvery bolts slung around on his back.

“Caroline, what the hell is going on around here?” Alex shouted.

Beside me, Wolf snarled, sounding very nearly like a real wolf.

“Stop! That’s my step-brother.”

He growled. His upper and lower canines had extended, his eyes glowed redder than I’d ever seen. I stepped closer to him.

“Caroline,” Alex said, a warning.

“Shh.”

I took Wolf’s face in my hands and forced him to look at me. I murmured to him, staring at his ruby red eyes and stroking his hair. He began breathing more slowly, his canines retreating to their normal size.

“Jesus f*cking Christ Caroline, what the hell are you doing?” Alex asked behind me, his voice a mix of worry and disgust.

I ignored him and kept focusing on Wolf. I kissed his forehead, continuing to run my fingers through his hair. Finally he heaved a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they shifted back to gold, and then faded into hazel.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Trust me.”

I knew he would obey, but he kept his frown and glared at Alex, who stared at us with horrified fascination.

“Now,” I said, feeling like we could finally do things normally, “Alex, why are you here?”

He flinched as if I’d just asked him the most unfathomable question in the world. “Why am I here? Why am I here? I was following you! You stopped using your radio and I got worried, so I went to that wolf den you’ve been talking about for the past three weeks and picked up your trail and somehow I ended up here. And I don’t even know where the hell here is!” He waved his arms around in a mildly crazy fashion.

“Liar,” Wolf snarled, unable to contain himself any longer. He pointed at Alex. “You wear the black coat of the wolf killers. You’re a Sentry for the House of Hood.”

I grabbed Wolf’s arm. “Whoa, Wolf—”

“What, this?” Alex’s face filled with scorn. “Some crazy old lady gave this to me back in some village.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“You jumped at me out of the f*cking bushes, buddy. And you’ve got red eyes and f*cking fangs. Of course I tried to kill you.”

Wolf bared his teeth in response. “You’re a hunter. I can smell it. I can smell the blood on you, the rabbits, the deer, the birds.”

“All right,” I said loudly. I kept my grip on Wolf’s coat, afraid that if I let go he’d go ballistic again.

“What of it?” Alex said, unwilling to back down.

Wolf paused. He seemed to be picking apart information in his brain, things he’d gathered from Alex’s scent.

“You smell like wolves…not a lot, but some…and it’s mixed with Caroline.”

“That’s only because that’s where she was when she went missing, and that’s where I went.”

Wolf breathed in a few more times. “You don’t kill wolves.” A statement, not a question.

“What? Of course I don’t kill wolves. They’d throw my ass in jail for that. And then Caroline would scratch my eyes out.”

Finally both men shut up. I looked back and forth between them.

“All right,” I said again. “I think we can safely establish that my brother is not a Sentry for the House of Hood. I think he must have met the same old witch that we did.”

“A huntsman that doesn’t hunt wolves,” Wolf said, unsure of how to process the information.

Alex pointed at him. “You know, that’s what that crazy woman said.” He paused. “What do you mean, ‘witch’?”

I shook my head. “Come on Alex. Just walk with us. I’ll explain on the way.”

I made sure to walk between Wolf and Alex as I explained where we were and what was going on. In turn, Alex told me how he’d ended up here.

He’d found the pond, tried to retrieve my radio from the bottom, and fell in instead, arriving in this world just as I had. After picking up my trail, he’d used every skill he had to keep on it, following the scuffed up leaves and soft LaSportiva boot marks in the soft earth. He’d found the cottage and pressed on from there, concerned about the scuff marks in the dust on the cottage floor and the blood at the window. Eventually he walked into the giant’s lair just as I had, almost getting caught in the process. Luckily for him, Wolf had been right about giants being clumsy and falling down. They’d tripped over one another, giving Alex time to run away. Now I knew the real cause for the rumble Wolf and I had felt the day we’d faced the slave traders.

“I thought I’d lost you after that,” Alex said. “I was about to turn right back around and go back to that pond when I found this.”

He flipped me the can of bear mace that Wolf had thrown out. I half smiled.

“Not many people draw moustaches on their canisters.”

“I get bored.”

Wolf snorted unhappily at the can.

“Then I found a village that looked like something out of the pioneering days,” Alex continued, “and I wasn’t even there very long when some creepy old woman bumped into me. She called me a ‘Huntsman who does not hunt wolves’ and told me which way you went. Then she gave me this getup and the hardware and a weird badge, but said not to put it on until I was out of sight of the village.” He rubbed his face, disturbed. A few days worth of stubble had darkened his skin. “She told me to hurry up too.”

I couldn’t fathom why she’d given him such an outfit when it clearly made him a target for wolves. At my left, Wolf continued to frown, occasionally sneaking suspicious glances at Alex. He relaxed a fraction when I reached down to hold his hand.

“This,” Alex said at length, “is messed up.”

“I know it is,” I said, “but we can’t turn back now.”

“Uh, yeah we can,” he stared at me like I’d lost my marbles, “we just go back to that pond and go home.”

“You didn’t see that thing that took Marianne, Alex. There is something serious going down around here, and I want to help.”

“Help? We don’t even know where this place is! It’s like we’re in f*cking, uh, whatever that place is called.”

“Narnia?” I said helpfully.

“Yeah, Narnia. We don’t know the rules here, sis. Whatever we do here could have some serious consequences.”

I scowled. “She’s just a kid.”

“Yeah, kidnapped by something a sorcerer conjured up.”

I stopped. “Okay, so, what then? Do we just skip on home, go to mom’s birthday party, and act like this never happened? Meanwhile some poor eight-year-old gets murdered or sacrificed or whatever they plan to do to her? I thought you were supposed to protect and serve?”

Alex shifted, uncomfortable.

“I think it’s too late now, Alex. I mean,” I gestured at him, “you’ve even got the right costume.” I put an arm on his shoulder. “This is more important than anything going on back home. Besides,” I chuckled a little, “it’ll take them a while to notice I’m gone.”

“That’s not funny, sis.”

“Sorry,” I said. But it’s probably true. “Either way, I’m looking for Marianne. You can come along or not, your choice.”

We started walking again.

“Well, hell I followed you this far. Might as well go the distance. How far away is she?”

“She’s in a small town. We should reach it by sundown,” Wolf said. He linked his fingers with mine, his thumb gently rubbing my skin. I tried not to smile.

“By the way,” I asked Alex, “do you have an extra shirt?” As good as Wolf looked without a shirt under his coat, if we ended up anywhere near people, I didn’t think it would seem very inconspicuous.

“Sure.” He pulled the canvas sack off his shoulder and pulled out a navy shirt with a Park County Sheriff logo on the left breast. I handed it off to Wolf, holding his coat as he put it on.

“How many pockets does this coat have?” I asked, examining it. Each one looked like it contained something.

“Seven. It’s a very good number.”

“Hey, um,” Alex said, “I know we’re kind of in a hurry, but do you think we could eat something? The last time I had something to eat was when that old woman gave me this getup.”

“Of course,” I said, giving Wolf his coat back. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked earlier. I stopped at the edge of the path to remove my pack and rummage through it, handing things to Wolf as I dug around. “We’ve got a lot in here. We can always cook something later, but for now we have some jerky and a bit of bread.”

I looked up. “Alex?”

He was walking away from us, pointing at some mushrooms. “Are these things edible?”

Wolf eyed them for a brief second before dumping everything on the ground and running after him. “Stop! Don’t go near them!”

“Why?” Alex took one last step and disappeared.

I screamed and dropped my pack, rushing over to where Wolf stood.

“What happened to him?” I cried.

Wolf frantically searched one of his pockets. “Fairy ring. See how the mushrooms are arranged in a circle?”

They were. Little clusters of mushrooms arced to create in a faint circle, including part of a tree. I realized the bark on the inside of the circle had a silvery sheen.

“So what’s that mean?” I asked.

Wolf yanked out a pouch and grabbed a handful of black powder. He flung it into the circle.

Alex suddenly materialized, stumbling out of the mushroom ring and falling flat on his back into a cluster of ferns.

I ran over to him. “Alex?” Behind me, I thought I heard angry chittering mixed with a bit of laughter.

“Are you all right?” Wolf asked. “Did they do anything to you?”

“Do anything?” I said. “He was only in there a few seconds.”

“Time flows differently on their side. That and fairies are fast workers.”

I helped Alex to his feet. He looked dazed, and after a few moments, managed to refocus some. He looked at me.

“They said they liked my outfit.”

I led him around the ring and back to the spilled contents of my daypack, Wolf at our heels. I sat him down.

“Will he be okay?” I asked Wolf.

“That was wild,” Alex said.

Wolf slipped the pouch back into his coat. “He’ll be fine. There are strange things in Fairy. He just needs a bit of time to readjust.”

“What was that stuff you threw in there?”

“Iron filings. Fairy folk don’t like iron.” Wolf glanced down at Alex. “I guess that really does prove that you’re not a Sentry.”

He looked up at us bleakly. “Could I get something to eat now, please?”

Thankfully Alex came to his senses rather quickly, though when I asked him what he’d seen within the fairy ring, he just shook his head and said he wasn’t able to explain. I let it go, and we continued. He was safe, and that was all that mattered.

“Are you sure they came this way?” I asked as we left the trees and entered open grasslands.

“They did. I can smell her. Her and sheep and little lambs,” Wolf said, his voice trailing as much as his thoughts. “Playing in the fields so innocent and juicy—”

“Wolf.” I stopped, eyeing him. “Are there farmers out here?”

“Farmers?” he asked, as if he didn’t recognize the word for a moment. “Oh. Yes. Farmers. Yes, they’re here. Out there, tending their crops, tending their flocks. Feeding their chickens, plump breasted and tasty and clucking...”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting him. I watched him. His gaze darted about as he sniffed, like a dog that had just gotten outside for the first time in weeks and could sense everything. Somehow between this morning and now he’d lost a lot of his human side, going more feral. Erratic. He’d said that the full moon was coming. Tomorrow, actually. I didn’t like the idea of waltzing into a farming town with him like this, even if we would need his help handling the magic beast that had taken Marianne.

I sidled up to Alex and whispered, “We can’t bring him in there like this.”

“What?” Alex whispered back, though he didn’t know why we were whispering. “What do you mean we can’t?” He scowled. “I thought this guy was our guide.”

“He is, but I don’t trust him like this. Wolves aren’t received well here, Alex. If they notice he’s part wolf, they’ll burn him alive or something.”

“I don’t like any of this Caroline, I want you to know that.”

“Will you shut up? I know, okay? I know. But we need to find somewhere to stash him. I mean, look at him.”

Wolf crouched on the ground, silent. But his eyes flickered gold, and a grin somewhere between horribly excited and creepy was plastered on his face. Alex sighed in a dejected this-is-too-f*cking-weird-for-me sort of way, but resigned himself to the idea.

The sun slipped further and further over the edge of the horizon with every passing moment. The last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep and let Wolf roam the countryside, eating chickens or sheep if that’s what he really did. Rather disturbing ideas considering he was only a half-wolf. I didn’t think he could change into a real one. Of course, what did I know about this world so far? Not much.

“Hey,” Alex said. He pointed toward a shallow valley. “How about there?”

An abandoned barn sat in the valley, a few holes in the roof and its windows broken. The barn was surprisingly big. It seemed strange for it to be deserted, but I wasn’t going to argue.

“Okay, that’s fine.” I looked around.

Wolf was several feet behind us, looking intently down on the farming town below. I called to him.

“Come on. We’re going to go to that barn.”

He looked at me sharply. “Why? Everything we want is down there.”

“Yes, but you’re not exactly in top condition to visit them, are you?”

He snorted. “And who are you to judge? Little missy wolf scholar. Think you know everything, do you? Keen on locking me up while you play with the locals?”

“Caroline,” Alex muttered.

Suddenly Wolf’s eyes went wide and the gold flecks disappeared. He gasped. “Oh Caroline. I’m so sorry. I’m just a little…out of sorts.” He pressed his fingers to his temples.

I took a moment to gather myself together from his little outburst and then beckoned him. “Come on then, it’s okay.”

He whimpered, but trotted obediently beside me. It was unnerving to see him like this. One day he’s taking on evil panthers and harpies to save me, the next he’s going bi-polar, violent in one moment, docile and worrisome in the next. I put my hand on his shoulder.

The barn wasn’t so much a barn as a huge stable. Inside were several large stalls for horses with tall doors, half of which were wood and the other half of thin bars that reached to the ceiling. The sort of barn one expected an extremely wealthy person to own. The other side was piled high with bales of fresh hay. Though the stables weren’t in use, someone was definitely using the place for storage. Still, they weren’t likely to come in and fetch hay at night, so I guessed Wolf would be relatively safe in the meantime. I sat him down on a bale.

“Okay. We’re going to go into the village to look for Marianne. You stay here and try to relax.”

He frowned up at me. “But you’ll need me to help find her.”

“No, you stay here. We can look around on our own. If we don’t find anything, we’ll come back and see if you’re able to help. How does that sound?”

He nodded and said nothing. I jerked my thumb at Alex to tell him to go. I patted Wolf on the head a few times and kissed him on the forehead. I was tempted to say, “Now be a good boy” before I left, but I kept quiet.

“Honestly,” Alex said as we walked toward the town, “I don’t know what you see in that guy.”

“He’s not just a guy, and it’s not his fault. There’s something wrong with the wolves in this place.”

“And you still think it’s safe to hang around him?”

“He’s just having a hard time because the full moon is tomorrow.”

“Full moon? You mean this guy is a werewolf?”

“No. Werewolves are human wolves that have gone bad.” I sighed in frustration. “Look, Alex, I don’t know everything about this place, okay? And so far my time here hasn’t been all that great. But Wolf,” I pointed back to the barn, “has saved me loads of times already. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing what he’s gotten me out of. So I’m going to do what I can to help him.”

“All right, all right. So what are we looking for in this place?”

I explained the frightening werewolf phantom, as well as what Marianne looked like. Alex looked at the town in disbelief.

“How the hell could something like that come in here and no one has a second thought about it?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s magic. Maybe it knows how to hide.”

We strolled through the town, trying to look as normal as possible. But people were giving me odd looks and gaping a bit at Alex. Made sense. My clothes were dirty and bloodstained while Alex wore the attire of a Sentry for the House of Hood. He nodded courteously at people with the occasional, “Ma’am,” the way he did in town back home. I looked for some sign of passage by the smoke beast. But the place looked for all the world like a regular town, though maybe in Switzerland. Quaint shops sold lace and fountain pens, candles and various shiny baubles. Pies cooled on windowsills of bakeries. The occasional small herd of sheep wove its way through the street, tended by boys or girls with herding staffs. Women in bonnets traveled from one merchant to another, adding goods to their baskets until they were full of mouth-watering morsels and homey items.

We wandered around the village for a bit, Alex using his influence to stop a few people and ask if they’d seen anything unusual. Night fell as we looked, the sky dimming to a rich, deep blue and stars appearing one by one.

“Nothing,” Alex said after a while. Most of the people retired to their cozy cottages, fires burning through the window panes as families ate dinner or chatted about their day.

“Nothing,” I echoed.

Alex slumped against the side of the building. “Now what?”

I leaned next to him, staring down an alleyway. Something niggled at a part of my brain, but I didn’t know what it was or where it came from. “I don’t know. Go back to the barn and wait for Wolf to snap out of it I guess.”

“I don’t see how you can have a demonic magic creature run through here and no one notices. Is he sure she’s here?”

“He hasn’t led me wrong yet.” I started back in the direction of the barn.

“I think I’m going to stick around a bit.”

I looked over my shoulder. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I think I’ll try knocking on doors to get a look inside. Sometimes when weird shit goes down small towns don’t like to discuss it.” He eyed me. “Are you going to be all right with him alone?”

“I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Alex let out a long sigh as if debating whether or not to come with me. Finally he said, “Okay. Just be careful.”

I smiled reassuringly.