It’s not unlike when I’d been attacked in that alley all those years ago. I tried to disarm one of our attackers and that set them all off. Should I have not fought back? I can’t say for sure. It’s the second-guessing every survivor does. If I hadn’t tried to disarm them and I’d still been attacked, I’d have been forever cursing myself for not taking my shot when I saw it.
Gloria kicks at the wolf-dog, and her foot doesn’t land within a foot of it, but it’s all the canine needs. It lunges, and before we can act, Storm races out and slams into the wolf-dog’s side. A battering-ram strike. The wolf-dog goes flying into a roll. It scrambles up, but Storm has parked herself between the wild dog and Gloria. I have my gun trained on the wolf-dog, and Dalton has run forward, ready to intercede in case of a fight. The wolf-dog doesn’t notice us. It’s too busy staring at the mountain of black fur in front of it.
The wolf-dog’s nostrils dilate as it sniffs the air. I swear I see its brain processing.
Huh, it looks like a bear, but it smells like a dog.
Wolves are big, and this one isn’t much shorter than Storm. It’s all legs, though, with a muscular but slender body. Storm is pure mastiff bulk.
She lowers her head and growls. It’s a warning, one that says she has no interest in fighting—she’s just here protecting her people.
“Move along now,” Dalton says.
The wolf-dog’s head swings his way. It notices me in that sweep and then glances over at Gloria.
Not one terrified human woman, but three humans and a very big dog. I’ve seen movies where wolves don’t care about those odds. They still leap in, fangs flashing. Yet even with just Gloria versus the wolf-dog, the wild canine hadn’t been committed to attack until she lashed out. Now, it looks between us and back at Storm. Then it grunts, and its gaze moves to a tangle of brush.
Dalton follows its gaze and nods. “You’d like your dinner to-go, huh?”
I ease around and see what Dalton does. The reason the wolf-dog went after Gloria in the first place. Again, we might see movies where healthy wolves attack at random, but it’s rare enough to be almost unheard of. In that clump of brush I see fur and blood. Gloria stumbled on the wolf-dog with its prey, and it mistook her for a meal thief.
“Okay,” Dalton says. “We’re going to leave you to your dinner. Gloria? Can you carefully walk sideways until you’re behind Casey?”
Gloria nods, chin bobbing, eyes wide. She does as he says, and at the same time, Dalton moves to stand beside me.
“Storm?” I call.
She glances over out of the corner of one eye. She knows I want her to retreat, but it takes her a moment to figure out how to do that without exposing herself to attack. She sidles until she’s given the wolf-dog room to return to its meal.
The wolf-dog creeps back to the brush, grabs what looks like a mangled hare, and dashes into the forest.
“I—” Gloria begins.
“Hold that thought,” Dalton says. “He seemed to be alone, but we’re going to put a little distance between us first.”
We do that, moving until we reach a clearing. Then I turn to Gloria.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her mouth opens, and she bursts into tears, her eyes widening in horror before she rubs her hands over her face. I move closer and put an awkward arm around her waist in a quick hug of reassurance.
“Are you okay?” I repeat.
“I … I think so. I was so proud of myself for getting away, and then I realized I was in the middle of the forest, with no idea which way to go. I remembered walking through water, and I heard water running so I started that way, and then I saw the dog. I could see its face and those freckles, and it looked like Raoul, so I thought Sebastian must be taking him for a walk, and I ran over and…”
A sharp breath. “I got right up to it before I realized it wasn’t Raoul. I shrieked and that made the wolf—the dog—whatever it is—jump and snarl. I backed up, only I backed against the rock and…”
She swallows. “What was that? It looked like Raoul, but it looked like a wolf, too, and I remember someone saying Raoul is part wolf.”
“He is. We rescued him as a pup. There are feral dogs out here. Some escaped from Rockton, and some might have escaped from other people. They breed with the local wolves.”
She gives a strained half laugh. “I’ll have to tell Raoul I met his brother or uncle.” She wraps her arms around herself and shivers convulsively.
“Gloria?”
She looks up at me, her eyes not quite focusing.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Doing?” She stares at me. Then she makes a noise, half groan, half bitter laugh. Her face falls into her hands. “Oh God, I’m losing it. I’m really losing it. I’m babbling about wolves and dogs when … when…”
“How about you sit down?” I tap her arm and point to a fallen log.
She nods mutely and moves to sit. I take a spot beside her.
“I found the note on your table,” I say.
She looks up sharply and then nods. “I got it, and I took off. I didn’t think.” She glances over. “I’m sorry, but I felt as if I wasn’t getting the whole story about Jolene, and I needed to see for myself. I realized I shouldn’t go running into the forest, but then I saw that the place indicated on the map was barely past the town border. If anything went wrong, I could scream, right?”
Another bitter laugh. “I didn’t have a chance. I was kneeling, looking for whatever clue I was supposed to find when someone pressed a knife to the back of my neck.” She reaches back, and there’s dirt-coated blood there, with a tiny scrape. “She told me to walk and said if I screamed, she’d kill me.”
“She?”
Gloria nods. “I couldn’t recognize the voice. It was muffled, and she barely said ten words. Definitely a woman, though. She told me to walk and … Oh God, this is embarrassing. I did as she said. I didn’t fight. Didn’t scream. I let her lead me into the forest. I kept thinking I could talk her out of it. That’s what I did. Talked and talked when I should have been fighting back.”
Which is why she lashed out at that wolf-dog. Exactly as I said, a survivor of violence will question every move they did and did not make. Gloria failed to fight her human attacker, and so she’d fought the wolf-dog.
She continues, “We got to a spot and stopped, and I started to turn. I wanted to see her, to talk face-to-face. That’s when I noticed the hole. Before I could even react, she jabbed me with something.” Gloria rubs her upper arm, where there’s another blood-smeared spot. “Then she shoved me hard, and I was so surprised that I fell. I went to get up, and she kicked me, and then everything just went black.”
She shivers, and I let her have that, not pushing or prodding. She’ll continue when she’s ready.