Drawn To The Alpha 2 (6 page)

Chapter 9

Sophia turned her key in the lock and opened her apartment door. She opened it slowly, compelled to move quietly as if her little home might be easily surprised after such a long period empty and in darkness. She flicked on the light, closed the door and leaned back against it. And just like that, she felt herself relax. She’d had a nap in her car – she didn’t have a choice, she couldn’t keep her eyes open – but she’d still carried tension in her shoulders and up her neck when she woke up and her head was pounding. But the moment she entered the space that had been her work and private sanctuary for five years now, some of that strain was lifted. After everything that had happened lately, she found that there was new meaning to the popular saying,
there’s no place like home.
Of course, everything about Van and Fir Lodge was wonderful, just wonderful, but right now she needed her apartment like she needed an old friend for a little down time.

She put her keys on the side table - even that familiar rattling sound felt comforting – and wandered over to the couch, affectionately running her hand across the back of it. The three-seater was one of her first purchases when she moved out of home and into the apartment, shortly after receiving her first advance from Trinity Rock Publishing. It represented so much: leaving home and becoming a real grown-up, becoming a bona fide published author, and more than that even. It was a part of her. It was magenta pink, generously proportioned and wonderfully squishy. Sophia thought the moment that she saw it in the furniture store,
if I were a couch, I’d look like
that
. Her parents thought it was a strange premise on which to select a piece of furniture, but it made complete sense to Sophia.

She kicked off her shoes, sank down into it and tucked her feet up under her legs. In her hands was a thin brown paper package. Her precious book had been waiting here at the apartment for nearly a week. She glanced over at the answering machine, which flashed with a dozen messages. It’ll be Willow from work, wondering if she’d received the book and fishing for news about Van. Or maybe Wendy, her illustrator, wanting to congratulate her on the completion of their joint venture. And probably her parents concerned that they’d missed their weekly dinner on Sunday. Sophia planned to attend to these and all of the other things on her to-do list first thing in the morning, but right now she wanted to enjoy seeing her new book for the first time.

She fingered the edges of the package but didn’t rip it open like she usually did. Somehow she didn’t feel she deserved to open it straight away because she hadn’t invested the appropriate amount of energy and excitement in anticipating its arrival. Her poor, neglected book. It was worthy of better treatment. She abstractedly wondered if people in other professions felt the same type of emotional attachment to their work as she did, or if it was a writer’s thing.

When she was with Van, especially when they were with the other werewolves in Oak Tree Forest, she felt as if being Van’s Pure Soul and The Mother was her life’s purpose. In fact, she was certain of it; nothing else was important. She was inspired by her newfound survival skills and by facing up to challenges far greater than anything her ordinary life had ever posed. But back in the city, back in her old life, she remembered that she loved being a writer too.

She loved meeting up with Jane and Willow and making dinner for her parents. She’d loved the Sophia Fawkes she was before she met Van Longshadow, and she was certain that this self-love was part of what made her so attractive to him. Now she was head over heels in love with Van and about to embark on an important mission that would ensure they could stay together forever. But Sophia knew that in the future, when everything settled down into a new normal, she’d have to learn to combine the old and the new Sophia in a way that satisfied her. She loved Van, but she loved being her own woman too. She was certain that if she could strike a balance it would only make her love for Van even stronger.

The room suddenly felt stuffy so she left the book on the coffee table and crossed to the window. She threw it open and breathed in the cool fall air. The city noise rose up from the street below and Sophia followed an urge to bellow out anonymously.

‘Hey, everyone out there!’ she cried. ‘Do what you love! Be happy!’ A few pedestrians looked up and one shouted back.

‘Amen, sister!’     

Grinning to herself, Sophia wandered unhurriedly around her lounge room, looking at and touching all of her familiar lovely things. On the bookshelf she smiled fondly at the stack of slim white books; her complete A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh collection. The books she loved as a child and that strongly influenced her leaning towards becoming a children’s author. She ran her fingertip over the ridges of the pretty shells in pale pink, yellow and purple that she’d collected on her last vacation at the beach.

Draped over the edge of the case was a pink feather boa that she wore to a school friend’s hens’ night last summer and sometimes still wore around the house, just because she liked it. She hoped to be brave enough to wear it nonchalantly on the train one regular Monday morning, but hadn’t worked up the courage just yet. She brushed her cheek against the soft feathers and decided to wear it right now. With the feathers tickling her chin, she peered at a family photograph that hung on the wall near the kitchen. It was her whole family on a skiing vacation in Canada. Sophia was twelve, Jane fourteen. Sophia remembered the vacation well, mainly because Jane was a natural at skiing and she most certainly was not. But that wasn’t important in this photo. The girls and their parents were all squeezed together in their brightly colored ski pants and jackets, cheeks and noses bright red.

The girls looked at the camera but both parents looked down at their children with such expressions of adoration that Sophia still felt warm and fuzzy inside whenever she looked at it. She considered herself truly lucky to have such wonderfully loving parents and dearly hoped to extend that gift to her own children someday.

Sitting back down on the couch, she felt satisfied. She’d reconnected with herself. She decided right then that she’d ask Van to spend some more time with her at her apartment, so that he might understand her on that deeper level that only comes with knowing the little details of a person’s life.

It was time. She took the brown parcel from the table and tore the paper off. And there it was; her beautiful book with her name in bold underneath the title. The cover illustration depicted a sweet child-fairy wearing a delicate soft pink dress, balancing on a rose leaf whilst stretching up to sniff a dewy pink bud rose. Behind her there was a sea of pink roses, and each seemed to be waiting for the fairy’s delicate nose to grace them. The drawing was old-fashioned, whimsical and utterly beautiful. Sophia hugged it to her chest and reveled in the warm glow of satisfaction that spread through her.  

Chapter 10

Sophia could see that Van had the fire going inside as she bumped down the driveway to Fir Lodge the following afternoon. The sight of smoke coming out of the chimney pleased her as it was an overcast day and the snow of winter suddenly didn’t seem so far away at all. The idea of a cozy fire was very appealing indeed. In reality, though, they still had several weeks before the first snows came, and Sophia hoped that they were later than usual this year, both here and in Oak Tree Forest. She didn’t fancy being out in the wilderness in thick snow, especially not after her last brush with hypothermia. 

She parked her car and hurried inside with her arms full of grocery bags. She called out to Van as she kicked the door open and then closed again. He appeared at the top of the stairs wearing a woolen sweater, casual black pants and a broad smile. He came down the stairs quickly and she only just had time to put down her bags before he swept her into his arms.

‘Hi, beautiful.’ He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I missed you. How do you feel?’

‘I’m alright today. I took a long nap after lunch. Do I look terrible? Jane was shocked by how bad I looked last night.’

He examined her face, cupping her chin gently in his hand. ‘No. You’re still beautiful.’

‘Maybe a little grey, though?’

‘Maybe just a touch.’

‘Well, I’m not too sick to be in charge of dinner tonight.’ She pointed at the shopping bags. ‘I’ve been to the store and I plan to make a feast to thank you for looking after me lately. I love cooking and tonight’s the night I’m going to showcase my talents. So far you’ve only seen me either eating your food or cooking a rabbit on a stick over a campfire!’

‘And a very good job you did at both of those things.’

‘Thank you. But tonight’s cuisine is going to be a little more refined than that.’

She set to work in the kitchen, determined to make the most of her current burst of energy.

‘What’s on the menu?’ Van asked, watching from a bar stool. He was awaiting instruction on what he could do to help.

‘I love Italian food, so we’re having a three course Italian feast tonight. Actually, I love most styles of international cuisine; French, Spanish, Japanese, Pacific Rim…’ She waved her knife around theatrically. ‘I just love eating, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now!’

Van smiled. ‘You come alive in the kitchen. I can see it’s a real passion for you.’

She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Mom’s a great cook and right from a young age, only three or four, I used to stand right beside her while she prepared dinner each night, ready to do any job she asked me to do. Peeling potatoes, chopping carrots, stirring onions in the pan. That’s where it all started. My Mom loved the whole ceremony of food and eating. She’d set the table for dinner each night with candles and proper napkins; it was a real occasion.’ Van smiled and nodded, seeming to enjoy this insight into her childhood.

‘Anyway, back to tonight. To start we’re having delicious potato gnocchi with a sage butter sauce. Then I’m going to make
brasato di maiale
– braised pork – with
contorni
of steamed vegetables, that’s sides of vegetables. The Italians never serve meat and vegetables to the table on the same plate, always separate. Then for dolce – dessert – a beautiful silky panna cotta.’ She looked up at Van expectantly. ‘My mouth’s watering. How does that sound to you?’

‘Incredible. Are you sure you’re up for all of this, though?’

‘Even if I have to nap in between and we don’t eat until eleven o’clock tonight, I’m doing it.’

‘Right.’ He took off his sweater. ‘Tell me what to do.’ Sophia’s heart melted at the sight of his ruffled hair and at how domestic and
normal
this little scene was. As she passed him the sack of potatoes to peel, she noticed again how she was yearning for that sense of normality, and took a moment to acknowledge and appreciate that the evening was delivering exactly what she needed. Funny how that tended to happen, she thought.

When all the preparations were complete and the pork was in the oven, Sophia took a quick nap and then emerged to find Van studying an enormous map on the rug beside the fire in the lounge. She tiptoed around the edges of it and sat down next to him. She was surprised to see that it was a map of Pennsylvania, and only the Eastern part of the state; by the size of it she’d presumed it must have been of the whole country. On the table beside them was a large leather binder with other maps neatly stacked inside.

She watched him quietly for a few minutes. He was deep in thought. ‘You know that no one really uses paper maps anymore, right?’ she said eventually, raising an eyebrow cheekily.

He looked up from his concentrated study, raising his own thick eyebrows sardonically in reply. ‘Is that right?’

‘Mm, hmm. There’s this thing on the internet called Google Maps that everyone uses now instead.’

‘I’ve heard my brothers talk about it.’

‘You should really get yourself an internet connection and try it. You can choose anywhere in the world that you want to go and see it in close-up detail. In many places you can actually see what it looks like to walk down the street. It’s called Street View. Google employs people all over the world to walk around with cameras strapped to their heads, up mountains and everything, collecting data for Street View. Eventually they’ll record every inch of the planet, I’m sure of it.’

Van twisted his mouth stubbornly. ‘I don’t like the idea of that. Where’s the mystery in knowing absolutely everything?’

Sophia shrugged. ‘I guess there are always the other planets. Oh, and mysterious forests in Eastern Europe. Hey, how do you think it’ll be before some poor soul with a camera on his head starts mapping Oak Tree Forest?’

Van gave a short laugh. ‘He wouldn’t survive long enough to complete his contract, that’s for certain.’

They both settled down and began studying the paper map in earnest. Van had made detailed pencil marks in several sections. He explained to Sophia that he’d spent many, many hours over the years studying maps of Maryland and the Eastern parts of Pennsylvania to try and figure out exactly where he’d travelled on the way to the Battle of Antietam and during his subsequent escape.

‘I’ve narrowed down the possible areas that I could’ve been when the grey wolf bit me. Based on the density of the forests at the time and the fact that I was travelling without a map or compass, my progress was fairly slow. When I left the army it was positioned only around thirty miles northeast of Sharpsburg. I was on the run for exactly three weeks. I’m fairly certain, in fact I’m sure that I made it to this forest right here.’ He pointed to a large green area on the map.
Weiser State Forest
. ‘The area of the forest was bigger back then,’ he said. ‘The state stepped in and formed the current Weiser State Forest because of the general depletion of forests in the nineteenth century. Which is good for us, because it means there’s a chance that grey wolf is still there. We’d have no hope if the trees were all cut down.’

‘But it’s still
huge
,’ Sophia groaned. 

Van nodded. ‘Thirty-thousand acres, to be exact.’

‘I’d like to know how on earth we are meant to find one werewolf amongst that entire wilderness. How do we even know he’s still alive? I feel like we’re setting out on a ridiculous mission that’s destined to fail.’

‘It does seem a long shot,’ Van admitted. ‘But we’ve got to stay positive. Maybe the grey wolf will find us. I’ve always felt that our first meeting was fate. Maybe the stars will align a second time.’

‘We need them to; we don’t have much hope otherwise.’ She stood up with a deep groan. Van looked up with concern.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes. I just make noises like an old lady when I move too quickly at the moment,’ she joked.

Van didn’t laugh. ‘We need to get moving sooner rather than later. Your energy seems lower by the day. I’ll make the final preparations first thing tomorrow morning then we’ll leave straight away.’

Sophia nodded. As much as she tried to make light of her weakening body, she was worried too. What if she was unable to make her own way through this forest to look for the wolf? Sure, Van could carry her some of the way, but progress would be slower and they needed to be as fast as possible on the ground. It was a daunting prospect. She clapped her hands together briskly.

‘First things first; let’s eat.’

That night Sophia set the table with real napkins and they dined on her sumptuous Italian feast by candlelight. They held hands across the table, shared lingering glances, and fed each other forkfuls of melt-in-your-mouth pork and creamy panna cotta. They both knew they needed to move quickly, that time was running out for Sophia. But there was time for one last night together, and they both wanted to make the most of it.