Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (35 page)

So what’s wrong with me? Wolf ’s not here.
So it wasn’t a question that
she might hurt or kill him. But whoever was left standing might take
it
out
on Wolf. That would be on her.
And so what?

Tired of this endless, mental rat race, she reached into her parka,
withdrew the candy bar, inhaled memories.
Jump, sweetheart.
“I agree,
Dad.” She slid another nibble of candy onto her tongue. “Live a little.”

Why care about Wolf ? How long was she supposed to be grateful?
Wolf was not Chris. She was starting to think like those kidnap victims . . . what was it? Stockholm syndrome?
Sympathy with the devil’s
more like it.
She worried coconut between her teeth.
What is this
, I
kissed a zombie and liked it
? He ate part of your shoulder, for God’s sake.
So what if he protects you now? He
put
you in this position—

She suddenly stiffened.
Hello.
That familiar and yet very weird
scent—wolf and not-wolf—was very close, much more so than ever
before. Dead ahead, in fact, and practically in her lap.
Oh shit.
Did
it sense easy prey? Here she was, alone, in the open. What help she
might count on—
hah!
—was too distant to do her any good, if Darth
even bothered.

Just be calm.
The scent hadn’t deepened to
And, oh, what big teeth
you have
, but she felt her heart giddyap in a spastic gallop. She inched
her eyes, sweeping up from untrammeled snow to the denser green
of the woods and a screen of low cedar—and it was right there, so
perfectly still that were it not for its scent, she’d never have known
where to look.

What
, she thought,
are you?
A flare gun?
Sighing, Chris massaged his aching temples and let himself
sink more deeply into the bed.
What the hell had Penny been thinking?

He was alone again, Hannah having locked him in almost a half
hour ago, according to the old clock. He could hear her moving
around in the kitchen downstairs, caught the chatter of plates and
chinks of glass as she put together food to take out to Isaac in the
lambing barn. His own lunch still waited. He should probably eat,
but the prospect of dragging himself off the bed made him groan
and pull a pillow over his eyes to blot out the bright afternoon light.
After two weeks spent dreaming, he’d have thought he would never
want to lie down again. Yet the creep of a deep weariness was too
powerful to ignore, the bed very inviting—and he needed some time
to digest all this.

Having burned so bright and hot, Peter’s boat sank fast in water
over five hundred feet deep. Neither it nor the dead girl were ever
recovered, and so they joined the litter of wrecks at the bottom of
the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes. Which meant that Peter’s
story—an engine room fire ignited by an electrical short—never
could be investigated. According to Hannah, the Coast Guard and
then the police questioned them but got nowhere. Simon was the
only eyewitness who hadn’t been drinking, and he backed up Peter.

“I knew what I’d seen,” Hannah had said. “But it all happened so
fast, I kept thinking I might be wrong. I didn’t know it was even a
flare until Simon finally told me. Can you believe Penny still had the
gun? After she shot it off, she crammed everything into her pockets.”

From below came the muted thump of a door: Hannah, leaving
for the barn. The silence settled. His clock ticked off the seconds.
Why Hannah kept in touch with Simon was a mystery. All she said
was,
We got close
. Even so, Simon’s suicide attempt was a shock. But
Chris could see it. He understood the impulse.
Your father kills his girlfriend.
Chris hugged the pillow to his eyes.
You—the little kid—help him hide the evidence. You lie to the police because
your dad says it’s the only way.
He remembered that, too. His father, reeking of booze, the smell
of blood wreathing him like a fog:
They’ll split us up, boy. Put you in a
home where there won’t be no one to give a shit about you. You want to be
safe? You don’t want boys and old men
doing
filthy things to you? You want
a roof over your head? Then this is what you’re gonna say. This is what
you’re gonna do.
“Shut up, Dad,” Chris muttered. “It was never about me. It was
always about protecting you.” And keeping secrets until you wake up
one day to find you live with two monsters, the one with your dad’s
face and the thing rotting inside—
“Chris.”
The sound of his name felt unreal, like the slash of an exclamation
point at the end of a sentence you hadn’t realized you’d written. The
sound was short and sharp, like knuckles on a door, and knocked
him from his thoughts. Before he could reply, he heard the doorknob
rattle.
“Come in,” he said, not moving from the bed. Probably Hannah,
back from the barn, wanting his dishes. When he didn’t hear the
hinges complain, he waited a moment. “Hannah?”
The knock came again. This time, he tossed the pillow with a
groan. “Hang on,” he said, swinging his feet to the floor. That was
when he remembered. “I can’t unlock it from my side.”
Hannah said something he didn’t catch. “What?” he called. She
said something else, but her voice was muffled. There was another
rattle, followed this time by the scrape of the bolt. Without thinking
much about it, he turned the knob and pulled open the door. “Sorry,
I was—”
Everything in him—his brain, his breath and blood, the thump of
his heart—stopped.
There, her lime-green scarf still twined around her neck, was
Lena.

Alex had been right. It was a wolf—and it wasn’t.
Some kind of hybrid.
This animal was much larger than even a malamute, but without the
curlicue tail. Its fur was virtually white, with only streaks of gray.
The shape of the head, snout, and ears reminded her of Jet, Chris’s
black German shepherd, but the facial markings and light black mask
resembled a husky.

Why show itself now? Was that because of the candy? What it
thought was an offer of food? Possibly, but the scent wasn’t right.
Like the alpha wolf, this animal’s scent didn’t scream
hunger
or
danger.
Over the lingering sweetness of chocolate and coconut, she could
taste
the emptiness here, all cold dust and gray ash. This wolfdog was
both alone and lonely.

But where did you come from?
For that matter, why had it risked
following her? Maybe it was like the dogs before: how they
always
clamored to be near and protect her, if need be.

They stared at one another. Unlike Jet, the wolfdog’s eyes were an
intense, stunning gold. Only after they’d locked gazes did she remember that it was dangerous to stare down a wild animal. Yet as their
eyes held, that
lonely
taste again washed over her tongue; her chest
ached. It had been a long time since she’d seen a dog. Even a wolfdog
was somehow more normal. It made her feel . . . human.

Moving slowly, she swiveled her head to the right. Head jutting
like a Neanderthal’s, Darth was clomping past the wraparound porch,
heading for Bert and Penny, who were just emerging from the woods.
From the crinkly nip in the air, she knew they’d hauled back mostly
desert-dry pine, which she, oh joy, would then sort through, because
these kids just didn’t learn:
pine + fire = big trouble.
But this meant she
had a few more minutes.

She turned back to the animal. “Hey, boy, whatcha doing?” she
said, softly, knowing better. This was something poor, cranky, sweet
little Ellie would’ve done:
Hey, strange animal, come give me rabies
. The
thought pushed a lump into her throat. If Ellie magically reappeared,
she could make nice to every animal in the forest, and Alex wouldn’t
bat an eye.
She
should know better, too. Given Wolf ’s interesting
fetish, encouraging this animal to stick around was a death warrant.
But she suddenly longed to touch it. Just ruffle her fingers behind its
ears. Selfish, she knew, but she really, really needed this.

“Hey, boy, whatcha doing? You stealing my food? Huh? That’s
okay,” she soothed, and saw the tip of its tail twitch back and forth.
Relax, breathe out; let go, so it can.
“But next time, you think you might
leave me some—”

There was a sudden urgent push in her head, a kind of mental
shove in the center of her brain. A split second later, she felt a heaving
sensation that was like the unfolding of arms and legs, the swiveling
of a gigantic head, the baring of needle-teeth. The opening of yellow
eyes.
What the hell?
Her mind shimmied as if the ground were shifting
under her feet, the snow ready to let go and carom down a rise and
sweep her away. Gasping, she flinched away, nearly tumbling down
the steps, barely aware of the wolfdog’s small, queer yip of alarm.

The monster? Why was it waking up now?
Not because of Wolf.
There was no way to get used to a monster, but she
was
beginning
to sense a difference in what the monster did. Never fully asleep now,
the monster always poked its nose up for a sniff whenever Wolf was
near.
That
feeling was close to her dream: fire and need. Desire. The
monster reaching out in a lover’s embrace because it wanted Wolf.

But this was different.
It’s like that night Spider killed Jack, when I got
yanked behind her eyes. Like when Leopard wanted me in the mine.
And
just days ago, when Acne tried to kill her. This was bloodlust, a killing frenzy
.
There was something—someone—pulling at the monster,
reaching in with clawed hands, dragging it along and into . . .

. . . into a mind that isn’t hers, behind alien eyes—push-push, go-go—in
a body she doesn’t recognize—push-push-push—and isn’t sure belongs to a
girl. Go-go, push-push, she/he/it is moving with four others, just as fast
and silent and gogogo: a red storm, pushpush over the snow, through trees,
pushpushpush, a swirl she/he/it sees through many eyes. To its left, there
are bright flashes of sun dazzle shining through breaks in the forest. That
portion of the forest curves, following a broad swath, rimming a bowl of
unbroken snow. Behind, not very far, there is the pushpushgogo. And there
is another, almost a brother but still an enemy, and that one is screaming:
GOGOGO, LET ME—

Very far ahead, there are six more, and the red storm drives pushpushpush them on, gogogo—and then what she
sees
and where she
is
collapses.
There is another shimmy, a shift. Now, suddenly, she’s jumped again to slip
behind the eyes of someone else, who is chasing after three others. One has a
head of wild, untamed hair; another is small and his pain is a ripe, bright
scent. And there is a third, but he . . . it? . . . is hard to read; there is nothing
to roll around the mouth—but pushpushpush her head is a red storm full of
gogogopushpushPUSH—