Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) (30 page)

“Huh? Oh…” I was pulling double duty; on one screen I was doing research on Teddy Roosevelt, on the other I was reading about pack hunting techniques. Like a genius, I’d left the wrong screen open when I spaced out. I was just glad it was Bo instead of Mr. Carter. I clicked back to my other window right away.

“Hey, I was reading that!” Bo pouted.

“Down boy, stop whining.”

“Fuck you.” he leaned back and stretched his thick arms over his head. “You know, I’ve always loved the idea of hunting in a pack… Everybody running together with a single purpose and flawless teamwork. I guess that’s why I loved sports so much…”

My eyes closed as I rememb
ered my first full moon; and everything from that memory that fate had stolen from me… I remembered the way the wind flowed around me as Fen and I chased Geri in a world long lost—the way Loki danced in the snow when she thought no one was watching—I’d give anything to have that back…

“Oh really?” Bo asked and my eyes snapped open as I realized I’d said that last part out loud.

“Oh, nothing, never mind…” I mumbled as I focused back on my computer.

“Damnit Jimmy, when are you going to tell me the truth?” he looked hurt and pissed. “I know you’re hiding, well,
everything
from me. You can trust me—”
Could I really?
“—so when are you going to stop lying to me all the time?”

I sighed and closed my eyes. Did he deserve the leap of faith he was asking for? Did I have any right to talk anymore? My wolf was gone—if he’d ever existed in the first place—and I was just as human as Bo. And just as easy to kill as Fen…

“Bo, I’m sorry, but my best friend is dead, and I don’t exactly feel like I can trust
anybody
, ya know?”

He grimaced and sighed, but I saw the anger in his eyes relent. “Yeah,” he looked down, “I guess I can understand th
at. I’m sorry; I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for you.”

“I was there Bo. I was the one holding his hand when his heart stopped. Some paramedic had to scrub his blood off my face… off my hands…” I paused as my throat grew tight, and swallowed hard.

“Jesus…” I couldn’t tell if Bo was more disturbed by the raw emotion on my face, or the gruesome details that only Loki and I knew.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like?” my voice broke as I struggled to keep my volume down. “The classrooms we shared, the halls we walked down together. Every second in this place is like a cheese grater carving out pieces of
my soul. Not enough to kill me, but more than enough to make me wish for death. Sometimes I wake up and I’ve forgotten, only to relive the loss, all over again, every… single… fucking… day…

“Every time I look down the street and see those goddamned potheads living in the house he grew up in. Every time I walk into Art and see that empty seat. It all crashes over me again and—and I failed him… I fucking failed him…” I heard the cloth of Bo’s shirt move as he reached out and set a hand on my shoulder.

“Geri left. As Fen died, I promised him I would look after the others, take care of them, but I failed… I couldn’t lead a goddamn lemming off a cliff…”

“I don’t know what it’s worth, but…
I
would follow you.”

“How can you say that? Bo, I don’t even know who I am anymore!” I moaned, “I’ve lost more than I can bear, and my toes are hanging over the edge. I feel like a boat adrift at sea, lost in a storm with a broken rudder, just waiting to drown. It’s like my identity—my very soul—has been stripped away…”

Bo just offered me a kind smile, his dark skin creased at the corners of his bright eyes, “You’re Jimmy Walker, a good guy who’s had enough shit dumped on him to crush a man twice his age. This sort of thing is called ‘the dark night of the soul’, and like any other night, it passes. And if you were my Alpha,” he nodded at my screen, “I’d follow you.” He smiled again and squeezed my shoulder and then went back to work. I watched him for just a moment longer before I turned back to my own screen and went through the motions while my mind wandered…

Everything starts over…

The rain passed, though the dark clouds lingered overhead. After school, I stopped by Jacob’s school and waited for a few minutes before I figured Mom must’ve picked him up. I got home and dropped my bag on the couch. I sighed and pressed my fingers into my eyes when I heard Mom call me into the kitchen.
God, what’d I do wrong now…?

John wasn’t there, but mom sat at the kitchen table looking terrible. It was obvious she’d been crying. I ground my teeth against the anger and suspicion that boiled up inside me as I sat down. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“This came in the mail today, must have been misdelivered.” she said and slid a large manila envelope across the table to me. “I couldn’t decide whether to throw it away or open it…” Her voice trailed off when she saw the look on my face.

The envelope was addressed to James Kendle
, with the Colorado State University seal stamped on the corner. Ringing filled my ears as my shaking hands opened the letter before my brain could decide if I really wanted to see what was inside or not. It was hard to breathe as I skimmed the papers.

Fen had been admitted to the College of Natural Sciences with a full ride scholarship about month after he died.

“Jimmy? Are you alr—”

“It’s not fair Mom,” I interrupted her, “it’s not fucking fair!” I screamed as I threw the papers across the kitchen and grabbed my head. “Why? Why did Fen have to die? He deserved to live; he had so much to live for! Why! Why him and not me, it should have been me!”

“Jimmy, don’t say that! Don’t ever say that!” Mom said as she reached out for me, but I recoiled from her. Jacob came downstairs and grabbed onto Mom’s leg. I didn’t care about how hurt they looked, how scared. The house loomed around me, pressing in, it choked me. The world narrowed. I had to run. Had to get out…

A single thought broke through with surgical clarity.

Before I even realized it, I was running out of the house to my car. Mom ran out after me with Jacob trailing behind with wide eyes, “Jimmy! Jimmy, where are you going?”

“To see Fen.” I said, and drove off.

I tried not to think as I drove into the mountains outside of town. I needed to get out. Out of my skin. Out of my mind. The nightmares that plagued me forbid me from finding a single moment’s reprieve from the guilt and pain of Fen’s death. Like he beckoned me even beyond the grave.

He never wanted you while he was alive…

I swallowed the bitter thought and turned off the highway. The same road Fen had taken me on that looked over the town, the same road we’d taken to spread his ashes. I hated and loved this road, this life, just as much as I hated and loved Fen himself.

The road curved through the mountain’s shadow and into a stretch of snow. Before I could react, the car lurched sideways on a hidden layer of ice. The rear end flipped around the front and finally halted, tires still spinning. Shaking, I revved the engine a couple times, hoping the tires would find traction. Nothing.

“Fuck my life…” I groaned as I hit my head against the steering wheel.

I opened the door and slipped on the ice. I caught myself, but it torqued the muscles in my scarred calf and ignited a festering burn. Cold wind whipped around me, cutting through my clothes. I fought a wave of vertigo as I looked down the side of the mountain and realized just how close I’d come to plummeting down it. I carefully worked my way around the car and looked underneath it at the packed snow that I
’d bottomed out on.

I tried everything I could think of to get the car unstuck. From pushing on it, to bouncing up a
nd down on the trunk, to cussing the thing into obedience. No matter what I tried, it wouldn’t budge.

I fished the cell phone my parents gave me out of my pocket and checked the reception; I’d forgotten I even had it. The ‘No Service’ icon blinked at the top of the display and I almost chucked it off the side of the mountain in frustration. Fuck you Murphy’s Law; fuck you so hard!

I tucked the cell phone into my pocket and admitted defeat as night grew close and I resigned myself to walking home. The jacket I wore to school was still on the passenger seat, so I layered that with one of Geri’s old shirts that I found in the trunk. It hardly dulled the biting wind, but it was better than nothing.

Mental note, keep winter clothes in the trunk at all times.

I wrapped my arms tight around myself and limped my way up the mountain to where the road crested along the top ridge. My eyes watered as I looked out over the city for the first time since we’d scattered Fen’s ashes. Streetlamps just looked like little glowing dots scattered around the landscape and outlining roadways. The world felt so far away; everyone and everything I’d ever known just something off in the distance.

I’d spent plenty of time alone over the years, especially the last month. But standing on top of that mountain and looking down at the city lights like some Olympian god with nothing but the sound of the wind and my own breath to keep be company, I felt truly isolated. Trapped, stranded, and alone with memories of things I’d never wanted, or wanted and never had.

No wolf can ever be happy alone; the wolf and the pack are the same thing.

I gritted my teeth. Now was not the time to think about that. It would be so much easier if I could just forget about my wolf. About the father I’d never known. About Fen, Loki, and Corwin, like it never happened, but that didn’t seem to be possible.

I resumed my descent to town and the pain in my calf grew as the muscles rebelled, aching from cold and overuse. Swearing in a steady stream, I descended the mountain with a limp. Near the halfway point, I heard something down at the base of the mountain. I heard splashing water, but I also thought I heard voices. I stepped over to the edge of the road to look down. It almost looked like people with flashlights. Distracted, I slipped, but my foot didn’t catch me in time. The ground rushed up to meet me and everything went black with a blast of pain.

I didn’t hurt.

I didn’t feel cold anymore.

To be honest, I couldn’t feel anything.

I stood up and looked down at my own body sprawled out in the dirt and slush. Logic was slow to respond as I fought the realization that nagged at me. I looked at the dark splash of red that colored the ground beneath my skull, and the jagged rock beside it.

“No… No-no-no-no-no” became a repeated mantra I chanted to myself as I fell to my knees beside my body, surprisingly weightless as I held my shoulders and rocked back and forth. Was I… was I dead?

A barely perceptible puff of steam leaked out from my face, and I froze. After what felt like an impossible eternity, I saw another one. I was still breathing, so I wasn’t quite dead… yet.

A familiar fluttering sound surrounded me, and I looked for the source. Finally the fluttering stopped and a resonant ‘cark’ came from behind me.

“Corwin?” My stomach dropped as I turned, but the raven that sat there watching me from the middle of the road was obviously not him. It wasn’t just bigger than Corwin’s raven form,
much
bigger; it also radiated a cold pulse of power. A power I recognized from buried memories, and Fen’s words repeated in my mind.

“Ravens walk between the worlds of the living and the dead; they help guide souls to the beyond.”

I struggled to swallow past a choked throat as I took a couple steps backward from it, and the thing spread its wings. Terrified, I turned and ran as the air churned behind me.

Powerful talons grasped my upper arm, scalding me with its touch. I cried out and flailed as the raven lifted me into the air and carried me away from the mountainside, the sound of voices and water far below.

My gut twisted as the raven dived and we plummeted sickeningly. I couldn’t even scream as we reached the surface of an irrigation ditch and violet light exploded around us. Instead of smashing into the rocky bottom, the earth opened for us and we barreled deep under the ground.

A swirling marble net of blue light covered us
for a moment before we exploded from the water, dry and whole on the other side. Blasting sunlight blinded me, and I clenched my eyes shut as the raven released its grip and I tumbled to the ground. I forced my eyes open and blinked as the raven’s silhouette flickered through the sunlight and soared through a brilliant blue sky.

Reeling, I gazed around the massive green valley the raven had dragged me into. A towering granite cliff dominated the valley across the water from a dense forest.

“Where the hell am I?” I muttered as wonder and terror dueled inside me. If I was dead, was this… heaven? Hell? None of the above? I had no freaking clue…

The raven circled overhead and dipped toward me with a caw, before winging toward the sprawling forest and the rows of misty blue mountains beyond. I felt a tug in my chest, just like I had the night Fen bit me, urging me toward the forest.

“He wants you to follow him,” a worn and smoky voice spoke behind me and I jumped. I turned and found an old Native American man standing there, with dark skin and a strong jaw. Laugh lines creased the leathery skin around his eyes as he smiled at my reaction and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his denim overalls.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked.

“That’s no way to talk to your elders boy, much less your
Qhipe
.” His smile faded and I felt the pressure of some hidden power lurking behind his dark eyes.

“What is a
‘keepay’
?” I asked.

“
Qhipe
means Grandfather, boy. That’s who I am!” It took a second for what he said to sink in before I realized how many of his features echoed my face, and I recognized him from my dream.

“But my grandfather’s dead—” after another second, the other implication sank in, “Fuck… I
am
dead!”

My grandfather waved a dismissive hand. “Relax boy, it’s not your first time, and probably won’t be the last. Besides, your body’s not dead yet, just empty.”

“Oh! Great, thanks, that’s
so
much better!”

“Can the lip, boy, and pay attention. Raven brought you here for a reason,” he said the word Raven like an old friend’s name with a capital ‘R’, “but you need to deal with your shackle first.”

“What shackle?” I said.

“That,” my grandfather pointed to my calf, “needs to be dealt with before you can see
Hnt’llane
.”

I looked where he pointed, and saw a dark stain on my pant leg. I lifted the fabric and almost threw up. Where my scar was in the real world, a blackened oozing pestilence ate into my body. Dark veins ran outward from the ruined tissue, through my ankle to the ground and up past my thigh.

“What is this?” I demanded as I looked up, but I was alone in the field. Over toward the forest, the raven—Raven himself apparently—cawed impatiently at me again. My grandfather wanted me to follow him, and I remembered Lupa saying that I was ‘marked’ by Brother Raven. In the end, I didn’t feel like I had a choice really. I crossed the field and swallowed as I stepped into the eerie calm of the forest.

The woods darkened and I withdrew into my mind as I picked my way along a path. Why did he call it my ‘shackle’? I frowned. Something about that scar seemed to be important, but my memories were hard to pin down. I was
in Middle School when it happened, Jacob was only a couple months old. I knew I got it in Miami, and I could remember the physical therapy as I learned to walk again, but…what made it? I struggled to remember the source until—

—A dry rattling rasp, like frying bacon—agony in my leg—sunlight flashed off too-blue water—my heart pounded in my chest as I struggled the breathe—

—obscure memories flashed inside my head and I staggered. The disease in my leg throbbed as a steel trap slammed shut on the memories, cutting them off before I could even make sense of them. I focused on just breathing in and out until a shadow moved in the corner of my eye.

I looked up and froze. My other self stood there watching me. My wolf’s black pelt and feral eyes gazed back at me. I felt the weight of his gaze as barely contained power radiated off of him. He lowered his face toward the ground and sniffed—seemed to recognize me—but tensed and bounded away toward the dark heart of the forest when I moved.

I followed as quickly as I could. The throbbing wound on my leg seemed to grow heavier and heavier as I limped along. A low mist crept between the trees and swirled around my feet as I rushed through trees ever darker and darker until—

I know this place!

I walked around a boulder and stepped into a circular clearing with a charred fire pit and looked up at the full moon, centered between the obsidian trees. Just like that dream so long ago, the first time I saw Lupa.

I smiled, hoping to see her again, but instead I heard a dry hissing sound that I recognized immediately and my throat went dry. I couldn’t focus the sound though; it seemed to come from everywhere at once. I turned in circles, and then the sound focused into a single spot and my blood ran cold when I glanced down.

The rattlesnake coiled by the trunk of one of the trees, its wide mouth displayed needle-like fangs.  

Past and present overlapped as long buried memories from Miami broke free
and terror choked me. Time slowed, and I saw everything in obscene clarity. Even the strange red cross-shaped mark atop the snake’s triangular head, like the dragon in my dream, as it struck toward my leg.

But the pain never came.

A dark blur smashed into the serpent in mid-strike and in the space of time it took me to blink the snake writhed dead, its head flopping around on a torn neck as small beads of yellowish venom gathered on the tips of its fangs. I tore my eyes away in time to watch a black lupine rump disappear into the misty trees.

I fought the choking cold that gripped me as I scrambled back from the twisting corpse. A dam ruptured inside my head, and a thousand buried memories crashed over me…

Sunlight glimmered off the water in the swimming pool in Miami, while insects droned around us. Anxious to cool off, I ran along the side of the pool ahead of Mom while she carried Jacob. I never even saw the rattlesnake; but I relived the agony that exploded in my calf. Flashing lights rushed me to a hospital, but they didn’t have the right antivenin, so a helicopter flew me to a second hospital.

My heart stopped en-route. I couldn’t breathe and I went into card
iac arrest. That’s what they told Mom, but they couldn’t see the violet
light that surrounded me as Raven fought to keep my soul from leaving my body. He held me together until the paramedics could restart my heart.

I should have died. The doctors said I should have died. Days passed in torment as the venom warred with my body and Death seemed to wait at the foot of my bed. The doctors had
to cut my leg open from knee to ankle so the swelling had somewhere to expand. They repaired the damage the best they could, but the scar on my calf remained.

A lingering reminder of everything I had shoved out and tried to hide from—

The memories released me, and my grandfather’s voice came into focus as he whispered, “Shh, come back Jimmy. Come back to me now…” I felt his strong arm around on my shoulders, holding me tight.

“That was what broke me,” I muttered as realization clicked into place, “I was terrified, not just of death, but of leaving my body at all. I forced Lupa away and then buried my wolf and the memories so deep they’d almost ceased to exist. Until Fen pulled me back…”

Another wave of sorrow, shame, and guilt washed over me. Before I could react, my grandfather jabbed the tip of a stone knife into the festering wound on my leg.

“What the fuck?” I shouted as I jerked back.

Black ichor spurted out of the wound and it began to drain like a lanced abscess. All of the fear and rejected memories I had infected myself with finally released. The dark and destructive hate I had hoarded inside myself, my Dragon’s very lifeblood, sizzled as its corrosion dribbled onto the ground.

“Let go of your fear Jimmy. All that rage and all that sorrow won’t ever make you stronger; it’s just a shackle that holds you back. In time, you will learn how to let go of the things you can never change. Things happen. Accept it, and learn what you can.”

“Shit, give me a little warning next time,” I snapped and stood up. My legs were already unsteady from reliving the trauma of the snake bite, and the oozing wound—which I stubbornly refused to admit already felt better—didn’t want to support my weight.

My grandfather stepped next to me and lifted my arm over his shoulder with a grunt. “Boy, you’ve grown. The last time I saw you, I could carry you with one arm—” I looked suspiciously at his knife until he stashed it in one of his pockets. “Weapons are tools, Jimmy,” he grumbled, “A hammer can build a house or crush a skull; it all depends on the person who wields it. Never confuse the two, and never forget where the accountability lies.”

He helped me through the trees and along the dried up riverbed. While we walked, I glanced at my grandfather’s face and tried to find myself in it. I had his jaw, though my cheekbones and eyes were definitely Mom’s. The lines on either side of my mouth were his, as was the raven black hair, though his was long and threaded with gray and silver. After a moment, he noticed me watching him.