Dreamwalkers (19 page)

One by one, campfires are started, or lights
go on inside the motor homes and trailers.

I remain wolf until it’s dark enough that I
feel safe. Misty has retreated once again into her catatonic
stupor, but I can feel her hunger gnawing at her. I turn human and
speak to her out loud for the first time.

“You should eat.”

When she doesn’t move, I poke her. Her head
rolls toward me sluggishly, then starts a little when she sees my
human form.

“Kayla,” she says slowly.

“Misty, you need to eat. Come on.”

She laughs. Her teeth are a flash on white in
the shadows of her face. “Eat? What am I gonna eat? They don’t feed
me. They like me weak.”

“There’s plenty of food.” I gesture to the
corpses around us. Over the hours, the two wolves that had been
alive expired quietly from their injuries. Ben never came back.
Like he didn’t even care. I can’t even imagine having expendable
members of my pack.

“Food?” Misty looks around, then lets her
head fall back again. “No.”

“It’s food for a wolf.” She doesn’t respond.
“Look, it will keep you alive. Just turn wolf and eat then turn
back. No big deal.”

She looks at me again. “You don’t seem to get
it, pretty girl.”

“Get what?”

“I’ve never turned wolf.”

“What?”

I had never considered this option. She’d
never turned? She had been bitten over a month ago!

“And I never will.” Her voice cracked.

“You will,” I say. “It isn’t hard. Look, I’ve
taught a bunch of people how to do it, so I’m sure–”

“I don’t want to turn wolf,” Misty spits at
me. “I am not an animal.”

Her words are like a slap in the face, and I
sit back on my heels. Thinking before speaking isn’t exactly my
strong suit, but I’m going to give it a shot.

“You don’t have to let the animal side of you
lose control,” I say. “You can control your wolf.”

“Like them?” she says sarcastically. “Like
you, when you were fighting? You just killed twelve people.
People
.
Maybe that’s no big deal to
you, but I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t want to attack
people, or eat their dead bodies.”

My mouth opens before I can even think about
controlling myself.

“Look, I’ve been like this since I was born.
I never had a choice not to be half animal. We’re in the middle of
a war, Misty. This pack–” I gesture around to indicate the
campground, “wants to capture my pack. Because my pack has three
females, and apparently those are a rare commodity. They want to
capture my pack so they can rape us and make us breed their little
bastard children for them, so yes, I am willing to kill them in
order to protect my family and my pack. I will kill every last one
of them if that means my pack can survive in peace. If that makes
me an animal, then fuck you.”

I melt back into a wolf and stalk away from
Misty, sitting with my back very definitely facing her. I watch the
trailer Martin went into. Of course I’m hyper aware of Misty behind
me. I want her to apologize. I want her to crawl on her knees. But
while I wait for that, I watch Martin’s trailer.

There’s a dim light shining from one of the
windows. Why do all trailers have frosted or tinted windows? I
can’t see anything going on inside. The light flickers, like a
candle.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember my wolf
senses.

I close my eyes.

I hear crickets, wind snaking through the
tops of the trees, tree trunks creaking as they sway imperceptibly.
I hear men laughing, whispering, arguing quietly. A woman’s voice,
then a slap. Whimpers.

I strain for voices coming from Martin’s
trailer. The voices are impossibly quiet, even as they seem to
argue. When I recall the flickering lights, I realize it must be a
television.

It takes some time before I notice the sounds
that are missing.

No birds. No owls, no squirrels. The animals
must be afraid, and stay away.

Smells: wood smoke, fire, beer, blood, shit,
and that awful stench that means the wolves have been marking their
territories.

“They make me fight,” Misty says quietly.

Her voice startles me a little. I allow one
ear to flick back to listen better.

“The first day, they drugged me. I woke up in
here with that collar on and a wolf growling in my face. I nearly
pissed myself, then he turned into naked man. And he proceeded to
beat me. I fought him as best I could. I must have fought pretty
hard because at some point he gave up, and another man came in. And
it was more of the same.

“The next time I woke up there was another
woman in here with me. It was dark, and neither of us had clothes
on. Ben stepped up to the fence and introduced himself, and told us
that we had to fight each other to the death. If neither of us was
a clear winner after twenty minutes, we would both get beaten. If
there was a clear winner, only the loser would get beaten.”

Misty sucks in a deep breath. Her voice has
become tense and angry.

“They didn’t tell me that if I won, I would
have to watch them beat her. They didn’t tell me that if I won, I
would have to keep fighting until I lost.”

I turn my head to look at her then.

(you haven’t lost yet, have you)

“No,” she says. She’s quiet for a moment,
then continues. “Some of the women, they turn wolf while I’m
fighting them. Others only turn as they’re being beaten. I see them
out there, beyond the fence, and I wonder if they like seeing me
suffer for what I made them go through.”

(you had no choice)

“But it feels like I did,” Misty says. In the
dark I can see that her face is wet. “I chose to fight.”

(I don’t think survival is a choice)

In the darkening twilight Misty looks at me
and gives me a little smile. Then she closes her eyes and drops her
head forward onto her arms. Within minutes she’s asleep, and I
follow not long after.

My ears twitch suddenly, waking me up. The
darkness is complete now. No lights in the trailers. Only the stars
and moon bright above lend a blue tint to the landscape.

Something woke me, something my wolf brain
interpreted as danger. I try not to move my head to look around and
instead use my other senses. It’s a car engine. Far off, but around
here sound carries. This is not something expected–no one else in
the camp has woken. I get up and pace as the car approaches.

I can’t stand this metal cage penning me in.
My wolf wants to run and escape. Misty still sleeps, her face
strangely peaceful. I came here for her. I need to get her out,
too.

The cage must have weak points. It isn’t
welded together, it’s jury-rigged fencing to make a cage. The frame
is made from metal piping that is thicker than a screen tent frame,
but thinner than the poles used for a chain-link fence at a school.
I wander over to a corner and peer at how the chain links are
attached to the poles. For the support poles along the middle, the
chain links are attacked with simple twisted metal brackets. At the
corner there’s a metal slat that runs through the edges of the
links and is screwed onto the pole. And at the top... the top is
just the twisted brackets holding the roof on.

Could it be so simple to just climb up and
twist the chain link off the pole, and escape?

I check out the gate.

There are two big padlocks attacked to chains
like the one that was attached to my collar earlier, one on each
side of the gate, tethering the lifting part of the gate to the
poles on each side. But when I look at how the chain link connects
to the poles, I see that it’s the same twisted metal brackets.

(Misty)

(wake up)

The car is much closer now, and it sounds
larger than a car. A truck or Jeep maybe. Part of me hopes it could
be Remy and Daniel and my mom and Aunt Jenny, and I’d love to be
out of this cage and able to jump in and escape with them.

(Misty!)

She is getting up, but slowly. I turn human
and start working at the twists. It’s much harder than I
thought–the metal wire is too thick for my soft human fingers–so I
turn back to wolf and pull at them with my teeth. This works much
better, although the inside of my mouth is getting cut up.

“What is it?” she whispers with a
sleep-clogged throat.

(turn wolf and help me)

She looks at me. “Did you forget?”

(Forget what--)

She had told me she’d never turned wolf. I
take a break from eating chain link and look at her.

(If I command you to turn, you can turn)

The look she gives me is one of fear. How can
she be afraid of this? But for me, it was such a natural
transition. “Please don’t,” she says. Her voice sounds like it’s
about to tremble.

(This is too hard for a human to do, but with
wolf teeth both of us could get this gate open and get us out of
here)

She looks at the gate, seeing what I’ve been
trying to do. I’ve got one metal twist most of the way off.

Her hand slides into one of the many pockets
of her cargo pants. I wonder if she’s been wearing those for the
past two months. They’re absolutely coated in mud and ripped all
over–hanging on by the seams.

When she extracts her hand, she has one of
the metal twists in her hands. It’s been bent in half, with the cut
ends held together by some kind of thin rope or thread.

A weapon.

“I found it in the mud,” she says, staring at
it. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to use it.”

For a moment I wonder if she means to kill
me, and I step back as she comes at me.

But she only kneels at the gate and slides
the looped end of the wire over one of the twist ends, and
pulls.

The wire comes away so easily I would have
laughed if I wasn’t a wolf.

“Shit, girl.” Misty laughs mirthlessly. “If
I’d known it was this easy, I would’ve been out of here a long time
ago.”

I swallow through a lump in my throat.
There’s nothing I could say, even if I was human, so I lick her
shoulder. She smiles sadly, then looks at the fence and attacks it
with a viciousness so sudden I back up again.

The truck, it’s definitely a truck, is only a
mile or so out. The headlights blink like tiny lights between the
trees. Misty yanks off one of the twists, hurls it to the ground,
and gets to work on another. I turn human and pick up the wire,
fold it in half, and stand to begin working at the side toward the
bottom corner while Misty works along the bottom.

The first one is difficult, but it gets
easier once I get the hang of it, and with the truck coming the two
of us work faster and faster. Now I hear the brakes squeal
slightly. The vehicle must be at the gate.

“Ben is awake now,” I say the moment I hear
the door of his cabin open. I yank off the twist I had been working
on and melt back into wolf. Misty stops and we both listen.

He slaps on the side of a trailer and,
without waiting, heads to another trailer to do the same. The men
inside grumble and rouse themselves and I hear the sounds of legs
being shoved into pants and boots being slipped onto feet. The
trailer doors open and a group of four men join Ben, who has
started up the road toward the main office.

Once they gone a ways away, I turn back to
human and the two of us begin working again. My fingers hum with
adrenaline. This would be the perfect distraction to allow our
escape.

One twist left. Misty yanks and pulls at it
and finally it’s free, and we’re rolling away the corner of the
gate fencing with shaking hands.

“You first,” I say.

She practically dives through, and I
follow.

“Which way?” Misty says.

“The office is up that way. We should–”

I don’t finish because I hear voices.

(don’t speak listen)

“Did you hear something?” The voice is inside
of a trailer.

“Like what?”

“Voices, or something.”

“I heard a truck. Maybe Arturo is back.”

“It sounded close. And like women.”

“Those bitches in the cage, probably
squawking.”

“You think we should check?”

“If Ben wanted us to keep watch on them he
would have told us to. Go back to sleep.”

“Damn I wish there were more women around
here so I wouldn’t have to share a trailer with you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you more.”

“The women don’t want us, you know. Adam says
the woman Ben gave him just lays there. Like she’s dead.”

“I bet that black bitch in the pit wouldn’t
just lay there.”

“The new one’s fiesty.”

“Fiesty? That alpha bitch is a stone killer,
man. Good thing Ben didn’t send in our crew. Damn.”

We wait, breathlessly, through this whole
exchange. I’m not sure Misty can hear them.

(We need to be silent. We can communicate
like this.)

Misty shakes her head.

(Just try it, think something at me. You can
do it.)

She squeezes her eyes shut and

(CAN YOU HEAR ME)

(yes! jesus. i’m right here, you don’t have
to shout)

She laughs, then covers her mouth.

(this is so weird)

(You’ll get used to it. Come on, we should
go. Let’s try heading away from that main road)

(should i...)

Her question lingers as she stares at my
naked body. I’ve never been taught to be ashamed of myself,
especially among fellow werewolves, but her gaze makes me suddenly
aware of how vulnerable I am as human.

(This would be much easier as wolves, but I
could turn and you stay human?)

She looks at me, then away. I can feel her
mind considering, though I can’t catch anything specific. She’s
awfully good at keeping her thoughts guarded.

Finally

(i would like to try)

I nod.

(Watch me)

I demonstrate the transformation to wolf then
back again. Far off I can hear Ben’s voice along with some of the
others. The engine is still running, idling, back at the main
office.