“How many have you killed?” P asked her as he led the way inside the house that lay at the front of the property along a gravel road and a good five minute walk from the shed. It was musty and stale and Hannah paid attention to the layout as P kept walking until they were in an office.
“How many what?” Hannah asked him as she put a hand on her hip, looking unconcerned by his question.
P gave her a dark look. “Wolves. Bastards like your friend there. And all the others like him.”
None. She’d never killed anything in her life. But she wasn’t sure if that was the right answer or not, so she chose to avoid the question altogether. “Why do you have a selkie?”
P didn’t answer her, but the other man behind her did. “Too tempting to resist taking him. Normally would have killed him, but figured his skin would make a nice display when he’s older. Too young to kill then. Almost there now.”
Hannah tried not to show how much she wanted to puke. “So you skin them?”
P smiled at her, but there was no warmth in the expression. “Show her.”
“You sure, boss?”
P nodded and Hannah found herself being led upstairs to a bedroom, which already made her nervous, but once she saw the heads mounted on the walls around the small twin size bed she couldn’t help the tears that spilled down her cheeks. The werewolves were easy enough to tell, but there were so many other creatures on display there that she had no idea what they all were. She walked toward one white wolf’s face and tried not to cry out when she realized it reminded her of Evangeline, who was safely back at home in the pack. Before she could get to the wolf’s mounted head though she tripped over a trunk at the foot of the bed.
“Ow,” she said, bending down to rub her bruised shin. “What’s in there? Its heavy.”
“You’re impressed by all of them, huh?” the man asked her.
Hannah played along, nodding even as she wanted to scream at him for his cruelty. “Um. Yeah. Sure.”
He knelt in front of her. “Then you’ll really like this.” He opened up the trunk and pulled out a shiny pelt. He laid it over the bed and pulled another out, followed by yet another.
“So many,” Hannah commented dryly. She caught sight of one that was different as he laid it on the bed. It looked wet and nearly dark brown. It was Caelum’s. She was sure of it.
“Never met a woman that was a hunter before. Stay here, with us, we’ll train you up right. The wolves, they’ve brainwashed you. They’re beasts. Monsters. Nothing like us. We’ll be good to you.” He was looking at her like he really hoped she’d say the right thing. Like when her teacher asked her a question that she should have known. But unlike the times when she wasn’t paying attention in class, she knew what her answer was here.
She smiled at him, hoping it would relax him long enough for her to do what she needed to do. She leaned forward and put a hand on his arm, hoping she looked innocent. “Really? I could stay here with you two? And you’d show me everything?”
His expression softened and he nodded. “Sure. Whatever you wanted. You’d be the best hunter this side of the Mississippi. I know you would. Pretty girl like you, they’d come to you. The beasts are drawn to girls like you. They—”
Hannah grabbed the keys out of his pocket and pushed him over, quickly jumping to her feet and picking up Caelum’s fur as she did. She was down the stairs a heartbeat later. P came out before she was at the front door, blocking her path.
“Hey! What—”
Hannah pushed him aside, using her speed and momentum to get him off balance as she bolted for the shed. She could hear them running behind her as she unlocked the door. Only two keys made it easy. Their mistake. Ippy’s cage was next and then she and Ippy started on Caelum’s ropes, but she felt the men behind her, blocking their way out even before they got Caelum untied.
“Bad mistake, you stupid little girl. Now you’ll die first,” one of them said. She heard him step into the shed and bristled.
“Caelum,” she whispered, looking down at him as he sat up, his hands freed. “I have your skin now. Help us get away. You don’t need to stay here. Not anymore. We can help you.” He got to his feet without saying anything to her. “You promised!” she hissed at him when it looked like he wasn’t going to do anything but stare the men down.
She shouldn’t have doubted him, though. She realized that a moment later as P charged toward him. Caelum’s movements were jerky, but he was strong as he fought back against P. Hannah ran at the men, too, shrieking as she pummeled one of them and kicked at another. She wasn’t very good, but she’d had some training and she was fast. They had the men down, but for how long she didn’t know as she grabbed Ippy’s hand without asking and pulled him and Caelum out of the shed by their hands. They took off to the woods, a place she felt comfortable in despite not knowing these particular ones, and kept running, the guys behind her, until her lungs burned and sweat made her shirt cling to her back. Only then did she stop and turn back to them.
“We did it,” she gasped out, grinning at them both.
“Not safe yet,” Caelum reminded her, killing her brief moment of joy.
Hannah rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Ippy. “You okay?”
You lied.
Nodding, Hannah figured he might catch onto that. “Yeah. I did. I had to get them to trust me. Forgive me?”
He shrugged and she thought that would have to be good enough for right now. “Alright, Caelum, here’s your skin. Now what’s around here? We need a phone. I’m going to call my dads.”
He took it from her hands, looking grateful as he clutched the small scrap of stiff leather tightly to his chest before lifting his shirt and stuffing it into his front pocket. It hung out a bit, but he tucked the top into the side of his shorts, too. She figured that when he was all healed up it would be a lot larger than it was now because there was no way that the skin, no more than a few feet across, would be able to cover him otherwise. “There’s the diner.”
Ippy shook his head.
Look for us there first.
“Ippy says they’d look for us there first. He’s right. No roads, no major places.”
Caelum frowned. “Then we might be walking for a while.”
Hannah nodded then quickly pulled them both down next to her behind a rotting log when she heard a twig snap in the distance. “That’s fine,” she whispered, wishing they hadn’t taken her phone.
Deer. West.
She nodded to Ippy, glad his sense of smell was much better than hers.
“How do you know it’s a deer?” Caelum asked.
Hannah was about to snap at him that Ippy just did, but then her mouth fell open and she could only stare up into his nearly black eyes. “You…how did…But he…”
They both turned their attentions to Ippy, who only shrugged.
Wanted to talk to both of you.
Hannah grinned. “I’m going to hug you now. Okay?”
He didn’t look too excited about that idea, but didn’t move away from her, either, as her arms came around his shoulders. She didn’t squeeze him, just wanted to let him know she was glad he’d figured out a way to talk to both of them at once. Or even just another person. She felt a moment of jealousy and uncertainty, like maybe he wouldn’t need her anymore. But she quickly brushed it aside. He didn’t really need her now. Not really, anyway. And now that he could talk to another person, maybe his parents would be next. And then their teacher and Samson, too. He could actually talk to them instead of her talking for him all the time.
Hannah was ecstatic until Ippy said,
Not a deer,
startling
her into pulling away from him.
“What isn’t?” she asked him, looking around to see what he had heard or seen.
He lifted his hand just as she spotted the men coming for them. Caelum ran first and Hannah grabbed Ippy’s hand, making sure he was close behind them before she took off running as well with the men screaming at their backs.
They found shelter a good mile later behind an old barn, but didn’t stay long out of fear that the men would easily be able to get them again. They avoided roads and other people, but kept heading east because that was the way Hannah knew their pack was. By the time they did stop to rest it was dark, their stomachs were growling and Hannah’s feet badly hurt from all the blisters forming on them. They found a spot behind a thick patch of trees a good ten minute walk from the nearest road and sank down in the old leaves.
This sucks.
Hannah nodded, easily agreeing with him. She turned onto her side and put her arm under her head, feeling miserable and like she’d let him down along with everyone else in the pack that was likely worried about them. “I’m sorry, Ippy,” she whispered. Her stomach hurt and she laid a hand over it. From beside her Ippy didn’t respond and she closed her eyes and tried not to think about how cold it was or how much she missed her dads, her alpha or Evangeline. They were her family and she’d really screwed up. The leaves crunched behind her and she opened her eyes to look over her shoulder as Caelum as he lay down behind her. He draped an arm over her side and Hannah looked up at Ippy, wondering what she should do. She’d never lain next to anyone besides Ippy, and this felt a lot different than when she was next to him. But she didn’t want Caelum to move, either. Not really, anyway.
Ippy lay down in front of her, giving her his back like they normally did when they lay down together. She tried not to think about how weird it was to have Caelum behind her as she stared at the back of Ippy’s head. Maybe selkies were touchy, too—like most werewolves were, Ippy being the exception, of course. Maybe that was it. Could be. She’d almost managed to convince herself of it when Caelum started softly snoring behind her.
Hannah was barely asleep when the barking of a dog woke her up. At first her sleep-addled brain thought it might be a member of the pack in wolf form bothering her. But when the barking grew louder and she heard a woman’s voice nearby she quickly shook the guys awake, much to Ippy’s displeasure. Caelum was on his feet first, even before she was, and she was surprised when she reached for his hand in the darkness. Too scared to move, they waited, Hannah pushing Ippy behind them as the light of a flashlight crept ever closer.
She caught sight of the bounding form of a dog jumping through the beam and waited, holding her breath for whoever it was that found them to get closer. They couldn’t run anymore. She hadn’t even considered trying. Caelum squeezed her hand in his and she was surprised to feel Ippy’s hand on the back of her shirt, holding her close as well. She’d known Ippy for years and he was her best friend, but even though they hadn’t even known Caelum for more than a day, she felt connected to him. And she was glad that he was there with them. She brought her free hand up to block the light as it shined in her eyes.
“Hannah Glass? Is that you, child?” a voice like crinkled tissue paper called into the darkness.
She gasped and dropped her hand, trying to get a look at the woman behind the voice. “Who are—how do you know my name?” She swallowed thickly, her nerves getting the better of her as she leaned into Caelum’s side and reached behind her to touch Ippy’s hand on her shirt, seeking strength and comfort from them both.
The elderly woman’s twisted face came into view as she crept forward, and Hannah had to turn away or risk letting out her surprise. She’d never seen anything quite so distressing as the sight of the gnarled, mottled skin that covered the woman’s thin face.
“Do not hide your eyes child, come, look closer.”
Hannah shook her head despite the woman’s soft voice. Ippy tugged on her shirt and Caelum added a second hand to the one holding hers. “Who are you?” Caelum demanded, sounding far stronger than she felt.
“Just a kindly old woman, sent by a father of both wolf and man. One that is quite worried about a little girl who, as I understand it, is in a good deal of trouble when he finds out where she’s gone off to.” There was a smile in the woman’s voice. Hannah could tell. Cold fingers touched her cheek and Hannah shivered as she tried to pull away. But the guys wouldn’t back up and when she looked up at the woman she realized that she was still a good ten feet away.
The moon illuminated her grisly face now and Hannah tried not to look, but something about her features caught her attention and a heartbeat later she was stepping forward toward the strange woman. “It’s a disguise,” she breathed into the chilled night air. The woman’s face began to crumble around the edges near her throat and Hannah forced herself to relax.
“I am Cicile. And you are welcome to wait with me until your father arrives to claim you. Come, all of you, come with me now. These woods are not safe for children.”
Hannah hesitated, not only because this woman was a stranger, but because as the disguise flaked off she saw something else on the woman’s face that made her heart skip. “There’s blood on your mouth,” she said into the space between them. Caelum was beside her a moment later, his much bigger body blocking Cicile from looking at her as Ippy came up beside her. He was smaller than them both, but she welcomed his support as he moved to protect her as well. She put a gentle hand on both of their backs, though she half expected Ippy to protest into her mind. When he didn’t, she wrapped her hand around the waist of his pants, glad to have him so close.
Cicile wiped at her mouth with one gnarled hand. When she looked at the smeared black fluid she smiled at her hand. “Ah. So there is.”
“I’ve met one of you before,” Hannah slowly said, the memories coming back to her. She’d been a child, frightened as she stood between her dads and faced down a glowing woman on the outskirts of a forest much like this one.
Cicile didn’t look surprised. “Oh? Have you, now?”
Hannah nodded. “I was in Ireland with my dads in a place called Galway Sound. And she was a forest fae. I don’t know if you’re a forest fae, too, but you aren’t human, and I’ll bet my chores for the next week that you’re fae.”
“Only a week?”
Hannah licked her lips, feeling emboldened by the moment. “A month.”
Between one heartbeat and the next Cicile transformed herself, dropping the withered old disguise completely and standing before them as a beautiful woman, her long white hair flowing around her and nearly coming to her knees. Beside her the dog changed, too, becoming taller, leaner as his face lengthened and his ears grew larger. Cicile reached down to touch the bright red stripe that went down the creature’s back. “You are correct, little huntress. I am a forest fae.”