“Where to now?”
He paused, looking hesitant. “I need to find out how wide these hunters’ strides across our realm have become. The mountain lair we just left, my family’s lair, is one of the closest to where the hunters set up their base. I am supposing that we were among the very first to be affected. The second closest tribe that I know of is the Tuftbrook tribe. We have never been on very good terms with them, but we have not been inimical either… You might be surprised how few packs get along with each other,” he added with a dark look. “If these hunters wish to divide and conquer, if that is their strategy, division already exists in this realm aplenty; it’s ripe for the picking.”
“You think the hunters might have reached the Tuftbrooks already?” I asked.
“It’s possible. Perhaps they found allies among traitors there, as they did in my pack. Or, I believe more likely, they could have just wiped them all out… But I wish to visit and see for myself. I have hope they are still there.”
And so I resumed my seat on his back and we began to travel again. I ended up closing my eyes for most of the journey—I’d been woken up abruptly, likely in the middle of a sleep cycle, and now I felt like death. Of course, there was no chance of actual sleep.
After about an hour, he assured me that we were about to arrive and then, without warning, he came to a stop so sudden I almost got thrown off his back. Bastien’s head raised toward the treetops. Following his gaze, I realized what he had spotted. My breath hitched. Perched on a high branch—and thankfully facing the opposite direction—was one of the mutants. Then I spotted another one, two trees along.
I expected Bastien to turn around and begin running in the opposite direction. It seemed obvious to me that the hunters had already struck here, as we had feared. But he kept creeping forward, even as he swerved to avoid direct visibility by the mutants above us.
My breathing was coming hard and fast as the trees began to thin and we approached a clearing. The ground sloped from the edges downward, and in the center was a wide hole in the ground. It looked like a giant rabbit hole or… a wolf hole. Hunters in uniforms carrying guns were milling in and out of it.
Come on, Bastien, let’s go! I was praying in my mind. What if they had installed alarms around here? We had witnessed enough to understand that they had taken over the lair.
Finally, Bastien stepped backward and began running in the opposite direction, away from the hunters, away from their mutants. Once I guessed we had traveled about ten miles, he slowed to a walk.
Still, he remained quiet.
“So, they took over the Tuftbrooks’ lair,” I said.
“Yes,” he grunted. “They are—or were—a tight-knit group, and I did doubt that any of them would be willing to submit to the hunters or cooperate with whatever it is they have in mind. The hunters have raided the place and either killed them or kidnapped them, or maybe a mixture of the two.”
Shivers ran through me as I caught screeching in the distance, a reminder that we were still close to the mutants.
“We should find some shelter for the night,” Bastien said, picking up his pace again.
We traveled through the forest until we reached another spread of mountains, a smaller one this time, and thankfully less steep. Bastien began climbing and stopped about twenty feet up, where we came across a small cave. He crept inside and I slid off his back, touching down on the rocky surface.
Bastien set down the satchel and the belt he had been carrying in his teeth. He nudged the satchel toward me with his nose. “Please take out my clothes.”
I hadn’t known that he’d put clothes in here. But as I rummaged through, I found three clean sets. He must have packed them while I had been sleeping. I pulled out a shirt and a pair of pants as well as, ahem, underpants, and handed them to him. He collected them between his teeth and then dropped down over the edge. I wasn’t sure where he planned to change, but I stood back quite a distance…
When he returned, he was a man again, fully dressed in his clothes. It was a good thing that he’d come when he had, because it had started to rain. We backed deeper into the cave together, bringing the belt and satchel with us. We found a couple of flat rocks and sat down.
What had been a light drizzle fast turned into a downpour. Staring out at the rain beating against the mountainside and harassing the trees surrounding us, we lapsed into silence. It was surprisingly dry back here, and I might have even felt semi-comfortable lying down on this rock, but there was no way I could sleep now and I knew he wouldn’t either.
My thoughts turned back to the hunters. How many other lairs had they reached already? Was the werewolf realm the only realm they had targeted so far? If not, which others had they gained a foothold in? And what was their game plan here? Was it just to send a message to supernaturals that they could just as easily cause havoc in their realms? Or in the end, were the hunters planning to massacre them all, even those who cooperated?
I thought anxiously about Grace and Heath again. I had never witnessed what happened to them. And then I thought of the loved ones I’d left behind on Earth. It killed me to think how worried sick my parents would be right now. I feared that they would come through the portal in search of me and maybe even get captured themselves. Please be okay. My uniform jacket had a tracker installed in it, but I highly doubted it would work in the supernatural world.
“How am I ever going to get back to them?” I found myself whispering aloud, fear constricting my throat. My words shattered through Bastien’s own contemplation and he glanced at me.
“You need a portal,” he said.
Well, yes and no. It depended on where the portal would lead in the human realm. I needed to get back there, but I couldn’t just be dumped anywhere… like in the middle of a wasteland overridden by Bloodless. I had to find a safe portal—one where, on the other side, I could find help to get back to The Shade.
“Do you know of any other portals in this werewolf realm?” I asked all the same.
“Yes,” Bastien replied. “I do know of one other. It is on the shore, some distance away from here.”
I chewed on my lower lip. I guessed I could see where it led to. If it dropped me somewhere terrible, then I would just have to hope I could scramble back through the gate… and ask Bastien to wait for me.
“Would you take me there?” I asked, tentatively.
Bastien looked away, his expression rather morose. He nodded. “We’ll have to hope the hunters haven’t already taken control of it. But I’ll take you there, if you’d like.”
“Thank you,” I said, even as I felt an unexpected stab of guilt. I felt bad for Bastien. The thought of leaving him all on his own, without friends, family, kingdom, or even a safe roof over his head.
“You know,” I ventured, “assuming we can access that portal without hunters getting in the way, and assuming the other side doesn’t lead to somewhere hellish, you might be safer off in the human realm right now… Have you ever heard of The Shade?”
He nodded. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a supernatural who has not heard of The Shade.” Then he shook his head. “But I cannot be lured away, Victoria. I cannot abandon my realm like a coward.” He grimaced at the notion, as though the very thought of it were disgusting. “I must stay and work to drive these men and their beasts off our land.”
I paused, running my tongue over my lower lip. “And how do you plan to do that?” I asked.
“I am still considering the matter… but I believe my first step must be to search this realm until I have found an untouched pack, and then together we must rally more wolves and form an army. Somehow, we must shake these demons from our soil. And it must be done soon. We must not let them spread any more than they already have.”
I really had not the first clue how Bastien and his future army would ever accomplish that. He was right of course that if there was ever a chance of achieving it, it had to be done sooner rather than later. I didn’t know if the base that I’d arrive
d at was the hunters’ only base here. But if it was, it was still relatively small. I’d only spotted three buildings. Something told me they would be expanding, perhaps setting up bases in the very lairs they’d ransacked.
“Do you have a large family?” Bastien asked, changing the subject. He looked genuinely curious.
“A fairly large one,” I replied. “I don’t have any siblings, though.”
I paused, holding my breath and wondering how to phrase the next question I wanted to ask him.
“Um, I need to be honest,” I began, even as I wrestled with myself to find the right words. “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me so much. I know I freed you from that cage, but I mean, you’ve been putting yourself out for me a lot.”
I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, after he’d delayed our escape just so I could sleep a few more hours, it was really beginning to nag at me. I wanted to better understand this man I found myself trapped with.
To my surprise, Bastien smiled a little, though his eyes stayed fixed on the ground in front of him. “I suppose to someone who wasn’t a wolf, it would seem strange,” he said. Then his mouth straightened, the smile on his face fading. “But if you were a werewolf,” he went on, his tone deeper, “you would understand. It would be instinct to you.”
I paused, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prodded, “I can try to understand. Understand what?”
His eyes, gray and somber, roamed my face. “We form attachments easily in… situations such as this.”
“And, um, what is ‘this’, exactly?”
He swallowed before replying in a low voice, “Isolation. Separation.”
I took a moment to absorb his words, even as I examined his face, studying every flicker of emotion that crossed it. His jaw was tight, and he looked like he was trying to steady his breathing.
“Creatures like me,” he went on, “we are not meant to be separated from our pack, least of all our families.”
Understanding dawned on me. In a time when his entire world had collapsed around him, the very foundations of his life had been shaken and all that he loved had been stripped from him… what did a man such as Bastien have to cling to? What mechanisms did a werewolf, an inherently social creature, employ to cope?
He’d watched his family murdered, and he’d been beaten and locked up in a cage. Then I’d appeared from nowhere and freed him. And when he’d heard my scream on arriving at the other side of the portal, he had been called to help me because he’d seen me as an ally. A friend. Someone he could trust where he’d had none other. As a wolf, he appeared to have an inbuilt need for connection, companionship, however weak or useless or even burdensome that companion might be. And I… I was serving that need for him.
I cleared my throat. “Well, thank you,” I said. “You’re a, uh, very caring person.” Ugh. That sounded so lame.
“Perhaps I have my mother to thank for that,” he murmured.
Before he could sink too much into melancholy again at the thought of his mother, I asked with a smile, “And what about your climbing skills? Where did you get those?”
His eyes warmed. “Not all werewolves have that skill, you know,” he said, a boyish grin spreading across his face.
I didn’t doubt that. Our werewolves in The Shade could climb, but certainly not with the skill and agility that Bastien could.
“Would you like to know something about my childhood?” Bastien asked, leaning back against the wall of the cave, eyeing me.
“Yes,” I replied. I truly was interested.
“I was very different from every other werewolf my age,” he said. “While they shifted between man and wolf, I remained always stuck as a wolf. Indeed, I was born as a wolf—something that is practically unheard of in The Woodlands.”
“So you came out of your mother as a furry, baby wolf?”
He nodded, still grinning. “My parents were both shocked and devastated. They feared I was deformed and might never become a man.”
“And you were stuck as a wolf for how long?”
“I was a wolf all throughout my childhood. I couldn’t shift until I turned fifteen—in wolf years, that is. When I did manage it, I was able to shift at will.”
“Why is that?” I asked, staring at him in astonishment.
“I was simply a fluke of nature, according to my parents… I’ve always been the wildest of my siblings. Being a beast throughout my formative years, when I finally managed to shift it came as a shock. It felt so unnatural. So restrictive.”
“Restrictive?” Thinking back to his Tarzan moves, I would hardly say that.
“Well, it was to me,” he said. “It was the strangest thing to be unable to feel the ground beneath four feet. I missed the speed, the wild abandon of racing through the meadows at speeds only a wolf could. When I shifted to a man, I needed to find other ways to feel wild. Other ways to release my energy.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Releasing energy is something you seem to excel at.”
He smiled impishly, running a hand down the back of his head.
“You’re different, Bastien,” I concluded. “And I like that about you.”
And even if we never see each other again after tomorrow, I thought with a twinge in my chest, I hope you won’t ever change.
Victoria
Bastien’s mood grew heavier and sadder as the night wore on. And I knew why. I felt worse than ever at the thought of abandoning him. But I had to remind myself that I had other responsibilities. I had my family to think about. Maybe once I managed to make it back to The Shade and reunite with them, I could persuade the League to lend a hand to the werewolves to try to lessen their plight caused by the hunters. I didn’t know how that would all work out with the governments once the hunters found out we were trying to work against them, but nobody in The Shade would stand for what was going on here. My parents wouldn’t, and my uncle, Derek, certainly wouldn’t. These thoughts were the only way I could comfort myself as we left the cave at the first signs of morning.
Gathering up the satchel and the belt, Bastien dutifully clambered down the mountainside with me on his back and re-entered the woods. The journey passed quickly this time—perhaps because I had so much on my mind. It was certainly the first time I could make such an observation since arriving in The Woodlands.
The shore came into view, another pebble beach, though much longer than the one where Bastien and his pack had their hideout. As we emerged onto it, leaving the shelter and shadows of the trees, we looked around cautiously. Bastien looked left and right, up and down the shore, while I scanned the skies for mutants. Or maybe even helicopters. God knew what else these hunters had brought through the portal.
So far, so good. The coast seemed clear. He began to run again, bolder now, along the beach.
“How do you even know about this gate?” I asked him.
“My older brother was the one to discover it,” he replied. “This one is less known to other werewolves than the one that the hunters have occupied…”
Bastien’s voice trailed off as his eyes moved further up the beach. They fixed on an area in the distance. He sped up again and then stopped after about half a mile. There appeared to be nothing different about this stretch of beach than the one we had just traversed. There were no signs of holes or indentations anywhere. I was not sure why he was stopping here…
My heart sank as he said, “The portal should be here. I swear, it’s on this stretch of beach.”
And yet there was nothing. He raced further up the beach and then further down it, along the path we had already traveled, as though he might have missed it. But we hadn’t. No portal was anywhere to be seen along this beach.
“Are you sure this is the right beach?” I asked.
“I’m positive,” Bastien said.
“Then what could’ve happened to the gate?” I breathed. “Could the hunters have… closed it?”
“Not without the
help of a powerful witch,” Bastien murmured. “But maybe they do have witches at their service… That would explain a number of things.”
Closing gates was something that Ibrahim and Corrine were able to do, as well as Mona—since she had regained the strength she’d lost after Lilith’s death. In the past we had fantasized about the three of them traveling the world with Mona’s map of portals and closing off all of them to solve this whole supernatural problem once and for all. But they had discovered even before I was born that the map was in no way comprehensive. Even if they managed to close them all, there were possibly hundreds of others we would never locate without a new map.
I wondered what kind of witch would ever want to side with the hunters.
“I wonder why they would want to close this gate,” I mumbled.
Bastien shrugged.
Maybe it was for more control. They wanted as few points of entry—and exit—as possible while they were here. Hmm.
“But there must be other gates in this realm?” I asked hopefully.
Bastien began moving away from the center of the beach and toward the shelter of the trees again. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I am sorry.”
Oh, great. What am I going to do now?
Once we were deep within the woods again, Bastien halted and let me get off. I began pacing up and down—or rather, hobbling up and down. “I need to get back to my family,” I said. I was just praying that Heath and Grace managed to escape and had made their way back through the portal, and would hopefully now be safely returned to The Shade.
“It’s possible we might come across some other wolves who know of another portal… if you come with me,” Bastien suggested.
I turned on him. “And where exactly do you plan to go now?” I asked, dreading to think how many more bumpy hours—or maybe even days—lay in wait for me atop Bastien’s back.
“As I said last night, I need to find allies. I plan to head east, toward one of the few packs that the Blackhalls are—or were—actually friends with. I believe they might be far enough away for the hunters to not have reached them yet. But I have to hurry.”