“It belonged to Maizie’s mother,” Gray said.
“Lilly’s?”
“Found it a few weeks after the accident.” He placed the gold quarter-sized locket in Granny’s hand. “The clasp was broken. I had it cleaned and repaired.”
Granny’s sad blue eyes peered at him beneath the hood of her lids. “You kept it all this time?”
Gray shifted his focus out the glass doors to the open backyard of the Green Acres Nursing Home. His face warmed. “I’m not sure why I didn’t return it sooner. Maybe because there was nothing left of Donna’s to keep. Maybe because Riddly and Lilly had taken something of mine and I wanted to take something of theirs. Foolish. I don’t know.”
Granny reached her withered hand over to his. He could feel her tremors, age keeping her constantly off balance, unsteady. “You needed it more than us. Maizie was too young for a piece like this and I…I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”
“Thank you, Ester.” It was a poor excuse, but he’d take it. “You have it now and I believe you’ll find the photos inside quite useful.”
Granny looked to the locket, her thin fingers working its tight seal. Her thumbnail wedged between the oval halves and the locket popped open. Seconds passed as her mind processed the images and a bright smile blossomed across her face.
Gray knew what she saw. He’d stared at the photo of the young Hood family and the one opposite of Riddly holding an infant Maizie a million times over the years. Such a photo didn’t exist of his family. He and Donna never discussed children. Ironically, he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted a photo like that until the possibility of it was taken away beneath the crush of an SUV.
Gray forced his thoughts from old dreams and wishes. “Maizie mentioned you’d had a visitor. Someone pretending to be Riddly.”
Granny’s cheeks flushed apple red, a bashful smile flickering across her thin lips. “Oh, I know Riddly wouldn’t want me to sell my little cottage. Not without a good reason. It was all my imagination. My mind plays tricks on me sometimes, y’know.”
“I don’t believe it was your mind playing tricks this time, Ester. I think someone is trying to take advantage, using whatever tactics he can, to get his hands on your property. And I’m fairly confident I know who’s behind it.”
The news brought a flash of relief to her eyes. An instant later resentment took its place. “Advantage, you say? Uhmph. We’ll see about that. The next time that ol’ dog comes around, I’ll…” Her pledge died on the air, her gaze flicking to Gray.
He knew her thoughts without hearing them. She’d been tricked once, believing her deceased son was visiting, issuing orders, how would she know differently next time?
Gray cupped his hands around hers, still holding the open locket. “This will help. Wear Lilly’s locket. Look at the pictures next time someone calls himself Riddly. Remember where it was found. That Riddly is gone. That Lilly and Donna are gone. Cadwick may resemble your son, but not enough to stand up to his photograph, or those kinds of potent memories.”
He couldn’t stay with Granny 24/7 and trying to ban Cadwick from the premises wouldn’t work any better than Maizie’s attempt had. Gray had used his werewolf-enhanced charm and familiarity with the staff to skirt around Maizie’s restricted-visitors list, but Cadwick was a master at zeroing in on a person’s pay-off point. He’d locate the weakest link in security and buy his way in.
No. Granny would have to use her mind and wits to protect herself. The locket would help.
“You never got to bury your wife, did you?”
Granny’s question caught him utterly by surprise. He stuttered. His mind shifting gears so fast he didn’t have time to throw up the barriers that would keep the most painful of the memories at bay.
“No. I…she… No. Donna died before she could shift back to human form. They disposed of her body as they would any roadkill.” He winced at the term, his heart pinching.
“You couldn’t request they leave her with you? The accident happened on your land.”
Gray shook his head. If only it’d been that easy. If only he’d been able to think clearly, quickly, maybe he could’ve come up with a way. “Taking the…carcass…is procedure. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t seem strange. I had to think of the pack. Protect the rest from curiosity or suspicion.”
Gray had given permission to the Hood family alone to use the shortcut through his forest from the housing subdivision on one side to the cottage on the other. He would never advance such trust again. The police arrived as fast as they did because Riddly and Lilly Hood had betrayed their agreement.
Another car, friends of the Hoods, was following behind when they’d hit his wife. Because of them, because of the police and ambulance and everyone else mulling around in his forest, he’d had to stand by, helpless as they thoughtlessly disengaged his wife’s body from the mangle of metal. They tossed it in the back of the tow truck like it was so much debris. Carted his wife away to be burned to ash in a city furnace. Or God forbid, something worse.
His only consolation was that nothing like it would ever happen again. He’d closed the single-lane gravel road, technically just two tire paths with weeds growing between, immediately after the accident. He planted trees, encouraged undergrowth, so that by now there was barely any sign the road had ever existed.
Granny shifted the locket to one hand and wrapped the other around Gray’s palm. “It was an accident, dear. I know you blame my Riddly, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He wouldn’t have wished the kind of suffering you and Maizie have endured on his worst enemy.”
“I don’t blame him.” Gray was surprised how easily he said it. He’d been thinking it from the start, but never out loud. “It was my fault. Donna and I were arguing…fighting. I accused her of cheating and she ran out. I didn’t go after her.”
He remembered the smell of another man on his wife, a man he recognized. There was no suspicion, no guessing. He knew she’d been with someone else. The rub was he wasn’t as upset over her infidelity as he was with himself for not feeling more betrayed. He loved Donna, but there was something missing between them, something that only became truly perceptible after she’d turned him. Maybe children would’ve made a difference, filled that missing piece between them. He’d never know.
“I was happy for the distance between us,” he said. “Until…Jeezus, I can still hear that sound, that crash, like an explosion. I knew before I started running. I knew Donna was gone. I could feel it.”
“I heard it too.” Granny shuddered. “What an awful sound. I knew my boy was gone. I’m just thankful my Little Red survived. Lord knows how she did.”
Gray knew how she’d survived. He’d been the one rushing headlong down the hillside over the butchered swath of forest so fast no one saw him go by. With the family friends useless, gawking down at the ruin from the road through the rain and darkness, it was up to Gray to assess the damage.
The truck was on its roof. He’d recognized the unmistakable odor of death, a mix of bodily fluids and cold meat. The parents were dead. The smell told him before he’d reached in to check for a pulse. Neither had been wearing seatbelts. They were gone before the truck stopped.
Their little girl, Maizie, was buckled into the backseat, but the shoulder strap had slipped to strangle across her neck. She was unconscious, her little face turning blue. But she was alive-barely.
He tried to unbuckle her, but the lock had jammed in the roll. Breaking it was nothing for his enhanced strength. Her little body fell into his arms and for a strange moment, gazing down into her slowly pinking face, he could breathe. His mind didn’t allow him respite for long, though. The sound, the thunderous explosion of metal and glass, the hideous thud, and the instinctive knowledge Donna was gone all came crashing in on him anew.
He laid Maizie in a soft patch of ferns and slowly made his way to the front of the truck. He couldn’t see her at first, the way the truck was lying, the rain, the darkness, made seeing anything difficult. Then he crouched and peered under the front of the truck. Only her tail and hindquarters showed, soft brown fur, wet with rain, and blood.
Gray raced around the truck to the driver’s side front wheel. Donna lay at an angle, pinned between the fender and the tree, her front paws, chest and head spared the crushing weight of the truck. She was dead. She was dead before the truck had stopped-God willing.
How long had he stood there? How much time passed? He wasn’t sure. Maybe if he’d snapped out of it quicker, reacted faster, maybe he could’ve gotten Donna’s body away before the police showed up. But once the first cop tripped and stumbled his way down the hill, it was too late. These people and their pretty little redheaded girl had altered his life irrevocably.
And now that pretty little redhead was poised to do it again.
“I’m not mad. I’m just curious.” Yeah. If she said it out loud a few more times maybe she’d actually believe it. After all, what other emotion would make her do something this stupid. And, Maizie had to admit, walking deep into the forest at dusk, full moon rising or not, was stupid. Really stupid.
But she had to talk to him. She wanted to know why Gray had waited twenty-one years to give Granny the locket. “Twenty-one years. That’s a long time to hold on to something that’s not yours. Not that I’m mad about it.”
She wasn’t-really. It was just an excuse. More than anything she wanted to know about where he’d found it. Granny told her Gray had been there at the accident. But she was so pleased with having the locket back she didn’t seem to care what his being there meant. He could answer questions no one else could.
What had he seen? What did he know? Had her parents said anything? Were they alive? Did he see the wolf that’d killed them? She had to know.
Anytime she’d asked those sorts of questions of Granny, or anyone else who might know, she’d gotten sad puppy-dog eyes staring back at her and no solid answers. “Just put it behind you, dear,” Granny would say. “It won’t bring them back. Consider yourself blessed that you can’t remember.”
This time she had a good excuse to broach the subject. She had a firsthand source to give her some answers. She wouldn’t settle for puppy-dog eyes and placating clichés. This time she’d get her answers and that, more than anything else, pushed her into the forest to a place she hadn’t been in years.
Maizie shined her flashlight off to the left. The path was clear, dirt covered, with tall weeds and brush kept at a distance. A small turn of her wrist to the right and the beam exposed a swath of low weeds cutting through the forest eight feet wide. Beneath were the remnants of a long-forgotten path. She could still see the twin ruts like old tire tracks through the weed stalks, though as far as she remembered there’d never been an actual road.
This path would lead to the housing subdivision, the place she’d once called home. She hoped it would also bring her closer to Gray’s secret mansion in the forest. She had to find it again. She had to find him.
Maizie steeled her nerves and started walking. Her legs parted the weeds with each step. Green seeds and sticky leaves clung to her sweat pants and left dark stripes of dew along the gray fabric on her thighs and knees. Her mind raced, constantly analyzing sounds, shadows and strange movements.
This was a stupid risk considering she’d come face to face with the big silver wolf once already. And she was pretty sure he’d chased her and Gray from the lake the other day. The wolf had been anything but deadly though. Of course his patient demeanor might’ve been dumb luck.
If she could just remember the path Gray had taken from the lake she wouldn’t have to wander around trying to find the house by accident. She should’ve waited ’til morning. But she wanted answers and she didn’t even care that she’d have to deal with his strange family. She’d already waited long enough.
Maizie had checked every map of the area she could find. Not one of them showed roads beyond the gravel driveway to the Wild Game Preserve. The forest was like a blank spot, the Bermuda Triangle of Pennsylvania.
This way, a straight path on foot, Maizie was convinced was faster. At least if she got lost she’d be in the right part of the forest.
Her pace quickened, though for no good reason she knew. It wasn’t full dark yet, but she used the flashlight to scan the woods as she went, first one side then the other. Some small part of her brain realized the flashlight kept her at a disadvantage. The bright beam pinpointed her location for anyone or anything that might be tracking her.
She kept walking, body tight, eyes darting back and forth, hoping to accidentally shine the light on any attackers before they leapt. The odds were slim but that didn’t stop her from hoping. The overgrown path traveled upward, and when she shined the light to her left she saw the tops of trees.
A better look made her realize the forest floor dropped off a few feet from the path. A fearless traveler venturing from the trail here could find themselves tumbling down a very steep, very long hillside. Maizie didn’t want to think about it. Careening down hillsides was something she knew too much about already, even if she couldn’t remember. She kept walking, resuming her flashlight scan to the right and left as the forest leveled off.
After more than an hour, full dark had fallen and above, the moon’s soft white light barely penetrated the forest’s thick canopy. Finally, Maizie strained to see a few small flickers of light through the trees up ahead.
“Wood Haven housing plan.” She exhaled the words. Relieved.
It had to be the quaint streetlights of the neighborhood. Maizie allowed a little smile despite the pinch of disappointment.
She hadn’t stumbled over Gray’s house as she’d hoped, but she’d made it through the woods without being gobbled up by any big bad wolves.
Believing civilization was less than five hundred feet away, her confidence returned. Her shoulders relaxed, flashlight aimed in front of her. She trusted she’d make it to the nearest street and hopefully a convenience store where she could call a cab.
Three steps and Maizie’s confidence evaporated with the rustle of movement off to her left. She froze, adrenaline tingles racing up her spine. She flicked the light to the left. A sapling and a cluster of tall ferns swayed. Had something brushed past them or were they moved by a breeze she only now noticed sifting through her hair?
Maizie dragged the light farther left, taking in all she could. There was nothing there but vegetation. She scanned the other way and found nothing out of the ordinary.
She forced a half laugh she didn’t feel. “Paranoid much?”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than another movement, this time on her right side, iced her to the bone. She swung the light, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was moving out there. Nothing.
She stared for several long minutes. Without moving her feet, she dragged the flashlight beam in a circle around her, her body twisting to cover as much area as possible.
She started to turn back and felt the familiar thrum of invisible fingers at the base of her neck.
The light swung fast in the direction she’d come and reflected off two glowing white eyes. “Oh shit!”
Her feet scrambled backward without benefit of thought or the shifting of balance to keep her upright. She landed hard on her ass, but didn’t hesitate for even a second. Flashlight forgotten, her hands and feet dug at the ground, crab-walking as fast as humanly possible.
Without the reflection of the light, white eyes turned blue in the cool darkness and fixed on her. Maizie couldn’t look away, didn’t dare or risk the animal’s inevitable attack catching her unaware. Somewhere in her brain a voice screamed Get up! Get up! But Maizie couldn’t find a moment she was willing to spend on getting to her feet rather than moving away.
Watching those eyes, the same kind of wolf eyes from her childhood, the same frightening eyes from hundreds of nightmares and sleepless nights, meant she wasn’t watching where she was going. The hard smack of a tree against her head stopped all progress.
She dropped to her ass with an oath. For one slim heartbeat she closed her eyes, her hand going to her head on reflex. She snapped her eyes open again and found the haunting blue orbs were still watching her-only closer. She could see the full body of the wolf now, big, muscled and…honey-brown.
This wasn’t the same wolf Granny talked about. This wasn’t Maizie’s naughty silver wolf. This wasn’t even the wild beast that’d chased her the other night. This wolf was male and big, with a crazed look in his eyes.
The animal growled, its lips curling back from huge white teeth, its thick fur vibrating from the sound. Maizie pressed back against the tree, her sneakers digging at the ground as though she could push herself through the thick trunk to the other side.
“Nice doggy. Now, go away. Go home.” It was worth a shot. But the massive wolf came nearer. Slow, deliberate steps, its eyes focused on her so intently she could feel the icy chill of it working to paralyze her body.
She had to get away. Maizie leaned to her right, pivoting against the tree trunk, ready to spin around to the other side. But just as she shifted her weight to her hip, a warm wash of air rippled over her shoulder and the side of her face.
She glanced sideways and caught the snarling jowls of a second wolf. Its coat was a light brown, the ends tipped with blonde. The female wolf that’d chased her the other day. It was close enough its saliva dribbled over her shoulder, the hot wetness soaking through her T-shirt.
Shit, how’d it get so close without her noticing? Maizie didn’t waste time wondering. She spun the other way and got to her knees before a third brown-sugar wolf met her face to face-eye to eye. “Fuck!”
Maizie pushed back on reflex, landing on her ass again. She pressed her back to the tree, shoved herself up and managed to get her feet under her. The shortest of the three wolves came to her hip at its head. The tallest, the male with the honey-brown fur, was only a half inch shorter than her silver wolf had been.
The growls mixed and merged, uniting to become one low rumbling sound that vibrated through her body like nothing she’d ever heard or felt before. They were too close, the larger wolf creeping nearer, snarling and drooling. Caged with wolves in front and on both sides, with the tree at her back, she was running out of escape routes fast.
Maizie rocked around the tree and ran. The soft fur of the wolf waiting at her left pressed against her leg, snagged through her fingers as it lunged to try and stop her escape. She got away.
No. They let her get away. On some level Maizie knew it was true. Why? Screw it. She didn’t give a damn why they’d let her go.
She was free, running full-out toward the flicker of lights from Wood Haven. Maizie’s panicked mind raced, trying to map the most direct route, but something was wrong.
She could only see one light now and it was fainter, as though a thick blanket of trees blocked it from sight. Where were the other lights? The dozen or so street lamps, the warm glow from living rooms and TV screens? There should be more lights. They should’ve been closer.
For a split second she shifted her attention from the hope of a single flickering light to the forest around her. The faint overgrown path she’d been following was gone. In her panic she must’ve run the wrong way. So what was the light she was running toward if not Wood Haven?
The soft thumping sound of padded feet crunching behind her chased the question from her brain. They were coming. The wolves had given chase. The hunt was on. Is that why they’d let her go? So they could chase her?
Maizie’s heart thundered in her ears, her blood pumping adrenaline-rich oxygen through her body. Her lungs burned but she wouldn’t slow up, couldn’t, or risked being caught, eaten. Oh God.
Up ahead a huge fallen tree blocked the way and she veered to the left to go around it. She barreled through the old limbs, cutting the distance she had to travel by several feet. The instant she broke through her whole world slammed to a halt.
A wolf. A fourth one, every bit as tall as her big silver wolf and only a few pounds lighter, stood before her. Its fur was the same brown-sugar color as the other two, its eyes a haunting luminous blue. Its lips hiked over its canines, trembling with a low menacing growl.
A trap. She’d been herded to the slaughter like a stupid sheep. The forest crunched and rustled as the other three wolves caught up and circled in. The brown, blonde-tipped wolf jumped to the fallen tree, towering over her right shoulder. The other smaller wolf stayed at her back and the last, the big darker-furred wolf, came around to her left.
Maizie’s muscles trembled from the sprint, from fear and the overpowering urge to run. Her body tingled, flight instincts warring with common sense and odds of success. There had to be something she could do. Some way to get out of this, to get help. Only one glimmer of hope came to mind.
“Gray.” She spoke just above a normal tone, unsure what the wolves’ reaction would be. The growls rose in volume but otherwise they remained where they were, each a good four feet away.
“Gray, help! Help me! Someone hel-” The wolf in front of her stepped two feet closer then stopped. Maizie’s breath caught. Shut up. Shutup shutup shutup. Self-preservation and fear screamed at her not to make another sound or risk the beasts’ attack.
Intelligence told her, her voice was her only hope. She needed to use it while she still could. She breathed deep to get as much volume as she could. “Heeeellllp-”
The big dark wolf on her left lunged, slammed into her, knocking the remaining air from her lungs. Maizie opened her mouth with a silent, breathless scream as its sharp teeth snagged on the hem of her shirt, barely grazing the skin. The biggest wolf lurched toward her, but his massive body slammed into the darker wolf and they both tumbled into the weeds.
An instant later her shoulder stabbed with pain, as the smallest wolf drove sharp teeth through muscle and meat. In the next moment, Maizie gasped air and made the scream real and loud. But the wolf’s powerful jaws clamped tighter.
Maizie writhed under the weight of its body, her hands frantic, pushing against its neck, fingers tearing out chunks of fur. The beast wouldn’t let go. She looked around, searching for something, anything to use against her attacker, but all she saw was a quick blur of blonde-tipped fur racing toward her. She held her breath, braced herself for the next stab of pain, the next bite.
It came from the exact same spot on her shoulder, when the wolf’s teeth ripped from its hold on her, its body flying off several feet away. The blonde-tipped wolf had knocked her loose. Who cared why?
The wound was deep and it hurt like hell. Even the slightest move sent a shower of pain pulsating out from the spot. It didn’t matter. She had to get out of there. Maizie rolled to her hip, pushed up, trying to get to her knees and then hopefully her feet. She didn’t make it to her knees before instinct told her things had suddenly turned from bad to fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition.
Her gaze shifted to the honey-brown wolf standing between her and the only manmade light she could see. He was creeping closer, low, as though stalking wounded prey. And he was.
She glanced behind her and saw the big brown-sugar wolf staring with unblinking blue eyes, recognizing her for what she was-food. Off to her right were the two wolves that had attacked and freed her. The latter still pinned the former to the ground, but both had their attention riveted on Maizie.
She was bleeding. The red smear of it was everywhere. There was enough blood the odor of it must have saturated the air, triggering instincts they had no reason to ignore. Definitely FUBARed.
The wolf in front, the darkest of the four, lunged first. Maizie saw it coming in time to spin away on her hip, but not fast enough to keep his huge white teeth from catching her calf and sinking in. She screamed and another set of powerful jaws snagged the back of her T-shirt. The fabric ripped just as a third nipped at her leg, catching her sweats in its teeth, scratching the skin beneath.
“Help me! Help! Heelllllpppp!”
Maizie tucked her head between her arms, protecting her face. Heavy paws scratched at her back, pushing against her, walking on her, fighting over her. She peered down her body at the enormous furry heads, nipping and snapping, tearing at her clothes, at each other. And then there was one less.
She blinked just in time to see another wolf sail backward into the woods. A big hand clamped around the neck-scruff of the third wolf, lifted, and sent it flying, its whole body squirming and twisting through the air. Finally two hands clamped on the muzzle of the fourth wolf, the wolf whose teeth were still deep in Maizie’s calf.
One hand on top, the other underneath, he pried open the wolf’s jaws. Maizie jerked her leg free, her gaze darting to the face behind the hands. “Gray.”
Still holding those powerful jaws in his hands, Gray twisted the wolf’s neck, forcing it away. The wolf’s long legs stumbled back and Gray let him go. It shook its big head then snorted as if trying to realign its senses. It glowered at Gray, growling, its front shoulders lowering as though it would attack.
“She won’t save you from this, Shawn. She can’t. Push any further and you’ll die here. Now,” Gray said. “What’ll it be, boy?”
The honey-brown wolf’s growl stopped. It swayed back and forth on its front legs as though deciding on a course of action. A hard snort again, and then it turned and jogged off. Gray looked at Maizie, still sprawled on the ground.
“What are you doing in my forest?”
“Bleeding,” she said. “Where’d you learn to speak wolf?”