Running with the Pack Part 28

"No but. I know what you're thinking. Don't worry about it. When's your hot date?"

"Tomorrow night. I'm meeting him in town. He's a cop, he's going to ask questions, you know." Molly insisted on airing her fears.

"Tell him we're weird," Gretchen said. "Just enjoy yourself, for G.o.d's sake." An unbidden harshness edged her voice.

Molly stared, and then finally said, "All right."

Three sisters did not sleep well that night.

Molly did something the next evening that left both Gretchen and May dumbfounded. Her hair was piled on top of her head and her eyes were lined with black kohl. Their younger sister was transformed, but this was no monster that greeted them at the stair.

"You look lovely!" May said as she hugged her.

Eyes downcast, Molly said, "Thank you."

"It's true. You must really like this guy," Gretchen teased.

"I just felt like doing something different," Molly said, but her sisters were not fooled.

After she'd gone to meet John at the diner, May slipped off to read in her room. Gretchen, left with her thoughts, began pacing again.

Molly seemed so happy tonight, Gretchen mused. It was the first time she'd seen her make an effort with her appearance. Gretchen frowned. There was no reason for either of her sisters to become spinsters on her behalf. Molly-though she hid it well-was a joyous soul who would do well with a family of her own. May might, in time, find someone, though Gretchen doubted it. May seemed content to follow Momma's lead. These troubles seemed far removed from Gretchen's own muddled reality, but they were closer than she realized.

Gretchen now felt a fool for ever imagining her own life as a cage. She was fortunate, she finally realized, to have such sisters as hers. Anyone else would have put a bullet in her, or worse. She could not stop thinking about the wolf, battered and starved. That, she thought, could have been me. Still, it was just a wolf, unless what she saw beneath the moon was true? Could it be? She put her hands to her head to still the pictures that pa.s.sed in a blur before her closed eyes.

They were interchangeable, wolf and woman. Wolf saw one thing, woman another. Gretchen thought she'd explode from the contradiction and she let a small cry escape from her throat. She sank into the sofa in the living room, huddled over and wrapped her arms around herself. The ache returned, an incredible longing. She understood, at long last, how very lonely she was.

Gretchen never shared Molly's interest in boys-not in school, when the possibility still existed, nor as as a young woman, when because of the wolf a lover was out of the question. Before the change, she often wondered if there was something wrong with her. Even May had the occasional weekend foray into the strange world of men. Not so, Gretchen. There was once, just before Momma died, when a girl in her cla.s.s made her young heart flutter. The way she felt when this girl entered the room scared Gretchen. When Gretchen changed, it was almost too easy to accept that love was not for her. Better that than face this other thing.

Now, wolf scented wolf and the woman Gretchen had become was in turmoil as she was slowly forced to recognize an affinity. Cotton curtains fluttered in a breeze, drawing Gretchen out of herself. She would have to go back. There was nothing else she could do.

"You've been spending a lot of time in the woods lately."

May could no longer hide her concern. Gretchen had been irritable and distracted for days, but that was understandable. The moon was rounding and would be full in less than a week's time. But this strange mood of her sister's began when she returned from that first trek in the forest, and only increased every time she went there. Daily now, Gretchen left the house while her sisters were at work. Molly, who came in late most nights, was unaware of Gretchen's habits, but May had been watching and finally she demanded an answer.

"I know. It's okay, really it is."

"You're lying to me. You're a mess every time you come home. What's going on?"

Gretchen turned her face away from her sister. How to explain the horror she witnessed daily? She had honed the skill of silent stalking, she had inspected the cabin from all sides and the cage next to it. She knew the habits of the man who kept the wolf in such horrific conditions. She knew how purely awful he was. She saw the locks, too, that kept the cage sealed, and the keys hanging from his leather belt. She knew the wolf now. Ragged and broken in body, its spirit remained intact though as far as Gretchen could tell, it wouldn't for much longer.

The man was brutal. She saw what and how he fed the creature, rotted meat dangled over the cage, withheld until the creature crawled, begging, toward him. Her ribs pushed through her sides and her coat hung in patches over scabbed flesh. Her eyes wept dark matter down over her nose. Gretchen felt the monster in her s.h.i.+ft and slither, struggling to surface. She fought to keep it down.

"If you must know," she finally spoke, "it's the wolf."

There. Not a lie, but not exactly true, Gretchen offered this to her sister in appeas.e.m.e.nt. She also knew that to mention the wolf was to draw a line neither of her sisters would cross.

"Oh Gretchen, I'm so sorry. I wish I could do more to help."

"Well, you can't."

May sagged and Gretchen, contrite, hugged her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Don't mind me."

"What are you two fussing about?" Molly said as she swung in, a pleasant smile on her face.

Molly was going through a change of her own. Under John's attention, at first reluctantly accepted, she was softening. An inner beauty once known only to her sisters was transforming the shape of her face, so much so that even the patrons at the bar had commented.

Gretchen wanted to say wolves, but she didn't. There was no reason to deflate her sister's good mood.

"The usual. Gretchen wants a whole cow for supper and I've only got three steaks thawed out," May said.

They shared a laugh, but Gretchen's was false and both sisters knew it.

Still troubled by her initial memory of a woman in the cage, she agonized over it until the night of the full moon. There had to be way, she thought, to be certain of what the wolf saw. She and the monster shared the same brain, didn't they? Somehow the wolf knew to go home when the night was gone. Somehow she must be able to connect with the beast and remember, more clearly, what it would see. Gretchen soured at the thought, but it was the only way she knew to solve this puzzle.

That night, as her sisters held her, Gretchen fought for control. Pain, she could almost endure. It was the sensation of every cell dislocating from the others that was impossible to bear. Her consciousness separated as her tendons burned. Her vision blurred and s.h.i.+fted, condensed and expanded with her skin. Remember, she thought, my name is Gretchen. She screamed with the effort, but as her sisters moved away, all that was Gretchen was gone.

The wolf hunted. A young fawn, unattended for one moment too long by its mother, went down easily under her strong jaws. She shredded it, burying what she didn't eat well away from the scene of its demise. In ever tightening circles she coursed through the forest, avoiding the outlying fields. Shortly after midnight, she found herself beside the stream. The running water triggered an echo of remembrance; she put her nose in the air and waited, for what she did not know. The wind stirred the upper leaves of the trees, bringing with it the taste of metal. The wolf shuddered and, as wolves do, it recalled. It turned and ambled along the bank, snuffling as it went, and then stopped as a cry pierced the night.

She would have run, but something held the wolf back. She knew that sound, it resonated and called her out, back to the clearing. Wolf eyes watched; she scented present danger but saw nothing. The cage stood empty. The cries came from within the shuttered cabin. The wolf crouched low and waited again, alert and still.

In time, the wolf's patience was rewarded. The cabin door opened and the man emerged, dragging someone behind him by the arm. The wolf tensed; the stink was incredible. She watched as he approached the cage, kicked it open with his foot and heaved his baggage inside. The wolf saw the way his hands moved on the iron and heard the locks click into place. The figure inside did not move as the man walked away, but it wept with a most pitiful sound. The wolf recognized the song of sorrow. The place reeked of fresh blood and pain.

The wolf waited still. Night settled softly around her. It would be dawn soon and as the sun drew nigh, she felt her usual compulsion to return home. She did not. She was held as captive by the cage as the figure inside it. The scintillating scent of wolf buried within woman held her there.

Finally, at long last, the figure moved. It rolled onto its side and heaved itself up with a bruised arm. One hand wrapped around a bar of the cage. She leaned her head against it and sighed. The wolf, watching this, must have disturbed a leaf with its breath. The woman turned and met the wolf's eyes.

Something was exchanged between them, some plea in a coded language only those two could understand. It lasted for but a moment, and then the woman lost her grip and slid back to the bottom of the cage.

The wolf was done here. She retreated through the forest, breaking into a trot only when the clearing was left far behind. Home called, dawn was coloring the horizon. She was running out of time.

She had not yet reached the boundary where wood met field when it came upon her. The wolf, mid-stride, twisted and fell. Leaves scattered in her wake as she slid for a few paces in the dirt. Tortured by her own mutation, she choked on vomit and released a burbling half-howl. When it ended, several endless minutes later, Gretchen lay motionless on the ground.

She did not respond to her sisters' calls. They, trampling through the brush at the edge of the wood, were almost frantic.

"Where could she be?" Molly said, her eyes wide with fear.

"I don't know." May's brows drew in. "She must be close. She knows to come home."

"She's been acting funny lately. I hope she's okay."

May was surprised Molly had noticed. "Has she said anything to you?"

"No, not really. She just seems so withdrawn." Molly kicked a pile of damp leaves out of her way.

"It's hard on her. She needs us, Molly, maybe more now than she ever has."

"I know." Molly hung her head. "I've been away too often. I'm sorry."

"Oh, no, that's not what I meant." May was overjoyed at Molly's newfound romance and did not want it to stop. Molly deserved all the goodness she could get.

"We just . . . " May hesitated. There was nothing they could do for Gretchen that they weren't already doing. "Never mind. Let's keep looking."

They were close to panic when they finally found her, stretched out in a copse of trees. She sat upright as May's hand touched her, startling her sisters who gasped and jumped back.

"It was a woman," Gretchen said. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e, not yet acclimated to human vocal cords.

May recovered and wrapped Gretchen in the blanket. "We're here, Gretchen," she said. "We're right here."

Gretchen sagged into her arms. May and Molly said nothing as they tended her and half-carried her back to the house. Once she was in bed, they met in the kitchen.

"What was she talking about?" Molly asked.

"I've got no idea, but we're going to find out. She needs to talk about whatever has been bothering her and we've got to make her do it. Tonight."

"She'll be a mess!"

"I know it. She may actually open up."

Gretchen did, and it was not what her sisters expected.

"I'm telling you, I know what I saw."

"You can't possibly expect us to believe you know what you saw out there as a . . . a wolf. You've said yourself you don't remember anything. And what you have seen is bad enough."

"You've got to tell someone, Gretchen." Molly was terrified that the someone would be John. They were getting along so well; the last thing she wanted was for him to discover just how weird her family was. And yet, what Gretchen described was a matter for the authorities. John was sure to learn of it, one way or another.

"It's no ordinary wolf. Under the full moon, it is a woman. We can't bring in the law. What do you think they'll do with her? And how long do you think it will be before they look at me?"

Perhaps now had not been a good time to speak to Gretchen after all, May thought. Yet, she had a point. If, and that was a large if, Gretchen had seen another of her kind as she so astonis.h.i.+ngly suggested, they could not risk anyone else becoming involved.

"Okay. You're tired. Why don't we call it a night and see what tomorrow brings."

Relieved, Gretchen nodded. "Fine. But I know what I saw."

After she'd staggered off to bed, Molly and May sat in silence.

"Do you think it's true?" Molly finally asked.

May reached across the table and took her hands. "I don't know. I think she's just had a bad dream. But don't worry. We'll make sure John stays out of it, whatever it is."

"Thank you," Molly said, holding on tight. "Thank you."

Gretchen rose the next morning in a stupor. The walls of her bedroom were close and confining. Her legs were weak and she clung to the back of a chair until she found her balance. Shadows seemed superimposed on the window frame: dark limbs of trees, scuttling creatures, the outline of a wolf somehow standing upright.

She was more certain than ever that what the wolf saw was accurate. Her sisters might not believe it, but she knew. She could not leave it alone. Gretchen gathered her wits. Both sisters were awake before her. She cornered them in the kitchen before either could wish her good day.

"I can't leave her out there. Don't argue. This is none of your business."

Shocked, the sisters turned as one. Gretchen's eyes were black, feral. They felt the monster there in the kitchen where no monster belonged. Fear tainted Molly's belly, but May held firm.

"Let us know what you need."

"I need time. Alone," Gretchen said.

Molly drew in her breath, but said nothing as Gretchen sat at the table and put her head in her hands.

"It hurts," she said and Molly went to her side.

"You need to eat."

May heaped a plate with bacon, sausage and eggs. Gretchen ate with her fingers as Molly stroked her hair. It was an uncomfortable morning, but it pa.s.sed and by noon the eerie light had dimmed in Gretchen's eyes.

"Will you see John tonight?" Gretchen asked as Molly dressed for work.

"No," Molly said with a frown.

"Why not?"

"I don't think I should see him again."

Gretchen took her by the shoulder. "I know what you're thinking, Molly. Don't. You really like this guy, I can tell. Promise me you won't give him up because of me."

Molly wiped a tear from her eye. "But it's too dangerous. What if he finds out?"

"You and May can't protect me for the rest of my life. You need to have a life, too. Look at me."

Gretchen turned Molly toward her. Molly saw her sister, as familiar as her own skin. She also saw, very close to the surface, the wolf. They clung to each other for a moment before Molly stepped away.

"Okay. I won't stop seeing him."

"Good," Gretchen smiled.

"Be careful, will you?" Molly said quietly.

"As careful as I can."

Gretchen cornered May in the living room that night, before she could turn on the television to watch her favorite show.

"I've got to set that woman free."

"What?" May said, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. I can't leave her out there to die."

"But what about that man? You said he had a gun." May's flesh grew cold. She rubbed her arms, suddenly very afraid.