His fingers dug into the moist earth, the tips disappearing, the backs of his hands changing, tendons bulging, wrists thickening. He let out another cry, swallowing the end of it as he tried to keep quiet. I reached out and lay my hand on his. The muscles bulged and shifted. Coarse hair sprouted and pushed against my palm, then retreated. I rubbed his hand and moved closer and whispered it would be okay, he was doing fine.
His back arched and he gulped air, and in that moment of silence, footsteps clomped along the path into the woods.
“Are you kids in there?” It was the bus driver, his words harsh in the still forest, his figure backlit by the truck stoplights. “Someone saw you kids head in here. You’ve got one minute to come out or the bus leaves.”
“Go,” Derek whispered, his voice guttural, barely recognizable.
“No.”
“You should—”
I met his gaze. “I’m not going. Now shhh.”
“Ten seconds!” The bus driver yelled. “I’m not holding up the bus so you kids can screw around in the forest.”
“If he comes closer, you go in there.” I pointed at the thicket. “I’ll stop him.”
“He won’t.”
Sure enough, Derek barely got the words out before the figure began retreating. A few minutes later, the bus lights receded from the lot.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I have money. We’ll catch—”
Derek convulsed again. This time his head shot up and he spewed vomit into the bushes. Wave after wave of convulsions rocked him, each one emptying his stomach until vomit dripped from every branch and the sickly smell mingled with the sharper stink of his sweat.
Hair sprouted and retracted and he kept convulsing and vomiting until there was nothing left to throw up, and still his stomach kept trying, with horrible dry heaves that were painful to hear. I rose onto my knees and rested my hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing and patting the sweat-slick skin there as I whispered the same words of reassurance, not even sure he could hear them anymore.
His back muscles twisted and shifted under my hands, the knobs of his spine pressing against them, his skin soaked with sweat and covered with coarse dark hair that wasn’t retracting, but growing longer.
Finally Derek stopped heaving and shuddered, his whole body trembling from exhaustion, his head lowered almost to the ground. I rubbed his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re doing great. You’re almost there.”
He shook his head and made a sound that must have been “no,” but it was too guttural to be more than a growl.
“That’s fine,” I said. “You will or you won’t. You can’t rush it.”
He nodded. His head was down, face averted, but I could still see the changes, his temples narrowing, hair shortening, the tops of his ears sticking out as they shifted higher onto his skull.
I absently rubbed his back, then halted. “Do you want me to stop? Move away and give you more room?”
He shook his head as he struggled to catch his breath, sides and back heaving. I massaged the spot between his shoulders. His skin stopped moving and his spine retracted. His shoulders felt different, though. Set different, the muscles bunched and thick, almost hunched. The hair felt more like fur now, like my friend Kara’s husky, with a coarse top layer, softer underneath.
Derek said werewolves changed into actual wolves. I’d found that hard to believe. In fact, I’d heard that the reason the “wolfman” type of werewolf had been so popular in early Hollywood was because of the difficulty of changing a human into a wolf. If they couldn’t do it with makeup and prosthetics, surely the human body couldn’t do it. But looking at Derek, shivering and gasping as he rested mid-Change, I saw I’d been wrong. I still couldn’t quite wrap even my vivid imagination around what I was seeing, but there was no doubt he was changing into a wolf.
“It seems to have stopped again,” I said.
He nodded.
“That’s probably it, then. For now, this is as far as—”
His body went rigid. The muscles under my hand moved, but slowly, like they were settling, preparing to reverse the transformation…
His back shot up, limbs straightening, head dropping and there was this…sound—an awful popping and snapping, like bones crackling. Then his head flew up and the crackling was drowned out by an inhuman howl. His head whipped from side to side and I saw his face then, the nose and jaw lengthening to a muzzle, neck thick, brow receding, black lips pulled back to show teeth sharpened to fangs.
One eye caught mine, and the absolute terror in it chased mine away. I could not be afraid. I could not be freaked out. I could not make this worse for him in any way. So I met his gaze, unblinking, and kept rubbing his back.
After a moment, the muscles under my hand relaxed and he went still, the silence broken only by labored heaves as he panted, the sound more canine than human. His back rose and fell with the deep breaths. Then another massive convulsion seized him, and I was sure that was the final jolt, that the transformation would finish. Instead, the fur between my fingers receded. He convulsed again, gagging, threads of bile dripping from his jaws. He shook them off, then turned his face away.
Derek hacked and coughed for a minute, his limbs trembling. Then, slowly, they slid out from under him, like they couldn’t bear his weight any more, and he collapsed, panting and quivering, his fur a dark shadow of stubble, his body almost returned to a human shape, only the thickened neck and shoulders remaining.
After one more deep, shuddering sigh, he rolled onto his side, toward me, legs drawn up, one hand draped over his face as it finished the reversal. I huddled there, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. Derek wrapped his hand around my bare ankle, where my sock had slid down into my sneaker.
“You’re freezing.”
I didn’t feel cold. The shivering and goose bumps seemed more from nerves, but I said, “A little.”
He shifted, then took my knee and tugged me closer, sheltered from the bitter wind. The heat of his body was like a radiator and I stopped shivering. He wrapped his hand around my ankle again, his skin rough, like a dog’s paw pads.
“How’re you doing?” he asked, his voice still odd, strained and raspy, but understandable.
I gave a small laugh. “I should be asking you that. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. That must be what’ll happen for a few times. A partial Change, then back to normal.”
“Practice runs.”
“I guess so.” He moved his hand down under his eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you all right?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah. You did.” He looked at me. “You did a lot.”
His eyes met mine, and I looked into them and I felt…I don’t know what I felt. A strange nameless something I couldn’t even identify as a good something or a bad something, could only feel in my gut, jumping and twitching, until I turned away and looked out over the forest.
“Yeah, we gotta go,” he said, starting to rise.
“Not yet. Lie down. Rest.”
“I’m”—he sat up and swayed, as if light-headed—“not fine. Okay. Just give me a sec.”
He lay back down, eyelids bobbing as he fought to keep them open.
“Close your eyes,” I said.
“Just for a minute.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I don’t know if they were even fully closed before he fell asleep.
Twenty-nine
I HUDDLED THERE UNTIL the sweat dried from his skin and he began to shiver, still sleeping. Then I unwrapped his fingers from my ankle. He let go, only to grasp my hand instead. I looked down at his hand, so huge around mine, like a kid’s clutching a toy.
I was glad I’d been here for him. Glad someone was—I don’t think it would have mattered who. Even if there’d been nothing I could do, just having me there seemed to help.
I couldn’t imagine what he was going through—not just the agony but the uncertainty. Was this normal for young werewolves? Starting to Change, then reversing? Or was it something the Edison Group had done? What if he couldn’t ever finish it? Would his body keep trying, putting him through this hell again and again?
I knew he would already be worrying about the same thing. That didn’t excuse his outbursts, but maybe it helped me understand him and not take it so personally when he lashed out at me.
I slipped my hand from his, and he shifted with a grunt but didn’t wake, just tucked his hand under his other arm and shivered. I hurried to where he’d left his clothing. When I returned, I checked the sweatshirt I’d been sitting on, but it was a damp, mud-caked mess. I decided to give him my jacket instead—it had to be close to his size—but it soon became apparent I wasn’t getting any clothes on him.
It didn’t matter that they were baggy—all Derek’s clothing was, like he thought he’d be less intimidating if he looked chubby instead of muscular. Still, I couldn’t get his jeans past his knees and even then I was sure I was going to wake him. So I settled for draping the clothing over him. I was fussing with the jacket, making sure it was the fleece side against him, when I caught a movement in the trees. I hunkered down beside Derek and went still.
When I didn’t hear anything, I peeked over Derek and saw a man through the trees. His face was rigid with anger as he walked fast. Something moved near the ground ahead of him. A truck stop visitor taking his dog for a walk?
I glanced at Derek. If the dog smelled him, we were in trouble. I pushed up to a crouch and crept forward as quietly as I could. I saw a flicker of yellow fur through the thick bushes. The man waved his hand with a flash of silver, like he was holding a chain leash. He looked furious. I couldn’t blame him. It was cold and wet and muddy, and his dog seemed to be insisting on doing its business in the deepest part of the small forest.
When the man’s foot flew out in a kick, though, my sympathy vanished, and I tensed, a shout of outrage on my lips. Then I saw it wasn’t a dog in front of him. It was a girl with long blond hair, wearing a light-colored shirt and jeans, crawling on all fours, like she was trying to get away from the man.
He kicked her again and she twisted, scuttling forward awkwardly, like she was too badly hurt to get up and run. Her face turned my way and I saw she wasn’t any older than me. Mascara raccoon-ringed her eyes. Dirt streaked her face. Dirt and blood, I realized, the blood still dripping from her nose, staining her shirt.
I sprang to my feet and as I did, the man raised his hand. Silver flashed—not a leash, but a knife. For a second, all I could see was that knife, my mind stumbling back to the girl in the alley, the knife tip over my eye. The terror I’d fought so hard to hide shot through me.
The man grabbed the girl’s long hair. He wrenched her head up and that jolted me from my frozen terror. My mouth opened to call out, yell anything, just get his attention so she could escape.
The knife sliced through the air, heading straight for the girl’s throat and I let out a cry. The knife passed through, seeming not to have left a mark, and I was sure he’d missed. Then her throat opened, splitting, gaping, blood gushing, spurting.
I fell back, hands flying to my mouth to stifle another scream. He thrust the dying girl aside with a snarl of disgust. She collapsed to the ground, blood still spurting, mouth moving, eyes rolling wildly.
The man turned toward me. I ran, tripping and stumbling through the undergrowth. I had to get to Derek, wake him, warn him. It seemed to take forever, but I finally made it. As I dropped beside him, I caught a glimmer out of the corner of my eyes and I turned to see the man…back where I’d first seen him, in exactly the same position, heading the same way.
His mouth opened, saying something, but no words came out. Why couldn’t I hear him? The forest was so silent my panting breaths sounded like a train, but I couldn’t even hear the man’s footsteps. I realized that the whole time I’d never heard a thing.
I waited for the flash of silver I’d seen earlier, and it came, in exactly the same place. Then he kicked the girl…in the same spot.
I reached into the pocket of my jacket, still wrapped around Derek, and pulled out the switchblade I’d taken from the girl in the alley. I was pretty sure by now that I wasn’t in danger, but I wasn’t taking chances. I crept toward the silent figures moving through the woods. The man kicked the girl a second time, but again the blow made no sound, her fall made no sound, she made no sound.
Ghosts. Like the man in the factory.
No, not ghosts. Ghosts might not make noise moving, but I could hear them talk. I could interact with them. These were just images. Metaphysical film clips of an event so horrible it was imprinted on this place, endlessly looping.
The man grabbed the girl by her hair. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I still saw it, the memory imprinted on me now, replaying on my eyelids.
I swallowed and retreated. Back in the clearing, I hunkered down beside Derek, drawing my knees up, my back turned to the scene playing out in the woods. But it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see it. I knew it was there, unfolding behind me, and it didn’t matter if I hadn’t really watched a girl die. In a way, I had.
A girl my age had been murdered in these woods and I’d seen her last terrified moments, watched her bleed to death in this forest. A life like mine had ended here, and it didn’t matter how many times I’d seen deaths in movies, it wasn’t the same, and I wasn’t ever going to forget it.
I huddled there, shivering, surrounded by darkness. I’d hated the dark since childhood. I know why now—I used to see ghosts in the dark when I was little, brushed off by my parents as bogeymen. Now, knowing that the “bogeymen” were real didn’t help at all.