85: That Is Feral

The dream rattles me throughout the night. The senses that felt so real, the familiarity. There’s always been that familiar sensation with Gabriel. Like I knew him the moment I met him, which is ridiculous.

When I finally decide to crawl out of bed, I walk into an empty kitchen, empty living room. Gabriel isn’t here. But a note rests on the kitchen table. It’s short and to the point. He regrets leaving, but he needs to meet with Phillip to discuss Scarlet River’s behavior.

A disappointment comes over me. I wanted to ask him about his so-called business with the wolves. What business would vampires want with werewolves? What was Phillip planning? How was Gabriel involved?

I guess I’ll just have to wait until later to ask.

Time passes by quickly as I get ready. Almost an hour passes before I walk into Mystic Moon. Gretchen sits behind the counter, Monty nowhere in sight.

“How is she?” I ask, semi-afraid of the answer.

Gretchen’s hands slightly shake as she answers. “I mended the bones, but she needs rest.” Her eyes meet mine. “Caleb stayed as long as he could. He wanted me to tell you that he’s…” Her words trail off.

“Pissed?” I guess at what she was going to say. “Frustrated. Disappointed. Pissed.” I rattle off. I’m pissed too. Dumbass wolves always claiming shit.

“I’m sorry. To both of you.” Gretchen apologizes. “I scheduled the appointment. I should’ve known it wouldn’t go well. The last werewolf reading didn’t go well, but…” She’s unable to finish her sentence again.

So I try to finish for her, “you hoped for the best. Not all wolves are helpless and not all wolves are psychotic.” I smash my lips together as I think about my words. “Even though those seem to be the ones that we always get stuck with.” I joke.

Gretchen gives a puff of laugher, but it doesn’t meet her eyes. It was something to fill the silence.

“So what’s on the agenda for today. Full schedule again?” I ask.

“No. I canceled our appointments for today, so it’s just a regular shop day.” She stares off into space as she speaks. This really disturbed her.

I rub my hands together, twisting my fingers together, “so...I think I’ll organize some of the shelves, maybe whip up some new smudge sticks.” A werewolf repellent would be amazing, but that would cause an uproar. Smudge sticks on the other hand are more discreet and popular sellers. What’s a few extra ingredients to ward off bad mojo.

“Sure. Sure.” Gretchen says without really paying attention. I could’ve told her that I’ll whip up some werewolf killer potion and she probably would still be like, sure sure.

I leave her to her thoughts and let my instincts take over. We needed to protect ourselves and our clients. So I set about the shop, digging through shipments, looking for a little of this and little of that. Customers don’t really care what properties their smudge stick has as long as it works to cleanse trapped energies.

Mine will just cleanse a little bit more.

With full hands and several trips around the shop, I have a decent pile of items heaped on my table. I take the most basic element of a smudge stick, sage and create small piles. There’s a total of four different base sages I use before adding special attributes to each pile. A little wolfsbane in some, some of my special dead-wood and thorned rose stems for vampires in others, extra white sage and sweetgrass for ghosts and strands of holy water soaked and then dried wheat for demons.

I’m quite pleased and slightly giddy with my creations, but then my heart plummets when a looming shadow stretches into the room. His gruff voice sends a shiver down my spine. I finish tying off bundle number thirty six before turning around to face him.

His dark eyes meet mine. “Busy?” Caleb asks as he eyeballs the table still heaping with items.

“Not really, but I want to warn you that some ingredients on this table might irritate you.” I cringe as I say it, because I’m inadvertently admitting something that I shouldn’t be doing.

“Irritate as in annoy me or cause a physical reaction?”

“Uh...both?”

He heaves a deep, long breath through his lungs. His shoulder and chest rise and fall before he speaks. “I’m not gonna ask.”
Quickly, I mutter, “probably for the best.”

“But,” his voice gets stern again, “you need to stop your little side project and take a ride with me to the den, to see Marcus.”

“What? No.” My voice suddenly gets so loud that I hear Gretchen’s chair scrap against the floor and then see the poke her head peeking in just behind Caleb.

“Everything alright in there?” She asks.

“Yeah.” I reply.

Caleb talks over me, “Just trying to get Hazel to take a break, get some lunch with me.” He lies. But why? To protect Gretchen or help his agenda?

My eyes narrow at him for leaving out a lot of details. It’s only for that reason that Gretchen quickly agrees. Not to mention, she believes that Caleb would never hurt me or put me in a situation that would result in my becoming a chew toy.

But he was taking me straight to Marcus. It can’t be something good when Marcus is involved.

I take his lead and keep that little bit of information to myself until we’re out of the shop. It’s tough to leave all my stuff, all my unfinished bundles behind. As Caleb leads me out the door, I rush to tell Gretchen that she can set up the completed ones out on the sales floor.

She grumbles that she doesn’t know what attributes each hold or which are which, but I do. The colored twine tells me which bundle is for which demizen. “I’ll fill you in when I get back.” I tell her the moment my foot steps out onto the sidewalk.

It’s only when Caleb shuts my passenger side door, hops into the driver’s seat and pulls away that I let my questions and annoyance flow. “In a rush much. What’s so important anyways?”

“It’s one of the girls. She’s…not herself.”

I let out a gruff sigh, “if you can be any more vague, please do.” I joke.

“I don’t know how to explain it. All I know is that if anyone can help her it’s you.” There’s a fearful tone to his voice. Does he care about this girl? Or is she just freaking everyone out?

“Okay.” I’m not sure what else to say even though there’s so much unsaid between us. In hopes of calming him, I lightly rest my hand on his forearm. “I’ll do my best.”

“You always do.” He says and I immediately feel guilty. About what I’m not sure, but my chest tightens and my lungs burn as if I got caught in a compromising position.

Is it from the fights we’ve recently had that revolve around Gabriel? How I’ve clearly chosen the vampire over him. Maybe. But Caleb has always chosen Marcus over me plenty of times. It’s not the same though, but I use it to make myself feel better.

We reach the den sooner than I’d like. Several wolves' eyes are on us as we pull up, Marcus’s gaze is the first and only pair of eyes I meet head on. He lingers on the front steps of a cabin that isn’t his own. This one is small and shabby, whereas, his is large and immaculate.

He bobs from one foot to the other, placing weight on one heel then on the other. Whatever is happening is making him nervous. And it instantly makes me nervous too. There are only so many things that scare wolves.

“Hazel.” Marcus’s pleasure at my arrival is fake. “Caleb was very persistent that you could help us. I hope he’s right.” He hopes he’s wrong.

“Well, I wish I knew what I was dealing with.” I blurt out.

Caleb steps forward, hand on the door knob, “and I told you it’s hard to explain.” He opens the door expectant of me walking in. I catch glimpses of other nearby wolves. All of which are several feet back, terrified.

What the hell is going on?

The room is so dark that I quickly mutter the small incantation to help my eyesight, because Caleb doesn’t seem to reach for the light switch. And once the door closes behind us, only Caleb and I inside, it becomes pitch black.

My spell hasn’t completely finished when a growl sounds across the room freezing me in place. The rake of nail scratching against wood causes me to flinch. When a piece of furniture clatters somewhere in front of me, I can barely make out shadows within the room.

But I feel the despair, the impending trouble that’s coming.

I barely have a chance to fixate on the largest shadow before Caleb shoves me out of the way, knocking the air from lungs. But his brute force isn’t anything compared to the stool that had been soaring at my head. It quickly shatters against the wall.

Another growl, more scratching. This time digging deep into the wood.

I become frozen as I watch the large wolf leap onto the kitchen counter. Her two front paws lift into the air as she roars with rage. Her yellowed eyes meet my terrified ones. They can smell fear and I’m petrified.

I don’t realize my feet are moving until the bright sunlight blinds me as I make a mad dash out of the cabin, Caleb hot on my heels. A ear piercing growl follows us as we safely make it to the front porch. Just as the door shuts, she slams her body against the wood and it rattles, and I stumble back nearly falling on my ass.

I pant for breath, hands on my knees doubled over. “What the fuck was that?” I hiss. That wasn’t a wolf. That was something else.

“We think she’s possessed.” Marcus interjects, cool, calm and collected. I didn’t see him go in.

“Possessed?” I shout. In a more calmer, serious voice, I repeat, “possessed.” All eyes are on me. “Werewolves can’t get possessed. That’s more of a human thing. That,” I jab my thumb behind to point at the door, “is feral. Did she eat a bad raccoon or something and contract rabies, because that’s more logical than possession.”

“This is serious, Hazel.” Caleb interjects, stopping the rage that’s bound to come from Marcus due to me making snide jokes about rabid dogs.

“No shit. Very serious things could happen if I go back in there.” My mouth continues to ramble, “I mean I could get bit and turn into some half werewolf, half witch crossbreed...thing.” The disgust is plain as day on my face.

“You know that’s not true.” Caleb says trying to calm me.

“You’re right,” I admit, “that's the best case scenario. In actuality, I would die.” A witch has never survived the change. There’s a reason there aren’t mixed demizens. Our DNA isn't compatible with each other. If that crazed wolf in there scratched or bit me, I would die, either from the wound or the transition. But no matter what, I would die.

And by the look on Marcus and even Caleb’s face, they understand and accept me as becoming collateral damage. I take in a deep breath and slowly exhale.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.” Caleb pleads.

I believe him. I trust him, but it still doesn’t feel good. “Fine, but I need more than just you watching my back.” I turn to Marcus, because it’s time for him to get his hands dirty. “I need her subdued. Tied down, drugged, I don’t care, but I need her out cold. Then I’ll see what I can do.”

His lips tighten into thin straight lines and his jaw grinds back and forth unpleased with having to some work. He calls out three names and seconds later three large, burly wolves come strutting up. “You heard the witch.”

“Thanks.” I say with a tinge of repulsion. Here I am trying to help him and he calls me a ‘witch’ as if it’s a bad thing.

The second worst thing about wolves, always showing dominance.