Red Moon Rising

62. curse

Chapter Song: Breezeblocks - alt-J

XX

Maybe I am tired of running. I've been thinking it more and more lately. Even in St. Croix, even when I've found my way back to my match, I'm still running. Fucking Paul...he knew even back in the cafe, when he first said those words to me, that I wouldn't be running from fate, but from him.

"You're not Jack."

I freeze, the car door standing open. It's Mariah, who has remained blissfully scarce when I'm around ever since our bathtub exchange when I first got here. Sage admitted that she "accidentally told Jack every detail" and that Jack was upset enough that he sought Mariah out to her to try to make her understand. I wish he hadn't; I'm sure it only made her hate me more.

"What are you doing?"

"Does it matter to you?" I ask, but then I really take in her face, which is even paler than usual, and the way her shoulders are drawn up tight. She looks haunted. Mariah glances over her shoulder, then back to me.

"Makes sense you'd leave when times got hard."

"Times will be harder if I stay. You know that." I close the door as she looks over her shoulder again and folds her arms over her stomach. "What's wrong?"

Mariah opens her mouth, then closes it. The way the hatred melts from her face is heartbreaking. When she manages to meet my eye, there are tears in hers. "Anna—my daughter—is gone. She shifted early. I can't find her anywhere."

My heart lurches, and I close the car door. It was rare for wolves to shift even before the moon nightfall, but it wasn't unheard of. "Which way?"

"The woods, east. I—" Mariah looks down at her leg, and her voice is soft and ragged. "It's a prosthetic. I couldn't even go after her her."

"Sage is at the back of the lodge. Find her."

She stares at me numbly as I shed my coat and kick out of my boots. Then, stumbling back, she runs toward the lodge, her gait unsteady as she pushes harder through the snow.

I shiver as the fur washes over me and I sink to all fours. Shifting beneath the full moon is always like this, a deep release, a relaxing of the soul. This is a bad idea. But then, I was just about to leave St. Croix alone in a vehicle I barely know how to drive, toward the hands of two men who undoubtedly mean to hurt me worse than I can imagine. The woods will not be a safe place tonight; even if Paul and Isaac aren't nearby, there are surely hunters at the edge of the territory. St. Croix has a better relationship to its locals than Rust Cove, but that doesn't mean that the worst Minnesota has to offer won't travel a few hours to sit at the border of the territory to see if they can skin a wolf.

Along the edge of the woods, I pick up Anna's scent, so like her mother's they are nearly indistinguishable from one another. Don't go far, kid. After a day of moving, carrying things to and from the lodge, making endless trips to the different storage facilities on the property, my muscles are warmed and more limber than I expect. Still, there's the ache in my leg that needles at the back of my mind, particularly when I break through deeper drifts of snow and have to put weight toward the front of the leg.

But I'm running again. I'm running again, and the sun sinking low on the horizon behind me stretches the shadows of the trees in long painted lines across the snow pointing due east, guiding me deeper into the forest. Running alone like this, I could almost believe I'm back in Rust Cove, chasing Tyler through the woods as his young giddy wolf restlessly explores the cliffs along the lake beneath the big full moon. I wonder if he's learned how to control the wolf yet, if he is now waiting for the full moon to arrive, sitting sweaty, skin all pins and needles, as the moon rises and he fights to remember what the human form feels like to wear.