Mistress of Blood and Fur

Chapter 36 - Endless

Onyx

At first, I think the burning cabin is the one Josie, Elaine and Sarah share. It’s not. It’s Grace’s and Carlotta’s. But Grace is in a weird trance so she doesn’t even see it right away. She thought the sky was burning.

“Grace?”

She’s still staring into space. I hold her close to me, feel her burning hot. I run hot for a werewolf, but I know that Grace is running a damn fever.

“Hey, hey. Wake up!” I say urgently but gently.

I know I need to call the others, but with that kind of fire burning to the sky, I bet most of the pack has already noticed. True enough, I hear shouting and growling. Wolves are running in their human forms with pails of water, trying to douse the fire.

My mobile phone rings. I startle. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard it ring. It’s my father calling, and he sounds like he’s at the end of his rope. Knowing him, though, he will not give up. For him, the pack comes first, which is good unless you’re his wife or his son.

“Is Grace there with you?” he demands, his voice loud and urgent.

“She’s here.”

“Thank the gods.”

The gods? Where have they been all this time?

“We don’t need to see or hear the gods to know if they’re helping us. They know we can handle this.”

I can’t handle Blaze’s words of wisdom right now. I need to be out there. To help. But Grace feels limp in my arm, while my right hand still holds my phone to my ear.

“We’re running over there, Onyx!” yells Fox. I didn’t even know he was home, but I can see him running toward the fire at full speed. Dash follows. Sarah lags behind, sobbing.

“I’ll help when I can. Grace – she’s not well,” I say.

“The rest of the wolves are there now. I’m going to check on Carlotta. Justine, Logan, Raul and Reed also live too close. We need to check on them. We need to secure Justine. She needs to stay in the mansion from now on so that she can keep her growing pup safe. We’re still under attack.”

“So,we fight back?”

“No. Stand down, Onyx. I will tell the others to do the same. No shifting!”

Then, a sound blares from the mansion. It’s loud and mournful. Only the Opium Hills wolves can understand the message. It’s the same one my father just passed on to me: “Stand down. Don’t shift!”

“Onyx?”

“Hey, I want you to stay here. The rest went to check your cabin -.” She tenses. After a few seconds, she begins pushing at my chest.

“I want to see the cabin, Onyx. I want to see if everything burned down!”

She looks so desperate that I don’t think there’s any other option but to bring her there.

“Hey. If you’re worried about your things, you don’t have to worry. We’ll shop for new clothes. New everything.”

I know that’s not what matters to her. She comes from a family who can buy her anything. She has begun feeling like she belongs to Opium Hills. An attack on what’s supposed to be her safe place is unacceptable.

“Let’s go,” she whispers.

It’s all that she has to tell me. I hold her hand just to make sure nobody can snatch her away. We run to the cabin. As we get closer, I realize that we are about to face something worse than a burned house.

Opium Hills wolves are crying. Logan is carrying Justine, who’s bleeding. The blood makes a path from between her legs, under her floral dress down to her ankles. She’s crying and holding onto Logan’s neck for dear life. But I know what she’s feeling. She’s not thinking about herself, but her pup. Elsewhere, there’s more crying. Four wolves are on the ground, twitching. They didn’t obey or didn’t hear the orders. They shifted and are now dying on the ground, with what looked like bullet holes on their flanks. All four of them.

“It looks like our numbers are going down, instead of increasing. This whole thing is a mistake,” Dash says. “I think it’s time to give up.”

I’m inclined to agree. There’s no way I want to see Grace gunned down with silver bullets or burned to a crisp.

“How did they do it? Dennington’s men, right?”

“Right,” Fox says. “He went for Grace’s and Carlotta’s cabin first.”

“It might just be because we’re near the edge of the forest,” Grace explains, trying to be logical even though we know we’re all f****d.

“Then, why not Reed’s and Raul’s cabin?” Dash asks, flinging his arms up. “They’re right on the edge, too, but their house barely smells like smoke. The fire didn’t reach Logan’s and Justine’s house, either. She just went into a panic.”

“Where’s Carlotta?’” Grace asks, her eyes darting left and right. I have to keep her hand in mine because she looks like she’s eager to get right into her cabin.

Half of her Opium Hills home has been burned to a crisp. The walls are sooty black and skeletal, like an animal peeled to show its rib. Inside, there’s barely anything that can be salvaged. Grace picks up a couple of journals, still hot from the fire. She checks the pages, her eyes sad. She must have lost a few things that she has written. Other than that, what else could she have lost? She came here, with only a few things that she must have been used to. We can easily buy back here stuff.

“Carlotta’s not here,” she observes softly.

There’s no sign of any bodies burned down to a crisp unless Carlotta has a way of disappearing, molecule by molecule. Maybe she was in a tryst. Maybe she was part of the attack. There are a lot of possibilities. We need to see her right away so that we can get rid of some of the

“You have to stay in the mansion,” I say.

“Can I stay with you?” she asks, her voice stronger. I can’t imagine her thinking of various things that Carlotta could have done wrong. She’s too pure. She relaxes as soon as she finds her notebooks and discovers that her roommate is more likely alive.

“No. Not yet. You know we have to wait until we’re formally joined.”

“It’s necessary right now. We need to stay together,” she insists.

“You know what. I think Alpha Kele should take us all in. The gods know the mansion has enough rooms for all of us,” Dash suggests, and damn it, I agree with him.

“He’s right, Onyx,” Fox seconds the motion before I can express my agreement.

“I know,” I mutter. “Let me talk to my father. Then again, if everyone’s in the mansion, we need to protect it even more. It will be easier for our enemies to target us at one time. We also have to keep the shapeshifter box outside of the main house.”

“s**t. You’re right, Onyx,” Dash says, shaking his head. “I don’t like it, but it looks like us damn fools should be the ones guarding the periphery.”

“We’ve been nothing but trouble,” Fox adds. He looks dazed. He has never been trouble all his life. He’s your quintessential good boy and we’ve been corrupting him. “I know we have four dead bodies to bury today, but this – all of this is a lot and a part of me likes it. Is it so wrong?”

We look at him and there’s a dark part in all of us that’s thrilled about being in the center of things.

“The endless warriors,” Grace mutters under her breath.

“What did you say?”

“It’s what we are now. Our fight won’t end as we try to be endless, to bring the Opium Hills pack to the future.”

“That means we need to end one of our enemies,” Sarah says. We all look at her. We have almost forgotten than Dennington’s own bastard child is right in our midst.

I let go of Grace’s hand so that I can look down at Sarah. She’s more than a foot shorter than I am and I try to intimidate her – to see if there’s fear or guilt lurking behind her black-fringed eyes.

“Did you know there would be an attack? Is it really your f*****g father who did this?”

“I – I d-didn’t know about the attack, O-onyx. I swear. I swear on the wolf gods, the Christian gods, and the maiden, mother, and crone. I have nothing to do with it, but yes, I smell my father’s doing. The attack feels too human.”

“Why would they target Grace?”

“Grace? Her blood descends from one of the first wolves of Opium Hills. But I don’t know if my father even knows who’s who over here.”

“What about Carlotta?” Fox asks. “What if they’re targeting Carlotta?”

“You all don’t make f*****g sense,” Dash protests. “Everyone’s a target. They just had to attack one cabin as a warning. In the end, these ignorant humans want us all dead.”

The thing is, one or all of them may be right. One things’ for sure, though. We need protection. We also need to train for defense and offense, as soon as possible.