Unbound (3 page)

Ranger sniffed around a bit longer, wondering over the scent. It almost didn’t seem human at all, or even animal. Just inherently wrong.

He spun on a paw and started loping towards the mountain to the north of Tamarack. The mountain had no name, but everyone knew about it. The wolf hated the place, loathed climbing it with every fiber of his being, but he had to check.

As he loped through the trees and across cleared farmland, he considered the rot. That had to be the smell of the murderer. He’d been in town for three days without encountering a single whiff of that smell though, which didn’t make sense – unless the killer was either a creature hiding out in the deep woods, or else a person living in town who could disguise their scent.

He didn’t like it, either way.

He noticed the curse-warning tied to a branch of a pin cherry as he crossed Slag Creek Road, beyond which there was no more farmland, just wilds. Four bones woven into a braid of twine, tied to a rusting upside-down horse shoe.

Slag Creek Road didn’t really deserve to be called a road anymore. The tarmac was covered in drifts of decaying leaves that had been building up for more than half a century. Weeds grew through the cracks in the road’s surface, and further up there was a downed fir tree lying diagonally across it, moss on the trunk.

The wolf slowed to a creep as he neared the closest of the mine entrances, his eyes wide, ears twitching, whiskers pricked forward to feel the slightest vibration in the air, nose working overtime to sift through the layers upon layers of smells of the forest.

Leaves. Grass. Pine resin, sharp and tangy, and sweet maple, and the damp smell of nighttime. Rust from the old mine buildings, collapsing onto themselves near the mine entrance, which was haphazardly boarded-over. Earth-smell, clay and loose dirt and metal, and beneath that the cold, cold smell of the deep dark and the
things
that lived there.

But no sweet rotting death.

The killer had not come from the mines.

The wolf did not feel relief. Skin prickling, hackles standing on end, he headed back to town, glancing back over his shoulder now and again to make sure nothing was following him until he’d crossed back over the road.

The wolf was passing through the last stand of trees before the cemetery when the hot, tangy, grassy scent of game came to him upon the wind. He froze.

Something wasn’t right, though it wasn’t a thing from the mine.

Game-scent. Deer-smell. Deer didn’t come this close to town, and they certainly didn’t go anywhere near the cemetery, with the Old Hemlock Grove at the center. Ears swiveling, eyes searching the darkness, the wolf assessed his surroundings.

The stag stepped out of the undergrowth beneath an oak tree.

Unwise is the lone wolf that hunts the deer without the aid of his pack
. Ranger had known this fact for most of his life, since his mother taught him to hunt. A flailing hoof could brain a wolf, and stags were particularly dangerous for their size and their racks of antlers, which could gut an unwary hunter. The deer standing in front of Ranger now had to be over a thousand pounds, more than six times the size of the lone gray wolf with the chewed up ear and the clawed muzzle.

This stag’s antlers spanned six feet, and it stood fully as high as a man at its shoulder. Its coat was dark as night, speckled with the light of the stars, its eyes reflecting the light of the moon.

It stamped a hoof, snorting and tossing its head.

Ranger tucked his tail and turned to slink away, watching the deer out of the corner of his eye.

It followed him.

He clambered over the low stone wall into the cemetery and crossed the ward line around the Old Hemlock Grove. As soon as he passed the Hemlock Tree itself, he bolted for Oakridge Road, which headed toward the heart of town. His claws clicked when they hit the sidewalk, and then he was tearing across the road, over Mister Mueller’s back garden fence, and then up the street towards Michelle’s house.

Behind him, the deer bugled.

The lights in Michelle’s house were off. What day of the week was it? He could never remember, had spent too long in the mountains, for things like days and months to matter. When was the last time he heard the church bells of the next town over? He couldn’t think, but he knew that Michelle often went down to Norfolk on Sundays to see her uncle, Dale, her cousin, Yani, and her brother, Clyde, at the Fox Creek Psychiatric Hospital. She usually stayed in a hotel in Norfolk overnight, then drove back on Monday morning.

Was it Sunday?

Ranger couldn’t remember, even as he barked at the door.

He heard the clatter of hooves on concrete and rather than waiting and hoping Michelle came to the door, he fled to the first safe place he could think of other than Michelle’s – Granny Florence’s old house over on Elmwood Street. His breath sawed in and out of his chest, his heart beat against his ribs like a terrified bird trapped inside a cage, fluttering against the bars. All he could hear was the sound of hoof beats on tarmac and the jingle of the tag on his collar.

He reached Elmwood Street and started yip-yowling. He vaulted onto the porch around Granny Florence’s old house, almost ran headfirst into the door and only stopped himself with a clattering of claws. He scratched desperately at the door, and window, bark-howling in terror as the grass behind him rustled.

A light flicked on in the hallway, and a dark shape moved to the door, unlocking it with a
click
.

It was Detective Bower. Ranger pushed past him into the house then spun around and peered out into the night, panting. The deer was gone.

The detective followed his gaze and found nothing, then looked at the wolf oddly before he closed the door, locking it again.

“There a reason you’re waking me up in the middle of the night, Ranger?” he asked, at length.

Ranger flicked his ears back, whining, and stared down at the worn floorboards. He couldn’t explain. Not to the detective.

“Well, all right,” Detective Bower said. “You’re welcome here any time, you know that, but please don’t pee on anything.”

Ranger wondered why everyone always assumed he wasn’t housebroken.

Oblivious to Ranger’s discontent, the detective went on: “You can let yourself out when you want to leave, I suppose? Breakfast is at six thirty, sharp. If you aren’t there, I’ll assume you aren’t eating with us. The house is yours, but try not to wake Sachie.”

Ranger whuffed at the detective softly. The man nodded to himself, scratched at his chin, and turned to go back up the stairs and presumably back to bed. The wolf paced the bottom floor, peering out the windows, looking for the gleam of the deer’s moonbright eye, but it wasn’t there. Eventually, he went upstairs also, brushing his flanks against doorframes and walls and peering through any door left ajar.

The detective was asleep, snoring softly. In a different room, the room that used to belong to Granny Florence, the detective’s son was snuffling quietly in his sleep. Ranger nosed his way into the bathroom, took a long drink from the toilet since the detective hadn’t been kind enough to offer him water, and then padded through into Sacheverell’s room and crawled under the bed, squirming across the floorboards until he could press his side up against the floral wallpaper.

He lay his head on his paws, closed his eyes, and sighed.

The following morning, Sacheverell woke him by jouncing around on the bed above him, making the bedsprings creak loudly. Ranger growled before he thought better of it, his mind still sleep-addled, and the boy on the bed froze. From the utter silence that fell over the room, he seemed to have stopped breathing completely.

Ranger’s growl tapered off as he listened to make sure Sacheverell hadn’t suddenly died above his head.

Then, startlingly sudden, Sacheverell yelled out: “Dad!
Dad!
”

From below them, Detective Bower replied: “What is it, Sachie?”

“You remember how when I was eight years old I agreed with you that the monsters under the bed weren’t real and that you didn’t need to check for them anymore? Okay, well, I changed my mind. Can you
please
come look under my bed for me?”

The wolf heard Detective Bower’s tread on the stairs, and squirmed out from under the bed to greet him. Sacheverell swore.

“Oh my god, Dad! It’s a wolf! There is a
wolf
in my
room
!”

Detective Bower laughed to himself out on the landing.

“Dad, you could hurry, you know!” Sacheverell called, a shrill note in his voice. Ranger yawned, making sure to show off just how big his teeth were, and was pleased when the boy swore again under his breath.

The detective pushed the bedroom door open and stood in the doorway, looking phenomenally unimpressed as Sacheverell asked him where his gun was, why he didn’t bring his gun, there was a
wolf
in the house.

“Sachie, calm down. That’s just Ranger. He’s a pet. See? He’s wearing a collar,” the detective said. “I let him in last night. Don’t know why he chose to sleep under your bed.”

“Why did you let some random dog in?” Sachie asked, his tone changing from one of fear to one of mild outrage. “You don’t even
like
dogs.”

Ranger side-eyed the detective, wondering if there was a story there. Had Sachie begged for a puppy as a child and been denied one? Did Detective Bower have a particular distaste for a next-door-neighbor’s pet? Had he been chewed on by one of the department’s police dogs back in Boston?

“I know Ranger quite well, actually. He belongs to Lowell Devereaux – your second cousin,” Detective Bower said.

Sachie blinked. “I have a second cousin?”

“A whole host of them, actually,” the detective replied. “Don’t you remember? I showed you our family tree when you were twelve.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t
really
expect me to remember that,” Sachie said, sounding aggrieved. “Family trees are boring. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Detective Bower shrugged. “Oh, well. I was born here. Your grandparents live here. You played with them when we came for a visit just after you turned seven. I thought you knew. Anyway, breakfast is on in ten. Have a shower and get dressed, please. Did you want a ride to school this morning?”

“No, I can walk,” Sachie said.

Ranger followed the detective back downstairs to the kitchen, where he sat by the stove and whined while the detective cooked bacon until he took pity on the wolf and dropped a couple of pieces on the floor, with a promise of: “Not a word to Michelle, okay?”

When Sachie came down, not ten minutes later but nearly twenty, he smelled of soap and toothpaste and laundry detergent and old socks, which led Ranger to believe he’d pulled on the same pair of socks he’d worn yesterday rather than bothering to find a new pair.

“Dad,” he said to the detective, as he sat down at the table and reached for a piece of toast. “Why is my second cousin just letting his dog wander around town?”

“Ranger’s something of a town dog, these days,” Detective Bower replied, pouring himself a cup of strong black coffee. “You want a cup?”

Sachie considered. “No, thanks. What do you mean, a town dog?”

“Well, it’s a bit hard to explain without telling you the entire history of the town, to be honest.”

“You’d have to tell me the history of the
whole town
to explain why one dog is allowed to wander?” Sachie said, disbelievingly.

The detective thought about that for a moment. “I guess not. I can just tell you that the town was founded by the Devereaux family, and that Lowell Devereaux owns most of the land hereabouts. He’s been abroad with his younger sister for the past few years and his grandmother – my great aunt – was looking after the dog, but she died recently, and since then Ranger’s been something of a town project. She used to live in this house, which is why he came here, I suppose.”

“Okay, then. I guess that makes sense.” Sachie was apparently appeased.

Detective Bower slathered a piece of bread with peanut butter and handed it to the wolf, who snapped it up then sat on the floor, licking his chops and hoping for more.