Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) (12 page)

A light blazed in Fen’s eyes as his brow creased and he chewed on the tip of his paintbrush. “Since we straddle the line between spirit and flesh; wouldn’t that make it more visceral for us to encounter spiritual forces? Especially on a day like Halloween, or Samhain, when the planes are meshed enough for even the supernaturally inept to notice strange phenomena? Ghost hunters have been able to record the voices of the dead; maybe we can hear them with our phantom wolf’s senses. That could explain the voices I suppose… Then again you
could
just be mentally disturbed…” Fen smiled.

“
I hear dead people…
” I whispered and he laughed.

“If that’s true, it might even be easier for us to see spiritual manifestations too. Maybe some of the people who experience spirit phenomena have
therian blood in their lineage. It might not be potent enough for them to become shifters like us, but it might be just enough to allow them to perceive the supernatural. For whatever reason, supernatural things and events are drawn to each other, like some law of paranormal attraction. Ghosts, werewolves, and vampires always seem to be caught in a loop with each other.”

“Okay, vampires I could understand, but what do ghosts have to do with us?”

“Ghosts are either an imprint of an event, or the restless spirit of someone who died; in either case they’re actually in the etheric plane, not the physical. However, because they used to be physical themselves, they can sometimes ‘haunt’ the physical world. Out of all the creepy-crawlies out there, ghosts and demons scare me the most.” Fen hugged his legs to his chest with a distant look in his eyes.

“Demons I get; but why, pray tell, is the big bad wolf afraid of spooks?”

He refused the bait, but his gaze grew hollow. “What if a soul came to a point of no return? If a soul remained trapped without resolution, it might just… diffuse into oblivion. The only true death; a final destruction of the undying spark with no chance for reincarnation. Just… gone…” Fen finally met my eyes “Everything you ever were or could be, utterly erased from existence…”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, “Holy shit dude, are you saying you believe someone could completely…
end
?”

He nodded, “The single most frightening part of life that has haunted us since the dawn of time is death. An afterlife, reincarnation, nirvana, heaven… even hell is preferable to a complete annihilation of the self.”

“Come on Fen, what are the odds that something like that could really happen?” I swallowed hard as shadows stirred in my subconscious.

“I hope I never find out,” He looked at me and rubbed a pale line of scar tissue on his arm, “What if you, or someone you love, ended up trapped?”

Fen went silent, disturbed by his own train of thought. I felt his emotions inside me as though they were my own, almost like a taste on my tongue. Not just fear and sadness, but also a fathomless melancholy. A loss so deep and rending it oppressed his very soul, and beneath it all… guilt…

“Who died Fen?”

He grabbed his book-bag and stormed out of the classroom, leaving his project on the table.

His mood lingered like smoke in the air even after he left. I put away his assignment for him, but I couldn’t focus on my own work anymore either. It was a bleeding black mess of ink anyway.

All alone in the cold art room the silence was not only deafening, but unnerving as well. My imagination conjured shapes in the corner of my eye, and the sensation of eyes watching me raised the short hairs on my neck. It reminded me of running down the trail in those dreams I’d had. Finally, my nerve broke and I cleaned up and got ready to go home.

“Damnit Fen, why’d you have to start talking about ghosts?” I grumbled to myself to break the silence, and hopefully remind my ears what
real
sounds were so they’d stop creating things that weren’t there. Whispers writhed in the periphery of my hearing. I looked around the room before I caught myself, and ground my teeth in frustration as I repacked my bag

Today was just
not
my day…

I turned the light off and stepped into the empty hallway, while my eyes adjusted to the eerie orange light that filled the halls with slanting beams through the glowing classroom windows. Cartoon cutouts of vampire bats and witches decorated the halls, with some fake spider web taped to the ceiling.

As I walked past the auditorium doors, Corwin popped into my head and a thought teased the edge of my mind just beyond reach.

I shoved the ancient brass lever on the door with my foot and it crashed open with an echoing clang. Strips of brilliant orange clouds faded into the dark blue of night as I walked outside into the shadowy twilight and a thought finally slipped past the noise in my head.

Corwin said he used to be friends with Fen and Loki…

Was he one of us?

I shook the thought away; there was no way Fen or Loki would ever abandon a member of the Pack. Still, I couldn’t shake the uneasiness I’d felt when he’d met my eyes. My distraction drowned out everything else, so I’d walked a couple blocks before I realized I wasn’t alone.

I glanced behind me and saw nothing but an empty street with gold and orange leaves trickling in the breeze. Still, the feeling would not relent. I imagined Jack watching me from the shadows, waiting to exact his revenge. My shoulders bunched and my phantom coat prickled. The streetlights along the block flickered and went off. I
felt
something out there, watching me…

A fluttering sound drew my gaze up. I couldn’t see anything at first but gaunt tree limbs silhouetted against the deep navy sky, but then a shadow moved. The iridescent feathers made the immense bird look even more powerful as it tilted its head to the side and looked at me. A little relieved that there
had
actually been something real watching me, I nodded at it and turned back toward home. It cawed and then fluttered down to the ground ahead of me. My wolf stirred as the sight of the bird triggered some instinctual memory, but something didn’t feel right…

I walked past it and it flew ahead of me again to watch, cocking its head in sharp twitches to keep track of me. I didn’t hear the rustle of feathers again.

Just as I thought the bird had grown weary of me, a wash of air moved behind me, and a sudden weight landed on my shoulders. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked over my shoulder to see the huge bird perched atop my backpack, looking at me. It curled its talons around the handle to keep its balance and cawed, impossibly loud so close to my ears.

“Well, hello…” I said awkwardly. It cawed again, its voice low and husky, and it tilted its head to the other side to watch me. I fought down the urge to run around flailing my arms and squealing, though my eyes followed the pronounced curve of its bill and an unpleasant image of him eating my eyeball flashed in my head. I turned my face away and resumed walking with my new ‘friend’ in tow.

The temperature dropped fast after sunset, and I sniffed my runny nose. I smelled dry crushed leaves, compost, and somewhere nearby the tantalizing aroma of rotisserie chicken. But there was something very obvious I
didn’t
smell. I risked my eye again to turn my head and sniff at the bird, but it was like there was nothing there. I felt the weight, I saw him, but I couldn’t smell him.

My class had gone to a raptor center in fourth grade; the smell of predatory birds was
not
easy to miss… Goosebumps rose all over me as my intuition screamed at me that this was
very not right!

Almost as if he sensed my unease, the bird croaked and fluttered off my pack. I glanced back but couldn’t see him, though I still heard his cries overhead. I turned down the alley and his voice grew fainter, but I still felt his eyes on me.

I pulled the shadows around myself again like I had in the locker room. It was harder to do while walking, but I wanted it to leave me alone. It didn’t seem to have any effect though. Even after I walked inside I still felt watched. Eyes and whispers lingered as dinner came and went, as I finished my homework down in the dungeon, and tried to fall asleep despite the chaos inside my head.

After an hour of lying in bed, frustrated and sleepless, I went upstairs and took some Nyquil. The vile goo eventually took effect and I forced myself to sleep; but that was when the
real
fun began…

Shadows and fog…

Shapes stirred and dispersed in the mist, a solid blackness beyond; I struggled through the nothingness adrift, lost… so lost… not even the moon graced me with her light any more… The abandoned one…

Cursed…

He… He’d abandoned me, though he stood right there, I knew he didn’t consider me Pack, how could he? I wasn’t what he wanted me to be. He was disappointed. He hated me. The humans ostracized me, and now the wall had grown tall and strong between me and… everything else… Everyone else… It was no way to live… Couldn’t even call it ‘life’ really… The life that I had practically begged him to steal from me…

My human family didn’t exist anymore, so I’d pushed harder. I’d fought so hard to impress him, make him proud of me, make him want me in the Pack, no matter what I was… But it was all useless…

As I stumbled blind through the fog, a room was revealed to me, a deep russet curtain, and a cluttered menagerie of things lying about in dusty piles, litter that looked like stage props. A strong melancholy, a smoldering anger… And a pit of darkness that completely consumed me inside… I wanted it over…

No… I needed it over.

A figure curled up in the shadows, weeping…

It’s too hard… too damn hard for me… So much easier…

No one will miss me…

I lurched awake gasping as the darkness was broken with a blinding crack. My heart pounded like a caged beast until I finally recognized my own room and I wept quietly in the dark, rocking back and forth. The deluge of emotions that crashed over me swept everything away.

“That wasn’t me, that’s not me…” I muttered over and over to myself as my pulse slowed. “And that won’t ever
be
me…” I sniffed and closed my eyes, pushing hot tears down over my cheeks.

Was it just a nightmare? It felt too real though… too damn real… Were they somebody else’s memories, or… a glimpse of my own fate? God knows I’d considered it often enough, the easy way out, an end to the weary procession of pain called life.

The sedatives in my bloodstream pulled at me, but I fought them, I didn’t ever want to return to that darkness again. While the dream held me, it felt like there was no escape, no reason for me to even keep breathing anymore.