Wolfen (10 page)

“Where are we going?”

Aiden preened. “I like to call it home. It’s just about the
best place a Wolfen girl like you can be. Remote, protected, tricked out with
all of the modern comforts like running water and flushing toilets. And best of
all, no trigger-happy humans.”

“What if I don’t want to go?”

Okay, that came out of left field. “Why would you not?”

“I don’t know you, I don’t really understand what you are or
what I am, I have no reason to trust you.”

“Other than our saving your life, you mean?”

“It’s
because
you saved my life I don’t trust you.
Why would you do that? There’s no reason for you to take on another hungry
mouth unless—”

“Then stop thinking like a human,” he said simply. “All of
those bad things you’re imagining are baseless; you’re applying old standards
to a new situation and lumping us together with the species that created this
whole mess to begin with. We’re not them. Don’t go guessing at our motives; you
have no idea what we do.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Just then, Bryce, bless his heart and his superb timing,
came back with a stack of clothing for Sinna, likely scavenged from one of the
other rooms. This house had been abandoned in a hurry, almost as if the
residents saw something coming, grabbed their loved ones, and ran like hell.
Aiden could respect that. He kind of hoped they got to safety.

Bryce handed the stack to Sinna, cleared his throat, and
said, “There’s some water in the bathroom for washing. Clothes should fit.”

Aiden stared. “Whoa, dude, no need to talk her ear off. Take
a breath, will you?”

Bryce snapped his fangs at him. He was still bloodied from
carrying Sinna, but apparently he’d left all the washing water for her.
Curiouser and curiouser.

Sinna accepted the clothing with a tentative smile at Bryce.
“Thank you.”

He nodded with a grunt, and went back to his corner. If that
didn’t confuse the little bit out of her silly ideas, Aiden didn’t know what would.

“Bathroom’s right outside, to the left,” Aiden said, driving
the last nail into that coffin, “in case you were wondering.”

Sinna stared at the door, clearly debating whether it would
be worth the physical exertion, then she made a face and surged to her feet.
But she stood up too fast, and pitched forward. Aiden caught her before she
face-planted into the wall behind him. “Whoa there, little bit. Easy does it.”
He could feel her shivering. She was barely awake, but she stubbornly righted
herself and brushed off his hands. “You good?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“All right, then. Yell if there’s trouble.”

“Right,” she muttered as she went out the door, not
realizing Wolfen hearing was ten times better than a cat’s. “Trouble from the
scary monsters who won’t come in because they don’t like the way I smell.”

Aiden’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. Sweet, innocent
girl. Even after everything he’d told her, she still had no idea. It was never
converts Wolfen had to worry about.

It was only ever humans.

I wonder if this could be a dream. If somehow my dying
brain has managed to conjure a vision in my final moments. I always knew the
old religions had it wrong. There is no heaven or hell, only more of the same
kind of different.

But I know better than to pretend. The person staring
back at me from inside the mirror, with her eyes aglow, her pert chin tilted
down, and her skin pearlescent pale in the moonlight, isn’t me. It can’t be me,
because I am not this…this
thing
they tell me I am. And if it’s not me,
then it’s someone else—I am someone else. Strange, the idea doesn’t fill me
with dread or fear, only a deep sense of sorrow.

There can be no creation of something new without first a
destruction of what used to be.

I mourn the old Sinna. I will never see her again.

She is dead.

~

A solid marble sink stood in the bathroom. Sinna leaned her
weight on it, staring beyond her reflection to find some mystical marker to
point her toward reality. Her legs were wobbly, and her head still ached. Aside
from her blood-soaked clothes, those were the last remaining signs she’d been
hurt in the first place.

Sinna shrugged out of her jacket and sat on the toilet to
rest her legs. From high up on one wall, a bright shaft of moonlight streamed
in through a small window, and she stuck her arm into it, tracing the long,
thin scar. It was still there, years after the wound had been inflicted.

She pulled her T-shirt off and twisted her torso into the
light. The skin over her stomach was smooth; no bumps, scabs, scars, or
discoloration. Nothing to suggest she’d been shot at all.

The old world order is gone,
Gerry had once told her.
There’s only one rule of survival now: Adapt or die. You can’t think this
through; there’s no pattern in destruction like this. There’s only before, and
after. Before,
who
we were mattered. After, all that matters is
what
we are.

Sinna could sit in this bathroom until the end of time and
stubbornly deny what Aiden had told her, but it wouldn’t change anything. Deep
inside, she knew he’d told her the truth; she could feel it, see it on her own
skin. Sinna stood again and looked at herself in the mirror. Nothing had
changed with this transformation, and for some reason, that made it more
difficult to accept. If she wasn’t human, then something should make that
obvious—purple skin, or long fangs, or scales. Something.

The only difference was in her eyes; her retinas reflected
moonlight, and she could see with perfect clarity even though the bathroom was
almost pitch-black. Would her other senses be affected too? Sinna held her
breath and listened hard. There were no sounds outside. Just like in the city,
the land was dead out here, too.

She stepped into the bathtub and raised on tiptoes to look
out the window. The house they occupied had a big front yard, dry and overgrown
with weeds. It was one of a handful on this street, all looking equally homey,
and all the creepier for it. Across the street lay a rusted pink bicycle
someone had run over. At the house to the left of it, a porch swing creaked in the
wind. The next house on the other side had a white sheet tied to the chimney.

Sinna knew what that meant. Someone had been too afraid to
leave. They’d holed themselves up and left a sign so if anyone had come by,
they’d know survivors were inside. Judging by the gaping holes where windows
and doors had been broken out, it hadn’t worked out for them.

With a sigh, Sinna stepped back out of the tub. Bryce’s
promised washing water sat in a one-gallon plastic milk jug next to the toilet.
It was brownish and murky, but it would do the trick. She found a washcloth in
the pile of clothes and scrubbed the worst of the blood and dirt off of her
torso and arms.

Soap was a luxury that simply didn’t exist anymore. People
had learned to make do without. There were natural ways to get clean and stay
that way, of course, but you needed
nature
to do it. Not something that
came easy in a big city like San Francisco. Gerry had made Sinna read all sorts
of survivalist books and do-it-yourself manuals, all of it good for about five
minutes of that self-sufficient feeling of empowerment.

It was one thing to know you could make soap by boiling old
bones. Quite another to consider it, once you realized the only available bones
might have belonged to a friend or a relative. And something all together
different to attempt it when any sharp meat smell attracted monsters.

Sinna hummed with pleasure when the wet washcloth met her
skin. Her first bath in who the hell remembered how long. God, it felt good.
She scrubbed until her arms grew tired, then pulled on a clean T-shirt. It was
slightly big on her and smelled like moth balls, but beggars couldn’t be
choosers. With her top sufficiently clean and covered, Sinna kicked off her
boots, stripped out of her pants, and washed her lower half with the same
determination. By the time she was finished and fully dressed—socks, boots, and
all—less than a third of the water remained. Nowhere near enough to wash her
hair. She wouldn’t have anyway, even if there had been. One didn’t waste a precious
resource like water. And besides, Bryce and Aiden might want to get clean, too.

Speaking of which, they were awfully quiet in there. Sinna
listened by the door. Had they changed their minds and left her behind while
she’d been busy washing? Of all the things Aiden had told her about Wolfen, one
thing had rung true: Sinna was a pack animal. She needed others around, craved
company and contact, and for all that they might be psychotic rapists or
murderers, the thought of them not being there made her anxious.

But that didn’t mean she trusted them. Oh, no. She didn’t
trust those two as far as she could throw them.

It was fear.

Sinna was afraid she’d open her eyes in the morning and
they’d be gone. Or worse, she’d be back in San Francisco, in that horrible
church rectory with Tam’s body rotting five feet away. What terrified her most
wasn’t that it might all be true, but that it might not be. For the first time
since she could remember, Sinna was outside with no monsters around. She could
walk out and feel the ground beneath her feet, see the sky above.

And it was because of them—Aiden and Bryce. Whatever else
they might be, they’d given her something she’d never had before: freedom. And
it felt too big, too important, to let go. Sinna couldn’t go back into hiding
now; she’d never survive it.

Yes, it was possible this could all turn out very badly for
her, and if she went along with it, she might end up regretting the decision
for the rest of her life.

But what if…?

Ever so slowly, Sinna turned the knob, disengaging the lock
with a quiet
snick
. She stilled for a long time, listening for movement
before she opened the door fully. Peeking left and right to make sure the
hallway was clear, she stepped out onto moldy carpet. It cushioned her
footfalls, and the wooden floor hardly groaned at all when she shifted her
weight on it.

To her right was the room where the brothers waited for her
to get back.

To her left was a descending staircase.

Sinna went left, sneaking down to the main floor. Everything
sat still and quiet; tidy, like a perfect time capsule. There were magazines on
the living room couch, keys hanging on hooks in the entryway, and a pile of
mail in a basket next to the front door. She could imagine the man of the house
coming home after work, tossing his coat onto the hook, and greeting the
children who ran to welcome him. At least two girls. The little beds in the
room upstairs were both pink, covered in golden star and crown stickers.

Sinna crept through the living room into the kitchen. The
dishes in the sink had long ago been thoroughly cleaned by insects. An empty
fruit basket sat on the table, a high chair in the corner, a small TV screen by
the stove. The sliding glass door led out into the backyard. She approached it
with caution, conscious of every rustle, every moving shadow. The night was
still, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Just in case, she pulled a
big knife from the wooden stand on the counter and slowly opened the door.

Nothing immediately jumped out at her.

Sinna let out a tense breath. She tripped over the threshold
as she stepped outside, but caught herself before she fell, looking behind to
see if the brothers had heard. Heart racing and head swimming with weary
anxiety, Sinna closed the sliding glass door and walked farther into the night.
The air was warm and muggy, heavy with an impending storm, so unlike the crisp,
windy nights in the city. She rolled her shoulders with an uncomfortable wince;
her skin felt sticky with humidity.

The house had a pool—probably where Bryce had found the
washing water—and inside she could see a dark patch of mud where the last of
the moisture was still evaporating. The property fence was nothing more than
posts stuck in the ground at five-foot intervals, and while the inside of the
house was immaculate, its outside looked like the aftermath of a violent
invasion: debris, destruction, fallen tree houses and swing sets. A graveyard
of broken dreams.

Driven by curiosity, Sinna walked across the property to the
next one. This was a trail—a clear path had been ripped into the suburb with
the force of a tidal wave. If she went far enough, would she see where it all
began? Somewhere in the part of her brain still alert enough to think clearly,
she knew the Grays—converts—might have come this way because they had a lair
ahead, and she was walking right into it. But the thought was fleeting, brushed
away by a stray breeze that pleasantly cooled the back of her neck.

Three houses down, Sinna stopped and lifted her face to the
sky, sighing at the feel of open air on her skin. Billions of pinpricks of
light twinkled above her; an endless sea of possibilities, so far out of reach.
At least a handful of those heavenly bodies were satellites and other detritus
left over from Man’s sky-faring days. Held in orbit by gravity, they floated
out there completely useless, now that no one had the technology to utilize
them anymore. A space station was up there too, and for a moment, she imagined
what the astronauts must have felt when they’d heard the news about converts.
How long they must have watched this planet after the signal had died, waiting
for someone to reestablish contact.

She pictured the moment they realized no one would ever hear
them again, that they were completely cut off, abandoned in space in a metal
tomb with finite resources. Their bodies would decay more slowly than on Earth,
where all sorts of creatures aided decomposition, but at some point, there
would have been nothing left of them either, except white bones floating around
the cabin.

How glorious their final sunrise would have looked…

A stronger breeze tickled her nose with a scent.

Sinna whirled around, knife up, but Bryce caught her wrist
with ease and pushed it down to her side, holding a finger to his lips for silence.
His eyes glinted and darted to something behind her. She slowly turned, and her
heart slammed into overdrive. A convert lurked in the next yard over, shuffling
around a tree as though lost. It gurgled and snarled, suddenly lashing out and
scratching long gouges down its face. It had no nose, the skin and flesh around
it rotting outward. With obvious frustration, it threw its head back and
screamed, then grabbed ahold of the tree and rammed its forehead into it, again
and again.

Sinna swayed, clutching the knife tighter, straining to
bring it up. Bryce wouldn’t let her. Her back abruptly met Bryce’s chest, and
his arm came around her. He pried the knife away and leaned in to whisper at
her ear, “Be still.” His words were so low, the convert couldn’t possibly have
heard, but it lifted its head at the same time and it sniffed furiously, trying
to scent something.

Sinna started shaking.

The convert’s face contorted, and it gurgled a sound.

Sinna curled her fingers into Bryce’s arm. She needed to
run—
now
. She never should have come outside to begin with. What the hell
was wrong with her? Hadn’t she learned her lesson yet?
Get me out of here!
she thought, desperate for Bryce to hear and understand. As much as she pressed
back into him, silently urging him to move, all he did was squeeze tighter.
Please
move. Please!

He didn’t. “Calm down, Wolfen girl. You’re safe.”

Sinna gritted her teeth, and made herself stand still. This
was a test, and she needed to see it through, to make sure what happened in the
city hadn’t been a fluke. She needed to know if Aiden had told her the truth.

“C-can it hear us?” she whispered.

Bryce turned his head from side to side against her so she
would feel his answer.

“Then why won’t you move?” The absence of her knife made her
palm itch; she felt too exposed, vulnerable.

“Need you to see.” He pressed the knife’s handle back into
her palm, but curled his fingers around her grip and kept her arm immobile at
her side. Tapping the flat of the blade against her thigh, he turned her
attention a few degrees to the left.

More converts approached, slamming into trees and walls, and
careening into each other. One looked more put together than the rest—a female,
larger, and not as pathetically emaciated. The others were walking skeletons tenting
gray skin; she could have been a supermodel among her kind—tall, lithe, and
most importantly, steady. She had markings on her face like some crude attempt
at camouflage, and she clutched a thigh bone the same way Sinna clung to her
knife.

When a male stumbled into her, she screamed and clubbed him
with the bone so hard he went spinning sideways, and fell. The others converged
on him in a feeding frenzy.