the tree. He held an intricately carved crossbow in one hand, a quiver of silvery bolts slung around on his back.
“Caroline, what the hell is going on around here?” Alex shouted.
Beside me, Wolf snarled, sounding very nearly like a real wolf.
“Stop! That’s my step-brother.”
He growled. His upper and lower canines had extended, his eyes glowed redder than I’d ever seen. I stepped closer to him.
“Caroline,” Alex said, a warning.
“Shh.”
I took Wolf’s face in my hands and forced him to look at me. I murmured to him, staring at his ruby red eyes and stroking his hair. He began breathing more slowly, his canines retreating to their normal size.
“Jesus fucking Christ Caroline, what the hell are you doing?” Alex asked behind me, his voice a mix of worry and disgust.
I ignored him and kept focusing on Wolf. I kissed his forehead, continuing to run my fingers through his hair. Finally he heaved a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they shifted back to gold, and then faded into hazel.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Trust me.”
I knew he would obey, but he kept his frown and glared at Alex, who stared at us with horrified fascination.
“Now,” I said, feeling like we could finally do things normally, “Alex, why are you here?”
He flinched as if I’d just asked him the most unfathomable question in the world. “Why am I here? Why am I here? I was following you! You stopped using your radio and I got worried, so I went to that wolf den you’ve been talking about for the past three weeks and picked up your trail and somehow I ended up here. And I don’t even know where the hell here is!” He waved his arms around in a mildly crazy fashion.
“Liar,” Wolf snarled, unable to contain himself any longer. He pointed at Alex. “You wear the black coat of the wolf killers. You’re a Sentry for the House of Hood.”
I grabbed Wolf’s arm. “Whoa, Wolf—”
“What, this?” Alex’s face filled with scorn. “Some crazy old lady gave this to me back in some village.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“You jumped at me out of the fucking bushes, buddy. And you’ve got red eyes and fucking fangs. Of course I tried to kill you.”
Wolf bared his teeth in response. “You’re a hunter. I can smell it. I can smell the blood on you, the rabbits, the deer, the birds.”
“All right,” I said loudly. I kept my grip on Wolf’s coat, afraid that if I let go he’d go ballistic again.
“What of it?” Alex said, unwilling to back down.
Wolf paused. He seemed to be picking apart information in his brain, things he’d gathered from Alex’s scent.
“You smell like wolves…not a lot, but some…and it’s mixed with Caroline.”
“That’s only because that’s where she was when she went missing, and that’s where I went.”
Wolf breathed in a few more times. “You don’t kill wolves.” A statement, not a question.
“What? Of course I don’t kill wolves. They’d throw my ass in jail for that. And then Caroline would scratch my eyes out.”
Finally both men shut up. I looked back and forth between them.
“All right,” I said again. “I think we can safely establish that my brother is not a Sentry for the House of Hood. I think he must have met the same old witch that we did.”
“A huntsman that doesn’t hunt wolves,” Wolf said, unsure of how to process the information.
Alex pointed at him. “You know, that’s what that crazy woman said.” He paused. “What do you mean, ‘witch’?”
I shook my head. “Come on Alex. Just walk with us. I’ll explain on the way.”
I made sure to walk between Wolf and Alex as I explained where we were and what was going on. In turn, Alex told me how he’d ended up here.
He’d found the pond, tried to retrieve my radio from the bottom, and fell in instead, arriving in this world just as I had. After picking up my trail, he’d used every skill he had to keep on it, following the scuffed up leaves and soft LaSportiva boot marks in the soft earth. He’d found the cottage and pressed on from there, concerned about the scuff marks in the dust on the cottage floor and the blood at the window. Eventually he walked into the giant’s lair just as I had, almost getting caught in the process. Luckily for him, Wolf had been right about giants being clumsy and falling down. They’d tripped over one another, giving Alex time to