we used to.”
I wanted that almost more than anything.
I said, “I don’t know how much longer I have.”
He cocked his head. “Until what?”
“It’s breaking. In my head. I thought… I thought you’d be enough. But it’s like it was before. I can feel it pulling on me.”
He took a step toward me. “I can’t be everything, Carter. I want to be, but I can’t. A tether can only do so much. Wolves aren’t meant to be alone. You need more than this. More than me. I’m nothing but a ghost. A memory. And it’s not enough.”
I looked back at the house as the first snow started to fall. It was nothing more than a flurry, the air filled with dancing flakes. It felt cool against my heated skin. “I could have killed those people at the bar.”
“You wanted to,” he said. “It was close.”
“Yes.”
“What happens when you can’t stop yourself? Do you really want to take that risk?”
I could feel him staring after me as I walked toward the house. I climbed the porch, stepping over the beams that had fallen. The door was peeling. The doorknob was cold to the touch. I turned it, but it barely moved.
Locked.
I pushed against it. I barely had to put any pressure on it before the wood cracked and gave way. The door swung open, the hinges creaking.
The house smelled of mold and dust.
I sneezed. It echoed flatly through the house.
Snow drifted in from the hole in the roof, landing in what had once been a living room. The fireplace was made of crumbling brick. There was an overturned chair, the fabric ripped, stuffing sticking out, yellowed and withered. The floor groaned with every step I took.
A picture hung crooked on the wall. The glass was cracked. The photograph had three people in it. A man with a quiet smile. A woman with sparkling eyes.
And a boy.
He stood between the man and woman, each with a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were dark, his hair black and windswept.
I’d seen a photograph once of when Gordo was a kid, hanging off of Mark’s back. The boy on the wall looked almost the same. The shape of the nose was off, the bridge bumpier. His cheeks were freckled. His eyes were farther apart. He was stockier than Gordo had ever been.
And he was smiling. Brightly. He was missing a couple of teeth, an endearing gap that almost made him look like he had fangs.
I knew this face.
I’d only seen it once before, and only briefly. And this face had been much older, eyes narrowed, teeth grinding together as words came from his lips, sounding as if they were being punched from his chest.
Don’t. Touch. Him.
Shadows crawled along the walls and floor as the day began to die.
But I couldn’t look away from the picture on the wall.
It seemed impossible that I would have found this place after all this time.
It couldn’t be real.
I was dreaming.
I was somewhere far away from here, and I was dreaming.
Except….
Except there was still blood on my hand from where I’d cut my palm.
The pain had been biting.
I reached up and touched the frozen boy’s face.
Something moved behind me.
I whirled around in the gathering darkness.
There was nothing there.
Not even Kelly, the ghost that he was.
Except….
Except there came the smell of an old-growth forest, and try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself that it came from the woods around the house.
It was soaked into the floor. The walls. The ceiling. I sucked in a great breath, letting it fill my lungs, and as the moon called to me, as it whispered run little prince it’s time to run it’s time to run and sing your songs, I knew I was close, closer than I’d been in almost a year.
I thought of him as he was when we’d run in the forest together, just the two of us.
The way he’d lay against me in the grass, head on my chest.
I took a step toward the open doorway.
“Hello?” I croaked out. “Are you….”
I took another step, and the forest was alive, it was so fucking present, and there was blood on my hand, a red smear that told me I was here, that I was here and this was real. All of this was real.
Another step.
I swore I heard the low growl of an angry wolf.
Another step and I was almost to the door. Almost to the ruined porch.
And then—
The rumble of engines.
I blinked slowly.
Lights through the trees.
Headlights.
There were vehicles coming down