Then I hear it, wolves coming. I had a head start and am a better swimmer, but they are still coming. This time, it isn’t Poul and his posse, howling for my blood. Cassius has never hunted with the pack, so he doesn’t know the tiny sounds they make so as to not alert prey.
The pack is wary this close to Offland. Now even Cassius can hear the blare of the semi horn to the south, and he knows wolves won’t kill a man on the shoulder of a county road. He turns the paddle to the side and swings it down with everything he has. As the snap of the bone resonates through my head, my jaw opens because I can’t help groaning and Cassius immediately squelches away toward the road, where the first thing this shit will do is tell everyone about this forest strong and fierce and these lives that must remain unspoken.
My front leg is useless, blood and mud thicken in my brain, buckthorn drills through my paws, but it doesn’t matter. Coiling the muscles in my hind legs, I take one last leap.
When he falls, the open sky is reflected in his terrified eyes and finally he knows.
“Constantine? But you’re one of—”
And with one crushing bite, I rip out his throat.
Because I am not one of you.
His body flails, hands grabbing at my muddy fur, viscous bubbles turn bright red at the hole in his neck, his rasping gurgles slow then stop, and eventually, his body stills, his head falling empty-eyed to the side while his tongue lolls from his mouth, covered in blood.
* * *
The hours that follow are made from odd and horrible memories interrupted by excruciating pain when ripped skin and broken bones are pulled apart as they find a new shape. If my voice actually functioned, I’d be screaming, but it doesn’t, so I don’t.
I can’t see anything, hear anything, move anything, smell anything, but I am blessed with the ability to feel not only the physical pain but the even more exquisite agony of what I’ve lost. There I was, after all that work, ready to teach Poul a lesson and prove myself strong enough for the Great North, big enough for Evie, and I blew it.
I can’t move either, not consciously anyway, but some involuntary twitch moves my body forward a little and I feel something warm. I replay Cassius’s last moments, especially his final bubbling exhalation to reassure myself that there is no way he could have survived. I’m not such a stranger to death that I would make that kind of mistake.
Then I know who it is. Blind, I know it’s Evie. Deaf, I know it’s Evie. Unable to smell, I know it’s Evie. Dead, I would know it was Evie.
I collapse against her, feeling pain combined with the helpless coming together of our changing bodies until finally when I take a breath, I make out granite and moss, and as always, Pack.
“Constantine?”
“Mmm-mmm.”
“Can you walk?”
I try to lift my hand against the bright early morning sun until my shoulder reminds me. Not that hand.
The other one is hardly better.
Evie sits beside me, her head to the side, pulling her fingers through her hair.
“’S Cassius?” I manage to croak out.
“Dead, yes,” she says and bends her head again, finger combing the other side. She doesn’t offer to help or anything as insulting as that, but she does watch carefully as I struggle to get up, pushing with my one working hand and my wobbly feet. She stands next to me, the still blood-smudged oar clasped under her arm, still combing her hair, pretending to ignore my flubbed first step and every flubbed step after until we reach the place where Cassius left the canoe. Evie holds it steady while I fall in. She ignores my swallowed scream as my collarbone separates. Pushing free of the mud and weeds and bushes, she paddles around the edge of the Holm.
Huddled deep in the hull, my throbbing arm propped on my leg, I watch the water go past and then the Holm. There’s a bloody bone there and Cassius’s boot. In the back, Evie sees the direction of my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We saved you some.”
Chapter 35
Evie
“That’s a flesh wound. That’s a flesh wound. That’s a flesh wound. And that…” Constantine groans loudly as Tristan pokes his collarbone. “That is not a flesh wound.”
He pokes some more around Constantine’s bruised and bloodied body.