Page 25 of Rabid
“Dammit,” I whisper beneath my breath, head whipping around the shed. No window or hanging tools are in here, but my steps hurry toward the tarps bunched up in the corner. All I find is an empty paint can, a plastic dustpan, and a bag of soil. Hissing beneath my breath, I drop to my knees and yank the tarps away in frustration. “No, no, there’s gotta be something else…”
Frantically, I search every corner, and I’m just about to grab the paint can and start slamming it into the walls when a glint of silver catches my eye. Rushing over, I grab the screwdriver out of the edges of the folded tarp where it was hiding and hold it up like I’ve just managed to yank Excalibur free from its rock.
I waste no time, because I ran out of that as soon as the sun went down. Using my wolf’s superior sight, I whirl around, searching for the weakest-looking wooden plank in this place. They’re wide and rough, and if I can just get one loose…
Spotting a round hole in the natural wood, I bustle over to it, kneeling down. Shoving the screwdriver into the weak spot, the metal end wedging against the hole in the plank, I pull with all my might, using it like a crowbar to yank the piece free.
With every inch that the wood loosens, I tug the screwdriver out before thrusting it right back in and doing it again and again and again. I manage to pry it away from the rest of the wall enough to get a grip on it, and I drop my tool, curling my fingers around the side of the plank to pull as hard as I can.
Splinters of dry wood cut into my skin, but I ignore the pricks of pain. I thank the wolf spirits that this shed was built so rudimentary and that no other layers are in my way. With gritted teeth and planted feet, I use all of my body strength instead of just relying on my arms. Holding my breath, I pull as hard as I can, cursing the wood in my head with silent threats if it doesn’t fuckinggive—
With a snap, the board flies free, rusted nails nearly catching me in the face. My fingertips throb as I scrabble for the plank next to it, but it’s already weakened, already lost its support, and it comes free with an angry squeak of a nail.
Yes!
Dropping to my hands and knees, I squeeze my body through the narrow space, biting back the hiss of pain as my hips and shoulders scrape against the old boards on either side of the hole. Tiny beads of blood rise along the drag marks, but the moment I tumble out of the shed and onto the hard ground behind it, I forget all about the scratches.
I’m out, and now I need to fuckingrun.
Head thrown back, my body is already shifting before I’ve even fully formed the thought. My wolf shoves her way up as though she were just lying in wait, ready to pounce. I fall on all fours as bones begin to shift and grow, break and realign.
Fur bursts from my skin, while thick pads form on my palms and the soles of my feet. A mouthful of sharp teeth lengthens my jaw, lips already pulling back into a wolfish sneer. My vision sharpens, nose poised to scent the air, and the moment our shift is complete, my wolf takes over.
She doesn’t just run toward the trees, she practicallyflies.
The speed of her, the precision...I wish I could just enjoy this, but the fact that we’re running for our lives taints the moment. Still, I’m in complete awe of her as she moves, her dark gray body as fast as a bullet. She follows pure instinct as we race away, her head constantly lifting to take in the scents in the air.
Unfamiliar wolves pollute every inch of this place, and their aroma makes her uneasy. She doesn’t like the assault of their fragrance. But we stop mid-stride as something rises on the wind and practically slaps us across the muzzle. There, woven deeply within the smell of foreign and threatening wolves, there’s...something. Something that speaks to my wolf on a visceral level. She drops her nose to the ground, pulling the smell deep into her lungs, trying to decipher what it is.
It’s a musk of wildmalenessthat’s so strong she can taste it. The heaviness of the scent is so powerful that it lingers even though the source hasn’t tread through this area in a very long time. My wolf abruptly veers off, her nose searching, hunting, following a trail. Panic explodes through me, and I shout out at her to focus, to get us out of here. But she doesn’t listen. To my horror, she’s so in control, so deeply driven by her animal instincts, that it even bleeds intome.
It’s dizzying and addictive, this sense of feral power that radiates through her, and I fall within its temptation, sinking beneath her consciousness as her compulsions and urges snap free and wrap around us.
Instincts take over completely.
It’s all that we are. Just running and scenting, driven by the need to hunt, to dominate, to kill, to fall into every animal urge, including finding the source of this potent bouquet.
When the sound of baying wolves erupts beneath the half moon, we both turn toward it, ears pricking. They’re calling to us, and we want to answer.
Somewhere in the back corner of my mind, I know that’s wrong, that we need to escape, to run from whatever is stoking our instincts like this. But that corner gets silenced with a snap of my wolf’s sharp teeth, and then she betrays us completely by throwing her head back and howling. It’s a haunting, singular lament to the sky. The stars blink down at us as though they’re watching with bated breath as my wolf announces to the Ruin Falls pack exactly where we are.
Then she turns andruns.
Excitement pumps through our veins as we weave our way through the night-kissed trees. Bracken and soil kick up in our wake as we push our wolf body to move as fast as it possibly can. I try to make sense of the idiotic wolf logic of announcing that we’ve escaped andthentrying to get away, but it all feels so good to her, so right, that I can’t seem to shove the emotions away from me. I’m enjoying this as much as she is, every single one of my senses in tune with hers, and those senses tell us one thing.
They’re coming.
We both know it, and I’m trying to figure out why this now feels like a game to my wolf, instead of the life or death situation it is. Faster and faster we fly, and then we catch the telltale sound of a snarl somewhere behind us. My fear spikes and tries to battle my wolf’s exhilaration, but she bats my apprehension away.
She takes in the new wolf with curiosity instead of terror, but her nose wrinkles, because the smell of it is wrong. Yet that doesn’t keep her from radiating eagerness for the fight we feel nipping at our heels. She pushes harder, and in a burst of incredible speed, she quickly leaves our pursuer in her dust. I find myself whooping in celebration, and her own pride lifts with it. She’s focused, ready for whoever is going to come next, but I wonder how we’re going to get out of here. Are we even going the right way?
A red and gray wolf leaps at us from the side, and we snarl at the charge. We turn and bite into him, while simultaneously pushing him in the path of a massive bush. Wolf number two is picked off by nature, and I can practically feel the spring in my wolf’s step at besting another one.
We blaze through the forest of the Ruin Falls pack, but that niggling part of my conscience works to piece the puzzle together, to make sense of her being dead set on playing cat and mouse instead of stealthily getting us away. I wrack my brain for any stories of similar experiences from my pack growing up, but I can’t pinpoint the cause of this weird dominantcatch me if you canbehavior.
The slope beneath our feet changes, and she begins to run hard uphill. We hear heavy paws just behind us, and I scream for my wolf to hurry. Her tongue lolls out of the side of her muzzle, and she starts to pant against the exertion. Determination strikes through our veins as my wolf digs in even harder, loving the push of her body and the embrace of what it was built for.
We just crest the peak of the steep hill when the wolf behind us bats a paw at our hind legs and sweeps them out from under us. My wolf snarls her objection as we go tumbling, but quick as a flash of lightning, she spins and rounds on the massive white wolf on our tail. Gleaming golden eyes take us in, and the air is suddenly saturated with dominance, purpose, and need.
