Page 28 of Found Objects

“You can die here in front of your mate,” he roared, charging toward her.

Justin bravely stepped in front of his mother, but he was slapped to the floor with the back of Tuss’s open hand. He was about to stomp on Justin’s leg as he lay sprawled beneath him, but then Cole was there, plowing forward, throwing him off-balance and hurling the wolf halfway across the floor.

“Oh, look now,” Tuss crowed, rolling to his feet before starting to laugh. “The pup has claws after all!”

Cole stepped sideways, eyes on Tuss, and I saw them turn gold.

“This is what we need,” Tuss announced, cracking his neck, moving to face Cole again. “Another predator, no more mewling humans.”

No one moved.

“Grab all the kids and the women,” he ordered as he advanced on Cole. “We’ll find out who can shift when we get home and kill the rest.”

People screamed as the men turned on the families huddled in the room. Tuss and his men didn’t shift, instead pulling what looked like machetes from sheaths at their sides, easy to see when they opened their coats.

“Kids, come with me,” I yelled. A guy came toward me, and I picked him up by the throat and hurled him through the living room wall.

As expected, Tuss, his men, and everyone else froze and stared. I wasn’t a large man, so the strength was a surprise. But what was great about kids was that they moved on instinct, so they still ran to me. When I went out the front door, all of them followed, urged on by their parents, who moved to block Tuss and his men from going after them.

The younger kids stayed right with me, not hesitating, but the teenagers, terrified for their parents and unsure what would be best, I was certain, were torn over running.

“You have to come with me, the little ones need you,” I said, appealing to their sense of duty. “They’ll be scared without you.”

Once they were outside with me, I pointed up the hill. “I need you all to run up there as fast as you can. I have a buddy who’s gonna meet you, and you can’t miss him because he’s dressed like an elf, okay? All in green, long black hair, big necklace, and he’ll have a huge-ass walking stick. He’ll protect you, and you stay with him until I come get you.”

“It’s dark,” a small girl said in an even smaller voice.

“No, it’s okay, look by the trees.” I pointed, and she saw, just like all the rest of the kids did, a sudden bright green glow. “There’s a light right there at the edge of the trees. Just follow it up and you’ll find him, easy-peasy.”

Several kids took off then. Had to love them—they didn’t stand around and debate or question, they simply acted. But the little girl and two others standing a bit away from me didn’t move. Instead, she slipped her hand into mine.

“What about Mommy?” she asked me in that tiny, shaking voice.

“Mommy will be fine. Go run up to the green light for me.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” And I meant it.

She nodded, let go of my hand and grabbed one of the other girls’ hands, and then the three of them ran together up the hill.

“Teague!” I yelled after them, knowing my voice would carry. He always heard me. “Take care of the kids!”

The green light in the distance pulsed once, then got brighter, and I could see the path to him light up even from where I was. I had to stop looking, though, as two Haviland wolves came down the steps then. One had shifted to the size of a Great Dane but with the heavy musculature of an English mastiff, and the other remained in human form, brandishing a machete in one hand and an enormous knife in the other.

When I turned to face them, the man jolted and the wolf froze. It was probably my eyes. I knew they were glowing an unnatural shade of electric green, quite different from how they appeared normally.

“The fuck are you, man?” the guy with, I noted now, blood-smeared weapons asked as he faced me.

“I am…other,” I answered, and then I breathed out my humanity.

Normally, I took long moments to experience the change, to embrace the great passage of time, taste the weight of the history I’d witnessed before taking on the mantle of the primeval creation I was. But I didn’t have the luxury of time at the moment, I had to stand between children and death, so I concentrated, as was necessary, and discarded the facade of a man quickly.

When I shook my head a moment later, I was there, all at once, in my true form. Originally, I was an enormous dog, but I had altered my shape a lifetime ago, preferring the look of the dire wolves that had allowed me to run with them. I’d always been bigger, though, and I still was, roughly the size of a cow, with long fur that allowed me to meld into the primordial forest—deep and dark green.

Most ran when they saw me. It was the natural reaction to seeing something preternatural. If that didn’t happen at once, I gave a warning—head down, low growl, the sound chilling, ominous, like distant thunder. It seeped into the soul, making lungs seize and muscles quake, filling the mind with terror and dread. I was a harbinger, after all, crafted to deliver punishment and death. But the wolves in front of me had descended the stairs to kidnap children on another’s order, and later, if they couldn’t shift, to murder them. That meant all the children, and two of the kids had been running with infants in their arms: a girl who looked around sixteen, and a boy who I presumed, since he looked so much like Cole, was his brother, Evan. So the reaping was upon them. There could be no other end.

It was fast. I never made anyone suffer, so I had the wolf’s neck between my jaws in seconds, his life snuffed out in one quick snap before he dropped heavily into the grass. Even having watched the slaughter, the man still came at me and was eviscerated, a splash of blood staining the newly made wooden stairs.