It was an hour before he came across anyone willing to part with their change for his bus ride home. Then another hour spent roaming the parts of town where the buses weren’t running so late at night.
He felt a pain in his left foot the longer he walked, and Jaylin sat on the steps outside of an old saloon-style bar, rolling down the socks on his ankle. It didn’t take exposing much skin before he saw the black roll in, eating at his veins and bubbling his flesh. It’d started again at his toes, and in the short time he’d been gone it’d worked its way up his ankle. He found it much too difficult to stand again, gripping the dirty metal railing of the steps and hauling himself up on one foot.
Each step felt like walking on nothing and as he took the next, his ankle rolled and he collapsed to his knees in the pavement.
A car coasted slowly on the street beside him—an old worn out Pontiac Firebird, the front light busted and the windshield cracked and splintered. The passenger window rolled down, and a washed out face peered from the darkness.
“Jaylin, get in.” It took a moment to recognize her, but once Jaylin saw the glare of oncoming headlights shine on her face, he knew exactly his response.
“No.” He shoved himself up to his feet, taking one more numb step forward.
“Jaylin please,” Olivia pleaded, rolling the car up at a slow pace that matched his own. “I need your help. Please. I’ve been looking for you everywhere—everyone has.”
“I don’t have time for a quick fuck, Olivia.” He gripped street signs for support as he walked on ahead. “I need to get home.”
“I’ll take you home. I’ll drive you there. But I need to show you something first, Jaylin please.”
He chewed the thought over. He still had two miles to walk on a busted ankle, and the feeling in his left foot had completely dissolved. He gritted his jaw and made way for the car. “Make it fast.”
Olivia didn’t drive him back to her apartment like he thought she would. She didn’t try to con him into bed, didn’t guilt him into staying in her frowzy, cramped little bedroom while Tyler could bust through the door at any given moment, liquor in his blood and a baseball bat at his hip. Instead, she drove him to Cedar Park and left the car parked beside a rose-bedded memorial statue.
He followed her along the path, through a split in the hedges and beyond the park’s property. They walked for a while longer, into dense woods and mossy underfoot. Jaylin had started to slack behind, and only partly because he couldn’t feel his own feet. Going anywhere with Olivia made him anxious, but deep into the forest? The last time he’d disappeared into a forest, he had blacked out for four solid days.
“It’s in here,” Olivia said, leaning between the towering trunks of two ponderosa pines—a white scarf blowing in the breeze on the lowest branch. “I tied that there so I could remember where he was.”
“He?” Jaylin asked, following her into a gap between trunks. He could smell something awful—a fumy kind of gas that made him pinch his nostrils shut.
Olivia knelt on her knee-ripped jeans and shoved a pile of leaves aside, and at the sight of him, Jaylin buckled over forward and covered his mouth to keep from shouting.
Tyler’s corpse laid beneath the scattered leaves, maggots gnawing away at what was left of him—a chunk taken from his face, and his eyeball hanging by the tendrils. It was all Jaylin saw before he spun around, looking anywhere else—anywhere but Tyler.
“Jaylin, I—”
“I need out,” Jaylin gasped for breath, pawing his way blindly through the crowding pillars of trees. “I need—I can’t breath,” he gasped, working air through his body only when the smell of Tyler had gone.
“Jaylin.” He felt Olivia’s hand on his back.
Jaylin’s body shook and he bent forward with a reflexive gag. Shoving her hand away, he turned to face Olivia. “What happened? Who did that?”
Olivia looked back in the direction of the corpse, completely unmoved. Not even her voice held any sympathy for what laid beneath the mud and leaves.
“Don’t know. Finally had enough. Told him I was leaving him. He grabbed that stupid hunting rifle of his and bashed me in the back of the head with it.” Olivia ran a frail hand up her neck and into the back of her hair, and her eyes fell shut like she could still feel the hit cracking against her skull. “I don’t know. After that, I woke up here. He was dead next to me.”
“Olivia, you have to tell someone.”
“No. No, I can’t do that. They’ll think I did it.”
“You can’t just leave him here.”
“Yes I can.” Olivia gave an incredulous laugh and grabbed Jaylin by the shoulders. “Jay, this is—this is the opportunity I’ve needed to start my life over. I’ve spent years trying to get away from him and now I don’t have to run anymore.”
“Because he’s dead,” Jaylin said. “He’s dead, Olivia. You have to tell someone.”
Olivia’s smile fell. She stepped back, crossed her arms and read Jaylin’s face for a long while. Then her eyes rolled over the ground as she said, “I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d—I thought you’d help me.”
“I don’t have time to help you, Olivia, I have my own problems. Stay here or leave, but I’m walking to the police station and telling them there’s a dead body in Cedar Park.”
He turned and started his way through the trees, feeling blindly around on the rough bark as he made for the light of a street lamp in the distance.
“Jaylin, please,” he heard Olivia protest. Then louder. “Jaylin!”
“Stop trying to drag me into your bullshit,” he replied over his shoulder. “I’m going.”
Then Olivia let out a shriek, one that stopped Jaylin dead in his tracks. Because it was not the scream of a woman. Not the scream of a beast. But both at once.
He froze, all but for the sticks cracking beneath his feet, and Jaylin turned slowly to the sounds she was making—grated, breathy noises, like fluid was filling her lungs and rage was boiling it back up again.
She was watching him beneath her brow, her chest rising and falling again with angry breath. Then Olivia collapsed to her knees. Her chest hit the earth beneath her, bubbles rippling through all of the flesh not veiled by her tank top, her spine rising in some places and falling in others like there was a snake beneath her skin, ravished and angry and writhing for its escape.
Her bones were moving within her body, shifting and rotating, forcing themselves into positions that caused her flesh to rip like paper, blood to spill out onto bruised, blackened skin.
Quills pricked through the discolored flesh. Not quills, but fur. It grew up her forearms, into her shoulders, bursting from each pore until every inch of her flesh was swathed in the dark shag. When she stood in this beastly form, Jaylin saw how truly tall she’d become. Nine feet—maybe even ten feet tall, she towered among the ponderosa’s branches. Her legs bowed like that of a wolf, her arms almost human but for the terrible tallons at the ends of her fingers.
But her face—her face was what frightened Jaylin. Because the eyes that belonged to her now were so dark, so hellishly dark. Her canine snout was curling, snarling, baring rows of sharp bloody teeth.
She rose on her back haunches, this beast, and split the silence with a caterwaul, a noise so frightening, Jaylin recoiled. Then that beast bent forward, prowling slowly on her front arms, a low gurgle rumbling in her cavernous chest.
Jaylin staggered back, but the change had taken over his entire foot and he found himself tripping over breached roots and mossy stone. Then the beast was charging at him, screeching again with that banshee cry.
Jaylin twisted his body around and shoved himself up from the forest floor.
He used the trees for balance as he ran, stumbling into one and then the next until his leg just wouldn’t move anymore. Then he was dragging himself back, through loose leafs and foliage, and the monster that had burst from Olivia’s body was only feet away.
And as she reached Jaylin, he dug his fingers into the forest floor and pulled himself away with all his might, but she reached out for his leg and he felt the claws piercing into the flesh of his calf. He shouted out, his body pulled closer to the monster who opened her mouth with too many teeth and caterwauled again, saliva stringing from one long fang to the other.
Then something dark and heavy hit her, and the monster went down with a cry, rising on her knees to shake the dark shape from her flesh.
Jaylin pulled himself up to his feet and ran. He couldn’t feel anything but the pain from the wound in his leg, but somehow the adrenaline was enough. He cut through the trees, blind to his surroundings, until he felt a wall of wood in front of him—the tall brown fencing that bordered the edge of a shoddy apartment complex.
He shoved his foot into the crack between two boards and climbed until he was high enough to toss himself over. Hitting the ground with a crack, he gripped at the pain in his shoulder and stumbled onward to the closest apartment, beating at the doors on ground floor.
At the first, no one answered. But the second door was unlocked, and Jaylin slipped inside to find an apartment, emptied of residents. There was nothing inside but a few scarce boxes and garbage that the old tenants didn’t care to take with them.
Jaylin locked the doors, shut off the lights and crawled into the empty cupboard beneath the kitchen counter. He could still hear it in the distance, the shrieking, caterwauling thunder. He held his breath and waited—waited for the sound of the beast.
There was a scream—much, much closer than the last. Jaylin flinched at the sound of Olivia’s voice, ripping apart from the cords of the beast—still human somewhere deep within its wicked cry.
Then silence fell over him so quickly, Jaylin thought maybe he’d gone deaf. Like this was his body’s way or protecting him. Maybe this was what shock felt like. Maybe they’d killed it. Or maybe it had killed them, but either way, an eerie quiet was cast over the night.
Breathing between gnashed teeth, Jaylin listened to the silence, beyond the deafening thump of his own heartbeat.
Then he heard footsteps.
The cabinet door swung open and a hand gripped down on his wrist. Jaylin screamed and thrashed to free himself, stopping when he felt the warm hands on his face, cupping his cheeks, urging him to look up.
The first thing Jaylin saw was the light glinting from her icy blue eyes. Then the blood, her naked body showered in it—the smell nauseating but so far gone that it didn’t bother Jaylin at all.
He’d never seen this girl before. He’d have recognized the vibrant red of her hair, the freckles that splattered her cheeks.
“Jaylin, we have to go.”
“Who are you?” he stuttered, watching as a man draped a towel over her back. The redhead wound it around herself and took Jaylin by the hand.
“We have to go.”
“Who are you? W-what was that?” he asked as she helped him from the cramped cupboard. With an arm slung over her shoulder, the stranger heaved him to his feet.
As they rose, he saw other faces in the room—five of them in total. Two more women, bloodied and naked like her and two men who observed cautiously, like they’d never seen anything the likes of him before.
“God,” the redhead groaned. “You’re too cute. Why’s it always the cute ones?”
“Just get him in the van, Izzy,” a man ordered. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting Felix take all that action while we’re all lounging around babysitting the kid.”
“Stop!” Jaylin shouted, shoving himself away from the redhead and gripping down on the counter to support his wounded leg. “Stop and tell me who you are.”
“Jaylin, it’s okay. We’re not who you think.” The redhead said, using the towel around her chest to gently wipe the dirt from his face. “We’re Sentinels. And I know you don’t know what that means, but just trust me. We’re on your side.”
“Quentin sent for us,” the second man clarified, far less disgruntle than the first. “Ben and I patrol this area.”
“You-you were the ones fighting that thing?” Jaylin asked, watching the light of the moon spill in through the open door, turning puddles of blood to scintillating pools of red.
The woman gave his arm a gentle squeeze and smiled at him. “Nah, we got here a little—”
“Late.”
Jaylin heard the voice, but it hadn’t come from a person. Instead, it came from one of the three wolves that lurked slowly through the front door. He’d seen all three before, recognized the blood-stained silver wolf as Imani and the black as Felix.
But at the lead was a wolf he hadn’t seen since the night at the cemetery. The wolf with all the patterns of the earth painted into his fur. The one that looked like the gold of the sunrise and the rich chestnut brown of a forest floor. He shook the blood from his fur, this wolf, his kind orange eyes focused steadfast on Jaylin.
His pulse skipped, changing rhythm until it was suddenly a hard, fast metronome in his chest. Somehow he knew this was Quentin, before he could even hear the voice in his head.
“Jaylin.”
His mouth tasted like blood. His legs trembled so hard, he couldn’t feel them under him, but it wasn’t the fright or the adrenaline that made him that way, it was something else. It was the way Olivia’s skin had turned. The way the darkness had rippled across her flesh. The way it fed into her shell like an infection. The way that darkness looked just like his own.
“That’s one of them, isn’t it?” He shook. “That was it, wasn’t it? That was a lichund. That’s what I’ll be. That’s what I am.”
The wolf bowed its head. A sudden splatter hit the floorboards and Jaylin watched as fur receded, blood poured from splitting flesh and bones moved beneath the very skin that kept them all bound together. And then Quentin was rising to his feet, his eyes only a sheen in the darkness as he looked Jaylin down, the wet shape of his broad chest rising and falling with deep, impatient breath.
And for a moment Jaylin was doubly afraid. First and foremost of the thing Olivia had become.
Secondly, of Quentin.
“What should we do?” one of the voices around them asked. “There’s never been two in one place before.”
“I don’t know… maybe we need help,” another said.
“More like a miracle,” whispered another.
Quentin held up a hand and all of the voices went mum. His eyes bore into Jaylin, so focused, he felt as if he couldn’t move. Like those eyes had nailed him to the floor beneath his feet.
Jaylin expected some kind of reprimand. A lecture—anything that matched the hard look on Quentin’s face. Instead he held out a hand, dripping from the fingernails with blood. “Will you come with me now?” he asked. “Will you trust me, Jaylin?”
“Will you give me a reason to?” Jaylin’s teeth chattered. His eyes stung with tears from the fright of it all. His chin quivered and he pointed a finger in the direction the monster had gone. “Tell me once and for all, is that what I’ll be?”
Quentin looked him in the eye and nodded. Just slightly. Just enough.
And in that moment, Jaylin’s world came crashing down.
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