Forever Bound

Chapter 13

        My body shook once twice, three times, jerking back and forth roughly, occasionally rising upwards then slamming back down. I pieced together everything I knew, the roar of the engine the familiar smell of gas and the unevenness of my movements, I was in a car driving or rather being driven on a dirt road.

        My eyelids were heavy as I lifted them, my vision blurred; everything in my sight was distorted. I tried to utter out a word but all that came was a hoarse inaudible whisper. I made a feeble attempt to sit up but fell back down, and once again drifted into sleep.

         When I awoke again, the car was no longer moving, but everything else was. Exhaustion clung to my muscles and bones, refusing me mobility. I shut my eyes tight to dispel the dizziness that spun my world. When the world came to stillness I made an attempt to sit up. A pain burnt deep inside me but I over came it, determined to know my location. Darkness. I blinked hard once and everything came into focus, vividly. Coniferous tress stood surrounding a still gray lake, threatening to pierce the sky. A squirrel hoped from branch to branch in the forest and in the far distance grey mountain peaks stood capped with frothy snow. Everything my human eyes could not see. I closed my eyes again and when I opened them everything returned to a canvas splattered with black paint. There were no other cottages within miles, and no apparent human activity. The knowledge of ho I had gotten where I was was completely lost on me; I opened the car door, and stepped out.

         “Hello?” I called my limbs tingling with fear.

         “You’re up,” a familiar voice boomed from behind me, I turned around to find Jason standing with his arms crossed. I began to remember snippets of what had happened when he showed up at my motel room.

“Let’s go,” he said beckoning me to follow him inside the house. I looked around nervously, realizing that I really had no choice than to go along with him.

         A fire crackled in the stone hearth, the smell of hickory and soot. “Where are we?” Jason’s back was turned to me as he pushed around the burning fire logs.  “Barrie” he said straightening up.

“What the hell are we doing in Barrie?” he turned around, stick in hand and a devious smile on his face.

“If you are planning to kill you’re not going to get away with it

He dropped the stick “why would you say that? I’m your brother.”

“ I don’t know Jason why in the world would I think you would kill me maybe because you have hated me since the day I was born. Now we are in mysterious cabin in Barrie and you are holding a pointy stick.” He laughed shaking his head “if only you knew how much I am doing for you. You are supposed to be dead right now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you think you’d get away with killing all those people?”

How did he know? Was he just bluffing? My hands began to get sweaty, I couldn’t think of what to say, my voice was lost.

“Calm down Riley, I know what you are.

“What…what are you talking about?”

“I know because I’m one too” everything from the motel came rushing back to memory.

I couldn’t formulate the words to ask what I wanted to, everything was just jumbled in my mind. Jason shook his head “I’ll tell you everything in the morning.” He pointed me to a room, and then disappeared into the night.

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I gave my eggs a stare down, nothing about them appealed to me. Two strips of bacon landed beside them jerking with grease, “eat”. Jason said, “I didn’t poison it.” I picked up my fork and pushed the food around, I was reluctant to eat but the scent of bacon was too tempting to resist.

“I was eleven, dad had just died and I was a total mess.” He sat down with a cup of coffee looking like he’d seen a ghost. “I was wandering around the forest taking my anger on some trees and rocks when it happened.” He took a deep breath then started again “I’m pretty sure it wanted to eat me, with the way it was chasing after me. I tripped on a branch and it took that as an opportunity to get at me. It bit me in the leg and then scampered away. Lying there on the cold hard forest floor, I waited to die. When death refused to come I rolled over onto my stomach and dragged myself home. Mom was a mess and you were just some stupid kid that believed everything so it wasn’t that hard to his it from you.

         “The changes began with uncontrollable bursts of emotions. I was happy sometimes then a sudden burst of anger will come out of me. You probably know what I do when those bursts come,” I laughed in spite of myself “my first full moon, something I’ll never forget. I was sleeping over at Mike’s house; I couldn’t be in a worst place. My nails were the first that started growing. I was lost and confused. Mike’s mom wasn’t really helping either, popping her head into the room every five minutes. I convinced Mike to go into the backyard with me. I had an idea of what was happening; although wolves weren’t real I was certain I was becoming one.

“I got down on all fours and it started. I stared eye to eye with Mike; he was speechless whimpering out words. I had no control over what I was doing and thinking I knew it was my best friend standing there, I could fully see that it was mike. But I jumped him anyway, throwing him to the ground I scratched him across the cheek opening a passageway for blood. He didn’t scream or struggle, just kept on saying, ‘Jason it’s me’ I leaped off him and scampered off into the forest.

“Did mike turn?” I asked.

He shrugged, “I don’t know, usually it’s not a scratch that turns, it’s a bite but maybe when I was hovering over him saliva fell into the wound. Mike’s family move before the next full moon, I never saw him again.”

My brother’s story hand an eerie chill to it, it sounded almost false, but the look on his face said otherwise.

“What did you mean when you said you saved my life?” at this point I had scarfed down my plate without the least bit of degust, all that was left was a cold cup of coffee. Jason stood up from his seat, shut the blinds, locked the door, and took in a voluminous breath, “when I couldn’t find answers to my many questions I turned to a pack. Caleb, Jesse, Kevin, Mike and Stephanie.”

“They were a closely knitted group, so letting me in was a very challenging thing for them. Once I was in, I learned things that I would have never known. The most important one being that, our pack struck a deal with hunters. People that believed we were evil. Caleb, the alpha, made a deal that said that the hunters weren’t allowed to kill us, and we had to remain abiding citizens and not kill anyone. You broke that deal when you killed those people.”

Hearing the word kill associated with me made my skin crawl.

“The hunters got angry at our pack and killed Jesse, Caleb’s younger brother. They are looking to kill us to and Caleb is looking to avenge Jesse, which means killing you. For Caleb that’s Childs play, he has the whole pack looking for you.-. if it wasn’t for me you’d be dead right now.”

I froze my breakfast rapidly creeping up my esophagus. I swallowed down hard and rested my head in my hands, “what...What…what am I supposed to do?” I summered, “do I apologize?” he laughed, “apologize? Caleb doesn’t believe in apologies, he believes in vengeance, nothing else. What you do is hide and if worst comes to worst, you fight.” He turned his back and stepped outside.

“Fight?” I asked following him out, “Jason I can’t fight.” He had his back to me, “not now.”

“What is that suppose to mean?” he turned around swiftly backhanding me, “the fuck Jason” I said pushing him.

        “By the time you would have pushed Caleb, you would already be a corpse, decomposing.” He walked around to the back of the house slowly and cunningly, I walked behind him trying not to make a sound, waiting for the right time to strike. I balled up my fist by my side and got ready to throw a punch into his back; as my hand lurched forward, he turned around and blocked it with his hand “nice try, you have to remember that we are animals, we sense things, and we know when things will happen before they do happen.” He pushed, pushed me over and over again, on the fifth push I held out my hands and blocked the push, “finally, you’re starting to get it.”

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