Page 30 of Entangled in the Woods
Jenny closed the screen of her laptop and tilted her head to the side. “Sorry. I should have knocked on your door earlier.”
I filled up my water bottle at the sink. It was probably already hot outside. “It’s fine. I just wanted to get an earlier start.”
“I’m just glad you made it back from the bar this week!” she teased. “If I don’t see you the rest of the weekend, I’ll just assume you’re crashing with one of the many attractive guys you keep running into.”
“Ha ha. Very funny, Jenny. I’m about to head out and explore one of the trails on Robinson’s map,” I said.
“Let me know if you see any big wolf tracks. I keep finding wolf footprints, and I follow them, only for them to suddenly disappear. It’s the weirdest thing,” Jenny said. “I started wearing my necklace again.” Jenny pulled a small silver whistle out of her shirt. It hung around her neck from a dainty silver chain. “The sound is high pitched enough that it stuns them, giving you enough time to get a head start.”
If only I could tell Jenny why they were vanishing. Or should I say shifting.
Not wanting her to see how conflicted I surely looked, I headed out the front door before she could say more.
“Oh! Elise! The new satellite phone got dropped off this morning. I’ll install it so we can make our calls this afternoon.” I have her a thumbs-up on the way out.
After finding the head of the new trail I planned to explore on the map, I let myself become lost to the serenity of the woods around me and the sound of my footsteps crunching the gravel.
The sun was high in the sky when I finally stopped for a water break. Glancing around, I saw more of the brown patches about ten yards off the trail. Putting my water bottle away, I stepped carefully until I was next to the brown, withered foliage. It looked like the plants I had seen before, but this was a new area. I took out my clean containers and gloves and started gathering the plant material. A buzzing sound entered my ears, then disappeared. I absently waved my hand around my head in case anything was flying past me.
Quickly, I finished gathering the specimens and zipped everything in my backpack. Time to go back.
Back on the trail, I started heading back the way I’d come. It was around lunchtime, and my stomach was rumbling.
I made it ten steps before something zapped me. Static electricity in the woods? Had I gotten stung by something? Odd. I turned slightly and took a few more steps. Zapped again. I heldout my hand cautiously, reaching in front of me. My hand shook. There it was again, the zap. I pulled my arm back against my body.No.
I bent my knees and launched myself forward, shoulder first. My body bounced off an invisible wall, and I stumbled, trying to catch myself before I fell. The wards weren’t that strong, were they? Maybe I could power through it. I went slowly this time walking forward, driving my feet into the soil as leverage. I braced myself and pushed my shoulder against it. My muscles strained as I pushed. I vibrated with the electrical current of the wall flowing through my body.
It wasn’t budging. The invisible wall pushed me back for a second time. I tripped over my feet before righting myself. The ward was stronger than I’d thought. I reached out with my hand, my fingertips searched for the barricade. I found the invisible wall, and tiny electrical shocks danced along my fingertips. It felt eerily like the last weekend when I had been knocked unconscious.
Maybe I was on the outside of the wards. It was a giant invisible wall, right? I was probably on the outside, I tried to convince myself. I hadn’t traveled too far from the cabin. My fingers grazed the ward as I walked quickly along the wall. I continued feeling small zaps skipping along my fingers as I traced it. At some point, if I was on the outside of the wall, I would stop feeling the buzz and know I’d made it past the ward. The ward had to end. I wasn’t trapped inside. I was on the outside. I had to be.
My fingers continued to feel the zaps as I walked along the invisible partition. Drips of perspiration fell down my back, tracing my spine. I couldn’t be… This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t trapped inside, was I? For the second weekend? I shouldn’t have slept in. Should’ve paid more attention to my surroundings. The wards wouldn’t open again until Sunday night. I couldn’t bestuck in the forest all weekend. I didn’t have any food or supplies with me.
A stick snapped behind me, and I turned to find nothing. I continued along until I heard another snap, this one closer to me. Twisting around, I came face to face with a brown wolf with his lips curled, showing his sharp white teeth. Instinctually backing up, I hit the ward with the side of my body and lost my balance. I fell onto my side, halfway on top of my backpack. Swiftly, I got up onto my hands and knees looking up at the wolf, who was in the middle of shifting.
He slowly morphed into a towering man with sandy-brown hair. The process of shifting still wasn’t pleasant to watch. All the stretching, bone elongating, and nakedness both shocked and disgusted me after he’d finished. The shifters seem to have no qualms about nudity.
“Hey, Kip! Get over here. I got a live one.” The man paraded over to me unclothed, his appendage swinging back and forth. My brain tried to focus on what was happening around me as my eyes took in what was in front of me. Where had I heard the name Kip before?
Another man made his way out of the woods, equally tall and equally naked. “Good find, Elijah. Not a rogue, but a plaything. She’ll make the weekend much more enjoyable.”
Kip and Elijah. Kip and Elijah…
My brain flew through the names and faces I’d seen at last weekend’s opening ceremony, and suddenly I recalled where I knew these two men from. They were the hunters from the Juniper Pack that Kleio had told me about. She had said nothing good about them.
Still crouched down, I scanned my surroundings for a stick or something I could use in defense. I saw a decent-sized stick a few feet away, and I scurried over to grab it. Standing up in adefensive position with my new weapon in front of me, I stood ready to protect myself from these assholes.
“Stay away from me!” I yelled. They didn’t even flinch.
“Look at the human with a stick. She’s a feisty one,” Elijah said. “We like a little fight in our girls, don’t we?”
They stalked around me.
“That we do,” Kip said. “I’ll let you have the first go with her since you got the last rogue. Don’t tire her out too much, though. I want some of that fight left in her.”
With the ward to my back, I had nowhere to go. I swung my stick at them like an amateur fencer, trying to get them to back off. My actions seemed to only excite them. They laughed at me as if this was a fun game. Their naked bodies were showing how excited they were as they got closer and closer to me, licking their lips hungrily.
“Get back!” I yelled again as loud as I could.
