Page 35 of Sweethearts and Savages
He tilted his head back. “Man or beast?” he asked me softly, or maybe he muttered it to himself. That was odd. Someone who belonged would know that any animal they found in these woods would be supernatural. We didn’t have many lions roaming Canada.
I eased forward. I wanted to smell the pretty man. I should tell Bohdie too.
I lifted my snout to howl.
The guy whipped out a gun and shot me.
He. Shot. Me.
My brain couldn’t comprehend it, even as darkness sank in.
17
Kell
The wolf went down and I didn’t hesitate. Scooping it over my shoulders, I hefted it up and ran for my truck. They never travelled alone, its pack would be here somewhere. This was an opportunity, but one misstep would end in me dead.
The truck came into view and I almost sighed with relief. I dropped the wolf heavily into the back and hogtied it, taping its jaws shut. I didn’t know how long the tranq would work for, and I wanted to be well away from this compound before it woke up. I didn’t want to destroy years of work by fucking it up at the last minute.
Tying it off quickly, I jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned it out of the woods. I needed to make it back to the freeway.
A bloodcurdling roar echoed through the woods, and I knew that I didn’t want to face whatever made that sound. I skidded down a firebreak, the potholes throwing around the wolf in the back. Hopefully it didn’t bounce right out and make this all for nothing.
Finally, I saw the turnoff back to the road, looking in the rearview mirror and seeing a motherfucking lion. Holy shit. Any doubt that I had the wrong place was thoroughly squashed. Unless the circus was in town and had an escapee, this was Eden. Fucking Eden.
After years, I’d found it.
Pushing the truck to its speed limit, I drove away from this backwater section of Alberta. I needed to get as far away as I could, otherwise I had no doubt that the monsters of Eden would find me. And then they’d do what they were made to do.
Kill.
I had a safe house for this moment. Off grid. I’d interrogate this monster in the back of my truck and then I’d plan. I’d finally have my revenge. My father’s revenge.
My brain shied away from thoughts of my father. Instead, I cranked up the radio, listening to the music so loudly it threatened to burst my eardrums. But it kept the circling thoughts away.
An hour into my drive, I pulled over to a rest stop, grabbing a syringe from my glovebox. Leaning over the bed, I looked at the wolf. No, not a wolf. A werewolf. It was snow white, and bigger than a normal wolf. Definitely male, given its size.
I jabbed it with more tranqs, because the last thing I needed was a drugged-out wolf falling off my truck in the middle of the highway. Then I covered it with a tarp, so animal rights activists didn’t call the Department of Wildlife Services or whatever they had up here in Canada. Explaining why I had a snow white fucking wolf in the back of my truck would be difficult.
Once the tarp was over the monster, I got back in my truck and drove solidly for another six hours. Those drugs would put out an elephant for a day, and my contact was pretty sure it would keep a werewolf out for a day or so.
The sun set, the darkness out here so all-encompassing that it was like driving through the abyss.
My phone screen lit up.
Frost:Did you do it?
Me:Mission success.
Frost:Holy fucking shit. I thought you were insane but you actually got one?
I’d metFrost on the dark web; he was scarily smart and also kind of fucking weird. But he’d believed me when I’d told him that monsters existed, and he’d been invaluable in helping me track shit. He believed in the mission. Believed in what I was doing.
Me:Yes. Going dark. Call you in twelve days.
That'show long I thought I’d need to break the monster in the back of my truck. My father had taught me everything he’d known about these monsters, about Eden. I’d learned under his own hand how to make people talk, and I was going to make sure the wolf in the back sang like a canary before I was done.
I was light-headed and sleep-deprived when I pulled into the parking lot of a diner off the freeway. There hadn’t been any movement under the tarp since I put the wolf back there, so apparently my contact was true to his word. I would stop real quick to refuel on coffee and food, just so I didn’t drive into a tree.
