The Attack

The trail was supposed to be easy.

Three miles. Moderate elevation. Well-marked. The kind of hike you do when you've worked seventy hours in the ER and need to remember what silence sounds like.

I should have turned back when the fog rolled in.

The forest changes when you can't see more than twenty feet ahead.

Trees blur into shapes that could be anything. The fog drinks every sound except your footsteps, which announce you to whatever waits in the grey.

I keep walking. Stubborn. Always stubborn.

That's what Gran used to say. Mara, you'd argue with a hurricane and expect to win.

I miss her. Even now, three years after the cancer took her. Miss her voice. Her hands. The way she'd know exactly what I needed before I did.

The trail curves. I follow it.

I don't see the wolf until it's too late.

Not a wolf.

That's my first thought. Wolves don't get that big. Don't move that fast. Don't have gold-bright eyes cutting through the fog like something borrowed from a nightmare.

It comes out of nowhere. One second I'm alone. The next I'm on the ground and there's weight crushing my chest and teeth at my throat.

I scream.

No one hears.

The pain is,

I can't describe it. Can't find words. Just fire and tearing and the wet sounds of my own body coming apart.

I fight. Punch. Kick. Scratch at whatever I can reach.

It doesn't care.

The teeth sink into my shoulder. They grind against bone. Something pops, gives way, a sound no body should make and keep living.

My vision goes white. Then red. Then nothing.

I wake up in my own blood.

The forest is quiet. The fog has lifted. Sunlight filters through the trees like nothing happened.

But I'm covered in blood. My blood. More blood than a human body should be able to lose and still breathe.

I touch my shoulder. My shirt is shredded. The skin beneath is,

Wrong.

It should be ruined. Should be muscle and bone exposed to the air. Should be a wound that needs surgery and months of recovery.

Instead there's new skin. Pink and tender but whole.

That's not possible.

I've debrided wounds in the ER. I know what tissue damage looks like at every stage of recovery.

This isn't recovery. This is something else entirely.

I stumble down the trail.

Every step sends pain radiating through my shoulder, but I can walk. I shouldn't be able to walk. I should be in shock, bleeding out, dying on the forest floor.

Instead I'm walking.

My phone has no signal. Of course it doesn't. I hiked out here specifically to get away from signals and schedules and the constant demands of the world.

Be careful what you wish for.

The trailhead parking lot appears through the trees.

My car is there. One other car, a black SUV with tinted windows that wasn't here when I arrived.

I don't care. I need to get to a hospital. Need to,

The SUV door opens.

A man steps out.

Tall. Broad. The kind of build that suggested controlled violence, not gym hours.

Dark hair, cut close. Grey eyes the color of winter sky, just as inviting. Old scars latticed his forearms below rolled sleeves.

He assessed me the way I'd assessed trauma patients who weren't going to make it.

"You shouldn't be alive."

His voice is flat. Not cruel. Just certain.

"I need..." My voice comes out wrong. Scraped and raw. "Hospital. I need..."

"The hospital can't help you." He takes a step closer. "Nothing can help what you're becoming."

"What I'm..."

A vibration starts low in my ribs. Not pain. Not fear. Something without a name, waking in a place I hadn't known was asleep.

The man's expression sharpens. His nostrils flare.

"You've been bitten," he says. "You survived the bite."

"A wolf attacked me. On the trail. But I..."

"Not a wolf." His voice goes hard. "Something worse. And now it's inside you."

I try to run.

Stupid. My shoulder is screaming, my legs are weak, and this man moves like nothing I've ever seen, beside his SUV one breath, blocking my path the next.

"Don't."

"Let me go."

"I can't do that."

"I'll scream."

"No one will hear."

He's right. The parking lot is empty. The trees press in on all sides. If he wanted to hurt me, there's nothing I could do.

But he doesn't touch me. Doesn't grab or threaten. Just stands there, blocking, watching me with that cold patience.

"What do you want?" I demand.

"That depends." His head tilts, a gesture more animal than human. "On what you're willing to do to stay alive."

"I don't understand."

"You will." He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a card. Plain white. A phone number and nothing else. "The changes have already started. You have maybe seventy-two hours before they become impossible to hide. Before someone else comes to finish what that rogue started."

"What changes? What rogue?"

"Go home. Rest. When you start to understand what's happening to you, call that number." He steps aside, clearing my path to my car. "I'll come."

"Why?"

The question stops him. His expression cracked, just barely. Not warmth. Just the absence of cold.

"Because I should kill you right now. Pack law demands it. Every instinct I have says put you down before you become a monster."

"But?"

"But I can't." A muscle jumped in his cheek. "And I need to understand why."

He's gone before I can respond.

One second standing in the parking lot. The next, vanished into the trees like he was never there.

I stand alone, covered in blood, holding a card with a phone number.

My body is a catalogue of wrongness.

And somewhere behind my ribs, in a place I can't name, a new appetite opens its eyes.

It is very, very hungry.