“But if you move?”

“If I move?” he said, with extra emphasis on the word to indicate it was incorrect. “If we move, Adria. I would never leave you here, or anywhere.”

I started to speak, but he hushed me with a peck on the jaw line.

“I know you don’t want to leave your family,” he said, “and I would never in a hundred years ask you to do that, not even for me. But in this situation, it may be the only thing that saves them.”

My head fell in despondency.

“I know,” he whispered, trying to console me. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I know we will,” I said, raising my chin.

We rode around for a while to waste time before visiting hours at the hospital. Spent an hour at Harvey’s Coffee Shop and drove into Augusta. I wanted to get something nice for Uncle Carl and flowers just seemed weird. We ended up at Barnes and Noble where I bought a book titled On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy by Stephen Hawking. Uncle Carl loved his Science. I just knew that it would be the best gift ever.

When I saw him lying in the bed, I tried not to think of how he looked last night. It was hard not to. All the same machines were still hooked up to him, even an extra one that I refused to ask Aunt Bev about.

I didn’t come here for that. I came to see my uncle getting better and to make him smile seeing my awesome gift-picking abilities.

He couldn’t smile when he saw it. He couldn’t even hold it and flip through the pages. I guess I hadn’t thought about any of that. I imagined him ripping open the bag, lifting it out and turning it this and that way. I imagined the biggest grin across his face as he read the book details.

None of that happened.

His car had been totaled by a monster bigger than his car was. He almost died when at first he seemed to be stable.

And I would never forget that it was all because of me.

Even he being in his car at that very moment was because of me. If only he hadn’t gone to Augusta to adopt a dog for me, he wouldn’t have been on that road. And even if the dog was out of the picture, Uncle Carl was still in his car to check on me at Finch’s.

Me, me, me.

I sat quietly in a chair, farthest corner of the hospital room. He fell asleep again.

“I know he loves the book, Adria.”

Beverlee came over and stood beside me.

“The doctor said Carl’s going to be here for a while,” she began. “I’ll be home as much as I can. I’ve even talked to my sister about coming to stay with us so you won’t be by yourself so much.”

I just let her talk. I didn’t have it in me to say much about anything in return. Nothing mattered really.

She knelt in front of me, placing her hand on top of mine. “He’s going to be okay.”

I smiled weakly, giving her the okay to stop worrying about me and my feelings. The smile was totally fake, of course, but as long as she didn’t know that.

Isaac had waited for me out in the waiting room.

“Let’s go to your house and get some of your things,” he said.

The sun had set sometime while I was with Beverlee. I recalled it getting darker outside from the hospital room window. It was also snowing again, but only light flurries. The ride to my house was quiet. All I could think about were things that required every bit of my attention. Things that sucked any happiness from me that might have been there. Isaac left me alone; I guess he felt I needed the time to think, to grieve. If he knew I was using any part of it to blame myself for anything, he would’ve tried to put a stop to it.

Pulling up into my driveway, I saw that the porch light wasn’t on. I never noticed before how eerie that old Victorian-style house was in the dark even though I’d seen it a hundred times just like that.

Isaac put the car in park.

“Are you okay, Adria,” he said turning sideways, one arm resting on the steering wheel.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“You will be, or you are?”

Leaning across the seat, I pressed my lips gently to his cheek, just under his eye. “I am,” I said. “I wouldn’t be if you weren’t here.”

A smile softened his face.

I placed my hand upon the door handle of the car and Isaac grabbed me.

“Stop,” he demanded, smelling deeply of the air.

His eyes darted around apprehensively.

Suddenly, Isaac threw the car back in drive and slammed on the gas. My body lurched forward and then backward, thrusting me harshly against the seat. I fumbled for the seatbelt, but couldn’t get it on. The car swerved through the snow, mud and slush, tossing me sideways.

“Isaac!”

“Hold on!” he shouted.

I braced myself against the dashboard, one foot pressing on the door. Slam! Clunk! The hood of the car caved in. Steam and anti-freeze whistled and spewed from the wreckage. The car was dead. Black eyes and dripping teeth bore down on us through the windshield. I screamed. My body pressed so hard against the seat I felt it jump the track forcibly and fall backward.

The windshield crumbled into a thousand nugget-like pieces of glass. The beast’s head entered the opening and roared, blood and thick saliva spewed from its blade-like teeth. I managed to get into the back seat, cowering low halfway into the floorboard.

I heard an uncanny pop! and then a long, grating sound. Isaac’s seat pushed backward and snapped completely off its tracks. I moved over just in time before the seat crushed me. Isaac’s door flew off, landing feet away in the snow. Another deafening roar ripped through the car and Isaac, massive and beastly, burst through what was left of it. The wreckage tossed with me in it. I held onto the back of the front seat. Trees and white ground flip-flopped in my vision many times before the car landed upside-down. Snow cushioned one side of my face, the roof of the car pressed against the other. The taste of blood filled my mouth and I could feel something hard and cold penetrate my side. At first, no pain followed, but then a burst of pain surged through my body.

I tried to call out for Isaac, but it seemed my voice was gone. A giant mass of gangly black fur and gnashing teeth skidded across the ground in my limited line of sight. I tried desperately to pull myself out of the car; dragging my body forward with...I didn’t know with what. Maybe I wasn’t moving at all.

Maybe I wasn’t really there. Something wasn’t right.

I could see the deadly fight, the torn flesh. I could see the dark red stain upon the bright white snow. My vision went in and out. More than two werewolves? I wasn’t sure. I heard voices in my head, not my ears, but my head. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I knew they were talking to me. Their voices were familiar, but intuition told me they were not real. I saw my mother’s face. She was so beautiful, like she used to be before she met Jeff and let herself go. She held out her hand to me and in it, the tiny ceramic cat she gave me when I was six.

It fell from my fingers and shattered on the sidewalk.

I saw her lips move to tell me not to cry, that she would glue it back together. But I only heard her voice in my head.

The car jerked violently and my eyes sprung open. Though they might not have ever been shut. The sound of metal ripping apart should have been much louder, but something muffled everything around me. I felt my cheek lift away from the coldness of the snow. I could have sworn in a glance I saw a nak*d woman lying dead; hair as black as paint contrasted heavily against the snow.

The voices were back. Alex was there with me. No, not really there. At first, I thought she was. I thought she came to help me, but she stood in the field outside our house in Georgia. The grass came up to her ankles. I took her hand and she helped me up. The sun was bright over the Georgia sky, but the wind was mild and it wasn’t so hot. I saw the house had been painted. No longer did I live in a dirty speck in a green, treeless pasture.

“Drink it,” Alex urged, holding out a cup of water. Words actually came from her lips. “I drew it from the creek for you. It’ll be hot soon.”

The creek? There was no creek by our house. But I reached out my hands and took the cup from her anyway. And I drank.

Was I dreaming? I had to be. Where was Isaac?

Suddenly, I was running fast and hard through the field with Alex close behind. We were laughing hysterically. I never felt so happy, so free. And when I saw the horses out ahead I ran straight for them. At a safe distance, I stopped, out of breath. My hands propped upon my knees to keep my balance. Alex ran up from behind.

“You think they’ll...let us ride them?” She was also out of breath.

Time moved forward, jumping ahead in strange jerking intervals. Alex went toward the horses. Further. Further. I noticed then that as she got closer, I stood farther away by hundreds of feet. Alex waved at me from afar, smiling so hugely. I waved back, but my heart doubted her.

“Adria,” said another familiar voice. “He’s coming. I love you, Adria.”

This voice was echoing from somewhere else, from where I was truly supposed to be.

This field wasn’t real....

The horses reared up. Alex was no longer my human sister. She took one horse down and devoured it. I cried out in horror and felt my feet run toward her of their own accord. “No!” I shouted; rage filled every part of me. By the time I made it there, Alex was gone.

The field was covered in snow, the sky gray and frigid, dominated by thick winter clouds. The horse lay dead in a pool of blood. I fell to the ground beside it. Blood and snow soaked up in my hair. And I just lay there, staring out at the endless nothing until the dream became nothing and everything went black.

20

THE HEAT OF A fire warmed my skin. It crackled softly somewhere nearby. So weak, at first I couldn’t even open my eyes; my body drained of energy and sore beyond tolerance. I could still smell the offensive stench of blood. But it wasn’t my own. My blood could never smell like that. My blood was human. Some kind of cloth lay underneath me. My feet were bare and I could tell I wore clothes that were not mine, either. Thin. A nightgown maybe.

I opened my eyes a slither. Viktor Vargas sat at a table in the room, watching me.

Had my nightmare gotten worse? No, this was real. I would have preferred to lie in that bloody field and die with the horse, than to be here.

My first instinct was to try to run, but I was too weak. I shut my eyes and hoped that it would all be over soon, that he would infect me with his...disease, and the transformation would kill me quickly.

Isaac, I thought.

I was strong enough to lift my shoulders suddenly.

“Where is he?” I demanded weakly. “Where’s Isaac?”

Viktor strolled over and sat beside me. I shrank back against the wall. “Get away from me,” I lashed out, fear lacing every syllable. “You sick bastard!”

He was unfazed.

A woman walked in. Familiar. I hated the cunning of her walk, and the way she looked at me; a venomous smile tugged the corners of her lips.

“Isaac,” she said, “He almost had me—such a strong boy. That part he got from me, of course.”

“Sibyl.”

She looked mildly surprised, until I realized it was sarcasm. “Oh,” she said, “he told you about me, did he?”