Unlikely Magic: A Cinderella Retelling (Girl Among Wolves Book 1) Page 19

  “What do you want?” While addressing Efrain, Harmon turns me as if we’re still locked in some kind of twisted dance. He pins my back to his chest, and I notice then that inside the oil lantern huddles a tiny grey mouse.

  “Tom,” I scream. “Mrs. Nguyen!” I struggle to reach her, but Harmon snatches my free arm and pins it with the rest of my body, his fingers firm but gentle.

  “Don’t fall for that,” he murmurs into my hair. “He’s dangerous.”

  Someone shrieks behind me, the tortured scream of a dying animal, and my mother goes flying past us. Her elegant dress is now twisted around her waist, trampled underfoot as she flies at Efrain, her hands outstretched like claws.

  With one blow of a huge, meaty fist, he drops her like a sack of potatoes.

  I gasp in shock at his brutality. Behind us, someone snarls.

  “Let me go,” I scream, but when I try to kick out at Harmon, he only holds me tighter, until I can hardly breathe.

  “I have a proposal,” Efrain says, as if he doesn’t hear the screaming girl in front of him, doesn’t notice the woman he just clubbed with a fist or the wolves emerging from human bodies. And why would he? He’s a freaking bear. He does the same thing. But if he’s struggling with it, I can’t tell.

  “What?” Harmon growls. I can feel him straining to hold himself, his muscles firing off little volleys of electricity. He spasms as he holds me, and his breathing is fast and ragged.

  “You’re the great unifier, right?” Efrain sneers. “You’re supposed to unite us. You know how to do that, don’t you? Or didn’t your daddy tell you your sacred duty? To marry the daughter of the shifter king.”

  “You don’t have a king.” Something rips apart inside Harmon, like muscles tearing free of gristle and cartilage, and I almost gag. But he doesn’t do more than suck in a breath. “I’m fulfilling the prophecy my way.”

  “We don’t need a king to have a rightful princess,” Efrain says, tossing the lantern in the air. I cry out as it spins up and over and over through the air. He catches it haphazardly, as if he wouldn’t have cared one way or the other if it shattered on the stones at his feet, splattering Mrs. Nguyen with it.

  “I’ve already Chosen,” Harmon says, his voice tight as a rubber band about to snap. A wave of something builds inside him, wracks his muscles, his skin, his bones. I scream in horror this time, twisting to get away, but his grip is like the bars of a prison cell, even as he lurches forward a step with the force of what’s happening inside his body.

  “Choose again.” Efrain’s voice is hard as stone.

  “No.”

  Efrain motions towards the woods, beckoning someone. A girl stumbles out of the shadows, as if pushed from behind. Her hands are tied with the same type of thick vine that grabbed me off the ground the last time I tried to run. Her face is pale and splotchy, her red hair flying around her with the force of the push that sends her to her knees in the dirt between Efrain and Harmon.

  My stomach drops at the intense flash of deja vous. The wrists, the rope. I was this girl once, in my own nightmare, a blackout fit. Helpless.

  “No,” she says, her voice barely more than a breath. “Efrain, no.”

  “Let her go,” Harmon barks, jerking forwards as if to spring. “I’m not marrying someone against her will.”

  “Is that so?” Efrain asks, smirking at me.

  “I don’t expect you to understand the mating of wolves,” Harmon says. “But we’ve tried to make an alliance of marriage with your kind. You know how well that worked out.”

  “That wasn’t the alpha dog,” Efrain says. “We want your best this time. Your leader.”

  Harmon growls low in his throat. Around us, the crowd shuffles, murmurs. They’re holding back for Harmon, but they’re ready to explode from the effort.

  “Leave.” Harmon’s voice is as ice cold as his eyes.

  “We came here to ask for a truce, all polite-like, and this is the treatment we get? I thought you wolves prided yourselves on being so…civilized.” Efrain’s lip curls in disgust at the last word, as if it’s a slur.

  “You make a mockery of marriage,” Harmon growls. “Now leave, or I’ll loose the pack on you.”

  At those words, some of our wolves throw off their remaining clothes in relief.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” Efrain says.

  “Where’s my grandma?” the redhead asks, lifting her face at last. Her green eyes are clouded with bewilderment.

  Suddenly, I grip Harmon’s arm, now sprouting soft white fur. “Harmon, no,” I whisper, twisting around to look up at him. “Elidi’s out there.”

  “Wolves protect our own with our lives,” he says, his words tumbling out in a rush. “And you’re mine now. Understand?” His pale eyes burn into mine like frostbite. I don’t understand. He’s trying to convey something more, something important, but there’s no time. His shoulders jerk out of their sockets. My mind flashes to Elidi, how she said she’d be able to hold this back, and I know she can’t leave here. She won’t be able to hold back from this simply because she decides to. I have to warn her, tell her to stay here. This time, when I struggle to free myself, Harmon releases me.

  He falls to his knees, but he tangles in the big skirt of my dress, and I tumble to the grass with him. I’m trapped under him, and he’s on all fours now, another wave rolling through his body. It twists and jerks, and all the time, I’m trying to crawl out but he’s kneeling on my dress. All I can see are his hands, clenching and unclenching, until they aren’t hands anymore but big black paws. I flatten myself on my belly under him, and he leaps off, propelling himself forward.

  He slams into Efrain, and I scream, scrambling forward on all fours like I’m just another wolf in transition. Efrain wraps his massive hands around Harmon’s throat, and they roll across the dirt. In the strange red light of the moon, I see a slash of Harmon’s claws down Efrain’s arm.

  Other things are coming from the woods now, bears and foxes and a huge, sleek mountain lion stalking towards one of the wolves. I should save Harmon, I should. But I’m not sure he’s the good guy here. I want to help the redhead, but she’s staring at the fight with a fixed concentration that sends chills down my spine, as if she’s controlling something I can’t see. Is she the puppet-master of the shifters, the princess who controls them the way the Alpha controls the wolves?

  In the end, I save the only person I really know is safe. I grab the glass lantern in my arms like a football and run towards the road out. In front of me, Zora’s little brown wolf gnashes her teeth while a red fox hangs from her throat. I swerve around them, only to see a huge black bull charging straight at me. I scream and dive forward, and the bull slams its massive head into a wolf, which goes flying through the air and lands in the fire with a horrible howl of pain. I dive around two wolves snarling and snapping at each other, past a deer fending off a wolf with its razor-sharp rack of antlers, a shrieking eagle slashing with its talons.

  A coyote leaps at me. I have no weapon. Instinctively, I grip the lantern with both hands and swing it as hard as I can. It cracks against the coyote’s skull, and it falls to the ground. With a cry, I lurch forward again. I swerve out of the way of a snarling bobcat, only to land hard on my knees and elbows. I don’t want to drop Mrs. Nguyen, who is racing around her glass prison. What seems like miles away, I watch the bull skewer a wolf pup all the way through with its curved horn. But these aren’t just wolves. They’re people. That’s a child.

  Gagging, I stumble to my feet. Holding the lantern cradled in my arms, I run. A roar splits the air, and the ground beneath my feet trembles, but I don’t look back. I keep running, because maybe they are waiting for us. Maybe Dad and Elidi are somehow okay, maybe they escaped those beasts ripping apart the pack of wolves behind me.

  I don’t know what I’ll do if I get to the end of the road, which I can only see because the moon is starting to peek out from behind the earth’s shadow, and find it empty. I have no way of knowing w
hat happened to Elidi and Dad. Did Efrain’s shifters catch all of them, or just Mrs. Nguyen? Maybe she came looking for me when I didn’t arrive on time, and now she’s captured inside this glass lantern. Where did she leave her human body?

  But Elidi…Elidi is okay. I can feel her somewhere in the woods, can feel that she’s still out there, that she’s unharmed, though I can’t tell if she’s been caught. Only that she’s alive and not hurt. So I keep going, because I have nothing to go back for. By the time the shifters are done with the wolves, Elidi may not have anything to go back for, either. She’ll have to come with us, werewolf or not.

  A tree branch appears out of nowhere and whips across my cheek, dragging its twiggy claws across my face like fingers. I grab it and snap it in half, slap away the next one. Suddenly, my heel sinks into a cold, wet pocket of mud, and I go sprawling. Tears of pain and fear burst from my eyes as I crawl forward, wiping at the glass lantern. Inside, the tiny grey mouse cowers. My ankle throbs in protest when I try to stand. I bend and loose it from the biting strap of my sandal, then take off the other. Winding up, I throw them both into the woods with as much force as my muscular arms possess, shedding the last bits of my old life like a snake shedding its skin.

  I may be broken, but I am not defeated. I will never give up again, not while Dad is out there. And I will never go back. Hobbling onwards, I clutch the glass lantern to my chest, ignoring the way the trees lean in, reaching for me. Biting my lip against the increasing pain in my ankle with each step, I watch for each branch and twig to trail fingers my way, as if beckoning me. I would have laughed at myself two years ago. But now I know that things aren’t always what they appear at first glance. A girl could be a wolf, or a mouse, or a soul-snatching human.

  A root ensnares my foot, and I fall again, but this time, I manage to stay on my knees. A rock slices painfully into my kneecap, and when I stand, I hear the ripping of Elidi’s beautiful dress, now streaked in mud and animal blood.

  That’s when I hear it. The bone-chilling, lonesome call of a wolf, long and tormented, as if all the sorrow in the world rest in that cry. And it’s near me, too near. Is it Elidi? Did she transition and feel the pain of the other wolves?

  An answering cry comes, further off. And then I hear the snapping of twigs, and I start to run again, crying out with each wobbling step. I can feel their presence, feel them coming. I can hear their pounding feet, or paws, or hooves. But I can’t run any faster.

  And then they are upon me, the sound of padding feet, of breathing, the heat of something passing me. I have time to let out one shuddering sob before the big black and white wolf stops and turns to face me. Blood drips from its muzzle, streaks the white fur on its face, drips from one torn and mangled ear.

  When I open my mouth to scream, no sound comes out. Winding up, I lift the glass lantern to strike again. The wolf’s lips draw back in a snarl, and in the silvery moonlight filtering through the dancing, budding leaves on the branches overhead, its eyes shine silver. I know who it is. I know by the silvery white-blue eyes and the white streaks through his black fur. Harmon.

  He’s come to exact his revenge on me for tricking him, for using the closest thing to magic I have at my disposal—the false mirror. I send a thought to Elidi, as hard as I can.

  Help me.

  Harmon growls, lowers his head while his eyes stay locked on mine, and steps closer, stalking his prey. As if I could turn and bolt out of his reach, outrun his powerful wolf legs. But when I duck to one side, I realize he’s not looking at me. He’s looking behind me. Growling at something behind me.

  A chuffing breath behind me makes my blood freeze in my veins. I don’t want to turn, don’t want to see what it is. A bellow shakes the earth beneath me, crushes in on my eardrums. Something huge charges towards me from behind, the vibrations terrible and ominous. I drop into a crouch, clutching the lantern as if it could save me, and ducking my head. A shape moves past me, the smell of it so thick and animal that I cringe.

  A shadow falls across me, blocking out the silvery slice of moon that glows like the blade of a reaper, and the shrinking blood-drop clinging to it. I look up to see the huge mountain lion towering above me, roaring at the wolf.

  Dropping to all fours, it leaps forward, striking at the wolf. A sickening crunch reverberates through the air, the same sound I heard last spring, when I hit a man’s skull with the blunt end of a hatchet. A howl of pain follows, and Harmon’s wolf sails through the air. I scream, and before I know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed a rock. Racing forwards, I slam it against the lion’s head just before its teeth rip into Harmon’s body.

  9

  The mountain lion snarls and drops Harmon, turning to me with teeth bared. But when our eyes meet, something strange happens. It pulls back, and after a second, changes smoothly into a large, towering man. I stumble back, my ankle throbbing where I sprained it.

  “Stella?” he asks in a voice so familiar that I know him in a second, even after three years.

  “Dad,” I gasp, my hand going to my throat. Somewhere nearby, a chorus of wolf howls rips through the woods.

  “We need to get out of here,” he says. “Hurry.”

  I take three steps and know I can’t outrun a pack of wolves, even with a head start. “I can’t,” I say, grabbing up the lantern from where I dropped it. “Just go. They’ll throw me in Mother’s attic. Come back and get me.”

  “I’m not leaving you now,” he says. “Come on, I’ll shift and you can climb on my back.”

  “What about Elidi?”

  He shakes his head. “She couldn’t hold back.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, shivering when the sound of the howls grows closer.

  “She shifted into a wolf,” he says.

  “But she wants to go with us.”

  “We have to go,” he says again, his voice urgent. “Your sister will be fine here. This is where she belongs. You belong with me.”

  “But—.”

  “Is that Yvonne?” he asks, nodding at the lantern. “Bring her and let’s go before it’s too late. They’re all coming for us.”

  “You’re a shifter? Like Efrain?”

  “That bastard’s family were the ones who wouldn’t let me go,” he growls.

  “But you were fighting on their side.”

  “Only so I could get you back,” he says. “Now they’re going to be after me for leaving the fight, and the wolves will be after you.” Before I can answer, he shifts seamlessly into his mountain lion form. A howl sounds so close that every hair on my body stands on end. I want to ask why he was there the very first day, if he was locked inside a tree, but I’ll have to wait. No matter what he’s done, he’s better than my mother. With one glance back, I throw my leg over Dad’s back. Sliding my arms around his neck, I press the lantern between my chest and his back and cling to him.

  Harmon rises halfway and lets out a long, anguished howl.

  “Will he be okay?” I whisper.

  But Dad can’t answer now. All he can do is run, taking me away from this community and this prison that, sometime over the past three years, have become my home. Taking me away from my mother and the wolves that have become my family and my pack, however hard we all resisted.

  I look back over my shoulder as we go, at the moon emerging from the shadow of the earth. And even though I’m leaving behind the only boy I’ve ever loved, even though I’m leaving behind a sister whose desperation for freedom mirrors my own, I force myself to turn and face forwards. I may never have the life I once dreamed of, but somewhere out here, life is waiting for me. It’s time I emerged from the shadow of the werewolves.

 

 

 
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