Throw Me to the Wolves by Lindy Ryan

Author:Lindy Ryan [Ryan, Lindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Spot Books
Published: 2021-11-14T23:00:00+00:00

I came to the motel, in human form again, naked and sore. The butcher’s paper lay in shreds, nothing left of the pound of flesh I’d purchased.

But I didn’t feel sated, not really. Now I could go a long time before eating, but as soon as my eyes opened my legs itched to move. I didn’t want another night of running the Moors, though; the buzzing in my thighs didn’t feel like that kind of restlessness.

I pulled on a long sleeve black tee, wishing I had my leather jacket, and hopped in the rental. The Prius silently crept out of the parking lot, engine kicking in on the freeway. I almost took the exit that would lead straight to the house, our old house, but decided against it. The engine went silent again as I turned down onto West.

The library sat fat and dark, and I tucked the rental in the shadowed corner of the parking lot. A beat-up old Dodge pickup sat closer to the building, and I bet it’d still be there come morning. The faint signal my phone picked up wouldn’t let me download the next part of the podcast, so I listened to some wannabe preacher complain about how the Republicans had settled for a Mormon to try to take out Obama. Hardly a car passed by, so I powered the rental’s engine off and hopped out without locking the door, dropping the key into my back pocket.

Wondering if the Coffee Stain stayed open late, I headed down the one well-lit block in town. I couldn’t very well walk through Vinton at night in sunglasses, not if the goal were to avoid notice, but it put a new twitch in my thighs to feel this exposed. Maybe my wolf had sensed something.

“Britta Orchid?”

I’d kept my eyes on the sidewalk, so I noticed the fluffy little terrier mix more than the man himself.

The dog pulled on the leash, sniffing eagerly at my legs, as Paul Beaulieu met my eyes. “Wow!” he said. “Sorry about Clarence, he’s normally not this friendly.”

I stepped back and pretended to keep looking at the dog when really I just wanted to hide my face. I drove my hands in my pants pockets past the wrists. Paul jerked back on the leash, laughed, and apologized again.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Dogs just normally don’t like me is all.”

“Wow,” he said. “Britta Orchid.” He knelt to reel the dog in.

I forced a hard laugh, trying to cover the name. “Yeah, yeah, you said that.”

“You really haven’t aged a day,” he said, and I laughed a little more genuinely.

“There’s some gray up there,” I said. But you’re right, I thought, but only because I am dead, whereas the faint lines around the corners of your smile and the way your skin hangs show the life you’ve gotten to live, the vital, actual human life pounding in your veins …

Between all the work on the house and how much Remi hated to be inside it, we spent a lot of that summer out in the sun.

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