Chapter 3: Billie

Chapter 3: Billie

My heart couldn’t stop pounding. Sickening anxiety and guilt reduced me to a wreck  in my bedroom. My fists clenched as I swallowed the humiliation of Gavin’s rage. His harsh voice rang in my ears. Thinking about how his eyes latched onto me made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. Then it was a flash of David takingaway my binoculars and grounding me. The tone of Catrina’s voice as she mocked me. It overwhelmed me, bringing me to my knees on the hardwood floor. The only comfort I could find was in clutching my arms and closing my eyes, small reassurances from my usual misery. But this time, there were flickers of something else. Something wild: anger as electrical as the excitement I’d felt watching the hunt, as uncontrollable as my heartbeat. It swelled hotly in my throat and coiled in my head like a viper.

What gave Gavin the right to talk to me that way? I hadn’t done anything except look at him.

I wished desperately that I could fire something back, but even if I mustered the courage to talk to him, I couldn’t back up what I wanted to say. I’d get out one, maybe two sentences before he would pick me up and crush my bones. I was helpless to assert myself, but that didn’t mean I didn’t deserve to be heard, right…? Or maybe it did.

Burying my face in my hands, I cried and stared woefully at the window above my bed until the muffled voices downstairs were silenced. Beyond the smell of salt from my tears,  a faint dirt and sweat smell was reminding me of the hunters; strange that I’d never noticed these smells before.  The rich, sweet perfume stirred up by Alpha David moving throughout the manor was most prominent. A few minutes later, the front door closed. From the window overlooking the front of the manor, I watched David trudge through the night and get back into his truck.

On my bedside table, the smartphone David let me have buzzed. ‘Go help Colt butcher that elk,’ read his text message.

The evening’s events stung me so much I didn’t even want to leave my room. I texted back, ‘Okay,’ and watched as David marked the message read, then pulled away in the truck.

The manor was eerily quiet, with everybody gone. My bare feet padded down the hardwood corridor on the second floor, past Catrina’s room and Colt’s room, and the master bedroom belonging to Alpha David, all with doors closed. I paused outside of Colt’s room and found the smell permeating from under the door to be the most pleasant: musky and piney like evergreen sap. His room never used to smell that way, so I wondered if what I had been smelling was a new cologne. Gingerly, I continued through the manor, pausing at creaking floorboards and harsh gusts of wind out of fear that I’d be ambushed again. When I finally made it through the basement door, I stepped onto cold cement and was smacked by the overpowering metallic stench of blood. It was so oppressive that it suffocated me, and I tasted it in the back of my throat and gagged.

In the chilly butchering room, Colt had the elk hanging by its hind legs on hooks above a metal grate below. The carcass was already skinned, its legs below the ankles sawed off, head removed, and savory organs harvested. They sat on a pile of ice cubes on a metal table, a gory scattering of offal glistening under the bright lighting in the room. Donning nitrile gloves and an apron both stained crimson, Colt had a hook in one hand and a curved butcher’s knife in the other, pausing from trimming the elk’s tenderloin to glance at me. “What’s with the face? You’ve done this before.” He smiled.

My hand clasped over my mouth from the smell. “I’m not feeling well,” I mumbled. The gash on Colt’s nose drew my eyes. “Are you okay?”

He wiggled his nose and the adhesive closures bridging the clefts of skin just below his brow crinkled up. “It’s nothing,” said Colt. “Just annoying.” He  returned to work on the carcass, his lingering smile present in the atmosphere around him. “You can start packaging up the offal. The recipient’s list is on the corner of the table.”

After washing my hands and putting on my gloves and rubber boots, I divvied up the organ meats on the table before me, sealing them in plastic, writing names on their labels, and storing them in a cooler.

“I’m glad it’s you down here and not Cat,” Colt eventually said.

“Was she supposed to help you tonight?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t too keen on it though.”

I carefully trimmed the fascia off the tenderloin cut. “Why?”

“She was just… unpleasant today.” His back was turned, so I couldn’t see his face. “Hey, how’d those binoculars work for you? Did you try them out yet?”

My guilt roared back to life. “David caught me using them.”

Colt peeked over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows pinched. A frock of black hair hung over his brow. “He did?”

“I’m grounded,” I said.

Now he looked annoyed. “He grounded you just for having binoculars?”

“Well, it was a little more than that…” I tried to focus on the cut. It was easier to give my eyes something to stare down at. “He caught me as I came in from outside.”

“You went outside?” Colt dropped his hands to his sides and faced me. “You could’ve just used them from your room!”

“I wanted to watch the hunt,” I muttered.

Colt laughed bleakly. “I give you binoculars to watch birds and you use ‘em to spy on us. I guess there’s no stopping a wolf from doing what she wants if she wants it badly enough.”

He didn’t sound angry. It inspired me to smile, bolstered by his acceptance of me as a wolf like him. Because I was one. Even if the others didn’t act like it.

My smile wilted a moment later. “He took the binoculars,” I said. “But I didn’t tell him you gave them to me.”

“Thanks for that.” Colt turned around again.

I snuck a glance at my brother, watching him carefully slice chunks of meat off the elk and set them aside for me to clean up and package. Despite his lean physique, the muscles in his arms bulged as he flexed and stretched. His smile had two modes: thoughtful and mischievous, the latter pairing best with his gleaming blue eyes and sharp jawline. Behind his every calculated move was cleverness certain to sweep his future mate off her feet, whoever she may be.

It took us three hours to process the elk and clean up the butchering room. By then, it was a little past midnight; tomorrow morning, I’d have to wake up early to clean the manor, even earlier than I used to wake up for school. I graduated this past June. David wanted to keep me on an early schedule so I knew I was going to be tired, especially since I felt exhausted tonight. Colt walked me back up to my bedroom, his gloves and apron gone and now wearing jeans and his dark blue t-shirt. “Hey,” he said, grabbing my shoulder as I opened my door, “if you need anything, just give me a shout.”

I hesitated.

“Since you’re grounded,” he added.

“Oh.” I wouldn’t be able to join in on trips to the grocery store. That was probably what he meant. “Okay. Thanks.”

Colt grinned softly, taking his hand away. From the air whisked by his hand, a fresh wave of his piney smell hit my nose, rising directly off his skin. I breathed in and relished it, catching his eyes.

He tilted his head.

The desire to tell him about these newfound smells became tangled up in my throat. I didn’t want to sound stupid in case it was nothing. It was  sometimes embarrassing, just looking in peoples’ eyes; so I averted my gaze and turned for my door. “Goodnight, Colt.”

“Night, Billie.”

I undressed into pajama shorts and a tank top, and once the corridor was clear, ducked into the bathroom to wash my face, brush my hair, and brush my teeth. Back in my bedroom, I crashed onto my bed and was sure I’d pass out within a few minutes.

Except I didn’t.

It was hard to sleep, no matter how heavy my eyelids felt. I tossed and turned, reliving the overwhelming stench of blood in the butchering room. No, outside. It was fresher outside. Warmer. How could I even tell the difference? I was fidgety, hungry, remembering the skinless corpse’s pattern of white fats strafing through pink muscle. The ambient sounds of the manor suddenly became too loud for me: the humming of central air, the groaning hardwood whenever Colt moved around in his room. It was too hot even after I took off my blanket. I wanted to be outside again.

I shouldn’t go. I knew I shouldn’t.

On the cusp of a dream, my feet hit the hardwood, and I walked to my door. I was only going to get a glass of water, but when I peered down the dark corridor and found it empty and still, fate tempted me to walk a little further. All I wanted was a breath of fresh air.

David’s truck wasn’t back yet. Catrina wasn’t home yet either. I slid the porch door open, wary of waking Colt, and stepped outside.

A deluge of night smells enveloped me. The dewy aftermath of a humid summer day made everything sweet and wet. It was the dirt that I could smell most strongly; fresh and damp, soil in a garden threaded with bitter notes of weeds and worms. Standing on the porch, the warm wind grazed my bare arms and fingered through my hair. My cravings magnified, pushing me into the grass so I could feel it under my feet. Smells from the dark fringe of the forest ahead lured me away. Dirt and dew, fungi and flowers, fresh animal tracks weaving around trees. I wasn’t going to be out long. I just wanted enough of the forest to sate my restlessness, then I’d be able to sleep.

I hadn’t anticipated how dark it would be out there. It was unnerving once I made it into the tree line. The forest transformed into a landscape of obscure silhouettes scarcely lit by starlight, rustling sounds I couldn’t pinpoint, cracking twigs, coyote shrieks in the distance. The lights from the manor were lost among the leaves. I didn’t know what direction I was walking.

The sensations of the forest were so intoxicating that after some minutes, going home became less of a priority; I tried not to worry about it. Instead, I savored the smells. The texture of dirt and grass under my feet. The sight of stars above me twinkling in the black expanse.

What if I kept walking and just never went back to Hexen Manor?

This freedom that gripped me invoked dozens of new possibilities. I was alone out here. I could keep walking until the sun rose and see how far I’d gone. Maybe I could get far enough away that David would never find me. I didn’t know why that was appealing; after all, he was my father, and Hexen Manor was my home. It was safe there. This wilderness was treacherous and could kill me instantly, yet… I wanted it so much more than the sequestered life I currently had.

When something moved behind me, I spun around to look, but didn’t speak. Freedom made me feel bolder. Like I didn’t need to worry—I was just imagining it. It was just the sounds of the forest. I kept walking, but there was a heaviness in the way the leaves shuddered around me. Heavy feet crackling twigs. Heavy bodies parting the bushes. And suddenly, among the forest smells, pungent miasmatic odors.

I thought of the dangerous other shifters David warned me about. They couldn’t be out here so close to Hexen Manor, in the heart of Dalesbloom territory, could they? I held my breath and stared until shadows in the forest bent, moving. Not with the natural sway of trees or bushes, but like hulking figures, striding limbs. “Who’s out there?” I ventured, fighting the shake from my voice.

Nothing answered but a low growl.

I wasn’t alone.

Immediately, I regretted coming out here—disobeying David, entering the forest at night, thinking I was brave enough to be free—I was wrong. I bolted away from the moving shadows but couldn’t see enough in the dark to navigate. My legs crashed through the undergrowth and my feet battled thistles and sticks. Every scratch made me whimper, worsened by my fear that stripped me of all rational thinking. All I could think of was getting out of the trees and into the moonlight.

“Moon Goddess,” I cried between breaths, begging for guidance home. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! Please don’t let me die out here!”

Stupid of me to think I’d be granted mercy after such disobedience.

Brambles snagged my foot. The pain fired up through my legs and toppled me to the ground, and then the pain continued all through me. My body was hot and cold at the same time. Fear blinded me, urging me to thrash, to fight the unseen enemy consuming me. A dark maw eclipsed the moon until my vision blacked out completely, and suddenly I went unconscious.

Glimmers of a pale figure materialized in my dream. Soft fur and celestial white eyes beckoned me forward. My dream continued without me, as if my soul had left my body behind in search of another vessel, following a smell…

Blood and sweat.

Those fleeting glimpses were the only traces of the dream I didn’t block out.