I didn’t.
But it was getting harder to ignore.
As the full moon approached, I crossed into Minnesota, following the directions of a witch in Kentucky who wanted nothing to do with wolves.
The air grew colder.
The sky was covered in a blanket of thick gray clouds.
It smelled like snow.
I didn’t know then that it was all about to end.
Here, at last.
I was being hunted.
awake
Isabella, Minnesota, was barely a blip on the road. A sign announced the town followed by a couple of buildings, but it looked dead. It reminded me of a place in Virginia called Lignite, where we’d fought for a member of our pack on a bridge.
The woods around Isabella were thick. I’d seen signs telling me I was in the Superior National Forest, and I tried to remember if I’d ever heard of a wolf pack here. It seemed like the perfect place. It was in the middle of nowhere, and it felt free. But the territory was empty.
The moon was tugging on me, scratching at the back of my mind. It was getting harder and harder to ignore it.
I drove through Isabella and didn’t see anyone. Small towns lay ahead, the closest almost thirty miles away. It seemed like a good place to stop. I would be safe here. I heard deer moving in the trees, and I wanted to find them. To chase them. To eat them. But not yet. I was close. I knew I was close.
I pulled the truck onto a dirt road. The canopy of the trees hung over it, creating a natural tunnel unlike anything I’d ever seen. I almost missed it. It was hidden away, the road almost overgrown.
The truck bounced on the old road, the potholes deep. Branches scratched against the sides. It was going on four in the afternoon, but the darkened sky above made it feel much later. The moon hid behind those clouds. My gums itched.
I was on the road for almost ten minutes before it ended in a small clearing. At one end of the clearing was a run-down house. The paint had long since peeled away, the wood weathered, looking almost charred. There was a hole in the roof near the front, about two feet across. The roof over the porch had collapsed.
The door was closed.
Two of the front windows were busted out, glass lying in the grass.
I stopped the truck.
My skin was vibrating as if a low electric current was coursing through me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Kelly said, “Maybe you should leave.”
I didn’t look at him. “Do you feel that?”
“Carter. You need to go.”
“Why?”
“Something’s wrong with this place. It feels….”
“Haunted.”
He touched my arm. “Yes.”
I looked down at his hand. “I’m already haunted.”