“You did this,” I told my father. “You did this. You knew. You knew about Gavin, and you said nothing. You kept him away. You hid the truth from us. From Gordo. What more could you have done to him? You took Mark away from him. You left him behind. You didn’t tell him he had a brother. You let Joe get his claws in Ox without him knowing what it meant. You died when we needed you most. Why would you do that to us? I love you. I hate you. I wish you were here. I wish you weren’t my father.”
A wolf howled, and I didn’t know if it was real.
“I try,” I panted, skin slick with sweat even though I was freezing. “I try so goddamn hard to do the right thing. To keep my family safe. To be a good wolf. And what does it get me? I’m thousands of miles away from home. I’m losing my mind. I want him. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all a dream. Or magic. He did something to me. Made me care about him. Made me miss him when he was gone. Made me put tires to the secret highways even though I told myself I would never do that again. He saved us. He saved himself. He is my shadow. I am his. Livingstones and Bennetts. Bennetts and Livingstones. It’s a circle, a snake eating itself. Kelly? Kelly!”
Clumps of snow fell from tree branches.
A flash of brown in the distance. A buck. A big one.
“Run,” I whispered to it. “It’s not safe here in these woods. I’ll hunt you. I’ll kill you. I’ll eat you up I love you so.”
And on and on it went.
THE TRACKS LED to a cave.
I stared at it. The mouth was large and gaping, a black hole from which came the sound of the diseased heart, the pulse that pierced a hook through my brain and pulled, pulled, pulled.
The fog in my head cleared slightly.
“Yeah,” I whispered to myself. “Now would be a good time to turn around. Only people with a death wish would go into caves in the middle of nowhere.”
I looked around for Kelly, hoping he’d be there with me. I needed to apologize for trying to hurt him. Tell him I didn’t mean it.
He wasn’t there.
I didn’t blame him.
A low whine came from the cave, pathetic and weak.
Gavin.
I went to the cave.
Water dripped somewhere inside.
Gavin’s heart raced.
The diseased heart was slow and steady.
I took a deep breath.
And went inside.
It was warmer than I expected, humid and wet. I stepped over piles of leaves. Over branches long dead. Bones littered the ground. Some looked small. Sitting on a rock was the skull of a deer, the bone stripped clean. I thought I saw a human rib cage, but I told myself it was just a trick of the low light.
The cave narrowed almost immediately. Tufts of black hair hung from the walls, as if a large animal had passed through and rubbed up against it. Above the smell of snow and stagnant water, animal parts and blood, there was something darker. Something deeper, as if it’d seeped into the earth. It burned my nose.
I found them only moments later. The cave opened up again to a larger space, and in the failing light, I saw the outline of a beast moving slowly. It inhaled. It exhaled.
And there, in the darkness, was a single red eye, as bright as a dying sun.
It wasn’t pointed toward me.
It was staring at the ground below it.
At a timber wolf.
He lay on his back, his eyes weakly flashing violet. His jaws hung open, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He struggled, legs kicking, but his father had a large misshapen hand pressed against his chest and stomach, claws like hooks digging into the soft flesh. Gavin whined again, eyes wild and unseeing. It tore at me, and I had to stop myself from rushing in, from leaping at the beast that held him down.