Wolfsong (Green Creek 1)

“Hello,” I croaked out. “Joe, it’s—”

“Ox?” a tearful voice said. “Ox. They… hurt me. Ox.”

Not Joe.

“Jessie?” I asked, confused and angry and hurt all at once. Because it wasn’t Joe, it wasn’t Joe, it wasn’t Joe—

“Ox,” she said. She was crying. “Their eyes. They’re glowing—”

“Where are you?” I bit out, hand tightening on the phone.

And then she screamed.

“Jessie!”

The scream fell away.

Another voice came through the phone.

It said, “Hello, Ox.” It sounded like it spoke through a mouthful of very sharp teeth.

“Who is this?” I snarled into the phone.

“I found a friend of yours. She smelled like you. A little bit. Maybe like a memory from long ago. Trying to travel back inside your little… wards.”

“I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill you if you touch a hair on her head.”

“Oh no,” the voice growled. “I suppose you’ll have to kill me, then. Because of her blood. It tastes so good.”

“What do you want?”

“Better. Thank you. It’s simple, really. I want you, Ox. The remains of your pack. He will be so… pleased. With me. He will love me… for taking away everything he could not.”

“You don’t know who you’re—”

“Ox,” the wolf snarled, because it couldn’t have been anything but a wolf. I’d been around them long enough to recognize the sounds they made. The anger they could have. “I don’t think you’re listening.”

Jessie screamed again, her voice cracking in the middle, bright and shivery with pain. “Don’t,” I pleaded into the phone. Because this was my fault. He was doing this to her because of me. “Don’t hurt her. Not any more. What do you want?”

“Come to me,” the wolf said. “Outside these… sticky things. These burns. These goddamn wards. Step outside them. And we’ll see… what we’ll see.”

“Where?” I said through gritted teeth.

“The bridge. I’m told there is only one. You have twenty minutes, Oxnard. I’m afraid I really must insist on t

hat. Twenty minutes. Or her blood will be on your hands.”

The wolf clicked off.

My hands were shaking as they fell to my sides.

“You heard?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said, eyes flaring orange in the dark.

“They don’t know, do they.”

“No. They think we’re fractured.”