Wolfsong (Green Creek 1)

I’m sorry.

THE ROAD to the bridge was empty as I approached.

There were no street lamps out here.

Only the moon and the stars.

It was very dark.

My headlights lit up the bridge, thirty feet away.

It was empty too.

But I could feel them.

A poison on the land that had somehow become mine.

It was a blight against the grass and the trees and the leaves that shuddered in the wind.

A wound that was festering.

I turned off the truck. I left the lights on.

The engine ticked. I breathed evenly and slowly. Thomas and Mom didn’t come back.

I wished they would, even if they hadn’t been real.

I didn’t want to walk this alone.

The pack bonds were completely cut off.

I felt cold and empty. I hadn’t felt like this in a long time.

I took the crowbar out from underneath the seat. It felt smaller than it’d ever felt before.

I opened the door of the old truck. It screeched in the quiet night.

I stepped out onto the dirt road.

I did not tremble.

I did not shake.

I gripped the crowbar tightly and closed the door to the truck.

I moved toward the front of the truck, the headlights stretching my shadow until I looked like

a giant against the wooden bridge.

I felt the moment I passed through the wards, like walking through a spiderweb. They brushed along my skin, and then the moment was over.

There were crickets in the grass, and they creaked.

I did not falter. The crowbar was cold in my hands.

A flash of violet off in the trees. Blinking once. Then again.