Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I walk out of the cage fearlessly and go to the van we were brought here in. The keys are still in it.
“Get in!” I order sharply. The other two are lost. Sheep, not knowing where the wolf really is. At my order, they obey and get in the van.
“What’s your name, guy?” I ask the man in the camouflage.
“Mark, ma’am,” he stammers.
Molly and Mark. Their names match. As do their expressions. Am I rescuing them, or kidnapping them all over again? They don’t know. I don’t know.
I was going to get Molly to drive, but she’s too busy looking stunned and scared, so I get into the driver’s seat, and I lean my pistol hand out the window and I fire a few shots, not to hit anyone, but to keep them suppressed while I reverse out of the warehouse. I’ve done enough killing for one day.
“Open the doors!” I scream out the window.
They start to open them, but it’s not quite fast enough and the rear of the van catches the lower part of the doors, ripping the metal off at the base.
The property damage is pretty severe.
I guess it doesn’t matter. Because these fuckers don’t matter, and their stuff doesn’t matter.
A few days ago, Gray burned my research down, and now I have killed someone and rescued some others and crashed a van, and kept driving anyway. Like an action movie, except with more concussion for my passengers.
“Are you two okay?”
“We’re alive!” Mark shouts back.
“How did the two of you see them?” I ask the question as I drive at a slightly more sedate pace. “The wolves, I mean, how did you discover their curse?”
“Me and Brent were hunting in the forest,” Mark says. “Tracking wolves, you know, culling the excess. Called Molly in for a good time. Then… just got tangled up in all of it, you know? Heard noises in the night, went to check if anyone was nearby messing with our things, saw some people around a fire…”
He doesn’t need to continue. I know what happened next.
“Why did they bring you back here?”
“We shot and ran,” he says. “Thought we’d gotten away, but they tracked us to a motel and they dragged us out and took us to that warehouse.”
“Right. Okay.” I am trying to make sense of things. The wolves kill people who discover their secrets, but obviously they don’t just kill them. Sometimes they take them prisoner first, if they think they might be useful. I don’t know exactly why people were caged. Maybe they had other uses for them first. The possibilities are awful and barely worth thinking about.
I shudder at the notion of how many people might be held by werewolves, only to die at their monstrous hands, or fangs, whichever comes first.
“You were brave,” Molly says. “I wouldn’t have been that brave. You saved my life.”
“I had a gun,” I remind her. “I had a gun and no choice.”
“It’s safe to say they’re going to keep tracking us,” I continue as silence falls. “Now I think we should either split up, or stay together.”
I need to talk to Gray. I need to find out how far they’ll go with this tracking stuff, though I’m betting it’s anywhere in the world.
Wolves are rotational persistence hunters. They run their prey down, but not singly. One tags in, and lets another tag out. We can expect them to be on our trail pretty quickly. They won’t want to draw attention to themselves from law enforcement, I imagine. Gray avoided them for sure.
“What do you two want? I can drop you somewhere if you like, or we can try to make it through this together.”
“Uhm, are you… Calista Hart?” Molly asks the question with some obvious nervousness.
“Yeah,” I say. No point denying it.
“We’ve been rescued by one of the richest ladies in the world!” she squeals, and punches Mark in the arm. “We’re lucky. I’m staying with her.”
Mark nods. “I reckon they’ll find us in hours, and they’ll put us down like dogs. You made a real good mess back there.”
“Thanks. Sorry about your friend. I would have… I mean…”
“Brent was always an asshole,” Mark says. “It’s not right to put your hands on women.”
“It wasn’t right for him, that’s for sure. Big mistake,” I say.
“Huge,” Molly pipes up.
There’s a certain air of euphoria starting to come over the van now, as we realize we all just survived something we probably should not have. The horror of seeing death close up fucked us all up, but now there’s more life than before.
We made it. We shouldn’t have. We should be dead, but we’re alive.
I hear Molly and Mark start making out in the back of the van.
I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to drive into the wilds, upstate or anywhere else. I don’t want to flee like prey would flee. I’m not the sort of person who runs from a fight. I just proved that. I’m not going to be forced out of my life by these werewolves. I might have spent an entire lifetime proving to myself that they exist, but they don’t get to dictate my whole life.