A November challenge

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I want to go home.

The words are alien to the wolf. They echo in her brain; incoherent sounds, noises she once heard, no more relevent than the wind on the cave walls, or the babbling of the brook.

I want to go home.

She stops and sniffs the air. It is crisp and clear; dead leaves over live earth, blood and water running over stone.

She stops and sniffs again. Nothing. Yet still those strange sounds echo around her ears, like the scream of a deer. And when she sniffs again for the first time in years she thinks she finds something new, something soft and warm, a scent without a name.

I want to go home.

She turns and begins to pad slowly through the thick and heavy forest.

******************************

The meeting had run on for far too long, and everyone was getting restless. Rio Knight, also known as 'Frostbite', was in one of those moods, however, and so no one was getting away on time. For some reason she had a severed head in one hand which she was using for added emphasis. She had actually thrown it at Ian Rock when he'd looked at his phone for the fifth time, leaving a splatter of blood across the wall.

Sophie Croft had shivered. She'd heard rumours that Rio had been married once, but her husband had died. Sophie didn't really want to think too deeply about how he'd died. She had suspicions. She also felt rather bad for Ian. The poor guy was meant to be getting married tomorrow, and so far he'd had to ditch his stag night, his wedding rehearsal dinner and at this rate his wedding itself, for the sake of this bloody Pure problem.

She hoped he didn't have to ditch his wedding. She wasn't sure if her sister would take it badly or not, but she certainly would. She had spent the last three months planning this wedding. If it had been left up to Riley, she and Ian would be getting married barefoot in a park. Probably, knowing her sister's amazing gift for trouble, in a park infested by Pure. Or maybe bale hounds.

Sophie was just glad that no one had let her sister anywhere near Rio Knight. She had enough to deal with right now without the Rahu trying to use Riley and Ian's wedding as some kind of trap.

******************************

The wolf stops, and sniffed at the air again. The scent is stronger now, and there is something more with it. The scent of warmth, of space, of skin. She cocks her head to one side. Is she hunting for a new kill? She has hunted for a long time. Every night she has been set loose. Every night she brings home fresh meat, her muzzle bathed in warm blood.

This would be a good kill, she thinks. She can smell him on the air. A man, she knows. Strong, and fast, although she isn't sure how she knew that. But tricksy.

The word forms itself in her head.

Tricksy

It isn't a sound. It is a word. A concept. A single neat definition of something that yesterday would have been quickstillnottheretherechangeclosegone, or maybe the empty sensation of her jaws snapping shut on empty air now had a clear and concise collection of sounds attached to it.

This man, this prey, this thing she hunts is tricksy.

And the other words, the strange and unfamiliar noises in her mind, seem to beat in time with her heart as she lowers her head and begins to run.

******************************

At last, the meeting was over. Ian was on his phone already as soon as he got out of the room.

"Rye? Where are you?"

There was a pause.

"Didn't we talk about this? You're not making your own wedding cake..."

And then there was a grin which he didn't entirely intend as the tirade of an outraged wolf blood trickled out from the earpiece of his mobile.

"You know," Ian commented cheerfully, "I'm sure the baker didn't actually shit into a bucket to make that icing.

"OK. Maybe she did. In which case we'll skip the wedding cake and just have lots of extra champagne instead."

Sophie sighed, despairingly. Riley had been told she wasn't making her own wedding cake. It had seemed like such a small thing at the time, but she'd been going crazy ever since. Apparently dresses didn't matter. Cakes did.

******************************

Running. Running on paws which ache, running on unfamiliar ground. Not territory now. Snow gone, rocks sharp. Run far. Run hard.

The scent is stronger now, filled with more and more detail every time. Strong, fast, tricksy. Warm too. Strange hungers, hungers that are out of place for the season, and a memory of quiet and calm.

Tricksy.

That's a word.

It sticks in the wolf's mind, like the memory of cinnamon and a vague awareness of the tactile sensation of cotton.

And in the corner of her eyes, the wolf sees a faint flicker of green, almost imperceptible, as the colour begins to bleed back into her vision.

******************************

"So," Sophie said conversationally, "all set for tomorrow,"

Ian glanced at her sideways and half smiled. He and Sophie had never really got on well. Then again, they hadn't exactly met under the best of circumstances.

"Yeah," he said, slowly. "I think I am."

His smile grew a little.

"Rye is being mental about this bloody cake. But she says she's coming home tonight."

"You know it's bad luck to see the bride on the wedding day," Sophie said.

Ian frowned a little, and Sophie tried to soften the conversation with a joke.

"Hey," she said. "Just wanting to make sure you're doing everything possible to look after my sister. No more bringing any more bad luck on her..." and she immediately knew from the slight tightening of Ian's jaw and the tension in his shoulders that she'd said the wrong thing and that that particular subject was not something he was OK with joking about, even now.

It had really hung over her relationship with Ian like a ghost; their first horrible meeting over Riley's hospital bed, where she lay in between life and death for days, after her bruised and battered body was found on the edge of Exmoor. No one had ever found the friends she had gone camping with. Sophie had been furious; furious when she found out that her sister had been dating a werewolf, furious when she found out it had been an argument with him which had sent Riley running off into the wilderness. She'd snapped, Ian had snarled and Riley had finally come around from her coma to see her boyfriend and her sister screaming at each other. She'd found out that werewolves existed at about the point that Ian had tried to put Sophie through a wall.

******************************

Now the wolf is running through greenery. Four legs, suddenly clumsy and uncertain. Her back aches, as if she's been stooped over too long. How can that be?

Words keep bubbling through her brain. They make no sense, yet they keep coming.

Home.

Love.

Family.

Sister.

Safe.

Warm.

Love.

Home.

She stops to sniff, but the scent is weaker now, although she knows it is close, closer than it had been. So why can't she smell so well? The wolf frowns and bats at her nose with a deformed paw. She needs to smell. She needs her nose to find her way home and she has to get home. She knows that now.

She has to get home.

******************************

The evening air was cool and clear as Ian Rock walked home. He was, he realized with some surprise, actually quite calm. Tomorrow was going to be a good day. There would be a registry office, and a nice quiet wedding, followed by a really really good meal for everyone. No honeymoon. They hadn't been able to find anywhere they could afford where they hadn't already a weekend having make up sex.

Ian grinned. Bless Riley.

Up ahead, he could see the lights spilling out from behind the curtains. Nearly home now. Home to scrambled egg, because Riley didn't want to come home from work and bake, but still had a compulsive need to feed people around her. Home to Riley's ups and downs and overwhelming brightness and lust for life, which seemed to touch everyone around her. Home to warmth, and comfort and the odd little scraps of security that Uratha get if very lucky.

******************************

The wolf stumbles onwards, perched uncertainly on her hind legs now. Her front paws are sore and bleeding, rubbed raw on these prickly grey roads. Her nose feels odd and numb, but she can still smell that same precious scent; man, skin and cinnammon.

I want to go home.

The words have become something of a mantra now, driving her on. Other words float through her head, other memories, slightly nonsensical to the wolf, yet filled with complicated meaning for the girl. And there is a girl now, stumbling on bruised and bare feet.

Family

Sister

Love

Home

And she wants to go home. She wants to go back to a place where she can break eggs into a little metal pan, for reasons which don't quite make sense yet. She wants to scatter rose petals over some kind of cloth and wood structure, although she can't remember why.

She wants to listen to a woman singing in a soft voice about birds and angels, and she doesn't know why, but that woman's voice will make her happy.

She wants to go home.

******************************

The sound of Karen Carpenter's voice is floating out through the open front door of Ian's house, which is odd. Riley's not listened to the Carpenters in years. Admittedly, she now owns several albums by Celine Dion, which is probably worse, but at least she doesn't play them at him.

The front door is hanging open, the lock broken. Did Riley forget her key or something? But if she'd done that, why the hell didn't she just call?

And Ian knows that something is wrong, but he doesn't know what, as he steps inside.

******************************

Twigs and leaves across the floor, and the smell of blood in the air. Jesus, that's smell is strong, but there's no blood on the floor. Fear and death and yet no body. Karen Carpenter howls out saccharine sentiment.

There's someone else, someone moving from room to room, scuttling and shuffling, moving now on two feet, then on four and with them comes other scents; mud and sweat, something unclean. And where is all the blood? There has to be blood.

Ian is running now, through the hall, up the stairs, past the pictures on the walls; New York, Dublin, Paris. The bedroom door is hanging off its hinges, the bedsheeets stained with mud and blood. The lamp that was on the bedside table lies in pieces by the door, and that stupid painting that Riley picked up Santiago from a street vendor is half hanging on the wall and half lying on the floor.

The bedroom is a mess, and somehow Ian sees all that before he even manages to focus on the thing that is squatting on the bed.

It's Riley...is is Riley, but dear god, what has happened to her face? Her eyes are dark and her teeth are sharp and there's a pink coloured froth on her lips. She shifts and sniffs and snarls like an animal, and her arms are heavy with scars that were never there before. She rasps at the air as she inhales great lumps of air, before she swings that strangely stained head around to peer at Ian through greasy ropes of hair.

"Hello Ian," she says, in a voice which is hers and not hers, all at once. "I came home."