Red and her Wolf Ch. 05-06

A/N: So, a minor edit for Chapter 2's summary where I mention Kade's last name. I had to change that last name due to logistical errors later on in the story.

No smut in these two chapters, either, sorry. Thanks so much for all your comments. They are much appreciated!

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CHAPTER 5

Emily

My own scraping gasp wakes me in the dark. I bolt upright, fast and sweat-drenched. Sticky yet again. Except this time there's no need to finish myself off.

This time, I am spent.

I lie back down and shift with groggy eyes, bed creaking under me. The black sky in the window is moonless now, clouded over. Rain drums against glass, jostles delicate leaves in the wind. Visions of Kade still press behind my eyelids, lick a wet trail up the center of my panties.

"This seriously needs to stop." I groan into my pillow, grateful that my sister took the couch downstairs tonight.

But the images won't stop. They burn bright and sweltering in every corner of my mind. A barrage of lust, sensation, heat. Desire builds again, makes me feverish despite the rain's chill. I move to touch myself, though I know another orgasm won't make the need fade. I'll only want another.

Then I remember that I have an escape. A long neglected outlet. Remember the blank sketchbook stuffed somewhere in one of my suitcases, empty pages beckoning.

It's been nearly a year since I've drawn anything, since I released the images building up inside my head, let them run rampant on the page. Coated my hands black with charcoal and ink.

No better time than now.

I click on my bedside lamp. Honeyed light glows. Memories of amber eyes shimmer.

Christ. Even light itself makes me think of Kade. It's like I'm never truly alone in this house. After stepping inside only once, he lingers in every room. Left a permanent imprint of sex and smoke and dark hunger.

I search my closet, pull out a large drawing pad and box of charcoal. Get down on my knees in my t-shirt and damp underwear. Ignore the awkward slick between my legs and simply begin.

To my relief, it doesn't take long to get into a flow. My hand moves of it's own accord, channelling something beyond myself. Twisting, weaving imagery that I have no control over.

Then something jolts my focus. A sultry twang of an acoustic guitar. Followed by a mean slide down the strings. I stop, charcoal hovering.

Come to me, baby...what evil have I done...

A haunting-rough voice quivers, seduces and right away I know it's my neighbour. Stripped down. Bare and raw. Goosebumps climb my arms, dance up my neck.

Fingerpicking blues. A dusty relic, fresh with passion. Straight out of a hot southern swamp.

Have I done you wrong? Oh yes, you know I care...

Holy mother of god.

Kade has a fucking gift. A strangely vulnerable one too, heart bleeding into every word. A part of me wants to go to the window to get closer to that unrestrained emotion, that honesty. But instinct makes me stay put, smear black pigment down paper. Let this blues-soaked spell unfold before morning breaks it.

Well, I gotta few more days to live, and they all belong to you...

A face emerges under my fingers. High cheekbones under strong brows. Downcast lashes. Carnal eyes.

My hands swirl, taper on the page as strings wail from afar. Sound braids with movement, compels each and every stroke of charcoal, each brush of my fingers. Until there's no separation between my body and his music, heartbeat in perfect sync with Kade's dark and lonesome chords. His voice drifts off as the guitar plucks it's final notes.

When I realize what I've created, a soft shudder wracks me.

A black wolf surfaces from behind what can only be Kade's head, it's fanged maw snarling. Eyes white, charcoal smearing so that fog envelops both figures. Wolf and man blend together, seamless.

Yet...something is missing.

Before I can think, I'm digging in my closet for a container of gold acrylic. I open the bottle, dip my index finger in thick paint, and carefully dab in two pairs of golden irises.

They look back at me, untamed, shimmering.

*

Kade

Mississipi, 2003

I stare at the kitchen wall where a gleaming guitar is pegged.

Elbows on the table. A half-carved wooden top in my hand, a carving knife in the other. Palms damp from the stuffy mid-day heat. Muddy Waters grates and howls from Mama's vintage record player in the living room, one of her favourites. Mine too.

She's stirring a bronze pot of something sour-smelling at the stove, wearing a long blueberry-colored dress, black hair up nice and pretty. She glances at me over her shoulder. "Remember, if you're a good boy you'll get that guitar for your birthday this year."

How could I forget? I've been aching to turn fourteen for too long. "Did Grandpa really play it on the radio?"

"You bet your ass he did." She flashes a dainty, gap-tooth smile, before turning back to her mystery concoction, softly humming. "He made the whole town fall in love with him. He could sing like an angel too."

Gazing at the guitar, distracted by a fierce wish to have known Grandpa, my hand slips, palm slicing open. Drops of hot blood splatter the table."Ow." My wooden top falls to the floor. It rattles before aligning itself into a slow, lazy spin.

Ma hurries over with a dish rag. Frown creasing, she plucks the crimson-stained blade from my fingers. "And that's why I don't like you playing with knives."

"There's nothing else to do," I grumble as she sits down, takes my wounded hand in her cool, soft fingers. "We don't have a TV and I already read all my books a hundred times."

"Should we do your visualization exercises then?" Mama presses rag to blood. It pools like ink on the clean white cotton, stretches towards the corners. "I know you love those."

I wince, but not from pain."No, thanks."

Mama laughs. "I know you hate being a luddite, but you're lucky we don't have a TV. No filling your mind with garbage. Just useful skills. Practical skills." She dabs at my cut but the blood is already clotting. Skin stitching together like someone's threading it shut from the inside. "You're also lucky you heal fast." She swipes away the red splotches on the table. Then she ruffles my hair, kisses my sweaty forehead and returns to her witches brew.

As the sting of my palm fades, Muddy's guitar keeps me spellbound and soft-jawed. The purest, deepest magic I've ever experienced even with a witch for a mother. I close my eyes. Imagine steel strings biting into my fingers. The roar of an adoring crowd. Playing just like him, just like Muddy-

The door blasts open. A shadow darkens the table as my gut springs up my throat. I turn to find Papa looming in the doorway.

"Outside, Rowen." His gray eyes look colorless, blind, but they always see everything. Always cut through me. Like he's dissecting every organ, bone, artery. All not up to par. "Come stand outside with your brother."

A fox's tail flashes in my mind, lightning-quick. A sharp dart in my belly.

Something is wrong. More wrong than usual. I glance at Mama who briskly nods at me to go with him, her face tight with quiet fear. I don't want to go with Papa, but I'm not much in the mood to get on his nerves. I've been doing that too often lately. Asking dumb questions. Acting soft and nervous. Papa's always asking why I can't be more like my brother, Asher. I don't know why I can't either. I try hard as I can but I know I'll never be as good. Whatever Asher has, I didn't inherit.

There's something...missing in me. I'm all clouds where I should be steel.

I ditch my project. Follow Papa through bumbling flies, sun-burnt grass, to the front of the wooden shed where Asher leans, half hidden by shade. A handsome, overly-cocky prince staring down his nose at me. He reminds me so much of Papa right now: too-pale eyes, hair so blonde it's nearly white. I've taken on Mama's darker looks. I think Papa doesn't like that. Like I've chosen her over him. Betrayed him like I somehow always do.

When I stand next to Asher, he has that eternal leer on his face like he just won an easy prize. Crushed me at a game I had no chance at winning.

Knowing him, he did win. He always does. I just don't know what the game is yet.

Papa takes a moment to size us up. Scanning us both with harsh eyes, though he offers Asher a small, flickering smile. He crosses us brothers towards an ankle-high, shifting lump covered in fluorescent orange tarp.

I am suddenly afraid. I am always afraid but this clawing fear is different. It's the scratching and whimpering coming from under the tarp, the sound of pure helplessness. The jaded, lazy look on Papa's and Asher's faces. I want to bend over and hurl.

"Today's the day, boys," Papa crows."Today's the day you prove to me what you're really made of. Where your blood comes from. How loyal you really are."

My throat tightens, my palm throbbing under it's fresh scar. I've never been able to prove anything to Papa. I always disappoint him. How will I disappoint him today?

Papa whips the tarp away and two baby foxes appear. Cubs barely a few weeks old, screeching in pain. Caught bloody in their traps.

Breathing hurts. Seeing hurts. I can't look without my eyes watering so I stare at the dried up ground.

"Now that both of you know how to change from one form to the other, we can move to the next part of your training." Papa casually lectures like the crying foxes are just aphids in a garden patch. A nuisance. "I want you to shift, and kill them."

"Why?" It comes out in a jolt. A voice-cracking plea. I know I shouldn't be asking questions, but here I am doing it again.

Papa narrows in on me and I try not to flinch."Because when you become Brethren, you'll have no mercy. That's how our kind have always been: rulers of the forests, leaders of the hunt, taking justice into our own hands." He leans in close and I smell dirt, azalea trees, greasy sweat. "Do you remember what humans did to us?"

I don't respond because my throat feels sewn shut. Asher happily doles out the memorized lines for me: "They nearly killed us all! Drove us out of society!"

"And why did they do that?" Papa keeps his cold eyes on me, waiting for me to step up to the plate.

"Because we're better than them." It takes all my energy to give my voice strength and it still breaks. "Because...because we're better than them and they're evil." I spot Mama hovering by the door and wonder what she thinks of all of this, if she feels as disgusted as I am now. Feels as human.

Papa says Mama doesn't count as a human. He tells us this a lot, like he's trying to convince himself he didn't make a mistake. Doesn't have subpar children. Being a witch and all, he says Mama's bringing extra power to the bloodline, that she's the only non-Brethren he respects.

I wonder if he respects her when he backhands her.

"Exactly, Rowen." Papa nods, but I know he's not satisfied with me. "We are superior."

A lump stings in my throat. I watch the small eyes of one of the shivering, bleeding foxes. A girl fox. She has three sisters back in her mother's den. I don't know how I know, I just do. Sometimes I just know things, see things. Mama says that's okay. Asher just knows things too. Neither of us tell Papa about it. "I don't want to kill her."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want to hurt her," I whisper, throaty and weak.

Papa slaps me hard across the face and I feel it all the way to the center of my brain. "Do you want other clans to beat us?" he sneers in my face. "Do you want the humans to win because you're too much of a bleeding heart? Hunt you down when they find out what you really are?"

"No." I'm dying to rub my cheek but I don't.

"Then you will learn to kill. And you will learn to do it well." He looks behind him at the foxes, full of disdain. "These are easy. Easy kills." When he faces me again his mouth and eyes are the hardest stone. "You're an animal, Rowen. A beast. Don't you forget that. Don't let your mother make you soft. This is only the beginning."

Papa moves from me to my brother. "Now, Asher. You go first. Show your brother how it's done." Papa gestures towards the cubs.

Asher smiles dashingly at me, then transforms. An ugly crunching of features, warping of flesh. Thirty seconds of brutal metamorphosis before he's a giant, white wolf. In a swift jump, he leaps on one of the cubs. I hear the nauseating snap of its neck a second later. The terrified squeal of its sibling.

My father looks at me expectantly. I know I have no choice if I don't want to be bruised and ashamed tonight. I transform with equal agony and join my brother.

The baby's neck breaks softly in my jaws. As I crush through tendon, sinew, a part of myself rips from me. The human part. The feral part wants to impress Papa, so I don't stop at just killing it. I show off. Growl, shake my head. Gnash it's spine between my teeth, bone shattering. Staining the earth with blood. Leave it's limp body in a scarlet pool on the grass.

"Excellent, Rowen." Papa's eyes flash gold at me as my tongue rasps over gore-lined fangs. "You're nearly as ruthless as your brother."

Nearly. It's strange how that frustrates. I don't want to be ruthless, but when I've shifted, I do. When I've shifted, I feel capable of a lot more than just killing a baby. I could destroy a family, a neighborhood, ravage a whole village.

No. I shift back with a painful gasp. Smearing the blood from my chin with the back of my human hand, chest shuddering. I look down at the mangled mess. Shame devastates me. Body feeling compressed, cramped. Mama's still standing in the doorway staring at me, looking...horrified. Like I'm a complete stranger. She gives Papa's back a determined glare as he affectionately rubs Asher's shoulder.

In that moment, I know that Mama doesn't love Papa, I know that my brother will always be Papa's favorite son. And I know, I know down to my soul, I'll never be Brethren.

CHAPTER SIX

Emily

My sister leaves in the early morning for work, hangover and all. My own head slightly achy, I decide to take the bus into town again anyway. Find a cafe or library with wifi to check emails and chug much-needed coffee. Maybe I'll even sketch in my notepad again, fuelled by my recent foray back into the art world.

I walk the fifteen minutes it takes to arrive at the dilapidated wood of the bus stop bench, clouds looming dark overhead.

"Shit." I'm too late. The moment the bus comes into view, it's already moving out of sight. Rounding a corner before it disappears. I turn to the posted schedule to see when the next bus arrives. Apparently, it doesn't come for another hour. Great.

Rain begins to drizzle. Then it bursts into a hard, unforgiving torrent. I heave my big purse over my head, wondering why I was dumb enough to not bring an umbrella when I first saw those heavy clouds. In a minute I'm drenched to the marrow.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch the dark blue glimmer of a Ford pickup trudging up the road towards me. I quickly turn my head back to the posted schedule, pretending to read the tiny print, rainwater sluicing down fogged-up plastic. When I hear the truck drive past me, I'm relieved, though my face is burning. My limbs frozen with anticipation.

Glancing at the road again, I expect to see the truck turn the tree-lined corner. Instead, it stops. Backs up slowly. Kade's expressionless face comes into view as he scans me, leaning across to roll down the passenger window by hand."Need a ride?" A molasses-soaked drawl rises over the pounding rain.

I'm now far too aware of how my floral summer dress is currently clinging to me. Thin linen saturated, permeable, though I'm glad that I at least wore a bra today.

I'm going to take the offer. Sure, a part of me is screaming to turn him down and head straight home, but logic knows better. Despite our last two awkward and heated encounters, my lizard brain knows Kade is trustworthy. A helpful neighbour offering refuge.

He's also a neighbour that I may or may not want to bone so badly that I have sex dreams about him every other night, but that's irrelevant.

I give my best aloof nod and then climb into the passenger's seat, met by a wall of seventies acoustic sound. As soon as I touch the upholstery, that thick tension between us sparks hot. I buckle myself in, my eyes automatically gluing to the road. Afraid that if I look directly at him, he'll be able to tell that I had extremely inappropriate dreams about him last night. That I used him both as my release and my creative muse. Oddly, the latter feels more embarrassing.

The truck rumbles down the road. Not wanting to be rude, I force my gaze towards him. A tight-lipped smile pressed. "Thanks for the ride."

"No problem." He shoots me a scorching glance. Unnecessarily volcanic.

That's all it takes for erotic dreams to engulf me, a million fireworks thundering up my back. Heat and sweat prickling. I keep my eyes horizon-bound. Drum my fingers on my knees as rainwater drips down my forehead, my throat, my cleavage.

In my peripheral, Kade keeps looking in my direction. Subtle but I can sense his eyes on me. It's profoundly gratifying. I have to admit: hearing his smoky blues last night has me not only physically attracted, but actually...admiring him. And with that admiration comes even deeper want.

Girlfriend, remember? He has a girlfriend.

"Are you cold?" Kade finally asks.

Yes and no. I'm cold and hot and jittery all over. "A little."

Kade unbuckles his seatbelt with one hand. Shrugs out of his jean jacket one arm at a time. "Here." He passes the blue denim to me with his eyes focused on the road

"Oh. Thank you." I take the jacket from him, warm and rough in my fingers. Fabric smelling of rustic evergreen and increasingly familiar tobacco as I slide into the sleeves. Dwarfed in them."So what are you going into town for?" My voice is detached, but inside I'm melting in Kade's body heat, his masculine scent.

"Running errands. Bringing some honey to Zed's Grocery." His head tilts trunk-ward. "He ordered some new stock."

I look behind to find the pickup-bed filled with crates of gold, jars click-clacking together. "You make your own honey?" I do my best to sound like I don't already know that.

"Yup." Long fingers reach for the radio dial, one knuckle scarred. "It helps pay the bills." Gordon Lightfoot comes on with "Sundown" and he keeps the station there. The guitar riff reminds me of Kade's skills.

"I heard you, um-playing last night." The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. Not part of the plan but I roll with it. "You sound great."

Unexpected color warms Kade's cheeks. "Thanks."

His blush surprises me, makes me want to coax out more of that softness. "How long have you been playing?"

He clears his throat, straightens his shoulders. Expression hardening, detaching. "Since my fourteenth birthday."

"And you've always played the blues?"

A mild shrug as we turn a corner, towers of evergreen flying past."I was born in the Delta with my mom blasting it daily. Was hardly exposed to anything else."

It's only now that I notice the subtlest southern accent, barely noticeable. Words drawling, lilting, just a touch.

Kade looks eager to change the subject, eyes darting to the drawing pad sticking out of my purse. "Whatcha got there, Red?"

"I was hoping to draw today." I pull my sketchbook out, frowning at the waterlogged corners. "I guess the rain didn't wreck it too much."

"And what do you like to draw?"

All I see is his sharp-angled face forming out of charcoal, a midnight black wolf emerging from the mist. "Portraits."