These Wolves Alone Ch. 08

His jaw dropped and blood spilled over his lips, bubbling as he tried to breath. Warm blood had splattered onto my neck and face as the man coughed and his legs went limp. He fell to the ground as his heart stopped. My jaw dropped as I saw Jessie standing behind him with a gun in her hands, arms extended and blood splattered across the front of her body.

She bent down and set the gun on the floor.

"We need to get out of here, who knows how many more people are after us..." She trailed off and went back into the room and started searching drawers.

"You won't find any clothes in there; Mrs. Dewby brought all my clothes to the Finley's."

Jessie disappeared and once again a white wolf appeared in her place. Follow. Jessie's voice came into my head right before the white wolf went out of the room and descended the stairs and out the open back door. Where the men must've come in through, I thought.

To keep up with her I had no choice but to shift again and follow her lead as she started running through the woods. I almost lost her two or three times with her weaving around trees and wads of tangled up briers, some my fur even got caught in it and that hurt, like pulling out a toe hair hurt, but worse.

I ran up to the edge of a lake just as I heard a splash and water coated my fur. I watched as she peeled off her shirt in the water and began rubbing it together, rubbing the blood spots out of it.

My tongue suddenly felt dry and I realized it was hanging out of my snout, without thinking I licked my lips and jumped in as well.

"We'll wash out our clothes here and maybe look a little decent. Then we'll get out of here. We've already stayed too long for our own safety. We need to find out what those men were after and why they were trying to kill us."

I nodded and began scrubbing the blood off my face and the little bit that had gotten onto my clothes.

"You know, it hurt like hell. It felt like my body was being ripped apart." I glanced at her and pulled my shirt back on after deciding that was about as clean as it was going to get.

"I just told you what I was told. I was only told so much and since you have no one to tell you these things in the first place, I'll just share with you what I know and we'll learn the rest together."

She disappeared into the water and I could see her rubbing the blood out of the hair that had been covering her face.

When she re-appeared above water I asked, "Where are we supposed to go while we're soaked?"

"We need to find out why those men were after us before we really go anywhere, which means going back to that house. I know, I said we should get far away from there but we need answers and we can't just leave two dead bodies for a realtor to find. Then we'd have the police on our butts as well."

I got out of the water and hung my shirt on a low tree limb. My shorts would have to dry while we walked back. Jessie came out of the water and wrung her shirt out and put it back on. She squeezed as much water as she could out of her shorts and then put her wet hair back in ponytail.

"Think you'll remember where you left that?" She asked, nodding to my shirt on the tree limb.

I shrugged, "I can smell my own trail now right?" She rolled her eyes at me. I thought it was a pretty good idea, a perk to being this...thing; not getting lost.

We started making our way back to the house. The walk back was silent except for the crunching of leaves as we walked over them. It was almost too cold to be walking around shirtless and I shivered in the breeze.

When we got back we went back upstairs to find there was only one body lying on the floor, a puddle of blood beneath him. I cursed and slammed my fist against the wall.

"Where is he?" Jessie asked, panic flooding her voice. How could I have missed that? How could I have left him here unconscious?

I cursed at myself. Nothing I could do about it now. All I could do now was take care of the one and get the hell out of this place. I went into the bathroom that connected to my bedroom and ripped the shower curtain from the rod. I laid it beside the body and rolled him across it, rolling him up in it tightly.

"Help me." I gestured to his feet and she grabbed the end of the curtain, lifting him up as I did the same with my end. We carried him down the stairs and out the back door.

After all but completely dropping him, Jessie finally put her end down and asked, "Where are we going to put him? We can't bury him, we don't have a shovel."

With that thought on my mind I laid my end down and went to the small storage shed on the other side of the yard and started going through the stuff inside, searching for tools.

We couldn't bury him in the backyard because it would be just a matter of time before someone started a garden and found him. I grabbed a hammer and a small shovel and started back to the house.

"What are you doing?" Jessie asked a curious look on her face. I ignored her and continued what I was doing.

I took the hammer and pulled out the nails holding the underpinning to the house. After opening a wide enough spot I crouched and made my way in. It was just tall enough that I could dig with ease and get deep enough. I started digging.

After deciding that it was a good enough size I went back out and Jessie gasped. I looked down to find my chest smeared with dirt and some cuts on my arms where they had caught on the way under the house.

"Come on." I urged her, we needed to get this done and get out of here. We both picked up our ends of the shower curtain and crouched to get back under the house. I went in backwards and pulled our load through the hole while Jessie pushed. We finally made it to the spot I had dug out and pushed him in. I started covering him back up with dirt and prayed no one would find him under here.