Red-Blooded Heart Read online

I pull the trigger again.

  * * *

  -juniper-

  I’m back at the truck when I hear the gunshots, each seeming to come on the heels of the last. He is shooting as quickly as he loads. I know it’s Deke. It’s got to be. There’s no one else out here. Besides Watson, we are the only three people who live on this mountain.

  I snatch up the first aid kit and go tearing back into the woods as fast as I can.

  But then the gunshots stop.

  I stop too.

  What does that mean? Does that mean that the wolves got him? He shot and shot until they jumped on him and tore out his throat. And if I go back there, I will draw the wolves after me. Now they have a taste of human flesh and they have attacked a human in cold blood. They’ll kill me too.

  I chew on my lip, unsure of what to do.

  I can’t leave Deke out there if he needs me, but if he’s already dead, then there’s no point in putting myself in danger for no reason.

  If only there was a way to be sure.

  I get my phone out of my pocket. I could call him, if I have service. If he has service. The snow is coming down harder now and it’s collecting on the screen of the phone. I wipe it away, trying to see if I have any bars.

  Calling him might scare the wolves too.

  I should try.

  I scroll through to find his number and—

  A growl.

  I drop my phone, I’m so startled.

  Then I bend down and pick it back up, and I see the glowing eyes of a wolf on the trail ahead of me. It steps forward, snarling, baring its teeth. It’s coming for me.

  I slam my phone back into my pocket and I turn and run as fast as I can.

  I hurl my way back through the forest, looking over my shoulder whenever I can to see that the wolf is following me, and that it’s not alone. There are three of them, and they are fast. They are gaining on me. There is no way that I am going to be able to outrun them. I gasp for air and I want to scream, but I can’t.

  There.

  The truck.

  I can see it, the dome light shining yellow and bright and safe, glittering on the white snow all around. If I can just get there before the wolves get to me, even though they are making up the distance between us exponentially as they run after me. They are so much faster than I am.

  But the sight of the truck galvanizes me. I move more quickly. I make it there and I open the door and hurl myself inside. I slam the door on the wolves, which are right behind me, practically shoving their noses into the car.

  Once safe, I hug myself, wishing I could somehow pull the car seats around me to protect me, wishing that none of this had ever happened.

  This is all my fault. If I had never killed Watson, we wouldn’t be in this position.

  No, there is no we. It’s only me now. Deke got some of the pack and then they overcame him, and they killed him. What was left came after me. Deke is gone. I’m alone.

  Oh, hell, I don’t know if I can do this alone.

  But the first thing I need to do is get the fuck out of here.

  I’ll drive home and I’ll stoke up the fire with firewood, and I’ll take a shower, and I’ll brush the snow off the solar panels in the morning as soon as I wake up. I’ll just keep moving forward, as if this didn’t happen. I’ll stay out here in the woods as my penance for what I’ve done. I’ll be alone, and I’ll only survive if I can do it in harmony with nature. I will not kill again. I will do as little as I can to hurt any other living thing. I will find balance.

  And that’s when I realize I don’t have keys to the truck.

  Outside, one of the wolves hurls itself into the side of the truck, making a loud metallic clang.

  I scream.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  -deke-

  Talk about good aim and good luck. There were only five wolves, and I shot them all. I have three shells left, and I’m ready.

  But I’m pretty sure that Juniper isn’t coming back for me. Before, I was ready to resign myself to my death. All of the fight had gone out of me. But after killing those wolves, I feel more alive than I have in hours.

  I can’t walk on my own, but I can crawl.

  I will crawl back to Juniper’s house, and I will bang on her door until she lets me in. If she thinks she can get rid of me this easily, she’s wrong.

  Even if I do die, I will haunt her. I’ll spend the rest of my existence banging on her windows, until she regrets what she did to me.

  Sure, okay, she and I conspired together and killed another man tonight. Maybe that’s a worse thing than leaving someone to die from exposure and wolf bites, but I don’t think it is, because Henry’s death was quick and mine will be interminable if I don’t get some help.

  I clutch the gun with one hand and I set off, dragging myself through the snow. It soaks through my jeans, but the cold is a relief because my legs are wounded, and the icy snow numbs the pain a bit.

  I tell myself that I will survive this, that I can survive anything, and that the only way that I will die is if I give up.

  And I will never give up.

  * * *

  -juniper-

  I’m trapped in the truck for a long time while the wolves outside try to get in.

  Finally, I have a brain wave to turn off the dome light inside. Maybe it’s attracting them.

  Once I do, they immediately stop hurling themselves against the side of the truck. I don’t hear anything outside but some growls and yips. And, after a while, even that fades.

  The windshield and the windows are all covered in snow. I can’t see out there.

  I open the door and shut it quickly, knocking as much snow off as I can. Now I have a small area that I look through.

  I peer out into the darkness. I can’t see them.

  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

  I have to leave the truck, however. I can’t stay here forever. I could either try to hike home, which seems ridiculous, or I could go back and search for Deke’s body, and hopefully they won’t have taken it all away. Hopefully, I can find his keys and get home.

  After a shower and a good night’s sleep, I’ll have a better idea about what to do. I’ll know what to do about the bodies and what to do about the wolves. I’ll figure it all out. But I need to get out of this situation for now.

  And the only way to do that is to get out of the truck.

  But I wait.

  I am safe in here, and if I get out, there’s a chance that I end up like Deke, ripped to shreds by the wolves.

  I debate spending the night in the truck.

  But it’s cold in here. I don’t even have a blanket. I don’t have the keys, so I can’t turn the truck on.

  I have a stray thought that maybe I could use my cell phone and find instructions on the internet about hot wiring the car. I get my phone out of my pocket. I turn it on and try a search query.

  No service.

  No internet.

  Okay, I have to get out of this truck. That’s all there is to it. I have to do it.

  Summoning all my bravery, I yank on the door handle and the door swings open. I jump down to the snowy ground.

  I still don’t see or hear the wolves. Maybe they have gone away.

  Of course, they’ve probably gone back to feast on Deke’s guts, so when I find them, they’ll turn on me.

  Shit.

  I start back through the woods. How many times tonight have I made this walk? I can see my footsteps from each other excursion and they are being filled in with snow. I move as quickly as I can, but I try to also be stealthy and not make too much noise. All I want to do is get back to Deke. I don’t want to alert the wolves to my presence.

  I feel as though I can see them everywhere, as if every time a branch snaps, it is the wolves moving through the trees, ready to pounce on me. I am looking everywhere for their glowing eyes, listening for their roars.

  But then I round a bend, I see something moving on the ground.

  At first,
I don’t recognize it. It doesn’t seem like anything that should exist. But then I see that it’s a person, crawling, and that it’s Deke.

  “You’re alive!” I say, too loudly. I turn, expecting the wolves to come for me.

  “Juniper,” he says. “You came back for me.”

  Well… sort of. Maybe it’s better if he thinks that. I hurry over and drag him to his feet.

  “First-aid kit?” he asks, out of breath.

  “There’s no time,” I say. “The wolves could find us any minute. We have to get back to the truck. Come on!”

  “Wolves?” he says. “So the pack must have split up. Some of them must have gone after you and some went after me. I killed the ones who came after me.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a gun,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  And we move, but it’s slow going pulling him along with me. He is still bleeding badly and he’s sweating and panting. I have an awful thought as we creep along, that I could probably just get the keys from him and leave him here.

  But I can’t leave him to die. I’ve already been responsible for the death of one man tonight. That’s enough.

  Of course, it’s not as if Deke is innocent. He’s a murderer, and he spied on me, and he took advantage of me. I can’t really trust him. Maybe he deserves to die.

  But Watson deserved it, and look how that’s turned out.

  No.

  I won’t do it.

  We continue our achingly slow progress and the snow falls faster, and the air gets colder, and we hear the coywolves howling in the distance.

  But we manage to get back to the truck without another run-in with the wolves. We climb inside, him on the passenger’s side and me on the driver’s side. There’s no discussion of that. We both know he can’t possibly drive.

  I peer down at the gear shift. “A stick shift,” I mutter.

  “You don’t know how to drive a standard?”

  “Well, not exactly,” I say. “I know the basics. Brake, gas, clutch. How hard can it really be?”

  He groans softly.

  “Keys,” I say, holding out my hand for them.

  He digs them out of his pocket and puts them in my palm.

  I fit the key into the ignition, and then I hesitate. “Do you have your foot on the clutch when you start?”

  “Clutch to shift,” he says.

  “I know that.” I am irritated, and I don’t know why. Maybe part of me wishes he had been dead. Maybe this would all have been easier that way. But I still would have had to drive a stick shift home on my own.

  I take a deep breath.

  I turn the key.

  Nothing happens.

  “Shit,” I whisper.

  “What?” he says.

  “The dome light,” I say. “I left the dome light on, and I must have killed the battery.”

  “What?”

  “The car won’t start. The battery’s dead.”

  He struggles to sit up straighter. “That’s actually not a problem. I have a charger in the back of the truck. It’s easy. You fire the thing up and hook it to the battery—I’ll do it.” He opens the door.

  “You can’t stand,” I say. “What, you think just because I’m a girl, I can’t hook cables up to a battery? I’m not a freaking idiot.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. He shuts the door and leans back against the seat. “Have at it.”

  I take the keys out of the ignition and lay them on the dash. I open the door to the truck and jump down into the snow.

  Around the truck I go to climb into the bed and look around. I don’t see it anywhere, so I look in the metal toolbox where I found the gun. I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly. I’ve never seen a car battery charger, but then I see a small box-like object with a handle and two jumper-cable-like wires tucked against its sides and I know it must be that.

  I snatch it up and go to the end of the truck, climb back to the ground and go around to the front.

  I reach under the hood, feeling for a catch to lift it. I can’t feel anything. “Hey!” I call. “Do you need to release something inside for the hood?”

  “What?” he calls back.

  I go back to the door and open it. “I need to open the hood. Is there something inside that I need to hit to pop it open?”

  “Oh, right,” he says, leaning across the seat to find it.

  I hear a metallic click.

  “Thanks,” I say. Now, the hood opens up when I go back out. I use the arm inside to prop it open, but I can’t see anything. It’s freaking dark out here.

  I remember that there was a flashlight in the glove compartment. I saw it when I was looking earlier. I go back to his door and open it.

  “What now?” he says.

  I glare at him, don’t answer, and open the glove compartment. I take out the flashlight, shut his door and go back to the front of the car.

  Snow is falling into the hood, as I see when I turn on the flashlight.

  I locate the battery and pop off the plastic protectors on the negative and positive terminals. Then I turn my attention to the charger. It looks pretty self-explanatory. Hook the jumper cables to the battery and turn the thing on, right?

  Or ought I turn it on first?

  Can I hurt it if I do things in the wrong order?

  They should really print instructions on this thing, but they probably figure that only an idiot wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

  I decide it’ll be safer to turn the thing on after the cables are attached. Then there will be no juice flowing through it, and I won’t electrocute myself.

  Carefully, holding the flashlight in my mouth, I make sure to connect negative to negative and positive to positive. Once they are secure, all I have to do is turn on the charger, and—

  A snarl. Blurred fur and teeth from the left of me.

  And then I am on my back on the snow, the breath knocked out of me, a growling wolf snapping its long, white teeth in my face.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  -deke-

  I hear the wolf, but I can’t see because there is snow all over the windows of the truck.

  Juniper doesn’t make a noise, and that terrifies me. I throw open the door to the truck and I topple out into the snow. I land on my side, and it hurts.

  “Juniper,” I whisper.

  All I hear is snarling, growling. God, it could have gotten to her by now. It could be feeding on her. If she dies, I’ll never forgive myself. I should have protected her, damn it. That was what I was meant to do all along, and that’s what I have failed to do from the very beginning.

  I crawl around to the front of the truck, and there she is, trapped under the wolf. It’s breathing in her face, snapping at her, growling.

  I have the gun.

  I raise it, aiming like a sniper in the army, my belly flat against the ground. I cock the shotgun. I know it is loaded, because I loaded it after the last wolf died.

  But I don’t pull the trigger, because I’m afraid.

  Juniper and the wolf are so close to each other.

  If I miss…

  But if I don’t try, the wolf could tear out her throat. I have to save her.

  I suck in a trembling breath, and then I squeeze the trigger.

  The gunshot echoes over the frozen mountain.

  The wolf yelps, stumbling away from Juniper. It teeters and then falls down. It is dying.

  Juniper is on her feet right away. She runs to the battery charger, but there are other wolves coming now, slinking out of the darkness, growling at both of us.

  I fumble for another shell to load the shotgun.

  She yanks me up by the arm and drags me through the snow.

  We scramble back into the truck and close the doors.

  It is quiet except for the sounds of the wolves outside and our labored breath.

  Time passes.

  We can still hear the wolves outside, howling. Growling.

  “They’re hungry,” she says softly. “They’re only doing wh
at their instinct tells them to do. That’s why they kill.”

  I don’t say anything. She’s right. What is there to reply to that?

  “But when we kill,” she says, “when humans kill, it’s different.”

  “Not always,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “What we did tonight—”

  “You’re comparing apples to oranges. The coywolves aren’t attacking another coywolf. When animals kill each other, it’s about vengeance and dominance, too.”

  She sighs. “We’re nothing but animals, aren’t we?”

  “We’re smarter than they are,” I say.

  “How does that help us now?”

  I struggle to think of something, but it’s hard to think. I’ve lost too much blood and she never did bandage me up and I am tired.

  We are quiet for a long time.

  It is cold in the truck, and there are no blankets. I wonder if perhaps the snow that is falling outside will serve as a sort of insulation, keeping us warmer than we would have been outside. My clothes are wet. I am shivering.

  Everything is starting to feel tattered around the edges, drifting away.

  One minute, I am in the truck, the next I am dreaming about being near a fire with Daisy the dog at my feet, my hands stroking her thick, warm fur.

  “This would never happen in the city,” she says.

  And then I am swallowed by darkness.

  * * *

  -juniper-

  It doesn’t seem possible that I could sleep in the truck, but I do. Probably because I am physically wrecked, after all the exertion that I have put my body through. I am cold, but once I am asleep, I don’t feel it.

  When I wake, though, it is to the chill of morning.

  Next to me, Deke lies motionless.

  “Deke?” I whisper.

  He doesn’t respond. There is blood all over his seat, blood on the floor beneath his feet.

  I shake him. “Deke.”

  Nothing.

  Is he dead? He doesn’t feel cold, not exactly, but then I am cold and I can’t quite even remember real warmth. What would that feel like?

  I try the door.

  Outside, the sun is struggling into the sky and the world is blanketed in snow. It is pristine and white and perfect. I cannot even see where the dead wolf is, because it is covered in snow as well. The coywolves that surrounded the car appear to be gone.