Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
But…
It’s not.
It’s a leg.
An animal’s leg.
Oh god, I think, my fingers clenching at my chest.
It looks like a…paw.
A dog?
Against my better judgment, I creep forward. I don’t want to see what it is, but at the same time, what if it’s alive and hurt and I can help?
I peer around a salal bush and gasp.
It’s a fucking wolf.
Not just any wolf, but a dead wolf, half of its body rotted away. Sinew stretches over the bones like pink gum, fluffs of fur sticking out in places. Underneath a couple of exposed ribs, I can see the heart, bright white and…fuzzy.
Nausea rolls through me. My hand covers my mouth, trying to keep from vomiting. The more I look at the wolf’s lifeless, decomposing body, the more disturbed I become. Thin white strands loop around the exposed skin and muscle, looking like tendons at first, but then I realize that’s not what they are at all.
It looks like…mycelia. Like fungi have sprouted up from inside the wolf, which isn’t strange at this stage of decomposition, and yet…
The fuzzy white heart twitches inside the rib cage.
No.
I freeze. Blood fills my ears until it sounds like a hammer.
I stare at the unmoving heart, wondering if some unseen maggots are writhing underneath, making it move. It seems too large for its body, and as I keep staring, I realize the white fuzz is hyphae, each tiny white hair moving together, like seagrass in a current.
The heart pulses again.
Once.
Twice.
It’s beating.
The wolf’s legs twitch, causing fur to shed.
I stare in horror. Lead in my veins. I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think.
The wolf opens its mouth, a long exhale that makes its chest expand, its ribs cracking. A black tongue slips out between its teeth, growing longer and longer and—
It raises its head and looks at me with one milky eye and one empty socket.
Release me, the wolf hisses.
Then it lunges at me.
I scream.
I scream so loud that my whole body shakes and my vision blurs and I stumble backward, the wolf’s rotting jaw snapping at me, a tooth catching the edge of my raised arm as I try in vain to protect myself.
I fall backward onto the moss, still screaming, my head banging against a rock.
But the wolf stops.
I struggle to sit up, expecting to see it face-to-face, to stare into that one milky eye, for its teeth to gnaw my nose off.
Instead, it’s slinking off into the bushes in retreat, and then it’s gone.
“What the fuck, what the fuck,” I cry out. I look down at my arm. There’s a long red mark, but it didn’t break skin.
“Sydney!” I hear Kincaid’s voice from behind me, echoing through the trees. “Sydney!”
“I’m here,” I say, trying to shout, but my voice cracks.
What the fuck just happened?
I hear rustling in the brush, and I twist around, expecting to see the wolf coming at me from behind, but instead, it’s Kincaid, bursting through the underbrush.
“Are you alright? What happened?” he asks, his voice strained with panic. He runs right over to me and crouches down. Then he reaches out and cups my face in his hands, so strong, so warm, brushing the hair off my forehead in a gesture that is so intimate and tender that it disarms me even further.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, conscious of how close our faces are, of how his winter eyes are vivid with concern. “There was a wolf.”
His pupils dilate. “A wolf?”
He looks behind him, and I raise my arm to show him the red mark, which has already faded to pink. “It tried to bite me, but it didn’t break the skin.”
He runs his finger over the mark, a soft touch. “A wolf,” he repeats. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I hit my head on the rock.”
He gently runs his hand over the back of my head, and I wince. “There’s a bump, but you should be alright,” he says. “Still, we need to get you back, have Everly look you over. Then we need to find this wolf. The sea wolves here have never attacked anyone. They’re shy creatures. It could be rabid.”
“It wasn’t rabid. It was dead,” I say.
He stares at me as if he didn’t hear what I said.
“What happened?!” Rav yells.
I turn to see him and Patrick at the edge of the clearing.
“She had a fall,” Kincaid says. “Nothing to worry about. The moss can be slippery.”
He grabs my elbows, ready to pull me up, and I give him an incredulous look. Why isn’t he telling them the truth?
His eyes narrow slightly as he tugs me to my feet.
A warning to keep my mouth shut.
“We should head back now, make sure she’s alright,” Kincaid says to the others, putting a hand at my lower back and guiding me forward.
“Shit. Sydney, you sounded like you were being murdered,” Rav says as I pass him.