thirty-seven

We slipped through the door and straight into a stairwell across the hall. Ella’s speech therapy used to be down the hall adjacent to Grant’s room, so if I had to guess, this was the stairwell she’d written about in her diary. At least, it had to be, because this was our only option.

“Do you remember what Ella wrote?” Grant said as soon as the heavy metal door shut behind us. “Because there’s a security station at the bottom of these stairs.”

“I remember. There was something in there about how they do rounds every twenty minutes.”

Grant nodded. “Then let’s hope and pray for the best.”

I started down the stairs, two at a time, and felt Grant just behind me until I reached the last step. When I turned around, he was still halfway up the stairs with his palm pressed to his side.

“What’s wrong?” I said as I started back up the stairs.

“I’m … fine.” He sucked in a breath. “I just … this one hurts.” He tugged at his hospital gown until I could the outline of a bandage wrapped around his rib cage. Speckles of blood had started to seep through the layers of fabric.

I touched his side. “We don’t have to—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. Let’s go.”

I pulled his hand into mine and led him the rest of the way down the stairs. When we got to the bottom, I pulled open the door and poked my head out.

The security station was empty.

I couldn’t even begin to believe my luck, especially since I was never lucky. I grabbed Grant’s hand. “We’re going to have to run for the side door, past the receptionists’ desk.”

He squeezed my fingers. “I can do it.”

“Okay,” I breathed. “Let’s go.”

I heard nothing but Grant’s hitched breathing behind me. I felt nothing but his sweaty palm on my scarred one. Even when a voice rained down on us from the ceiling speakers, I only heard Grant’s words, saying: “Go, go, go!”

I shoved my shoulder into the door and flew into the parking lot, my hand still tucked in Grant’s. The light, which had looked like a beacon less than an hour ago, leered down at us now and threatened to tell everyone our secret.

“Where do we go?” Grant huffed from behind me. His fingers slipped from mine as he bent over to clutch at his side.

I glanced up at the cornfield stretched between here and Grant’s house. “We need to get your truck. And then we go north.”

Grant lifted his head and I had to look away. I couldn’t look at the pain that had snaked its way into every line on his face and every fleck of green in his eyes. He coughed once and then pulled himself up. “Okay. Let’s go.” And he started jogging.

I followed him as the lights strobed over us. And when we hit the edge of the parking lot and made our way toward the road that cut through the cornfield, I followed the sound of his heavy breathing.

I followed. But this time, I followed because I made the choice to. Because I knew that being with Grant was the path to a future that made sense. Because I loved him.

I love him.

For a long time, we didn’t speak. Nothing twitched in the sinking stalks, only the stars hovering over us breathed in their own little universe, while we breathed in ours.

I didn’t even think about the wolves, or finding Ella, or how Dad was most definitely going to lose his job and his reputation over this. I just listened to my own heart thumping under my ribs, Grant’s breath pulsing in and out of his lungs in quick bursts, and the crunch of the pavement under my feet; Grant’s feet were still wrapped in hospital socks.

Porch lights began to pop up on the other side of the cornfield like lightning bugs flickering to life. We turned down the dirt road that led to Grant’s truck and our only shot of getting out of here together.

Then he jerked to a stop in front of me and I slammed into him—hard. His knees buckled and we both fell to the frozen road.

“Grant.” Panic rose in my throat. “What happened? Can you get up?”

He rolled onto his back. Both of his hands were pressed to his side, and they were both covered in blood. “I think my stitches broke,” he groaned.

There was so much more blood than I thought could be possible from a quick graze of wolf’s teeth or a swipe of a claw. My head was fuzzy; everything smelled like metal.

I breathed into my sweater. “Let me see.”

Carefully, I pulled up the side of Grant’s hospital gown and pulled back the soaked bandage.

A wound that looked like a gaping mouth sliced across Grant’s rib cage. It was so deep that its center was purplish and puffy with blood.

It was the exact width of a small knife.

My brain felt itchy, like there was a sharp piece of memory still stuck there: the weight of the knife in my hand, the way my muscles felt when I tore through the wolf’s skin.

Maybe it wasn’t the wolf’s skin.

I pressed my scarred palm against Grant’s open cut. “It should’ve been you,” I breathed.

I listened to his shallow breaths for a while before he finally said, “What?” His words were so soft that if the night wasn’t so still they would have been swallowed up by the wind.

“I should have made a blood oath with you, not Rae.” The tears came, hot and fast, and they felt more like goodbye tears than sad tears. Not because I thought Grant was going to die here due to broken stitches, but because I somehow knew that my time was up.

“What would you have promised?” he asked softly. The tips of his fingers touched the edge of my palm.

Just then, the cluster of stalks behind Grant twitched to life. I gasped.

They twitched again, and at the same time something snapped from the other side of the road. A shadow slipped through the stalks until its pricked ears and yellow eyes materialized next to Grant. He let a strangled little cry and clutched his side. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

There was the rustling sound again, and when I turned around there were more wolves: some scrawny and wiry, some so solid I wondered how they’d hidden in a half-rotted cornfield for so long. A low growl vibrated in the throat of the yellow-eyed wolf.

I turned back to it, lifted both of my palms still slick with Grant’s blood. “Please, don’t,” I begged.

The wolf’s nostrils flared as its eyes bounced between the blood on my hands and Grant’s pained face. And then it snapped before I had time to even think.

Bone to bone, teeth on skin.

Warmth that bubbled and dripped from my shattered scar.

It was a solid three seconds before I realized I was screaming.

That Grant was screaming too.

I dropped my face to his chest and pressed my broken hand to his rib cage.

And I waited. And sobbed out the words to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Because there was nothing left to try for, nothing left to do but wait.

Their breath curdled around us, hot and urgent and wanting. From behind my eyelids, I could see the flash of lights, probably the reflection of the stars in their eyes. There was the howling that sounded like sirens.

There were claws that felt like fingers around my arms, and teeth that felt like handcuffs. And there was Grant’s voice, muffled and far away as my body was ripped from his.

And then there was darkness.