B. LÍTOST

 

Lítost: noun. A state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

 

The first stop on our continental tour of werewolf habitats is the Bavarian Alps. It’s all very picturesque in a Heidi, Girl of the Alps kind of way with snow-capped mountains, green pastures and log cabins. The packs we’re looking for turn out to be spread thin and living in the most random, off-the-map kind of places. Arden said it made them easier targets for the Luparii. Like “if a wolf is shot in the forest and no one is around to see it, does it really happen?” Not like the pack in Paris at all. When Aquila died, it made the papers.

I mean, Arden and I haven’t actually even met any of the packs yet, even though we’ve been tracking them for days. They’re good at hiding, obvs. We’ve caught glimpses of a few. Whenever we do, Arden takes it as his cue to address the forest in the hopes that one of the wolves is actually listening. He gives them the exact same speech each and every time. It’s part warning that the Luparii are coming, part ominous invitation to come see what they’re capable of. I assume, naturally, he’s talking about himself, but the werewolves never come out of hiding to test it out.

Every time he’s done his little speech he leaves them with the same coordinates scrawled on paper and tucked under a rock: 49°00’47”N 2°27’50”E. When we leave the Alps, he switches from German to South Slavic, and even though I don’t understand the words, I can follow along the same basic speech.

I just hang close to him like some kind of doe-eyed groupie clinging to him on the back of his rocking Ducati. Lurking in strange woods is freaky enough. Purposefully looking to find the things that are supposed to go bump in the dark just defies all logic.

I shiver due to my overactive imagination.

“If you’re cold, shift,” Arden offers, “but stay close and don’t make eye contact with them.”

Nice. “What about you?”

“I’ll survive,” he says, adding, “if you listen.”

Sometimes I like it a lot better when we’re not on speaking terms.

We head south through Slovenia where we break for the night at a hostel just off the highway and Arden pays for a double room in cash. Total sketch accommodations.

The first thing I do is raid the vending machine. Our meals have been beyond depressing so far: cured meats, stale bread and bottled water. After spending all my change I return with an armful of unfamiliar snack brands: Corny muesli bars, M-joy hazelnut chocolates, LEO corn crisps, and what I hope are tuna sandwiches that I pray to Jebus aren’t rancid.

When I get back to our room, Arden has stripped out of his motorcycle suit and is lying back on the bed closest to the window, looking toward the dirty pane at the practically abandoned street. He’s only wearing pajama bottoms. I guess his hotness is impervious to the room temperature. He barely gives me a glance as I drop the spoils of vending machine purchases on my bed.

“Here,” I say, hurling a sandwich over at him.

I toss it hard, expecting him to catch it deftly in one hand like the werewolf superstar he’s supposed to be — or used to be. Instead it totally overshoots him, smacks wetly against the wallpaper, and lands on the floor. Earth to Arden. He leans over the side of the bed to pick up the smooshed but hopefully otherwise safe to eat packaged meal.

I sit cross-legged in the middle of my bed and take a good whiff of my own sandwich before tentatively nomming on it. I almost make the mistake of pulling back the bread slices to inspect the interior but shrug it off, mostly because I don’t want to think about what I’m actually eating.

“So, like, what’s there?” I ask, pointing at the map laid out by his side.

He takes a ginormous bite out of the sandwich, I’m sure as a diversionary tactic so he doesn’t have to make small talk.

“The place you’re sending them all to? What’s there?”

With his free hand he folds up the map along its creases. We’re en route to somewhere in Croatia in the morning. It’s a long way from where he’s asking these packs to go.

“You keep telling them there’s proof of what the Luparii’s got planned. Connor didn’t say he had anything lined up.”

Arden wipes crumbs from his lips with his fingertips. “Have you spoken with him?”

“Oh, you can talk. Answer my question first. I looked up those coordinates on my phone. The place you’re sending them is some tiny suburb of Paris. What’s going on? And how do wolves look up coordinates anyway?”

“Give me your phone,” he says, sitting up suddenly.

I shouldn’t have said anything about it.

“The Luparii could be tracking us right now with that.”

My eyes search his. They’re never anything but earnest, even when he’s being impossible. Damn it all. After digging through my rucksack, I hand it over.

“I’m supposed to text Connor to let him know everything’s fine,” I tell him, trying not to sound codependent with my phone. Not that I’ve texted him since we left Fenrir Pharmaceuticals. Reception has been spotty at best.

Arden glowers at me, snatching the phone from me before tapping angrily at the screen. Then, in a matter of seconds he turns it off, removes the SIM card, and stashes both away in a Ziploc bag, which he tucks into his backpack. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t just smash it.

I don’t press my luck by saying anything else.

Lights go out at nine. Well, Arden just turns them off and that’s that. Prison rules, but I don’t fight it. Hiking through backwoods is exhausting and it beats having to make small talk with random hostelers in the common room.

In the morning, and I literally mean at the break of dawn, after we’ve been awake for like an hour, we pack up our things and ride across the border into Croatia. If Arden wasn’t such a speed freak and the back roads weren’t so tiny and sketchy with crazy cliffs on one side, I’d probably have time to take in how pretty the scenery actually is. We only stop to pay tolls and once at the border to have our passports checked.

We take an old one-lane road, heavily forested on both sides. At one point we go through a long-ass tunnel that’s been cut through a mountain. Along the way there are brown signs for our destination: Plitvice Lakes National Park. After about three hours on the road we arrive, taking the second entrance to an empty parking lot.

If I thought there was such a thing as paradise, this is probably what it would look like. Turquoise lakes so totally crystal clear that I could easily reach down and grab a fish. Cascades of water tumble in a rush of foam and mist from pale outcroppings of limestone. The lushness of spring blooms on the trees. An elf or faerie sighting is probably not outside the realm of possibility. With my luck, though, they’d be the killer kind.

For a long while we stand on a railing-free wooden footbridge just taking it all in. I cannot stand how pretty it is.

“This. Is. Amazeballs.”

Arden grimaces at me. It’s not like there are words to describe it. None that come close to the real deal, anyway. If I had my phone I’d Instagram it. Way to give away our location, Maddy! Maybe it’s better that he took it away from me.

Even though it’s strictly verboten to leave the marked trails that wind between the glistening ponds, it kind of goes without saying that the supernatural creatures aren’t exactly going to come to us. Tourist sightings become rarer the deeper we head along the trail. I follow Arden along the main path for an hour before he finally makes his covert exit. He has a way of moving that’s practically stealth mode, so when he sidesteps his way off the path I wind up crashing noisily through the leaves in the wake behind him just to keep up. My reward is an amber-eyed glare that speaks more than he ever does.

We’re deep into the dense forest before he eventually slows. I hang back on his heels, waiting for him to get his spiel to the forest over with already, but the wolves here apparently have a different approach than elsewhere. As Arden speaks in South Slavic, broadcasting to no one in particular, they show themselves for the big, badass wolves that they are. As they approach us, I take in their stocky builds and their rust brown coats tipped in black. With their ears flat against their heads and fangs flashing angrily, they’re so not interested in listening.

The biggest of them all snarls as he breaks away from the pack and sprints toward us. When he leaps up to attack, Arden’s ready. He grabs the beast with both hands on either side of its massive neck, preventing the jaws and teeth from finding flesh. As they grapple on the ground, his own teeth are bared like they would probably be if he could shift into a wolf.

Right, shift! After way too long gaping at them like an idiot, I toss off my coat to wolf out, but seriously, what the hell do I know about fighting like this? Until about four months ago I changed into a grotesque she-monster, not a wolf. Instead I rummage through my rucksack for an EpiPen in case Arden gets bitten. Werewolf venom is deadly to him now. I’ll leave it to him to avoid being ripped to shreds.

Arden punches his opponent in the muzzle with enough force to gain the upper hand and roll on top of it. He draws his switchblade and holds it against the wolf’s throat. Within seconds the creature he has pinned turns into a man who holds his hands up in surrender. A crooked, wolfish grin is painted on his broad face. His straight brown hair is jagged. Light brown eyes perched above prominent cheekbones flicker with amusement. They get up from the ground, brushing off dirt while the other wolves watch from a distance.

“Always so serious, LaTène,” the stranger calls Arden by his surname in a melodious Croatian accented English, rubbing the back of his palm against his snubbed nose where he was hit. “But more so this day than ever.”

“The Luparii are coming for us,” Arden reiterates from his earlier speech. “There’s no time for politics or in-fighting. See for yourself what they can do now, Vukašin.”

Then he pulls a scrap of paper from his backpack and presses it against the pack leader’s chest until the man reluctantly takes it.

Vukašin reads the coordinates out loud. “This is territory of Aquila, ne? One of the old territories.”

A flicker of some emotion passes across Arden’s face. “He’s dead.”

Vukašin thinks about it for a while. With a solemn nod he says, “Prince, pauper, man, wolf ... it is our fate to die.”

“Not like this. There’s no honor in the way the Luparii intend for us to go.”

Arden would know.

“I expected a proper fight from you.” The leader still doesn’t seem capable of wrapping his head around why we’re here, but he squints in suspicion. He cracks his knuckles. “Fight and I will go. First to draw blood wins. What say you?”

“No!” The declarative word comes from my mouth.

Arden glares at me as the Slavic werewolf homes in on me, as if just noticing me for the first time. I try to stand my ground when Arden moves between us.

“I’ve no time for ceremony, Vukašin,” he says. “We have other packs to warn still. Things aren’t like before. It’s far more dangerous.”

Vukašin folds his arms across his muscled chest. “And who shall I ask for that runs Aquila’s pack now?”

“His kin, Connor Lewis.”

“He means to bring the packs together? His ambition matches that of Aquila.” Vukašin is still looking him over, probably sensing that something is wrong with Arden but unable to figure out what exactly. “What will I see that will make my decision?”

“What you do, or don’t do, is for you to decide. I’m certain my words alone mean nothing to you.” Arden guides me toward the way we came with a simple wave.

“Oproštaj,” Vukašin says, gesturing for his wolves to head out as he turns from us.

We start to trace our way back to the main path and I glance over my shoulder at a wolf darting away. I don’t get what the point of this whole exercise was.

“What the hell? That’s it?” I ask. “That’s the first pack we’ve come across to even acknowledge our existence and we’re just moving on without explaining Wolf’s Bane to them?”

“Words mean nothing. They need to witness it for themselves.”

“And you’re not enough? You didn’t actually explain your ... situation. Human-wise, I mean.”

“It didn’t need to be said,” he responds. “He knew.”

He goes quiet again and quickens his pace, leaving me panting to catch up. It’s not until we get back out onto the main path of the expansive park that I push for answers again.

“Did something happen to the rest of your pack?”

Somehow he strides even faster again so I have to jog to keep up now.

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going next?”

“South,” he says. “Then east toward the Ural Mountains before we have to turn back.”

“Why do we have to turn back? What’s past the mountains?” My geography skills suck.

“Nothing of our concern.”

“Do you even know?”

He turns on me then and I stop in the middle of the wooden footpath so suddenly that I almost run into him. “Why must you question everything?” he snaps. “Beyond the mountains are packs we’ve never seen. That’s all that matters.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are places we don’t go. Places we’re not welcome.” The frustration on his face is almost tangible. “Places that have nothing to do with us.”

Like Connor back in NYC. Anyone who’s ever tried to find out what’s on the other side of the Atlantic has never come back. That’s all we know. I try to push that part out of my mind, but now I can’t. He’s not welcome there. He might not come back.

Arden’s expression softens as he watches me trying to keep it together. When he makes a move toward me I bolt past him. Neither one of us is made for Hallmark moments. Nobody makes sympathy cards for werewolves.

We head out of the park in silence and back to the parked Ducati. After reluctantly putting on my helmet I slide in behind Arden. The motorcycle roars to life and we take off on our next wilderness adventure. We’re not on the winding one-lane highway for five minutes before we reach a crossroads. Headlights flare in the fading glow of sunset as a parked white limo on the side of the road starts its engine.

It isn’t every day that a Rolls-Royce Phantom just appears in the middle of the wilderness. I’ve only ever seen a few in my life, and they’ve always been white with blacked-out windows just like this one. All of them were owned and operated by the Hounds of God. We tear by the limo. With a quick over-the-shoulder, I watch it pull onto the road behind us. At about the same time, Arden accelerates with the roar of the Ducati’s engine.

FML. I so didn’t sign up for a high-speed chase. As we continue to pick up speed, I squeeze on tight to Arden’s well-muscled torso. This is not the way I envisioned myself dying. Surrounded by werewolves for almost a year now, I was pretty sure it would be death by one of them. I mean, one close call is all anyone could reasonably expect to survive.

I have no sweet clue what the top speed of a Rolls-Royce is, but I’m betting Arden didn’t pick his Ducati just because it looks pretty. He tilts the bike deep into a tight bend in the road. As we lean down into it, he stretches one knee out so that it’s almost touching the ground and I hope I’m moving the right way too. Behind us the limo drifts into the other lane and for the first time I think about oncoming traffic.

I try my best to mimic Arden’s movements, straightening up as the turn ends. It should be clear sailing now that we’ve put space between us. But it’s not. A line of bicyclists races toward us and Arden slows to maneuver around them. Something glimmers on the road from the beam of the headlamp. A spike strip is laid out in front of us.

In a rapid series of hums and purrs, Arden shifts down the gear and pulls our weight to one side on the bike as we pull into a low drag. I cling to him, bracing for severe road rash, because I’m a million per cent sure we’re going to tip over. We don’t.

After sliding into a burning, rubbery 180, he rights the bike and we’re face-to-face with the Hounds. Instead of playing chicken with us, they’ve stopped the limo and are waiting for our next move. Silhouettes stand in the middle of the road, and I hear the clatter of iron hitting the pavement. Arden doesn’t hesitate, and I have to hold on tight as he accelerates again to take them by surprise. They have a surprise of their own waiting for us: the clanking was the sound of iron caltrops being laid out across the lanes.

“Jump off!” he howls.

Knowing that even a millisecond of hesitation could put an end to the rest of my time on Earth, I have no time to question the insanity of doing as he says. I just do it. I let go. I hit the concrete roadside with a painful crash and roll to a stop. As a human, the fall would have probably killed me. For the first time since being bitten, I actually feel lucky that I’m not human.

Ahead of me Arden lays the Ducati all the way on its side and it skids out from under him, sparks flying in a stream of light. He slides across the asphalt behind the machine, thankfully protected by his riding suit.

The Heaven’s Guard Militiamen race toward us. While I try to peel myself from the pavement, a horrible pain shoots through my right side and stops me altogether.

A voice yells, “Leave him! He’s untouchable.” A familiar voice.

Arden disappears from my line of sight. I almost shift to run away, but the anguish from what is definitely a broken collarbone puts a full stop to it. It’ll be a couple of days before I’m able to use it normally again.

One of the men bends down on one knee by my side. He reaches out and removes my helmet, but in a way that’s much gentler than I expect. I stare defeated at the bleak winter clouds looming overhead and the world starts to fade out around me. In the moments before I pass out his face comes into view and I catch a glimpse of the eyes that sometimes still haunt my dreams. Blue like the clearest summer sky.