Thirty-six hours until the full moon and Erin Adams was climbing the walls of her cell. She paced back and forth and around in as much of a circle as she could create while dodging the bunk bed, the toilet bowl and the tiny sink. The woods and the mountains were boiling in her blood, sending the moon’s song through her until she felt like she’d be changing any moment.
But then what? Good thing she didn’t have a cellmate or she’d be tempted to eat them. She snorted at the thought and switched from pacing to doing lunges and stretches. Anything to work off these feelings that were driving her, well, “wolfy.” “Batty” wasn’t going to cut it tonight.
Shelly and Becca had stopped by during visiting hours that afternoon, all excited because the lawyer from the Pack firm thought he might have found something that might get her out of here. She wanted to share their enthusiasm, she really did, but the more time she spent looking at concrete walls and iron bars, the less optimistic she felt. And she’d let that show and had shut Becca out. She didn’t feel very good about that right now either, and she gave the wall next to her an open-handed smack to let off some steam
Wolf’s Point had an old jail, cold and slightly damp, but that wasn’t the real problem. Erin felt as if she could touch all the occupants the cell had ever had when her hand hit the wall. Despair, cunning, rage, depression: it was washing over her in waves the longer she stayed in here. True, the full moon was close, but she wasn’t a new wolf anymore. This shouldn’t be hitting her as hard as it was.
Thinking about the moon got her thinking about how long it might take before the lawyer got a judge to post bail or bond or whatever it was. If he could find one who would. She looked up at the security cameras and down the echoing hallway where she could hear the guards from the jail’s small staff taking their break. If he took more than thirty-five hours, it wasn’t going to matter anymore. The best she could hope for was getting sent to a lab somewhere for study.
The alternative was even less pleasant.
Part of her wanted to smack her head against the concrete walls instead of her hand. She shouldn’t have turned herself in, she should have run and kept running. But then what? Everyone she cared about, with very few exceptions, was here in Wolf’s Point. This was where she belonged, not on the run without a Pack.
But wasn’t this making it harder on everyone? She could see it in her friends’ eyes when they came to visit. Shelly, Becca, Molly, they all looked strained and exhausted. Yet they came anyway and tried to cheer her up even after what she’d done. She really didn’t deserve them.
Erin stopped pacing and dropped onto the lower bunk. She buried her head in her hands for a few minutes. Then jerked her head away from her fingers. She could smell the blood on them, she was sure of it. If only she could remember whose blood...and why. That was the worst of it: the not remembering.
Why had she been drinking that day? She couldn’t remember that part either, but that had to have been what happened. Why else would she have lost control like that? Five years of sobriety down the tubes and she couldn’t even bring herself to let Shelly call her sponsor. She’d never been so ashamed of herself before.
No, that wasn't strong enough. This was more than shame; in fact, it was something that she didn’t think she even had a word for yet. She’d let down the Pack and Becca and Shelly and she’d let herself down too. Not to mention the poor sod, whoever they were, who she’d killed.
Becca was better off without her. They all were. She collapsed onto the rock-hard mattress, closed her eyes and tried not to sob too loudly.
It took awhile for her to notice the smell. There was something familiar about it, a quality that made her think about pine floors and mild perfume, but with an undercurrent of the full moon, blood and change. She’d smelled it before and recently. Erin opened her eyes and sat up slowly.
The couple in the corridor outside her cell looking in at her certainly weren’t guards. And neither one of them looked like Al in the cell across from her, brought in for petty theft just yesterday. In fact, they looked like the people that Becca had been talking about. There had been a comment that she’d made about some people she met looking like “Ken and Barbie.” Well, these two certainly fit the bill.
“Hi!” The young blonde woman with the perfectly coiffed hair flashed a smile at her, white teeth brilliant in the gloom. She and the man with her moved like runners, maybe with some Pilates workouts thrown in for additional grace and flexibility. She gestured toward the bars and he stepped sideways, making himself a smaller target with a movement that looked choreographed.
There was a clicking noise, but nothing else happened as far as Erin could tell. They all stared at each other through the cell bars.
Erin got up and backed away from the bars and the door. Whoever they were, they’d snuck in here somehow, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how or why. She risked a glance up at the camera; the red light was on. Did the guards know these two were here? Had they been paid off to ignore what was going on in the cellblock? She strained her hearing, pricking up her phantom wolf ears to listen to the break room as she managed a croak that might have been, “Hi.”
“I’m Kari and this is Jim.” The woman gestured at her companion. He wrinkled his otherwise flawlessly high forehead with a quick frown, then switched to a tentative smile, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know their names.
Erin frowned back. There was a stretcher on the floor behind them, tucked away so she hadn’t noticed it before. She wondered why they had that with them. “Our new neighbors? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Becca must have told you that she met us. She’s just the sweetest thing, and worried sick about you. I can see it in her eyes. Jim was telling me how bad he felt for you two and I knew that we just had to help out.” Kari flashed that smile again, her blue eyes shining with enthusiasm as she moved closer to the bars.
“Help?” Erin asked nervously. There was no way that Becca would have turned to these strangers, not when she had the Pack. Who were they? What was that sound, like something being sprayed? The smell was much heavier now, and the stronger it got, the more tired she felt. If these two would just leave, she could get in a good nap before...before...
The cell door opened and Erin realized that she was lying on the floor for some reason. What was she doing down here? There were feet getting closer and closer to her, and from far away, she heard a woman’s voice say, “See, Jim, I told you it would work. Get her head and I’ll take her feet.”
Erin disappeared into the dark, running and running through the trees under the brilliant light of the full moon.