Gwen
The smell of burning oil and the rasping sigh of the engine was the old truck’s idea of a thank you to me, as far as I could tell. But, she had made another journey into Riverford. The damn thing turned fifty that year but I couldn’t see her giving me another. Sam had told me there was nothing more he could do for her, the truck would need a new engine if I wanted it to keep going. And being the sentimental bitch that I was, that meant I’d be dipping into the inheritance to buy a new engine for my old truck.
Granddad’s truck.
I tried not to touch the nest egg he’d left me, instead keeping his business alive. It paid the bills and kept the pantry stocked, but a new engine was an entirely different matter.
A sigh escaped me as I slid out, feeling my boots on the pavement of the only market in town. The posters were still up from the Hitchcock Film Festival, even though it had been over for weeks. The signs of the crowd, the only reason anyone came to this particular patch of nowhere, were gone at least. The smell of the garbage was gone, the brisk wind was finally greeting us. I could remember when there was snow on the ground this time of year, but that hadn’t been true for a while. The winters started late now, and made up for it by being extra brutal.
I raised my hand, a lazy greeting, as I stepped in. “Hi Mabel.” I followed her eyes deeper into the store, and was shocked to see a scraggly teenager turning the corner, headed toward the liquor. Her clothes looked like they hadn't had a good wash in awhile, neither did her hair. It was a knotted, filthy, tangled mess falling down her shoulders. “Who’s the kid?”
“Runaway, I bet.” Mabel was somewhere in her eighties, I had lost track - but she’d been a fixture here as long as I could remember. “On the drugs, I’m sure. No hello when she came in.”
While she griped, I looked towards the motel across the way. Didn't see any cars in front I wasn't expecting. Andrew had said there were two guests expected this week. One was Teddy, lived out of town but came to visit his brother Al a few times a year. Al and Stacy didn't have a spot to let him sleep and he didn't mind paying for a room in the motel. The other was someone passing through that had some car trouble a few days back. Sam was fixing his car but the part had to be ordered. Supposedly, he was leaving tomorrow. And neither of those two had a teenager with them.
I laid an arm on the checkout counter, trying to puzzle out who it might be - runaway was probably a good guess. Didn’t know about the drugs, though. I watched as the kid turned the corner again, grabbing chips and jerky in one arm, a case of beer dangling from two fingers of her left hand. Looking down, I saw the final clue I needed.
The kid was in flipflops in November.
Mabel was giving her the evil eye, always convinced that kids were going to pocket stuff. Not that it was an unfair sentiment, exactly. The few kids we had in town were generally on their best behavior, but Bobby picked up bad habits from the city kids and thought he could get away with it here.
I decided to try and redirect her attention, faking a small cough. "We got a storm coming in. Here for some supplies."
She looked back to me, those paper-thin white cheeks coloring ever so slightly as she realized she was skipping part of her job.
Mabel recovered quickly enough, taking my list from me the way she always did. “Of course, Gwen. The usual, right?”
I kept one eye on the kid. She was lost in thought, but didn’t seem to be trying to swipe anything. Just thinking real hard on something, her face creased with a frown.
“Heavier on the rice and frozen beef, just in case the storm goes long.” Windy Market knew when I was coming in, I was a creature of habit after all, so Mabel generally had Henry pull everything for my order before I got there, the list was just for things I deviated on.
Of course, Mabel’s mood soured again the second the kid dropped her haul on the belt effortlessly.
“I need to see some ID.” Her voice was far colder than the wind outside.
I managed to catch a glimpse as she fished it out of her backpack - which was surprisingly empty. “Here.” Her license said Arizona, with a picture of a much cleaner kid - but the girl in the picture looked no happier than the girl standing in front of us. What stood out was the words emblazoned beneath her picture.
NOT 21 UNTIL APRIL 5TH, 2022.
She was 21, but barely. I tried not to be a paranoid person, but it tended to be irresponsible not to consider there was a fire when you smelled smoke - and this kid was setting off all kinds of alarms for me. I hadn’t noticed any activity recently, it tended to be in the spring, but I had missed one by being too relaxed before.
“Now why do you have an ID this old?” Mabel was still giving the kid the stink eye, looking back and forth between the license and the filthy girl in front of us. Up close I could see that her skin had a deep tan. “You don’t look a moment older than the day you got this picture done. I’m bettin’ this was the only fake they’d sell ya.”
“I got real fucking dirty in that moment then,” she snapped back, pulling out a wad of cash - a lot of money for someone in such rough shape. More smoke. “It’s a long walk back to Flagstaff, grandma. Maybe they’ll give me a new one if I ever make it home. How much for the beer and the jerky?” Before Mabel could answer, the kid’s gaze turned toward me. She locked eyes with me, not quite a glare from those baby blues, but definitely something. “Problem, lady?”
I held up my hands in submission, stepping back and breaking eye contact. “Sorry hun.” Her wording gave away more than she likely realized. She had walked from Arizona. The question was whether or not she was alone. The fact that she was buying instead of stealing meant she probably planned to hole up somewhere nearby, she planned on being here again. She might be a loner, it was hard to tell. "We don't get many visitors this time of year, just a bit surprised to see someone new."
"Those bags are five." Mabel spoke up, pulling the attention off me. "We also got some venison jerky made by a local. Better stuff than that. Ten bucks for the same amount." Mabel looked between the card and the girl one more time and frowned. "Beer price doesn't matter. I don't believe you're old enough."
"Stop being such a cantankerous old git, Mabel. She's got the ID." I sighed. Mabel had a stubborn streak a mile wide, she’d refuse to sell now whether she believed or not. "Who's getting a fake ID of them under the legal age? Doesn't make any sense." I reached over the counter and plucked the ID out of her hand, stealing a look. Victoria Tanner. I handed the license back to Victoria. "Throw her stuff onto my bill. Just have Henry grab my extra and toss it in the back of the truck."
That wad of cash was probably all she had, and me buying her snacks and beer might give me more of a chance to talk to her. Figure out if she had a pack, where she was staying. Strange wolves in the area was not an auspicious start to the winter.
"Henry will have it out in your truck in fifteen, Gwen. Careful who you're buying beer for. I don't want to have to call Hank if it becomes a problem."
"Oh, Hank’s not gonna do anything about it." I rolled my eyes. "Too preoccupied playing games on his phone during his shift. For all we know there's a drug ring operating under his nose."
"Wait, you're buying this stuff for me? All of it?" Victoria looked at me with shifty eyes, suspicious. "Why?"
Mabel vanished after handing over the bag of snacks, likely to go get Henry. I pondered what to say, but it probably wasn't best to talk in here. I didn't trust Mabel not to overhear something and spread it through the phone lines. Enough people were already going to know about her being here, I didn't need more rumors to spread.
"Perhaps you can spare a few minutes to talk?" I walked towards the door, holding it open for her. "Maybe outside where the cranky old lady won't be listening for gossip to tell all her neighbors?"
"Sure, but I'm not getting in your truck even if you bought this stuff for me, I'm not dumb. You could be a serial killer."
The irony was not lost on me, and I couldn’t help but give a small, amused laugh at it. “That's not unfair. I think a small town without a lot of visitors would be a poor place for a serial killer to live. Someone walking through a town in the middle of nowhere with a sketchy ID though?"
Of the two of us, Victoria was more dangerous. At least to someone who wasn’t prepared. I took a deep breath, leaning against the wall as the first snowflakes of the promised storm began to fall. According to the reports, it was going to open up sometime overnight. The sun was going down and the temperature was dropping like a stone.
“It’s not a sketchy ID!” She huffed, crossing her arms like a petulant child. It was cute, in a way.
I gestured to her flipflops as I continued. "I have a feeling you don't have a room in the motel and I don’t see your car. What's your plan now that you have a case of beer you have to carry somewhere?"
"Look, you caught me, okay? I'm a homeless hitchhiker and the asshole promised me a ride to... " she paused for a few heartbeats too long, whatever came out of her mouth was a lie. "Cheyenne, and he ditched me. But I'm not calling my parents for help, I can figure this out on my own.” The case of beer clattered as she set it down roughly, loading up bottle after bottle into her backpack. “Arizona sucks anyway. College sucks.”
"Uh huh." I didn't even bother to try to sound convinced. She didn't even have her location decided when she started her lie. "I have a feeling if you empty that backpack there isn't even a cellphone in there you could use to call your parents."
I sighed - I shouldn’t continue prodding her. On the off chance she wasn’t a wolf and I scared her away into the cold, her frozen death would be on my conscience. If I was right, I needed to figure out why a lone wolf from Arizona was all the way up here.
Or worse, why a new pack had moved in.
"Look, hun. I don't really care why you're here." I tried a mixed approach, stepping back to give her some space, my hands up again, non-threatening. I wanted her to read me as worried, not overbearing. "You don't have to tell me the truth. I'm more concerned about your well being than forcing you to spill the beans. I don't know where you might have tried to make shelter, but there's a snowstorm coming in tonight. Nothing you built is gonna last overnight. I'm not sure how you made it this far in flipflops, but you could lose some toes tonight."
The comment about her footgear was tipping my hand a bit - I’d never seen a wolf with a decent pair of shoes, they all seemed to either go barefoot or with a pair of cheap flipflops that they wouldn’t care if they broke… or if they had to ditch them to shift.
Victoria slung her backpack over her shoulder, brushing her matted hair from her face with her free hand, rolling those blue eyes at me. "Let me guess, you've got a warm room waiting at your cabin in the woods, don't mind the skulls, they're an art project." She turned and started walking deeper into town, calling over her shoulder. "Look Gwen, I might be down to my last pair of shoes, but I'm not so down on my luck that I'm gonna cry to my mommy for help. Thanks for the jerky and beer, I won’t see you around."
I was running out of time. I wasn’t going to figure out where she was sheltering, I might not figure out if she was lone, but either way I couldn’t let a werewolf walk around without knowing how dangerous they were. I’d seen the damage a fight between packs could do, and for all I knew she was one that ate humans and was just staking the place out.
What I did know was that she was a sarcastic wreck with a chip on her shoulder that was easier to call a plank of wood. I thought for a moment what insults I had heard from River’s pack. “Look, runt.” Victoria froze in her tracks, mid-step. "Not asking for help is a weakness. Is it really gonna take you losing some toes in a snowstorm to learn that? Going about alone is a bigger weakness."
She spun on those toes, closing the gap between us in two strides, fury in her eyes. “Don’t you fucking call me runt.”
I had hit the nail on the head and found a very sore spot in the process. There was no doubt in my mind now. “Apologies.” I said the word, but I kept eye contact with her intentionally. “It’s a common term around here, you’re small and stubborn, it seemed fair to me.” She was glaring at me, but I was looking down at her - I had a good four inches on her. “Too stubborn to ask for help when you need it.”
She snapped at me instantly, practically growling. “I accepted your help. And I thanked you for it. Now leave me alone.” But she didn’t turn to leave, she stood there, staring at me, her eyes never leaving mine.
"Leave you alone?" I asked, staring back at her. I had shown submission to her twice already, I wasn’t doing it again. "You're the one standing here and staring at me. You were walking away before because you were too weak to ask for help. Now you won't leave."
She stepped closer, invading my space, those eyes flashing. And in that step, she grew several inches, coming to eye level with me for just a moment, close enough that I could feel her breath on my face.
“Go. Home.”
The fact that she had shifted forms, that she had shown her brute was a complete shock. This was far beyond any aggression I had expected from her. There was no way a pack was guiding her. River had nearly bitten the head off of Riggs once for showing the brute when there had been a human in the area, let alone in plain view.
She was a loner. She was young and stupid, and that made her dangerous.
Which meant she was now my problem.
“I’m waiting for my groceries.” I kept my voice calm, level, but I never broke eye contact. I continued to challenge her authority. Thankfully, I had been too shocked to flinch from the brute - and runt had been right on the money, even in her brute form, she wasn’t particularly big. I decided to push a little harder. “It’s irresponsible of me to let you freeze to death tonight. It’s okay to be scared and ask others for help.”
She was fuming, her chest heaving - if looks could kill, I would have been dead on the spot. “I’m not scared.” The threat in her voice was plain. I was likely driving her half-mad, humans instinctively distrusted wolves and would either lash out or run away when confronted by one subconsciously. “Wait in your truck.”
The clatter of glass bottles in her bag hitting the ground reached my ears at the same time that her hand wrapped around my throat, squeezing… and with more strength than that small frame should have been capable of, she lifted me onto my toes. I had no choice now, Henry could step out at any moment - and not being able to breathe was a problem.
With a croak, I apologized for what I was about to do.
“Sorry hun.”