Page 63 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“Would you stop,” I tugged my arm away from Clay as we finally neared the Jeep. He’d been hauling me at a breakneck speed through the trees after we left. If he’d gripped me any tighter, he’d have left bruises, and in my new, tougher skin, that was saying something.

Jared unlocked the Jeep and froze with his hand on the handle as a long howl rose up into the sky to the South.

“Seth,” Jared choked, his eyes going wide and breaths coming harder than they had been a minute before.

Clay’s gaze hardened on him and he held out a hand to Jared. “Go,” he growled. “I’ll get her home safe.”

Jared considered the keys in his hand and then his friend in the moonlight. Then me.

“We’ll be alright,” I told him. “Go help them.”

“Fuck,” Jared cursed, his hands beginning to shake. “No. I need to stay with you. Get in the Jeep.”

He pulled on the door and I cleared the four steps between us and slammed it back shut. “Go,” I told him. “They need you.”

I hoped my eyes conveyed what I couldn’t bring myself to say. Don’t stay because of me. Don’t let them get hurt because of me.

Jared’s face bleached of color and he tossed the keys to Clay and met my eyes. “I’ll be there soon. Stay on the property—it’s protected.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain,” Clay told me and then stepped up into the driver’s side, pushing the seat back to accommodate his size. “Get in.”

“Be safe,” Jared whispered to me and I hugged him, tightening my arms around his back.

“You be safe,” I countered. “Okay?”

“I will.”

Swiftly, Jared kissed the top of my head just as Clay started the Jeep and then he was off and running, removing his shirt as he went. His twin footfalls turned to the canter of an animal working into a full sprint within seconds.

“Come on,” Clay barked out the window and I raced around the Jeep and hopped inside, shivering as a blast of warm air washed over me from the vents. I hadn’t even realized I’d been cold.

Clay turned up the heat and peeled out of the little nook we’d parked in at the side of the dirt road.

Bits of loose earth and gravel spat from the Jeep’s tires as we barreled toward the main road.

Of its own accord, my hand shot up and curled around the holy shit handle just as we went over a bump in the road that would’ve had my head bouncing high enough to hit the roof.

“Should I be worried?” I almost shouted over the roar of the engine and the sound of the tires munching gravel.

There was a pause, then, “No.”

“You hesitated.”

No reply.

Well, fuck.

The Jeep bumped onto the main road and the feel of smooth pavement beneath the tires made some of the tension flee from my muscles. My pulse slowed and the glow cast by my eyes over the dash was fading. The things were like goddamned flashlights in the dark.

“So, the cabin is protected?” I asked, still a little more breathless than I’d like, but slowly gaining back control.

Clay cut his blue eyes toward me for a second before training them back on the road, only looking away to scan the tree line on either side periodically. “Yeah,” he said. “A friend of my parents did it a long time ago. She’s a witch.”

I realized now wasn’t the time, but a little blossom of hope formed in my chest that he might actually know a witch. Witches could do magic, right? And magic might be able to heal something like Huntington’s Disease.

Later, I told myself—when this is all over. I’ll ask him later.

“It’s a warding spell that’s tied to the cabin itself, but it’s only activated while we’re inside. It draws its energy from us.”

I squinted, trying to wrap my head around that. “So, the magic keeps people away by sucking energy out of the people who live in the cabin?”

I grimaced. I didn’t like the sound of that. I’d been an unwitting participant in some spell I didn’t even know existed.

Clay pursed his lips, considering how best to respond. “Basically, yeah. Only those who know where it is can find it. For everyone else, it’s like it’s not even there. It’s invisible.”

“But I’ve always been able to see It,” I argued, thinking back to the very first time I’d laid eyes on it like a beacon of safety through the trees, dragging my battered body over muck and leaves.

Clay peered over at me curiously but said nothing.

Finally, he shrugged. “I’m no magic expert.”

Ww made it back to the cabin without any problems and I didn’t take a full breath until we were both on the dirt lawn. I sighed. “So…we should be safe now?”

He grunted.

But then something else prickled at the edges of my mind—something that didn’t make sense. “Clay?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you have to sleep inside when Jared was gone? I mean, if I was totally safe being in the house alone.”

His body stilled and I could see his mind working in the way he shifted his eyes over the dirt at his feet. “Some enemies don’t wear masks,” he replied. “Some hide in plain sight, wearing the faces of people you trust.”

He ran a hand over the back of his neck, and I could tell the question had made him uncomfortable. “Besides,” he added after a beat of silence. “I thought it might make you feel safer. The one night I didn’t sleep inside was the night you woke up from that nightmare and I…”

My brows furrowed. “…busted down the door,” I finished for him.

He nodded.

I hadn’t even realized it, but he was right.

I only had the nightmares when he wasn’t there.

In the first week when he slept out in the woods, I’d woken shaking from nightmares almost every night.

And then that night when I was alone in the cabin and he was out sleeping on the sofa in his shop—that’d been the worst nightmare of all.

I looked at Clay like I was seeing him for the first time. I smirked. “You aren’t so bad, you know,” I told him, trying to lighten the conversation. “You act like this big tough guy with your mean words and your angry face, but deep down, you’re just a big softie, aren’t you?”

His brows lifted for an instant before his face settled back to its usual hardness. “Nah. I really am just a giant asshole.”

I laughed.

Clay nudged his head toward the dark cabin. “Think you can sleep?”

I thought about it. “No. Not until Jared comes back, anyway.”

Clay didn’t say anything right away, so I asked the question that’d been eating at me most of the drive and walk back home. “He’ll be alright…right?”

Clay smirked. “He always is. We joke that the guy has horseshoes stuck up his ass. He’s basically unkillable.”

I cocked my head at him, laughing and wincing at the same time at the mental image that provoked. “What? Why?”

“He always finds some way to get himself out of trouble,” Clay explained. “Add in the fact that he’s cheated death a good half dozen times and…” Clay shrugged, trailing off.

Unkillable.

It was enough for me to shrug off the foreboding feeling weighing on my shoulders and my mind. I knew deep down that no one was truly unkillable, but Clay’s confidence that Jared would be alright would have to do for now. Until I saw he was unharmed with my own eyes.

Clay nodded to himself, as though making a decision. “Come on, then,” he said, lumbering off down the side of the cabin. “I could use an extra set of hands in the shop.”

I grinned, biting the inside of my cheek as I followed after him.

We worked on a Honda CRF450R. It was one Clay was fixing for someone named Jack—who was apparently someone I’d briefly met around the campfire, but all the names blurred together, and I couldn’t recall his face.

The bike was an older model. Maybe a 2015. Dad had one similar to it before he bought the Maico, and we’d worked on that one together lots of times before he got sick.

I was surprised to find, like archery, the muscle memory of working on bikes had never truly left, either.

Clay and I settled into a rhythm as we changed the air filter which was just as much of a pain in the ass as I remembered.

I went to wash up, letting Clay finish adjusting the intake valves since it was really a one-man job.

Dirt, grime, and engine grease stained the sides of my hands and the creases in my fingers. I rubbed the grit between my fingertips, a million memories of Dad surfacing in the back of my mind. But unlike most times, the memories didn’t trigger the cloying darkness.

Instead, I smiled at my dirty hands. At the metallic shop smell and the tang of Fast Orange as I rubbed the abrasive soap into my palms and scrubbed the grease from beneath my nails.

I breathed deeply. I’d forgotten how much I loved that smell. I felt…strangely peaceful as I dried my hands on my jeans and lifted myself to sit atop the counter, waiting for Clay to finish.

Jared still wasn’t back, and I began to bob my knee, hoping Clay had more work I could help with. It was doing wonders for keeping me distracted and I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts just yet.

There were too many places my mind wanted to wander.

To Jared and whether he was safe. To Layla and her illness.

To the inevitable choice I would have to make tomorrow.

And to the way the light and shadows played over Clay’s face as he fit his big fingers into the cavity of the bike, adjusting its valves. His expression focused and without the pain it usually held.

This was his solace, too.

This and the mangled heavy bag hanging in the corner of the room.

It was streaked with ribbons of shining silver duct tape, holding it together in the place where Clay had blown it apart.

I’d felt the rattle of his fury in the floorboards on more than a few nights since I’d come to live here.

It was a wonder the thing didn’t need daily replacement.