I landed with an impressive flash of neon light in the middle of an atrociously bland and horribly recognizable snowscape. Twelve wolves stood in identical startled positions around me – tails up, eyes wide, nostrils quivering.
“Whoa... easy doggies...” I began, before the shock of the cold hit me. I gasped and shivered in my shorts and T-shirt. Melting snow seeped through.
“You’re not going to eat me, right?” I asked dubiously. Nobody moved. Still they stood frozen. I fidgeted under their steely gaze.
One of the wolves snorted and shook its head, unfreezing the whole pack. The cold was getting to me, I knew, but my shocked mental facilities didn’t care. One wolf sniffed at me, but I barely noticed. I allowed the world to drift out of focus and immersed myself in that small part of my mind which was still convinced that this couldn’t be happening. Let them eat me, I thought. It’s not as though I’d feel it. The hazy wolf-silhouettes seemed to lengthen, blurring into fuzzy humanoid figures. A face leaned over me.
“She’s dying of cold,” it said. “We need to get her back to the cabin. She’s passed out already.” I felt myself lifted, carried, then, once more, I was lost.
------
It started with the sounds. Everything was still black, but my ears were almost functioning.
“I thought she wouldn’t pull through. She’s been out for three hours.”
“No, I could feel her heart beating. Must be a really strong heart in there.”
“Shhh. She’s coming to – what would you think if you woke up surrounded with people discussing your innards?”
“Her breathing is changing. Look, she’s moving. Go fetch some water, Victor.”
I attempted to groan, but my mouth was glued shut. Right about then, feeling returned. Every part of me was on fire. The icy burning feeling was pure agony. Smoke assailed my nose, along with a distinctly canine scent…
My next attempt at a groan was more successful. I rolled, whimpering softly as floor materialized under me, followed by faces, a fire and more pain.
“Don’t worry,” said a woman. “You are among friends.”
“Yes,” a girl pouted. “I wanted to eat you, but Mama said we shouldn’t.”
“Quiet, Fera,” a man growled. It was a real growl, not one of those namby-pamby ones found in the average male’s vocabulary. “We don’t intimidate visitors – it’s bad manners.”
“Where am I?” I rasped.
“This is the middle of nowhere, I am afraid,” answered the woman, with an accompanying snicker from Fera. “We don’t usually mix with… humans.”
“Humans?” I said, horrified as my suspicions deepened.
“Oh, Mother,” drawled a new, deep voice. “You know she’ll never sleep now. We’ll have to knock her out just to get her to lie down.”
Immediately I sprang up. “I’m not sleeping!”
A wave of dizziness and pain overtook me and I fell sideways. My limbs screamed for mercy as I slid down a wall – and fell into arms waiting to receive me.
“See,” said the voice, right at my ear. “You really should be more careful. Make a space so that I can put her down – easy now…”
“Werewolves,” I gasped as he put me down. “I’ve fallen into a pack of damn werewolves! That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
The woman wrinkled her nose. “We might as well ask what you are,” she said, “person dropping from the sky.”
“I’m a human. I come from a different place, I had this – this thing, it took me here…”
“Is this the object that you are referring to?” the father asked, holding out a small, white cube in his palm.
“Yes, that’s it!” I exclaimed, reaching out to grab it, but the man withdrew his hand with a small smile on his face. “Not yet,” he murmured.
“No! Give it back! It’s mine!”
“Father,” the younger male reprimanded. “You are upsetting her! Leave her alone – I know how to deal with humans. Go away, everyone.”
The young man crouched over me and the family disappeared through a door. I struggled to sit up. It was the first time I could clearly see him and he was so… male! You could almost smell it. Testosterone swirled around him like expensive cologne; deep, musky… His steady brown eyes followed me. Muscles glided under gleaming skin as he moved. One huge hand enveloped my wrist and he pushed me back onto the floor gently, but firmly. I suddenly realized how vulnerable I was. Alone, weak, in the middle of nowhere in a house full of werewolves.
“Um – have you got some water?” I asked to break the tension.
He stepped back and wordlessly gave me a tin mug.
“Am I allowed to sit up to drink it?” I snapped, annoyed. This was going more and more like one of those rotten teen fictions with the black covers and those miserable-looking girls skulking on the foreground.
“You may,” he murmured, still watching me steadily. I was uncomfortably reminded of the wolf pack staring at me in the snow. I wrapped my fingers shakily around the mug and sipped the water. It tasted of tin.
“Er… Hi,” I started. His expression was like a vacuum, sucking information out of me. “My name is Esme. I come from England and I am fifteen years old.”
The werewolf nodded. “I am Victor. I come from here and I am nineteen years old. I am a werewolf, if you didn’t know.”
“I knew. It’s hard to miss. Yesterday… I think it was yesterday, I ran into a group of people and sort of stole that block from them. It has some kind of power…”
“Yes, my father has it.”
“Why won’t he give it back to me?”
Victor smirked. “Because it could be dangerous and he is not sure what to do with you yet. Quite frankly, we can either kill you, or keep you. Neither option seems quite appealing.”
“I think if you gave it back to me, I could get back home. Then I wouldn’t bother you anymore,” I said hopefully.
“Unfortunately not. There is a reason why we live in isolation. Werewolves are not a popular species. I am afraid that if we sent you back, you would return – with backup.”
He was getting too close to me again. “Humans have something called personal space,” I snarled. “I don’t know if the concept is familiar to you.”
Victor looked puzzled at my ferocity in the face of his charm, then stepped back. “I think you need more sleep. Drink up your water, we don’t want you to dehydrate,” he flashed his teeth suddenly. “It takes all the flavor out of the blood, you know…”
“You hypocrite!” I yelled at his retreating back. “Talk about upsetting me!”
The door closed behind him. I stopped breathing through my mouth and sniffed. His scent still lingered in the room, rich and alluring. It was like an enchantment, unwinding the knots in my burning shoulders, relaxing my stiffened muscles. It made me hope that I was in a sci-fi romance. Just for a second. I knew that Victor was using it to his advantage. But was he the bad guy, or the good guy? I was too tired to argue with myself. I shifted my aching body, curled up and fell asleep.
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