Luna of Rogues

Part 27 - A Twisted Mind

A round of applause please for LittleLoneWriterGirl who drew this beautiful illustration of Jeff's hut :)

We had to cut our way through a maze of brambles to reach the hut. One wolf would charge through first to break all the stems, then the others would crawl through the resulting gap. That made it easy for us, but Carter was considerably taller and ended up scratched to ribbons. I couldn't find it in me to care.

Old Jeff loved solitude, so he had made his home in a thicket and built a wall of brambles around it. It had been added to over the years by Jeff himself, I assumed. No one else bothered to come out here. There were a few pathways through the defences, but they were hard to find and often strewn with bear traps to keep out trespassers.

So we walked straight through the brambles. Being in the lead, I took the worst of the thorns. My fur was mottled with blood by the time the hut came into view, standing forlorn and lonely in the undergrowth. As rundown as it looked from the outside, the inside was presentable enough and mercifully empty that day. Old Jeff must have been hunting.

We took turns shifting and changing around the back, with at least one person watching the humans at all times. When all three of us were dressed decently, I pushed open a bright yellow door. The paint was an old coat, chipped in places but not faded.

The hut was the size of an average garage. Everything was crammed into the one room — stove, table, chairs and bed. Today the handmade furniture was littered with animal hides, left to dry. I moved a deerskin from a chair and eyed the stove, which was full of glowing embers, I noted.

Jeff couldn't be far away. And with the storm raging outside, I expected him home very soon. But we had a few minutes to ourselves before that happened. He had frightened all of us when we were kids, but now I was older, stronger and not alone. The three of us could handle Jeff when he returned. Hopefully.

I sat down on the freed chair and nudged a bench into interrogation position with my foot. It was only then I realised that everyone else was stood in the doorway, staring at the hut with horror. Well except Fion, of course, but she was stuck behind the stragglers.

"Oh, come on in. They don't bite after you take their heads off," I teased.

Carter tore his gaze away from the animal skulls which hung from the ceiling, barely even daring to glance at the shelves of pickling jars, and shuffled into the room. Leo sat him down on the bench roughly.

I leant forwards and grinned at our prisoner. "Alright, here's how this is going to go. I'll ask a question and you'll answer it honestly. Sound easy enough?"

Carter didn't reply — just stared at me. It was more than defiance, something more like puzzlement. Then he loosed a breath and blinked at me, wide-eyed. He muttered, "A black wolf with grey eyes. You're Lauren."

"Lauren," I repeated disbelievingly. That was my birth name, and until a week ago, not even I had known it. How did he? "My name's Skye."

"No." Carter shook his head firmly. "You're Lauren."

My mouth opened and closed like a fish. By the time I had got control over my emotions, it was too late. He would know for sure now, even if he hadn't before, that the name meant something to me. But I still slipped an impassive frown onto my face and narrowed my eyes.

"You just get more and more interesting, don't you? A hunter who thinks he knows it all. Who is this Lauren girl?"

"You," he insisted. "You've been on our hit list longer than you've been alive."