(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 52; cold air

"And silver bullets."

"And wolves," Jaylin added.

The lot of them looked his way, interests piqued. "Wolves?" Netty asked.

Jaylin let his eyes swing back to the plantation house. "Yeah. A lot of them." He hadn't seen Ziya since the day she caught him at Olivia's cell. Was she even still around? Or was she looking for more of them—more like him?

The thought brought another to Jaylin. Olivia. He'd forgotten Olivia.

"We have to go back," he said. "My friend is in there."

"There's no time," Olly said. "They're moving the last of the trucks out. That gate's going toclose and we'll lose our ticket out of here."

A heavy dread wracked his heart. Olivia was a victim, just like he was. She didn't deserve to die. Not when she finally had the opportunity to get her life together. He couldn't live with himself if he left her in this place.

But Bo had a hand on his shoulder, shaking him back to reality. "You're asking for the impossible, get that straight. It's your friend or all of us."

"Bo," Olly lectured him, his head cocked in disapproval. "Let him be, he's been through some shit."

"I'm not putting our lives on the line. That's the end of the discussion."

"He's the reason we're even free!" Netty chewed back at him. "He saved us, Bo."

"Not yet," Bo said. "We're not saved yet."

Then a shot sounded in the air—a pop so loud Jaylin jumped back into Netty's small hands.

"What was that?".

Then another pop snapped in the distance, and another and another, dense in the air like thunderclaps. The guards at the gate were aiming their rifles towards something in the field beyond the fence line, flashes of light popping from the long barrels of their guns. Jaylin searched the darkness—the faces in the trees and the shadows between them, and somewhere in the cloak of night, he saw a white shape far off in the field. Square and flagrant in the moonlight, but too distant to make out. White, that was all he knew. It was white and it was barreling towards them.

The men with guns shouted orders to one another and the access gate started to roll shut again.

But the shape, the shape kept coming. And then on flashed its brilliant headlights, bright and brazen as they lit the courtyard, two blinding godsend beacons. A truck.

Voices shouted under the sound of sirens and men in white coats fled the gate. And in the dark, Jaylin could make out the shape of a figure, leaping from the driver door at the very last moment, rolling to a stop in the high grass.

Those who hadn't escaped already were leaping out of the way, throwing themselves from the path of the oncoming truck as it barreled through the gate, punched right through the metal frame like a knife through a net. And it drove onward, unheeded until it crashed into the wall of the Northern building, bringing bricks to the ground around it.

And Jaylin could feel him.

He took off running, barefoot along the rough cobblestone pavement. The others were calling for him to stop, but he couldn't spare an ear to anything more than the howls that beckoned to him from the tree lining.

Smoke poured from the engine of the truck, and some men hurried to put out the fire. Some ran for cover. And some raised their guns.

He heard the pop before he felt it, and even then it was only like stones on his skin. One in his arm, nearly ripping it out of the socket, one boring into his abdomen. And then he spotted a dark shape, leaping into the window of the guard's station. The man inside let out a curdling scream. The other guard raised his gun to the wolf, but another slithered through the gap in the fence—her mighty jaw chomping down on the barrel, thrashing it from his hands. And as two more wolves rained in, they veered past Jaylin, bringing down the men with guns and the white-coats that ran to stop them.

Jaylin cleared the metal tracks of the gate, blood raining down his arm, dripping from his fingertips. There was a pain in the core of his stomach, but it was nothing compared to the sensation of grass under his feet, cold air on his face. And somehow, somewhere near, the feeling of Quentin.

It was an uphill climb to the lining of the forest, and dark veiled everything within a ten-foot radius. But he could hear his tapered breath, smell the perfume of him. His senses were loud, every one of them. The air washed over each hair on his head, whisked up chills on his nape. He could hear the crickets singing, smell the bouquet of blood in the breeze. And then Jaylin saw him break through the trees, and Quentin was sprinting down the incline so fast—too fast, he couldn't stop once he'd reached him.

It was a hard hit into his chest, and Jaylin clutched onto him tight, his face pressed into the front of his bloodstained, dirt-stained t-shirt as Quentin slid for friction on the steep hillside. And then he dropped to his knees, and Jaylin was tangled into him, numb and weak and so tired, he couldn't tell if this was reality or if he was back in his cell, dreaming again.

But if there was one thing he could feel, it was Quentin's arms, tight around him. The sound of his breath—deep, rugged, imperfect breath, and the hard rise and fall of his chest. And he had a hand in Jaylin's hair to hold his head in close, whispering something between each heavy breath. After a few, Jaylin deciphered it as "I'm sorry". "I'm sorry," he was saying again and again. "I'm sorry."

And then he felt two more arms around him, and he knew it was Tisper before she even buried herself in his shoulder. "Jaylin, I'm so happy," she was sobbing. "I'm so happy you're okay."

Jaylin felt so tired. So tired that opening his mouth was too much a chore. But he turned his head enough to look over Tisper's shoulder—the see in the distance, that old plantation house. To hear the howls coming from it.

"Maya," he said.

"Maya?" Tisper asked, blinking back her over flux of tears.

"Wolves," he managed again.

"Quentin," a voice came from beside him and Jaylin recognized Imani, even in wolf form. She raised her snout to the air, and maybe he was hearing her like the day he'd heard Quentin's wolf speak. Or maybe he was hallucinating. "We need to go."

Olly and the others were reaching the incline, tired sallow faces, starved and keen on the safety of the forest. He couldn't save Olivia. It sat like a stone in his chest. He couldn't help her in the end. But at least he could help Quentin. He felt through his gown for the envelope Gunner had given him. His fingers found nothing, and Jaylin let out a panicked "No!" He looked back the way he'd come, but he didn't spot the envelope. "I dropped it," he heaved. "I dropped it."

Quentin read his face, but his dark eyes failed to understand. "Dropped what, Jaylin?"

"Quentin," Imani said again, "we need to go. Now."

"Get on my back," Quentin said, and he heaved Jaylin up from the grass, slinging his arms around his neck. Jaylin clung to his shoulder as he was lifted from the ground and gripped under the knees. Tisper straightened too, and with Imani at their heels, they retreated back to the safety of the tree lining.

"Call them back," Quentin ordered to Imani. "Make sure they have the boy."

Jaylin couldn't move his arms or his legs. He couldn't breathe. His chest rattled when he inhaled, the wound in his stomach and his arm, pulsing with hard heartbeats of their own. He watched the sharp cuts of the treetops overhead and the red of the moon as it chased him through the carmine forest. Jayllin shut his eyes, just to escape it. He wanted to go back to his special place. In the snowy mountains, where the only thing that existed was the cold. But Jaylin didn't dream of that magical place. Instead, he dreamt of Anna.