But I couldn’t hear her. All I knew were the matted clumps of bloody fur and handfuls of dirt that smothered all my senses. Whatever adrenaline rush had given me the strength to fight dissolved into nothingness and the ground rushed up towards me, promising blissful oblivion.
‘Emily? Emily!’
Somewhere deep inside, I registered a sharp palm striking my numb face and I came back at once. Catherine’s eyes bored into mine as she dragged me up to my feet.
‘That’s right, stay with me,’ she said soothingly. ‘The worst is over now.’
‘It’s dead,’ I choked, looking past her to the pool of blood that was spreading out around the wolf. Too much blood to have come from a puncture made by one silver pin. The gravestones spun around me and I was certain I was going to be sick. ‘I killed it.’
‘It was him or us,’ Catherine replied, her fingertips digging sharply into my shoulders. ‘Which would you rather?’
She was right, I knew that, but it didn’t make the ugly truth any easier. I watched her as she turned the body over and extracted the silver pin from its throat. Carefully, she wiped it with the hem of her silk shirt, once an elegant ivory, now a horrifying collage of all the colours of war.
‘This came over from England with the first Emma Catherine Bell,’ she said, pressing it into my hand, the central stone sparkling through a muted red smear. ‘Now it’s yours.’
‘We need to go to the hospital,’ I mumbled, clinging to the things people say in an emergency as I shoved it into my pocket. I didn’t even want to look at it. ‘We need a tetanus shot, we have to call animal control, we have to call the police.’
Catherine stared at me for a moment, her ashen face streaked with blood – mine, hers, and the wolf’s – and then she laughed. A short, sharp howl that shocked me back into the present moment.
‘And tell them what?’
With a look of foul disdain, she poked the corpse with her foot and its head lolled over to the other side, my stomach turning with it.
‘What we need to do is move the body,’ she said. ‘We cannot have the custodian finding this scene on our family plot when he makes his morning rounds. Do you want this in the newspapers, on the internet? Do you want to have to relive it over and over while you justify and explain?’
‘No but—’
‘Do you want to be known as the girl who killed the wolf in Bonaventure for the rest of your life?’
I’d always worn unwelcome labels. The American who had never been to America, the girl whose mom died when she was a baby, the orphan whose dad was killed in that accident, and now I was back in Savannah, I’d already been christened the famous missing Bell baby. Did I really need another dark story following me around? I shook my head at Catherine.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Then help me.’
Catherine ordered and I obeyed. Together, we pushed the wolf’s body, still warm and supple with a seemingly endless stream of blood pouring from its throat, along the ground. I lifted my head to look past it, focusing on the trees in the middle distance. Whether it was coming for me or not, I killedthis thing and guilt pulled me down like a pair of concrete boots. I couldn’t swat a fly without feeling guilty about it.
Eventually, we heaved the carcass through a small cluster of palmetto trees and onto the bank of the dark, wide river as tears streamed freely down my filthy face. Falling backwards onto my heels, I closed my eyes and drifted away, thinking back to the day we’d scattered my dad’s ashes in the lake in Wales. It was so peaceful, so full of love. It was not this. I heard a loud splash and when I opened my eyes, the wolf was gone. Waves, ripples, and then nothing.
Catherine pulled a wad of moss from the trunk of a nearby tree and pressed it to my arm to staunch the flow of blood still pouring from my wound. I sucked the air in through my teeth at the sting.
‘Hold that there and you’ll be fine tomorrow,’ she promised, pulling me up to my feet.
‘Are you sure?’ I blanched when I saw my flesh through the damp green of the moss. ‘It looks deep.’
‘It may look ugly now but you won’t need stitches. That thing’s bark was worse than its bite.’
Now that I simply did not believe.
We leaned against each other, turning away from the river to stumble back through the cemetery, and as we passed the Bell monument, I searched the ground for traces of blood. But there was nothing to see, just a single fallen branch in front of the gate and nothing more. Bonaventure had already drawn the evidence deep into the earth, making a silent promise to keep our secret.
‘I was going to suggest we step out for supper,’ Catherine said, an attempt at lightening the mood as we picked our way carefully through the darkness. ‘But perhaps that was quite enough excitement for this evening.’
‘Can’t say I have much of an appetite,’ I replied with a dry croak. ‘Besides, we’re not really dressed for it.’
She pressed her lips together into a thin, grim line that turned up very slightly at the edges. ‘You saved my life tonight, my brave, bold girl. Your father would be so very proud of you.’
‘Do you think so?’ I wanted so desperately to believe her. ‘I’m not sure, he was pretty anti-hunting.’
