“No, Jasper, I didn’t, I—”
“You’ll pay for this.” In an instant his expression has shifted again. Now he appears cold, deadly, his fangs grow and his claws extend. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done to me.”
“NO!”
I turn and run back toward the building. The balcony feels like it must extend for miles as I run and run, heading for the glass doors of the packhouse but never reaching them. Then suddenly the doors are somehow right in front of me, my reflection visible in the dark, silver surface of the glass. Only it isn’t my reflection. It’s me in my wolf form, hurtling toward the doors from the other side. As me and my wolf draw nearer, its form growing larger with each step, it leaps toward me.
From the opposite side of the glass I leap as well and at the same time my wolf self and I collide. I cross my arms over my face to shield them as the glass shatters, shards sent flying every which way.
THE CRYING WOLF
I should be falling, landing with a thud inside the packhouse. But instead my body becomes light, held aloft by some unseen force or maybe…a lack of gravity.
When I open my eyes I find I’m no longer in the packhouse, or Manhattan, or anywhere I’m able to recognize.
Darkness surrounds me, stretching on forever. The shards of glass from the shattered doors float around me, like dust particles in the sun. They drift outward until they grow small, reflecting some unseen source of light, twinkling in the pitch blackness of wherever the hell this is. Eventually they drift far enough from me that all I can make out are millions of glittering specks…like stars.
Gently, I come to land on an invisible floor, my toe sending ripples outward in concentric circles, almost like I’m standing on water. But there is no water here. There isn’t anything. Just darkness and stars.
Staring at the ripples emanating from my feet, I spot another set of circular waves meeting mine and interrupting their pattern. The cause of these other ripples is my wolf, standing across the galaxy, watching me.
The anger and violence he evoked before are gone. Now he seems calm. His eyes are soft, subdued, almost…pleading.
We stand at the center of this shattered glass universe and for the first time during this whole trippy moonwalk thing, a sense of calm and purpose washes over me.
“I’ve made it,” I say quietly.
Then my wolf lifts his muzzle into the air, opens his jaws, and howls.
My ears perk up, every hair on my body stands on end, a shiver runs right through me.
“I know that howl. That was you? That was…me?”
My wolf howls again, the crying howl that’s been haunting me for months, the same howl that has sent splitting pain through my brain and interrupted my attempts to mind-link with Jasper. But how can that be? How can it have been me this whole time?
“He calls to you.”
I freeze at the resonant sound of a woman’s voice, echoing in the endless nothingness. I spin around to find my wolf and I have company. A tall, statuesque woman is hovering just above the nonvisible ground, her delicate silver toes drifting millimeters above the surface. She is wearing the most insanely gorgeous gown, a flowing silver dress made of this sheer, iridescent fabric my mind can’t quite comprehend. It’s almost as if it’s emitting a sort of glow, like she’s shining. Her face is long and narrow, her skin pale but not white—it’s almost gray, but shimmering just like her outfit. Her long hair wafts in silver waves, held aloft like she’s underwater. Her arms are long and her elegant hands float by her sides.
“Your wolf,”she says, only her lips don’t move.“He has been waiting.”
Her voice moves through me like electricity, like she’s speaking directly to my mind. “How are you doing that?”
“I am capable of many things. As are you.”
“Is this what it feels like to mind-link?”
“That is an earthly term. I am not of the earth.”Gently, she bows her head, smiling benevolently.“Is that the most pressing question you have to ask me?”
For some reason I’m not scared of her—even though I should be, because she’s a floating freaking hallucination with a one-way communication channel to my brain. But I feel this strange sense of familiarity toward her. Like I know her, have known her, for…forever. Like she’s always been there, watching, looking over and protecting me.
“Why does my wolf call me if he lives within me?” I ask, somehow finding the question at the tip of my tongue.
She lifts her hands as if telling a room full of people to stand, except we’re the only ones here and we’re already standing.
“You speak of your wolf as if it is apart from you. As if you and it are two separate beings.”
“I only mean because, well, he’s there”—I gesture to my wolf, who is still standing quietly behind me—“and I’m here.”
