Waken (The Woods of Everod Book 1) (3 page)

Rachel laughed at that. “You mean boring.”

“It’s not bad,” I assured her. “Just not as busy as I’m used to.” There weren’t as many places to hide out. In a city, I could sit in the middle of a mall and be alone for hours without a single person wondering about me. Here I had to hide at home, because really even the library was too small to blend in.

“So, why’d your parents move here?”

“Tim, my stepdad, is a wildlife photographer and decided he wants to focus on Western Colorado for a while,” I explained, not exactly the truth but not a lie either.

“Cool.”

She threw her head back, tossing her hair when she laughed, as if every eye around was on her. My secret longing to have that same confidence kept me at her side, listening to what I would normally consider drivel.

I’d always been leery of talking to girls like her; they possessed the power to intimidate me just by walking around looking so perfect. Rachel, though, was amazingly easy to talk with. Well, Rachel talked and I listened, which was fine by me. I took the time to study her. She looked like a beauty queen. She had long wavy caramel hair, not a strand out of place, and her make-up was flawless, although I doubted she needed it.

We made the summit only minutes behind the others. Justin looked from Rachel to me and I could almost see the panic fill him as he made his way over to us. I flashed him an evil smile and went on listening to Rachel.

“Janie.” He leaned around Rachel. I ignored him, although my grin now stretched across my face. “Janie, I’m sorry.” His voice held a bit of desperation. My smile must have been very convincing. Usually I actually had to do something to him before he began backtracking, but I suppose the thought of being my personal chauffeur was finally sinking in. “I shouldn’t have forced you to take the bet.”

I waited a minute, just to watch him squirm and debated dragging it out to make him suffer, but thought better of it when I realized he could leave me to walk home. Besides, I had somehow managed to make what could actually be a friend.

“That’s all right,” I said. “You can drive me into Montrose this weekend.”

He’d begun to smile, but it disappeared with the realization that I wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Giving me a nasty look, he wandered off. Rachel went to sit with the large group of friends and I watched them both enviously. They all knew each other. Not just in a ‘go to school together’ way, but in a ‘known each other since birth’ way. How could I put myself into that? That was what I wanted. The comfort in knowing I could talk to someone other than Tim or Justin.

My eyes fell on Tristan. I found in nearly impossible not to look at him, as if he were a magnet for my eyes. He, on the other hand, had only thrown me a curious glance before the start of the hike.

Rachel stood and walked around their semi-circle and sat down by his side. Her hand slid along his thigh. He pushed it off, but didn’t move away from her. It was impossible to tell if they were together or not, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of subjecting myself to any more displays of touchy-feely stuff.

I finished my lunch and wandered over to the edge of the summit. A cool breeze rushed by me, blowing strands of my hair loose from the silk scarf holding my hair back. No one could say I was an outdoorsy kind of girl, but it was impossible to deny the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.

I approached Justin from behind and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m heading back down. I’ll meet you at the car, okay?”

“We’re all leaving in a few.”

“I know. I just need…” My words trailed off as he turned back to Rachel.

“Yeah, sure,” he said distractedly, gazing at Rachel, who seemed oblivious to his interest.

While Rachel’s continuous chatter had dominated the walk up, the journey back down was quiet. Halfway down the mountain, I stopped at a fallen tree resting beside the path and dropped my pack, enjoying the ray of light that fell across me. I sat on the rough wood and moisture dampened my jeans, but I didn’t care. Having a wet butt wasn’t going to hurt as much as my legs if I didn’t rest. Sipping water from my bottle, I leaned back to gaze up at the sky peeking through the tree branches.

Ten minutes later faint voices echoed from up the trail, I stood and stretched my legs, already feeling the muscles tightening. I pulled my hoodie from my bag and wrapped it around my waist covering the wet spot on my butt. The voices were getting louder so I slung my pack over one shoulder, moving swiftly to keep a bit of distance between the others and me.

I rounded a bend and stopped abruptly. Blocking the path was a white wolf, its milky fur broken only by a gray patch at the base of its head. But unlike the other animals I’d passed along the way, this animal stood his ground. Its lips curled up revealing sharp teeth and a savage growl rumbled from it.

I couldn’t move. Of all the stupid times to not be able to run and hide.

The wolf’s head lifted and it sniffed the air, testing my scent, then it lowered slowly. With hooded eyes, its back arched and its muscles tensed in preparation to spring. I screamed silently at my legs to move, hell even a twitch would have helped, but nothing.

Voices drifted closer and I might have been able to understand what they were saying if the pulsing sound of blood rushing through me weren’t drowning out everything else. The wolf froze and we stared at each other while he contemplated my fate. From the corner of my eye, I could see a small group of the others come around the bend and stop. The wolf vibrated with intent as if still trying to decide whether or not to attack.

“Don’t move, Janie,” Justin said softly. “Whatever you do, don’t run.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. At this point, I couldn’t even feel my legs and he thought I was going to run? One of the guys stepped in front of me. At his movement, the wolf straightened up, shaking its head and giving another snarl. Another few people stepped up and the wolf turned and darted into the woods.

No one spoke. They all just stood there staring wide-eyed at me in confusion. I couldn’t decide if it was because I’d almost died in an animal attack or because the wolf hadn’t liked me as much as they’d expected it to. Silence surrounded us, until Justin threw his arm across my shoulders, squeezing tightly.

“Damn, Janie, now I know why you stick to the library.” His laugh was forced, but the joke worked and I slumped against him, the ice draining from my veins and an uncontrollable chuckle burst from me.

This time as we continued walking, I didn’t linger at the back of the crowd. Instead, I was safely entrenched in the center with Rachel trying valiantly to distract me with some Hollywood tabloid story. Her voice was strangely familiar and drowned out the quietness the wolf had left in its wake. No one else seemed to know what to say. They moved quickly down the trail, occasionally glancing at me.

Rachel’s constant chatter also gave me the freedom to follow Tristan’s movements. His bobbing head was the only thing that actually worked in making me forget the near wolf attack. I stared at the back of his head, wishing I could run my fingers through the thick curls.

When we reached the lot, I took Justin’s keys and I threw my bag in the trunk. I leaned against the car, unwilling to wait in its confining heat while Justin finished his flirting, but unable to stand on my own. Despite the twenty minutes that had passed since I’d run across the wolf, I still had to force my body to follow the simple command of stepping forward and standing.

Tristan wound his way through the group and began walking towards me. Not me, his car. I scooted around to sit on the front bumper as he came around to his car’s driver side. He gave me a curious smile and opened the door. Tossing his pack into the back seat, he looked up at me again. Shivers ran down my back.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I...I-”

Whatever idiotic comment I was going to make went unsaid as Rachel bounded up to us. She looped her arm through Tristan’s and smiled like she’d won the lottery.

“God, I’m so exhausted. Let’s get out of here.” She tugged on his arm before dropping it and going around to her door. She pulled it open. “Janie, you should come to the diner sometime. It’s about the only place for any of us under fifty to go.”

I nodded, but not with any real intention.

“No need to worry about wolves in town,” Tristan said, a half smile tipping his lips up. He slid into the car and I shifted to watch them pull away. For just a moment, I met his blue eyes in the side mirror.

I spent the ride home convincing Justin that I was fine and by the time we pulled into the driveway, it was back to our normal quiet acceptance of each other’s presence. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Maybe it was denial, but I didn’t do strange well. After the whole necklace thing the other day, I wasn’t willing to spend my precious sanity debating what was so wrong with me that a wolf would willingly eat me and not the others.

Later that night, Tim and I sat on the couch watching a rerun of our favorite medical drama.

“How was the hike?” Tim asked as the credits rolled.

“It was alright. I think I even made a friend.” I threw that in knowing it would make Tim beyond happy.

“Wonderful! So tell me about this friend.”

“Hmm… her name is Rachel and she didn’t fawn all over Justin. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who doesn’t think he’s God’s gift to women.”

Tim laughed. “I’m really impressed, Janie. You’re usually miserable anytime you have to be around people.”

I rolled my eyes at him and stuck out my tongue. “Thanks, Tim. I love you, too!”

Laughing at my expression, he switched the TV off and gave my head a pat goodnight. “Night, sweetheart.”

I swatted at his hand, loving that Tim constantly ignored my protests to his rare and random parenting motions. “Night, Tim.”

A faint pulsing grew behind my eyes as the stress of the day brought on a headache. One of the therapists I’d been to suggested that the physical pain was my mind’s way of expressing the emotional pain I was feeling.
No duh
. I closed my lids and began slowly breathing, counting each inhale and exhale, using meditation to stop the progression of the pain.

I must have laid there for over an hour before the pain was gone. Justin had come in and, after one look at me, gone straight to his room. I arched my back and heard it give a couple pops, then stood up and made my way to my bedroom. Tim always said that a good night’s dream would cure anything. I wonder what he would say if he knew my dreams were really nightmares and what I really needed was to escape
from
them, not to them.

Chapter 3

The sweet notes of Brahms’s Lullaby drift across the gentle waves. Sunlight hits the rocky sand, creating a shore of black diamonds, blinding me to the absoluteness of what was to come. Trepidation tosses around inside me. I’ve been here before. Countless times I had stood, gazing intently at the woman approaching me. My mother. She wears a shimmering black gown, almost blending into the diamond beach. Her hair spirals down her back in a riot of curls. Her beauty is overwhelming. Her soft smile enthralls me.

Every time I stand there waiting for her to come to me, I try to move. Whether to her or away from her, I don’t know, but I am frozen in place. It is always the same. Futile to fight it, but I do.

Finally, she is before me and she runs her cold fingers down my face, coming to rest on my chest. There is wrenching pain. She draws her hand back. In her palm lay my heart, still beating. She twists around and places it in the mouth of a white wolf that appears at her side.

Gone is the loving mask meant to deceive me, in its place is the hideous face of my true mother. “I wish I’d done it sooner,” she says.

I try to speak, to beg her to love me, to say that she doesn’t really mean it, but my voice is powerless, silent in the midst of my anguish. She wraps her hands around my neck, squeezing firmly, intent on my death. I open my mouth to scream. The only sound to fill the space is the howl of a wolf.

Bolting upright, a scream lodged in my throat. The shuddering gasps I pulled in had my body quivering. I flicked on the bedside lamp and ran a hand across my face, feeling the tears staining my cheeks.

It had been two months since the last dream if I didn’t count the hallucination from the other day. Feelings of being powerless, unloved, and terrified, coiled within me as strong as they had after the first time I’d had one.

Tim didn’t know the specifics of them, just that they were distressing. There had been no way to hide the cries that erupted from me, or the fact that for months I fought off sleep. I couldn’t talk about them with Tim. We never discussed Elin, which was another reason I couldn’t tell him about the vision. Not that it was a real vision. It had been a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation or dehydration or something. Heck, it could have been some repressed memory for all I knew.

Flopping back onto my feather pillow, I looked at my alarm clock. Seven forty-three. I silently cursed Tim’s summer rule of no sleeping past eight. Going back to sleep would just make it harder to wake up when the alarm went off. I rolled out of bed and lumbered down the hall to the kitchen, went straight for the coffee and filled a cup halfway. I sat across from Justin, inhaling the scent of the coffee. It was about all I did with it. The idea of actually drinking it didn’t appeal to me, but the smell of freshly brewed coffee was amazing.