“Come on, boys,” My mom shouts through the open window. The crappy 80s Daytona pulls up to the sidewalk and Danny and I rush to get inside. It’s warm in the car, making the musty smell more prominent. “Where to, Mr. Bonadio?”

“Back past the school,” Danny replies. “The road to my house is just past the farmer’s market on Greenhorn Street.”

“You got it.”

Mom pulls out of Maple Shore’s parking lot and takes a left. I glance into the side mirror, watching the park shrink in the distance and listen to the radio humming with a slight amount of white noise. It can’t be helped. There are only a few stations that come in clear but they all play country or oldies or the same pop songs over and over. I’d rather have a little interference than unappealing music.

“How was basketball,” my mom asks. “You smell like you had a great time.”

Danny holds in a snicker unsuccessfully while I just roll my eyes. “It was fun,” I tell her. “My team won.”

“Yeah, Briggs kicked ass!”

“Language,” my mom warns. Danny raises his hands in innocence while it’s my turn to suppress a laugh. “I’m glad you guys had fun.”

I lean back in my seat as a comfortable quiet settles in the car. The radio starts coming in clearer as we near the school. This town takes 20 minutes to get anywhere decent but the driving alone is well worth it. The chimes of the trees quiver in the wind and scatter their colorful leaves on the road. I smile and mouth the lyrics pouring from the speakers. This place could be good for us while it lasts.

Then I see her.

Her hair is up in a ponytail today though it’s still messy with a few strands tucked behind her ear. She’s hunched into her black peacoat as she walks her dog in the direction we’re moving in. Even without seeing her face, I know it’s her. Vito senses it. As quickly as our car reaches her, we pass her and I finally catch the features on her face.

The lonely girl’s face is cast down in concentration but I make out her thick eyelashes and full lips. Her awkwardness becomes her, like a quiet beauty with held up by strength of spirit and turmoil from her past. In a flash, she’s behind us but it was all it took for my breath to stumble. Vito draws back as if he is preparing for her attack. I hush him silently and turn around in my seat.

“Who’s that,” I ask a bit more forcefully than I mean to. “She’s in my class and she has yet to even look my way.”

“Getting a big head there aren’t you?” My mom pretends to be busy with the road but I see the smile pulling the corner of her mouth. I send her a look before turning around to talk directly to Dan.

“I’m just… people usually have the common courtesy to say hello to a new classmate.”

“Don’t bother,” Danny tells me with a shrug. “Kayla isn’t a people-person.”

I wait for more of an answer but Dan stares out the window deep in thought. I shift back around and slouch in my seat. His unsettling answer makes Vito uneasy but I just turn the radio up again and try to think of relaxing runs through the trees.

“Right,” I mutter with my unspoken words disintegrating into the air.

We pull up to Danny’s home ten minutes later. He too lives in an isolated house close by Hìtwike Park, though on another side. It’s an older home with beautiful Victorian architecture. The roof comes to multiple points like towers of a castle and back then it must have belonged to a wealthy family. The wrap-around front porch has obviously been repainted but the second floor balcony is peeling at the sides. My mouth gapes open as I get up to let my friend out.

“I would not have guessed you lived here,” I tell him flat out. Danny shrugs.

“It’s an old family house,” he says. “It’s cool but intense.”

“What do you mean?”

Danny turns back with another heave of his shoulders. “Nothing really. Thanks for the ride Mrs. Briggs.”

My mom waves and I return to my musty passenger seat. I leave my friend and his incredible house in the wake of our car, wondering how on earth someone as chill as Danny comes from a house as elegant as that. I shake my head and turn up the fizzling radio. Vito agrees; it’s just nice to have a friend.

.

Across the table, dad grabs another slice of Italian bread and spreads a hefty layer of butter on top. I normally would do the same, piling food onto my plate from not being able to help myself against my mother’s cooking, but today I’m not as hungry. My mind is too full of questions.

“Do you ever get senses about wolves?” I blurt it out before I knew I wanted to say it. My dad stops chewing and sets his bread next to his bowl of soup.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. People… Does Bishop ever get this uncontrollable vibe around them? There’s someone in my class and Vito doesn’t trust her but she’s never done anything wrong. She doesn’t even look at me. But it’s like I’m not even able to control it, I just have to watch her every move. I’ve never even talked to her.”

“I don’t think I’ve felt anything like that,” he says after a long thought. “If I find a wolf, Bishop feels more at home, even if he doesn’t really like them.”

Mom returns from the kitchen with a crocheted circle and a pot full of green beans. Dad takes the homemade hotplate and places it in the center for her before she finally joins us to eat. I know she heard us from the kitchen and as she serves herself, she inserts her opinion into the conversation.

“Just stay away from them,” she tells me. Dad stares at his plate while mom creases her forehead in concern. “Trust your instincts. Nine times out of ten, they’re the right choice.”

Dad agrees and that ends the conversation. The rest of dinner is them making idle chit-chat of the garden mom wants to grow. It’s debatable we’ll still be here in spring but they talk as if this is the house we’ll live in forever. I know better. I eat my soup, thinking of anything other than planting tomatoes.

Dinner finishes and I retire to bed early. My fingers graze the stair railing as I head up the creaky stairs to the second floor. My room is at the end of the hall and to the left. It’s a medium sized space with plenty of boxes I have yet to unpack. My essentials are in place but I am too lazy to unload the photo albums or the sentimental trinkets I’ve collected over the years. I remove my shirt and toss it aside as I jump backward onto the bed. I don’t bother with the sheets. The cold air feels nice on my muscles sore from today’s workout.

My eyes fix on the ceiling as I grab the tennis ball from my nightstand. It comforts Vito, concentrating his focus to throw it up in the air and having to catch it with one hand. It must be an animal thing. I sigh noisily and allow my thoughts to finally roam free. And they all point to her.

At least I know her name: Kayla. Kayla, the lone girl with a curious strength under a shy exterior. Mom said to stay away but the more I try to think of anything else, the more everything reminds me of her. I’ve seen her face, if only for a split second, but it was all I needed to be hooked on finding out who or what she is. I close my eyes, trying to imagine her face and drifting off from my eventful day.

My sleep is cut short with a sudden screeching of car wheels outside. We lives miles away from people, meaning there shouldn’t be anyone here. I crawl over on my bed to the window, Vito on high alert.  Someone is strutting down the road, silhouetted by headlights shining just out of site. I narrow my sights on him, bringing Vito to the very edges of the powers of containment. The night brightens from my wolf vision and I realize it is a guy around my age with pale blond hair hanging scruffily over his forehead.

The stranger stops suddenly, allowing the dust from the road to settle in the lit air. His eyes are trained on the door of my house with a glint of malice in them. I grip the edge of my bed, not in fear but in dominance. This is my home and I will not let anyone threaten me.

Another noise comes from the trees, closer to my window. This time, a girl walks toward the house. Her hair too is a ghostly pale blonde but she walks with a softer air surrounding her. She wants not to intimidate but to observe. I retreat from my window to find my parents.

“Dad,” I whisper loudly as I descend the stairs. No answer. “Mom! There’s someone outside.”

The kitchen is empty. I return to their room upstairs but they’re nowhere to be found. They were here only a few minutes ago. My parents couldn’t have vanished out of coincidence. My pulse races as I realize I’m alone in the house. I won’t let that stop me from doing everything to protect my home. I grab the poker from the fireplace we haven’t used yet and the phone from the kitchen wall before opening my front door to face the two strangers outside.

“Leave or I’ll call the cops,” I threaten. The main door I leave wide open but screen door bounces behind me. I shouldn’t be out here long. They have no idea who they’re messing with. “I’m serious. One step closer and I’ll… I’ll…”

The boy dressed completely in black isn’t intimidated and if I were him, I wouldn’t be either. He smiles with his shoulders hunched over and bids the girl to my right girl closer to the house. Vito stirs aggressively under my skin. He’s wary and if this were a night of the full moon, he would have torn himself from my human skin and charged us at the strangers already.

“Shit,” I mutter and start to recede into the house. I turn around to pull the screen door open but there’s someone blocking my way. I ram into a man standing about seven feet tall with a gold hoop glinting from his left ear. He pushes me off easily, stunning me from shock and fear. It takes one swing of the 2x4 in his hand to knock me to the floor. I lay barely conscious and unable to raise myself off the floor.

“Grab his wrists,” the giant says. “That’s it. Tie them tight.”

“Hurry up.”

“I got him, boy. Don’t tell me how to do this.”

I groan as I’m dragged away toward the woods. My eyes don’t register their surroundings but I feel every stone my knees catch on. I call for Vito but I can’t feel him. Silence. I try again, begging him to come forth but I receive no response. My wolf is gone and my parents are nowhere to be found. I wrestle with what little strength I have on the ropes around my wrist. Their bristles dig into my skin as does the sticks and dead leaves I’m being scraped over. Slowly, I grow more awake to the danger I’m in and each moment feels more terrifying than the last.

“Help,” I struggle to speak. My throat feels as though I haven’t had a drop of water in days. “Someone, help me!”

“Stop you’re rasping. No one can hear you,” the man dragging me says. “You are ours, little mutt.”

My eyes widen. They know what I am.

I struggle more but I it’s no use. Their ropes are too tightly tied and the giant is pulling me faster than I have time to lift up on my feet. The young girl of the group hurries beside us, holding up the hem of her long white dress so she can keep up.

“Do we have to?”

“Don’t do this now, Ki-ki,” replies the boy I assume is her brother. “You have to. I’m not losing you.”

Ki-ki keeps her lips pressed together so tightly, they look whiter than her skin. Her tone appears grayish as if her pulse barely beats. I almost feel sorry for the girl before remembering she is one of the three kidnapping me. I soon realize they aren’t the only ones.

Voices whisper ahead of us and soon we enter a mass of people clothed in all black. Ki-ki hurries ahead of us, passing the crowd who hurry forward. They surround us instantly, every person helping to restrain me on a large wooden table. My strength is no match. I shout, asking what is going on but no one listens. They’re all too focused on making sure I’m secured and soon enough, my mouth is gagged. The man who pulled me steps forward. His meaty hand rises into the air, hushing the crowd with a single motion. He must be the cult’s leader.

“She will possess,” the giant says. The silence of the night persists for a moment as I inhale through the filthy gag. “And he will belong. She will possess.”

“And he will belong,” the people repeat.

They chant the words and circle around the table. The girl in white looks to those around her with innocent eyes, not as willing as the rest. From her brilliant white dress to the ends of her ashen hair, she contrasts her fellow cult members. They seem almost hungry for whatever is to happen to me while she is hesitant to say the least. Her apprehensions are dismissed and she follows through.

The pale girl hovers her hands above my chest, trying to ignore my muffled pleas. She swallows from the fear clear upon her face but her features relax. My heart thuds in my ears as the sensation begins. It starts like a tickle, as though someone is gliding a feather over my chest. My breath shivers as the sensation grows stronger and more painful.

“Hmmph,” I shout through the gag. “Mmph, stphh!”

Her forearm begins to glow and exotic symbols appear on her skin. I struggle against the ropes unsuccessfully. I may be a wolf but never would I have believed things such as this would exist. The symbols slither like snakes slowly up her arm until they wrap around her neck, making the roots of her hair fly up. A gust of wind surrounds us as the chanting gets louder. Leaves fly about in the cyclone, picking up from the cold November ground.

Then all at once, everything stops. The blonde girl in front of me lets out a sigh as the leaves freeze in mid air and the voices mute. Their lips still move but slowly as if we’ve stopped time.

“I will possess,” Ki-ki whispers softly. She inhales as her pale blonde hair sheds from her scalp and grows back dark chocolate brown locks in its place. I shout frantically into the gag around my mouth. “Let the hound hear his Master. He belongs and I possess.”

I close my eyes in pain as a surge of what feels like electricity shoots through my limbs. Time resumes its normal pace and the tornado circling us dies down. A smile of triumph spreads on the only blond member left. He lifts his shoulders back, proud of Ki-ki.

“Just this last part and you’re safe,” he tells the girl in white. His hand reaches for his pocket and reveals a small folded knife. “We’ll be okay.”

She takes the knife from her brother and slices into her palm. A steady trickle of blood flows down her forearm. Another cult member unties my wrists and holds out my hand. After uncurling my fingers, the girl slices my palm as well and interlaces her fingers with mine. I feel a swell of terror which is then consumed by an icy pulse flowing from her into me.

“I am Kiana Gorski of the Silver Maple Masters,” she tells me. “You are mine.”

The girl, Kiana, flashes her eyes at me. I feel paralyzed. There is nowhere to run and I can’t break free. I’m at the mercy of these people without so much of a murmur of Vito to guide me. Kiana leans in for a kiss upon my forehead. Before her lips are on mine, I sit up in my bed, trashing about with Vito’s warning growl.

My heavy breathing breaks the quiet of the night. I check all around, seeing the familiar bedroom but not believing it to be real. I’m still in my house, atop the covers on my bed. I whip my head around to my alarm clock. It’s a little past 2am. I let out a long exhale and flop back onto my pillow. It was a dream; a messed up, terrifying dream.

“Easy boy,” I mumble out loud. My fingers subconsciously check for the wound on my palm. I find nothing, not even a scar. I laugh at my subconscious scaring myself so viciously. “We’re alright, Vi.”

Vito silently whimpers. It will be a long while until we sleep again tonight. I curl up on my side. That nightmare felt too real but I never left my bed. I hear my mom walk up the steps and down the hall to her room, humming the song we were listening to earlier today. She mutters a hello to my dad and closes the door behind her. All is right and I have nothing to be afraid of.

So why is it my body is still shaking?