Wolf at the Door (8 page)

“It’s my fault.  Things are going so much faster than I planned.  I haven’t had the chance to explain everything, to teach you what you need to know.  It’s just a title, a stupid fucking title like in the story.  In the legends and myths it’s always the Huntsman, so as time passed that’s what they started calling themselves, Huntsmen, after the original, the first of their kind.”  Raylan’s behind him then, nuzzling his face into the side of Darin’s neck in a gesture that seems both apologetic and reassuring.

  “You mean like in Little Red Riding Hood?”  Darin’s joking, his tone trying for levity, for something to lessen the almost overwhelming tension that’s taken over his house.  He doesn’t expect Raylan to nod against his neck, for him to huff out another breath and then pull back, his face drawn in serious lines as he begins to speak again.

“Exactly.  The details have been changed, warped really, but it still has the basic characters pretty much correct.  We wolves know the truth, know that the wolf was peaceful and only wanted its mate, and that the Huntsman was just another frightened human who didn’t understand what he’d stumbled across.  But he was the first, and his story spread and was twisted with his fear, and his one became many, and there was no way for the truth to spread as quickly as his lies.”

There are certain parallels that make Darin vaguely uncomfortable, similarities that make him want to laugh at the fact that apparently he’s stepped into a Grimm’s fairytale without realizing it.  That humor doesn’t last long though because he remembers that the original fairytales were warnings and never really ended happily.

“What happened to them?”  He can’t stop himself from asking the question.  He can’t stop himself from thinking that maybe, just maybe, if things didn’t end as badly in the true story as they did in the one he’s always known, then maybe there’s a chance for him and Raylan to get out of this alive.

“To the wolf and its mate?”  Raylan’s voice is a low whisper into the shell of his ear, his warm breath sending chills down Darin’s spine as it washes over the sensitive skin.

“Yeah.”

“They lived, Darin.  They lived and they prospered and their numbers swelled and flourished and spread.  In the end they won.  In the end, all the Huntsman had left were his lies.”

Darin feels a grin spread across his face slowly, a razor sharp and pleased thing that he thinks should do Raylan proud.  He nudges Raylan gently in the stomach with his elbow to get him to back off a bit as he picks his pack up off of the bed and heads to the hall closet to get a coat.  Even if he doesn’t need it now there’s no telling how long this might take so he figures that it’s better safe than sorry.  His hand hovers over the red hoodie that he always wears, but thoughts of blending in and camouflage are racing through his mind so he reaches past it to grab a sturdy black pullover.  Raylan stops him, a large hand reaching past him and snagging the red hoodie by the sleeve and tugging it off the hanger.

“Wear this one.  Might not be the smartest move, but I’m kind of attached to it.”  Darin can hear the smile in Raylan’s voice and his own lips quirk once again in response even as he’s setting the pack down and tugging the hoodie over his head.

When he’s got everything situated, the pack settled firmly across his shoulder and everything he can think of in place, Darin can only stare at the thick wood of his front door in silence for a moment.  He takes a deep breath as he looks up at Raylan and nods his head.  He’s as ready as he’s going to be, as ready as he knows how to be, to undertake something so serious, so potentially deadly.

“Alright.  Let’s do this.”  Darin tries to make his voice firm and confident. He’s pretty sure he fails, but the point is that he tried in the first place.

Raylan leans down and kisses him again, tongue sweeping into his mouth without hesitation, dominating every crease and crevice like he’s staking a claim.  Darin is pretty sure that’s fairly accurate.  Still it tastes like a promise, like something dangerously close to devotion, and even though it’s a bit overwhelming and so soon, Darin can almost feel an answering vow echoing in his own heart.  They draw away from each other slowly, lips lingering against one another, reluctant to part even though they know they don’t actually have a choice.  Raylan rests his forehead against Darin’s, hands coming up to catch on his waist as they take strength from one another for a second before Raylan pulls back and stares down at Darin with an almost frightening intensity.

“I’ll go first. You stay close and low and don’t get more than an arm’s length away from me.  If I say run, you run; you do what I say when I say it.  I know you’re strong, Darin, and fast, but I’m stronger and faster and I have tools you don’t have.  Just trust me to get us through this, to get you through this, no matter what.”

Darin nods and a lump is forming in his throat for a second before he can push it back down.  Things are real, almost too real, and he doesn’t want to do this as much as he knows that he has to.  He wants to pull Raylan back into the bedroom and spend the rest of their lives between the sheets, lost in one another without a care in the world.

But he can’t.

“I trust you, Raylan.”  God help him he does.  Even if it’s not been that long, not been nearly long enough at all, he still trusts him, can’t imagine not trusting him.

Raylan pulls the front door open slowly, body crouched, his eyes scanning the yard, and Darin knows that his senses are working overtime, trying to identify anything that might be classified as a threat.  Everything’s quiet and calm and after a few seconds some of the tension seems to drain out of Raylan’s shoulders.  He straightens slowly until he’s back to his impressive height even as he turns to usher Darin through the door and to his side.

Darin takes a step outside, goes to draw the door closed behind him when he realizes that he forgot to grab his keys off of the hook.  He ducks back inside to grab them, and that’s when the front of the door splinters and cracks as a bullet lodges itself deep into the wood right where his head had been just seconds before.

Chapter Twelve

Darin surprises himself with how quickly he reacts.  He’s back inside the house, heart beating hard and fast in his chest, and he slams the door shut and throws the bolt as soon as Raylan comes barreling back inside as well.  Raylan’s hands are all over him then, running across his hair, trailing across his face and tugging at his clothes as he frantically searches for injuries.

“I’m fine!  Raylan, I’m fine!  The bitch missed, she missed I swear.”  Raylan seems to believe him because in the next second he’s tugging Darin back down the hall and towards the kitchen and the back door.

“She has to have been waiting in that stretch of trees across the street.  She’s down wind and far enough away that I couldn’t catch her scent.  She could’ve been there for hours, waiting for the both of us to come out at the same time.  We’ll have to go out the back and make a break for the thick woods.  I’ll move better in the forest and it’ll make it harder for her to get a clean shot.”  Raylan’s cautious when he approaches the sliding glass doors. He sticks close to the wall, arm out to make sure that Darin is safe and secure as well even as he looks out at the backyard through the slats in the large blinds that cover the doors.

Raylan turns back to look at Darin, his eyes bright and serious as he seems to reach some sort of decision.  In a few quick moves he kicks off his shoes and strips, bundling his borrowed shirt and pants into a ball and thrusting them out to Darin, who takes them instinctively.  Darin stares at Raylan for a moment in confusion before he snaps out of it and shrugs the pack off of his shoulder to quickly stuff the discarded clothes and shoes inside.

“We get out and we get to my house.  It’s far enough out of the way that she shouldn’t have been able to track me back to it and even if she has I know every inch of it.  We get there and I’ll have home field advantage.  You’ll be safe, and I’ll be able to take the bitch down.”   Raylan’s stretching as he talks, acres of tanned skin and rippling muscles catching Darin’s attention even in their current situation.

All Darin can really do is nod his agreement and watch as Raylan reaches out and tugs the sliding door open before he moves away to drop to his hands and knees on the tiled floor.  The change, when it overtakes him, is similar to what Darin had seen before and yet so completely different.  Before it had been about watching something wild be contained, watching wolf become man and dark rippling fur give way to smooth tanned skin.  Now it’s about watching something being released. It’s about watching as Raylan’s bones shift and change as the wolf comes rushing out, as skin sprouts thick dark fur that spreads like wildfire.

It’s a quick process, quicker than the way he’d changed when he was injured, and even if it makes Darin want to cringe at the sound of shifting bones he still wants to watch it again and again.  He wants to catalogue it, study the way Raylan’s body twists and arches as the wolf breaks through the surface.  It’s neither the time nor the place for things like that so Darin does his best to push those urges to the back of his mind.  It’s not really hard to do because Raylan’s gaining his feet in the next second, his wolf form just as massive as Darin remembers.

Raylan moves towards Darin slowly, almost cautiously like he’s afraid he’s going to spook him, but Darin meets him halfway and they press their foreheads together just like the last time.  Raylan moves back first and crouches down to present his back to Darin, who gets the message quickly.  He doesn’t argue, doesn’t spend a moment trying to second-guess Raylan’s command.  They’ve already wasted too much time as it is, and Darin trusts Raylan.  So he hitches the pack back up onto both shoulders, checks the straps and then steps up and slings a leg over Raylan’s back so that he’s sitting astride the giant wolf.

He has enough time to settle himself and grip thick fur in both of his hands before Raylan starts moving.  Raylan’s out the open door like a shot, ears perked up and at attention, amber eyes glowing intense and focused.  They’re almost all the way across the yard, heading for the gaping hole in Darin’s fence when the shooting starts.  A rapid procession of bullets hit the fence and then the ground as Raylan zigzags his way across the yard.  Darin plasters himself across the wolf’s back, ducking his head down as low as he can and pulling his legs and arms in as well.  He can only hope that the thick pack will be enough to protect his back.

Then they’re out of the yard and streaking like an arrow across the small clearing between his land and the forest.  It’s amazing and frightening, the feeling of having so much raw power beneath him, of feeling Raylan’s muscles stretch and tighten in this form that’s so different than anything Darin is used to.  Then they hit the trees and Raylan seems to come alive even more.  He’s in his element, Darin can tell, weaving in and out of the trees like he was born to move through the forest and maybe he actually was.

Raylan’s long powerful legs are eating up the ground beneath them in long loping strides when the first explosion nearly unseats Darin.  It takes both of them by surprise and forces Raylan to veer hard to the right and then scramble to regain his footing as Darin almost slides off of his back.  The blast is relatively small; it’s not big enough to do anything but startle Raylan, but it does send up a shower of dirt and debris that pelts down on the back of Darin’s head when he buries his face in Raylan’s fur for protection.

Darin hears a low rumbling growl beneath him, and he knows that Raylan has reached the same conclusion that he has, that once again they’re running on the same wavelength.  While they’d been inside the house, lost in one another in so many different ways, Karen had been hard at work in the surrounding areas.  The explosions she’d rigged weren’t big enough to draw unwanted attention, to expose a secret best kept hidden, but they were also all she would need to keep track of them as they moved through the trees.  Or all she would need to injure a human running on foot.  Darin bites back a curse and concentrates on keeping his head down and making himself as small a target as possible.

Still Raylan doesn’t actually pause; he keeps moving, weaving through the trees and trying his best to avoid any more surprises Karen might have planted.  He’s not completely successful. They run across more than one surprise explosion and once even a shallow ditch that’s lined crudely with what looks like spikes that Raylan avoids with an almost amused snort.  Darin can tell when they get too far into the trees for Karen to have actively trapped anything.  For one, there’s a distinct lack of new explosions or semi-camouflaged traps, but mostly he can tell by the way Raylan relaxes a fraction between his legs.

Darin takes that as a pretty positive sign that they’re in the momentary clear and finally lets himself relax as well and stretch his body out a bit across Raylan’s back.  His muscles have cramped a bit from trying to hold himself so tightly together for what feels like forever.  Darin’s lost track of time and isn’t sure how long they’ve been on the move, but he knows that it couldn’t have actually been that long in the scheme of things.  He’s distracted from his rambling thoughts by the way Raylan begins to slow down, and he sits up a bit straighter so that he can really look around.  The trees are thinning, sunlight is streaming through the leaves much easier than it had before in the deep woods, and Darin realizes that they must be close to Raylan’s house if they’re going to be leaving the relative safety of the forest.

Raylan stops completely at the very edge of the woods, and Darin can see the back of a large cream colored house not too far from where they’re standing.  Darin takes a deep breath and tightens his grip on the thick fur in his hands and squeezes his thighs against Raylan’s sides in encouragement.  Raylan goes still and lifts his face towards the treetops, and Darin can see the way his nostrils flare and he knows that Raylan is scenting the air, attempting to catch anything on the wind that might alert them to danger.  Finally, he seems satisfied, but Darin can tell that he’s still alert, can feel the tension returning to his muscles beneath that thick fur.  Raylan trots forward out of the trees and into the yard, massive head swinging back and forth as he constantly scans their surroundings.