Chapter Thirteen

My pulse drums hard in my ears. Something doesn't feel right, like an uncomfortable pressure sitting on my spine.

Where am I? I twirl around, searching for any semblance of the bathroom I fainted in, but there's only an infinite line of olive walls, with old damask wallpaper peeling down to the dirt-caked floor. Before me, the walls disappear into a whitish fog, reminiscent of the Golden Gate Bridge in the fall.

"What are we supposed to do?" Something whispers, and my heart beats on the muffled voices like a drum.

I whip around to search for the origin, but I only meet with more green walls. Instead of this side fading into fog, this part of the hallway is dark. Dampness fills the area between me and the line of shadows.

One side is light, one side is shadow. The literature nerd inside me should see this as a metaphor of sorts, a warning. Perhaps deep down, I do, but when my feet shuffle towards the light, it doesn't feel like a decision I've consciously made. I just move.

I take three strides when my name ripples past my head in a gust of cold wind. The noise echoes until it disintegrates into the light.

"Shelland..."

I have no idea who the voices are coming from, but they leave a strange itch beneath my skin, like I should recognize the altered tones.

"Help me..."

I take a look towards the darkness. I know I shouldn't go there, I can feel the fear bubbling in my gut, but my body pivots without me telling it to and step by step, I close in the space between us.

"Who's there?" I croak, though my esophagus feels like it's coated in chalk. "Hello?"

HELLO

Hello

hello

Silence.

I push louder, "Hello?"

HELLO

Hello

hello

"No!" The violent burst ricochets down the hall, vibrating small rocks across the floor.

"We can't do this! It's not right," a woman sobs. The sound is frantic, terrified, and my stomach lodges into my throat. I know that voice. I've heard it countless times before.

Closer and closer I get to the shadows. Despite the warning blooming in my gut, I keep going until I'm just outside the line.

"Mom?" I call into the dark. I wait for the echo, for the whispers to call to me, but somehow there's nothing. No voices, no whispers, no wind. The loudest noise in the hall is my pounding heart.

As I begin to turn back, the wall of shadow waves, like a first drop of rain disturbing a glassy lake. However, these ripples don't dissipate...they're growing, intensifying as if trying to latch onto some sort of rhythm.

Faster, faster the barrier ripples. So strong, it's nearly pounding against the walls.

An arm bursts from the shadow in a billowing plume of smoke. Skeletal fingers made of coal scrape along my skin and wrap around my ankle. In an instant, the arm rips my leg from under me, and I slam into the hard floor, paralyzed in breathless fear.

"Sssshell..." the creature hisses as it slowly drags my foot into the barrier. "Let us in..."

I kick and cry out, desperately trying to fight out of the skeleton's iron grip. My shoulders burn from scraping against the carpet, but I keep kicking until I hear the crack of bones snapping against my boot.

"Conall!" Another set of fingers wrap around my skin, this time taking hold of my wrist. I'm about to fling my closed fist upward until my body is yanked upright.

I recognize the scent of snow before the vertigo subsides.

"Beck?" I connect with his icy eyes. His hair is wild, body trembling like he's trying to catch his breath. How long has he been running?

"Go!" He rips me from the shadows, footsteps booming against the floor like a giant's as we plow into the lit end of the hallway.

The fog begins to seep between us, creating a thick partition of murky, humid clouds.

"Whatever you do, don't let go!" He calls back, but he already looks like a faded silhouette.

"Beck? Slow down. I can't see."

"Keep going, Conall!" Beck yells, but he sounds a million miles away.

"Beck!"

"Raif, we can't do this to her." The voice is soft, melancholy, and immediately I know it's Mom. "We have no right."

A blue light blinks in the distance, illuminating the haze within a ten foot radius.

"No right?" A man responds, voice thick with anger. "They'll kill her if we don't!"

"Dad?" I walk forward, somehow understanding this light is my Polaris.

"Raif, what did you do?" My mom sobs.

Once I'm nearly a foot from the door, the source of the light is revealed to be a glass lamp hanging above a wood door. The lamp is antique in shape and green like aged copper, just like the lamp that used to hang above the steps to our old house—the one we had before Mom and Dad separated.

I run my fingers along the grooves of the wood, suddenly feeling like I'm seven again, trying to sneak into my parent's bedroom after waking from a terrifying nightmare.

The door creaks open with little pressure and the fog at my feet slowly seeps into the blank area. In a matter of seconds, the fog stretches and dances across the empty space, forming and solidifying into walls and doors and dressers and nightstands. Once the smoke takes the shape of a king-sized bed, I understand where I'm at.

Between me and the bed frame, the smoke takes the shape of my Mom and Dad.

Mom's face is red and puffy, strained from excessive crying. Though she looks tired, she looks younger, and even a bit stronger than when I saw her last night.

"What did you do?" She repeats. "We can't—"

"Hey, take a breath," Dad says in a calmer voice. He's still irritated for being questioned, but he's holding back. Neither of us can stand to see Mom cry.

"I told you I would take care of it, and I did. Sarah—"

Anger gleans across my Mom's face, "You went to Sarah? I asked you to keep her out of this!"

"What else was I going to do? I watched Shelland nearly died last night. I refuse to do it again."

Mom starts sobbing again the moment Dad touches her face. In an attempt to console her, he lifts her off the bed and into his wide arms. They stay like this for a long moment, almost long enough that I feel weird for watching them, but then Dad pulls away and walks to the opposite side of the room.

I can't quite make out what he's rummaging through the dresser drawers for, but after a moment he strides towards Mom again, extending out the object in his fist.

"Here," he gruffs. When she takes the item, I catch a glimpse of the translucent, plastic bottle with the impossible-to-open white cap.

"Shell's iron pills?"

He nods. "I had Sarah enchant them."

Mom's confusion melts into a dark scowl. "No! We're not using magic on our child, Raif! She's just a girl! She's our little girl!"

"Do you really think I'd give our daughter something harmful?" Dad growls, and follows it up with a frustrated exhale. "These will work. They have to."

"I don't know if I can live with myself."

"Would you rather they kill her? Because the second they find her, they will." Dad moves across the opening again, and this time takes a seat on the bed beside her. "They'll suppress everything. Even her memories. They'll erase anything that has to do with magic. Sights, sounds, smells..."

Mom sighs, "I don't know, Raif. Is this right? She can't consent to something like this. She doesn't even understand why she has to take the regular pills."

"We're not going to tell her," Dad says it firmly, and before Mom can protest, he adds, "These will help her live a normal life. A good long life that not even her blood can pollute."

Mom nods, staring blankly at the bottle in her palm.

"You weren't ready for that."

Relief washes over me when Beck moves past me. I watch as he steps into the room. My parents don't react, but keep going on as if we're the ones that are simulated. Eventually, they move out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

"My parents...they did this to me." I know this is a dream, but everything feels so real. The deep crack splitting apart my heart feels real.

"Beck, how do I get out of here?"

"How am I supposed to know?" He shrugs. "It's your head."

I groan, "Why is it that you're just as big a pain in the ass in my head as you are in the real world."

He only gives me a mocking grin in reply.

"Where are my skates when I need them?"

He clutches his gut, pretending to be wounded in the spot I first sliced him at. He doesn't know I'm only partially kidding.

"Sssshell..."

Beck freezes. "Its here."

"What? What's here?"

"Let usss in..."

"What is that? Beck? Do you know what that is?"

"We need to move, now."

He grabs my hand and nearly rips it out of my socket as he pulls me out of the door I watched my parents leave from. I can feel the shadows creeping behind us as we run down the flight of stairs, and weave our way through the smoke-filled first floor.

When our feet hit the grass, a woman screams behind us. The voice is terrified, and it sounds just like Mom.

I try to rip out of Beck's arms, but his hold is made of iron. Just as he tells me to not to look back, an explosion knocks us to the ground, licking my spine with a gust of heat as wood and glass splinters blow past us.

"Mom!"

"Conall!" Beck says against my hair. "We have to keep moving."

"No! We have to go back! They're dying in there!"

"They're not real!" He growls. "We can't stop."

My stomach lodges in my throat. I want to throw up or scream or drink a glass of water, but I can't do anything but try to breathe past the lump.

He's right. This isn't real. It can't be.

"Come on," Beck peels me off the ground and then we're moving faster than I have time to process.

We run through slush and gravel and snow and trees. Faster, faster, faster until our legs feel like mush, but Beck tells me to keep running through the forest.

Don't look back. Keep fighting. We're almost there.

Just when I realize he's too far ahead, I collide hard into a black figure and bounce backward onto the ground.

A noise gurgles through the cold air. The black wolf is bigger than any creature I've ever seen before, its paws nearly three times the size of the native wolves I once saw at Glacier National Park. The creature is growling low, its body ready to pounce, and just when I brace for impact, tree branches snap in the distance.

The wolf rips its neck toward the sound and barrels down the mountainside. I'm relieved, ready to wake from this emotionally draining nightmare...until I hear Beck scream my name.

Before I can tell my body what to do, my legs are upright and pulling my body toward the wolves. I'm plowing through deep snow, snapping branches and rustling bushes as I struggle to keep up behind them.

The air is filled with the light humming of silence and deep pants. The suspended moment in time makes the hair on my skin prickle as I brace myself for whatever wicked will occur. I feel a surge of body heat around me; like that horrific feeling of being watched when I'm utterly alone.

Then, branches snap again, and a high-pitched howl echoes through the trees. For some reason, I know it's Beck, like I can feel him calling to the creature.

It's going to kill him, I realize.

"Beck!" I take off down the path the large creature had plowed and follow it until I nearly tumble down a slope on the edge of the highway. I see Beck standing across the road, on the opposite side of the guardrail, and just as I'm about to step foot onto the snow-covered asphalt, the creature barrels out of the woods, salivating and raging.

The creature is like a wolf on steroids. It's massive, towering over seven feet tall, with a hunched and protruding spine, each vertebrae jets out like the edge of a cliff. I watch as it grapples piles of snow into its hands and drops low, as if it's going to launch itself over a hurdle.

But before the wolf takes off, the wind picks up a cloud of thick snow and blows it through the air, as if to build a wall between the creature and Beck.

In the faint distance, a rattling sounds, as if heavy chains are clinking together. Despite the temporary blindness, the massive wolf launches himself into the white cloud. Seconds after he disappears, echoes of metal crunching and glass shattering sound through the mountains.

Brakes squeal in the white powder, metal scrapes against metal.

When the dust settles, a semi-truck is displayed, the front end completely smashed inward. Blood is splattered across the road, dripping from the jagged edges of metal protruding from the hood.

Twenty feet south of the destroyed truck, I see my silver car parked, headlights still beaming.

I'm slammed with a heavy punch of déjà vu. Everything seems so familiar. Have I dreamed this before? The car, the wolves, the bloody prints on the ground...

A groan sounds out and then a flash of orange shifts behind the Semi's crushed windshield. Without hesitation, I move forward, climbing up the side to jimmy the door open.

"Hey, you okay in there?"

Inside, the driver slowly moves, rubbing his cut brow under the bright orange hunter's cap.

"Are you hurt?

"I think I hit someone," he says, but already I know it wasn't human.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "It was an animal."

"No, there was someone. Someone was in the road." His eyes connect to mine, so sincere and so frightened. They're glowing green from the little light on the dashboard. The man goes on and on about a superhuman crippling his car as I radio for help. Why does he keep calling it human? Is it to rationalize that he did not in fact see a massive werewolf?

Werewolf, I realize. That creature was a werewolf! Was it one of the Elite that Beck mentioned? If it could debilitate a logging truck, what was it going to do to Beck?

Beck.

Immediately, I hop out of the truck and run to the spot where I last saw him standing. All of this feels so familiar, but I can't put my finger on how or why.

"Hello?"

The bushes rattle and a shadow crosses between the trees, snapping twigs as it runs down the slope. I follow the shadow further down until my feet slap against thick ice. It takes me all of a second to understand that I'm now standing on Cascadian Lake, the very lake where, just a mile down, Dad and I always practice for Nationals.

A howl pierces the serenity, filling the sky with rage and promises of vengeance, rattling birds from the safety of the trees.

"Beck?" I call out, though deep down, I know it isn't him howling.

Silence follows for only a second, and then a sharp crack rips through the air, like metal snapping.

Bushes are rustling and full trees are splintering, and when I turn back towards the hill, I see the back of the semi hurtling straight for me like a bullet and my body is the target practive. Logs are spilling out of the unhinged cage, bouncing off of the hillside and tumbling into the thick ice.

Straight ahead, a log is hurtling towards me, spinning rapidly in the air like it's a nail being drilled into a wall.

This isn't real, I tell myself. I close my eyes.

The weight of a thousand houses slams me down, crushing the life from me. Briefly, I wonder if this is what the wicked witch felt before she was pancaked between a house and Oz.

My spine rams into something sharp and solid and cold. All I hear is ice shattering and my brain rattling inside my skull. Everything is black, cold, and still, and all that's left to focus on is my still-beating heart.

I open my lids to a pair of eyes as stark as the ice besides me, caccooned in white, brown, and beige ragged fur. Long bits of hair brush across my skin with the wind, but his eyes render me speechless.

I close my eyes again. I remember this. I remember Beck.

When I open my eyes again, it's not a furry muzzle above me, but the light complected, blue-eyed Beck that somehow managed to both save and shatter my life.

He brushes a lock of dark hair behind his ear and I wait in anticipation as his lips part. In a single breath, he says, "Are you stupid, or just slow?"

I didn't notice it before, but this time I recognize the way the corner of his brow twitches, matching the slight tug of barely-there smile.

I'm still in shock. He saved me. Just like he said he did. A second too late and I would have been mashed up fish food.

"How did you—" I start to ask, but then I remember that I'm stuck in dream limbo.

"Slow, it is," he says. His tone is still harsh, but that threat of a smile still remains. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"

I shake my head no, and he goes off on a tangent about stupidity. I should be listening, but I can't focus on his words when I realize that Beck is hovering above me and he's one hundred percent, stark naked.

"Conall? Are you even listening to me?"

Another howl ripples through the air, and Beck's face garners my full attention again.

"Shit, we have to go," he says. The smile has been wiped from his lips. "He can't know I let you see me. If he does, he'll kill us both."

Before I can brace myself, Beck grabs hold of my wrists and practically rips my arms from the sockets when he yanks me up.

I cry out as a hot burn sears across my side.

"You hurt?" Beck takes a quick look at my ribcage. "Dammit! Where are your keys?"

I suddenly feel so far away. "Um, they're still in the ignition."

Everything feels fuzzy and warm, like I've fallen asleep by a fireplace.

"Don't fall asleep," he commands, "Wake up."

"It's okay, Beck." I say groggily. "I remember now."

"Conall?"

A liquid is splashed onto my face and I'm ripped out of my subconscious shivering, gasping for air. I rub the water from my eyes and when I open them, I meet with the satisfied smile of Olivian Lucke.

"God, we should have done that fifteen minutes ago," she says with a smirk.

Reflexively, I stretch out my arms, ready to launch at her. But when I move, two firm hands grip tight on my shoulders and rip me backwards, gluing me against the wall of the girls' bathroom.

"Conall, calm your shit." Beck's body blocks my view of Olivian, and I couldn't be more relieved. Though his act as a tour-guide through the maze of my mind was just a dream, somehow I feel different towards him...connected.

He was telling the true this whole time. Beck had saved my life.

His brows pull tight together as he rakes me over. "What's wrong with you?"

I take a jagged breath and try to concentrate, just breathe, but when I meet his eyes again, I'm surged with the sudden desire to touch him. To brush back his wild hair the way he did when we were at the lake.

"I remember," I push out in one breath. "I remember you."