Wolven, p.1
Wolven, page 1
Wolven
V.R. Dannenberg
Copyright © 2022 V.R. Dannenberg All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0692832752
ISBN-10: 0692832750
Cover design by: @rebeccacovers on Fiverr
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
reasons not to trip in the woods
super-duper party poopers
shards of glass
french fries and fist fights
a shadow follows
words under the willow
laws of loving
wolves of the woods
the unmistakable scent of blood
lunchtime soap opera
heat, heart, and deep breathing
double-digit losses
and then the night breaks
we let the dogs out
one foot in quicksand, another in mud
midnight promises
surprises, good and bad
dinner with wolves
myths and murmurs
hour of the ghost
knowing’s in the details
scarlet reputations
jaws of the wolf
hell and high water
gloomy Monday
eye of the storm
the waters settle
sounds of the forest
sweat, blood, and dirt
uneasy nights
risky business
roots unseen
supernova
the bad kind of butterflies
the rage of truth
promises in blood and flesh
a taste of something finally right
Acknowledgement
About the Author
About the Author
reasons not to trip in the woods
Jade
The halls of San Clemente High looked apocalyptic in the pale morning light, blotched with the stiff, barely conscious students that milled from locker to friend to classroom. At least I could appreciate the morning sun in the bustling parking lot of the school before having to interact with the infected student body. Every person at the school was counting down the seconds to the last bell of the day, even though the first hadn’t even rang.
I was no different. All the muscles in my body felt heavy with sleep.
“I don’t know that I can do another two months of this,” I said.
Ivy had no time for sympathy.
“You’ve made it this long,” she sighed, tucking her car keys into her backpack. She was twitching at the lips, like being five minutes later than usual to school meant we were going to be marked tardy for the rest of the year. Still, she managed to keep her tone level as usual. “And you only have to get through the day before some rest. You should be proud, Jade. The golden age of your childhood is coming to an end; take advantage and enjoy it.”
“The golden age died with Mom,” I said, biting at the inside of my cheek as we began towards the main quad. I tapped my temple, giving her a smirk. “I’ve been in the dark ages for years now.”
“Well then hopefully you’ll be coming into your Middle Ages.”
“Yikes. I was hoping to keep clear of that for another few decades,” I said.
“What? No, Jade, I was following the history joke—”
“Yep. Got that, thanks.”
I took a sharp turn towards the library and away from her before she could baby me further. I’d caught sight of a familiar face, his nose stuck between the pages... A perfect opportunity to ditch my constantly displeased sister.
Baxter greeted me as soon as he saw me jogging up to our table. The pile of backpacks on the benches around him was normal, though their owners were more missing than usual.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I asked him.
He delicately dogeared the page of his book before pursing his lips.
“I think Elsie is sniffing around for potential bashes for spring break, and Tristan is either catching up with his other beef-heads and/or sniffing around for something to bump against.” Baxter shook his head. “You know how it gets.”
“Lots of sniffing going on,” I said, sitting down beside him.
“You’re right. Now that I think about it, Julio is probably doing some sniffing of his own,” Baxter added with a pinch to his nose. “Either way, I’m just enjoying my book here and playing Keeper of the Backpacks until the bell rings and I’m no longer under any obligation to be a good friend.”
“No one romanticizes like you, Bax,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Oh, but I do love the idea of a good cocaine binge.”
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“Miss Wise! Have you joined the statistic?” Baxter exclaimed, leaning forward. He took his glasses off and blinked the focus in his eyes before adding, “I’m a little offended you didn’t immediately tell me about it.”
“Careful; you’re starting to sound like Elsie, and I can’t handle more than one of her in my life,” I told him. Over his shoulder, I could see Tristan and two of his other friends making their way towards our table. “Besides, Tristan could probably tell you more about it than I could.”
“Dear God, no thank you. I do not need to hear about you that way.”
“Exactly,” I laughed, waving to Tristan.
“Hey, Jade.” Tristan pushed aside the bags at my side so he could straddle the bench, his knee brushing mine. “You look a little rough this morning. Ivy worse than usual?”
“Not particularly,” I said with a shrug, taking the cracker that Baxter just offered me.
Without warning, Tristan leaned over to yank the book out of Baxter’s hands. Baxter, placid as ever, leaned back with only the slightest twitch in his eyebrows to hint his protest.
“Are you doing homework?” Tristan demanded, shaking his head. “It’s almost the end of the school year. You shouldn’t care this much—is it because you’re a nerd? I know you think grades are super important, but there’s no need to be elitist this early in the morning, my brother.”
“Baxter’s always been a fickle pickle,” I said, wagging my finger at Tristan. He caught it in his hand with a scowl.
“What the hell did you just call him?” Tristan’s laugh was infectious. “Are you a fourth grader?”
I rolled my eyes. “You can blame Ivy for that. She’s been on my ass about vocabulary. She thinks God will smite me down for saying such foul phrases. Sometimes I seriously think she wishes she were in Salem during the witch trials. She would have made such a good cattle blower.”
“Whistle blower,” Baxter corrected me.
“She’d have half the town hanged,” I went on. “Elsie included. Look at her, for fuck’s sake.”
I spotted her beelining towards our table, her pale cheeks flushed and her hair looking like a natty bird’s nest from a distance. She wore a fluttery cape over her shoulders, which should have made her look like a tall child but really accentuated her soft shoulders like some sort of mystical cloak. She arrived at the table half out of breath, clutching her bag to her chest.
“You’re really going for the white bitch aesthetic, aren’t you?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at her grungy sandals. “What in the hell are you trying to do to your hair? It looks like you haven’t washed it in days.”
“I read online that the Druids let their hair mat into braids, okay? I don’t think I like it but I want to honor my ancestry,” Elsie said, her nostrils flaring at the accusation. “That’s why they’re called dreads, you know. For the Druids.”
“None of that is correct,” Baxter said into his book.
“Anyway, I think I’m going to take it out tonight,” Elsie said, pulling at a particularly vicious tangle. “It’s uncomfortable and none of the Druids in Outlander had them, so I’m just going to have Marie brush it out and re-dye it green before tonight.”
“What’s tonight?” Tristan asked, nodding a vague farewell to his two beef-heads.
“It’s the full moon, you idiot,” Elsie snapped at him. She glanced around the courtyard before sitting on the bench beside Baxter and leaning towards us with a flash of scandal. “It’s when the cosmic energies are at their most powerful—I thought we could hike out to Bear Rock for some drinks and a smoke.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tristan said, his eyebrows tilted upwards. “Baxter might have a test tomorrow and... gee, I don’t think Jade would be able to get past Ivy.”
“Ivy won’t be a problem,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “As long as I’m there for dinner, she’ll hardly notice if I’m gone after dark. If she somehow notices, I’ll tell her to piss off. What can she do? Tell our Dad?”
“9:30-ish, then?” Elsie asked, glancing about the three of them.
“Sounds good to me,” Tristan said. He wiggled his eyebrows my way. “Gives me time for some ice after practice, hmm?”
After fourth period, I met Elsie at her locker to discuss a text she’d sent me that consisted of eight sad faces with no further context. It’d been a fair enough distraction, boring as the day had been passing.
“Do you remember Jag?” she said, sniffling to her best dramatic effect.
“Who’s that? Your cat?”
“You know I hate cats, bitch,” Elsie said. Her lower lip stuck out in a pout. “He’s the guy who just transferred to my chemistry period. The really hot one that sits two seats down from me—I’ve told you about him a million times, Jade!”
Likely she had, but I wasn’t one for remembering much about her passing flings.
“What about him?”
“More of his friends have moved in and now he’s sitting all the way across the room with them,” Elsie whimpered, stomping her foot as she closed her locker. “He didn’t even look at me when he walked in. Can you believe that? And then Andrew asked me to the spring dance. Fucking Andrew, Jade.”
“Sucks for Andrew,” I said, following her out to the courtyard to get to our next class together. “Is Jag the one that got you into this whole... witch thing?”
“It’s in my blood,” Elsie sniffed, tilting her chin upwards. “It was just coincidence he had that moon sticker on his binder.”
“I thought you said it was the 3D goddess or something?”
“Omigod, Jade, no. The triple goddess. Of the moon?”
“Right, of course. Can’t forget the good ol’ moon mama.”
“Don’t be disrespectful to the moon, Jade,” Elsie warned, wrinkling her nose. “She could send a tsunami our way.”
“We’re nowhere near the coast, dipshit,” I sighed. “And anyway, I’ll be sure to make profound apologies to her tonight when we get up to the Rock. We’ll make sure you forget all about John—”
“Jag,” Elsie corrected me.
“... All about Jack and his stupid family.”
“And Andrew,” Elsie added pathetically.
"Davis was really kind of a safety school, I think, but it’s UCSB I’m hoping to hear from soon. I can feel it in my bones, that’s where I’m meant to be. All I need is that acceptance letter, and then I won’t have anything else to worry about. It’s exciting, don’t you think?"
"Oh, absolutely," I agreed with Ivy half-heartedly, my eyes glued to the heap of mashed potatoes on my plate. Gray, mushy, and unappetizing. "I, too, am so very thrilled to... do whatever it is that seniors are supposed to be doing for their last semester of high school."
"Any plans for after graduation yet?" Ivy asked, pointing her fork at me.
"Nope," I answered with a sigh, getting up from my seat at the dinner table. "I think Elsie and I may go on a road trip. She has family or something in Kentucky so we’ll... go get lots of corn, I guess. I don’t know. We'll see where it goes."
Ivy watched as I scraped my plate into the trashcan and set it in the sink. Her lips were pursed in skepticism, but I merely clicked my tongue at her as I began to retreat upstairs. When I reached the landing, Ivy called my name from the foot of the stairs.
"Yes?"
"Please don't forget that essay we have in English," she began. I blinked heavily with exaggeration, knowing already where her words were headed. "And I still really think it would be a good idea to look into some colleges and–"
"Why?"
Ivy looked taken aback, as if we hadn't had this conversation a million times.
"I think it’s what Aunt Annabelle would have wanted," she said, her hazel green eyes boring into me. I curled my fingers around the railing of the stairs. "College could do you some good. It could give you some insight on where you want to go with your life, you know?"
"I'm not sure fifty thousand dollars necessarily means 'Go to college'," I sighed to Ivy, turning my back to continue up the stairs. "I think it just means, 'I'm rich and here's fifty thousand dollars because now that I'm dead you officially have no female figures in your life so do with it whatever makes you happy'."
If Ivy answered, I didn't hear her. I had already shut the door to my room and began to strip down from the day's earlier clothing in the semi-darkness of my room. Jeans were fun and made my ass look great but they weren't comfortable enough for a late night hike in the woods, so it was an insulated pair of leggings that I chose to keep me warm in the early-spring chill.
I still had plenty of time if I wanted to stay in and do nothing, but I itched to get out of the house and away from Ivy’s prickly energy. So I grabbed my pencil pouch, my reading light, and the closest sketchbook I could find and stuffed it all into my hiking pack. Cracking the door open to peek down the stairs assured me that I could sneak out the window without a problem; Ivy had come upstairs and was shut in her own room, and my dad wouldn't notice one way or the other.
Ivy's precious light-blue Prius sat in its usual position in the driveway. How easy it would have been to get up into the forest if she didn't keep her keys in her bedroom. Instead I had to rely on my old bike, hanging onto its last rusty hinges.
I wasn’t really complaining. It got me where I needed to go in a reasonable amount of time, even if it left me feeling a little wheezy in the throat. The view from my little nook in the mountainside would always be worth it. The spot overlooked my little town and her twinkling lights, but was far enough removed for the light of the moon to brush the forests in a silvery glow.
I pulled out my materials and fixed my gaze onto the mountain range beyond the town. It was barely distinguishable in the evening light, but soon the curves and jags of the peaks emerged on my page, melting slowly into the figure of a woman laying carelessly on her side. I lost track of time in glancing back and forth between the horizon and the page in my book, moving my hand in a familiar rhythm and enjoying the soft chirps of the bats, with the occasional hoot of an owl. And then, somewhere behind me, the softest sound of footfalls. I lifted my head to look over my shoulder, but couldn't identify anything in the darkness behind me.
"Hello?" I called out.
No one answered. I switched off my reading light, feeling slightly anxious and suddenly more exposed than I wanted to be. I pushed the sketchbook off my lap and pressed my pencil hard into my palm, the sharp end pointed out between my knuckles. A crap weapon was better than none at all.
My heart nearly exploded when someone grabbed my shoulders and pulled me onto my back. Tristan barely managed to duck my fist, his face contorted in laughter as he saw my makeshift defense weapon.
"Son of a bitch!" I gasped once my mind registered his face as a friendly one. He leaned down to plant a kiss on my lips. "You scared the shit out of me, asshole. I could have stabbed you in the eye."
He scooted up to sit at my side, still chuckling under his breath over his triumph in making me screech. His blonde hair looked peppered in the moonlight, his hazel eyes silvery soft. A teasing smile took up the corners of his mouth.
"You're here early," I said, pulling all my supplies back into my bag. He shrugged, looking over the city. A gang of coyotes yipped to each other somewhere in the dark hills. "I thought you wanted to take an ice bath."
"I thought I did, too," Tristan laughed. "Turns out we didn't have practice today, though. I guess Norton's daughter had something going on that he couldn't miss or whatever. So now I'm all hot instead." He wiggled his eyebrows at me.
"You're always hot," I teased him. He leaned back up to look at the sky, nodding in silent agreement. I shook my head and pushed him playfully at the naughty glimmer in his eye. “Not like that, horndog.”
"What?" he protested. "You said it yourself. I'm way hot. The football star, babe. You should count yourself lucky you get to bask in my presence."
"Ah, yes, you've come a long way from freshman nobody who was really hit-or-miss in bed," I agreed. He scowled at me, but I shrugged, laying back on the ground with my hands behind my head. "You know it's true. Just be glad it was me, in all my forgiving glory, that took your virginity to all those years ago. Because if it had been, say, Kathy Tate... you would have never lived it down, my friend."
Tristan clicked his tongue, fishing for the pack of cigarettes in his pockets. “Please, you weren’t so great yourself the first few times around.”
“You were too busy buried in my tits to care,” I said, pulling out a lighter to offer him.
“Sure was,” Tristan said, patting the grass beside him. As I adjusted my head against his shoulder, he passed me the cig. “The good stuff never changes, and the sorta-okay stuff only gets better.”
“Inspiring,” I said. “Who said that one?”
