I glanced at the paper and then stuffed it in my pocket. “You’re giving me a referral?”
Bondurant stood. “Don’t come around here again. If you do, Regent Smith will take pleasure in ending you.” He paused at the door, but didn’t look at me. “Max, forget about Otis and the shadow. No good will come from it. Live your life, instead of reliving your past.”
“And Shar?” I said. “Should I forget she existed, that she was brutalized and killed?”
“Otis is dead,” said Bondurant. “Justice has been served, and with it your first lesson in this world. Justice doesn’t make a wrong right. It doesn’t make you feel better or fill up the hole inside of you. Justice is just a small fairness in an otherwise unfair world. ”
The wolf in me wanted to kill; it howled for blood and begged for flesh. The pup wanted to run and hide, to burrow into a den and sleep until the pain dulled and the fear subsided.
“Max,” said Bondurant as he opened the door, “become the wolf Shar would have been.” Then he left, disappearing into the brightness of the afternoon.
I waited a full minute and then followed, expecting to be jumped, beaten and then tossed into a ditch. It was the easiest way to end my misery, but it wasn’t the way of a wolf. Outside, I was greeted by the afternoon heat, as well as the scent of dry earth, yellow pollen, and sun. Then, I felt the sting in my neck — a dart, not a bullet, was the Society’s goodbye gift — and then the numbness, which felt good.
A few hours later I woke in my Nova Coupe. It was parked on the shoulder of the highway, pointing eastward toward Laurel City. If the Huntsmen Society wasn’t after me, I could have returned home, but there was nothing there, except for a couple of graves and a ramshackle house.
I had nothing.
No family.
No home.
I laughed and then cried, then wiped away the tears and drove, deciding I’d become a worthy wolf.
Read the first story, which appeared on October 27, 2013 in Wild Violet: “The Huntsman”
About Marla Johnson
