The Society
The pup in me quivered, but the burgeoning wolf snarled as I thrashed my head around, trying to get the black nylon hood off my head. The hood smelled from a mixture of creatures’ sweat, and I couldn’t pick out a distinct scent; but I was sure of the other smell: men. There were two of them in the room. One of them reminded me of the woods: balsam and pine. The other man’s scent was waterless: dry earth, yellow pollen and sun. A punch in the gut knocked me into a concrete wall, and then the hood was yanked off. I didn’t fall. I wasn’t about to look weak, despite my stomach seizing...
Read MoreThe Huntsman
An amalgam of sea and cherries filled the woods. The August heat baked the scent into foulness, and I inhaled each glob of tart cherry and bitter salt with dread. It was the scent of my sister’s blood. I sat in a thicket, next to Sharon’s body. I used to call her Shar. Used to. Her head was gashed, her chest pierced, and her hands and arms covered in a sleeve of slash marks. Her body had been stripped. Blood cascaded down her cocoa skin. I tilted inward, as if my insides were being crushed like a soda can. At eighteen, I was six feet tall with a bulk of muscle, but my voice was washed in...
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