Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (best e book reader TXT) 📕

“Go to sleep, Audry.” Mercy stroked her forehead, setting a cool cloth on it.

Unwillingly obeying, as her exhaustion and something else from that drink put her into a stupor, Audry closed her eyes and dreamed.

Her dream had a soundtrack. Werewolves of London played over and over again, intermittently interrupted with Duran Duran’s Hungry like the Wolf. In the dream, Rick was shouting at his cellphone, trying to change the ringtone to something less obvious. Audry tried to call to him, but she was in a boat floating on a river that seemed to be taking her down to a waterfall where she knew she would inevitably fall over and die. She wanted to dive into the water to swim to the shore. There were no oars. But one rope held her to the boat, and she could not get out. When she woke from the dream, she was coated in sweat.

The witchdoctor was standing over her with Mercy, their sides to her, discussing something. Audry saw Juma come in. Then Sefu and Luis. No Akachi. No Darth. None of the dogs. It seemed strange.

“Where’s Darth?” she breathed out.

They all turned to look.

“Ah,” Juma waggled a finger at her. “You are threatening to haunt me?”

“Where’s Darth?” she asked again, sitting up.

“You care more about my dogs than me,” Juma said, looking honestly put out about it.

“Where. Is. Darth?” she demanded this time.

They all stared at her.

Luis cleared his throat and said, “Akachi took the dogs back to Arusha.”

Audry doubted Darth would have left willingly, and she realized that the dog had been missing since she was taken to the witchdoctor’s hut. “Is he ok?”

Sefu snorted while Juma shot her a dark look, as she most definitely confirmed what he had just accused her of.

“He would not leave you, but he was getting in the way,” Luis said.

Darth would have bit off the hand of someone who dared take him away. She knew it. And they could tell she knew it.

“We shot him with your tranquilizer, ok?” Juma finally fessed up.

She glared at him.

“He was in the way,” Mercy said again what Luis had told her. “The doctor could not work on you with him always there.”

“Now sit up and let him take a look at you,” Juma ordered peevishly.

Audry struggled to sit, casting him a dirty look. She hoped Darth was ok. He would be upset when he woke up. She was sure of it.

The doctor checked her over. Made comments and all that in the local language. As she was sitting, a sharp pain convulsed through her gut. Audry grasped it, dropping back down again, moaning. Everyone stared. The witchdoctor said something in a grave tone. Even Audry could guess what he was saying. It was only a matter of time.

She slept most of the day. Juma sat next to her and read from a book he had. It was boring, but he was studying for an exam and he did not see the point in wasting time. There was some extra certification he was seeking and he would have been doing it anyway if he were back in Arusha. Mercy stayed with them while Luis and Sefu came and went.

They no longer asked about the wolf. It was possible they had figured out who Rick was, though Audry started to believe it was more possible that they took her threat of haunting more seriously. They seemed likely to believe in ghosts, or something akin to it.

Around midday, Audry noticed her skin looked peculiarly yellow, and there were bruises on her arms. Thinking about all the pamphlets she had read on different African diseases, she figured it was most likely she was suffering from yellow fever—and she was now in the toxic phase. She wondered how long it would last before she died.

Her dreams that night were something like having a life review. She was sitting in a room, almost a private movie theater, and she watched an almost comical silent picture show of her past, with caption cards and everything. Charlie Chaplin even walked in and out with Buster Keaton. Yet in the middle of it, it gained color—as a rust-haired boy rushed into her Paris tour group and asked her for the tiger balm. His gray eyes were striking. And when he looked at her, he gazed directly into her eyes, seeing her. Very few people did that. And he morphed in his dream into a frazzled young business heir in a fancy gray suit with a tie, once again looking into her eyes with that acknowledging smile, seeing her. Once more, fast forward, he was with her in the snow on skis, cutting off those men who tried to run her down for stopping them from tossing trash in the trees. Then in the wolf’s den, those gray eyes in pain, that wolf in pain, begging for her not to hurt him. Once again, him as a man, he was now sneaking with two children into a hotel party he could have attended and didn’t want to get involved with at all except to snitch food off the tables for the kids. And then again, at that conference, being seduced unwillingly by that slutty she-wolf who had invaded her booth with her pack of hick werewolves. His panic as he saw her surrounded by them…

Audry drew a breath and sat up. It was dark. She could feel a presence next to her. A murmur. It was a prayer. It was Juma.

He did not notice her waking. His prayer continued, unabated between sobs. She nearly reached out to him, but then pulled back as everything in her hurt. Seeing her hand in the firelight, it was discolored. Bruised.

Everything in her ached.

Juma kept praying for her the next day. Audry could hardly move. Juma cradled her as Mercy gave her sips of broth, tea, and water. But Audry noticed she was bleeding from her mouth. Her gums were sore. Mercy and one other woman helped her when she needed to relieve herself, but most of it was water by this time—or should have been. The color in it was dark.

Near the evening, Juma broke down during a prayer, sobbing. Audry had started to bleed from her eyes. The other two men had left, presumably to make sure her message to her family reached them. Audry could already hear a mourning wail start up.

“Please God,” Juma murmured through sobs. “Forgive me for being angry with her. It was not right. Please let her know I am no longer angry. Let her know that I will not hurt her wolf.”

“Thank you,” Audry whispered, relaxing. She could die now. She didn’t want one more person with a vendetta against Rick.

In walked another person—yet for some reason that person did not block the light. There was no shadow. The person seemed drawn there.

Audry blinked open her eyes. Standing before her was Eve. Her black fleshy wings were tucked down as if by habit, though there was something oddly insubstantial about her presence. It was like she wasn’t actually there. Or rather, she was there, but carried no weight at all in the physical world. Eve gazed down at her with red eyes, her long black hair mussed up as if she had been tussling with something obnoxious that she had just tossed off. And Eve recognized her.

“Oh no,” Eve said. No one else but Audry heard her. But then Eve’s voice was not really in the air around them, but projected as if spoken inside Audry’s brain. “I thought I had saved you. What happened?”

“Sick,” Audry murmured, unable to say more. 

 Juma lifted up his head. “Ife?”

Eve puzzled at him, mouthing ‘Ife’ as if it made zero sense to her. “I thought your name was Audry.”

Audry nodded, but it hurt.

Juma gently grasped her hands. “Forgive me. I won’t hurt your wolf, I promise.”

“You don’t want me to haunt you,” Audry breathed out.

He shook his head, closing his eyes. “No. I mean it’s not that. I was wrong. Luis made it clear to me. That demon hates your wolf because he does good. He told me who he was. I am sorry.”

Audry closed her eyes. He meant it.

“Oh… if you die, Rick will be so mad at me,” Audry heard Eve say.

Chapter Eleven

Immediately, Audry felt an icy hand rest on her stomach, the heat, the pain, all the aches, all exhaustion, all of it seemed to draw into that hand. Her strength returned as if she were being filled up with some sort of revitalizing energy smoothie. Audry opened her eyes. She saw Eve’s face just a foot away from hers, becoming jaundiced and bleeding from her eyes—so much worse than before. Audry could feel it, all her bruises, all her wounds, each one slipping away, siphoning into this now incredibly horrific looking being before her. But Eve was smiling at her with a painful cringe, and drew the entirety of Audry’s infirmity into herself.

“Why?” Audry breathed out, realizing Eve now had her sickness.

Smiling a vampiric grin, Eve replied with a pained shrug, “Rick would never forgive me if I let you die.”

“How?” Audry murmured just as Juma was trying to answer the question, thinking it was for him.

“Because I love you, even if I can never have you,” Juma said.

But Eve shot him a sorry glance when she said, “I just can. When you see Rick, say ‘hi’ for me. And if you ever meet Hanz, tell him I love him.”

Almost immediately two others rushed into the room. They were not African. They were not even human. In fact, their huge feathered wings took up most of the space in the room. One’s wings were the color and shape of an owl’s—the size comparable to his almost owlish belly and rotund head. But it was a man who was balding with a pale face and long nose. The other actually looked like the catholic version of an angel, only he was carrying a scythe. The both of them were, actually, but each scythe was different—and one scythe quickly transformed into a sword. He attacked Eve.

Eve’s scythe quickly did the same—taking the shape of a long black sword, which oddly reminded her of Narsil from Lord of the Rings. She blocked them both.

Juma did not even notice them, though all three winged beings were tussling about the room in a fight, shouting.

“Ife?” He stared at her, especially as Audry sat up, no longer bruised, yellow, or bleeding. Her eyes tracked the fight.

“You’ve broken the rules! You are supposed to be spreading plague, not curing it! She was to die!” One violent angel screamed at the jaundiced Eve.

“Not on my watch!” Eve shouted back, moving faster than lightning, shoving the pair of dangerous angels off and away from Audry.

“Ife?” Juma rose from his seat, watching her watch the fight. “What are you seeing?”

“You guys ripped me from my life! But since I am stuck out here, I am going to spare my friends!” Eve swung back, shoving them further away from Audry. It was as if they we trying to give her yellow fever again and Eve was protecting her. “I don’t care if it is selfish! I know whose hearts would break if she