The Hollows. Woods of Danger by Mircaydi Kuzio (best romance novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Dante” I said. I knew he wouldn’t hear me, but I said his name anyways. I jumped as he lifted his head. Dante slid his headphones off his head and set them around his neck.--- Dante was one of those people, that even if they couldn’t hear you, they knew you were talking--- “Hey, what’s up, you don’t look too good,” he said.

“Ya I don’t feel too good either,” I told him. “ Grayson shifted and ran off. I don’t know where he is.” I explained. I saw him hold his breath.

“This is not good,” He sighed. “Kenzie’s out there,” 

I jumped and ran back outside one last time to see if Kenzie just stayed near like she always does. I searched and searched but there was no sign of her and I could feel my heart racing as I thought about what could happen to Grayson if he gets near Kenzie.

As you can tell Kenzie is not the sweet type. Like at all. When she was young, I saw her outside on the porch and I went to see what she was doing. She had a pigeon in one hand and a pencil in the other. I listened as she whispered under her breath.

“This is what happens when you take a crap on the railing of our porch,”

I shielded my eyes as she stabbed the sharp pencil into the pigeon’s chest. She laughed an evil laugh under her breath as she watched the birds eyes open wide, then with another swift movement, she stabbed into his eye and pulled the pencil out with the eyeball still stuck onto it.

She slowly turned around with an evil smile on her face. I was about to say something when she dropped the pencil and let the eye roll away and threw the bird in the bush and pick up a flower she had on the deck.

“I picked this for you Bedir!” She said sweetly, trying to act like nothing happened. I took the yellow daisy and slowly walked back into the house. I closed the door behind me, ran to the window and opened it up just so I could hear what Kenzie was doing. I watched and listened as she rustled through the bushes to find the bird, she lifted it up and triumph and laughed evilly.

“Let’s get back to our little chat shall we!” she said as she sat back down on the porch.

After that incident, I have never looked at Kenzie the same way.

I can be so quiet

Haste ruins the silence. Impatience squanders the hunt.

I take my time.

I am silent as I move through the darkness. Dust hangs in the air of the nighttime wood. The moonlight makes constellations of the particles where it creeps through the branches overhead.

The only sound is my breath, inhaled slowly through my bared teeth. The pads of  my paws are soundless in the damp underbrush. My nostrils flare. I listen to the sound of my heartbeat over a gurgling creek nearby.

I hear rustling in the bushes nearby. My stomach is tight and empty. I push farther into the darkness. Slow. I tell myself.  My ears prick; The panicked animal is close by. A deer? A night insect fills the the long moment with clicking sounds before I move again. How large is the animal? If it’s injured it won’t matter that I’m hunting alone.

Something brushes my shoulder. Soft. Tender. I want to flinch. I want to turn and snap it between my teeth. But I stay still, I don’t move… until the soft feather touch comes back. It tickles my ear. I turn my head to see what it is. Only, it is something I do not understand. It floats in the air, moving with the breeze. It touches my ear again and again as my mind burns and bends, struggling to name it.

Paper?

I don’t understand why it is there like a leaf hanging from a branch when it is not a leaf. Beyond it, scattered on the ground, are items imbued with an unfamiliar, hostile smell. The skin of some dangerous animal, shed and left behind. I shy away from them, lip curled. And suddenly there is my prey.

Only it is not a deer.

It is a girl.

She is struggling on the dirty ground. She looks like one of the fish that I caught yesterday at the lake. I notice that she smells like wolf.

I smell danger.

I smell fear. I can tell that she is uncomfortable.

Startled by her sudden movement, I jump back as she sits up shaking terribly. She looks up at me and stares into my eyes. I step close, and as I do she curls back. I take another step closer, and she falls onto her back.

She is scared, I can smell it.

I keep taking more and more steps until I am hovering over her. She is breathing heavily and I can feel the soft wind of her breath on my face when she exhales. I slowly lower down, and my nose skims her cheek. I watch her, waiting for something to happen. Her eyes dart from me to the trees beside her.

And when she screams.

I kill her.

 I slowly walked back the way I came. My legs are like jello. They kept giving out on me. A single golden leaf pirouetted down an invisible spiral of breeze, spinning through the air as it let itself be carried down. It shook slightly, as if it could have been whisked away any second by the grip of an icy wind, but it kept floating down the twirling course. It blew past my face and landed lightly on the ground, the shiny, vibrant colour standing out against the ambers and bronzes beneath it. It was so delicate, I wanted to reach down and pick it up and hold it close to my heart, smoothing out any creases, but something told me that it belonged there, this corpse of what was once summer. Cold licked at my face and crept over my skin like the lacy tide on a frigid winter beach. 

I needed to get back or I might shift again. I started to jog, thinking that it might get me warmer.  But, my legs gave out and I fell into the mushy soil. I froze when I heard a rustle in the bushes behind me. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. I heard the leave crunch behind me. Whatever it was it was getting closer and closer. I remembered something that Bedir had told me before I shifted. Kenzie. Something about Kenzie.

Kenzie’s out here! I whipped my head around and there she was. The white she-wolf.

There was a sudden shot of adrenaline through my body. I leaped up and started to run. Luckily my legs did not feel like collapsing. I ran so fast I felt like I was flying. I could hear Kenzie following me. Her soft paws landing on the ground making a soft thud. She seemed to be running slow. My guess was she ran here and now she is losing energy. I was getting close to a to a tree. The branches were low on the ground and close together, so I may be able to climb to safety.

When I was about a metre away I jumped as high as I could and climbed for my life. The branches were slippery was last nights rain. The bark was rough and scraped my bare skin. I climbed to the top. This tree was shorter, but large. The trunk was uneven and wide like two people trying to huddle under the same umbrella. All the leaves had fallen off. That meant I was in plain sight to Kenzie. I looked down and saw her staring up at me. Her eyes looked guilty and hungry. Her sleek body paced the ground beside the tree. When she turned to face the sound that was coming from the bushes, I noticed a hole in her back leg. It was red and purple with black around it. I assumed that she got shot. That wound  was why she was running so slow.

Who could’ve shot her? People rarely came into this forest, because they knew that wolves were everywhere. But what they didn’t know, was that we were not just wolves. We were also humans.

I remembered what had happened the year before when Liam Taylor was attacked. It was winter and all the wolves were out on a hunt. We stumbled upon a peculiar scent. We followed the scent to a large house. 

There, we found a boy outside in the yard. We watched him through the trees. Bedir smelled the air for any sign of other humans. He flashed a image at me. An empty house, it is large with many windows. I followed Fernando slowly and cautiously as he walked up close to the boy. I could tell that the boy had heard us, because he suddenly froze as I stepped on a dry stick. He slowly and cautiously turned around. Fernando and I froze in our slowly moving tracks and stared into his eyes. He was petrified.

I remember running back to the safety of the trees when Fernando pounced at the boy. I wanted to go to Bedir and feel his body rub against mine. But, when I started to walk towards him, he ran towards Fernando and the boy. When Bedir went…  Everyone went. The wolves had dragged the boy into the forest and I followed, I was hungry after all. I shoved my way through everyone and took a bite. I was about to take another one when a woman came out of the house screaming. We all ran away and left the boy there. It was that one moment when I didn’t trust Bedir. He said the house was empty and it was not and after what happened a few years ago, he said that he would never attack another human, but, he did.

I suddenly understood. Liam’s father was out for revenge.