A Shift in the Water by Patricia D. Eddy Read Free Book Online Page A

exhausted, but he wouldn’t stop. A car door slammed. Hurry!
    “Get back here you fucking mongrel!” Katerina shouted. A blast of flame pelted the wolf’s back and he yelped. He shoved his body underneath the stone as more flames licked his skin. His senses overloaded: sweet, burnt scents of fur, skin, dirt, and blood. Tears obscured his vision, but he was operating on pure instinct now.  Faster. Away from fire.
    Footsteps pounded towards him, but his body popped free from the stone and he ran. A blood-curdling scream followed him and the earth shook, but he was free.
    The blackberry brambles sliced his pelt. He scrambled over rocks, cutting his paw pads deeper. But the pain was nothing compared to what the evil woman would do to him, even if he wasn’t caught. The blood that ran through his veins heated with every passing day. As his body weakened, her charms strengthened. He had hours. Days at most before his body gave out. Air wheezed in and out of his lungs. His head pounded. Nausea flooded his belly from the rancid berries and his fear.
    He stumbled over endless little hills, finding a path here, a copse there. He jumped over a low fence and ran through a small field nestled among the hills filled with cows. The next field had goats. His mouth watered. At full strength, he could take down a goat easily, but he couldn’t stop running. He found an old logging road and ran along it for a few minutes, but too out in the open, he veered off back into the underbrush. An arc of flame landed a few feet in front of him setting a pile of wet leaves steaming. He pushed himself harder. The water was ahead, down a steep cliff. He had to get down there. If he got to the water, he could swim. The bad woman couldn’t follow him. Not easily anyway.
    “Get back here, you son of a bitch!” the bad woman screamed. Another blast of fire seared him. His shoulder burned with pain and he yelped. His body slammed down onto the hard ground. He couldn’t get up. “You’re mine!”
    The boy followed the bad woman. He raised his arms. The wolf crawled, scraping his belly along the muddy tree roots and slick leaves. The pain in his paws kept him focused. The earth rumbled. Katerina shouted for the boy to stop, but the earth charm was already at work. A gaping maw appeared under the wolf’s front paws. A three foot section of the cliffside broke away and fell into the sea, taking the wolf with it.
    He tumbled—over and over. His body slammed into tree roots, rocks, and even huge pieces of shale. A large gash in his side spurted blood. When he hit the water, the salt buried into his wounds and he howled. He was submerged, water rushing into his lungs, suffocating him. His mind went blank. All he could do was fight to get to the surface. When his muzzle broke through, he expelled the water in his lungs and started paddling. He made it to the shore in minutes and crawled away, into the brambles. He listened carefully.
    “Dammit! Get me down there,” the bad woman shouted.
    “I don’t have that much control, babe. I could drop you. Let’s get the car. He’s not going anywhere. No one’s going to let a wolf on the ferry.”
    The voices faded. A road not too far away brought the occasional rumble of a car, but the bad woman and the boy were gone. They’d be searching for him. He couldn’t stay here for long.
    He wriggled and slunk within sight of the shore as the sun painted the sky in reds, oranges, and purples. There was nothing but the endless blue-gray of the sea in every direction.  Island.  He knew islands. He knew there weren’t easy ways to escape them. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he had to get as far away from the bad woman and the boy as possible. There was enough underbrush to keep him largely hidden, though he caught sight of the two-lane road from time to time and burrowed deeper into the brambles.
    Exhaustion pressed him to the ground by the time the sun reached its apex. He panted and wheezed. A