Wild Side (Dark Side Series: Book 2)

Twenty-Two

South was the direction of choice, the direction of the sea, where the Connecticut River ultimately fled beneath snow-covered stone bridges and ice-crusted trees. The road coiled in a serpentine, tight trail through miniature towns, snaking along the curves of running water. Our destination lurked within the scenic vistas of East Haddam. There were a few cars near the old state park as twilight bruised the landscape, none at all as we rolled into the paved lot and turned the car off.

The forest had rocks to grow on and ponds to conceal, steep plunges and towering cliffs that put the focus on the crumbled stone mansion of the now-deceased William Gillette. Unless you stood peering out grey fieldstone windows or braced your hands along its sweeping terrace, you could hardly see the river without stumbling upon it. The exterior architecture bore the decayed fabrication of centuries spent enduring the British countryside, but it was the thought of werewolves that made it hunched grey walls predatory in the early moonlight.

"I've been here," I whispered, opening my door to the cold. Caelan popped a rear door and stretched.  "Gillette Castle. Owned by some actor who played Sherlock Holmes. Built the home with secret passages and badassery."

Caelan ducked his head against the door frame and looked back at me, the drawn look in his face breaking into a brief smile. "Badddassery?" he asked with raised brows, eyes luminous in the yellow glow of the dome light. 

"The woodwork inside is incredible. Haven't you been here?"

He shook his head and stepped aside to let me out. "Here, yes,"  he said, gesturing toward the woods. "Not there. Wasn't house-trained at the time."

"Girl's right," Cal added. She spit something small and pearly into the ground, a splash of wet crimson. With the back of one hand she dabbed her lip. A lone, long tooth replaced one of the canines in her smile. "Beautiful interior, especially around the holidays. Shame most of its valuables are rather heavy."

Caelan kicked snow over the she-wolf's mess. The casual slouch of hours spent in the car gave way to tightened shoulders and eyes that never lingered on anything more than a few seconds. "Blood taints the soil," he said. "Can you feel it?"

I swallowed a gasp of brittle air, aware suddenly of things like the width of trees, the shimmer of shadows as the rising moon swallowed the first stars. And I felt nervous, both for what I'd find of Lisa, and what I might learn of Caelan's past. If I were subjected to that particular kind of torment, the moment they let me loose I'd have run so hard and so far away. I couldn't imagine how broken you had to be to suffer in his way and then work for the ones who kept you caged.

My attention drifted onto the looming forest, and a downy, three inch layer of as-yet undisturbed snow. "Hikers have never reported—"

"Correct," Caelan said. "And they never will." Neither he nor Calico carried a coat into the castle's looming shadow. Calico made a few uncertain steps after the man, then finally asked the question I'd been thinking in the growing black.

"Should we shift?" With her tongue she jiggled loose another human fang.

"Would limit our access," Caelan told her, but his gold-rimmed eyes were filled with a rangy hunger.

Calico immediately turned toward me. "I'm coming," I told her sternly. The two of us, close as a pack and distant in our own thoughts, followed Caelan's lead. His path skirted the sullen grey walls, ducked down through narrowed spaces and slippery rocks. With chilled gloved hands I had to grab a trunk here and there to keep balanced on the steeper slopes as we left civilization behind, as the forest consumed us, the silent river nothing but a spectre visible through crystallized branches. Caelan moved quicker than we could keep up, stopping more than once with an impatient sigh to go back and help us along. Looking into his eyes at our final destination, a yawning cave on the edge of a cliff blocked with a fence and a warning sign of unstable rocks, I knew a part of him wasn't with us tonight. A part of him was already inside.