Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Seventeen

I'm part of a skinwalker pack, Zave thought.

It had been nearly an hour since Fey had made that offer, but he still felt like a gong reverberating after being struck. He had no idea what this meant, and he got the distinct feeling that Fey didn't either. Everything about the way she had made that offer screamed "I didn't think this through, but I can't back down now without looking like a jerk!"

She'll forget about it in a day or two, he reassured himself. She has her hands full just being Clueless’ alpha.

He looked over at her. Fey was sitting a few feet away, holding a long, thin branch she'd found up to her horns and rubbing the tip back and forth like she was trying to sand it down. She hadn't explained what she was doing, and for now Zave had enough to think about that he didn't feel like asking.

Give it a week and she won't even remember this conversation, he thought.

That should have made him feel better. He didn't belong out here in the Wild with a bunch of skinwalkers, and Fey knew it. The fact that he was here at all was purely a matter of necessity. If Jacob Donner hadn't expressed such intense interest in him, they would have dumped him on the side of the road days ago. And as soon as the wendigo threat had been dealt with, that was exactly what they would do. Exactly what they should do.

And yet…with each passing day, Zave was coming to realize that he did want to be a part of this world. He couldn't explain why. Almost everything that had happened was somewhere between bad and horrible. And yet, out here in the lands untamed by humankind, simply existing beside these people who not only appreciated nature, but thrived in it, he felt a sense of belonging that he had never felt in his old life. Zave had never exactly been a social butterfly, but he'd had friends and had always considered himself to be moderately well adjusted. As well adjusted as a guy with a debilitating lifelong fear of the dark could be, anyway.

But this was different. As he watched Fey do whatever it was she was doing, he could feel the difference. He vaguely remembered learning in high school science that if you struck a tuning fork, and then placed it next to another tuning fork that was calibrated to the same frequency, it would resonate with the first one.

Living out here with the skinwalkers, he was resonating.

That is without a doubt, he thought with a little smile, the nerdiest thought I've ever had.

"There, that should do it!" Fey announced, holding the stick out to him. Zave took it and looked it up and down. It was almost perfectly straight, thin enough that he could wrap his whole hand around it, but still thick enough to give it a good, solid feel. More importantly, the end that Fey had been rubbing against her horns had been ground down to a needle-sharp point.

Fey had made him a spear.

"This way," she said, leading him into the woods. A minute later, they were standing on the bank of a river. She gestured toward the water. "Go on out until you're waist deep."

Zave looked nervously at the water. It was less than twenty feet across, and the current looked calm enough to stand in without being swept away, but the water was murky enough that Zave couldn't tell exactly how deep it was. What if he stepped out there, only to fall into a…

He looked at Fey. Even if her offer only lasted for a day, right now she was his alpha. He could trust her not to lead him astray. So, taking off his shirt, he cast it aside—only for it to be caught in midair by Fey. He gave her a surprised look, and her cheeks reddened beneath her fur. She didn't put it down, though.

"I'll just, uh, hold this until you're done," she said quickly.

Zave stepped out of his shoes and socks next. The ground was a combination of soft mud and river-smoothed stones, so he didn't feel like he needed his shoes at the moment anyway. For a second, he considered taking his pants off too, but the intense way Fey was staring at him made him uncomfortable, so he settled for rolling the legs up to his knees.

He paused. Had Fey just sighed in disappointment? No, he had to be imagining things.

With that, he stepped out into the water. It was cold enough to send a quick shock through his system, chasing away the rest of his morning sleepiness. His body quickly adjusted to it, though, and he did as Fey had said, continuing out until the water was lapping at his waist.

"Now just stay right there," Fey called from the shore. "You need to let the fish get used to you. That should only take a few minutes."

And so Zave stood as motionless as he could. With the spear hoisted above his shoulder to keep it dry, he felt like the living version of one of those ancient cave drawings. The minutes crept by slowly, and every few seconds he would glance downward to see if any fish had been brave enough to come out and investigate the pair of fleshy pillars that had taken up residence in their home. The water was still too dark for him to see more than a couple inches below the surface, though.

Up above him, the sun came out from behind a cloud, shining its light down onto the river and making it shimmer. One particularly bright spot caught Zave's eye and, doing his best not to disturb the water, he turned to gaze into it.

Are you sure you want to do that? asked the logical part of him.

No, he answered silently, but I don't think I could stop myself if I tried.

He stared at the reflected light—and once again, it flared brighter and brighter until he was consumed by it. He saw himself, waist deep in the water, turn suddenly and toss his spear almost straight up into the sky. It came back down, and…

The vision ended.

Zave reacted without thinking, mimicking the movements he had just seen himself make. He twisted around until he was facing the other way, and threw the spear up into the sky. It made a surprisingly graceful arc, and then plummeted back down again, hitting the water about ten feet away from him at the perfect angle to send it straight down to the riverbed.

"Zave, what are you doing?" Fey called to him, a touch of annoyance in her voice. "You'll have to wait for the fish to come out again now!"

He didn't answer. Instead, he took a deep breath and dove under the surface. Just a few feet from where he was standing, the riverbed plunged downward, making the water about nine or ten feet deep. Zave had never considered himself a strong swimmer, but he could see the outline of his spear sticking straight up from the muddy ground. He reached it without much trouble, yanked it out of the muck, and then awkwardly doggy paddled his way back to the surface.

"Zave!" Fey was yelling. "Have you lost your…oh my God!"

Zave gasped for breath, floundering until the water became shallow enough for him to stand in, and then made his way back to the shore. He looked at Fey, expecting her to scold him, but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at his spear.

He followed her gaze, and his mouth fell open when he saw the biggest catfish he'd ever seen flopping limply on the tip, stabbed straight through the middle.

"How did you do that?" Fey asked, turning amazed eyes on him.

"I…I don't know," he answered truthfully. "I saw myself do it in a vision, and I just…followed its example."

The two of them stared at each other for a minute, neither of them wanting to be the one to say it: that Zave's powers were growing stronger, and they were no closer to understanding where they came from.

"Fey," Zave finally whispered, "I'm scared."

She was scared too. He could see it in her eyes. First wendigos, then thunderbirds, and now this. Fey's life operated on an entirely different standard for weirdness than Zave's, but this was too much even for her.

"Well," she said with confidence that she clearly didn't feel, taking the spear from him, "if it keeps proving helpful like this, then your powers are a-okay with me! Come on, let's fry and dry! That's where I fry this bad boy up, and you dry off by the fire."

"Right," Zave said weakly. "Yeah."

Fey headed back to camp, and Zave moved to follow her. But then he stopped, turning back to the river. He looked down, and found his reflection looking right back up at him—a reflection that he felt he recognized a little less with every weird thing that happened.

"What the hell are you?" he asked it.

NEXT CHAPTER: 3/05/2025