Instinct

A Cry in the Night by Lucienne Diver

I LET MYSELF INTO SPIRIT’S ENCLOSURE, as I did at the end of every day, needing to soak up the love after a shift spent with people and paperwork, only he didn’t come running.

“Spirit, it’s me,” I called, as though he didn’t know. As though the big, gray wolf-dog couldn’t smell me coming from a mile away and hear me from, literally, ten times that distance.

But Spirit, and his skittish mate Frost, had been acting strangely, which was why Thompson, our biologist, was with me. When I did our tours, I always said Spirit was over eighty percent wolf and one hundred percent love, which was a miracle after the way he’d been treated.

One of my neighbors, in the wilds of Colorado, had decided it would be amazing to have a wolf-dog to impress his friends, but he hadn’t done his research, and took all his own failings out on Spirit. A mix of more than fifty percent wolf was unlikely to ever be domesticated. They wouldn’t learn to wait for walkies. They would never be comfortable living within walls without clear sightlines of anything coming at them. The poor animal would stress and act out because of it. Gavin reacted by beating and starving Spirit, taking it like a challenge to his manhood and trying to “break” the animal, leaving Spirit chained out in the yard in all kinds of weather.

Which was where I came in. Gavin took off on one of his long hauls, leaving Spirit bolted down with a single bowl of food and water and a major storm threatening. Well, wolves were outdoor creatures; they could survive in the wild, but there they had the freedom to seek food and shelter. Spirit had no freedom at all. Until I arrived with my trusty bolt-cutters after listening to him howl for too long and deciding to do something about it.

I had a fenced in yard, blankets to spare, and a large faux-wooden playset that my son Luke had outgrown. Spirit spent his nights sheltered beneath it. When Gavin returned and tried to bully the “little lady” I laughed in his face. Then I showed him the pictures I’d taken of Spirit before and asked him if he really wanted to argue that the beautiful beast growling at him from behind me was the same animal, because I’d happily see him in court for abuse. He decided that neither of us was worth the trouble.

Spirit had been worth all the trouble. And then some. One rescue had grown into two. Message boards, training, more rescue work. The need to move to a larger facility.

Three years later, the Wolf Rescue and Rehabilitation Center was going strong.

Only Spirit hadn’t made an appearance today. He was keeping to the edges of his spacious enclosure, hiding from visitors, and I was worried.

He was one of our ambassadors. He loved to greet people. He was the first to join in the group howls. Was he nursing a wound? Had someone thrown something dangerous into his enclosure or, worse, tried to cut through it?

No matter how much we educated people, some still didn’t understand. We didn’t put up fences to imprison our wolves and wolf-dogs, coy-wolves, coyotes, and foxes, as some suggested rather virulently, but rather the fences were there to protect them. Some had gotten too comfortable wandering into towns or feeding off livestock and were likely to be killed or weren’t fit to live in the wild for one reason or another. Others were only being held pending release once laws and preparations were in place.

Wolves were endangered and were, even now, mostly allowed to be hunted where they did exist in the wild. It didn’t help that they had such bad PR, that we were taught to see them as evil from the cradle, from Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs up through The Wolfman and American Werewolf in London. Farmers shot and killed them on sight for fear of losing livestock with no thought given to how much natural predators were needed as part of an ecosystem.

“Spirit,” I called again, that line of thought spurring me on.

Finally, I heard a whimper.

“Lacey,” Thompson said and pointed in the same direction I’d already turned.

Wordlessly, we headed that way. We’d worked together for five years, and could do silence as easily as words now, and while there were one or two times when more might have been said, when I might have invited him to stay after hours for a drink or conversation, there was always Luke, my nearing-twenty-year-old still living at home.

It would have been awkward. Or maybe that was just my excuse. I was bad with change. Bad with people. Good with animals. I could have suggested we go out, yet I never did. My house was on the grounds; it was important to stay in every night, in case the animals needed me or someone who thought we weren’t doing enough, or were doing too much, tried to start something. Besides, I was Thompson’s boss. Maybe that was why he never asked me either.

Spirit looked over his shoulder at us as we skirted a bush left in the enclosure to give the wolves privacy. His golden eyes met mine, full of meaning, as though he could convey it to me mind to mind, then he gazed back out into the darkening evening. I looked where he looked but couldn’t see a thing.

“What’s the matter, hon? What do you see?”

His body language was stiff, tail out like a flag behind him, hair raised, but not to full-on alert. More like concern.

Something was out there. Not an immediate threat, maybe, but he didn’t like it. Didn’t want to look away. In case… In case what?

I approached slowly, knowing I didn’t want to box him in and limit his options.

“Everything’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe. Where’s Frost?”

Spirit backed away from the fence. One step, then two. Backed up to where he was beside me, then finally looked away and bumped me with his head, almost knocking me down as I’d started to go to one knee but hadn’t yet settled.

Wolves were big, far bigger than people realized unless they’d seen them in person. Even wolf-dogs, as Spirit was— eighty two percent timber wolf, eighteen percent husky. We’d had him tested. But he looked all gray wolf— varying shades of gray and white with black detailing, especially around the tips of his ears and around his eyes, as though someone had ringed them with kohl. He had tan in there too, lower on his sides. Standing, he came to the low/midpoint of my ribcage, and I was no tiny tot.

I caught my balance and ran my fingers through Spirit’s ruff, scratching just so and muttering nothings until he calmed. Until he turned and licked my face, his big tongue taking up my whole cheek. It was magical the way my tension melted away.

Seeing Spirit stand down, Frost came out of the trees at the back of the enclosure to nudge Thompson’s hand with her nose, much like our German shepherd, Beau, did with Luke and me at home. Thompson dropped to a knee, like I had, to scratch her behind the ears. She rolled to give him her belly, winter white like the rest of her. I’d seen her do it before, but only for Thompson. He seemed to have a special gift. The wolves had chosen their humans. And as much as my knees were starting to ache, I didn’t dare shift and ruin the moment.

The wolves were fine, and whatever lurked in the deepening night must have moved on.

I was exhausted by the time I got home. I’d finished off the last slice of cold pizza—all my son had left me—while standing at the kitchen counter, and had poured myself a glass of merlot when the phone rang. I seriously considered letting it go to voicemail, but it was forwarded from the office line and might be an emergency, and so I answered with the name of our rescue.

“Lacey?” My best friend, Sarah, sounded…odd. It didn’t make sense for her to call the office line at this time of night. Not when…I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear and patted myself down for my cell before cursing internally. I’d done it again—pulled it out of my jeans pocket when it impeded mobility, set it down somewhere and forgot all about it. It could be anywhere from my office to an enclosure. Sarah knew that if she couldn’t reach me on my cell, she had only to call the rescue. As a former volunteer, she probably had the place on speed dial, especially with as many times as she’d had to call out to take care of her husband during his cancer treatments, and then afterward.

“Guilty,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I really don’t want to bother you, but I didn’t know what else to do, and… Tell me if you think I’m just crazy and I should check it out on my own.”

“Check what out?”

“Okay, first you have to know that my mother just sent me an article about all the ways predators use to target people, particularly women—looking up obituaries to see who’s newly widowed, playing sick or injured like Ted Bundy did, faking car trouble or lost pets, playing recordings of crying babies or women in distress to lure someone out of their home…”

I took a sip of my wine, swallowing it too quickly when I realized she wasn’t going to continue without encouragement. “And?” I choked out. “Not crazy so far.”

“And…I keep hearing a crying baby outside.”

I set my wine down. “I’ll be right over.”

“You don’t think I should check it out?”

“You live on two and a half acres on your own.” Since Joe’s death, which had recently been in the obituaries. “Where would the baby have come from?”

“Someone could have abandoned it. It could be scared. Or hurt. The crying… It’s breaking my heart. And we do have coyotes in the area, even some feral dogs…”

“I’m on my way now. If you’re concerned about dogs, turn on all the lights, put on some loud music. That should scare away man or beast, but wait for me. If someone wanted to abandon a baby, a church or a hospital would make more sense.”

“Maybe there’s too much surveillance there or too many people, too much chance of being seen. Maybe—”

“Wait!”

I’d already grabbed my keys off the counter, and my shepherd, Beau, hearing them, was pawing at my leg, asking to come. He’d heard the tension in Sarah’s voice straight through the phone. Or maybe in mine, and he wasn’t letting me go alone.

“Get your leash.”

He did a half spin and took off to where I left it hanging on a hook with his harness as I ran down our short hall to let Luke know where we were going. I had to yell twice to penetrate his ever-present headphones, but I finally got through, and by that time, Beau was bumping my hand with the leash and harness in his mouth. I got him into the harness, scratching him quickly as I went and telling him what a good boy he was, but neither of us lingered. We were both up and running for the door as the last snap clicked into place.

After that, our only brief pause was for Beau to water the path twice on the way to the car, either to refresh his marking of our territory or because Luke had forgotten to let him out earlier. Either way, it didn’t keep us long, and we were rumbling in my Jeep down the steep drive to the actual roadway in no time.

As anxious as I was to get to Sarah, I didn’t put my pedal to the metal. Our crazy Colorado weather—freezing and thawing, often in the same day, the sometimes drought followed by flash-floods—and the volume of our visitor traffic took a toll on our paved drive. Cracks, potholes, erosion at the edges. At night with only headlights as a guide, the drive could be a hazard, but with no oncoming traffic expected, I stayed to the center and drove as fast as I dared.

I carved ten minutes down to nine, glad Beau was strapped into his doggy hammock in the back, so he wasn’t shaken around. He whined only once and put his head up to make a vee in the sling so that I could see him if I looked over my shoulder or angled my rearview mirror. I didn’t, but I could feel him there.

As soon as we pulled into Sarah’s drive, though, he went crazy, as though he could pull himself out of his car seat by force of will. He threw himself at the door. He’d never done that before. Quickly, I got myself out and went around to get him out, but that put my back to the night, and I didn’t like it. My own hackles rose in reaction—hair on the back of my neck, up and down my arms, all over my body standing on end. My t-shirt, flannel and jeans suddenly felt like flimsy protection against whatever was out there.

And something was out there. Just as Spirit had sensed earlier.

As Beau sensed now.

I freed Beau from his car seat and jumped out of the way as he flung himself out of the car, snarling and barking and ready to chase down Sarah’s intruder. I grabbed the end of his leash just in time to get my shoulder wrenched as I tried to hold him back.

At my command, Beau quieted, except for low growls to let me know there was still something out there, as though I couldn’t feel it. But I needed to hear what Sarah had heard, what I thought I’d heard even over his ruckus: a baby crying, screaming for someone to save it. No one with a heart could resist. It was eerie. Haunting. Horrible. My mind had already sorted through all of Luke’s baby cries, and this wasn’t like any of them. It wasn’t one of want—food, changing, comfort. It was one of desperate, immediate need. One of terror.

With my cell gone, I couldn’t let Sarah know we were there, but when I looked toward the house, I saw that Beau’s barking had done that already. She was silhouetted in the window beside her door, looking out into the night. She raised a hand, and I gave a nod back. Then I turned my full focus onto the trouble.

“Find it,” I told Beau. “Go. Good boy.”

He didn’t need to be told. His ears were already back, and his body tense, spine rigid, tail low. His nose was pressed to the ground, scenting. He strained at the leash, pulling us forward, and I wasn’t at all surprised when the trail took us toward the baby’s cries, which seemed to come from the bushes beneath Sarah’s bow window.

The closer we came, the louder the baby’s cries. The more I wanted to grab it up, cradle it in my arms. Save it. I almost launched myself into the bushes. Beau seemed to sense that, and stopped short in front of me, quivering, tacking right and left to block me as I tried to go around him. I had no choice but to stop or fall over him. Try to see what had him on alert.

At first, I couldn’t make sense of his behavior. The light from the house didn’t extend out over the hedges. All I could see was that they were overgrown. Trimming them had been Joe’s job, and the least of Sarah’s worries after his death, but thorns and brambles wouldn’t set Beau off like that.

And then the shaggiest part of the bush moved, and I realized that those weren’t jagged leaves or branches at the top. They were matted fur and raised hackles, a ruff or a mane or… I couldn’t even make sense of what I was seeing. The thing in the bushes was far bigger than a wolf; bigger than any predatory animal we had here in Colorado except the black bear, and this was no bear.

It turned toward me as I stood stunned, its dark eyes flashing in the night, and my arms and legs suddenly felt as though they were made of clay, heavy and hardening. Terrified, I tried to reach for the ever-present treats in my pocket so that I could throw them far afield, divert the thing long enough to grab up the baby and run, get it and Beau to safety, but I couldn’t move. Not a muscle. My stunned paralysis had become all too real.

All I could do was look my fill, but that didn’t help with the horror. This was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was more of a size with a male lion and had a mane like one as well—or like a hyena, since it was dark and spotted. That mane continued in a ridge down its back as far as I could see. And its teeth… My mind sputtered. Not teeth. Or yes, one on top, one on bottom, but each arcing the entire jaw. One singular ridge of bone sharpened like a butcher’s blade.

Truly terrifying.

Beau lunged, and the beast rose up, its shadow falling upon Beau, and his rigid spine seemed to become fused. He was frozen. A block of Beau.

But the thing’s movement had released me, at least for now. I wanted to drop to Beau’s side, assure myself that he lived and breathed, but that would leave us both vulnerable. I had to defend him. And get to that baby…

And that was when I realized the cries had stopped. Had there even been a baby? Was it all a ruse? Bobcats were said to sound like babies crying, but nothing like this.

This was another level. And the paralysis… I’d heard of basilisks and cockatrices, but in mythology, not in reality, and anyway, they turned things to stone, didn’t they?

I was out of my depth. This was completely beyond my experience. I didn’t want to go for the knife in the sheath at my belt, the one I carried with me everywhere in case I had to cut one of my rescues loose of something or finish taking down branches felled by our weather.

But I reached for it now, and when the thing’s attention swung back to me, I avoided it and dove for the bushes. My plan wasn’t to kill the beast—not if I could help it—but I would if I had to in self-defense. Otherwise, I would find a way to subdue it and take it in. Maybe it had been driven out of its territory. Maybe it was a species so endangered we didn’t even know it still existed, or a cryptid someone was searching for. Either way, it deserved a chance. And if Beau didn’t come out of his paralysis, this thing might have the answer for that too!

But not looking dead on made it hard to fight. The bushes cut and scraped at me, and the beast itself immediately caught me in the chest—two sharp blows just above my breasts, like paddles to either side of my heart, only a helluva lot harder. I went down, my knife falling useless at my side.

Vaguely, I heard Sarah’s door open, and a cry of “Lacey!” and the sound of a shotgun going off. There were shadows and scuffling, and a second later, Sarah’s face appeared above me, her hair falling like rain all around.

“I found Joe’s shotgun. He even kept it loaded. You okay?”

I mumbled something I meant to be yes, though I wasn’t so sure, and she gave me a hand up. I went to sitting first, making sure nothing in my chest was broken before I tried standing. It hurt like hell but felt like bruising rather than a break. I thought I was okay, especially when Beau came up and nosed my hair, licking my cheek and catching the corner of my eye. Aside from us, the night was silent. No crying baby.

I looked down at myself to see two prints as clear as mud on my flannel. Cloven. Definitely not canid. The thing had kicked me in the chest, and I had fallen. If Sarah hadn’t come out with Joe’s shotgun, it probably would have torn me apart with those teeth next.

“What the hell was that thing?” I asked.

We all looked off into the night as though it held answers. “I was hoping you knew,” Sarah said.

I shook as I drove back up my drive with Beau curled protectively around himself in the backseat. He peed on his way into the house, but quickly—so much so that he never got his legs firmly set and went off balance before he was really finished, but it didn’t seem to matter.

He scooted inside like his tail was on fire, cutting me off and looking back with apologies. He didn’t pause for me to take his harness off. Or to offer his nightly minty chewstick.

He ran straight for the back of the house. At a guess, to leap onto the side of my bed he’d claimed as his own, to nose himself under the covers and hide out there as he did during thunderstorms—the only thing he was afraid of.

Until now.

I locked the front door, bolted it, checked the back door as well, and all the windows. Then I grabbed my laptop and brought the cordless phone into the bedroom in lieu of my cell, just in case… I knew I wasn’t going to sleep for a long, long while, but Beau preferred to have me next to him when he was scared, and if I didn’t show soon, he might go scratching at Luke’s door, and Luke slept like the dead.

The thought sent chills over me, and I slipped under the covers rather than settling over them to work. That could have been us tonight. Me and Beau—dead. He sidled next to me under the covers, settling his warmth against me. I stroked his head resting on my ‘guest’ pillow as I waited for my computer to boot up, telling him over and over that he was safe.

Once I had my browser up, I struggled with what to search. Big hyena that freezes people didn’t get me anywhere. I tried hyena with cloven feet, and that got me something really odd, a creature called a leukrokotta said to come from Ethiopia and written about by Greek and Roman historians. It had the body of a stag, a mane like a lion, cloven hooves and that sharp continuous ridge of teeth—er, tooth, in the upper and lower jaws.

My beast was nothing like a stag, but it was so close that I kept reading. Not because I believed it. I mean, this was crazy. A mythological beast written about by historians in first and second centuries A.D. and certainly not widely sighted since or I’d have heard about it!

But every fiction, fable, and fairy tale started with a kernel of truth, a point to the telling. I just had to find it. And ah ha— or sort of, anyway—the leukrokotta was related to another beast called the krokotta, or crocotta, which was a hyena-lion hybrid and maybe from Ethiopia or maybe from India, and either way, known to mimic human speech to lure victims, which explained the piteous sounds of the baby crying.

Oh, yeah, and if they looked at a person—generally thrice—the person was frozen in place, and if their shadow fell on a dog, they were struck dumb. Or a bit more, as we’d experienced.

In other words, they were apex predators. Everything about them was designed to lure, subdue, and savage prey. Maybe they weren’t reported because so few lived to tell the tale. If that was the case, and if this one had decided to move in on our territory, as Spirit and the other wolf-dogs’ agitation seemed to indicate, there was a good chance that this one would be back.

Despite Beau’s heat, chills ran up and down my body, and it was well into the night, edging toward morning before I fell into an exhausted sleep.

Part of my sleeplessness the night before was going round and round in my head about how to bring the subject up with Thompson without having him think me mad. But I had to put him on alert. And find out if he’d ever heard of such a creature or any way to trap or defeat it. I couldn’t have it coming for Sarah again. Or for me and Beau. Or Luke or Thompson or any of my volunteers.

I was fairly sure my wild wolves and all the others could fight for themselves, but what if they couldn’t? The folklore I’d read had said that the krokotta’s shadow struck dogs dumb, but instinct or something had frozen Beau in place, and most of my wolves were part dog. I didn’t know what would happen with the wolf side. Or coyote. Or fox.

Most people thought that because wolves and dogs were genetically similar enough to breed, they were the same, but they were so, so different, from when they begin to socialize to when certain genes turned on to the stronger reliance on scent. Coyotes and foxes were even farther afield. There was no telling what a krokotta would do to them until tested, and I’d be damned if I’d let things get that far. Not with my animals. Not on my watch.

So, I kept an eye out for Thompson’s truck, and when he arrived, I ambushed him right there in the parking lot.

He didn’t look at me like I was crazy, but then, he hadn’t yet heard what I had to say. As I was saying it, he started out looking deeply into my eyes, as though he could see straight through them into the inner workings of my mind. At a certain point in my story, I watched his eyes widen, and he gave up our staring contest to look me all over, checking for any damage I wasn’t reporting. Finally, those green eyes with the crinkles at the corners rolled skyward as though headed for a mental search bar to browse through any outlandish experiences he might have archived.

When his gaze met mine again, he only said, “Everyone thought the New Guinea Singing Dog was extinct until just recently. Maybe this is something like that. Some nearly-forgotten evolutionary offshoot—”

“That you and I have never heard of? One that stopped me and Beau in our tracks? That can sound like a crying baby?”

“The bobcat has been known to sound like a crying baby.”

“I thought that too, but this was no bobcat,” I said, trying not to get irritated. He was only going through the very same process I’d gone through myself. “They have short tails. This one was long. Lion-like. And it had hooves, not paws. Listen, I know how this sounds. Just be on guard, okay, especially around the other animals, because if this thing is in their territory, they’ll have their hackles up. I did some research last night and found an old, old reference that sounds a lot like what we saw. It’s mythological, but there’s often a little truth in fiction. I’ll text it to you, but if you see anything, or know anyone you can ask who won’t have you committed, let me know, okay?”

He agreed that he would, and we parted ways, a full day ahead of us, though my day would be spent mostly in the office. I was the proposal writer for grants and other funding, but I backstopped our educational outreach administrator. We basically worked the office, handled questions, wrote up articles and content for the website, fielded interviews and Q&As, or arranged them where our biologist or vet or others were called for. I did other fun things too, like bill-paying, spread-sheeting, scheduling, and troubleshooting. It was a relief when I occasionally took a break to participate in something like the afternoon wolf encounter.

Some rescues were entirely no contact, and I completely got that. Most of our animals were off-limits except to be viewed in their enclosures. But a few were more social, and we allowed limited visitors who signed up, and were vetted in advance, agreeing to our strict rules and accompanied by our staff, to visit with our animal ambassadors. But we were not one of those places who constantly bred baby animals for photo ops and tore them away from their mamas.

When the time came, I stretched out the hours of sitting in my office chair, listening to my vertebrae snap, crackle and pop, then went out to mix in with the back of the tour group I’d be accompanying. Our volunteer, Jenny, started up the group wolf howl, encouraging the tour to howl with the wolves, and it warmed my heart, as it always did, when the wolves, wolf-dogs and coy-wolves across the rescue took up her call. Our entire woods were filled with the joyful, communal sounds of pack, of being recognized and reinforced. It was heartening. Bolstering. Bracing.

I almost forgot all my fears. Until the howls started to subside, and in the last echoes, something entirely other came back at us. Laughter. Entirely preternatural laughter that said you can’t touch me, for you are in there, and I am OUT HERE.

It dared all to follow and be lost.

The humans on the tour looked at each other for reassurance at the primal fear they felt. Their howls cut off, but the wolves took up again, answering the challenge. More than a few fences were tested as wolves flung themselves at the perimeters.

Thompson came home with me that night, loaded for bear. Quite literally. I didn’t keep guns on the property, even with the threats we sometimes received. Threats to property weren’t worth a potential loss of life, and who was to say my animals wouldn’t get caught in any crossfire.

I didn’t like guns. I’d seen the damage they could do. Tranq guns, though, were a different matter. They took a target down but not out, and that was the plan. Whatever this thing was, it had been evolutionally designed that way. It was obeying its instincts. I didn’t have to like them or submit to them, but I was against the death penalty for people or animals. If we could keep this thing alive, we certainly would.

I just hoped that ‘loaded for bear’ would be enough. Maybe he should have come ‘loaded for moose.’

I’d sent Sarah to her sister’s. Hopefully, that meant the beast would be coming for me. I was equating the imitation of human speech with human intelligence, which might be a mistake, but many animals were so much smarter than we gave them credit for. And predators in particular could be wily. They had to be, especially if they hunted alone.

Luke, after a chin ’sup of acknowledgement, a raid of the refrigerator, and a retreat to his room, gave no thought to Thompson’s presence and asked no questions. We were left alone in my cozy living room/kitchen combination to sit catty-corner to each other over coffee, him with the tranq gun resting against one leg and Beau hard-leaning against the other, as if I never gave him any love at all and Thompson could scratch behind that ear all night, thank-you-very-much.

I tried not to enjoy the sight too much.

And then I heard it. It was soft at first. I sat up straighter in my seat, as though that might help me hear. Beau pulled away from Thompson, whimpering, ears perking forward. He heard it too.

A cry—my name, Sarah’s voice.

“Lacey!” Out of breath. In pain. “Lacey, help me!”

It was a trick. It had to be a trick. I’d sent her out of town. She promised to go.

“Help!” A scream this time, as though whatever was after her had taken her down and she was seconds from death.

I ran for the door, grabbed for the walking stick I kept beside it, and wrenched it open. Thompson was right behind me. Beau tried to get out between his legs, but our biologist kept him back.

“Not this time, buddy.” He closed the door in Beau’s face, and I heard his barking and scratching behind us, desperate to join and protect us despite what had happened the last time. I was relieved that he was safe. That Luke with his headphones would never even hear the commotion.

“Lacey!” It was otherworldly, as though Sarah was choking on blood as she screamed.

Thompson outpaced me, which made me angry, somehow, and I poured on more speed until we were side by side. The uneven ground of the rescue tried to trip me, but momentum kept me upright as I raced, vaguely aware of the howling and fence rattling all around me. My animals were restless. They knew there was an invader in their midst. Whether Sarah was in trouble or not, this thing was here. Right here. In my territory. Their territory. Thompson and I were all that stood between it and my rescues.

As we ran past Spirit and Frost’s enclosure, a shadow launched out of nowhere, landing on Thompson’s back and biting into his neck with a crunch I could feel as though it were my own pain. He went down with a cry, arms going wide, tranq gun flying off into the night. I raised my walking stick like a club, leaping in to bash it over the beast’s head, desperate to get it to release, to save my friend. If it got Thompson’s jugular… I thought of that sharp ridge of teeth I’d seen in my Internet search. I didn’t know how well it would cut, but it seemed like a chopper, like something out of a butcher’s shop. Terribly effective. And that spurt of blood…

My brain wouldn’t stop with that until the monster—the krokotta—turned on me, jaw running with blood. Its lips pulled back from the teeth and there was no gum at all, just that ridge of bone straight down to the jaw, razor sharp and cutting. It looked like a horror version of a hyena, but pride lion sized, a sense reinforced when it flicked its lion-like tail my way as though swishing at a fly. It leapt off of Thompson’s body and started to come at me.

No, not off his body. He had to be alive. I had to draw the thing away. Had to put it down before it could double back to finish him.

It came slowly, sinuously, casually, as though it had all night. As though it was enjoying this.

I jabbed my stick forward; it snapped at it like it was nothing more than a twig. I pulled back quickly, afraid that it wouldn’t stand up to those jaws. Suddenly, it seemed a flimsy thing, and yet it was all that stood between me and death.

I angled so that I could redirect myself, try to get at the tranq gun that had skittered off, but the thing’s eyes flashed in the night, as if with sudden insight, and it pounced at me, striking out with its hooves, knocking my walking stick away and driving me to the ground. I rolled before it could take me, but I came up in the wrong direction. It was between me and the gun. And my stick was too far away to grab.

It laughed. That same mocking, horrible laugh from earlier that day, and a howl went up around the camp, a rattling of fences, especially close by. I’d recognize Spirit’s vocalizations anywhere, and he was snarling and throwing himself so hard I was afraid he’d hurt himself. I made the mistake of turning to look, an instant of inattention to the threat before me, and the krokotta pounced.

Only to be met in the air by a one-hundred-pound gray wolf-dog determined to rescue me as I’d once rescued him. How he’d gotten free I had no idea, but—

“No!” I cried, terrified the krokotta’s shadow would fall across him as it had Beau, and he’d fall frozen to the ground.

But Spirit was a force of nature. He hit with everything he had, knocking the krokotta away from me and tearing into the beast’s neck. But it was bigger and more powerful. It gave a horrible cry, still half-sounding like Sarah, and bucked to tear itself loose of Spirit’s jaws. It twisted, as though its spine were elastic, side kicking Spirit with its hooves, like a horse or a mule, pummeling him hard enough to break bone to get him to release. I couldn’t stand by and watch him be brutalized.

I ran for the tranq gun and heard Spirit give a sudden sharp whimper as though it had caught him in the chest. In an instant, their positions shifted, and the krokotta was above him, free of Spirit’s jaws and going for its own bit of flesh. And then suddenly Frost was loose as well, a blur of white against the darkness, crashing into the krokotta’s side, sending them all rolling across the packed earth. She wasn’t as large as Spirit. Or as powerful. I had to hurry. Together they might stand a chance. But with Spirit down…

But Spirit didn’t stay down. He rose with a snarl, making sure the krokotta knew him for the bigger threat, making it face him. It leapt to its feet and backed away a pace to face the two wolf-hybrids, snarling and bristling and ready to defend their territory and the people they considered their pack.

I almost stumbled over Thompson and heard him groan. My heart gave a leap. He was alive. Oh, thank the god I wasn’t even certain I believed in, he was alive.

I fell to my knees, not to pray, but to feel for the gun in the scant night lighting of the rescue, and I found it.

I lifted it from my kneeling position and sighted in. The krokotta was between me and my wolves. I prayed to the maybe-deity that it wouldn’t move, and I pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

Dammit, I’d forgotten the safety. Even tranq guns had safeties. Wouldn’t do to shoot oneself full of bear tranq. I quickly scrabbled for it, toggled it off, raised the gun again.

But now the krokotta was engaged.

Both wolves were on the beast. Or it was on them, as they scrapped, recovered, rolled, tore. I ran toward the snarl. I had to save my wolves. They couldn’t die on my account. They couldn’t.

Tears were streaming down my face as I ran toward the fight. It wasn’t a long run, but it was long enough. When I reached them, Spirit and Frost stood, bloody but triumphant over the even more bloody and bizarre creature out of myth, panting and exhausted. Bleeding, but not dead. I shot it anyway, not wanting it to rise. It was just tranquilizer. It wouldn’t kill it. But it would make sure it wouldn’t kill us.

Then I dropped the gun and got down on one knee.

“Are you okay, my heroes?” I put out an arm for each of them for them to decide whether they wanted to be touched, scratched, loved on. They were wounded. They might feel vulnerable, might want to go off and lick their wounds. Frost gave my hand a lick and backed away, then went to check on Thompson. Spirit came in, face to face, and then rested his chin on my shoulder. I brought my hand up to scratch his ruff, and we stayed there a moment. It was Spirit’s version of a hug, and I drank it down. Then he limped away a little bit to lick at his wounds, and I, too, went to check on Thompson. He was completely unconscious but breathing as I patted him down for his phone to call 911 for an ambulance and then animal control for the beast. But as I looked over between one call and the next to make sure that the krokotta was still out and we were all safe, the creature began to fade away. There, and then going, going, gone until it was as though it had never been, returned to the annals of myth or off to plague some other place or time.

I blinked and then blinked again, as though that would change anything.

I wasn’t thinking about how it would simplify my night, only about how it would complicate my world. An accident on rescue grounds involving what was clearly an animal attack and the shooting of a tranq gun—the first conclusion anyone would reach was that things were out of our control. Our animals were out of our control. Investigation would be required. Spirit and Frost were clearly blooded. Even if I could clean the beast’s blood from them before authorities appeared—and I had other priorities—I couldn’t hide their wounds. How would we ever satisfy an investigation?

Quickly, quietly, with apologies to Thompson for leaving him, I brought Spirit and Frost back to their enclosure and begged them to stay, even though I could see where they’d bowed and torn the fencing enough to allow themselves to slip through. Then I phoned our on-call vet and asked her to pay them a visit on the QT, explaining as vaguely as possible and promising more tomorrow before collapsing beside Thompson to wait for the ambulance and the unanswerable questions to come.

“So, what was it that did this?” Sergeant Martinez asked.

I was pacing the waiting room while Thompson was in surgery. Not normal for animal bites, but the krokotta had done major damage. There was internal bleeding that had to be stopped, blood vessels that had to be stitched back together or cauterized or whatever they did. He was up-to-date on his shots, but…

“I’m sorry, what?” And the x-ray had shown that the collar-bone had been broken…

“I said—”

“Oh right, go through it all again.” Because I had babbled something to the paramedics when they’d asked, stunned at the damage, and now I had to remember what I’d said and stay consistent. Although really, I hadn’t said much, had I? They’d been happy to move me quickly along to his insurance and medical history.

I kept it simple—wolves acting oddly, asking Thompson to stay behind, having the tranq gun loaded up in case there was something stalking the preserve. We didn’t really get a look at what attacked. When Thompson dropped the gun, I picked it up, fired it off at the intruder. It stumbled off into the night. End of story.

It seemed as though there were going to be a lot more questions. Sergeant Martinez— or Cami, as I knew her from the monthly poker games that mostly took place around my kitchen table, since I didn’t like to leave my rescue—was onto my tells. But then two things happened at once. A tall woman all gowned up in surgical scrubs came out and called my name, and a man and a woman decidedly not in hospital garb walked through the outer doors into the waiting room of the surgical center, making a bee-line for the Sergeant. I hesitated for an instant before answering my call, because there was something about the duo that radiated power and presence, and I had a feeling I wanted to hear what they had to say.

“Tori Karacis, P.I. and Apollo Demas—” the woman said, flipping open a wallet with some kind of identification to show the Sergeant.

Cami’s eyes went wide. Even I recognized the second name and, now that I was paying attention, that face. Apollo Demas…the actor? What on earth? But I went on my way. I’d get the full story later. Right now, I had to know what was going on with Thompson.

“Miss Guerrera?” the surgeon asked. At least, I presumed she was the surgeon who’d been working on him.

“Yes,” I answered, breathless. Thompson had me listed as his medical proxy, as I found out when we got to the hospital. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been allowed to know anything at all.

“He’s going to be fine, as long as we keep the wound infection-free, and we’re doing all we can on that, of course. We have to leave it open for a few days to drain and clean it, and we’d prefer to do that here before we close up. And a collarbone break is more a matter of slinging than casting, so he’s going to need care once we send him home to make sure that he’s not doing too much for himself.”

“I’ve got that covered,” I said with relief. More relief than the situation warranted, probably. I was terrible with change. But rescue. I was amazing with that. Not that I’d ever frame it in those terms to Thompson. He could come home with me. And if he chose to stay, become part of my pack, well, that would probably work out just fine. We’d see how it went.

“Are you okay?” the surgeon asked, reaching a hand out for me. I realized then that I was shaky with relief. Or maybe the released adrenaline of the whole damned night.

“I’m good, thank you. I think I just need to sit down. Or lie down. Maybe go home and sleep. Someone will call me when he wakes? I assume he’s still under anesthesia?”

“I’ll see to it,” she said, and turned back for the surgery center.

I let her go and turned back, but the strangers were gone, leaving just Cami staring after them. My legs carried me only so far as a chair I could collapse into, and Cami collapsed into the one beside me.

“What was that all about?” I asked. It came out more or less coherently.

She gave a bark of a laugh. “They’re here on behalf of a high-profile client, who asked that his name be kept out of things. Apparently, his ‘dog’ got free. He sent them for a private retrieval, which has now been accomplished, and they wanted to assure us that there’ll be no more trouble. There’s no reason to open an investigation or hunt down the animal. They’re going to cover all of Thompson’s medical bills, by the way—and they’ll be back around in the morning to talk to you about a donation to your rescue.”

“Oh, good,” I said, or almost. A yawn split my face before the words were entirely out.

“Good? I thought you’d be hopping mad. Someone’s keeping a dangerous animal that clearly got loose and savaged Thompson. That seems like the sort of thing you’d want me to investigate.”

If this was a lion or tiger or some other exotic animal, she’d be exactly right. But the krokotta was on another level entirely. Something about it fading away as I watched, freezing me and Beau in our tracks said it wasn’t entirely of this world. And I didn’t think that my people or the Sergeant and her force were equipped to deal with it. If this Tori Karacis was, so much the better. But I’d be asking some hard questions of the P.I. when she came to visit, and if I wasn’t satisfied… Well, now that I knew such creatures as the krokotta existed, I could hardly let them go running amok. Or allow the beasties to hurt others. Or be hurt or hunted themselves.

I hadn’t known a lot about wolves or wolf dogs before my first rescue. If need be, I could launch a whole new crusade.

But I had a very strong feeling that the two who’d arrived had things well in hand, and I’d be more than happy to get back to my pack and my son. And maybe, once Thompson was ready to come home, a new normal.

Lucienne Diver is the author of the Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series, featuring Tori Karacis, P.I., who makes a cameo in “A Cry in the Night.” Long and Short Reviews gave the series her favorite pull quote of all time, “a clever mix of Janet Evanovich and Rick Riordan!”

Lucienne has also written the Vamped young adult series—think Clueless meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer—and young adult suspense novels, including Faultlines, The Countdown Club, and Disappeared. Her short stories have appeared in Kicking It, ed. by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price, Strip-Mauled, and Fangs for the Mammaries, ed. by Esther Friesner, Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage Anthology Tribulations, and more.

On a personal note, Lucienne lives in Florida with her husband, daughter, the two cutest dogs in the world, and enough books to someday collapse the second floor of her home into the first. She likes living dangerously. Wolves are her spirit animal. If not agenting and writing, she would run off to work at a wolf rescue. Or become a dryad and guardian of the forests, but, so far, no opening has become available.