Free Collected by Shawntelle Madison Page B

been far too long since I’d hunted prey bigger than
the rabbits hiding along my property.
    After a few deep breaths, I managed to open
the door. No, I just couldn’t get dirty. I couldn’t go running off
through the woods into God knew what—poison ivy, spiderwebs, or
worse. I’d have to bathe for hours to get it all off me. The next
step should’ve been to leave the car. Unfortunately, I used it to
shut the door.
    There had to be another way. Some other way
to reach my destination and maintain my sanity. I kept driving
south.
    The scent wasn’t as heavy, but it
remained.
    Eventually, a right-hand turn appeared. Maybe
a real path could be found. The gravel road led to a vacant lot
with a small building and a tool shed. Based on the shape of the
large building at one corner, a township stored their snow plows
here. Bags of salt were stacked on top of each other. Not far from
the piles was a second gravel path. My nose told me to go that
way.
    I pulled off the side, got out of the car,
and then slowly strode toward the path. The scent was ever so
faint, like detecting perfume left on clothes from the night
before. The trail led me behind the buildings.
    Spring had sprung all around me, yet I didn’t
notice its fragrance due to the forest’s filth. Broken branches
covered in sickly green moss. There had to be red trilliums nearby.
The wildflower was lovely, but it stank to high heaven like
carrion. Sadly, the only thing that smelled sweet was the faint
fragrance of barren strawberries that had yet to come into full
bloom. Yet another scent prevailed over everything, a swampy one
from the rain that had fallen a few days ago.
    Every awkward step in my heels sent shocks of
pain into my ankles. But I kept going. I kept moving. What drew me
forward was the hunger for confrontation, the hunger to see
whatever had taken what was rightfully mine.
    Thankfully, I didn’t have to touch any trees
or step on anything other than the gravel. The dust from the path
would be easy enough to clean off. After a ways, the path turned
into a clearing. With each step, I told myself, Stop looking
around you. Don’t think about the fallen trees. Don’t think about
the grass, and for goodness sake, don’t think about your damn
shoes .
    I was a werewolf, and I needed to focus on
the hunt.
    Rays of sunlight peeked through the trees.
Branches hovered over the clearing like a mother protecting her
child from the rain. But even with the speckled light, I could make
out some kind of tool shed surrounded by a graveyard of scrap
metal. The haphazard piles included refrigerators, televisions, and
other electronics.
    I sucked in a breath. They were rusted,
putrid things.
    Right next to the junk, leaning against the
shed, was another unsteady structure which couldn’t be classified
as a home. Bits and pieces of the scrap metal, along with crumbled
bricks, had been used to protect it from the elements. A thick
tree, most likely oak, jutted out from the back and provided ample
shade over the shed and ramshackle house. My mom always said a home
was any place where you could burn what you caught and quartered,
but this was ridiculous. I gazed with disdain at the place. At the
mud along the bent-in door. What kind of person lived like
this?
    Yet a trail of smoke from a slanting chimney
told a different tale. Something lived here. And that
something had the scent of the intruder who took my package.
    His sneaky butt was mine to chew out—when I
learned how to get in.
    I shouted instead.
    “Whoever took my package needs to show
themselves. Now .”
    Silence.
    “You know, you just can’t take what doesn’t
belong to you.”
    Would it be sad to admit I stood there for a
few minutes before I mustered the courage to get really pissed off?
How long had it been since I’d showed another supernatural creature
who was boss? A few months? Over a year?
    “I’m going to give you ten seconds to come
out before I rip off your door—or whatever constitutes