The Marradith Ryder Series Part 2

The man shook his head. His eyes pleaded with her. “Look, I’ll tell you what you want to know, but please…if you beat me you’re not going to get any information. Marradith, we don’t have a lot of time.  You heard me talking to someone on the phone. I am not the only one who knows you’re here.  You need to accept what I am about to tell you. I am Justin Granthem. You‘ve already seen what I am.”

She took a step back. “How do you know me?”

“I know of you and your family. Your parents are Paul and Nora Ryder. You have two brothers, Scott and Danny. Scott is away at college. Your younger brother Danny is with your parents.”

She felt a chill down her spine. It hadn’t occurred to her that something might be wrong with Danny and her parents. They were supposed to be in California visiting her Grandmother.

She wasn’t expecting them back for another week.

“Where are they? What did you do to my family?”

“Nothing has been done to them, they are safe. We have them in protection. This did not go the way it was supposed to. The man that I spoke to earlier is expecting me to call back in. If they don’t hear back from me within five minutes, you’re going to have more than one werewolf on you hands.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care what you say, I want to know my family is alright.”

Justin sighed. “I don’t even know where they are exactly, but I have a number. You can call them.”

“Give me the number.”

“We don’t have much time. And you can’t stay on the phone for more than two minutes.”

“Yeah, whatever, you’re going to give me the number.” She picked up the receiver. With the other hand, she pressed her bat against his thigh, applying just enough pressure to make him uncomfortable. “Come on.”

“If you talk to them will you believe me?”

“I am not making you any promises.”

He recited the number. She dialed, holding her breath. It rang twice before there was an answer.

“Honey?” Nora’s voice flowed over the line.

“Mom! Are you okay? Are Dad and Danny alright?”

“Yes. You must have met Justin by now, right?”

“This man… this thing says he’s Justin. You know him?”

There was a pause before she continued. “Yes. Marradith, we were going to  explain everything, but they came for you early. This is something that we’re all going to have to deal with right now, and you should know that Dad and I are sorry that we can’t be there with you. You have to do exactly what he tells you to do.”

“Mom! He’s a were…”

“You’re not going to say that word over the telephone,” Nora Ryder replied sharply. “I know what he is. Justin is there to protect and teach you, and you’re going to follow him to the letter.”

“What…?” Marradith had never come so close to cussing out her own mother. “Are you serious?”

“This is more serious than anything we’ve ever talked about. Do what he says, Marradith.”

“Someone is making you say these things. This can’t be right.”

“Listen here. You stubborn girl. I love you but for once in your life you’re going to have to go along with someone else’s plan. I can’t stay on this line. We’re fine, but if you don’t do what Justin says things might not stay that way. You understand?”

“Mom…!”

“I love you. Remember what I said.”

She hung up.

Marradith held the phone.

Justin stomped his foot. “Well?”

She got a knife from one of the drawers, and he flinched when she came near him. She cut through the ropes. He stood slowly, not backing away. He was a good six inches taller than her, but she still gripped the bat in her left hand, and the knife was in her right.

He picked up the phone from the counter and made his call. A male voice answered.

“She is compliant,” he said. “Call off the men.”

Justin hung up. He stretched, relieved to be free of the ropes, though he was still aching and sore. If  Marradith was fearful before, she looked like she was in shock now.  “Like I said before,”  he said softly, “this was not supposed to happen this way. But there isn’t time to explain now. We need to get out of here.”

“Where? For how long?”

“That depends.”

“I’ll need to pack.”

“No you don’t. Go and get your jacket. If your parents left some cash here, we’ll need that, too.”

She rolled her wide eyes at him. Marradith was only sixteen, and he guessed that she could pass for younger if she tried. Her heart shaped face reminded him of a cat. Her black hair was in a ponytail, but strands had gotten loose and now hung around her face like a dark halo.

“Get your jacket, and come on. We need to make this quick.”

She ran upstairs. For a moment, she stood in her room, looking around.  She thought about trying to escape. She could climb out onto the roof and shimmy her way down the side of the house. She could make it outside into the night before Justin knew she was gone. But if she did that, how long would it take for him to realize she was gone? How long before he (or the other werewolves ) would find her?  What price would her family pay for her disobedience?

She remembered her Mother’s voice over the phone.

For now, she’d have to go along with it.

She pulled out her favorite jacket and put on socks and sneakers.

She scrawled words across her bathroom mirror, and shoved her cell phone into her jeans pocket before she ran back downstairs to join Justin.

Under what circumstances, she wondered, does any parent turn over their teenage daughter to a werewolf?

***

(If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here.)

___

© 2009 Lori Titus

Lori Titus’s The Marradith Ryder Series appears in episodes on Flashes in the Dark. Many of her short stories appear on MicroHorror.com, DemonMinds.com, and Shadeworks.org. An upcoming story will also be featured as a pod cast on SFZine.org. For more information see her at http://www.myspace.com/talesforthedark.

Artwork by: Raul Faria of Faria Graphics.

The Marradith Ryder Series Part 1

There were only two things that you could do in a situation like this: either sit there and wait, and hope that it doesn’t hear your breathing. Or brace yourself for the inevitable.

Lots of choices, huh?

I concentrated on being quiet. There were slats in the closet door, but I was afraid to look out of them. I feared that it would feel I was looking and pull open the door. There was a baseball bat in my hands, but who was I kidding?

If that thing got hold of me, it would beat me to death with my own bat.

If I got lucky.

I heard it, breathing heavy, moving slowly up the stairs. My brothers weren’t home. My parents were out of town. I had not been left alone in the house for even one night over the past three months.

But this would have to be the night.

It stopped.

It had reached the top of the stairs. From my vantage point, I could see the fur on its back. The form was muscular, standing tall like a man. He sniffed the air, seeming to sense something that appealed to him.

You’d think he just stepped in the door and smelled pumpkin pie.

With some alarm, I realized that what he probably smelled was me.

He turned then and came towards the door of the bedroom.

I clutched the bat a little tighter. I could feel sweat on my skin. Dogs could smell fear, couldn’t they?

After all, werewolves are highly evolved dogs…. Or poorly evolved humans? My mind was racing. Maybe, if I aimed low, I had a fighting chance…

A sound pealed through the house, so loud against the silence that the werewolf jumped.

The phone was ringing.

The werewolf grunted.

Annoyed, he went padding down the hallway. The phone was on a little pedestal table there. He stared at it for a moment.

I thought, what the hell, is he trying to figure out how to answer it?

Part of me was trying to plan out how I might escape. I was also wondering what he was going to do with the phone.

He picked up the receiver.

He grumbled, in a voice that was low but somehow intelligible, one word: Hello?

I clamped a hand over my mouth. I could tell you that I wanted to scream, but it probably would have been a laugh.

The werewolf was holding the phone and listening.

What happened next made me drop the bat. I got up on my knees.

As I watched, the werewolf’s body began to shiver, and he changed form.
Suddenly, he was a man.

He stood naked in my hallway, still gripping the receiver in his right hand.

He spoke into the phone then, his voice hoarse but otherwise normal.

“You told me,” he said, “that the girl was here. That she’d be waiting for me. Why is she hiding? Hasn’t she been told anything?”

He paused, listening to the reply. The person – or thing – on the other end sounded angry, because I could hear the tone from my hiding place.

The man, anxious now, cleared his throat. “I changed as soon as I got into the house. So, there’s not much left in the way of explanation, is there?”

He hung up.

He did not turn around. Instead, he went down the stairs.

When he came back up, I was waiting. He was wearing my brother’s jeans. He bent forward, looking into the bottom of the closest.

I sensed his confusion. His animal senses must have told him that I’d never left the room.

He turned, almost in time.

I hit him in the head with the baseball bat.

************

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

He was sitting upright in a chair, with his hands bound behind his back.

The girl was somewhere near. He could smell her scent.

His head throbbed. One of his eyes was swollen shut. The other, he could see through, but everything was blurry.

When he tried to move his neck, he realized that the throbbing was coming from more than one place. It shot from the crown of his head, down his neck, and down the side of his back. He could recall the hollow thump of the metallic bat as she smashed it across his head. Once he went down, how many more times had the bitch hit him?

He breathed in, which made a shudder go through his chest. If he were still in his werewolf form, the sound would have come out as a growl.

In his weakened, human condition, the sound was only a cough.

Focus, he thought. He felt her moving around, but could not see her. She’s on the right, he surmised, the side that his eye was swollen shut.

Carefully, he turned his head in that direction.

His reward was a whole new symphony of pain sizzling its way through his muscles. But he also caught her scent again. She was quite near.

Despite the pain, he turned his head a little more.

Her feet were bare. Her brown flesh was nearly the same color as the maple wood floor. She shifted her weight. As he looked up further he saw her hands planted on her hips. Her face, when it came into view, was immobile. She had an excellent poker face.

Except, for the darkness of her eyes. That, and the faint, salty sweet of perspiration.

Fear covered her like an extra layer of clothing.

“Who are you?” she said. Her voice held an edge of hysteria.

How could he answer without making things worse?

“They told me you already knew. I came here.. To teach you. How to hunt Wolves like me.”

He flinched as he said the last few words, afraid that her bat would meet his head again. “Looks like you’re doing fine so far.”

___

© 2008 Lori Titus

New episodes of The Marradith Ryder Series are posted here every Wednesday. You can also vote for Marradith on Top Web Fiction:  http://topwebfiction.com/vote.php?for=the-marradith-ryder-series

To catch up with the author, visit her blog: http://loribeth215.wordpress.com/