Hannah Pole - Silence of the Wolves

Leyth made quick work of wrapping the bandage around her stomach, then hastily covered her in blankets, keeping his eyes anywhere but on her. His traitorous crotch refused to cooperate, fighting against his jeans.

‘You OK?’ he growled.

‘Yup,’ she said through gritted teeth.

He could see the exhaustion sweeping through her. ‘Do you mind if I grab a shower?’ He motioned to the dried blood still covering his arms and chest.

‘Sure. Go ahead,’ she mumbled, waving towards the bathroom.

‘Good. Try to sleep.’

He was almost certain she would be out like a light before he’d even left the room, and maybe that was for the best.

Tamriel was absolutely exhausted but, hell, she wasn’t going to let a silly thing like sleep stop her. Leyth excused himself and went to shower, which was possibly the best thing that could have happened. It gave her a few minutes of vital alone time that she really needed. Time to collect herself and process all that had just happened.

As he left the room, she didn’t waste any time. Trying her hardest to sit up, she struggled against the sofa. Even that had tears streaming from her eyes and her body screaming in agony. Her mind was buzzing with unanswered questions; she was so confused and frustrated, it was a wonder she didn’t literally burst.

Cursing under her breath, Tam reached an arm underneath her sofa and pulled out her computer. She hit the power button. She didn’t have long before her captor returned from the shower and she needed answers quickly. She Googled ‘Werewolves, Folkestone.’

The page filled up with various websites claiming to be an ‘online hangout for genuine werewolves’. All fake gothic crap. Nothing of any interest.

Tapping her fingers against the arm of the sofa, Tam blew out a frustrated breath before typing in ‘wolves’.

This didn’t return very much of interest, only pictures of various wolves around the world, a Wikipedia description of the types of wolves around today, and your more generic wolf sites.

She changed the search term to ‘Wolves in Kent.’

The first thing that came up was the website for the Wildlife Park called ‘White Wolves Inc.’. It looked pretty normal, a description of the park itself and a bit about the wolves and other wildlife that was kept there.

It struck her as odd, however, that the park was not open to the public. It was only available for private hire, and even that had to be applied for, scheduled and approved.

There were no articles about the wildlife park, no reviews or advertisements. Only the low-key website. Tam clicked back through to the full list of searches.

Port Lympne, the zoo, popped up in Google’s search results, but Tam didn’t bother looking at that. She knew all about the zoo and the Aspinall Foundation, following a story she did on them last year.

Scrolling through the many results, Tam finally came across an article that hooked her interest. It was entitled ‘Real Werewolves in Kent’.

Reading through the article, she found it was a detailed description of one researcher’s experience with ‘werewolves’. It didn’t say where in Kent he’d found them, but he did describe a huge man with an attractive accent. The article went on to describe how the researcher had cameras hidden in various areas of woodland around the Kent countryside, and one of these had picked up footage of a huge man walking out into the woodland stark naked. He had apparently then proceeded to drop onto all fours and literally turned into an enormous wolf. The article was incredibly descriptive about how the change happened, and the author, still obviously in shock from what he’d witnessed, then reeled off several of his many theories surrounding the experience.

Tamriel then did a search on the researcher. His name was Tobias Daniels, and he’d written various books and articles on ‘supernatural happenings’ in the Kent area. Strangely, following that particular article, he’d promptly written a disclaimer telling the world that it was a prank played by some of the local college kids and that he had no reason to believe that werewolves actually exist. Interesting.

Tam dug a little further. Tobias Daniels had apparently come into a lot of money recently, only weeks after that particular article in fact, and now ran a private research facility in Canterbury, although he refused to publish any of his findings.

Tam chewed on this information for a little while, skimming through various articles that mentioned the researcher, and published works by the man himself. After a while, she absently typed ‘real werewolf’ into Google, which brought up all manner of websites, some a little ridiculous, others a little more serious.

Tam snorted at the thought. Was she actually trying to believe this? But, following what she’d witnessed, how could she not?

Tam rubbed her eyes. She herself was definitely not normal, was it really a stretch to believe she genuinely was supernatural? Probably not.

Through the thin walls of her flat, she could hear the water running still. She had some time. God that man scared her yet, behind that hard exterior, she’d managed to see glimpses of compassion. She clicked on her email icon and pulled up a new message. Who the hell was she going to email? ‘Help, I’m trapped in my own house, held captive by a werewolf.’ Who on earth wasn’t going to think that was a prank?

Tam finally decided that dropping her colleague at work an email was the best plan, keeping it short and simple, ‘At home, please send help.’

As she hit send, she felt a pang of guilt; what if someone came over and Leyth killed or hurt them? The logical side of her pointed out that they were in a building full of people, in the middle of a town, so it would be difficult for her captor to do anything violent and it go unnoticed. Besides, he hadn’t done anything even remotely malicious yet. In fact, he’d only tried to help her; he’d carried her home after she’d injured herself and nursed her back to health. She would probably have died if it weren’t for him and, what’s more, he had brought her home. Plus he hadn’t once said she couldn’t leave; she was just too sore to move.

As she was mulling on this, a message popped up in her inbox. Service delivery notification failure. The message she’d sent hadn’t been delivered. Frowning, and keeping her ear tuned in to the shower, she quickly typed the message out again, double-checked the address, and hit ‘send’ again. A few seconds later, the message notifying her that it hadn’t sent popped up again. Crap. She sent another message to a different colleague, and had the same response. Finally she blew out a frustrated breath and sent a message to her mother. The last thing she wanted to do was to get her mother involved in all this madness, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The message failed to send once more. What the hell?

Clicking onto the web browser, she typed in ‘Facebook’ and hit enter. She could message someone on there, not that she had many friends to speak of. She sucked in a disbelieving breath as a message popped up on her browser: ‘access denied’.

What the—?

Her confusion was cut short as she heard the water in the shower come to a stop and the glass door open. Crap. She slammed her laptop shut and shoved it underneath the sofa, not wanting her ‘captor’ to know she had some, albeit limited, access to the Internet and, hopefully, if she could just work out how, a means of connecting to the outside world. Though even as she thought it, her heart sank. They’d obviously found a way of restricting her Internet so she couldn’t call for help, and she would put money on the fact that her captor had found a way of restricting her phone line as well.