Riley

 

With Jack’s warning still ringing in my ears hours later, I huddle behind the couch and point Uncle Elmer’s old shotgun at the door, too scared to even blink. The only company I have through the lonely night is the annoying tick-tock of the grandfather clock by the wall. Sometimes, I wonder if it wants to deliberately lure me to sleep so the big, bad Wolf can come into my house and eat me.

But Jack doesn’t return. In the early morning hours, and after three visits from the sandman, I finally lose the fight and let my eyes drift shut, my finger still on the trigger…

A pack of ravenous wolves chases me through the forest in my dreams, a handsome prince waiting and waving at me ahead. But no matter how fast I run toward him, he continues to hover just beyond my reach.

As a sharp knock on wood echoes, the prince and I both jerk our heads. The gun in my hand fires—

My eyes pop open at the thunderous bang, and I find that, luckily, the bullet went through the ceiling and not the door.

Panic grabs me for a moment at the thought that Jack has finally come for me. “Who is it?” I call out, wiping drool off the corner of my mouth as I straighten from the couch and walk to the door, the gun at the ready.

Alarmed not by my voice but more than likely by the shot, someone outside shouts back, “Riley, are you okay?”

Thank the thirteen fairies it isn’t Jack. I lower the rusty, old weapon and rush forward to open the door. “Phillip! Sorry, I didn’t mean to shoot at you. I…fell asleep…” My face crumples. “With the gun.” Okay, even to me that sounds odd.

Quietly, his guarded gaze drops to the smoke steaming from the barrel of my shotgun before it slowly wanders back up to my eyes. “I see you took Jack’s warning seriously.”

He knows what Jack said to me before he left? Then again, it’s not a big surprise. They must have met afterward. Leaning the gun against the wall next to the door, I step aside and ask my visitor in, confessing, “I think he’s a bit out of his mind since we stopped playing.”

“Oh, he sure is.” Phillip comes through the door and takes a curious look around my small but cozy home. He’s never been here before, which hikes up my next suspicion.

“To what do I owe the honor?” I drawl, sweeping my hand toward the couch, offering him a seat. “Did Rory send you?”

Tearing his attention away from my whimsical furniture, his focus sharpens on me once more as his hands disappear into his dark leather pants’ pockets, pushing the red, button-down shirt and white royal vest slightly upward. “Nobody sent me. But I need you to come with me, Riley.” Besides the urgency in his tone, I notice that he ignores my offer to sit down and lingers close to the door, which is still open.

My backside pressed against the kitchen table, I grab the wooden edges beside my hips. Lines furrow my brow. “Come with you where?”

“To Jack.” He takes a step toward me, his chin dipping just a little as he stares down at my face. “He’s in trouble, and I believe you’re the only one who can help him.”

“What?” The tiny word escapes me on a squeak of shock. My fingers loosen from the edge of the table, and I clasp my suddenly clammy hands in front of my stomach. “Where is he? Is anybody hurt? Did Jack eat someone?” Holy honeypot, if he lost control in the village, it’s all my fault. I forced this fate on him, even though he told me how hard it was for him to endure. I saw the struggle in his eyes yesterday before he left. “Are the police after him?”

Phillip lays his hands on my shoulders, speaking very softly yet with insistence. “No one got hurt…yet. But it’s only a matter of time. Will you please come with me and help me save my friend?”

In a wild panic, I nod and let the prince lead me out of my house. With my brain so fuzzy, I only realize that I’m without my bow and quiver when I pull the door closed. As I turn around to get them, something else grabs my focus.

There’s a horse in front of my house.

Phillip walks to the giant white animal, takes the reins, and holds out a hand to me. In response, I lift both of mine in denial. “Nuh-uh!”

“You don’t have to be afraid. I’ll help you up.”

“I’ve never ridden a horse before,” I confess, fear making my voice tremble.

He slips one foot into the stirrup of the lordly black saddle and hoists himself onto the back of the beast. A loud snort puffs out of the horse’s nostrils as it shakes its ghostly white mane. When Phillip has a good seat, he gently taps the animal’s belly with his heel so it trots toward me.

The gleam in his eyes is a mix of taunt and mischief. “I heard you rode a wolf yesterday,” he says, bending down to grab my wrist. In the next moment, I’m lifted up so fast that I can’t even protest. “Riding a horse is much the same.” He tucks me sideways against his chest and holds me tightly with one arm as he gathers the reins in the other hand and makes the white horse gallop off with an aggressive, “Giddyup!”

My legs dangling over the horse’s side, Phillip is the only thing I can hold on to. And I do it with ferocious strength.

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen you scared before, Red Riding Hood,” he chuckles into my ear as I press my face against his chest.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Well, now you know my weakness.”

A few minutes later, the sound of hoof beats on the forest floor gives way to the sound of a hard clop on cobblestones. I dare to glimpse at where we are. Expecting a ride through Grimwich, surprise knocks me dumb because we’re crossing the bridge over the moat to Rory’s home.

The mighty castle towers over an enchanted circle of thorn hedges around us, and Phillip pulls the horse to an abrupt stop. He gets off first and helps me down with a safe grip on my waist.

By Pinocchio’s growing nose, standing on my own feet has never felt so good.

That the magical hedge is still there but lets us ride through it so easily tells me exactly where in their story of Little Briar-Rose they are stuck right now. “Is Rory asleep?”

“Yep. Has been for almost a day.” A smack on the horse’s behind from Phillip is enough to send it trotting away. Apparently, it knows the way to the stables well.

“Why didn’t you kiss her?” It should be the first thing for him to do right after breaking through the wild, creeping rose brambles. And why are we here anyway? Didn’t he say he was going to take me to Jack?

“Because things will be easier if she sleeps on for a little longer.” He opens the door and drags me through.

Everything inside the castle is eerily quiet. The servants are probably napping in the sun. Briar-Rose is supposed to be asleep in a room in the highest tower of the castle, but as we pass the grand stairs leading upward, I realize that’s not where we’re going.

“I’ll kiss her awake soon. But first, we need to solve this problem.”

We take a left behind the servants’ kitchen, and Phillip picks a burning torch from the wall before he leads me down a set of narrow stone steps. All right, the problem must be in the dungeons then. A shiver pleads with me to turn around and run away because damp vaults without any daylight are never a place for a happy story. Phillip seems to sense my worry and wraps his fingers around my hand a little tighter.

“I thought we were going to see Jack? Why are we heading into the dungeon?” I croak in an almost inaudible voice. I don’t know why, but dark places always make me whisper.

Phillip pulls me along a narrow corridor, the light from the torch making our shadows perform a spooky welcome dance on the stone walls. He turns his head to me, his gaze serious. “Because Jack is in the dungeon. He asked me to lock him away.”

His words zap me like Maleficent’s evil spell. My mouth tips open, but no sound comes out. Until we round another corner, and I make out the features of a person in a vault behind an iron gate.

My heartbeat clips incredibly fast. Letting go of Phillip’s hand, I move closer to the gate, noticing that the young man in there is leaning his head on his forearm, which is braced against the wall. Even though his back is to us, I would recognize him anywhere in the world. “Jack—” I croak.

He’s breathing hard, I can see that from here. When he turns his head to look over his shoulder at me, an inhuman sound rumbles from his throat, making me stop in my tracks. His face is covered in sweat. With Phillip’s torchlight, I can see that his clothes are also drenched. Wet hair sticks to his forehead, strands of it nearly covering his sinister eyes. “Why did you bring her?” he growls so dangerously my skin rises in goosebumps. Even though I know he’s talking to the prince behind me, his gaze bores holes into me.

My hands clapped over my mouth, I try not to tear up as I walk closer to him. “Jack…what hap—?”

In an explosive roar, he leaps away from the wall, changing into the deadly Wolf, and knocks against the gate only inches from my face.

“Baaah!” Terrified, I jump away, bumping into Phillip, who almost drops the torch in surprise. Thankfully, the iron keeps Jack in place, even if his mighty paw claws out through the gaps in the woven metal. His enraged barks and snarls echo through the tunnels.

Phillip steadies me and worriedly searches my face. “Are you all right? He didn’t catch you, did he?”

“Ah, yeah…no…I’m fine,” I stutter in a whiny voice. Even if he has no trouble ignoring Jack, I can’t do that so easily. My torn gaze switches back to the tortured Wolf, and I want to start crying. “What’s going on?”

Phillip tucks the torch into an iron claw fastened on the stone wall and puts his hands on my shoulders, gently moving me backward until my legs knock into something hard and I drop sideways onto a wooden chair by the wall. “Jack came to me yesterday. He was in bad shape, asking me for help.”

“Help?” I rasp.

“The whole thing with ignoring your tale is getting to him.” Phillip lowers into a squat in front of me, holding on to the backrest of the chair. “He knew he couldn’t keep the Wolf inside for much longer, so he asked me to lock him down and make sure he didn’t wreak havoc. Neither of us knew what to expect, but we both hoped it would ease after a while. It hasn’t.”

Very slowly, I start taking in the rest of my surroundings. There’s a small, round table beside the chair. An open bottle of wine and a used glass on the surface suggest that someone must have been sitting guard here through the night.

“Jack didn’t want anyone to know what’s happening.” Phillip speaks in a calm but firm tone. “I couldn’t tell Rory. That’s why she’s still sleeping. I can’t engage in the story as long as my buddy is in trouble.” He heaves a sigh. “And he barred me from bringing you here.”

“Thanks for coming for me anyway,” I whisper. My gaze shifts, and I look over to the still raging Wolf. His animalistic scowl is focused hard on me. It seems he’s trying to tear the iron gate apart just so he can get to me. His roar shakes me to the core.

“Don’t worry.” Phillip interprets my look absolutely right. “He can’t get out of there. But we need to do something to help him.”

My gaze snaps back to him, and I pant in all sincerity, “Of course. We’ll go through with our tale. Well go to Granny and finish what began two days ago. I mean, that should stop his pain and bring him back to normal, right?”

The long silence coming from the prince makes me nervous. “What? You don’t think it’ll work?”

He sighs. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. He isn’t himself anymore. For hours, he’s been changing back and forth, uncontrollably. If I open this gate now, he’ll descend on me.” A short pause. “Right after he eats you.”

Goodness, I can just see that happening. We’d never make it to Granny’s house. If the lunacy in his eyes is anything to go by, we wouldn’t even make it around the corner, and Jack would leave a bloody trail in his wake.

“What do you suggest?” I chirp, swallowing hard.

“I have an idea, but it’s a long shot.” He rises to this feet and starts pacing. The tension in his shoulders reveals that he doesn’t put a lot of stock in the plan.

“I guess we don’t have much choice right now. So…what is it?”

Blowing out a breath, he turns around to me. “Dr. Jekyll.”

A shudder travels down my spine at the name. Dr. Henry Jekyll is a brilliant ENT specialist and pediatrician in town, but I know Phillip isn’t speaking about getting sore throat drops for Jack.

The doctor also has a darker side. The scientist in him has been mixing dangerous potions in his laboratory all through his story. His most questionable masterpiece is an elixir originally meant to separate the good side from the evil in a person. In doing so, he ended up creating Mr. Hyde.

Now, I can understand why the idea puts Phillip on edge. “You want him to give Jack some of his mixture. Do you think it’ll bring him back?”

“Well, it can’t get much worse than this.” He gestures toward the Wolf repeatedly running into the gate, the clang echoing through the underground. “It’s worth a try. And maybe the only chance we have.” He lifts a brow, taunting me in the middle of this already dire situation. “Unless you want to get your bow and release Jack from his torture.”

Shoot my friend? “That’s not funny,” I growl.

Phillip comes closer and hunkers down in front of me again so we’re at eye level. “I know.” The honesty in his look says that he’s just plain overwhelmed and at a loss for what to do next. “I’d really like to get ahold of the doctor, hear what he has to say. Would you stay here and keep an eye on Jack while I ride to town?”

“Of course!” My heart is bleeding for my friend. I’m not going anywhere until he’s well again.

Phillip nods, standing. “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

What I like so much about the prince is that he never hems and haws when it’s clearly not the time to. The clip of the heels of his boots echoes and fades as he strides away, disappearing around the corner.

Still shaking from the shock of all of this, I sit rigidly and finally turn my head back to the cell. Jack snarls in the flickering light of the flame. He oozes danger but, for once, he retreats from the gate. We stare at each other for a lengthy moment. By all the rainbows in Fairyland, I wish I could help him.

The snarling ceases. He doesn’t bare his teeth at me anymore either. Not letting me out of his sight, he lowers to the cold stone floor in the shadows of his vault. Hope surfaces that he’ll soon change back to his human self, realizing that I’m not a piece of meat that Phillip brought here to tease him with.

Breathing in slow and deep, I grasp the backrest of the chair and brace the other hand on the table, pushing myself up. Cautiously, I walk closer to the cage. “Jack? Is that you now?” My voice is nothing more than a mouse squeak in the silent dungeon. “I’m so sorry. You have to know that I never meant to—”

The beast leaps forward once again and crashes headfirst into the gate, making it shudder and sending me back in terror. He falls to the floor, a labored breath puffing out through his snout.

Heartbroken, I press my fists to my mouth and scrunch up my face.

Ouch.

 

*

 

Hours must have passed since Phillip left us alone. My back hurts from hunching over the small, round table, peeling the label off the half-empty wine bottle. Merlot. I believe this is a much classier brand than the bottom-shelf liquor I bring to Granny every so often.

Jack became quiet over the last half hour. He stopped maltreating the iron gate to get out and is now lying in the shadowy corner at the back of the vault. Only his eyes sparkle in the dark.

Impatiently, I get up and look around the corner in hopes that the prince might be returning at last. But the cold corridor is still empty. Disheartened, I lower back onto the chair.

“Want to know what I’ve been wondering all this time, Jack?” I murmur after some time, concentrating on the final sticky bits of the label. “What Granny does with all the wine I bring to her? I mean, obviously, she can’t drink it all or she’d have long since conked out from alcoholic cirrhosis, right? So where does it go? Into a pool behind her house?”

I sniff, rolling the biggest piece of paper I peeled off into a small pellet. “And then I wondered what you do outside our tales. The other day when we had to play double was the first time I ever saw you drunk.” Okay, he wasn’t really drunk, just slightly tipsy, but it made me think about him anyway. About his private life that doesn’t include Granny or me. Or even the Huntsman. “We’ve spent an incredible amount of time together, yet I don’t know anything about you or what you like to do. Isn’t that odd? I don’t know what your favorite food is. If you’d rather sleep in wolf or human form. Or what you wish for when you see a shooting star.”

As an extended, dangerous snarl crawls across the stone floor from the farthest corner of the vault, I pull up my feet by instinct as if the sound alone could drag me into the shadows. And then Jack’s contemptuous voice flows out of the dark. “I wish I had eaten you that last time at your granny’s house.”

I stiffen in the chair and snap my head up, my heart beating in my throat. He doesn’t come out of the shadows, but his eyes gleam differently now. More brown again than pitch-black.

Three nervous heartbeats pass before my voice returns, and I slowly lift from the chair. “No, you don’t mean that, Jack.” It’s a mere whisper. A plea. I know he’s suffering because of my wanton decisions, but he can’t hate me that much. Can he? “We’re friends.”

Rustling on the floor tells me that he’s rising. Cautiously, I walk closer, holding my breath, but when he steps out of the darkness into the firelight, my blood curdles, and I freeze.

His chin dipped low, lips compressed into a scathing line, he comes to the gate and scowls at me through a gap in the iron. Thin, bloodied veins spread out in an eerie pattern beneath the skin under his eyes. Sweat drips from his brow, and his nostrils flare as if he can’t filter enough air through them to survive.

There, at the corner of his mouth, foam builds and runs down his chin as he drawls in a toxic tone, “That is what you think.”