Chapter 1 - The Girl Who Cried Wolf
Annie Leonhardt sipped gently away at a coffee, cooling slowly in a plain styrofoam cup, as she tapped irritably at the computer set in front of her. She hadn't wanted to come to this absurdly small café at nearly ten o'clock in the evening, but she certainly hadn't wanted to spend the next two hours there before she could finally finish that damn report for her major in veterinary studies. Her veterinary medicine class was requiring a research paper on new methods of treating major wounds in animals — due tomorrow — and it had to be a minimum of seven pages long; she couldn't tell if her professor was utterly insane, or if she just wanted her students to suffer. When she was finally able to close her laptop, the clock in the bottom right corner of her screen read 11:53pm and it was pouring rain outside, obscuring her view of the velvet sky.
She sighed heavily and gathered her materials, her sloppily scribbled-in notebook and her heavy messenger bag and her hastily spread out articles on her topic. She left a ten dollar bill on the table as payment for the three coffees she had downed in her two hours of being there; she had been drinking it to keep her going for the next five hours, just in case it had taken her longer than she had hoped it would. She groaned as she left the café's interior. She'd forgotten both a jacket and an umbrella, essentially ensuring she'd be soaked by the time she reached her car, which was rather far away, unlocked it, and gotten inside with her things. Pulling out her keys and unlocking her car from a distance, she dashed to her car like a graceful deer fleeing from a hungry wolf. She yanked open the door, shoved her things inside, and then was able to get in herself — but not before she was absolutely drenched by the rain; it was as if she had fallen into a pond, or rather as if the pond had fallen on her.
Instead of drowning in the rainwater she found herself weighted down by, she lost herself in her thoughts of graduation. She'd never exactly been an overachiever, but she'd always sailed through her classes with no problems whatsoever, whether the classes were regular or advanced. Because of this experience of high school experience, she'd become snide, arrogant, and pretentious. These qualities didn't exactly make her well-liked among her classmates. She looked down on all of them for their apparent stupidity, which was essentially every time they were unable to comprehend a lesson, even though it was quite clear to everyone else that Annie was just naturally quite gifted. Annie couldn't teach others the lesson either. She had no patience and no attention span, and so was unable to thoroughly explain what she found so simple to others. Perhaps they found her bitchy, but she'd never been particularly fond of any of them either. The ones in her advanced classes were far too concerned with becoming valedictorian, and the ones in regular classes were far too concerned with partying — neither of which she was interested in. Fortunately for her, she'd passed through her four years of high school with good grades and then was able to go to university — where she was currently in her third year, and still near the top of her class.
As her mind wandered, she began to take more notice of her surroundings. The thick forest, trees heavy with rainfall and leaves shining like polished emeralds, and the rushing river flowing through the trees, which was only a small creek on her way to the café. Her apartment was on the outskirts of town, where it was less expensive to rent, and Annie preferred it anyways because it was farther out into the country, where she could be alone with the beauty of nature. But due to the still pouring rain, she found it difficult to see the road that laid before her. Her windshield wipers swiped back and forth across the glass with the same speed at which the American debt grew — too damn fast. And yet, it wasn't enough to make it much easier for her to see, as the rain only fell harder and harder. Though it was dark, and hard enough to see against the gray-black pavement, Annie hit the breaks immediately when she saw her headlights flash across a shadowy blob, bringing her to a slippery halt, nearly slamming right into it with her car.
What in the bloody hell is that?
Who could say? It was nearly midnight and there was a massive black shadow in the road. It could easily have been the pet of some family nearby that had been hit by a car, though it surprised her that whomever who had hit it hadn't stopped to take a look at it. Approaching slowly, cautiously, she noted the puddle of blood congealing around the massive shadow. The shadow, she found, was a beautiful black dog, coated in the blood that poured from the shallow wounds all over its body, and the apparently deep one on its stomach. Annie's eyes widened slightly. She'd always been rather fond of animals, particularly dogs, and despised seeing them in pain, and she was studying to become a veterinarian because she wanted to help prevent that pain, or put it to an end. Upon closer examination, the dog not only appeared to be alive still, but seemed to be less like a common dog and more like a mix between some breed of dog and a wolf. She returned to her car and retrieved the old sheets she had been planning on donating later that week, and began wrapping the dog's wounded abdomen with it. She picked the dog up as gently as she could given that, by the size of its body, it probably weighed somewhere around the range of 70 - 90 pounds, and found herself suddenly grateful that she worked out every day for her training in boxing.
Placing the dog lightly in the car, lying it down across the seats in the back, she did her best to find a way to keep it from sliding around. Though she was only perhaps a mile from her home, and the road was straight, she wanted to make the dog comfortable and safe. By this point, she had taken so long, though, that another car had pulled up behind her own. The driver, who had previously been patiently been waiting for her to return to her vehicle and move out of their own way, then clambered out of their own car, curious as to what in the world could have been keeping Annie from going back to her car. As he moved closer to her, Annie got a good look at him — he had a concerned look on his face, and kind eyes that drooped at the outer corners like a sad puppy's. His dark skin and darker clothing made it difficult to see him, and she was just barely able to see the silhouette of his hulking body. He called out to her as he approached. "Is there something I can help you with, miss? Did your car break down?"
Annie nearly laughed aloud. Even if that had happened, she would've been able to take care of it herself. Her father had made sure she was fully prepared for every possible situation before disappearing from her life. "No, my car's just fine. I found a wounded dog in the road — I'm a vet med student, I was planning on taking it back to my house to treat it, but the problem is, I don't know how to keep it still in the back of my car. I don't want it to slide off of the seat or something and worsen its wounds," she explained.
"Oh, I see. Well, maybe you could pad the area around its body to keep it from moving around too much? Do you have anything you could use for that?" the man asked.
She did. Not only was she planning on donating those (now bloody) sheets, but she'd also been planning on donating some old pillows and old clothes from her absent father. She hadn't really thought about it, but now that he had brought it to the forefront of her mind she could use those to not only comfort the dog, but to keep its position from shifting too much and reopening the now staunched rips in its flesh. "Yeah, I do actually. I'll go take care of that right away, so I can finally get out of your way. Otherwise, you're welcome to go around me."
The man frowned slightly. "I'll probably just go around you, but… be careful. It's late. Some creep might try and pull something on you." And with that, he returned to his car, started the engine, and drove off around her.
Annie waved, and grinned wickedly at the rear of the truck as its silhouette blurred with the darkness around it. "If someone tries something on me, they're the ones who are going to end up in the hospital," she murmured.
She then dutifully returned to the trunk of her car to retrieve the pillows and blankets. Once she had grabbed them, she padded the area in front of the dog with pillows and the area around it with her dad's old clothing. She lifted the dog as gently as she could, treating it like a delicate piece of antique china, and tucked the clothing underneath it. She did her best to make it so that the dog wouldn't be able to shift its position — any motion at all could tear its wounds, and she couldn't allow that to happen. She needed to be able to stitch the dog up when she returned home, and it would be far easier to do if the dog was still knocked out and the wounds weren't bleeding. She finished up padding the area around the dog, got into the driver's seat, and quickly returned home.
Once she was at her house, she immediately pulled a clean, spare sheet from her linens closet and laid it out atop her kitchen table. Then she returned to her car and gently picked up the dog from the back seat, quietly pushing the door closed behind her. Entering the kitchen, she'd soon crossed the distance to the table and set the dog down lightly. She sterilized a needle to prepare to stitch up its wounds, retrieved some hydrogen peroxide to clean its cuts with, and prepared some clean towels to staunch any bleeding that occurred because of her attempts to help it. Annie took a deep breath. The dog may be unconscious for now, but that may not last long, and she wondered vaguely if she should sedate it, just to make sure. She supposed she should — fortunately working as an assistant to a mobile veterinarian that often had to do surgical procedures had its perks; that included having all of the necessary medical supplies in her own home so she could take spare supplies to her superiors, or even do a job on her own, on a busy day. She brought the medical supplies to the table, along with a syringe of a sedative, to make sure the dog didn't wake up to find her operating on it.
Injecting the dog with she sedative, she began to examine her patient. As she had originally thought, there was only one deep wound on its entire body. The rest were only shallow slices across its skin. Deciding that those would heal on their own, and that she needn't concern herself with them outside of disinfecting them, she focused on the deeper of the rips in its flesh upon its belly. It was a long slash in its stomach, which still oozed blood after she had unwrapped the dog, even though, judging by the other cuts incurred upon the dog, it had happened quite a bit earlier in the day. She narrowed her eyes in concentration at the dog as she threaded the needle through its skin to stitch up the wound, after disinfecting it. She wanted the dog to be able to live a long, healthy life, free of infections from its wounds.
There, she thought, I'm done.
And finally she was able to get some sleep. her classes didn't start until five o'clock in the evening, but she had to get up to prepare for her work shift by 8, which wouldn't be terribly bad, except that between the long car ride home, picking up the unknown, and possibly stray, dog, and stitching it up, it was already 2:30am. She groaned reproachfully at her inability to get more than five and a half hours of sleep that night. Quickly getting ready to go to sleep, she crawled into her bed and slept heavily until her alarm went off the next morning.
Too. Damn. Early. She glared with vicious contempt at her alarm clock. It was already 8:00am — quite late for most people — but she wasn't content with the amount she'd slept unless she'd gotten at least seven hours of sleep, or unless she'd slept until at least nine; which she did, on her days off from work. As she hauled the draconian ass of her — as usual — horrifying morning self out of bed, she recalled the reason why she'd gotten so little sleep in the first place. Oh fuck, the dog! It's gotta be awake by now! Dammit!
Feeling entirely reenergized, Annie rushed to her kitchen, but was greeted by a sight altogether different than what she was expecting. First of all, the dog was gone. The beautiful black wolf-dog she'd been expecting to be either wandering about her house — which it wasn't — or lying on her kitchen table — which also wasn't — had completely and utterly disappeared, as if it had never even been there to begin with. There wasn't even a trace of its prior existence in her home. What was in her kitchen, however, was a girl. Hair black as the feathers on a raven's chest, and skin golden and smooth as caramel, she was completely and utterly naked. While Annie would have had no trouble admitting that the girl was practically an Amazonian goddess when it came to how hot she was, she had no fucking clue why the girl was standing in her kitchen, not to mention looking just as damned confused as she was.
The girl's dark chocolate eyes widened and a look befitting that of a cornered animal crossed her face. When she finally noticed the — apparently unlocked — backdoor, she fled through it to the outdoors. Annie, on the other hand, relaxed from the tense stance she had assumed upon finding the girl in her kitchen. What the fuck was that about? Who the hell was she? And why in the fuck was she naked? Annie thought back to the way the girl had looked. Dark hair.. Dark eyes... Animal instinct... And her body... her body had been cut up, just like that dog's was, and there were stitches across a long gash in her stomach. Was that the dog she had saved last night..?