Hard Decisions
Julie wiped her brow as she reached the ridge of Doherty Mountain and looked down over Searchlight in the morning sunlight. She'd left town in the pre-dawn, when the light of the sun was just beginning to show above the eastern horizon, to avoid any of the locals seeing her and get up to the mountain to think before it became too warm. Thinking was something she desperately needed to do.
Connor had sneaked into the Red Cross Shelter for her to retrieve her purse. Thankfully in all the chaos nobody had thought to look for it, not even the damn TV reporter that called the apartment phone every ten minutes. It wouldn't stop anyone from finding out where she lived, but it wouldn't make it as easy, especially with the way local government services like the BMV were breaking down in all the confusion.
Her call with her parents hadn't gone well. They hadn't called that night or the next day and Julie hadn't known what to think, had they somehow not seen their daughter transform on national television? She'd seen it herself, the footage had been shown on all the networks and cable news channels, for the first couple hours it was looped about every fifteen minutes on some channels. Finally, she'd given up waiting and called them and the metaphysical fur had started to fly.
They'd seen the footage all right, and come up with one explanation: their daughter was dead, killed sometime in the two years she'd been on the run from Brad, and a demon had taken her place. She'd tried to explain what had happened, what Brad had really been, but they refused to listen or believe anything she told them, and had hung up on her after warning not to try and come to the ranch.
The call had left her devastated, but oddly unsurprised. Deep down she'd known her parents wouldn't be able to understand the supernatural, they simply weren't wired that way, and once the revelation had happened this was the only way they knew how to deal with it. She'd retreated into her bedroom and shut the door before crying herself to sleep last night, and this morning she'd been up before dawn to come out here to ponder her next move. She was on her own for real now, no family, no strings except those she'd made herself.
She wasn't going to stay in Searchlight, or Nevada. Julie was half surprised that the local ranchers weren't already knocking on her door with silver bullets loaded in their guns, they didn't like regular wolves one bit and she'd often heard them complain about the beast that seemed to kill livestock at random and never be caught. It wouldn't take a genius to eventually put two and two together that she was that beast. Besides that the media would figure out where she was eventually and start wanting to follow up on the story, and she wasn't interested in talking to them.
Julie found a decent sized boulder to sit down on and looked out over the town as she thought things through.
This was the second time she'd transformed against her will this year, and despite her best efforts she wasn't much better at controlling herself than when she'd first arrived in Searhlight over two years ago. Her family had all but disowned her, and now everyone in the world might know she was a werewolf. The latter bit might not be bad or it might be really bad, considering how crazy everything had been since Agent Markowitz got on television. People could react like her parents or they could act like Mallory, she just wasn't sure.
She needed to learn how to control herself, and try and understand what being a werewolf was really all about. There was no cure to her condition, and after that disaster at the red cross she couldn't try and pretend she was normal either. Maybe it was time to start trying to find others of her kind that she could learn from...
The sun was well over the horizon by the time Julie'd reached a decision. There was only one other wolf she knew who was experienced enough to teach her anything: Devon O'Connell. He'd left Searchlight to return to his pack a long time ago, but there was no way she was going to trust the bastards in Brad's old pack to teach her anything. They were the same assholes who stood by and did nothing while he turned her.
Bunch of lying, backstabbing murderers and she wanted no part of them.
That left Devon.
She wasn't sure exactly where his pack was, but she'd find them. But before she could do that, there were things to take care of here. Things to get rid off, and goodbyes to be said.
The decision made, Julie stood up from her rock and started back toward town.