Her Werewolf Hero. Michele Hauf
after she’d processed them, had led her here.
And, yes, she sought closure. To take one final look, then walk away. And maybe the nightmares would stop.
She checked the view screen. In the past half hour, she’d taken well over a hundred photos. She’d return to the apartment in Thief River Falls and look them over.
In the past few months, Kizzy had grown accustomed to living on the road. Her soul demanded the movement and the unsure yet wondrous discovery of the new and even the familiar. Her Minnesota hometown, Thief River Falls—tucked close to the North Dakota border and a couple hours south of Canada—had felt like a place to stay and relax a bit before returning overseas to Romania for her next photography adventure. Europe had been her home since the accident. Her parents had been living there for nearly a decade, and the extra bedroom had been waiting for her as soon as the doctor had signed off on her feeling well enough to travel.
She’d rented the apartment here for a week. Not because she’d been homesick and had thought to catch up with friends. A week had simply been the best deal. And okay, she’d visited a few relatives and friends the first two days she’d been in town.
Kizzy headed back to her rental car, which she’d parked off the road, the wheels hugging the grassy ditch. Another hour would bring twilight, and she wanted to stop by the city park to end the day. She remembered how the setting sun would highlight the gorgeous northern pines in the forest edging the park and wanted to capture that light on film.
And maybe, she might discover a creature or two.
Her photography captured the otherworldly. Or at least, her idea of what could be something different, perhaps even paranormal. A creature or monster that had only been imagined on the page or in movies. She liked to play with shadow and light in an attempt to make others question their own reality. That was what art was about to her.
But her quest to capture myth and legend went deeper than that. Because those creatures did exist. She knew it. They just had to.
She’d been a believer since a young age. And her blog, Other Wonders, was wildly successful, her fan base being those with paranormal interests, as well as artists and creatives. The blog was five years old, and she boasted half a million subscribers with millions of hits yearly. The money she made by monetizing that blog funded her travel.
She’d snagged a few freelance jobs after a prospective employer had viewed her online galleries, including a photo shoot for National Geographic last year. It had been a dark, moody piece, and she’d framed silhouettes of trees and rocky outcrops to suggest dragon heads peering out from their lairs. They’d used it for a medieval piece. It hadn’t paid much, but it had been the catalyst to rocket her online stats.
Her next trip was to Romania. She’d managed to win a sponsorship from the Romanian tourism board to cover half her expenses. They’d been impressed by the Nat Geo feature. All she had to do was provide the board with scenic photos and grant them all rights to use. The Romanian forests promised to offer unique photography moments. And who knew? Maybe she’d catch a vampire hanging out at a dilapidated castle. Or a ghost? At the very least, she’d try to capture the essence of the otherworldly. It’s what she did. It was what she was compelled to do.
She was blessed to be doing something she enjoyed and not stuck behind a desk nine to five.
With a turn of the key in the ignition, the Taurus hummed to life. Kizzy didn’t own a car. Never had and couldn’t foresee ever needing to. She currently held no permanent address that required a car to get from a home to an office job. But she did appreciate the freedom a rental car granted when it was necessary to travel beyond city limits.
Shifting into gear, she allowed her gaze to linger on the boulders below. Her heart tightened, almost as if someone were squeezing it. She shook her head, thinking it was too early in the day for another nightmare. Why she dreamed about a werewolf grabbing her heart was beyond her. But the recurring dream had haunted her about twice a month since the accident.
“I’ve spent too much time seeking monsters,” she muttered as she turned the car around on the two-lane highway and headed toward Thief River Falls. “Bound to catch up with me in my dreams sooner or later. But a werewolf?”
Such creatures were on her list of most feared paranormals. As a believer, she knew to have a healthy fear of the more dangerous sorts, especially those who sported claws or talons. And there had been that one time when she was six and her dad had taken her camping at Lake Bronson. Had it been a werewolf lurking behind the outhouse on the moonlit summer night? She’d screamed so loudly, her father had thought she’d been attacked by a bear. He’d laughed when she’d told him what she thought it was.
Why did men always make her feel stupid for her beliefs? What was so wrong with having a healthy imagination? With not ruling anything out until it was proven otherwise?
Once back in town, she dropped off the car at the rental site because she didn’t plan to drive anywhere else out of city limits. The city was very walkable, and she would take a taxi to the airport at the end of the week. The apartment rental had included a bicycle, but she shook her head as she studied the pink ten-speed. The park was only a half-hour jaunt across the river.
With her trusty DSLR camera on a strap around her neck and the camera bag slung over one shoulder, she headed down the sidewalk and toward the vast city park. Her faded red Vans got her most places comfortably. And her standard slim jeans and a loose but comfy faded pink T-shirt saw her through summer like a pro. The gray linen scarf she’d slipped around her neck this morning hung out of her back jean pocket so it didn’t get tangled in the camera strap.
Crossing a street, she held up her hand to the honking car and swished her long brown hair over a shoulder to cast the driver a thankful smile. He waved her off, a disgusted grimace clouding his face. Didn’t he notice the gorgeous light on the horizon so swiftly slipping through the sky? Grump.
She quickened her steps. The park was not busy; maybe half a dozen people were scattered about, and a few of those were headed toward their cars. It was the supper hour. As she passed the swing sets, she had to laugh at the little girl getting a push from her dad. She screamed madly, but as soon as the swing made its return—from a mere two-foot lift into the air—she giggled.
Striding beyond the semiformal 4H gardens in which she’d spent her high school summers volunteering—clipping, trimming, getting the hornbeam and roses ready for fall—she leaped over the final box hedge. In her peripheral view, she sighted a man walking to her left. No kids in tow. If he had any appreciation for shadows and light, he should be taking in the glimmer of sun setting just beyond the jagged silhouette of forest. He looked a bit older than her, but beyond that she didn’t linger on his appearance.
Though she was twenty-nine, having kids was not on Kizzy’s radar. She’d not once heard her biological clock tick and wasn’t worried about that, either. A husband might add a new angle to this adventure called life but wasn’t necessary to her happiness. As long as he didn’t mind her wanderlust and constant need to move, a man would fit into her life nicely. As a partner in adventure, but never as someone she needed to take care of and expect the same from in return.
And he should never laugh at her beliefs.
Kizzy had been off the market, as her mother liked to call it, for eight months. Call it a bad relationship. Call it dying on the operating-room table and having to have her heart massaged back to life. She hadn’t been in the mood for dating. Sex? Always. But she wasn’t sure she could trust a man beyond a one-night bootie call.
Unless of course they happened to look like Jared Padalecki or Jensen Ackles.
She’d once thought a man could complete her. Probably all women had that thought at some point in their lives. But thankfully her mother, merely by example, had proven to Kizzy that the best relationships are not needy or demanding but rather a shared experience that thrives thanks to the independence of one another. And never balks at the partner’s need to explore anything meaningful.
In Kizzy’s case, what felt meaningful to her was to travel. This trip to Minnesota