Amnesia - The Matlock Pack: Book One

Tuesday 1 December

~*Cody’s POV*~

A very tall, very pale, and very naked woman crashed through the dense tree line, stumbled into the middle of the road, and collapsed onto her knees in front of us.

Pulling the steering wheel to the right, I swerved to avoid hitting her. I pumped the brakes hard, finally bringing the car to a stop, mere inches from her huddled form.

I turned to look at my Mum in panic. “Please tell me I didn’t just run over some poor woman with your car,” I stammered, my eyes wide in horror. I was still only on my Learner’s Permit. Somehow, I didn’t think the state would look too kindly on a learner driver killing someone, even if she was a naked pedestrian.

“Pfft. We would have felt the impact if you had.” She dismissed my concern before getting out of the car. I dreaded to think how on earth she would know that.

Still shaking, I opened the door to get out of the car as well. Mum was already at the front, looking over at the cowering figure in front of our vehicle. She leaned over the shaking woman before placing her hand on the woman’s shoulder. The woman immediately shied away from the touch in terror, before looking up at my Mum’s face.

“Refuge. Help.” Her voice was hoarse as she looked deep into Mum’s eyes, before grasping Mum’s shirtfront to pull her forward. “Please help. Please!”

Mum widened her eyes, then looked over the woman’s shoulder at me. “Cody, can you get the blanket that’s on the back seat?” She returned her gaze to the trembling woman in front of her.

“It’s okay. We can help you. Can you tell us your name?” Mum asked, as I turned away from the scene to grab the old blanket in the car. Once I had it in hand, a rustling in the undergrowth near to where the woman had appeared caught my attention.

A magpie was sitting on a low-lying branch, watching us intently. I cocked my head at it, narrowing my eyes. Magpies swooped unsuspecting people in this area, and I really didn’t want to add a beak-induced head injury to my already pounding headache.

It looked back at me like it didn’t have a care in the world, before suddenly shifting its focus to some heavier noise immediately below it. I followed its eyeline and realised we now had an audience.

“Mum?” I called, seeing the giant black wolf staring at us through the trees. Its eye level was in line with mine and I instantly felt incredibly grateful that I had the car sitting between me and the beast in front of me.

“Mum?!” I repeated when I didn’t get a response, a little more strangled than my usual steady voice. There was no way I was going to look away first. I was determined to win this silent battle of wills, regardless of how terrified I felt.

“Cody, bring the blanket over here,” my Mum finally called back to me. She drifted into my field of vision on the other side of the car, her hands out in a peaceful gesture to the wolf in front of us. A low snarl rippled through the air, the wolf baring its teeth at us. It obviously wasn’t happy.

Side-stepping around the car, not taking my eyes off the wolf, I grasped the blanket like it was some sort of life-raft. I could hear Mum talking to the creature, but she was speaking so quietly, I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

I knelt and wrapped the blanket around the woman still huddled in front of the car, the sight of Mum and the wolf easing out of sight as I dropped to my knees. My attention shifted to the woman. Watery pale blue eyes stared in my general direction, but it was like she couldn’t focus. Her wavy pale blonde hair fell barely to her shoulders, tangled with small twigs and leaves. Her face was filthy; dirt, mud, and scratches covered her from head to toe, and both her feet and hands looked like something had ripped them to shreds.

Wherever she’d come from, she’d had to fight hard to get here.

“Do you think you could stand?” I asked.

Gradually, her focus cleared. Blinking a few times, she frowned at me.

Getting no response, I tried again. “We can get you some help, but first we need to get you into the car. Do you think you can move?”

She looked down at her feet. I could see her flexing her toes, almost like she was trying to determine whether she still had control over her limbs. She slowly grasped the edges of the blanket before wrapping her hands around her middle, covering herself as best she could.

“I think so.” Her voice was soft now, yet still somewhat gravelly and low in pitch. She had lost the extreme panic that had sounded when she pleaded for help from Mum.

“Okay, let’s get you into the car, then.” I gripped her upper arms over the blanket, helping her up, then holding her steady until she’d found her balance. She towered over me, a full head above mine. It felt like I was the perfect height to be her chin rest. Crikey, she was tall.

Ensuring that her back faced where the wolf and my Mum were still squaring off, I narrowed my eyes in thought. How was I going to get her in the car without turning her around and letting her see the terrifying thing behind her?

The dilemma resolved itself when a loud commotion developed, and the mystery woman instinctively turned around before I could say anything to stop her. I popped my head around her towards the noise, only to see the undergrowth at the tree line shaking violently. Mum was still standing where I had last seen her, but her hands were now planted on her hips, staring at the greenery. I recognised that stance. I had pissed her off enough when I was a kid to identify that posture as her ‘I can’t believe you just did that shit’ stance. She wasn’t happy. I grimaced. Great. The drive home was going to seem even longer now.

Eventually, Mum turned around to look at us both. She shook her head in annoyance. “Put her in the back. It’ll be easiest for her there,” she instructed, before she headed for the front passenger door. I tipped my head in acknowledgement and nudged the mystery woman to the back door of the car before slowly easing her inside. She still looked completely out of sorts, so I locked her seatbelt in place for her, before shutting the passenger door and opening the driver’s door to get myself in and behind the steering wheel.

A loud squawk sounded, making me pause and look up. The magpie was still sitting on its branch, watching me with its beady little eyes.

“What are you still doing here?” I asked it, throwing out a hand to shoo it away. “The show’s over. There’s nothing more to see. Go home.”

It screeched at me again. Maybe it recognised the movie quote? It bobbed its head up and down twice, then took flight. It passed over me before following the road up and around the bend ahead.

“Bloody bird,” I grumbled, as I got into the driver’s seat and shut the door. “They’re a goddamn menace.”

Pausing before she locked her seatbelt in place, Mum looked at me quizzically.

“Magpie,” I told her, tilting my head to show which way the bird had disappeared. “It’d been hanging around since we stopped.”

The confusion in Mum’s eyes cleared. “They’re not all bad, you know. Some can even be incredibly helpful.” She clicked her seatbelt into place, effectively putting a full-stop to the conversation.

I looked back at her, filled with doubt. I didn’t care what she said. As far as I was concerned, magpies were dangerous and needed to be treated with extreme caution. They were brutal when they didn’t like you.

“What?” she asked, with a raised eyebrow. “You just haven’t met the right ones yet.” She grinned.

“I think I could live the rest of my life happily not meeting any, thank you very much,” I muttered with a huff.

She laughed, before turning in her seat to face the blonde woman sitting behind us. I started the engine and looked in the rear-view mirror for traffic. It was incredible that nobody had passed us during our time on the side of the road, but as it was still only a quarter past six in the morning, I figured the peak time was still an hour off or so.

I caught the mystery woman’s eyes in the rear vision mirror just as I brought my focus back to the front. Her wide eyes held mine for a moment, a slight look of fear remaining on her face.

“It’s okay. We’ll get you someplace safe,” I said to her with a small smile. She nodded ever so slightly before shifting her attention back to my Mum.

“Which way are we headed?” I merged back onto the road, but I needed to know if Mum wanted me to head for the local police station or if we were going to take the stranger back to the medical centre Mum worked at.

“Take us home Cody,” Mum sighed. I raised an eyebrow in her direction, even though I didn’t know if she could see it; my concentration was on the road in front of us.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I checked the mirrors again.

Mum was quiet. “Her eyes were glowing.” I couldn’t help but glance at her, taking my eyes off the road for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough to warrant a hard glare. “Eyes on the road, Cody.”

I grimaced, but returned my eyes to the road. I heard Mum shift her body in the seat, angling towards our mystery woman. Huh. We were transporting one of us. Well, that should make things easier. My mind started wandering with all the different scenarios that potentially lay ahead of us. So much for focusing on the drive, I thought, with an internal sigh. I never could focus on only one thing at a time. Some called it a character flaw; I called it my innate ability to multi-task.

“My name is Auden. Our driver is my daughter Cody,” Mum said to our guest, as I sensed her wave her hand towards me.

I took one of my own hands off the steering wheel briefly to wave a late hello. I could feel Mum’s eyes drilling into the side of my head until I placed my hand back on the steering wheel. She was really going to have to get over this irritation about how I drove; I was turning eighteen in a matter of weeks; my driving hours were beyond what they needed to be, and all signs pointed towards me passing my final driving test with flying colours. There was really no need for her to be so worried.

Mum took a deep breath in, like she was trying to control her anger. I had no idea if that anger was directed at me or something else entirely. She shifted in her seat again. “I know you’re tired, but I need to ask you some questions.”

The woman said nothing, but she must have nodded or given some other form of affirmation, because Mum continued.

“Earlier, you said that you needed refuge and help. Refuge from what?”

A pause, before her quiet response: “I don’t know.”

Mum let out a low hmm. I doubted the mystery woman would have heard it. The only reason I picked it up was because I knew Mum’s mannerisms so well. This one was from frustration. “Are you from the Ball?”

Another pause. “What ball? Like a ball that you play with?”

I frowned but said nothing. If she was one of us, she should have known the answer to that.

Mum took her time before asking another question. “Earlier I asked you what your name was, but you didn’t respond. Can you tell us who you are?”

A much longer pause this time, before a startled: “No.” I heard her breathing grow faster and more erratic. “I don’t know. Why don’t I know that? Why can’t I remember my name??” I heard panicked movements behind me, but this time I knew better than to even think about moving my focus from the road. I can’t say that her alarm didn’t affect me, though. Instinctively, my hands gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“Shh… It’s okay, it’s okay. Take slow breaths in,” my Mum said to her in a soothing voice. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mum reach out, leaning towards the woman in the back seat. “Follow my lead. Breathe in. Hold it. Now breathe out. Good.”

Slowly, I could hear the woman’s shallow breathing ease, a choked snuffling taking its place.

“Shh… It’s about another hour’s drive before we get back to our place. It looks like you’ve had a bit of a wild night. Why don’t you try to get some rest?” Mum asked our passenger, trying to soothe her. I could still hear sniffling, but it sounded like she was calming down. Mum was working her usual magic.

Twenty minutes went by before Mum turned back around to face the front.

“She’s finally asleep,” Mum said quietly. “I don’t know how heavy of a sleeper she is, so let’s keep things quiet, yeah?”

I nodded. “What are your thoughts?”

“On her?”

I nodded again.

“I don’t think she’s lying. There’s something…” Mum trailed off, obviously thinking about how to respond. I glanced over at her quickly before returning my gaze to the road. “She’s definitely one of us, but I can’t sense…” She frowned, before looking out the window at the passing greenery and then sighed. “I don’t know, Cody. Hopefully, Takeshi can read her better than I can.”

The look I gave Mum this time was a bit more prolonged before I refocused on the road. Mum excelled at reading people, and she knew it. I couldn’t remember any previous occasion where Mum hadn’t been able to determine a person’s character after a few minutes. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn she had some mystic blood in her.

“Maybe you’re right,” I responded, albeit doubtfully. I gave up on this train of thought and decided to bring up something else that had been bothering me. “Any idea of who the wolf was?”

Mum was still staring out the window when she took a deep, long breath in before letting it out incredibly slowly. “No,” before she paused, dropping her head to face her lap. “He’s definitely not one of ours. I have my suspicions, but I can’t be one hundred percent sure until I talk to Takeshi.”

“It was a male? I only saw the face.”

“Yeah,” she said absently, still lost in thought.

“What made him run off? He didn’t look like he was happy to see us, and he was big enough to take both of us.” A shiver ran up my spine as I thought about how angry he looked when he snarled at us.

“It sounded like the guards finally caught up to him. No idea why it took them so long to track him, though. They should have been more on top of things than that. Another thing I need to talk to Takeshi about.” I glanced at her to see a deep frown burrowing her forehead. Ah. So that’s what had her so upset earlier. I had a feeling that someone was going to be hauled over hot coals later today for their lack of attention. Glad it wasn’t me this time.

I sensed her bring her elbow up to the ledge of the window. She leaned back in her seat, her hand cradling her forehead like she had a headache. “There’s still a bit of a drive left before we get home,” I repeated her sentiment to our guest from earlier. “You want to get some rest? I know you’re still tired from last night.”

She turned her head to me once more, before returning it to her hand. “I shouldn’t, but I’m getting the feeling that today is going to be a long one and I’m going to need it.”

I tried to keep the astonishment out of my voice when I replied. She had never felt comfortable enough to sleep whilst I was driving before. “It’s all good. You know that I’ve driven this road plenty of times. See if you can get some sleep. I’ll wake you up when we’re getting close.”

“Okay.” She sighed softly, with what I could only interpret to be resignation.

As I listened to her breathing slowly match our guest in the back seat, I let my thoughts run wild. I wondered if she was right. The morning had already proven to be out of the ordinary and it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. What were the chances of things getting any better?