WolfsbaneandMistletoe Page 3

  Claudia fanged down, called 911. We continued.

  The next door opened silently; I could smell WD-40 recently applied to the hinges. No way to tell Claud, but she pointed to the duct tape across the lock, and I nodded. We went in.

  The children were there. Even under Smith’s foulness, I could tell they were alive. I felt a surge of delight.

  They were drugged, only half-awake; a light on the playground offered just enough illumination for a normal to see forms without detail. My nose told me of full diapers, fear, and baby shampoo.

  Smith was nowhere around. We went quietly, just in case.

  “Hang on,” Claudia said. She Changed back about halfway, just enough to keep her powers on deck, but not so far that the first thing the kids saw was a pale purple lady with no nose and very big teeth.

  She went over to them quickly. “Hey, you guys? Let’s get you fixed up and we’ll get you home, okay? My dog Chewie is going to do some tricks for you. He’s really big, but he’s really, really friendly. Chewie, come!”

  That was my cue. I knew to play it dumb and sweet over in the faint light so the kids would focus on me. That way, they’d be less afraid and they wouldn’t notice Claudia practicing her leech-craft. I spend my time fighting evil, not practicing party tricks, but whenever I fell over, the kids laughed, so it was okay. And as soon as Claudia got one kid untied, her razor nails dancing scalpels over the duct tape, I was there, his new best friend, and they were so busy patting me they forgot to be afraid. Under the guise of inspecting their wounded hands, she got to work, biting their wrists, narcotizing the pain, neutralizing their terror, sucking out Smith’s drugs, dimming their memories. I could sense her body reacting to the blood and emotion she was taking in, her muscles rippling, nearly all trace of humanity lost from her features even as she healed the little ones.

  She’d just finished the last one when he was on her. Even as I picked up on the fresh scent—snow mixed with spoiled milk and rotting fish heads—Smith rocketed from the shadows, moving faster than anything human.

  If I knew he was there, it meant Claudia knew, too. She shoved the kid toward me as Smith landed on her. She rolled with him as far away from us as she could.

  In spite of Claudia’s ministrations, the kids whimpered. I grabbed the last one by the hood of her jacket and gently pulled her the rest of the way to the group. I stood between them and the brawl, nudging the kids to stand behind me, thankful Disney had removed their fear of large wild animals.

  It took everything I had to keep from jumping in and ripping Smith apart, but I had to keep the children safe. And there’s not much that can stop my sister when she’s pissed and Changed; for all her tweedy skirts and bookishness, she’s as much a warrior as I am.

  Smith was putting up a pretty good fight and the sonofabitch knew how to use a knife: Claudia would need a week on the roof to recover from this. I was glad of the dark, that the children’s eyes weren’t as sharp as mine, that they couldn’t see the amount of blood that Claudia was letting.

  She was winning. Maybe Smith wasn’t Fangborn, maybe just some kind of freak human genetic anomaly—

  You could practically feel the energy she expended fill the room, almost blotting out the horror of Smith. Righteous violence in the cause of justice—

  I let out a low growl; there was too much energy, the air was sizzling as if every Fangborn in New England was Changing next to me.

  Claudia screamed.

  Smith had Changed. An unholy transformation, something never before seen in the world as I knew it: evil taking on the shape of a werewolf.

  If I’d had time for rational, human thought, I would have been slowed by what shouldn’t have been happening, by what was impossible, but the pull to attack was so strong I almost burst out of my skin. I bunched up and launched myself at Smith.

  Claudia threw herself out of the way as I bowled the other wolf out of the room. We skidded into the hallway, unable to get a purchase on the cold, polished cement floor. With a scrabble of claws, I was up, but he was just a second faster and knocked me down again, snapping at my eyes. I slashed at his gut and jerked my head out of the way, feeling his hot breath and drool on my ears. I whipped around and grabbed at his muzzle; I was bigger than he was and he almost pulled away before I closed my teeth. I caught him, barely, by the tender tip of his nose and the soft skin under his jaw. Teeth slid through flesh and I held on; he tried to push me away with his front paws, but was more effective with his rear claws, raking across my belly.

  I smelled my own blood, but held on for dear life. He couldn’t pull out of my grasp without tearing himself and I couldn’t let him go.

  The door opened and cold air washed over us. I heard a shout and recognized Weems.

  He shouted again. I could smell Weems’s fear.

  Weems drew his pistol. He was going to shoot.

  Well, I couldn’t let him shoot me. I let go and Smith hurled himself at the doorway and Weems.

  Thoughts flashed through my head: If Smith landed on Weems, I could grab him before he did much damage. If he knocked Weems out of the way, or took a bullet or six, so much the better for me.

  Damn. He bolted right past Weems. He couldn’t afford to get caught as a werewolf any more than I could. The prospect of decades of lab experiments made a life sentence at Cedar Junction look like a week at Sandals.

  Sweat-soaked polyester, terror, boiled coffee, and roast beef: Weems had had dinner at Big Freddy’s. If I planted a dirty, doggy paw in his face as I chased after Smith, I’m sure it was an accident.

  Smith was nowhere to be seen as I raced down the street away from the school, but it didn’t matter: he was leaving a trail of blood that any Cub Scout could have followed, and his scent was so strong there might as well have been a spotlight on him.

  I cut through snowy backyards and vaulted a chain-link fence: Christmas lights lit the snow and the smell of cooking meats and seafood wasn’t even a momentary distraction. Another burst of speed brought me down to the historic district on the waterfront, the eighteenth-century houses decorated with candles and garlands.

  The tear in my belly was bad; I could feel the shock of the cold air through fur even as my muscle re-knit itself. There was a sharp pain whenever I moved my left hind leg. The icy snow, dirty with sand and road salt, packed itself in between the pads of my paws, slowing me down and throwing off my gait. Blood—mine and Smith’s—was matted in my fur, and my jaw ached.

  The trail of blood was getting heavier, though: Smith was also slowing down. In spite of my wounds, I sped up, eager to end this.

  But part of me hoped Smith would never stop. If he stopped, I’d kill him, and my job would be finished. Then I’d have to think about what was happening. I wasn’t sure if my frail human brain could deal with it.

  I leapt onto a back porch, tensed, then sailed over the back of the deck onto the sidewalk of Derby Street. I skidded on the icy bricks of the crosswalk, and barely missed getting hit by an Escalade. I yelped, feeling the breeze as the SUV swerved past.

  The waterfront opened up in front of me. The heavy clouds parted for an instant and the full moon shone down on the blood that led straight down Derby Wharf, which stretched out a quarter of a mile into the harbor.

  Unless Smith wanted to swim in life-sucking cold water toward the winking lights of Marblehead, he had nowhere to go except back to me. I grinned, as only a wolf drunk on power can.

  There was no one out, and I was glad; it was usually a place for evening strolls, the marks of lesser canines blazoned against the snow-banks. I padded down the wide gravel path, catching my breath, preparing myself for the last fight.

  Smith was smarter than I gave him credit for. He timed his attack for the instant the lighthouse lamp whirled toward me, washing the shadows together and reducing my field of vision.

  Keeping my eyes lowered and narrowed, my ears back, I made myself wait until the last moment. Then I sprang at him, just as hard as I could. I caught Smith with his head still up, and seized him by the throat, biting down with every bit of strength I had. His momentum carried him over me, and as he fell, his own weight tore his flesh off in my mouth. Hot blood poured and he dropped dead at my feet.

  He might have been a predator with a hero’s weapons, but I was a hero with true purpose.

  I spat out the fur and gore as the moonlight flooded the wharf and harbor. Steam rose from the wounds of the dead wolf, blood black on the snow. Power from the kill, from having slain one of my own kind, almost knocked me off my feet, and it was possible I was the first one ever in history to have experienced it.

  Evil just doesn’t exist in the Fangborn. At least, it hadn’t before now.

  I threw my head back and howled, my inhuman blood singing, the completeness and rightness of my triumph dizzying.

  But somewhere in the back of my brain, the part that stays human, I knew it was the last time I’d feel that way.

  On Christmas Eve, Claudia found me down in the basement of my house. It’s finished with mats on the floors and walls so we can train in private.

  “That’s some sweat you’re working up there,” she yelled. She was wearing her T-shirt with the bull’s-eye printed over her heart, the one that says, GO AHEAD AND TRY IT, BUFFY.

  I was flaked out on the floor in three layers of sweats, my headphones on, music turned to eleven. I considered her statement, then showed her a finger.

  She came over to the stereo, cranked it up to fourteen or twenty so I had to pull the headphones off, then she switched off the CD. She glanced at the player.

  “Disintegration. Nice. And have you been down here since yesterday, moping out to The Cure? I’m going to take my old CDs away from you if you’re going to behave like an adolescent.”

  “I am an adolescent.” And I am, by my people’s standards. Just a pup.

  “I get that. Gerry, you peed on Weems’s car!”

  I shrugged. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

  After I’d returned, still wolfself, to the school, Claudia had sold most of the story to a suspicious Weems. She was out walking her dog when she saw the school bus. Not wanting to feel like a fool if it wasn’t the missing children, she’d explored, then found the kids. The kids, still under her chemical thrall, had confirmed it: the scary man’s dog had attacked the nice lady’s doggie, who chased both the bad guys away. Weems later found Smith’s body at the wharf, dead, without a mark on him save for his stitched-up arm.

  She knelt beside me. “Gerry, Smith is a shock; I buy that. I was rattled, too. It’s scary as Hell. The family computer lists have been lighting up with the discussion, and none of the historians have anything like this. Ever.”

  “I’m not scared, Claud,” I said. “And I get that this is major. It’s just that . . .”

  I took a breath; it was even harder to say out loud than it was to admit to myself. “I liked knowing that we Fangborn were the righteous ones, and that whatever we hunted was always wrong. No doubts, never. I always thought it was the payoff for the work we do.” It also meant, no matter what my opinion, that Weems was at least nominally on our side.

  She cocked her head. “You mean, in addition to the super-strength, healing, and longevity?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the rush that comes after the Change?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  She frowned. “You’re young and you’re being greedy and you’re forgetting the First Lesson.”

  I scowled. “‘The work is the reward.’ You sound like Grandpa.”

  “There’s a good reason for that. He was right.” She hunkered down against the wall next to me. “Look, everyone reaches a crisis of faith at some point in his life. For me, it was trying to figure out if we had the right to live outside human law, learning the difference between law and justice. It’s part of the life. It makes us understand what it is to be human, why that’s precious and to be protected. Normals never get half of what we have, and go through life in doubt.”

  “We’re not human, Claud. Never will be. And now we get the doubt, too.”

  She shook her head. “We’re closer to them than anything else. Biologically and spiritually. We need that connection. And you know that killing Smith was right, even if he was one of us.”

  But no Fangborn had ever killed Fangborn before. No Fangborn had ever manifested pure evil before . . . I couldn’t turn off the voice in my head.

  Claudia talked for a long time about the community of the Fangborn, duty, honor, and all that crap. I listened. A lot of it made sense.

  I nodded. “You’re right. I need time, that’s all. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I’m just glad I got here before you got into the Nine Inch Nails.” Relief flooded her features, which told me exactly how rocky she thought I looked. “So. You packed?”

  “No. It won’t take me long.” This year, our Christmas present to each other was tickets to Aruba. Expensive, but we both needed the sunshine right now.

  She nodded, then eyed me sternly. “But you’re gonna go to midnight Mass, right?”

  “Probably. I gotta go for a walk, first. Clear my head.” I hauled myself up, muscles stiff not from the fight, but from lying around. Any harm I take while wolfself heals rapidly, as long as I remain wolfy, but any hurt I get while in human form reappears when I revert back to human form.

  “Good. I’ll see you there. And Gerry?”

  “Yeah, Claud?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Take a shower, would you?”

  I flipped her the bird again, and got my jacket. She smiled as she left, and I knew I had her convinced. That’s the good thing about having a shrink for a sister: you learn what they look for and you can give it to them.

  Yes, her words made sense. They just did nothing to take away my pain.

  I pulled on my duck boots, hat, scarf, and gloves. I probably didn’t need so much—it was over thirty degrees—but ever since the fight, I just couldn’t get warm.

  I walked a long time and found myself at the foot of Derby Wharf. I went out far enough to let the holiday lights of the street fall behind me, until I was alone in the frigid dark. Bloodstains blurred the snow, which had been trampled by the locals looking for the serial killer’s savage dog. A fierce hellhound roaming Salem, one more myth in the making.

  I watched the lighthouse beam skim the surface of the dark water. Listened to the soft slap of waves against the stone wharf. Anyone with a lick of insight could feel the remnants of the power that had been expended here.

  In our family’s annals, there was nothing like this, but now I had to wonder: Who else had we missed? Or if this was a really new development, what did it mean? The only thing I knew was that my certainty about my place in the world—my armor and my sword—was shattered.

  I felt the silence all around me, city noises muffled by the snow, and tried to find the bottom of the sea of pain I felt. The uncertainty was crushing, the loss of faith like the loss of a limb. I felt broken and made a fool of, mocked by the universe for my belief.

  I took a deep breath, the kind you take at the crossroads when the dark man shows up and offers you the world in exchange for your grubby soul. As I watched the obsidian water, I took another breath and realized that if I couldn’t manage the leap of faith that Claudia described, then I had to make a leap of another kind.

  Down the street from Derby Wharf is a little bar called In a Pig’s Eye. It’s a local joint; there’s no television and they pull the best pints in town.

  Annie works there nights.

  It was about half full, the folks who were getting one more drink in before Mass and the ones whose family were the other strangers on bar stools.

  “Jeez, Gerry, you been sick or something? You look kinda peaky.” She set down a coaster in front of me. “Winter Warmer?”

  “Thanks. Just . . . out of it, I guess.” I suddenly remembered my rank-smelling sweats and two days’ growth of beard, and kept my jacket zipped. Hell.

  “I bet. I read about Claudia in the paper. You must have freaked.”

  One of the things I’ve learned to live with is the fact that I’ll never get credit for being on the scene, for doing the job. “I worry about her, but she’s good at taking care of herself.” Then I couldn’t resist, sweats or no. “And besides. Chewie wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”

  She put the dark beer down in front of me, a perfect half inch of froth at the top. “No. He’s a sweetie.”

  I felt myself flush, remembering the perfume of Annie’s ankles, her hand on the back of my neck as she talked to Claudia one summer night. We’d been coming home from work and I’d still been intoxicated by the kill when we ran into Annie. It’s one of my fondest memories. “You like dogs?”

  She shrugged. “Depends. Like people, really. You gotta take them one at a time, you know?”

  Ask her out, I told myself, ask her out right now, coffee, a drink, anything, or so help me, I’ll—“How do you feel about Aruba?” I felt myself go red again: that was not what I meant to say. It was too much, too soon, too pimp, oh shit—

  Annie stopped wiping down the bar.

  Suddenly, the bottomless water seemed a better choice.

  “I’d prefer to start with a drink, maybe dinner,” she said slowly. “That is, if you’re really, actually, finally getting the guts to ask me out?”

  “Uh . . . yeah.” I swallowed. “That okay?”

  “Yeah. But it took you long enough.” She glanced at me. “You tough guys, you’re all just pussycats. You aren’t always a big pussycat, are you, Gerry?”

  Mostly I’m a big wolf, I thought giddily. “Never again,” I vowed. “How’s tomorrow night?”

  “Can’t.” She looked at me funny. “It’s Christmas tomorrow, remember? I’m going snowshoeing at Bradley Palmer State Park in the morning.”

  I wrinkled my brow. An odd tradition, but nice, I s’pose . . .

  She blew out her cheeks. “You know I’m Wiccan, right? I like Christmas, but I observe the Solstice.”