The Witch and the Werewolf Page 12

  Pain raced through his body like ragged electricity sputtering from a downed power line. He felt his blood flowing freely, steaming out of his body, and then quickly freezing as it hit the ice covered pavement. The wolf stared down at him, for a moment, and their eyes locked. He saw the intelligence there, felt the thing’s power. It was a perfect war machine, oblivious to pain, unbeatable by a mere man. In one instant it had dominated him and he knew then that the food chain was forever changed. Man was no longer top dog. The wolf was.

  The other wolves in the pack ignored him as his body convulsed. It wasn’t just pain of dying. He wasn’t dying. He was changing. He felt it. His mind was a blur of emotions and the fact that they were not entirely his own frightened him. There was the thrill of victory, fear of a small girl… the pack’s hive mind was a powerful thing, an intoxicant. He felt the pack as it moved through the survivors, selecting the strong to add to their numbers and devouring the weak. He knew he was one of those chosen to become a member, that he was changing, becoming one with the pack that had conquered his little kingdom in the span of minutes.

  His bones ached as they stretched, the very molecular structure lengthening. His muscles spasmed as they grew and expanded. Even the pores of his skin crawled as thick black fur sprouted up and down his arms. The pain was excruciating and easily the worst thing he’d ever felt. He twisted on the pavement, wondering why the wolves had left him alive.

  The pain and confusion as several dozen other being’s thoughts and emotions invaded his mind at once was overwhelming, even more intense than the pain of the physical transformation.

  “Get of my goddamn head,” he screamed, holding the sides of his head as he squirmed on the ground. “I don’t want to feel you!”

  There were two main emotions from the pack, at that point. The first was their absolute joy at the buffet of food they’d stumbled across on the bridge. He felt their hunger from the ruins. Pickings were slim and the vast majority of their primary food source, man, was gone, succumbed to the wave and the cold. The second was their abject fear of the girl who’d run by him just a few moments before. He didn’t understand that fear though he’d seen the blue flames jut from the girl’s palms just moments before. He didn’t understand the hatred, didn’t know what the girl had done to draw the pack’s ire, but it didn’t matter. Their hatred was his hatred.

  The alpha looked up at him, probing his thoughts, deciding what part he’d play in the newer, larger pack. Robert felt the pull of the beast’s will. The urge to conform to the pack was almost more than he could stand. Something deep and primal wanted to please the alpha. It was a part of his soul that he was not accustomed to, and the desire to conform was almost more than he could stand.

  Almost. Robert had never been one to cower to authority.

  Robert coiled tight, feeling the power of his new, stronger muscles. He’d always been a strong man. It was the only reason he’d survived prison and the merciless attempts to take ‘Junior’s’ life. Child abusers were the most hated of the hated, but he’d survived. But that strength was nothing compared to the power he felt coursing through his body then. He growled at the alpha just before he leapt across the two lanes of highway in a single, sixteen foot jump.

  The body was new and awkward, but he caught the leader wolf unprepared and surprised. The being’s shock rang like a bell in his own head and he relished that, using the confusion to push the thing’s will away. He didn’t want to be subservient to the king. He was the king.

  He slashed at the alpha’s throat, going for the quick kill. The leader of the pack, somewhat recovered from his initial attack, backed out of the way, just barely missing being ripped by Robert’s razor sharp claws.

  The rest of the pack gathered, both old members and new, and he felt their confusion. The alpha was older than the United States and his memories of coming to the new world in a Viking ship were as clear as the day he’d experienced them. He’d led his pack through dark times, though constant challenges from the witches and their ever expanding prey. The alpha had kept them safe through the hunts and then, when the new moon dawned in the sky above the dark clouds, led them out to not just eradicate their enemy, but to claim their space as the rightful rulers of the world.

  They were loyal to the old alpha, but the pack law was set in stone. Any wolf who so desired could challenge the alpha for control. And Robert wanted, more than anything, to do just that.

  “You dare challenge me, pup?” the alpha roared. Its voice was strange to Robert. Instead of answering, Robert launched himself at the wolf once more, striking it in the chest before being batted away by the bigger, more powerful wolf.

  The alpha, still confused by his new pack mate’s actions, hesitated as Robert launched at him again, from behind. This time his claws dug in deep, shredding the alpha’s back, racking against his spine. Robert held on with one claw and came down on the alpha’s back. He pushed his hands in the open wound and wrapped them around the old creature’s spine. Planting his feet against the massive alpha’s shoulders, he pulled upwards and out, pulling the spine away from nerve and cartilage, ripping fur, and yanking the alpha’s head away from his body.

  The alpha slumped to the icy pavement, dead. The headless corpse changed back to human form and Robert stood above it, holding the bloody spine up for all of the pack to see. Robert turned back to human, naked in the cold, but not caring. He stared down the pack members who’d circled, watching his challenge for leadership. The first of the warriors knelt, in front of him, acknowledging his accomplishment. He felt their wonder and their loyalty. They were his pack, now, to do with as he pleased.

  “First we kill that girl,” he told them, arms raised up high. “I know she means something to you. I will allow this thing. But first, my pack,” he said, the world rolling off his tongue like silver, “we feast. We rest. And then we run.”

  The girl would come first. She had to go. As the pack’s collective memories filled him he saw the fires and the silver death as the girl’s kind, over the centuries, hunted and killed his new kind. The witches had to burn, again, if they were ever to take their rightful place in the world. And he knew where she was heading. He could feel the older wolf, an alpha stronger even than the one he’d just taken down, to the west of them in the ruins of old downtown Houston. The old wolf was in pain, under constant torture. There was something else there, darting at the edges of his thoughts, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was neither wolf nor man, he thought.

  But none of it mattered. He’d deal with it just like he dealt with everything. The pack was his and soon, the world would be.

  Life after Ruins

  The big eighteen wheeler rumbled down the northbound slope of the I-610 bridge and Dutch felt no small amount of thrill as he smashed through the parked cars and trucks. The thugs on the bridge had done a good job of moving the cars to create walls at both ends of the bridge, leaving just a few to block his path. The cab, along with the trailer, was packed with people. Cassandra sat in the front seat, Jeremy in her lap, staring in the side mirror.

  “They’re killing those people,” Cassandra said sadly.

  He felt the same way, but couldn’t do anything about it. They’d saved who they could and that was that. Dutch nudged a late model Ford out of the way. He wanted to yank on the air horn and hoot out the window. The carnage was behind them. He couldn’t do anything about it, at that point, and had saved as many as he could. The truck was literally packed with survivors. They’d done what they could and now it was time to move on.

  “They aren’t killing them,” Jeremy said softly. It was the first time the boy had spoken since they’d hit the bridge and Dutch was sad for what the new world was going to turn its children into. “Not all of them, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “They’re changing them. They’re making them werewolves.”

  Dutch cringed. He’d estimated the pack size somewhere around three dozen. There were at least a couple of hundred people bac
k on the bridge. He and the girl had done well fighting a couple at a time and he wasn’t sure they’d have pulled that off without her powers and the silver ammunition. But an army of a couple of hundred? There was no way. He tried to mask his emotions but the boy saw through the wall.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Cassandra said, shooting an evil sideways glance at Dutch. “We know we can fight them. We can beat them. They bleed just like us.”

  “You can’t fight all of them,” Jeremy said sadly as if he were already resigned to his fate. “There are going to be so many of them.”

  And that was the root of the problem, Dutch thought. That was the reason he had to work for the priest, crazy or not. The werewolves were capable of increasing their numbers as they decimated those of the humans. Mankind was going to need every gun hand they could get if they were to survive.

  “Why are they so obsessed with you?” he asked as he guided the truck through the north side gate of the bridge. The big rig hung on a stack of cars and turned it over, sending Toyotas, Fords, and Nissans scattering to the ice covered pavement. The truck slid sideways and Dutch took his foot from the accelerator, following the slide and steering into it. Years on his father’s farm in northern Oklahoma winters were good training for driving after the apocalypse, he thought.

  The highway past the bridge had been submerged during the tsunami and wiped clean of cars. Though ice covered and treacherous, he was still able to make a solid ten miles an hour which was far faster than he, with the survivors of the bridge to watch after, would have been able to walk. They’d make the church by the end of the day, he thought, if he could keep the big rig on the road.

  “Because I’m a witch,” Cassandra said, trying to sound strong. Yet he could hear the fear and doubt in her voice. The dawn after Worm Fall had changed everyone’s world. Hers even more so.

  “Are you the only witch? Is your meat special, or something?” Dutch asked and then regretted his choice of words. He’d been too hard on the girl. She’d been through a lot, just like everyone else who’d survived the past few days.

  She didn’t take it that way, though. “I don’t know. Up until a couple of days ago if you had asked me about witches and werewolves I’d have told you I didn’t like those movies. Because I didn’t. The whole idea of monsters was silly. I don’t know anything about being a witch. My mother was apparently the real witch and she died before she could train me or even tell me anything about our history. I watched her fight them with powers that make what I’ve done look like school kid things. And even with that great power those things killed her. I don’t know why they wanted her so badly. She died before she could tell me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dutch said, genuinely sorry this time. Yes, Cassandra came off as a spoiled little brat occasionally, but there was a real, genuine girl in there full of pain and doubt. She cared deeply about the boy despite having known him only a few short days. She was funny when she wanted to be. It didn’t hurt that she was drop dead gorgeous.

  “She said something, before she died, about witches having fought the werewolves and kept them from man, like there was some generations old battle bubbling in the background.”

  “The priest said something similar.”

  “Priest?”

  “Yes, the crazy old guy that hired me to capture the werewolf. He said his order had been fighting the werewolves for centuries. The wolf said he he’d seen him during the Inquisition. It’s all pretty crazy and I don’t know how much of it I believe.” There was too much to process in too short a time. The only thing he could do, at that point, was push forward with the mission.

  She was quiet for a long time and he knew that the thing was in her mind, again. How could one person exist where two tread? He felt sorry for her, for all the suffering she was going through. All the more reason to end the werewolves, he thought.

  “They’ll be coming for us,” Cassandra said. “The entire pack is coming for us. I don’t know if I can fight them all.”

  “We’ll have help at the Church,” Dutch said, but doubted that, even with the priest’s vast amount of silver, they’d be able to survive the onslaught of the wolves. “We’ll win.”

  “But there’s more than just silver at the church,” Jeremy said, looking towards that direction.

  “What is there?”

  “Death.”

  He drove on in silence, trying not to look at the ruins left by Worm Fall.

  She felt the old one to the west, a pull at her very being. The entire pack felt it, and the feeling did not sit well with them. They were torn. First, they had a new alpha. Though it had been generations since it had happened, violent change was common place among the wolves. Yet there had never been a time when a newcomer, within minutes of his transformation, had so easily dispatched the pack leader. The new alpha frightened her. She’d fallen into the pack’s collective consciousness quickly, easily forgetting her former life. The pack came first, everything else was a blur. But the new Alpha retained his former self to the point he was able to fend off the old alpha’s commands and destroy the wolf quite easily.

  There was something dark there, and she didn’t know if she was the only one in the pack to feel it or not. They were on edge after the witch had escaped them yet again, destroying several members of the pack in the process. She shared in the bloodlust of the new alpha yet she knew there was more to it than simple revenge for the pack. The new leader wanted nothing but absolute submission of the humans. He was gleeful in their demise, took joy in their pain and suffering. It wasn’t simple survival for him. The old alpha had been methodical in his hate for the humans, but knew that the wolves needed them in order to survive. The new alpha did not care and that scared her.

  The older alpha’s call affected the entire pack, though, sowing confusion and more fear. Her wolves were afraid of what came next. The pack was expanding by leaps and bounds and the new minds, just added to the communal mix, only added to the confusion. They could feel him, just at the edge of their consciousness. He was older than anyone in their pack and in much pain. He needed the pack but they could also feel the new alpha’s hatred of him.

  There would be a conflict and the coming battle only stirred the pack more. The new pack, numbering in the hundreds, was the largest group of werewolves to run together in thousands of years. As one, they moved west, towards the girl, the old alpha, and war.

  Cassandra stared at the ruined city in the glow of the tractor trailer’s headlights. The tsunami had destroyed so much, so quickly. The once vibrant city of Houston was reduced to a few skeletal skyscrapers and vast swaths of junk filled plains. The black snow and sleet was beginning to cover everything, changing the landscape to a black, desolate thing from a nightmare. Dutch crawled down I-10 at a snail’s pace. But even at their slow speed she knew they’d make it to their final destination much quicker than if they’d walked.

  She thought a lot about the female who’d attacked her. She hadn’t seen a female fight, up to that point, and the wolf had come at her with a vengeance, singling her out of the group of survivors. She could feel the pack’s hatred for her like a knife through the heart. There was so much history there to create so much hate, she thought, a history she knew nothing of. Maybe she’d find answers ahead of her, at the Church of the Dead Wolf.

  Cassandra began to sense the other wolf; the one Dutch had captured, well before they neared the Church of the Dead Wolf. The beast was very old and she was sure it had seen much over the centuries. It was also in great pain and she wondered what sort of torture the priest Dutch talked about was heaping on it. It didn’t matter. She’d end the wolf’s suffering as soon as she saw it, one way or another.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Dutch said from the driver’s seat. “The old coot really did it.”

  It wasn’t often you saw a ship wedged between buildings in the middle of an urban city. More so, it wasn’t often you saw a ship with dozens of campfires on its decks and e
lectric lights strung from one end to the other lighting up the post-apocalyptic landscape. The massive container ship’s lights lit the dark city for blocks. Cars and trucks, along with heavy construction equipment, surrounded it. Even from as far out as they were she could see hundreds of people working. A wall, made of rubble from the surrounding ruins, was going up and ramps led into the remains of the building the ship was wedged against.

  “He’s building a new city,” Jeremy said. “And has a bunch of good people doing it. It’s pretty amazing.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Dutch said, pointing to the highest point of the ship. A flag flew there, white on black, depicting a wolf’s head, ripped from the body. “He wasn’t kidding. He wants them to come here.”

  “The one you caught,” she said, unable to escape the old wolf’s attention. “What was he like?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s calling to me,” she said, feeling the wolf’s pain. “I don’t know if he knows it or not, but I can feel him. He’s… he is a part of me. How was he?” She imagined a very old man, like a wizard with long flowing white beard and dark robes. There was so much complexity to the wolf, so very different from the feral things that had been chasing her since Worm Fall. He was a wolf first, but also a man who’d seen more of the world than she’d ever hoped to. And he was in there, somewhere in that Church, suffering.

  “Are you all right?” Jeremy asked.

  “I’m fine,” she told the boy, shaking the images from her mind. “Dutch… what is he like? What do I need to expect?”

  The mercenary shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We fought for just a couple of minutes and then I dragged him to the church. He’s a young guy,” the man said, surprising her, “and looks like he was a business man, or something. A runner. He fought hard and didn’t go down until I put three in his chest.”