The Witch and the Werewolf Read online

  “I’ve been looking for you,” the pack’s alpha said as his body began to change, transforming back to the wolf. “There is only room for one of us.”

  “That’s great,” the old wolf began. “You think that because you took an infant alpha that you can take me? Do you have the slightest clue who I am?”

  “I know you’re the old in a world of new,” Robert told him as the two circled. “I know you want to die.”

  “And do you think you are the one to kill me?”

  “I can only try.”

  The pack stopped, unsure of what to do. Their new alpha was young and untested, but he’d won his spot in fair combat. The old wolf in the center of the ring was an unknown quantity. Cassandra could feel their awe and fear of the old wolf. She expected a titanic battle for control of the pack, something even more dramatic than on the bridge. The young alpha was strong and quick, the old experienced and powerful.

  What actually happened, though, surprised her.

  Once the young alpha’s transformation was complete it rushed the older alpha. The gigantic werewolf reached out and took the creature by the neck, lifting it up off the ground. The young one squirmed in his grasp, surprised. It was even more surprised when the old alpha, with a simple flick of his wrist, broke its neck. He tossed the lifeless body to the ground and faced the pack. The battle was over before it even began.

  “No, pup. You are not the one to kill me.”

  The wolves bowed their head in reverence. It was obvious to many of the older wolves. This was not just an alpha. It was the alpha, the first.

  Cassandra used the pack’s distraction to go to where her mother lay, clutching at the smoking sounds in her gut.

  “Come on mom,” she whispered. “I have to get you out of here while there’s still time.”

  “Get away from me.”

  “Mother,” she said sternly. “It’s me. Don’t you remember your own daughter?”

  The woman’s face was a mask of confusion and fear. “I… I don’t remember anything.”

  “You are my mother,” Cassandra said, slapping her mother across the face. “You are a witch. You need to get yourself together and move while we have the chance.” She was so very exhausted. The reprieve presented by the appearance of the old alpha was temporary at best, she knew. She had to get her mother back in the church’s compound.

  There was a flash in the sky and Cassandra looked up to see two blurs streaking across the night. Blue energy lanced out, mixing and fighting with countered red energy. Sparks flew, lighting up the dark, ice covered landscape. She watched the fireworks show, awestruck. There was a sound like a jet breaking the sound barrier, the boom so loud that the remains of buildings shook and chunks of concrete littered the ground. The entire pack, including the alpha, stared at the battle in the sky, unable to make out the combatants but entranced by the light show. Blue energy waves would strike out only to be blocked by the red. Then the process was reversed. The sonic booms continued and the wolves watched.

  “Cassandra?” her mother asked, coming to her senses and finally remembering her. “My daughter?”

  Cassandra clutched her mother to her chest, feeling the heat from her wounds. “Yes mom. It’s me. I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened, but we have to go now. We have to get out of here.”

  The woman shook her head in disagreement. “No, dear daughter. I can’t go with you. I am of the pack, now. I am one of them.”

  “I don’t care,” Cassandra said, tears forming in her eyes. “We can fix this. We can find the alpha and kill him. That will fix everything.” She was lying to her mother and they both knew it. She’d already tried to kill the alpha, put a silver bullet into his brain.

  Her mother stroked her cheek. “That is the alpha, dear. He is the first wolf and he’s returned to his people, at long last. You cannot kill him. He is as eternal as the sun, one of the first beings.”

  She couldn’t get the thing out of her mind. The loss of the connection bothered her. “We can think of something. We’re witches.”

  The battle in the air cumulated in a gigantic explosion of blue and red. The light was so bright she saw the ruins, for the first time, as if it were daytime. Her mother looked so sad in the full daylight and she held her tight, once more.

  “You have to leave, Cass. Go now.”

  “No,” she said solemnly, images of the night of Worm Fall still fresh in her mind. “I’m not leaving you again.”

  “Then end me, Cassandra,” her mother said, guiding one of Cass’s silver blades towards her heart. “Don’t let me go on like this. You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

  “No,” Cassandra said with force. “I will not. We will figure this out, mom. I promise you that. Just come with me. Let me get you out of here.”

  After the explosion there was a sound like a crashing jet and she looked up just in time to see Jeremy plummet down, hitting the ground with enough force to leave a crater. The wolves stared on in wonder, watching as the other half of the sky battle, Father O’Leary, descended in a cloud of red energy. He was absolutely rippling with the fire, casting a red glow about the circle of wolves, and he looked very different than the last time she’d seen him. Gone was the dawdling old man with wrinkled skin and wild gray hair. The thing that landed in the middle of the circle was a predator, like the wolves. But where the wolves hunted to survive and grow the pack, the thing that had been O’Leary was evil incarnate.

  “Imagine my disappointment,” it began, staring straight at Cassandra, “when I discovered your mother had vanished from the world. You cannot bgin to understand how long I’ve waited for the opportunity to have your mother and the alpha in the same spot at the same time. Such power in their essence… such an absolutely intoxicating elixir.”

  “Mom… we have to run,” she said, already trying to figure out how she was going to snatch up Jeremy on the way. How was the boy here in the first place? Had he been battling with O’Leary in the sky? Was that even possible?

  Her mother whispered, the fear so evident even with the exhaustion and pain from the silver wounds. “My god… I thought they were all gone a thousand years ago…”

  “What? What is he?”

  The alpha spoke, his voice in wolf form deep and guttural, answering for them. “Wraith.”

  “You know me so well,” O’Leary grinned. “And you, right here, under my nose. I must be getting old to ignore the signs. Three silver rounds to the chest, another to the head… how does any wolf besides the first survive that? I’ve hungered for your essence for eons. Now I will have you and I will have your pack. Now feed me. I desire your essence.”

  The alpha motioned and his new pack moved forward as one, launching at the vampire. The wolves piled onto the wraith and all Cassandra saw was flying fur and blinding red light. The sound of dozens of wolves attacking at once was intense, but the roar of red energy from inside the pile of werewolves was louder and building, a low grumble like a missile taking off. Cassandra knew a ferocious power was building there, something that made her abilities look like mere child’s play. The energy released in a light too bright to look at directly and the pile of burning wolves went flying in every direction like so many glowing embers. O’Leary stood at the center of the burning circle, unharmed and grinning.

  “So many dead little wolves,” it said with a grin of bloody, stainless steel teeth. “Such a shame.”

  Cassandra stroked her mother’s cheek. “I’m sorry, mother.”

  “For what, dear?”

  “Everything,” she said as she coiled herself like a spring and launched herself across the area separating them like a cannon ball. The priest grinned when he saw her coming, caught her, and used her own momentum to throw her into the remains of a brick wall, collapsing it atop her.

  “No, wraith,” the alpha growled. “You will not have the girl.”

  “Developed a taste for her, have you? I understand completely. She smells… delicious. I will have her and her m
other, after I’m done with you. With the combined power I will absorb I will rule the pathetic remains of this world. The night has come and I am death.”

  The alpha launched across the open expanse of ice covered pavement in a manner of a couple of bounds. He was met with a wall of solid red energy, bouncing off and landing on his back, stunned. The wraith laughed.

  “Poor little wolf… so ready to die. Let me help you with that.”

  The wraith shot straight up into the air, trailing red energy. It then came down like a missile, slamming into the alpha in a burst of red electrical energy. The shock wave rushed out and blew the remaining spectators back. Cassandra tried to shake the exhaustion and scrambled to her feet, swords in hand. She rushed forward and, as the wraith was staring down at the wounded alpha, drove both blades into its back.

  The creature screamed out in pain with a cry that shook the remaining glass from the skeletal remains of skyscrapers and showered the survivors in small pieces of concrete. It turned to her quickly, wrenching the blades free of her hands, and slapped her hard enough to hurl her twenty feet back.

  The alpha took the moment of distraction to leap at the wraith, knocking him to the ground. The act drove the short swords through the wraith, into the alpha, and the wolf howled in pain. The wraith tossed him aside like he was a toy.

  “You think you can destroy me?” the creature howled. “I am the night. I am the coming dark.” It was very disconcerting to see the wraith, arms raised and dripping with red energy, turn to the gathered onlookers, the two swords driven through his chest.

  Cassandra focused her energy, feeling the stirring in the pit of her being, the tingling sensation ringing through her body. The blue fire shot from the outstretched palms of her hand, engulfing the wraith in a curtain of azure flame. It screamed again and again its scream reverberated through the ruins. The alpha launched at it once more, knocking it to the ground. The two wrestled on the ground in a swirl of red and blue fire and Cassandra lost track of the battle, unable to tell who was winning and who was losing.

  That’s when she saw Jeremy crawl out of the crater he’d created when he hit the ground.

  The boy had changed in the short time since she’d last seen him. A large part of the right side of his neck and shoulder were missing, a wound where the wraith had bit into him. He rippled with blue and red energy, bolts of power shooting out like sparks from a kid’s toy. She could feel anger and sheer, unadulterated hatred pouring from him.

  “Jeremy?”

  The boy floated across the ice, several feet off of the ground. When he arrived to where the wolf and wraith fought, he raised his lowered hands and as he did, the wolf and wraith rose with them. They struggled fruitlessly against the invisible bonds he created fruitlessly. His face was a mask of hatred and the space where his eyes had been glowed with ferocious purple energy that wafted out like steam.

  “I killed you…” the wraith screamed. “You are dead.”

  Jeremy clapped his hands and the two beings, wolf and wraith, slammed together in an explosion of energy. He did it again, multiple times, colliding the two beasts into each other in a fury of light and heat. She could feel the alpha weakening and the pack, feeling the same thing, howled in the night. They were like her, unable to do anything about it.

  “Jeremy stop!” she pleaded, getting to her knees and crawling across the cold ice towards the boy. “What are you doing?”

  “Ending this,” the boy said, but his voice was no longer that of a sweet young man. It had been replaced by something dark, something cold. He slammed his fists together then and the two beings came together in a blow that sent out shockwaves, pushing back the remaining wolves and Cassandra like the tsunami of Worm Fall.

  She blacked out for a moment, but when she awoke, Jeremy hovered over the priest. All she could make out of Jeremy were the red glow of his eyes and the steely bright shine of the rows of teeth in his mouth as he bit down into the wraith’s neck, gorging on the priest’s body. The priest convulsed under him. The wounded alpha tried to crawl away, but Jeremy blinked eyeless eyes at him and the furry body slid back towards him, apparently under Jeremy’s control. She had no idea what to think. Had the wraith, when it had bit into him, transferred some part of his essence to the boy? Like the wolves expanding the pack?

  “Jeremy, no,” Cassandra said, moving towards him. The boy held his hand up and an invisible energy wave swept out, pushing her away.

  “Jeremy?” Dutch said, finally joining the scene. The man was covered in blood, his black uniform in tatters. His face was burnt badly. “Jeremy, kiddo, what the hell are you doing?”

  Jeremy looked up. The skin of his face bulged with the power he consumed. “Don’t call me kid.”

  Dutch flew backwards a hundred feet, his gun flying in the opposite direction. He landed on a dead wolf, the corpse breaking his fall. Cassandra got to her feet.

  “Whatever you are doing, Jeremy, please don’t. Please don’t do this. Let me help you,” she said, easing across the pavement.

  The boy pushed his hand forward again, palm out, and she felt the force of energy hit her in the gut like a sledge hammer. She dropped to her knees, puking.

  The boy drained the priest until the corpse collapsed upon itself, the flesh imploding. He then turned to the beaten alpha. He moved so fast, just a blur of motion, that Cassandra lost track of him. The alpha howled out in agony that tore at her soul. Jeremy sank his razor sharp into the creature’s neck. Lightning flashed and she watched as he watched her. It wasn’t just a transference of blood, like a vampire in a movie. Jeremy was taking the alpha’s soul.

  Dutch crawled towards her, pistol in hand.

  “What’s happened to him?”

  “I think he was infected by the priest in their battle. He’s become a wraith.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s taking their essence… the thing that makes them who they are. Their powers, everything.”

  “We have to do something.”

  “Don’t bother,” Jeremy said, finishing his second meal. The boy stood, stretching out. He looked several inches taller than he had before and bulkier. His body was changing even as they watched, transforming like the wolves. “You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to,” he said, his voice squeaky like he was going through puberty right there, on the spot. “You were nice to me, so I’ll spare you today. But things have changed. I am coming to take everything, one day. I am king of this world.”

  “Jeremy please,” Cassandra begged, tears streaming down her cheek. “Please let me help you.”

  “You can’t help me,” the boy said, turning to the pitiful remains of the pack. “We leave now.”

  Cassandra watched in shock as the wolves obeyed, following Jeremy west, out of the ruins of old downtown. He’d killed the alpha and, by that act, assumed control of the werewolves. Worse, she thought, he was now the alpha of every wolf on the planet, including her mother. He’d literally become the first wolf by executing the priest’s plans.

  “Come on,” Dutch said, getting her to her feet. “Let’s get you back into the compound.”

  “But my mother…”

  In the distance Cassandra watched as her mother, back in wolf form, walked with the few remaining wolves of her pack away from the scene of the battle. She looked back at them and howled once before they bounded away.

  “I think if she was going to stay she would have,” Dutch said, her arm wrapped around his shoulder. “We need to get out of the weather, Cass. We need to recuperate.”

  “This weather is nothing,” Cassandra told him. She was exhausted and knew if Dutch wasn’t there to hold her up, she would be flat on her back. The battles had been intense, changing her in a way that she couldn’t quite place her finger on. It was subtle and strange. She had taken to the fight easily, naturally even. It was as if she’d been born for the fight yet she knew the battles were not nearly over.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A st
orm is coming,” she said quietly.

  “We’ll be ready,” Dutch told her.

  She wasn’t so sure. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she needed to learn.

  “But for now we have to rest and rebuild.”

  “Me and you starting a new civilization, is it?” she asked, forcing a smile. So much had happened and there was so much to cry about, but Dutch was there with a smile.

  The mercenary shrugged. “It could be worse.”

  And it would be worse, she thought. Things would get much, much worse before they got any better. But they’d make it.

  She knew they’d make it. She’d already made it this far.

  Epilogue

  Six Months after Worm Fall

  “Fuck Colorado,” Sergeant Manny Rodriguez said around a thick wad of chew. “Fuck Colorado, fuck the black god damn snow, and fuck the President. Fuck all this shit. We should have stayed in Minot.”

  Corporal Lance Reid could not disagree. Before Worm Fall, the eight hundred and seventy mile trip would have taken them a little over twelve hours. After Worm Fall, underneath the permanent dark clouds and ever present black sleet, the trip took over a month. At least back at the Minot Air Force Base they’d been safe in the bunkers. Even if the only thing they had to eat was MREs, there had been plenty of them. There weren’t crazies in the bunkers taking potshots at them at every turn and it was warm. Though it wasn’t sunlight, there was light.

  He didn’t know if he’d ever get warm again and he was sick of the ever present night left in the wake of Worm Fall.

  “Damn straight Sarge,” Henry Wilkerson, late of New Orleans, Louisiana, agreed. “Why they got us all the way out here anyway? I want to be back in my bunk, man. With the fucking heater, man. It’s too goddamn cold out here.”

  “Suck it up boys,” the Sergeant told them. “They told us to come dig out the President and dig out the fucking president we will. Even though they haven’t heard from this facility in three god damn months. And even though there isn’t a fucking Washington, DC any more. They tell us to saddle up and go, we saddle up and go. Doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about it.”