The Witch and the Werewolf Read online

  “You’re lying and you’re scared,” the boy said, warming up a little. “You’ve got orange all through you.”

  “You can tell that from my aura?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well,” she said, forcing a smile, “keep it to yourself, champ. We’ve got places to go and people to see. We’re going to be all right. I don’t care what my aura says.”

  She knew they were getting closer to their prey simply based on the level of excited emotions in the pack. They’d followed the scent down into the broken city, through the twisted remains of refineries and chemical plants, and were zeroing in on her. It was a girl they sought, she knew, though her newness to the ways of the pack kept her in the dark for knowing just why they hunted her. The wolf had no idea why she was running and hunting, nor did she care.

  The smells in the cold city of man were driving her crazy. Mixed in with the scent of man, which made her stomach rumble, were the stink of chemicals and the smell of death. It was hard for her to pick one scent out above the rest. As the pack ran through the cold mud she knew, though, that there was a large group of men somewhere in the miles ahead. Her alpha was excited. The prey was near.

  The area was vaguely familiar, even with the destruction wrought by the wall of water, and she knew it was just a remnant of her life before. It was a memory in that hazy fog of her past. She saw glimpses of it, remembered scents more than anything else, but couldn’t remember much about who she’d been before the pack fell upon her. It didn’t matter, though. She wouldn’t trade that life, whatever it had been, for the pack.

  The alpha paused, turning to her and the other females, and she knew she was to wait. Their prey was near. She felt their excitement yet there was a twinge of fear about the entire thing. She didn’t like having to stay with the females. She had no cub of her own. But the alphas will was overwhelming. She couldn’t have fought if she wanted to.

  She watched as the males descended into the city, anxious for the hunt, anxious to run again.

  Home to a Hole in the Ground

  The snow fell with a flourish and Cassandra was reminded of the time her mother had taken her to North Dakota one winter. The snow there had been beautiful. The vast grass fields were covered in a blanket of white. The snow that fell now was different. It was black, tasted of ash and dirt, and smelled like sour bleach. The snow stuck to everything and by the time they’d made it the few miles to where her house had once stood the blankets and towels they’d covered up with were soaked through and starting to freeze. The temperature was dropping rapidly and what little sunshine had filtered through the dark clouds above started to fade. Night was coming and with it Cassandra knew it would be too cold to stay outside and survive.

  And with each step he was in her mind intertwined like an old lover. The old wolf was in great pain and she had to concentrate to keep the visions of his torture out of her mind. If she lived through this, she thought, she was going to put an end to his misery. The wolves following them, attempting to kill them, she’d kill with a passion. It was her or them. But the old wolf to the west… it was different. She felt mercy for it.

  The old landmarks and street signs were gone and instead she followed the clear spots where the roads were buried in mud to her house. She had to count foundations from the entrance to the neighborhood in order to locate it. It was one of the few homes in the neighborhood with an actual basement and her mother had paid more during construction for it. The water table in the low lying areas of Houston was so high that it normal made basements unusable. After some digging in mud that was rapidly turning to ice she found the heavy iron door leading down. It took her and Jeremy working together to pull the door open.

  She stepped down the stairs and flicked the light switch and then laughed at herself when they didn’t come on. Of course there wasn’t power. There weren’t power lines or power stations anymore. Her mother had mounted large mag-lites to the wall, though, and she took one, pushing down the rubber button. The light was bright and surprising after so long in the dark once the clouds had set in.

  “Would you look at that,” she mused, checking the basement. Not an ounce of water had gotten in.

  “What is it?” Jeremy asked, still shivering in the snow.

  “Come down and see for yourself,” she said, instantly regretting her choice of words. The boy descended the stairs. It was painful for her to look at him in the light. He looked broken, like he’d come from an ad for a feed the children program in a third world country.

  “Wow,” Jeremy exclaimed. “There isn’t any water down here. It’s all dry. And it’s kind of warm.”

  She’d only spent a little time down in the basement. Mostly it was when her mother made her do gun cleaning drills. Her mother, however, had spent a lot of time down there in the months leading up to Worm Fall. There were boxes stacked against the wall, each labeled as to their contents. There were boxes of MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat, cases of water, and vacuum sealed packs of clothing. There was a gun case against the far wall and stacks of ammunition next to it. The small basement was crowded and the largest free space was occupied by two military style cots.

  Cassandra guided the boy to one of the cots and then began pulling his wet, icy clothes off him. He blushed when she got to his underwear but did not resist. Once he was out of the rags she used bottled water to clean him up as best she could with wash cloths and then dried him off. Jeremy suffered through the cleaning silently, staring straight ahead with his eyes shut. She laid him down and heaped blankets on him.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes,” the boy said hesitantly, staring at her with empty sockets.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something different about you. It was just a little black spot on your heart, at first. I didn’t think much about it. But it keeps growing.”

  She knew what the boy was talking about without having to ask anything else. But she’d just met the kid and though they’d become instant friends in the aftermath of Worm Fall, she wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell him.

  “You feel them, right,” she asked.

  “The wolves? Yeah. I guess. I see them farther out, but I can sort of feel them.”

  “Well I can feel them. Seriously feel them. I feel the pack when they are close and their hatred for me. But beyond that, I feel another wolf who is somewhere that way,” she said, pointing west without even knowing it was west. She knew where it was. “They’re torturing him something awful.”

  “And you feel bad for him?” Jeremy asked, eyebrows raised.

  “No one should get hurt like that.”

  “That’s not right. They tried to kill us. They deserve everything they get.”

  The malice with which the young boy said it surprised her. “I wouldn’t want to see anyone tortured.”

  “And it’s in your head?” he asked suspiciously.

  “It’s not that big a deal. Don’t sweat it.”

  Cassandra smiled and stroked his cheek. “We’re going to be good.”

  She then proceeded to repeat the cleaning process for herself. Her mother had stored plenty of clothing in her size and she quickly dressed, only leaving off the leather cowboy boots her mother had thoughtfully stored for her. She then opened a box of MREs randomly and began putting together a meal for them.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, knowing he wasn’t asleep.

  “Yes,” the boy replied. Though his voice was meek he already sounded better than he had out in the blistering cold. “I’m starving.”

  “Well it looks like chicken noodle or beef stew,” she said, looking at the packages and instructions. They were straight forward, so easy a soldier could follow them, she imagined with a laugh.

  “Chicken noodle sounds great,” the boy said, sitting with the blankets still wrapped around him.

  Cassandra prepared their meals and relaxed. It was the first time, since Worm Fall, that she’d actually
just sat down.

  “They’re close, aren’t they?” the boy asked, whispering as if the wolves were outside the metal door to the basement.

  She felt them too. It was like a burning sensation in her gut. They were close. Would they be able to find them in the basement? “Yes, I think so. It’s kind of fuzzy.”

  “So no witchcraft manuals down here?” the boy asked with a smile. “Maybe an owner’s manual to your new superpowers?”

  “They aren’t superpowers,” Cassandra countered.

  “Pretty much are superpowers. You had fire burst from your hands and made a force field. How are those not superpowers?”

  “This isn’t a comic,” she began. “I’m a witch, I guess. Not Wonder Woman.”

  “Same difference, I think,” Jeremy said.

  “So what does that make you?” she asked playfully. The boy could see auras even though he had no eye sight. And those auras were very telling about people.

  “I don’t know,” the boy responded sadly. “Mostly useless, I guess.”

  “No,” she said, taking him and pulling him close. “You are not useless. You can see what people and things really are. No one can lie to you, ever. You can know a person’s heart just by looking at them. I think that makes you pretty powerful.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “We’re not doing anything for tonight. Maybe not for a couple of days. We’re going to eat and we’re going to rest. But when we’re ready we’re going to pack up and head towards downtown.”

  “To the Church of the Dead Wolf,” Jeremy said, agreeing. “What do you think we’ll find there?”

  She had fantasized about a group of soldiers armed with silver bullets holding the wolves at bay. In all honesty, considering the kooks her mother had run around with, there just wasn’t any telling. But she suspected that’s where the old wolf was and that the Church were the ones responsible for his pain that she felt in her heart.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But if there’s nothing there we’ll just go somewhere else.”

  “Like where?”

  “I don’t know. Where’s someplace you’ve always wanted to go but haven’t?”

  “The Grand Canyon,” the boy said without hesitation. “I’ve always wanted to see that. I bet the colors there are awesome.”

  “The Grand Canyon then,” she began. “We’ll find a truck that still runs and one of those shiny travel trailers.”

  “You might want to practice driving better first. I saw you last time, remember?”

  She remembered the fuzzy day before in a series of blurs often interrupted by the thoughts of the old wolf.

  “Fine, I’ll practice. But we’ll go there. And then to the desert after that. I think I’d like some heat after all this, right?”

  “It’s going to be cold like this everywhere, not just here. That cloud is going to cover the planet for a long, long time.”

  “How long?”

  “There isn’t any way to know,” Jeremy said. “They say something like this killed off the dinosaurs.”

  Killed off, she thought. Could the human race go extinct? They wouldn’t even have a half a chance with the werewolves out there, and knowledge of that one fact steeled her. It didn’t matter if there really was a Church of the Dead Wolf or not. She was going to have to fight them with or without help.

  “Shh,” the boy whispered, suddenly very afraid. “They’re outside the door.”

  She’d ignored the growing feeling of dread in the pit of her being. Maybe there was so much dread going around she was getting used to it. She padded across the floor and opened the gun safe, selecting a large shotgun and shoving a pistol down the back of her waist band. She then found some clothes for Jeremy and made him start getting dressed.

  “We’ll be quiet,” she whispered as she began packing food and other things they’d need into back packs. “But if we have to run…”

  “I know,” the boy said, putting on her mother’s shoes that were three sizes too big. “We’ll be okay.”

  It was her turn to wonder who was lying when the first growl came at the door above them.

  The male wolves of the pack descended on the neighborhood, scratching at the ground. They knew the prey was close. The alpha could smell her and it was driving him mad that he couldn’t see her. It took the wolves a long time to finally understand that she was beneath them, sealed off by a large iron door.

  The alpha dug his clawed hands in around one corner of the door and heaved, bending it backwards. Her scent was even stronger and she was just there, out of his reach. He stuck his head in and howled.

  A shotgun blast answered and the wolf jerked back in pain. The pack howled in frustration.

  Dutch heard the howls first, his gut clenching with fear, and then heard the unmistakable blast of the shotgun.

  It could be coincidence, he thought as he took off at a run, or his target could also be targeted by werewolves. He kicked himself for not bringing any heavier silver weaponry besides the pistol. He knew better and should have provided for every possible eventuality. The silver .45 ACP he had in the pistol, along with the silver blades scattered around his body, were going to have to do.

  He took off at a run and then slipped, falling to his knees. The ground was freezing rapidly. He got back to his feet and slowed, jogging. The painfully slow progress towards the source of the howls and growls was infuriating, but if he were to blow his kneecap out before he got there he’d be no help to the witch.

  There was very little cover to hide behind. When he finally got to the neighborhood where the wolves were digging at the ground, dead center to the GPS coordinates the priest had given him, he marveled again at the beasts. He’d only fought the single werewolf in the streets during Worm Fall. Here there were a dozen of the monsters. They were eight feet tall when standing on their hind legs but ran on all fours. The muscles rippling under the mangled brown fur would put a pro-wrestler to shame. The beasts were tearing into a concrete foundation like it was made of Legos, flinging chunks of concrete behind them. He checked the GPS once more to be sure. The wolves were trying to get to the same person he was. He was sure, however, that they didn’t want to escort the witch and her daughter to safety.

  “Well,” he said softly with a grin, “nothing wrong with shooting werewolves for fun and profit.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Cassandra racked the slide back on the shotgun, forcing another shell into the chamber. The wolf she’d shot first pushed back in, howling in rage at her. The thing’s incisors were longer than her forefingers. She pulled the trigger and the big gun jumped in her hands. But the blast of buckshot sent the beast scrambling backwards.

  Jeremy screamed and tried to hide under the pile of blankets.

  Cassandra jumped up the stairs, two at a time, to the bent corner of the iron door. She racked the slide on the shotgun again and shoved it through the opening, pulling the trigger. She grinned when one of the beasts howled.

  The door began slipping away, again, as a creature out of the reach of her pulled at the opposite corner. She dropped the shotgun and pulled the pistol from its holster. She shoved the pistol out the opposite opening, angled it towards the beast, and pulled the trigger until the gun bumped on empty. The creature howled and backed away but before she could pull her hand back in, the gun was knocked from her hand.

  “Oh, that’s how you want to play, huh?” she screamed out the opening. “Fine.”

  She went back to the gun safe as the creatures tore at the iron door. She heard it giving way on its hinges. She picked up the M4 rifle and slammed a thirty round magazine into the receiver, again thankful that her mother had made her learn to use the weapons. She looked down and saw another thirty round magazine, the glint of a silver bullet shining in the artificial life, and changed her mind. She swapped the magazines, pulled the charging lever, and fired just as one of the beasts was c
oming down the stairs.

  It was nearly too big and had to push against the walls, squirming down.

  “Hiya big boy,” Cassandra said with a relish. Something had come over her. She didn’t fear the beast. She wanted it dead. There was nothing else, at that moment in life, that mattered. “How’s it going?”

  She pulled the trigger not realizing the rifle was set to automatic. The silver tipped rounds tore through the beast, stitching it from the middle of its chest, blowing out its neck, and then shattering its snout. The creature howled in pain and then collapsed in the stairwell. She watched, fascinated, as it slowly reverted back into a naked man.

  “That’s right. You came to the wrong basement. Come get some more,” she hollered at the beasts howling in unison outside the basement’s entrance.

  But between the howls she heard something else. There was someone else shooting outside.

  Dutch sighted through the scope on the rifle and pulled the trigger, firing in careful, controlled three round bursts. Though not silver, the ammunition still had a devastating effect on the creatures. They recoiled in pain and their wounds bled. That was good enough for him. If they bled, they could die, even without the silver. He walked forward at a crouch, shooting at any beast that got near him.

  He put a careful burst into the beast descending the stairs, but missed, as it ducked down.

  “Crap,” he muttered, knowing the beast was in the confines of the basement. Hopefully the witch could deal with just the one.

  Another leapt across the frozen mud at him and he marveled as the creature arched through the air. They really were amazing beasts; the culmination of evolution had turned them into amazing killing machines. Too bad they wanted to eat him.

  Dutch let the rifle fall to its sling and pulled the 1911 from its holster. He aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. The .45 ACP silver round caught the beast in the face and sent it spinning end over end backwards. It had turned back into a man by the time its lifeless body hit the ground.