The Wolfborne Saga Box Set

by Cheree Alsop

  The silence in the room pressed against me. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the faces of the Steins. Though Jemmy and Virgo had definitely been unprepared for what happened, the lingering reminder of Mrs. Stein backing away so Madam Doxy could shoot me refused to leave. The sting of betrayal filled my mouth with a bitter taste.

  My body grew weaker from the effects of the silver. My hands started to shake, so I closed them. I wanted to push the witch away, but I knew I would die if the rest of the silver wasn’t drawn from the wounds. I forced myself to ask the question that I feared the most.

  I gritted my teeth so they wouldn’t chatter and asked through them, “Are you healing me just to shoot me again?”

  Madam Anna paused in her ministrations. Something flickered in her eyes when they lifted to mine. Whatever she read there softened her expression further and she shook her head.

  “No, Zev. Not at all.”

  There was regret in her voice that surprised me. I shook my head. None of it made sense. I needed distance to think. I sat up away from her and pushed back with an arm across my chest to stifle the pain. She made no move to stop me. When my back rested against the border of the gas fireplace, the coolness of the painted wood helped to center my thoughts.

  “I don’t get it,” I admitted. “You attacked me and I didn’t do anything.” My breath shuddered in my chest when I continued with, “Why not just leave me to bleed out?”

  My gaze lingered on the bloody blanket where I had rested. Strips of cloth had been sewn into intricate star patterns. Blood marred the beautiful black, white, and red designs. The fact that it was my blood and more stained the floor beneath it made me entirely uneasy.

  “You said it,” Madam Anna replied softly.

  Her voice made me turn my head to look at her.

  “We’re sorry, Zev, but we had to know,” she continued.

  “Had to know what?” I couldn’t help the bite to my tone. The silver burned and it was still hard to breathe. Death hadn’t been so very far away, and my body ached with it.

  Madan Anna glanced behind her. I followed her gaze to Madam Doxy and Madam Henrietta. Both lowered their eyes to the floor when I met them. Jemmy had tears on her cheeks and she tried to leave the couch, but she was still held fast by the immobilization spell. When I looked at Virgo, his pale face was filled with anger and his eyes shone with unshed tears. He glared at Madam Anna as if his gaze could sear a hole through her. But the runes on his hands were dark. Whatever they had done to bind him had cut off his ability to cast spells. His hands were clenched so tight his knuckles showed white.

  “We had to know if you were dangerous,” Madam Anna continued.

  I forced the slightest bit of wry humor into my voice when I asked, “Couldn’t you have just asked me?”

  She shook her head. “I wish it was that simple. But we had to know if we could trust you. We had to know who was in control.”

  “Nobody controls me,” I said in a growl. But the truth was there. The Master’s voice had indeed whispered in my ear and scratched across my thoughts. His dark words, ingrained by years of training and torture, still lingered in my mind.

  Madam Henrietta spoke up, her tone flat as if she repeated something she had memorized, “A werewolf by nature has no mind of its own. It is a puppet, a servant of dark lords. Due to the circumstances of its revitalization, the werewolf owes its soul to the darkness.”

  I looked from Henrietta back to Madam Anna. “What is that?” I demanded.

  Pain pulsed through my chest. I put a hand to it and sat up straighter in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, but it was no use.

  “That’s a passage from the teachings of Madam Onie, one of the only Third Order witches that has ever lived,” Madam Anna replied.

  “That makes no sense,” Virgo said from the couch. He sat forward as if he had just been released from the witches’ hold. He rubbed his hands, anger still evident in his expression. “Revitalization in the ancient literature meant bringing back from the dead, reanimating or putting life back into something.”

  Madam Anna’s gaze flickered to Mrs. Stein. “You haven’t told him?”

  She shot me an apologetic look and said, “There hasn’t been time.”

  “Time for what?” I demanded.

  I felt as though everyone in the room knew something I didn’t, and after all I had been through, I wasn’t sure I could take more secrecy. I pushed against the wall to stand. Madam Anna reached out a hand to help, but I shrugged away and she backed off. I took shallow, steeling breaths against the pain.

  It was a moment before I could ask, “Tell me what?”

  Madam Anna motioned to Henrietta. The witch swallowed nervously before she said in the same tone of recitation, “Werewolves were officially recorded as hunted and burned alive to extinction in the fifteenth century. They were later brought back to life by the revenant, the undead who depend on draining the core entities of life from another for their survival.”

  My head spun. I didn’t know if it was from the silver, the loss of blood, or trying to decipher what they were telling me, but nothing made sense.

  I looked at Virgo. “What does that mean?”

  The pallor of his face and the way his forehead furrowed made him appear upset and confused at the same time. “Are you sure?” he asked Henrietta.

  The witch nodded. “It’s in the ancient texts.”

  Virgo let out a breath; his eyes shifted around the room as if he was searching for the right words. When he looked at me again, he appeared lost. “Your race was killed off entirely and the vampires brought you back with their dark arts.”

  I stared at him. “So, I shouldn’t exist?”

  “You wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the vampires,” he replied. He looked away from me and said, “You owe your soul to the darkness.”

  My heart clenched at his stark tone. The realization of what he meant struck hard. I pushed away from the wall and walked to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Jemmy asked, her voice tremulous.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I said. “The witches are right. I shouldn’t be around you or the Willards. None of us should.”

  I opened the door with the intention of returning to the Willards’ house and telling the werewolves what I had found out. I would forbid them from staying in the Willards’ forest, or to be around humans at all. We were a scourge. We shouldn’t exist. We truly were dangerous monsters who would have been better left extinct.

  “Isley’s in trouble.”

  The name stopped me in my tracks. I put a hand to the doorframe and looked over my shoulder.

  “What about her?”

  Mrs. Stein’s gaze showed desperation when she replied, “She’s dying, Zev. That’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

  Chapter Two

  “She’s dying?” Jemmy repeated behind us in a voice filled with tears. She had been through more than enough in one day.

  Mrs. Stein nodded at her daughter. “Her body is no longer responding to the salve.” Her eyes met mine. “That’s why she keeps having nightmares. The pain and hallucinations are getting worse and will continue to do so until the poison stops her heart.”

  All of the anger at how I had been treated and what I had just learned about the origin of werewolves fled at the witch’s words. “That’s why she thought I carried her,” I said as the realization dawned on me. “She’s having hallucinations from the felgul bite.”

  “She was bitten by a felgul?” Madam Doxy said.

  The horror in her voice was reflected on the other witches’ faces.

  “Three of them attacked her, but Zev risked his life to save her.” Virgo said. He shot an accusing look at Madam Anna. “Maybe you should have asked about that before you shot him.”

  As much as I appreciated the warlock sticking up for me, Mrs. Stein’s words pounded through my head. “She’s dying? What can we do? There must be another salve or something that can draw the poison out.
” I thought quickly. “Or if you need the blood from a felgul to make an antidote, I’ll gladly hunt one down. I’ll—”

  Madam Anna held up a hand. “Slow down. We need to take this one step at a time.” She gave a small smile that touched her eyes. “And I’ve seen felguls before. If you’re so willing to go off after one, then yes, Virgo is right. We should have started there.” She turned to Mrs. Stein. “Tell me what you’ve done so far.”

  Mrs. Stein put her arm around Jemmy’s shoulders. “We made the charcoal toxin paste you taught me for snake bites and demon scratches, and Jemmy and I applied new paste every hour through the night and day. We also performed incense censing, purifying wards, and air cleansing chants, and we ensured that the room in which she slept was warded from dark spirits and demons.”

  I hadn’t realized how very hard Mrs. Stein had fought to help Isley recover from the bite. The toll it had taken on both her and Jemmy was evident in their eyes as she spoke. Mrs. Stein squeezed her daughter’s shoulder.

  “While it’s been good training for my apprentice and we had progress through the first night in eliminating the streaks from the wound toward Isley’s heart, our effects have been met with less and less response.”

  “What are you seeing?” Madam Henrietta asked.

  “The streaks are back,” Mrs. Stein told her. “Isley’s nightmares are getting worse, and she’s started to mumble in her sleep.”

  “Oh no,” Madam Doxy said. “That’s bad.”

  Madam Anna speared her with a look. “It’s expected,” the head witch corrected. “You’ve done everything you should, Madam Rosy. But felgul bites come with an added risk because of the infection that enters the wound along with the poison. The bacteria inside a felgul’s mouth and claws can be devastating for some.” She shook her head. “I fear your Isley may have the odds stacked against her.”

  That sent a chill down my spine. “What can we do?” I asked. “I’ll do anything to save her life.”

  The fact that I was begging to the same witches who had shot me wasn’t lost on me.

  A small squeak of laughter escaped from Henrietta. “What can a werewolf offer?”

  I looked from one of them to the next, ending on Madam Anna. “Anything. Whatever you need. Let me know and I’ll do it. Just save Isley’s life!” I lowered my gaze and said, “Please.”

  “Me, too,” Virgo seconded. He crossed to my side. “We can help. Just tell us what to do.”

  Madam Anna’s expression softened at the warlock’s words. Her gaze shifted between the two of us. “You both care about her, don’t you?”

  Virgo nodded. “She’s Mrs. Willard’s daughter’s best friend. She’s never hurt anyone. She deserves help.”

  I studied the floor in silence for a moment. I couldn’t put into words why I wanted to help Isley so badly. She was sweet and innocent, it was true. There was an edge of spitfire to her if her bad side showed, which I was apparently great at drawing out, and yet, she was vulnerable and alone in a way I knew very personally. Perhaps, all things taken away, she was one I could save in a lifetime of being the destroyer. If I admitted the truth to myself, I felt like if she slipped through my fingers, there wasn’t any hope left for my soul at all.

  But who was I kidding? I was a werewolf. I had nothing of value to offer. I didn’t even own the clothes I wore or the shoes on my feet. My haircut was a gift of pity from Isley, and a begrudging one at that. I may have saved lives, but only because I put them in danger in the first place.

  The voice in the back of my mind whispered that if I hadn’t stopped him, the vampire who came to Brickwell with his felguls would have left a wake of death and devastation behind him. Also, if I hadn’t been the means to ending my Master, the werewolves we freed would have continued following his orders and bringing about the deaths of the humans they brought back to the Lair.

  “Anything?” Madam Doxy’s high voice broke through my thoughts.

  I nodded. “Anything, if you can save her.”

  Madam Anna let out a breath. “We’ll do what we can, but no promises.” She glanced at Mrs. Stein. “Bring her here. Time is of the essence.”

  “I’ll hurry,” Mrs. Stein replied.

  She hurried through the door with Jemmy and Virgo following close behind.

  I was about to join them when Madam Anna called out, “Zev, you need to stay.”

  Cold fingers tickled across the back of my neck when I turned. “Forever?”

  Henrietta laughed and Madam Doxy covered her mouth to hide her smile.

  Madam Anna shook her head, “No, son. We just need to finish getting the silver out of those bullet holes or else you’re going to be in worse trouble than Isley.”

  Relief swept through me that I hadn’t just signed my life over as some sort of slave to the witches in order to save Isley, but the fact remained that I had promised them something. There was no telling what they would order me to do to pay my debt.

  “Can I walk them to the car?” I asked.

  “You may if you can,” Madam Anna replied.

  I stepped outside. As soon as I reached the Steins at the end of the sidewalk, the illusion the house was cast under took effect. Instead of the grand mansion the interior revealed without Madam Doxy’s cloaking spell, the outside appeared to be a plain, little house built a few decades ago. It fit into the neighborhood, especially with its unkempt yard and sagging porch.

  “Zev, are you sure you should be coming with us?” Mrs. Stein asked when she noticed my approach.

  “I’m staying,” I replied. “I just needed to ask you a question.”

  Mrs. Stein looked at Jemmy and Virgo who had both paused in the act of climbing into the car. “Go ahead,” she told them.

  As soon as the doors were shut, she turned back to me. Her expression was grim as though she guessed what I needed to know.

  “Go ahead.”

  The rotund witch with the wild orange hair appeared more serious than I had ever seen her. A hint of sadness touched her gaze. I didn’t let it deter me from asking what I had to.

  “Did you know they would try to kill me?”

  My question lingered in the air between us. The hope I had harbored that I was mistaken fell away at Mrs. Stein’s silence.

  When she finally broke it, it was with a nod. “I knew. They had to.”

  “Because of what I am,” I replied. I felt betrayed in so many ways. I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice when I asked, “Couldn’t you have warned me?”

  I wasn’t sure it would have helped, but in everything I had experienced at the Lair, being burned by branding irons with my hands chained above my head, captured by four werewolves and held down with my exposed neck over a ledge waiting to be broken, beaten to within an inch of my life and thrown into a cell away from the moonlight, I had never felt so helpless as a few minutes ago when I was held suspended and unable to move while a witch shot me with silver bullets.

  It didn’t matter that I had survived. I had seen the look on Mrs. Stein’s face. She thought I was as dead as I knew myself to be when the silver ran through my veins, and she hadn’t moved to do anything about it. She was one of the few humans I knew. Both Mrs. Stein and Mrs. Willard had treated me with almost the same motherly caring they showed their own children. I was under no presumptions that I was even close to them. I was a monster, to be sure. But I had never expected to be set up in such a harsh and life-threatening way.

  “If I warned you, it wouldn’t have been a true test,” Mrs. Stein said.

  I looked away from her. I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze, to see the source of my betrayal as the sweet face of the woman who had cooked strange lasagnas for me and fed the werewolves from the Lair out of her own resources.

  “Zev,” she said quietly.

  I resisted the urge to clench my hands into fists. My breath came in short, ragged spurts, compliments of the partially healed wounds. A few drops of blood trickled from one of the bullet holes. I put a hand to it to ease t
he ache.

  “You can feel betrayed by me,” Mrs. Stein said in a tone of defeat. “But I needed to know.”

  That brought my head up. “Why?”

  She gestured toward the car. I could make out Virgo in the front seat twisting to talk to his sister in the back. My heartbeat slowed.

  “You had to know for the safety of your children,” I replied softly.

  She nodded. Her gaze was pleading when she said, “I don’t expect you to understand the drive of a mother to protect her children. As you’ve seen, ours isn’t a normal human family. It is a family of witches raised with the knowledge of the darkness that is out there.”

  My stomach twisted at the whispered reminder that I was a part of that darkness.

  Oblivious to my thoughts, Mrs. Stein continued, “We’ve been through plenty of hard times. Virgo lost his girlfriend in an accident, Jemmy was plagued by ghouls all through her childhood, and,” her voice lowered, “Mr. Stein was killed in a war with a neighboring witch coven four years ago.” Tears glimmered in her eyes at the revelation, but she blinked them back. Sincerity showed in her gaze when she said, “So I’m asking you to understand that even though my methods might be questionable, I have my reasons.”

  I nodded numbly. The sage scent of sorrow wafted from her, verifying the truth of her story. I swallowed past the knot in my throat and said, “I understand.”

  She gave me a sweet smile and patted my cheek with the words, “Thank you, Zev. You’re better than you know. We’ll return with Isley as soon as we can.”

  My insides twisted as the car pulled away. The wolf surged toward the surface. With the weakening effects of the silver, if the moon had been overhead, the wolf would have won out. I would have run, regardless of the consequences to those I left behind. They had their own to protect. I could understand that more than anyone. I was the only one who would look out for me. If it wasn’t for the silver, I would have left and never looked back. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  As I entered the yard and it changed to finely manicured, endless lawns dotted with trees and even the occasional grazing deer, I made myself a vow. Just like at the Lair, nobody in this world would have my back but myself. I wouldn’t expect caring, compassion, or loyalty from anyone. I would trust no one and rely only on myself.