The Black Wolves of Boston (eARC)

by Wen Spencer

  "And the recording of the ocean?" Joshua whispered as the women settled into silence.

  "It's Winnie's focus," Sioux Zee whispered. "She needs to concentrate to open up enough to let a spirit talk through her. Even housed in Winnie, the spirit probably won't be able to hear you. I'll ask it questions. Now, quiet, so Winnie can focus."

  Joshua didn't want to believe in ghosts but the séance was about to happen whether he believed in them or not. The spirits were as real as everything else that had happened to him in the last thirty-some hours.

  With a rush of wind that sent the candle flickering Fred returned. The room grew colder and somehow more still.

  Winnie took a deep breath, bowing her head slightly so her hair fell across her face. Another deep breath, she relaxed more, and then she jerked rigid. Her breath quickened and she peered upward through the screen of purple hair.

  She locked gaze with Joshua. "Shit. Gandhi was right. Karma bites you in the ass in the end." It was Winnie's voice but pitched deeper with a faint Southern accent. Her gaze slid to Sioux Zee and her eyes narrowed. "Do you have a cigarette? I would kill for a smoke."

  "What's your name?"

  The ghost snorted. "Shit by any other name still stinks. It doesn't matter what my name was. I just needed a computer, a printer, and a lamination machine, and voila, I could be anyone."

  "The name you were born with if you want a cigarette."

  The ghost laughed bitterly. "It was a stupid name. My mom was a new age hippie into peace, love, tie die, crystal healing, reincarnation and spiritual beings. She named me Wonder Woman Alvarado. Try going through middle school tagged with that. I might have had a chance if my father hadn't been picked up for identity theft the day before I was born. He wanted to call me Jazmin after his mother. He would get out of jail and tell me that my name was Jazmin. He would get picked up again for running some con or other, and my mother would force me to answer to Wonder Woman. I tried to go by Diane Prince once and that pissed them both off. You can call me Jazmin."

  Sioux Zee leaned back, opened the black metal toolbox behind her and took out an unopened pack of cigarettes, matches, and an ashtray.

  Jazmin snorted at Winnie's purple fingernails. "I always said I wouldn't be caught dead in nail polish. You want the mark's eyes on your face. Not on your hands." She opened the pack and tapped out a cigarette, laughing silently, so it nearly seemed like she was sobbing. She flipped the cigarette that she'd taken out, and started to slide it back into the pack, filter first. When she realized what she was doing, she shook her head. "My mom always did that with her smokes. Her lucky cigarette. I thought she was crazy, always talking about crystals and negative energy and magic. I thought it was all bullshit until I met Linden."

  She lit the match with practiced ease and leaned back to take a deep drag on the cigarette. "Linden. Linden. Linden. He was the real deal. He had powers that made my mother look like a girl scout with a Ouija board."

  Another deep drag and she settled back to tell her story. "I was in Fort Lauderdale when I met him, running a fortune-telling scam on the snowbirds. With my parents, it was only natural that I ended up running cons like that. My mom gave me this bottomless pit of new age craziness to bullshit with and a touch of power to back it. 'Persuasion' was what Linden called it. My dad taught me how to read marks and steal credit information and get out before the law came crashing down on you. I had a pretty sweet set up running. Linden came sweeping into my place like a king. Gorgeous man. He reeked of money and power. I thought I'd hit the jackpot. I was shit out of luck and didn't know it. Do you have anything to drink in this shithole?"

  Sioux Zee took out a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey and a shot glass.

  "Oh, my boy Jack! How I have missed you!" The ghost moved for the bottle.

  Sioux Zee shifted the bottle out of Jazmin's reach. "Tell me about Linden."

  The room went frosty cold. "Give me the bottle if you know what is good for you."

  "I'm the real deal too," Sioux Zee said. "Just a different flavor. You mess with me, and you'll be in a cold dark place forever. Tell me what I want to know and you can have the shot. Tell me more and you can have another."

  The ghost licked Winnie's lips and took a drag of the cigarette. "Linden Wakefield was a scary ass warlock. Not like that chick on Bewitched. No twitching the nose or chanting spells or anything. He'd just tell you to do something and you did."

  "He was Wicker?" Joshua asked.

  The ghost squinted at him and then looked to Sioux Zee. "I can see him but I can't hear him."

  Sioux Zee poured a finger of whiskey. "Did Linden make things with wood and herbs and dead things?"

  "God, yes." The ghost tossed down the drink and then shuddered at the burn of the whisky and bad memories. "We'd grab some wino off the street and go out into the woods and make these creepy-ass things." Jazmin pushed the glass toward Sioux Zee. "You can't get drunk enough to get it out of your mind. My mother was always going on and on about magic like it was a good thing full of light and happiness. Real magic is the stuff of nightmares."

  She tapped the empty glass impatiently on the table. "More."

  Sioux Zee lifted the bottle but didn't pour. "Tell me how you know this wolf."

  The ghost frowned at the woman in a silence measured out by the ticking timing device. "Give me the bottle and I'll tell you the plan."

  "A glass. Your information is years out of date."

  "Oh no, it's not or he wouldn't be sitting here." The ghost pointed at Joshua. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. "It was a long-range plan. They planned big changes using him."

  Sioux Zee poured a shot glass and pushed it toward Winnie. "I'll be the judge. Egomaniacs are always thinking that they're going to change the world. It's the ones that know their weaknesses who do."

  Jazmin tossed down the shot and pushed the glass back. "Oh, Linden knew his weaknesses. That was what it was all about. Why he came to my place in Fort Lauderdale. See, Linden was like a god. A vengeful god. Someone flips him off? He'd have them walk in front of a bus. Someone cut him off in traffic? He would follow them to the next red light, get them to roll down the window, and calmly tell them to drive off a bridge. Only he was a god on a very short leash."

  "What did Linden plan to do with the wolf?" Sioux Zee tapped the whiskey bottle on the table as if reminding the ghost of the possible reward. "Get to the point. Quickly."

  Jazmin laughed bitterly. "What is time for me? I'm the one that got the short end of the stick in all this. See, it was just dumb luck that Linden even showed up at my place. I'd gotten in a fight with some meth head and he scratched my left cornea, so I needed to wear an eye patch for a while. Customers liked the flair that it gave me. 'A pirate fortune-teller! Oh! Ah!' After my cornea healed, I wore the eye patch as a prop. I even got a freaking parrot. I figured that if I had to skip town, the eye patch would make it harder for the police to find me. The problem was that Linden was looking for a one-eyed fortune-teller."

  "He walked into my place, sat down at my table, and put a gun in front of me. Told me to shoot myself. It was like he put a pack of cigarettes in front of me. I picked it up, put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger as naturally as lighting up. Click. Click. Click. I sat, crying my eyes out, but I couldn't stop pulling the trigger. Click. Click. I thought it was like Russian roulette, that there was only one bullet and sooner or later I'd hit it. There wasn't---it was empty. Linden laughed at me, took the pistol, loaded it up and handed it back. I couldn't even see because of the tears burning in my eyes but I could feel that the gun was heavier. I knew I was going to die."

  "I started to blubber out promises. Money. Sex. Kill someone. Find anyone. At 'find anyone' Linden had me put the gun down and talk."

  "Whom did he want you to find?" Sioux Zee growled.

  Jazmin banged the shot glass on the table. "If you want to know, pay up."

  Sioux Zee glanced at the timer. It had just two minutes left. She gritted her teeth and poured anot
her finger of whiskey into the glass. "What was his plan? What does it have to do with this wolf here? Where is Linden now? Here in Boston?"

  "Linden beat me to the afterlife by a day; torn to pieces by a pissed off papa werewolf. It freed me of his control, though, and I ran, for all the good it did me. His coven is still alive and kicking. They're an incestuous group of people just like him. His daughter wife Belladonna and their little hell spawn Garland and all the rest. Little petty gods. Able to make most people kill themselves with a word. They wanted to rule the world. They thought it was their birthright to be kings and queens. Instead they lived like cockroaches; scuttling for darkness every time the lights were turned on. See, the angels and the wolves---they're immune to witches. They'll kill a witch if they find it. At one time, the angels and wolves fought one another and witches could take advantage of the chaos. But for the last thousand years, there has been a treaty..."

  "This is all ancient history!" Sioux Zee snapped.

  "I'm getting to it." Jazmin tapped the shot glass again.

  Sioux Zee ignored the demand. "Get to it now!"

  "Linden heard about a real-deal fortune-teller, a woman with an eyepatch. That's what he was doing at my place. His coven was combing the country to find her. They needed her to pinpoint the right wolf. My little pirate shtick brought them down on me. What kept me alive was I knew all the tricks of hiding, so I also knew all the tricks of finding."

  "You found her?" Sioux Zee snapped. "What did she tell him?"

  Jazmin tapped the shot glass on the table, indicating that she wasn't going to talk any more without whiskey. "Come on, it's good. You want it. You know you want it."

  Sioux Zee poured the whisky. "What did she tell him?"

  "Very little that made him happy. He thought they were all set to go. They had a little wolf all picked out to grab; finding the fortune-teller was supposed to be a last-minute safety check while they were waiting for the right moment. If the shit hit the fan, it would take out everything within miles, so Linden decided to take the time to be careful. The bad news was that the puppy's bitch mother had been messing with the milkman. If the coven used the puppy, most of East Coast would go under in a major shitstorm. The good news was him." The ghost pointed at Joshua. "The stars aligned and all that shit with him. The problem being, they might also align for all his little brothers, if they were born. The apple never falls far from the tree. Linden was out of patience. He decided to do it the messy way."

  Sioux Zee shot Joshua a sharp look. "Still ancient news."

  The ghost laughed. "Do you know what the one-eyed fortune-teller said that was all so true? Half of knowing the future is knowing the 'why,' not the 'what' in past events. Sure you're sitting there, so confident you know what happened, but do you know why?"

  The hands of the clock were nearly at twelve.

  "What do they plan?" Sioux Zee cried. "How are they going to 'use' the wolf? What will they do next?"

  "Next? They drown Boston in darkness and..."

  The timer hit zero and it rang the bronze bell. Joshua felt the tone, like it had struck him in the chest and resonated all the way down to his toes.

  Winnie collapsed backwards in her chair, breathing fast as if she'd just run a race. "Oh geez, why do I always get the foul-mouthed smokers?" She dug through her messenger bag to find a pack of gum.

  Sioux Zee flicked on the overhead lights and blew out the candle. "Foul-mouthed smokers are the people that usually have unfinished business when they die."

  "I don't understand," Joshua said. "What does this have to do with Jack Cabot? I thought we were trying to find out about him."

  "Where were you when you talked to Jack?" Winnie asked.

  "Inside an MRI machine at Saint Elizabeth's." Joshua blushed as he fumbled to explain. "I really wouldn't call it 'talk' so much as had a very odd---very odd but intense 'vision.' They were afraid I might have some brain damage so they were running all these tests. They put me in the MRI machine. It's very loud and surprisingly scary. I was trying to do deep mediation to stay calm. And then suddenly, he was there. Well, not really there. It was like one of those dreams where you think you're awake until really weird shit happens. I thought I felt a wolf lying on top of me, his head on my chest, pinning me down. I could feel his fur and he was really heavy. He said 'You are not safe here. Go to the Prince of Boston. Run!' I broke the MRI machine; I punched a hole in it. They were very upset with me."

  He had already torn the bathroom door off its hinges, broken his bed and reduced both his IV drip thingy and the automatic blood pressure machine to small pieces in similar panic reactions. He didn't want to stay at the hospital after his vision of Jack. The hospital wasn't hard to convince that breaking protocol and releasing him early would be best for everyone.

  "I didn't want to hurt anyone, so I left home. I could have gone to New York or Buffalo or stopped at Albany. Because of what Jack said in the vision, though, I came to Boston."

  "Your vision sounds like a projection through the pack magic," Winnie said. "With the Boston pack reduced to two or three individuals, the ties between the wolves might be stronger than normal. Jack is a Thane and most likely Seth's heir."

  Downstairs the front door chimed as a new customer came in.

  Sioux Zee stood up. "My next appointment is here. It will be dark soon. If you're taking him home, you should go soon."

  She started down the steps.

  "Granny," Winnie called after her. "Do you think Jack might still be alive?"

  Sioux Zee paused to give her a sad look. "I wouldn't get your hopes up. If Joshua's part of the Boston pack, then only Jack or Seth could have changed him. According to the news, the wolf that bit him is dead."

  "Oh pooh." Winnie slid down in her chair to disappear under the table.

  Joshua froze in place, unsure what to do. Girls were unknown to him except the ones that didn't like him; they always just wanted him to go away. Older women were his mom and sister; neither ever turned to him for comfort. He felt like he should do something. He leaned sideways to look under the table.

  Winnie huddled underneath, rubbing tears from her eyes. "I always thought that I was so weird because, when push came to shove, I'd be able to do something that no one else could do. That I could help. I could matter. Now something horrible has happened to someone I know---someone who was always nice to me---and this is all I can do?"

  Winnie sniffed loudly and guilt stabbed through Joshua.

  This was his fault; he just wasn't sure how. There were people dead. Lots of them. He hated that they might have died because of him yet he didn't have a clue why. He'd always been a dorky little nobody at school. The most interesting thing about him was his judo but he hadn't been able to raise the money to compete at the national level. He wished he could remember what happened at the barn.

  Witches had sent the huntsman after him. The ghost seemed to recognize him. Fred claimed that Jack had sent him to Boston. What was so special about him that all these weird things were after him? He wanted to know.

  "You meditate on the ocean sound to contact the ghosts," Joshua said. "I was trying to meditate when Jack talked to me. Maybe I can meditate and channel his spirit."

  He'd tried lots of quick meditations since he'd left the hospital, but nothing deep and focused. If this was a video game, though, the initial vision would have been an indication that certain keystrokes could recreate the ability. Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. B. A. Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! Channel werewolf ghosts. Achievement unlocked.

  "Oh! Oh! That's a marvelous idea." Winnie crawled across the floor to his feet. "I'll ride shotgun since you've never done it before."

  "Ooookay." He wasn't sure how she was going to do that.

  She leaned up and took his hands. "I listen to the ocean because I imagine I'm a whale. I start out swimming just under the waves. The deep: dark below me. The surface: a shifting gleam above me. Take a deep breath."

  Josh
ua closed his eyes and breathed deep. Usually it wasn't hard to meditate. He'd learned how when he started martial arts in second grade. When he closed his eyes, however, all the weirdness wanted to crowd in. Fred's fresh grave scent. The rustle of wind through invisible leaves as the spirit guide moved around them. How the dead leaves of the hounds had crunched under his fingers when he grabbed hold of them. The cries of seagulls outside the windows. The screams of his classmates at the barn.

  He struggled to relax. Breathe deep. Be calm. Find your center. Be in the now. Anything that happened before this moment, forget.

  Another dozen deep breaths and he settled into the calm that meditation usually brought.

  "Now slide down into the darkness," Winnie whispered.

  She gave him a slight tug and they seemed to fall downward, through the floor. He jerked and opened his eyes.

  "It's okay." Winnie tightened her hold. Her hands were warm and soft.

  He realized that he was growling softly. "It wasn't like that at the hospital. I didn't slide into the dark."

  "Can you remember what you did at the hospital? You lead; I'll follow."

  He closed his eyes again. His mother clung fiercely to his hand as she sat beside his hospital bed. Her hands were surprisingly small, like she'd shrunk sometime during the nightmarish night. Her palms had been dry from the harsh soap that she used to strip engine grease off every night.

  She had to be worried sick about him. He knew that she would have fought to the death to protect him. Against werewolves and witches, though, all she could have done was die.

  Breathe deeply. Be calm. Exist in the now.

  It took longer for him to find his center the second time.

  In the dark stillness, Joshua became aware that Winnie was breathing in time with him.

  At the hospital they'd wheeled him away from his mother's anchoring presence into the stark cold room with the MRI machine. Once he was on the table, the technicians had moved out of sight, leaving him alone in the hospital gown that barely kept him decent. He suspected that since he was in the pediatrics unit, they'd given him a child-sized gown. It was purple with puppies romping on it. It was so short that he felt like he needed fig leaves to stay decent, especially when the female technician tucked pillows under his legs, canting up his knees.