by Amira Rain
Like runners at the starting line of a race, they dropped to all-fours on fingertips and tiptoes and released their human bodies into full wolves, the form in which they would move the fastest and their senses would be sharpest. The grey-toned fur emerged from the naked flesh of body forms that morphed from two legs to four and the heads and extremities that transformed from human to canine. With growls and whines, they were out the door in twin grey blurs.
She stood at the edge of the lawn bordered by the thicket leading into the forest surrounding the house. She was perfectly still, and her face was vacant of expression—or perhaps her eyes gazed at something that only she could see. A crawling blackness came sifting and winding silently through the grass in her direction, like an intangible serpent of vapor.
It rolled onto the cut grass of the Maguires’ property and twisted and billowed itself upward, spreading out and settling into a form, a shape: shoulders, a torso, arms, legs. It took on features and flesh and muscles, until something in the appearance of Tate Dunster presented itself, naked and desiring, to the entranced Megan Brosnan.
The being in the guise of Tate did not need to say a word to Megan. He simply offered her his hand, which Megan silently stepped forward and took. Tate pulled her close and kissed Megan, a kiss to make her swoon. Breathing deeply, she leaned back her head from Tate’s kiss and remained calm, quiet, submissive, as he brought his hands to the hem of her T-shirt and began to pull it up and off her.
He had it almost to her bosom when two sharp and furious growls cut their way through the night. He peered over the mesmerized Megan’s shoulders at the figures of two grey wolves, crouching in an enraged stance of threat and aggression, hunched forward with front legs apart, ears back, jaws parted and fangs glinting in the moonlight. They were showing themselves ready to rip him to pieces unless he backed away from their female and let her be.
Tate at first only looked at them and smiled, a mocking, contemptuous smile. Then he stepped away from Megan to one side and acknowledged them. “The Maguire brothers, I presume.”
Pearce and Nash shifted their wolf bodies from four legs to two. Now in half-wolf form but still wearing the same snarls of menace and defense, they glowered at the intruder to their territory.
“Get away from her!” bellowed Pearce.
“Now!” snapped Nash.
“You leave,” Tate defied them. “She belongs to me now. She’s only mine.”
Tate glared back at them with eyes that suddenly became red fires set into his face. And then, what appeared to be Tate Dunster transformed. In a rude puff of rushing air, the naked human male figure became a cloud of roiling black smoke that churned and transformed itself into a massive black werewolf on two legs, fully seven feet tall, with large and powerful muscles rippling under ebony fur. The lycanthrope figure that seconds ago looked like a man looked down on Pearce and Nash, and returned their deadly snarls with a deeper one of its own.
The giant wolf man rushed at the twins, who first leaped around to evade their enemy’s lunge, then closed in on him from opposite sides. What they were setting upon was clearly neither man nor werewolf, and they did not care. Whatever it was, it would not have Megan—their Megan. It had come to lay claim upon her when she was theirs. They would defend what was theirs to the point of bloodshed.
Megan, staring out into the blackened forest, did not see the battle being waged just a few steps beyond her. She did not see the whirling, thrashing bodies covered with bristling fur, lunging and snapping and growling. She did not see the fangs of Pearce and Nash sinking into the pelt of the other creature, nor the colossal paws of the night-black thing swatting and beating at the brothers and knocking them away.
The sight of the brothers spilling and rolling onto the grass, then bounding back up, their growls tearing at the night, and leaping back at the larger beast again, lay outside of her senses. The terrifying tableau of all three werewolves crashing down onto the grass in a heap of mighty, dueling, battling canine bodies was outside of Megan’s knowing. The calling of the creature that had brought her out from the brothers’ bed had her too strongly in its grasp…
…until, at the sound of one of the twins yelping loudly at a blow from the big black werewolf’s paw, something shifted inside Megan. Her eyes flickered. Her head trembled. Expression slowly crept back into her features as senses and thoughts crept their way back into her mind. In a daze, she turned around in the direction of what lay at the edge of her hearing.
With an effort, she focused her sight on what was happening. She scrambled to perceive, to comprehend, the scene of two grey wolf men grappling with and snapping at a night-black giant. Awareness came tearing fully back into her mind. First, she gasped. Then she screamed, a shrill scream of total horror that stabbed out across the scene.
As one, the wolfen combatants froze. Then they looked to find the horrified Megan, roused from her trance and watching them, incredulous and terrified.
The great black beast marshaled its strength and batted away with its huge paws at Pearce and Nash, sending them flying to either side. He stalked his way towards the transfixed Megan. She screamed at it again. “No! NO…!”
The twins moved. Paws scraping deep into the turf, they sped from where they had landed when the creature beat them away and put themselves between the towering beast and Megan, growling their warning not to take another step.
The canine monstrosity stopped. Megan trembled behind the brothers, expecting either the two of them or the monster towering over them to be dead in the next few minutes—and dreading what would then befall her.
The black werewolf burst his body into black mist, becoming a living storm cloud that rose and spread over the heads of the twins and the woman and twisted its way through the air and back down again into the tall grass bordering the forest. There it settled and shifted back to the form of Tate, and glared at the brothers protecting the woman.
“It’s not over, Megan,” said the thing in the form of the young man she once loved. “We’ll be together. Nothing will stop us. Not even them.”
With a final, sinister smile at the Maguire twins, Tate dissolved back into black mist and disappeared into the thicket.
For a moment, neither the brothers nor Megan moved and none of them made a sound. Then, Megan’s sudden, desperate and confused sobbing tore Nash and Pearce’s attention away from the tall grass. Whining with concern, they drew Megan into a shared hug, an embrace that was their solemn promise to protect her from whatever had come for her in the night.
The brothers took her back into the house, glancing back at the forest where their enemy still lurked. As they walked with Megan, their nostrils flared with something familiar in the air.
“There’s that smell again,” said Nash.
“The thunderstorm smell—like before,” said Pearce. “Just like before.”
They took one last glance in the direction of the forest before getting Megan back inside.
In the living room, they morphed back to human and got Megan sitting on the sofa and wrapped her up in the quilt draped over the back of it. Pearce dashed upstairs while Nash sat with Megan and held her. A moment later Pearce was back with two pairs of shorts, one for himself and one for his brother, which they quickly threw on.
“All those stories they used to tell us,” Pearce grimly reflected, “about the things no one believes in, the things that have been living in the shadows for millions of years. I think we just met one.”
“What was it?” Megan asked in a tiny frightened voice, shivering in Nash’s arms.
“I think it’s what’s called…a shape wraith,” said Nash. “Real werewolves don’t prey on humans, like in the movies. This thing does.”
“Hold that thought,” said Pearce, and ran upstairs again.
With her head against Nash’s chest, Megan repeated, “A shape wraith? Like…a ghost?”
“More like a vampire,” Nash replied, hugging her a little more tightly.
Pearce’s footfa
lls came racing down the stairs again. They looked up at him; he was now carrying his laptop. He set it on the coffee table, opened it up, turned it on, and logged onto the Internet.
“There are websites on this stuff. Only people with…rare interests…really go to them,” Pearce said. “Our interests are pretty rare right now, and pretty dark. One of those sites will tell us about this thing, help us remember the old stories.”
“Yeah,” Nash agreed. “As we got older—teenagers—we weren’t so interested in the stuff the older relatives talked about anymore. Typical know-it-all kids; no time for what anyone older has to say. You forget stuff that way.”
Nash and Megan sat watching Pearce bring up websites filled with arcane information and pictures about shape-changing beings, spirits, demons, and supernatural monsters of every description. Pearce had to do a bit of digging, but the sought-after information appeared soon enough.
Finding the most comprehensive website available, Pearce began to read aloud from it. “Shape wraiths, for those who believe in their existence, are thought to be living energy that can become living matter for brief periods of time. The more energy they take from a host, the longer they can remain in physical forms. They spend endless lives visiting host after host and transforming into an unending series of bodies.
They possess the power to mesmerize humans and control them with powerful manipulations of their emotions and senses, even entering a human’s thoughts and making the host dream, feel, and see whatever the wraith wishes. What they need to take on bodies of flesh is energy from other living beings; the energy of strong emotions.
They are particularly strengthened by emotions of desire, sexuality, and passion, and they are drawn to humans whose lives are unsettled, unfocused, or in a state of turmoil, uncertainty, or flux; humans who are in a state of emotional transition. The storm attracts the storm; the fire draws out the fire.”
Both brothers looked at Megan, who sat, pale-faced, eyeing the computer.
She repeated the words: “Unsettled, unfocused, or in a state of turmoil, uncertainty, or flux.” She paused, then continued, “Humans who are in a state of emotional transition.” She took a breath, then added, “Like…the end of a marriage. A divorce. Going from one part of life to another.” She looked from one brother to his twin. “In a transition to something new, something else.”
Nash said, “Like a fire is a kind of transition of matter from one state to another. ‘The fire draws out the fire.’”
Studying the computer, Pearce continued, “It says the creature feeds on all of the host’s thoughts, memories, emotions—until there’s nothing left. Then it takes a human form that is stable—but temporarily. Eventually the flesh and blood form needs to feed again, and the wraith has to move on to another host to feed from.”
With a gulp, hugging herself as Nash held her, Megan repeated, “‘Until there’s nothing left…’?”
Pearce looked from the computer to Megan. In a dire tone, he said, “It wants…everything you are, inside. It’s a vampire that drinks emotions instead of blood. The site says the wraith leaves its host—its victim—as ‘a vessel empty of all thought and feeling. Like…in a catatonic state that the host never comes out from. Ever.”
Megan dissolved into tears of all-consuming terror, burying her face in her hands. “No! No! NO…!” Pearce went from the computer to her side, and both brothers held her tightly in their arms. They looked from each other, to the computer, to the weeping woman wrapped up between them.
Would it cost both their lives to save her from this thing that was neither man nor beast nor lycanthrope? And in the end…could they save Megan at all?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nash left Pearce to sit with Megan while he went to the kitchen to make her some tea. When he returned, he found the two of them still on the sofa, Megan leaning back and resting her head on Pearce’s shoulder, Pearce’s arm around her. Megan looked exhausted both from crying and from what had just happened with the shape wraith. Pearce still looked grim, a feeling that Nash more than shared.
Megan took the cup from Nash, took a swallow from it, and set it down on the coffee table. Then, with her elbows on her knees, she raised her hands and buried her face in them again. Nash and Pearce traded stricken expressions, feeling the fear come rolling off her in waves of emotion and feeling powerless at their inability to take it from her. Nash sat back down on the sofa on the opposite side of her from his brother. He wrapped one arm around her while Pearce gently took her face from her hands and even more gently said into her once again tear-streaked face, “Talk to us.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Megan said, weary from fright. “That…thing…went into my mind. It went into me. I didn’t want some wraith, some creature, slithering around inside my head. I would never ask for a thing like that. It just came to me. It stalked me in my own thoughts, my own dreams—my private self! Damn, it’s sick! It’s sick! I want this thing to stay out of me and stay the hell away from me! God, it’s so disgusting…”
She tore herself away from the brothers, threw herself onto the back of the sofa, brought her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them, folding herself up into a ball. The act of her wrenching herself from them felt like a stabbing pain in Pearce and Nash’s hearts. They sat watching her, almost afraid to touch her again. “My relationship with Tate was one of the most intimate parts of my life.
It’s something I’ve kept in my heart all these years, all through my marriage and my divorce. I’ve held it in the deepest part of me, because it was special and it was something I’d never have again. At least not until I met you. But he was my first really great love. I experienced things with him. He showed me things…so special. And that wraith—that monster—just reached into me and took all that, and made itself look like him, and sound like him…and feel like him.
And made me relive things and made me think they were happening again… It used the way I felt for Tate to try to drain my life away. And the damned sickening thing is going to come back for more.” Now she hid her face, with all the fear and the pain and the rage and the tears, against her knees.
Nash and Pearce felt the pain almost as if it were their own. It made them want to whine and whimper like frightened wolves themselves: for there is no other anguish to compare with the pain and the fear and the shame of a woman who has been violated. And it lit a searing fire of anger in them to match the fire now blazing inside of Megan. The look that passed between them now gave no uncertain terms for what was in each brother’s heart.
They wanted this creature dead.
Megan lifted her head and rested her chin on her knees. Her voice sounded as raw as the shredded emotions inside her. “It won’t give up. It won’t stop coming for me until it’s completely devoured my soul. It’ll leave me an empty shell. There’ll be nothing left of me.”
“Like hell it will,” Pearce almost snapped. “We will never let that thing have you.”
“Never,” repeated Nash.
Each of them reached out to touch her on one shoulder. More than anything, they wanted to impart their own strength to her, to shore up the broken walls of her emotions and make her a fortress inside, a fortress that nothing could ever breach. Echoing in both their minds were words they did not say, words like that of the shape wraith itself: You’ll never belong to that thing. You’re ours. You belong to us. But another thought as well: And we’ll fight to the death for you.
Instead of voicing their thoughts, Nash asked Pearce, “What does it say online about how to fight this thing, how to get rid of it—permanently?” How to kill it, he meant.
Pearce leaned back over to his laptop to follow the links and scroll and read more.
He read aloud, “Creatures that have been thought to be ‘supernatural’ down through the ages have been critically vulnerable to metal, usually cold iron, sometimes silver.” He looked up at Nash and Megan and observed, “The same thing that kills werewolves in those old movies.”
M
egan remembered her visit to Moonlight Bay. “Jules. The man at the antique store: he’s one of you. He must know about these things too. Maybe we should try calling him…”
“It’s too late to call Jules now,” said Nash. “And there’s no time to bring him in on this. We need to move fast to stop this thing. Read more, Pearce. What else does it say?”
Pearce resumed reading the website. “Creatures such as these are composed of energy. Metal can short them out or ground them, as an electrical current can be shorted or lightning can be grounded.” He turned back to them again. “Right—short them out, ground them, scramble them so badly that they probably disintegrate or something.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” Nash asked.
“Let’s see,” he said, and returned to the screen. Reading aloud, he continued, “To kill a shape wraith, one must catch it in a solid form and penetrate it with cold iron, steel, or some other alloy containing iron.” He paused and considered, “Right. Stab it and run it through with something, and don’t let it pull the thing out. That must make it ‘bleed out’ all of its energy. That would kill it.”