The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2)

by Bethany Helwig

  Contents

  Title

  Also By

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  The Adventure Continues

  About the Author

  ALSO BY BETHANY HELWIG

  International Monster Slayers:

  The Curse of Moose Lake

  * * *

  Darkest Light

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Bethany Helwig

  Published by Brightway Books, LLC

  THE BITE OF WINTER, characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Bethany Helwig.

  Cover Illustration: Bethany Helwig

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition: April 2017

  ISBN-10: 0-9981247-5-3

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9981247-5-9

  For my dear friend, caffeine.

  I love you.

  Prologue

  The salty ocean spray feels like flecks of ice against his freezing skin. He grasps onto the railing of the Nauti Buoy, his uncle’s forty-foot yacht, and fights the vomit rising in his throat yet again. His insides are a churning pot as the Atlantic Ocean rocks the vessel up and down, side to side, rolling it ever on the waves scaling up in size. A yacht trip will be fun, his uncle said. Take a vacation before you go to college, he said. The sea’s great, he said. His uncle’s a liar.

  “Gene!” His uncle thunders his name from where he stands on the opposite side of the yacht. He waves his bear paw of a hand and Gene staggers over to him, working to gain his sea legs across the yawing deck while clutching onto his life preserver that he refuses to take off.

  “Give us a hand, boy,” his uncle says. “There’s trouble.”

  His hope of not being asked to help is crushed as his uncle grabs his arm and pulls him down into the motor launch with him. Gene nearly falls flat on his face getting in but his uncle and the deckhands hardly seem to notice. One grabs him under the arm and hauls him onto the seat next to the others. His uncle’s best friend starts up the motor and they come alongside the lifeless triple-decker yacht they stumbled across on their “super fun” trip. There are no lights, no sign of people, no nothing. A chill runs down Gene’s spine. They came across it by accident when it almost ran into their yacht. No one has responded to his uncle’s hails. The men around him are quiet and not a sound is heard apart from the roar of the Atlantic Ocean.

  The deckhands manage to tie onto the transom at the back of the yacht and they clamber onboard. For a long moment they all stand there and no one moves except to sweep the beams of their flashlights over the deck. With the storm and twilight falling around them, everything is bleary, gray, and dim—like all those horror movies Gene loves to watch. In real life, it’s a lot less cool.

  “Hello?” his uncle calls.

  Once his voice breaks the silence, the others start to spread out. Gene’s uncle takes his arm, dragging him along, and together they head below deck into the belly of the craft. He lags behind his uncle and continues to clutch his life preserver to his chest. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a coward but he’s terrified. There’s nothing like walking through a ghost ship to make you jumpy. The muffled calls of the others sound across the vessel as they walk through the levels above. With the power off it’s near pitch black down in the hold. Why didn’t anyone bother to give him a flashlight? His uncle’s beam is the only light now.

  “Hello? Anyone here?” his uncle calls again. There’s no response. Just the echo of his own voice. Suddenly he freezes and Gene takes a cautious step forward to see what his light is resting on.

  A woman lies on her stomach, stretched out and unmoving, her splayed hair hiding her face. There’s a dark pool beneath her that looks suspiciously like blood. Gene’s heart leaps into his throat along with another swell of nausea. His uncle, a man of stronger countenance, bends down to hold two fingers to the woman’s neck. Gene stays frozen where he is, soaking up the nightmare of finding a dead body in the darkened hold of a mystery ship. After a few seconds, his uncle shakes his head to confirm the woman is dead. Is the killer still on board? What happened? Where’s the rest of the crew? Are they dead too? Is their crew going to die next?

  “Gene, go get the others,” his uncle orders, his face grim.

  Gene glances over his shoulder to the dark hallway that leads back to the door. He can’t see a thing. There’s no way he’s going by himself. He shakes his head and pulls the edges of the life preserver closer to his chest.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  His uncle opens his mouth to respond, but he never gets to make a sound as a white hand shoots out of the darkness to clutch his throat. His uncle’s eyes bulge as the woman thought to be a corpse on the floor rises, her hold tightening on his uncle’s throat. The beam of the flashlight catches the woman’s snake eyes and razor sharp teeth like a shark’s maw opening out of the darkness. Gene can’t shout, can’t move. Warmth soaks his pants.

  There’s a loud crack of bone and his uncle suddenly falls lifeless to the floor, his neck broken. The flashlight drops and with it the light. The monster of a woman disappears in the void of darkness.

  Fear engulfs everything. Gene’s survival instincts make him turn heel and run as hard as he can back the way he had come. He stumbles blindly into the walls and nearly trips over the hatch but find the stairs and keep running, screaming the whole way. He reaches the deck and keeps running until he comes to a jerky halt at the railing where the motor launch is still tied.

  A single shout is all that’s heard behind him and then silence. No screams, no calls for help from the others, just silence. He spins about and scans the ship. There’s not a soul in sight. Frantically turning back to the single means of escape, his hands fumble with the rope holding the launch in place. That monster will be coming for him. He has to escape. He has to get back to the Nauti Buoy. God, his uncle. His uncle is dead. He’s dead and Gene will be next.

  The rope in his hand suddenly goes taut and his hand is almost caught in the knot he had been loosening. The launch below inexplicably sinks—no, it doesn’t sink. It gets dragged down. It disappears below the waves and then bubbles are all that’s left. Lightning flashes across the sky and if he wasn’t terrified before, he is now. Below the surface, for just that split second of lightning, he sees a massive shape moving beneath the waves. The mass of it stretches on and on, impossibly large. There’s more than one monster out here?

  The hairs on the back of his neck rise. There are no footsteps, no slapping of shoes or feet, no breathing, no sound of movement along the deck, but he knows there’s someone—something—directly behind him.

  A cold white hand grabs his shoulder.

  Chapter 1

  Snarls
and howls echo in the wintery air. If not for the cold, I would be overwhelmed by the smell of wet dog. As it is, it’s strong enough. My breath mists before me and I hug my winter jacket closer to myself in the freezing temperature. Werewolves race back and forth through the snow, jaws snapping and saliva flying. I keep my distance so I don’t get run over but one purposefully veers in my direction at full speed. I jump back just in time so I’m not flattened and almost lose my balance on the slippery field.

  I cup my hands around my mouth and shout, “Ben, do that again and I’ll red card you!”

  He barks at me and keeps running, his blue jersey sticking to his damp fur. He races after the soccer ball being pushed along by Hawk in wolf form moving towards the makeshift goal at the other end of the field in a red jersey. Other wolves in red jerseys team up around Hawk and protect his charge. The atmosphere is rich with adrenaline as Ben and the rest of the blue team rush to cut him off. When they get in close, Ben snaps at the ball and grabs it with his teeth. Before he can make a dash for the opposite goal, he’s hit from the side and the pair of blue and red jerseys go tumbling.

  A yellow flag flies into the air and Deputy Graham jogs out onto the field in his Carlton County Sheriff’s jacket. His towering frame makes him seem like a giant amongst the wolves spread out around him. Strands of his chin length hair peek out from a dark beanie on his head as it starts to slip off. “Hey, hey! No biting the ball! This is soccer, not Frisbee!”

  The soccer game pauses and the werewolves stand still, breathing hard. Ben and a werewolf I recognize as Jason untangle themselves. The deputy has to pull Ben’s paw out of Jason’s twisted jersey before they are completely extricated. He picks up the ball, shaking his head, and tosses it to me. It’s punctured and bleeding air fast, turning into a limp mass in my hands. I hold it up for Ben to see.

  “This is why we can’t have nice things!” I shout and toss the ruined ball aside. A line of others, loaned out by players in the game, sits behind me. I pick up the closest non-mangled one and place it on the edge of the field.

  Hawk trots over and stands perfectly still behind the ball, paw pointed. His reddish fur pokes through the jersey around his torso and gleams in the fading winter light. His team automatically starts spreading out between the blue jerseys.

  I hold up my hands and call, “Resume!”

  My brother nudges the ball with his nose and races back into the fold. The wolves dive around each other, fighting to get the ball to the goal. I may be prejudiced but Hawk is one of the best players on the field. He’s the captain of the red team and they’ve won four consecutive games so far. If he makes this next goal, it’ll be their fifth. I’m supposed to be refereeing along with Deputy Graham but I start cheering my brother on.

  Mrs. Ferguson guards the goal, furry head bent down as she paces back and forth. The wolves pound across the snow packed down by their many trampling paws. Ben slides forward to block Hawk’s drive but overshoots and ends up running into one of his own teammates. The way is clear. Hawk tosses the ball into the air with his nose, launches skywards, and gives the ball an almighty kick with both back legs to send it towards the goal. Mrs. Ferguson slides.

  “Goal!” I shout and jump up and down with my hands in the air.

  The red team howls and they throw themselves into a literal dog pile on top of Hawk. I laugh and want to jump in to congratulate him, give him a noogie maybe, but there’s a crowd of wolves between me and my brother. I hold off and stand on the outskirts. I know better than to get into the middle of a pack of excited werewolves.

  Since Hawk and I started our campaign to turn the werewolves into more of a community rather than a loose smattering of loners, our job has become more like herding puppies than corralling wolves. The sight before me is evidence enough of that. Several are now jumping around like antelopes and eating snow simply because they can. It’s almost easy to forget what they are and what this city went through three months ago. I subconsciously rub the spot on my forearm that bears the scar from having my first life-threatening encounter with a werewolf. It doesn’t have the same silver sheen as your typical werewolf bite but I’m still marked where teeth punctured the skin. As a force of habit, I find Jason’s slinky gray wolf form in the crowd, always conscious of where he is. Jason had been under an alpha’s compulsion at the time he bit me, but still.

  I heave a sigh and push the thought out of my mind. Dwelling on something like that will only give me a headache. Dasc, Lycaon—whatever his name is—is gone along with his influence. None of the werewolves gathered here would ever hurt someone like that now.

  “I thought you were supposed to be keeping them in check,” a grouchy voice says behind me. “What is this? 101 Dalmatians?”

  Jefferson stamps out from the trees, a black stocking cap over his shaggy gray hair and the collar of his fleece jacket pulled up to his ears. He’s let his scruff grow out into a thick beard since winter started. It’s his “extra layer of protection” as he puts it. His beady eyes appraise the werewolves with disapproval.

  I just smile and rub my cold hands together. “Hawk won again in case you were wondering.”

  “Shocker.”

  “Any trouble out there?”

  Jefferson heaves a sigh and frowns at the tangle of werewolves still running around and playing tag with each other. “Surprisingly, no, considering the racket they’re making. I could hear them howling all the way out at the road.”

  “They were just having fun.”

  “Yeah, well.” He rolls his shoulders and gives me a sideways look. “Too much fun and too much noise and they’ll end up drawing more attention than we can handle. Do you want them winning soccer games, or safe?”

  I scowl at him and kick at the snow under my feet. He always has to be the downer of the group. “They can’t have both?”

  “They can play soccer like normal people. They don’t have to wolf out for it.”

  “They need this,” I say and throw a hand out to the werewolves finally settling down and tugging their jerseys off each other with their teeth. “It lets them blow off steam and get all that instinctual crap out of the way. We’ve cut way back on the number of incidents Moose Lake used to have.”

  He rolls his eyes. “It’s only been three months, Phoenix. Don’t let it go to your head, and never let your guard down. Come on. We’ve got probation duties to attend to.”

  The werewolves have started to shift and people stagger to their feet panting after the exertion of the game and the pain of transformation. Hawk stands on his tiptoes over the group and waves to me with a big smile before one of his teammates tackles him. I laugh and watch as a few boys wrestle with him for a bit.

  I’ve always wanted this for Hawk, for him to fit in completely and have friends. I mean, we had friends back in Underground but none that were like him, none that knew intimately all the things a werewolf goes through. Even I can’t fill that void for my brother. After his alpha display when we took down Dasc, the werewolves flocked to him. They look up to him and I’ve never seen him happier.

  But I also realize I’m standing on the outskirts now, looking on instead of being in the thick of it with him. I’m not a part of the pack, and never will be, but at least I’ll always be his sister when he needs me.

  The teams disperse and everyone walks off the field into the sparse woods down a narrow path to an impressive colonial style house. Cows and horses fenced in near the enormous red barn shy away from the werewolves walking as humans. Animals must be able to sense the danger lurking beneath on some level. It makes them nervous but not terrified. Their owner, Mr. Wick, who’s a werewolf himself, still handles them just fine. He’s been kind enough to allow us to use his land on the far outskirts of Moose Lake to host these kinds of events. Thanks to soccer games, capture the flag, races, and whatever other games we feel like, the werewolves have been far more willing to comply with probation.

  Jefferson and I catch up to the tail end of the werewolves and I pat Ben on the
shoulder.

  “Ready for your checkup?” I ask, and Jefferson moves on to talk to another boy.

  Ben’s red in the face and still breathing hard. The front of his black hair is plastered to his forehead and when he tries to fix it, he ends up making it stick out in every direction. He smiles and heaves a little sigh before holding out his hand palm down.

  “Sure thing,” he says and waits.

  I pull out my bio-mech scanner, that looks like little more than a handheld video game, from my jacket pocket and switch it on. Ben holds his hand steady while I scan the probation ring on his finger. The ring doesn’t look like much but that’s kind of the whole point. It’s just an ordinary silver band until the bio-mech scanner does its thing. Then the whole band glows faintly blue while it transmits data to the scanner. Four seconds later and it’s back to being a regular old ring. Ben lets his hand drop and gives me another smile but I’m paying attention to the readings on my scanner, not him. Data displays in a line graph and each spike shows when Ben has transformed. Today’s transformation for the soccer game shows up in two sharp spikes—one for turning into a wolf, and one for turning back. The rest of the line is flat.

  “How’ve you been, Ben?” I ask, eyes glued to the screen as I scroll back in time to the last time I tested his ring.

  “I’ve been great!” he says enthusiastically and starts to stretch his arms. “School’s fine, I’m fine. I’ve been wanting to go see a movie though.”

  I speed through the rest of the data and mark him as all clear. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, do you want to go?”

  My mind draws a blank and I look up, finally finished with the probationary report. “Go where?”

  “To a movie. With me.”