“Thanks,” she replied slowly. “Nice to meet you, too.” There was something odd about Lockheart. He was attractive, but not in the usual way—it was more instinctual, almost carnal in nature. As if he were emitting an invisible, unscented pheromone that drew her attention to him and nowhere else—but only when his eyes locked onto hers. When he looked away, the feeling vanished.
Rue shook her head. Just hormones.
Lockheart turned to Doctor Forlorn. “Doctor, did you get a new car? The Toyota?”
“That’s mine,” Rue broke in. “Do you need me to move it?”
“No, but you might want to go take a look at it.”
“I know it’s dented in the front—”
“I’m not talking about the dent.”
Rue’s eyes narrowed and she excused herself, hurrying down the stairs and out the front door. She circled her car. “What is he talking about?” she muttered to herself. “I don’t see anything...”
Then she saw it.
The front passenger side tire was completely slashed to bits. She didn’t think a human could do this much damage. It looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex had somehow come out of extinction simply to rip every shard of rubber into a million pieces and scatter them all over the driveway. Could a wolf have caused this? Maybe another had been here, smelling the scent of its injured packmate on the fender.
The bare hubcap hung sadly—naked, stripped of its rubber clothing—in the wheel well. The setting sun glinted off the metal, making Rue realize with a jolt how late it had gotten.
“Oh, no,” Rue cried. “How will I get home?”
“You’ll have to stay the night,” she heard the doctor say behind her. She turned around. “It can be a trial run of your new job. Tomorrow, I’ll drive you back into town. I can’t drive after dark. Bad eyes, you see.”
Rue looked around helplessly. “I really can’t,” she said. “I have class in the morning. What about Lockheart? Can he drive me?”
“Sadly, no,” the doctor replied. “He cannot drive.”
Rue sighed. “Let me try my roommate.” She turned back around and walked a short distance away from where the doctor still stood. She pulled her phone out of her coat pocket and called Eliza. The phone rang and rang and rang, until finally a stoic-sounding woman reported that the carrier had not set up their voicemail yet. Rue growled to herself under her breath. “Dammit, Eliza!”
She had no choice, then. She had to stay. She walked back to the front steps and helped the doctor back into his house.
♛
After a fairly awkward dinner, Rue was shown to the “least offensive” of the bedrooms, according to Lockheart. It felt like nobody had slept there in decades, though the linens were fresh and the furniture dusted. There was just an eerie stillness about it, another thing that she couldn’t quite seem to put her finger on.
Rue thanked the doctor for his hospitality, and then Lockheart after he brought her a set of clean towels.
“I’m going to see the doctor to bed,” Lockheart explained. “Then I’ll be back to give you some more details about your job.”
“The doctor went over it all with me earlier. What else is there to know?” asked Rue.
“You’ll see,” Lockheart replied. “Oh! And Rue, if you hear the bell at night, go check on him, okay? That’s one of the most important jobs you’ll have.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I can handle that.”
Lockheart left, so Rue let her body fall backward onto the queen-sized bed and waited for him to return. She pulled out her phone and tried to text Eliza. But now nothing would go through at all—her phone constantly flashed No signal and Message delivery failure at her. No matter where she stood in her room Rue couldn’t get a bar to stick long enough to make a call go through. She started to play solitaire on her phone to pass the time, the only game she had that didn’t require a wireless connection.
A couple of hours passed, and still no Lockheart. Finally, Rue stood up. It was late, but she wasn’t tired. The house was silent. Lockheart must have gone to bed by now—he must have decided to talk to her about the job in the morning. She wondered if he’d conferred with the doctor and realized that Forlorn had gone over it all with her already.
She stretched thoughtfully. Maybe another part of the house would have cell reception, or she could find a landline to use to call Eliza and let her know why she hadn’t returned, and that she’d be missing class in the morning.
She opened the door to the dark hallway and clicked on the flashlight app on her phone. Rue had never seen a house so bleakly dark in all her lifetime, and the still quietness of the air continued to make her uneasy. She’d seen too many horror movies. She had to remind herself this wasn’t some kind of haunted mansion. It was just a rundown old Victorian, and it was going to be her place of employment and her home for at least part of the week, for who knew how long. The only way she was going to shake this spooked feeling was to get familiar with the house—and then convince the doctor to have wi-fi installed.
Rue wandered about the hallways and peeked into every room that was unlocked. During her daytime tour, the rooms had seemed a lot more harmless than they did now. There was something about the house at night that seemed to come alive, despite the incessant darkness. Every creak, anomalous blink of light, or slight breeze made her jump, and the hair on the nape of her neck stood unrelentingly on end.
When Rue finally reached the doctor’s office, she slipped inside and closed the door behind her. There was a small sliver of light from a thin window behind the desk, but not enough for Rue to fully see the room in its entirety. She noticed a small oil lamp on the desk, so she turned it on and clicked off the flashlight on her phone. The battery was low, and the indicator at the top of her screen had turned red. Rue internally kicked herself for leaving her charger at home, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
Rue’s attention turned to the bookshelves. She approached slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light of the lamp. She squinted as she tried to make out the title of any of the books but found that she couldn’t. She grabbed one at random and pulled it out. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. She pulled out another one. Modern Progressive Science: The Art of Transmutation. And finally, Organ Transplanting for Dummies.
“Hmm, I’m starting to see a pattern here,” she whispered to herself as she reached to pull out another book. But this time, the book didn’t budge from its spot. This one seemed to be stuck. Rue pulled harder.
The bookshelf began to shift, and Rue leapt backward to avoid a sharp corner hitting her. When the shelf tilted, Rue peered into the cavity left behind. Again, nothing but pure blackness.
“I should know better,” she mumbled, “but what the hell?” The longer she was here, the more curious she became about what sort of research the doctor was conducting out here in the woods. She tried to press the button that lit up her phone but found the screen didn’t change. She pressed again. The phone wouldn’t turn on. She set her phone down on the desk—it was useless now that the battery was dead.
Rue tiptoed into the hole in the wall, stopping for a brief moment to allow her eyes to adjust to a room even darker than the doctor’s office. She was only a handful of steps into the hole when she noticed it dropped off, and the small bit of light revealed a long, winding, cement staircase trickling down into more darkness. Rue took a deep breath and went down.
When she reached the bottom, the first thing she noticed was a large wooden switch directly to her right. Without thinking, she flipped it on. The room became illuminated in bright white light, and a dull hum sounded as though several machines of some kind were powering on. As Rue glanced around the room, she was eerily reminded of the old movie version of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. The room was massive and truly did resemble the laboratories portrayed in the old monster movies. Clear rubber tubing wove from one strange device to the next, and a centrally-located, gurney-style table sat amid smaller tables covered in beakers and glas
s test tubes in racks.
“So that’s what he meant when he called this place his laboratory,” Rue mumbled. She suddenly became aware of what she was doing and felt her heart begin to race. “I probably shouldn’t be here.”
Rue was starting to back away from the tables and toward the switch to turn it back off when something caught her eye. In the very back of the room was a long, thin table with several enormous jars containing some fleshy-colored objects floating in fluid. Rue knew she should have left, but her curiosity got the best of her. She made her way over and peered into the jars, covering her mouth as she ascertained what was within them.
One jar contained a human hand. Another held a foot. And yet another was filled with ears and a nose. One smaller jar had a set of moldy, bright-blue eyeballs submerged perfectly in the center to glare right back at her. Rue felt her stomach turn, then saw the last jar at the end of the table.
A man’s head covered in black hair bobbed within the table’s largest jar. As Rue looked closer, she felt an even stronger urge to throw up. The head was devoid of ears, nose, and eyes—and from the looks of it, had been that way for quite some time. Rue felt her body retch but held back the vomit that was aching to come up her throat. She knew she had to leave.
Rue turned from the table and ran to the stairs, taking three at a time as she bounded back up to the office. In all her haste, she realized she’d forgotten to turn off the switch, but what the doctor thought was no longer of concern to her. She needed to get as far away as humanly possible. She dashed up the last step and out the hole, promptly crashing into Lockheart’s overly warm body.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked calmly, raising an eyebrow at her.
“I... have... to... go...” was all Rue could squeak out.
Lockheart laughed. “So you saw old Vladimir, did you? Don’t worry; he won’t bite. I can’t guarantee I won’t, though.” He chuckled as though he were proud of himself somehow. “But maybe you’re into that kind of stuff. Well, I guess if you’re not now, you probably will be soon enough.”
Rue stared at Lockheart blankly, confused. She was at a loss for words. All she could muster was, “Please...”
Lockheart’s thick hand latched on to her arm and tightened its grip. “Come now, Rue. You can’t be scared that easily.” His fingernails pressed firmly into her flesh, causing Rue to cry out in pain.
“Let me go!” Rue shouted, and Lockheart’s grip eased a bit.
“Shh, you’re going to wake him up,” Lockheart said with a chuckle. “Trust me, you don’t want the doctor to wake up.”
“Please,” Rue said, feeling tears start to well up in her eyes. “I won’t tell anybody about what I saw. Just please, let me go. You’ll never see or hear from me again, I promise.”
“But therein lies the problem, sweetheart,” Lockheart cooed. “I don’t want that. Victor doesn’t want that, either. We want you here with us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your assistant position. Of course by now you must know that that was just a façade. But we’re offering you something better. The opportunity of a lifetime. What would you say if I told you that you could live forever? And that you could save a dying species in the process? How’s that for a scientific endeavor? More than any nursing degree could achieve.” When Rue didn’t answer, he chuckled. “You’re more important than you realize, Rue.”
In one swift movement, Lockheart threw Rue onto the floor and laughed as she scrambled to find the doorway in the darkness. “It’s right behind me!” he mocked. “But don’t even try it. You, Rue Chambers, are here to stay.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You, my dear, will be the culmination of years of research. It’s taken this long for the doctor to perfect his methods—but it’s down to a science now, which for you, honey, is a good thing. I’m afraid there were a few hiccups in the process, but luckily, he was able to correct them, thanks to all the preliminary experiments we did on those corpses. Did you happen to see the rest of Vladimir? It took us forever to dig that sucker out of his grave.”
Rue shook her head and noticed in the small bit of light that Lockheart’s eyes had a glow all their own, as if they were grabbing the tiniest sliver of moonlight from the window and reflecting it outward in order to see perfectly in the darkness. They looked much larger than she remembered. Rue, on the other hand, could barely make out Lockheart’s silhouette.
“My, what big eyes you have,” Rue said sardonically under her breath.
“The better to see you with, my dear,” Lockheart replied.
“What are you?” she said forcefully. “You can’t be human.”
Lockheart laughed. “You got it half-right. I’m only half-human.”
“What’s the other half?”
Lockheart bent down to Rue’s level, his eyes piercing into her soul. “Wolf, of course. I’m a werewolf. The last of my kind. The last of the Alphas, or Proto-Werewolves, to be precise. Well, until we change you over, that is.” He chuckled. “There was another male like me—my brother, actually—but sadly, somebody hit him with their car this afternoon. Now I’m the only one.” His voice sounded regretful, and for a moment Rue almost felt sorry for him.
“Did you do that to my car, then?” She’d been right—it had been a wolf. A half-wolf. A werewolf.
“I’m terribly sorry about that. My emotions get the best of me in the wake of a full moon. I was upset over the loss of my brother. And we couldn’t have you leaving. Of course, we were hoping for two males and two females, but since my brother is now dead and your roommate didn’t come with you, we’ll just have to make do with what we have.” He paused before adding, “It’s a shame about your roommate. She would have been my first choice—no offense. I’ve always had a thing for tall blondes. But I suppose you’ll do. You’ll have to, anyway.”
Rue couldn’t even begin to comprehend what Lockheart was telling her. He made it seem like he’d seen Eliza before, almost as if he’d spied on them before Rue had come to the mansion. Then Rue recalled the crouching, darkened figure in the woods on her bike ride and shuddered at the thought that she had likely been followed home that night.
“What are you planning to do to me?” she whispered.
“It’s a simple process,” Lockheart explained, sounding bored. “And don’t worry; it only hurts a little bit. And then again—though less intense than the first time—every full moon when you change.”
“Why don’t you just bite me now and get it over with?” Rue snapped.
Lockheart laughed. “That would work—if I wanted to create a Beta. A bite or scratch would be all that was necessary. Anything that draws blood. But I don’t want a Beta for my mate, Rue. I want an Alpha. Like myself. I need another Alpha for my mate. That’s just the way it has to be.”
Rue saw a small sliver of light begin to form around the doorway. The oil lamp on the desk. Somebody was opening the door. She took a deep breath and in one swift movement pulled herself up and shoved past Lockheart toward the door. Lockheart grabbed at her, but Rue’s tiny body slipped past him. Rue threw her whole weight on the door, knocking the frail doctor backward. He landed on the floor hard with a moan and a thud. Rue wasted no time leaping over his fallen body and dashing across the hallway, down the staircase, and out the front door.
“Oh, little Rue!”
Rue heard Lockheart’s voice echo through the forest as she ran through the dense trees, but she kept running without looking back. A distant, almost disembodied howl reverberated all around her. It seemed to be catching up to her. But Rue kept running.
“Rue! Little Rue!” Lockheart’s voice was filled with malice and mockery and still grew ever-closer despite Rue’s small legs propelling her forward, farther and farther from the mansion. She could feel herself growing tired but knew if she stopped that Lockheart would surely catch up to her quickly. As she ran, she could hear him loudly singing the chorus of an old, haunting song from the sixti
es about Little Red Riding Hood, told from the perspective of the wolf. Almost as if to frighten her more, he let out another long, drawn-out howl that reverberated through the trees. Sharp branches snaked out into her path, whipping against her hood and slicing across her cheeks. She felt warm blood trickle down her face, but that didn’t stop her.
“Little Rue in the red hood!” Lockheart screamed, his voice bellowing through the thick foliage. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I can smell you; you smell like lamb chops and gardenias!” Then he began to sing the song again, this time more unsettlingly than before, if that were possible.
Rue kept running. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of light through the trees, and as she drew closer, she saw that it was headlights from a car. It couldn’t be the doctor—he couldn’t drive at night. Besides, he was frail and she’d hit him hard on her way out. It must be someone else; maybe the mustached man who’d helped her earlier...
She dashed into the road in front of the car, holding out her hands in front of her. The headlights blinded her, so she couldn’t make out what kind of car it was, nor who was driving it, but nevertheless, the car had stopped. Without thinking, Rue jumped into the passenger seat, locked the door, and burst into tears.
“Are you okay?” a husky male voice asked, and Rue looked up to see the silhouette of a dainty man clutching the steering wheel, though she couldn’t make out any features. She did, however, notice that the man was wrapped in a thick, wool blanket that resembled actual sheepskin. The man leaned toward her, allowing his face to show through the darkness.
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