by Reine, SM
“I’m disappointed, Seth. A werewolf would have no interest in a mine. There’s not enough prey. Let’s get out of here before we’re found,” she said, and Abel looked like he was on the verge of exploding.
“Mom—” he began.
And then a noise echoed from the mine.
It wasn’t much of a noise. They probably wouldn’t have even noticed it under normal circumstances. It was a distant dragging sound, like hauling a heavy sack across the cement, and it faded within a second.
But it was one sound too many from an abandoned mine.
Eleanor and Abel exchanged looks.
“Shut the door,” Seth said as a second dragging sound echoed form the earth. He didn’t have to see what was happening to imagine a bloody, newly-changed werewolf pulling herself up the stairs. It wouldn’t be Rylie down there. It would be something else entirely. “Shut the door!”
“Why—?”
“Just do it!”
His mom looked surprised enough by his change in attitude that she didn’t stop him when he shoved her aside and grabbed the handle, hauling with all his strength.
The sliding changed to the padding sound of paws, and then a growl.
A very close growl.
Seth pulled one more time, but it was too late. White fur flashed in the darkness. Eleanor lifted her rifle.
And then Rylie leaped out of the mine.
A huge, furred body struck him, and his leg gave out. He hit the ground. The pistol skittered out of his hand.
“Shoot it!” Eleanor shouted.
He had never seen a werewolf move as fast as Rylie. She was a white-gold blur darting through the night. She snarled and snapped at Abel, who jammed his rifle in her mouth just in time to keep her jaws from closing on his face.
Throwing her to the ground, he tried to bring his gun to bear, but Rylie jumped at him again before he could collect himself.
Black blood cascaded down his shoulder as she ripped free of him. Shreds of his skin dangled between her teeth. Abel roared and collapsed.
“Stop!” Seth yelled.
She crouched over Abel and glared at him. Her gold eyes were like twin full moons. Did she recognize him? He couldn’t tell, and he wasn’t willing to bet on it enough to make a move for his brother.
Eleanor turned at an angle to get the wolf in her sights without endangering Abel.
Rylie burst into motion when she fired.
For a terrifying motion, he was sure she had been hit. But when Rylie landed, she shifted direction and bounded toward the fence, scaling it in an instant.
She rushed into the hills beyond, completely unfazed. Eleanor must have missed.
Spinning, Seth’s mom fired a half dozen shots into the darkness, but Rylie was already gone. “Dammit!” she swore, punching a fist into the air.
Seth scrambled to Abel’s side. He was curled into a ball and his face twisted with pain. Pushing him onto his back, Seth found his brother’s skin sweaty and ashen. Abel had his hands jammed against the wound, and he could almost fit his entire fist in it.
With a chill, Seth recalled that horrible night when his brother had first been bitten by a werewolf. What would a second bite do to him?
“Stay with Abel,” Eleanor commanded. “I’m going after that thing.”
“I don’t think I can get him home alone, Mom,” he called. When she didn’t turn, he got to his feet. “Mom!”
She slung her rifle over her shoulder and scaled the fence.
Seth was torn. Abel was bleeding and groaning on the ground. He might be fine—but he also might not. Rylie was out there with Eleanor, and he wasn’t sure who he would bet on if they came face to face again.
He couldn’t face Abel alone. Praying that Rylie’s speed was greater than his mom’s wits, Seth hauled his brother to his feet.
“Let’s get you home.”
Twelve
Golden Hair
“Ouch! Watch it!”
“Shut up and stop being a sissy,” Seth said.
Abel sat on the kitchen counter, hunched forward so his head wouldn’t bump the cabinets. The family first aid kit was open on their kitchen table and the bottle of painkillers had been tipped to spill pills across the surface. Abel had swallowed a handful of them as soon as they got home. Now he was high enough to withstand Seth’s sloppiest attempts at stitching him up.
Biting his tongue, Seth moved slowly with his needle and wire to stitch the injury. There wasn’t a lot he could do. Rylie had bitten deep and it would definitely scar.
“Sissy? You think I’m a sissy? You’re not the one who got eaten by a werewolf!”
Seth’s hand slipped. Abel grunted. “Sorry.” He cut the wire on the right side and knotted it, leaving five sloppy stitches, and went to work on the other side.
“You owe me thanks, bro. You could have been bitten if we hadn’t been there.”
“Rylie would never attack me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” he said. The more he thought about the moment his eyes met Rylie’s, the more sure he was that she recognized him. Any other werewolf would have attacked him too. Most of them were mindless animals, but she wasn’t.
“She would have come out of that mine and—ow!” Abel shoved Seth away from him. “Give me the needle. I’ll do it myself.”
“You’ve taken so many drugs that you couldn’t legally operate a pair of safety scissors. I’m not giving you a needle.”
“At least I don’t have the sewing skill of a Mack truck.”
Seth jabbed his elbow into Abel’s side when he tried to grab the needle again. Normally, his brother wouldn’t have put up with that kind of treatment, but the painkillers made him sluggish.
“I told you to shut up.”
“What was I saying?” Abel asked, swaying where he sat. “Oh yeah. Your girlfriend would have come out of that mine and killed you if we hadn’t been there. You weren’t even armed. You think the power of love is going to save you? Is love made of silver alloy?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Seth said. “And you promised not to tell Mom. You lied to me.”
“We saved your butt. You’re welcome.”
He shut the first aid kit. “Whatever. Sew yourself up. Stitch your eyes closed and bleed to death if you want. I don’t care.”
“I’m not joking. Rylie will kill you,” Abel said.
“At least she doesn’t lie to me.”
Abel craned his neck to the side to examine his injury. When he couldn’t see it, he jumped off the counter and moved for the bathroom. He staggered drunkenly and barely caught himself on the empty refrigerator.
“Whoa!”
“Sit down, stupid. You’re going to kill yourself before Rylie can finish the job,” Seth said.
Abel did sit down—on the floor. Hard. He tried to grab the table on his way down and managed to pull the first aid kit on his head. Seth grabbed the needle and scissors off the floor before he could hurt himself.
“This cheap trailer is such a piece of crap! The floor isn’t even level!” Abel snarled.
Seth didn’t argue even though the floor was fine. He rinsed out a cup of soda from a burger joint, filling it with water from the tap, and handed it to his brother. “Drink it.”
“Sure, Mom.”
Eleanor had never been the type to watch over them when they were sick, and they both knew it. The joke fell flat.
Abel chugged the entire thing in one breath, wiping water off his chin. Seth knelt beside him to examine the bite wound. “I’m going to have to put a bandage on it. I don’t think we can stitch the rest. You’re going to have a really bad scar.”
“Your girlfriend has a hell of a bite on her.”
“I told you, she’s not my girlfriend!”
“Good.” Abel gripped Seth’s shoulders in both hands. “Listen to me, bro. I protected you tonight. You’re an idiot, but we’re family, so we’ll have this mushy talk once. All right?” No response. “Werewolves killed Dad. A werewol
f almost turned me. I don’t want to see you bitten or dead.”
Seth smacked a gauze pad on the wound and taped it down, then shoved his brother toward bed. “You should sleep.”
For once, he didn’t argue. Abel collapsed on top of a pile of sheets in the corner. They didn’t have mattresses. Buying beds didn’t kill werewolves.
Seth was so used to his mom’s Spartan approach to life that he usually didn’t think twice about it, but watching his injured brother trying to find a comfortable position on the floor made a knot of anger clench in his stomach.
“Think I’m going to turn into a werewolf on the next moon?” Abel mumbled into the sweater he used as a pillow.
It was a question Seth had been trying not to consider. He didn’t think anybody had been bitten by a werewolf twice before. So he didn’t respond.
“Rylie is different,” he said as he shut the door. “She is.”
Abel snored.
Seth stood on the porch, craning his neck back to search the sky for a moon. Moths fluttered through the air, and the light on the porch occasionally crackled and snapped as one drew too close and fried on the electrified wire. It was late enough at night to be considered early morning.
Rylie was out there, and so was his mom.
He didn’t want to think about what they were doing.
If Seth was supposed to be an amazing hunter like Dad—destined to save humanity from the werewolf threat—then why was his life so miserable? Why did he have to grow up in a family where it was normal to live in an apartment without heat or electricity? What kind of people survived off nothing but a dwindling life insurance policy?
Why should Seth have to grow up in motels with a mom bent on hunting when Rylie had designer clothes and a family who loved her?
He didn’t deserve it. Any of it.
It was all too horrible for him to take. Misery overwhelmed and choked him. He sank to the steps and pressed his forehead to his knees.
Seth didn’t move until the sun rose.
By the time dawn stretched over the horizon, Eleanor hadn’t gotten to kill anything.
She hadn’t so much as glimpsed the werewolf since it jumped the fence. She found signs of it, yes—broken trees, paw prints twice the breadth of human feet, and even a rabbit with a snapped neck. But no matter how fast she moved, she couldn’t catch up with the beast.
The only mercy was that her chase had led them away from civilization. The blood smears she found were stuck with rabbit fur, not human hair.
“Still not a good sign, is it, honey?” she asked the clouds. She imagined Jim, her dead husband, watching the hunt from Heaven. She was never sure if it was a happy thought. He had been a hard man to satisfy. None of her kills were as good as his, and he was always happy to tell her that she could never replicate his techniques with any skill.
She wondered what he would think of the werewolf escaping her. Eleanor was sure he would have gotten it already.
Her search led her in a loop around the hills and back to the mine. It was unlikely that the wolf would have gone back to the place it turned once its den had been compromised, so she shouldered her rifle before hopping the fence.
Eleanor shone a flashlight around the cement as she went down the stairs in the mine. She didn’t care about the heavy machinery left behind by the corporation that owned it, even though the parts might have been valuable. She focused on the ground. A werewolf’s claws weren’t sharp enough to score concrete when it walked, but there was always blood where they transformed.
When she found the first smears of crimson, she tracked them back to an empty room with a heavy door that had been ripped from its hinges.
A lantern was tipped on its side in the corner. Eleanor righted it, frowning at the broken bulb and the scuffed casing. She had a similar lantern at home, but that didn’t seem too odd. Anybody could buy them at a corner store.
A glimmer of something lighter than the rest of the floor caught her eye, and she knelt to get a closer look.
Hair. Human hair.
They were like long, silvery strands of moonlight, and they made Eleanor’s heart race as she turned them over in her fingers.
Long hair probably meant a woman. A blond woman.
“Now what do you think of that, Jim?” she asked. He probably would have laughed and gone to sharpen his knives. He liked to skin the werewolves and keep the pelts as a trophy.
Looping the hairs around her hand, she tucked them into a pouch on her belt and stood. Her search had just become much easier.
Eleanor left the mine grinning.
She had been awake for almost thirty-six hours and fatigue weighed heavy on her bones, but she wasn’t ready to sleep. How many women with pale blond hair could possibly live in such a small town?
Her sons must have taken the car back to the trailer. The only sign it had been parked there were tire tracks. She found Abel’s motorcycle hidden in the bushes and mounted it, leaving the helmet hanging from a saddlebag.
Eleanor thought about blond hair as she roared down the road.
Was it blond in color, or gray? It was hard to tell the difference. If it was gray, then Gwyneth Gresham would be the main suspect.
Only one way to find out.
She went straight to the Gresham ranch and was surprised to find the Chevy parked on the hill. Eleanor tried to remember how badly Abel had been injured the night before. The werewolf had definitely bitten him, so it seemed doubtful he would have gone to work.
Parking the motorcycle behind a tree where it wouldn’t be visible from the house, Eleanor climbed into the branches to wait for Gwyneth to emerge. She didn’t have to wait long. The woman came out wearing leather gloves with her graying blond hair pulled into two thick braids. She had a shovel in one hand. She didn’t look like a woman who had spent her night mauling rabbits.
Eleanor pulled out the hair to give it another look in the sunlight. It was shinier and more silken than Gwyneth Gresham’s hair. Definitely blond, not silver.
Then why was her son’s car parked there?
Gwyneth went into the barn, and noise drew Eleanor’s attention to the other side of the hill. To her surprise, she saw Seth pacing by the pond.
I’m hunting. Isn’t that what he said the night before? Maybe he had found the hair, too.
She had been surprised when Seth wanted to spend the summer hunting werewolves alone—proud, but surprised. Yet he seemed more reluctant to embrace his destiny when he returned. He’d become even more stubborn and talked a lot about college.
He wasn’t the boy she thought she raised. He was nothing like his father.
“Didn’t we always fear the teenage rebellion?” she whispered to Jim. Abel was a good kid. He was almost as dedicated as Eleanor. But Seth… he was a disappointment.
He suddenly straightened and rushed down the hill. Eleanor narrowed her eyes to see what he was running toward.
A pale figure limped out of the fields.
Eleanor dropped out of the tree and crouch-walked into the garden to get a closer look.
It was a girl. She was probably Seth’s age, and naked as the day God brought her onto the Earth. Her skin was filthy. One of her legs was pouring blood.
And her hair was a shimmering white-gold sheet down her back.
“Seth,” she said, her voice thick with tears. Her chest hitched. “I think I got shot.”
She dropped, and he caught her. “Oh my God.”
Oh my God.
A sense of calm settled over Eleanor as she took in the scene in front of her. The girl—blond-haired and naked the morning after a new moon—must have been the monster. That part didn’t require much thinking. Eleanor heard Gwyneth had a niece living on her ranch. Abel had spoken the name “Rylie” once or twice himself.
But the way his son held that beast, looking at her with tenderness as he felt her leg… now that was something wrong.
If she thought she had been disappointed in Seth before, it was nothing in comparison to t
he way she felt now.
“You’re healing,” he said. “I think the bullet passed through. You should be okay.”
“It burns,” she whimpered.
“It’s the silver in the bullets. That’s why it’s closing so slowly. If we clean out the wound—”
“Where’s Gwyn? Help me get inside. She can’t see.”
Eleanor didn’t want to hear any more of it. She stroked a hand down the butt of her rifle. Jim’s voice came echoing from the dim depths of her memory. We don’t kill them when they’re humans.
But oh, it was tempting. So very tempting.
Now she knew. And it wouldn’t be long until the next moon.
Thirteen
A Visitor
Rylie’s thigh was on fire. She could barely move her leg. She dressed slowly in the bathroom while Seth hid in her bedroom, pulling a flowered sundress over her head. Jeans would have hurt too much.
Scrubbing her hands and arms in the sink, she got as much dirt off her upper body as she could manage before grabbing a spare towel and limping back to her room. Seth stood up when she came through the door.
“What happened? Did my mom find you?”
“I don’t know,” Rylie said. She laid the towel on her bed and sat on it, pressing a hand to her forehead as she tried to remember. The night before was as foggy as the rest of her nights as a werewolf. She groaned. “I don’t know! Why can’t I remember being a werewolf?”
He knelt in front of her. “It’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with you. Can I see your leg?”
Rylie bit her lip and nodded, lifting the hem of her skirt. The injury was kind of high on her thigh. Her blush almost burned more than the silver alloy did.
Seth leaned in close enough that she could feel his breath warming her skin. Her heart hammered.
Her excitement disappeared the instant his fingers probed the wound. Rylie squeezed her eyes shut as pain throbbed through her. It felt like getting stabbed in the hip.
“Silver is a soft metal,” Seth said as he examined her, sounding totally calm again. “The bullets are cast with other metals to inflict maximum damage. They’re supposed to sit in the injury and leech silver in your veins until you die of poisoning.”