by Amira Rain
“And how do we keep from getting shocked ourselves doing this?” asked Nash.
“It says we’d need an anti-static bracelet for protection. It would ‘reduce or dampen an electrostatic discharge.’ Okay, let’s see where we’d get one of those…” He brought up another tab on his browser and began a search for places to buy anti-static bracelets. A quick look through local vendors’ websites brought up the best available answer. “Yeah, they’ve got ‘em at the big hardware store over in Foley, right down the road.” Decisively, he looked back at his brother and Megan. “We’ll go first thing in the morning. And we’ve got other stuff around here to fight off the thing in the meantime.” He jerked his head in the direction of the hearth. “The pokers, for example. And some other things.”
“Probably not in the shop, though,” Nash thought aloud. “I don’t see us going after the thing with hammers, drills, handsaws, chainsaws, wrenches, files… And using screwdrivers we’d have to move in too close to the bastard; that’d be no good.”
“That’s all right,” said Pearce, “we’ve got other options. We can come up with other things.” Directly to Megan, he said, “In the meantime, we’re not letting you out of our sight.” And he reached over to touch one of her hands, which still rested on her bent knees, and gave it a little squeeze. Megan gave just the faintest hint of a smile.
“You’re going back upstairs to bed and try to get some sleep,” Nash told her.
“And if it comes in my dreams again…?” Megan said anxiously.
“Pearce and I’ll sleep in shifts. One of us will always be up, and we’ll sense anything going on with you. We’ll wake you and run the bastard off.”
The twins stood up and offered her their hands. She reached out for them and let them pull her back up to her feet.
They walked her back upstairs to the master suite and let her slip back between the covers. Each of them took a poker from the bedroom fireplace. Nash, poker in hand, lay down on the bedspread beside her. He kissed her forehead and brushed a lock of hair from her face, and Megan and Nash both shut their eyes. Pearce, armed with another poker, sat down in a chair beside the window and glared out into the darkness, daring their foe to try something else tonight. Just try…
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The next morning was the first morning since their visit began that Megan and her wolf-man twins did not start with sex for three in bed and in the shower. None of them said so, but all of them were keenly aware of how much they missed it. Megan simply showered and dressed; the brothers, not willing to leave her alone for a minute, dressed outside the shower stall in the bathroom.
Silently they went downstairs to breakfast. On their way to the kitchen, Megan stopped them, taking each of them by one arm. They regarded her with concern, sensing she had something to tell them.
“What?” asked Nash.
“Just in case the worst happens,” Megan said, “I want you both to know how grateful I am. I’m grateful that I got to be here, to be with you—to know you. Until this insane thing started, you showed me excitement, and satisfaction—and fun—that I never thought I’d have. And you took me places I never thought I would go. If I don’t make it through this for some reason…I want to thank you. Thank you for wanting me. Thank you for making me feel desired and cared for. Because that’s what you’ve done. And…you’re the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. Ever.” A lone tear traced wetly down her face.
Together, the Maguire brothers pulled Megan Brosnan into their arms, wanting to shed tears of their own. In just a few days, they knew, Megan had changed their lives in ways they likewise never expected.
“If this thing wants you,” said Pearce, “it’ll have to come through us.”
“And we’re not going anywhere,” said Nash.
In turn, the werewolf twins gently kissed the human woman who had grown to mean so much to them, before the three of them went together for a quick breakfast.
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Nash and Pearce took the day off from work, leaving their staff to run the shop. From the garage they brought out a collection of firewood-chopping axes that had been in their family for generations, axes that would likely have a very different purpose before all was said and done. The brothers left them in a wooden chest in the living room before the three of them headed out for the store in Foley.
As before, Pearce drove the SUV. This time Nash rode shotgun and they let Megan climb into the back. When they got out onto the road, Megan thought aloud, “I wasn’t going to bring this up, but it’s kind of too bad you don’t have guns or rifles—maybe with silver bullets.”
“Werewolves don’t like guns anyway,” said Nash. “They remind us too much of the kinds of things humans—some humans—do with real wolves.”
They were quiet for a while, heading off down the road.
The trip to Foley, the visit to the hardware store, a trip to a take-out place for lunch and dinner, and the trip back home took no more than two hours. It was nearing lunchtime and nothing was amiss. The trio looked in on the men in the shop, who had nothing usual to report about the time the twins and Megan were gone. Megan and the twins headed back into the house. Naturally the shape wraith wouldn’t try anything now, with so many people on the property.
They had no doubt it was lurking about somewhere, but it would not make a move until the guys in the shop called it a day. It only wanted Megan and whatever it meant to do, it would not attempt it until it was just Megan and the two brothers it had to deal with. They all kept up their guard.
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The passage of hours dimmed the sunlight and darkened the forest. Shirtless, with bare feet, ready to shift on a moment’s notice, the brothers, with Megan, took to the living room again to wait for something to happen. That was the most frustrating part, the waiting for something to happen; the fact that the next move was all in the hands of the shape wraith, and that there was nothing they could do proactively.
It might strike at any time. It might be circling them even now, searching for an opening to strike. They would be able to do nothing but react. Megan had suggested letting the shop workers in on what was happening, but the brothers remained firm in their suspicion that as long as anyone other than the three of them were on the property, the creature would stew in its own hunger and stay away rather than move in with too many opponents to attack it.
The three of them needed to be alone to draw it out. So, with Nash and Pearce wearing only their jeans and their anti-static bracelets, and Megan sporting a bracelet of her own, they loaded new wood into the fireplace and lit it up, and settled down to wait. They stood up three axes beside the fireplace.
While still remaining wary, Pearce, Nash, and Megan felt the need for at least a small diversion—enough to keep them all going mad with anticipation, but not so much as to lower their vigilance. Nash had an idea. From the bookcase he produced a chess set, and set it up on the coffee table. He sat on the sofa and Megan pulled up a chair, and they began to play, Megan taking white.
Maneuvering with, and against, Megan on a chessboard got them into very different “positions” than those in which Nash and Pearce had been accustomed to being with her—a thought that Nash discreetly kept to himself.
Pearce, wielding a fireplace poker, paced the living room while Nash played with Megan. Nash, between moves, mentioned to Megan, “You know, any other time, under any other circumstances, we’d be playing strip chess.”
Megan looked up from the board at him, mildly bemused. “Strip chess?”
“Yep,” he said. “For every piece captured besides a pawn, one of us would have to take something off. Winner gets to be on top after the game. So, if I won I’d get to ride you while Pearce watched, or if you won you’d ride me.”
“Of course,” said Megan. Here was another new thing. She had never heard of this particular variation on the game, but of course it was the way that werewolves would play it.
Suddenly Pearce stopped in his tracks and Nash
snapped to attention, looking up from the board. The brothers sniffed at the air. The part of them that was always a wolf even when they were human could sense something. And the way Megan looked up, they could tell that she smelled it too.
“Ozone,” said Pearce, frowning, eyes narrow. “Coming from where?”
On the wall on one side of the room opposite the fireplace was a grated vent leading down to the furnace that heated the house in the winter when the fireplaces were not in use. The vent issued billows of thick black smoke that did not smell of soot and ash—and were not coming from the furnace.
Megan stood up, gasping. Pearce bolted up as well, the brothers instantly starting to morph to bipedal man-wolf bodies. “Stay where you are, Megan!” Pearce called. The twins scrambled to the side of the fireplace. Pearce put down his poker and each one armed himself with an axe.
The smoke had become a mass of churning blackness facing the hearth and the now weaponed wolf twins. The smoke congealed and turned solid, and resolved itself into the black and baleful shape of the wraith in man-wolf form, towering over Nash and Pearce and Megan, his ears reaching for the ceiling. The were-beast, eyes ablaze and fangs bared with a growl, looked down upon them with the same pure menace that it radiated last night.
The brothers raised their axes. “Get the hell out of our house!” snarled Nash. They advanced on the monster together, ready to let the blades of their axes drink deeply of its transformed hide—only to stop, halting in their tracks, at the sudden brightening of the glow from the creature’s eyes, as if someone had thrown a switch inside the wraith to make the eye lights twice as strong. Megan, standing away, felt a ripple of something awful and nameless pass through the room—and through her, Nash, and Pearce. What was happening now? Why weren’t they moving? What was the creature doing?
In a guttural voice, the monstrosity growled, “I sense how you both want her. Only one can have her. Decide who is the Alpha in this house.”
Like robots under remote control, Pearce and Nash turned around on their footpads, and with axes still raised and ready, they faced each other.
Transfixed with disbelief and blind terror, Megan watched the twins brandish and swing their weapons, each one meaning to cleave the body of his brother. The blades clanged against each other and the handles of the weapons. Nash and Pearce uttered feral, evil growls and snarls, showing each other their fangs, lunging and swinging and snapping. They wheeled about the room, holding the axes, searching out the opening and the opportunity to cut a blade into a neck or a shoulder or a stomach. Murder was in the air.
Megan shouted, “Nash! Pearce! NO!” And as she did, the wraith in the shape of the giant black werewolf stepped away from the brothers’ confrontation—and towards her.
The creature’s eyes blazed into Megan as they had done into the Maguire twins. Megan fell once again into her mesmerized state. Having failed to run when she had the chance, she could not run now. It was too late—for her, and for her wolf twins.
The entity willed its form to change again, shrinking, turning from black-furred behemoth to naked human youth. As Tate, it strode forth, beckoning to Megan. “Don’t resist. You don’t want to resist me. You know you’re mine. Come to me…”
Megan obeyed, stepping toward the image of the naked Tate.
CHAPTER 12
The entity embraced Megan with arms that she remembered as Tate’s. She peered into the gleam of his eyes and her thoughts and her will dissolved. The entity picked her up from the floor. She rested listlessly in his arms, in a state of neither waking nor sleeping. From behind them came the harsh and brutal sounds of the entranced Maguire brothers sparring and dodging with axes, each intent on splitting the skull, slashing the throat, or spilling the intestines of the other. The entity took one last contemptuous look at them over his shoulder and muttered, “May you die well.”
With a sick and sinister smile, the wraith turned his back on the brothers. Its assumed human shape expanded, shifted, and darkened, once again taking on the aspect of the monster werewolf. Transformed, it carried Megan to the door.
Oblivious to all else, Pearce and Nash grappled with each other, their deep and feral growls filling the air around them. Time and again they had swung at each other, narrowly missing only because of their werewolf reflexes, faster than those of a human. Repeatedly their axe blades had connected with each other, making a terrible clang of metal on metal and throwing off sparks.
They had deflected some swings by thrusting forward the metal handles of the axes, into which deep and deadly grooves had been cut. They fought on, a swing and whoosh here, a dodge there, a leap to one side or the other—until one swing from Pearce carried him through the empty space from which Nash swerved out, spinning away. His momentum carried Pearce several feet across the room, blade-first.
The axe plunged into the chessboard on the coffee table, splitting it in two and sending chess pieces flying in every direction. The force of Pearce’s blow was such that the axe buried itself in the hardwood top of the table itself. Snarling, Pearce pulled at the handle of his axe. Nash, seeing his opportunity at last, closed in for the kill. He stepped forward, raising his own weapon, preparing to sink it into his brother’s back even as Pearce had sunk his blade into the table…
…until, sensing Nash’s approach, Pearce whirled around. Nash’s axe swung through the air at him, but with a sudden lunge of one hand-paw, Pearce caught Nash by one wrist and held him there. Now the two brothers grappled with the axe in Nash’s paw, growling all the louder, lurching back and forth for control.
To break the deadly tie, Pearce took his other paw and seized the handle of the axe. Now clutched in three massive paws, both of Nash’s and one of Pearce’s, the wood of the axe handle strained under the force being exerted on it by the opposite pulls of mighty werewolf muscles—and snapped, leaving both brothers holding splintered wood and sending the lethal blade flying away.
Both brothers were now weaponless and ready to rip at each other with fang and claw. Pearce lunged, but Nash ducked to the floor—and took up the fireplace poker that Pearce had dropped when they went for the axes. With Pearce bearing quickly down on him, Nash swung up and around with the steel rod and caught Pearce across the ribs. Pearce, bellowing furiously, staggered and reeled back. He fell hard on the table in which he had buried his axe. Two of its legs snapped, and Pearce and the tabletop spilled amid an awful crashing to the floor.
Nash was upon him at once, swinging down hard with the poker. Pearce rolled away and Nash connected with the floor, making a horrible clang. Leaping to his feet again, Pearce went towards Nash. At the next swing from his brother, Pearce caught the fireplace poker in one paw, and he and Nash now struggled with the poker as they had done with the other weapon. They wrenched from side to side, making deadly sounds, scraping at the floor with their paws, and lurched back and forth, each determined to wrest the metal rod free and use it on the skull of the other…
…but into each of their minds came something like a fog clearing when burned away by the sun. Their thrashing and thrusting slowed down, grew less furious, less murderously manic, and the horrible sounds of their growling turned to grunts, then to whining and puffing. In moments, they ceased their sparring altogether and stood shaking with the poker in their grasp. The look in their eyes softened. They blinked and focused, as if seeing each other after waking from a dream. Or a nightmare.
Which they realized was exactly what had happened. With yelps of shock and horror at the realization of that they had been doing, Nash and Pearce dropped the poker. It clattered on the floor and they each took a shaking, staggering step back, gazing at each other across the space between them, suddenly knowing what they had been doing—and why.
Nash was the first to find his halting voice. Feeling the revulsion rising in both himself and his brother, he stammered out, “It…the thing…it…”
Pearce stammered back, “…went into our heads, like it did Megan. It made us…”
Nash gr
unted, “…jealous. It used our feelings…like it used…” His voice caught in his throat with an awful realization. He spun around to the door, where Pearce also looked.
Both brothers yelped at the sight of the front door, open wide in a repeat of what had happened only last night—only this time, they sensed, much worse.
Pearce made a sound more like the roar of a lion than any noise that a wolf would make. Enraged, he hurled himself past the horrified Nash at the broken table and brought down both of his werewolf fists on the top of it, which lay at an angle on its broken legs. He smashed the tabletop in two, and the axe that he had sunk into it fell free. Crouching there, he grabbed the axe and glared up at Nash.
Through clenched fangs Pearce said, “I want that bastard.”
Nash threw back his head and howled out his own fury. Wherever the shape wraith was, he hoped that the thing could hear him—and know the Maguire brothers were coming.
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The shape wraith moved quickly in its hulking werewolf shape, carrying Megan as if she weighed no more than the clothes on her back. Up the dark, forested incline of the mountain under the gleaming crescent moon it took her, with long strides and bounds, to a place on the mountainside where it would have her alone, all to itself.