A Wolf's Quest

by Hannah Steenbock

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you,” she said, a little twinkle in her eyes.

  “McMullen,” I managed to whisper. It was getting hard to even move my lips.

  “Ah.” She took a deep breath. “Beth Minster here. I doubt you have heard of us.”

  I managed to shake my head. Or at least roll it a little, and she smiled and patted my hand.

  The car ride seemed both endless and short, and I kept waking up with a start every time my head lolled. Carl and Beth managed to get me into a small cabin and a bed, and then things got really fuzzy.

  “Poison,” I managed to mutter as darkness drew closer. The last thing I felt was Beth patting my hand again and I surrendered to oblivion hoping she had heard me.

  Chapter 6

  Sylvia

  I didn’t sleep much for the rest of that night, Ben’s eyes just kept haunting me. And I couldn’t get over the fact that my own family, my Grandpa and my cousin had been gleefully torturing a fellow human being.

  Why?

  When I could hear Grandpa making breakfast in the kitchen, I knew it was time to face them. And then pack my stuff and go back home, to forget about this horror.

  That thought surprised me, but it really was the only reasonable option. Preferably without them finding out I had observed them.

  But what about Ben?

  He was gone, I told myself, and after what happened during the night, he would never want to come back. I would never see him again, and somehow, that thought hurt.

  I could still feel his kiss burning on my lips, raise fire in my body. This had happened with nobody else, and I wanted more.

  Don’t be an idiot, I told myself, took a deep breath and got out of bed. Dressing was minimal effort, jeans and a t-shirt. I tied my sneakers and saw a spot of blood on the knee of my jeans, and couldn’t stop shaking.

  Last night had not been a bad dream.

  I got up and changed into a fresh pair of jeans before forcing myself to go downstairs, even though the scent of frying bacon made me feel nauseous.

  “Morning,” I muttered when I reached the ground floor. The house wasn’t large, and the kitchen took up most of that floor. Grandpa was flipping bacon in the pan, and Eric was already at the table, digging into breakfast.

  “There you are,” Grandpa said, looking at me with a frown.

  “Where’s Ben?” I asked, doing my best to pretend that I hadn’t seen anything last night, that I hadn’t been in the workshop, hadn’t gotten blood on… I forced my thoughts to a hard stop.

  “He left,” Grandpa said, his voice lofty.

  “Oh.” Technically, he was right, as I knew only too well, but how would an innocent Sylvia react? I pouted. “I wanted to say good bye.”

  Grandpa’s face hardened. “There is something you need to know about that boy you dragged in.”

  I frowned back at him. What else did I need to know, other than Ben getting tortured for saving me?

  He pulled out his cell phone, poked and swiped a few times, and then held it out to me. “Watch this. Look closely.”

  I saw the head of a man looking down, just showing a bunch of wild sandy hair to the camera. Someone grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, revealing the face.

  Dark brown eyes, sunken, full of pain, mouth tight, desperation in those lines.

  The camera panned back a little, showing that the man was wearing a red and black checkered shirt, the kind common among outdoor people. Someone slapped him and his eyes opened more, one side of his mouth curling as if in a snarl.

  The view widened again, showing the man tied to the front of a truck, and with a shock, I realized that red wasn’t originally in the color of the shirt, that the sleeves were light blue and black, and that the red on the shirt was still spreading. His jeans were also dark red on one leg, the one he wasn’t putting weight on.

  Blood. So much blood.

  The camera zoomed in again, just as someone growled.

  “Anything you want to say, McMullen?”

  The lip curled a little more. “Would be wasted on you.”

  “So be it.”

  The man grunted, gave a little gasp and sighed. His face softened and relaxed, mouth opening to reveal blood staining his teeth.

  And then his eyes shifted from dark brown to gray-blue, and I clapped my hands over my mouth, because he looked so much like Ben then and because just a moment later those eyes lost all focus and went empty.

  The camera zoomed out and I could see the handle of a knife sticking out of the man’s chest. They had killed him.

  I was shaking, feeling my stomach bunch up, and I swallowed bile. I managed to look at Grandpa, and the glee on his face shocked me even more.

  “What…?”

  “What you just saw was the end of a monster,” he said, swiping away the video and putting the phone back into his pocket.

  “What…?”

  “It took three days to hunt it down.” He was smiling with pride. “And they finally cornered it, and put it out of misery.”

  “It?” All I had seen was a man with sandy hair, covered in blood. Had seen his death. A man looking like an older version of Ben.

  “A werewolf.”

  I stared. Werewolves were a myth. They didn’t exist.

  “Just like that boy you dragged in.” Grandpa’s voice was hard.

  Eric snickered when I gasped.

  They thought Ben was a werewolf? How… absurd.

  “We hunt them,” Grandpa was explaining. “We kill them. They are abominations, they need to be exterminated.”

  I blinked more than once. What was he talking about?

  “They like to hide in places like ours, trying to blend in, pretending they are human. They murder, rob and rape.”

  The words were just gushing out of him, filled with venom.

  “What did you do to Ben?” I said, before I could stop those words.

  Grandpa growled just like that person off camera in the video. “He got away.”

  Of course, I had known that, but having it stated like that still made me tremble.

  Eric snickered again. “That’s just like you, Cuz, falling for a werewolf. So naive.”

  “I didn’t!” I had, of course I had, but they didn’t need to know that.

  He laughed at me. “So you’ll come along to track it when Steven brings over his hounds? We’ll rid the world of another monster soon, just like they did.”

  “I will not!” I glared at him. Ben was not a monster.

  “Silly Cuz. I bet she fell for that beast.” Eric was still snickering.

  “What makes you so sure?” I asked Grandpa. “Just because there’s a little similarity to the… the video?”

  “Of course not.” Grandpa looked angry. “I tested him. I put something into the water at dinner that only hurts werewolves. And you saw yourself how sick he got.”

  My heart froze. He had poisoned Ben?

  Grandpa came to me and patted my shoulder. “Yes, I can understand it’s a shock for you. But that boy is a monster, and it’ll be better to get him off your mind, Sylvie. We’ll protect you against him if he comes back.”

  Ben had protected me. And these two would never believe me. Maybe I needed to protect myself now.

  I forced myself to nod, to pretend that he was actually consoling me. Because I needed to learn everything I could about this whole werewolf thing. If it was true.

  “What did you use?”

  He gave me a proud grin. “You know how silver hurts vampires?”

  I nodded, that was a familiar trope in movies.

  “It hurts werewolves, too.”

  I remembered that from movies, too, not that I believed in werewolves or vampires. But Ben had been drinking out of a normal glass last night.

  “But there was no silver in the glass you gave him.”

  Grandpa smiled indulgently. “Colloidal silver.”

  I had heard of that substance, it had been part of a health fad a while ago. My roommate at c
ollege had been putting it into her water, claiming it improved the immune system. I had tried it and tasted nothing at all.

  And it had made Ben feel ill?

  Did that mean he was a werewolf?

  And did that in turn mean that werewolves truly existed?

  My mind was reeling.

  “Sit down, darling. I know this is hard to understand. You didn’t grow up with this as Eric did.”

  I knew that was another dig against my parents who had moved away when I was still small and usually, I would have said something, but I was still thinking about Ben.

  He was a werewolf?

  I tried to pull myself together and remember everything I had read about them in fantasy books. Which was probably not even close to the real thing, but it was all I had to go on.

  “Can you explain?” I managed to say.

  Grandpa filled two plates with the bacon from one pan, eggs from another pan and several slices of toast before sitting down with me and sliding one of the plates in front of me. Eric poured coffee for me from a thermos, and I gave him a surprised look.

  “Come on, Cuz. We still like you.” He handed me the mug.

  My family liked me. They cared about me, I could tell. And yet they had tortured Ben with glee. My mind was still reeling.

  “Now, you probably know that werewolves look like people who can transform into a wolf.” Grandpa sounded completely serious.

  I nodded.

  “Not like in the movies, though, they actually look mostly like normal wolves, if they shift completely.”

  Well, that ruled out a lot of fun stuff like getting all hairy and things, like in some movies. I didn’t know if I should laugh or feel as if they were pulling an elaborate joke on me.

  Except it hadn’t been a joke for Ben.

  “But they do have a few attributes that set them apart from humans.” Now Grandpa looked angry and I wondered why.

  “Really?”

  He gritted his teeth. “They can bring up the wolf, as they call it. I think it means starting the shift but not completing it. It gives them strength, speed and the ability to heal fast. And they are insanely attractive to women in that state.”

  Now I knew why he was angry. He was jealous. Seriously jealous.

  “You can tell because their eyes shift. And their face changes a little. You saw that in reverse in the video.”

  I nodded, feeling sick again.

  “No normal human would have survived getting shot five times,” he growled, and I realized he was still referring to the man in the video.

  My heart went out to that poor dead man. Being hunted for three days, getting shot five times, and then stabbed to death without mercy… nobody deserved that.

  Not even a werewolf.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Sylvia. You believe that this doesn’t make them monsters. You’re wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they use those abilities to murder people, to steal livestock, and to rape women. And to get away with it.” He spat out the words.

  Ben had done none of that. He had been a caring, thoughtful and respectful companion on our ride down here. How could he be a monster?

  “Is there any proof?”

  He slammed his hands on the table, and the plates jumped, the silverware on them clinking as they fell back. I flinched.

  “Have you listened to me at all! I said they are monsters. They’ve been wreaking havoc here for decades, if not centuries.”

  I found that I was shaking my head. “It sounds like the witch hunts in Europe. There never was proof, but everyone knew a witch.”

  “It is not like that at all.” He took a deep breath. “Werewolves are real. Witches are not. You saw that video. You saw his eyes change.”

  “Okay, let’s assume werewolves are real.”

  “They are!” He lifted his hands as if to slam them down again, but put them back on the table gently.

  I nodded. “Yes, but even if they are, is there proof that they do these awful things?”

  “We have plenty of stories around here. They are wicked, evil creatures.”

  “I mean real proof. Arrests. Witnesses. Court cases, that kind of stuff.”

  Grandpa took a deep breath. “The authorities have no idea what we are dealing with. A dead werewolf looks human.”

  “The man in the video.” It was hard to even think of him. “What did he do?”

  “That werewolf? Got to ask the people up there.” He sighed. “Can you just believe that they are vermin and parasites and need to be exterminated like rats? Can you believe the experience I have just living out here?”

  I closed my eyes. So they had no real evidence, and it was a witch hunt. History told me it was useless to try to argue against an ingrained belief. Was this fight even worth it? I would leave and go home and forget about all of it.

  Forget about Ben?

  I could not. Not until I knew that he was all right. Which meant I needed to stay friends with my Grandpa for a while longer.

  “I’ll try,” I said, feeling more weary than after a full day of yard work.

  “Thank you, Sylvia.”

  Chapter 7

  Ben

  It was a huge effort to just open my eyes, but my stomach demanded food, and I was aware enough to know that I desperately needed it.

  “Ah, there you are, young McMullen.”

  I blinked and then remembered Beth. She was sitting in a chair next to the bed I was lying in.

  “Carl, get the broth!” she called and then turned to me, helping me sit up, stuffing cushions behind my back and head.

  I still felt dizzy, still felt stiff and sore, despite having the sense of having slept for days.

  “How long?” I managed to ask, and she seemed to know exactly what I meant.

  “Three days. We were worried.”

  That must have been an understatement, considering how worn she looked.

  “You mentioned poison”, she continued. “And you had all symptoms of silver poisoning but there was none in your wounds. We did a few rounds of detox even so, but…”

  “It was in the food, somehow.” I had been thinking about that during those awful moments on that sofa, but I hadn’t come up with a good answer. The food was the only way I could think of.

  “And who gave that food to you?”

  I would remember those men until the end of my days. “I only know his first name. Theo.”

  Beth hissed. “How in the world did you end up with him?”

  So she knew Theo, which was all kinds of interesting. Just as she seemed familiar with my last name.

  I took a deep breath, gathering my thoughts, but at that moment Carl arrived with a steaming bowl in his hands.

  To my relief, Beth didn’t insist on feeding me. Her tiny smile made me think that she realized how undignified that would be and that she had chosen not to embarrass me.

  It was hard enough and I wasn’t up to using the spoon she offered me. Instead, I drank it slowly straight from the bowl.

  Blessed warmth flowed through me and I could feel some of my energy returning. The wolf gave us strength, speed and healing, but it took, as well, mostly food. The bowl was empty too soon, but it seemed she had known that as well, because she went and refilled it herself, twice, before I felt I couldn’t eat any more.

  “Now, young McMullen. Your name, please.”

  “I’m Ben.”

  She nodded. “And do you know a Mal with that last name?”

  I blinked in shock. “That… that is my father.”

  The breath she sighed out spoke volumes. What had I stumbled into?

  “Tell me. What brings you down here, and how did you end up with Theo?”

  So I told her the story of how I had met Sylvia, and how she had insisted on taking me to her family and having dinner, at least. The only thing I left out was that kiss.

  Beth’s frown got deeper with every word, but she listened without interrupting me.

  “She
set you up,” she growled, her eyes yellow.

  “She freed me.” It wasn’t quite a rebuke, but Sylvia had saved my life. Theo had been looking forward to killing me, I knew that.

  “That’s a trick to get you to trust her.”

  I stared at her, sinking back into the cushions.

  “You are young, Ben. You have no experience with the deviousness of those Hunters and their families.”

  Her words had the ring of authority, held the experience of many years. And yet the thought of Sylvia being capable of such subterfuge broke my heart. She had seemed so innocent.

  And I had felt comfortable being near her.

  It didn’t fit. And yet, Beth knew that family better than I did.

  “How much did your father tell you about this area?”

  I blinked, wrenching my mind back to those days when we had prepared ourselves to move den.

  “Nothing. He just sent us here to regroup.”

  “Us?”

  “Me and my siblings. He went out to distract the Hunters, making sure we got away.” We had all known that there was a high chance of him getting killed with that plan, but we hadn’t managed to come up with a better one.

  Her eyes were sad. “And have you heard from any of them?”

  I shook my head. We didn’t carry cell phones on purpose, they were too easy to track, and while we had agreed on a location to check in with each other, I didn’t expect any of them to be here already. Hitching the ride with Sylvia had taken days off the journey. For a price.

  She put a hand on my arm and sighed. “Well, get back to strength, and then we’ll see what to do about this mess. It won’t take much longer for Theo to come up with an excuse to send the cops here, and by that time, you need to be elsewhere.”

  I nodded, knowing that she would send me away, that I’d be on my own in a day or two, and I couldn’t blame her. “Thank you for all you did.”

  “Ah, I’m not kicking you out.” She smiled, a little sadly. “Mal has left some scent here, and his pups are welcome. But I think we’ll need to dye your hair and find a place for you to set up for a while to get Theo off your tracks.”

  I felt relief flooding through me. I had found a pack who would have my back for now, and that was huge. Then my mind caught up with what else she had said.