by Eric Asher
He looked down at the gray werewolf-claw slippers Vicky had sent him this past Christmas. Hugh had never taken to the Christian customs like some of the Wyandots had over the centuries, instead keeping with the old ways, but he held no ill will to those of the pack who didn’t. Many white men called him a Pagan, as if that would somehow insult his belief system. Hugh slid his feet into the clawed slippers and padded down the hall, a small smile tugging at his lips despite the horrors he’d seen that day.
“Splitlog,” Hugh said. “How are you feeling?” It had become a routine for Hugh to ask the survivors of the Kansas City Pack how they were doing. He knew how trauma could affect a werewolf. He studied the cut on Splitlog’s broad nose, and the other wolf’s nostrils flared. Splitlog’s pale eyes squinted, and Hugh suspected he knew what the wolf was about to say.
“I can still smell the blood,” Splitlog said. “You’ve been fighting. You should have waited for the rest of us.”
“This was not a battle you needed to involve yourself in. Camazotz was with us. I know you’re uneasy around the old vampire, so it worked out well that you were with Haka.”
As if hearing his name pulled him from a trance, Haka started pulling various Styrofoam to-go boxes out of brown paper bags. He stacked them up on the coffee table, some of them squeaking and squealing as he pushed them toward their ultimate fate.
“Bison empanadas,” Haka said, shaking the box at Hugh. “But I can’t imagine you should be eating this much grease at your age.”
“They’re not that greasy,” Hugh said. “Quite delicious.”
Splitlog didn’t miss the opportunity that Hugh had given him to change the topic. Instead of pursuing the Camazotz conversation, Splitlog asked, “How did you all even find out about RJ’s? That restaurant is a hidden gem.”
“That would be Damian,” Haka said. “He has a thing for food. And if you spend any time with him at all, it’ll rub off.”
“And if you let him pick the restaurant, you’ll usually feel it for a week,” Alan said.
“Oh, I heard about that.” Haka laughed. “He took you and your family to Crown Candy, didn’t he? Sink you with those milkshakes?”
Alan closed his eyes and shivered. “I never knew how sick you could get from milkshakes.”
Haka grinned. “Never go up against a necromancer when a milkshake drinking contest is on the line.”
Alan’s expression turned sour as he scraped his tongue across his teeth, obviously trying to forget some unfortunate side effects of choking down far too many milkshakes.
“The necromancer?” Splitlog asked. “Why would you tolerate such dark magic among the pack?”
Hugh popped one of the empanadas into his mouth, enjoying the flaky crust as it crumbled into the barbecue nugget of bison inside. It was a unique food, and one he would enjoy as long as they remained in Kansas City. The short distraction gone, he turned his attention back to Splitlog.
“Magicks, in my long life, have proven to be neither good nor evil. It is how they are used, and who wields them, that makes the difference. Damian has proven himself time and again, proven that he is not evil, and that he will stand with us against some of the darkest forces in this world. I’ve seen what he has sacrificed to save his friends, his family, and perhaps more directly to this point, complete strangers. Fear his power if you must, but he is an ally.”
Splitlog took a deep breath and shook his head.
“You know his girlfriend is the queen of the water witches?” Haka asked.
“And how many of us did those witches drown?” Splitlog asked. “And you battle beside the old god Camazotz, and the death bats of South America.”
“Nixie’s all right,” Haka said. “She’s a hell of a lot more balanced than their old queen, Lewena. Of course, I do have a soft spot for her. She saved me from drowning when I was a kid.”
Splitlog chewed slowly on an oversized bite of pulled pork. “You keep strange company. It was not the way of the Kansas City Pack. We were isolated, cut off from all the other supernaturals, outside of our enemies and the witch coven that lives here.” Splitlog paused and frowned. “Lived here.”
“At one time even the witches would have been considered mortal enemies,” Hugh said. “But did you not find them to be valuable allies in the end?”
“More valuable than we were,” Splitlog said. “We were allies, and they died on our watch.”
“Ashley doesn’t blame you for any of that,” Alan said. “And the priestess lost a great many friends when that coven was destroyed by the dark-touched.”
Splitlog slammed his hand against the coffee table, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “They were our friends too. Perhaps if we had not been so cut off, we would’ve understood what was coming. If we’d been able to combine our forces, things could have been different.”
“You will rebuild in time,” Hugh said. “It is easy to question your choices when they were made long ago. The path to healing is a journey, and you always feel the wounds suffered at the hands of your enemy, but they will diminish. And as you fill your life with new friends and new family, the scars will grow less painful.”
They sat in silence. Hugh remembered those he had lost, most recently the Ghost Pack. Saying goodbye to Carter twice had been a particularly cruel twist. But Damian was still with them, and Vicky was reunited with her family. They would recover. All things in time.
CHAPTER THREE
Sleep came easier that night. It often did after a hard battle, and there were few battles with the dark-touched that Hugh wouldn’t consider hard. He stretched his back as he got dressed and headed for the kitchen. The security monitors mounted above the countertops showed a thick white fog hanging above the river.
Hugh frowned, sipped a cup of warm tea, and let out a slow breath. It might not seem like the ideal time to go hunting a monster that might or might not be lurking in the river, but there were many creatures who grew bolder in the mist and fog that twisted like smoke on the river.
Alan’s footsteps sounded behind him.
“Wake Haka and Splitlog.” Hugh didn’t take his eyes away from the monitor. “We’re going hunting this morning.”
* * *
“These hunts are fruitless, but the walk is not unwelcome,” Splitlog said.
“You’ve lost too many pack members in the last century for all those rumors to be a coincidence. The dark-touched have not been here that long, and your brothers and sisters went missing in unusual numbers long before the war started.”
“Do you think we’ve routed the dark-touched?” Alan ran his fingers over close-cropped hair as he glanced at Splitlog. “Like Camazotz said, their lines did seem a little thin last night.”
“If you grow beyond the age of a pup,” Splitlog said, “you’ll see far stranger things than the dark-touched.”
“Like what?” Alan asked. “I don’t think we need any more problems to deal with.”
Splitlog turned his attention to Hugh as they stepped over the remains of an old wall on their way to the riverbank. “I thought you’d shared our stories with your pack?”
Hugh smiled and glanced at Alan. “I did, but we have had other concerns of late.”
Splitlog grunted. “Some stories should not slip your mind, especially when those stories can kill you.” They made their way over the train tracks, and Splitlog paused as a train whistled in the distance.
Alan nodded. “I certainly wouldn’t want to tangle with the Piasa Bird. And how can a bird that big actually fly, anyway?”
Splitlog gave the other werewolf a blank stare. “You are a shape-changing wolf, friend of a man who can raise the dead, ally of an undine who can control the seas, and yet you question how a large bird can fly? Do not die looking for the knowledge of fools.”
Hugh turned to the other two wolves. “We hunt. Save your lecture for later.” Hugh cupped his hands in front of his lips and gave a brief shrill whistle that reverberated as he closed and opened his palms. He frowned when
only silence echoed, but it was soon joined by a sister whistle. Hugh struck off through an almost unnoticeable path in the tree line. Alan and Splitlog followed in the direction of Haka’s cry.
They broke into a clearing at the river, the bank long and flat. Haka looked as if he was standing on water, though Hugh knew he stood on a shallow sandbar.
Haka raised his hand in greeting, then leaned down to the water and scooped up what looked like a long section of oddly flat rock. Only the rock unfolded, and Hugh’s steps slowed.
“How old is it?” Splitlog asked. “It should be ancient.”
“It’s not,” Haka said. “The outer layer is still pliable. I doubt it’s more than a day old. Or at least the most recent layer is.”
“What the hell is it?” Alan asked.
Hugh crouched down beside the stone and sniffed the air. It smelled of turpentine and sand, layered until the garment itself became as hard as rock, and almost as impenetrable. He took it from Haka’s hands, letting the weight of the thing lean against his forearms. It stood nearly to his chest, which meant the creature it belonged to was massive indeed.
“Stone giants,” Hugh said. “It looks old, but Haka is right, someone’s been adding to it.” Hugh frowned at the splash he heard in the distance. It could have been easily mistaken for a large fish breaching the surface, but Hugh had long ago learned it was best to be overly cautious.
“Out of the water,” he snapped. “Everyone.”
Hugh let the vest fall back into the water to slap against the sandbar. They hurried onto the shore, Hugh’s heartbeat racing as he let the change come over him. As fast as he could strip out of his clothes, the fur and bulk of his werewolf form took their place.
“I am always going to be jealous of that,” Alan said, stripping out of his own clothes. “What the hell did you see?”
Hugh’s voice was still recognizable, taking on a faint growl as the half man half beast hunched beside him. “Something splashed in the river. But it did not move like a fish.” His nostrils flared. The scent of the river was there, and the rich scent of moss and algae, the subtle stench of rotting things abandoned on the shores, and animals that hunted these waters. But there was something there that did not belong. He narrowed his sunburst eyes, studying the water so closely that he almost missed the shadow in the fog.
CHAPTER FOUR
No matter how many battles and wars Hugh had seen in his long life, the terror of first contact never abated. In constant conflict it might grow dull, but a fresh hunt would always send that surge of adrenaline through his system, and a grim excitement for a battle he did not want to fight.
Relief warred with concentration as the dark-touched vampire pierced the fog and crashed down onto the sandbar where Haka had been standing. It could have been worse, Hugh thought. Dark-touched they could fight; they could get their claws into them and destroy the brain that fueled them. But the creatures out of Splitlog’s tales were another story.
The dark-touched charged and Hugh braced himself for the impact, pushing Haka to the side as the boy was still undergoing his transformation into a werewolf. Alan was nearly ready, but the vampire’s claws would be on him before his change was complete. No matter how fast the wolves learned to change, there would always be enemies that were a threat to their speed.
But the vampire wasn’t moving quite right, a slight hesitation, almost a limp, and if Hugh didn’t know better, he would have sworn the dark-touched was avoiding the water.
Splitlog was faster. With a blow that lived up to his name, he buried the head of an axe between the dark-touched’s ribs. The creature screamed, and the river behind it boiled.
“Back!” Hugh snapped.
Splitlog gave one tug on the handle of his axe, but it was lodged too deep in the vampire’s body, had too much suction from its innards, or the blade was caught on one of its nearly indestructible ribs. Splitlog did not forgo Hugh’s warning again. He retreated, taking up a position next to Alan.
The water in the river calmed once more, and Hugh risked an attack on the dark-touched. Two savage blows and a kick to the axe handle in its chest sent the dark-touched to the ground. But it wasn’t down. It wasn’t dead. It opened its mouth as if it meant to scream, but instead, it spoke.
“Old wolves,” the dark-touched growled, his voice deep and guttural. “You still lack the cunning to defeat us all. I’ve suffered harder blows from the humans, the commoners, the spider who crawls through the mud and earth around you.” The vampire grunted and pulled the axe from his chest. He frowned at the blade coated in his blood before hurling it at Splitlog.
The werewolf almost missed it before effortlessly snatching the end of its handle and spinning it around his hand. Hugh suspected Splitlog was as surprised as he was to see an elite dark-touched without its drones.
“You hide behind Camazotz,” the vampire said. “But he won’t protect you this night.”
The vampire surged forward, catching its foot on the garments of the stone giant, and the river boiled once more.
Elite dark-touched were just as durable as their mindless drones, but they were smarter, sneakier, and needed to be put down. There were few creatures in the world who Hugh held that opinion of, but the vampires fit the mold.
The dark-touched lunged at Haka, wings spreading from its back to support a short glide. It should’ve taken the creature two leaps to reach Haka with its limited mobility, but the unexpected assistance from its wings had it on the werewolf in the blink of an eye. Haka was no slouch in a fight. His wide jaws bit into the shoulder of the vampire, even as the dark-touched’s claws ripped a hole in Haka’s thigh.
“Haka!” Hugh shouted.
Splitlog cracked his axe against the forehead of the dark-touched, drawing its attention for a split second, and allowing Haka to reach one of its eyes with his claws. The black orb popped, and a viscous fluid flowed down the side of the screeching vampire’s face. With its claws disengaged, Splitlog pulled the dark-touched off Haka and flung it at Hugh.
Hugh caught the beast’s arm as it sailed by, spinning in a half-circle and slamming the dark-touched’s mangled form into the calm waters of the river. What happened next horrified him.
The gaping maw of a serpent exploded from the river, a beast so long and thick it could have been mistaken for a dragon. Only it had no legs or wings, and moved like a viper beneath the waves. Massive fangs punctured the dark-touched, and the vampire stilled a moment later.
Hugh expected the serpent to devour the dark-touched, swallow it whole. What he did not expect was for the serpent to fling the vampire into the air, and a massive winged head to come swooping out of the mist above. He could envision what had happened, could see the dark-touched in some mad gamble to release the flying heads imprisoned beneath the cliffs, but one did not deceive those creatures and live. Hugh was not one to curse very often, but old words poured from his mouth in a language he had not spoken in some millennia. But the phrase ended with a word they could all understand.
“Run!”
The indestructible bones of the dark-touched could be heard shattering like steel in the night behind them. They reached the woods. Hugh chanced a glance back toward the river, and watched those enormous leathery wings pump to keep the head afloat. The head’s long hair dripped water into the river as the maw let chunks of the vampire fall from its mouth to feed the serpent below. An electric shiver crawled through Hugh’s bones as the fog swirled in the distance, and another shadow appeared. The flying head wasn’t alone. The werewolves would either make it back to the brewery, to the safety of the lair, or this would be the day their long lives ended.
* * *
“Those stories look pretty fucking real now, don’t they?” Splitlog shouted.
“How do we kill it?” Alan said, sprinting beside the older wolf.
“That’s a good fucking question,” Splitlog snapped. “If you figure it out, let us know. If I’m already dead, get the necromancer to wake me up so I can kill you.
”
“Helpful,” Haka grumbled.
“It’s not like I brought these things down on us,” Alan shouted as one of the heads shrieked in the sky above them. Strings of wet hair fell through the trees around them, icy water dripping on their shoulders as they sprinted through the night.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hugh said. “They have our scent. We must run.”
For a time it looked as though they might make it back to the lair before the heads caught them. But at least one of their pursuers had been far more strategic than the others, as if it knew where they were going. As the werewolves broke into the clearing that led to the ruins of the old brewery, the head was waiting for them. Hugh tried to stop, but his mass carried him forward, his claws rending deep ruts into the mud and grass as he tripped over the asphalt and sailed into the face of the flying head.
Its maw opened, and the rank stench of death and rot and decay washed over the werewolf. Hugh’s senses were overwhelmed. Instincts were the only thing that got his claws to hook into the flying head’s lip. Teeth snapped closed, crashing together in a clap of thunder that rivaled the storm from earlier in the night. The pain didn’t feel real. He thought he’d been clear, but the head had caught his foot, and he had enough experience to know the bones were crushed. It would take time to heal from it, if the head didn’t manage to catch the rest of him first.
The eyes rolled in the winged face, and Hugh kicked off of the closed teeth, wrenching his shattered foot away and snarling as half his weight landed on it, sending him toppling to the side. The head shifted for another strike, but then Haka was on it. Claws and growls and shrieks filled the night as Haka peeled away half of the creature’s cheek and left a stringy, savaged mass behind. Each time he struck out at the eyes, the flying head pulled away until it finally retreated into the sky.
The other heads entered the clearing, and Alan didn’t hesitate. He hurled giant stones from the collapsed ruin of the old brewery, sending them crashing into the flying head’s wing. The creature hobbled through the air as the boulder fell away.