The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1)

by Anna Roberts

  “Nnrrrr...”

  “Now, don’t be like that. I’d like to say it was nothing personal, but we both know that’s a lie.”

  Reese thrashed and rolled. It was tying his guts in new knots and the puke that came out was bright arterial red.

  “I liked making you eat his rotten heart,” said Charlie. “On some level I knew it was never gonna win over the swampers, but what the fuck? After that barbeque stunt you both had it coming. Yum yum.”

  More screaming. Wow, what a performance.

  “And like I say, I’m a cliché,” said Charlie. “Yet another werewolf with daddy issues. You’re damned right I saw the writing on the wall, Reese. And more, I knew what it meant.”

  Reese’s screams were taking on a howly quality now. There was hair erupting all over; Charlie knew all too well how that felt.

  “Besides, something had to give.” said Charlie. “Your old man always went too far, kid. Like that time he beat the shit out of Lutesinger. Unnecessary. He always went hard when he should have gone smart.”

  “...HELP ME HELP ME OH MY GOD HELP ME...”

  One more little push. That should do it. “After that it was easy. Just added an extra bottle to his bedside pharmacy...”

  “...MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOOOOOOP...”

  “...it will,” said Charlie. “Don’t you worry about that. It poisoned him quick enough. Enough for his last change to kick him over the edge into kidney failure.”

  Reese was trying to speak but it was gone now; his face had lengthened too far. There was silence. Reese – wolf Reese – sagged on the floor, soiling his fresh grown fur with bloody vomit.

  “He hung on too long, Reese,” said Charlie, even though he knew – for one reason or another – that Reese could no longer hear him. “And so did you. And sure, it’s personal, but I’m only finishing what nature started.”

  Wolf Reese roared up from the floor. He snapped at the bars. Charlie jerked backwards, for a second caught in a kind of deja vu he never wanted to experience again.

  It was over in a second. The fat wolf fell back on its haunches, whimpering with pain. Reese stared dully at Charlie for a moment, licked his lips and walked stiffly up the stairs.

  “Oh shit,” said Charlie. He hadn’t had time to lock the basement door.

  And Gloria was upstairs.

  *

  Blue didn’t dare close the window. She didn’t want it – him, Axl – to hear the soft, electronic sound of it winding up. And she knew he’d hear, better than any person (what big ears you have) and that if he jumped he would be in the car before she even remembered how to scream.

  The deer was dead. He had leapt onto its back and bit down, crushing its throat. After that it had sunk down slowly, legs moving mindlessly in a way that reminded her of the blind, insect legs of a freshly killed lobster. Axl was chewing loudly, a wet, gutty smacking sound that spoke of unreasoning animal hunger. The deer’s head lolled out from under one huge paw, eye clouding and nostrils clotted with blood.

  The phone rang.

  Axl’s head snapped up.

  Blue mashed the button. The window rose too slowly and she thought this was it, this was how she was going to die after everything she had been through. Katrina Survivor Eaten By Werewolf: now there was a Florida headline.

  The wolf’s muzzle came sideways through the gap at the top of the window, snapping, snarling and filling the car with raw meat breath. Blue jammed her finger down until it hurt, pushing, pushing, praying that the thing would withdraw.

  “I don’t care, do you hear me?” she yelled back, as if there was anything of the teenager left in this hungry wild thing. “I’ll snap your goddamn nose off if I have to.”

  Axl twisted and turned. He pulled himself free with an awful scraping sound; blood ran down the window, but it didn’t matter, because it was up. It was up. She was in. Sealed. Safe.

  Blue grabbed the phone. She couldn’t speak and even if she had been able to peel her tongue away from the roof of her dry mouth in that instant she had no idea what to say.

  “Blue?”

  She forced spit back into her mouth and tried to breathe. “Gabe, he’s here.”

  “Oh my God. Stay in the...”

  There was a thud. Blue let out a short scream.

  “...stay in the car. What’s going on? Has he seen you?”

  “He had a deer. But I think he’s bored of venison.”

  She felt the car rock on its suspension, and somehow she knew what was coming next. His paws came down on the windshield, his mouth (what big teeth you have) panting all over the glass.

  “Don’t come up here,” she said. “He’s still hungry.”

  “Wait there,” said Gabe, like she had a choice. “I’ll call Joe. He has the tranq gun.”

  It was a bad time to point out that two tranquilizer guns might have come in handy, but he’d hung up anyway. Axl was busy destroying the windshield wipers; she wondered if he had any idea that this was his father’s car.

  There was another thud from the rear of the car. Axl stopped what he was doing and stood poised, his ears and eyes on something other than Blue. Not a person, please – not a person. She felt the suspension rock again and something landed heavily on the roof, making her scream in surprise and fear. Axl barely reacted to her. He was growling softly at whatever was on the roof.

  And he was scared.

  He crouched with his body curled away, his hackles flat. He was baring his teeth and the thin black strip of his lip shivered over the pink of his gums as he growled. But it was a low, nervous growl, and while his feet were flat on the hood as if poised to spring, Blue somehow knew that if he did spring it would be out of defensive panic, not raw aggression.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to think too much about what would scare a hungry teenaged werewolf.

  Something pounced onto the windshield. She heard Axl let out a doglike yip and then she couldn’t see anything, because the windshield was full of paws and fur and tails squashed against it. Blue reared back instinctively, praying that the glass would hold. More than four paws. What the hell?

  And then it was gone. She couldn’t see a thing. It looked like the fight had moved to the front of the car and there was no way on God’s green earth that she was going to open the window to take a look.

  She reached for the phone again. “You hung up on me, you asshole,” she said.

  “I had to call Joe,” said Gabe.

  “I hope he has more than one dart in that thing. There’s another wolf here.”

  “What?”

  Axl backed into sight, still growling, belly on the ground. “I don’t understand it,” said Blue, and sure enough there was another one. Paler, grayer and smaller, but size obviously didn’t matter here, not if Axl’s crouch was anything to go by. “There’s two of them. Did someone else change?”

  “No,” said Gabe. “It’s not the full moon, and we’re all too old to Hulk out like the kids do.” He drew in a sharp breath. “Oh God,” he said. “Reese.”

  “He’s not too old?”

  “No.”

  Blue frowned down at the wolves. “Are you sure? This new one looks kind of skinny.”

  The new wolf jumped on Axl. For a second Blue wondered if it was trying to hump him, but then it caught him by the ruff of fur at the nape of his neck and seemed to be trying to carry him off, as if he were a pup.

  “Wait a second,” she said.

  Axl wriggled out from under the other wolf and started to trot away. The gray wolf followed. “They’re moving,” Blue said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Moving? Where?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you back.”

  She started the engine and carefully reversed, heart in mouth. If she lost them again...or worse, hit them with the car.

  By the time she got turned around she thought they had gone, but when she turned on the high beams she caught sight of a brushy tail disappearing at the top of the path.

  The fear was back
. For a brief time back there it had given way to curiosity, but now all she could think about was those hungry creatures walking around where there were people. When she saw the golden arches she thought she was going to throw up; McDonalds’ sat in the middle of a big, open plaza.

  A woman was walking across the parking lot, rummaging in her purse for keys. Her son, similarly oblivious, was spooning his way deeper into a large McFlurry. The wolves were coming straight at them.

  Oh shit.

  “Nice doggy,” said the kid, absently, clutching his ice-cream tighter. “Mom, look...”

  The gray wolf growled and then it was over in a second; Mom screamed, the kid dropped his ice-cream and the wolves kept on moving. As Blue passed she heard the boy wailing and the mother’s voice. “...calling animal control. Stop crying, Mason; I’ll get you another...”

  Blue kept on driving, following the wolves down quiet streets with white porch railings. They seemed to be moving with a purpose and she soon realized why; they were going back to Gloria’s.

  The front door was locked. Blue jabbed at the keyhole a couple of times before her shaking hands would allow her to fit the key in the lock. It was quiet inside the house, but it was the kind of stunned hush that meant nothing good. And there was a smell – a heavy, animal, panting kind of smell, tinged with metal around the edges.

  Blood. She was sure that was blood.

  There were footprints – paw prints on the stairs. Beneath the stairs was a fresh scratch – a gouge, really – in the hardwood. The basement door was open.

  But at least the light fitting was finally still. She could be grateful for that much.

  Blue moved slowly through the house, with every step feeling more and more as though her legs wanted to go in the opposite direction. As she turned into the kitchen she saw that the screen door had been all but destroyed, the mesh butted clean out of its frame. The thing hadn’t even had to bite to wreck it.

  There was a sound beneath the table, a thin sob so childish and (thank God) so human that she knew there was no immediate danger.

  Axl was curled up on the floor, a tangle of skinny, overlong limbs. He was naked and streaked with deer blood and lymph fluid, but he was human.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” Blue reached out to him.

  The whole thing was so insane she wouldn’t have believed it, if it hadn’t been for the raw strip of flesh across his nose, where she had wound the window up on his face. His eyes were confused and unfocused, like Gloria’s sometimes were. Blue remembered that brain damage could be a thing with these transformations, and that thought brought with it a fresh hammer blow of fear.

  “Everything’s okay,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  The other one was somewhere, and she had no way of knowing whether it had changed back.

  Something went crash in the next room. Blue almost smacked her head on the top of the table. “Wait there,” she told Axl, and got to her feet. She looked for the big knife in the block, the one Gabe had used to kill the lobsters. It wasn’t there.

  Someone was moving closer. Closer. She could hear breathing behind the door.

  She reached for the handle, but it was jerked out of her hand, at the same time as a man screamed behind it. Charlie was standing there with the knife in his hand, held above his head, his mouth still open.

  “Oh fuck,” he said, and the knife clattered from his fingers. “Oh my God, it’s you.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to stay alive,” he said, breathing hard and fast. “Reese decided to join in with the wolf-out party.”

  Blue pushed past him and into the hallway. Once more she found herself drawn to the basement, just to see, just to try and put things together in her mind.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “I saw him,” she said, moving slowly down the stairs. Yes, this made sense. There was blood on the floor, and the smell was disgusting, but she could make out the torn yellow of the t-shirt Reese had been wearing. The door of the cage hung open.

  “You let him out?” she said.

  “No! Jesus – why would I do that? I let me out. I didn’t have time to drag him in there; you’ve seen the size of him.”

  She only vaguely registered what he was saying, but then it was too late. Charlie stumbled to the side, clinging to the stair rail as the wolf burst past him. The wolf reached the bottom of the stairs and just stood there, looking directly at Blue, who was standing at the open mouth of the cage.

  Blue stared back, barely daring to breathe. Gabe had been right. There was nothing in here, no finer feelings. Just a big, wild animal with nothing on its mind beyond survival. In her mind’s eye Blue once again saw the screen door, the mesh pushed casually aside. She saw the gouge in the floor.

  The wolf moved towards her. She thought for a crazy second that she might wet herself, but then the wolf walked straight past her. And into the cage.

  It sat down on its haunches like a dog, licked its lips and waited.

  “Holy shit,” said Charlie.

  Blue slowly closed the cage. As she turned the key in the padlock she half expected the wolf to leap up and bite off her fingers, but it sat tight. As she clicked the lock shut with shaking hands, the wolf laid down.

  Charlie moved closer. “What the hell just happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Blue. Her lips felt numb as she spoke. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “You got me. I have no fuckin’ idea.”

  “Why did he just...go in there?”

  “She.”

  “Huh?”

  “‘Why did she just go in there?’” said Charlie, nodding to the wolf. “Werewolves don’t change sex, and that there wolf is a girl.”

  Blue stared at the animal, unable to quite believe what she was thinking. The wolf was skinny and the brown fur on its muzzle was grizzled in a way that looked more like age than any kind of marking. One lower tooth stuck up over its lip in a way that gave it a messy, snaggle-toothed appearance, and as it opened its mouth in a long yawn Blue saw that almost all of its – beg pardon, her – upper teeth were gone.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Gloria?”

  She looked over at Charlie for some kind of guidance, some indication that this had happened before, but he looked even further out of his depth than she felt.

  “Has she...?”

  “ – nope,” said Charlie, shaking his head. “Never. I didn’t even know. Nobody knew.” He caught his breath in a sharp sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. “Ma? Is that you in there?”

  The wolf rose and Blue instinctively moved back; regardless of age and weight she was still an intimidating animal. They watched as the wolf padded across the cage and poked her nose between the bars. The corner of the Ouija board was sticking out of a cardboard box and as the old wolf gummed ineffectually at it Blue suddenly understood.

  “Got it,” she said, and gingerly reached for the board. Beside it in the box was a little plastic planchette that she’d missed before. She took both round to the concrete floor in front of the cage and set them down within reach of a paw.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” said Charlie.

  “She went straight for it.”

  The wolf watched them for a moment, then raised a back paw and gave her ear a good, long scratch. “So much for that,” said Charlie.

  “Just wait,” said Blue. She was already beginning to have faith in strange things; everything that she had seen and heard lately had convinced her that this was the sanest course of action.

  The wolf poked out a front paw. Blue held her breath as the paw came down on the planchette. At first it skidded off so wildly that it almost wound up on the other side of the room, but Blue retrieved it and set it back in place. A giddy laugh threatened to bubble up out of her throat; the dog was playing fetch with her.

  This time the wolf seemed to have the knack of it, and the planchette moved. Blue and Charlie watched as it spell
ed out what she had already guessed.

  G-L-O-R-I-A

  23

  They found Reese on the rug in Gloria’s bedroom.

  He must have smelled a beating heart and bashed in the door, but the wolf was weak in him and he’d collapsed, his legs half human and his knees on back to front. He was still breathing when Gabe entered the room, blood frothing out of the slits at the side of his nostrils; he still had a wolf’s muzzle.

  “Oh God,” said Joe, in such a swoony, breath-held voice that Gabe wondered if he was about to be flattened by six and a half feet of Joe hitting the deck in a dead faint.

  Reese’s sides were barely moving. His chest hadn’t gone back and was all the wrong shape for a human being, and Gabe suspected that the lungs inside had gone back and found themselves in the wrong rib cage. Reese let out a long, thin wheeze and then lay still.

  Gabe heard Axl’s voice downstairs - “...what’s going on? Why won’t you tell me?” – and then Eli’s interruption; “You stay right where you are.”

  Keep him there, thought Gabe. If he sees this fucking mess he’ll want to kill himself before his first full moon.

  It was Grayson who finally said the thing nobody wanted to say. “Where the hell is Gloria?”

  The bed was made, but there was a bloody claw slash in the bedspread. The lamp and alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand, so that when Gabe had first entered the room he had mistaken the broken red ceramic shell of the lamp for something far more gory. The dressing table was a wreck, with a paw print in the middle and boxes knocked over and off, spilling junk jewelry and old Mardi Gras beads all over the floor around Reese’s sad, mismatched corpse.

  No. It was impossible. There was no way the wolf could have swallowed up grandma, not this time. The poor bastard could barely breathe, let alone bite.

  Gabe heard a light step behind him and whirled round, quickly holding up a hand to shield Blue’s eyes. “Don’t look. Don’t come in.”

  She caught his hand in mid-air and looked anyway. He heard her throat work and for a second he thought she was going to be sick, but she licked her lips a couple of times and spoke. “Reese?”