by Domini, Sage
She lied to me.
Since Alicia’s tender, half-forgotten girlhood, Magda had been guardian and teacher. She had been old even then, shriveled and dry, a wraith of life whose sinews remained in operation because of a cold certainty that a duty must be performed until the last drop of warm blood was exhausted. She had always warned Alicia and the other sisters that all werewolves were beasts without exception, no better than mere animals and far more dangerous. Only they, the witches, stood between this moral scourge and tender mankind. The apprentice trials were meant to bleed the emotion from them so they could fulfill their purpose as the guardians of the frail majority who populated this world. Finally in the middle of the last century, witches had rid the world of the bloodsuckers, the walking dead. Would they now forsake the truce and destroy the wolves as well?
Rick Deston was none of these things she had been warned of. He posed no threat. So how much of the rest of it was true?
Alicia gently touched the sculpted muscles of his chest.
Don’t leave me, my love.
Alicia feared her restlessness would disturb him. She slipped on his flannel shirt and found her shoes. The day was dawning bright. Taking a brief flight was out of the question. So, a short walk then. A brief sojourn in the quiet wilderness to mentally relive their hours of passion before she returned to see him off. The earth had a red tinge to it, the vegetation thicker and greener than central Arizona. Tall, dense trees lined the perimeter of the campground and so she wandered into their cool depths.
***
Deston smelled her before he opened his eyes. His gut tensed. Instinct called the wolf, but a more lucid, human part of his mind resisted as he felt the peril of sharp metal as the base of his belly.
“Hello, lover boy,” Ryah purred as she tightened the legs which straddled his naked middle. She pushed lightly on the knife and he felt the skin break enough to release a drop of blood. Her light hair was filthy; streaks of dirt and blood painted her face. But it was her eyes which were most terrible. They alone held her wolf, amber and evil. They hated him.
Alicia.
His senses told him she was not inside the cabin.
She bent forward, hissing in his ear. “Did you think we couldn’t follow your scent?”
Deston did not move. “We?”
Ryah tightened her grip on the large knife. Of course, wolf to wolf she could not have vanquished him. But with the knife…one errant twitch from Deston and he was sure she would gut him with glee.
“Yes, we! The rest limped away, more interested in survival, but Kristoff and I would not allow a traitor to live.”
“Traitor?” Deston was baffled.
Ryah growled. “Yes you! Fucking traitor and your witch whore!” She nodded triumphantly at his surprise. “Yes, we know. Now I’ve had a human or two in my time and their bodies can be so sweet and pliant, but you FUCKED A WITCH!” She screamed the last few words. The sharp bones of her knees dug deeper into his side. Her mood changed suddenly. Her eyes fell. “They came for us,” she said gloomily.
Alicia…and Kristoff. The thought of what Kristoff would do to his sweet Alicia nearly caused him to lose his sanity, but if he wanted to be of use to Alicia he needed to dispatch this threat first. The room was very hot; sweat beaded in every crevice of his body. He spoke softly to Ryah, who was now shaking, a string of saliva stretching from her thin lips. “What happened?”
Ryah’s mouth dropped and she moaned. “There were so many of them. The fire came from every corner of the sky. So much screaming. Some got away.” Her eyes narrowed. “And some didn’t.”
Deston’s mouth had gone dry. His mind’s eye saw the destroyed pack, the blood of his wolf brethren as they were taken by the fire brought by the chanting witches. Sick bile rose in his mouth. “Ryah, I-“
“NO!” Ryah screeched. “Don’t you FUCKING TALK TO ME!” She leaned forward. “So after all your arrogant self-righteousness you are just an animal ruled by your big prick.” She ran the knife along his scrotum and sobbed. “I hope her cunt was cold and dry.” She sniffed. “Fool, she couldn’t have wanted you! Witches don’t feel.” Suddenly she brightened. “But even now Kristoff might have found her.” Ryah laughed, a ghastly sound. “Oh, and won’t he shred that fat witch in a thousand pretty ways…”
Distracted in her glee, Ryah allowed the knife to slip. Deston was waiting. In a lightening flash he was the wolf. One powerful limb toppled Ryah to the hard floor in a spill of bony legs and smoky clothing. She gasped and tried to retain her grip on the knife. Her eyes widened she beheld Deston the wolf. He had leapt from the sweaty bed and was crouched before her, teeth bared.
“Where is he?” Deston growled.
Ryah rose, cackling. She let out a piercing howl and became the golden she-wolf, a snarl of hair and rage. He was the stronger, but her hatred was fueling her. She lunged for his throat and managed to snag the skin of his neck. He flung her off mightily, her body hitting the thin wall of the cabin, cracking the plaster. She gave a small yelp of pain and rolled back to her feet. Deston smelled his own blood, but knew the cut wasn’t deep. The devil only knew where Kristoff was, if he had found Alicia. Deston figured he had little time; he must end this quickly.
Ryah crouched and prepared to pounce again but Deston was quicker. He charged at her, reaching for the vulnerable expanse of her throat.
She had not even time to whimper as he tore a gaping hole in the soft place under her snout. She fell, blood gushing, body twitching. One deep yellow eye regarded him with utter loathing and then closed forever.
Deston did not have time to feel relieved. He must find Alicia. He broke through the front door of the cabin. The wolf could reach her more quickly. He tried to clear his mind of terror as he ran.
***
Alicia was sitting under a canopy of evergreen, listening to the small wisps of wind sifting through the branches. The harsh medallion of the sun had nearly risen completely. She should get back to the cabin, back to Deston.
She was brushing the dirt from her legs when a mighty force knocked her to the ground. There, looming beneath the sky, a vision of snarling malevolence, was a wolf. A wolf far larger than a wild wolf, and epically more lethal. He changed back into his man form and she cried out. She recognized him.
“Witch slut. I should have torn you apart.” Kristoff leaned heavily on her arms and she grimaced in pain. “Yes, we brought down some of your crone sisters but they killed more of us.” Kristoff was panting, his hot breath grazing her chest. He gazed at her body in disgust. “What did he find in a cold witch to make him abandon his own people?” He forced her legs apart, chuckling. “No matter, I plan to find out for myself.”
Alicia’s mind was a frenzy of panic.
Deston, are you still alive??
She felt the pulse of his Kristoff’s hard shaft on her thigh and her terror changed to revulsion. She fought with her legs, twisting, but he was too strong. He chuckled again, enjoying her fear. Alicia closed her eyes. She must collect herself if she had any chance of living. She summoned all her years of training and briefly saw Magda’s ancient face, nodding. Alicia felt the power bubbling from deep inside and she welcomed its cold spread.
The werewolf was oblivious. “Before I’m done with you, witch, your insides will be on the outside.”
Alicia heard the rustling in the brush followed immediately by an enraged roar. She felt the whoosh of enormous weight as a blurred shape capsized her astonished tormenter.
My love.
Kristoff had recovered in a heartbeat and was crouched, once again a snarling wolf. Deston pushed Alicia behind him and she saw he was bleeding from a wound between his shoulder and the base of his neck. She could not tell how deep the injury was.
Kristoff’s eyes glowed with wrath. He was crazed with fury. Deston was hurt and Alicia was unsure he could defeat Kristoff. He surely risked fatal wounds to try.
Alicia thrust her arms wide. Her fingers beckoned, her mouth issued the chants. She called t
o the fire.
A primeval noise of ferocity came from Kristoff. He lunged at her but Deston beat him backwards. Claws slashed and jaws snapped. The two enemy werewolves circled one another in a deadly dance from which only one could possibly emerge.
Alicia felt the wind at her back. The fire in the sky was coming. The two wolves were locked in their battle pose. She must somehow separate them before the fire arrived, for it would not distinguish between good wolf and bad wolf. The fire would take them both.
A great rumbling vibrated the ground and, startled, the wolves paused in their deadly embrace. Deston looked at Alicia and she willed him to understand the meaning in her eyes. She nodded.
Come to me, my wolf.
And then he was at her side. The wind blew more furiously, a hot breath of justice. Kristoff knew it. No longer the murderous beast, he cowered, melting back into his human façade. It would not matter.
Alicia pointed and the fire did her bidding, sweeping over the werewolf as he screamed. Alicia watched the terrible sight of his shape, first man, then wolf, burning without mercy. Deston issued a low growl. She placed a possessive hand on his slick head. “Not you,” she said, “never you.” She raised her arms again and bid the fire to depart. And it was gone in a mighty coil of heat, returned to its waiting earthly den until called by the next witch.
Deston was standing beside her, a man, the wolf having receded. He stared wordlessly at the pile of singed matter which once was Kristoff. Alicia fingered the place above his shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
He shook his head. “No, it isn’t bad.” He told her about Ryah.
Alicia hung her head, dismayed. “I am sorry. About your people.”
“No, it isn’t your doing. Nor is it mine.” He braced a strong arm around her, troubled. “They’ll find us.”
Alicia admitted the truth. “They’ll try.” She buried her face in his neck, the adrenaline leaving her with little but weariness.
***
They had buried Ryah in the woods and cleaned up as well as they could. Deston could hear the soft snoring of the caretaker in his snug apartment beyond the front desk. He left the note on the counter. An apology, and a promise to compensate him for the loss of the cabin door.
Alicia waited for him outside in the driver’s seat of the truck. She had dressed his wound but soreness pervaded his body. He climbed stiffly into the passenger seat. Alicia watched him. He leaned back into the seat leather and slept for a time.
When he woke he saw water. “It isn’t the ocean,” Alicia said. “Not yet.” She had found a small lake and directed the truck to its rocky shoreline. No one else was in sight.
Deston looked at her, his lusty witch. Despite all the rules of his kind and her kind and nature itself, he belonged to her now, body and spirit. He ran a finger over her creamy thigh and she shuddered with the electricity of his touch. “Come on,” he beckoned. She followed him to the shore which was a blanket of hard pebbles. He removed his clothes and then gently undressed her. “My mate,” he whispered. He ran his mouth over her breasts, her belly, between her thighs, inhaling the scent of her. She groaned and met him kneeling on the ground. She pulled close to his ear and whispered the word, “Wolf,” and he took his cue to spread her open right there on the ground as his hard organ demanded her warm wetness, her eager mouth, every part of her in every which way.
WITCH AND WEREWOLF
The Pursuit
***
She could feel her witch strength dissolving with each passing day. She tried not to mind. Instead of spending her hours engaged in the solemn practice of the craft with morbid sisters of the coven, she was satisfying the desires of her body. And his body.
Deston.
As her mind whispered the name of her werewolf lover, her hand went unthinkingly to that warm place at her center which moistened with welcome. He had called her his mate, and that she was. She had left behind another life in the brown heat of Arizona and taken the werewolf into her body and her heart. Even now she was restless out of his presence, scanning the cool woods for his strong form. They had found this place two months earlier and, weary of running, had stopped. The cabin occupied a desolate corner of Texas’s Piney Woods, close to the border of Arkansas. It was a forgotten place, evidently abandoned for years, but the small gray structure had beckoned to them when they had longed for rest. A fresh stream burbled nearby and game was plentiful. A weapon wasn’t needed for hunting. Deston was enough. Alicia heard the crack of a stick and tensed, peering into the twilight, relaxing when a deer skipped by. She still half expected Magda, the grim coven queen, to descend from the sky seeking retribution. Alicia was a renegade. Moreover she had succumbed to a werewolf. Magda would regard it as treachery and witches did not forgive. She would call the fire.
Alicia shuddered at the memory of the fires, of the screaming and the blackened remains. A chill swept over her and she realized the sky was darkening. Her anxiety deepened. She couldn’t bear to consider what would happen if the witches found them. Deston was more than her lover; he was her other half.
And there he was. He was whistling with a pair of bloodied rabbits slung over his shoulder. Alicia’s eyes hungrily raked his naked form. Clothes tended to tear when he turned wolf so he avoided wearing them when he disappeared into the woods for a hunt. He always waited until he was out of her sight; she knew he avoided letting her see the wolf whenever possible.
Deston casually dropped the rabbits by the fire she had built. His large, thick organ began to rise as he came nearer. Alicia felt that familiar throb between her legs as her body responded with a slippery greeting. She removed her clothes carefully only because they had so few wearable items remaining. He scarcely waited until her large breasts were bared before feasting hungrily. His teeth ran along her nipples, teasing, and she groaned, impatiently shoving his head lower. It was what she wanted and she knew it was what he wanted. After a hunt he always sought to be enveloped in her heady scent.
She remained standing as his thick tongue plunged her depths and she helped him find the rhythm that pleased her most. His broad hands circled her wide hips and held tight as he knelt before her. As Alicia’s pleasure crested she seized his buried head, her fingers raking his dark damp hair. Once she finished her orgasmic writhing, she let him push her to the floor of the forest and spread her legs wide to receive his engorged maleness.
As her werewolf delivered one delicious thrust after another, Alicia thought, as she always did, that no pleasure this divine could possibly be forbidden. She screamed with raucous bliss as she came again.
***
The feel of her body always made him forget the dangers at hand, at least for a little while. Deston traced the round swell of Alicia’s hip with one finger. He loved her curves. His past encounters - the quick couplings with the wild she-wolves, even a few eager humans - could not compare the pleasure he enjoyed with Alicia’s body. She purred at his touch, tossing her dark hair. Deston felt himself getting hard again as he looked at her ripe body in the moonlight. He glanced up at the sky where the mysterious pale disc showed its face. Only one more night and it would be full. Werewolves didn’t need calendars. The phases of the moon were written in their blood.
“What’s it like?” Alicia asked dreamily. She had shifted to her back. Deston was distracted by the curling triangle which was still wet from the spill of his seed.
“What?”
“The change.”
Deston shrugged. He did not know how to explain the shift to one who wouldn’t know. “It just…is. Like your witch doings.”
“No,” she said. He could feel her frowning. “It isn’t like that. Witches are made.”
He understood. “And werewolves aren’t made. They are born.”
She was quiet. He knew the power she had cultivated for so long was leaving her slowly, drifting away. It was not a sense he could relate to. The wolf would never leave him.
The move was sudden. She was lying there dreamily and then she wa
s straddling him, her open cavern searching feverishly for fulfillment. He gripped her hips and shifted, filling her with his instantly rigid tool. It was always like this. No matter how often he joined with her, it was never enough. He always wanted more. He watched in wonder as his witch goddess arched her back and let her plump breasts jut forward. He allowed her to dominate the tempo this time, no matter how he wished to reverse their poses and pound her soft body into submission. She climaxed after only a few thrusts and he followed, digging his fingers into the flesh of her buttocks as he released his spray into her depths, yet another time in a thousand couplings since they met in a wild confusion of blood and lust.
He felt her roll off and nursed the sting of loss as the warmth of her skin left him. The moon stared at him like a frozen eye. The euphoria of the moon’s fullness was near. He could not have adequately described to his mortal mate what it meant to become the wolf, traveling with the sinew of a brute animal and yielding to primal instincts. The needs of the wolf were always strongest during a full moon.
And now a full moon is coming.
Yet Deston found himself filled with disquieting dread as he lay there in the moonlight next to his contented mate. He had not wanted to worry her but he was troubled by his trip into the woods. He had picked up a familiar scent. Something in between the realm of animals and people. He knew Alicia fretted obsessively over the witches. He knew that when she searched the sky it was their grim black outlines which she feared most. Deston could do nothing to quiet Alicia’s worry about the witches. He worried about other things.
***
Alicia had never been much of a cook but she was learning to be inventive in consideration of their limited resources. Among the scattered possession left behind in the cabin were a bevy of cracking cookbooks and a small store of flour and spices. Alicia learned how to make sourdough starter and supplemented their meals with lumpy biscuits cooked in a cast iron kettle over a campfire. The domesticity of it all pleased her as did the vision of her mate feasting on the combined spoils of his hunting and her labor. Sometime she laughed at herself . This was not a life she had ever envisioned. She had always figured she would live in a quick breath of the universe performing her duty and dying when it was time. But this… the serene housekeeping and the long passions satisfied something earthy in her soul.