“Shhh,” Scarlet said, and moved further into the kitchen, trying to tell Diesel not to give away their location.
Aiden held out his hand to them, shooing them further away, and walked closer to the kitchen doorway. His heart thumped. The werewolf stood upstairs, right outside her room, not dead. A funny feeling of relief overwhelmed him for a moment. His granny was alive!
Aiden glanced at Scarlet and Diesel, who stood behind him in the darkness. He turned back toward Granny as she howled out in excitement and jumped over the banister.
“Run!” he shouted, but he couldn’t move—he just stood in stuck-panic as she came galloping toward him, front legs, back legs, front legs… And when Granny pounced, Diesel lunged, meeting her halfway in the air, landing on top of her. But she fought back, and round and round they rolled on the living room floor.
The grunts from the werewolves were loud and grotesque. It sounded as if they were ripping one another to shreds: fur flew, blood slung, teeth snarled. It was difficult to tell if one was stronger than the other. Diesel had his wits about him, so he was aware that he fought his grandmother. Granny didn’t know who she was—she had no Silverweed in her system—she was full animal.
Aiden ran to where Scarlet stood in the corner, her hand over her mouth, in a frozen daze. He took hold of her by the wrist. “Come on,” he said, guiding her toward the entrance to the basement.
Aiden pulled her downstairs. Despite the lantern, the darkness had again taken over the basement. His eyes had adjusted to the more candlelit upstairs. “We need the gun,” he said, searching like mad around the room. He had dropped it on the floor earlier, thinking they didn’t need it anymore.
Scarlet got down on all fours. “Where’d you put it?”
“It’s around the cage somewhere.” Finally, after crawling around the floor blindly for a second, Aiden found it.
He grabbed a dart out of his back pocket, barely able to load the gun in the dark while he shivered with cold and fear. “Stay here,” he told her, intending to go up the stairs. But a mighty ruckus arose at the top of the stairs, followed by two dark, hairy figures tumbling down toward them. Scarlet backed up behind Aiden and the gun.
Aiden aimed the gun at the two werewolves, who fought and rolled one over the other on the basement’s concrete floor.
“You have to pump it,” Scarlett yelled over them.
It took a second for what she had said to register in his mind. He pulled the wooden pump at the bottom of the pistol barrel and pumped it until it wouldn’t pump anymore.
Aiden aimed at the blurry masses of fur, trying not the think about the fact that one of the wolves was his grandmother and the other one was Diesel. He had to think about Scarlet and what would happen if Granny killed Diesel. But… it was his granny.
“Just shoot!” Scarlet yelled.
And so he did. The small kick of the gun sent an instant regret through his veins. “Oh NO!” he cried, after he watched Diesel flinch and hold his thigh. “I shot the wrong one!”
“The other dart, Aiden,” Scarlet said. “Get another dart….”
Diesel kept fighting for a few seconds, even with the dart in his leg, but his enthusiasm soon wavered. Aiden struggled to keep watch as he tried to take the last dart out of his back pocket, but he couldn’t find it.
Diesel finally stopped, fell over, and landed sprawled out on the floor. The room fell into deep quietness.
The werewolf’s glowing eyes met Aiden’s. Unlike before, he knew this large animal in front of him was his grandmother. His mom’s mom. The petite old lady who had told him stories about his mom when she was a little girl. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t find anything familiar.
“Hurry, Aiden,” Scarlet whimpered from behind him.
Aiden gulped, and with a trembling, forced voice said, “It’s me, Granny.”
The werewolf in the pink nightgown stood to her hind legs and took a step closer. It almost seemed as if she were taunting them. She lowered her neck and growled, moving only her mouth, revealing daggered teeth to her meal. Granny wasn’t home.
Aiden realized there was no time, even if he found the dart, to load and pump. He turned and pushed Scarlet into the cage and jumped in right afterwards. He dropped the pistol as he grabbed the door, closing it just as Granny figured out what had happened and began to claw to keep the cage door open.
Aiden, Scarlet, and the werewolf fought to open and to close the door. When it seemed as though there would be enough slack in the chain, Aiden yelled, “Lock it.” Scarlet let go of the door, and just when Aiden thought the werewolf had gained control of it, the locked chain caught and kept it from opening. But then pain shot through Aiden’s arm; the werewolf had latched on like it was trying to pull him through the bars with it. “Ahhh!” he screamed, thinking his arm was going to be ripped from his shoulder.
“Let go of him!” Scarlet grabbed hold of Aiden’s waist and pulled in the opposite direction. “LET GOOOO!!”
Suddenly, Scarlet let loose of him, and his face smashed against the bars. He felt something wet and opened his eyes to the bloody, foamy mouth of the werewolf.
“Where’s the dart?” he heard Scarlet scream beside him.
When Granny let go of Aiden, he dropped hard to the floor, as if he had no bones in his body. Aiden’s face was on the cold floor, and his aching arm was still on the outside of the cage as he watched the werewolf snatch the gun from Scarlet, pulling her with it, and heard her head bang against the steel bars.
She fell beside Aiden, and as his eyes followed her down, he saw the dart lying on the floor not far from his hand. He reached for it, pulling the red tip of it closer. He had it.
Aiden didn’t hesitate. He reared the dart back over his shoulder and brought it down with as much strength as he had left into Granny’s big, hairy, yellow-clawed foot.
The werewolf let loose a howling scream. She managed to get the dart out of her foot and stumbled backwards. She came toward the cage again. Aiden grabbed Scarlet under her arms and pulled her out of the way of Granny’s groping claws.
Scarlet blinked her eyes, coming back to consciousness, and held onto her head. “Oh, shit.” She sat up and scooted away when she saw the werewolf and seemed to remember what was going on.
Granny’s head swayed a little, and she took a step back before going down to her knees, finally collapsing.
Both werewolves were laid out on the concrete floor. Aiden couldn’t see them breathing, but he figured since Granny had survived two darts, they were both alive.
With their backs against the far cage wall, Aiden put his arm around Scarlet, pulling her closer, and she cried silently against his chest.
Chapter 20
They Filled The Wolf’s Belly And He Fell Dead
When Aiden woke up, Scarlet’s head was still on his shoulder. A beam of light from outside shone through a small window. It was morning. “Scarlet,” he whispered and gently shook her.
He looked up to see Diesel standing outside the cage, fully dressed with his hair pulled back. He looked normal, except for a new gentleness in his eyes. Aiden didn’t even notice any scratches. Diesel nodded at Aiden, and he didn’t have to say thank you for Aiden to know that was what he meant.
“It’s so cold,” Scarlet said as she hugged herself.
“Come on,” Diesel said. “I have the fire going. Sorry to leave you guys, but I was really cold when I woke up and had to go get something to wear.” He pointed with his head to his ripped up clothes on the cage floor.
Aiden and Scarlet stood up, and Aiden fished the key out of his front pants pocket.
He and Diesel carried Granny, who was herself again but still asleep, upstairs to the living room, where she slept another half an hour.
They briefed her after she woke up. There were no tears shared between the four of them, just a complete breakfast of eggs, bacon, and Silverweed muffins.
Aiden placed a second muffin on Granny’s plate. She looked up at him, worn out and wear
y, and gave a faint smile. It didn’t need to be said that they would keep everything a secret. He wasn’t going to tell anyone.
The storm was over, and he hoped the clearing of the roads would begin soon. The sun peeked in through the curtains, and the clanking of silverware against plates made Aiden feel almost comfortable.
After breakfast, Aiden helped Diesel and Scarlet take Granny upstairs to her room.
“Don’t worry, Granny,” Diesel said, kneeling down beside her bed. “I’m going to find a cure. I’m going to go through all of Mom’s notes and go from there. And…” He looked over at Scarlet, who stood by the open door. “I’ll never run off and leave you like that again.”
Scarlet made a tiny sigh and walked out of the room. Aiden followed her down the stairs to the living room. She was crying.
“Are you all right?”
She shrugged. She wore jeans, a t-shirt that looked to be one of Diesel’s, and no makeup. Even though she had showered, she seemed disheveled and not the same girl he’d met earlier that weekend. “It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s just that I don’t know what I’m going to do. I love him, but they need each other. I don’t know if you noticed this about me… but I’m a little selfish. I don’t think I could handle a boyfriend that changes into a beast every full moon, anyway. Looks like the only way I’m going to get out of this hell-hole town is to finish high school.”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’m actually looking forward to going back to the normalcy of school.”
“Maybe. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss my mom. It’ll be good to see her. Talk about normal. But right now, I think that’s what I want. It’s so weird, I’ve been begging Diesel to put me first forever, and now that I think about it, my mom’s been the only person who ever did that. Maybe I’ll even be nice to her.” She smiled.
He smiled back at her.
“Aiden,” Diesel said from behind them. “Can you show me my mom’s notes?”
When they walked into the guestroom, Aiden said, “They’re kind of in a mess.”
Diesel opened the window, letting the sunshine enter, and walked over to the folders and papers. He shuffled and arranged, finally bringing a stack over to the bed and sitting down. As he started reading aloud, Scarlet and Aiden sat down and listened.
“Harley left a week ago. He said he was sorry, but he couldn’t help me with Mother anymore. I really should be grateful, for where he lacked courage, he had strength. Without him I probably would have lost mother that night. Instead Steven Robinson lost his life, and with it, his secret. Harley didn’t set out to kill a man, only a wild beast-monster, which was attacking Mother while she was out on the back porch. When he turned into a man, we all doubted our sanity and knew everyone else in the world would, too.
“We said words over the deep grave that we dug out in our woods behind the hill. But neither our words nor our world was ever the same. Especially the first time Mother turned. We still have no idea what she did that night. We found her naked in the woods that warm spring morning, and none of us said it, but we knew.
“Harley helped me with the cage but then packed up. Before leaving he kissed my tummy and told the baby goodbye. He did ask me to come… but I can’t just leave Mother. I know I must look like a mad woman to all around me. But I must find a cure for her. This will be the beginning of my notes that I’ll keep so that I can track my progress.
“I hope that my child never has to learn the truth about his grandmother, who loves him so much already. But I will do my best to instill in him a sense of the unknown and let him know that not everything is always as it seems. The world can be a wonderful place, but there are also secrets, and it is best to be ready for whatever life throws at us so that we are not completely surprised…”
Wednesday morning Aiden was packed and had his flight back to Texas confirmed. He had already explained to his mom that Diesel had returned, and both he and his grandmother wanted to stay there. He had assured her Diesel was the best person to take care of Granny. Reluctantly, she had accepted the arrangement.
He had also called Summer. She agreed to meet him at his house when he arrived home. He no longer planned on hiding behind his written words but was prepared to talk it out. Although he did hope she would take him back, he was also ready to face the consequences of his actions.
Before he left, he had been invited to the backyard. Diesel stood beside the stream with his arm around Scarlet’s shoulder.
“Hey, cousin,” Diesel said. “All packed?”
“Yep,” Aiden said, putting his hands inside the pockets of the borrowed coat he wore. Despite everything they had been through, Aiden felt like he was going to miss them. He knew for sure he would be back to visit… he would just make sure to check the cycle of the moon first.
Diesel took the necklace from around his neck and held it in his hands. “Here’s to the end of our bad luck.” He turned around and tossed it over his shoulder and into the running water. “Abracadabra,” he whispered.
Fear
By Aiden Young
Werewolves and vampires, but another chilling beast
is our fear. It manipulates our common sense
and fuels our phobias with a scrumptious feast.
It can change like the wind or with the moon’s phases.
Don’t be fooled, because it’s hard to recognize,
looking it’s best in a clever, subtle disguise.
Be warned, for it attacks even the most secure,
shifting frightened victims into true monsters.
Dedication and Acknowledgements
For Doria, Darah, and Dean
Love and thanks to my husband, Don Vann, and to my children. I would also like to thank the following people for edits, tough critiques, and/or encouragement: Kelli D. Meyer, Chrissa Sandlin, Theresa Laws, Susan Miller, Kathy Burt, Sheryl Tuttle, Linda Lindsey, Gary Denton, Victor DiGiovanni, Sharolyn Gales, Joy Vyoral, Johanna Bustamento, and Doris Roberts.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SILVERWEED Copyright © 2010 by Dorlana Vann. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, electronically or in print, in any form.
A Pixie Punk Press eBook
Houston, TX
www.dorlanavann.com
Silverweed: a supernatural fairy tale Page 12