Was he possibly planning to meet up with a whole pack of someones?
Elena’s library contained hundreds of facts and figures about lycanthropy—how the condition manifested itself, what its specific indications were, how werewolves behaved and how they could be killed. The literature noted repeatedly that wolves were pack animals and that even the supernatural kind preferred to hunt in groups whenever possible. No matter how many times Betty insisted it was uncommon for multiple werewolves to be romping around at the same time, for all Archie knew, he might be headed straight into the jaws of something truly heinous. Guilt racking his insides, he couldn’t help the furtive hope that Bingo Wilkin might also be a monster after all, so that maybe Betty had been led out to this same patch of spooky, distant forest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to face this alone.
The trail snaked through the trees and sloped upward, finally spilling into a small patch of cleared earth where birches, maples, and cedars were towering around the remains of a ruined building. What little was left of its stone walls framed a poured concrete floor, in the center of which was a dark hole that bristled with a small network of ancient pipes. It was a pump house, drawing water from a well that had—at some point in the past—surely been a vital resource for the lumberjacks that worked these woods.
On the ground beside the abandoned well, his back to the trailhead, sat Jughead Jones. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped, and multiple lengths of heavy-duty chain had been strung around his chest, waist, and ankles, fixed to the metal pipes with a steel padlock the size of a fist. A cold wind rushed past, making the branches chitter around the clearing, and Archie lowered his gun before he even realized he’d aimed it.
“Go away.” Choked and thick with tears, Jughead’s voice was barely audible. He still hadn’t turned around—hadn’t even looked to see who was there behind him. “Go home, Archie. Don’t ask me any questions, just … just go, okay? Please.”
Letting out a breath that ended in a whimper, he curled onto his side, his shoulders shaking silently as the sharp wind swirled and danced around him. Archie went cold, the air pressed from his lungs, and he took a step backward. The gun in his hand felt heavy enough to pull his shoulder out of its socket. He had been planning to use the firearm, he realized; before he’d even fully made sense of what was in front of him, he’d already removed the safety and racked the slide, preparing to take his best friend’s life.
Shame swept over him, and he almost dropped the weapon in the grass, wishing he’d never asked Elena to train him for this—wishing he’d never decided to leave his house at all the night he followed Betty to the secret gym. Remaining ignorant of the true dangers out there would still be better than this, than knowing what it felt like to be ready to kill someone you care about. While he’d been getting psyched up to pull a trigger, Jughead had been isolating himself in the deep woods, wrapping himself in chains so he couldn’t hurt anyone. Maybe the guy was a killer after all … but he wasn’t a monster. Only one of them had left home that night with the intention of shedding blood.
Archie fled from the clearing, not even looking for the trail, blundering into the woods too early and emerging along the road a quarter mile from his car. When he finally climbed behind the wheel, his chest was heaving and his eyes were too full of tears to see, so he put the gun back in his glove compartment, buried his face in his hands, and cried.
The thing about running for your life is that you actually need a place to run to … and Betty didn’t have one. She was miles from anywhere in either direction, and she’d definitely missed Ethel’s heart with that shot. Any minute now, the werewolf-girl—probably ravenous after her first shift—would rip the silver bullet from her own shoulder; when she’d recovered from its poisonous effect on her system, also any minute now, she’d be out for vengeance, as well.
Betty should have pressed her advantage while she had it; she should have jumped up and emptied her gun into the car, stopping Ethel for good, and she knew it. It would have been the best tactical maneuver, and undoubtedly what Elena would have done. But missing two shots in a row had rattled her, and knowing she’d have no chance to reload—because the rest of her silver bullets were now strewn all over the ground beside the Beetle, along with everything else she’d kept in her bag—had rattled her further. On instinct, she’d bought time again, seeking a better position, a second chance with more favorable odds.
Just back from the roadside, the weather-beaten fence of the municipal junkyard rose like an ancient city wall, capped with coils of razor wire that gleamed viciously under the full moon. It was the only place for miles around that she might have a chance of finding more weapons, or at least a place to hide, and she sprinted for the gate across its front entrance. She hesitated for only a second before using her gun to blast open the lock—three bullets left, now—and shoved her way onto the lot.
Great dunes of plastic and metal rose before her under the moonlight, the wind carrying the scent of grease, earth, and decay, and she took a frantic look around. There were junked cars, oil drums filled with refuse, and a prefabricated structure just inside the entrance that housed a tiny office. Its door had a simple security mechanism, one she could easily pick if she only had the time to spare, but its walls could have been made from origami for how much protection they would offer against a hungry, furious werewolf.
As if on cue, the gate behind her smashed open a second time, and Betty whirled around to see the Ethel wolf charge onto the lot. Eyes bright, lips curled back to reveal every one of her sharp, glistening teeth, the monster-girl bounded forward and leaped suddenly sideways into the air. Betty swung the gun up and fired, the bullet slamming into the wooden fence as the beast landed and pivoted; dropping to one knee and spinning, Betty squeezed off a second shot that thumped into the side panel of an old Buick as Ethel bounded out of the way, back toward the office.
Too late, two more bullets wasted. Betty realized she was being baited into spending what remained of her ammunition; she had only one shot left, and Ethel was crouched low, panting and watching her—waiting to see if the girl would try again. For the first time, a true inkling of fear cut a cold path down Betty’s back. She was great at hitting the targets in Elena’s gym, when cardboard circles were sitting still and she was the one on the move, but this was completely different. Nothing could have prepared her for a moment like this one. Her mouth dry, her hands starting to shake, she knew that if she did try again, she would very likely miss.
Backing away, Betty inched toward one of the massive piles of rubbish that loomed in the middle of the yard, her eyes locked on Ethel. The werewolf-girl sidled out of the shadow of the office, creeping around one of the massive oil drums, and prowled a few steps closer. Betty braced herself, expecting another jump—which is why she was taken by surprise when her opponent spun instead, grabbing one of the heavy drums and throwing it with all her considerable strength.
The metal barrel sailed straight at Betty, fast-food wrappers and plastic bags flying loose from its open end, and the girl flung herself to the ground, diving narrowly out of the way as it slammed back down. She hadn’t even stopped moving when Ethel came leaping after the makeshift missile, eyes gleaming as she dropped out of the sky, and Betty barely swerved back the other way in time. The werewolf’s jaws missed her throat by only a hairbreadth as they snapped shut on thin air, saliva speckling the dusty earth.
Rolling up to her knees again, thrusting out the revolver in a move she’d practiced a thousand times, Betty was still a beat too slow to take the kill shot—and a few inches too close to her target. Sweeping out with one elongated, muscular arm, Ethel caught her square in the chest with a blow that sent the girl flying, her body completely leaving the ground.
Limbs flailing, Betty came down hard on a nest of scrap metal and plastic sheeting, halfway up one of the mountainous heaps of refuse. The revolver slipped from her hand, vanishing among the debris, and a sharp impact against the back of her head made lights flash behind
her eyes. The world spun as she struggled to drag herself upright again, the werewolf-girl already starting to climb up after her, tin cans and rusting hardware shifting precariously beneath her paws.
With a gasp, Betty shuffled backward, kicking loose a cascade of shrapnel as she retreated farther up the unstable hill. Ethel tried to jump, claws scrabbling for purchase; but the loose footing gave way beneath her, and she slid to the bottom again. Sweat rolling down her neck, Betty pulled herself up higher, grabbing on to the exposed springs of a rotting mattress, stumbling when a coil of wire wrapped around her ankle. Desperately, she looked for a weapon; it was a pile of metal, and there was only so high she could go—only so long until the wolf figured out a way up.
Ethel started again, trying a new section of the mound, scrambling up several feet before the scrap gave way and she backslid again. Wildly, Betty dug into the tangled debris at her feet, yanking loose an ancient hotplate, which she hurled at the werewolf’s head. She followed it with a dented tire rim, a box grater, and a handful of roofing nails; and even though Ethel dropped further back with each direct hit, they clearly had no lingering effect, the growl in the beast’s inhuman throat growing only deeper and more determined.
Inching higher, two-thirds of the way up, Betty searched desperately for a knife among the waste—or even a pole—anything she could use to fight back. Even if she couldn’t kill Ethel, she could fend her off, or maybe wear her out … buy time until the inevitable. She had just uncovered a set of golf clubs when the wolf-girl finally threw something back, an old CPU smashing into the debris just beneath where Betty was standing, a depth charge that knocked her footing loose.
The girl toppled and rolled, her clothes ripping open on coat hangers and jutting L-brackets, and she narrowly avoided getting skewered by a windshield wiper before slamming down on a hard bed of sheet metal. The air was driven from her lungs, pain stabbing up and down the length of her sternum, and the night wobbled again as she gazed down to see the monster that was Ethel Muggs backing up across the junkyard lot—getting ready to take a running start.
In only three bounds the beast had built up the momentum she needed to launch herself into the air, soaring up and up and then down in a graceful arch; her claws stretched out and her teeth aimed for the vulnerable throat of her human prey. Running on adrenaline and instinct, Betty barely managed to drag a piece of sheet metal free, to swing it around with its slender, jagged edge aimed upward, in time to meet the werewolf as she landed.
Ethel’s throat sank down onto the makeshift blade, blood spraying out of the wound and over Betty’s face in a revolting bath of hot, slippery fluid. Surprise made the monster’s eyes go wide, but it was too late; weight and momentum plunged her the rest of the way down, gristle and soft tissue splitting quickly apart until the metal sheet passed between two of the vertebrae in her neck … and the wolf-girl’s head separated cleanly from her body.
It toppled forward, bouncing off Betty’s shoulder and rolling down the slope of cast-off metal, while the rest of her went limp and heavy on top of the blond girl’s torso. Tossing the sticky, impromptu weapon aside, her stomach heaving, Betty barely dragged herself free in time to puke her guts out into the basin of a discarded toilet.
The buzzing of the phone in his pocket is what woke Archie up this time, his neck stiff, his fingers sluggish with cold as he rubbed his eyes. He was still parked at the side of the desolate, darkened road, the car so frigid he was surprised his breath didn’t come out in visible puffs, and he was almost shocked to see how much time had passed when he finally wrestled his cell out into the open. Betty was calling.
“I just killed Ethel Muggs!” she screamed down the line, before he even had a chance to say hello.
“You … what?” Archie blinked a few times, trying to shake off the grogginess. “Betts, what—”
“Bingo is the wolf—it has to be him!” Betty sounded utterly distraught, nerves crackling in her voice like electrical interference. “I ran into Ethel at the bowling alley, and it turns out she and Bingo had a, a Thing, or something, only he bit her, and she … she changed. Archie, she transformed right in front of me, in my car!”
“Are you okay?” His brain wasn’t moving fast enough to absorb what she was saying. Ethel Muggs turned into a werewolf? Archie could picture the girl, easily—someone he’d shared classrooms with for most of his life, always hovering just outside their inner circle—but he couldn’t imagine what he was being told. “Did she hurt you?”
“I’m okay, but I’m not okay.” Tears threatened Betty’s voice, and he heard her swallow them back. “She tried to kill me, and I—she’s dead, Archie.”
She started explaining her evening, from running into Ethel at The Bingoes’ gig to the reason she had the girl in her Beetle in the first place. As she reached the horrible moment when the girl’s body began to reshape itself while they were trapped together on the way back to Riverdale, Archie shoved open his door and got out of the car. He’d never meant to fall asleep, and Betty’s agitation was contagious; suddenly, all he could think about was how long it had been since he’d left Jughead alone in that clearing. With the gun gripped tightly in his hand, he hurried back into the trees and up the slope.
“I had to leave her body in the junkyard,” Betty was finally saying as he reached the trailhead, the pump house ruins stark beneath the unguarded moon. “She was already beginning to shift back again, and it’s … I mean, it’s bad. Like, whatever you’re imagining, make it ten times worse and you’re still not there yet.” She let out a shaky breath. “But my car is totaled, and now I’m stranded out here with a headless corpse.”
Archie’s lips were stiff, his voice strained and unnatural when it eked out between them. “Betts, I can’t—”
“I don’t know what to do,” she blurted. “My parents are out of town, Elena is somewhere hunting Jacob, and I need to get back to Midville before the band finishes their set. I don’t want you to have to leave Juggie, but I need a ride!”
“Okay, well, uh … I guess I’ve got good news and bad news,” Archie replied nervously. Turning a quick 360, he scanned the entire area, the gun bobbing a little in his unsteady hand. What remained of the pump house walls were right where he remembered them—but the rusting metal pipes had been ripped clean out of the ground, and the heavy chains that had once been wrapped tightly around his best friend’s waist were now strewn across the clearing. Empty. “Because Jughead is gone.”
TWO MILES AWAY, BREATHING hard through the muscle cramps that racked his entire body, Jughead Jones stumbled over a fallen log and crashed to the forest floor. The pain was literally blinding, a shimmering curtain of wobbly light distorting the world as agony lanced him from every angle. He forced air into his lungs down a knotted windpipe, battling against his body, his instincts, with everything he had.
His hands convulsed, the knuckles swelling and sprouting hair—only to shrink again a moment later, as he put every bit of concentration he could into fighting the transformation. His shoulders were wider than they should be, his torso stretched and his face misshapen, but the worst were his legs. His knees kept snapping back and forth, the bones and ligaments rearranging themselves over and over, the pain so excruciating he was afraid he’d black out.
He wanted to black out.
He couldn’t afford to black out.
Back in the clearing, he’d lost control, breaking the lead pipes like carrot sticks and flinging aside the chains meant for his own protection—for everyone’s protection. He’d covered a full mile before managing to claw his way through the mind-numbing haze, forcing back the beast, regaining some part of himself. But he was losing the war, and he knew it. The moon pulled at him, gravity drawing the wolf to the surface, and he couldn’t stand the torture of resisting it much longer.
A deep rumble shook his stomach, hunger making him dizzy, and his knuckles swelled again. He couldn’t stop them this time.
Something bad was going to happen.
When Betty Cooper jumped into his car from where she’d been waiting beside her demolished Beetle, Archie just narrowly stifled the urge to scream out loud. She looked horrendous—her clothes ripped and filthy, her face bruised and streaked with hastily mopped blood—but she didn’t even wait until her seat belt was buckled before ordering him to start driving.
“We’re gonna be late,” she reported ominously, an edge of fear to her voice Archie hadn’t heard before. In her hand, Betty clutched a pile of dusty silver bullets, and as soon as they were moving she started reloading her gun. “The Bingoes are probably done with their gig already, and then …”
She didn’t finish, and into the guilty silence, Archie blurted, “I’m sorry, Betts. I shouldn’t have left Jug alone, I should have—”
“Don’t.” She met his eyes, her expression pained but gentle. “Seriously, Archie, don’t blame yourself. It’s your first time doing this, and you made a bad call—it happens. I did the same thing when all those people died in the woods and I decided it wasn’t my mess to clean up.” Slumping back in her seat, she closed her eyes. “I should have stepped up, but I was scared I wasn’t ready. So I let Elena add it to the list of everything else she’s dealing with right now, and … well, here we are.”
“This isn’t your fault, either, you know,” he returned with a careful frown. “I mean, I’m not even ready to take that chemistry exam next week—it’s probably okay if you weren’t prepared to become Riverdale’s monster hunter in chief over summer break.”
She wasn’t ready to give up her self-recrimination, though. “Monsters don’t care whether you’re prepared or not.”
“You can’t anticipate literally everything all the time, Betts. And it’s not like you sat back and let werewolves take over, either—you did take charge, and you even recruited your first deputy!”
A Werewolf in Riverdale Page 15