A Werewolf in Riverdale

by Caleb Roehrig

  Together, she and Archie had barely managed to carry Jughead out of the aquarium, “borrow” a car off the road, and get the boy back to Elena’s gym before he bled out. Once there, they’d removed the bullet and then locked the unconscious werewolf up in Cousin Jacob’s empty cage while his supernatural healing took over. Thanks to some Cooper family connections, they’d even managed to get both the Beetle and Archie’s four-door towed to safety before either vehicle could be identified and linked to a crime scene.

  “Seriously, Betty,” Jughead mumbled, staring into his milk shake. “Thanks. You gave me a chance, even though you didn’t have to. Even though I … I did some really awful stuff.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.” Archie’s response was immediate, but Jughead waved off the excuse.

  “I didn’t ask to be the way I am, but I’m the only one there is to blame for what happened to Pop Tate,” Jughead said solemnly—and Archie squirmed once again. Was he really not going to tell them where he ate the man? Giving both his friends a meek smile, Jughead added, “Whether I like it or not, I’m a monster. And you guys didn’t have to save my life.”

  “You earned a chance, Juggie.” Betty was firm, interrupting Archie before he could argue against Jughead some more. “I’ve … in all the time I’ve spent studying and hunting werewolves, I’ve never seen what I saw that night. Even when you were completely transformed, you still fought the urge to kill.” Poking her straw up and down in her milk shake, she admitted, “My cousin spent his whole life learning to think of lycanthropes as the enemy—learning to beat them any way he could. But when it happened to him, he still wasn’t strong enough to do what you did.”

  “And now, thanks to the power of wolfsbane, you’re even stronger!” Archie couldn’t keep the smugness out of his voice, and Betty rolled her eyes again.

  “Yeah, yeah. Cheers to Archie.” Her tone was dry, but she lifted her milk shake anyway, and they all toasted. Despite her many doubts and ominous predictions, at Archie’s insistence, she’d gotten Jughead a supply of wolfsbane. For the next two nights, they’d dosed him and then locked him in the cage—and on both occasions, he’d shifted only briefly from his human form before turning back. It was frankly pretty remarkable. He wasn’t “cured,” of course, and he still had to be confined for safety’s sake, but it was another thing Betty had never seen before. “I honestly didn’t think it would work, but you proved me wrong, Juggie.”

  “To be fair, your family’s whole ‘shoot first, ask questions never’ approach to werewolves probably limits the number of successful experiments,” Jughead replied bluntly. There was an awkward silence that he did not seem the least bit aware of, and then he asked, “Does your aunt still hate me?”

  “Elena doesn’t hate you; she just thinks you should be dead.” Betty was equally blunt. Convincing her aunt to let Jughead take up residency in the empty cage had been difficult, to say the least, and many strong words about “sacred duty” and “walking, bloodthirsty nightmares” had been exchanged. “But it’s not her call. The mission was mine, and this is how I’m handling it. For now.”

  Jughead was still learning to control his condition, to resist his violent instincts while under the thrall of the full moon, and if he ever slipped up … well, it wasn’t something any of them wanted to think about too much.

  “Is there any word on Jacob?” Archie asked, trying to head off another awkward silence.

  “According to Elena, it looks like he may have fled the country.” Betty shook her head. “She’s going down to Mexico next week to follow up on a lead. There’s another family of longtime hunters down there who have offered her backup if she needs it.”

  “And have you heard anything about … you know, the investigation?” Jughead wouldn’t look either of them in the eye.

  “According to Kevin Keller, his dad says the case is in sort of a holding pattern. All the evidence points to animal attacks, but aside from a couple of very tenuous reports from terrified residents in a certain Midville neighborhood, no one has reported any sightings that match the kind of creature that could be responsible.” Betty set her milk shake aside, clearing her throat. “Because of the established pattern, they’re expecting more deaths next week when the full moon returns, but they don’t have any leads to pursue right now.” Glancing up at Jughead, she added, “Officially, Ethel Muggs and Bingo Wilkin have been named the last known victims of the Riverdale Ripper.”

  That awkward silence returned to the table, and they shared a round of dark, meaningful glances. Because the crime scene where Ethel’s body had been found was covered in animal hair and surrounded by massive paw prints, the conclusion that she had fallen prey to the Ripper had been easy to jump to. Bingo’s case, however, was a little less cut-and-dried.

  The Wilkin home had been utterly destroyed, with not much left but the severely water-damaged basement, once the fire department was done putting out the blaze. Lying among the structure’s charred remnants, however, investigators had found a severed limb—an arm, the shoulder joint exhibiting the deep scoring of bite marks. DNA testing had proved that the body part belonged to Bingo, who had been missing since the night the house exploded … but no other remains had been found, human or animal.

  “Maybe he just, you know … kablow,” Archie suggested, not for the first time, making a motion with his hand as if to suggest Bingo’s body going completely up in smoke. “Jug said he was in the kitchen, right next to the gas main when the blast happened … maybe it was so hot and intense he just, like, disintegrated.”

  “And maybe he was blown out the back door.” Jughead fidgeted nervously with his hat, tilting it first one way and then the other. It was a new hat, to replace the one that had been destroyed in the inferno—and even though it was identical to his old one, he still swore it didn’t fit the same.

  “So what if he was?” Archie’s hands felt unsteady, and he took a gulp of milk shake that went down as thick and slimy as an oyster. “We saw the house go ‘boom,’ remember? It was a total fireball. Even if he got thrown clear by the blast, he was probably a charcoal briquette by the time he landed in the backyard.”

  “Werewolves heal really fast,” Jughead pointed out. “Didn’t you tell me Betty said there were stories of them regenerating whole limbs? Like, for example, missing arms?”

  Archie turned to the blond girl beside him. “Betts, have you ever heard of a charcoal briquette spontaneously poofing back into a werewolf after getting blown out of an exploding house?”

  “I’m just saying.” Jughead’s voice was tiny, his eyes fixed on his fingernails. “He might … he could still be out there. Right?”

  “Maybe he is, and maybe he isn’t,” Betty finally stated after an interminable pause. Then she turned and looked through the broad windows of the diner, gazing up at the gathering twilight and the waxing gibbous moon slowly rising in the evening sky. “I guess we’ve got about seven days until we know for sure.”

  Jughead peered even closer at his fingernails, blurting, “I want to help you track him down. If … if he’s really alive, I mean.”

  Snapping her eyes back from the window, Betty blinked. “Juggie—”

  “After everything that happened, after everything I—we—did … I have to do whatever I can to make sure he won’t hurt anyone else.” Jughead finally met her gaze, his expression meek. “Please?”

  “I … I don’t know, Juggie.” Betty shifted uncomfortably, turning over her hand in a one-armed shrug. “You’ve got a lot to deal with already; right now you need to be focused on controlling your shifts as much as you can.”

  “But that’s just it.” He gave her a smart look. “I know how he thinks, both as a human and a wolf—and he’s my pack, remember? When I change, I’ll be compelled to seek him out anyway.”

  “It’s not like we can put a leash on you,” Betty pointed out, making a face. “And it is kind of too soon to have this conversation. For all we know, Bingo really is a charcoal briquette.”

&
nbsp; “Thank you.” Archie spread his hands out.

  “I can help with other things, too, though.” Jughead remained as stubborn as ever. “I’m only a monster three days a month, but the rest of the time I can do research and make phone calls and stuff.” Snatching a napkin from the metal box on the table, he added, “Anyway, it’s not just about Bingo. I’ve got a lot to make up for, and if other werewolves turn up, I want to help stop them, too. I owe it to the people I killed, I owe it to you guys for giving me a chance, and … and I owe it to Ethel.”

  Betty went silent again—which wasn’t unusual these days, when Ethel’s name came up; but something in the tightness of her expression, in the way her finger traced a nervous pattern in the sweat on her water glass, made Archie’s hackles rise. “Betts? Is, uh … is something wrong?”

  She took a deep breath, and her shoulders slumped. “Ethel Muggs. For three whole weeks, I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened to her.”

  “Betty, you need to let go of the guilt.” Archie was firm. He’d been reading up on this, so he’d know exactly what to say when the subject arose. “You’re not the one who made her a monster, and it was self-def—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she cut him off with a faint smile, “but thank you. What I don’t understand is why Bingo bit her.”

  “It was probably an accident.” Jughead frowned. “They were making out, his teeth slipped, and … oopsy?”

  “Maybe.” Betty didn’t look convinced. “Bingo made out with lots of girls, though. He had … experience. Ethel made it sound like he was chewing on her—like it was deliberate.”

  “Maybe he wanted to create confusion?” Archie’s scalp prickled, a brilliant deduction blossoming. “Bodies were piling up, people were starting to panic … he had to figure that sooner or later a hunter would get involved.”

  “Or the FBI,” Jughead interjected thoughtfully. “The sheriff’s department doesn’t have a huge budget, and if they attributed the deaths to a serial killer or something they’d be able to bring in outside help.”

  Archie nodded. “If Ethel got all hairy and went bananas in public, everyone would think she was the Riverdale Ripper all along.”

  “And because she wouldn’t have known what was happening to her, or how to deal with it, there was a better chance of someone tracking her and killing her, letting Bingo off the hook …” Betty pursed her lips. “That’s possible.”

  “Or maybe,” Jughead began, after a moment, “he did it because he was a cruel, malignant sociopath who liked making people suffer.” His voice was quiet and chilling. “Maybe the only thing he wanted to create was chaos and terror—because he thought it was fun.”

  “That’s the one that’s got me worried.” Betty toyed with her fork, pressing her thumb against the tines as a rueful smile twisted her mouth. “Because what if … what if Bingo bit other girls, too? What if Riverdale is filled with ticking, werewolf time bombs, just waiting to go off?” She turned back to the windows. “What if Bingo still being out there is only the least of our worries?”

  A long silence fell over the table, until Archie cleared his throat. “Then we’ve got a week to investigate—and to be ready, no matter what.”

  For a long time, they stayed at their booth in the Chock’Lit Shoppe, watching stars poke through the darkness outside—and making plans.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next Archie Horror novel, Interview with the Vixen, by Rebecca Barrow!

  THERE’S NO PARTY like a Cheryl Blossom party. Bass pumping, speakers jumping, bottles spinning in a game that’s only going to lead to kissing and crying and somebody breaking up on the front lawn after midnight, but isn’t that the fun of it?

  It is for me, anyway.

  Cheryl’s wearing cutoffs—the ones that Mommie Dearest always says are trashy, with that rictus smile she’s so practiced at giving her daughter—with a tight white tee and, of course, her signature Bombshell lipstick. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, she feels like a queen reigning over her wild kingdom. There, Chuck Clayton and half the football team playing some stupid game on the deck. Here, Alanna Chiang and the Vixens throwing out tipsy cheers by the pool. And by her side, her sometimes-loyal minions waiting for their next instructions.

  She looks at Nancy and Midge and snaps her fingers. “Ladies!” she barks. “Fetch me a drink.” Then she turns to the group of girls mingling behind her and throws her hands in the air. “Who wants to play seven minutes in heaven?”

  The boys over on the deck look up, jaws dropped, and Cheryl laughs with her red-painted lips wide open. Like she’s interested in any of them. “Sorry, boys, this is strictly—”

  A scream slices through the night.

  “—girls only,” Cheryl finishes, but the hairs on the back of her neck are standing up and she half turns at the thud she hears behind her.

  It’s some kid, hunched over and staggering toward her.

  “Excuse you,” she says, her voice loud and sharp to counteract the chill rippling along her spine. “This party is exclusive. No sloppy messes allowed. Got it?”

  The boy keeps coming, and he’s clearly hammered already, from the way he’s shambling along, and Cheryl has had enough. This is her house, her rules. No one defies Cheryl Bombshell in her own backyard.

  “Hey,” she says. “Are you listening? Shoo, little vermin.”

  There’s another thud to her left, and Cheryl whips around.

  Another crasher, hunched over in the same way as the first.

  “Take him with you, too!” she snaps, but the first one is still ignoring her, and so she takes a few steps forward, hands on her hips, her never-fail power stance. “I said, get—”

  The first boy rears up, and now Cheryl is the one who screams, a short wild noise at the sight of the boy’s face—one she finally recognizes—contorted into a snarl that shows a row of dangerously sharp teeth that maybe used to be shiny white but are now stained and marbled a deep, dark red.

  Almost as red as the color on Cheryl’s own lips.

  And not teeth.

  Fangs.

  Caleb Roehrig is an author of young adult thrillers, including Last Seen Leaving, White Rabbit, and Death Prefers Blondes. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, he has also lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Helsinki, Finland. As a former actor and television producer, Roehrig has experience on both sides of the camera, with a résumé that includes appearances on film and TV—not to mention seven years in the stranger-than-fiction salt mines of reality television. In the name of earning a paycheck, he has: hung around a frozen cornfield in his underwear, partied with an actual rock star, chatted with a scandal-plagued politician, and been menaced by a disgruntled ostrich.

  Copyright © 2020 by Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

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  First printing 2020

  Cover and interior art by Matt Griffin

  Cover design by Heather Daugherty

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-60837-3

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