“You heard Owen,” Max replied and cocked the gun. “You saw him in there. He doesn’t want to live.”
“That’s not what he said! We can still help him!”
“How, Cora? The guy just killed his sister and is turning. Would you want to live with that on your conscious?”
I didn’t realize it right away, but I was crying. “It can’t end this way. He’s my friend. Owen deserves better than this.”
“I’m sorry, Cora,” Max said genuinely. Even though Max had killed plenty in the name of hunting, I could tell from one look in his eyes that this wasn’t an easy decision, but one that needed to be made.
Suddenly, the screen door to the house burst open and knocked into Max, throwing his rifle right out of his hands and off the porch. Owen was in full wolf form, pushing into the door, his claws screeching against the glass as Max fought to keep it closed. I raced to help him, but Max yelled for me to run.
“I’m not going to abandon you!” I screamed back at him. There was no way I was leaving him to die. I threw away his warning and ran toward the porch, hoping maybe I could help keep the door closed, but almost instantly the door tore right off the hinges and Owen flew through the air like he had wings. The unhinged door collapsed onto Max as he tumbled down the steps and toward my feet.
This was the first time I had seen Owen completely transformed, knowing full well that it was him underneath. And it was terrifying. His fur was dark as night, his teeth long and saturated, and even though he looked like a beast, I could still recognize those sweet, sincere blue eyes peeking out from beneath the hair. He was still there, but trapped.
I wanted to cry.
Max stood up beside me, putting his arm out in front of my body once again as protection as Owen inched his way down the steps in a cautious but predatory way. But honestly, what was Max’s protection going to do? Owen was about the size of a bear, but way more mobile, and so terrifyingly dangerous looking. If his jaw clamped down on my arm, it’d probably be gone in one bite. I saw what happened to Freddy. I didn’t want that to be me.
“Owen,” I trembled, hoping somewhere deep inside him he’d recognize my voice and break through. Only response I got was a snarl and a growling bark in my direction. “Owen, please. You don’t want to do this.”
“I need the gun,” Max whispered to me. I could see it lying in the grass, and while it technically wasn’t far away, it may as well have been on Pluto. One jolt from us in that direction and Owen would be on us and we’d be dead.
We continued backing up together as Owen closed in on us. He was stalking us and I had to wonder why he hadn’t already devoured us like those people at the party. Maybe Owen really was in there fighting.
“What do we do?” I steadily asked.
“I’m thinking.”
Suddenly, my friend stood up on his hind legs and began howling. This felt like a direct call to other animals, and immediately, I went into a full blown panic. If another wolf heard his call, we were as good as dead.
With Owen preoccupied, I reached down to the ground and grabbed a broken branch, thinking if I, at least, had a sharp object I’d be okay. Owen’s gaze landed on me, as though intrigued over what I had. I didn’t know what to do, so I began waving it back and forth. His eyes followed it every direction. Then I launched it across the yard as far as I could throw, thinking maybe, just maybe, he’d go after it. Instead, his eyes remained on me with vicious intent.
“What was that?” Max asked. “He’s not a fucking dog.”
Out of nowhere, Owen leapt onto Max and the two went tumbling across the yard. “Max!” I yelled, completely beside myself. This giant black beast was on top of him, snarling and chomping at the air around him just trying to get a bite. If I didn’t do something, Max was going to die. But this was Owen.
Oh, God, it was Owen.
I searched the grass for the rifle and as soon as I found it, I immediately aimed it at the two struggling on the ground. I had never fired a gun, and I was afraid of missing, but I had to do something. I held my breath and pulled the trigger.
The werewolf was a big enough target, so despite my terrible aim, the bullet made contact. The beast flew right off of Max.
And then there was silence.
I ran to Max who was on the ground and in the midst of trying to get to his feet. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he quickly said and brushed the dirt off his shirt. I was so happy to see him alive that the impending doom of what happened to Owen almost didn’t strike me. Almost.
Once Max was to his feet, we looked out into the darkness for a sign of Owen. There, lying on the ground in the shadows, breathing slow deep breaths, was the body of the beast I called my friend. I went toward him, but Max stopped me.
“Don’t go near it.”
I could already feel the tears threatening to resurface. “I have to,” I said. “He’s my friend.” So much of me was terrified to go near him. I knew how dangerous he was, how lethal his bite could be, but I needed to get close. Owen may have been in wolf form, but deep down inside, he was still that polite stranger I sat on the roof with talking about photography. I needed to see my friend one last time.
He was wounded pretty badly. I had hit him right in the chest and there was a lot of blood. As soon as I came near him, those blue eyes peered up at me. But this time, it was different. I didn’t feel threatened, I didn’t feel scared. I oddly felt welcomed. He breathed in deeply and groaned as I knelt down beside his wounded body, testing out how close I could get without putting myself into danger. Somehow, the bullet had subdued him and I no longer felt like I was at risk.
“Owen,” I spoke softly to him. “I’m so sorry. You deserved better than this.” A low, deep moan came from his throat, and I imagined it was the real him trying to speak to me. That my friend was coming through. I hesitated, but placed my hand on his side and brushed my fingers through the thick layers of black hair. Owen closed those crystal blue eyes of his, soothed. “You’re free now,” I told him, and rose to my feet. “Be with your family.”
Very slowly I aimed the gun.
Very slowly I pulled the trigger.
The light faded from my friend’s eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When it was all over and the dust had settled, the police arrived with reinforcements. They collected the bodies, secured the site of the deaths, and comforted the remaining victims. The townspeople were mostly in shock. So much brutality and craziness happened in just one night that none of them (myself included) could really find the words to explain what went down. It was simply too unbelievable. For the most part, they all kept quiet, clutching onto their family members, shaking, and I imagine playing the night in their head over and over again. Whenever anyone did get a word out, it was a lot of mumbling and uneven breaths. People were pretty freaked out.
Myself? I was feeling torn up inside. Not only had I lost a friend, but I had no idea how I was going to explain what happened to him. He was shot. I killed him. Any rational person wasn't going to believe I had to put down someone because they had become a werewolf. It sounded ridiculous.
When men finally did show up to get Owen, his body had returned to its human form and they zipped him up inside a black body bag and loaded him up inside a truck with hardly a word spoken to me. No questions about who had pulled the trigger, why he was lying bare in the dirt, nothing. I actually knew what happened here and even I realized how suspicious this looked. With all that had gone down, you’d think the officers would want eye witnesses or any kind of answers. But nothing was done. Almost like they didn’t care.
That was when I realized something; these weren’t police officers.
They were dressed all in black, with black hats, black boots, and no badges or inscriptions on their clothing to give me an idea of who they were or where they came from. I had never seen anything like them. In fact, I ended up asking the people from Rookridge if they had ever seen these guys before and none of them had
. They were all in too much shock to ask any questions and simply let the men do their work. By the time anyone got wind of something being off, they were gone.
There were rumors, of course. One was that they were scientists collecting the aftermath of experiments gone wrong, the other was that they were monster hunters, and, of course, the last were the men in black legend, and that they wanted to clear up everything before the real cops appeared so everything could remain covered up. As loopy as that all sounded, it wasn’t too far-fetched. This was, after all, the aftermath of a werewolf attack.
A week passed before stories started circulating between the people left in the town, with some claiming the men dressed in black instructed them to keep their mouths shut, and that what they experienced here were a couple of animals that had broken out from the zoo. If that were the case, why were they told not to speak? I don’t know who they thought they were fooling, but there was no way these people were going to brush off this attack. People died. How do you act like that’s not a big deal? But apparently, that’s what they were told, and that if they did speak out about it, no one would believe them, anyway.
I think people were afraid of being shunned by the public if they spoke. Who wants to be lumped into the same category as the crazy rednecks claiming to have been snatched up by aliens and experimented on? So, most maintained their silence.
But it was harder for me to do that. I knew what I saw, and I knew who I lost.
I had to remind myself about everything that had actually gone right that night. The moment I returned home and freed Priscilla and Grandma from the closet, I held them both in my arms (much to Priscilla’s chagrin) and just let myself weep. The weirdest part was Grandma and Priscilla walking out of that closet like they were buddies. Grandma related our night of terror to old war stories involving Grandpa, and Priscilla, I swear to God, smiled. I don’t know what went down in that closet that night, but they formed some kind of weird comradery. I guess being held up in a closet to hide from werewolves will do that to a person.
Priscilla slept on my floor that night, and when morning broke she told me, “I now have an excuse to get the hell out of this town.” And she did. She ended up with her own apartment in the city within just a few weeks. People are way more miserable there, so she found many, many kindred spirits.
I never did find out what happened to Dana. The only people in town that knew her all ended up dead. Everybody else either never heard of her or didn’t pay attention enough. I guess it paid being Tiffany’s unnoticeable doppelganger, because she was free to escape and be on her own, and no one was on her tail.
Wherever she was, I hoped she found the peace Owen never did.
Right after they took Owen’s body away, I was in such a terrible place. All I could do was sit there on the steps of my porch with my face in my hands, listening to the sound of vehicles zipping by quickly from one attack site to the next. As cliché as it sounds, this really did feel like one giant, horrific dream.
I glanced down at my lap and saw a chunk of animal hair hanging from the bottom of my dress. At first, I brushed it off and let the wind catch it and carry it away, until it dawned on me where it came from. It was Owen’s. I stepped off the porch and caught the hair before it was able to get far, and held it in the palm of my hand. This was the last piece of Owen. My friend. When those people took his body away, I was left with the sinking feeling that I would never see him ever again. Not even to say goodbye. This little clump of fur was the closest I was going to get to him. I decided to keep it.
I saw Max coming up to the porch from the main road, and he looked just as rough and exhausted as I did. I didn’t realize how happy I’d be to see him until he was right here.
“The cops left,” he told me.
“Okay.”
He came closer. “You all right?”
“Just trying to wrap my mind around this. Give me a few years.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about being the only one.”
“Do you think...?” I struggled not to cry, hanging my head down low. “Do you think I did the right thing?”
“It’s what Owen would have wanted.”
I nodded with my head still low. “At least this mess is over.”
Max sat down on the bottom step to the porch. “I don’t think this mess is going away anytime soon.” He sounded so somber, so glum. Maybe Owen’s death was bothering him more than he thought it would. I wasn’t sure.
“There’s still more out there, doing God only knows what. I mean if Owen was right about them feeling disturbed, maybe if we leave them alone they’ll do the same for us.” I sighed and rubbed my eyes hard. “When I try to imagine what Owen went through... the fear, the pain, the secrets... he must have been in hell.”
Max said nothing.
“If he had just come to me, maybe everything would have been better.” I didn’t even realize I had tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Even if you knew, there’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know. I’m just... speaking irrationally.”
A melancholy smile came over him.
I slid down on the step below me to sit beside him. “Let’s go somewhere,” I abruptly said. “We can take a vacation and bring Grandma and Priscilla along with us. I can take pictures, they can get drunk. They’re apparently, best friends now, so I’m sure they’ll be all for it. I just don’t want to be here right now. I don’t think I can handle another minute of this.”
He hesitated. “I, uh, think you better go without me.”
“How come?”
“I’m not going to be the best company right now.”
“Why not?”
Max quickly stood up and darted a few steps away from me. It was the first time I noticed how depressed he looked. Something wasn’t right. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.
Max was pressing his fingers into his hand, twisting back and forth and looking agitated. Yes, something was definitely off. I crawled off the bottom step of the porch in an effort to get closer to him, and right away he threw one hand up and said, “You might want to get used to keeping your distance.”
“What are you talking about?”
There were no words spoken as the two of us stared at one another, quietly. Eventually he realized I wasn't going to back down, and gave in. Max folded back the cuff of his shirt and slowly rolled his sleeve up as he approached me. He twisted his arm and hand until it was palm up. Immediately, I gasped.
There, curved along the softest arch of his palm was a jagged, thin, but very prominent red slash. Along that slash were little dots that were a darker shade of red than the others. They were puncture wounds. Like someone had bit him.
“Owen got me,” he said very softly and then tugged his hand away. I was left speechless and unable to breathe.
“See?” Max said with a whisper as he looked away from me. “I told you this mess wasn’t behind us.”
About the Author:
Samantha Cross was raised in a small town of Michigan, where she spent her lazy summer days dreaming of stories with strong heroines and charismatic heroes. But one night in particular, a dream came to her, vivid and thrilling, of a small town inhabited by werewolves. She found herself up at 3 a.m jotting down every detail, enthralled by the tale, but unfortunately, put the story on the back burner for years. That is, until one summer day when she sat down and turned the dream into a reality. Lunar Rampage.
Acknowledgements:
I am eternally grateful to the following people:
To my parents, for not throwing me out on my behind and allowing me the time to nurture my craft and grow as an artist. You'll never know how much that means to me. And even though I'm terrible with expressing my emotions, I love you guys. More than you know.
To my high school teacher, Mr. Wuerful, for being the first person to take me aside and tell me I had potential. That was honestly the moment I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
And th
e last one is a bit odd, but I'd like to thank the dream that inspired this very story. Without it, I never would have written this in the first place.
Social Media Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SCross_Author
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorSamanthaCross
Lunar Rampage (Lunar Rampage Series Book 1) Page 28