One of the remaining pair of wolves leapt forward and pounced onto Frazier, knocking the goblin onto his back.
Frazier cried out as the wolf landed on top of him and clawed into his shoulders.
The third werewolf didn’t have a chance to follow suit. Carrie fired the shotgun. The load of buckshot hit the wolf square in the chest. It staggered a few paces back, but kept its feet.
It was stunned long enough for me to take a shot at him. I gathered the air around the silver sword in grandpa’s hand and, with a focused torrent, yanked the sword from Grandpa’s grip and sent it straight through the werewolf’s back, the sword’s bloody point sticking out through the wolf’s chest. It threw its head back, but its outcry turned to a gargle as blood filled its throat. It staggered for a moment, then dropped dead in front of the fireplace.
The wolf on Frazier snapped at the goblin’s throat, but Frazier gripped the wolf’s ears like a pair of handle bars and held it back. I wouldn’t have believed the goblin’s short arms could resist the strength of a werewolf if I hadn’t seen it for myself. I gained a new respect for all of goblin kind.
Carrie had the shotgun aimed at the wolf, but she hesitated, clearly uncertain she could shoot the wolf without also injuring her husband. Finally she took the gun by the barrel and swung it like a bat.
The stock cracked on impact with the wolf’s head. The blow might as well have been a tap on its shoulder, because all it did was get its attention. The wolf snarled and backhanded Carrie, knocking her to the floor.
Frazier let loose a sound worthy of the most frightening creatures of the dark. He used the momentary distraction Carrie had provided to press his finger against the side of his crooked nose.
In a blink, something about the wolf changed. It happened so quickly it took my brain a second to process.
The wet slap against the ceiling. The red spray off the wolf’s whole body. The sight of blood-slick musculature.
Gods be damned, the goblin had stripped the wolf of its pelt, which was what had hit the ceiling. All of its skin had come off like a zippered coat and now lay in a rubbery clump on the floor.
A hot glop of bile burned its way up the back of my throat.
The skinned wolf reared its head back and bayed. The pain must have been unbearable. The wolf rolled off of Frazier and curled up in a fetal position, whimpering. With enough time, it could have conceivably grown its skin back. It probably wouldn’t die without additional help. Which made it all the more horrible to think about.
Despite my rolling stomach, I couldn’t look away.
Which meant I had my back to the door. Which gave the wolf Frazier had thrown outside the opportunity to pounce me. I felt its claws dig in just under my shoulder blades. I opened my mouth to scream, but the impact with the floor and the weight of the wolf on top of me squeezed the air out of my lungs.
From the corner of my eye I saw Grandpa raise his arms in the air. He bellowed something in a language I didn’t know.
A swirling wind whooshed through the room with enough force to blow out the fireplace. The wind had an icy bite I could feel even with the wolf’s body heat pressing down on my back. The spell drew the wolf’s attention, sparing me from a huge bite to the back of my neck.
The cyclone picked up tremendous speed in a matter of seconds. Then Grandpa threw his raised arms down, and the wind lifted the wolf off my back and straight through the wall separating the living room from the kitchen. The hole it left behind was large enough for someone to step through. Pieces of the drywall crumbled to the floor and kicked up chalky dust. A pair of broken studs hung down like stalactites.
I could see the wolf through the hole, up against the stainless steel refrigerator that now had a werewolf-sized dent in the door. The wolf’s jaw hung open, its tongue lolling out its mouth.
Grandpa trudged over to the wolf I’d shish-kababed with the sword. He grabbed the hilt in one hand and braced his foot against the wolf’s back. With a wet sluice, he pulled the sword loose.
I pushed myself up onto my knees, wincing at the pain through my back from the wolf’s claws. I watched Grandpa, his jaw set, blood running down the side of his face where he had earned his own claw marks. He ducked through the hole in the wall and stepped up to the wolf, who was already shaking off the cobwebs from its trip through the wall. It had a chance to look up at my grandfather, then Grandpa jammed the sword straight through the wolf’s face, splitting its canine snout in half.
The wolf kicked its clawed feet and seized for a couple seconds, then fell still.
Once again, Grandpa yanked the sword loose.
I watched this man in awe as he came out of the kitchen with a stony expression and an angry gleam in his eyes. He stepped over to Frazier and helped the goblin get to his feet. He held the sword out to Frazier.
Frazier looked into Grandpa’s eyes for a moment. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them. Frazier took the sword, strode over to the skinned wolf, and thrust the silver blade through its heart. The wolf didn’t yelp or whimper, but rather sighed like a deflating tire.
Frazier stepped around the wolf without giving it another glance and went over to Carrie. Carrie propped herself up on one elbow and reached up to her husband to stroke his cheek. Frazier cupped his hand over hers and held it against his face.
“I’m okay,” she said. “We’re okay.”
The goblin exhaled a shaky breath. Then he turned to me. He opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind, and nodded instead.
I returned the nod.
Then I looked to my grandfather. With the fire out, the shadows obscured the details of his expression, but I felt a different energy emanating from him. I knew I was looking at a changed man.
After a night of burning werewolf bodies in Grandpa’s back field, I took the Fleischhackers to the bus station. Grandpa had made a call to his contact, and the whole thing was arranged with surprising speed. I found myself a little bummed they had to leave so quickly. I’d grown fond of the couple. Probably a product of our having shared a traumatic experience together. But the feeling was real enough.
I even think Frazier had warmed up to me, though he wouldn’t admit it.
Carrie hugged me, then climbed onto the bus. Frazier had a blue hoodie on with the hood up. He appraised me for a moment, then said, “Take care of my bike,” and got onto the bus.
I shook my head and laughed.
That was the last I ever saw or heard from Mr. and Mrs. Fleischhacker.
I headed back to Grandpa’s. That swipe across his face from the wolf and the large amount of magical energy he had put into his cyclone spell had taken a lot out of him. I wanted to make sure he was okay.
When I arrived and didn’t see any sign of him in the house, the skin on the back of my neck prickled and I felt a pit in my stomach.
A cool spring breeze cut through the usually stuffy house. Some of that came from the shattered window and lack of a front door. But he had opened a couple of intact windows as well. He hadn’t relit the fire. And his rocker…
It was missing.
I found him on the back porch. He had brought his rocker out there and now stared toward the tree line at the back of his property. A trail of smoke rose from the charred lump of werewolves at the edge of the clearing
As nice as the spring breeze felt that morning, it was coming out of the east and carrying the smell of cooked wolf with it.
Grandpa rocked steadily, the floorboards of the porch groaning in a steady rhythm.
I nearly choked when I saw he was fully dressed. And not just dressed, but dressed. He wore a tan suit and a polka dot bowtie.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked.
He raised a hand, which held the framed photo of Grandma from the mantle. “Family reunion.”
I wrinkled my nose, not sure what he was talking about.
He turned to face me, and I saw the still raw claw marks across his face. They oozed with pus and were bright with infection.
He slowly shook his head. He leaned forward and tried to stand, but he couldn’t make it and dropped back into the chair with a heavy groan. One flap of his coat pulled away from his belly, revealing a thick, wet red stain on his shirt.
My stomach clenched. I pointed at the blood stain. “What is that?”
“That wolf,” he said and grimaced. “Got more than my face.”
In all the chaos of the night, I had somehow missed this other wound. Worse still, he had failed to tell me about it.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I knew you would…” He clenched his jaw and hissed through his teeth. “You’d probably tell your parents, or take me to that apothecary friend of theirs. You’d try to save me.”
“You’re damn right. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
He grasped my wrist with a strength that belied his clammy, pale face. “You won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my time,” he said. He squeezed my wrist harder. “It’s my time.”
I sighed. What little energy I had hung onto to keep me from passing out with exhaustion leaked out of me. I slowly lowered to my knees beside his chair. “I can’t talk you out of this.”
He shook his head. His gaze went down to the photograph. “It’s my time,” he said again.
A silence fell between us. The call of a sand hill crane echoed in the distance. The breeze cooled the moisture in my eyes and made my eyelids feel sticky. Finally, I said, “You were awesome last night.”
He laughed, but had to cut it short to keep from breaking into a coughing fit. It was more than his wounds wearing him down. He had pulled a large chunk of power together to create a wind strong enough to shoot that werewolf through a wall. He probably hadn’t worked a spell like that in decades. Maybe longer. It had cracked his already damaged soul.
And without the will to live pressing him on, he could not recover.
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t do much magic.”
He looked me in the eye. “No, but you did the right thing. And sometimes that’s harder than casting the biggest of spells.”
After that, we didn’t say more. I held his hand and let a little magic flow from me to him. I couldn’t heal him, but I could make him a little more comfortable. The moment was so serene, I didn’t notice when he passed. I thought I would have felt the life go out of him through the magical connection I had established to ease his pain. But the man had been so full of life, it had carried on a little longer after him.
I stood, kissed his cold cheek, then went to call my parents and let them know we had lost another Light.
Read the first novel in the Unturned series featuring
Sebastian Light here
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About the Author
Rob Cornell is the author of The Lockman Chronicles, a five-book urban fantasy series featuring Craig Lockman, an ex-government agent battling the world’s greatest paranormal threats. He also has a new series that starts with Branded, about a Detroit sorcerer with a serious vampire problem.
Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, he has always spent much of his time wandering the halls of his imagination, conjuring stories. Nowadays, he writes them down like a responsible adult. He lives in rural Southeast Michigan with his family.
Contact Rob here:
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Valentine Blues - James A. Hunter
A Yancy Lazarus Short Story
The kids in Valentine, Nebraska just aren’t right. Not anymore.
They’re Dangerous. Unpredictable. Hungry. As violence breaks out and people start dying, butchered in their homes, only Yancy Lazarus—bluesman, gambler, mage, and former wet-works man—can put things right. Well, he can try …
Something was wrong in Valentine.
I could feel it in the air, beating down on my senses like an invisible sledgehammer.
My El Camino rumbled beneath me as I cruised along US 20, nearing the edge of the sleepy town, a few worn buildings poking up along the horizon. I leaned over and cranked down the window, letting the wind whip into the cab, filling the interior with the scent of fresh-turned earth—musky and rich—and the sweet aroma of wildflowers offset by the pungent smell of cow shit. I breathed deeply, inhaling a great big whiff of country air, then exhaled it slowly through my nose.
Great swathes of dusty dry yellow stretched off to either side of me, a flat land deep in the heart of a drought, but ahead lay a patch of green, like an oasis in a desert. I turned an eye skyward, searching the clouds above for any telltale sign of the strange energy bearing down on me, but the sky was clear as far as I could see. I turned my gaze back to the two-lane cut of asphalt lazily meandering off to the left. A “Reduced Speed Ahead” sign popped up on the right, so I dropped down from sixty-five, coming damned near to a crawl as I passed by the first few buildings on the edge of Valentine.
Off to the left lurked a recently renovated motel, the Trading Post, laid out in a “U,” the grass out front lush and inviting, a series of squat bushes lining the roadway. The motel vanished in a blink, replaced in short order by a run-down gas station, followed by a few rows of single-wide trailers, many old and worn. None of ’em looked occupied. The run-down trailer park disappeared behind a clump of leafy trees as the road straightened, swelling into a four-lane boulevard, lined on either side by gas stations, hardware stores, a couple of fast-food chains, and a spattering of rough motels with names like the Waterfall Inn or the Motor Carriage Lodge.
Cheap tacky places that appealed to approximately no one, anywhere, ever.
I travel a lot, living out of the back of my car, moving from state to state, town to town, bar to bar, eating cheap bar food and playing the blues for beer money, so I know a thing or two about sleepy towns. This place? This place was a Podunk shit-speck—maybe eight or nine hundred people—the kinda town folks drive through, but only because they were on the way to someplace better, more interesting. The shops lining the streets damn near shouted that fact at the top of their lungs: all catered to the weary travelers looking for a bite to eat or a place to catch a wink.
Podunk to the core.
Not that I have anything against Podunk shit-speck towns, mind you. Not the kinda place I’d ever want to settle down in, obviously, but small towns are the best places to shoot the shit with crusty old-timers over at the VFW hall. Tradin’ war stories, having a few laughs, killin’ time.
I stared at the shops as I cruised, my eyes picking over the long shadows cast by the fading sun, searching for signs of life, but everything seemed dead. Cold. The air washing into the cab felt heavy with arcane power, some powerful construct laying over the entire town like a smothering pillow.
Eric Clapton blared from my speakers, but with a grunt of irritation I flicked the power button, killing the gritty tunes so I could get a better read on the town. The music died, replaced by silence. An unnatural quiet radiating from the buildings and the streets. A hush that demanded compliance. Valentine felt like a friggin’ library, presided over by some haughty, overbearing lady with boxy glasses and a motherly cardigan, eager to bring down the gavel the moment some snot-nosed kid broke the peace.
I rolled up to a three-way intersection guarded by an unnecessary stoplight looking down on an otherwise empty street. There were cars around, true—lots of older American made trucks, a few newer SUVs in various makes and models, a couple muscle cars with peeling paint—but they were all parked along the streets, empty. On the surface, everything looked fine. No sign of trouble. No evidence of rioting. No burnt buildings or broken store windows. The stores, though munda
ne, looked neat and clean, carefully and lovingly maintained. But no people.
Not a one.
I stopped at the light even though I had a green, loitering for a moment as I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness. Straight ahead, flanking the US 20, lay more motels and fast-food joints. Then the road broke away, clearing the shit-speck town, cruising on for another three hundred miles until it turned into Interstate 25 in Wyoming. To the right, though, lay North Main Street, a quaint two-lane, slicing deeper into the town, leading back into the residential area, eventually turning into the US 83, which headed into South Dakota.
I was bound for Rapid City, which meant that bastard road was on my route.
For a long beat, I considered just gassing it, laying my foot down flat against the pedal and driving right on through this shithole. Skip Rapid City entirely and head west into Wyoming instead. After all, one town was as good as another, since I didn’t actually have a place to be.
I idled at the intersection a spell longer.
Yep, the smart thing to do was to keep right on truckin’, put this place firmly in the rear-view, and leave the residents of Valentine to deal with their own bullshit. Whatever bullshit that happened to be.
I frowned, sighed, then reluctantly gave the Camino some gas and wheeled right, puttering onto North Main Street and deeper into the heart of the town. Dammit. Idiot.
Stupid, bleeding-heart moron, is what I was.
I passed a few more shops and city buildings, all made of old red brick—a post office here and some kinda historical center there—before finally passing into a winding neighborhood loaded down with cute, double-story cookie-cutter houses that could’ve filled the suburbs of any city in America. Lifeless trucks and motorhomes dotted streets and driveways. Too-green lawns stared at me as I rolled past, mocking me with their vitality while the rest of the town remained dead and quiet. Still no friggin’ people. Zippo.
Full Metal Magic: An Urban Fantasy Anthology Page 22