by Dave Ferraro
Chapter Thirteen
When Amelia emerged from the wreckage of the car, she quickly scanned the area. The wolf was no longer atop the car, and as she squinted into the woods on the far side of the ditch, she couldn’t make out anything in its deep shadows. She shivered and wrapped an arm around herself as she glanced up the other side of the ditch, where Jordan’s tires had made messy muddy skid marks as it had driven over the grass, several pieces of metal and one tire clearly showing the path their car had taken as it had flipped over in the ditch to where it now rested on its crumpled roof.
Krystal squirmed out of the same open window that Amelia had, and Amelia squatted to help her to her feet, noticing only superficial cuts on the girl’s arms.
“You look okay,” Amelia assured her, turning her around. “You’re lucky.”
“You weren’t so lucky,” Krystal observed, touching Amelia’s forehead, where some blood had trickled down from an open scalp wound.
“It’s not serious,” Amelia said. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but it’s nothing to worry about.” She was lying, because she was quite sure that she had a concussion with how much her head was beginning to throb and the fuzziness that was invading the periphery of her vision, but she didn’t want to worry the girl needlessly. She would survive her injuries, provided they escaped the creature that had caused the accident in the first place. She glanced around at their surroundings again suspiciously. It wouldn’t have just left them. What was it waiting for? Was is toying with its prey? Waiting for them to escape the car so that it could play with its food, have a good hunt out of it?
Jordan stumbled out of the front of the car, boasting a nasty cut on his forehead, and blood clouding the whites of one of his eyes. But he was otherwise unharmed. He brushed off his injuries quickly in favor of helping his sister, who was still trapped beneath the wreckage.
“Are you alright?” he asked, getting down on his stomach and looking in the passenger side window at his sister.
“I’m stuck,” Jade announced. “I can’t…damn it! I can’t get this off with my one hand.”
“I’ll help,” Jordan told her in a soothing voice. He glanced back at Amelia, nodding meaningfully at the trees as he returned into the car the same way he’d climbed out so that he could have access to his sister.
“We seem to have gotten off pretty easy,” Amelia commented, wincing as her head pounded all the more relentlessly.
Krystal watched her closely. “I think you’re really hurt, Amelia.” She pulled off her sweater and ripped off a few strips. Amelia let her tie them over the cuts on her head as best she could, but there was no good way to place them and they remained loose. “We have to get you to a hospital.”
“It can wait,” Amelia assured her. “For now, we need to get Jade out of there and then we need to get moving before that creature comes back for us.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a large figure suddenly emerged from the shadows of the trees, leaping through the air gracefully, landing just ten feet shy of where they stood.
Amelia held up a hand as she took in the creature. It was ten feet tall, covered in thick brown fur from its toes to the long muzzle of its face, sharp teeth visible through its snarling lips. Its eyes were a solid yellow with just a pinprick of black at the center, making it seem very inhuman, despite how it stood on its two hind legs like a man. It was obviously well-muscled, with horrible-looking black claws standing at the ready before it, the nails at least an inch and a half long, and narrowed to a point that looked like it could shred through metal. It was very intimidating, especially as its ears lowered atop its head and a low rumble resounded deep in its chest.
Amelia’s eyes narrowed as she saw its legs shift a fraction, bracing to pounce at them. As the creature pushed off the ground, she loosed a strong gust of wind from her outstretched hand, sending it backward into a tall, sturdy pine with a loud crack. She earned a startled whine from the creature for her effort, but it seemed to shake off its injury quickly, blending into the surrounding darkness again with ease.
If she was honest with herself, Amelia realized she wouldn’t be able to offer many more magickal attacks like that. Already, it was growing hard to concentrate. And the effort of summoning the brief strong wind had left her feeling nauseous.
“Ugh,” Jade cried as Jordan helped her from the car. She limped as she stood on her right leg. “Damn it. I think…” Her voice trailed off as she flexed her leg. “It’s not broken. I think it’s just a sprain.”
“A wolf attacked us,” Krystal told them. “ A werewolf.”
Jordan’s eyes widened. “Did you get a good look at it?”
“Yes. It stood on two legs. Thick brown fur. Black claws. Yellow eyes.”
Jade frowned. “Black in the middle of its eyes?”
“Yes.”
Sighing, Jade smiled back at her brother. “Common Australian Lycanthrope. Strong and quick, but not very smart.”
“Do we have any weapons?” Amelia asked.
Jordan frowned as Jade waved the gun she’d stuffed into the waistband of her pants. “There’s no silver in these bullets,” she confessed “but it’ll hurt like hell. Should keep it at bay for a while.”
“I have silver,” Krystal announced, touching the thin necklace at her throat.
Jade smiled. “That won’t be much help here. It’ll hurt him if he touches it, but even that won’t deter him for long.”
“I have a bow and arrows in the trunk,” Jordan said after a moment. “They’re just wooden arrows, nothing fancy, but again, the pain might be enough incentive to keep it away.”
Jade put a hand on his arm. “Wait a minute. This isn’t natural. Sure, Australian Lycanthropes have attacked people in America, but they’re very territorial. They don’t stray far from their dens and don’t move around much. They’re very much like animals, and often act in self-defense, only attacking humans if food is scarce.”
“So, what’s it doing attacking us like this?” Krystal asked.
“That’s the question.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“Maybe it’s adapting,” Amelia suggested. “Or maybe it just found a new home.”
Jade hesitated. “Possibly, but I don’t recall seeing anything in the local news about attacks. Either this is a very new threat and we’re just extremely unlucky to have been its first victims…”
“Or this is an intentional attack,” Jordan finished. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter for the moment. We need to move. We can sort out the whys and hows later.”
“Which way do we go?” Krystal asked, hugging herself. “Back toward the video store? We’re probably closer to that than town.”
“No,” Jade said decisively. “We head into town, where we can lose its scent easier. There’s a river that way and we can throw it off our trail.”
“And maybe we’ll meet some of the others along the way,” Amelia added.
“Agreed,” Jordan said, giving their surroundings a quick once-over. “Let’s get moving then.”
They wasted precious time as Jordan crawled back into the backseat to access the content of his trunk, but everyone felt a little better as they began moving with the bow slung over his shoulder. Even if they didn’t have anything to kill the creature with, they weren’t utterly defenseless.
At first they walked along the ditch, but Jade suggested they take higher ground, and began traveling along the road, in a close-knit group, everybody assigned to watch the forest around them in certain areas. They had a clear view of anything that would try to attack them this way, so couldn’t be taken completely by surprise.
Krystal shivered in the moonlight, eyes vigilantly fastened to the area of the forest on the right of the road that she was in charge of. It was too dark to see anything beyond the first row of trees, but once anything stepped out from the safety they afforded, they would be ready for it. It ma
de her feel a little less vulnerable, at least.
“I see movement on my side,” Jade suddenly said, very calmly despite the tense situation. Krystal glanced over to the left side of the road, where Jade watched, and sure enough, a werewolf stepped out from the treeline, eyes watching them. It was huge, and Krystal felt a bubbling panic build within her.
Then she turned back to her area of forest and drew in a shaky breath, fear freezing her heart, for she saw another werewolf step out from the woods there, as well. “Um, guys?”
Jordan glanced back at her and saw the werewolf, cursing under his breath. “Jade?”
“I’ve got five rounds,” Jade said evenly, not taking her eyes off of the werewolf on her side of the road.
“And I’ve got a dozen arrows,” Jordan said. “Yours will hurt them more, so use them sparingly.”
Krystal saw the werewolf closest to her shift its legs, and suddenly, it was charging them, bounding up the ditch easily. As it reached the asphalt, an arrow slammed into its shoulder, and it howled in pain, dropping back into the ditch, out of sight, but not retreating all the way to the treeline.
Krystal heard a shot go off behind her and twisted to see Jade’s werewolf also retreat into the ditch, although she’d only grazed its arm.
“We aren’t going to last long like this,” Jordan said.
“Agreed,” Jade looked back at him briefly. “They’re making us use up our ammo, then withdrawing to heal before another assault.”
“I thought they weren’t that smart,” Krystal protested.
“They’re not. But they’re not imbeciles either.”
Krystal gasped as the werewolf near her suddenly darted out of its hiding place, taking her by surprise.
Jordan got off an arrow, but it went wild, missing it altogether, meanwhile another gunshot went off behind them.
In the time that it took Jordan to reload his bow, the werewolf was upon them. Krystal screamed, and Jade was suddenly shooting at the wolf that was inches away from Jordan, getting off two shots before deterring the creature, which slunk back into its ditch, And then Jade was suddenly turning and shooting the other werewolf once more, forcing it to retreat as well.
“That was the last of my bullets,” Jade announced, licking her lips and looking back at Jordan.
“I appreciate the save,” Jordan said, smiling at her meaningfully.
Krystal could see from the looks they gave each other that they didn’t think they were going to survive this. “You guys are werewolf hunters. Do something!”
Jordan smiled at her thinly. “We set traps for werewolves and take them out from a distance. We never get this close to a kill. It’s suicide.”
“We don’t stand a chance,” Jade agreed, shaking her head. “All we can hope to do at this point is distract them long enough for you two to escape.”
“Escape?” Krystal blinked. “You mean you guys are just going to sacrifice yourselves so we can run? They’re going to kill us anyway! We could never outrun those things!”
“There aren’t a whole lot of options left here,” Jordan said, eyes sharpening as Krystal noted movement from her side of the ditch again.
“Maybe there are,” Amelia suddenly perked up.
Krystal watched the werewolf rush out of its spot near the ditch once more, Jordan shooting it square in the chest with an arrow that sent it retreating again. Then there was a rustle from the other side of the ditch.
“Do you mind?” Amelia said, grabbing Krystal’s necklace and yanking it off of her neck. Krystal put a hand to her throat, not bothering to answer as Amelia yanked a wooden arrow from Jordan’s quiver, and wrapped the silver chain around the end.
“What…?” Krystal watched in fascination as Amelia tossed the arrow up into the air a few inches and used her wind powers to guide the arrow at a dizzying speed toward the werewolf attacking them from Jade’s side of the road.
The monster roared as the arrow buried itself in its chest, just a few feet from where Jade stood, eyes wide. And then it dropped to its knees, glaring up at them with murder in its burning eyes. It slumped to the ground, landing with a thunk as a naked human man, its bulk and fur disappearing in seconds. Blood oozed out from beneath his chest, the arrow wrapped in silver sticking out of his back with the force of Amelia’s power.
“Holy crap,” Jordan whispered, staring first at the man, then at Amelia. “Good thinking.”
“We’re not finished yet,” Jade warned, eyeing the other side of the road.
Jordan nodded curtly, notching another arrow into the string of his bow.
Amelia walked over to the dead man and yanked on the arrow, trying to dislodge it, but her power had propelled it deep into the man and it wasn’t letting go without another show of power. As she attempted to use the wind to aid her, she suddenly grew pale and fell to the ground.
“Amelia!” Krystal shouted.
Jordan caught her before she hit her head, dropping his bow in the act. The remaining werewolf seized the opportunity to charge them then, leaping at them with renewed ferocity.
“No!” Krystal screamed as it charged at Jade. She felt a warmth in her stomach that rose quickly to consume her entire body. Energy coursed through her veins as she forced the naked man to his feet. She envisioned in her mind what she wanted him to do, as he pulled the arrow out from his heart, out of his chest, releasing a fountain of blood down the front of his body. And then she propelled him toward the other werewolf, who seemed startled at the development, but not enough to give up its prey. The werewolf changed direction and targeted the naked man, and it looked triumphant as it slashed the skin of the man to ribbons with its massive claws, burying its muzzle deep in its throat and tearing it out with terrifying savagery. But none of that mattered to a dead man who could no longer feel anything, and Krystal took advantage of the monster’s distracted bloodlust to have the man shove the arrow into the werewolf’s back, over its heart.
The werewolf roared and bucked, shoving the dead man away from him, where it slammed into Krystal and knocked her to the ground.
The arrow stuck painfully out from the werewolf’s back, where it tried in vain to retrieve it with grasping claws. Jade took the opportunity to carefully round the creature until she was facing its back, whereupon she ran forward and kicked the arrow deeper into the creature with the impact of her running start behind it, sliding it easily through its chest and its dark heart.
A minute later and they stood over a second naked man.
“Well, that worked out better than I expected,” Jordan said, Amelia unconscious in his arms.
Jade nodded, looking down at the man with something like fascination in her eyes, Jordan’s bow slung over her shoulder carelessly. “I’d say.”
“Good job, Krystal,” Jordan glanced up at her. “You saved us.”
“It was nothing,” Krystal assured him, staring down at the blood from the corpse of the first man, which had soiled the front of her outfit. She sighed. “We wouldn’t have gotten very far without Amelia’s power, or her idea.”
“Speaking of which,” Jade said, cleaning some blood away from Amelia’s forehead with some cloth, “we need to get her to a hospital, pronto.”
They concurred, and decided that it would be best to backtrack to the video store to call for help. They were in no shape to help out their comrades.
“I can’t believe we killed two werewolves face-to-face,” Jordan shook his head. “Never though I’d live to see the day.”
Jade snorted. “You forget that we didn’t do a thing.” She gestured to Krystal. “We had a sorceress and a necromancer do all the heavy lifting. If it had been just us, we’d be supper right about now.”
“True,” Jordan considered. “That makes me a little nervous.”
“Oh, yeah?” Krystal looked at him sharply. “Why?”
“Because the other hunters don’t have superpowers in their groups.”
They looked at one an
other silently for a moment.
“So, uh, what do we do with the bodies?” Krystal asked, sending a nervous glance down at the man she’d killed.
“We call it in to The Agency and they take care of it for us,” Jade said with a shrug. “If anyone discovers them until that happens, they’ll take care of the damage control.”
Jordan squinted down at the man in front of Krystal and did a double-take, before bending slightly to take a closer look.
Krystal shuddered as he nudged the body over with his foot, careful to keep Amelia steady in his arms as he did so, so that the man’s front side was exposed, the arrow still jutting grotesquely from his chest. She looked away, but couldn’t help but turn back as Jordan set Amelia down gently on the asphalt before shifting the corpse of the first man as well.
“What is that?” Jade bent over to see better, and Krystal, not wanting to miss anything, did the same, ignoring the fact that she was staring at dead bodies. She closed her eyes as she felt their bodies in her mind, empty vessels that seemed to vibrate within her, much stronger than the little tickles of power she felt from dead animals in the woods. These were strong, fresh bodies, almost electrifying in their strength. Strength that she could tap into, if she had a mind to. She cringed at the perversion of her power, but stood in awe of it as well. She didn’t think she would ever stop being frightened of it.
“See them?” Jordan asked, looking up at Jade, excitement in his face. “These aren’t your typical Australian Lycanthropes after all.”
Krystal stared into the shadows until Jade kneeled in front of one of the men and moved his body so that the full moon provided some light. There on his chest was a blue mark, raised on his skin like a scar, but sparkling in the light of the moon. It was a circle with a curved line going down the center of it. Beneath the fur of the werewolf, they wouldn’t have been able to see it, but on the naked man’s unprotected skin, it stood out starkly against his pale skin.
“They’re marked somehow,” Jade said.
“Duh,” Krystal scowled. “But what does it mean? Were they being controlled?”
Jade looked up at her. “Could be, but their behavior when hunting us seemed pretty typical for their species. They were branded for a reason though, and with it all glowy like that, I’m guessing magick is involved somehow.”
“Too bad Amelia’s out for the count,” Krystal said, peeking over at the redhead, who seemed to be breathing steadily.
“There’ll be plenty of time to figure out what’s going on around here,” Jordan said, scooping Amelia up again with a grunt.
“Never a dull moment,” Krystal snickered, following him up the road.