As soon as Colby had done the same thing, I eagerly got out to stretch my legs. I watched as Sam shifted into his bear and loped away. Colby stood by his door and stripped naked before shifting into his large brown wolf and running after him.
“Rozene, are you hungry?” Hunting Wolf asked.
“I could eat.”
Together, we unloaded the folding chairs and portable tables we had packed. Cecil helped, but I avoided making small talk with him or eye contact for that matter. Instead, I evaded him by cutting apple slices to go with our sandwiches. Seeing through me, yet again, Cecil said something to Hunting Wolf in another language, one I didn’t know. Hunting Wolf replied to him, and I became truly annoyed at having been purposefully excluded. Yes, it was hypocritical of me.
“Don’t be angry. I’ve been teaching Cecil and Sam a few of the words we used long ago,” Hunting Wolf patiently explained.
Cecil smiled, and I blushed. “There is a question you wish to ask,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if the medicine man would know the answer, but it was worth a shot. “You know about Elizabeth.”
Cecil nodded.
“Holden bit her, claiming her, but she really isn’t herself any longer. It’s me, wearing her skin. I’m not Holden’s mate. How do I get her form to realize it?” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my tone. Whenever I shifted into Elizabeth’s form and Holden was near, a mating lust consumed me. So far, I had managed to fight against it with the strength of my reason, but I worried my conviction might not be enough. I sure couldn’t depend on Holden to do the right thing and be a gentleman. He’d done it once, but I wasn’t putting my faith in him to do it again.
Hunting Wolf took my hand in his to comfort me.
Then, surprisingly, Cecil looked to him for an answer to my question.
“I do not know. My brothers and I have pondered this problem. None of our Wendigoag forms has ever suffered the indignity of a forced mating by a male werewolf.”
When I realized he was attempting to be humorous, I gave him a stern look so he’d know in how much trouble he was getting.
“I have spoken of this problem with Chief Stillwater. Neutering is the preferred solution. However, Holden’s testicles would grow back.” Cecil shrugged.
“You’re both teasing me? Seriously? I need help. I made my wedding vows to you, Sam, and Colby, not only with my mouth but with my mind and soul. It wasn’t just a promise to each of you but one to myself and God. I can fight Holden’s influence in my heart and mind, but his control over Elizabeth’s form, when I assume it, is becoming overpowering. I’d never forgive myself if I was unfaithful because of the effects of his bite on her hormones. Please. What can I do?” My speech had the desired effect and made them more serious.
Holding out a lawn chair for me, Hunting Wolf said, “All you can do is your best when faced with temptation. You have been honest and forthcoming with us about your feelings for Holden. I have considered unmaking him more than once. It would be wrong to do such a thing for my own selfish reasons, especially when he is attempting to become a better person. You understand what the unmaking does to us here and here.” He tapped his fingers to his temple and his chest. “He has been guilty of offensive treatment toward you in the past. However, he has also protected and defended you. At first, he wanted to prove he could have you. Now, I believe his motives have changed, and I pity him.”
My jaw dropped in shock. Hunting Wolf filled it with an apple slice and smiled. After I had finished chewing, I asked, “You pity Holden?”
With a sad smile, he said, “Finally to understand what love is and to feel it and not to have it returned is a feeling to be pitied.”
“You think Holden loves me?” I snorted in disbelief. Then, I caught sight of Sam and Colby running back to us.
Sam seamlessly shifted and pulled out a chair. He downed half a beer and took a big bite out of one of his sandwiches. “There’s a path about a mile ahead. It leads down the side of the overpass. The grass makes it hard to see. We have to drive across the feeder road and take a detour through a few neighborhoods before turning back and returning to the highway about ten miles down. The other roads are clogged with abandoned vehicles.” He gestured off in the distance using his beer for emphasis.
After dressing by his truck, Colby joined us. We ate our lunch, packed up, and journeyed along the route they had scouted. We drove throughout the day until we discovered a small farming town which had managed to survive. It didn’t have a motel or much else to offer, but we were welcomed to camp in the town’s park which was adjacent to its school. The park’s facilities, which had clean, functional restrooms, were a perk. The five of us set up camp and enjoyed a dinner of grilled hotdogs. I was proud of Sam’s cooking skills and glad he had thought to bring along a portable grill. When the time arrived to go to sleep, I crawled inside of Sam’s bag with him.
“Hey? Why are you sleeping with him and not me?” Colby complained.
“Oh, muzzle it. You had her to yourself all day,” Sam said.
“Well, to be fair, you can ride with her tomorrow. Hunting Wolf can keep me company.”
“Excellent idea,” Sam said.
“Not in my opinion,” a disgruntled Hunting Wolf interjected.
An annoyed Cecil called out from within his tent, “I will ride with Mr. Reeves. Now, let an old man get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said. He held me a little tighter, so I yawned and snuggled closer.
The next morning before sunrise, we packed up, refueled at the town’s gas station, enjoyed a big breakfast at its diner, and got back on the road. After two hours, Sam turned his full attention on me. “Is this how you and Colby passed the time?”
I smiled and nodded. “He sang to me, too.” I was seated between Sam and Hunting Wolf. “Okay. My turn. I spy with my little eye something green.”
Hunting Wolf groaned. He wasn’t good at it. I patted his knee. He’d get better with practice.
Once we had crossed the border into New Mexico, the men became far more serious. We had stopped for a lunch and comfort break at an overgrown rest area.
Cecil patted the top of a stone picnic table. “Come, sit here.” He had a leather bag slung across his chest. I sat and watched as he pulled out a comb, wondering what he was doing. “You were at Duke’s when he gave your friends the medicine bags I made for them.”
“Yes, sir.” Duke was Sam’s cousin, so I guessed that made him my cousin through marriage. Smiling, I thought about Aponi. I was quite pleased to have a sister.
Cecil took a lock of hair from behind my ear, combed it, and started braiding it. Into the braid, he added feathers and beads, tying off the finished product with a thin leather cord. “Change into your other self.”
My eyes found Hunting Wolf’s. He was busy heating up cans of chili in a pot on our portable grill, but he gave me a nod of his head to signal that I should comply with Cecil’s request. “Do as he asks, Rozene. Sophia is powerful. We need all of the help we can get to protect ourselves from her dark and twisted magic.”
“Can he protect you?” I asked. I glanced over at Sam and Colby. They were occupied with refilling their gas tanks from the fuel cans we had brought along.
“There is greater darkness within me than there is within the bruja,” Hunting Wolf said.
“No, you’re full of light and goodness. I can prove it, too.”
“Oh, how?” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“If you were evil, would love be able to find its way into your heart and fill it, like the love you feel for me?”
Furrows formed on his brow. “Rozene,” he said in a gruff voice as he returned his attention to the chili he was stirring.
I had won that argument.
Cecil watched me with a smile on his lips. Knowing what he wanted, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated on Elizabeth. Some unseen force felt as though it latched onto each of my molecules, yanked me forward like magnets snapping together, an
d then repelled me back. Opening my eyes, I saw the black, stretchy cargo pants into which I had dressed her. Seemingly unaffected by my shift into another woman, Cecil began carefully combing through her hair. He hummed as he did so, and I managed to relax while he braided her hair. After he had created braids at each temple and decorated them with feathers and beads, he pulled those pieces back adding them to another single braid down her back.
Cecil’s humming faded away like a dying wind. “There you go. That should keep both of your forms safe from evil brujas.”
I gave a startled jump and clutched at my left shoulder. It tingled like crazy as if electric ants were line dancing under my skin. My eyes went wide.
“Shit! Change back!” Colby ordered.
Willing Elizabeth away, I once again stared down at my own jeans and then up from them into Cecil’s eyes. “What was that? I felt like I got zapped.”
Cecil said, “When I stopped singing my song of protection, you acted as though you had been shocked.”
Colby strode over to us, a serious expression on his handsome face, with Sam at his side. “That was Holden’s power. You felt it where he bit you. Didn’t you? He’s claimed Elizabeth as his. You must have kept her hidden somehow during the chanting you were doing because I didn’t sense her either, but once you stopped I sure did. Now, he’s gonna know right where we are, and he’s gonna know exactly what we’re up to.” A stick snapped from somewhere within the woods, and all of us heard it. Colby shifted into his wolf, and with his fangs bared in a furious snarl, he charged off after whatever had made it.
Hunting Wolf said, “It’s not safe here. Fill up your bowls. After Colby returns, I think we should leave.” He took a shovel from the truck and got to work burying the coals.
Taking his advice, I made Colby a bowl of chili and set it aside. Then, we quickly ate and packed up. We got inside of the trucks and waited for him to come back. When Colby loped into view as his massive brown wolf, blood covered his muzzle. The sight filled me with an instinctual terror, but I kept reminding myself that it was Colby. I watched him through the driver’s side window of his truck with a clean change of his clothes folded on the seat beside me.
Rolling down the window, I said to the wolf, “I’m driving. Shift and get in.”
Ignoring me, he trotted over to Sam’s truck, lifted his leg, and peed all over Sam’s window. It dripped down the door to make a puddle in the weed-riddled gravel. Then, he jumped up onto the hood, showed his fangs, and growled. Whatever it was he had eaten in the woods had brought out a wildness in him. I realized that Colby was no longer in control. My stomach sank. This was exactly what Colby feared. It was the reason he limited the time he spent with his family.
“Colby, get over here! Do you hear me? Right now!” I yelled while putting all of the emotion I felt into my words, willing him to obey and knowing he wanted to do so. An odd sensation accompanied my words. It was as though my will had become a tangible thing, an insistence he couldn’t ignore. Hopping down from the truck, he came to me with his head down and his tail between his legs. “Change back into yourself and get dressed this instant. Your chili is getting cold.” Again, I felt the force of my will nudging Colby to do as I demanded. The wolf struggled to obey as though it wanted to submit but couldn’t. I pushed my desire for his obedience harder. My left shoulder, not Elizabeth’s, began to tingle, like Holden’s magic had seeped from her and into me, and it frightened me. “Oh, shit,” I said as Colby’s startled blue eyes met mine. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. He walked over to the passenger door, opened it, and started dressing without a word.
“What the hell was that?” Sam asked over the CB radio.
Climbing inside, Colby took the microphone and said, “It was a wolf from Pascal’s pack, spying on and tracking us. We fought, and I won. He won’t be giving away our location, but where there’s one, there’s ten or more.”
Sam said, “We need to get to a town and ask around for Sophia.” After opening up the windshield wiper fluid to rinse off the werewolf pee from his truck, Sam drove off with me following behind him.
Colby sat, deep in thought, and grinding his jaw. He didn’t seem inclined to speak of what had privately passed between us, so I didn’t bring it up, nor did I try to entice him into any games. It was probably best if I concentrated on my driving anyway.
Chapter Three
The town in which we eventually found ourselves had a minuscule population comprised of distrustful individuals. While my men filled the gas tanks and the fuel cans, Cecil and I went inside the store. The place appeared to be the local hangout for the past-their-prime set. A few people sat at tables along the windows with cups of coffee and ashtrays in front of them, watching and waiting for something, anything to happen, and now we had their attention. While I paid for the gas, Cecil discovered something of interest to him which had been stored in wooden bins near the register. He filled a couple of paper bags with the dried brown leaves.
When it was his turn to pay, I said to the cashier, “I’m looking for a woman who lives out here, but I don’t know her actual address. Would you please be so kind as to give me directions?”
The cashier was a middle-aged man with tattoos covering both of his arms. His attitude screamed, “Fuck with me and die screaming.” The shotgun mounted on the wall behind him seemed to agree. I smiled sweetly at him. “That depends. Who are you looking for?”
“She’s an older lady who goes by the name of Sophia.”
Behind me, I heard a cup clatter and then fall, shattering to the floor.
In a far less confident tone, the cashier asked, “What do you want with her? It might be best to leave her alone and not to trouble her.”
With what I hoped was a professional and courteous smile, I said, “What I want with her is personal. I’m sure you understand.” I slid a twenty across the counter to him and watched as a bead of sweat slid from his black hairline down his temple.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said quietly.
“You’ll get none from us. I didn’t want any trouble either, but sometimes trouble has a way of finding us when we’re not looking.” I slid another twenty across to him.
He whispered, “She lives north of here about sixty miles away. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
At that very moment, something banged against the store’s door. The patrons cried out in fright. Startled, I turned my head to see what had hit the door. Then, I wished I hadn’t looked. A black crow had flown hard enough into the glass door to crack its head open. A smear of blood was left behind on the glass. It led a trail down to the cracked cement sidewalk where black wings and feathers stuck out in odd directions from the dead bird.
Cecil pulled something from his leather pouch, dried herbs of some sort. Lighting the bundle, he chanted while slowly walking around inside of the store, leaving fragrant smoke in his wake. The cashier and his customers had faces bleached by terror, but Cecil’s actions seemed to have a calming effect upon them. Sam held up a hand from outside. He wanted me to stay where I was. I watched as he walked over to a patch of grass and started digging a hole with the shovel we had brought. After he had buried the bird, he gave me a thumbs up. I followed Cecil outside where he waved the smoking bundle around the door and chanted. His singing was louder and seemed to vibrate with some unseen power while he walked around the bird’s grave. A sudden chill raised the hair on my arms.
Standing at my side, Colby said, “That’s some creepy shit.”
“Very. A man inside had just told us where to find her,” I whispered.
“No, I mean that.” He pointed up to the worthless telephone wires. Hundreds of black crows were perched upon it and watching us. They didn’t move, not even to adjust their feet or wings.
Hunting Wolf said, “Get in the truck.” He climbed in after me, placing me between him and Colby.
Sam and Cecil got in the other truck where I was sure he was giving Sam directions to Sophia. Colby started up his
truck and followed them. She knew we were coming and had killed the crow as a warning of what she would do to us. “Are you scared?” I asked them.
“I’m on edge. After seeing what she’s capable of with the Chenoo, I’m worried about how she might retaliate,” Colby admitted.
“Fear no evil. Your fear and terror will strengthen the bruja. We face her, not for ourselves but to protect the innocent. We are striking now while she is weak,” Hunting Wolf said.
As the miles went by, I watched Sam’s taillights while outside it grew considerably darker. We were driving up a hill. Tall trees towered over us to either side with their branches touching above the road. “No, this isn’t scary,” I said sarcastically. It got even darker until it seemed like night. Then, something dropped down on our windshield. It was brown, so it wasn’t rain. Another and another joined the first. “Are they dead leaves?” I asked while squinting at them.
“No,” Hunting Wolf said gravely.
“Aw, fuck,” Colby exclaimed.
I stared at the windshield in confusion which rapidly transformed into revulsion. Leaves didn’t have legs and wings. “Oh, no! No, no, no!” I shook my head. “Screw Sophia. Turn the fuck around. Let’s go home.”
More and more of the tree roaches fell from above and onto our trucks until ahead of us, Sam was forced to come to a stop. They blackened the sky and covered all of our windows. Colby turned on his windshield wipers. “Well, that didn’t help,” he said as some of the nasty bugs left yellow smears across the glass.
I gagged. “Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” I yelled. I pushed my back into the seat and lifted up my feet. A large cockroach was crawling into the cab through the air vent. Its antenna moved while it tried to make its way inside with us.
Colby shut off the heat and closed the air vents on his side while Hunting Wolf shut the others. My hands wouldn’t be going anywhere near them. “You got into a fistfight with Elizabeth once, but you’re scared of a bug that can’t hurt you?” Hunting Wolf asked.
Wendigo Conjuring Page 3