Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Kelly walked to the bed where Malcolm hung one leg over the side as he pored through the pages. She read over his shoulder.

  The pages were printed from the ‘About’ section of the website for an organisation in Missouri called Salvation. The background was a pale golden yellow. Most of it was text, but there was also a black and white picture of a young, clean-shaven man with a head of thick, dark hair, as though it was a historical site and the picture was over a hundred years old. He even looked old-fashioned in the pastor’s robes he wore. The cutline didn’t reveal his name, just that he was called ‘the Father’.

  That boded well.

  It didn’t get much better.

  Magic is real. It is neither good nor bad, but all magic has consequences, and in those consequences, the nature of the magic is revealed. It is only when we admit the magical gifts within our spirit that we can also acknowledge the ways in which we abuse those gifts.

  This abuse can be intentional, as in the practice of black magic. But the abuse can also be accidental—although still a product of our own weakness as human vessels—such as when we open ourselves to magical curses and demonic possession. See the Dangers page for more information about how you make yourself vulnerable and how to Safeguard your Soul.

  Do not be afraid. You have within you the potential for amazing creative and regenerative power. Most of us never experience this power, but the Father can help you achieve that magical potential.

  The Father invites you to cleanse yourself of whatever darkness has seeped into your soul. The Father’s fearless devotion and love for humanity has saved dark witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves and more. He can deliver you from evil.

  We at Salvation urge you to attend our Wednesday and Saturday services to witness this cleansing for yourselves. Once cleansed, the Father can teach you how to tap into your intrinsic magical gifts. See Abilities for more information about what you can become once all impurities have been purged.

  This is a world at war, a spiritual war, a supernatural war. To dismiss that is to put yourself at risk. Save your immortal soul at Salvation. Return to the Father and find true freedom.

  The second page was a biography of sorts, but it still didn’t name the man calling himself ‘the Father’. Instead, it was surprisingly generic—rural kid moves to the big city for college and acts the Prodigal Son before discovering the seedy underbelly of magic dabbling. Rural kid grows up, grows a conscience, has an epiphany. It was the narrative of every self-styled prophet figure that Kelly had ever read about or encountered.

  Kelly crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned against the wooden walls, waiting for Malcolm to finish. And scoff.

  But when he put the papers down on the bedspread, that damned hope had not faded.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Kelly said.

  She pointed at Ki and Max in turn, holding her anger in as well as she could to keep her fingernails from becoming claws. “I know the two of you think you’re helping him, but you’re really not.” Then she addressed Malcolm, “This is ridiculous.”

  Before any of them could feebly attempt to convince her otherwise, she stormed out, running from the house and transforming as soon as she hit the forest line. Malcolm had already got his run in, but she hadn’t, and now was the perfect fucking time to run away, run far away from the lunacy behind her. There was no way they were going anywhere near an organisation called Salvation headed by a man who wouldn’t even tell anyone his real name.

  When she reached the barbed wire fence, she jumped. At one point, she smelt Damien’s pack, but she veered in the other direction, and they didn’t follow after her. Nor did Malcolm.

  It was almost dawn before she made it back to her trailer. She lowered the window, keeping it open a crack to feel a cold draught then turned on the space heater in her room for Butch Cassidy. Kelly peeked under the blankets and smiled weakly at the glint of his bright eyes. She crawled under the quilts with him. He nestled against her stomach. She was as good as the space heater while Butch Cassidy waited for the room to warm up.

  She couldn’t sleep.

  This time the feeling was more than just a feeling, but the future was still vague, and she clenched her fist in the sheets beneath her. What good was this stupid gift if it didn’t show her what was going to happen when it actually mattered?

  * * * *

  She got maybe two hours of sleep before the knocking started. Butch Cassidy, who had moved to the corner of the bed nearest the space heater, yowled to re-emphasise that there was someone at the door and that his stomach was woefully empty.

  Kelly rubbed her eyes. She had a headache.

  “It’s open!” she shouted. With resentful reluctance, she folded the quilt down, wincing at the sunlight coming through the window and the skylight.

  Malcolm came in wearing his jeans, a flannel shirt and a sheepish expression.

  “Before you do anything, could you feed that cat before he decides my fingers are edible?” Kelly asked. “And a coffee wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “Yeah,” Malcolm replied. “I’ll do that. Don’t get up. I just want to talk.”

  Kelly pulled her quilt back over her head and closed her eyes. She could have probably drifted back to sleep, but now Malcolm’s wish to talk was strong enough that her brain stayed conscious.

  About fifteen minutes later, Malcolm came back in with a mug of coffee. She sighed and sat up against the makeshift headboard.

  “I don’t know how you take it,” Malcolm said after he’d given her the coffee. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

  “There’s creamer in the cupboard there right next to you. Two, please.”

  He tossed the creamers onto the dip of the blanket over her lap.

  Kelly gestured to the foot of the bed. “You can sit. I’m not mad. A little frustrated, but I’m hardly going to gouge your eyes out over something so common as stupidity.”

  “I want to apologise for yesterday,” Malcolm said. “I’m pretty sure I stepped in multiple piles of shit from morning to midnight.”

  Kelly sipped her coffee. “You’re not wrong. Some of it wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, it was. Like you said—if it’s true—the beast is me. And I’ve got to admit I’m not always the most pleasant person to be around. Even when I wasn’t a beast,” Malcolm said.

  “I don’t expect you to be able to control yourself right out of the gate,” Kelly said.

  “And when should I expect to be able to control myself?” Malcolm asked.

  “Depends on the person,” Kelly said. “It can take up to a year for the average new wolf. According to Ki, you were the quiet, solitary, brooding type before, which I can’t imagine at all. That usually means you internalize deep conflicts under those still waters, and the wolf just doesn’t let you do that. Marvel at my armchair psychology.”

  “I don’t like to share my problems,” Malcolm said. “But lately it’s been really hard not to.”

  “I understand, believe me.”

  “Then you understand why I’ve got to go to see this man.”

  Kelly lowered her mug. “You mean you need to go see the Father to cleanse your soul?”

  Malcolm hid his eyes behind his hand. “Yeah. You know, when you say it like that…”

  “It’s what he calls himself,” Kelly said. “You know this is complete quackery.”

  “Probably.”

  “This place can’t cure you. If there was magic that could cure lycanthropy, I’d probably have heard about it from any number of the covens I talked with,” Kelly said.

  “Look,” Malcolm said, “I know it’s the stupidest thing in the world.”

  “What about that description is attractive? There are ‘massive cult’ red flags all over it. It’s like a cross between a pyramid scheme and a Great Awakening revival.”

  “I need to try,” Malcolm said, not meeting her eyes. His voice was low, as though he loathed having to say it.

  “N
o,” Kelly said. “No, you don’t.”

  Kelly swallowed a few gulps of her coffee and put it on the windowsill behind her then crawled forward in the bed so that he couldn’t look away from her.

  “I wasn’t too bad as a kid,” she said. “Most of the stuff that went down back then was dismissed as bad luck by people who didn’t have to live with me. But my parents did have to live with me, so they got to see the pattern. They got to thinking that I was possessed or that there was some kind of poltergeist haunting me. They took me to these tent revivals. I don’t even know how they found out about them, but I guess when you’re desperate enough, you’ll find whatever you need to find. We drove all over the country, wherever the faith healers and the amateur exorcists advertised their services.

  “I had a lot of hands placed on me, a lot of ‘in the name of Jesus, I cast you outs,’ a lot of dunking into rivers, a few vials of snake oil. Not one of them managed to scare me straight. The magic stayed right where it wanted to stay, and Mom and Dad always brought me back more and more discouraged every time, several hundred dollars more in debt.

  “I’m telling you this,” Kelly said, “because there will always be someone claiming they can fix you. But lycanthropy, like my magic, can’t be fixed. As long as you prolong this delusion that it can, you’re going to be as abjectly miserable as I was for a good portion of my life.”

  “But you want to be a werewolf,” Malcolm said. “If you didn’t, would you be willing to go?”

  “Don’t assume I’d choose this life if it were up to me,” Kelly replied. “If I could shed the wolf skin and about ninety-five per cent of the magic, then maybe I’d feel better. But right now, I’m at peace with the fact that not everyone gets to choose everything about their life. It’s like that prayer on what you can change and what you can’t and knowing which one is which.”

  Malcolm put a hand on her knee over the blankets.

  “You have your history and I have mine,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. One trip. That’s all I’m asking. If it turns out to be a dud, we can come back and I’ll start figuring out how to live with this. And I’d like you to come with me, not Ki and Max.”

  “Why me?” Kelly asked. It was a full question, given that Salvation was the kind of place that Malcolm had already heard gave her bad memories—not to mention Kelly had made it perfectly clear she was trying to help Malcolm get used to his werewolf, not get rid of it.

  “More selfishness,” Malcolm said sheepishly.

  Kelly peered at him then laughed. “You don’t just want another werewolf on hand to keep you from wolfing out on the people there. You want someone to protect you. You want a magical bodyguard in case something goes wrong on that end.”

  “Guilty as charged. What can I say, Miss Kelly? You’re a formidable woman,” Malcolm said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Kelly said. “Well, flattery doesn’t get you everywhere.”

  Malcolm took her hand this time, engulfed it in his much larger one. “Please. One trip. You can rib me as much as you want on the way there and even more on the way back, since it’s probably a scam.”

  Kelly sighed. She didn’t need prophecy to know that this was a bad idea. As a matter of fact, the first prophetic warnings were stirring in her stomach like awakened butterflies.

  “And if I tell you that this will end badly?” Kelly asked. “With dead certainty that this is a place we don’t want to be going?”

  “I couldn’t sleep last night,” Malcolm replied. “I couldn’t even shut my eyes. I kept imagining what it would be like if it worked and wondering if I was missing my chance.”

  He implored her, holding tightly to her hand in a silent plea.

  “I’m going to regret this,” Kelly said. “And being prophetic, I’m in the unique position of being able to guarantee that.”

  “Thank you,” Malcolm said, kissing the back of her hand with disarming earnestness. “Thank you.”

  “So, we’re heading to Salvation to ask the Father to purge you of lycanthropy,” she said with a sigh.

  “Do you have to put it that way?” Malcolm asked.

  “What?” Kelly said as she reached for her coffee again. “You do realise those are their words, not mine.”

  He groaned. “You’re right. I’m going to regret this.”

  “But we’re still going.”

  “I have to,” he said apologetically.

  “I know,” she replied. “And I can’t stop you. I see that now.”

  When Malcolm left her trailer, she finished her coffee and absentmindedly stroked Butch Cassidy. Above the nausea rolling about in her stomach, Kelly felt at the brink of a connection, but it eluded her. She wished she could read her mind the way she read other people’s, but it just didn’t work that way.

  She shook her head in frustration. There was one thing she was sure of, though.

  “Events are set in motion,” she whispered. “God help us.”

  Chapter Seven

  After being assured several times over that Renee and Britt would take care of Butch Cassidy while she was away, Kelly handed the cat to Renee. She scratched Butch Cassidy’s scarred chin, brushing against his protruding canines. She’d take him along, but he was an outdoor cat, and on this trip he would have to be cooped up for several days in a small trailer, which seemed like a recipe for a small disaster.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him,” Renee said, mostly hiding her amusement. “We took good care of him before you came, you know, and he still tolerates us.”

  “I know,” Kelly said. “I’ve just grown to like the munchkin.”

  “He has that effect,” Renee said.

  “You ever think that the reason we were never able to adopt him out before was because he was waiting for you?” Britt said with a smile. “Don’t worry about him.”

  Ki, Max and Malcolm walked out of the log cabin. Ki kissed Malcolm on the cheek, then on the lips, imbuing the gesture with the hope that she and Malcolm shared, a promise of what could be if he returned well. Kelly had to look away. She heard Max clap his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder in the traditional one-armed hug standard these days between men attempting to be stoic. Jake and Leslie came out of the cabin as well and waited on the porch with Ki and Max.

  “You want to sit in the truck with me or in the trailer?” Kelly asked.

  “Truck,” Malcolm replied, coming up behind Britt and Renee. Malcolm brushed the small of Renee’s back.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Renee said. She was not as good at hiding her scepticism as she was her amusement.

  “Me, too. And I’m sorry. I’ve been an absolute monster to you. I was the one who went out to confront Grant. That was my decision,” Malcolm said.

  “I hold some of the blame,” Renee said. “It wasn’t right to let Grant stay. But it’s mostly Grant’s fault. I try to remember that.”

  “I know. It’s just that Grant’s dead. I can’t kill him again for what he’s done,” Malcolm said.

  “I’d let you get a shot in if I could,” Renee said. She flinched a little when Malcolm put his arm around her shoulder, but he’d know that was just a reflex that had nothing to do with him being a werewolf, and she didn’t pull away.

  Britt rubbed Malcolm’s upper arm. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. See you all in a few days,” Malcolm said.

  They all waved as Malcolm followed Kelly down to the trailer, which was already hooked up to the truck.

  “It’s roughly an eight or nine-hour drive,” Kelly said.

  She climbed into the driver’s seat, and Malcolm pulled himself into the passenger seat. It was an old pickup. The springs of the seats were a little squeaky, the fabric worn down and the mileage criminal, but it was serviceable, good for a few more years.

  “We don’t have to get there tonight,” Malcolm replied. “The service isn’t until Saturday evening.”

  “Damn right we don’t have to get there tonight,” Kelly said. “If you
think I’m driving eight hours on two hours of sleep, you’ve got another think coming. I need my zees.”

  “I got less sleep than you. Believe me, we can break up the trip.”

  As they passed the threshold from the dog sanctuary to the concrete road, Damien’s pack stepped out from behind the trees. Malcolm immediately tensed. Kelly put a hand on his knee.

  “Thought I smelt you coming closer,” Jada said. “Leaving without saying goodbye?” She was a little calmer than when Kelly had last seen her, so Damien must have reassured her that her position in the pack was secure.

  “We’re just going on a little trip,” Kelly replied through the open window.

  “How long is a little?” Damien asked. He glanced between Kelly and Malcolm, who couldn’t look at him. Damien narrowed his eyes.

  “A few days,” Kelly said. “As soon as we get back, we’ll have an answer for you. Won’t we, Malcolm?”

  Malcolm turned his attention to what was outside his window. He nodded.

  “Okay, even I know something’s going on,” Tanya said, leaning against Kelly’s door. She peered in at Malcolm. Her black braids swung freely, the beads at the base clinking against the steel. “What’s up, big guy? We scare you?”

  “We’re just going to visit a witch doctor to see if he can get the curse reversed,” Kelly said brightly. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Jeremy, a somewhat scrawny, sickly-looking man who shaved his head to hide his receding hairline, snorted. “Seriously?”

  Damien bared his teeth, but his aggression was more defensive than offensive.

  “Wolf not good enough for you?” Damien asked Malcolm. “No wonder you can’t win against me.”

  “He used to be shapeshifter,” Kelly said. “Give him a break.”

  Damien slowly retreated. Kelly could tell that he understood, but he didn’t show it for Malcolm’s benefit. Damien was proud of his lycanthropy. He wouldn’t be alpha if he weren’t.

  “You’re not getting that nonsense done, are you, Kelly?” Lily asked, putting an arm around Tanya’s waist. Against Tanya, her skin seemed light, but against Kelly’s, it was dark.