Candace’s relief was visible. Stella knew the girl’s real father, Aloysius, had withheld medical and emotional attention his children desperately needed. It was understandable that Candace would fear having it taken away. “Whatever it takes to keep you feeling safe,” Stella added.
“You make us feel safe, Mom,” Candace said, as Emmie crawled over and scrunched up against her on the wall side. “Thank you for taking care of us.” The earnestness in Candace’s eyes, the ferocity of her hug, swelled Stella’s heart.
Emmie joined the hug, radiating the same gratitude.
Bernard stepped in with a storybook, smiling at the huddle. “Hey, me too!” He playfully covered Stella and the girls, mashing them into the bed and eliciting a chorus of giggles. He relinquished them quickly, careful not to make them feel trapped, or remind them of a closed bedroom with a terrible predator implacably tearing its way to them.
Bravo took his nightly post in the bedroom doorway, where he had a good view in all directions.
* * * *
Rushing into the barn, Yoshida met the glowing gaze of the werewolf Aura and felt a weird relief that she was safe. But he couldn’t help feeling her howl had been meant for him. A summons—or a test of his will.
“Thank you, Deputy Yoshida.” Ysabella said. “Just put them down anywhere.”
“Matilda had quite a stock here.” Maisie, wearing an expression of mild alarm, appeared from between two of the shelving units with an armful of bottles, decanters, and wooden boxes. “No one should have most of these things. For any reason.”
“It cost her.” Ysabella had McGlazer open her case on a scarred worktable.
“Reverend, there is a hand pump outside. Would you fill this?” Maisie handed McGlazer a tin bucket that had to be fifty years old. “And consecrate it?”
McGlazer considered telling her he was neither Catholic nor altogether certain that a blessing from him—or anyone—would “take.” He decided to just do as asked, an act of politeness, if not faith.
Ysabella pointed to a row of bundled roots hanging from the rafters and asked Hudson to get them down. As he did, he discreetly watched Yoshida, sensing his friend’s growing agitation. He also noticed that Aura had stopped moving. She pricked her ears toward any small sound—but never took her gaze off Yoshida.
The witches cast a circle—five white candles—around the cage at about a dozen feet from each other. In a well-rehearsed chorus of commanding tones, they called on spirits of the elements and directions.
“All right.” Ysabella gave Hudson a look of dread. “Please open the cage.”
* * * *
“That’s a bad idea, lady,” warned Yoshida, regarding Ysabella’s order to open the cage.
“I’m afraid you’ll like my next idea even less,” Ysabella said, as she accepted a large clay jar from Maisie. “We need her brought out of the cage.”
When she opened the jar, an alien odor hit their nostrils like a shock wave. Ysabella was the only one who did not show disgust as she took a sniff and handed it back to Maisie. “Her muzzle must be removed also.”
Hudson and Yoshida exchanged a leery glance, as Hudson handed Reverend McGlazer the dart gun. “You can still shoot, right, Rev?”
McGlazer nodded and raised the weapon. As Hudson unlocked the cage hasp, Aura lowered her ears and issued a deep growl that rumbled in his bones. Judging by McGlazer’s expression, it reached him as well.
Hudson and Yoshida took hold of the loop of chain around her shoulders and dragged her forward, halfway out of the cage. “She hasn’t gotten any lighter.”
Ysabella dowsed her own face, neck and arms from the bucket of blessed water, then stepped forward without hesitation, knelt, and slowly reached out with both hands. Aura growled stronger and deeper as Ysabella’s fingers made contact just under the ears. “Remove the strap.”
Though she didn’t move at all, Aura continued to growl as Hudson unfastened the buckle of the makeshift muzzle. He kept the strap pulled taut, sure she would bite his hand the very instant he relinquished it.
“I won’t be able to shoot her fast enough to keep her from biting,” McGlazer told the witch. Realizing the rifle was trembling in his hands, the preacher felt admiration for Ysabella’s steel nerves.
“Now, please,” Ysabella whispered. Hudson unwrapped the strap and eased it off, relieved—and shocked—when the beast did not snap.
Ysabella remained poised and steady, her expression as placid as a pond. “You are ready to come out now,” she whispered.
Aura peeled back her black lips to show teeth larger and sharper than any of them had ever seen. The vibration of her snarl had saliva drops dancing like moths on the ivory needlepoints.
As Ysabella’s fingers and palms spread over the wolf’s lean jowls, her growls grew louder, drowning out Ysabella’s whispered litany.
Aura’s eyes rolled in their sockets, then stopped on Yoshida.
“Come out, Aura.” Ysabella dug her fingers into the wolf’s fur. “Face your fate.”
Yoshida felt righteous anger rise in his veins—on behalf of the she-wolf.
How dare this arrogant woman try to manipulate destiny.
…What…?
Given his long-standing contempt of the murderous, very human criminal Aura, Yoshida was alarmed by his own sudden empathy for her.
“Come on,” he mumbled. “Hurry it up…” Yoshida was betting and hoping that the reversal of Aura’s transformation would sever whatever this link was that made him feel more under her control by the minute.
Hudson saw him trembling, wincing, mumbling.
Ysabella began to show signs of stress as well—shaking hands, fluttering eyelids. “The salve,” whispered the petite elder witch.
Maisie already had it in her hands, rubbing them together vigorously. She leaned forward behind Ysabella and began working the strange-smelling concoction onto the monster’s forehead. Aura snarled louder, her right eye wide-open and straining to focus on Yoshida with desperation and insistence.
Hudson checked on McGlazer. The minister’s knuckles were white from his grip on the rifle.
“Pray for her,” Maisie told the shocked minister. He blinked back at her, as if not understanding.
Ysabella’s entire body now shook with the vibration of Aura’s snarls. Still, she rubbed the salve into the wolf’s face as Maisie continued to slather it around her fingers.
“Are you . . ?” Hudson didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“We have to pull her out of there,” Maisie explained. “Quite literally.”
Seeing McGlazer’s shocked face and Yoshida sweating like a salad-hater in a sauna, Hudson felt a surreal kind of aloneness, like an out-of-body experience.
“Come here,” Ysabella whispered like a midwife. “Come out.”
Aura’s savage snarls became more strident, pained instead of fearful and angry.
Yoshida subtly mirrored the wolf’s distress. Hudson had the feeling that if something wasn’t done about Yoshida soon…
“Unchain her,” said Ysabella, her voice presenting strain that her expression did not.
“Um…have you lost your mind, lady?” Hudson asked.
“I have her immobilized,” Ysabella said softly. “I think.”
Keeping his weight on her thick back, Hudson drew the keys from his pocket and gingerly reached for the padlock connected to the chain over the blanket near her shoulder blades. “Say when.”
Maisie leaned in over Ysabella’s shoulder, a good-sized glob of the stinky ointment in each hand. Aura’s howls suddenly became gurgling pants.
Yoshida reached for his sidearm, taking a step toward them.
“Yosh!” Hudson barked. “Stand down. Let them work.”
Yoshida maintained eye contact with the beast, as his trembling hand hovered over his weapon.
“Yosh,” mumbled Hudson. “What the hell are you doing?”
The deputy snapped his head sharply from the wolf’s gaze once again, as her throat swelled like a bullfrog’s.
Ysabella put her hand on this sudden growth and stroked it toward her. “Come out here, Aura.” Ysabella’s tone was soft yet commanding. Maisie raised her voice, chanting a series of strange old words, faster and louder with each repetition.
Ysabella raised her left hand for Maisie to generously coat with the balm. Then she formed a spearhead with her fingers—and thrust her hand into the wolf’s mouth.
“Good God…” Hudson thought it was an internal exclamation, and maybe it was. But Maisie sharply shushed him.
As Ysabella forced her hand deeper and deeper, the werewolf made garbled, almost human sounds of anguish. Its eyes went full white.
Yoshida kept his head turned away, his eyelids crushed shut. He trembled and gnashed, his face distorting into a mask of agony that nearly matched the rolling-eyed wolf beast.
A gallon of blood burst and splashed out around Ysabella’s arm, now fully a foot deep in the monster’s maw. The crone remained calm, focused. “I have you.”
Yoshida fell to his knees, violently convulsing.
Reverend McGlazer ran to the deputy, setting down the rifle.
“Hold her neck, Deputy Hudson!” stammered Maisie. “Tight as you can!”
Hudson wrapped his arms around the giant neck, keeping an eye on Yoshida. “He okay?”
“He might be having a seizure,” Reverend McGlazer answered, prying at the deputy’s steel-trap-clenched teeth.
“He’ll be fine,” murmured Maisie.
Ysabella’s expression finally took on a hint of alarm, maybe even doubt.
Hudson tried to ignore the unreal sensation of writhing he felt beneath Aura’s hide, so much like Leticia’s belly in late-term pregnancy—writ much larger, and decidedly less poignant.
“Here we…are…” Ysabella said, as she began to withdraw her arm from the lycanthrope’s gullet.
Slick-scarlet, Ysabella’s dainty wrist and hand emerged. She had hold of something.
A hand. Hudson had the horrifying thought that Ysabella was dragging out the arm of someone Aura had eaten.
Ysabella clasped this larger hand with both of hers, straining to pull. “Come…out!”
“Come out!” repeated Maisie.
The pale hand, now connected to an arm streaked with blood, continued to issue from the monster’s snout till it was just past the elbow.
The wolf’s body shook so hard it blurred Hudson’s vision. He was grateful for this.
The animal’s gurgle suddenly became the scream of a woman violently giving birth. Fresh blood sprayed from the edges of the monster’s mouth as the flesh ripped, spattering Hudson’s face with blood and saliva. Looking away, he saw that McGlazer had gotten Yoshida on his back and was trying to straighten the deputy’s legs. “How is he?”
McGlazer looked at the bloody wolf with disgust and horror. “Better than that!”
Maisie chanted words that sounded as old as language itself, louder with every word, as she held tight to Ysabella’s wrists, helping her pull and pull.
The monster shifted forward—then set its four powerful legs in a strong stance and yanked Ysabella toward it. The monstrous maw stretched open further, impossibly, like a giant crocodile, to consume Ysabella. She screamed as her head disappeared within the tunnel of teeth and flesh. Maisie, caught off guard and off balance, shrieked in sheer terror.
Hudson held tight to the thing’s undulating neck with his right arm as he reached for the makeshift muzzle on the floor, wishing he had thought to drop it closer.
“No!” Maisie’s loss of control nearly broke Hudson, except that he didn’t have a choice. It was up to him now.
Ysabella’s petite form was sucked waist-deep into the werewolf’s mouth and gullet. Maisie pulled at her legs without gaining an inch.
Hudson let his headlock grip slide away, snatching the loose skin of the wolf’s neck before she could gain leverage.
With a great lunge, Hudson reached for the muzzle.
For an instant, it seemed the silver chain was going to fall away from the strap and render the restraint useless. But Hudson pulled the loose skin with him to gain the extra crucial inch.
He got both the strap and chain securely in his fist.
Hudson smashed himself chest-down across the skinwalker’s back and whipped the belt over the upper jaw like a horse’s bridle. The unnatural undulations of flesh beneath him became more disturbing and intense than before. Hudson cast away all thoughts of this, as he wrapped the ends of the belt in his fists and tugged like he was reining in a literal nightmare.
“Do your ritual!” he shouted to Maisie, shocking the young witch out of her panic.
She stood and raised her hands, shouting six syllables, faster and louder with each repetition.
Yoshida shook just like the wolf, foaming at the mouth. McGlazer hugged him tight.
Hudson pulled the silver-chained strap. The reverend’s grunts of effort joined the distressing chorus of Yoshida’s unnatural ululations, Maisie’s chant and Hudson’s roar of exertion.
Smoke rose from the beast’s snout, which began to shrink.
Whatever suctioning force was dragging Ysabella into the beast now started to fail.
Hudson again recalled when Leticia gave birth, feeling as queasy as when he held her hand in the moment of delivery—then worse. Between the sounds of ripping flesh and cracking bones, the weird movement in the monster’s flesh, the squeal of animal agony and the realization that Yoshida was approaching disintegration just a few feet away, Hudson was certain he would be spending this Halloween—and probably Thanksgiving and Christmas—in the loony bin.
Maisie wrapped her arms around Ysabella’s waist and dragged her out of the terrible tunnel, gaining momentum until the elder witch rocketed away from the monster’s mouth and landed hard, yards away. The naked, bloody and very human Aura came out along with her, falling atop Ysabella with a cry of shock and a splash of bloody mucus.
Hudson collapsed on his side. The skin he held was empty, more or less. The wolf’s head, its eyes sunken into the blackness of its crumbled skull, lay stretched and torn open like latex, the split flesh rendered grotesquely opaque, the gray fur falling out in clumps.
The hide smoked and bubbled. Hudson realized it would soon be gone.
Yoshida had calmed by a few degrees, though he wasn’t out of the woods yet. McGlazer had forced a handkerchief between his teeth to stop the distressing chatter.
The witches too had gone silent, their screaming replaced by Aura’s infantile cries, underscored by the hiss of smoke rising from the wolf’s dissolving carcass.
Barely conscious, Ysabella held Aura, rocking the biker-turned-baby as the thick coating of blood and wildness burned away from her skin like morning fog, leaving her as clean as a child baptized in a rushing river.
Hudson went to help the sobbing Maisie to her feet, not surprised that she seemed as traumatized as he was.
Chapter 7
Lust for Flesh
Standing in the cool air outside Matilda Saxon’s “Barn of Wonders,” as he and Yoshida had dubbed it, Hudson accepted the dented, extra-large coffee thermos from the other deputy. They had traded it off like a jar of moonshine since the end of Aura’s rehumanizing twenty minutes ago. “Damn, what’d you do? Shotgun it?”
“I was thirsty,” Yoshida said.
“We have plenty of water.”
“I’m also exhausted, if it’s okay with you.”
Hudson took only a couple of gulps and gave the thermos back to Yoshida. “Relax, Yosh. It’s you I’m worried about, not the java.”
“Yeah.” Yoshida wiped the thin sheen off his face. “Sorry.”
“Wanna tell me what the hell happened to you in there?’
Yoshida looked in the barn to check on the minister and the witches, as they attended Aura. The biker was bundled in a blanket on the lawn chair, her expression the slack blank of a newborn.
“Chalk it up to stress,” Yoshida said.
Hudson wasn’t convinced. “I thought you were having a seizure.”
“I don’t think so. Never had one before.” He offered Hudson the thermos. When it was refused, he emptied it in three large gulps.
“Still. Wouldn’t hurt you to see a doctor.”
Yoshida looked at his friend as if to protest, then saluted with the thermos, closed it up and went back in to help the others.
As McGlazer and the magic folk gently pulled Aura to her feet, the biker looked at them like they were aliens, her childlike expression far removed from the smug sneer she wore before she became a wolf.
Supported on either side, she took trembling steps, looking up from her feet to McGlazer and Maisie.
“Her memory is gone,” murmured Ysabella. “Wiped clean.”
“You don’t think she’s…?” Hudson warily began.
“She’s not faking, Deputy.”
“Will she regain it?” asked McGlazer.
“We don’t know,” said Ysabella, her tone that of a very tired woman. She looked and sounded like she had aged twenty years during the ritual.
Maisie continued for her. “We’ve never heard of a skinwalker who remained in animal form for this long. There is no precedent.”
There were other questions: Would she change back? Was she still as strong?
“We have to study and consult with our coven.”
“Not to be disrespectful,” Hudson said, realizing he was falling into DeShaun mode, “I hope your coven has a good benefits package, because it looks like you ladies are going to be working overtime.”
His humor served him well. Everyone relaxed and laughed, except Aura.
* * * *
“Dennis! How go the rehearsals?” Reverend McGlazer secretly hoped the singer, whom he sponsored through AA, hadn’t come by for a sobriety pep talk.
Though McGlazer himself had stayed dry—a miracle itself—in the wake of his possession by the ghost of Conal O’Herlihy, he hardly felt qualified to offer strength, much less faith, to anyone lately.
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