Shadows in the Mist

by Jeri Westerson

  “With what I understand of such a ritual,” said Doc, “Dan couldn’t have done it himself, and he couldn’t have been alone either. I doubt Andras did it. It was likely done with a ritual knife.”

  Ed nodded. “Techs corroborated that. He didn’t commit suicide.”

  “So…he was a sacrifice?”

  Doc shook his head sadly. “Appears that way.”

  Seraphina made a worried sound. “Would he have known? I just can’t believe dear old Mr. Parker would be involved in something like that.”

  Doc shrugged. “I just don’t know, Seraphina. What do we really know about anyone in this village?”

  It was a horrible thought either way, whether he was a willing victim or an unwilling one. Maybe he put that pentagram in the church. Maybe he was coerced into it. Maybe he even invited his killers into his home, not knowing what they had planned.

  “Doc, could I talk to you for a moment?”

  He followed me into the kitchen, and I made sure the swinging door was closed. “Two weeks ago, at the Chamber of Commerce get-together, Ruth was with a group of men who, well, disparaged all the Wiccans.”

  He sighed and seemed to gird himself. “I’m not surprised.”

  “But what if they were in league with Ruth, forming another sort of black magic circle?”

  “Do you think that’s likely?”

  “I never thought any of this was likely three weeks ago.”

  “Who then? Who was with her?”

  “I don’t want to be an alarmist or a gossip—”

  “Now, young lady, you opened this door. It’s best you just march right through it.”

  “Okay. It was John Fairgood, that gun shop guy. And, I hate to say this, but…Deputy George was with her, too.”

  “Hockey pucks. George Miller just has some conservative tendencies. I have no doubt that Mr. Riley will soon wean him from that.”

  Despite our solitude, I got in close and said quietly, “You know about them, then?”

  “I have eyes, don’t I? I certainly can’t believe that George would do anything as heinous as a ritual murder.”

  “But he is a cop. He’s used to all sorts of violence.”

  “If you have your doubts, I’d talk to Ed.”

  “Yeah. I guess I should do that, but he’ll probably vouch for him like you did.”

  “And I’m sure Nick would do the same.”

  “But like you said, do we really know anyone? People have been fooled before. You always see it on the news. They interview the neighbors of that nice, quiet guy…who has a bunch of heads in his garage freezer.”

  “You’ve been watching too much television. And as for John Fairgood, well. Not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t think he has the smarts or the capacity to get his hands dirty. But to make you happy, I’ll do some digging. In the meantime, no more Chamber of Commerce for you!”

  I decided I would heed Doc’s warning as I watched him return to the living room.

  Nick was trying to figure out how we were going to attach salt and iron to an arrow. I kept sneaking glances at him, wondering if there would ever be an opportunity to ask about George…and imagining just how that conversation would go.

  “That will never work!” said Erasmus loudly. All heads turned toward him.

  “It will!” cried Jolene. “Especially if we use the power of the rift back in the caves.”

  “That is extremely dangerous. If we should make a mistake, the rift would widen and encompass your world completely. There would be no stopping it.”

  Jolene stilled, gnawing on her knuckle in front of the demon. “The scrying stick.” She crouched and reached into her Hello Kitty Witch bag almost up to her elbow when she remembered. “Doc, you have the scryer.”

  “I do, young lady, and I’m keeping it until we have a good reason to use it again.”

  “I think we can use it to manipulate the rift and keep it from opening more than it already has.”

  “I’d like to see any documentation you have on that.”

  He marched over to her as she sat on the sofa again, now flanked by Erasmus and Doc. It was the weirdest sight I’d ever seen.

  No, I had to amend that. Jeff sniffing the air like a dog and leaning forward as if ready to pounce on all fours was the weirdest sight, especially when his ears began elongating. “Jeff?” I said.

  “I smell them.” He was heading toward the door.

  “Jeff, what do you smell?”

  “Draugrrrrrr…” he said, voice becoming a growl. His hair began to grow. He started pulling off his clothes, and everyone rose, dropping whatever it was they were doing.

  I looked around. “How could they find us? We’re under the Forget-Me spell.”

  “It could be random,” said Doc, worried. “They could have just wandered here on their way somewhere else and sensed gold here.”

  Jeff looked odd because he hadn’t completely shifted, though his clothes were dumped on the floor. He’d given up wearing shoes a while ago. He wasn’t full wolf, but a weird in-between. A long sleek body with strangely configured legs as his thighs grew wider and his feet grew longer. And there, on his furring neck, was the necklace and locket.

  “It’s gold,” I said, pointing.

  “By Godfrey,” said Doc. “They’re after the Babylonian locket.”

  And Jeff was walking right toward them.

  We couldn’t stop him before he opened the door and morphed fully into a wolf, leaping out over the threshold.

  I grabbed my coat from the hall tree. Before I could reach the door, Erasmus shot out of it. Jeff and the Draugr were already enmeshed in mortal combat.

  Nick pushed me aside to run out into the yard. The growling and barking echoed loudly in the clearing, and then the Draugr howled. The others might hear him and come running…uh, shambling. He had to be stopped. “Erasmus! Make sure no other Draugr are on their way.”

  Ed was on the porch with his handgun. But every time he tried to aim, he pulled the gun away. He’d just hit Jeff if he fired.

  Nick reached into a pouch in his hand and grabbed a handful of…something. Herbs and powders and whatnots. He started an incantation.

  “Nick!” cried Jolene from the doorway. “It’s not ready.”

  “Yes, it is. I’ve worked it out. But we’ve got to get Jeff away from the Viking.”

  “Is that the fire spell?” I asked.

  “Yes. But it’s gonna be explosive and I don’t want to hit Jeff.”

  “Okay. I’ll get him out of the way. Somehow.”

  Nick started his incantation again. I approached Jeff and the Draugr’s fighting, scrambling bodies. The Viking was trying to use his short sword, but one of Jeff’s clawed paws dug in to his arm and pushed hard against it.

  The stench was horrific, the smell of rotting flesh seeming that much stronger as he fought.

  “Jeff! Jeff, you have to get away! Let Nick and Ed do their work.”

  Jeff was still snarling and snapping at the Draugr’s neck, while the Viking tried to get at the locket with boney fingers.

  “Jeff!”

  One of his ears twitched toward me.

  “Jeff, you have to get out of the way!”

  He turned his head—a fatal mistake. The Draugr darted his head forward and clamped his teeth to Jeff’s neck.

  Jeff whined a scream and let go of the Viking’s sword arm. No longer blocked, the sword plunged toward him, when something dark darted forward. Erasmus? No, it was Nick!

  Nick held fast to the Viking’s sword arm, trying to wrench the weapon from its grip. It was enough of a distraction that the Viking released Jeff’s neck. But now the wolf was biting anything that came his way—the Viking’s arm, ear, rotting clothing—while Nick was struggling to break loose from between them. The Draugr’s skeletal hand clamped onto Nick’s wrist. Nick tried to shake it loose and finally slipped down to the ground, taking Jeff down with him. The Draugr stood over them, seeming to choose who to kill first. He raised his swor
d.

  The Draugr’s head blew apart. Ed was standing on the porch, his smoking gun still aimed in their direction.

  “Oh my God!” Nick was screaming. “Oh my God!”

  “It’s okay, Nick.” I rushed forward and knelt beside him, curling my arm around his shoulders. His face and shoulders were covered with pieces of rotting Viking head. “You’re okay.”

  “No, I’m not.” His bloodied face was twisted in terror, tears rimming his eyes. He was holding his arm. “He bit me.”

  “Oh! Let me see. It’s okay. Their bite isn’t infectious—”

  “No,” he wailed. “It wasn’t the zombie. It was the wolf.”

  “Oh my God.” I looked at Jeff. He was morphing back, and as soon as he was even remotely human-looking, the horror was plain on his face. His ears, still long and sharp, drooped, and his snout still protruded when he reached for Nick. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “The werewolf bit me,” Nick kept saying.

  Jolene had her hand over her mouth. Seraphina stood pale and frozen. Doc hurried down from the porch and bent over him.

  “I didn’t mean it,” said Jeff, clumps of blond wolf hair falling off him. “It was an accident.”

  “He bit me. He bit me.” Nick held his arm and yes, I could plainly see the punctures from teeth marks on his bleeding flesh.

  I looked at Doc. “Doc? Is it bad?”

  He clutched the arm and stared at the open wound but said nothing. “Let’s get him into the house.”

  Ed holstered his gun and moved to help Doc lift Nick, who moaned and muttered in a feverish chatter as they maneuvered him inside.

  Jeff, now naked and fully human again, stood in the yard, the headless Draugr at his feet. He grabbed my hand before I could follow the others inside. “Kylie, it was an accident. You believe me, don’t you? I never would have…I mean I couldn’t do that…”

  I patted his hand. “I know, Jeff. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I bit him. He’s gonna be a—”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  “He is, though. That’s how it happens. That’s what happened to me. I am a monster.” He whispered the last.

  “Jeff.” I took his shoulders. “Look at me. You are not a monster. It was an accident.”

  “He might die,” he said dully. “It might be better.”

  “Don’t say that. If…if he’s a wolf, too, you can help him. You know it’s not the end of the world.”

  “No. Only the end of his world.”

  I thought he was going to trudge inside, but instead, he morphed back into a wolf, quicker this time, like turning on a switch, and leaped into the dark woods.

  “Jeff!” There was only silence in response.

  I hugged myself and hurried inside.

  They had laid Nick on the sofa. He looked pretty out of it. Doc was bandaging his arm.

  “Will he be all right?”

  “It’s not a fatal wound,” said Doc. “But as for his being all right, I think you know the answer to that as well as the rest of us.”

  “He’s…he’s going to wolf out, isn’t he?”

  “I cleaned the wound as best I could, but…”

  I dropped my face into my palm. “Oh my God.” And this, too, was my fault for opening the Booke. I wished that I could run out into the forest like Jeff, run and run till I was exhausted. But I couldn’t. I had the Booke throbbing in my consciousness, reminding me that I belonged to it. That everything from now on was about the Booke and only the Booke.

  I wanted to scream. When the pull of the Booke felt at its strongest, I glanced wildly at Erasmus, who was suddenly at my side…and he knew. His eyes told me to follow him, and I did. I trudged into the hall, into the kitchen, and out the back door.

  “Help me, Erasmus,” I whispered. “Help me.”

  He enclosed me in his arms and the coldness went away, at least for a while. “I will do what I can. You must believe me, Kylie. I will help you.”

  “Don’t disappear, okay? I couldn’t stand it if you disappeared.”

  “I won’t.” He held me tighter. I inhaled his scent—wood smoke, cedar, and musk…and the faraway hint of sulfur.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nick was, for all intents and purposes, unconscious. He groaned from time to time as Doc kept checking him—under his eyelids, his pulse. Jeff was back from the woods, hovering. He knew. He knew what Nick was going through because he’d been there only a week and a half ago.

  Jolene’s eyes were red. “He lives with his folks. What are we going to tell them?”

  “That’s a fair point, Jolene,” said Doc. “Jeff, I trust you won’t have any objections to a roommate.”

  “No. No, anything he wants. I owe him.” He shot a desperate look toward me.

  “Of course, he can stay. He’s going to need help.”

  “And I will need more help brewing wolfsbane,” said Seraphina. “I hope Jolene wouldn’t mind—”

  “Anything to help,” she said tearfully.

  Erasmus stood aloof in the corner, watching all of us with critical eyes. But it was Ed I had to talk to. I tapped his shoulder and motioned for him to follow me. I noticed Erasmus watching us as we left the room. Once the kitchen door swung closed, I said quietly, “Ed, how well do you know George?”

  He shook his head, perplexed. “I’ve known him since we were kids. I mean not well, but we were both from Moody Bog. Hard not to know everyone in town.”

  “When I saw him at the Chamber of Commerce thing, he was sort of siding with Ruth. How much do you trust him?”

  “With my life. I have to. What are you suggesting?”

  “If Ruth sacrificed Dan Parker, she would have to have had help.”

  “No way. Not George. He might be a bit stiff and kind of a loner, but he is not like that.”

  “Well…he’s not really a loner. He’s…he’s with Nick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  O mighty detective. “I mean he and Nick are together. Together together.”

  He stared at me for another second before the penny dropped. “Oh! Jeez, I didn’t know that. You know a guy for years and… Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  “I don’t know. Nick said that he’s a private sort.”

  “That’s for sure.” He rubbed his chin and stared at the floor. “You just don’t know people, do you?”

  “Well, that’s the assumption I’m working under. That maybe people in town are up to no good and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “I can’t believe it of George.”

  “You didn’t know he was gay.”

  “That’s different. That I can believe, but not this other thing.”

  “Putting that aside, what do we do about George?”

  Ed looked back at the closed kitchen door. “You’re asking if we should tell him everything?”

  “He’ll have to be told if he and Nick—”

  “Now hold on, Kylie. If George isn’t out, it isn’t fair to drag him into all this.”

  “It isn’t fair not to. What’s he going to think when Nick suddenly falls off the radar? He’s going to know something’s up.”

  “Isn’t that Nick’s decision?”

  “Nick’s going to need all the help he can get.”

  “And what if George rejects him?”

  I didn’t want to think about that.

  Ed rubbed his chin again. Looked like he needed a shave. The last thing I wanted was for him to look like Doug. “We’ve got to wait till Nick…wakes up.”

  “That might be a while. And wouldn’t it help you if George knew?”

  He shook his head. “But it’s different now. How would you feel?”

  I stiffened and the anger and hurt returned. “You mean he might say he wanted to take a break?”

  Bullseye. Ed’s mouth clenched. “I’m…I’m sorry for that. I felt a little overwhelmed. And for the record…it was a mistake.” He made a beaten puppy face at me. “My timing is terrible. But I’
m sorry I ever asked for a break. I don’t want one anymore. But I’m afraid…” He looked toward the other room where Erasmus was. “Maybe it’s too late now.”

  Was it? I thought about Erasmus—his literal smoldering looks, his kisses, the way he made love. And I thought of Ed, too, and his very human reactions and sensibility. And his lips, and the way he made love. I still didn’t want to make a choice.

  “I hadn’t want a take a break.”

  “Then, are you saying there’s…hope?” He hesitated, before finally lifting his hand and taking mine.

  “We’ll just have to see. Right now, I can’t really think straight.”

  His hold on my hand tightened involuntarily. “You mean you still want to see…that guy? The demon?”

  When I thought of leaving Erasmus for good my stomach clenched. “I might.”

  Ed wasn’t happy when we left the kitchen together to check on Nick. Erasmus followed us with narrowed eyes.

  Nick’s moans were morphing into low growls. All of a sudden, he started whipping about. Doc tried to hold him down, but Jeff pulled him out of the way.

  “Jeff!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

  “Saving your life. Look!”

  Nick thrashed as thick, black hair began sprouting all over him. He screamed as his mouth and nose elongated and darkened into a snout, while his ears grew into longer, pointed appendages. His whole body shook and cracked and changed. He growled and howled from the pain. It had to be painful, what was happening.

  He tore at his clothes with the claws that were now on his fingers, and soon he flipped over onto his paws, crouching down on the sofa with back arched and hackles raised, a fully black-furred wolf. His green eyes snapped open. He looked about the room at us, lip curled back in a snarl, revealing sharp canines.

  We all drew back. It looked like he was about to leap at any one of us, when Jeff shed his clothes and shifted in seconds into a wolf. He bared his teeth and bark-growled at Nick, who just as quickly cowered back, bushy tail curled under him.

  There was some wordless communication between them, as Nick seemed to understand the pecking order in the…the pack, I guessed. Jeff was his alpha. What a weird thought.

  As he cringed back on the sofa, his fur sifted off of him in big chunks and his face slowly contorted back to normal. I snatched the knitted throw off of the sofa back and tossed it over him just in time.