by Amy Hopkins
Amelia slapped him on the back of the shoulder. "You might have been. I was miles off!"
"Oh, my God, stop!" Penny clapped her hands over her ears. "I swear to God, if there's jizz on that seat…"
"There's not," Amelia hurriedly assured her.
"Thanks to Cisco," Red muttered. He ducked another slap from his girlfriend. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"All my shit is in there," Penny reminded them. "I'm freezing, and I need my coat." She narrowed her eyes, remembering where she’d left it. "If there's jizz on my coat…"
"Can you stop saying ‘jizz?’" Amelia dove back into the car and emerged with Penny's jacket. "Look. Perfectly clean."
Penny gingerly took it from Amelia, holding it between two fingers. She gave it a quick examination before slipping it on. "I don't know whether to be grossed out that you were humping on it or glad that it came prewarmed."
Amelia flashed a sunny smile. "You’re welcome."
"We'll leave you two to get back to it," Cisco said.
"The hell we will." Penny glared at the offending couple. "There's a whole beach out there. Can't you go bump uglies somewhere…I don't know, less upholstered?"
"And get sand in me crack?" Red shook his head. "No way."
"And now I've got the image of Red’s ass stuck in my head." Cisco threw his hands up in defeat. "I didn't think this night could get any worse. "
A panicked scream filled the air. Boots immediately slithered down, eyes bright, tongue seeking any indication of danger.
"You had to say it," Amelia said. She jerked the back door of the Jeep open again. "I've got a mini-kit ready to go. Cisco, grab the monster."
Cisco jumped into action, popping the trunk and hauling out the black duffel bag. The zipper rasped as he pulled it open and handed a handgun to each of his friends. "Amelia, take the crossbow. Penny, do you want the big knife or the little one?"
"Little one. And a solar flare, knuckle dusters, and my yellow beanie."
Cisco tossed her the first three items and a gun belt. He stuck his head back in and popped out a moment later with the knitted beanie. “All set!”
Penny hesitated, looking toward the moonlit road where the scream had come from. On the other side, a thick forest beckoned. An eerie silence reigned, completely devoid of all the sounds one would expect from the woods at night-time.
She took a breath and clipped on her belt. "Okay, Boots." The serpent had her eyes fixed on a point in the darkness, her tongue flicking anxiously as she tasted the air. "Lead the way."
As if she'd been waiting for the command, Boots jumped forward. She slithered through the small car park of the recreation point and onto the Road. Penny nervously glanced in each direction but saw no sign of an approaching vehicle.
As if sensing Penny's caution, Boots made a frustrated clicking sound. She didn't stop, though, quickly crossing the road and disappearing into the bushes on the other side.
"Slow down," Penny called a loud whisper. She swung her flashlight in a wide arc. "Dammit, Boots. Where did you go?"
A hiss by her ear made Penny jump. She berated the snake, who was hanging from a nearby branch. "Are you trying to scare the shit out of me?"
When Boots gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, Penny nearly fell on her ass. She rounded on Cisco, thrusting a finger up at him. "That's your fault," she said. "You're a terrible influence!"
He held his hands up defensively. "It was funny!"
Shaking her head, Penny turned back. She quickly picked out the snake making her way down the nearby tree and across the leaf litter scattered on the ground.
Boots hesitated, arching her head up and baring her fangs silently.
Penny pulled her pistol from its holster. She'd only used it at the nearby range where Quaid had been training the students. For the first time, she wished it was a little bigger.
Twigs crackled underfoot as the four Academy students moved through the trees. Dead leaves and spindly branches made it almost impossible to move silently. Overhead, the swollen moon filtered through the leaves to cast long-fingered shadows on the ground.
"This doesn't feel like a B-grade horror movie at all," Red muttered. He waved his flashlight at the branches above, then yelped, "I take it back! By the love of all that’s holy, I take it back."
Penny lifted her own flashlight up to see the bundle of leaves twirling in the breeze. She squinted. They weren't leaves; the bundle of sticks had been secured with strings to look like little arms and legs sticking out at odd angles. A shiver went down her spine.
"I think I've seen this movie," she said. Her voice was hoarse with fear. "I didn't like it very much."
A twig crackled behind her and she jumped, only for Amelia to slip a hand into hers.
"I'm not scared," Amelia whispered. The whites of her eyes begged to differ. "I'm not. Just…dammit. I’m scared."
"Well, I'm fecking scared," Red hissed back. "I'm telling you now, if some hag with three teeth and a pointy hat jumps out of the trees, I'm going to piss my pants." He glared at Cisco.
"Shh." Cisco crept further forward, motioning for them to follow. He pointed at a shadowy hump on the ground. "Someone had a fire here." He edged closer, holding his hand out. "It's cold. It doesn't look that old, though."
Boots circled around the abandoned campfire, her body seeming longer in the twisted shadows. She arched again, her body frozen except for the slightest twitch in her tail. She hissed, a drawn-out sound that scared Penny almost as much as the twig-dolls in the trees.
Penny held a hand up to the others, pointing her gun in the direction Boots faced.
Something crashed in the darkness. Boots launched herself toward it, disappearing into the shadows.
Silence fell again. It was broken by a low growl.
"Wendigo," Amelia whimpered. "I bet it's a fucking Wendigo."
“You don’t know that, pet. Might just be a stray dog.” Red didn’t sound like he was convinced, though. “A really big stray.”
“Boots?” Penny kept her voice low, but anxiety made it strained. “Boots, where are you?”
Silence.
Then chaos.
Sound exploded from the trees, crashing and barking as a creature as tall as Penny burst from the darkness, its yellow teeth dripping with saliva as they snapped at the skinny beam of light from Cisco’s flashlight.
“Boots!” The serpent was wrapped around the wolfish neck, slowly constricting as the beast twisted its head, trying to bite her.
Penny let off two rounds. Both bullets hit the dog’s chest, safely away from her serpentine friend.
It didn’t even flinch.
“That’s no dog!” Red yelled. He ejected the chamber of his gun and grabbed a cartridge from the pack at his belt. “Get the silver!”
Silver. Werewolf! The realization sent Penny into a spin as she hastily tried to swap her bullets over. In the darkness, she fumbled the magazine’s release, dropping her regular ammunition on the ground. Fuck it, they won’t help me here.
The wolf—the werewolf—dove onto its back, giant paws scratching at its neck. Boots let out a pained hiss and released her grip before darting into the bushes.
The wolf eyed Penny and let out a low growl, hackles raised.
“Hey! Puppy want a bone?” Amelia taunted the dog, and it leaped, sailing over Penny’s head as her magazine snapped into place. Penny fired three quick rounds, the loud shots echoed as a nearby muzzle flashed.
The wolf slammed into Amelia, and she screamed.
Penny’s heart lurched as her friend was knocked back into the dirt. She heard a loud yell, then saw Red tackle the werewolf and pull it away from Amelia.
Slipping a knife from her belt, Penny dove toward them. She couldn’t risk a shot while Red wrestled the creature, but perhaps she could wound it enough to separate them.
She threw herself onto the monstrous wolf and plunged her knife into its side. Teeth snapped at her hand and she yanked it back, leaving th
e knife still embedded in the thick fur and sinewy muscle.
Two muffled shots went off, and suddenly, the werewolf stilled. Sticky liquid, black under the moonlight, bubbled at the corners of its mouth. It collapsed to one side, flesh writhing as it changed.
The long wolf muzzle shortened, stilling somewhere in between man and beast. The fur thinned, drawing into the skin to leave nothing more than the wiry, sparse hair of a human. The legs shortened, and the fingers lengthened even as the claws began to retract.
Penny winced as the face contorted. That must hurt when you’re not dead. The resulting face was elongated with a flat nose but otherwise looked like a man.
Amelia pressed a hand to her mouth, scrambling away from the fallen body. “It’s…human?”
“Only half.” Penny shoved herself away from the man-wolf and stood on shaky legs. She nudged it with a toe. “It hasn’t changed all the way back. And if it’s a Myther, it’s not really human.”
Amelia didn’t look convinced. “I guess.”
“Everyone ok?” Cisco asked.
Red gave a hollow laugh. “Aye. Nothing but a scratch.” He held up his arm a thin line of blood welled, but not enough to drip. “Lucky it wasn’t a bite, hey?”
“Amelia?” Penny reached to help Amelia up from where she crouched on the forest floor.
“I’m okay.” She took Penny’s proffered hand and pulled herself up. “But I think from now on, I’m officially a cat person.”
Cisco was already pushing through the forest, headed deeper into the trees. “Guys! Come and look at this.”
Penny gave a nervous glance at the ground. Two glassy black eyes stared back lifelessly.
Ahead, a gentle glow shone from a small hollow in the ground. The cool light bounced as Cisco nudged it with a foot. “Battery lantern,” he said. “Someone is here.”
“Hello?” Amelia called out. “The wolf is dead. You’re safe now.”
Nothing.
Cisco picked up the lantern and held it up. “Uhh, guys? Maybe it’s not so safe here. Not for us, anyway.”
A flat rock sat nestled among the tall pines. It looked to Penny like it had been naturally placed—settled deep within the soil and leaf litter, no different to the other rocks scattered around.
No different, except for the crudely painted runes that decorated its sides and mounds of candle wax piled around blackened wicks.
"It's some kind of altar." Penny pointed her flashlight at it and took a few steps closer. "Look, that wax hasn't set properly. Guys, I think this is fresh."
Immediately, her companions turned their flashlights toward the surrounding trees. Cisco edged closer with the discarded lantern. "What do you think they were trying to summon? The wolf?"
“Unless the altar belongs to the werewolf.” Penny ran her fingers through the loose scatter of leaves around the altar. She wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for. A tuft of dog hair, perhaps. An old tooth, maybe even a fragment from a spellbook.
Instead, she found something that made her stomach turn. “This must be from the coven Crenel was talking about.”
"It looks like a piece of bandage," she said, picking it up gingerly between two fingers. "Is that…blood?"
"Penny, don't touch it." Amelia swung her flashlight back toward them. "It could be full of diseases."
"Amelia, I think a few germs are the least of our worries." Cisco picked up a stick from the ground and held it out so that Penny could lay the strip of cloth over it.
She wiped her hands on her jeans uncomfortably. "She might be right, Cisco. That thing could be harboring anything from hepatitis to the black plague. Or lycanthropy. Don't touch it, not until we know what we're dealing with."
Amelia unzipped the pouch at her belt. She ran her fingers over the neatly arranged bulges within it. "Here." She slid a tiny white packet from one of the loops and unfolded it to reveal a plastic bag. She held it open so that Cisco could drop the bandage into it and sealed it, shuddering dramatically. "All done. It's safe to breathe again. Oh, and you guys can use this for your surveillance class! If nothing else, you got your homework done, right?"
"Do you think whoever was lurking around here is the person who screamed?" Penny asked. "More to the point, should we be calling in back up?"
Cisco nodded. "Agent Crenel and the dean will have our asses if we don't call this in. I mean, we just killed a freaking werewolf."
Penny looked around the area. Apart from the recently used altar, nothing else seemed out of place. Still, something didn't sit right. "Cisco, do you really think the werewolf was responsible for the attack on that car?"
He shrugged. "What else would it be?"
Penny shook her head. "Nothing, I guess. Never mind." The glow of her phone screen made her squint as her eyes adjusted to the bright light. “Damn, I’ve got almost no reception.” She stretched her arm out, holding the phone as high as she could and was rewarded with an extra bar. Penny tapped Crenel's name and put it on speaker.
Crenel's voice was heavy with sleep. "You’d better have a good reason for waking me up at two AM."
Before Penny could answer, she heard a second voice murmuring into the phone.
"Of course they would have a good reason. Don't be a fool, Stuart."
Something about hearing the always-professional Dean March's voice in such an intimate situation made Penny want to giggle like a schoolchild who just caught a teacher in a compromising position.
"Well?" Crenel sounded impatient.
"Werewolf," Penny blurted. "We found a werewolf. And there's an altar. Someone was here." She knew that her words weren’t making a great deal of sense, but she couldn't seem to string a sentence together to save a life.
"I have your coordinates. I'll have a team there as soon as I can." Crenel ended the call before Penny could clarify that the werewolf was already dead and that whoever had summoned it had vanished.
"He couldn't have held on the line for one more minute?" Amelia muttered. "What are we supposed to do? Just hang around until backup arrives?"
"Apparently." Penny stared at her phone. "Wait a minute. Coordinates?"
"It's the FBI," Cisco said dryly. "They have everyone's coordinates."
Penny's phone vibrated in her hand, startling her into dropping it. She fished it back out of the fallen leaves, brushed it off, and answered, "Here I was, thinking you'd abandoned the four of us in the dark. And the cold. Holy fuck, is it cold here." As the adrenaline had worn off, the cold had seeped back into her bones, making her teeth chatter.
"Abandon you?" Crenel barked through crackling static. "My wife would have my balls for breakfast if I even thought about it."
Penny heard the tsk of the irritated dean nearby. "So, do you always track our location?" she asked, not bothering to hide her irritation.
Crenel laughed. "Of course, I do. There's a team on their way. Now, find some damn cell reception and call me back so you can tell me exactly what happened."
Chapter Eight
Penny couldn't deny feeling a sense of relief when the team Crenel sent arrived in five shiny black SUVs instead of a helicopter.
Apart from the wind and the noise, she didn't want to draw attention to their little adventure if she could help it. Not that any of the partygoers back at the bonfire were sober enough to notice a Black Hawk landing in the middle of their party.
Agent Delouise led the operation, instructing the four biggest members of the team to secure the werewolf and load it into one of the cars. "You'll have to fold down the seats," she said. "Make sure you lay down some plastic. Carney will have my head if you get blood on the upholstery."
"We found this." Amelia held out the evidence bag. "By the altar. It's got blood on it."
Agent Delouise gingerly took it from her."You didn't touch it, did you?"
"I picked it up by the edges,” Penny admitted. “But I didn’t get any blood on my hands.”
"Make sure you sanitize the hell out of yourself. I think I’ve got some rubbi
ng alcohol in the car if you need it. Anything else?" The agent's eyes pierced into Penny's soul.
"No. Not really." She bit the inside of her cheek, wondering what exactly she could say.
"Bullshit."
Penny's eyebrows skyrocketed. "Excuse me?"
"Bullshit. There's something you're not telling me." Agent Delouise leaned closer to her. "Spill it."
Penny sidestepped. "There's nothing, really. Just… I dunno. It feels like we're missing something."
Delouise narrowed her eyes, then jerked her head down in a nod. "Trust your gut. I'll have my guys go over this whole place with a fine toothcomb—twice. As soon as your gut starts talking to your brain, let me know."
Relief washed through Penny. She could trust these Agents, she knew she could. They had the training that she didn't, and equipment to boot. Whatever was going on at that creepy makeshift altar, they were sure to figure it out.
"Thanks," she said. "Will you tell us if you find anything?"
The agent winked. "Depends if they let me."
Penny couldn't argue with that. "You need us for anything else?" she asked.
"You can go. Keep your phone on you, though."
With a grateful grin, Penny said goodbye, then she and her friends trudged back toward the road.
"Where's Boots?" Amelia whispered. "I'm guessing you already know. It’s not like you'd leave her behind."
With a tired sigh, Penny jerked her thumb sideways. "I think she was trying to avoid all the fuss back there. She was hiding up a tree."
"Aww, the poor thing was scared?" Amelia crooned.
Penny snorted. "The 'poor thing' was hanging off a branch, making faces behind Delouise’s back."
"Oh." Amelia darted a glance into the bushes. "Yeah, that does sound like Boots."
By the time they made it back to the bonfire, sleepy students were scattered around the dying fire. A guy strummed the guitar while he chatted with a pretty girl wrapped in a blanket, and a couple slow-danced nearby.
"I'm bushed." Penny sank down into the spot she had claimed earlier. She kicked off her shoes, unzipped her sleeping bag, and tucked her feet in, sandy socks and all.
