Digging the Wolf: a paranormal romance (Werewolves of Crookshollow Book 1)

by Steffanie Holmes

  After dinner, Frances handed around drinks from the fridge, and each person settled into their own activities. I hoped this might be my chance to speak to Anna and apologise for upsetting her, but just as I was about to move in, Ruth plopped down next to me and shoved a beer under my nose. “I’m so passionate about sustainability,” she gushed, as she tipped her cider into a disposable coffee cup that would release enough methane into the atmosphere during its inevitable trip to the bottom of a landfill to turn the ozone layer around her ditzy head into a doily.

  I choked back my gathering scorn and spoke to Ruth politely, listening with half an ear as she prattled on about the Save the Whales project she’d been involved in back at the university. My eyes remained fixed on Anna, who sat at the far end of the caravan, under the window, drinking her beer in short gulps as she buried her face in a science fiction novel. She wore a pair of reading glasses that made her doe-brown eyes appear even larger.

  “—and I raised enough money to pay the petrol for one whale protestor’s boat—”

  “Excuse me.” I broke Ruth off mid-sentence as I stood up, and walked over to where Anna was sitting. Max looked up from the rummy game he was playing with Frances and shot me a horrified look that clearly implied what he thought of my decision.

  “May I?” I gestured to the space beside Anna.

  “It’s a free country,” she replied. Her cheeks flared red as I plopped down beside her, close enough to breathe in her intoxicating scent, but not close enough that we actually touched. She pushed her glasses up her nose, and continued to stare down at the page.

  “You’re reading Heinlein?” I glanced at the title of her book. Stranger in a Strange Land. A lump rose in my throat at the title. That had been one of Dad’s favourite books.

  Anna nodded. “Re-reading, actually. I love all of Heinlein’s stories.” She blushed deeper, as though she’d somehow revealed some deep personal secret.

  “Me, too.” I said. The electricity between us sizzled, pulling me towards her like two opposing charges. “I love the way Heinlein uses the character of Smith to force the reader to view their own preconceptions.”

  She nodded, her fingers tracing the edge of the page. “Exactly. I read this book for the first time when I was fourteen. Every few years, I reread it. And I always get something different out of it. That’s what I love about Heinlein – people think Stranger is all about Heinlein presenting his ideal world in the form of Smith’s “religion”. But that’s not it at all. He’s inviting you to think, not to believe.”

  “Yeah, that’s it exactly.” That was seriously insightful. “What other authors do you like?”

  “Oh, all sorts.” She looked up at me then. Her eyes lit up as she spoke. “I’ve read all the classic science fiction authors, of course. Asimov, H. G. Wells, Frank Herbert. I especially love science fiction when it crosses with horror.”

  “So a big Lovecraft fan, then?”

  “Oh, definitely. Give me Cthulhu over sparkly vampires any day.” She grinned. “I do like some fantasy books. Writers like Laurell K. Hamilton and Patricia Briggs who take old legends like vampires and werewolves and bring them into the contemporary world. There’s this amazing author named S. C. Green who wrote these dark steampunk books set in a Georgian London infested with dinosaurs. My friend Derek got me onto those – he is always giving me new books to read. He’s studying mythology so he digs that kind of stuff.”

  “What’s your favourite creature?”

  “Werewolves.” Anna said instantly. “I love how primal and protective they are. Werewolves are all about family. I totally dig that.”

  If only you knew, I thought ruefully, marvelling at where this conversation had gone. I pointed to the crinkled book cover. “So you’ve had that book since you were fourteen?”

  Anna shook her head. “I got this copy from a second-hand bookshop in Crookshollow. My dad gave me a beautiful hardcover copy for my fourteenth birthday. But I wouldn’t take that to a site. My books are precious, especially ones from my dad.”

  “A woman after my own heart.”

  She smiled then, a genuine smile that made my heart pound against my stomach. “Oh yes?”

  “I have a small cabin in Sherwood Forest.” I explained. “I go there when I’m not working. It’s pretty tiny and very basic – there’s no mobile reception and you have to bathe in a little stream outside. But I keep all my books there.” In my head I imagined her sitting beside me before the fire, her feet over my knees as she leaned back against the sofa, a book open on her lap, those adorable glasses perched on her nose.

  I hadn’t been back to the cabin since Dad died – everything there bore his scent, his unmistakable presence. I couldn’t face being there alone. But the idea of Anna being there with me made a return trip seem instantly palatable. The things we could get up to in that stream...

  “It sounds heavenly,” she said, her voice slightly wistful. “I live with my mum in a flat in Crooks Crossing. There’s not a lot of room, so I have to keep my favourite books in boxes under my bed. Even then, there are several boxes stashed in the loft.”

  “You live with your mum? So your parents are divorced.”

  Anna shook her head. My stomach sank as I realised what that probably meant. Anna looked away, her whole body stiffening. Her hand flew to her wrist, which the silver bracelet still defiantly encircled.

  “I have to go,” she whispered, the book falling from her hand and clattering on the floor.

  “Why?” Disappointment surged through me. I was actually enjoying talking to her. I wanted to find out more about what books she liked, about her family, about her studies and what had made her want to be an archaeologist. But for some reason, her father’s death – for that had to be what it was – kept her closed off from me. But it didn’t have to. I reached out to her, willing to say anything to get her to stay and talk to me. “Anna. I know how you feel. My father—”

  “I just…I can’t…” She grabbed her coat and swung herself up, racing for the caravan door and sprinting into the wet evening as fast as her legs could carry her.

  I stayed in the caravan for another hour in case Anna came back, but she didn’t. I got stuck talking to Ruth and Max about reality TV shows – a sickness I had yet to succumb to. As a ranger, I didn’t have the chance to watch much TV, and when I did my taste lent itself to western films and Star Trek reruns, not the inner monologues of ten stick-thin models posing as seductive lampposts in an avant-garde advertisement for a lighting company. While I tuned out their inane discussion, I mentally ran through my conversation with Anna, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong.

  Her father. I’d assumed he was dead, but what if I was wrong? What if I just assumed that because that was my situation? What if Anna’s father was in jail? What if he was in jail for something he’d done to her?

  If that was true, that was pretty heavy. I got why she wouldn’t want to talk about that with a stranger, especially not in the caravan with Frances and Ruth and Max listening. Fuck, I was an insensitive idiot.

  Try again tomorrow, I told myself. I hadn’t completely fucked up. Yet. Even though I didn’t want a mate, I was becoming more intrigued by Anna Sinclair. Maybe it was that pain I’d seen flicker across her face – a pain that felt like a mirror of my own.

  That decision made, I stood up and loped off towards my tent without wishing the others good night. As I strode across the campsite, the moon rose higher through the trees, taunting me with its pale light. In two days’ time she would be completely full. The itch pulsed through my veins, making me feel nervous, jumpy. I scratched my cheek furiously, out of habit, but nothing could sate the itch of the moon heating my wolven blood.

  I was staying in Daniel’s tent, which he’d left set up for me after leaving in a hurry to deal with the emergency I’d invented for him. I was lucky I had a dodgy friend in Liverpool (are there any other kind of friends from Liverpool?) who was willing to break into Daniel’s flat for me. He hadn’t s
tolen anything, just messed the place up enough that Daniel would need to spend time cleaning it as well as filing reports with the police. He’d taken two weeks’ leave, which should be more than enough time for me to do what I’d come to do.

  Luckily, Daniel had set up his tent a good fifty metres from the others, between the camp and the caves. I’d at least have some privacy. Most of Daniel’s things were still inside. I unzipped my rucksack and took out my bottle of Lycan pills. They weren’t the usual ones I took, but I’d heard good things about Clara – the local witch in Crookshollow village – and she’d assured me these were even more potent. Hopefully, the pills would keep my wolfish persona in check while the moon was high. Otherwise, I might do something I’d later regret, especially with the delectable Anna around.

  I downed a couple of pills, and waited. The itch did seem to abate a bit. Good. I had something important to do that night.

  The moon rose higher, and the itch throbbed through my whole body. I gritted my teeth and held my hands at my sides, resisting the urge to scratch my skin raw, the way I had done as a child.

  Instead, I counted the minutes on my watch. Eleven thirty…eleven forty-three…eleven fifty-seven…When I was sure everyone else was asleep, I grabbed my torch, a crowbar, and a notebook from my pack, and made my way swiftly and silently from the camp towards the caves.

  It was better to get the job over and done with. Then I could focus my attention on Anna.

  The seam of basaltic rock ran through the forest for miles, and I knew that a huge network of caves ran through it, carved out by the movement of the earth and the paths dug by water rushing ever downward. People had inhabited the caves since the neolithic period, but not many people knew how recently they had been occupied.

  I had to keep it that way.

  It took me a few minutes to find the cave entrance in the dark. I sniffed the air again, but it was hard to distinguish the smells. Everything out here was tainted by the intoxicating scent of Anna. I could smell her footsteps as clearly as if she’d wandered through a tub of butter.

  I shimmied through the tiny hole, my boots splashing in the water. Now that the rain had finally stopped, the pool around my feet wasn’t nearly as deep as it had been earlier, although it was still slippery. I flicked my torch on, and made my way carefully over the rocks and across the site.

  The archaeologists had used string lines to create a grid of twelve squares (or quadrants, as Anna called them) across the living floor, and they were systematically clearing away the stratigraphic layers of each square, recording all the artefacts and features, and mapping notable finds into the theodolite to create a three-dimensional spatial map. So far, it didn’t look as though they’d ventured any further back into the cave. That was a good sign.

  Even when the cancer had eaten away at his mind and body, my father remembered the layout of the cave as though he’d been there just yesterday. I knew from his description the cave paintings were located in a tunnel leading down from a secondary cavern located through a small fissure at the end of the living floor. I needed to find them before Frances and her team did, and destroy them, if there was even anything left. Over fifty years had passed since they’d last been seen. Nature might have already taken care of things for me.

  I picked my way carefully along the wooden planks placed between the quadrants, and scanned the rear wall with my torch. It only took a few moments to find what I was looking for, a small opening in the back wall of the cave, at about waist height. I pushed my torch through first, resting it on a protruding rock so it pointed back towards me. I squeezed my shoulders forward, and wriggled my body into the tiny hole, using the wall behind me to kick off with my feet.

  It was a tight fit, but after a few moments of sweating and shifting and grunting, I managed to slip my arms through. I used the rock in front of me to pull my torso into the darkness. I stood up, dusting myself off, and shone the torch around me. I was standing in a long fissure between the rocks, the roof of the cave at least three metres above my head. I manoeuvred my way between the two sloping faces. At the end of the fissure, the room opened out into a large cavern. In the far corner, a pool of water reflected the light of my torch back at me. Dark openings led off to the left and the right.

  Dad said it was the left tunnel. I jumped down onto the next stone and headed towards the opening, the crowbar on my back clanging against the rock as I swung myself around.

  Back here, the rocks were dry, the ground beneath me crumbling stone. At the entrance, I shone my torch down the tunnel, bouncing the light along the walls, searching for the coloured designs that marked the paintings. I couldn’t see anything.

  “You’ve got to be here,” I muttered under my breath, bending up to check the ceiling of the tunnel. This was exactly where he’d said they’d be. So why couldn’t I see—

  “What the hell are you doing?” a sultry voice demanded from behind me.

  Shit. I was caught.

  3

  Anna

  Luke whirled around, the light of his torch temporarily blinding me. “Anna, you startled me.”

  “I might say the same thing,” I said, suddenly nervous. Not twenty minutes ago I’d been tucked up warm in bed, trying to forget about the way Luke had smiled at me when I said how much I love Heinlein’s books. I was drifting off to sleep imagining what it would be like to kiss Luke’s soft lips…but then I realised I didn’t have my book with me. Had I left it in the caravan when I’d run away from Luke, or had I dropped it somewhere outside on the way to my tent?

  Damnit. That was the only book I’d brought along to read. Without it, I’d have to resort to talking to people. And between Ruth’s sickening suckup-itude, Frances’s scatterbrained inattentiveness, and Max’s overall leery strangeness, I wasn’t that keen on the idea.

  I sighed, and sat up to pull on my socks and boots. I was wide awake now, and the thought of the book sitting in a puddle outside was more than I could bear. It was like I’d told Luke: my books were precious, even the battered second-hand copies. I pulled on my jacket and stepped out into the frigid night. I retraced my steps across the camp to the caravan, but couldn’t see it on the ground anywhere. Peering in at the window, I noticed the book sitting on the edge of the chair. I went inside and grabbed it, relief seeping through my body as I clutched it under my arm. I was heading back to my tent when I’d seen Luke creeping off towards the caves.

  It had been curiosity that compelled me to follow him. But now that I was here, confronting him wearing only my pyjamas, thermal underwear, boots, and jacket, I realised just how dangerous this situation could be. I barely knew Luke. Just because he was gorgeous didn’t mean he didn’t have some nefarious purpose. As far as I knew, this guy could be unstable. And I was alone with him, without my hard hat, in the dark, in an unexplored section of the cave. No one else knew I was here. If he killed me now, they wouldn’t ever find my body.

  I’d just made all the mistakes I’d promised myself I’d never make.

  “I asked a question,” I said, trying to stop my voice from wavering. Luke stared at me with wide eyes. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Fancy that. I’d actually rendered him speechless.

  “Luke?” I prodded, careful to keep my voice stern. No sense in letting him sense my fear.

  “I’m just…checking up on some of the details of your excavation.” Luke nodded firmly. “Frances’s notes weren’t very expansive. I thought I’d come here and try to get a sense of things in situ.”

  “This area of the cave hasn’t been explored,” I said, my voice shrinking in the cavernous space. “That fact was in the notes you were reading. It’s dangerous to come here by yourself, especially at night, especially if no one knows where you are.”

  “You know where I am,” he growled, those fierce green eyes flickering over my body. With a flush, I remembered that I was wearing my hideous pink thermal leggings underneath my Snoopy pyjama pants. Could this day get any worse?

  “We shouldn�
�t be in the caves at night,” I repeated nervously. “I believe a certain ranger told me it’s against the rules.”

  “Do you ever do anything that’s against the rules?” he asked, closing the gap between us in a heartbeat. He still hadn’t touched me, but my body flooded with warm, pulsing energy. How was it he could make me feel this way? Especially when I’d just caught him red handed doing something he shouldn’t.

  “I…er…”

  “I thought so,” Luke stepped closer. “Anna. I can explain. I—”

  “Argh!” I screamed as something swooped down from the darkness and flapped beside my face. I dropped my torch as I flung my hands up to protect my eyes from the screeching bat. My stomach turned as the bat’s furry body slipped through my fingers and scrambled into my hair, its wings twitching as tangled itself deeper.

  The torch clattered on the rocks below, bouncing down the steps and plunging into the pool. The light went out.

  “Fuck,” Luke swore. “Stand still!”

  “I can’t stand still. There’s a bat in my hair!” I wailed, flailing my hands around my head. I turned to run back down the fissure, but instead I crashed into Luke, sending his torch flying from his hands. It hit the rocks with a crash, and the light flickered out, plunging us both into complete darkness.

  Tears welled in my eyes. The bat’s feet scrabbled against my head, yanking my hair so hard the entire side of my scalp felt as though it were being pulled off. Luke’s hands battled in my hair. He swore again as the squabbling intensified. Finally, the bat released me, and I heard its wings flapping away into the darkness.

  “Ow.” I touched the side of my head. My scalp felt tender. But at least it was still there. Luckily I’d already had a tetanus shot.

  “Anna. Are you OK?”

  I nodded, biting my lip. After a moment of silence I realised how stupid that was. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice cracking.