Witch Wolf

by Winter Pennington

  Light flooded the room and the man in the chair jumped up. He’d had a gun in his lap and was now holding it up. The man looked at me, a look of relief passing over his face.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  “Who are you?” I let the demand slip into my tone. He was, after all, in my bedroom.

  “A friend of Rupert’s. He told me to keep an eye on you while he was away.” He shoved the gun down the back of his pants and sat down in the armchair someone had pulled into the corner.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s at work right now. He should be back here in an hour or so.” I watched as his eyes dropped below my chin. I looked down and realized I was only wearing a bra and panties. I grabbed the blanket and jerked it up over my chest.

  “Get out so I can get dressed.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the door.

  The man stood and stretched with his arms above his shoulders. I arched a darkened brow. The dark blue tank top he wore left his arms bare. It was obvious he worked out by the bulk of muscles he flexed while stretching. The jeans he wore were faded and torn at the knees. I looked up at his face. It was more boyish than I thought it had been. The desperate need to shave had made him look older. His unruly blond hair fell in front of his eyes as he looked shyly at his own feet. I rolled my eyes.

  “Can your shit and get out of my room,” I said.

  He looked up at me, either pretending to be shocked, or maybe really shocked, that I didn’t buy into his little act. “What?”

  “You heard me. I want to get dressed, and I don’t want an audience.” I gave him an expectant look.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll be in the living room.”

  He walked out of the room, shutting the bedroom door behind him. I rolled out of bed and walked over to my closet. I put on a pair of black lounge pants and dug a red tank top out of the top drawer of my dresser. I grabbed the gray flannel that hung on the closet door and put it on.

  There were lights on in the house when I walked into the kitchen. I listened.

  “Yeah, she’s awake,” the guy said.

  “Good. Tell her I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m locking the shop up now.”

  “I’ll tell her, but she’s not very friendly,” he said.

  I heard Rupert’s laugh. “She’s always that way at first.”

  I quietly stepped into the living room when the boy hung up his cell phone.

  “He’s right, you know.”

  The kid jumped and turned. “Sweet Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.”

  I gave him an empty look. “You should pay more attention to your surroundings.”

  “I pay plenty attention to my surroundings.”

  “Which is why you were asleep when I woke up?” I asked, tilting my head to one side.

  “I was bored and figured I’d get a little shut-eye.” He plopped down on the black leather couch.

  “I’m guessing Rupert hired you as a sort of bodyguard?”

  “Yeah…”

  “You need more practice,” I said blandly. “Next time remember that you’re supposed to be guarding someone’s body, not ogling at it.”

  He looked up and I knew he’d been looking at me again. “Huh?”

  “My point exactly.”

  When Rupert knocked on the door, I allowed the kid to get it. I sat at the kitchen table drinking a mug of coffee.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” he said.

  “I am. Though I’m curious to know—how long I was out?”

  “Three days,” he said and sat down across the table from me.

  “Shit. What about work?”

  “They called when I was here. I told them you had the flu and were up all night vomiting. You should call them in the morning and let them know you’re feeling better.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How’s your back doing?” he asked.

  “It feels better, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “The wounds had already closed up by the time I got you here.” He leaned back in his seat. “The wounds on your thigh were only scratches…nothing to worry about.”

  Nothing to worry about, I thought. Yeah, right.

  Chapter Three

  The phone rang, drawing me out of my memories. I put the mug of coffee down on my desk and leaned over to grab it.

  “Lyall Preternatural Investigations,” I said in the best courtesy voice I could muster.

  “Heya, Kass. How’s it going?” It was Arthur’s cheerful voice leaking over the line.

  I frowned. “It’s going. What do you want?”

  “Is that any way to talk to an ol’ buddy ol’ pal?” he asked and tsked softly. “Why do you always think I want something?”

  “You never call me just to talk. There’s always a string attached. So, go ahead and tell me what the catch is. What’s going on?” I picked up a pencil and began tapping the eraser rhythmically on my mug.

  “Harsh,” he said, pretending I’d wounded his pride. “We need you to come out and take a look at something.”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. I looked at the large calendar on my desk.

  “Shit,” I said out loud.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re in luck.” My voice was flat. “There’s nothing written on my calendar to help me get out of this. Tell me what happened, and why exactly I need to come out and take a look at it. You know, just because you guys treat me like I’m still a member of the team doesn’t mean I am, Arthur. I’ve got my own business now,” I reminded him.

  He laughed. “You tell me that every time I call you.”

  “Then perhaps you should stop calling me?”

  “You break my little heart,” he said, and I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything. “Trust me, you’ll want to take a look at this. They’re keeping everything on the down low, but no one can decide what the hell murdered a man like this…” He sighed. “It’s gruesome, Kass. I hope you haven’t had lunch.”

  “Oh goody, a gruesome murder mystery.” I mocked being thrilled. “You know I run strictly on coffee until around five or so.”

  Ignoring my sarcasm, he asked, “Will you come take a look?”

  “Tell me where it is.” I turned the pencil around and dug through my desk for a Post-it pad.

  Arthur gave me the address. “Good Lady,” I said, “the boonies? It’ll take me forty minutes alone to get out there.”

  “I know, but we need you to take a look at this.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “I told you…No one has figured out what did this. We’ve got people running around talking about a bear. We need your preternatural expertise,” he said making it sound oh so important by emphasizing the word “expertise.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again. “How does one get a bear killing and preternatural in the same sentence?” I asked. “Especially since bears are not native to Oklahoma.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “So, yea or nay?”

  “Yea,” I said, “I’m leaving the office now.”

  I hung up without saying good-bye.

  On my way out I stopped to do one of those little girly checks in front of the mirror that hung on the wall by my office door. I tucked the streak of white in my long black hair behind my right ear, tucking the long side-swept bangs with it. Unlike most side-swept bangs, mine were long enough that they swept across my face and past my chin. In my profession, it’s a must that I can keep my hair out of my face. The white streak, on the other hand, wasn’t bleached. It had begun showing up gradually after every shift I’d made into wolf form. Ironically, it was the same color as my fur.

  If someone asked me what the change was like, the melding of my human thoughts with those of the wolf and the sharing of my body with her, I would tell them it was beyond frightening. The first shift I ever experienced, I’d gone under alone, locking myself in the bathroom of my apartment on the night of the full moon. It was that night that
I knew without a doubt that I was no longer human.

  It was the first battle the wolf and I had. She ripped from my flesh as if she were tearing me apart. I’d passed out from the pain of it and when I came to on the bathroom floor it was morning. All I can remember are snatches, bits of memory, and my utter determination to stay on that bathroom floor.

  I’d fought the wolf and won the first few times, but always at the price of my consciousness. I cannot remember if it was my third or fourth shift that I finally decided to try and work with the wolf. The cravings were too strong and lingering just a bit longer after each shift. So I drove out to the country hours before the full moon rose to hunt in a woodland area an hour away from my apartment.

  And hunt we did. It was beautiful and tragic. The earth and moon and stars were my mother, were a part of me. I’d taken down a deer that night, running wildly, teeth gnashing.

  If I think about it hard enough I can still feel the creature’s pulse thumping slowly against my tongue as it died. I wasn’t used to it and I didn’t know if a part of me would ever get used to it, but I had to learn to live so that it didn’t kill us both.

  I stopped reflecting on my change and looked in the mirror. I had to admit—I looked pretty damn harmless. Of course, the shoulder holster and Mark III over my red blouse looked anything but harmless. I could see what most people saw: a petite woman with a heart-shaped face. The dark kohl looked good with my pale skin and green eyes. It helped to bring out the specks of gold around my pupils. I was the only person in my family who had black hair and green eyes. The rest of my family had brown hair and blue eyes. On my mother’s side our ancestry went back to Ireland, and on my father’s, England. I was the weird wolf in the family. My high school history teacher had used the term “Black Irish” to describe it, whatever that meant.

  I grabbed the black pea coat from the back of my chair and shrugged into it. Once the jacket went on over the Mark III, no one would know I was carrying. I was going to see a crime scene. Yippee. I tossed the messenger bag over my shoulder and walked out of the office, silently cursing myself for wearing high heels. Three-inch heels and a crime scene are a disaster waiting to happen.

  “June, I’ve got to go take a look at something for the cops. Can you manage locking the shop up by yourself if I’m not back by then?” I asked my secretary.

  She pushed the gray tresses out of her eyes. “Will do,” she said, “but I don’t want this becoming a ritual.” She looked down at the paperwork she was filing through.

  I smirked even though she couldn’t see it. June could be a little demanding at times, and an outsider might think she ran the place, by the way she talked to me. I’d come to realize she looked at me like one of her grandchildren. I liked having her in the office, because not only would she not take my shit—she wouldn’t take anyone else’s.

  I walked across the street and spotted the solid black paint of my Tiburon. I slapped the sticky note with the directions on it on the dash and threw my bag on the floor in front of the other seat. When I turned the key in the ignition the gentle sounds of Within Temptation’s “Mother Earth” drowned out the soft hum of the car.

  *

  Everyone had been standing around twiddling his or her thumbs. It seemed they’d already looked at the body. That figures. I ducked under the tape as Arthur spotted me and approached. He led me through the mass of uniforms and to the body.

  I knelt carefully, holding my hands out for the pair of latex gloves he offered. There wasn’t much of a body left of this…thing. I had to call it a thing, or a body, because in my mind it wasn’t a man anymore. It was a mutilated corpse.

  The torso was barely connected to the rest of its body, hanging on by ribbons of flesh like the torn wrapping paper of a present that someone had opened a little too eagerly. White hipbones tipped with blood glinted in the afternoon sun. The ground was soaked with blood and other fluids. The stench caught in the back of my throat and I resisted the urge to cough.

  “What body parts are missing?” I asked as Arthur knelt down beside me. I leaned over the torso and carefully examined the wounds there. The body’s hips had claw marks engraved in them. I tried not to focus on the hollowed insides of the torso below me. The smell of blood and death made my stomach lurch.

  “We found the arm over there.” Arthur pointed farther into the woods that surrounded us. “And as you can see, there’s nothing left of his intestines.” He sounded like he was going to be sick. The human part of me agreed with him.

  I took in a deep breath of air. It was a mistake this close to the body. I froze and tried to hold the pacing wolf inside me down. If I went apeshit at a crime scene I was not getting a Scooby Snack. The entire body was such a mess of red gore that all I could smell was blood. It flooded my senses and called to the beast inside me. I resisted the urge to roll around in it, to claim it as my territory, my blood, my kill. It wasn’t my kill, and that just wouldn’t look good, would it? I stifled a giggle at the ridiculousness of my thoughts.

  Lesson number one: You don’t giggle at a crime scene. It makes everyone else think you’ve lost your mind.

  I closed my eyes as the scent of blood mingled with something else. Another smell hit my nostrils, something sour and acrid. “Werewolf,” I said as I moved around the body, pretending to examine it as I sniffed out the area around it. It wasn’t just the scattered pieces of human flesh strewn across the dying grass that made me say that. I stopped with the tree behind me. Turning, I pretended to cough. The movement put my face toward the tree, and I sniffed. There was a scent on the tree next to the body. The werewolf had marked the tree. Which meant that yes, he’d piddled all over the damn thing. How did I know it was male? Female urine does not smell that bad, and most females don’t feel an urge to piss on everything.

  I felt the beast pacing in her fleshy cage, nuzzling at the surface as the tide of anger rose within me. I stood too quickly and stumbled away from the body. It wouldn’t be an unusual sight. A lot of people stumble away after seeing a dead body, and usually vomit. I had good control over the beast, but when she lurked this close to the surface—I knew better. She whispered not-so-nice things. Okay, not-so-human things. I wouldn’t let myself touch the blood. That was too much temptation. In fact, I was getting away from the smell of sweet metal and raw meat. The thought alone made my mouth water and I swallowed a little too loudly. I was suddenly craving a bacon cheeseburger. Good Goddess. That sounded good.

  At first, the cravings had freaked me out. It started with a desire for bloody food. I had learned, over time, that it wasn’t always just the smell of blood that pulled the predatory instincts out of the wolf. The smell of fear could pull out the predator in me and I’d want nothing more than to taste that fear on my tongue. In fact, smell serves as a huge trigger. The smell of desire, the smell of fear, the smell of salt and sweat and human frailty, those things have a tendency to excite the wolf and make me feel terribly inhuman. For months, I was a stranger to myself, but with time, I began to learn the wolf and to understand her.

  Well, in some areas. Getting hungry standing over a corpse still made me uneasy.

  I headed back toward the group of uniforms and Arthur fell into step beside me. My stomach gave a fierce little rumble.

  “Did your stomach just growl or are you about to upchuck?” he asked with a teasing twinkle in his eyes.

  I looked at him with what I knew was a blank expression. “I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry?” The teasing fell from his face. “How can you be hungry after seeing that?”

  I shrugged. “There’s this place by my apartment that makes delicious bacon cheeseburgers. I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “I cannot believe you could eat any kind of meat after seeing…that. You are definitely one of the weirdest gals I’ve met.” The expression he wore was both shocked and curious.

  “You have absolutely no idea.”

  “What?”

  I smiled. “Nothing.”

  When w
e made it back to the uniforms they were standing as far away from the mess of man-meat as they could. Two of them were arguing back and forth about the bear theory. I felt the anger stir inside me. How could they try and slight this off as a bear attack? It didn’t make any fucking sense. If they ever wanted to catch the real killer, they’d have to come to terms with the facts.

  “That wasn’t a bear,” I raised my voice, interrupting.

  “What?” one of the uniforms asked.

  I looked to the man I knew was in charge of the investigation.

  “Deputy Sheriff Witkins,” I said, “it was a werewolf attack.”

  “How can you tell?” he asked, his voice deep and calm.

  “The only wild animal that’s native to these parts is livestock and deer, and unless mad cow disease just took a whole new turn, it was a werewolf attack. A deer won’t snack on the insides of a man.”

  “What about coyotes, Miss Lyall?” he asked, and I ignored the “Miss” part.

  “They’re scavengers for the most part,” I said, “but even then they’re not going to do that much damage to a man. If you measure the claw marks around the hip, you’ll see they don’t match up with any animals in this area.” I left off the part that they probably wouldn’t match up with any animals at all.

  “The couple that owns this ranch says they heard a wolf howl.” He looked me up and down. “You may think it’s a werewolf, Lyall, but I’m not putting my job at risk on your say-so. Not for a thing like that.”

  I looked at his pudgy face, staring into his beady brown eyes.

  “That thing?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “That thing, Witkins, was a werewolf.” I dramatically pointed in the direction of the body. “That was not the work of one Winnie the Pooh. It’s seriously the Big Bad Wolf.”

  The deputy sheriff’s dark brown eyes followed my pointing finger, and even with the tan his face paled.

  “Miss Lyall,” the deputy said, “if that’s the case we have to figure something else out because the media can’t have their hands on that version.”