“Okay, then.” Betty took a breath, felt her heartbeat picking up. “We have a plan. Right? We go to Bingo’s, and … on the way, we figure out what we’ll say when we get there.”
“Perfect,” Archie agreed, sounding wholly unconvinced. He pulled out of the parking lot at last, heading in the direction of Midville.
Jughead had rage on his side, but not experience. He was in midair when he finished his transformation, but by the time his jaws closed around his cousin’s neck, Bingo’s throat was already protected by a thick pelt of charcoal-and-silver fur. They crashed to the ground, rolling across the tile, and Jughead’s teeth slipped free from their hold. Slamming into the cabinets beneath the sink, he scrambled to right himself again while his cousin danced out of reach.
Bingo had backed away, stepping in a careful semicircle, snarling down at him—waiting. The voice inside that belonged to Jughead’s human self, the one of reason and rationale, was gone. In its place was only a feral need for blood, for dominance, and he could silence it no longer. There would be no walking away from this fight, no matter how outclassed he was. He would either defeat his cousin, or he would die trying.
And he hadn’t even begun to try.
Shoving against the baseboard with his hind feet, he leaped into the air again, jaws sharp and wide. Bingo tried to feint, but it was a maneuver Jughead anticipated, and he managed to sink his teeth into one of his cousin’s flanks. Blood welled up from the wound, warm and slippery, and the taste made his head spin with adrenaline and primal excitement. But his bite was still too shallow. With a piercing yelp, Bingo rolled, bracing his massive hind paws under Jughead’s chest and sending him hurtling across the room.
Twice his normal size, and packed with dense, lean muscle, Jughead crashed into the Wilkins’ vintage oven like a wrecking ball. The antique appliance caved in under the impact, breaking free from its moorings and scraping across the floor, ripping up the tile. A pipe that jutted from the wall gave off a soft hiss, pouring invisible gas into the air as Jughead shook himself out again, once more struggling up onto his feet.
The kitchen was already covered in wreckage—broken glass and ceramics, splintered fragments of wood from the table and chairs, books and magnets and bits of damaged flooring—but Bingo sat in the middle of it all, crouched calmly on his haunches, watching his cousin with amusement dancing in his eyes. His attitude was knowing, taunting, his relaxed pose a middle finger. I could do this all day.
Memories were coming back to Jughead, but still so much was a blur. That night in the woods two months ago … had that been the first time he ever changed? Had he claimed other victims no one even knew about? His subhuman consciousness teemed with an understanding of the silent communication that passed between wolves; he recalled the signals he’d obeyed, the instincts he’d honed, in just a few short nights under Bingo’s tutelage. But he had no fighting experience, and his cousin knew it.
Growling deep in his throat, Jughead bared his teeth, rage at this unfairness quickly overpowering his common sense. With a start, Bingo rose onto all fours, backing away—and stumbling. His hind leg, on the side where he’d been bitten, gave out, and he fell into a seated position again. More adrenaline flooded Jughead’s system, the show of weakness triggering an immediate impulse to seize the advantage, to strike … but that fading human voice inside urged him just as clearly to stop.
The competing instincts confused him, fogged his thoughts, leaving him briefly immobilized; and after a few endless moments, Bingo got up again, a sly look angling his features—his hind leg just fine. It had been a ruse, a trick meant to fool his cousin into making a hasty attack that he would regret. Folding his ears back, Jughead growled again, a low, threatening rumble that rattled the glasses on the counter. No more games. They circled each other, stepping over the sharp-edged debris that littered the floor, the number display shifting on the digital clock. And then Bingo lunged.
Their teeth clashed in a razor-tipped fury, their claws tearing vicious grooves in each other’s flesh, and Jughead’s pulse quickened when his fangs carved a notch out of Bingo’s left ear. His cousin retreated with a sharp cry … and then charged again, immediately, and they raged throughout the kitchen. Slamming into drawers and counters, struggling for supremacy, they brought dishes down from the overhead cupboards while the air turned heavy and sweet with gas from the exposed line.
Bingo’s smug confidence disappeared gradually, his scent turning sour, and the more blows he failed to land, the more erratic his movements became. When he made another leaping attack, it was finally Jughead’s turn to feint. Darting left and then twisting right, he caused his cousin to overshoot the mark, and when their bodies collided, he buried his deadly teeth deep into Bingo’s left shoulder. Their bodies rolled again, sliding through broken dishes, careening into the doorway that led to the living room.
Once again, Jughead tasted blood … and this time he wasn’t going to be shaken off so easily. He bit down harder as Bingo scrabbled against the slick floor beneath them, feeling the shift of ligaments between his teeth, the resistance of bone; his jaw ached, but he clamped down with even more strength—as much as he could muster—his mind filling with ugly memories: Dilton’s mouth gaping open in death; Miss Grundy running in fear; Pop Tate’s terrified, reeling eyes. A frantic, high-pitched noise hung in the air, but Jughead ignored it, wrenching his head from side to side, tasting victory at last.
There was a hideous sound as the shoulder joint separated, as flesh sucked apart from flesh; and when Bingo finally braced his feet against his cousin’s chest, kicking him away with everything he had, his arm ripped clean from his body. Jughead flew backward, the detached limb still clenched in his jaws, tumbling wildly into the living room and slamming into a wooden bench arranged beneath the picture window. Blood soaked the fur around his mouth, dripped from his whiskers, and he spat the appendage onto the floor.
Still in the kitchen, Bingo staggered backward, eyes bright, blood spurting from the massive wound in his shoulder. He crashed hard against the cabinet that stood in the corner, the digital clock teetering precariously before it toppled and finally fell. When it hit the ground, the plastic casing shattered, and a spark flashed around the base of the cord.
Their gazes met across the length of two rooms, their eyes widening as the gas-filled air crackled and a sound like a great, heaving gasp filled the house …
LEAFLESS TREES CLAWED THE AIR on either side of the road, streetlamps gilding their branches in tawny light as Archie and Betty drove slowly along the curb. The houses they passed were unremarkable to the point of being nearly indistinguishable: two stories, picture windows, gabled roofs … one after another, they repeated themselves like Russian dolls. The only thing that set any of them apart was whether a light was on inside.
“I’m pretty sure this is the right neighborhood,” Archie declared, squinting at the row of identical mailboxes that lined the street, and Betty gritted her teeth so hard something popped in her jaw.
“I don’t want to be the one to point this out, but there’s nobody else, so I guess I’ll have to: That’s the third time you’ve said that,” she remarked. Then: “Not that I’m criticizing! You’re doing a great job, Archie. I’m sure we’ll find it.”
“Ugh,” Archie groaned. “Don’t be nice to me, it makes the guilt worse. If I were doing a great job, we’d be there already.”
“What do you remember about Bingo’s house?” Betty asked helpfully. She’d posed this question a half-dozen times already, but she was running out of clever ways to jog Archie’s memory, and time was most definitely of the essence. “What color was it? What was the layout like, and was it on a corner, or …?”
“The house was … dark,” Archie said confidently. “And it had two stories and a picture window. And a mailbox.”
“Great.” Betty felt her smile tighten a little bit. “That’s … great. We’re starting to narrow it down.”
The car screeched to a sudden halt, and Bett
y’s seat belt snapped tight against her shoulder. She was still catching her breath when Archie leaned across her, his eyes going wide. “And it had a birdhouse in the front yard, just like this one! I think this is it!”
Betty looked out at an unremarkable two-story home with a gabled roof, a featureless mailbox, and a birdhouse mounted on a post at the foot of the front walk. The place had a large picture window, like all the other houses on the block, but a light glowed somewhere inside … and a shadow moved across the glass.
“I think someone is home,” she observed. And an instant later, a large figure smashed clean through the window, hurtling out from inside the house in a hail of deadly shards.
Hitting the ground in a frenzied roll, its giant paws flailing, a gargantuan brown wolf with glowing yellow eyes scrabbled to a desperate stop on the front lawn only a few feet from the sidewalk. It looked up, meeting Archie’s and Betty’s slack-jawed stares—scarcely a moment before a massive explosion shook the entire neighborhood.
The house blew apart from the baseboards, great billows of orange flame blasting out the windows and licking at the night, the impact so tremendous it made Archie’s car rock on its axles. Wood and glass rained down from above, bits of smoldering insulation drifting on the air like hellish snowflakes, and a plume of ugly black smoke mushroomed into the sky. Betty was still blinking in shock, blood roaring in her ears like a subway train, when the werewolf turned and sprinted up the street.
“W-what the …?” Archie’s eyes were so wide they were in danger of falling out as he stared at the burning wreckage. “Did somebody just drop a bomb on Bingo’s house?”
“Archie!” Betty gripped his shoulder, gesturing frantically out the windshield. “The wolf? He’s getting away!”
The boy’s eyes were still locked on the conflagration before them, his hands so tight on the steering wheel they looked like it would take surgery to pry them off. “Who do you think it was? Bingo, or … or Jug?”
“Who the hell cares, just drive!” Betty shouted, shoving his right leg down so his foot slammed onto the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a sharp squeal from the tires, the front bumper narrowly missing the Wilkins’ mailbox before Archie remembered that he was supposed to be steering. He corrected at the last second, and they took off down the street, flames licking at the treetops behind them.
Chasing a werewolf is no easy task, even if you’ve had experience—and Archie had none. The beast moved with astonishing speed, its muscular limbs churning, its substantial feet allowing it to turn on a dime and change course without warning. Three blocks from Bingo’s neighborhood, emergency sirens already wailing in the distance, Betty yanked her gun from her bag and then rolled down the window.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she said, “Try to keep as steady as possible, okay, Archie?”
“Betty, what do you—” But there was no point finishing; she was already half outside the car, her upper body leaning into the night, her blond ponytail streaming in the cold, unrelenting wind.
The werewolf was kicking up grit maybe twenty yards ahead, and Archie watched from the corner of one eye as Betty took aim, sighting down the barrel of her revolver. Then, just as she pulled the trigger, the beast veered right unexpectedly. The bullet slammed into the ground, ripping a hole out of the pavement, while their quarry vaulted the curb and streaked away from the road—unharmed.
“Damn!” The girl cursed, dropping back into her seat as Archie slowed the car, watching the wolf gallop across someone’s yard, vanishing into the darkness that passed between houses. Gesturing wildly once again, Betty yelped, “What are you waiting for? Go! Go go go!”
“How?” Archie stared at the evenly spaced homes, the manicured lawns and sculpted hedges. “I told you, I’ve only been to Midville a couple of times—whatever’s on the other side of this neighborhood, I don’t know how to get there!”
“Yes. You do,” Betty insisted through her teeth. Then, grabbing the wheel, she shoved down on his right leg again, and the four-door jumped the curb with a bone-shaking thud. Wheels skidding, they flew over the sidewalk and tore through the grass, the car bouncing and juddering as they followed the beast at what was definitely an unsafe speed. The sound that came out of Archie’s mouth as they flashed through the narrow side lawn, the mirror on his side crunching and snapping off as they scraped past a carved gatepost, could best be described as a terrified yodel.
Plowing across backyards and between two more houses, they caught sight of the brown wolf again as they barreled back into the moonlight, a dark shape fleeing up the sidewalk on all fours. Archie careened out onto the road again, swerving left, the engine protesting as he put the pedal down. They were on a hill, the street sloping up, and the car inexplicably began to lose speed.
“What’s happening?” Betty asked, one arm already out the window as she prepared to haul herself into the open again. “Why are we slowing down? Go faster—we’re gonna lose him!”
“I’m trying!” Archie snapped back, stomping his foot on the gas as the wolf reached the crest of the hill … but the car didn’t respond. The speedometer kept dropping, orange lights blinking to life on the dashboard. “Something’s wrong, Betts, I think, uh … I think we messed up the gas tank?”
With a string of panicked expletives, Betty hoisted herself up, thrusting her gun over the hood of the car—but she was already too late. The werewolf vanished beyond the peak, while the four-door first coasted to a stop and then started rolling backward. Before Archie even managed to find the brake with his foot, Betty was already scrambling the rest of the way out the window, tumbling onto the street.
“Betts?” he shouted, throwing the gear shift into park. “Betty, what are you doing?” But she was up and off like a shot, racing pell-mell for the point where the beast had disappeared from sight, and Archie had no choice but to rip the keys from the ignition, grab his own weapon, and run after her. “Hey, wait, be careful!”
At the pace the creature moved, there was no way they could hope to keep up with it on foot, let alone overtake it; but that fact didn’t slow Betty down at all. Muscles burning, Archie bolted over the rise a few feet behind her, just in time for them to catch sight of the wolf once more—already at the bottom of the hill again, where it took the sharp corner of a T-intersection and vanished behind a thick stand of trees. A moment later, there was a violent crash-clang of metal followed by an explosion of breaking glass, and the two teenagers exchanged a startled glance as they chased after the noise.
Reaching the base of the slope, they stumbled to a halt, breathing hard and staring at what rose before them. Past a grandly arched entryway, an imposing building loomed against the sky, a sign out front greeting them in large, colorful letters: WELCOME TO THE MIDVILLE AQUARIUM! The gate that blocked the drive after hours had been smashed open—and it still drifted lazily on its hinges, squeaking faintly as it rebounded from the force necessary to snap its locks.
Archie shot Betty another glance, his neck clammy with sweat, and he arched a brow. “The aquarium?”
Staring at the building’s broad, darkened windows, she answered, “I’d make a ‘fish in a barrel’ joke, but … you know. We might turn out to be the fish.”
“Do you think there’s a security guard around?” He tried not to sound too hopeful.
“I think,” Betty said, slipping one more silver bullet into her revolver to replace the one she’d fired from the car, “that you and I are the only security Midville has right now.”
With that, she darted forward, slipping through the swinging gate, moonlight painting her blond hair a pale blue. For a moment, Archie was rooted in place, eyes locked on the shining, black windows of the aquarium. It was deserted … but not quite deserted enough. If that wolf really was his best friend, then something very bad was going to happen tonight. Either they would have to kill Jughead …
Or Jughead would have to kill them.
THE MIDVILLE AQUARIUM HAD an angular, space-age look to it, with dark cladd
ing and tinted glass that reflected back the stars. Inside, it housed thousands of creatures, from otters and eels to fish from parts of the ocean the sun never reached—and tonight, it seemed, it also housed a werewolf. At the top of the wide front steps, one of the vast windows looking into the foyer had been completely shattered, a gaping hole giving them a clear view of the black void within.
Most of the Riverdale kids had been to the aquarium at least once before, either on a field trip or with their families, but Betty’s last visit had been in fifth grade. She remembered almost nothing of the layout inside and didn’t know what kind of situation they were heading into. Holding the revolver steady in a two-handed grip, broken glass crunching under her feet, she sidled through the damaged window and into the building.
The foyer was vast and sleek, with heavy shadows pouring down from a high ceiling, and as far as either of them could tell it was empty. There were some plants and benches, a shuttered gift shop, and a circular reception desk backed by a wall-mounted floor plan, but no monsters in sight. The aquarium was a loop, Betty realized, with the entrance to the exhibits on the left of the entrance hall, and the exit facing it from the opposite side.
“Where is he?” Archie whispered the question, his voice still bouncing conspicuously off the marble floor and polished stone walls. A thousand bits of tinted glass were scattered over the ground, but there was no indication of which direction the wolf had gone, and a clock above the door ticked forebodingly as Betty stared at the blueprint on the wall.
“We’ll have to split up,” she finally said, wishing there was a better answer. “It’s the only way we can make sure he doesn’t escape. You go that way, I’ll go the other, and we cut off his way out. He’ll be cornered between us.”
“Right. He’ll be cornered.” Archie looked queasy, but he nodded as he followed the direction of her pointed finger—to the darkened arch on the far side of the foyer that marked the exit from the tour of displays.
A Werewolf in Riverdale Page 17
