The Wereling 1: Wounded

by Stephen Cole

  Giant yellow eyes shone through the dust as something huge roared and screeched into the room from the black night outside.

  It was a blue Chevy, skewed headlights glaring out from its bashed-in front. Hadn’t Patience said she owned a …

  ‘Get in, you idiot!’

  Through the cloud of thick dust, Tom made out Kate’s willowy form behind the wheel. ‘What the—?’

  ‘Quick!’ she snapped, checking the rear-view. ‘There are ’wolves everywhere!’

  Tom scrambled across the rubble to reach the passenger door. Patience, still in her ’wolf-form, was whimpering, bloodied and half-crushed beneath a pile of brick and lintel.

  He jumped over her with a shudder, flung open the door and slid into the seat beside Kate. ‘Nice driving.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ she remarked, pumping the pedals and grappling with the gearshift. ‘I got the brake and accelerator mixed up, I was trying to stop outside.’ A metallic rasp belched across the sound of the idling engine. ‘Jesus. Where the hell is reverse?’

  ‘Look out!’ Tom shouted. A shape had detached itself from the shadows outside the pool of the car’s headlights, a monster bounding towards them so fast he could barely track it.

  ‘Finally!’ Kate cried, as the car lurched backwards.

  The werewolf threw itself on to the car, landing with an impact that might have shattered the suspension. It scrabbled for a hold as Kate reversed the Chevy at sickening speed. As she went careering out into the quiet suburban road, the beast’s front claws actually punctured the metal of the hood, securing it while its back paws scrabbled to find a hold.

  Kate braked. The car almost stalled but she revved it back into noisy life. Tom’s hand met hers trembling on the gearshift.

  Craning its neck, the ’wolf’s jaws snapped at them through the windshield, its breath clouding up the glass.

  ‘Hit the clutch!’ Tom yelled, and rammed the stick home into first. Wheels spinning, the Chevy screeched forwards. But the ’wolf clung on, eyes narrowed with hatred and determination.

  ‘Put your belt on,’ Kate shouted.

  Tom scrabbled for his seatbelt. The fastener clicked home just as Kate steered them into the back of another car. There was the hollow smack of metal on metal, and the ’wolf’s muscular body was jolted clear. Its nightmare form slithered away into the darkness.

  Kate shrugged as she slammed the car back into reverse. ‘Car’s screwed, anyway.’

  ‘So’s my neck,’ said Tom, rubbing the back of it. ‘Can we stop playing dodgems now?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Kate replied, thrashing the engine as they accelerated away. ‘I don’t think any of his friends are going to ask for a ride, do you?’ she added mildly.

  Tom shuddered and looked out at the lights that were flickering on at most of the windows along the street. Warm little squares that spoke of cosy normality.

  With the likes of Patience Stern living in their midst.

  ‘I thought it was traditional for the wolf to eat the grandmother, not for the grandmother to eat every poor bastard who comes to call. Though I guess she might have lost her appetite for a while.’ A flash-frame of her broken body spliced itself into Tom’s mind, and he shuddered. ‘She said Marcie had “put out the word”. There’ll be others after us, won’t there?’

  Kate nodded, hung a left. ‘You can bet on it. She’ll have posted our details on all the newsgroups, mailed all her special contacts … ’

  ‘Newsgroups?’ Tom echoed. ‘Werewolves on the Web?’

  ‘It’s just like any other society, Tom,’ Kate replied, ‘only a lot more secret and a lot less harmless. You might’ve noticed, werewolves don’t all skulk about in scary places – in Frankenstein’s castle or misty graveyards. They’re everywhere, OK? Everywhere.’ She cut across two lanes to reach an exit, ignoring swerving cars and blaring horns. ‘And they were using the Web and e-mail years before there was a PC in almost every home. Reaching out to each other. Sharing information. Uniting, organising.’

  ‘OK, Kate, how about we slow down a little, huh?’ Tom suggested over the rising whine of the engine. ‘We don’t want the cops hitting us with a speeding fine right now.’

  ‘The lupine community has never been stronger, Tom,’ Kate said, gripping the wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. ‘And now they’re after us. There is no one, no one we can trust right now, OK? You got that?’

  ‘I got that!’ Tom yelled at her. ‘I got it, now will you stop the god-damned car before you kill us first?’

  Kate braked hard and pulled over to the side of the road. The car lurched giddily as one wheel mounted the sidewalk beside a streetlight. The orange glow drowned out the sickly silver of the moonlight. She killed the engine. The cooling metal ticked noisily, like a bomb waiting to go off.

  ‘Where’d you go, Kate?’ Tom asked.

  Kate kept on staring out at the quiet highway.

  ‘You were gone. And so was your rucksack – with all the money.’

  ‘It’s on the back seat,’ Kate replied.

  Tom saw her eyes were brimming with tears. He swallowed. ‘You ran out on me, didn’t you?’

  She shrugged, then nodded.

  ‘What’s the matter, my snoring that bad?’

  ‘Yep.’ Kate looked like she was trying not to smile. ‘You’re not mad at me?’

  ‘Mad at you?’ Tom looked at her. ‘Sure. But more than anything, I’m hurt that you’d just leave without saying a word.’

  ‘I left a note,’ Kate muttered. ‘I tucked it in your—’

  ‘I don’t care about some stupid note!’ Tom yelled. ‘Writing doesn’t count, OK? I’m not just a few lines of typed text in a chat room, winking and smiley-facing you from a gazillion miles away. I’m right here. I know it’s not what you’re used to but … ’ His voice dried, and he hoped Kate wouldn’t see he was close to tears as well. ‘Look. I just need to know that I can trust you. That you won’t run out on me again.’

  Kate’s hands slipped from the wheel and fell into her lap. ‘I came back for you, didn’t I?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Because of me? Or because of the ’wolves outside?’

  She turned to face him, the look on her tear-stained face darkening.

  ‘“Semi-colon-dash-right bracket”,’ he added, and mimed the emoticon for her.

  When she smiled, he wished he could lean in to hold her, and to be held. In your dreams, he told himself. Not while you’re stuck in your nightmares.

  Kate turned the ignition, and the battered Chevy rattled into new life.

  ‘Know where we’re going?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Not really,’ she admitted, calmer now. ‘But I guess at least now we know where we’re coming from.’

  An hour later on the interstate, it seemed Kate had worked out a fair idea of where they were headed.

  Twin Falls, Idaho. Her old home.

  ‘Won’t your mom be expecting us to make for there?’ Tom worried. ‘It’s the same route as the bus was taking.’

  Kate nodded. ‘But we need new transport.’

  Tom looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Think about it,’ Kate continued. ‘Someone drove into sweet old lady Patience’s house – and her Chevy is missing. The cops are probably already looking for it. I’m hoping we can borrow something else from someone I know in Twin Falls.’

  ‘You said we can’t trust anyone,’ Tom reminded her.

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘You must know them pretty well.’

  Kate didn’t answer.

  Rocky stretches of desert and wilderness gradually gave way to wide-open fields. They arrived in Twin Falls as dawn was smudging trails of golden-red across the paling sky. They drove past fields and farmsteads on the outskirts of town for a few miles, then Kate jerked hard on the wheel.

  ‘Hey!’ Tom cried as the Chevy started ploughing a ragged swathe through a wheat field.

  ‘Off road and out of sight,’ Kate explained. She turned off the engine and the c
ar slowed to a graceless halt. The wheat waved wildly in a stiff breeze, as if in surrender.

  ‘Thanks, Patience,’ said Tom reverently. ‘Your car was a virtue even if you turned out not to be.’

  Kate didn’t smile. She picked up her rucksack, got out of the car and walked away without looking back.

  Tom followed her back on to the road, where they walked for about a quarter of a mile before hitting a dirt track.

  ‘This is the place,’ Kate told him.

  The track swerved round, a blind bend.

  ‘So, who’s this person you think can help us?’ Tom asked.

  Kate suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Him,’ she said.

  Tom froze too. A blond-haired guy, probably in his early twenties, with clear blue eyes and a straggly goatee was standing in the middle of the track. He wore muddy jeans, a plaid shirt and a heavy waterproof jacket.

  And he was pointing a shotgun at them.

  g

  g

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Hey, Jed,’ Kate said, pushing her hands deep into her coat pockets. ‘You going to shoot me or what?’

  Jed was staring at her like Tarzan seeing Jane for the first time: part wonder and desire, part fear. He lowered the shotgun, hesitantly. ‘Katy? Jesus, is it really you?’

  A tiny smile appeared on Kate’s face. ‘Yeah. Really.’

  Jed shook his head, disbelief stretching his face somewhere between goofy smile and baleful frown. ‘Three years since you disappeared.’

  ‘Long story,’ Kate told him, but before she could manage another word Jed grabbed her in a clumsy hug.

  Tom felt a cold spark of jealousy kick through him. Kate was embracing Jed too, her hands pressing against different parts of his back like she couldn’t work out where best to hold him first. ‘Hi, I’m Tom Anderson,’ he announced loudly.

  The two broke off the hug.

  Jed skittered back a few steps, like he’d been sleepwalking and now he’d woken up with a shock. He nodded at Tom without enthusiasm. ‘Jed Monterey.’

  ‘Tom’s a friend of mine,’ Kate said casually.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Jed remarked.

  ‘So do you greet all your visitors at gunpoint?’ Tom enquired.

  ‘Saw you dump the car on our land,’ replied Jed. ‘Thought you might mean trouble.’ He turned back to Kate, and there was something raw in the way he looked at her. ‘Then I saw it was you, and … ’

  ‘Right first time,’ she said stiffly. ‘We do mean trouble.’

  Jed looked quickly at Tom. Then he shrugged. ‘You want to come up to the house?’

  ‘If that’s OK,’ Kate said.

  A keen wind was whipping up as they traipsed along the path to the farmhouse. Storm clouds were blowing in from the west, but the sun was still blazing. The few fall leaves dotting the bare branches glowed copper against the dark edges of cloud. Tom tagged along after Kate and Jed, feeling like a kid who couldn’t quite grasp the undertones between the adults leading him on.

  The farmhouse was old, its whitewashed exterior peeling and cracked. The heavy timber door stuck in its frame when Jed went to open it. He gave it a sharp kick. It loosened and he stepped through.

  ‘I hope we won’t be disturbing your folks,’ Tom said.

  ‘They’re farmers, Tom,’ said Kate, rolling her eyes. ‘Jed’s dad gets up before he’s even gone to bed.’

  ‘You being funny, Kate?’ Jed asked hoarsely. It was like shutters had come down behind his eyes. ‘You know Dad’s dead?’

  Ouch. Tom felt his toes curl.

  ‘No. I – I had no idea.’ Kate’s face drained of colour and she gripped hold of a kitchen chair. ‘I’m so sorry. When did – ’

  ‘The night you left.’ Jed stared at her, his gaze glassy and unfocused. ‘Some kind of wild animal, police said, same kind as killed all the others. Slit him open from top to bottom.’

  Tom froze.

  ‘I … ’ Kate put her hand to her chest, like she couldn’t breathe.

  Tom pulled out the chair for her to sit on. Its legs creaked across the stone floor like massive claws tearing the silence. He frowned at Jed. ‘Can we get her a glass of water?’

  Jed nodded towards the sink. ‘There’s a glass in the cupboard.’

  While Tom poured her the water, Jed leaned back against the kitchen counter. ‘It’s my farm now. I run it for Mom. She ain’t been well since Dad died.’ He smiled, like he was mocking some childish dream. ‘Never did make it out of Twin Falls the way you did, Katy.’

  Kate shook her head as Tom tried to put the glass of water to her lips. ‘Where is your mom?’

  ‘Over at Rodman’s.’ Jed looked at Tom. ‘Rod’s my brother. Owns a bigger farm the other side of town. Dad’d be real proud of him, he’s done real well.’ That mocking smile again. ‘Me, I’m a better vet than I am a farmer. But I get by.’

  ‘You stay here alone?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Depends what you mean,’ said Jed, his eyes fixed on Kate like she’d asked the question. ‘Sometimes I think Dad’s still here, watching over me. That’s why I can’t leave, can’t sell up. Not till Mom … ’ He broke off, sighed heavily. ‘It’d break her heart to see all Dad’s work die the way he did.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Kate appeared to be in a state of shock. ‘So sorry.’

  Jed shrugged. ‘It was three years ago. We ain’t never got over it. But maybe someday.’ He pulled up a chair and sat facing Kate. He placed his hand on hers. ‘With a little help, maybe someday.’

  Tom watched sulkily as Kate placed her free hand on top of his. He felt like the invisible man.

  ‘It’s kind of strange when the past comes running back and slaps you in the face,’ Jed went on, softly shaking his head. ‘Hey, you still got the scarf I gave you?’

  Kate seemed to wake from a trance. ‘Uh … ’ She flushed. ‘The green one?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It matched your pretty eyes.’

  ‘I … ’ A blush warmed Kate’s pale complexion. ‘Uh, sure I do.’

  Jed nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘So, what’s this trouble you mentioned?’

  Kate’s voice was flat, emotionless. ‘We need to dump the Chevy. Get new wheels. I can’t tell you details.’

  Jed looked at Tom, a hint of menace in his glacial eyes. ‘Maybe he can.’

  ‘No.’ Kate shook her head. ‘Look, some people are coming after us. It’s not safe for us to stay here too long—’

  Jed snorted. ‘Running away again, Katy?’

  ‘I didn’t want to involve you but there was no one else I could … trust.’ She squeezed more tightly on his hand. ‘Jed, you have to trust me. Please, will you trust me?’

  ‘I used to trust you, Katy,’ he whispered. ‘Where you running to now?’

  ‘It’s best you don’t know,’ she replied.

  ‘Best for me or best for you?’ Jed retorted.

  ‘For everyone.’

  Jed pulled his hand away. ‘Strange how you always know what’s best for everyone without asking first.’

  ‘Uh, excuse me.’ Tom stood up suddenly. ‘Obviously you two need to talk, so why don’t I … ’

  Jed shook his head. ‘No. No, it’s cool.’ He got up and grabbed his coat from its hook on the door. ‘OK, I think I can get you a car. But I’ll have to sort it with Rodman first. Let me do that, and I’ll be back around seven.’ He looked at Kate. ‘Rest here for the day, huh? The house is empty, no one’ll disturb you.’

  Kate nodded and smiled wearily.

  Jed slammed the door behind him. To Tom it felt like a cell door closing on him and Kate, shutting them inside.

  ‘So your mom killed his dad,’ Tom said quietly.

  ‘Figures. She hated me seeing Jed.’ Kate seemed lost in some private space. ‘Hated me dating a warm, kind human boy.’

  ‘Sweet.’ The word slipped bitterly out of Tom’s mouth before he could catch it.

  Kate ignored him, still away in her own world. ‘And I never knew. It must have been Mom.
She killed Jed’s dad, wrecked his life, his whole family, just because she could. One last kill … ’

  A thought slid into Tom’s mind. He looked at Kate. ‘So what happens if you mate with a … warm, kind human boy … instead of a werewolf?

  Kate turned to him slowly, a sneer on her face. ‘What are you trying to say? I was just fourteen, you sick jerk.’

  ‘Hey,’ Tom protested, ‘I wasn’t saying you slept with Jed. But would sleeping with someone normal make any difference?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘It might make it harder to turn me ’wolf later,’ she replied. ‘But ultimately … ’ She shook her head.

  ‘So you and Jed really never … ?’

  ‘What is your problem, Tom? Are you getting off on this?’ Kate rose angrily, sending the chair crashing over behind her. ‘I am a virgin. All right? Does that satisfy you, float your boat?’ Tears filled her eyes. She sighed heavily. ‘You know, I really did think about sleeping with Jed. I tried really hard to fall in love with him so it would be OK. So I wouldn’t just be using him. But even at fourteen I knew that if I cashed in my virginity to fend off the big bad ’wolf then my mother had won. She would still have been dictating who I slept with, still controlling me, and … ’ The tears were coming now in fat drops. ‘And you know, I like to think I’m worth more than that.’

  ‘You are,’ Tom told her quietly.

  ‘And I like to think that I’m stronger than my fear of her and what she wants to do to me.’

  Tom reached out a hand to her, but she slapped it away.

  ‘Go to hell,’ she hissed. She stormed from the kitchen.

  Tom heard a distant door slam. Jed’s bedroom door, maybe. How many times had the fourteen-year-old Kate fooled around with her older boyfriend in there? He shook his head. Why the hell was he getting so worked up over Kate? She could never want him. He’d been turned into the thing she hated most in the world. The thing that could destroy her. Tom felt the ’wolf shadow looming in the back of his mind, prickling his insides. If he could only go on fighting against it, show her that he really was a wereling or whatever her stupid old books told her he might be … Maybe then …

  Tom kicked a chair clear across the room in frustration.