The Werewolf before Christmas

by Charles Payseur

  Alec pursed his lips a moment. It wasn’t that he was upset that Ray wanted to do something for him. It was… it was that he was afraid Ray would do it better. However much it wasn’t supposed to be a competition, there was still part of Alec that wanted to prove he could be just as romantic as Ray, and part of him that doubted he could.

  “Right,” Alec said. “The spirit of giving.” His hand clenched a bit around his wand. He had nothing to worry about, right? Even if Ray was planning something, it wouldn’t be able to live up to Alec’s gift. He moved close to the desk. “Just let me know if I need to get my space suit cleaned or anything.”

  Ray laughed and rolled over in bed, putting his back and glorious ass toward Alec. Tearing his gaze away, Alec moved quickly to the desk, making sure to still move the dust wand over the surface as he inched open the drawer that contained the binder. With a whisper, he transported the script to his apartment for later and closed the drawer.

  “Hey, I’m going to be gone most of the night,” Alec said. “You okay here?”

  Ray grumbled a bit from where he was obviously trying to doze.

  “You villaining tonight?”

  “No. I’m thinking of catching a show.” Alec tried to keep the maniacal edge out of his voice, knowing Ray would pick up on it, but he couldn’t resist just a little tease.

  “Just try to stay out of trouble,” Ray said, still not stirring from bed. “I don’t want to have to reschedule our plans for inside the Metronome.”

  “Good night, Ray.”

  Ray sighed. “Good night, Alec—”

  “—azam!” And Alec disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  THE HOMING signal led Alec back into Canada. He expected that maybe Lucien had some shameful secret—maybe once a month he gave in to his desire for bad Chinese food? Or perhaps he had a boyfriend or girlfriend that he didn’t want any of his fans knowing about. It certainly would cause a stir if he was secretly married.

  Whatever the case, it seemed that where he disappeared to was a cabin a little outside of town, surrounded by tall trees and the beginnings of mountains. The sky was cloudy and wind howled through the trees. Alec shivered as he made his way through the snow to the small building, wanting to make sure Lucien was alone before revealing himself. He’d also gone through the trouble of turning off his phone’s GPS and casting a spell that should have made him untraceable to any of Tech Knight’s tracking bugs.

  The cabin was dimly lit inside, just a few candles and a fire in the fireplace. It almost seemed cozy, and Alec wondered if it was for rent or anything—it would make a romantic getaway for him and Ray. Peering through the window, he couldn’t make out too much. He was looking into the kitchen, where two boxes of take-out pizza and a large cooler implied that Lucien was probably expecting company. There were no cars around, though, and from when he finally circled the cabin, he saw only Lucien was inside, sitting in a chair in front of the fireplace with a bottle of dark liquor in his hand.

  Alec smiled and spelled the front door open. Lucien shot to his feet at the movement of Alec entering the cabin.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Alec gave a deep bow, relishing this small moment of villainy. The manners, the suit, the dramatic flare—it reminded him of why he loved this, the theatrics of it. Lucien would probably understand, but at the moment, he seemed far more annoyed than appreciative of the craft.

  “Alec-azam, at your service. Or, rather, here for yours.”

  Lucien gaped for a few seconds before the anger returned to his expression.

  “You have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

  Alec frowned. That was not the reaction he was expecting. Normally people had the decency to act… alarmed? Terror wasn’t really necessary, but some fear would have been nice. Maybe an “oh no!” or two. Perhaps a “What do you have planned, villain?”

  “I’m not sure you’re understanding the situation,” Alec said. “Do you need me to do the introduction again? My named is Alec-azam! I’m a supervillain.”

  Lucien’s eyes narrowed and he took a deep breath. “Okay, fine, whatever, but you need to leave.” He looked out the window at the cloudy sky. “There’s not a lot of time and—”

  “What, you’re expecting company?” Alec asked, trying to stay in character despite Lucien’s refusal to get into his. Seriously, as an actor, he really should understand the value of immersing in a role.

  “No,” Lucien said, a little too forcefully. “You just have to go. If you stay, things are going to get… bad.”

  “And bad is my middle name.” Which wasn’t technically true—his real middle name was Rigby, but no one had to know that. There was just no way he was going to let a punk actor scare him off, not with Ray’s Christmas gift at stake. “So why don’t we drop the concerned act and get to business?”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not going to work,” Lucien said. “Not tonight.”

  There was something almost sad in the way he said it, and Lucien again looked out the window at the night sky. He had certainly mastered the brooding look from his years on All My Werewolves, that was for sure.

  “I don’t really care what kind of pizza party you were thinking of having with yourself, I guess, but I’m on a mission and you’re going to help me. For love.”

  Okay, he probably could have skipped the last part, but at least Lucien finally seemed interested, perking up and giving Alec a skeptical look.

  “What do you mean?”

  Alec produced the binder with a quick spell and held it out.

  “I give you the greatest fan script ever created for All My Werewolves,” he said. “My boyfriend wrote it, and you’re going to perform it. Perfectly.”

  Lucien rolled his eyes but moved closer, reaching out for binder. Alec paused only a moment, not wanting anything bad to happen to Ray’s prized script, but it wasn’t like Lucien could perform it without reading it. When Lucien took it, his eyes widened in what had to be surprise.

  “Wait a second, your boyfriend is MantaGuy83? He’s, like, my favorite!” Lucien began paging through the script. “This one looks a little different from the one he posted originally.”

  Alec blinked. Realization was slow to arrive, but when it did, it rocked him back on his heels. Lucien Ulman, star of the hit show All My Werewolves, read the fan fiction people wrote about his characters.

  “Hold on, you’ve read this before?” Alec asked.

  Lucien didn’t look up from the script, his eyes scanning the pages avidly. “Well, it was called ‘Once in a Silver Bullet’ when I read it. Though, I have to say, ‘A Taste for Silver’ is better. I love the way that it explores Jeremy and Jacob’s complicated relationship.”

  An avalanche of thoughts pushed down on Alec’s mind. “What, do you even read the….”

  Lucien grinned and blushed. “Yeah, well, I have to say, that one your boyfriend did where it was the meta where Jacob and Jeremy crossed dimensions and the three of us met in my trailer on set—”

  “Okay, okay,” Alec said, remembering when Ray had told him maybe reading the fanfic would help him appreciate the show more. All it had done, really, was make him horny and disappointed the show kept things strictly TV14.

  “Seriously, though, I do love this script,” Lucien said, still pouring over the binder.

  “Well, then, performing it for your number one fan should be no great imposition,” Alec said. Really, this was going to be easier than he thought. He moved over to the kitchen, where the pizzas smelled amazing. It was a little early to celebrate, but he figured they could both do with a beer. He reached for the cooler.

  “It’s not that I mind exactly, but—don’t open that!”

  The shout came too late to stop Alec from lifting the top of the cooler and stopping cold. It was full of meat. Raw, red meat. It was like someone had hit up the butcher’s and told them not to bother wrapping anything. Steaks and ground beef were packed in around each other, and Alec stared in mute horror at th
e bloody mess.

  “Uh… what the—”

  A noise from where he had left Lucien finally broke his gaze from the cooler of terror, and Alec looked from one nightmare to another. Lucien was standing near the window, the binder still in his hands. But he was motionless, his eyes wide, his mouth open in what might have been an attempt to speak, but something stopped him. Behind Lucien, the window shone a bit as the clouds must have cleared, revealing the moon.

  “R-run,” Lucien finally managed, but Alec found he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Something was happening to Lucien.

  It was subtle at first, the quiver of a muscle, the way his mouth seemed to stretch just a bit too wide in its grimace. And then he started to tremble all over. Was he hairier than he had been a moment ago? Were his muscles more pronounced? What was happening to his ears?

  Alec’s eyes bulged and everything fell into place. The meat. The near-monthly absences from set. The insistence that Alec leave, that he wasn’t safe. Lucien Ulman, who played fake-science werewolves on television, was an honest-to-magic real-life werewolf! And he was holding Ray’s prize fan script.

  “Fuck,” Alec said.

  The transformation accelerated. Hair sprouted everywhere over Lucien’s body. His arms lengthened so they could reach the floor. His face elongated and his ears grew. His shirt and jeans ripped strategically. Alec remained stuck, rooted in place, one hand still holding open the cooler of meat.

  Lucien collapsed to the floor, uncannily long arms covering his head in some mockery of the safety position they teach kids in school to adopt during tornadoes. Alec needed to flee. Lucien was giving him time to do just that, and Alec needed to listen. But he couldn’t leave Ray’s script to be destroyed by a mooned-out werewolf. This was supposed to be his gift, his declaration of love to Ray, to show how much he cared. Having to say “Yeah, um… kinda got that script you’re super proud of destroyed by the monster version of your favorite actor” just wasn’t romantic. Alec stood his ground.

  Finally the transformation stopped, Lucien’s body still but for the rhythm of his ragged breaths. Then he got up. And up. He couldn’t stand fully under the cabin’s ceiling, which was ten feet high. Instead, he crouched on hands and haunches, Ray’s script still held in his clawed grasp. His eyes, hazel before, were a glowing red, and saliva dripped onto the floor over long, sharp teeth. WereLucien was looking in Alec’s direction but not really at him. Beyond him. To the cooler. His nose twitched, nostrils flaring—his eyes were locked on the meat.

  “Now, I’m sure if we all just remain calm we c—”

  Alec was cut off by a growl that seemed to rise from WereLucien’s feet and ascend his whole body, exploding from his mouth in a wet warning. He crouched lower, muscles tensing, and Alec didn’t wait for him to leap. Grabbing the cooler by the handle, he threw it across the room, away from both of them. WereLucien pounced, taking the bait, and Alec ran for the door. He hoped that in the rush to feed, WereLucien would drop the binder, and then all Alec needed to do was lure him away from the cabin and teleport back in to retrieve Ray’s script.

  The door opened to the cold of the winter night, the light of the full moon giving the mountainous landscape an eerie glow. Alec chanced a look over his shoulder as he fled and saw WereLucien making short work of the cooler, his red eyes following Alec even as he fed.

  Alec stumbled out into the snow, mind racing. Adapting to circumstances was rarely a villain’s strong suit. Planning, yes, and the more complicated, the better. But once the plan started to fall apart….

  A crash from the doorway caused Alec to turn, his wand up, his legs shaking slightly. It took WereLucien two tries to force himself through, and even so, he smashed half the doorframe doing it. Alec watched in mute horror as the beast shook, wood and bits of bloody meat sloughing off into the snow. WereLucien paused then, looked up into the night sky, and howled. The sound was piercing, consuming, a warning siren going off, telling Alec to run, get away, far, far away. But Alec squared his shoulders and held his ground, knuckles white around his wand. His heart lurched when he saw WereLucien was still clutching the binder. So much for things being easy.

  WereLucien looked back down, directly at Alec. Their eyes met, and Alec saw no reason in those bright red orbs. No hesitation. No mercy. Just hunger, and pain, and the promise of violence. Everything in him told him to flee. To live to fight another day. It was the supervillain way. Sure, Alec had a host of magic at his command, but he doubted that a stream of glitter was going to get him out of this one.

  Everything stilled. The world narrowed until it was just Alec and WereLucien. Then they moved.

  “Alec-AZAM!”

  The night erupted in light from the tip of Alec’s wand even as WereLucien charged. Alec threw himself to the side, light still shining, hoping that WereLucien would be blind, maybe even that the light would break through the moon’s hold over him. It worked. WereLucien crashed past him, through the space he had just been, and collided with a tree beyond, which splintered upon impact. And Alec saw something else drop to the snow. Not debris—Ray’s script!

  Without thinking, Alec lurched forward. WereLucien looked dazed, and if he could just—

  Alec yelped as a furred arm moved faster than he thought possible, knocking the wand from his hand. He left it and dove instead for the binder abandoned in the snow. He felt the air above him sing with the sound of another clawed arm barely missing him. The snow was cold on his hands, but he managed to scoop up the binder and roll to the side in time to avoid the stomp from one of WereLucien’s feet. Alec crawled behind a tree and stood, eyes now sweeping the snow for his wand.

  Instead, he was greeted by the sight of a ten-foot-tall werewolf towering directly in front of him, arms poised and ready to end things then and there. Alec wrapped his arms around Ray’s script as if to protect it from whatever was about to happen.

  The forest seemed to explode, and Alec felt himself be blown back. Not from the violence of a claw, but from a sudden shadow that swept through, knocking him from his feet and erasing his view of WereLucien. He landed in the snow as noise rushed in all around him, crashing and snarling and breaking tree limbs. As the world resolved itself, he saw—Ray, fully enclosed in his MantaRay suit, battling WereLucien through the trees.

  Alec’s heart lodged in his throat, and he gasped, then rushed to his feet. Ray and WereLucien were evenly matched, the pair pushing each other through trees. Alec winced as WereLucien raked across the MantaRay suit’s skin, cutting through the tough outer shell and into the circuits beneath. Ray responded by firing minirockets from the suit’s eyes, blasting WereLucien back toward the cabin, the heat of the fire making the winter cold a bit more bearable.

  The fight wasn’t over, though. WereLucien stood, his torn muscle knitting itself back together. Probably for the best, as Ray probably wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he killed his favorite actor. Of course, if Lucien killed him instead…. Alec looked around for his wand. He needed to get back into the fight, needed to do something to help end this so no one got hurt. It was all his fault, after all, his failure to see the pattern in Lucien’s disappearances. Of course they would coincide with the full moon.

  He caught sight of his wand just as the battle moved to nearly on top of it, WereLucien flinging himself at Ray, Ray repelling the attack with a quick flick of the suit’s tail. Alec didn’t wait. Rushing forward, he barely avoided colliding with Ray as WereLucien forced him back with a series of howling swipes. Alec snatched up the wand and turned back to the fight, but everything was too close, too confused to get a clear shot. If he tried something offensive, he might hit Ray. He needed to adjust his tactics. He looked around for something to help, something he could use to swing the battle in their favor… and saw the moon.

  The events of the night came rushing back to him. It had been a full moon the entire time he had been in the cabin, and yet Lucien had only transformed when the clouds had lifted. Which meant he needed not the moon, but the moonlight
. Which—why the fuck hadn’t he just closed the curtains! Alec shook the thought away and aimed his wand at the sky.

  “Alec-AZAM!” he shouted, drawing on his reserves of magic. The sky filled with clouds. WereLucien paused in his battle with Ray, and both men looked up toward the now-concealed moon. WereLucien gave one final howl and then began to shrink. And Alec, exhausted, nearly toppled, but was caught by Ray’s strong arms, suddenly free of his MantaRay suit.

  “How’d you even find me?” Alec asked. It seemed too good to be true, him showing up at just the right moment.

  “Tech Knight told me you might try something stupid, so I told em I would deal with it and ey gave me Lucien’s location, told me to keep an eye on him.”

  Alec winced, knowing he should have suspected Tech Knight would track Lucien just as he had done. Ray’s expression turned more stern.

  “I think you have some explaining to do.”

  Alec smiled lazily, simply enjoying the feeling of being held. He lifted the binder, which was mostly intact, though scored by three deep claw marks on the front and back, toward Ray.

  “Merry Christmas?” he asked.

  THE SINISTER Plan was crowded, the place packed with villains there for the special Christmas Eve showing of the All My Werewolves winter finale. Alec sat in the back, as usual, a beer in his hand, a wrapped box on the table in front of him. Though everyone was absorbed in the show, people kept stealing glances in his direction. He couldn’t tell if they were worried they wouldn’t be able to watch their favorite show anymore, or if they were excited to see the drama of a public breakup. Probably the latter.

  “So, we going to have to sit here all night waiting for you two to exchange presents?” Gorillord asked the moment the next commercial break started.

  Alec grinned and looked at Ray, who was the picture of calm, arms folded over his chest, reclined as much as possible in his seat what with a giant MantaRay suit on his back.