“What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?”
She’s rocking slowly as she says it, repeating her mantra of guilt over and over.
She trembles as I put my hand against her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Jules. You saved me. You saved us. He got what he deserves.”
She turns her face to me, a jagged scar where the open wound had been, but there’s still only a hollow pit where her eye should be. The shock of it must show on my face. She drops her gaze and turns away again.
“He deserves much worse. So do I.”
“Jules,” I say, wadding Bob’s shirt up to place under his head. “We’re in a load of deep shit here. Magus is going to kill us, he’s already . . .” I stop, knowing that me not saying the words won’t change it, knowing that she already hears it in my voice.
“I heard what he said. They’re all dead. Because of me. My parents. Your dad. Raigan. Now Jamie and Kev . . .” Her voice cracks on the last two names.
“Arthur.” I don’t know why I say it. She’s had enough. I can hear the defeat, the self-loathing, in her voice. I know the sound of it all too well, from years of my own misery. She doesn’t need any more tombstones piled on her back. I guess I say it to make it real.
I twist another leather strap under Bob’s left arm, where a ragged slice of flesh is missing, and a deep cut shows white beneath carved muscle. He groans and tries to lift his head.
“Shhhh. It’s okay, Bob. You’re going to be okay.” He swats at me with his other arm. He knows I’m lying. How much blood can a regular person have inside of them? Most of Bob’s is on the floor underneath him.
Blood’s on the inside, right? Isn’t that what he said? Not this time.
“Boys,” he croaks at me. “Ain’t dead.”
Jules throws me out of the way before the words are out of his mouth. She’s right on top of Bob. Her one eye trained on his lips. “What did you say? Where?” She shakes him. “Where the fuck are they?”
Bob coughs and sucks a shallow breath that whistles somewhere inside of him. I notice little pink bubbles of foam in the bloody spot around his ribs.
“Get off of him!” I grab her around the waist and lift her off of the floor, off of Bob, as she kicks and thrashes, clawing at my arms. I shove her toward the door.
She turns and growls at me, teeth bared, looking feral and dangerous, wild rage burning in that one green eye like a forest of flame.
I hold her gaze with my own, not flinching. I stare her down. No more games.
“Enough.”
Her shoulders hunch around her neck, and she crouches, ever-so-slightly, ready to pounce. Her muscles tighten, and her fists ball at her chest. I remember her doing the same thing in the back room of the Victory. There she looked like an angry mythical goddess. Now she looks like a mad witch, naked, dirty, caked with blood.
“Jules.” I try to make the words calm, but strong. If I back down from her, she’ll attack. I need her on my side. I can’t face Magus alone. I know that. All three. That’s what Raigan said.
“Bob says that Kev and Jamie are alive. We need to help Bob so he can tell us where they are.”
She tenses again, lips curling up over her teeth. I know the face.
Her chest is heaving with anger. I know the feeling.
“I’m not telling you. I’m asking you. Please, Jules. Help me.”
Her breathing softens, hardly enough to notice, but I feel her temperature drop. I see the flush fade from her face, and her fists release enough that her fingers take colour again.
BOB IS STILL struggling for breath, a spatter of pink foam forming around the wound in his side. I check the other gashes and cuts, none of them pouring blood the way they had been. I just hope it’s from my nursing skills, and not that he’s almost out of time.
Jules kneels next to me, fingering the tiny hole where the pink foam is bubbling.
“We need something to seal this. There’s some plastic sheet over there.” She points to the other side of the shed. “Go cut me a piece big enough to cover this hole. A little bit bigger.”
I do as I’m told, and when I return, Jules has a small pail of water and is washing the foam away, pouring water over the wound, and then we watch as the rivulets of water change from clear to red. It shows her where the damage is, and she smooths the plastic over it, pressing my hand against it to hold it in place.
“Keep the pressure on. And give him some water, if you can wake him up.”
She moves to the other side of Bob, checking my handiwork, tightening the tourniquet on his leg, then dousing it with water from the bucket.
“This one’s the worst, this and the hole in his chest. He might be okay if we can get him down the mountain.”
“Thank you.” I put my hand on top of hers.
“I’m sorry,” she offers, but she pulls her hand away. “All of this. This is my fault. I believed him. I let him use me against you all. I let them destroy my family. Our family.”
I pull her close to me, feeling the heat of her skin against mine, and I brush the thick mess of blood-stained hair away from her face. “I thought it was Magus, and McQueen, that tricked me into coming here. It wasn’t. I made that decision. It took a long time to realize it, but you’re born what you’re meant to be. I spent so long pretending to be something I’m not, blaming everyone else, being angry at myself, at them, at the world. I thought I was going crazy.”
I pick up the little jade statue from the floor.
“I thought I was a monster.”
She takes the bauble from my hand, holds it up to her face. Examines it. “What is it?”
“It means hero. Somebody gave me that for saving someone he loved. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time. I’ve been a goddamn werewolf for about a week now, and I find out it’s my birthright, that I’m destined to be with the little pig-tailed girl I only remember from dreams of my distant childhood. I have a town full of cousins, an uncle with a mansion on top of a mountain, and a crazy hobbit-witch aunt who lives in the woods. Most of those people are dead, days after I’ve just met them. There’s a two-hundred-year-old wizard in my ancestral home, threatening my unborn children and the woman who may be my soul-mate, and the only thing close to a father that I’ve ever known is dying in front of me.”
I close her hand around the statue, hold it tight in my own.
“I’ve spent the better part of thirty years being the monster, and a week being a hero.”
I lift her up off of the floor with me, still holding her hands in mine around the little statue.
“I’m not giving up now that I know who I am. Neither should you. You’re not Simon Magus’ bitch. You’re a Strong Wolf.”
THE BIRDS CRY out from the trees outside, the thunderous clatter beginning on the roof again. Jules makes the door in two steps. She falls to her knees, laughing. A sweet, infectious laughter. Something I wouldn’t have imagined. She’s rolling on the ground, half out the door, two little wolves nuzzling at her neck. The jade statue still held tight in one hand.
36
MOMENTS LATER, THE boys are helping us lift Bob from the floor and out into the yard.
“Bob found us,” Jamie tells me of their escape.
“We weren’t scared,” Kev adds. “Simon did something to us. We couldn’t move.”
“McQueen was going to hurt us, but Simon told him he had to wait. He said we were insurance.”
“We knew you’d come back, Finn.”
“Bob said you’d save us.”
I smile at them, silently thanking Bob for being more of a hero than any of us could hope to be.
I can hear the piano, tinkling some far-off tune, something old and western. The kind of folk-song everybody knows, but can’t place. Like “Camptown Races”, but slower.
Jules runs silent through the grass, hardly more than a shadow, and one of the SUVs rumbles to life, backing slowly across the gravel, the red lights burning like twin suns in the darkness.<
br />
We slide Bob across the back seat, and Kevin gets in beside him.
Jamie climbs in and pulls the driver’s seat up as far as it will move. He pushes the button to lower it until the motor grinds and whirrs, with nowhere left to go.
“We can help you fight him,” Kevin pleads.
“Yeah,” Jamie says. “We’ll take Bob down and bring reinforcements.”
“People from town.”
“The Vargas brothers,” they say in unison.
Jules leans into the car, pulls Kevin’s head down toward her, and kisses his forehead.
I give him a nod and shut the door, as Jules comes behind me to kiss her other brother.
“Just be careful. Get Bob to the garage so they can get him some help. You don’t want to bring anybody else up here. Trust me,” I warn them, thinking of Mary-Ellen’s demon-face, and the big biker’s brains splattering my face.
“Listen to Finn,” Jules tells them. “You stay at the garage until I come get you.”
“Okay,” the boys say together.
“I love you,” Jules tells them, and a strange warm look comes over their faces.
“Now go!” she whispers, and they roll off toward the little bridge.
“SHOULDN’T WE GET some guns, or something? Go back up to Raigan’s? Find some kind of weapons?” Jules says as we step up onto the porch. She looks down at her feet. “I mean, we’re naked.”
She looks me up and down, a gesture that is exaggerated by her compensating for her lost eye.
“And you’re still bleeding.”
I nod. “Not for long.”
“So that’s your whole master plan? We turn into big bad wolves and attack the powerful sorcerer with our teeth?”
I recite the poem. In its entirety, possibly for the first time.
From the South
Three sisters fair
Ran athwart the gloom
Dressed of fur
And fierce of tooth
The maidens of the moon
“Do you know it?” I ask.
“Aunty Raigan used to tell us that when we were little. It’s just some old rhyme.”
“It’s the secret of our power. She was trying to tell me. Three sisters fair running athwart the gloom.”
“That asshole would have needed to get you a couple inches higher for you to be a sister, Finn.”
I fix her with a hard glare.
“It’s not literally sisters. It means family. Our family. And fair means good, not just light-coloured. Athwart the gloom. Family. Our family, fighting against evil. Against darkness.”
“Dark magic. The silver charms, the same as Raigan’s, but with his magic in them. That’s what the collar was for?”
“To keep us from changing. Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth. This whole thing is about him wanting the power behind that transformation. He’s afraid of it. He doesn’t understand it, so he can’t control it. Even like this, in human form, we’re more powerful than normal people. As wolves, together, we may be strong enough to kill him.”
Jules turns her head slightly, to get a better look at me, doubtless questioning the logic behind my theory.
“I watched him turn the whole of Pitamont into a rampaging horde of mindless killers,” I explain. “He didn’t have to clamp a collar on any of them. He wasn’t playing any games, trying to manipulate them into going along with him. Forty people under his spell with no more than a whisper—while he was causing a sandstorm, making himself look twelve feet tall, and pinning me up like a voodoo doll. Why can’t he do that here?”
She shrugs, but I see the wheels turning. She’s a witch too, after all, she must have some idea how these things are done.
“And why is he so terrified of anyone turning? Why did he need to keep you and Emma under his control? McQueen did all of his dirty work when there were Strong Wolves involved. Simon Magus may be perfectly capable of terrorizing humans and sneaking around in the dark . . .”
It crosses her ravaged face like the coming dawn. Somehow her beauty is even more stark and terrifying in its loss of symmetry.
“He’s scared of us.”
“You heard the story about his father. Of course, he’s scared of us. We are the boogeyman, not him, and his magic won’t work on us in wolf form—dressed of fur and fierce of tooth—especially if all three of us work together.”
“The maidens of the moon.”
I smile wide and full.
“Exactly. Bob called him Skinkuk. He’s a coyote. A trickster. A scavenger. A fucking pretender. We’re the real thing.”
I feel as if I’ve swallowed the moon and its power and light are seeping out of every pore. I know my power now. It comes from this place, from these people. It comes from me. I am a hero, and it’s time to prove it.
“I can still hear the piano. They must be in the parlour. He’ll want to keep her close and keep her safe now that she’s . . .”
“She’s pregnant, Finn. Congratulations,” Jules says coldly. “There’s only one way up and around that hall. One door in. If we can sneak up on him . . .”
I have the urge to use Bob’s Navy SEAL signs, but there’s no real plan and no options other than what has already been said. Instead, I take a deep breath through my nose and wait for the fur.
QUIET
Is the thought shared between us, as we step careful across the parquet floor, claws scratching lightly at the glossy finish. A creak in the top of the house freezes us both, mid-stride, and my nose goes to the air, seeking out the scents of sulfur and fish, smells I know as evil and dangerous. All I smell is the house. The lingering hint of burnt bacon from the kitchen, the pine and cedar of the walls, Emma’s scent of vanilla and chocolate. The piano continues to play from the parlour. From the edge of the stairs we can see the flickering of candles from inside the room.
Jules is halfway up the staircase when I notice the skip in the tune. The same five notes repeated, the scratch of a record needle bouncing.
His voice comes from the wide room at the front of the house, the room behind me.
“I’m afraid there’s no dogs allowed in the house.”
He’s standing by the window, posed in the shadows, using the darkness to play up his size and power. More theatrics from the Victorian magician. Emma is seated in a chair beside him, neck held high and stiff under the leather collar, Raigan’s moon medallion swelling from the centre of it.
With wolf eyes I can see farther into the gloom. Past his magic. Simon Magus is an old man. Wrinkled and stooped, sparse white hair standing in thickets on his spotty head. He’s weak and afraid. I smell his fear. So does Jules.
Kill
Is the one thought I catch as the flash of yellow and grey bounds past me into the dark of the room.
I follow, and we leap toward him, both aiming for the chest, bring him down to the ground then tear him apart.
We find nothing but space. A wisp of grey and he’s gone, laughing. Jules crashes down on top of me with a yelp, and I scramble out from beneath her and across the floor, finding room to breathe and turn before I reassess my surroundings. The room is empty, save the two of us, and Magus’ laughter bounces from the walls and the ceiling, penning us in with its overwhelming rush of noise.
The music still plays from the parlour underneath it all.
They’re not here at all. It’s a trap, a distraction.
Smoke rolls across the ceiling above us, a blast of heat and a tsunami wave of sound and air that crashes through everything around us. The furniture flies overhead, splintering against the walls. The windows explode with the crash of a thousand cymbals. A blast of thunder followed by a tinkling rain.
Jules is shaking beside me, back bowed and lips curled, swinging her head in manic circles, one eye wide and panicked. I nip at her hind leg and nod toward the door.
We step carefully around the scattered contents of the room, ignoring the raging heat of the fire now licking at us from every surface. As we come out to the foyer, I can s
ee the black scorch marks where the explosion has disintegrated the kitchen. A gaping hole feeds flame and grey smoke out into the night. The floor shimmers with heat.
There’s a huge creaking to our left, and we drop lower, splaying our legs as the stairs come away from the walls, and crumble into tinder. The whole house is ablaze and coming down on top of us. The smoke thick and choking the air. He means for us to burn.
There is another crash and boom above us. The embers begin to fall like hail, spitting down and singeing our backs. The roar is immense, the rocket launch sound of a thousand dragons croaking demon-flame, as our castle burns down around us. The hail becomes chunks of plaster and the clatter of roasting boards hitting the floor, crackling and exploding.
I nudge Jules forward, toward the door, our only chance of escape. One more thunderous crack erupts above us, and I turn my head to the flaming sky just as it falls upon our heads. The beam comes so close to my face that it burns the short hairs on the end of my snout. Jules staggers back, just as the ceiling falls on top of me. Stars burst in my head, and all of my air is replaced by liquid fire.
Darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision, and I fall through the floor into a deep, black void.
37
I FEEL THE weight on top of me shifting. It grinds across my broken ribs, pushing down again. Something sharp inside of me digs deeper into the hole it’s made, and I want to scream, but I’m gulping thick air that burns my chest and my throat. The weight shifts again, and there is a cry, a wail like someone giving birth. I open my eyes, and Jules is standing over me, arms smoking, skin sizzling against the red-hot glow of the timber she’s lifting off of me. I smell bacon. The weight lifts, and my breath comes, deep and hot, burning hot. I try to crawl, but my paws are just scratching at nothing. I think I’m dying.
The beam crashes to the floor next to me in a cloud of smoke and cinder.
Her arms are sliding under me, lifting me to her chest. I can feel her heart beating, powerful and fast. She swings me backwards as she twists and charges the door, the hinges giving way with a pop, and we crash out into the night air, Jules on top of the door, me on top of Jules. I try to twist away, to move off of her, but I can’t. She’s up in one more heartbeat, and she lifts me again, her long human legs taking long strides, despite the wolf in her arms who is almost as big, certainly as heavy, as she is.
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