Wendigo Conjuring

by Wendie Nordgren

  Shaking like a leaf, I said, “She sent them after us. She was controlling them. She made one fly into the door at the g-g-g-gas station. Then, there were all of the c-c-c-cockroaches on the road, swarming our t-t-trucks. She was controlling Pascal’s wolves. She had d-d-dolls. Cecil sent me inside to destroy her witchcraft supplies and things. That was when the d-d-dolls came to l-l-life and attacked us. They were laughing and w-walking. They were p-p-p-possessed. That was why I had to set the basement on fire.” I gulped down a breath. “The dark one came down the basement steps, and the d-d-dolls started laughing. The werewolf who was trying to kill me was just as scared as I was. We worked together to survive. We were trying to get out of the house. There was so much smoke, and the fumes were burning our eyes and noses. Sophia was in the door. We accidentally knocked her down, but she was so old…. The fall killed her. It wasn’t on purpose.”

  They finally listened to me, even Holden did, with serious expressions. The neatly mowed yard had become littered with the stiff corpses of hundreds of crows. Their shiny black wings caught in the cold breeze and turned their rigid bodies from side to side.

  “Help! Help me!” a muffled voice cried out.

  Chills erupted over my flesh, and I took a few steps back, wanting to run but terrified of being alone. The men turned their attention from me to the grave. Holden squatted down beside it.

  “No, Holden. Please! We have to go. We have to go, now!” I cried desperately to him.

  He said, “I checked for a pulse. I thought she was gone.” Pain and horror laced his words.

  One of his men said, “She was gone, Holden. Look around. These birds were just sacrificed by some evil power to reanimate her corpse. Nothing good is in that grave. I think we should take the little lady’s advice.”

  Jumping down into the grave, Holden picked up Sophia and brought her out. He brushed away the grave dirt with his hands as he held her shrouded form over his bended knee and then pulled the blanket from her face. Red, evil, soulless eyes glowed at him. “Oh, Sophia. I loved you once. I wish my love had been enough for you.”

  Was he going to become one of her minions? Would she take over his pack, a pack that was so much more powerful than Colby’s? None of us would be safe. My feet started carrying me back and away. I wanted to run but tripped over dead birds and fell to my butt. Scrambling to my feet, disgusted at having touched them, I saw Sophia’s possessed eyes as they snapped onto me. She started chanting, casting a spell.

  Holden stood, and Sophia rolled from his legs and back into her grave, landing with a thud. Sadly, Holden pulled an old silver lighter from his pocket. With a flick of his thumb, a flame came to life. His face was hidden from me when he dropped it into the grave. Sophia’s chanting changed into furious screams. Clutching my arms, I stood watching the scene with wide eyes. Flames reached up toward Holden, greedily from the grave. He stood with his head bowed, listening to her shrieks. Eventually, she stopped.

  After what seemed like hours, Holden said, “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

  His men tossed the dead birds into the ashes of the house. Then, they set the dying pyre aflame once more. Holden shoveled dirt over Sophia’s ashes. He glanced over at me with sad eyes and said, “The only way to keep a witch from coming back is with fire, sweetheart.”

  Something plummeted down and struck me in the head. I ducked down and moved to the side, but it came purposefully for me again. Shiny black wings and claws were all I saw. Then, those claws tore into my arms while I tried to protect my face. Growling, Holden knocked the crow into a tree, killing it.

  “Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw.”

  All of us looked up. Hundreds of crows had replaced those who had fallen dead to the ground. Malicious eyes watched us, and they flapped their wings and adjusted their feet on branches. The caws increased in number and intensity. They were becoming frenzied. Holden and his men started stripping out of their clothing.

  “Here, put this on. It will protect your arms,” Holden said. He gave me his jacket. Then, he and his men shifted as a black blanket fell upon us from above.

  The tawny wolf loomed above me and snatched the attacking crows from the air, catching them in his teeth and chomping down. Bloodied feathers and crushed corpses were all around. I tried to find somewhere to hide, but bird guts glistened near the toe of my boot making me gag. Crow after crow flew down, pecking and scratching. They did their best to draw blood. Holden and his wolves killed the crows while doing their best to protect me, but my fear suddenly vanished and was replaced with conviction. The crows couldn’t kill the werewolves, and they couldn’t kill me. I’d been afraid for the final time for the evening. I willed Elizabeth forth and was pulled forward and shoved back. A crow flew for my eyes aiming for them with its beak. Lifting my hand, I touched it. Keeping my mind and thoughts protected, I drew the crow’s life into myself. Instinctually, I knew these crows had been corrupted and defiled. They fought on the side of evil. The dark one was using them. I drew in the life force of each crow which attacked me and grew stronger as I did. With my touch, they vanished. Briefly, I wondered where the souls of crows went when they died, or if in unmaking them they went no farther. It was just as well since they belonged to the dark one. His forces would be diminished this day.

  I had moved away from the wolves not wanting to hurt them. I was unsure of my Wendigo abilities. While they had bitten and clawed at their attackers, I had done nothing other than stand still. All I had to do was allow my enemies to touch me, and my touch would be their poison. Two crows swooped down, grabbing and pulling at Elizabeth’s long black hair. I absorbed them through it. Her hair was an extension of me, and I was Wendigoag. I wouldn’t fear the dark one any longer, I would fight him. Around the yard, I became aware of a stillness. Calmly, I observed. Any injuries they had sustained from the crows had already healed. The wolves either watched me or scanned their surroundings for danger. What crows we hadn’t killed had retreated.

  The tawny wolf padded closer to me and stared down from his great height into my eyes. My shoulder jolted and then tingled and itched. He didn’t come close enough to touch. His wariness made me smile. Taking a step closer to him, my foot touched a bird’s corpse, and it vanished. The power and strength coursing through me were intoxicating. The Alpha wolf called to me. He belonged to me and had tried to claim my form. I longed to run my fingers through his fur and to feel the force of his life filling me.

  Realizing that I didn’t want him to fill me in the sense which he had imagined, the wolf took steps back, keeping his distance. Then, the wolf shimmered into a man. “Sweetheart, can you hear me? It’s Holden. Snap out of it.”

  “Back up, Boss. She ain’t quite Elizabeth or Miss Rozene. Something’s off. Did you see what happened to them birds that touched her? Poof. Gone.”

  “Yeah, I saw. She took out at least a dozen more of the beady-eyed little fuckers than you did, Irving. Stay back. Don’t let her touch you. She’d never forgive herself. Ain’t that right, sweetheart? You didn’t mean to hurt Elizabeth. It was an accident. Come back to me. Can you hear me?” Holden kept walking backwards.

  I followed, drawn to him by things I didn’t understand. I drew in a breath. I could smell his skin, an intoxicating, manly scent and knew he would be warm and strong. Desire pooled between my thighs, but I also hungered for his life.

  “Shit,” Holden said.

  I saw fear in his eyes and walked toward him, ready to devour him. He glanced down at the juncture of my thighs and then back up at my eyes. Then, he took several steps back.

  The sounds of a truck intruded. Holden seemed relieved by it and ran for it. I watched him and hungered. The wind blew my black hair around me. I wouldn’t allow him to escape. Smiling, I considered catching the male by his beard.

  “Something is wrong with her. She was fine until the crows attacked. Fuck it. That’s a long story. Do something! She ain’t herself. Hell, she ain’t even Elizabeth.”

  Someone got out of the truck. He said, “
She was supposed to remain at the hotel. She would have been safe there. You should not have taken our woman.” He walked toward me, and the weaker male was forgotten. The bearded male would fade at my touch. The warrior striding purposefully toward me would revel in it. He loved my touch and longed for it. His glowing red eyes grew larger until my arms were around his neck, and his hands covered the naked flesh of my back. Safety and comfort were within his arms. He was my home. “Rozene,” he whispered in my ear. He nuzzled my temple with his chin. Then, he shifted, lifting me into his arms as he did and carrying me off into the trees.

  I kissed his shoulder. No longer gaunt and starved, he was strong and healthy. He had fed far more voraciously than had I. He had done so on wolves, weaker ones than he who I had eyed as my prey moments ago. Lifting my hand, I felt his muzzle, and my touch made him shiver. In his Wendigo form, he had put distance between us and those who now argued amongst themselves in the distance. Lowering me to my feet, he shimmered and was once more a man. I ran my fingers through his long black hair and accepted his kiss with a greedy desire. He lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and groaned as my back hit the trunk of a tree. Turning, he lowered my back to the ground, ripped open his jeans, and pushed his hard length into my swollen, aching folds. He shrugged out of his jacket and shirt and covered me with his warm chest as he sank himself into me, again and again.

  I sank my teeth into his shoulder to keep from crying out. He had become frenzied and pounded in and out of me. The ground burned against my back, stinging my skin, but it healed as quickly as it tore. He felt as though he grew within me. Releasing his shoulder, I gazed up into mahogany eyes and cried out my release. Quickening his thrusts, he grunted when he came, spilling himself into me. After a final thrust, he held still but remained inside of me, stretching me.

  “Rozene, can you come back to me or do you need me to find a cold river and dunk you in it?” He smiled down at me.

  “Hunting Wolf,” I said.

  “Yes, are you having trouble?” He watched me patiently. It didn’t seem like he cared if I changed back. Entwining his fingers in Elizabeth’s black hair, he lifted it to his nose and inhaled.

  “My touch can’t hurt you. You aren’t afraid of me.”

  Bringing his lips down to mine, he kissed me with a soft tenderness. He grew hard within me. His girth grew until I felt stretched by him. My breathing increased until I was practically panting. He had called upon his Wendigo form. The stretching continued as he shifted. His face elongated, and his mouth filled with sharp teeth, but still I felt no fear other than that of being torn apart from within. He continued to grow and stretch me. I couldn’t move. My inner lips were stretched so wide that my nub rubbed against his thick cock, and pleasure exploded through me, making me cry out. Still, he lengthened and thickened. He was too much even for her human form to take. I drew on Elizabeth’s werewolf. Her claws sprang from my hands and clawed at his back. Her inner walls held him comfortably. She thrust her hips up against him. No, I did. They were my hips.

  He chuckled, a deep, demonic sound. Grabbing my wrists, he held them above my head, pressing them down into the dirt. “You can’t hurt me, and I can’t hurt you,” he said. With those words, he fully accepted his Wendigo form.

  I gasped as he stretched Elizabeth’s werewolf form to the point of pain and then drew his hips back and rammed forward until he had impaled her on his shaft. She panted in my mind. Gideon had been a cocktail sausage in comparison. Hunting Wolf quickly drew his hips back and slammed forward. My werewolf form tore and healed. Smelling blood, he growled and bit my shoulder. Frenzied, he moved in and out of me at a wild pace but quickly found his release. Pulling out, he released my wrists and grabbed my ankles. Dragging me closer, he lowered his muzzle and licked between my legs. His long tongue entered me and undulated. I came so hard that stars filled my vision, and Elizabeth and her werewolf fled as they blacked out from pleasure.

  I opened my eyes. Dazed, I stared at Hunting Wolf. He was carrying me into Sophia’s yard. Clinging to him, I hid my face against his chest and cried.

  Colby said, “I’ll stay. He should know.”

  Hunting Wolf gave a nod of his head. Sam opened the truck door for him, and I slid over to the middle of the seat. Seated safely between Hunting Wolf and Sam, I kept my eyes averted from everything outside of the truck until we had left Sophia’s property and were on the road. Through it all, I clutched Hunting Wolf’s hand. There was no need for me to explain. One look had made everything all too clear. Before leaving Silver Springs, we had anticipated Holden’s reaction. I remembered wanting to unmake Holden and to feed upon him. I recalled Colby, Sam, and Hunting Wolf driving onto the scene. Holden had needed their help with me. When Hunting Wolf had carried me away, the men had argued. They didn’t need to hear any of that, but I needed to talk about what had happened.

  “It was so much worse than what I was expecting.” Hiding my face against Hunting Wolf’s arm, I said, “He was devastated.” I was still wearing Holden’s leather jacket.

  “It wasn’t our intention to hurt Holden. I will talk to him after he’s had some time,” Sam promised.

  “Don’t cry, Rozene. Everything will be alright,” Hunting Wolf tried to assure me.

  “How can you say that? Not only did we kill Sophia, but I came close to unmaking Holden. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “He wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. However, I believe he will be more respectful of you in the future.” Hunting Wolf had a grin on his face.

  Sam laughed. “He looked scared shitless. Did you see the look on his face? There she was all hot and ready for him, just like he’s been dreaming since he bit her, and he looked like a boy who’d been cornered by a girl on the playground, clueless about what to do if she actually was to catch him.”

  “He can’t handle our woman.”

  Eager to change the subject, I decided to ask about what the waitress had told me. “I heard. Gossip spreads faster than fire. Did the dark one kill the cashier, the one who told us where to find Sophia?” In the distance, I could see the reassuring lights of the hotel.

  On the road behind us, headlamps came into view. They looked like demented fireflies, but I knew it was the pack catching up to us. Colby was with them. I could feel him. A few of the bikers sped up and passed us. I thought it was rude, but Sam said they were doing it to be protective. It was an instinctual thing.

  Hunting Wolf held me lovingly against his side. “The cashier was killed, but there were no witnesses. We will speak of it with Cecil after he has rested.” He became tight-lipped about it.

  When we entered the hotel, all evidence of the earlier fighting had been erased and whatever proof there had been of it on the faces and bodies of the wolves had already healed. Furthermore, Holden’s wolves weren’t behaving with the rowdy abandon with which they typically behaved. It was as though Holden’s grief was shared along the pack’s bonds.

  “Come on, Honey. We’ll get this all sorted out tomorrow,” Sam said quietly.

  Eventually, after hot showers and a few beers, they held me in bed between them, doing their best to defend me against my guilt-ridden emotions and troubling nightmares. It was hard to be fearless and brave in my sleep. It came to me in broken pieces. Each time I woke, one of my husbands would hold me, whispering soothing, comforting nonsense until I slept once more.

  Chapter Five

  Daylight streamed into the room through a thin seam where the curtains met. It was a relief to me. I was exhausted from trying to sleep. Sophia rising from the dead, dolls coming to life, the attacking crows, murdered cashier, and manifestation of the dark one, as he had come down the basement steps as a black cloud, had been too much for me. Losing control of myself had frightened me almost as much. The three of us dressed in silence. At some point during the night, Colby had come in because the other bed had been slept in, but he wasn’t here now.

  It was an unspoken truth between us that we needed coffee. Hunting Wo
lf led the way down, and Sam kept a hand pressed into the small of my back to comfort me. When we entered the hotel restaurant, Sam pulled out my chair. A waitress was pouring coffee for us before Hunting Wolf and Sam sat down. Cecil had beaten us down and sat with a breakfast feast spread out before him. He held no resemblance to the frail old man of the previous evening who had needed help getting to his room. I’d been duped.

  “That Cecil, he’s quite the actor,” I said under my breath.

  Focusing on me with his unnerving pale blue eyes, he said clearly, “Not that it did any good. You were told not to leave this hotel, but you are a stubborn woman.”

  A clatter caught my attention. Holden sat across the room at a table with Colby and two other wolves. “She left with me because I told her to. Got a problem with that, old Injun?” Holden lifted a bottle of whiskey to his lips and drank. His eyes held a challenge in them for Cecil. He knew which one of us had confronted Sophia.

  My cup clattered to my saucer. Grief tore at my heart. The pain we had caused Holden was unforgivable, even if the threat Sophia had posed had been dire. Shame consumed me. Hurrying to leave before I could embarrass myself with a flood of tears, I stood only to have Sam catch me and drag me down to his lap. Holding me, he stroked my back and hair.

  “Shit,” Holden said. Roughly, he put the bottle down on the table.

  Wolves of both packs sat and attentively listened. Sam, Colby, Hunting Wolf, Cecil, and I were outnumbered, but part of me felt like we deserved whatever Holden put us through. I tried and failed to suppress a sob.

  Holden said, “Cecil, I apologize.”

  I lifted my head from Sam’s shoulder, confused and fearful I hadn’t heard correctly.

  Gruffly, Holden said, “Sophia gave herself over to the darkness. It’s why our son left. He couldn’t stand to be around her. Hell, he couldn’t stand being around me either. It’s surprising such goodness ever came out of our unholy union, a witch and a werewolf. For all of the wrong Sophia did, she gave me a son who was pure goodness and nobility of spirit. He was a fine young man. A father has never been prouder of a son as I was of him. Now, my last tie to him is gone.” He motioned for a waitress. Hesitantly, she approached. “Take this away and bring me some coffee, Sugar.” He winked at her.