All Hallows

by W. Sheridan Bradford

  Her tongue scraped across stumps of feline teeth that had snapped under impact, sharp and white at the breaks. Their airways fused until Maren gagged at a splash of snotty liquid. She held steady, her mouth tickling whiskers and gore, her forearms trembling, her bony chest heaving.

  She retched as quietly as she could, gagging until she disgorged an unpolished, semi-transparent gemstone, inside of which glimmered a tiny, luminous skeleton key.

  Her spoons advised that the girl with the lamp was still watching. A swirl of leaves and trash spun with forces Maren summoned, obscuring her movements; the rustle of autumn’s voice was loud and demanding, competing with the sounds of a distant fire engine.

  Maren tucked the paste diamond into the cat’s throat, her finger lubricated by saliva. She massaged the lump from the outside when the tom’s esophagus resisted.

  Committed now, her fingers stiffened in inhuman shapes, weaving arcane symbols in the air—the chalk slid roughly, untouched by her hands, scrawling a thick, yellow line that stumbled, overturned at obstacles, but accelerated constantly, repeating geometric patterns until nothing remained of the chalk aside from the infinite knot it had drawn on the pavement.

  Exhausted, her hose wet, her knees inflamed, Maren ran the sharp edge of a broken fingernail between gummy lids, much as she would to open a present sealed by tape that was fraudulently billed as invisible.

  The cat’s eyes snapped open, clouded by death. Maren worked her mouth and dribbled saliva into each of the tabby’s milky sockets.

  Blowing outward as if a bomb had exploded, the leaves whispered, the cat’s tail flicked, and Maren clapped her hands like a delighted child: petting and tickling, purring an example, tucking intestines into place.

  A sucking sound accompanied the moth-wings of a thousand settling leaves.

  “You are back,” she informed the animal. “How are you? Irritable? Cramps? Bloating? I haven’t messed with your gender. The discomfort will pass. Eat sparingly for a time. You are flat on your left side, and as dirty as a ditch can make you. Shameful for a feline.”

  She helped the cat to its feet with a strong grip and stronger legs. The ripping sound of old carpet and a gurgling yowl unsealed the tom from the pavement. The tabby scampered drunkenly away, bouncing from the curb like a rubber ball, his legs and eyes crossing like a bored housewife on her third martini.

  “Don’t thank me!” Maren snapped; the tabby built his awkward pace into a streaking gait, heading for the window with the lamp.

  The girl inside stared at the reanimated tom with an open mouth, crying for what Maren thought might be different reasons than before.

  Her necklace had been warm for hours, a common problem in population centers—and entirely expected on the holiday. For her spoons to freeze and stick to her skin, however, was a warning she couldn’t ignore. Maren lifted her left knee until it clicked.

  “Knew I should have brought my war bag,” she mumbled, spinning slowly, intent on the darkness as she worked spells and sigils for shielding and discovery.

  She nearly called-out to Uriah, for Maren’s enhancements detected the little witch in the general vicinity—but Uriah was always warm, necklaces or no.

  “Ah,” Maren said to herself as her spells made the connection. She was too shocked at the proximity and identification to say more. If Feri knew of the bounty, and could care enough to collect such a thing…

  Maren pushed such thoughts from her mind. She’d never seen a battle lost more quickly than when towels were thrown before it began.

  “Could be worse,” she told herself. It might even be true. There were once hundreds—thousands—of equally formidable creatures loose in the world. Most had perished long ago, but there was—well, there was Tocaya.

  “Not helping,” she said, accenting the last word. After all, it was Tocaya who’d answered the lamentations of a dying young woman sprawled in Hallett’s coppice—who’d given a speck of her unspeakable power to Mary. Tocaya who commanded Sarquito. Tocaya who had created the great wolf of the middle mountains.

  “Feri and I are friends,” Maren whispered, prayer-like, her lips unmoving. Her mind raced for anything that might be effective against the behemoth. Her thoughts landed on no items she currently possessed.

  There was little to be done for it. She would call Feri into the light, she would hope, and never yield.

  Maren straightened. She had been out of options before, and, at times, hope could be found within the void of necessity. She’d been stripped naked, tied to a pole, kindling piled to her thighs—and who but her remained alive from that?

  No witch worth her salt was ever completely powerless, and Maren was known for her craft. They had a history, she and the wolf with putrid breath.

  Maren cleared her throat, striving for familiarity. “A friend of mine once said—she was in human form at the time—that there is no invisibility before God. We argued amiably about divinity, but we were of accord that lurking doesn’t last. What moves and feeds can’t hide for long. Come out and play. I have a nose for blood, Feri—though not so good as yours.”

  A grunt came from behind her, and Maren’s neck crawled as though covered in maggots. She turned slowly as the spattered hulk of gore-slicked hair and rolling muscle rumbled in acknowledgment. Every follicle on Maren’s body stiffened with recollection and common sense.

  To men—to the few slayers who knew of her and still drew breath—she was her own species, Feri facinorous, a monster consigned to impossibility; the horrible offshoot of a larger family of lesser creatures: werewolves.

  Men were fools, but it was easy to agree that Feri inspired fear. Maren’s bowels went loose in ways that normally required a tea of roachwing and wormwood. That or a bowl of oatmeal.

  Feri disliked the word reserved for the others; for the packs that roamed Europe and could raid as far as Asia when the moon was right. The comparison enraged Feri… and what made Feri angry was liable to lose extremities and spill its guts before an attack was formally announced.

  If she could not be called a werewolf, then she was certainly comparable, though Feri stood eleven feet in height, packing over a thousand pounds of fang and fury. The beast was the converse to a meek and sickly girl who was dutiful, and Catholic, and calm.

  Not a werewolf, however alike the general pattern. Better was to call her Feri. Best was to call her friend. Maren swallowed and attempted a smile.

  In her present form, Feri was friend to few. Maren watched slaver drip in total concentration, willing her heart to beat without terror.

  The hybrid of wolf and woman had the capacity for speech, but Feri rarely exercised the ability. To speak would flay her lips and slice her tongue, Maren thought. Anatomy suggested this as likely.

  Of course, this also presumed that Feri could hurt herself. Maren had learned quickly during their encounters that precious little injured or fazed the monstrosity. Nothing short of high-cost magic or the most outlandish physicality would penetrate, and even then…

  Maren rubbed the bracelet of scars around her right wrist. She was not dead already. In that lay hope. The rest would be up to her tongue.

  “Feri, darling—it does my heart good to see you. You look… healthy. All of us ladies have beauty secrets, but I’ll guess that yours rely on long nights spent in the cold. Such excursions do wonders for me.”

  The eyes of the towering wolf shone mystically in the sodium lamp. Feri’s solid pupils swirled and shifted through light-eating black, a luminous pea green, and a dull red that reminded Maren of used charcoal hit by a breeze. Each color presented a different format of sight, or so went the rumor. Thermal, intensification, and… unsettling, was the reality.

  “It’s nice of you to come down from the hills,” Maren continued. “A delight. I know of a great little place nearby that serves cattle. Raises them, anyway. I’d be happy to take you there. It’s my treat!”

  The fact was—while Maren understood that a swift death would free her of such piddling concerns—s
he had misgivings at Feri being around crowds of humans.

  Stumbling partygoers here or there, a handful of dead police, a house fire, a revived cat—these were hallmarks of any suburban Halloween: such happenings would be swept under the rug and binned alongside a thousand tons of rotting pumpkin.

  A hundred people slaughtered in a small city, shark-sized bites missing from corpses tossed into trees—that would not only make the news, it would stay there. Some weeks prior, a madman with a cleaver had assaulted spits of overcooked rotisserie chicken in a local supermarket, and that had been a front page item for three days.

  Tocaya was notoriously unpredictable, but she was clear about her creations not making the news—though the goddess was understanding about conspiracy blogs and certain among the network stations.

  Perhaps sensing her thoughts—or scenting them—the great wolf growled, a sound so low the volume was lost on human hearing. Liquid vibrated in Maren’s ears; her vision wobbled.

  Swallowing with a click, Maren bent for her bowling bag and straightened to her full height, which gave her the advantage of poking Feri in the belly button, should it come to that.

  Maren beetled her brows, flopping the head of a zipper back and forth, her swollen fingers calmed by imminent battle. As much on faith as reason, she tore the purse open and thrust deeply into the bag. This earned another rumbling, eye-jittering growl and the unmistakable knowledge that evisceration lay inches from her hips.

  Smearing her right wrist, slap-dash, with leavings from a wooden bowl she’d used as a pestle earlier, Maren whispering a brief curse on her own skin. She whispered again—this time a basic obscenity known to any teen—clacking her molars together as her wrist flared with light. She shoved it straight into the yawning jaws.

  Feri thrust a slender rear leg backwards, snapping at the hand with a clash of teeth so violent Maren could hear a combination of a falling boulders and a row of butchers honing their knives.

  She did not recall closing her eyes, but Maren opened them reluctantly to judge whether she might yet have part of an arm. She steadied her breathing as Feri licked at the bracelet of scars, her blood smearing mottled gums, the purple skin of her inner lips in sharp contrast to long teeth, which Maren thought a vanity—Feri’s teeth were brightly-polished saffron.

  The damage to Maren’s wrist was limited, falling well short of amputation—though her hand did remain in the wolfen maw.

  “You remember,” Maren said, her voice cracking. The stress of the situation reminded her of a dare Uriah Lee had accepted when the Spanish Flu was rampant: on a day when thousands died, Uriah had gifted herself early into her teens. She’d sounded like a pubescent boy for weeks.

  Maren was shaken from the past as a fingernail split beyond the quick; one of Feri’s teeth nicked the smallest bone in Maren’s middle finger. The wolf showed no inclination to let go.

  Steeling herself, Maren dropped her bowling bag and used her free hand to draw a curlicue in Feri’s mane. Apart from a few damp clumps, Feri’s mane was down-soft and as long as her waifish counterpart’s head of hair; the mane grew luxuriously, ending at the tip of a saber-curved tail.

  “A pleasure to see you again, Feri. You may notice that a tabby-cat is tripping over his legs and yours. He’s already visited death today. Tonight is an energetic time, but I’ll ask that you spare him. There is much else to feed upon with less corrupted flesh.”

  Releasing Maren’s wrist, the wolf’s great head dropped; Feri’s pupils burned somber red; a massive forearm shot at the drunken tabby—Feri’s claws, fully seven inches long, encircled the animal. The tom was, Maren saw, still quite flat on the one side.

  “I won’t order you away,” Maren said softly. “We know how that would end—yet here is a moment to recall Tocaya’s command. You are among… common folk. Do you see that child in the window? The hundred others like her? You won’t be overlooked here, Feri. The men will come. I ask that you spare the cat, and spare the girl, too.”

  Maren pointed in the direction of the cherubic teen, the one with the lamp. Feri would see far more through the wall than Maren could. A single witness could be dealt with—ignored, so far as Maren cared: no adult alive would believe a lonely, big-boned girl who’d eaten too much sugar and seen a cryptid under a streetlight—certainly not on Halloween.

  Then again, Feri, in this form, was not given to reason, and only the first bones knew how long it had been since she’d undergone her weeks-long reversion—Maren intuited that the cheerful humanity of the girl was distant.

  The slicing fist squeezed and released in time with Feri’s slow breath.

  “If you don’t want him, I can—”

  The tabby flew into a bank of metal trash cans. A glass bottle cracked under its label; a spill of aluminum cans clattered. The tabby clambered out of a discarded wad of sweaters, mewled, and began walking back toward Feri.

  “This kind of decision-making is how you came to be a pancake,” Maren advised. The disheveled tom fell as much as he leaned against the wolf, his purr the buzz of a dying cicada. “He likes you.”

  “Cat,” Feri said slowly.

  “Yes. A kitty-cat. He’s yours. You’ll want to be more gentle, if you want him to last. He will make for a fine companion. I know you get lonely. Did I say he was injured? You could find him a place to rest at your cabin. He’ll be playful again by morning.”

  Feri roared at the suggestion; a deafening, extended challenge. The roar transformed into a wailing howl. Maren removed a string of decomposing flesh from her cheek and forced a smile.

  “Of course I don’t presume to… it would be your idea. I didn’t quite grasp the end, but yes—a low profile is wise. You have my thanks,” Maren said. She caught Feri glancing to the side.

  “I will deal with the staring girl, if you like. She might misread your intentions, were you to… I’m sure she appreciates the kindness you’ve shown her tabby. Your tabby. I could explain the new ownership to her. Can’t see how she’d mind. If you’d rather be on the prowl, I’ll be happy to turn that favor for a friend.”

  Feri grunted, teeth clicking into worn places with the sound of machinery.

  The wolf turned without comment, her tread surprisingly quiet on asphalt—she carried the cat like a handkerchief. The tom had just enough sense to hunch, claws-deep, in Feri’s soft mane of dark curls.

  Although Maren tracked the werewolf without pause, she lost Feri’s enormous form in a score of flowing paces, the night consuming the first—and by far the most fearsome—of the New World werewolves.

  Maren rubbed her wrist until the shining scar faded to the intensity of a dying glow stick. She breathed herself calm—somewhat calm—and eventually determined that she was, once more, standing in the middle of the street.

  As was often the case when presented with her imminent demise, Maren had lost track of her surroundings. She regained awareness none too soon: a gigantic diesel pickup took the corner at high speed. Maren leaped for the curb in a fog of exhaust and expletives.

  “There goes a man who doesn’t like cats,” she grumbled, reaching for her loosened hair. The thickest of the twigs from the park came away in her hand. “I’m back down to braids,” she said, and nearly disposed of the twig, the gutter being handy.

  Maren thought of the nameless tabby, watching as the lifted truck accelerated well past the posted limit. A mirror missed clipping a sedan due to the height advantage.

  “Be glad you have full coverage,” Maren said.

  She lobbed a scissorwing, gripped the stick in both hands, and rattled-off the first words that came to mind:

  Rolling coal; squeaky-clean mudflaps…

  I spy a babied four-by-four!

  By this stick, the gearbox collapse,

  Rupturing the four on the floor.

  Maren broke the twig in half, completing her spell. The pickup, which had begun to slow in order to run a stop sign in another turn, followed suit—its front axle snapped; the scissorwing shredded a rear tire
in the same instant.

  Front wheels askew, the lifted vehicle jerked into a streetlamp with a thunderous crash. White steam rose from the radiator; clouds of dark diesel chugged from the rear. The motor died—from far away, Feri roared.

  “No good deed,” Maren muttered, considered wholesale flight, decided she wouldn’t get a block if Feri wanted to take-up pursuit, and went to her knees with both hands in the bowling purse. “Of course I have silver,” she said, throwing a tarnished chunk of metal back. Maren reviewed another item, then another.

  “This won’t do anything to… this didn’t work last time… immune… scissorwings won’t… For fanden!” she finished loudly, and found herself holding a full-sized candy bar, which was no less effective than anything else.

  The purse searched, Maren patted at her clothes. “A waste of a worm… Bessie can’t… spare buttons… and that’s that. Uriah will have a fine laugh. Hubris has taken me the way of the tarpans. I just had to say I wouldn’t die.”

  There being little else to do but wait—Feri would not have howled merely to outdo the noise of a traffic accident—Maren read the print on the back of the candy bar, which wasn’t comforting.

  “Exceeded my allowances hours ago,” she said, pushed the bar into a vacated pocket of her waistcoat, and began braiding her silver hair with sure, steady hands.

  Feri roared again—closer now.

  20

  “Now here’s something,” Maren said after another round of rummaging. “Mommet, poppet, I need you to—” Maren grumbled to herself. “Poppet? Where are you?”

  Seconds ticked by without progress, though Maren did find a miraculously intact tube of Necco wafers.

  “I ought to go back to a shopping cart,” Maren said to nobody in particular, and contented herself with having found one of the set.

  The mommet was waxy and shapeless, a figurine holding a bare hint of humanity. This was as it should be, for Maren shaped her proxies to the images of the intended—and the intended were not always human.