The Witch and the Werewolf (17 page)

The body was new and
awkward, but he caught the leader wolf unprepared and surprised.
The being’s shock rang like a bell in his own head and he relished
that, using the confusion to push the thing’s will away. He didn’t
want to be subservient to the king. He was the king.

He slashed at the alpha’s
throat, going for the quick kill. The leader of the pack, somewhat
recovered from his initial attack, backed out of the way, just
barely missing being ripped by Robert’s razor sharp
claws.

The rest of the pack
gathered, both old members and new, and he felt their confusion.
The alpha was older than the United States and his memories of
coming to the new world in a Viking ship were as clear as the day
he’d experienced them. He’d led his pack through dark times, though
constant challenges from the witches and their ever expanding prey.
The alpha had kept them safe through the hunts and then, when the
new moon dawned in the sky above the dark clouds, led them out to
not just eradicate their enemy, but to claim their space as the
rightful rulers of the world.

They were loyal to the old
alpha, but the pack law was set in stone. Any wolf who so desired
could challenge the alpha for control. And Robert wanted, more than
anything, to do just that.

“
You dare challenge me,
pup?” the alpha roared. Its voice was strange to Robert. Instead of
answering, Robert launched himself at the wolf once more, striking
it in the chest before being batted away by the bigger, more
powerful wolf.

The alpha, still confused
by his new pack mate’s actions, hesitated as Robert launched at him
again, from behind. This time his claws dug in deep, shredding the
alpha’s back, racking against his spine. Robert held on with one
claw and came down on the alpha’s back. He pushed his hands in the
open wound and wrapped them around the old creature’s spine.
Planting his feet against the massive alpha’s shoulders, he pulled
upwards and out, pulling the spine away from nerve and cartilage,
ripping fur, and yanking the alpha’s head away from his
body.

The alpha slumped to the
icy pavement, dead. The headless corpse changed back to human form
and Robert stood above it, holding the bloody spine up for all of
the pack to see. Robert turned back to human, naked in the cold,
but not caring. He stared down the pack members who’d circled,
watching his challenge for leadership. The first of the warriors
knelt, in front of him, acknowledging his accomplishment. He felt
their wonder and their loyalty. They were his pack, now, to do with
as he pleased.

“
First we kill that girl,”
he told them, arms raised up high. “I know she means something to
you. I will allow this thing. But first, my pack,” he said, the
world rolling off his tongue like silver, “we feast. We rest. And
then we run.”

The girl would come first.
She had to go. As the pack’s collective memories filled him he saw
the fires and the silver death as the girl’s kind, over the
centuries, hunted and killed his new kind. The witches had to burn,
again, if they were ever to take their rightful place in the world.
And he knew where she was heading. He could feel the older wolf, an
alpha stronger even than the one he’d just taken down, to the west
of them in the ruins of old downtown Houston. The old wolf was in
pain, under constant torture. There was something else there,
darting at the edges of his thoughts, but he couldn’t quite place
it. It was neither wolf nor man, he thought.

But none of it mattered.
He’d deal with it just like he dealt with everything. The pack was
his and soon, the world would be.

Life after Ruins

The big eighteen wheeler rumbled down the
northbound slope of the I-610 bridge and Dutch felt no small amount
of thrill as he smashed through the parked cars and trucks. The
thugs on the bridge had done a good job of moving the cars to
create walls at both ends of the bridge, leaving just a few to
block his path. The cab, along with the trailer, was packed with
people. Cassandra sat in the front seat, Jeremy in her lap, staring
in the side mirror.

“
They’re killing those
people,” Cassandra said sadly.

He felt the same way, but
couldn’t do anything about it. They’d saved who they could and that
was that. Dutch nudged a late model Ford out of the way. He wanted
to yank on the air horn and hoot out the window. The carnage was
behind them. He couldn’t do anything about it, at that point, and
had saved as many as he could. The truck was literally packed with
survivors. They’d done what they could and now it was time to move
on.

“
They aren’t killing
them,” Jeremy said softly. It was the first time the boy had spoken
since they’d hit the bridge and Dutch was sad for what the new
world was going to turn its children into. “Not all of them,
anyway.”

“
What?”

“
They’re changing them.
They’re making them werewolves.”

Dutch cringed. He’d
estimated the pack size somewhere around three dozen. There were at
least a couple of hundred people back on the bridge. He and the
girl had done well fighting a couple at a time and he wasn’t sure
they’d have pulled that off without her powers and the silver
ammunition. But an army of a couple of hundred? There was no way.
He tried to mask his emotions but the boy saw through the
wall.

“
It’s bad, isn’t
it?”

“
We’ll be fine,” Cassandra
said, shooting an evil sideways glance at Dutch. “We know we can
fight them. We can beat them. They bleed just like us.”

“
You can’t fight all of
them,” Jeremy said sadly as if he were already resigned to his
fate. “There are going to be so many of them.”

And that was the root of
the problem, Dutch thought. That was the reason he had to work for
the priest, crazy or not. The werewolves were capable of increasing
their numbers as they decimated those of the humans. Mankind was
going to need every gun hand they could get if they were to
survive.

“
Why are they so obsessed
with you?” he asked as he guided the truck through the north side
gate of the bridge. The big rig hung on a stack of cars and turned
it over, sending Toyotas, Fords, and Nissans scattering to the ice
covered pavement. The truck slid sideways and Dutch took his foot
from the accelerator, following the slide and steering into it.
Years on his father’s farm in northern Oklahoma winters were good
training for driving after the apocalypse, he thought.

The highway past the
bridge had been submerged during the tsunami and wiped clean of
cars. Though ice covered and treacherous, he was still able to make
a solid ten miles an hour which was far faster than he, with the
survivors of the bridge to watch after, would have been able to
walk. They’d make the church by the end of the day, he thought, if
he could keep the big rig on the road.

“
Because I’m a witch,”
Cassandra said, trying to sound strong. Yet he could hear the fear
and doubt in her voice. The dawn after Worm Fall had changed
everyone’s world. Hers even more so.

“
Are you the only witch?
Is your meat special, or something?” Dutch asked and then regretted
his choice of words. He’d been too hard on the girl. She’d been
through a lot, just like everyone else who’d survived the past few
days.

She didn’t take it that
way, though. “I don’t know. Up until a couple of days ago if you
had asked me about witches and werewolves I’d have told you I
didn’t like those movies. Because I didn’t. The whole idea of
monsters was silly. I don’t know anything about being a witch. My
mother was apparently the real witch and she died before she could
train me or even tell me anything about our history. I watched her
fight them with powers that make what I’ve done look like school
kid things. And even with that great power those things killed her.
I don’t know why they wanted her so badly. She died before she
could tell me.”

“
I’m sorry,” Dutch said,
genuinely sorry this time. Yes, Cassandra came off as a spoiled
little brat occasionally, but there was a real, genuine girl in
there full of pain and doubt. She cared deeply about the boy
despite having known him only a few short days. She was funny when
she wanted to be. It didn’t hurt that she was drop dead
gorgeous.

“
She said something,
before she died, about witches having fought the werewolves and
kept them from man, like there was some generations old battle
bubbling in the background.”

“
The priest said something
similar.”

“
Priest?”

“
Yes, the crazy old guy
that hired me to capture the werewolf. He said his order had been
fighting the werewolves for centuries. The wolf said he he’d seen
him during the Inquisition. It’s all pretty crazy and I don’t know
how much of it I believe.” There was too much to process in too
short a time. The only thing he could do, at that point, was push
forward with the mission.

She was quiet for a long
time and he knew that the thing was in her mind, again. How could
one person exist where two tread? He felt sorry for her, for all
the suffering she was going through. All the more reason to end the
werewolves, he thought.

“
They’ll be coming for
us,” Cassandra said. “The entire pack is coming for us. I don’t
know if I can fight them all.”

“
We’ll have help at the
Church,” Dutch said, but doubted that, even with the priest’s vast
amount of silver, they’d be able to survive the onslaught of the
wolves. “We’ll win.”

“
But there’s more than
just silver at the church,” Jeremy said, looking towards that
direction.

“
What is
there?”

“
Death.”

He drove on in silence,
trying not to look at the ruins left by Worm Fall.

She felt the old one to the west, a pull at her
very being. The entire pack felt it, and the feeling did not sit
well with them. They were torn. First, they had a new alpha. Though
it had been generations since it had happened, violent change was
common place among the wolves. Yet there had never been a time when
a newcomer, within minutes of his transformation, had so easily
dispatched the pack leader. The new alpha frightened her. She’d
fallen into the pack’s collective consciousness quickly, easily
forgetting her former life. The pack came first, everything else
was a blur. But the new Alpha retained his former self to the point
he was able to fend off the old alpha’s commands and destroy the
wolf quite easily.

There was something dark
there, and she didn’t know if she was the only one in the pack to
feel it or not. They were on edge after the witch had escaped them
yet again, destroying several members of the pack in the process.
She shared in the bloodlust of the new alpha yet she knew there was
more to it than simple revenge for the pack. The new leader wanted
nothing but absolute submission of the humans. He was gleeful in
their demise, took joy in their pain and suffering. It wasn’t
simple survival for him. The old alpha had been methodical in his
hate for the humans, but knew that the wolves needed them in order
to survive. The new alpha did not care and that scared
her.

The older alpha’s call
affected the entire pack, though, sowing confusion and more fear.
Her wolves were afraid of what came next. The pack was expanding by
leaps and bounds and the new minds, just added to the communal mix,
only added to the confusion. They could feel him, just at the edge
of their consciousness. He was older than anyone in their pack and
in much pain. He needed the pack but they could also feel the new
alpha’s hatred of him.

There would be a conflict
and the coming battle only stirred the pack more. The new pack,
numbering in the hundreds, was the largest group of werewolves to
run together in thousands of years. As one, they moved west,
towards the girl, the old alpha, and war.

Cassandra stared at the ruined city in the glow
of the tractor trailer’s headlights. The tsunami had destroyed so
much, so quickly. The once vibrant city of Houston was reduced to a
few skeletal skyscrapers and vast swaths of junk filled plains. The
black snow and sleet was beginning to cover everything, changing
the landscape to a black, desolate thing from a nightmare. Dutch
crawled down I-10 at a snail’s pace. But even at their slow speed
she knew they’d make it to their final destination much quicker
than if they’d walked.

She thought a lot about
the female who’d attacked her. She hadn’t seen a female fight, up
to that point, and the wolf had come at her with a vengeance,
singling her out of the group of survivors. She could feel the
pack’s hatred for her like a knife through the heart. There was so
much history there to create so much hate, she thought, a history
she knew nothing of. Maybe she’d find answers ahead of her, at the
Church of the Dead Wolf.

Cassandra began to sense
the other wolf; the one Dutch had captured, well before they neared
the Church of the Dead Wolf. The beast was very old and she was
sure it had seen much over the centuries. It was also in great pain
and she wondered what sort of torture the priest Dutch talked about
was heaping on it. It didn’t matter. She’d end the wolf’s suffering
as soon as she saw it, one way or another.