The Witch and the Werewolf (2 page)

“
Stop panicking,” she said
coolly. “If that thing wanted us dead we’d be dead. It just doesn’t
want us to go anywhere.” She had no idea what the thing was but it
didn’t matter. The world was ending. She’d have to worry about the
weirdness of it all in the afterlife, if there was an
afterlife.

“
Headlights,” Brad said,
looking past the orb and Cassandra followed his gaze.

“
Great,” she thought.
“Just what we need now.”

The lights neared showing
a car that was all too familiar. She got out of Brad’s card, walked
around the blue orb, and stood, hands crossed across her chest as
her mother pulled up in their small, nondescript
minivan.

“
Mother,” she said coolly
as her mother stepped out. She wasn’t going to give into panic and
wasn’t even going to mention the glowing blue ball behind her. That
her mother had the audacity to track her down on the last night of
the world… she was furious. Why couldn’t the woman leave her in
peace?

“
Cassandra,” her mother
began, her voice crackly as if she’d been crying. “Gods, I didn’t
think I’d find you in time.”

Her mother’s clothing
struck her as odd. She wore black leather pants tucked into the
tops of rough looking combat boots. Despite the heat she wore a
floor length black overcoat and… were those swords? Instead of
being angry her mother stepped to her and pulled her in tightly,
hugging her. Her walls broke down and she held her mother just as
tightly.

“
I’m sorry I ran,
mom.”

“
Don’t be. I should have
told you before all this. I shouldn’t have kept such a tight regn
on you. This was the only outcome. I was just so scared for you. I
should have been training you years ago. I just didn’t want you to
have to see that world. Then Worm Wood came and I thought none of
it mattered anyway. But… I should have told you
everything.”

“
None of what mattered,
mom? What do you mean by training? I’ve been training my whole
life. I am the bad girl walking in the shadows. I have no fear, ”
Cassandra quipped, trying to inject some humor into their
reunion.

Her mother snapped her
fingers and the blue orb disappeared. “There’s so much I haven’t
told you, Cass. I’m so sorry for that.”

“
You sent that
thing?”

“
I had to. I had to find
you. This night, of all nights…”

What had her mother just
done? How did her mother control that blue ball of
light?

“
We have to go and we have
to go now,” her mother pleaded, dragging her towards the van. “The
missiles are going to strike at any moment. Remember not to look at
them,” she said as Cassandra pulled against her grip. “Don’t look
at the explosions.”

“
I can’t leave, mom,” she
said, pulling away. “Brad is here.”

“
The neighbor boy
Brad?”

“
He’s hardly a boy
anymore,” Cassandra said, pointing to Brad’s car. The boy waved at
them and forced a smile.

“
Hey Mrs. Kent. I…
er…”

“
Hush boy,” her mother
ordered. “You should be home with your parents. Your mother is
worried sick about you.”

“
Car won’t start,” the boy
said, still waving like an idiot. Cassandra sighed.

“
I don’t want to spend my
last night on earth locked in our basement, mother. I want to feel
the night air and I want to watch as that monster,” she said,
pointing at the comet that filled the night sky, “kills our world.
I want to feel the touch of Brad’s hand on my breast,” she
continued, not noticing the boy blushing, “and I want to kiss him.
That’s right, mother. I want to kiss a boy.”

The walls were back up and
despite the absolute oddity of her mother’s control of the blue
orb, she was still angry.

“
I want to be free,
mother.”

“
This is not the night for
it, Cassandra,” her mother began seriously. “Can’t you feel
them?”

“
Feel who?”

Her mother looked so sad.
“I’ve utterly and completely failed you. I thought I’d keep you
safe enough that you wouldn’t have to be a part of this life. I
thought you could skate by and never see the underside. But they
are out there, Cass, right now. And they are looking for us. They’d
like nothing more than to take us and make us their own as they
have so many of our coven.”

“
Coven? What coven. We
aren’t witches, mother.”

Her mother looked about in
a panic. “We must flee. Right now. I will tell you everything once
we get back to the fortress.”

“
It’s a basement, mother.
Not a fortress. And you’re freaking me out here.”

“
You should be freaked
out, Cassandra. The world as you knew it is ending, but it’s just
the beginning. And you’re not going to like what it looks like
tomorrow morning.”

Brad got out of the car
and started towards them. “I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Kent. I… ow…
wow. Look at that.”

Bright light filled the
dark, turning it to an off white daytime. Her mother gripped her
head, preventing her from looking up as the missiles slammed into
Worm Wood.

“
Do not look at them,
Cass. Look at me.”

The urge to look up at the
source of the light show was overwhelming but her mother held firm.
Instead she stared into her mother’s deep blue eyes, locked on her
gaze. Brad screamed out and dropped to his knees.

“
Oh shit. I can’t see.
What…”

She was able to angle her
eyes down enough to see the gory muck of his eyes, melted by the
nuclear explosions in the sky, running down through his fingers.
She gasped and turned back to her mother, now afraid to look
away.

“
That’s right. Look at me,
child. We’ll live through this night, you and I. We will survive
this. And then I have to show you the real world. They’re out there
now, looking for us. They can smell my fear. But we’ll beat them.
We’ll have to or they will overrun the world.”

Cassandra heard a growling
from the bayou’s edge and felt her mother tense, hands clasped even
tighter around her face.

“
They’re here,” her mother
said dramatically and, when she said it, Cassandra felt it as well.
It was a crawling feeling of fear and dread in the pit of her
stomach. There was something out there, in the wood line. “Remember
not to look at Worm Wood. No matter what happens, don’t look
up.”

The first creature burst
from the wooded edge of the bayou and Cassandra couldn’t help but
stare at it. It looked like a wolf crossed with a man, though it
was like nothing she’d ever seen in a werewolf movie. It stood
nearly eight feet tall and, even beneath the scraggly brown fur,
she could make out the solid muscles of its body. Its arms were
long and dangly, its fingers tipped with inches long claws. The
thing had the face of a wolf, long and elongated, and its mouth was
filled with razor sharp yellow teeth. It stared at them with all
too human eyes, though, and licked its chops through a
growl.

The thing howled in the
night when it saw her mother, licking its chops.

“
Get in the van and
drive,” her mother ordered, pushing her aside . “And whatever you
do, don’t look at the comet. Do not wait for me.”

Her mother pushed her
towards the van and then stepped back, drawing the two silver
swords from the scabbards beneath her long coat. She looked like an
avenging angel in the nuclear light of Worm Wood, a warrior
queen.

“
Wolf,” she said simply,
her voice untouched by fear. “Begone this night.”

The wolf laughed at her
and watched as Cassandra pulled Brad towards the van. “She smells
like you, Eleanor. Does she taste like you?”

“
You will not find out
this night,” her mother said as she, amazingly, leapt into the air,
blades pointed in front of her. She cleared the thirty feet between
she and the wolf in a single bound and Cassandra was sure the two
blades were going to, at any second, impale the wolf. It moved in a
flash, though, and she came down on grass.

The thing laughed at her.
“You are slowing in your old age, Eleanor. You used to be much
quicker.”

Her mother turned and
threw one of the swords at the wolf. It arched across the expanse
of grass like a silver arrow and cut the wolf’s arm as the beast
stepped out the way. It howled in pain as the wound smoked and
blood gushed out.

“
Bitch,” it growled. “I
will enjoy consuming you.”

Her mother was in the air
again, this time raining fire down around the werewolf. Fire? How
did her mother do that? Who was that woman? It was obvious she
didn’t know all there was to know about Eleanor Kent. The fire
singed the wolf as it darted out of the circle, again howling in
pain. Her mother came down inches from where the thrown silver
blade had stuck in the ground, yanked it free, and came up in a
crouch.

The wolf yanked a small
tree from the ground, roots and all, and hurled it at her. Eleanor
raised her hand, palm up, and a wall of bramble thorns sprang into
existence between her and the flying tree. The tree crashed through
in a shower of sparks, but the wolf was already leaping over it,
coming down on top of her mother, knocking her to the ground and
sending her blades flying.

“
Mom!” Cassandra screamed,
still struggling to get Brad to the van. The boy was crying, hands
locked to his face.

“
Don’t worry, little one,”
the thing growled at her. “You’ll get your chance.”

“
Run, Cassandra! Get in
the van and run,” her mother screamed, pushing uselessly against
the massive weight crouched on her chest. “You have to
run!”

Cassandra was locked in
place as the thing howled and then bit into her mother’s shoulder.
Eleanor Kent cried out in agony, unable to struggle away from the
werewolf. She wanted to rush to her mother, to help her somehow,
but couldn’t move. Brad sobbed next to her, sinking to the dirt
once more.

“
What’s going on, Cass?
What’s happening?”

The wolf bit into her
mother again, blood and bone flying. It turned and looked at her,
the long snout forming a grin. “Your turn, little
bitch.”

The thing leapt into the
air, towards her, and came down next to Brad. It slapped Brad away
as if he was nothing but a child’s toy and he landed ten feet away,
his neck in an unnatural position. Cassandra glanced at her
erstwhile lover and was sure he was dead. The wolf turned to her,
snout inches from her cheek, sniffing.

“
You smell so sweet,
little bitch. Like your mother a hundred years ago.”

Something clicked in
Cassandra. Suddenly she didn’t want to die. The world might be
ending, she thought, but if these things were out there, in the
coming night, she’d be there to stop them. She didn’t know what her
mother was, didn’t know what she was, but she knew she wanted to
live long enough to hunt every one of the werewolves down and put
them out of her misery. Inaction turned to action and she felt
something building deep within her. It was like a fire, burning in
the pit of her stomach. As the wolf put its clawed hands on her the
fire leapt out, through her hands, and set the wolf’s fur alight,
flinging him back across the park in an explosion that sent shock
waves through the trees.

“
What the hell?” she
muttered, staring at the smoking palms of her hands. “What did I
do?”

She ran to her mother’s
side, scooping the woman’s bloody carcass into her lap. The woman
breathed laboriously and Cassandra knew she was dying.

“
Mom…”

“
It’s okay, Cassandra.
I’m… it’s too late for me. You have to go on. You have to carry on
the fight.” She coughed up a chunk of blood. “You have to find the
alpha wolf and kill him. The first one, Cassandra. Find him and
kill him and this will all end. Take the pack from
them.”

She has so many questions.
She regretted leaving her mother and chasing her own silly,
childish desires.

“
I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so
sorry.”

“
Take these,” the woman
said, forcing the short silver swords into her hand. “And run. When
you’re ready, hunt him down and kill him. They will consume the
human race now, if you don’t. There is nothing to keep them in
check anymore. Find the priest. Find the Church of the Dead Wolf.
He will help you.”

Tears flowed down her
cheeks as her mother, suddenly a mystery, died in her hands. She
watched the woman’s life energy flow from her like water, seeping
into the ground. No matter how much she’d hated what the woman had
kept from her, she loved her. Her mother had been, until Worm Fall,
her entire world.

Cassandra took the two
swords. They were heavy in her hands. The wolf that she had,
somehow, managed to stun was getting to his feet.

“
You are your mother’s
daughter, wench,” the thing growled at her, its fur smoking in
places. “I will eat you as well.”

She started towards the
beast, swords bared, anger filling her heart. She had no idea if
she could muster that power again but the beast would pay and pay
dearly for what it had done to her mother. But then she saw the
dozens of burning yellow eyes peering at her from the darkness. She
could feel them then, feel them just as her mother had. There were
a half of dozen of the creatures there and she knew, without a
doubt, that she couldn’t fight them all, even if she could somehow
summon that magic her mother had. And that’s what it was, wasn’t
it? Magic. Her mother had done magic while fighting the beast and
it would take her a very long time to accept that. She watched as
her mother’s back arched in a dying spasm, her body
shuddering.