The Witch and the Werewolf (10 page)

“
Do you know the
way?”

All the landmarks and
street signs were gone, but she was sure she could find the
house.

“
I know the way. Come on.
Let’s get moving.”

“
My goodness,” Father O’Leary said softly, looking out from
the steps leading down into the half flooded basement of his
church. “It’s all gone.”

Dutch pushed past the
priest, anxious to get out into the daylight. He was disappointed
when he found the exterior of the church dark as night. He looked
at his watch. Unless it was busted it was a little after one in the
afternoon.

The basement had flooded
to the point they all thought they were going to drown. But slowly
the water had stopped trickling in and Father O’Leary thought it
would be safe to go topside and see the devastation. The packed
occupants of the bunker held a collective breath as the priest
opened the door and they streamed out.

It was worse than any war
zone Dutch had ever seen. The water had had first scoured the land
then, as it receded back into the ocean, left a trail of debris and
bodies. He heard crying behind him, as people came out of the
shelter, mixed with shocked gasps.

It wasn’t all gone, as the
priest had just said. The skeletal remains of Houston’s skyscrapers
remained, though many had been toppled by the wall of water. A few
of the far upper stories even had intact glass. Dutch figured they
must have stuck out above the top of the wave and wondered if
anyone was alive up there. A massive cargo ship had washed up with
the tsunami and then come to rest just steps from the entrance to
the church’s basement. It leaned against the skeletal remains of a
building.

“
You just don’t see that
every day,” Dutch said, looking at the ship. They may have gotten a
lucky break, he thought, depending on what cargo the ship was
carrying.

“
I’ve naught seen anything
quite like it,” the priest said in awe.

“
It’s pretty bad,” he
finally said, agreeing with the priest.

There wasn’t anything else
to say. The destruction was absolute.

The priest took a deep
breath and turned to the crowd, who were still pouring from the
small stairway leading down into the ground.

“
Me brothers and sisters.
I am so glad to see you survived the night, glad our dear lord
looked on this little band of sinners and graced us with his
salvation. We survived but as you can plainly see, we’ve only gone
from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. We survived, but we
have been left with nothing but the contents of that basement,” he
said, pointing to the stairwell. “I don’t know about you, but I
like to eat and we’re not going to survive long on what’s down
there.”

Dutch had no idea where
the priest was going with his speech, but had the feeling the man
had it planned for a long while. The crowd listened
attentively.

“
Believe it or not, lads
and lasses, food is not our biggest problem. Or it is, but not in
the way you might think. The biggest threat we face… nay, the
biggest threat all the survivors of Wormwood face, are more beasts
out there, just like the one you saw in the basement. They are a
scourge on mankind. We are their food and without the world to keep
them in check, they will spread like a virus. They are coming for
us, friends.”

“
So what do we do?”
someone asked, and Dutch wondered the same thing, wondering what
the priest had in mind.

“
We fortify ourselves and
prepare,” O’Leary said. “We hunt the wolves and we destroy them
before they destroy us.”

Dutch marveled at the
change of tone and the hint of bloodlust. There was more to the
priest than met the eye, he knew. He suspected a long history
there.

“
And how are we supposed
to do that?” another of the bunker survivors asked. “We have
nothing.”

The crowd rumbled in
agreement. Dutch had to admit the situation looked pretty dire.
Whatever supplies the priest had stashed in the bunker would have
to last until more could be procured and it didn’t look like that
was going to happen anytime soon. The temperature was dropping
rapidly as the black clouds gathered overhead, and most of the
bunker survivors were dressed in summer clothes.

“
We’re going to have to
make something out of nothing,” O’Leary answered. “And I’m going to
need your help. The first thing we can do is explore the contents
of that ship. I suspect that even if we find nothing, we’ve found
better shelter that we had in that flooded hole in the
ground.”

“
There were a bunch of
bulldozers over off of Washington,” a man said from the crowd. “If
the water didn’t wash them away, we could probably get one over
here and start clearing this debris. Maybe pile it in a wall around
the place.”

“
But they were submerged,
Jim,” the father asked. “They would be ruined.”

“
Naw, father. Those diesel
engines are sealed pretty tight. It would take a little work, but
we might be able to get one going. If the water didn’t wash them
away.”

“
The Medical Center has a
lot of underground areas,” another offered. “There might be
supplies there. And all those underground parking lots… once the
water’s cleared, those cars are going to be ripe for the
picking.”

“
Up in the towers,” a
woman said, pointing up to the remains of the skyscrapers. “A lot
of those were apartments. It’s going to be hell going up those
stairs, but we could do it.

“
I bet we can cut a hole
in that hull,” yet another man said. “Get in the ship from right
here.”

“
Good,” O’Leary smiled,
listening as more plans were offered, excitement building. The
people who’d survived the tsunami in the priest’s bunker had been
the bottom of the rung in the former world. They were prostitutes,
junkies, and the homeless. They’d had nothing. They still had
nothing but surviving the end of the world had given them a new
chance at something they’d never had before. That there were big
bad werewolves in the mix didn’t matter much. There’d always been
someone out to get them before. “I knew you’d have a plan for this.
I had faith. Now gather in groups and figure these things out. Do
not go in the wastes alone and do not go without silver from the
armory. Be wary, friends, very wary of the beasts. They will be
coming for you.”

The crowd milled away,
breaking off in small groups and preparing to head out into the
ruins.

“
Nice speech,” Dutch said.
“I’m guessing you had that prepared in advance?”

“
Look at ‘em,” O’Leary
told him, voice low enough that they wouldn’t be heard. “They were
trash before Worm Fall, trash that hadn’t even been taken to the
curb. They were the lowest sort of scum in the city, the people who
lived between the cracks. Now they have some kind of hope for
something different.”

Dutch shrugged. They
wouldn’t survive. Those people didn’t have it in them. He didn’t
say anything but the priest saw the look on his face.

“
You don’t
agree?”

“
If there are really more
of those things out there,” he began, “you don’t need them. You
need soldiers. No, not soldiers. Warriors. You need people who can
fight and these aren’t them. What do you think is going to happen
if even a couple of those things attack here? What you should be
doing is getting them out of this city and north, somewhere
safer.”

“
But Dutch, me boy, I do
have warriors. I have you.”

Dutch hadn’t made up his
mind that he was staying to help the crazy priest or not. There was
a brand new world out there, now. “Even I were to sign up, I’m just
one guy.”

“
I know that, lad. And I
know you’re going to join up. But there is help out there,” the
priest said, pointing east. “I just need you to go round them
up.”

“
Meaning what?”

“
A rescue mission,” the
priest said.

“
You want me to go out
there and find someone?” Dutch asked, flabbergasted. “Not that I
mind a mission. Work keeps you busy. But how am I supposed to find
a specific person?”

“
She was supposed to have
come here, with her daughter. But something happened during Worm
Fall and she left her own shelter. I’ve not heard from her since. I
want you to take the bayous to the Channel, and then the Channel to
her home and see if they are there. I have the GPS coordinates to
her home, if the infernal satellites are still working. We need
this woman, Dutch, if we are to win the fight against the
wolves.”

“
Who is she?”

“
Her name is Eleanor Kent.
She, and her daughter, are very powerful witches, though her
daughter does not know it quite yet. Bad choice there, I think,
keeping it from the girl, but who am I to dictate how the witch
raises her daughter?”

“
A witch.”

“
Quite,” O’Leary said.
“And one of the most powerful I’ve seen. That she hasn’t checked in
is worrisome, though. Will you help me with this? Will you bring
her to me?”

Dutch shrugged. “It’s not
like I have anything else better to do, right now.”

“
Good. While you are gone,
we will make something of this new camp, this Church of the Dead
Wolf. It’s all going to be good, me boy. Very good.”

A witch, he thought.
What’s next? Vampires?

Her life had gone from abject terror to absolute
exhilaration.

The wolves had come for
her, biting and snarling. She considered herself lucky. Though the
pack was expanding their ranks, growing an army as they ran south,
most survivors they came across became food. She, however, had been
one of the lucky ones. She’d been bitten and turned, taken into the
pack as a mere cub. She knew it was a great honor but had to go
through the terrifying change first. She didn’t even remember her
life before awaking in the cold, dark basement surrounded by the
pack’s females. All she felt was their warmth and love, absolute
and unadulterated.

Her body convulsed and
grew, her arms and legs extending out, her torso growing until she
stood nearly seven feet tall. The hair protruding from her arms
burned. The worst was her face, as it grew and elongated, the teeth
growing painfully in her jaw. She watched the pack through a haze
of blood as her body convulsed.

And then she felt the
pack.

It wasn’t just a feeling
that someone was close. It was a connection. She was bound to them
through blood and family, and could feel their emotions as if they
were her own. She’d never felt as connected to anyone in her life
and, once the transformation was complete and her body became the
pack’s, they accepted her. It wasn’t just a simple acknowledgement
of her presence. It was a physical thing, an emotion that she could
feel. She was a part of the pack in a way she’d never been a part
of anything before.

The world had ended but
she’d been reborn.

She didn’t even know any
of their names at that point. She simply knew them by the function
they performed in the pack. There were the defenders, big brutish
wolves made of sheer power and will. There were the scouts who ran
forward of the pack, sniffing out danger and opportunity. There
were the mates and the cubs. And then there was the one she only
knew as the alpha, the leader of the pack. He was a constant
presence in her mind and their bond was strongest of all. His
approval was everything, his whim an instant command that she had a
burning desire to follow. Her old life was gone, not even a distant
memory, and the pack was the only thing that mattered.

She watched as the cubs
nuzzled with their dams, hanging on as the wolves leapt through the
ruins, running as fast as they could, and felt a twang of sorrow.
She missed that bond, missed having a child of her own. She was a
bit jealous.

None of them had changed
to the despised human form, electing to stay wolf. For the whole of
eternity they’d been forced to stay human besides those few days a
month of the full moon. Now, with the second moon pounding in their
souls like a hammer, they didn’t have to.

When the waves cleared and
the newly converted had been reborn, they ran and she ran with
them. It was the simple most exhilarating thing she’d ever
experienced. It was as much of a training session to give the new
wolves a chance to learn their new bodies as it was anything else.
They ran through the dark, the scouts ranging ahead, and when they
found survivors they ate and they grew the pack. She gorged with
them and her belly was full. The fact that she was eating the
survivors of her former species didn’t even occur to her. The men,
women, and children were mere cattle put there for the pack to feed
on. She howled in delight, covered in their blood and the mud of
the new world.

Her alpha was seeking
something in the ruins and the scouts sniffed the trail out. They
followed it deep into the ruins of the old city, the city of man,
and she plodded after them.

If the alpha wanted that
human dead, who was she to deny him his pleasure?

But there was something
else in the minds of the pack, something she couldn’t quite place.
Somewhere in the ruined city was another wolf.