The Witch and the Werewolf (16 page)

Dozens of werewolves
poured through the south gate, running on all fours. They covered
eight feet in a single bound.

“
We have to go now,” Dutch
said, dragging the boy forward, up the steep incline of the bridge.
He hadn’t expected the wolves that early, so far from the other
side of the bridge. But their arrival would just cause that much
more chaos and maybe give he and his small group a chance to get
across.

“
But the people in the
cars…” Cassandra pleaded, staring in horror as a wolf landed on the
roof of a minivan and tore it away. It hoisted a smallish woman in
nurse’s scrubs out, pulling her head from her body in one easy
motion. It threw the head at Cassandra and she danced away,
screaming.

Dutch put three rounds in
the beast, knocking it off the top of the van. It fell where he
couldn’t see it and he hoped it had died.

“
You people have to run
that way,” Dutch screamed, pointing north to where the bridge thugs
were making their way towards them. The people in the cars stared
at him blankly. Cassandra fired three shots into the
air.

“
If you want to live,” the
girl screamed, “get out and get moving.”

Several did, rushing
towards the opposite end of the bridge. More often than not,
though, the people stayed in their cars, staring wild eyed as the
werewolves poured through the gate. Dutch grimaced as one woman
pushed down the door lock of the station wagon she was hiding in.
As if that would stop the beasts. The wolves spread out, tearing
into the vehicles and ripping the people from them. Howls and the
screams of the attacked, punctuated by gunfire from the north,
filled the night.

“
We have to move,
Cassandra,” Dutch insisted, dragging the boy along with him. “Just
run.”

The girl looked back one
last time and then followed him into the chaos.

Robert raced down the bridge, slipped on the
black ice, and then fell forward, face planting on the slippery
pavement. He got to his knees and watched as people from the
southern end of the bridge rushed north, towards him. Only a couple
were shooting, however, and they were firing behind them, covering
the retreat of his people. None of it made any sense until he saw
the wolf like things darting in between the cars further down the
bridge.

Robert had seen wolves in
a zoo. They were majestic creatures that, as one killer to another,
he’d greatly admired. These were a combination of those animals and
a man. They ran all fours, taking great giant leaps, but stood when
they were fighting. He watched one throw a small car, occupants
still inside, at the shooters who just narrowly danced out of its
way. They were incredibly strong and covered in thick brown fur.
Their long canines were sharp and easily ripped flesh from
bone.

They were majestic, he
thought. They were the single greatest killing machine he’d ever
seen, a fusion of death and fur.

His men, both the inmates
from the bus and those few he’d selected from the ranks of the
bridge’s survivors, were running north, away from the battle. He
didn’t blame them. You didn’t stare at fur covered death long and
not run away. The two people shooting, however, did fight. There
was a man who had that look of a soldier who’d seen combat. He
moved with a stoic grace, easy under pressure, yet deliberate with
every action. The other, a teenage girl, moved like a dancer. She
was a ballet of blades and bullets and the wolves gave her a wide
berth.

“
Where the fuck are you
going?” he asked Hank as the man ran past him.

“
Fuck it,” the man
screamed over his shoulder. “I didn’t sign on to fight
werewolves.”

And Hank was, of course,
right. They were werewolves. While he didn’t know if they turned
into men after the full moon or not, they were most definitely
bipedal, upright walking wolves. Hank was also right in another
aspect.

“
Yeah, I guess I didn’t
either,” he said, taking a longing glance at the truck full of
boys. There would be more, he knew. There would be time to play
later.

He got to his feet and
started to run and then felt a force like a ton of bricks at his
back, shoving him back to the ground. He turned around just long
enough to see the long fangs of the wolf sinking into his glint in
the fire light as the werewolf tackled him.

She felt the pack’s recklessness and the alpha’s
anger with them like a dagger to her heart. They’d followed the
prey through the wastes and to the base of the bridge but the pack
had become distracted by the buffet of flesh before them, losing
sight of the goal. The alpha tried to coax them from their blood
fever, urging them towards the prey. But the defenders and scouts
were not convinced and most avoided the girl by with a wide
berth.

Even the alpha avoided her
and their fear disgusted her. She had no idea why they wanted the
girl that badly. It was an ominous sense of dread that hung over
the pack. They could not be complete until she was dealt
with.

They were afraid of her,
the female knew. The mighty wolves of the pack were afraid of one
little girl with two silver swords.

The fact infuriated the
female. She too disobeyed the alphas orders to stay with the
females and cubs and launched into the fray, barreling through the
male wolves. She fought with a vengeance, ripping to shreds any man
that got between her and the prey. The girl ran behind a soldier
and a boy, switching easily between sword and gun, both spitting
the hated silver, death to the pack.

The alpha toppled a man
further up the bridge, having bypassed the prey altogether, and was
busy gorging. She growled at her leader’s own blood lust, losing
sight of their goal, and rushed at the prey, intent on deciding the
issue once and for all.

She jumped at the prey and
suddenly stopped in midair as if she’d run straight into a brick
wall. Blue fire emanated from the girl and that fire formed a wall
between them. She slid to the ground, growling, and then ran at the
girl again. The blue wall faded, just as quickly as it had
appeared, and she jumped.

As she leapt through the
air she saw, in horror, that the prey was prepared for her, two
swords of gleaming sliver held low. She just barely avoided the
full force of the swords, twisting in a way that left her cut but
not harmed significantly. The cuts burned, though, and she howled
in the night, unable to move. The wolf watched as the prey ran
further, shooting and stabbing her pack mates at will.

She decided, right there,
that destroying the human was her only goal, pack or no. The girl
was the single most dangerous thing her kind faced.

Dutch stopped and knelt at a BigMart truck,
reloading his rifle and scanning to the south. A group of refugees
from the fight huddled with him and Cassandra watched as the man
did his best to console them.

“
We’re going to make it,”
Dutch said softly as the group caught their collective breath.
“It’s only a mile to the next gate and then…” Dutch
paused.

“
And then what? Where are
we going to go from here?”

Cassandra wondered the
same thing. Oh, she knew they were going to the Church of the Dead
Wolf. She just didn’t know what exactly that meant. The only thing
she knew about the Church, at that point, was that they were
incessantly torturing a werewolf. She didn’t know if the place
would safe, if there would be food… she didn’t know anything about
it. Dutch seemed like an all right guy and his actions on the
bridge, both what he’d told her about and what she’d witnessed, led
her to believe he was a good guy. She had to trust him, for the
moment.

“
That’s a little more
difficult,” Dutch said, glancing past the survivors to the mayhem
below on the southern end of the bridge. The wolves had stopped
their pursuit in order to feed on the survivors there. “There is a
shelter, in downtown Houston, and a ship. The ship came to rest in
downtown and, when I was leaving, they were getting ready to open
it up to use as shelter. I don’t know that the conditions are going
to be any better than here, but there’s a large group of survivors
and they have a few supplies. They are organizing, though, and
trying to get more. I also know they don’t exile anyone and they
sure as crap aren’t shooting defenseless people out in the snow. If
you don’t want to follow us I completely understand. But they’ll be
coming soon,” he said, pointing at the wolves. “And I don’t know
about you, but I’d rather survive in a place called the Church of
the Dead Wolf than on the outside. It at least sounds like they
know what they’re doing to fight these things.”

A ship, she thought,
remembering the bubble and the ships that had pushed past her and
Jeremy. Was there a ship downtown? What was he talking about? Dutch
looked at her, grinned, and then winked. Something passed between
them and she realized that fighting alongside the man had changed
her impression of him. He wasn’t a hulking brute of a soldier,
ready to smash and bash to get his way, though he would if needed.
He was a leader of men, a natural at combat, and, she thought with
a giggle, one hell of a cute guy under the grime and
mud.

“
And what the hell are
those things?”

“
Werewolves,” Cassandra
said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “And they
eat people. Come or go,” she began, “but we have to move now. Come
on Jeremy,” she said, brushing past Dutch. The small touch was
electric and she knew, from his smile, that he approved.

She stopped cold in her
tracks, listening to banging coming from inside the trailer. She
went to the back and opened the doors. A dozen young boys stared
back at her. The boys were dirty and scared, eyes wide at the
carnage just down the bridge.

“
Hey guys,” she said with
the best smile she could muster. “Are you ready to get out of
here?”

She heard the big truck
roar to life and a couple of moments later Dutch returned to the
rear of the truck. “Load them up,” he said. “We’re getting out of
here.”

Pain raced through his body like ragged
electricity sputtering from a downed power line. He felt his blood
flowing freely, steaming out of his body, and then quickly freezing
as it hit the ice covered pavement. The wolf stared down at him,
for a moment, and their eyes locked. He saw the intelligence there,
felt the thing’s power. It was a perfect war machine, oblivious to
pain, unbeatable by a mere man. In one instant it had dominated him
and he knew then that the food chain was forever changed. Man was
no longer top dog. The wolf was.

The other wolves in the
pack ignored him as his body convulsed. It wasn’t just pain of
dying. He wasn’t dying. He was changing. He felt it. His mind was a
blur of emotions and the fact that they were not entirely his own
frightened him. There was the thrill of victory, fear of a small
girl… the pack’s hive mind was a powerful thing, an intoxicant. He
felt the pack as it moved through the survivors, selecting the
strong to add to their numbers and devouring the weak. He knew he
was one of those chosen to become a member, that he was changing,
becoming one with the pack that had conquered his little kingdom in
the span of minutes.

His bones ached as they
stretched, the very molecular structure lengthening. His muscles
spasmed as they grew and expanded. Even the pores of his skin
crawled as thick black fur sprouted up and down his arms. The pain
was excruciating and easily the worst thing he’d ever felt. He
twisted on the pavement, wondering why the wolves had left him
alive.

The pain and confusion as
several dozen other being’s thoughts and emotions invaded his mind
at once was overwhelming, even more intense than the pain of the
physical transformation.

“
Get of my goddamn head,”
he screamed, holding the sides of his head as he squirmed on the
ground. “I don’t want to feel you!”

There were two main
emotions from the pack, at that point. The first was their absolute
joy at the buffet of food they’d stumbled across on the bridge. He
felt their hunger from the ruins. Pickings were slim and the vast
majority of their primary food source, man, was gone, succumbed to
the wave and the cold. The second was their abject fear of the girl
who’d run by him just a few moments before. He didn’t understand
that fear though he’d seen the blue flames jut from the girl’s
palms just moments before. He didn’t understand the hatred, didn’t
know what the girl had done to draw the pack’s ire, but it didn’t
matter. Their hatred was his hatred.

The alpha looked up at
him, probing his thoughts, deciding what part he’d play in the
newer, larger pack. Robert felt the pull of the beast’s will. The
urge to conform to the pack was almost more than he could stand.
Something deep and primal wanted to please the alpha. It was a part
of his soul that he was not accustomed to, and the desire to
conform was almost more than he could stand.

Almost. Robert had never
been one to cower to authority.

Robert coiled tight,
feeling the power of his new, stronger muscles. He’d always been a
strong man. It was the only reason he’d survived prison and the
merciless attempts to take ‘Junior’s’ life. Child abusers were the
most hated of the hated, but he’d survived. But that strength was
nothing compared to the power he felt coursing through his body
then. He growled at the alpha just before he leapt across the two
lanes of highway in a single, sixteen foot jump.