The Witch and the Werewolf (23 page)

“
So many dead little
wolves,” it said with a grin of bloody, stainless steel teeth.
“Such a shame.”

Cassandra stroked her
mother’s cheek. “I’m sorry, mother.”

“
For what,
dear?”

“
Everything,” she said as
she coiled herself like a spring and launched herself across the
area separating them like a cannon ball. The priest grinned when he
saw her coming, caught her, and used her own momentum to throw her
into the remains of a brick wall, collapsing it atop
her.

“
No, wraith,” the alpha
growled. “You will not have the girl.”

“
Developed a taste for
her, have you? I understand completely. She smells… delicious. I
will have her and her mother, after I’m done with you. With the
combined power I will absorb I will rule the pathetic remains of
this world. The night has come and I am death.”

The alpha launched across
the open expanse of ice covered pavement in a manner of a couple of
bounds. He was met with a wall of solid red energy, bouncing off
and landing on his back, stunned. The wraith laughed.

“
Poor little wolf… so
ready to die. Let me help you with that.”

The wraith shot straight
up into the air, trailing red energy. It then came down like a
missile, slamming into the alpha in a burst of red electrical
energy. The shock wave rushed out and blew the remaining spectators
back. Cassandra tried to shake the exhaustion and scrambled to her
feet, swords in hand. She rushed forward and, as the wraith was
staring down at the wounded alpha, drove both blades into its
back.

The creature screamed out
in pain with a cry that shook the remaining glass from the skeletal
remains of skyscrapers and showered the survivors in small pieces
of concrete. It turned to her quickly, wrenching the blades free of
her hands, and slapped her hard enough to hurl her twenty feet
back.

The alpha took the moment
of distraction to leap at the wraith, knocking him to the ground.
The act drove the short swords through the wraith, into the alpha,
and the wolf howled in pain. The wraith tossed him aside like he
was a toy.

“
You think you can destroy
me?” the creature howled. “I am the night. I am the coming dark.”
It was very disconcerting to see the wraith, arms raised and
dripping with red energy, turn to the gathered onlookers, the two
swords driven through his chest.

Cassandra focused her
energy, feeling the stirring in the pit of her being, the tingling
sensation ringing through her body. The blue fire shot from the
outstretched palms of her hand, engulfing the wraith in a curtain
of azure flame. It screamed again and again its scream reverberated
through the ruins. The alpha launched at it once more, knocking it
to the ground. The two wrestled on the ground in a swirl of red and
blue fire and Cassandra lost track of the battle, unable to tell
who was winning and who was losing.

That’s when she saw Jeremy
crawl out of the crater he’d created when he hit the
ground.

The boy had changed in the
short time since she’d last seen him. A large part of the right
side of his neck and shoulder were missing, a wound where the
wraith had bit into him. He rippled with blue and red energy, bolts
of power shooting out like sparks from a kid’s toy. She could feel
anger and sheer, unadulterated hatred pouring from him.

“
Jeremy?”

The boy floated across the
ice, several feet off of the ground. When he arrived to where the
wolf and wraith fought, he raised his lowered hands and as he did,
the wolf and wraith rose with them. They struggled fruitlessly
against the invisible bonds he created fruitlessly. His face was a
mask of hatred and the space where his eyes had been glowed with
ferocious purple energy that wafted out like steam.

“
I killed you…” the wraith
screamed. “You are dead.”

Jeremy clapped his hands
and the two beings, wolf and wraith, slammed together in an
explosion of energy. He did it again, multiple times, colliding the
two beasts into each other in a fury of light and heat. She could
feel the alpha weakening and the pack, feeling the same thing,
howled in the night. They were like her, unable to do anything
about it.

“
Jeremy stop!” she
pleaded, getting to her knees and crawling across the cold ice
towards the boy. “What are you doing?”

“
Ending this,” the boy
said, but his voice was no longer that of a sweet young man. It had
been replaced by something dark, something cold. He slammed his
fists together then and the two beings came together in a blow that
sent out shockwaves, pushing back the remaining wolves and
Cassandra like the tsunami of Worm Fall.

She blacked out for a
moment, but when she awoke, Jeremy hovered over the priest. All she
could make out of Jeremy were the red glow of his eyes and the
steely bright shine of the rows of teeth in his mouth as he bit
down into the wraith’s neck, gorging on the priest’s body. The
priest convulsed under him. The wounded alpha tried to crawl away,
but Jeremy blinked eyeless eyes at him and the furry body slid back
towards him, apparently under Jeremy’s control. She had no idea
what to think. Had the wraith, when it had bit into him,
transferred some part of his essence to the boy? Like the wolves
expanding the pack?

“
Jeremy, no,” Cassandra
said, moving towards him. The boy held his hand up and an invisible
energy wave swept out, pushing her away.

“
Jeremy?” Dutch said,
finally joining the scene. The man was covered in blood, his black
uniform in tatters. His face was burnt badly. “Jeremy, kiddo, what
the hell are you doing?”

Jeremy looked up. The skin
of his face bulged with the power he consumed. “Don’t call me
kid.”

Dutch flew backwards a
hundred feet, his gun flying in the opposite direction. He landed
on a dead wolf, the corpse breaking his fall. Cassandra got to her
feet.

“
Whatever you are doing,
Jeremy, please don’t. Please don’t do this. Let me help you,” she
said, easing across the pavement.

The boy pushed his hand
forward again, palm out, and she felt the force of energy hit her
in the gut like a sledge hammer. She dropped to her knees,
puking.

The boy drained the priest
until the corpse collapsed upon itself, the flesh imploding. He
then turned to the beaten alpha. He moved so fast, just a blur of
motion, that Cassandra lost track of him. The alpha howled out in
agony that tore at her soul. Jeremy sank his razor sharp into the
creature’s neck. Lightning flashed and she watched as he watched
her. It wasn’t just a transference of blood, like a vampire in a
movie. Jeremy was taking the alpha’s soul.

Dutch crawled towards her,
pistol in hand.

“
What’s happened to
him?”

“
I think he was infected
by the priest in their battle. He’s become a wraith.”

“
What does that
mean?”

“
It means he’s taking
their essence… the thing that makes them who they are. Their
powers, everything.”

“
We have to do
something.”

“
Don’t bother,” Jeremy
said, finishing his second meal. The boy stood, stretching out. He
looked several inches taller than he had before and bulkier. His
body was changing even as they watched, transforming like the
wolves. “You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to,” he said, his voice
squeaky like he was going through puberty right there, on the spot.
“You were nice to me, so I’ll spare you today. But things have
changed. I am coming to take everything, one day. I am king of this
world.”

“
Jeremy please,” Cassandra
begged, tears streaming down her cheek. “Please let me help
you.”

“
You can’t help me,” the
boy said, turning to the pitiful remains of the pack. “We leave
now.”

Cassandra watched in shock
as the wolves obeyed, following Jeremy west, out of the ruins of
old downtown. He’d killed the alpha and, by that act, assumed
control of the werewolves. Worse, she thought, he was now the alpha
of every wolf on the planet, including her mother. He’d literally
become the first wolf by executing the priest’s plans.

“
Come on,” Dutch said,
getting her to her feet. “Let’s get you back into the
compound.”

“
But my
mother…”

In the distance Cassandra
watched as her mother, back in wolf form, walked with the few
remaining wolves of her pack away from the scene of the battle. She
looked back at them and howled once before they bounded
away.

“
I think if she was going
to stay she would have,” Dutch said, her arm wrapped around his
shoulder. “We need to get out of the weather, Cass. We need to
recuperate.”

“
This weather is nothing,”
Cassandra told him. She was exhausted and knew if Dutch wasn’t
there to hold her up, she would be flat on her back. The battles
had been intense, changing her in a way that she couldn’t quite
place her finger on. It was subtle and strange. She had taken to
the fight easily, naturally even. It was as if she’d been born for
the fight yet she knew the battles were not nearly over.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
A storm is coming,” she
said quietly.

“
We’ll be ready,” Dutch
told her.

She wasn’t so sure. There
was so much she didn’t know, so much she needed to
learn.

“
But for now we have to
rest and rebuild.”

“
Me and you starting a new
civilization, is it?” she asked, forcing a smile. So much had
happened and there was so much to cry about, but Dutch was there
with a smile.

The mercenary shrugged.
“It could be worse.”

And it would be worse, she
thought. Things would get much, much worse before they got any
better. But they’d make it.

She knew they’d make it.
She’d already made it this far.

Epilogue

Six Months after Worm Fall

“
Fuck Colorado,” Sergeant
Manny Rodriguez said around a thick wad of chew. “Fuck Colorado,
fuck the black god damn snow, and fuck the President. Fuck all this
shit. We should have stayed in Minot.”

Corporal Lance Reid could
not disagree. Before Worm Fall, the eight hundred and seventy mile
trip would have taken them a little over twelve hours. After Worm
Fall, underneath the permanent dark clouds and ever present black
sleet, the trip took over a month. At least back at the Minot Air
Force Base they’d been safe in the bunkers. Even if the only thing
they had to eat was MREs, there had been plenty of them. There
weren’t crazies in the bunkers taking potshots at them at every
turn and it was warm. Though it wasn’t sunlight, there was
light.

He didn’t know if he’d
ever get warm again and he was sick of the ever present night left
in the wake of Worm Fall.

“
Damn straight Sarge,”
Henry Wilkerson, late of New Orleans, Louisiana, agreed. “Why they
got us all the way out here anyway? I want to be back in my bunk,
man. With the fucking heater, man. It’s too goddamn cold out
here.”

“
Suck it up boys,” the
Sergeant told them. “They told us to come dig out the President and
dig out the fucking president we will. Even though they haven’t
heard from this facility in three god damn months. And even though
there isn’t a fucking Washington, DC any more. They tell us to
saddle up and go, we saddle up and go. Doesn’t mean we can’t bitch
about it.”

Reid cringed. DC, like
many of the coastal cities around the world, had been swept under
the furious tsunamis produced as radioactive chunks of Wormwood
rained down on the world’s oceans. Those refugees that had survived
the waves poured inland, away from the coasts, dragging pestilence
and disease with them along with the stories of life down on the
coasts. Not that life in Minot, after Worm Fall, was much better.
They just had the advantage of being on the base and
underground.

He started shivering again
and, to warm up, swung the pick ax once again. “I don’t know that
we’re ever going to just dig our way in. Not like this,” he
observed, picking the ax up and slamming it down once
more.

Hundreds of troops from
all branches were strung across the rocky spit of land known as
Cheyenne Mountain. Many, like Reid, wielded pick axes and shovels.
Others drove bull dozers and back hoes. Explosions filled the
night, lighting up the black as other soldiers tried to blast their
way in. Reid half figured the exercise in futility was the Brass’
way of giving them something to do. Hundreds of soldiers with no
war to fight dying on a forced march to Colorado just meant fewer
mouths to feed later. Dozens more had died in the frigid cold of
the nuclear winter since they’d arrived at the underground military
installation.

“
What the hell do you
think happened to them anyway?” Wilkerson asked. “Those fuckers had
it made, even better than us. I heard they even had swimming pools
down there. Can you imagine that shit? Swimming pools.”

“
I heard it was kind a
plague,” Reid answered. “Franky over in comms heard their last
message. It was all about fucking dying and bleeding. Real creepy
shit. There was all sorts of gunfire and…”