1: JOSHUA
Joshua really thought it would be easier to catch a rabbit; he was a werewolf, after all. The stupid things, though, could turn on a dime and kept zigging while his body zagged.
And then there were the trees.
He hit yet another oak tree, this one only about four inches wide, but enough to knock him down and nearly knock him out when he hit it. Acorns rained down on him. It felt like the oak tree was laughing at him.
“Stupid tree.” He kicked it while still lying flat on his back.
There was a loud crack and it toppled slowly away from him.
Joshua groaned and slapped his hands over his eyes. He was doing this at night so no one would see him or know what he’d done. People might not notice if half the trees in the Back Bay Fens Park had face impressions but they weren’t going to miss a downed tree.
If he were a real wolf, or at least as real a wolf as he got, then catching a rabbit would be easier. Maybe. At least he probably could zig and zag faster on all fours. He had no idea, though, if he was a traditional werewolf who needed the full moon or the newfangled sparkly kind that could pop the wolf out at any moment, like a very violent and hairy sneeze.
Of course, he wasn’t sure if he could kill a rabbit if he managed to catch it. And eating it? The more he chased the stupid things, the less they seemed like tiny fried chickens. His stomach growled loudly at the thought of crispy breaded meat.
“Oh shut…” He froze as he realized that he wasn’t alone. Someone was standing behind him, just out of reach. Oddly, he hadn’t heard them walk up.
“What exactly,” the person drawled out slowly in the tone you use on a misbehaving toddler, “are you trying to do?” Emphasis on trying, because even the trees knew he was failing.
Joshua lifted his hands and tilted his head back. A tall, lean young man stood looking down at him with his head tilted slightly in confusion. His long hair was pulled back into a hipster’s ponytail. He was wearing a long black coat and a white scarf that fluttered in the chilly wind.
“Landscaping,” Joshua said. “I’m the new tree guy for the city of Boston.”
“Oh.” The man eyed the toppled oak. “I see. I’ve been watching; you’ve run into a dozen trees now.”
“I’m testing them for rot,” Joshua stated firmly. “It’s very hard to tell from the outside. You got to thump them good. Like a pumpkin…” He was babbling like a complete idiot now.
The man tilted his head in the other direction. “Aren’t you a little short for a tree trimmer?”
Joshua growled in annoyance and climbed to his feet. Not that it helped. Life had always been unfair to him, starting with his last name and ending with turning him into a very inept werewolf. Along the way, for complete shits and giggles, it had made him embarrassingly short too. Joshua only came to the man’s shoulder.
Smells had been driving Joshua nuts since he’d woken up a werewolf. It had been the scent of the rabbits that started the entire trying to catch them fiasco. This man smelled of expensive cologne and something faintly sweet that triggered a strange urge to rub against him. Joshua stepped back a couple of steps to lessen the effect; he didn’t want a repeat of the fire hydrant incident. Stupid dogs. At least, he assumed it was dogs. He couldn’t imagine there were other werewolves out there, walking around on autopilot like he seemed to be half the time, pissing on fire hydrants without realizing what they were doing.
And to top everything off, his stomach growled again. Loudly.
“You’re hungry.” The man stated it as a fact.
A growl of anger slipped out without him even knowing it was coming. His temper had become something separate from him; it roamed around him like a high school bully looking for victims. Joshua closed his eyes and took a deep breath and found his center. He normally was a much calmer person than this, but normally he was a much less hairy person than this. He actually had five o’clock shadow for the first time in his life.
“Are you some kind of tree police?” Joshua asked without opening his eyes. “Do you feel as if you have some kind of civic duty to come out here and—and—annoy the hell out of me?”
“Well—yes—I do have a civic duty to stop you—that is—if you needed stopping. If you’d kept to simple tree assault, I would have just kept watching. It was fairly entertaining, in a train wreck kind of way. You’ve moved up to tree homicide.”
“Homicide?” Joshua opened his eyes to give the man an annoyed glare. “That implies intent. At most, this is tree slaughter. Maybe even just reckless endangerment—it might not be dead.”
They eyed the tree in silence. His kick had sheered the tree trunk off five inches from the roots, leaving behind a jagged white stump, flowing with sap.
“No, that’s dead,” the man said.
“Yeah.” Joshua had to agree. It occurred to Joshua that this person might be undercover cop or some off-duty park ranger or a very lost Canadian Mountie or something. He’d seen Joshua destroy a piece of public property worth hundreds of dollars. The man might try to arrest him. That wouldn’t end well for either one of them.
Joshua bolted.
He was out of the park and halfway down the street before he was fully aware that he was running. Another two blocks before he realized that he had no clue where he was going. Another block before he realized that, wherever he was heading, he was getting there amazingly fast. He was running faster than the cars on the street beside him. Not that they were going all that fast, but he was running at least forty miles per hour and he didn’t feel…
He missed the fact that the street ended. He missed the turn. He didn’t miss the wall.
He hit it and kept going, smashing through wood and drywall in a cartwheeling blur of destruction. There were shelves of pots and pans and dishes and Halloween decorations. Somewhere along the way there was a glass display full of knives.
He came to a stop on the far wall beside a display of jack-o-lantern cookie jars, surrounded by broken china and drifting clouds of plaster. He’d tripped some kind of burglar alarm, probably by flagging half a dozen motion detectors, and a bell was ringing loudly. There was a butcher knife stuck in his thigh. He stared at it, hyperventilating with fear.
He had a knife in his right leg. A big, big knife. In his leg. The two together just looked so wrong it seemed like it had been photoshopped.
People died from things like this! This could kill him. Maybe. He was a werewolf. Knowing what kind of werewolf he was would be very useful right now.
He couldn’t catch his breath. He was getting lightheaded. He didn’t know if it was from hyperventilating or blood loss or both. He closed his eyes and tried to center himself. He was sure that his judo sensei never had this in mind when he taught Joshua how to meditate.
He heard the crunch of footsteps through the rubble. Oh good! The cops must have shown up. They could get him an ambulance—after they arrested him for something. Breaking and entering. Or just plain breaking. Lots and lots of breaking. His breathing sped up and he opened his eyes.
The tall dude from the park was walking cautiously toward him.
Joshua was beyond caring if he was the police. He pointed at the knife in his leg with both hands and whimpered. “Can’t. Breathe.”
The dude gave him a long, slightly confused, stare. Pulling a paper bag from the nearby service desk, he crouched beside Joshua. “Here. Breathe into this.”
The name of the store was “Kitchen Kitsch” and the paper bag was red with white spots all over it. The bag inflated and deflated like one of the Mario Brothers’ mushrooms. He couldn’t stop whimpering. He sounded like a kicked puppy and it was freaking him out nearly as much as the knife.
Joshua took the bag away from his mouth long enough to pant out. “Call 911.” Which got him another long stare. “Call 911!”
The dude pointed to the left. “Look over there!”
“Huh?” Joshua couldn’t see anything beyond scattered pots and pans and a wall of Halloween decorations.
The man jerked the knife out of Joshua’s leg.
Joshua yelped and lashed out in sheer reflex. It wasn’t a solid hit but the man tumbled away from him, taking the knife with him. “You’re not supposed to take it out! Only doctors are supposed to take it out! Don’t you know basic first aid?”
“You’re a werewolf.” The man called from behind a display of vampire kitchen timers. “You can only be killed by cutting your head off.”
It was comforting for only a moment. Then Joshua realized that the dude still had a seriously huge knife in his hand.
The part of him that was crying like a kicked puppy took off running. Unfortunately it took the rest of him with it.
“No! Nononono!” He cried even as he bolted. This was what scared him about being a werewolf. He wasn’t in control of his body anymore. Because of his last name and small size, he’d always been a target of bullies. He’d learned early that they could hurt him but they couldn’t control him if he didn’t let them. And then he learned martial arts and they couldn’t even hurt him anymore. In the last twenty-four hours, it had been as if he was strapped into a rollercoaster: all he could do was go for the ride and scream a lot. His fear was that the ride would be through other people. He’d become like the monster that made him, tearing his way through humans like they were so many blood-filled water balloons.
He was away from everyone he loved, but he wasn’t away from people. There was a city full of strangers he could kill.
He knew nothing about werewolves but what was in the movies. He hadn’t even believed they existed until he was attacked. The tall dude, though, knew.
Joshua managed to force his body to make a left-hand turn at the corner, and again once he was across the street, and then a third time. He came looping past the Kitchen Kitsch where the tall dude was standing in the hole in the wall.
“You’re really conflicted about this running away part, aren’t you?” the dude said as Joshua dashed past him.
“Yes!” He tried to put on the brakes but his body kept running. He could smell his own blood on the man and his body wanted nothing to do with that.
The dude wasn’t standing in the hole as Joshua came looping back toward the Kitchen Kitsch a second time. Joshua was afraid he’d lost the man. He was so focused on the opposite side of the street that he nearly ran into the glass door that opened out in front of him. A hand caught him, jerking him into the building.
He tumbled through a roll and came up in front of a steaming tray of crab rangoons. They were fried golden brown, still so hot that they burned his throat a little going down. Next to them were giant-sized pot stickers, the outside fried crispy and the inside a big ball of heavenly-tasting ground pork.
“Don’t use your fingers.” The dude shoved a plate into his hands.
“I can’t pay for this. I don’t have any money.” Joshua thumped a heaping spoonful of sesame chicken onto the plate and ate like a dog. He was sure that’s not what the man meant by “don’t use your fingers” but at the moment, it was all Joshua could manage.
“I’m treating you.” The man filled another plate with beef and broccoli and handed it to Joshua. “Sit down and use chopsticks. I’ll bring you more food.”
The man brought four plates filled with meat dishes. He watched Joshua stab the beef chunks with his chopsticks and went off to find forks. He carefully slid two across the table and then sat on the other side of the booth to watch Joshua wolf down the food as fast as humanly possible.
“Mank mou,” Joshua mumbled around garlic shrimp.
“You’re welcome.”
Joshua realized the man wasn’t eating, so he pushed one of the plates toward him.
The man waved off the offering. “I’m allergic.”
A weird silence fell at the table as Joshua ate. It felt too comfortable to be eating with someone he didn’t know. His father liked to say that just because someone was being nice to you at the moment, it didn’t mean they were good people. The dude looked as if he could be a college student but there was something about him that made him feel much older to Joshua. Maybe it was the way he sat; patient stillness, like an old man who had been alive so long he wasn’t impatient for the moment to be over. His eyes were dark, dark brown. Crow’s feet were beginning to form at the corners, but they seemed more like laugh lines. At some point in his life, the man had smiled a lot, but he wasn’t smiling now.
Joshua blushed as he realized he was sitting, staring into a guy’s eyes. And the guy—all clean and elegantly dressed—was staring back as if sizing him up. And he’d just bought Joshua dinner.
He swallowed down the mouthful of food he was currently chewing and asked, “Is this some kind of a date? It better not be. I’m not gay. Not there’s anything wrong with being gay. I’m not…” At least he was fairly sure he wasn’t. He was seriously lacking in terms of interaction with girls, with the exception of sparring partners, since he was the only boy in class of similar size. It probably was better not to bring that up. “I’m not.”
The man laughed. “No, not a date. You’ll have more control if you feed the beast. Hungry and scared, there will be no talking to you.”
“Who the hell are you? How do you know about werewolves? No one believes in werewolves. And how do you know that I am one? It’s not like I’m wolfing out on you. And how is it your ‘civic duty’ to scare the shit out of me?”
The man laughed again. “I’m Decker, Silas Decker. I have a gift and need for tracking down magical creatures. I was out looking for—” He paused as if he had forgotten what he had been really looking for. “—something when I spotted you.”
“And?”
“And?” Decker echoed, confused by Joshua’s question.
“How do you know I’m a werewolf?”
“Really? Chasing rabbits in the dark?”
“Okay, that’s suspect but why did ‘werewolf’ leap to mind instead of just—I don’t know—desperate for a pet? Crazy?”
“Kicking down a tree?” Decker gave him a look that said “just accept it.” And then, sighing, he glanced away. “There are two types of werewolves. Feral werewolves are deadly uncontrollable monsters that kill everything in their path. Anyone that survives their attack—which are fortunately few in number—becomes a feral werewolf too. The other type is a pack wolf. And they’re very dangerous, but law abiding. They could be your next-door neighbors and you’d never know. The thing is, pack wolves are the world’s best parents. They live for their kids. Any little baby pack werewolves come with a set of big, ugly parents that will rip the throat out of anyone that says ‘boo’ to their kid. So I see you and you’re acting like a feral werewolf, but if you’re a pack wolf, and I kill you, I’d be calling down a world of hurt on my head.”
“Wait! What? There are good werewolves and bad werewolves? Which am I?”
“That is the question I’ve been trying to figure out for nearly an hour now. The thing is, if you were feral, there wouldn’t be anyone still alive in this restaurant. But if you were a pack wolf, you’d know it.”
Joshua opened his mouth but all the dots finally connected and the light went on. Decker wanted to know if he’d get in trouble if he killed Joshua. Telling Decker that he didn’t have protective monster parents would be a bad idea. “I—I might. You said that pack wolves could be my next-door neighbors and I wouldn’t know. Who knows, maybe my parents are—wolves. Or—or I could be adopted. I always suspected that. Family reunions are like living in the land of the giants.”
“You’re starving. You’re broke. And you’ve got a backpack stashed under the nearest bridge. Maybe. If that homeless guy didn’t take it yet.”
Joshua leapt to his feet. “What homeless guy?”
“The one I made up.” Decker tapped the table. “Sit.”
Joshua wavered. It really didn’t feel safe to stay with the man but he’d come to Boston looking for answers. He wasn’t going to find anything if he bolted from the only person so far that knew about werewolves. He sat down. “Is there a cure?”
“Pardon?”
“A cure! You get bit by a werewolf and you become one. It’s some kind of disease. There has to be a cure.”
Decker slapped a hand over his eyes. He sat that way for several minutes. He kept taking a breath as if he was going to say something but then would sigh it out without speaking. “That’s—” he finally said. “That’s not how it works.”
“Are you sure? How do you know it’s not?” It occurred to Joshua what he should have asked Decker first. He leaned over the table and whispered. “Are you a werewolf?”
Decker’s body started to quake. It took Joshua a minute to realize that the man was silently laughing at him.
“This is not funny!” Joshua felt the other inside him stir with his anger and focused back on shoving food into his mouth. Feed the beast. Feed the beast. “I want to be able to go back home. I got kicked out of the hospital for breaking things. I tore the door off my dad’s pickup, flooded the bathroom, and nearly electrocuted my neighbor to death. Our cat is scared of me. He won’t come near me and he peed in my bed! I just want to go back to how I was.”
Decker continued to laugh silently without taking his hand from his eyes. He finally canted up his hand to look at Joshua in confusion. “How did you electrocute your neighbor?”
Joshua blushed with embarrassment. “Does it matter?”
“I’m just curious.”
“I snapped the faucet off the sink in the upstairs bathroom.” The entire disaster had been a lesson in plumbing. “Our house is old. There aren’t any shutoff valves for those pipes. You need to turn off the water main for the whole house. I didn’t know how to do that and my parents weren’t home. I ran to my neighbor’s to get help and put my hand through their door when I went to knock. By the time we found the main and got the water turned off, it was raining in the kitchen. It turns out that the two-twenty line for our old electric stove isn’t properly grounded. Mr. Buckley went into the kitchen to mop up the water and it nearly killed him.” Up to that moment, Joshua believed that nothing could be more frightening that being attacked by a werewolf. The universe seemed determined to prove him wrong. “I had this weird vision—or something—while I was having an MRI that I should go to Boston. After the ambulance took Mr. Buckley to the hospital, I packed some clothes and left home.”
“Your poor parents,” Decker murmured. “To leave, thinking their child was snug in their safe nest, and to return—bough broke, nest in ruin, and the chick is lost.”
“I don’t think ‘chick’ is the correct metaphor here.”
“It is a little forced.”
They fell silent as a tiny Asian woman came to clear the table of plates. She left a little tray with the bill upside down, pinned by two fortune cookies. Decker flicked the plastic-wrapped cookies toward Joshua and took the bill. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he read the total.
“Did they charge you for two?” Joshua asked.
“It’s just I have not bought food at a restaurant for a very long time. I’d forgotten how expensive it is.”
“Do you have enough?”
“Yes. Don’t worry about it.” He took out a wallet and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “Eat your cookies.”
The first fortune read, “Accept something that you cannot change and you will feel better.” He dropped the slip of paper on the table and opened the second cookie. The fortune said, “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned.”
Decker cocked an eyebrow at Joshua’s face and picked up the discarded fortunes. “See. No going back.”
“I don’t take advice from baked goods,” Joshua growled. “They’re just random nonsense.”
“They used to be random nonsense for you, but not anymore. Men live by logic; a flipped coin always has equal chance of landing heads or tails. Monsters live by magic; the universe is no longer random for you. You are now ruled by fate.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Decker held up the slip of paper as if it was proof. “It means that you becoming a werewolf is part of something much bigger than your own personal tragedy.”
Joshua considered the possibility that he should amend his father’s advice of “just because they’re nice doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good.” Maybe he should add, “just because they recognize that you are a werewolf doesn’t mean they aren’t crazy.” Who knows, maybe Decker thought everyone was a werewolf. The man just happened to finally run into someone that was.
Decker’s phone played “Für Elise” in dubstep. He took it out of his coat’s breast pocket and eyed it. “It keeps doing that.”
Shades of Joshua’s mother.
“Someone texting you,” Joshua said.
“Texting?” Decker looked dubious. “It’s a phone.”
So like his mother.
Joshua took the phone from Decker. At least he could be fairly sure it would be just a text and not someone sexting Decker since the man seemed clueless. There had been a missed call at 6:43, 6:47 and 6:51, all from someone named Elise. At 6:52, the first text was received.
“Are you awake yet? I didn’t think you could sleep in. Call me.” And then. “Freaking hell, I need help.” And then. “Damn you, you better not let the battery die on that thing after I bought it for you.” And then, “I need backhoe. Backhoe. Backhoe. Damn autocorrect! BACKUP!” This was followed by a string of symbols and numbers that looked like someone had pounded randomly on the screen. “Help! Now!”
“I need to go.” Decker stood up and then froze in place, looking confused.
“You don’t know where you’re going?” Joshua guessed.
“Not quickly; I’d have to slowly divine her location. Does she not say?”
They peered together at the screen.
“She gave you the phone?” Joshua said. “Okay, hold on, let’s see if she has loaded any kind of friend finder app. Bingo. There she is.”
Judging by the pins on the map, they were not far from Elise.
Decker strode purposely for the door, his long black coat tails flowing behind him. Joshua realized that he was letting the one person who might be able to help him get away. He dashed after Decker.
“Elise is Grigori Virtue,” Decker said as they ran down the street. “Which you know nothing about. How to put this? Long, long story which we do not have time for, yadayadayada.”
“That is so not useful.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to condense several thousand years of history into a few short sentences as we’re running toward certain mayhem. The Grigori are religious lunatics. Heavily armed religious lunatics—with magical powers—who will kill you if they think you’re feral. Okay, that covers it.”
“Wait—these lunatics—are these the good guys or the bad guys?”
“That’s a fluid condition, changeable by day, if not minute by minute. I worked with her grandfather Saul and her mother Lauretta, which is the only reason Elise trusts me as far as she does. I will warn you that if you anger her, she knows that she can shoot you with no fear of actually killing you. It will hurt really, really bad, but it will not kill you. Make no mistake, though, she can also shoot you to kill you. That’s the heavily armed part of religious lunatics; she’s loaded for werewolf.”
“And this is your friend?”
“Elise would shoot me if I called her my friend. Stick to ally. Better yet, how about ‘associate.’ Yes, I think associate would be safest thing to call her.”
“Well, you must like her if we’re running to save her.”
Decker glanced at him sharply and then laughed. “We, hm? Yes, I’m very fond of Elise. More importantly, she trusts me—somewhat—which means we can work together. Most would not give me the benefit of doubt. If Elise were killed, some other Virtue would take over this area. That person would have good reason not to trust me—Elise had been killed in my territory—and would hunt me down. For my own safety, I have to keep Elise alive.”
“So who are the bad guys?”
“Huh?”
“Who is trying to kill Elise?” Joshua assumed that the label of “Virtue” made her the good guy in this scenario.
“Elise? Who knows? Knowing Elise, the question is probably ‘what’ not ‘who.’ Especially if she’s asking for help.”
Joshua hadn’t realized from the map that they were going back to the park until they crossed the street and plunged into the wooded darkness. The winding paths, arched stone bridges, tranquil ponds, and lush green had not been what he’d expected of Boston when he left home. He had expectations of big city and skyscrapers fringed by nothing but pavement and row houses.
Once into the wooded darkness, though, they stopped, unsure which way to head. The map indicated that they were nearly on top of Elise. A storm wind tossed the trees, promising incoming violence. Dried leaves skittered across the cement path like hordes of dark mice.
“She’s close by.” Joshua tried to hear if anyone was calling for help. It was impossible to hear over the thrashing leaves that all whispered like a thousand voices. “Here, give me your phone again.”
Joshua switched to the phone app. Elise was the only contact entered into Decker’s list. Oh, that was so sad—even Joshua had two-dozen contacts on his list. It explained, however, why the man didn’t understand his phone. Joshua tapped Elise’s cell phone number. A dozen feet away, the Toadies “Possum Kingdom” started to play.
“I can promise you,” the lyrics sang out of the darkness. “You’ll stay as beautiful, with dark hair and soft skin…forever. Forever.”
“That isn’t good,” Decker walked in a circle as Joshua retrieved the phone from the bushes. “Not good at all. We need to find her. Quickly. My way is too slow. Can you track her?”
“Me?”
“You can do that now.” Decker tapped his nose. “Just follow her scent.”
“Me?” Joshua repeated, feeling something that could have been horror. Did Decker fully expect him to embrace his werewolf-ness and do something he’d never tried before with a woman’s life on the line? Joshua struggled to keep in control with cold logic. “I have no idea what she smells like.”
Decker pointed at the phone in Joshua’s hand. “Her scent should be on that.”
Joshua sniffed cautiously at the phone, not expecting to be able to smell anything. There was, however, a rich “other” on the slick surface. Baby powder. Rose-scented soap. Sweat. A murky oily smell he couldn’t identify. Okay, assuming that was Elise, could he actually track her? He shoved the phone into his back pocket so it wouldn’t distract him and then walked in a circle, sniffing.
Decker stayed quiet and impossibly still while Joshua hunted for the scent.
The night smelled rich and complex. The cinnamon-like death of the autumn leaves tossed by the storm wind. Green of bruised grass. He could smell the damn rabbits. And then, unexpectedly, Elise and blood. He started forward, afraid of what he’d find.
Down the path, over an arched bridge, they came to a small playground with swings. A woman sprawled in a pool of blood.
Decker caught his shoulder and pulled him back. “That’s not her.”
“But she’s hurt.” Joshua pointed at the woman on the ground.
“She’s dead.” Decker tightened his hold. “Something’s wrong here.”
The wind started to pick up, tugging at them with a thousand little hands. It caught up sticks and dead leaves and swirled them about the shadowed playground. The swings gave rusty cries, swinging as if used by ghosts. The hair on Joshua’s neck rose and he sank down without thinking, until he crouched nearly on all fours, growling lowly.
Someone came running up the dark path. Joshua only caught the impression of a slim figure wielding two long knives before Decker pulled him back.
“No!” Decker shouted. “He’s with me.”
“God Almighty, Decker, you finally checked your phone? And where in Heaven’s name did you find a wolf in Boston?” A stunningly beautiful girl walked out of the shadows. Her black hair spilled down over her shoulders in loose curls. She wore tight black clothes and held two long daggers that gleamed in the darkness. A pair of pistols hung low on her hips, tied down like a Western gunfighter. Heavily armed religious nutcase: check. This was Elise.
“What are you hunting?” Decker ignored her questions, still pulling Joshua backwards.
“A huntsman,” Elise stuck her daggers into sheaths strapped across her kidneys.
Decker breathed out a curse. “What idiot made one of those? Who is it hunting?”
“Don’t know.” Elise skirted the body in a wide circle to join them at the edge of the playground. “And don’t know. It’s got five hounds already.”
“Six!” Decker shouted as the wind howled louder. Dead leaves by the thousands whirled and danced, circling the body.
“Stop it, Decker!” Elise cried. “My blades don’t work on them.”
“I can’t!” Decker shouted. “It’s too late. The ground is tilled and wet with blood. The seed is planted. We could only stop it at this point by killing the huntsman!”
“Stop what?” Joshua growled.
Suddenly the wind roared and all the dead leaves rushed toward the body.
“That!” Decker pointed.
Sticks joined in the whirlwind of leaves, sucked from the nearby trees and undergrowth. The maelstrom collapsed inward, growing denser. The roar deepened to an animal-like growl and the bracken became a dark beast.
“Oh,” Joshua whispered in shock. “Oh, shit.”
His voice attracted the beast’s attention. Its eyes were hollow pits with something glistening deep within the darkness. A snarl of fear bloomed out of Joshua’s chest. He dropped down to all fours, his fingernails scratching deep lines in the cement.
“Don’t lose control.” Decker gripped Joshua’s shoulder hard.
“I can’t kill the hounds,” Elise whispered. “They regenerate too fast.”
“Just slow it down,” Decker said.
Elise unsheathed her daggers and leapt forward. Her gleaming blades left contrails on Joshua’s vision as she met the beast halfway. The blades slashed through the hound’s dark side. Bits of leaves and sticks sprayed from the wound that vanished instantly.
The hound dodged Elise and leapt snarling at Joshua. He reacted without thinking. He caught hold of the beast by its throat and shoulder. His fingers crunched through brittle leaves and found solid skeleton within. Turning with the creature’s momentum, he flung it at the nearest tree. It shattered on impact.
“Yes!” Joshua cried.
The wind caught the leaves and sticks and whirled them up. Roaring, the hound amassed together again.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Joshua whispered.
“Get back,” Decker shouted.
From someplace Decker had gotten a massive dark red sword. For some reason, it was scarier than the hound. Joshua didn’t know if something could gleam with evil, but it made his hair crawl just looking at it. He scuttled backwards away from it, snarling.
“What the hell is that?” Joshua cried.
“You don’t want to know,” Decker stated calmly.
It was Joshua’s experience that when people said that, he definitely did want to know. Not knowing led to bad, bad things.
Decker charged the hound and rammed the sword tip into the center of the beast. The leaves collapsed into a tight ball around the sword and then fell to the ground. Decker stood panting, the sword level, his face twisted hard as if he was in pain.
“You good?” Elise backed away from Decker, daggers ready.
Decker gave a deep, husky laugh. “Oh, I’m good.”
“Don’t lose it on me.”
Decker took several deep breaths and then nodded. He lowered the sword. “I’m fine.”
“The huntsman?” Elise asked.
Decker pointed. “It’s that way, but it knows I’m here.”
There was a shitload of questions Joshua wanted to ask, but he stuck to the thing that was scaring the other two.
“What exactly is a huntsman?” Joshua said.
“It’s a magical construct.” Elise watched Decker closely. “It finds, captures and teleports a target to its maker. It is used to collect powerful creatures like Decker.”
“Teleports? Powerful creatures like Decker? What does that mean?”
“It means we need to stop it fast.” Decker started down the path. “Every person the huntsman kills becomes a seedbed for a hound.”
Elise sheathed her daggers and gave Joshua a hard look. “Did you just judo throw that hound?”
Joshua spread his hands in confusion. She made it sound bad. “Brown belt judo. I would be black belt if I weren’t a minor. Legal responsibilities and all that.”
“Wolves don’t learn judo.” Elise’s voice was full of suspicion.
“Stranger things happen!” Decker called back as he disappeared into the darkness. “All the time! Especially around us!”
Elise trotted down the path, calling, “There aren’t any wolves in Boston, Decker. If there were, we wouldn’t have the mess we have! Where did you find a wolf?”
Joshua trailed after the two. Obviously everything he thought he knew about the world was wrong.
It was Saturday night.
Friday had been Halloween.
As part of trying to nail a scholarship for college, Joshua had joined the prom committee. Their first fundraiser was going to be a haunted house at the Dwyer barn. They’d gotten permission to leave school early to set up. Joshua spent the afternoon knowing that he didn’t fit in. Prom was for popular kids and Halloween was for little kids. He used to love the holiday, running around with his friends in the autumn night, doors opening up to warm brightly-lit houses, people happy to see little monsters at their door, praising them for the work they’d put into their costumes. All happy. All nice. All fake.
He was too old to trick or threat. He was too dorky to fit in with the popular kids.
At dusk, a real monster showed up at the barn.
Joshua wanted the world to go back to making sense. He needed it for his own sanity’s sake. He’d lost everything else in the last twenty-four hours; it was all he had left. His classmates were dead. He’d fled his family to keep them safe. He had no money, no place to live, no idea where to go except to follow the two deadly people who knew what the world was really like.
Elise was explaining her day. “I picked up a police report out of Framingham this afternoon.”
Joshua was surprised to hear the town name. He’d taken the Lake Shore Limited to Framingham, using up most of the fifty dollars he had to his name. From there, he’d connected with the Boston commuter lines. He’d only had enough money by then to buy a ticket to Yawkey Station. Feeling lost and alone, he’d retreated into the park a few blocks from his stop.
“The Framingham PD had found a seedbed,” Elise continued. “They had no idea what it was. From what I could tell, the huntsman made his first hound there, which meant its target was close by. I’ve been calling you since sunset.”
“Framingham,” Decker murmured and then, after a long pause. “Yawkey.”
With a roar, another hound came rushing out of the darkness. It tried to slip past Decker to lunge at Joshua. The man skewered it with his scary long sword. After the monster collapsed into leaves, he turned to look at Joshua. His eyes were totally black and his breathing was ragged.
“The huntsman knows I’m here,” Decker said. “But it’s closing on us.”
“Maybe you’re the target,” Elise said.
“It wouldn’t have started in Framingham. Any enemy of mine knows that I never venture that far out.”
Elise followed Decker gaze. “Where did you find a wolf in Boston?”
“Here,” Decker murmured. “In this park. Chasing rabbits. Killing trees.”
“Killing what?” Elise said.
“A newly made wolf, connected to their magic, not protected by the pack,” Decker whispered. “Someone is playing a deep game.”
“He’s the target?” Elise asked.
“Yes, someone wants him very, very badly.” Decker tilted his head, thinking through the problem. “When he bolted from his parents’ house, he was only hours old. I’m thinking that the Wickers had a hand in making him. He’d slipped through their fingers when they went to collect him. They need to catch him fast, before he draws the Wolf King’s notice. Any place else, he’d be one of many, but in Boston, he stands out because he’s the only one.”
Go to Boston’s Prince, the black wolf had whispered in his dream, Run!
He’d come to Boston looking for a prince. Was the Wolf King the same as a prince?
“We could just kill him.” Elise pulled one of her pistols.
“Hey!” Joshua backed away from her.
“No, you can’t.” Decker drifted sideways, blocking Elise. “The boy isn’t feral. Killing him would violate the Grigoris’ treaty with the Wolf King. You’d be starting a war that the wolves would win.”
Elise huffed but holstered her gun. “You could kill him. You don’t have a treaty.”
“Nah.” Decker reached out to pat Joshua on the head. “He amuses me.”
This would be a whole lot more comforting if Decker didn’t have solid black eyes and smelled wild and dark as the night.
Decker ruffled Joshua’s hair and turned away. “The huntsman is coming with the other four hounds.”
“Are you going to be able to take four without losing it?” Elise said.
Decker laughed. “I doubt it. Kill the huntsman fast and I won’t have to.”
Elise frowned at Joshua. “Keep your head down and don’t let them get ahold of you. If they snare you, they’ll drag you through a tear in realty and we won’t be able to save you.”
The wind rose. Over the thrashing of leaves, Joshua could hear the growling roar of the hounds closing in. He thought of just fleeing. The huntsman was killing people in his wake, though, to make hounds. So no, they had to stop it. And by “they,” he meant Decker and Elise because he didn’t know what the huntsman was, let alone how to kill it. He hadn’t been able to hurt the hound.
The hounds came in a solid wave. Decker stabbed one but the other three kept coming. One of the hounds tackled Elise, and she went down cursing. Joshua caught the third hound as it leapt at him and flung it toward a tree. The fourth slammed into him and they went tumbling into the darkness. The beast filled his nose with the scent of blood and dead leaves and tree sap. All his sparring never prepared him for an opponent that could grow vines around his arms and legs. He locked down on the fear coursing through him and focused on leverage. Fight the opponent, not yourself.
The hounds could be broken by hard impact. He got his legs under him, did a quick roll, followed by a hard body slam pin. The hound howled as it shattered with the sound of a thousand little twigs snapping. It sounded like someone was beating a Rottweiler with a dead Christmas tree. Joshua rolled again and flung it away from him. As it reformed, Decker stabbed it.
“Thanks—” Joshua yelped as Decker caught him by the collar and slammed him into a tree.
The man felt like static electricity against Joshua’s skin. Decker snarled, showing sharp teeth.
Vampire! Vampirevampirevampirevampire!
Decker lunged for Joshua’s throat.
“Decker!” Joshua punched him. It felt like hitting a stonewall. He caught the man—vampire—by his dark hair. “No! Not me! I amuse you! Remember?”
Decker breathed hard against Joshua’s throat. And again. And again. After the fourth time, Joshua realized that the vampire was laughing. “Yes,” Decker finally whispered. “You amuse me.”
“No biting?” Joshua said hopefully.
“No biting,” Decker whispered.
“Goddamn you stupid shrubbery!” Elise cried, rolling around on the ground, slashing at the last hound. “Stay dead!”
Decker took a deep breath and whispered, “Don’t let me kill her. She is dear to me, despite all appearances.”
Joshua nodded, ready to agree to anything at this point. He had no idea how he would actually stop Decker if the vampire attacked Elise, nor was he sure that Elise wouldn’t simply kill them both. And somewhere out there was a monster that scared them all.
Correction, the monster was standing over Elise.
It was a mishmash of horrors. The bottom part was a more solid version of the hounds with wicker and grapevines forming a pony-sized dog body. The upper part grew upwards through a scarecrow straw-stuffed body, creating a centaur from hell.
Joshua whimpered as he recognized the bloody ripped shirt. It was Frank Cahall’s number seventeen football jersey. It was layered over Kevin’s black hoodie. D.J.’s ever-present expensive headphones hung around its neck. The neon glow stick necklace that Chris had been wearing before being beheaded looped under it. The jack-o-lantern that Joshua had carved and left sitting on his parents’ front porch snarled down at him, some brilliant red light source blazing within the cavity.
There was no question as to its target. It was there for him.
As Joshua stared in horror, the huntsman lifted up a bow. The weapon was the huntsman’s left hand. The bowstring shimmered like a strand of moonlight. It drew the gleaming string taunt with its thumb. Its fingers grew long and pointed. It took aim at Elise, still pinned to the ground by the hound.
“Decker!” Elise shouted.
Decker leapt between the huntsman and Elise.
Joshua tackled the hound, tearing it from Elise. He flung it at a tree, smashing it to pieces.
Elise drew her guns as she rose from the ground. “Decker, move! Don’t block my shot!”
The bowstring twanged as the huntsman released it. The four arrows struck Decker with a loud thud.
“You idiot!” Elise opened fire with both pistols at the huntsman as Decker staggered backwards. The bullets flared as they hit, burning their way through the stuffed clothing, lighting the huntsman on fire.
The monster didn’t stagger or scream. It drew back the bowstring again.
Joshua snatched up the scary sword that Decker had dropped and plunged it into the huntsman.
“No!” Elise screamed.
…a forest surrounded him, massive trees stretching up to a canopy far, far overhead. Sun dappled the leaf-strewn ground with shafts of pure gold light. The scent of lush green vegetation filled his senses. He took a deep breath, feeling at peace. This was home…
And then he was flat on his back, looking up at faint stars and a worried Elise gazing down at him. Behind her a pile of leaves, sticks, and scraps of clothing burned. The flames crackled and popped; the firelight dancing off the leaves overhead.
“What a stupid ass move!” Elise cried. “You could have gotten us all killed! Keep your hands off his sword!”
Decker started to snicker. He was lying on his back a few feet away, four arrows sticking out of his chest. His eyes, though, looked normal.
“Do you want to be kicked?” Elise turned her attention back to Decker. “Stop making everything sound like a double entendre!”
“I did not say anything; you did,” Decker pointed out. “Ow!” This was because Elise had yanked out one of the arrows. “Ow! Ow! Ow! That wasn’t nice.”
“I can stick them back in and take them back out in a nice way.” Elise shook the last arrow at him.
“No!” Decker waved both hands to fend her off. “No, that’s fine! Thank you, Elise.”
Elise flung the bloodied arrows into the fire. The flames leapt up as if she’d poured gasoline onto it.
Decker got shakily to his feet. Despite Elise’s casual treatment, he didn’t look very good. Joshua steadied him before he could fall forward onto his face.
Elise ignored them to shine her flashlight on what looked like a hunk of meat.
“What is that?” Joshua really hoped it wasn’t what it looked like.
“A heart.” Elise confirmed his fear. “The Wickers make huntsmen by sacrificing a human. The victim’s life force fuels the spell. Their heart will find the target and forms the huntsman.”
“That’s a hu-hu-human heart?” Joshua said.
“Yes.” Elise cut black threads that crudely stitched shut a hole in the heart.
“What are you doing?” Joshua winced at the awful squishing noise that the wet meat made when she pushed fingers into the opening.
“Getting the heart stone.” She pulled out a small bloody item that looked like a pinkie.
“Oh geez, that’s so gross,” he said. “Why do you need that?”
“If the Wickers recover it, they’ll be able to send another huntsman after you.”
“Oh! Yeah! We don’t want them to get—get—get the what?”
“Heart stone.” She wiped the blood from it and held it out to him.
It was a loop of silver about the size of a small donut. One edge was engraved with the face of the man in moon. “Why is that called a heart stone? It looks like it’s made out of silver.”
“You don’t recognize it?” She held it out to him. It made an odd rattling noise.
“No.”
“Odd.” She pocketed it. “A heart stone needs to be something extremely unique to you for it to work. A baby tooth. A custom-made engagement ring.” She took a square of leather out of her other pocket. “A handmade wallet.”
Joshua slapped his hand to his back pocket. It was empty.
“Hey! What are you doing with my wallet?”
“Finding out who you are.” She pulled out his student ID and squinted at it. “Is this really your name?”
He braced himself for the inevitable teasing. “Yes.”
“You poor child.” She handed it to Decker.
The vampire gave a surprised laugh before Joshua snatched the card out of his hand. “That has to be an Ellis Island misspelling.”
Joshua doubted that spelling it different would have lessened the lifetime of teasing. His dad would insist on the embarrassing pronunciation.
“It’s not a werewolf family name.” Elise continued to dig through his wallet. His emergency contact and library card followed. “He’s seventeen. Freshly bitten.”
“He’s clearly not feral. If he was, he’d be trying to tear open your throat instead of looking at you like a hurt puppy.” Decker patted Joshua on the head. It was surprisingly comforting. “Nor could he have helped me find you quickly. You know how slow my method can be at times.”
Elise gave Decker a dark look then studied the empty billfold of Joshua’s wallet. “Take him home with you.”
Joshua wasn’t sure which of them she was talking to or which house she meant. He didn’t want to go back to his parents’ with monsters chasing after him.
Elise made herself clear when she realized that they were both standing still, staring at her. “The Wickers won’t know where the huntsman spawned. Even if they pinpointed Framingham, that’s twenty miles out. Where you live is one of the best kept secrets in Boston. Your place is warded against nearly everything. No one will be able to find him if he’s with you.”
Decker glanced behind himself before pressing a hand to his chest. “Me?”
Elise snorted. “I’m not going to drag a newborn werewolf with me while hunting Wickers. I’d be hip deep in ferals before he learned how to control his wolf.”
“You’re not going alone…” Decker started.
Elise cut him off with an angry stab of her finger. “I’m not doing that vampire in the trunk thing again. It’s entirely too freaky. Besides, I want to take my Jeep, not a rented sedan with no clearance. If he’s a pack wolf, then there’s a pack. Someplace.” Elise had apparently taken her phone out of Joshua’s pocket while he was unconscious. She photographed his emergency contact card and then typed in his home address. “It looks like Albany is the closest pack. Was he from Albany?”
It took Joshua a minute to realize that she was talking to him and that “he” meant the werewolf that had bitten him. “I—I don’t know. I didn’t recognize his car; it was a black BMW i8. It had New York plates; KJV 2341.”
She handed back his emergency contact card and empty wallet. “And he didn’t tell you anything before or after he made you a werewolf?”
“I don’t think so.”
Up close she was breathtakingly beautiful and very scary. “You know his license plate but you don’t know if he mentioned werewolves?”
He took a step backwards and looked down so he could think. The bonfire threw uneven light and shadows so it looked like something was reaching for him. He backed up another step. “I don’t remember a lot of last night. When I woke up in the hospital, I couldn’t even remember my name. The police showed me a picture of his car; they wanted to know who drove it to the barn. I was a little freaked out about the amnesia, so I memorized the license plate.”
“How do you know it was the werewolf’s car?” Elise turned away to stir the fire, making it burn brighter. Driving back the shadows.
“After they left, I remembered him getting out of it,” Joshua said. “It was like a circus act: little car, big, big man. After he got out of the BMW, he changed into a wolf. That’s when I realized why I felt so—wrong. I was a werewolf.”
“And you know nothing at all about werewolves?” Elise collected the sticks that had been the hounds and added them to the flames. The jack-o-lantern leered at Joshua from the bonfire.
“No,” Joshua whispered. “Nor about witches and vampires or any of that stuff.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Elise murmured and Decker nodded in agreement. “Pack wolves only change their own children.”
“I don’t think he was trying to change me,” Joshua said. “He killed ten other kids from my school. They say the only reason I’m still alive was someone killed him first.”
“Who?” Decker asked.
“How?” Elise cried.
“I don’t know.” Joshua rubbed his shoulder. “I only know that the paramedics had to pull his body off me.”
Elise was shaking her head. “You can’t kill a werewolf with a normal weapon. I don’t think even a chainsaw would work. They heal too fast. A silver blade will work, but short of silverware, no one makes silver knives. The metal is too soft to hold a decent edge. Trust me, you don’t want to be stabbing at a werewolf with a butter knife as it tears you to pieces. So it’s freaky weird that a lone pack wolf shows up at a barn in the middle of nowhere and someone there has a weapon that can kill him. Did they shoot it with silver bullets?”
He spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t remember.”
“That’s normal,” Decker said. “The amnesia that is. The werewolf bite is a magical wound; it opens a gate between you and the source of the werewolf’s powers. When you’re first opened up to magic, it burns part of you away.”
Elise pointed at Decker. “Take him home.” She turned and pointed at Joshua. “Make sure you don’t hurt Decker or I’ll make you sorry.”
Joshua was all for bolting from the park. He never wanted to come back. He hated everything about it: the gymnastic rabbits, the badly placed trees, and the rampaging monsters.
* * *
It had been a weird, weird night. Joshua’s brain had shut down somewhere around the time that the huntsman showed up. He’d collected his backpack from its hiding place and followed Decker the whole way to the Yawkey subway station before his brain finally engaged again.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked while Decker fed money into the ticket machine. “How did we win?”
“We got lucky.” Decker handed him the ticket the machine spat out. “I don’t fully understand the pack’s magical power, but it’s not like most monsters’. The pack is like a tightly woven net; all the members sharing one central power. Most other supernatural beings are a solitary pinprick through which massive power can flow. There’s no on or off switch, it’s just a flood that wipes out the individual and they become the power. I’m a freak of nature as a vampire; I have an off switch. It gets stuck on when I stress it out, and I become a true vampire if I can’t turn it off.”
“Like when you almost bit me?”
Decker herded him through the turnstile. “Not my finest moment, but yes. Part of my nature is that I don’t need blood to survive; I can tap power from other monsters. If I get too much, though, I overload and can’t break free. I could become something that lives to drain all life essence from everything around me. The huntsman should have destroyed any hold I have on myself.”
“Which was why you wanted Elise to kill it while you dealt with the hounds.”
“Yes. Because you struck the killing blow, the huntsman’s power was defused by your connection to the pack’s magic.” Decker glanced away. “Thank you for protecting Elise.”
The train rumbled up to the platform. The doors slid open and Decker stepped on. Joshua realized he hadn’t actually thought everything through. His parents always told him not to go anywhere with strangers. They could be dangerous. A vampire definitely qualified as strange and dangerous.
Decker turned and saw that he was still standing outside the subway car. He waved Joshua forward. “Come on. Come on.” He said in the sort of voice that one used with a puppy.
Joshua blushed. If he didn’t get on, he wouldn’t be able to actually finish the conversation. He still didn’t know anything useful about being a werewolf and there were monsters chasing after him. He stepped onto the train seconds before the door slid shut.
“Look,” Joshua said. “Usually when I’m going to go stay over at someone’s place, they have to call their folks and make sure it’s alright. This is kind of freaking me out.”
“My parents died a long time ago.”
Awkward.
“You don’t have any place to go, right?” Decker asked. “Or do you have family in town?”
“No. I-I just had the weird dream in the hospital that I should come to Boston.” It sounded stupid aloud. At least he assumed the Prince of Boston would be in Boston. Someplace.
Decker nodded but didn’t comment on the dream. “And you don’t have any money? Nothing to buy food with?”
His running away from home would seem stupid if it wasn’t for the whole “monsters chasing you.” And to be honest, he hadn’t known about that part. It wasn’t like he was some little kid that should be under constant watch. “I was going to go to college next fall. I had it all planned. Harvard was my top choice but I needed a scholarship. That was a real long shot. I’d figured that I’d end up at Syracuse like my sister Bethy. She’s a senior there. I wanted to have an apartment instead of living in the dorms. I figured I’d just get bullied in the dorms—like usual—only worse.”
Decker raised an eyebrow, apparently confused by the change in subject. He thought for a moment, tilted his head, and asked, “Do you know the story of Bluebeard?”
It was Joshua’s turn to be confused. “The pirate?”
“That’s Blackbeard. Bluebeard is about this woman who gets married to a man who’d been married multiple times but all his wives had mysteriously disappeared. He gives his bride the keys to his castle and tells her that she has full run of the place, as long as she never uses the key to a small room in the basement. Eventually she goes to see what’s in it and finds the bodies of his previous wives hung up like butchered pigs.”
Joshua squinted at Decker, trying to figure out the point of this story. “You’ve got dead bodies in your basement?”
Decker covered his eyes and shook his head, laughing silently. “I am the dead body in the basement! And people are like that. You try to tell them to stay out of one room and no matter how many times they promise not to, sooner or later, they just have to find out what you’re hiding. It never ends well. As recently as fifty years ago, it got villagers with torches showing up, trying to kill you, blaming you for everything from a recent murder to low sex appeal.”
“Okay.” Joshua still didn’t see the point.
“I’ve been trying to live alone and it’s not working. I need someone. A housekeeper.”
“Like Alice?”
“Alice?” Decker echoed, mystified.
“On The Brady Bunch. Alice was the housekeeper. Always in a maid’s dress.”
“I was thinking more like Mr. French.”
“Who?”
Decker sighed. “Obviously before your time.”
Joshua doubted that the vampire actually needed a housekeeper. He wasn’t sure why Decker was even making the suggestion. “Look, I wouldn’t look good in a maid’s outfit.”
“I don’t know. A little black corset dress with a white apron?” Decker drew indecent lines where the outfit would start and end. “Stockings and garter belts? A white ruffled headband and a black ribbon choker?”
“In. Your. Dreams.”
Decker snickered. “Okay, what I really need is a guard dog. Someone that can move around in the daylight. Chase off intruders. Bring in the daily paper.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“You’re better than a dog, because you talk and clean up after yourself and drive a car.”
Joshua burned with embarrassment. “I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t even have a learner’s permit because my parents have never been able to figure out what they did with my birth certificate.” He needed it to get a social security number too. He didn’t remember his folks being so weird about the paperwork with his older sister. As always, it sounded so lame that he added on their other excuses. “They couldn’t afford the additional insurance while my sister is in college. And my folks have an old Dodge half-ton pickup with a manual transmission and I—I’m having trouble with the clutch.” Because he couldn’t reach the freaking pedals, but he didn’t want to mention that.
“Ah, the all-important clutch.” Decker somehow made that sound dirty. “You can learn to drive, something that’s beyond the average Rottweiler.” He took a deep breath and confessed. “I need someone I can trust. Someone that knows I’m a vampire and won’t be trying to kill me or sell my story to newspapers. Someone who has a hope of surviving if I lose hold of the monster inside me. Someone who amuses me.”
Joshua studied the vampire. In the flickering lights of the subway, he looked like a normal college student. If Elise was his closest friend, then the man was very much alone. And wasn’t everything Decker said true for Joshua? He needed someone that knew he was a werewolf. Someone that had a hope of dealing with the wolf when it finally manifested. Someone who found him amusing, not frightening?
“Okay, but no maid outfit.”
Decker grinned but made no promises.
The subway slowed and pulled into a station.
Decker stood up. “Come, this is us.”