I readied the blade, holding it loose and firm in my hand. I didn’t have much practice in knife fighting. Just what friends had demonstrated while goofing around at parties over the years. For some reason, guys always thought I’d be impressed if they did weird things like give me a knife fighting lesson. Once a guy had shown me how to swallow fire. I had to take him to the ER afterwards, but it had been entertaining right up until he started screaming.
“Stay behind me,” Brax ordered, running forward just as the wolf leapt.
They came together in a crash of snarls and growls, each one moving almost quicker than my eyes could follow. Brax gripped the wolf’s head, preventing it from sinking its teeth in his throat. The wolf raked his claws along Brax’s arms and legs, creating long, bloody furrows of torn flesh. A bellow of pain escaped Brax even as his arms tightened around the wolf’s neck.
I darted forward, sinking my blade between its ribs, only to withdraw and do it again. Brax held him immobile as I stabbed, again and again. The wolf refused to die.
I changed my angle and stabbed into his abdomen. My knife skated against something hard, before it gave way. The wolf let out a spine tingling howl as he thrashed and heaved, nearly jerking himself loose. Before long, his struggles eased until he hung limp from Brax’s arms.
Brax threw the wolf away, sending him crashing into a tree where he lay boneless.
“He really didn’t want to die,” I said. My arms were covered in black gunk. It should have been blood. I sniffed. The black smelled of rot, like the blood had been sitting for weeks and weeks. It smelled like what I’d found in the alley behind Lou’s. It wasn’t an exact match. This didn’t smell nearly as bad, but it definitely had a lot in common with that smell.
“That should not have happened,” Brax said, without taking his eyes off the wolf. “He should have bled out much sooner.”
“This blood smells similar to what was in the alley,” I told him.
Brax’s eerie ice blue eyes shifted to me and he leaned forward, inhaling deeply. I held still, not wanting to provoke him. His wolf seemed close to the surface, and I didn’t know how good Brax’s control was.
“This is wrong. This is all wrong,” he growled. “Our blood doesn’t smell like this.”
I suspected not many people’s blood smelled like this. It didn’t change the facts.
I walked over to the body. Somehow, in some way, this wolf had a link to whatever had killed the werewolf at the bar, and all the other deaths that had happened over the summer. I crouched down next to it.
“What are you doing?” Brax asked, coming to stand behind me.
The smell was worse up close. I don’t know how I’d missed it while we’d been fighting with the creature. Moreover, Brax should have been able to smell it long before it got close enough to attack.
I picked up a stick and lifted the wolf’s head. Its glassy eyes stared vacantly past mine. The pupils were dilated and filmy white, which was strange. It usually took a few hours after death for eyes to gain that appearance.
“Did you notice any type of smell before fighting him? Or even during?”
“No,” Brax said slowly as he thought back. “I didn’t, and I should have. This smell is distinctive enough that I would have been able to pick it up from several miles away.”
Miles? Really? I knew their noses were more sensitive than mine but not by that much. It made sense though. A wolf’s nose was a hundred times more powerful than a human’s and could outperform a dog’s. I just hadn’t realized how much of the skill translated over to the human form.
The sound of metal sliding against metal came from the wolf’s neck. I leaned closer. There, a piece of chain around it. I picked up another stick and worked it under the chain to lift it free from the fur. It took some work, but now that I knew what it was I eventually got the chain and the amulet attached free of the neck. My knife had caught on the chain and snapped it during the fight. I was surprised it had stayed there given Brax tossed him through the air like a Frisbee.
“What is that?” Brax asked, squatting down beside me.
I shook my head, holding the amulet up with the sticks. I didn’t want to touch it. Given that I suspected a witch was involved in this somehow, I didn’t want to take the chance it was ensorcelled.
The body hissed and crunched. Brax grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I bobbled the sticks, dropping the amulet.
“Wait.”
Brax didn’t wait, hauling me further away as the body started deteriorating, a fine dust rising in the air.
A face appeared in the dust as a voice hissed, “It’s mine. Where is it? Where is it? I know you’ve taken it. It’s mine.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You have it. I know you have it. Tell me where it is. If you don’t give it to me, I will curse your family line and hunt all of your descendants down and kill them in their sleep. I will deny you a warrior’s death so you languish on this earth, forever denied the halls of your ancestors.”
The face morphed between a human’s and a wolf’s, shifting and changing the features one at a time. Brax grabbed the knife from where I’d stashed it in my belt and threw it. Silver glinted as it spun through the air, dispelling the mist. The voice screamed, the sound enraged and powerful as it echoed through the air before both face and mist disappeared.
“Holy shit. What was that?” I asked.
