Prologue
Prologue
Snow fell from the fading light of the winter sky, wet and heavy, muffling the woods, enveloping us in silence. Meridian City had been quiet since we’d clawed our way out of the nightmare circus. But the quiet never lasted for long, not in my life. The quiet filled the space between adventures..
Thom would say I was making progress with my training. I could summon armies of squeaky toys. I could transform Duncan DeWitt into a grumpy honey badger and make everyone think it was an accident!
I was learning how to better guide the chaos. It started falling into place when I swapped control for guidance.
The first sign that something was amiss came from my ducks. They flapped restlessly, feathers ruffled, eyes shining and sharp. Brandie, Malcolm, and Duncan looked at me warily as they continued quacking like alarms.
“They’ve got that look again,” Brandie said, tugging her neon jacket tighter. Pink hair glowed like a flare against the snow. “The ‘we’re about to drag you into some nonsense’ look.”
“They’re ducks,” Duncan muttered, crunching across the ice behind us. “They always look like nonsense.”
“Nonsense? They have more sense than you do!” Brandie chuckled.
He was always hating on my magic ducks. Inferiority Complex? Poster child!
“Correction,” I said, “they look like nonsense when they’re content. This is different.”
The ducks quacked louder, marching ahead like feathery generals. Even Malcolm, usally calm and skeptical, frowned nervously. “They’re not playing this time.”
We followed them like ducklings, out of the yard, across frozen fields, right to the edge of the forest where the snow lay deep and untouched. The trees loomed above us, darkening everything. Their black and skeletal limbs swayed in the wind, creaking softly.
That’s when the ducks stopped, and our adventure began.
“What the-“ I began.
“How have I never seen that before?” Malcolm mused.
“Why does it look so familiar?” Brandie whispered.
Cheese and Quackers stood at the mouth of a jagged opening in the hillside. A cave mouth, wide and dark, rimmed with ice that glowed faintly, even with the sun hidden behind clouds and trees.
The moment I saw it, something in me shivered. I felt a strange mixture of curiosity and fear. I exchanged nervous glances with Malcolm and Duncan. Brandie, however, was transfixed, her eyes glazed, staring at the strange cave. I grabbed her arm. “You okay?”
She nodded but I didn’t believe it for a minute. Her strange behavior had me even more unsettled.
“This feels off,” Duncan muttered. His breath fogged hard, too fast. “Like it’s watching us.” He wasn’t wrong. The shadows clung to that cave like they had teeth, and my hackles raised in a way they hadn’t since my encounters with the entity.
Suddenly a piercing howl split the silence. It carved straight through my chest as wolves burst from the tree line. They were larger than I’d seen, with black fur and eyes that flashed like coins in the fading light. They circled us, growling, but I sensed no threat, it seemed instead like they were herding us away from the cave.
Suddenly one wolf broke away, larger than the rest, shoulders rippling with power. Its eyes, green, wild and bright, locked on Brandie. She stepped forward, boots crunching in the snow.
“Brandie,” I hissed, “what the hell are you-“
Slowly, cautiously, she held out her hand. The wolf padded closer, each step careful and deliberate, breath steaming in the night. It lowered its massive head until her palm touched fur.
For a heartbeat, the world froze. Then a shock wave rolled outward, like lightning and gravity colliding. I staggered, falling on my knees, fear coursing through my veins.
“What the hell?” Malcolm swore. Even Duncan clutched his chest like the air had been punched out of him.
Brandie gasped, wide eyed. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “I feel… everything.” The wolf leaned harder into her hand. Its eyes glowed brighter.
Brandie started to change. Her body shimmered, bent, with sharp cracking sounds as her bones broke and reconnected. Finally, in the space where she’d been standing, a great white wolf rose, with thick fur glowing under the moon.
She threw her head back and howled. The sound was nothing like the entity’s shrieks. It was clear, wild, and above all else, alive. Like life itself had fused itself with the hauntingly beautiful sound. The other wolves sank low in the snow, while the largest wolf, the Alpha, I realized witn surprise. bowed his head to her.
My breath snagged in my throat. “Holy shit.”
My best friend was…
A werewolf?
