Anthony Francis - Frost Moon

"It's the fucking House of Leaves down here," I said, flashing my light into the bottom of the boat like Cinnamon taught me, so the beam wouldn't kill our night vision.

"What?" she asked, eyes tracing over the ancient masonry.

"Sorry," I said. "I doubt that one's coming to audiobook."

"Whatever. This shit supposed to be from the Civil War?" Cinnamon said. "No ways they built all this just for the fucking Civil War. It was over in, like, five years-"

"Don't know much about history," I said, "but maybe they built it after that."

"Shit this old?" she said. "You believes that?"

"I have no fucking idea," I replied. "I just think we're lost-"

And then the tunnel abruptly widened up, into a vast, dungeonlike vault built from huge, rough-hewn blocks of stone. Only now could I see that Cinnamon was right: No way was this Civil War architecture. .. this was something far older, far more primal. When I'd first seen these runes and waymarks I'd meant to read up on them, but life since I'd taken Wulf s assignment had been so insane I'd had no time-so I still couldn't decipher the marks in the rock around us. All I knew was that the ones painted on it were old… and the ones scratched into it, older.

"We met here," I said, pointing to the landing upon which Wulf had stood.

"This is a… neutral place," Cinnamon said, flicking her ear. "But not a safe one. You be meeting here, not living here. His den will be somewhere else."

I pulled up to the landing and tied the boat off. "Hopefully in walking distance."

The air surged around us, like the tunnels were taking a breath. It was oddly regular, like we were crawling around the throat of some monster, feeling the rhythm of its lungs.

"Fuck," Cinnamon said, looking around wildly. "What is doin' that? I mean, fuck! Let's get this over with."

Rough stone steps climbed up from the landing, and we followed them to a high ledge overlooking the docking chamber below. A bare stone corridor tracked off in either direction, but Cinnamon dismissed them with a sniff, taking us into narrow slots perpendicular to the ledge. Here the ancient stonework gave way to merely old brick and well-rusted steel; now it did feel like we were working our way through the foundation of some Civil War era structure.

"This is it," she said. "Smells like a den."

"Is he here?" I said. "Wolves are territorial, right? I don't want to barge in-"

"Relax," she said, moving forward cautiously. "I wouldn't take ya into a live den. All the smells are old, and I don't hear nothing, so-"

The air shifted again, hot breath drawn in to the throat of the unseen 'monster' behind us.

"Homina," she said, breathing in deeply. "Does he looks as good as he smells?"

"Better," I said, following her as she picked up the pace.

"How come you gets all the good boyfriends?" she complained, worming her way through the narrow tunnel. "You don't even like 'em!"

"I'm an outgoing, attractive woman with a job that lets me meet a lot of people," I said, "and I do too like boys. I just like girls too."

And then the wind shifted, the hot breath of the monster now wafting towards us.

"Fuck," Cinnamon said, whirling. "I was wrong. He's here."

Twin golden eyes glowed in the narrow tunnel behind us, twin golden sparks in the black, silhouetted form of a man. In the gloom you could actually see the light from his eyes reflecting off the ancient masonry, twin rows of vertical lines stretching towards us like golden bars.

"You should not have come here, Dakota," Wulf growled.

Cinnamon and I backed up slowly, stepping out into a pathetic, brick-pillared room, wide and low, littered with old rags and Wendy's boxes. Moments later Wulf emerged between us, standing there in his worn Italian suit, just out of arms' reach.

Then he bulled past us, into the room, and began pacing about. We both relaxed.

"Why are you here?" Wulf snarled, glaring at me out of the corner of his eye.

"You left me no other way to contact you," I said.

"I told you to butt out," he snapped. "Who is she?"

"A friend," I said warily. "She's a good tracker."

"I'm Cinnamon," she said cheerily. Then her ears flattened as he glared at her, and she looked down, avoiding his eyes.

"She's not a wolf," he said, glaring at her. "Why did you bring her?"

"I-I didn't know it was a problem," I said. "No one seemed to care, at the werehouse."

"My beast doesn't know jack about the werehouse," Wulf snarled. "Dakota, I told you to stay away, and here you've brought a morsel into my den at my weakest hour!"

"Then let me do your tattoo," I said. "It will give you more control-"

"It's too late for that," he said. "It will take a week for the tattoo to reach full strength-"

"Then let me do it on myself and transfer it to you," I said, holding up my bare left hand. "Remember my butterfly? Cinnamon, show him."

Wulf stared at my bare wrist, then at Cinnamon's tufted hand, where the design he had seen before now lived. I squeezed my hand and waved it over Cinnamon's wrist, and the sparkle of mana dancing down from my fingers made the butterfly come to life and flap once.

"I don't believe it," Wulf said, in a voice that indicated that yes, he did believe.

"I've already tested the procedure out with the other tattoo I was doing, which was a much more complicated design," I said. "Come back with us. I've made the needles and mixed the pigments. Come back to my studio and we'll do the tattoo tonight."

"It's too late for that," he repeated, his eyes glowing an even brighter yellow.

"His wolf is angry," Cinnamon said. "Don't be making eye contact-"

"Come on, Wulf, try, you've got to try," I said, looking at the ground. "It's not even eleven, and the moon won't be right overhead until midnight-"

"Dakota, you fool," he roared. "The moon rises an hour earlier every day. Even now it stands over our heads, five shades short of full!"

Suddenly Wulf snarled, a great rumbling crackle that seemed to ripple through the room. His eyes seemed to flare, twin torches. He hunched low, growling, snarling-then in one spasmodic movement pulled off the coat of his suit and hurled it to the ground.

"Don't run," Cinnamon said. "Whatever you do, stand your ground. Don't run."

But I couldn't move. I was mesmerized. Wulf was stripping before me. On some distant level I realized that was a threat, but all my eyes saw were the few tufts of grey in the hair on his tanned, ripped chest, the crisscrossing lines of some ancient tattoo or brand rippling down from that chest over his washboard flat stomach, and his buff arms, muscles bulging and shifting like the skin was packed with croquet balls.

But then the croquet balls began to move, the skin to ripple, his features to shimmer. When my eyes drew back to his face, I saw something hungry and alive peeking out behind those golden eyes, something that had always been there but… suppressed. But the beast was not suppressed now. It was awake, aware-and coming out.

"What do we do?" I said desperately. "He's just about popped his cork-"

"You stays still," Cinnamon said. "Right now his man thinks you're his girlfriend-but if you runs, his wolfwill think you're prey."

"What about you?" I said.

"I'll run," Cinnamon said. "I'll lure him-whoa-"

Wulf snarled and pulled his pants down, kicking them away. Tremors ran down his taut legs, part muscle spasms, part something more. Neither Cinnamon nor I could seem to tear our eyes away from him, from the muscular legs, the dark briefs.

"Yes, run, little one," Wulf snarled, dropping to a squat, one hand touching the ground as the other hooked in to his briefs. Fur began rising on his forearms, and he turned his legs to pull the briefs away as the hair of his chest and abdomen thickened into a full pelt. "Run! Take me away from Dakota before I slay her!"