Carrie Vaughn: Kitty's Greatest Hits

His father pointed with the barest movement of his left hand, no more than a finger lifted from the barrel of the rifle, replaced just as subtly. Cormac wouldn’t have seen the wolf as quickly. It didn’t make a sound—the clearing was as quiet as ever, but a huge beast, a furred canine as big as a Great Dane, two hundred pounds easy, stepped carefully from the trees across from them. Dark gray and silver, it might have been a shadow come to life. Its fur made it indistinct, its outline hard to see. A few paces from the cow, it paused, raised its head, its eyes sparking gold in the moonlight. Cormac couldn’t breathe.

His father’s hand had closed around his rifle stock, but he didn’t yet raise the weapon. This was going to be Cormac’s shot.

Cormac worked to keep his breathing steady. He had one shot, had to make it good. Couldn’t move too fast or the creature would see it. Best thing was to let it start in on the bait, distracting it. With silver bullets, they didn’t have to get a good target. They only had to break skin and the silver would poison it.

His father leaned out of the way, giving Cormac a clear shot. He watched the wolf, large and unnatural, pause, nose leading, searching the carcass. Any second now, he’d aim and shoot, all in a heartbeat. He could do this.

Then the wolf was gone.

Its coloring blended with the wooded clearing, but Cormac had been watching carefully, he’d followed the thing’s movements, he knew where it was. He imagined putting the bullet into it—a good clean shot that meant they wouldn’t have to track it. But it had just vanished.

“Where’d it go?” Cormac whispered in a panic.

“Hush,” his father breathed. He raised his rifle in a clean movement. Didn’t take aim yet; just looked out, waiting.

Somehow, it had sensed them. Maybe smelled them on the cow or noticed the knife cut in the animal’s throat, showing that its death wasn’t natural, that this was bait and not scavenging. Maybe it had simply backed up the way it had come and slipped into the woods, avoiding the hunters. Cormac started to feel disappointed.

Then his father hissed, “Get back, get back. Cormac—” Douglas threw his arm and hit Cormac, shoving him out of the way as the creature leapt.

His father was strong, and Cormac fell hard and rolled, reaching to stop himself while keeping hold of his rifle. Turning onto his belly, he scrambled to look.

Another thing that made werewolves and wild wolves different: A wild wolf would have run away from the hunters, disappearing into the trees, finding safety in speed. This one attacked.

The thing planted front paws on Douglas Bennett’s shoulders and shoved. Douglas fired, the mouth of his rifle flashing, but the shot did nothing, flying uselessly into air. The man screamed while the monster clawed and bit, shaking its head, ripping at flesh like this was an unfortunate rabbit. Douglas kicked and bucked, his hands on the wolf’s head, fingers digging at its eyes and twisting its ears. The wolf kept on, lips curled back from red-stained teeth. Emanating from deep in its throat, its snarls sounded like the revving of a broken engine. And still Cormac’s father screamed. Full-lunged, tortured, gasping screams.

“Dad!” It happened in a heartbeat. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. His scream was an echo of his father’s.

He raised his rifle, took half a second to aim. Fired. Later, he’d never know how he managed to hold the weapon steady, to exhale and squeeze the trigger rather than blasting off in a panic.

He got it. That perfect shot in the wolf’s head. The blast knocked the wolf away from Douglas, and it lay still.

“Dad?” He dropped the rifle and ran, sliding to the ground next to his father’s prone form. His voice sounded suddenly high-pitched and weak, no better than a child’s. He was five years old again. “Dad?”

His father reached, clutching at his son with bloody hands. Looking at him, Cormac’s gut jumped to his mouth, but he didn’t vomit.

Douglas’s face was gone, gory meat instead of nose, eyes, lips. His throat was gone, turned into frayed tubes and tendons and a hint of backbone, glistening in moonlight. A wheezing breath whistled and gurgled. Somehow, Douglas pulled another through the mangled windpipe, and his hand closed on Cormac’s arm, bunching his jacket in rigid fingers. He didn’t breathe again, and the fingers went slack a moment later.

Cormac knelt there for a long time, holding his father’s hand. A pool of blood was creeping under him, soaking into the ground. The air reeked. He’d never get that smell out of his nose.

A couple of feet away, a naked man sprawled on his side. He had stringy, shoulder-length hair, black going to gray. He was burly, powerful, the muscles on his arms and back well defined. He was weathered, older, maybe in his fifties. Blood and fragments covered his face.

“Dad?” He swallowed, trying to get his throat to open up. But his father didn’t move.

Cormac didn’t know what to do. The truck was a couple of miles away and had a CB he could use to call for help. He was pretty sure he had to get help, though he wasn’t sure what anyone would make of the situation when they saw this. He couldn’t tell them it was a werewolf.

He squeezed his father’s hand one more time, placed it gently on the body’s chest, found his rifle, checked it to make sure it was loaded and ready for another shot—just in case—and set out for the truck.

He radioed an emergency channel, told them where to go, then went back to wait with his father. To chase coyotes and ravens away from the body. A forest service ranger, county sheriff’s deputy, and EMTs arrived to find him standing guard, still holding the rifle, covered in blood.

Slumped against the front corner of the cell, he stared at his hands.

It wasn’t your fault.

Everybody said that. But they didn’t know, they hadn’t been there. They were just words, didn’t mean anything. “Leave me alone,” he muttered. But he could feel her, as if she’d put a hand on his shoulder. He batted the imaginary hand away.

He heard shouting, ringing—inmates banging on the bars of their cells, echoing, thunderous. He couldn’t see anything out the window but the wall across from him. Pressing his ear to the crack along the door, he tried to make out what was happening. Not that it helped. Not that it gave him a clue what to do next. Not that he could pick his way out of this door. He couldn’t do a damn thing about anything.

Cormac had once felt that he’d been part of an unbroken tradition, a long line of warriors, secret and proud. It had all fallen apart. The line would end with him. He’d made his father’s legacy worthless. No better than dust. Nothing more than blood on his hands.

He was trapped, helpless in the face of a threat his father hadn’t taught him how to handle.

You aren’t helpless.

He tried to shut out the voice. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.

It’s a prison riot. I’ve seen it before. Too many guards stopped coming to work after the murders. The prison is understaffed and the inmates are frightened.

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

The demon will take advantage of it. There will be slaughter.

“I’m safest here.”

Not if the rioters unlock the doors.

The locks were electronic, connected to both individual and master switches. They’d have to take over the whole prison to do that. Which it sounded like they were on the way to doing.

He put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes, tried to block out the world. “Get out of my head. You’re driving me crazy.”

She scratched at the inside of his skull, like fingernails on a chalkboard. With the pain came a promise—that it would stop if she would just let him in. Open wide the door to his mind. He was almost there.