MOMENTS LATER, THE boys are helping us lift Bob from the floor and out into the yard.
“Bob found us,” Jamie tells me of their escape.
“We weren’t scared,” Kev adds. “Simon did something to us. We couldn’t move.”
“McQueen was going to hurt us, but Simon told him he had to wait. He said we were insurance.”
“We knew you’d come back, Finn.”
“Bob said you’d save us.”
I smile at them, silently thanking Bob for being more of a hero than any of us could hope to be.
I can hear the piano, tinkling some far-off tune, something old and western. The kind of folk-song everybody knows, but can’t place. Like “Camptown Races”, but slower.
Jules runs silent through the grass, hardly more than a shadow, and one of the SUVs rumbles to life, backing slowly across the gravel, the red lights burning like twin suns in the darkness.
We slide Bob across the back seat, and Kevin gets in beside him.
Jamie climbs in and pulls the driver’s seat up as far as it will move. He pushes the button to lower it until the motor grinds and whirrs, with nowhere left to go.
“We can help you fight him,” Kevin pleads.
“Yeah,” Jamie says. “We’ll take Bob down and bring reinforcements.”
“People from town.”
“The Vargas brothers,” they say in unison.
Jules leans into the car, pulls Kevin’s head down toward her, and kisses his forehead.
I give him a nod and shut the door, as Jules comes behind me to kiss her other brother.
“Just be careful. Get Bob to the garage so they can get him some help. You don’t want to bring anybody else up here. Trust me,” I warn them, thinking of Mary-Ellen’s demon-face, and the big biker’s brains splattering my face.
“Listen to Finn,” Jules tells them. “You stay at the garage until I come get you.”
“Okay,” the boys say together.
“I love you,” Jules tells them, and a strange warm look comes over their faces.
“Now go!” she whispers, and they roll off toward the little bridge.
“SHOULDN’T WE GET some guns, or something? Go back up to Raigan’s? Find some kind of weapons?” Jules says as we step up onto the porch. She looks down at her feet. “I mean, we’re naked.”
She looks me up and down, a gesture that is exaggerated by her compensating for her lost eye.
“And you’re still bleeding.”
I nod. “Not for long.”
“So that’s your whole master plan? We turn into big bad wolves and attack the powerful sorcerer with our teeth?”
I recite the poem. In its entirety, possibly for the first time.
From the South
Three sisters fair
Ran athwart the gloom
Dressed of fur
And fierce of tooth
The maidens of the moon
“Do you know it?” I ask.
“Aunty Raigan used to tell us that when we were little. It’s just some old rhyme.”
“It’s the secret of our power. She was trying to tell me. Three sisters fair running athwart the gloom.”
“That asshole would have needed to get you a couple inches higher for you to be a sister, Finn.”
I fix her with a hard glare.
“It’s not literally sisters. It means family. Our family. And fair means good, not just light-coloured. Athwart the gloom. Family. Our family, fighting against evil. Against darkness.”
“Dark magic. The silver charms, the same as Raigan’s, but with his magic in them. That’s what the collar was for?”
“To keep us from changing. Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth. This whole thing is about him wanting the power behind that transformation. He’s afraid of it. He doesn’t understand it, so he can’t control it. Even like this, in human form, we’re more powerful than normal people. As wolves, together, we may be strong enough to kill him.”
Jules turns her head slightly, to get a better look at me, doubtless questioning the logic behind my theory.
“I watched him turn the whole of Pitamont into a rampaging horde of mindless killers,” I explain. “He didn’t have to clamp a collar on any of them. He wasn’t playing any games, trying to manipulate them into going along with him. Forty people under his spell with no more than a whisper—while he was causing a sandstorm, making himself look twelve feet tall, and pinning me up like a voodoo doll. Why can’t he do that here?”
She shrugs, but I see the wheels turning. She’s a witch too, after all, she must have some idea how these things are done.
“And why is he so terrified of anyone turning? Why did he need to keep you and Emma under his control? McQueen did all of his dirty work when there were Strong Wolves involved. Simon Magus may be perfectly capable of terrorizing humans and sneaking around in the dark . . .”
It crosses her ravaged face like the coming dawn. Somehow her beauty is even more stark and terrifying in its loss of symmetry.
“He’s scared of us.”
“You heard the story about his father. Of course, he’s scared of us. We are the boogeyman, not him, and his magic won’t work on us in wolf form—dressed of fur and fierce of tooth—especially if all three of us work together.”
“The maidens of the moon.”
I smile wide and full.
“Exactly. Bob called him Skinkuk. He’s a coyote. A trickster. A scavenger. A fucking pretender. We’re the real thing.”
I feel as if I’ve swallowed the moon and its power and light are seeping out of every pore. I know my power now. It comes from this place, from these people. It comes from me. I am a hero, and it’s time to prove it.
“I can still hear the piano. They must be in the parlour. He’ll want to keep her close and keep her safe now that she’s . . .”
“She’s pregnant, Finn. Congratulations,” Jules says coldly. “There’s only one way up and around that hall. One door in. If we can sneak up on him . . .”
I have the urge to use Bob’s Navy SEAL signs, but there’s no real plan and no options other than what has already been said. Instead, I take a deep breath through my nose and wait for the fur.
QUIET
Is the thought shared between us, as we step careful across the parquet floor, claws scratching lightly at the glossy finish. A creak in the top of the house freezes us both, mid-stride, and my nose goes to the air, seeking out the scents of sulfur and fish, smells I know as evil and dangerous. All I smell is the house. The lingering hint of burnt bacon from the kitchen, the pine and cedar of the walls, Emma’s scent of vanilla and chocolate. The piano continues to play from the parlour. From the edge of the stairs we can see the flickering of candles from inside the room.
Jules is halfway up the staircase when I notice the skip in the tune. The same five notes repeated, the scratch of a record needle bouncing.
His voice comes from the wide room at the front of the house, the room behind me.
“I’m afraid there’s no dogs allowed in the house.”
He’s standing by the window, posed in the shadows, using the darkness to play up his size and power. More theatrics from the Victorian magician. Emma is seated in a chair beside him, neck held high and stiff under the leather collar, Raigan’s moon medallion swelling from the centre of it.
With wolf eyes I can see farther into the gloom. Past his magic. Simon Magus is an old man. Wrinkled and stooped, sparse white hair standing in thickets on his spotty head. He’s weak and afraid. I smell his fear. So does Jules.
Kill
Is the one thought I catch as the flash of yellow and grey bounds past me into the dark of the room.
I follow, and we leap toward him, both aiming for the chest, bring him down to the ground then tear him apart.
We find nothing but space. A wisp of grey and he’s gone, laughing. Jules crashes down on top of me with a yelp, and I scramble out from beneath her and across the floor, finding room to breathe and turn before I reassess my surroundings. The room is empty, save the two of us, and Magus’ laughter bounces from the walls and the ceiling, penning us in with its overwhelming rush of noise.
The music still plays from the parlour underneath it all.
They’re not here at all. It’s a trap, a distraction.
Smoke rolls across the ceiling above us, a blast of heat and a tsunami wave of sound and air that crashes through everything around us. The furniture flies overhead, splintering against the walls. The windows explode with the crash of a thousand cymbals. A blast of thunder followed by a tinkling rain.
Jules is shaking beside me, back bowed and lips curled, swinging her head in manic circles, one eye wide and panicked. I nip at her hind leg and nod toward the door.
We step carefully around the scattered contents of the room, ignoring the raging heat of the fire now licking at us from every surface. As we come out to the foyer, I can see the black scorch marks where the explosion has disintegrated the kitchen. A gaping hole feeds flame and grey smoke out into the night. The floor shimmers with heat.
There’s a huge creaking to our left, and we drop lower, splaying our legs as the stairs come away from the walls, and crumble into tinder. The whole house is ablaze and coming down on top of us. The smoke thick and choking the air. He means for us to burn.
There is another crash and boom above us. The embers begin to fall like hail, spitting down and singeing our backs. The roar is immense, the rocket launch sound of a thousand dragons croaking demon-flame, as our castle burns down around us. The hail becomes chunks of plaster and the clatter of roasting boards hitting the floor, crackling and exploding.
I nudge Jules forward, toward the door, our only chance of escape. One more thunderous crack erupts above us, and I turn my head to the flaming sky just as it falls upon our heads. The beam comes so close to my face that it burns the short hairs on the end of my snout. Jules staggers back, just as the ceiling falls on top of me. Stars burst in my head, and all of my air is replaced by liquid fire.
Darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision, and I fall through the floor into a deep, black void.