It had been decided that Ruth would come with them to the caves, which was a good thing, Jeff thought. But their cars were all in the front where the mob was. Ruth hadn’t brought hers, but if they could get it... Jeff straightened. “Give me the key and I’ll go get it and pick you all up,” he said.
Ruth rested her fists on her hips. “How are you going to get there faster than the rest of us?”
Jeff smiled. He began peeling off his clothes and by the time his trousers fell away, he was all wolf.
She stared at him dumbfounded until Doc nudged her. “Your key?”
Mouth still open, she reached into a pocket of her cargo pants and handed it to Jeff, who took it delicately between his teeth. Doc leaned toward him. “Ruth lives at 421 Mill Pond Road. She drives a green Mercedes.”
Of course, she does, Jeff thought, before he bounded off, skirting around the back way through the woods. He ran full pelt, ashamed to be reveling in it. But he realized if he went too many days without wolfing completely and tearing through the wilderness, he got jumpy and angered too easily. It was good to get out of his human skin sometimes. He wondered if it had always been that way. He got the same sort of thrill from surfing, getting a little agitated when he went too long without being on the waves. It could be that the original werewolf had looked for him, knowing his restlessness. Maybe it was some sort of fate. Whatever, he told himself. He hated it…but he kind of loved it, too.
He got to Mill Pond Road and figured what the hell. He ran down the middle of the road looking for 421 without worrying about anyone seeing him. Too late for that. There! With the shiny Mercedes in the front driveway, newly washed. Good thing, or it might have been in the garage. But once he got there, he realized that to get in the car, he’d have to shift back…and he didn’t have any clothes.
One problem at a time, he mused and shifted. And without fur it was considerably colder. He fumbled with the key fob and clicked the button. He heard the door unlock and quickly got inside, cranking up the heat. In no time he was feeling better.
He hoped Ruth wouldn’t mind his naked butt on her leather seats and chuckled to himself. Kylie would have loved this. But backing out of the driveway, his smile faded. Not past tense. She wasn’t gone yet. He could cling to the hope that she’d somehow get out of it. If anyone could, it would be his babygirl…though not his anymore. That demon. Why had she fallen for him? There was no accounting for it, but she had. But more importantly, the demon had fallen for her. That’s what had kept her alive so far.
Jeff took all the backroads he could think of to end up parked near Kylie’s backyard. The coven seemed to just appear from behind the trees. Seraphina got in first and dropped his clothes on his lap.
“I thought you might be needing these,” she said with a serene smile.
“Thanks, babe.”
The rest of the coven crammed in. Ruth did wince when she noticed Jeff’s undressed state on her smooth leather seats, but she didn’t say anything.
“Where am I going again?” asked Jeff.
“Get to the highway,” said Doc, “and I’ll let you know when to turn.”
Doc directed from the back seat and Jeff drove fast up the highway. He occasionally locked glances with Nick through the rearview mirror. He could tell Nick was ready to shift too, fingers drumming anxiously on his thigh.
Jeff maneuvered the car up Falcon’s Point Road and parked at the trailhead. He slipped from the driver’s seat just as he shifted, avoiding any embarrassment, though he hardly ever got embarrassed by it anymore, truthfully.
Nick started undressing. “You two can get us in and out of the cave, right?” asked Doc for the fifteenth time.
“Yeah, Doc, no sweat.” Nick nearly jumped out of his shirt and trousers and stepped out of his shoes not with feet, but with paws. He glanced at Jeff, who just led the way up the trail.
They both ran side by side. Jeff lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air. No trace of Baphomet’s scent of ash and tar. Nick kept stride and it was wonderful. Jeff tried not to think about the plans he’d made, the plans to go back home to California after all this was over. Nick was his pack and he didn’t know if it would be possible to leave him. But he needed to do it, had to.
Nick glanced at him like he knew what he was thinking. Likely, he sort of did.
They kept going until they made it to the cave entrance. The sheriff had roped it off with police tape so no one would wander in and get sucked to another dimension, or at least that’s how Jeff understood it.
He and Nick sat and waited, though he could tell that Nick wanted to nuzzle him. It was a pack thing but Jeff was uncomfortable with it. Not because Nick was gay, but because he liked keeping his humanity, even when he was a wolf. Maybe especially when he was a wolf.
It took about half an hour for the others to make it up the trail. Jeff hadn’t been too sure about Ruth, but smelling her as a wolf, she seemed to be right with him. If there was something amiss, he was sure Nick would know, too.
They entered the caves and Jeff sniffed around. Yes, he knew the way. He could definitely find this scent again. He took the lead while Nick took the rear. It was getting darker and he could still see, but thank goodness for flashlights because he doubted even he could see in the pitch blackness with no light at all.
He saw the green glow before the others. He gave a yelp and they headed toward him.
It was a glowing crack in space slowly turning like some weird virtual reality game. But it really was just a crack. Did the book bring it? The coven seemed to think so. All Jeff knew was that it stunk. He hated the smell of it. He noticed Nick thought so, too, because he was wrinkling his nose at it and kept shaking his head, trying to get the smell out of his muzzle.
Right? Jeff was saying in his head. He let his tongue loll, trying to catch some other better scents to mask the terrible one.
Ruth walked around it, simply studying it. “I never would have guessed.”
It was funny listening to people talk when he was a wolf. They sounded like they were talking into a cup, kind of hollow and muffled. He was just happy to be able to understand them. Without the wolfsbane, their voices sounded garbled. He supposed that being a werewolf made you forget your past self, forget those you loved even, just so you could kill. Yeah, the wolfsbane kept him just that much more human. He never missed a dose and was even getting proficient at making it himself, under the careful guidance of Seraphina.
“How do we start?” said Ruth.
Doc took out some things from a bag and Jolene took more supplies out of her backpack. Jeff never bothered with the details of what they were doing. He wasn’t into Wicca. He knew plenty of people back home who were into it, from teenaged girls who just wanted to dabble to full-on witches with tattoos, braided purple-dyed hair, and serious piercings. He’d slept with one of the latter once. She was a bit too intense for him.
Soon, the coven had surrounded the rift and began chanting. Doc had a big leather-bound book that he was reading from as a sort of call and repeat. He didn’t quite understand what they were up to, but the rift sure seemed to. It began pulsating. Jolene tossed some colorful powders into it and the rift sparked and bucked. The chanting got louder. There was a strange electricity in the air. He felt it crackle around him, and his fur started to rise.
All at once, something flashed and Jolene was yanked back, as if she’d been attached to a rope. She fell into the darkness beyond their flashlights and lanterns. Seraphina ran to her and lifted her head into her lap, cooing at her.
“Are you all right, Jolene?” she asked softly.
Nick wandered toward her, lay down beside her, and licked her face.
Jolene lay there and suddenly snapped open her eyes. They glowed red. Everyone jerked back, especially when she said in a deep voice not her own, “Weak mortals. You think to close the gate. The gate is open! It will remain so. The game is not done.”
“Oh, it’s done, buster,” said Ruth. She had something like a willow wand in her hand. She pointed it at the rift and then slowly walked it closer.
“What are you doing?” said the voice. “Stop it, you fool!”
Ruth poked it right into the glowing crack. A boom and light burst in all directions, blinding everyone.
Jolene started to float off the floor. But her head was shaking violently and the voice was saying, “No, no, no, no, NO!”
Ruth held the wand in the rift. She shut her eyes against the blasts of wind and gritted her teeth. She held up her wand arm with her other hand to keep it steady. The rift was expanding. Was it supposed to do that?
The wolf’s self-preservation was taking hold of Jeff. He backed away. Wanted to run. Had to run away. But the human side, the Jeff side, forced the wolf to stop. You stay right there, wolfboy. Don’t you dare leave them. They’re your pack and they’re in trouble. That seemed to do it. He whined to Nick who looked like he was ready to bolt too. Nick whimpered and stood his ground, though his tail was between his legs.
Jolene suddenly turned her head Exorcist-style toward Ruth. “Get away from there, mortal. You don’t know what you are doing. No one has ever interfered with the book!”
“Get used to it!” screamed Ruth.
“YOU’LL ALL DIE!”
“We’ve all got to die sometime,” yelled Doc. He opened the book in his hand again and started reciting the strange words. Seraphina and Ruth repeated. They all talked louder and louder over the noise of the wind and the rumble coming from the crack. The cave’s floor began to tremble, like an earthquake. Pebbles fell from the roof, but Jeff was worried bigger ones were on their way. He admonished himself again when his paws edged toward the exit.
There was a sudden and powerful boom that knocked all of them off their feet, throwing Ruth back. She landed on Nick, who gave out a yelp.
When everyone looked up, the rift was gone. They all turned toward Jolene. She was lying peacefully on the ground as if asleep.
Doc knelt beside her and opened her lids, looking at her eyes. “Wake up, Jolene. Wake up.”
But she didn’t stir.
“Get my bag,” said Doc to no one in particular. Nick padded over, closed his mouth gently over the handle of the black doctor bag, and brought it forward. Doc dug inside and grabbed a little pill-looking thing, snapped it, and waved it under her nose.
Nick and Jeff shied back. Ammonia.
Still she didn’t stir.
“She’s not breathing,” he said worriedly.
“Maybe you should start CPR,” said Seraphina. Big tears rolled from her eyes.
Doc hesitated, as if he was arguing with himself. “Get me the book,” he said at last. Seraphina raced to the book and put it into Doc’s hands.
He flipped some pages and stopped, holding his whole hand over Jolene’s face. He muttered some kind of incantation. It was a garbled sort of language, not demonic or else Jeff would have been able to understand it. Doc slowly lifted his hand away. A pale light hung in an arc between her face and his hand, like some kind of chalk smear. He seemed to hold it for a moment more before suddenly clenching his hand into a fist. The light went out and Jolene coughed.
Doc bent over her again. “Jolene?”
“Yeah, yeah I’m back.” She wiped at her face and Doc helped her to sit up.
“Are you all right, young lady?”
“Yeah. Just a little woozy. Another possession. Not nice. He really didn’t want to go, even though the rift closed.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He is gone, though. I can feel it. I can probably stand now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, let me get up.” Doc helped her and she stood, maybe a little wobbly at first but she got better quickly.
A few more rocks tumbled down from the ceiling and edges. The cave trembled. She looked up. “Maybe we’d better get out of here.”
“By Godfrey, I think you’re right!”
Seraphina and Doc each took her arm and ran out of the room with her. Ruth followed after and Nick ran following her.
Jeff looked back to the place the rift had been. No light remained. He sniffed and couldn’t smell it. That was good enough for him.
He ran and caught up to Nick in the lead. The wolves trotted, often running back to make sure the humans were following. Dust and rocks kept falling. There was a great rumbling behind them. Get moving! cried Jeff, but all that came out were some barks.
The entrance was in sight but now some serious rocks were falling, and the dust was making the exit hard to see.
Nick and Jeff barked, urgently herding them toward the entrance.
With a mighty roar, the ceiling crumbled. Everyone leapt for the entrance, rolling past the police tape. It seemed as if the whole mountain was coming down. Dust and debris crashed, filling the entrance with rubble and collapsing part of the cave opening.
Jeff quickly assessed, pacing back and forth in front of the cave, and was satisfied that everyone had made it out.
Seraphina and Jolene helped Doc to his feet. He was a bit scraped up but no worse for wear. “That’s one down,” he said. “And a mighty big one at that. Good job, everyone. Now all we have to worry over is Baphomet.”
“And an angry mob,” said Jolene.
“We’d better get back,” he agreed. They hurried as fast as they could up the trail.