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Jacques had a rough idea where to find Arald and Lenore. He’d heard whispers and rumours from other hunters and wolves over the years to know what was true and what wasn’t.
He knew Arald was a civil, friendly version of Malaceia, and he also knew that Lenore was not quite the old scary hag most thought of when hearing her history.
After stowing himself away inside the back of a lorry, Jacques hitched a ride down to Devonshire.
In less than half a day, he was heading right along the Jurassic Coast to a small town called Salcombe Regis.
Situated on the edges of several tourist hotspots, Salcombe Regis was a small town that still thrived with its locals and the steady flow of holidaying families.
Out in the rural areas, Arald and Lenore were all but left to their own devices, known only to the locals as ‘the odd couple’ because they seldom took part in any community events.
Lenore wished for nothing more than to enjoy the fruits of life in peace and quiet. The less attention she drew, the better.
Arald, having had one too many fights with his hot-headed twin brother, wished for only the same, making the two ideal business partners.
Lenore, for all her magick trading for an immortal life had been worth, still carried a natural, almost ‘human’ like ability to sense certain things.
Psychic, for want of a better word. She could sense something big coming her way and she knew she had to help whoever knocked at her door.
Jacques obviously had a problem when it came to knocking on doors. Using his muzzle only resulted in a sore nose and a quietened, almost muted, ‘thud.’ Using his paws did nothing but scrape like nails down a blackboard.
When he approached the faded sky-blue door of the old farmhouse, he was pleasantly relieved, but not surprised, to see it already open, as if inviting him in.
All of the buildings in the local area were at least two centuries old, each harbouring its own quirky characteristics of days gone by.
This particular farmhouse was painted white, and where it would have once had a thatched roof, now sported a modern slate roof.
With its uneven, crumbling bricks on the exterior giving off a charming country vibe, the modern roof, all new and shiny, looked particularly peculiar and out of character for it. Almost like seeing one of your grandparents suddenly sporting lots of bling but still walking around with their zimmer frame.
Jacques placed a paw over the threshold and called out, “Hello?”
A woman appeared from a doorway to the left, around six feet inside. Her auburn hair hung in curls around her heart shaped face and her green eyes gleamed like freshly cut gems. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks.
“Hello,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been expecting someone. I had no idea it would be a wolf. Come on in.”
Jacques padded inside, heading towards her. The delicious aroma of freshly baked bread trickled into his nose, making him sour for old memories once again.
Saliva pooled in his mouth as he remembered how good his mother’s home-baked bread had been, especially when he slathered it in her freshly churned butter.
He entered the kitchen to see a huge room open out before him. Brick red porcelain tiles were under his paws, most of them dull and faded with age and wear and tear. A beautifully sculpted pine dining table sat in the middle of the room, four chairs either side and one at each end. An old aga kicked out heat to his left, warming a black kettle sat on top of one of the burning rings.
“Would you like something to drink?” Lenore asked, preparing two mugs with tea bags.
“Some water, please,” Jacques replied. He’d not stopped for food or drink in his dire need to get here as quickly as possible.
Lenore looked down at him with soft eyes and smiled. “Now, you’re not expecting to drink out of a bowl like a dog, are you?”
Jacques frowned. “Well how else do you expect me to drink?”
“I can give you a closed glass with a straw?”
Jacques found this rather curious. She was already treating him like he was a human before he’d even asked for her help. “Ok...I’ll give it a try. Thank you.”
Lenore nodded her head and reached to the cupboard above her. She pulled out a pint glass with a blue and white checked lid screwed over the top of it. A white straw poked through the middle. She unscrewed it, went to the fridge, grabbed a hold of a large jug with water and ice cubes in it, and poured it into his glass until it was full.
At just hearing the ice cubes clinking, Jacques found himself even more homesick. Memories of summer filled days running around with his siblings before heading inside to quench his thirst with some of his mum’s delicious freshly squeezed fruit juice, complete with cool ice cubes.
“Thank you,” he said, when Lenore set the glass down on the table and motioned for him to sit down.
Footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards out in the hall. Jacques shivered when the rhythm and heaviness of them reminded him so much of Malaceia, and in some ways Gregory. Gregory weighed less than half of either of the brothers, so his footsteps never quite carried the thudding that Malaceia and Arald’s did.
“Hello young fellow,” came a booming male voice.
Jacques turned in his seat, somewhat nervous of the reception to expect from Arald. They’d not seen each other or spoken since Malaceia and Arald had had their big fight; just over six years ago.
“Hi,” Jacques said. “I must apologise for the unscheduled visit. I really don’t mean to barge in on you like this, but you know I wouldn’t do it unless absolutely necessary.”
Arald laughed and pulled out a chair opposite Jacques. He leaned across the table, his mass of weight making the old wood groan.
He and Malaceia were identical twins. Before their fight, the only thing that differentiated them was their belly buttons—Arald had an ‘outy’ whilst Malaceia had an ‘inny.’ Not a widely known fact to many.
Since their fight though, Arald bore a puckered scar that ran from the left side of his mouth all the way up his cheek to the tip of his left earlobe. Malaceia had his own scar that ran from the bottom of his right-hand ribs to his left hip bone. Arald had nearly eviscerated his own brother.
“No need for the babbling, Jacques. I knew you’d lighten my doorstep one day. How are things?”
Jacques shook his head. “Bad. I fear Malaceia and Gregory have gone into some sort of maniacal episode together. They’ve created a pack of over eighty hybrids. Gregory has let twelve of them loose, but that’s not all. He’s packed each of them with a virus—a virus that can change a human to a werewolf by a good old-fashioned bite.”
Arald raised a dark bushy eyebrow. “We knew about the hybrids, but we didn’t know about the virus.”
Jacques frowned, trying to put things together. “You knew about the hybrids?”
“Of course we did,” Arald replied, thanking Lenore when she presented him with his tea. “You didn’t think it was slightly odd that one of Lenore’s children was a test subject, but no-one had been to rescue him?”
“I hadn’t actually given it much thought. There’s been so much going on. So, did you volunteer Ashley or something?”
“Pretty much,” Lenore said, sitting down next to Arald. “After the fight with Malaceia, we knew something needed to be done to stop things spiralling out of control. Obviously with Arald’s involvement with the business up to that point, Gregory had been talking about experiments with hybrids and we needed a way to keep tabs on what was going on. We needed to know when it was time to pull the plug on The Red Riding Hoods.”
Jacques gasped. “Pull the plug? As in make them go out of business?”
Arald nodded. “It’s all well and good, having a few rogue beasts of the supernatural wreaking havoc here and there. It keeps things interesting and it reminds the humans that they’re not as invincible as they think they are. However, the scales that Gregory and Malaceia are going to are something else entirely.”
“Does Gregory know who Ashley is?” Jacques asked.
“No,” Arald said, snorting. “The arrogant bastard was too delighted with his catch to bother with his background. To him, Ashley was a prize catch. He’d been through Cambridge Witch School and aced all of his classes—even coming out with a higher score than what his lecturer did when he passed. We made sure Ashley was ‘vulnerable’ and in the right place at the right time for Gregory to risk a kidnap. Worked like a charm.” He took a sip of his tea. “Now, Gregory has unwittingly turned one of his own family into an immortal, murderous beast. What else can take down such a highly regarded family?”
Jacques eyes widened. Fear choked him. All he could think about was Katana. “But...but what about Katana?”
Lenore frowned and cocked her head to one side. “What about Katana?”
“Gregory sent Ashley after Katana. He told him they were soul-mates. He thinks that’s his only ‘in’ to kill off the phoenix-hybrids—using their soul-mate as their weakness, but I don’t know how...” something clicked into place in Jacques head “...dying of a broken heart. Oh my God. He wants Katana dead.”
“What?” Lenore said, her hand trembling around the handle of her mug. “He sent Ashley to find Katana? Did he find her?”
“Yes. We’ve spent the past three days in Scotland with him. Katana’s killed him twice already.”
“No!” Lenore cried. “No, she mustn’t. Each time she kills him, he loses a little bit more of his humanity. The werewolf will takeover eventually. If he dies enough, he’ll never turn human again.”
“But Gregory was killing him dozens of times a day in the lab?”
“Yes, but Gregory had a serum that stopped that effect taking a hold.” Lenore looked down at the table and rested her forehead in her hands. “You must tell Katana to stop killing him.”
“Doesn’t Ashley know about the serum? He never mentioned anything to us?”
“No,” Arald said, reaching out to Lenore and holding her hand. “We only know about it because we saw it on one of the spy-cams Ashley managed to set up down there. We’ve not checked in for over a week. We had no idea he’d let them go until Ashley called this morning to ask me about you. We’ve not spoken to Ashley in depth about it all since he went down there.”
“Ashley thinks he’s immortal, pretty much. He needs telling.”
“When did you last see him?” Lenore asked.
“About ten hours ago. He lost control after Katana told him she’d agreed to marry Tobias Bembridge. He started to turn and yelled at us to get away, but he was turning at such a rate, we wouldn’t have had much of a head start so Katana took his head off and gave us a good head start. As far as I know, he didn’t chase the trail.”
“Killing him will stop the werewolf transition,” Lenore said. “But it just means that next time, he’ll transition even quicker, meaning when he dies again, he’s more werewolf than before. Eventually, when he rises from the flames, he’ll rise a werewolf, not a human.”
“I need to call Katana,” Jacques said, looking around him for a phone.
“You said she’s marrying Tobias Bembridge?” Arald asked, his intrigue more than spiked.
“Yes...she wanted help with the hybrids that are running loose and advice on what to do about her father and Gregory. Tobias named his price and she paid it.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Arald said, reaching over and patting one of Jacques paws. “There’s no way Tobias would let Katana be prosecuted for any of this. She’s unknowingly protected herself.”
“All of this is Malaceia and Gregory anyway. What could she possibly be prosecuted for?”
“Guilty by association. Unwittingly taking part in what is essentially genocide without even questioning it.”
Jacques sucked in a breath. “So what about her brothers?”
“They’ll all go down,” Arald said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “That’s just the way it is. Even if Katana hadn’t agreed to marry Tobias, she may have been looked upon favourably as she’s the one to expose all of this.”
“Oh my goodness,” Jacques said, sighing. “This is so much more of a mess than what I anticipated.”
“But Ashley and Katana aren’t what you came to speak to us about today, is it?” Lenore asked, care and concern filtering through her eyes. “Ashley briefly rang me this morning to ask me about your...state so to speak.”
Jacques nodded. “I wondered if there’s any way to undo what Gregory has done. Surely there must be something that can help me shift again? Even if I end up stuck as a human for the rest of my life, I don’t care. I just don’t want to be like this anymore. I’m sick of it.”
Lenore nodded and smiled. “I understand. We need access to you though to see exactly what Gregory has done. If it’s more magick involved than science then I have a friend who can help. If it’s more science than magick, then we may need some outside help.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Your mind, my love,” Lenore said, smiling.
Jacques balked. The idea of her reaching the deepest crevices of his tortured memories made him very uncomfortable. “Gregory is your son though,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Why are you not upset about his involvement and possible downfall in all of this?”
Lenore sighed. “To put it quite simply, Gregory should be in a grave, alongside his brothers and sisters who all died before the turn of the 1300’s. When he decided to start dabbling in the occult and killing young children to extend his own life, he became dead to me. He’s an abomination that needs stopping.”
“But he’s nearly as old as you. Why have you only just decided now to stop him?”
“I tried years ago when I first found out he’d gone into the occult. Up until that point, I understood that he’d managed to find a herbal drink to prolong his life. Of course, it was all just a big fat lie. By that point though, he was well and truly settled in The Red Riding Hood business and Malaceia was having none of it.”
“But surely you turning people into werewolves was dabbling in the occult?”
“No,” she said. “Not at all. That’s simply using magick to alter their physical form based on a trigger—that trigger being the full moon. It’s complex but is white magick. I’ve sought no help from demons to do that. Unlike Gregory.”
“Gregory has been to demons?”
“Of course. What did you think I meant when I said occult? You don’t gain access to black magick without a hefty price.”
Dread tumbled around inside Jacques belly. “What kind of price?”
Lenore shrugged her shoulders. “Usually something cliché like the blood or soul of a virgin.”
“Katana!” Jacques yelled. “Give me a phone. I need to call Katana.”