The Witch and the Werewolf by John Burks Read Free Book Online Page A

to shreds by the
oncoming tsunami. But it wasn’t his style. He sat down on the steps
and watched the waves.
    The door creaked open
behind him, casting a dim light onto the steps. The old priest
looked at him, the wolf, and then the waves.
    “ Well are you gonna be
comin’ to that church or what?” the man said in a thick Irish
accent. “Even a cur dog knows to get out of the rain.”
    Dutch grinned. Maybe he
would survive the first night of the end of the world.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Water, Water Everywhere
     
    Cassandra barreled through the streets of La Porte, Texas,
doing her dead level best to avoid parked cars, people, and the
detritus littering the streets. She’d never been much of a driver
to begin with. When she was sixteen her mother had refused to let
her drive. She told Cassandra she was worried she’d wander away.
She just wasn’t that experienced at driving and trying to drive
away from the hundred foot wall of water rushing up from the south
just made her that much more nervous.
    The wolves weren’t helping
either, but she’d tried to block those out. The constant howling
was hard to ignore.
    Worse, though, was the
thing in her mind. It was a collision of thought and memory, her
own fears mixed with the pain and torment of another being. She
felt the old alpha as if it were a part of her, felt his fear and
hesitation. She felt them torturing him. It burned like a lantern
and the flashing visions, visions from his mind, interrupted her
ability to concentrate on the road. It was like switching real time
from a dream to the waking world.
    The pack ran through the
forest at full speed, heedless to the dangers of fallen trees,
bolting through the low hanging branches, baying at the moon full
in the sky. She saw through the eyes the
pack’s alpha who strode out front, leading his wolves. The pack ran
for non other reason than the moon was full and they could. She
felt the bond they shared as a physical connection. The alpha’s
mind was intune with each other wolf, from the strongest males down
to the youngest cubs. The alpha was intone with his pack on a
primal level, feeling their fears, their hopes… their
hunger.
    As they entered a clearing
she jerked in reaction to the pack’s instant fear. A group of women
stood there, all armed with bows.
    She shook the vision,
trying to differentiate the panic she felt from the vision from her
own fear, and tried to focus on the task at hand.
    The wolves were chasing
her. She knew that. She felt them in the pit of her stomach, a deep
primal dread that made her skin crawl. It was completely different
than the feeling she got from the connection with the old wolf. She
feared them. The beasts ran along the van, howling as they leapt
from telephone pole to telephone pole, leaping over houses and
coming within mere feet of the speeding van. They were toying with
her. They were trying to let her know that they were in control and
she was… well she was nothing but their next meal. Just as her
mother had been.
    The water came, though,
and quickly began filling the streets, making it harder for the
wolves to follow her. She knew what was happening, knew a piece of
the radioactive comet must have fallen in the Gulf. She knew she
should find some kind of shelter. But she drove on anyway, driving
until she ran into a patch of water in a suburban neighborhood too
deep for the van. It stopped in the water, the engine died, and she
felt the tires move under her. The van was being carried away in
the current.
    The power was off in the
city and it was pitch black. Besides the sound of the rushing water
the city was strangely quiet. She thought she could hear screams
but they were muffled and distant.
    She sat in the van for a
long time, the vehicle inching down the street in the torrent of
water surging up from the sewers, tears streaming down her face. So
much had happened in so little time. There was so much about her
mother she didn’t know, so much the woman had hidden