“Classy,” I said, raising my glass. “To the survivors.”
I sat cross-legged on the rug, sipping the bourbon, the fireless fireplace at my back. The house creaked, settling into its bones, and for once the silence didn’t feel hostile. I found myself talking to the wolf, words spilling out in the hush.
“I’m not cut out for this,” I said, swirling the amber in my glass. “The board thinks I’m a liability. Marcus Ellery’s gunning for my job. The only reason they haven’t eaten me alive is that Daddy set up the trust so tight even he couldn’t get out of it.”
The wolf watched, ears cocked, eyes glinting in the lamplight.
“I promised him I’d keep it together, but sometimes I think he set me up to fail. Like, he knew I’d never be what he wanted, but he left me the mess anyway.”
I set the glass down, leaned in, and stroked the wolf’s head. The fur was matted and sticky, but the skull underneath was warm, alive. The animal closed its eyes, not in submission but in trust.
“Maybe you get it,” I whispered. “Run your whole life, and then one day, someone bigger and meaner takes a shot at you. Next thing you know, you’re bleeding out in the living room of a stranger who’s even more lost than you are.”
The bourbon worked its way through my veins, loosening the knots in my shoulders. I lay down beside the wolf, head pillowedon a stack of library books, and let my hand rest on his ribs. The rise and fall was hypnotic, soothing in a way nothing had been in months.
“I’m supposed to call animal control,” I said, voice thick with exhaustion. “But I think we both know how that ends.”
The wolf shifted, pressing its flank against my side. The heat of him was incredible, more real than anything in the whole house.
“You can stay,” I whispered. “Just don’t eat me in my sleep. I know how it ended for Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother.”
I continued rubbing his fur, moving my hand to his chest as he lay on his side. When my hand went down too far, it nudged something hard. I turned to look, jaw dropping at the sight of the wolf’s cock. I don’t know why I did it, but I stared, transfixed, studying the way the thing looked: long, hard, balls, and something strange and swelling at the base. What the fuck?
The wolf turned its head and looked at me.
My stomach turned and knotted, a tickle surging between my legs. Fuck. I cleared my throat and turned away from the thing, catching what I believed to be a smile on the animal’s face. Fuck me.
I closed my eyes, drifting on the warmth, the smell of wet fur and bourbon and old wood. The fire never caught, but I didn’t need it.
The last thing I heard before I slipped under was the wolf’s breath—deep, even, and impossibly human.
In the morning, I’d have to face the world again. But for now, I belonged to the night, and the night belonged to us.
Carrie
The bourbon left a salt film on my teeth, my mouth dry as cinders. When I blinked awake, there was no gentle drift of morning, only the stench of blood, fur, and a living-room lamp casting an ellipse of jaundice across the rug. I didn’t know how long I’d slept—minutes, hours—just that my head throbbed with the hangover of a funeral, and my tongue was thick with the memory of last night’s confession to a dying animal.
The wolf was where I left it, half-curled on a heap of tattered quilts in front of the fireplace. Its breathing had a cadence, steadier than mine: exhale, shallow inhale, pause, then a hitch like a prayer. I reached out, expecting to find its pelt cold, but instead my fingertips met a heat that was almost feverish. I traced the ridge of its spine through the rough fur. The animal did not flinch.
I’d meant to stand and shower, meant to bury the night in gallons of hot water and whatever lavender soap remained in the master bath. Instead, I stayed on the floor, my knees stiff,muscles locked in the coil of a runner bracing for a pistol shot. I watched the rise and fall of its chest, willing it to keep going.
It was the quiet that did me in. Stillwater Mansion was never truly silent—not with its century of creaking floors, its platoons of clocks, the HVAC that whooped like a failing heart valve every time the furnace kicked. But this was something else. The only sound was the wet click of the wolf licking its wounds. Even the wall clock seemed to hold its breath.
I must have dozed. When the glass exploded, I didn’t start so much as come online: senses sharp, vision narrowed, the taste of panic like a citrus peel behind my teeth. The bay window shattered inward, flinging a storm of diamonds across the walnut floor. The wolf’s head shot up, ears canted forward, teeth bared in a rictus that was all business.
Three men moved in perfect formation. Black gear, full facemasks, tactical gloves. The first one cleared the window ledge in a crouch, landing with a low thump and a hiss as he pivoted to cover the room. His rifle swept the space and fixed on me—then, a beat later, the wolf.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t move. The wolf did both.
It sprang, not with the limp agony of a dying beast, but with the whipcord speed of a nightmare. Its paws hit the rug; then there was a sound, a wet series of pops, and the creature bent midair, like a folding knife opening the wrong way. Its spine elongated, back legs hyperextending, claws raking the air as muscle bulked and shoulders ballooned. The head split, muzzle stretching into something that was only half-wolf, the rest human and impossibly angry. The gash in its side opened up, and blood sprayed the rug in a line as crisp as a signature.
The first man got off a shot. The bullet missed the beast but nailed a Waterford vase behind me, which exploded in a spray of blue hydrangea and glass. The wolf-thing slammed into him. There was a noise like a cinderblock splitting, and the man’shelmet snapped sideways, visor jamming against jaw. The wolf’s teeth found the gap beneath his chin guard and closed, lifting the man clear off the ground. He gurgled; then the wolf shook him like a disobedient puppy. Blood hit the ceiling in arterial arcs. The man’s body went loose, rifle dropping with a polite clatter onto the Persian rug.
The second man raised a sidearm, shouting something that sounded like “Freeze, hands up!” but it came out shredded by static. The wolf let go of the first corpse, which toppled and smeared the glass-and-flower mess into a Pollock across the hardwood. The second man squeezed off two rounds; one caught the wolf’s left flank, the other buried itself in the overstuffed arm of my favorite chair. The wolf barely reacted, but I heard the slug whine as it flattened against a rib.
It took the second man slower, almost thoughtful. They tumbled together onto the coffee table, which collapsed beneath them. The wolf’s claws raked his side, carving lines through kevlar and flesh as if it were nothing. The man screamed—a sound so raw and high it silenced the whole house. He kicked at the wolf’s belly, boots landing with wet, desperate thuds, but the thing only pressed harder, pinning him with a weight that left divots in the solid cherry floor. Then it dipped its head and bit. The helmet’s faceplate shattered, and the wolf dug into the meat below. The man tried to push it away, hands groping in panic, but the wolf caught one wrist and snapped it in half with a single twist. I heard the break, then the muffled pop of the other arm as the man tried to shield his face and the wolf crushed his forearm with its jaws.
By the time it let go, the second man’s head lolled, helmet caved in, blood geysering from the artery above the collar. He spasmed, boots kicking the air, then went still. The wolf sat atop the corpse for a heartbeat, muzzle dripping, eyes black holes punched in silver.