The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (32 page)

There was nothing anyone could say. They were all staring at Axl, who scowled slowly around at them.

“Great,” he said, in a high, breaking boy’s voice. “Thanks for fucking telling me, assholes. Thanks a fucking lot.”

He slammed the screen door behind him as he stormed out.

21

The kid could move. When Axl saw Gabe and Joe coming he took off at top speed, tearing down the street.

Blue - who had never been much of a runner - got as far as the corner, but when she looked around she couldn’t see any of them. Grayson followed at an awkward jog.

“Where did they go?” he said, already limping a little as he caught up with her.

“I don’t know.”

He sighed. “Oh God.”

“They’ll find him, right?”

“I don’t know. Can you drive?”

“Yes, but I don’t have...”

He turned and hurried back towards the house. When they got back, Charlie was still in the throes of a grand apology tour.

“Seriously,” he was saying, hand on his heart. “I am
so
fuckin’ sorry, man. I did not mean to put my foot in it like that. I had no idea you hadn’t...”

“...I was working my way up to it...”

“...yeah, I know that
now
. I just assumed...”

“Good news,” said Grayson. “We now have a volatile teenage werewolf running around Islamorada.”

Charlie sighed loudly. “If there’s anything I can do...”

“You’ve done enough,” said Eli. “Just stay here and keep an eye on Gloria.” He turned back to Blue. “Where are the others?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Chasing Axl. I couldn’t keep up.”

“We could do with a car,” said Grayson.

Eli handed him a set of keys. “Take mine. I’ll borrow Gabe’s. Find the little bugger before something
really
unfortunate goes down.”

Blue went into the hallway to find a pair of shoes. On her way back Gloria somehow got caught in her wake and bobbed into the kitchen, frowning and knotting her fingers together. “You’re not leaving me?” she said, looking straight at Charlie. “Why is everyone going? We haven’t had dessert.”

“I’m not leaving,” said Charlie. “I promise. I won’t leave you.”

Gloria’s frown deepened and then she started to cry - soft, baffled sobs, like something was tearing her to pieces inside.

“Go,” Eli told Blue. “Please. I can take care of this.”

Grayson dropped the keys into her hand as they stepped out of the back door. For a brief, stupid second Blue realized she didn’t even know which car was Eli’s, then glanced at the key fob and saw it was for the gunmetal-gray Land Rover parked behind Gabe.

The inside of the car smelled faintly of cigars and something expensive she had caught a whiff of when Eli had bent to kiss her cheek in greeting. The scent recalled the brush of his stubble and the warmth of his skin, and in that instant she could picture him clearly as a ladies’ man.

She hesitated over the unfamiliar controls for a moment, before reversing out into the street. The car felt big and growly under her, and her palms were sweating on the steering wheel before she had even reached the end of the street.

“Where am I supposed to be going?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Grayson.

“Great. Well, that makes two of us.”

The last red sunset streaks of light were fading as she drove slowly around the neighborhood, taking care to look at everyone she passed. Kids on bikes, pizza delivery boys, chattering children trailing cleat-laden soccer moms. Blue had only some idea of why everyone was so worried about Axl, but it was enough to make her afraid for these people.

She caught sight of Gabe just as the night rolled in. He was walking alone down a quiet street. She rolled the window down and called to him.

“Where’s Joe?” she said, as he scrambled into the back.

“Lost him,” said Gabe. He looked sweat-stained and tired and it was only a matter of seconds before the AC started wafting the salt of his sweat around the interior of Eli’s car. “He has much longer legs than me; I’m faster in the water. Did you see him?”

“Who? Axl? No.”

“Shit.” Gabe sighed. “Is this Eli’s car?”

“Yeah. He took yours.”

Grayson frowned. “Wait...you left Charlie alone with Gloria?”

“Yes,” said Gabe, with an edge to his voice. “I trust him that far. Besides, he knows not to fuck with her. She’s the reason Lyle never dared come south of Miami.”

Blue caught his eye in the rear view mirror. “Why?” she asked, trying – and failing – to imagine what an eighty pound old lady could do to scare a full-grown werewolf. “What did she do?”

“That’s just the thing,” said Grayson. “Nobody really knows.”

Gabe leaned in again. “Turn right. He might have gone to the beach to smoke. Hopefully calm himself down.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” said Blue, the turn signal clunking loudly in her ear.

“I told you,” said Gabe. “At his age – Reese’s age, even – they’re unstable. And resilient as all hell. Remember your teens? You’re built to bounce when you’re Axl’s age; your bodies are more or less elastic, to keep you alive through the dumbass shit your brain tells you do when you’re angry, full of hormones and a total moron when it comes to thinking through the long term consequences of your actions.”

“They can flip just like that,” said Grayson. “Doesn’t even need to be a full moon. Just your average teenage moodiness can bring it on.”

Blue kept on driving. She thought that might have been the reason for the emergency, but a small part of her was hoping it wasn’t. So much for that. “You’re serious?”

“He’s probably done it before,” said Gabe, with a dreadful matter-of-factness. “You think that dead deer and him showing up naked on Gloria’s doorstep was a coincidence?”

“Jesus.” She didn’t think she wanted to see this. There was something obscene about the idea of a boy – a child, really – being bent by some unseen force into the shape of something not human. The whole thing gave her the deep-down shudders and she wanted it not to be real, some weird sick joke that the locals played on outsiders.

“It could be worse,” said Gabe. “At least he’s healthy enough for the turn not to kill him. Not like that poor little bastard Charlie brought with him. Kid’s so pale he’s practically blue.”

Grayson frowned out of the window, the dark pane reflecting his face back like a mirror. “Violet,” he murmured. “You’re turning violet.”

“Huh?”

Grayson’s eyes widened and he stiffened in his seat. “Oh my God,” he said.

“What?”

“We have to go back.”

“Why? You think he’s back at the house?”

“No,” said Grayson. “But I think I know what that metal smell is. The one that’s been bothering Joe. We have to go back.”

At the same moment he said it, a noise cut through the night. Blue had heard it a million times in her own head recently, like the punchline of a joke.
“I used to be a werewolf but I’m all right noooooooowwwoooooooo.”

She felt a strange urge to laugh as it rose up into the stunned silence. A howl. Someone – or something – was howling.

*

Charlie heard the howl, too, spiraling up over the town into the night sky, but then he heard something else. Something even more unexpected.

The floorboards were shaking. Reese was
running
, the fastest Charlie had ever seen him move, lumbering from one flat foot to the other on his way to the bathroom, hand over his mouth. Charlie could feel the house shaking right down to its foundations; the light fitting in the hall began to sway.

“He’s just a little queasy,” Charlie told Gloria, who was staring at him with this awful, blank look on her face, like a puppy or a simple-minded child. “I guess seafood doesn’t agree with him.”

God, it was rough seeing her like this. It was one thing to joke about it from the top end of the panhandle, but up close and personal it was clear that her final marble had long since rolled out of reach. She had always been so tough and resourceful, an expert at untangling the yards of red tape that went with the foster care system. And now she couldn’t even untangle her own hair.

“Come on,” said Charlie, taking her thin arm. “Let’s get some ice-cream and have us a game of checkers. I’ll even let you cheat.”

Gloria yanked her arm away, her vacant eyes suddenly bright with anger. “I never cheated,” she said, her voice rising. “It was just payback.”

“Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”

She reached out and shoved ineffectually at him. “Get out of here!”

“Ma, it’s me – Charlie.”

“I know who you are,” she said, and there was something else in her eyes now. Something he’d never seen there before. Jesus, was she fucking
scared?
“Get out. Get the hell out of here!”

Gloria turned and ran, half-stumbling, up the stairs. He reached out to calm her but she screamed so loud that he was sure everyone up and down the block would hear it. In the brief, panicked silence that followed Charlie could hear Reese retching and moaning. The light above the stairs was swinging. Jesus, was that thing
still here
after all these years?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Charlie, holding up both hands, but Gloria kept on up the stairs, taking the top of the flight on all fours. He followed at a safe distance but it was too late; she had reached the top, got to her feet and he was just in time to watch her bedroom door slam. A lock clicked shut.

Something else splattered in the downstairs bathroom. Reese began to sob and moan.

“Shit,” muttered Charlie, and went down the stairs.

Reese was on his knees in front of the toilet, crying. There was red around his mouth and smeared across the back of his hand where he’d wiped his mouth. The bowl was full of dark blood.

“I’m dying,” he moaned, snot and tears streaming down his face. “There was something in the food.”

“What? Vegetables?”

Reese shot him a look of pure hatred. “It was her. I know it.”

“Who?”

“Her,” said Reese. “The old lady. She’s trying to kill me.”

“Gloria? Why would she be trying to kill you?”

Reese lurched to his feet. His wet eyes swam in their sockets and Charlie held his breath. Was this it?

“Because she knows,” said Reese, and pulled a knife from the back of his jeans. He staggered past Charlie, shoving him hard into the stairs. In the few, scrambling seconds it took him to get up Charlie grasped what the boy meant and why he’d agreed to come here; the stupid little bastard had come to get even with his dad’s most fearsome old adversary. With Gloria.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” said Charlie, following Reese into the empty living area. “I mean it, Reese. She’s a sick old lady.”

“Bullshit she is. I know what she did. I was there. I saw it.” Reese waved the knife wildly, blood still foaming at the corners of his mouth. “The flies and the footsteps and the writing on the fucking wall, Charlie. You saw it, too. That was what killed him. That was what killed my dad. It was her fucking voodoo.”

“Put the knife down, Reese. If you lay a single fucking sausage finger on her...”

Reese turned on a heel. For a second his gaze was swimmy and unsteady, like something had shaken loose in his brain, but then it solidified somehow, into that bratty, delighted look that Charlie recognized – and this was the funny part – as the exact same look Reese had been wearing when he’d pooped on the front seat of Lyle’s car.

“Seriously?” he said, starting to giggle. “You
really
wanna be mentioning sausages, Charlie?”

Charlie said nothing; for a second it was like his fury had stolen his breath. It wasn’t so much that Reese had brought it up, but that Reese had been
dumb
enough to bring it up. He probably didn’t even remember the original incident; he’d been a brat in a high chair at the time, drawing ketchup patterns on the plastic with his dirty, snot-crusted fingers.

Daddy issues. Fucking little bastard had no idea. Try fifteen years of trying to rinse the taste out of your mouth. After all those years Charlie could still see Lyle laughing behind the grill, turning over the sausage links with a pair of tongs.

Wes couldn’t make it today, but he said he’d be along in spirit. Sausage, son?

“Gloria didn’t kill your dad, Reese,” said Charlie, and goddamn if it didn’t feel good to say it after all this time. “
I did
.”

Reese let out a wild bellow and came thumping towards him, knife held over his head. He sent Charlie crashing once again into the banister and the blade flew out of his fingers and fell, scoring the stair wall as it went. Charlie saw the light swaying above his head for a second and then Reese’s face, all white and runny with blood and tears.

Oh shit. This was not a good place to be. Reese was huge. Okay, it was all fat, but three hundred pounds was still three hundred pounds when it was sitting on top of you. As Reese shifted his weight back to take another shot, Charlie felt his bones grinding into the floor beneath him. If Reese chose to sit on his ribs he knew he’d suffocate in a matter of minutes.

But Reese wasn’t thinking. He was just smacking and flailing, raining blows down on Charlie’s head and face, screaming the whole time.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, fucking motherfucker!”

Not if I kill you first, Charlie thought, starting to feel floaty. There had been a brief second of darkness just then, ended only when he felt blood trickling into the back of his throat, triggering his gag reflex and snapping him back to full consciousness. The teeth in his right lower jaw felt sharp and raggedy and one of them was loose. His cheekbone and eye socket were a swollen, sunken hole of pain that threatened to swallow his head whole. And Reese wasn’t even nearly done; the crazy little shit was just sat there riding out the storm of sobs, but his fists were still clenched.

Just how much longer could he keep this up without busting out like Eli’s kid had done? He was only nineteen, after all.

Now, there was a thought.

Charlie swallowed very carefully. His tongue felt thick and he’d bitten it in several places. When he tried to speak it first came out in a lispy gurgle, so that he had to swallow again. “I did it slowly,” he said. “So he’d suffer.”