She nodded, then eyed me sternly. “But you’re gonna go to midnight Mass, right?”
“Probably. I gotta go for a walk, first. Clear my head.” I hauled myself up, muscles stiff not from the fight, but from lying around. Any harm I take while wolfself heals rapidly, as long as I remain wolfy, but any hurt I get while in human form reappears when I revert back to human form.
“Good. I’ll see you there. And Gerry?”
“Yeah, Claud?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Take a shower, would you?”
I flipped her the bird again, and got my jacket. She smiled as she left, and I knew I had her convinced. That’s the good thing about having a shrink for a sister: you learn what they look for and you can give it to them.
Yes, her words made sense. They just did nothing to take away my pain.
I pulled on my duck boots, hat, scarf, and gloves. I probably didn’t need so much—it was over thirty degrees—but ever since the fight, I just couldn’t get warm.
I walked a long time and found myself at the foot of Derby Wharf. I went out far enough to let the holiday lights of the street fall behind me, until I was alone in the frigid dark. Bloodstains blurred the snow, which had been trampled by the locals looking for the serial killer’s savage dog. A fierce hellhound roaming Salem, one more myth in the making.
I watched the lighthouse beam skim the surface of the dark water. Listened to the soft slap of waves against the stone wharf. Anyone with a lick of insight could feel the remnants of the power that had been expended here.
In our family’s annals, there was nothing like this, but now I had to wonder: Who else had we missed? Or if this was a really new development, what did it mean? The only thing I knew was that my certainty about my place in the world—my armor and my sword—was shattered.
I felt the silence all around me, city noises muffled by the snow, and tried to find the bottom of the sea of pain I felt. The uncertainty was crushing, the loss of faith like the loss of a limb. I felt broken and made a fool of, mocked by the universe for my belief.
I took a deep breath, the kind you take at the crossroads when the dark man shows up and offers you the world in exchange for your grubby soul. As I watched the obsidian water, I took another breath and realized that if I couldn’t manage the leap of faith that Claudia described, then I had to make a leap of another kind.
Down the street from Derby Wharf is a little bar called In a Pig’s Eye. It’s a local joint; there’s no television and they pull the best pints in town.
Annie works there nights.
It was about half full, the folks who were getting one more drink in before Mass and the ones whose family were the other strangers on bar stools.
“Jeez, Gerry, you been sick or something? You look kinda peaky.” She set down a coaster in front of me. “Winter Warmer?”
“Thanks. Just . . . out of it, I guess.” I suddenly remembered my rank-smelling sweats and two days’ growth of beard, and kept my jacket zipped. Hell.
“I bet. I read about Claudia in the paper. You must have freaked.”
One of the things I’ve learned to live with is the fact that I’ll never get credit for being on the scene, for doing the job. “I worry about her, but she’s good at taking care of herself.” Then I couldn’t resist, sweats or no. “And besides. Chewie wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
She put the dark beer down in front of me, a perfect half inch of froth at the top. “No. He’s a sweetie.”
I felt myself flush, remembering the perfume of Annie’s ankles, her hand on the back of my neck as she talked to Claudia one summer night. We’d been coming home from work and I’d still been intoxicated by the kill when we ran into Annie. It’s one of my fondest memories. “You like dogs?”
She shrugged. “Depends. Like people, really. You gotta take them one at a time, you know?”
Ask her out, I told myself, ask her out right now, coffee, a drink, anything, or so help me, I’ll—“How do you feel about Aruba?” I felt myself go red again: that was not what I meant to say. It was too much, too soon, too pimp, oh shit—
Annie stopped wiping down the bar.
Suddenly, the bottomless water seemed a better choice.
“I’d prefer to start with a drink, maybe dinner,” she said slowly. “That is, if you’re really, actually, finally getting the guts to ask me out?”
“Uh . . . yeah.” I swallowed. “That okay?”
“Yeah. But it took you long enough.” She glanced at me. “You tough guys, you’re all just pussycats. You aren’t always a big pussycat, are you, Gerry?”
Mostly I’m a big wolf, I thought giddily. “Never again,” I vowed. “How’s tomorrow night?”
“Can’t.” She looked at me funny. “It’s Christmas tomorrow, remember? I’m going snowshoeing at Bradley Palmer State Park in the morning.”
I wrinkled my brow. An odd tradition, but nice, I s’pose . . .
She blew out her cheeks. “You know I’m Wiccan, right? I like Christmas, but I observe the Solstice.”
She looked a little defensive, but I could barely contain myself. I forced myself to take a deep breath. “Trust me when I say that mixed relationships are not a problem for me.”
She relaxed, then gave me a look that warmed me instantly, straight through. “If you invite me over for breakfast, I’ll ditch the snowshoeing. But I have to leave by noon, because I promised Kelly I’d take her shift at the shelter so she can be with her family.”
“Breakfast is at nine o’clock!” I could barely get the words out fast enough.
“Claudia won’t mind?”
“Nah. I’ll call her when I get home.” Claudia had been pushing me to ask Annie out from the first time I’d mentioned her. “She’s good people, not an evil bone in her body,” Claudia’d said. And Claudia knows bones, good and evil.
“I’ll be there.” Annie smiled, so sexy I felt my knees go to jelly. “I made a batch of my famous chocolate-chip muffins; I’ll bring them.”
Into nature, civic-minded, and a cook? I realized I was grinning like an idiot, so I drank the rest of my beer, to keep from proposing to her right then and there, my head ringing with every Christmas carol ever written.
The Werewolf Before Christmas
Kat Richardson
Kat Richardson is the author of the Greywalker paranormal detective novels. She is a former magazine editor from Los Angeles who now lives on a sailboat in the Seattle area with her husband and two ferrets. She rides a motorcycle and doesn’t own a TV, so she’s only seen one episode of Buffy in her life—poor Kat! On the other hand . . . she has more time for writing and World of Warcraft and working on the Northwest regional board of the Mystery Writers of America. This is her first werewolf story.
’Twas the night before Christmas—well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter—and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer’s own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo—always hungry—had taken the opportunity for a quick snack.
It hadn’t been as easy as he had expected. Something about the moon magic was really messed up at the North Pole, and he couldn’t manage to be quite wolf or man, but an uncomfortable, hairy hybrid of both—but at least he was warm. So he’d vaulted the fence of the reindeer stockade and chased the light-footed lunch to its doom. It was pretty tasty, too: corn-fed.
He’d chowed down with the alacrity you’d expect of a man or wolf who’d been lost in the tundra for most of a week following that stupid, stupid plane crash. That couldn’t really be called Matt’s fault, either, since the compass and GPS had both been on the fritz when the moon poked its beam through the window. He’d always embraced his wolf nature, and when the moon insisted, he threw himself into the frenzy of the change with the enthusiasm of a pig in a wallow. Well, maybe that had been a bad idea after all. . . .