Copyright 2024 Blackwych Books

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

Kindle edition

First published in September 2024

by Blackwych Books, London

Struggling to deal with his divided self, John Tench realizes that he'll soon have to make a decision. Does he want to continue living his old life, or is he ready to embrace a new existence? And can either of those choices help him save Sobolton from the fury of the wolves?

Desperate to save her daughter, Lisa finally comes to the conclusion that she needs to go on the offensive. Armed only with her patchy knowledge of the wolves and their ways, she sets out into the forest on a one-woman mission to rescue Eloise. As far as she's concerned, the town of Sobolton can burn, but she's willing to die if that's the only way to save her daughter.

As different strands of Sobolton's history start to come together, dark forces awaken in the forest and other dangers emerge. Sensing weakness, an ancient enemy believes that the time has finally come to claim its greatest victory.

Echo of the Dead is the eleventh book in the thirteen-part Horrors of Sobolton series, which tells the story of one small town's struggle to deal with the paranormal monstrosities on its doorstep. Each book tells a standalone story, but there are cliffhangers and readers are recommended to go through the series in order.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Echo of the Dead

(The Horrors of Sobolton book 11)

Chapter One

Today...

“She's gone to them,” Lisa replied, watching the forest for a moment longer before turning to him with panic in her eyes. “John, don't you see what happened here? She told me she feels guilty about what's happening to Sobolton, and I think she finally decided that there's only one way to set things straight.” She paused for a few more seconds, as if she couldn't quite get the words out. “She's gone to find them,” she added finally. “Eloise has gone to turn herself over to the wolves. She thinks that if she does that, she can save the whole town.”

“Well...”

For a moment, he wasn't quite sure what to say. As he looked out into the dark forest, John couldn't help but think of Eloise out there all alone, potentially at the mercy of the wolves.

“Eloise!” Lisa yelled, suddenly pushing past him and climbing up the muddy slope that led between the trees. “Stop! Come back!”

“Hold on a moment,” John replied. “We don't even know which way she's gone.”

“Eloise!” Lisa shouted, stopping for a moment to cup her hands around her mouth. “Where are you? Eloise, come back right now!”

“How much of a head start do you think she got?”

“I don't know,” Lisa stammered, setting off again, starting to disappear into the forest, “but I have to find her. She's has no idea what she's getting herself into.”

“Just wait a few seconds,” John said, before starting to follow. “I can't let both of you go wandering off out there. Lisa, we need a plan.”

“My daughter's missing and those monsters might get their hands on her at any moment,” she pointed out, already a little breathless. “Michael once told me that wolves aren't the only things out there. If you think I'm going to hang back and wait, you've got another thing coming.”

“I get that,” he admitted, catching up to her quite fast, with the map still in his hands, “but it's better to at least have some kind of plan.”

“The plan is to find Eloise.”

“I know, but -”

Grabbing her arm, he forced her to turn to him.

“It's dark,” he said firmly, “and the forest is huge. Added to that, look down. Do you see any tracks at all that we can follow?”

“No,” she replied, “but -”

“So we need to regroup,” he told her. “Instead of charging out there, probably going in completely the wrong direction, we need to come up with a proper plan and then we need to execute it properly. I know you must be terrified, and I'm not denying for one moment that Eloise is in danger, but rash actions won't help her. Please, you have to see that.”

“You don't understand,” she insisted. “If Saint Thomas gets his hands on her, he'll kill her. Either that, or he'll try to use her for his own ends. Whatever he ends up doing, it won't be good. To him, she's just a pawn in his plans.”

“I know that,” he reminded her. “Can we just be logical for a moment?”

He watched her eyes, and finally he began to hope that he might be getting through to her.

“Let's come up with a proper plan,” he continued, “and -”

“There's no time!” she snapped, pulling away and heading off again, reaching out to support herself against the sides of trees as she passed. “Eloise! Mommy's here! Eloise, come back to me!”

***

Around an hour later, still stumbling through the pitch black forest, Lisa briefly lost her footing again. She began to slip and a sharp pain rippled up one side of her ankle, but at the last moment she managed to stay on her feet.

“Eloise!” she screamed, and now her voice sounded harsh and ragged. “Come back!”

Stopping next to her, John looked around, but in truth the forest was too dark now for him to see anything at all. He'd given up trying to persuade Lisa to head back to town, and he'd told himself that they were just going to have to find some way to make the search work, but now he felt as if they were completely lost. He was even struggling to work out which direction they were going, and part of him thought that perhaps they might simply be trudging round and round in the same patch over and over.

A cold wind blew through the forest, rustling the leaves of the trees.

Turning to look the other way, he searched for something – anything – that might give him a clue. He was trying to draw on every last scrap of experience he'd gained over his years in law enforcement, yet in truth he felt as if he was far beyond the limits of his knowledge now. He needed something new, something different; deep in his heart of hearts, he was already starting to suspect that he needed to go beyond mere human capabilities.

“Where is she?” Lisa asked, with tears in her eyes. “John, it's so dark and scary and cold out here. She must be so terrified.”

“I don't even quite know where we are,” he replied, looking around in the hope that he might spot something – anything – he could use as a marker. “I'm not used to this forest yet, at least not apart from a few areas. I don't exactly know my way around.”

“Eloise has an instinct for it.”

He turned to her, although in truth he could barely see her at all.

“I first noticed it when she was young,” she continued. “We weren't allowed to leave the clearing surrounding the cabin, but Eloise always had a kind of... affinity for the world around her. I guess I never wanted to admit the truth, but deep down I knew it was always something to do with the other side of her. The wolf side, the side she inherited from her father.”

“Do you think that's guiding her now?”

“I think she's too young to really understand it,” she told him, “but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel it. It's a part of her and it's probably calling to her right now.”

Looking up, she saw the moon hanging high in the starry night sky.

“And that thing's probably part of it.”

“If you're right, it might be a good thing,” he suggested. “It might mean that she's less lost than we are.”

“Or she's following instincts she doesn't understand,” she replied, before hesitating for a moment. “The thing that always scared me the most,” she added finally, “is the idea that her wolf side might... wake up. I've spent so long trying to keep it hidden, trying to ignore it and push it down and just pretend that it doesn't exist. My hope was always to get her the hell away from Sobolton and then hope that her wolf side could be suppressed entirely.”

“Can she... transform into one of them?”

“I've never let her try,” she explained, “but... it stands to reason that she should have the ability.”

“Then -”

“But that's not her!” she said angrily. “It doesn't have to be part of her soul! With my help, she can deny it completely!”

“Do you really think that's possible!”

“I know it's possible! It has to be possible!”

Once those words had left her lips, she and John stood in silence for a few seconds. They were both listening to the sounds of the forest, even if those sounds amounted to nothing more than the rustling of the trees. Turning, Lisa looked at the darkness in every direction, while John felt as if he could almost sense the vastness of the forest stretching out in every direction.

“She's out here somewhere,” Lisa whispered. “My little baby's out here and she's all alone.”

Deep down, John knew that they were making a mistake. He'd wanted to wait before rushing out into the darkness, to come up with a methodically crafted plan based on reason and logic; he still believed that a proper plan would have allowed them to pursue Eloise much more successfully, but he knew that it was far too late to turn back now. He also knew that no amount of cold hard practical logic could ever contend with a mother's desperate fear for her child, and he figured that he and Lisa were simply going to have to make the best of the situation now.

In which case, there was one idea that had been percolating slowly at the back of his mind for a few minutes now.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, turning to look past him.

“I didn't hear anything,” he admitted, convinced that she was starting to imagine clues now.

“She might have gone that way,” she said, stepping around him and picking her way between two more trees.

“We don't know that for sure,” he replied with a sigh. “Didn't we just come from roughly that direction? Lisa, can we just -”

Suddenly she let out a cry, and he saw her slipping and falling from view. Hurrying after her, he stopped just in time to keep himself from tumbling down a shallow incline; he saw Lisa slamming into the side of a tree at the bottom, and he quickly began to make his way down with care.

Reaching her, he crouched down and rolled her over, but he could already see a bloodied wound on one side of her forehead.

“Damn it, this isn't the way!” he hissed as he tried in vain to wake her up. “Lisa, can you hear me? We can't just go charging around in the forest all night! We need a proper plan!”

Chapter Two

Twenty years earlier...

Bright morning line shone down through the treetops, casting gently swaying shadows across the steps at the front of the cabin.

“Here,” Michael said, holding out the books for her. “I... borrowed them from the bins at the back of a goodwill store in town. I'm sorry they're old and slightly dog-eared, but they're the best I could manage. I know you like these things.”

Taking the books, Lisa saw that he'd picked a few romance novels from a series she'd read a few years back. In fact, as she began to flick through them, she realized that they were the actual copies she herself had taken to the goodwill store a while earlier. Evidently the books had sat on the shelves ever since, unloved and untouched before finally finding their way back to her after getting tossed out. Looking at the front of one of the books, she saw a stylized image of a scantily-clad woman being held in the big, strong arms of a very muscly man.

For a fraction of a second she remembered how these books and their covers had made her feel when she was young. She'd escaped into them, convinced that they offered glimpses into a possible future. Even at veterinary college, she'd spent most of her spare time holed up in her room, losing herself in tales of romance. Part of her wanted to scream at her younger self and tell her to stop being so naive, yet she couldn't quite escape a glimmer of hope – and at the same time, she hated herself for feeling that way.

“We can still have it all, you know.”

Looking up, she saw a trace of hope and expectation – but also fear – in Michael's eyes. His face remained horribly bloodied, with skin peeling away in patches due to his refusal to shift his form.

“A happy ending, I mean,” he continued. “I know things seem bleak right now, but you just have to get used to it.”

“Get used to what?” she asked. “Being kept here as a prisoner?”

“I'm keeping you safe.”

“For how long?” she continued. “Michael, my home is back in Sobolton. I can't just move out here and live in the forest with you!”

“Why not?”

“Because this isn't my life!”

“It can be,” he countered. “I get it, you're in shock. It's only been a few weeks and you're having trouble adjusting, but these things are always bound to take time. Once you get used to life out here, I'm certain that you'll realize how much happier you are. Don't you remember how dirty the town is? There's filth and grime everywhere, the streets are caked in it. Do you really want to spend your life dealing with all those idiots who used to traipse into your office?”

“It might help if your father's corpse wasn't over there,” she pointed out, glancing at the large dead wolf in the middle of the clearing. Flies were already buzzing around the carcass.

“I already explained, he has to stay where he fell,” Michael replied. “It's complicated, but it's part of our culture.” He paused again. “We do have a culture, you know,” he added. “I know that might seem surprising, I'm sure most people think wolves are just wild beasts, but we have a long culture that goes back centuries. Granted, there are parts of it that I hate and want to ignore, but sometimes I have to respect parts of it. You'll learn to appreciate our way of life too, Lisa.”

He put a hand on the side of her arm, but she immediately pulled away.

“You will,” he insisted. “I swear. But for now, I want to make this as comfortable as possible for you. You like those books, don't you? If I've got the wrong ones, let me know and I'll try to do better. I know they're only part of a series and there are some gaps. Hopefully I'll be able to find the rest soon.”

“They're fine,” she told him, not wanting to admit that she'd already read them. “They just seem a little... corny now. A little dumb.”

“They're not dumb at all,” he replied firmly. “I was wrong earlier, when I said that we can still have our happy ending. I got the tense wrong. We've already got a happy ending. We're living it right now. You just need a little time to come around to seeing it, that's all.”

***

Several months later, Lisa sat in the exact same spot, having just finished eating inside the cabin. She always sat on the steps in the evenings and watched as the sun set, but this time she felt unusually tense and she couldn't ignore an idea that was emerging in the back of her mind.

Ahead, past the decaying corpse of Michael's father, she could see the expanding darkness of the forest. Although the idea of going out there again filled her with fear, part of her wondered whether this time she might be able to find some way to escape; sure, Michael was an expert at tracking, but she refused to believe that she had no chance at all. Deep down, she felt sure that there was a way to escape and that she just needed to be a little smarter.

Or faster.

“Are you sure you're full?” he called out to her from inside the cabin.

“I'm fine,” she replied, as her gaze fell once more upon the rotting wolf in the middle of the clearing. She could see thick chunks of bloodied flesh glistening in the low evening light, and she was starting to wonder whether she might be able to use the corpse to her advantage.

As the flies continued to buzz, she frantically tried to work out exactly how she might be able to trick Michael into losing her trail in the forest.

“I need to confuse you,” she whispered, feeling the first flicker of hope. “I need to put you off completely.”

Looking over her shoulder, she saw him heading through to the rear of the cabin. She knew that she rarely got moments alone, that he was always keeping an eye on her, and she wondered whether this might be a rare opportunity to get a head start. Standing up, she could feel the fear tightening in her chest but she knew that she had to strike when the chance arrived.

Hurrying across the clearing, she waved the flies away as she reached the corpse. The wolf's body was decaying fast, and now that she was closer she saw that the glistening blood was in fact mixed with pus and even maggots. The sight was sickening, yet she couldn't help but hope that this sickening quality might be exactly what she needed.

Reaching down, she forced herself to wipe some of the bloodied pus away from the wolf's dead body. The mixture was thick, and she could already smell an awful stench in the air. She wiped the substance onto her arms, hoping that this might disguise her own scent, and then she quickly got to work wiping more and more over her face and the back of her neck.

Glancing at the cabin, she saw to her immense relief that there was still no sign of Michael. She worked fast now, covering every bare patch of skin on her body, and then for good luck she smeared some under her armpits as well. Once that was done, she took a couple of steps back as the flies began to return to the corpse, and she told herself that this might be her final chance to get away.

“I'm sorry,” she said under her breath.

And she meant it – and then she ran.

Having fantasized about making her escape so many times in the past, now she could barely believe that she was actually rushing through the forest, barreling between the trees in a desperate attempt to get as far from the cabin as possible. The stink of so much bloodied pus all over her body was overwhelming but seemed to only confirm that her plan might work. She almost tripped a few times, but after a couple of minutes she stopped for a moment and looked around in hope of getting her bearings.

“You know the way,” she said out loud, hoping to gain a little more confidence. “You can't have forgotten. If -”

Suddenly a hand clamped tight over her mouth from behind, pulling her back.

“Did you seriously think this world work?” Michael snarled. “Have you got no honor at all?”

Trying desperately to get free, she already knew that she was going to be punished again.

“You just exchanged one stink for another,” he continued. “I thought you were smarter than this, Lisa. When are you ever going to learn that we can be happy?”

Sobbing now, she realized that all her hopes of getting back to Sobolton and walking back into the veterinary office were falling away. She'd actually begun to feel a sliver of hope, but a moment later Michael started to drag her back through the forest.

“Anyone else could have caught you out here,” he pointed out. “What if it had been Saint Thomas who'd found you first? Did you even think about that? I can protect us both while we're at the cabin, Lisa, but the further away we go, the harder it is for me to keep you safe.”

She tried one more time to break free, even though she knew she had no chance, and then she began to accept her fate.

“You're making it so much harder than it needs to be,” he told her. “Lisa, I love you and I know you love me too. You've seen how much I'm willing to go through, and it's all for you. Now I'm going to have to punish you again!”

Chapter Three

Today...

Stirring slowly, Lisa let out a gasp as she began to sit up. Morning light was streaming down, bathing the forest in an eerie glow, and for a moment the world of Sobolton seemed so very far away.

“What the...”

As her memory began to return, Lisa realized that she'd fallen in the forest. Reaching up, she touched a sore spot on the side of her head, and then – hearing a faint rustling sound – she turned to see a large gray wolf watching her from nearby.

“Who are you?” she stammered, pulling back as she felt a rush of fear. “What -”

In that moment, looking into the wolf's eyes, she realized that she recognized him. She blinked a couple of times, convinced that she must be wrong, but then she spotted John's clothes – or rather, the old-fashioned uniform he'd borrowed from the museum – neatly folded on the ground nearby. Leaning closer, she saw to her surprise that a handwritten note had been left on top of the pile

“I can track Eloise's scent like this,” she whispered as she read out loud. “Bring clothes and map.”

Puzzled, she turned the note over and saw that it had been written on the back of the map showing the location of various bunkers in the forest.

“John, I'm not sure that this is a good idea,” she said cautiously, turning to him. “You can't keep shifting your form like this, not when you were originally a human. I've heard lots of claims that people in your situation... I mean, humans who've been turned... eventually you have to pick one form and stay in it. And if you don't, you might find one day that you can never change again.”

She waited, wondering whether he understood her words, but after a moment he turned and looked to his left. She tried to follow his gaze; at first she saw only the emptiness of the forest, although a few seconds later she began to realize that his powerful sense of smell might in fact allow him to keep track of Eloise. She'd never quite understood the full range of the wolves' instincts, but she knew they picked up on things that were missed by mere humans.

“Is it working?” she asked, stumbling to her feet. “Do you know where she's gone?”

He stepped past her, and something about his gait seemed to exude a sense of confidence.

“I guess this is better than nothing,” she muttered, setting off after him, only for him to stop after a moment and look back at her. “What?” she asked “What's wrong?”

She waited, and then she remembered the clothes.

“Sorry,” she added, stepping back and picking them up, then following once more as John resumed his walk between the trees. “I guess you'll need these later.” She felt the uniform's rough fabric. “This thing seems so old. No offense, but it looked a little strange on you, almost like you'd stepped out of some old photo. Then again, it's got a kind of charm, too. It might even be slightly nicer than those modern uniforms you guys wear.”

***

After making their way through the forest for some time, following a route that Lisa noticed was remarkably straight, the pair emerged on a rocky outcrop overlooking another part of the valley.

Stopping ahead, John looked out across the sun-dappled trees and for a moment he seemed almost to be studying the vast scene. His nose twitched, and he completely ignored Lisa even as she caught up and stood next to him.

“It's huge,” she pointed out. “How are we ever going to find her in all of this? Do you really think that your sense of smell is going to be strong enough?”

He turned to her.

“You're new to this,” she added. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that this seems like a lot to ask of you. But if you're confident you can do it, then... thank you.”

She waited, but something seemed to be bothering him. The more she looked into his eyes, the more she felt sure that the real John Tench was truly staring back at her, although this realization brought a sense of frustration as she realized that their ability to communicate was somewhat limited. They were physically close, yet – in terms of their different understandings of the world, and of each other perhaps – she felt as if she was now at a massive disadvantage, almost like a blind person being led through the forest.

A few seconds later she felt a few spots of rain falling against her face.

“Is that what you were sensing?” she asked cautiously. “Could you feel the rain coming?”

The wolf briefly swished his tail, before hurrying down a slope leading deeper into the forest. He stopped at the end and looked back, and Lisa understood that this was his way of telling her to hurry. She began to follow, and sure enough John walked on ahead as the rain gradually became stronger.

A few minutes later, he led her straight to a small cave set into the lower part of the outcrop. Ducking undercover, Lisa turned and looked back out just as the rain intensified and a massive downpour began.

“I remember this,” she said as she and John looked out at the bad weather. “The rain can come so suddenly out here. Michael used to hint that he and his kind can sometimes control it. Not completely, but they can maybe... nudge it a little. He said Saint Thomas was particularly good at that sort of thing.”

Reaching up, she touched the side of her head.

“I must have been knocked out for a while,” she continued. “That's twice in twenty-four hours I've been out for the count. That can't be too healthy.”

As those words left her lips, the roar of the rain became so much louder.

“This is going to wash away her scent, isn't it?” she added, with a trace of fear. “John, is this going to make it harder for you to track her?”

Looking over at him, she felt that she could see the answer in his eyes.

“Do you think that's on purpose?” she asked. “Do you think Saint Thomas... I mean, I know it might sound paranoid, but if he's aware that she's out here then he might be doing everything in his power to keep her hidden from us. If he's one step ahead, he might be able to keep us away forever. What if -”

For a moment, she realized that the fear was growing in her heart, and she knew that Eloise was now well and truly lost in the world of the wolves. Sure, she had John on her side, but he was only one wolf against an army of hundreds – perhaps even thousands. As much as she wanted to believe that she could somehow find and save her daughter, she couldn't shake the growing fear that Saint Thomas was gaining the upper hand. At the same time, she told herself that somehow she was going to put things right, and that soon she was going to get Eloise back forever.

Suddenly hearing a snarling sound, she turned to see that John was baring his fangs as he looked out into the rain-lashed forest.

“What is it?” she asked cautiously.

Watching the gaps between the trees, she saw no sign that they had company, yet John's snarl was becoming a little stronger now.

“You're freaking me out,” she told him. “You know, this would really be a lot easier if you could actually talk. Or if I could read your body language better.”

She waited, but John was still watching the forest and baring his fangs, while emitting a rumbling snarl that seemed designed to ward off a predator.

“If there's something out there,” Lisa continued, “then I really can't see it. Then again, compared to you, I guess my senses are pretty dull and -”

Before she could finish, she finally spotted something slipping between the trees. Squinting, she was just about able to make out the sign of a wolf.

“That's not Saint Thomas,” she whispered, “but it'll definitely be connected to him somehow. Has it been sent out here to keep an eye on us?”

The more she watched the wolf, the more she began to realize that it in turn was watching her back. A shiver ran through her bones and she hated the idea that she and John were being monitored, but a few seconds later the wolf turned and hurried away, quickly vanishing into the gloom and haze of the forest.

“He's probably gone to report back to his master,” Lisa said through gritted teeth. “If we ever needed a reminder that we're well and truly in their territory now, I guess that was it.”

Next to her, John finally stopped snarling, although he continued to watch the trees as if he was worried that the other wolf might return at any moment – perhaps even with reinforcements.

“How long are we going to wait?” Lisa asked, unable to mask a sense of growing frustration. “Eloise is still out there, John. She must be so scared. We have to find her while there's still a chance to keep her away from her uncle.”

Chapter Four

Fifteen years earlier...

The hatch shuddered slightly before swinging open, allowing light to finally shine down into the cramped space below.

Almost blinded, Lisa held a hand up to protect her eyes. She was at the bottom of the small pit, surrounded by tree roots that had begun to intrude into the gap; after blinking a few times, she looked up and saw Michael towering over her.

“I'm back,” he explained. “I'm sorry I have to do this whenever I go away for a few hours, Lisa, but... it's not my fault that I can't trust you.”

As he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoed loudly across the room.

Relieved that her time down under the floor was over – at least for now – Lisa slowly began to clamber out. She left the books behind; a crack of light had allowed her to read them, but in truth they were now just a way for her to pass the time; she knew the stories and sometimes even the actual text by heart. As she climbed out and hauled herself onto the floor, she saw that Michael was staring out the window. Looking over at the open doorway, she saw the corpse of his father, which by now had been almost entirely picked clean.

“I spent some time in the town,” Michael said finally. “Did I tell you that there was a big fire at the hospital? That was a couple of years ago now. They're rebuilding it, but I'm not sure it'll ever quite be the same again and -”

He hesitated, and then he turned to her.

“I'm sorry,” he continued. “Do you want these little updates or not? I guess they might seem cruel.”

Not really knowing how to respond, Lisa looked once more at the bones in the clearing.

“I saw signs of Clanath again,” Michael added. “You might not know her by name, but she comes close to the cabin sometimes. Only during the day, though. I'm not sure why, but she never visits the forest at night. Today I spotted her in the town, in her human form. She looks so awful, I have no idea how she manages to keep going. I guess my brother will track her down again soon. They have a kind of... on and off relationship. He loves her, but her mind is gone and to be honest I think he's just wasting his time. He should accept that there's nothing left there to be salvaged.”

Still looking outside, Lisa was once again trying to come up with a way to escape. She'd tried a few times over the years, never with any luck, yet her mind remained fixated on the idea that one day she was going to get her chance. The alternative, the idea that she might remain at the cabin forever, was too awful to contemplate.

“Stop it,” Michael said.

She turned to him.

“I know exactly what you're thinking,” he continued. “And no, that's not because of any kind of special power. I certainly wouldn't ever read your mind, not now. I can see it in your eyes, you're still thinking about getting away. When will you ever learn that this is your home now? Do you think the town has become better over the years? Lisa, it's so much worse than before. You'd hate it there now.”

“I hate it here,” she told him.

He opened his mouth to reply, but for a few seconds he seemed taken aback by the abruptness of her comment.

“You'll learn,” he said finally. “Lisa, tonight I'm going to do something for you. Something that I think will show you how we can be happy. Just... promise me that you'll keep an open mind.”

***

A few hours later, stepping out of the cabin, Lisa was shocked to see that Michael had set up a small table in the clearing, complete with two chairs and a burning candle.

“You always talk about that burger place you liked going to as a kid,” he explained, gesturing toward the two Sobolton Burger bags on the table. “I picked these up earlier, and I kept them warm on the stove. They're still good and I just thought... I want to do something romantic for you.”

“Romantic?”

He nodded.

Staring back at him, she was struck by the eagerness of his expression. He'd clearly gone to quite a lot of trouble to try to make everything perfect, and she had to admit that Sobolton Burger was one of her favorite places in the whole town. At the same time, the presence of his father's skeletal corpse just a few feet away added a somewhat somber tone to the situation, and something about the entire effort simply seemed to sum up Michael's continued failure to address the root problem.

“Come and sit down,” he said, stepping around the table and pulling one of the chairs out.

“Michael...”

“At least try it!”

“I'm not going to sit staring at your father's body while I eat.”

He hurried around and pulled out the other chair.

“You won't see it from here.”

“Then we'll swap. Michael, that's not the point,” she told him.

“The point is that I'm trying,” he continued, sounding a little more agitated now, “and you're pushing me back at every opportunity.”

“That's because you're keeping me here against my will.”

“What's the alternative?” he asked desperately. “If you go back to them, they'll make you forget me again! I spent twenty years trying to find a way to undo that, and I can't go through it all again. Don't you understand, Lisa? They'll drag you off to that Lakehurst place again and I'll have to start at the beginning. I can't do that!”

“Michael -”

“Do you remember when we first met? Do you remember how much potential we had?”

“Yes, but things change. Things... sour.”

“Not for us,” he said firmly. “Never for us. You just need to open your heart up to the possibilities and realize that we can still pull this back. Saint Thomas and the others are still out there, but I don't care about them. All I care about is you, and making you happy, and finding a way for us to be together forever.”

“You don't get it,” she said softly, shaking her head. “You never will.”

“This is our paradise,” he continued, looking around the clearing for a few seconds. “They can't touch us, not while we're here. They can't touch you, Lisa. I'm willing to give up my entire kingdom for you. I never wanted to rule my people anyway, not really. Let Saint Thomas take the throne; if he wants it that badly, he can have it. I don't need to be a king, not anymore. Not now that I have you.”

Although she wanted to tell him to leave her alone, for a moment Lisa thought back to the very first time she'd ever encountered Michael. Although Lakehurst had left some damage in her head, most of her memories had returned over time and she had no doubt that she and Michael had once been happy. In fact, as she looked over at him, she began to wonder whether they might somehow be able to get that happiness back, even if the process would undoubtedly be extremely difficult.

“This is nothing,” she said under her breath finally, “like those books I used to read.”

“Come and sit down,” he replied, pleading with her now. “Lisa, I'm begging you.”

“I can't,” she whispered, before turning to go back into the cabin. “I'm sorry, Michael, I just -”

In that moment he lunged at her, slamming her against the door and sending her tumbling down onto the floor. Letting out a gasp of pain, she looked up at him and wondered how he'd even covered the distance from the table so quickly; she could see real anger in his eyes, and not for the first time she felt a sense of pure terror spreading through her body.

“Michael, you need to change back,” she stammered. “It's not good for you to stay in your human form for so long. When were you last a wolf? Twenty years ago? Longer? I think it's not just altering your physical appearance, it's also doing something to your mind.”

“Rubbish,” he sneered.

“No, it's true!” she continued. “You were never like this before! You were sweet and charming and... caring!”

“That's because you understood me,” he replied darkly. “How can you claim that there's something wrong with my mind when we both know you're the one who literally got her head fried? I've been so patient with you, Lisa, but you still don't get it!”

“So what are you going to do? Are you going to throw me back down into that pit under the cabin? How long for this time, Michael? Another day? A week? Longer?”

“Don't tempt me,” he snarled.

“You might as well throw me down there and leave me to rot forever!” she screamed. “I'll never love you! Not again! I'll never love you, not even in a million years!”

Chapter Five

Today...

“Okay,” Dean said, leaning back a little to get a better view of his work, “that seems to be all fixed up for now, Doctor Law. But I don't think I need to tell you... it's gonna hurt for a while.”

“I'm painfully aware of that fact, thank you,” Robert Law replied, watching his reflection in the dirty mirror that had been propped up in one of the hospital's examination rooms. “That's usually my line.”

“Is there any lasting damage?” Cassie asked, having been watching from a chair in the corner.

“I don't think so,” Robert said, wincing as he got to his feet. “I'm still an ugly old man, so nothing's changed in that regard, at least.”

“I should take you home,” she told him, standing up and making her way over to support him. “You need to get some sleep.”

“I'm not the only one,” he replied.

“I'm fine,” she continued, forcing an entirely unconvincing smile. “I should probably get back into town and see how much damage Toby and his friends have done.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“You really need to rest,” Dean interjected. “Doctor Law, I know you've got seniority over me here, but you have to listen to me.”

“There's too much at stake,” Robert replied, “for any of us to sit around on our asses.” He took a moment to clear his throat. “John and Lisa are out there somewhere with the girl. I need to figure out where they're hiding and try to help them.”

“You're in no fit state to help anyone,” Dean said, slipping his plastic gloves off and heading across the room, “but I know better than to try to lecture you. I just hope you make the right decision. I swear this whole town has been going crazy. I've been spending most of my time here at the hospital instead of heading home. The last thing I want to come across is another violent mob.”

“You should listen to him” Cassie said softly. “Doctor Law -”

“I keep seeing them,” he said, cutting her off.

“Seeing who?”

“The wolves,” he insisted, hating himself for admitting to such a simple weakness. “I see... flashes of visions of... horror and chaos. I see people getting dragged down and mauled to death. It's only a second or two at a time, but it keeps happening and I'm starting to think that it's some kind of glimpse into the future. If we don't sort this out fast, the whole town is going to be overrun by wolves. And I'll tell you another thing... Toby and his goons sure aren't going to prevent any of it. Hell, they're probably making it more likely by the day.”

“Then what can we do to save the town?” she asked.

Before he could respond, he heard footsteps and turned just in time to see Tracy Marshall hurrying through.

“Bob!” she gasped, stopping as soon as she saw him. “I just heard you'd been brought in. Are you okay?”

“I've had better days,” he replied, before forcing a smile. “That doesn't exactly make me unique right now, though. How's Tommy doing?”

“That's really why I wanted to find you,” she told him. “Bob... I think something's really wrong with him. I can't quite explain it, but it's almost as if he's not really himself.” As she paused for a moment, fresh tears began to fill her eyes. “Can you take a look at him? Bob, I'm really worried that there's something in his head, and I think it's slowly killing him!”

***

“They're out there now,” Tommy said, with fresh bandages over his eyes as he remained flat on his back in a hospital bed, surrounded by various wires and tubes. “They're trying to find her, but they're looking in all the wrong places.”

He fell silent for a moment, before starting to smile.

“Poor Sheriff Tench isn't having the best time, either,” he continued, clearly amused by something. “I wonder if he's tried to poop in his new form yet. That's going to be a surprise for him!”

“What's he talking about?” Cassie asked, watching Tommy from the foot of the bed. “I don't understand.”

“He's been like this for a while now,” Tracy explained. “When he's talking, it's like he truly believes everything he's saying, but none of it makes any sense to me at all.”

“Tommy,” Robert said cautiously, stepping closer to the side of the bed, “it's me. It's Doctor Robert Law, do you -”

“I know who you are,” Tommy replied, turning toward him with a big smile still plastered across his face. “How are you doing there, Doctor Law? Have you recovered from what they did to you last night?”

“If you mean the beating I took at the hands of Toby and his followers, then yes, I'll be fine.” He paused for a few seconds. “But how did you know about that? Did you overhear someone talking?”

“It's a little more complicated than that,” he replied. “The girl... she plugged me into the consciousness that they all join eventually. I think she thought I'd quickly lose the link, but instead it's just growing and growing. Did you know that when one of the important wolves dies, they don't just disappear? They linger like a kind of... collected echo that sees all and feels all and... knows all.”

Reaching over, Robert checked to make sure that Tommy wasn't accidentally being given too much morphine.

“They're too late,” Tommy added.

Robert looked down at him again.

“She's been taken,” Tommy continued, with a little more urgency than before. “The little girl in the forest... what did we call her, again? That's right! Little Miss Dead! She's been taken now, back to her other kind, and I'm not sure that anyone can do anything about it. They haven't hurt her yet, but they will. For now, she's more useful to them if she's alive and if they can get into her head somehow.”

“Again, I have to ask... how do you know all of this?”

“Sheriff Tench is one of them now,” Tommy explained. “Sort of, at least. He's torn between two worlds, but eventually a choice will have to be made. I know which way I think he should go, but it's not as if anyone cares about my opinion. Remember, though... sometimes it's easier to say something if you don't open your mouth. I think -”

Suddenly he froze, before – equally suddenly – lunging at Robert and grabbing his hand.

“I think I'm proof enough of that!” he chuckled, before breaking into a series of convulsive laughs.

“You're sick,” Robert replied disdainfully, trying but so far failing to pull his hand free. “We need a nurse in here to check your meds, Tommy, and then some big decisions have to be made.”

Trying a little harder, he eventually managed to get his hand away.

“Tommy, we're going to do everything we can for you,” he added, “and we're going to look after you. It might take a little time and you'll need to be strong, but I'm going to send someone though who can help you to... calm down.”

Turning, he made his way over to the door.

“You need to listen to more music!” Tommy called out suddenly.

Stopping, Robert looked back over at him.

“You need to listen to more music, Doctor Law,” Tommy continued. “It's really important. The music's out there, you know. It's been out there all along, you just need to open your ears and let it in. Let me tell you, when you do that, things might seem a lot easier. Can you promise me, Doctor Law? Can you really promise me that you'll listen to the music, and that you won't just let it pass you by?”

“He's delirious,” Tracy whispered, once again struggling to hold back tears. “I'm not even sure that it's him talking.”

“He's not making any sense,” Cassie added. “This is so sad to see.”

Opening his mouth, Robert was about to reply when – instead – he continued to watch Tommy. Although he had to agree that Tommy's train of thought was clearly out of control, he wasn't entirely sure that the man was speaking gibberish. Instead, he couldn't help noticing that the smile was still on Tommy's face, and he tried to make sense of the comments about music. And the more he looked at Tommy, the more he found himself wondering whether – in some strange way – he was being offered a warning.

“I can't stand to see him like his,” Tracy sobbed, turning and hurrying away along the corridor. “I'm sorry, but.. I just can't!”

“What do you think it means?” Cassie asked as she saw Tommy settling back against the bed.

“I think it means that we need to head into town,” Robert said cautiously. “I might be wrong, but I can't shake the feeling that Tommy's been trying to warn us about something.”

Chapter Six

Nine years earlier...

Sitting in a corner of the cabin, reading by candlelight, Lisa suddenly realized that she'd been going over the same few lines several times.

Sighing, she closed the book and looked at its lurid cover. In the years since she'd become his prisoner, Michael had sourced a seemingly endless supply of novels for her to read, as if he believed that somehow this would keep her completely occupied. Often she found herself reading the same books over and over again, occasionally without realizing at first, but lately she'd become sick and tired of endless happy endings. As she now knew from experience, happy endings were extremely rare.

A moment later, hearing a gasping sound, she looked over at the door. Michael had gone out a while earlier, muttering his usual vague explanations, but now Lisa worried that someone or something might be approaching the cabin. She hesitated, telling herself that she had to be wrong, yet after a few seconds later she heard another gasp.

This time, however, she realized that somebody was in pain.

Getting to her feet, she headed to the window and peered out. In the moonlight, she could see a shape on the steps, and she quickly realized that she recognized this particular shape.

“Michael?”

Pulling the door open, she rushed out and dropped to her knees. Sure enough, Michael was trying to drag himself to the cabin's front door; bloodied and battered, he'd clearly been attacked, and when he rolled onto his back he looked up at her with bloodshot eyes.

“What happened to you?” she stammered.

“Nothing,” he said, barely able to get any words out at all. “My brother. You should -”

Suddenly breaking into a coughing fit, he rolled onto his side and spat out some blood.

“You should have seen him,” he continued. “I gave as good as I took.”

“Why were you fighting Saint Thomas?” she asked.

“It was an accident,” he explained, clearly exhausted. “We just happened to cross paths and... this time I wasn't willing to let him just run his mouth off, not when... he was talking about...”

He looked up at her for a moment, before shaking his head.

“Forget it,” he continued, trying to sit up but immediately wincing as pain arced through his body. “It's over. We got it out of our systems and now we're both licking our wounds. Don't worry, he'll stay away. He's not looking for serious trouble, not with us. This is just... brotherly squabbling.”

“You're hurt,” she told him. “I'll clean you up.”

“You don't have to.”

“Let's get you inside,” she said firmly. “You're bleeding a lot, I can't just let you struggle on like this. I'll clean you up and then you need to get some rest.”

***

“Why don't you just change?” she asked as she dabbed at a nasty cut on his bare chest, wiping away some of the blood. “That'd work, wouldn't it? You could change into your wolf form, and then when you change back all these wounds would be healed.”

“It's not that simple.”

“Shouldn't they even be healing now?” she continued. “What's holding that process back? Why -”

“You don't understand,” he said firmly, pushing her away.

“You're right,” she admitted, hesitating for a few seconds before starting to clean his cuts again. “I know you originally refused to change for me. You worried that I'd be horrified if I saw you in your wolf form again, but... I think that boat has sailed. I've seen so many horrifying things since that moment, and besides, you could always go and do it where I can't see.”

“That's not the point.”

“You're hurting yourself,” she pointed out. “Look at you, Michael, you're torturing yourself by staying in your human form all the time.”

“It's worth it.”

“Just change,” she added, pleading with him now. “Get it over with. You're in so much pain anyway, and it wouldn't take long.”

“I don't want to risk that side of me coming out more.”

“Why not?”

“Because you hate it!” he snapped, before he could stop himself. “Because that's the reason you ended up being taken from me before, and I can't risk letting anything like that happen ever again.”

“Where exactly do you think I'd go? Who would take me away?”

“I don't know, but if there's even a chance then -”

Wincing, he pulled away.

“I'm sorry,” she said softly, seeing that she'd caught the edge of a wound on his arm, causing it to start bleeding again. After taking a moment to clean the rag in a bowl of water, she set to work more carefully. “This just seems so unnecessary. I keep thinking that there has to be some other way to fix everything. It's as if you've been frozen like this for more than thirty years now and... what happens next? What if you get even worse?”

“I can handle that.”

“But you don't have to,” she continued. “Michael, I'll do anything I can to help you. I just hate to see you like this.”

“At least they couldn't take you to that Lakehurst place,” he told her. “Did I tell you? Apparently it burned to the ground a little while ago. From what I heard, there was some pretty crazy stuff going on there and -”

“Michael, I don't care about Lakehurst anymore,” she insisted, interrupting him. “I care about sorting this mess out.”

She waited, hoping that she might have managed to get through to him, but after a moment he reached past her instead. Slowly, and clearly still in pain, he slid one of the paperback books over and looked at the cover image showing a man and a woman locked in a passionate embrace.

“Curse of the Obsidiath Werewolf Brothers,” he read out loud, before managing a faintly amused smile. “I can't believe you read this stuff.”

“I always found it useful to escape from the real world after a long day at work.”

“They look so happy,” he added. “They look like they've got everything under control.”

“Life's not quite that easy.”

“I know,” he murmured, setting the book down before turning to her again. For a few seconds he seemed lost in the depths of her eyes. “It should be, though,” he continued. “I want to make it that easy. I want to take the world and bend it to my will, so that we're as happy as I know we deserve to be. Is that so wrong?”

“It's...”

She tried to think of the right word.

And then, before she could even try to come up with something, he leaned closer and kissed her. Every fiber of her being told her that this was wrong, that she should push him away, but in that moment she simply felt too weak. She allowed the kiss to continue, and as she closed her eyes she finally remembered how happy she'd been with him all those years ago. She put a hand on his bare shoulder and felt the chapped skin, and she began to wonder whether this might be a way to help him. What if, finally, she could persuade him to shift his form? What if she just needed to reset everything to how it had been back in the old days?

“I'm sorry,” he said once he'd pulled away. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“Don't be sorry,” she replied, putting a hand on the side of his face, tilting his head until he was looking into her eyes again. “We were happy once, weren't we?”

“Yes, but -”

“What if we can remember what that was like?” she asked. “What if we can experience it again, even if it's for just one night?”

“You hate me.”

“I don't hate you,” she said firmly. “I could never hate you. I want to help you, and I know that you're trying to keep me safe. You're doing it all wrong, but I know your heart's in the right place.” She paused, wondering whether she might be on the verge of making a terrible mistake, but finally she told herself that she had to try. “Let's forget that the past few decades ever happened. Let's pretend for one night that no-one ever got in our way.”

She waited for an answer, and then she leaned close and kissed him again. As much as she worried that she was only making things worse, part of her wanted – after so many years of pain – to remember what it had been like when she'd first met him, and to experience once again the sensation of being young and in love. A moment later he gently lowered her down, and she felt the heat of his body as he moved closer.

“Are you sure about this?” he whispered. “I mean... are you really sure?”

“I'm completely sure,” she replied, looking up into his bloodshot eyes. “Better not wait too long, though. You never know when I might change my mind.”

As they continued, the paperback book remained on the floor nearby, with its loving couple still locked in a passionate embrace on the cover.

Chapter Seven

Today...

Stepping out from the cave, Lisa immediately looked around for any sign of more wolves.

Ahead, John – still in his wolf form – had gone first. Although she still lacked any real ability to understand the body language of such a creature, Lisa couldn't help but notice a certain stiffness in the way he walked and a sense of caution that radiated from his every sinew. Even now, looking carefully in each direction, he seemed to be constantly prepared for some kind of attack, and this in turn made Lisa ever more fearful of the gloomy spaces between the trees. At the same time, some aspect of John's new form imparted a degree of confidence; although she worried that she might be clutching at straws, she figured that for now at least she had no real option other than to keep following him.

Even if, in that moment, he looked utterly lost.

“There's nothing there,” she said finally. “Is there?”

The wolf turned to her, and she immediately saw fear in his eyes. She told herself, however, that there was a danger she might anthropomorphize him just a little too much, although she had to concede that such concerns seemed hardly relevant. Behind those eyes, John's mind – or soul – had to be lurking.

“Which way now?” she asked, determined to set off again – and slightly annoyed with herself for having taken shelter at all in the first place. “Where's Eloise?”

She watched as he sniffed the ground. Just as she was starting to worry that the rain might have washed away Eloise's scent, she saw him walking slowly past a few of the trees, and she immediately began to follow.

“So the wolves know we're out here, right?” she continued, as much to make sense of her own thoughts as to communicate with him. “That means Saint Thomas knows. That means he'll be ready for us. That means we might be walking into a trap. And that means we need to somehow out-think him.”

They walked on in silence for a moment, picking their way through the freshly-churned mud.

“You know, I swear some of this looks familiar,” she muttered. “That's crazy, right? How large is this forest? And how many trees are in it?”

She continued to talk, but for the most part John was barely listening. Still getting used to his wolf form, he was learning that he could prioritize certain senses over others, meaning for example that he could enhance his sense of smell but only at the expense of his hearing. In that moment, he was desperately trying to pick up the fragments of Eloise's scent that he'd followed earlier. One of the more surprising elements of his change was that he found he could sense how old certain scents were; if a dozen or more criss-crossed at any point in the forest, he was somehow able to pick apart the different layers and tell – for example – that the deer had passed by a few hours before the fox, and that the wolf had followed during the night.

The forest was alive with so much information, but it was only now that he knew how to read it all.

Now, however, he was also learning that rain had pulled all of those scents up and turned them into conflicting ribbons. Eloise had certainly been through this part of the forest, he could tell that much, but he was struggling to read the age of her scent. A more experienced wolf, he assumed, would have no such difficulty.

And then it hit him.

Stopping, he looked to the west – he instinctively knew the points of the compass now – and was struck by the overpowering aroma of wet wood. This aroma, which he hadn't even noticed a few seconds earlier, was now all-encompassing, and he knew that he'd picked it up once before. Assuming that he was remembering a scent he'd come across in his human form, one that he perhaps hadn't even noticed at the time, he set off in that direction. He could hear Lisa still thinking out loud as she followed, but all his senses were now subservient to the one that operated through his nostrils.

Human thoughts were sinking deeper into the back of his mind, replaced by something much more instinctual as he picked his way easily between the trees and watched the space ahead. Something was waiting for him, he knew that much, and he could think of nothing other than getting there as fast as possible.

***

“And that means,” Lisa continued as she followed John's wolf out into another clearing, “that we need -”

Stopping suddenly, she felt a thud of shock in her chest as she saw that they'd arrived in front of the cabin. Blinking in the stark light, she instinctively shuddered as she found herself looking at the small wooden building that for twenty years had been her prison.

“Why are we here?” she asked cautiously, watching as John approached the front of the building. “They're not here, John! You don't have to be a wolf to figure that out. This is a distraction!”

Stopping at the foot of the steps, John looked up at the door for a few seconds before making his way up.

“I'm not going in there!” she said firmly. “John, I'm serious! Why are you doing this? There's no way Eloise is going to be here! She...”

As her voice trailed off, she realized that the clearing was so very quiet. Although she hadn't given the matter much thought, she was quite sure that she'd hoped to never set foot near the cabin ever again. She wanted to turn around and walk away, to never even see the place, but instead she could only watch as John used his muzzle to gently nudge the door open. The hinges immediately let out a slight creaking sound that Lisa had heard so many times over those two decades of captivity; now, as ever, that sound filled her with a sense of fear.

“I don't want to be here, John,” she said, hating the tears that even now were threatening to fill her eyes. “John, I'm serious, this is pointless. She's not here.”

He disappeared inside; the last she saw of him was his tail slipping smoothly out of sight as the door began to swung shut again.

Realizing that she had no choice, and that she couldn't exactly just stand outside waiting, Lisa looked around one more time before slowly starting to advance toward the cabin. Every step felt heavy and wrong, and she knew with absolute certainty that John was simply wasting precious time, but she also knew that she couldn't simply run off into the forest without him.

By the time she reached the bottom of the steps, her heart was pounding.

“Why are we at the cabin?” she asked again. “John, I don't want to be here!”

She waited, but she heard no hint of a response. Finally, figuring that she had no choice, she walked up the steps and pushed the door open, and in that moment she saw the open hatch in the middle of the floor. She hated that hatch more than anything else in the entire world, and she couldn't help but think back to all the times she'd been sent down there by Michael as punishment.

Nearby, John was moving slowly around the room; his paws padded softly against the wooden floor and he seemed to be in no particular hurry.

“What are you doing?” she asked, unable to hide a sense of frustration. “John, I mean it, this is stupid. Eloise is out there somewhere and you're bringing us here? How does this help us?”

He glanced at her briefly, but with no real sense of urgency, before heading to the steps and starting to make his way up.

“Are you trying to get some kind of reaction out of me?” she continued. “Is that it? John, we're supposed to be tracking Eloise down and instead...”

She paused for a few seconds as she tried to make sense of his approach.

“Are you forgetting?” she asked. “Is that it? Is that what happens if you spend too much time as a wolf? Do you start to forget things that mattered to you when you were a human?”

Hurrying to the bottom of the steps, she looked up – just in time to see him slipping out of view at the top.

“John, I need you to focus,” she added, and a moment later he reappeared, quickly making his way down again. “What are you looking for? You didn't actually think that she'd be here, did you?”

Waiting for an answer even though she knew none would be forthcoming, she watched with a growing sense of frustration as John slipped past her and headed toward the door. And then, with as much vigor as he'd displayed when he'd entered, he squeezed through the gap and made his way back outside.

“Are you kidding me?” Lisa asked, walking to the window and peering through the glass.

Sure enough, John was now making his way across the clearing, heading back the way they'd just come.

“That was a complete waste of time,” she continued, hurrying out and following quickly, relieved that at least their trip to the cabin had been brief. “I can't believe you took us on that little detour. Every second counts, John. Eloise is getting further and further away! I get it, you want to be thorough, but that was too much!”

As he led her back into the forest, John was dimly aware of her voice, but in truth he remained far too focused on the task of tracking Eloise's weak scent. He'd gone to the cabin for a very good reason, one that he hadn't entirely understood himself until he'd pushed the door open, but now he could only hope that his little plan might work. Ahead the forest awaited, murky and uninviting, and his focus now had to be on finding a way to arrange the myriad little puzzle pieces of Eloise's scent. At the same time, he was starting to pick up on a second scent that seemed to have joined with her at some point, and he had no doubt that this new scent was something much darker and more dangerous.

Although he didn't want to worry Lisa further, he was now absolutely certain that Saint Thomas had already found Eloise.

Chapter Eight

Eight years earlier...

“Hey, I can feel you in there,” Lisa whispered softly, sitting at the top of the cabin's steps and looking down at her large, swollen and very much pregnant belly. “Having another little kick, are you?”

She waited, feeling the sensation again, and after a moment a faint smile reached her lips. Part of her knew that she should still be raging with anger and trying to get away from the cabin, yet something – hormones, she supposed, even if she didn't like that excuse – had made her focus entirely on the task of keeping herself and her unborn child safe. Every single second of every single day was now about the baby, and she realized with a sense of shock that some days she barely even thought about her old life in Sobolton at all.

“There you go again,” she added, feeling another kick. “I've got a feeling that you're going to grow up to be big and strong. You're going to take after -”

Stopping herself just in time, she realized that she'd been about to compare the unborn child to Michael. She had no idea how the child's unusual parentage might complicate things, and Michael had been extremely vague whenever she'd begun to ask questions. Part of her even worried that she might eventually give birth to a fully-formed wolf cub, although deep down she felt sure that the kicks she felt were entirely human. She knew that she was due to deliver soon, and in the back of her mind she supposed that she might be able to get away with the baby at some point and run all the way back to Sobolton.

Yet that urge to run never lasted for long, not these days; instead, she found her mind continually returning to the subject of her unborn child.

Hearing a familiar creaking sound, she turned to see that Michael was making his way out of the cabin.

“How are you feeling?” he murmured.

“The same as last time you asked. Which was about ten minutes ago.”

She waited for a reply, but after a few more seconds she realized that he was watching the treeline. She followed his gaze, but as usual she saw nothing of note.

“What's wrong?” she continued.

“Nothing,” he replied, “just... they're curious about you.”

“Why?”

“Because your scent has changed. Now that you're getting closer to your due date, everything about your scent is screaming that you're going to become a mother.”

“It's crazy to me that you can pick up on that stuff.”

“It's crazy to me that you can't.”

“Are you talking about the other wolves?” She hesitated for a moment. “It's none of their business. They're not going to interfere, are they?”

“Not while I'm here to protect you, but they're certainly... curious. They want to know what this means for the power dynamic. After all, any child of mine is technically heir to the throne once I'm gone.” He looked at his father's bones. “Not that the dynamic has been particularly straightforward of late, but you know what I mean. I'm worried that the uncertainty might cause more trouble.”

“So what do you want to do about it?”

“I know what I should do about it,” he admitted. “I should go to the heartland and address them. I should tell them to keep their snouts out of it all.”

“So why don't you?”

“Because I swore I'd never get involved in their world again,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don't want to set foot in that realm. When I told Saint Thomas I was going to stay away, he laughed at me. He said I'd go back eventually, even if it was just to visit. I told him he was wrong.”

“Are you going to let pride stop you doing the right thing now?”

“It's not pride.” He watched the trees for a moment longer, before looking down at her. “It's okay. They won't come here, I promise. Not really. The only one who ever comes by here regularly is Clanath, and she never stays for long.” Reaching down, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Ignore me,” he added finally. “You don't need to worry about anything. Our child is going to be safe from them. Forever.”

***

And one week later, that child made its entrance into the world.

Having screamed for hours, Lisa finally leaned back and felt the pain starting to subside. Sweat was running down her face and she felt simultaneously both weak and energized, and a few seconds later she heard the sound of a child – no, her child – starting to cry. Part of her just wanted to rest, to slip into unconsciousness for a short while, yet at the same time she felt an urgent need to check on her daughter.

“Let me see her!” she gasped, sitting up and seeing the bloodied baby in Michael's arms. “Let me hold her!”

“Wait,” he replied, taking a moment to cut the umbilical cord. “Just give me a moment. Anyway, how did you know she's a girl?”

“I've known all along,” she stammered. “I don't know how, I just sensed it. That's how I've also known she's going to be named Eloise. Please, you have to give her to me.”

She waited, but Michael was simply staring down at the girl now as if mesmerized by the sight of her. With each passing second, Lisa worried more and more that he might suddenly take her away, that she might never even get to hold her properly.

“Is she normal?” she asked.

“Normal?” he replied, glancing at her. “Are you worried she might have come out with a tail?”

“Let me hold her!”

He hesitated again, as if he was considering denying her request, but finally he held the crying baby out. Lisa quickly took her and held her tight, unable to quite believe that after nearly nine months the moment had finally arrived. Every single inch of the baby seemed like a miracle, like something that couldn't possibly be real, yet she could already feel a burgeoning sense of love in her chest, a kind of love that she'd never even understood was possible.

“It's okay,” she told the girl. “Everything's fine. Welcome to the world, Eloise.”

“She's strong,” Michael pointed out. “You both are. That wasn't the easiest birth in the world.”

“She's got a good pair of lungs,” Lisa replied, wiping some smeared blood from the side of Eloise's face. “We need to get her to a hospital, though. Michael, I know you don't want us to have any contact with the human world, but now she's here... I want to take her to Middleford Cross, just to get her checked over.”

“No,” he said firmly, shaking his head.

“I'm not going to try to run away!”

“She doesn't need a doctor,” he continued. “Stop asking, because it's never going to happen. She's got us and we're all she needs.”

“Michael -”

“I said no!” he snarled angrily, before pulling back as if shocked by his own reaction. “I said no,” he repeated, more softly this time. “Can't you just accept that? She's never going to go anywhere near those savages with their knives and drugs and machines. They'd ask too many questions, and they'd want to corrupt her somehow. That's never going to happen, Lisa. I'd rather...”

His voice trailed off.

“You'd rather do what?” she asked. “What were you about to say?”

“Shouldn't you be feeding her or something like that?” he replied, clearly troubled as he turned and looked to the door. “Every wolf within five miles is going to know that she's been born now. There's so much blood in the air, and now her scent is free to spread through the forest for the first time. That's a big occasion. The birth of royalty always attracts a certain degree of attention.”

“She's not royalty,” Lisa insisted. “She's a completely ordinary human child.”

He turned to her.

“She's never going to get mixed up in your madness,” she added. “I don't want her to ever even know where she came from.”

“You can't deny who she is,” he told her. “One day it'll come bursting out of her.”

She shook her head.

“You're so wrong,” he continued. “How can anyone's true nature be suppressed for long? There's nothing you can possibly do to tame the wolf in her soul. I already agreed that we'll raise her in her human form, I accept that you won't do anything else, but one day – when she's older – she's going to understand that she's more than just another human. She's going to feel her wolf side growing.”

“Never,” she sneered, as Eloise continued to cry in her arms. “I'll find a way to keep it hidden.”

Sighing, Michael turned and headed over to the door.

“I want to check the perimeter, just to be sure,” he called back as he stepped outside. “Feed our daughter, Lisa. It's one of your jobs now. You want her to grow up nice and strong, don't you?”

“You're never going to know the whole truth,” Lisa whispered, looking down at the crying child. “I promise, Eloise. You're going to live a normal life, completely untouched by these lunatics, and you're never going to know that you were ever anything to do with them.” As those words left her lips, she realized that her earlier determination to escape was already starting to return. “We'll pick our moment carefully,” she added softly, “and then we'll run.”

Chapter Nine

Today...

“Are you sure we're not lost?” Lisa asked, having followed John now for what felt like forever. Several hours had passed, at least. “I've definitely never been this far out into the forest before. We must be miles from town.”

Ahead, John continued to push his way through the undergrowth. He'd been charting a fairly direct course through the forest, leading Lisa in a straight line that led way past Cutter's Hill and close to the far end of Drifter's Lake. He'd certainly never ventured so far beyond the edge of town, and ordinarily he wouldn't like being so isolated; in his wolf form, however, the scents of the forest provided a kind of reassuring structure that allowed him to move more calmly and with greater purpose. With each passing second, he felt his human side fading further away and his wolf side starting to dominate.

“Hey,” Lisa said suddenly. “What's this?”

Stopping, John turned to see that she was crouching down. She picked up a small piece of plastic and peered at it for a moment, before turning it around for him to see.

“It's an identification card for an F.B.I. agent,” she pointed out. “Penelope Chandler. Who do you think she is? Do you think she's come to help us? Do you think the government might step in?”

Looking at the front of the card again, she realized that one edge was slightly splattered with a fine coating of blood. She saw the steady, authoritative glare of the woman in the photo, but deep down she already knew that something very bad must have happened to this particular individual.

“At least the outside world's starting to pay attention,” she suggested, getting to her feet again. “That's got to be a good thing, right? People have to start noticing that Sobolton's been cut off from everyone else.”

John stared at her for a moment longer before turning and setting off again, clearly not really too interested in the identification card.

“I'll hang onto it, just in case,” she continued, slipping the card into her pocket before starting to follow him. “You never know, it might come in useful at some point.”

As they walked deeper and deeper into the forest, Lisa had to admit that she wished she could actually speak to John properly. Sure, his tracking skills seemed to be working pretty well, but she wanted to actually hear what he was thinking. There was something profoundly stoic about the way he moved, and she had to admit that he appeared to be a pretty impressive specimen of a wolf, yet she desperately wanted to speak to someone and bounce a few ideas back and forth; if only to bolster her own confidence, she needed to hear someone else's thoughts.

Finally John stopped up ahead. As she caught up to him, Lisa realized that he was looking at one of the nearby trees, and when she followed his gaze she saw a series of strange shapes that had been carved into the bark. Stepping closer, she reached out and touched the shapes, and she began to understand that she'd seen something similar before.

“This is them,” she whispered. “The wolves did this. I think it's some way of marking their territory.”

Looking over her shoulder, she saw that John was simply watching her.

“I think it's a warning,” she continued. “It's probably their way of saying that anyone who passes this point is in danger. I mean, that's just a guess, but it kind of makes sense. Do you agree?”

Yet again she waited for a reply, but – if John had any clue as to the meaning of the carved shapes – he gave no indication. There was an extra hint of sadness in his eyes, however, and she couldn't shake the fear that so far their expedition into the forest wasn't going particularly well. A moment later he turned and began to walk away again, leaving her somewhat at a loss. She quickly began to walk after him, and she couldn't help but hope that he knew a lot more than he was letting on.

***

If he did know more, he certainly wasn't revealing anything as – about one hour later – he continued to lead Lisa through yet another interminably uneventful part of the forest.

Although her legs were starting to ache, Lisa knew that she couldn't afford to slow down. She was starting to stumble a few times as exhaustion began to drag her down, but all she could think about was the fact that Eloise was still out there somewhere.

And then, with no warning, John suddenly stopped again.

“What is it?” she asked, catching up to him but seeing nothing ahead. She began to step past him. “I don't -”

Before she could finish, he hurried around and stopped again, this time blocking her path.

“What's wrong with you?” she continued. “Why are you acting like this?”

Again she tried to go past him, but this time he bared his fangs and let out a low snarl.

“You're being really weird,” she told him, although she could only assume that he must have a good reason for his behavior. Looking around again, she still saw no sign of anyone else. “I really don't understand. John, I think we're going to have to try to find some better way to communicate.”

Looking back down at him, she saw great intelligence in his eyes but she felt a rush of frustration. What use was that intelligence, and any knowledge that came with it, if she couldn't actually hear what was on his mind? In that moment the gap between their two species had never felt larger – or more frustrating.

“What if I set out some letters on the ground?” she asked. “Could you somehow... point to them and spell out words?”

Even as those words left her lips, she knew that the idea was ludicrous, yet she was still running out of options.

“Why can't we go further?” she continued. “Can you at least give me a clue?”

She looked past him again. All she saw was yet another part of the forest, one that seemed exactly the same as every other; some more carvings had been left on a nearby tree, but she'd seen similar signs several times already and she found it hard to believe that these were somehow different. Frustrated by the fact that John seemed to expect her to understand, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was somehow being particularly dumb.

“I'm not just going to stand around here like some kind of idiot,” she said finally. “Do you get that? Fine, if you're scared of going on, I understand. This isn't your battle, not really. She's my daughter and I guess I have to be the one who goes to rescue her.”

She paused again, wondering whether she might have hit the nail on the head. Was John, in fact, unable to go deeper into what was clearly wolf territory?

“If that's how it has to be, then that's how it has to be,” she added, trying to ignore the sheer terror that even in that moment was already growing in her chest. “Thanks for bringing me this far, John. Really, you've already done far more than you ever had to.”

She waited, just in case he might offer her a sliver of a clue, and then she stepped past him. To her surprise, she immediately felt his teeth clamp tight around her leg, although as she stopped and looked at him she realized that at least he wasn't biting hard.

“Seriously?” she continued. “John, what the hell has gotten into you? You're acting like -”

In that moment she heard a crackling sound, and she turned to look ahead. The same sound returned a couple more times, and she began to understand that someone was making their way closer. Figuring that they'd reached some kind of rendezvous point, she took a step back and John immediately released her leg.

“Thanks for that,” she told him. “You really made your point.”

“Lisa Sondnes,” a voice called out suddenly. “Fancy seeing you out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Immediately recognizing that voice, Lisa bristled and – for a few seconds – failed to turn and look as she heard footsteps approaching. Finally she forced herself to face the new arrival, and sure enough she saw Saint Thomas making his way closer.

“I slipped into my human form just for you,” he explained, stepping over a fallen branch and then stopping to stare at her with a big grin. “I figured that should make it easier for us to talk business.”

“Where is she?” she asked.

“And look at you!” Saint Thomas continued, glancing down at John. “My word, you're looking stronger and stronger with each passing day. You really are turning into a good boy, aren't you?”

In response, John began to emit a low, rumbling growl.

“Where's my daughter?” Lisa asked, taking a step forward and keeping her eyes fixed on Saint Thomas. “If you've hurt her, I swear I'll find a way to make you pay.”

“Hurt her?” Saint Thomas replied, raising an amused eyebrow. “Why would I do something like that, Lisa? I get the feeling that you've gravely misunderstood exactly what's going on here.”

“Do you know where she is,” she snapped, “or not?”

“As it happens, I do,” he continued, and now his smile grew a little. “Let me tell you, Lisa... she's mine now. She's where she belongs, living as part of our pack. And she's never going back to the human world.”

Chapter Ten

Four years earlier...

“Eloise! Eloise, where are you?”

Stepping out at the front of the cabin, Lisa stopped as soon as she saw her daughter sitting happily on the far side of the clearing, playing with some sticks.

“Eloise, I'm going to be inside preparing food for this evening,” she continued. “Your father should be back soon, so just... don't go out of my sight, okay?”

“Okay, Mommy,” Eloise said with a giggle.

Heading back inside, Lisa made her way straight over to the table and stopped again to look down at the notes she'd scribbled in the back of a paperback book. Michael rarely left the cabin for long; whenever he did, she knew she had to make good use of the time, and so far she'd managed to hide her notes well. The problem wasn't a lack of escape plans; in reality, she had so many different ideas that she was struggling to pick just one. She felt sure that she and Eloise had a good chance of getting away, and that once they reached the town they could secure help from others. Most importantly, she'd mapped out the easiest way to get to civilization and now – as she looked at the notes once more – she came to an important realization.

“We're ready,” she whispered.

As soon as those words left her lips, she felt a shiver run through her bones. She'd been telling herself for a while now that she needed to wait a few more months, yet now she wondered whether part of her was actually scared of making a move. She knew that the consequences of failure would be extreme, that she might well end up unleashing a whole new wave of anger in Michael, and part of her wondered whether she might be better off simply accepting her fate. After all, Eloise was a happy child and she didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize that happiness. At the same time, she kept coming back to the same question.

Could a 'happy' prisoner ever really be considered happy at all?

“Mommy?”

Turning, she saw that Eloise was at the doorway.

“There was a funny woman,” Eloise said.

“A what?” Heading to the window, Lisa looked outside but saw no sign of anyone. “There's no-one there,” she continued, figuring that Eloise had simply been imagining things. “Listen, I think we're going to go for a little walk. Would you like that? I'll carry you most of the way.”

She waited, but her daughter seemed not to understand.

“You'll love it,” she continued, forcing a smile that she hoped might seem at least partially reassuring. “We need to get going, though. Let's put your coat on.”

***

Although she'd lost track of how many times she'd run terrified through the forest, Lisa had to admit that this was the first time she'd ever done it with a child in her arms.

Frantically out of breath and constantly looking over her shoulder, she pushed through the undergrowth and tried to stay on her feet. She was still just about managing to keep track of her location in the vast wilderness, and she felt sure that she was now only a mile or so from the road that twisted and snaked its way through the forest. She worried that perhaps she should have waited another day, but deep down she knew that she had to act as soon as the opportunity arrived. Besides, she was fairly sure that Michael would be away for at least another hour; he'd muttered about his brother, and about the wolves, and she suspected that he'd had to go to them.

“It's okay,” she told Eloise, worried that the girl might be scared. “We're just out for a nice walk and -”

Before she could finish, she spotted the road. Confused, she hurried to the side and looked both ways; somehow, impossibly, she'd made better progress than she'd ever expected, but she figured that this was no time to stop and try to analyze her route through the forest. She vaguely remembered this particular stretch, so she turned to the left and began to walk, hoping against hope that soon she might bump into a driver who'd be able to take her the rest of the way, and then...

She had no idea what she was going to do once they reached Sobolton, but she figured that she was going to have to try to tell everyone the truth. Whether or not they believed her, she needed to find some way out of town, and she could only hope that Michael would never be able to reach either her or Eloise once they were beyond the pack's territory.

“We're just going on a little adventure,” she explained. “We're going to a place you've never been to before.”

“Where's Daddy?”

“Oh, he's... busy.”

“Where?”

“I think he's gone to see some other... people.”

“What other people?”

“I haven't really met them properly” she continued, while trying to think of some way she might be able to shut the conversation down. “Hey, when we get to town, there's going to be so much cool stuff that you've never tried before.”

“Like what?”

“You can have your first waffle, and your first pancake, and your first -”

In that moment, hearing the sound of a distant car, she stopped and looked over her shoulder. The engine was still far off, but someone was definitely getting closer and for the first time she allowed herself to actually believe that her plan might be working. Adjusting her grip on Eloise, she watched the turn in the road, and sure enough after a few more seconds a vehicle drove around the corner and headed straight for her before slowing to a stop.

To her horror, Lisa realized that this was a cruiser from the sheriff's station in town.

“Please don't be Joe Hicks,” she whispered, unable to make out the driver. “Please don't be Joe Hicks. Please don't be Joe -”

The driver's side door swung open, and a moment later a fairly short, squat man struggled slightly to climb out.

“Damn it,” Lisa added under her breath.

“Lisa?” Joe said, staring at her with a shocked expression. “Well blow me down, if it isn't little Lisa Sondnes... and who's that you've got with you?”

Although her first instinct told her to run, she knew that in truth she had no chance. At the same time, she also knew that Joe had been her father's friend and she hoped that – despite everything else that had happened over the years – he might still be capable of doing the right thing.

“Do you know how many posters were put up about you?”

“Joe, please...”

“Who's the girl?” he continued. “I heard a few rumors about you, Lisa. I heard you might have given birth and... well, here we are.”

“Joe,” she stammered, glancing around briefly to check that there was still no sign of Michael, “I need you to listen to me.”

“I'm all ears.”

“I have to get away,” she told him. “You have no idea what it's like out there. It's not just about me, not now. You might not like me, Joe, but I know you've got a heart. You wouldn't condemn an innocent little girl to that life, would you?”

“This is not what I was expecting to find out here today,” he admitted. “You've been gone for an awful long time, Lisa. How long have you been missing for? Must be more than ten years now, must be more like fifteen or -”

“Joe, I need help!” she snapped, as she felt panic starting to rise through her chest. “Joe, I'm serious, I need you to get me to town. I can do everything after that, I won't make a fuss, I'll just leave and never come back.”

She waited for an answer, but she was already worrying that she might not be able to get through to him.

“Or just leave me here,” she continued. “Isn't that an option? Get in your car and drive off, and pretend you never saw me. That way, you don't even have to worry about interfering, or about making the wolves angry. You can just drive off and act like none of this ever happened.”

“Wouldn't that be nice, huh?” he murmured.

“So do it,” she said firmly. “It's within your power, Joe. No-one ever has to know that we bumped into each other out here.”

“Lisa, you know I can't do that,” he replied, with a hint of sadness in his voice. “If I could, I would. I don't want to be mean to you, but some things are just so much bigger than either of us. We're just little pawns in a much bigger game, a game that neither of us can ever really understand. Do you know the real reason I don't like to get mixed up in the business of the wolves?”

“Joe...”

“It's because they terrify me,” he added. “There, I admitted it. People think I'm this tough guy who never gets scared of anything, but those wolves... when I think of what they could potentially do to our town if they really got angry, I feel a kind of fear running through my bones. They scare me to my very core. But to be honest, I don't think that I really need to go on too much about that. After all, I've distracted you long enough.”

“Distracted me?” she replied. “What -”

“Daddy!” Eloise gasped, and in that moment footsteps began to approach. “Daddy, are you coming with us?”

Lisa froze, but she already knew she was too late. Michael was right behind her, and she could almost sense the anger emanating from every fiber of his being. She'd made her move, she'd tried to escape but in truth he must have been close behind her all the time, following her scent through the forest. And as he stopped directly behind her, she felt tears filling her eyes as she realized that this might well have been her last ever chance to get away.

“I'll be off, then,” Joe said, turning to climb back into his car. “I don't really know why I stopped. It's not like I saw anything or anyone out here today.”

Lisa remained completely still and silent as the cruiser started up again. She looked down and saw Joe's face as he drove past, and for a moment she spotted what appeared to be genuine regret in his eyes. And then, once the cruiser had disappeared around the next curve in the road, she finally forced herself to turn and look up directly into Michael's eyes.

“You've made a big mistake, Lisa,” he sneered. “Now things between us can never be the same again.”

Chapter Eleven

Today...

“What the hell happened here?” Robert Law asked, staring down at the bloodied corpse that had been carried into his office at the rear of the station. “What did that mob do to this poor woman?”

“For once, it wasn't the mob,” Cassie replied. “Not from what I've heard, anyway.”

“It's true.”

They both turned to see that Zach had made his way through. He looked a little pale and worse for wear, as if he'd been in the wars.

“What are you doing here?” Cassie asked, clearly disgusted by the sight of him. “Shouldn't you be out there with Toby and the others, causing more trouble?”

“I had... a bit of a rethink,” he admitted sheepishly as he made his way over to the other side of the examination table. Rubbing the back of his head, he seemed to be in more than a little discomfort. “Everyone's going crazy. It's chaos out there.”

“Who is she?” Robert asked, still looking at the body of Penelope Chandler. “Her belly's been ripped open.”

“A load of rocks and stones fell out,” Zach explained.

Robert turned and glared at him.

“I'm telling the truth!” Zach protested. “I saw it myself, she just showed up in the middle of town and her belly sort of... split and all these rocks came tumbling out. She was screaming, she was in so much pain. To be honest, by the time she finally died I was kind of wondering whether I should...”

His voice trailed off.

“Do something to end her suffering,” he murmured, as if he was ashamed of the words leaving his own mouth. “I didn't know what. I just hate seeing anyone in such a terrible state. I mean, if she'd been an animal I definitely would have stepped in sooner. It's just on account of her being a person that I...”

Again he couldn't quite complete the sentence.

“She's wearing a red dress,” Robert pointed out. “If she's from out of town, then there's the obvious question of how she suddenly showed up here. I can't help thinking that she was sent to us as some kind of message. She's been dressed up, too, almost like...”

He hesitated, staring at her dead face.

“It's like they're taunting us,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Mocking us, even. They want us to know that they're in complete control. This poor woman was used as a warning, but it's more than that. Hell, they clearly enjoyed doing this to her.”

The three of them stood in silence for a few seconds, each of them contemplating the grisly sight before them but nobody quite knowing what to say. Agent Chandler's features were locked in a frozen scream, and her body was covered in cuts and scratches from the forest.

“I saw Sheriff Tench in the town hall,” Zach said finally.

“How long ago?” Robert asked.

“A while back, but that's not the only strange thing,” Zach continued. “I know you're gonna think I'm imagining things, but I swear... he was completely naked.”

***

“Why are you guys still here, anyway?” Al Major asked, standing behind the bar at McGinty's. “I already told you, the place is completely dry now. There's not a drop of beer or liquor left in the whole damn building, unless you want to try sucking some dregs out of the walls.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Hell, that might actually work. Enough must have been spilled in here over the years. But if you don't believe me about the rest of it, feel free to go through to the back and see for yourselves.”

“I don't know about anyone else,” Doug said cautiously, “but I just... I guess it's just habit. I don't really know where else to go. I've been coming here every night for years, it's almost like I don't know how to not drop by. I sure miss the beer, but even without it, I'd rather be here than at home.”

“Same,” Sindy added. “I don't know, I just feel safer here.”

“I'm just waiting for news,” Alice Cairns said, sitting in one of the booths. “I figure this is where it'll break, if there's any at all. Something has to change, right.”

“Do you want us to leave?” Doug asked. “I get it, Al, maybe you just want to lock the door and be on your own for a while.”

“What good would that do me?” Al muttered, making his way around from behind the bar and heading to a cupboard, then proceeding to open the door so that he could pull out some spare stools. “A bar without booze isn't really a bar at all, is it?”

“Hey,” Alice said, craning her neck a little, “is that a guitar?”

“Do you play?” Al asked, reaching further back and pulling out the old acoustic guitar that one of his customers had left behind a few years earlier.

“I've been having lessons for a little while,” she explained as he carried the guitar over and handed it to her. “One of my neighbors used to be a singer in a band, and now he's a composer. I'm not very good, but -”

“I don't care whether or not you're good,” Al chuckled. “It's strange in here without any music. Even if you can only strum a few chords, that'd be better than nothing.”

“It's really out of tune,” she said as she began to strum the strings, while turning one of the heads. “Exactly how long has it been sitting untouched in there?”

“Beats me,” Al muttered, pulling out more stools. “I think it was old Leonard Lacy, the musician who lived in town, who left it behind. He used to put on these jazz nights in the bar. Go on, Alice, put on a bit of a show for us. Nothing too depressing, though. We're already feeling pretty bad as it is.”

“My teacher mainly gave me local ballads,” she admitted. “I think he used to be the head of the folk festival as well, something like that.”

“Folk music?” Doug said, with no obvious enthusiasm. “Seriously? Why don't you just hand me a razor right now? I might as well slit my wrists before you get started.”

“There's a town way out in the forest,” Alice sang uncertainly, still struggling to get the guitar tuned properly, “in a land where the wise fear to tread. If you go to this land tomorrow, you might find that everyone's -”

Before she could finish, the guitar's second string snapped.

“Great,” Al said, “even that damn thing's giving up.”

“I can play around it,” Alice told him with a faint smile, taking a moment to remove the broken string before getting back to work, still trying to tune the rest. “In the old days, people used to make do with whatever they'd got.”

“Is anyone else really not feeling this?” Al asked, turning to the others.

“I want to hear,” Sindy said. “I don't know, music just... always makes me feel better, somehow.”

“Do you know any Clapton, at least?” Al sighed.

After taking a few more seconds to finish tuning the guitar, Alice tested some chords.

“No Clapton, sorry,” she replied, “but this is one I was taught early on.” She strummed for a few more seconds. “Driven from her home one night,” she sang, “she walked out to the lake.”

She tried a couple more chords.

“Sorry, I don't know all the words,” she added. “It's called Thomizen's Sorrow or Thomizen's Lament, something like that.”

“Who the hell is Thomizen?” Al asked.

“I have absolutely no idea,” she admitted, “but apparently it's one of the oldest folk songs from round this area. I'm sure someone's done some research into it. The melody's actually pretty common, it's used in a lot of pieces.”

She continued to strum for a few more seconds.

“She went out alone one day, an outcast from the town,” she sang, “and the wolves they gathered round and tore her perfect gown. Her cries were heard for miles around, her blood spilled on the shore, 'til Thomizen's anguished screams could be heard nevermore.”

She furrowed her brow.

“I think I got that part a little wrong,” she added, before stopping for a moment. “I'm a little disappointed in myself, actually. I used to know this stuff way better, I really need to do some more practice.”

“I always find these songs boring,” Doug said. “They've got no real kick or drive to them.”

“That's because they're about preserving stories,” Sindy told him. “Can't you get that through your soulless mind, Dougie? In the old days, before computers and stuff like that, when most people couldn't even read or write... this is how stories were passed on from one generation to the next.”

“They could still make it catchy,” he murmured. “Who the hell could ever dance to this stuff?”

“It's growing on me,” Al said, leaning against the bar for a moment. “It ain't bad, actually.”

“This is another one he taught me,” Alice said, struggling for a moment to get the chord quite right. “Bar chords are always a challenge.” She took a few tries to play the next chord, and then she began to sing again. “Don't let the sheriff lose his badge,” she continued. “Hide it away, hide it away, and if you need it again... go looking in the town museum.”

“What a load of crap,” Doug said, shaking his head. “These stupid songs are completely pointless. I'd rather -”

“Shut up, Doug!” Al and Sindy both snapped at the same time. “Give it a rest,” Al continued. “If you don't want to listen to this stuff, you know where the door is. As for me... I actually quite like it now. It's kinda soothing.”

Chapter Twelve

Four years earlier...

“Michael, stop!” Lisa shouted. “Don't -”

Before she could get another word out, he shoved her hard and sent her tumbling down onto the floor of the cabin.

“Daddy, why are you so angry?” Eloise sobbed. “Why are you hurting Mommy?”

“I'm not hurting her,” he replied, picking the girl up and carrying her back outside, then setting her down at the bottom of the steps. “Why don't you play outside for a while? I'll come and get you soon.” He wiped a tear from her cheek. “I promise. Everything's going to be okay. Mommy and Daddy just... need to talk about a few things, that's all.”

Turning, he headed back inside and swung the door shut, and then he stopped to see that Lisa was still on the floor.

“I trusted you,” he said, still a little breathless after hauling her back through the forest. “I can't believe I was so stupid. I actually started to believe that I could leave you alone for longer periods, and that you'd still be here when I got back.”

“Michael, I'm sorry,” she replied, wiping blood from her cut lip, “but I have to get Eloise away from here. It's not good for her to grow up isolated like this and -”

“Don't tell me what's good for her!” he screamed angrily. “I know what's good for both of you!”

“You're not the real Michael!” she snapped.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It took me so long to figure it out,” she continued, sitting up a little. “Look at you. It's been so long since you changed back to your wolf form, and your human body is still breaking down. But that's not all, is it? I was right before. The damage to your body is also happening to your mind. The Michael I fell in love with would never have done any of these things, but your brain is literally dying as well.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Just change!” she hissed. “Do it once, and then change back, and I honestly believe that everything will be alright again! You'll be back to your old self! You'll be the Michael I love!”

“Are you saying that you don't love me now?” he asked, before picking up one of the paperback books and holding it out so that she could see the cover. “Is that how the characters in your stupid little stories behave too? Are they fickle and ungrateful?”

“Please just try it,” she whimpered. “If not for me, then for Eloise. I won't be horrified this time, I swear. Please change, even if it's just briefly.”

“I refuse to let you see me as a monster ever again.”

“You're a monster now!” she shouted.

Staring at her with a growing sense of fury, Michael seemed frozen in place for a moment, unable to quite work out what to do next. He clenched and unclenched his fists, causing the skin to crack and bleed a little more, while Eloise could still be heard sobbing outside. As the silence grew in the cabin, however, Michael seemed to be on the verge of unleashing his full fury.

“Please,” Lisa continued, crawling over to him and reaching out to take hold of his right hand, then squeezing tight. “This can all be fixed. You have to change!”

Staring up into his eyes, she waited in vain for him to accept that she was right.

“I know you can do it,” she added softly, trying desperately to encourage him. “I know the real Michael is still in there. You once told me that Eloise can't deny her wolf side, but doesn't that same logic apply to you as well?” She squeezed his hand a little harder, still hoping that she might make him understand. “I'm sorry about how I reacted all those years ago,” she continued, “but I wouldn't react that way now. I'd actually really like to see how you change. I'd like to see it properly. I think I'd find it beautiful.”

Watching his eyes, she tried to spot even the slightest hint of understanding.

“Please, Michael,” she whispered. “Listen to me. Change and -”

“No!” he snarled, pulling his hand away and opening the hatch on the floor, then grabbing her by the arm and pulling her closer. “I'll never do that! Last time I tried, I almost lost you! I won't let that happen again!”

“Michael -”

Unable to fight back, she struggled for a few more seconds before he finally managed to shove her down into the small space beneath the hatch. Stepping away, he kicked the paperback books down after her, and then he stopped to watch as she struggled to get free of the tree roots that even now were holding her in place.

“You're going to stay down there,” he sneered, “until you truly understand why I can never change again. I am the real Michael, whether you like it or not, and nothing you do or say will ever alter that fact. I hope you come to your senses soon, Lisa, but until then... I'm sorry, but you have to stay down there for your own safety!”

With that, he slammed the hatch shut, ignoring the sound of her frantic cries from below.

***

“There's no need to be scared,” Michael said a short while later, sitting on the steps outside the cabin with his daughter. “Things are going to be a little different for a while, but different doesn't have to be bad. And we can still have a lot of fun.”

“What about Mommy?” Eloise asked, before looking over her shoulder and spotting the closed hatch. “Is -”

“Don't think about that,” he replied, reaching up and touching the side of her face, forcing her to turn to him again. “I'll deal with that.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but for a moment she could only stare at him.

“Daddy,” she said cautiously, “why are you always bleeding like that?”

“It's nothing.”

“It makes you look funny.”

“It's just how things have to be,” he told her. “You're a very smart little girl, but at the end of the day you're still so young. There are a lot of things in this big, scary world that you can't possibly understand, and this is one of them.”

“Did Mommy do something wrong?”

“No, of course not,” he replied, although he wasn't entirely sure how to explain things properly. “What you have to remember is that Mommy's only human, and that means she makes mistakes.”

“Are you only human too?”

“That's complicated,” he admitted, before watching her carefully for a moment longer. “Do you ever feel anything in your soul, Eloise? Do you ever feel anything stirring?”

“I don't know.”

“It's probably best to leave it like that,” he suggested. “For now at least, and -”

Suddenly a wolf howled far off in the distance, followed swiftly by another; the sounds continued for several more seconds before fading away.

“What was that?” Eloise asked.

“What do you think it was?”

“I don't know.”

“Then it doesn't really matter,” he told her. “If you didn't feel some kind of... pull in your heart, some kind of innate recognition, then maybe that side of you isn't as strong as I suspected. Or it might not be as developed. Certainly your scent seems much more human than I would have expected.” He watched her for a moment longer, as if he was trying to spot something specific in her eyes. “There's no need to rush you, Eloise. As far as I know, you're the first human-wolf hybrid that has ever been born in Sobolton, and probably the first for many years anywhere in the world. Do you realize how special that makes you?”

She thought for a moment, and then she slowly shook her head.

“Of course you don't,” he muttered, before reaching over and moving a strand of her away from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

“Your hands are scratchy,” she said softly.

“I'm sorry,” he replied, pulling away and immediately getting to his feet. “You're right. Listen, I need to check on some things, and while I do that I want you to stay out here. Don't go into the cabin, and definitely don't listen if your mother tries to call out to you. And don't go too close to the edge of the clearing, either. Do you understand?”

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” he continued firmly. “I mean it, Eloise. Things are going to be a little different around here from now on, but that doesn't have to be scary. It can actually be a good thing, just so long as you remember to stick to my new rules. Do you think you can do that?”

Again she thought, and then she nodded.

“Good girl,” he said with a smile. “One day, you're going to look back on this and be so grateful. I promise, Eloise. One day you're going to realize that all of this had to happen for a very good reason.”

Chapter Thirteen

Today...

“Well, this place sure looks...”

Stepping through the wrecked doorway at the front of the sheriff's station, Carolyn saw broken glass everywhere. Even by recent standards, this was a somewhat shocking scene and she couldn't help but wonder exactly what had happened while she'd been away in the forest. As far as she was aware, the wolves still hadn't caused any real damage in the town, which meant that the humans had been left to stew; and she knew that they could certainly cause trouble with very little provocation. She walked over to her desk and set her bag down, and then she heard footsteps emerging from a nearby room.

Turning, she saw Robert Law making his way through, with Cassie just a few steps further back.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Weren't you here last night?” Robert asked.

“I... no,” she continued. “I went home. I was exhausted, I needed to sleep.”

“Wise choice,” Robert muttered, stopping next to the desk and looking around at all the damage. “Toby decided to cause some more trouble,” he explained. “He and his goons damn near rampaged through the entire place. I'm not sure where they are right now, I imagine they're sleeping it off but they'll be back soon enough.”

“What happened to you?” she continued, peering at the cuts and bruises on his face.

“Occupational hazard,” he sighed. “When you stand up to the mob, you're gonna get beaten up a bit.”

“We've lost track of Sheriff Tench and Lisa Sondnes,” Cassie explained. “And the little girl, too. Toby and the others wanted to turn her over to the wolves, so Sheriff Tench helped them get away. We can only assume that they're hiding somewhere, but we don't know exactly where.”

“That's... shocking,” Carolyn suggested, but her mind was racing as she tried to work out how best to cover her tracks.

“It's starting to look more and more like my nightmares,” Robert replied, limping to the door and looking out across the parking lot. “When night falls... I think those nightmares might come true.”

“What are you talking about?” Carolyn asked.

“I'm talking about despair,” he told her. “I'm talking about the fact that I think we might have lost. We have no way of fighting back, and if those wolves come to attack us, we're basically defenseless.”

“They might not attack, though,” Carolyn pointed out. “If they get the girl, they might decide to leave us alone. I know Saint Thomas isn't exactly popular round these parts, but he's not a complete monster. I just don't think the time has come to completely give up.”

“You might be right,” Robert murmured, before carefully picking his way outside, “but it sure feels right now like everything's closing in. Cassie, I need time to think about everything Tommy said back at the hospital. Can you hold the fort here for now?”

“Of course,” she replied, although she sounded more than a little uncertain, “but... you won't be long, Doctor Law, will you?”

“Truthfully, I have no idea,” he admitted. “Part of me just wants to go and sit in McGinty's and wait for the end of the world. Then again, I think I heard that they're out of booze, so that'd probably just make things worse.” He looked out at the town for a few seconds, and then he turned to her again. “We just have to wait for John Tench to show up,” he added. “With any luck, he's still got at least some semblance of a plan.”

***

“I'm going to take stock of the damage round the back,” Cassie called out as she made her way along the corridor. “I won't be long.”

“Take your time,” Carolyn replied, heading into the little kitchenette and grabbing a mug. “There doesn't seem to be much else to do around here right now.”

She instinctively reached out and switched the coffee machine on, only to sigh as she remembered that there was no power. She still flicked the switch a few times, out of sheer desperation rather than any hope that a miracle might occur, and then she took the pot out of the machine and saw that it was still half filled with coffee from a few days earlier.

Opening the lid, she dipped a finger inside and felt that the coffee was – as expected – completely cold. Still, she wondered for a few seconds whether she might yet drink it; one aspect of the human world that she'd been unable to resist was coffee, and she felt genuine anger that she was being denied her hit of caffeine.

Finally, however, she set the pot down.

“I'm not that desperate yet,” she said under her breath, before turning to go and check what was in the cupboards. “I -”

Before she could finish, the pot slid off the counter and spilled, dousing her legs in cold coffee.

“What the hell?” she gasped angrily as the pot hit the floor.

Looking around, she saw that there was no sign of anyone. She felt absolutely certain that she'd put the pot down away from the counter's edge, and she couldn't help but think that this was merely the latest in a long series of coffee-related calamities and mysteries that had struck her. Reaching down, she picked the pot up and set it back on the counter, and then – as she glanced at the machine – she froze as soon as she spotted a familiar grinning face reflected in one of the metal hoods.

“Joe Hicks,” she whispered. “I kinda guessed it was you. What's wrong, have you got nothing better to do in the afterlife than torment me?”

She turned and looked over her shoulder, but there was no sign of him. When she looked at the machine again, however, she spotted his dead eyes staring back at her.

“Don't you think this is kind of pathetic?” she continued. “Heaven wouldn't take you, huh? Hell's probably waiting, though. Or are you planning to just float around here forever, spilling coffee cups and just generally being an annoyance?”

Again she waited for a reply, and again he simply kept his gaze fixed on her face.

“Joe, what do you want?” she asked, unable to hide a sense of irritation. “What -”

“I know what you are,” he sneered.

“And what's that?”

“I always knew,” he continued. “Well, maybe not always, but certainly from very early on. You might have been able to fool everyone else, even the perfect Mr. Tench, but I had you pegged as the Walker.”

“I -”

“Don't insult my intelligence by trying to deny it,” he added. “I had your predecessor pegged as well. His name was Connor, right? By my reckoning, he must've been the seventh or eighth Walker to live in our little town over the years. You took over not long before I got my ass into the big chair, didn't you? You've been very good at disguising yourself, but you couldn't fool me. Not for long.”

“Really?” She hesitated for a few seconds. “Maybe you weren't quite as dumb as you looked.”

“Oh, I had to be real careful in my dealings with you,” he continued. “There were things I really didn't want to let you know, but I couldn't hide them because then I'd risk tipping you off about my suspicions. But that allowed me to keep the really important secrets away from you.”

“Joe, I don't have time for this,” she replied dismissively. “I just -”

“There was only one really crucial secret,” he added. “I think you know what it is. Don't you remember how I used to search and search for that little pendant? I spent every spare moment trying to figure out where it might have gone.”

“And you never found it,” she sneered. “You failed miserably.”

Watching his reflection, she waited for him to say something, but now he'd fallen silent again.

“You failed,” she continued. “I watched you going through box after box, reading every damn copy of the local paper from front to back. I know you never found it!”

“Well, you're right about that,” he told her. “Partly right, at least. To my eternal shame, I never did quite figure out where that pendant might be lurking. But I did figure out one important detail that I always kept hidden from you.”

“And what's that?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

“It's here somewhere,” he said firmly. “I established that much. I learned that one of my predecessors, very many years ago, had hold of that pendant and whatever's inside it, and he hid it away good. Too good, if you ask me. But it's here somewhere in the town, and the only question is where.”

“You're lying,” she replied, sounding a little less confident now. “That thing has been lost for years, and it's going to stay lost.”

“Maybe, or maybe not,” he continued, “but I can see the fear in your eyes right now, Carolyn, and I like that very much. But the best part is, when it's needed, that little pendant is gonna make itself known. That's the other thing I worked out. It makes a kind of rattling sound when it's around your kind, apparently. So when your lot inevitably show up to cause carnage, all the good people of Sobolton have to do... is listen.”

Chapter Fourteen

One year earlier...

As her thoughts began to drift away and she felt herself falling into another nightmare, Lisa suddenly realized that the hatch was opening. Caught in the ragged roots that filled the space beneath the cabin's floor, she looked up just in time to see a blast of light silhouetting the familiar figure of Michael.

“You can come up now,” he said firmly. “I hope you've learned your lesson this time.”

Having been forced to spend weeks at a time in the cramped space, only ever being let out for a few hours here and there, Lisa instinctively turned away. She knocked some of the paperback books off the roots; she reached out to grab them, only for Michael to take hold of her arms and haul her up. Still struggling in the bright morning light, she was powerless to stop him as he set her on the cabin's floor and kicked the hatch shut, and then he let go and allowed her to roll onto her side.

“Do we have to do this every damn time?” he asked.

“Please,” she stammered, turning and reaching toward the hatch again, “don't make me be up here. I want to go back down.”

“No, you really don't,” he replied.

“Please,” she said again, getting onto her knees and crawling back over to the hatch. “Don't -”

“Not this again,” he sighed, grabbing her from behind and hauling her kicking and screaming across the cabin, then shoving her down again. “Do you have to make all this noise? You're going to scare Eloise!”

As soon as she heard her daughter's name, Lisa froze. She still hated the fact that Michael was looking at her, but after a moment she heard the sound of laughter outside. Stumbling to her feet, barely able to stay up at all, she shuffled to the window and immediately saw Eloise playing outside in the clearing, chasing a butterfly. For a moment the entire scene looked so perfect and so beautiful, and Lisa felt her heart filling with pure unadulterated love.

“I hope I can keep you out for longer this time,” Michael said. “I hope you don't make another stupid attempt to run away.”

“Last time -”

“You were going to run the other week.”

“No, I wasn't,” she replied, turning to him. “I swear! You got it all wrong!”

“I have a hard time believing that,” he admitted, before nodding at a pile of clothes on a nearby table. “I collected these from the back of the goodwill store,” he continued. “I picked up some that are too big, so that she can grow into them.”

Heading to the table, Lisa began to look through the assortment of dresses, some of which had small holes that needed fixing.

“I could only get the ones that were left out back,” Michael explained. “For the most part, they were already rejected by the store, but a few decent items slipped through. The point is, I don't know how to fix them and I figured that you would.”

“I can try,” she replied, “but I'd need a needle and thread, at least.”

“On the shelf next to you,” he pointed out, before pausing for a moment and watching as she began to work. “Aren't you going to go out there and see Eloise?”

“Not while I look like this,” she murmured, and her hands were trembling slightly as she tried to hold the first dress. “Can you keep her outside for a little while?”

“Actually,” he replied, “I need to go out for a few hours. Nothing major, just some... pack business.” He smiled as she turned to him. “You'll be okay by yourself here, won't you? I'm sure you and Eloise can enjoy having a little time together.”

***

A little over two hours later, standing in the forest, Michael realized that footsteps were approaching. He turned to look, but in truth he already knew who he was going to see.

“Brother, how are you doing?” Saint Thomas asked, stopping next to him. “It's a real nice surprise to find you out here again.”

“It's not a surprise,” Michael replied, bristling slightly. “You seem to make a real habit of showing up.”

“What if I just miss my brother?” Turning, Saint Thomas saw the cabin a short distance away, beyond the farthest line of trees. “What are you doing, anyway?” he continued. “Scared to go home?”

“I'm testing her.”

“Lisa?”

“I need to know if she's going to try to escape again. She thinks I've gone away for a while, and that she's been left alone with Eloise. If she stays put and doesn't try anything stupid, I'll know that I can start trusting her again.”

“Sometimes I'm massively relieved that I stay away from the fairer sex,” Saint Thomas said with a sigh. “I've got one brother pining over a human, and another chasing around after an older wolf who insists on staying in her human form. Meanwhile here I am, preferring to pursue less... permanent pairings.”

“Did you actually come here for a reason?” Michael asked.

“Something has to be done about Clanath soon. She keeps leaving dead cubs in the forest and, frankly, it's getting embarrassing. Our dear brother insists that he'll deal with her, but he's been stalling for a while now. As long as Clanath stays in town, acting like some kind of drifter, I guess we can tolerate the situation. I'm just worried that eventually she's going to... do something stupid.”

“Clanath is nothing to do with me,” Michael said firmly. “She hasn't been here for years.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Turning, Michael saw a hint of amusement in his brother's eyes.

“How long has it been since you reverted to your natural form?” Saint Thomas asked. “A decade? More? I'm losing track, but I guess your ability to pick up scents isn't as good as it could be.”

“I can track just fine.”

“Sure, when you're after something specific. But Clanath has visited your little clearing a few times over the years, especially since that daughter of yours was born, and you don't seem to have a clue.”

Michael opened his mouth to tell his brother to go away, but in that moment he realized that perhaps he could pick up a trace of Clanath's human scent after all. Annoyed with himself for not having noticed sooner, he looked toward the cabin again and saw that Eloise was still playing alone happily. Lisa, he could only assume, was still working on the dresses inside.

“The others are getting restless,” Saint Thomas said firmly. “This situation can't last forever. There's a power vacuum in our pack and if you're not going to fill it -”

“The pack's fine.”

“The pack needs a leader.”

“Then lead them.”

“It's not as simple as that,” Saint Thomas sighed. “Brother, you know that I can't just take your place. Like it or not, you are our father's successor and soon you have to accept that fact. The alternative just isn't going to be -”

“I'm never returning to the pack,” Michael said, interrupting him. “I don't belong there. I've got my life here with Lisa and Eloise, and that's more than enough for me.”

“It's not enough for the pack, though,” Saint Thomas continued. “Mark my words, at some point something's gonna happen, and you'll find that everything's taken out of your hands. When that day comes – and it might come soon – you really need to be prepared for anything. I'm your brother, Michael, and I still want what's best for you.” He reached over and put a hand on Michael's shoulder, ignoring the inevitable flinch. “Do you think this fairy tale life is going to last forever? Look at you, you're slowly crumbling to pieces. If you can't be your real self in front of the woman you claim to love, and in front of your own child, then how can you possibly see this situation lasting?”

“I don't need your advice,” Michael said through gritted teeth, slipping away from his grasp while keeping his eyes fixed on the cabin. “I've got everything under control. Anything beyond the boundaries of this clearing has no meaning for me at all. You need to learn to accept that fact.”

He waited for a reply, before turning and seeing that somehow Saint Thomas had slipped away silently. Although he wanted to make his point a little more firmly, he finally let out a sigh and looked at the cabin again. He no longer cared about the pack, or about his brothers; he only cared about his new family, and so far – to his immense relief – Lisa was actually passing his latest little test.

Chapter Fifteen

Today...

“Where is she?” Lisa asked, taking a step toward Saint Thomas. “I want to see her right now.”

“I already explained -”

“I don't care about your excuses!” she snapped angrily. “I'm her mother and I demand to see her!”

“John, can you try to get through to her?” Saint Thomas asked with a sigh, turning to the spot where John's wolf was waiting. “Oh, that's right, I forgot you're like that now. How's the wolf lifestyle going for you, by the way? Have you decided which form your prefer? You're probably going to have to pick one or -”

“Get out of my way!” Lisa hissed, pushing past him and hurrying ahead through the forest.

“Damn it,” Saint Thomas muttered, “I was really hoping that we could deal with this situation like civilized creatures.”

“Eloise!” Lisa shouted, looking around in the desperate hope that she might spot her daughter. “Eloise, where are you? Eloise, I'm here!”

John began to follow her, while taking care to avoid getting too close to Saint Thomas.

“You're making a big mistake, John,” Saint Thomas said firmly. “I think you know that, too. You're getting into a part of the forest that you really should stay out of. I can't guarantee your safety beyond this point. Not that I was particularly guaranteeing anything before, but you know what I mean.”

John glanced back at him but otherwise continued to follow Lisa.

“I warned you!” Saint Thomas called after them both. “I warned Michael once, too, but he didn't listen. All of this could have been avoided if people just stopped for five seconds and actually listened to what I'm saying. Sure, I've got plenty of rough edges, but I'm actually right about a lot of things. It's my presentation that I really need to work on.”

Ignoring him, Lisa continued to make her way through the forest. Darkness was starting to fall again and she couldn't bear the thought of Eloise being trapped out in the forest for another night. Hearing a rustling sound, she looked down just as John hurried past; she could tell that he was trying to protect her by going first, and when she glanced over her shoulder she no longer saw any sign of Saint Thomas.

“It feels different here,” she said under her breath, as she briefly ducked down to pass beneath a low-hanging branch. “Am I imagining things, or does the air feel different somehow? It's almost as if I'm picking up on some kind of... change in the forest.”

John looked up at her for a few seconds before continuing on his way. Not for the first time, Lisa found herself desperately wishing that she could understand more of his body language, or that he could switch back into his human form for a while, but she figured that for now he was most useful as a wolf. Her legs were aching more than ever and she knew she was exhausted, but the urge to find Eloise was keeping her going and she told herself that she could walk forever if necessary.

“Where are you, Eloise?” she whispered, convinced that her daughter had to be close. “How far into the forest did you run?”

***

And then, finally, her right foot buckled and she fell. Having walked for another hour or two, long into the darkening evening, Lisa let out a gasp of pain as she slumped down against the ground.

Stopping ahead, John turned and looked back at her.

“I'm fine,” she told him, before wincing as soon as she tried to move her ankle. “Just give me a moment.”

After stepping over to inspect the damage, John looked into her eyes.

“I don't need pity!” she snapped.

He tilted his head slightly.

“Don't give me that look!”

He tilted his head the other way.

“You're being very patronizing right now,” she continued, even though she knew her outburst was faintly ridiculous. “You know that, right? Even for a wolf, you've got this... air about you.”

He tilted his head back again.

“You're no use,” she muttered, before tossing the clothes at him. “You might as well put these on, because you're not exactly setting the world on fire as a sniffer dog, are you? There's no sign of Eloise! She could be anywhere!”

He turned and looked past her. She followed his gaze, but she saw no sign of anyone in the increasingly dark forest.

“Now it's almost night,” she continued, struggling to stay calm, “and we've been walking for so long, and I'm not even sure that you know where we're going. We're not -”

In that moment, she realized that she could see something in the distance, beyond the treeline. Puzzled, she furrowed her brow; a tingling sense of doubt was filling her chest and she told herself that she had to be wrong, but as she hauled herself to her feet she realized that she recognized the structure ahead. Taking care to avoid putting too much pressure on her injured ankle, she picked her way between the trees until she reached the edge of the clearing, and finally she found herself staring at the cabin.

“What?” she whispered. “How...”

Slowly, she turned and saw John's wolf form watching her.

“How are we back here?” she asked. “This is impossible! We've been walking for hours!”

John made his way over and brushed against her as he walked past and headed out into the clearing.

“What are you doing?” she shouted angrily. “John, are you out of your mind? We're supposed to be finding Eloise, not going round and round in circles!”

Stopping again, he turned to her.

“I've been trusting you,” she continued, struggling to contain her anger. “I assumed you were using that big nose of yours to track Eloise! I assumed you were trying to help me or...”

Her voice trailed off, and after a moment she hurried toward the cabin.

“Is she here?” she shouted, rushing up the steps and barreling through the door. “Eloise!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

She hurried up the stairs, but already she was starting to lose all hope. Once she was back down on the ground floor, she checked the space beneath the hatch before walking back out to the top of the steps. She saw John watching her, and in that moment she began to feel as if he'd been wasting her time for several hours. Having trusted him, she now wondered whether he'd somehow been recruited by the wolves.

“I can't believe you did this,” she whispered, struggling to contain her anger even as she felt the rage starting to boil over. “I thought you were on my side.”

John began to make his way closer, but Lisa immediately felt her rage taking over. Looking around, she spotted some rocks on the ground; she hurried over and picked one up, and then she turned and threw the rock, hitting the wolf's flank and causing him to immediately pull back.

“You're one of them now, aren't you?” she hissed, before throwing another rock, this time missing him by several feet. “You're one of those things and you're on their side!”

After ducking another rock, John hurried toward her. Enraged, Lisa picked up yet another rock and threw it as hard as she could manage, hitting him in the face and bringing a pained yelp from his jaws.

“You might as well go back to them, then,” she continued as he turned and hurried away, scampering into the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing. “That's right, beat it! I've been following you for hours and hours, I believed you were trying to help me, and now you've brought me right back to the one place I never wanted to go again! You don't care about Eloise, do you? Maybe you did once, or maybe...”

Pausing for a moment, she tried to make sense of the madness.

“Was I right all along?” she asked. “Are you the Walker? I wouldn't be surprised. From what I heard, you just showed up here in Sobolton out of nowhere. Sure, you claim to have come from New York or wherever, but can anyone here actually verify that fact? After Joe Hicks I hoped that Sobolton might have finally found itself a decent sheriff, but now I see I was deluded. You're no better than he was. Hell, you might even be worse.”

With tears in her eyes, she took a couple of steps back.

“And now you've stopped me going after Eloise,” she sobbed, sitting on the steps and putting her hands over her face. “She could be anywhere now. She could be dead for all I know!” Looking at the forest again, she no longer saw any sign of John. “Do you hear me?” she screamed. “If anything happens to her, John, it's all your fault!”

Chapter Sixteen

One year earlier...

“Eloise,” Michael whispered, reading the name on a tag in one of the dresses, before checking another. “Eloise again. Is this really necessary? Who exactly is going to steal her clothes?”

“My mother used to do it for me,” Lisa replied, watching from the doorway. “I just... I thought it seemed right, that's all.” She hesitated, before stepping over to the table and reaching for the dresses. “It's stupid, though. I can cross them out.”

“No.”

“There's no point,” she continued, picking up one of the dresses and seeing her daughter's name in spidery handwriting on the tag. “I'm just being sentimental, that's all. It's a kind of weakness. I should be a better person.”

“I like the names on the tags,” he said firmly.

“I just want to look after her,” she explained, as she heard Eloise still playing outside. “I never thought very much about having kids before. I don't even know how much I wanted them. With Wade, I guess I somehow sensed that things probably weren't going to work out, and then I figured I was just going to get too old. But now I love Eloise so much, with all my heart, and I feel powerless to be the mother she deserves.”

“You're doing a great job,” he told her.

Shaking her head, she let out a sigh.

“But you need to spend more time with her,” he added, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Why do you avoid her so much?”

“I don't want her to get used to having me around,” she replied. “Not when you might decide to throw me back down into that pit at any moment.”

“I'll only do that if you give me a reason,” he explained. “Lisa, you must understand that I never want to punish you, it's just that I'm trying to make you understand why you have to stay here.”

Leaning down, he carefully planted a kiss on her cheek, although he couldn't ignore the fact that she immediately flinched and began to pull away. He could tell that she was trying to hide her reaction, however, and he told himself that with time she might well begin to show him proper affection again. And although that day couldn't come soon enough, he knew now that he couldn't rush things and that – like any relationship – his life with Lisa needed to be treated with great care and tenderness.

Certainly with more care and tenderness than he'd shown so far.

“I'll leave you for now,” he said, turning and heading to the door. “I'm sure you've got a lot to do, and... so do I. I'll be gone for an hour or two.”

Once she was alone, Lisa looked at the handwritten name she'd carefully added to the tags of Eloise's dresses. She knew that there was no real need for what she was doing; after all, it wasn't as if Eloise was likely to ever mix with other children, and the idea of her going to school seemed utterly impossible. All she knew, however, was that her own mother had done the same thing for her many years earlier, and that she had to cling to whatever scraps of normality she could find.

Taking another dress, she picked up a pen and swallowed hard before starting to write Eloise's name on the tag. She worked slowly and carefully, determined to do the best job possible, but already a fresh plan was stirring in the back of her mind. Having almost begun to accept her fate, and Eloise's fate too, she was starting to think that there might yet be a way for them both to get away from the cabin.

Glancing out the window, she saw Eloise picking flowers at the edge of the clearing. In that moment she felt her resolve stiffen, and she realized that life at the cabin was no life at all. She was going to have to try again to get them both back to Sobolton, and this time she really couldn't afford to fail. And if she couldn't manage to get herself to safety, she was going to have to find a way to set her daughter free.

***

Several months later, with darkness having fallen across the clearing, Lisa stood at the window and looked out at the moonlit forest. Whereas all her previous plans had been fairly sudden, on this occasion she had taken great care to think things through over and over again, and she knew that soon the moment would arrive.

Hearing the sound of a floorboard creaking behind her, she immediately knew that she was no longer alone.

“Can't sleep?”

“I'll be up soon,” she replied, hating the fact that she was now so accustomed to lying. “I was just... watching the moonlight.”

“I thought I was the only one who felt its pull,” Michael said, stepping up behind her and stopping just inches away. “You have no idea what it's like. When the moon is full, I can feel its hold on my blood. I know that probably sounds crazy, but the difference is extreme. And when the moon isn't full, everything seems so much calmer. My body feels its movement, just as the sea's tide is pulled from one direction to another.”

“I'm sure,” she murmured, barely able to even pay attention to what he was telling her.

“It's the same for humans, you know,” he added, putting his hands on the sides of her arms from behind. “You've just been conditioned to not feel it. In the old days, humans were much more influenced by the pull of the moon, their moods would swing wildly. Then you surrounded yourself with electricity and the pull became constant. That's one of the reasons why our people find it so difficult to spend too much time in the human world. Honestly, I don't know how the Walkers have managed it over the years.”

“There's no electricity out here,” she pointed out.

“It'll take time for you to adjust,” he explained. “Even after all these years, the damage caused by the electricity in Sobolton will need to heal. Eloise, though... I'm sure she feels the influence of the moon, even if she doesn't understand it.”

“What do you think her life is going to be like?”

“I -”

“I'm serious, Michael,” she continued, turning to him, looking up into his eyes. In that moment, she wondered whether she might yet abandon her plan and allow herself and Eloise to remain with him. “She's just a child now, but what do you think will happen to her in ten or twenty years from now? Do you think she's just going to sit around happily in this cabin, never questioning her life or wondering what the world is like beyond the clearing?”

“I haven't really thought that far ahead yet.”

“Do you want her to be like you?” she asked. “Do you want her to just... cower here?”

“I'm not cowering,” he replied, clearly irritated by the words she'd chosen. “I've never hidden from anything. Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“Because I'm trying to understand you.”

“I'm creating a perfect world for us out here,” he said firmly. “Why would Eloise ever want to leave somewhere like that?”

“So I was right. You do want to trap her here.”

He shook his head.

“The outside world is still there, Michael,” she continued. “You can't expect us to ignore it forever, and in return it won't ignore us either. I don't know how or when, but eventually something from beyond this clearing is going to interfere, and there won't be anything you can do to stop it.”

“There'll always be something I can do.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I'm the king!” he snapped, before sighing. “You know what I mean. I might have refused to take my throne, but there's no such thing as abdication in the wolf world. As much as they might hate it, the wolves all know that my authority remains absolute. Even Saint Thomas, as much as he'd like to deny it, knows that he has to bend to my will. I refuse to wield my power, but if that ever changes...”

His voice trailed off for a moment.

“You have no idea what I could do,” he added finally. “Saint Thomas does, or at least he suspects. That's why he's always careful around me. He likes to jab at me from the sides, but he knows he can't afford to really come at me, because at the end of the day I can still command the loyalty of the pack. So I'm not cowering anywhere, Lisa. Far from it. If anyone's cowering, it's the other wolves, the ones who don't dare to come within a mile of me because they know... I'm still their king.”

“I've never seen this side of you before,” she replied, genuinely shocked by the way he was talking.

“And hopefully you'll never need to again,” he said, before turning and heading over to the stairs. “Come up soon. And don't ever accuse me of cowering away, not ever again. Because if you do, it just shows that you don't understand me at all.”

“Oh, I understand you,” she said under her breath as she watched him disappearing into the darkness of the room above. “That's why I have to get Eloise away from you before it's too late.”

Chapter Seventeen

Today...

“I didn't think I'd be seeing you here tonight,” Al Major said, watching with a growing sense of bemusement as Robert Law limped into the bar. Candles were flickering nearby, providing the only illumination. “You're just in time to join our little folk festival.”

“Folk festival?” Robert replied, making no effort to hide the concern in his voice. “Doesn't anyone here know some good old-fashioned rock or blues?”

“That's what I said!” Doug pointed out. “Finally someone agrees with me!”

“To be honest,” Al continued, as Alice practiced a few chords in the corner, “it kind of fits the mood. There's no booze, by the way. I swear, people keep popping their heads around the corner as if they expect me to have magically found a few extra bottles stashed away. It's like they can't believe what's happening. I tell them I don't have any, and they go away for a few hours before coming back to try again.”

“I'm not gonna lie,” Robert said, wincing a little as he took up his favorite position on one of the bar stools, “a drink would feel pretty damn good right now.”

“When we get out of this mess,” Doug added, “I'm going to get so drunk, I doubt I'll remember anything at all. Screw this healthy living and sobriety. It's all so boring.” He glanced at the clock. “Does anyone else feel like time's not moving quite right? I swear, it's like everything's slowing down.”

“Can they do that?” Sindy asked, looking around in the hope that someone might be able to answer. “The wolves, I mean. It seems like they can do a lot of weird things. Can they actually slow time down?”

“How are things going?” Al muttered, lowering his voice a little as he leaned across the bar and watched Robert's reaction carefully. “That Toby idiot and his mob... did they track down the little girl yet?”

Robert shook his head.

“And that woman who showed up with all those rocks in her belly, did -”

“I don't know,” Robert said firmly.

“The saints won't protect us,” Alice began to sing in the corner, “they just turn away and cry.”

“What about Sheriff Tench?” Al asked. “Did -”

“I don't know!” Robert snapped angrily, before getting to his feet once more. “Damn it, I just came in here to try to relax and now I'm getting peppered with all these stupid questions. I'm not some great source of knowledge, okay? I don't have a clue what's going on and I don't know how or if we're ever gonna get out of this mess!”

Everyone fell silent for a few seconds, before Alice started playing again.

“Sheriff Cochrane fetched his gun,” she sang softly, “and left the town to die.”

“That's not helping!” Robert hissed, turning to her before letting out a heavy sigh. “I should've known better than to come down here. What's the use of a bar when it doesn't have anything to drink, huh? It's just a room full of depressives who can barely string two sentences together.”

Grabbing his cane again, he began to limp back toward the door.

“He left the pendant on the ground,” Alice sang, “beneath Emma's body hanging high.”

“Goddamn folk music rubbish,” Robert muttered, reaching out to open the door. “I've never heard such a pile of -”

In that moment he froze, as he realized exactly what he'd just heard Alice singing. He turned to her slowly, but she'd already moved on to the next part of the piece.

“In old Sobolton,” she continued, “they -”

“Do that part again!” Robert said firmly, interrupting her. “Sing that last part again!”

“What part?” she asked, clearly surprised by his sudden interest in what she was doing. “Sorry, I'm not sure that I quite understand.”

“Sing the part about a pendant,” he continued, limping over to her, “and make sure you get the words exactly right.”

***

A few more pieces of glass fell from the frame and hit the floor as Robert stepped through into the darkened front office at the station.

“I still don't quite get what you're expecting to find,” Alice said, as she and Doug followed. “I was just singing an old folk song, that's all. It's one that's been handed down over the years. What do the lyrics have to do with anything that's happening right now?”

“Maybe something and maybe nothing,” Robert replied, stopping to look around, “but according to that song, the pendant was in the possession of some Sheriff Cochrane guy, and he left it when he took off away from the town.”

“But -”

“So it stands to reason,” he continued, “that from that point on, the pendant would have become property of the next sheriff, whoever he might have been at any given time.”

“I still don't get it,” Alice told him. “That song was probably written more than a hundred years ago. I bet there have been a lot of sheriffs since then. Do you even know who Sheriff Cochrane was?”

“I don't have a clue,” Robert told her, “but -”

Before he could finish, they all heard footsteps approaching and they turned just in time to see Carolyn making her way through from one of the back rooms with a dark coffee stain on her shirt.

“What happened to you?” Robert asked.

“Another... altercation with the machine in the kitchenette,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We might have made a breakthrough with the -”

Stopping suddenly, Robert turned and eyed Alice and Doug with a hint of suspicion.

“What?” they both asked at the same time.

“What's wrong?” Doug added. “What did we do?”

“Hell, you don't look much like werewolves to me,” Robert told them, “plus I know your parents, so I guess that makes you safe.” He turned to Carolyn again. “This is going to sound crazy, but I don't care. Alice here was singing some old folk songs. Now, obviously I'd usually rather listen to the sound of someone scratching their nails down a chalkboard. I like my guitars plugged in and my amps turned up to eleven. But the point is, she happened to sing this one particular song about an old sheriff from these parts, and one of the lines mentioned a pendant.”

Carolyn opened her mouth to reply, before hesitating for a moment.

“I don't need to explain why that might be important, do I?” he continued.

“You do not,” she said softly.

“If the song's to be believed,” he added, “then that pendant at some point found its way into the hands of the local sheriff. Do you realize what that means? It means that we now know where the pendant was last seen. It was here.”

“This building isn't very old,” Carolyn pointed out.

“No, but the pendant has been the property of the sheriff, or of the office, for all this time,” he countered, “which means it's probably still here somewhere. I don't know where exactly, I wouldn't be surprised if it's been forgotten and ignored, and maybe stashed away in some box that nobody's opened in a few decades. But we've got a lead and I intend to follow it.”

Leaning on his stick, he hurried past her and made his way toward John's office.

“It's worth a try!” he called back to the others. “I'm gonna tear every inch of this place apart!”

Once he was gone, Carolyn stood in silence for a moment before suddenly Alice and Doug began to follow Robert.

“Where do you think you two are going?” Carolyn asked, stepping into their path.

“We figured we should help,” Alice told her. “We just -”

“This is still an official building,” Carolyn replied, “and I can't just let two civilians go wandering around. I'm sorry, but you won't be able to take part in this search. My advice would be for you to go back to wherever you were – McGinty's, I imagine – and let the professionals conduct this search.”

“Fine by me,” Doug said, turning and heading to the door. “Come on, Alice. I'm sure you've got some more songs about poor dead people that you can sing to really make us extra depressed. I've still got this pesky sliver of hope that needs finishing off.”

“Are you sure Doctor Law won't mind?” Alice asked hesitantly.

“Don't worry about Doctor Law,” Carolyn told her with a smile. “He and I are more than capable of carrying out this search. I'll take real good care of him.”

“If you say so,” Alice replied, turning and following Doug out of the station.

Carolyn watched as they walked away, and a moment later she realized that she could already hear Robert rooting through the office. True to his word, he certainly sounded as if he was taking the place apart. After a few more seconds, with a faint smile on her lips, Carolyn turned around and made her way through to join him.

Chapter Eighteen

Earlier...

“Just go!” Lisa hissed in the darkness, turning Eloise around and pushing her toward the cabin's front door. “There'll be time to talk later. Right now I need you to run! I already told you that I -”

“I'm scared,” the girl sobbed.

“You're my big brave girl and I know you'll be fine,” Lisa continued. “I'll be right behind you. I promise. But... if I'm not, Eloise, then you have to keep running anyway. Do you understand me? Run like your life depends on it.”

“What if you don't come?”

“I will. I swear to you. Even if it takes a little longer than I'd like, eventually I'll come and find you.”

Looking over her shoulder, Lisa still saw no sign that Michael was coming after them, but she knew he wouldn't be far behind. She'd waited until he'd taken a rare trip away at night, but part of her still worried that this might be some kind of test. In the back of her mind, however, she told herself that this time she had one advantage up her sleeve; this time it was Eloise who had to get away, which mean that Lisa could use herself as a distraction.

“Where are we going to run to?” Eloise asked.

“The town.”

“What town?”

“It's not far from here,” she explained. “Not too far, anyway. There are people there who can help us... if we can find them. I don't know, a lot might have changed. If it's changed too much, we'll find a car and we'll get the hell away from Sobolton.”

“What's Sobolton?”

“It's the town,” she continued, taking her by the hand and leading her to the door. “Okay, I think this is our chance. Eloise. We won't have another, not ever, so we need to get this right.”

“How will we find the town? Do you know the way?”

“Sort of. But there'll be lights.”

“What kind of lights?”

“More lights than you've ever seen in your life.”

“More lights than the stars?”

“In a different way, yes.” She opened the cabin's front door and pushed Eloise out into the cold night air. “Okay,” she continued, “when I say run...”

She froze, looking out at the clearing and still seeing no sign of Michael. She knew deep down that she could still change her mind, that she could abandon the plan and avoid causing any trouble; in some ways, that idea seemed very appealing, but she knew she could never forgive herself if she allowed Eloise to become trapped forever at the cabin. Looking down, she saw that the tag was poking up at the back of the girl's dress. As she tucked that tag away, she spotted her own handwriting spelling out the name Eloise, and she allowed herself a sad smile.

The time had come.

“Run!” she gasped, pushing Eloise down the steps. “I'll catch up, but run!”

Eloise turned to her.

“Run!” Lisa hissed.

In that moment, Eloise turned and raced away across the clearing.

“I'll be right behind you!” Lisa called after her, although she knew she had to give her daughter a small head start in case Michael arrived too early. With tears in her eyes, she watched as Eloise disappeared between the trees. “I swear,” she added, although part of her worried that she might never see her again. “I'll find you,” she sobbed, fighting the urge to run after her, forcing herself to hold her ground. “He's going to be focused on my scent at first. That should give you a chance to -”

Before she could finish, she heard a wolf howling somewhere in the distance. She knew that was just a coincidence, but she couldn't help worrying that there might yet be other dangers out there in the forest. After hesitating for a moment longer, she pulled the cabin's door shut and hurried down the steps, desperate to not let Eloise get too far ahead before putting the next part of the plan into action. The details of that plan were changing almost constantly, swirling through her thoughts, and all she really knew with any certainty was that she had to make sure that Eloise was safe.

Reaching the edge of the clearing, she thought back to the promises she'd made to her daughter. And although she still hoped to catch up to her eventually, she understood now that she needed to use her own – much stronger – scent to her advantage. After all, her time of the month had arrived a few days earlier and she figured that her scent might yet overwhelm Michael's tracking abilities. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than anything else she'd managed to come up with.

“Run, Eloise,” she whispered, sniffing back more tears before turning and hurrying away in a different direction. “I'll find you, I promise.”

***

A short while later, as she picked her way through the dark forest, Lisa realized that a certain chill had begun to fill the air. Looking up, she saw the stars beyond the tops of the trees and she began to wonder whether a cold snap might be approaching, but she quickly told herself that Eloise should have reached safety by now.

In which case, she just needed -

Suddenly an immense force slammed into her from behind, smashing her against a tree and then leaving her to slump down onto the forest floor.

She immediately tried to get up, only for someone to grab her and spin her around. In a sliver of moonlight, she saw Michael's furious face glaring at her.

“Again?” he snarled angrily. “I thought you'd grown up, Lisa! I thought these pathetic escape attempts were over!”

“I -”

Before she could get another word out, he slammed her into another tree, but this time he kept a hand around her throat and held her up.

“Eloise, where are you?” he snarled. “Eloise, you can come out now! Wherever you are, you don't need to hide. Not from me. I'm your father.”

“Stay where you are!” Lisa gasped, hoping to trick Michael into thinking that their daughter was still nearby. “Don't come out until Mommy tells you to.”

“Are you teaching her to be scared of me?” he asked. “Is that it? Is -”

Stopping suddenly, he furrowed his brow. A moment later he let go of Lisa's throat, allowing her to slump back against the tree as he turned and looked all around.

“She's not here,” he continued, and now his voice was filled with a sense of shock. “She's nowhere near, not for miles around.” He turned to Lisa again. “What did you do with her?”

“I got her away from you,” she stammered.

“What did you do with her?” he screamed, leaning closer to her as she turned away with tears streaming down her face. “Where is she right now?”

“I told you,” she whimpered, “she's safe.”

“She's not safe unless she's with me!” he growled. “Neither of you are! Why can't you get that through your thick head? I'm the only one who can keep the wolves away from you both!”

“You're the only wolf we need to get away from right now,” she replied.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked, staring at her with an expression of genuine horror. “Are you really so deluded? Have you forgotten so much? When they tied you down at that hospital and fried your brain, did they turn you into a complete idiot?”

“This could all be avoided if you just changed!” she told him. “You'd be yourself again! You wouldn't have all this anger!”

“And now you're lecturing me?” he asked. “You, a mere human, dare to tell me that what I'm doing is wrong? Sometimes I marvel at you, Lisa. You're a guest in my world, yet somehow you seem to think that you have the right to lecture me. You, a girl from a backwater town whose greatest claim is that she looked after sick animals... dare to lecture a king on how to look after his family?”

“We're not your family,” she cried. “We're your prisoners! We -”

“Enough!” he snarled, slamming the back of her head against the tree, knocking her out cold before letting her fall down onto the ground.

Standing completely still and silent for a moment, Michael tried to pick up on some hint of Eloise's location. He knew that in his wolf form he'd be able to find her easily enough, but in his wrecked and ruined human body he found that his senses were severely impaired. She was out there somewhere, he knew that much, and he couldn't quite believe that his own daughter would actually try to run from him. For a fraction of a second – just a millisecond or two – he began to shift into his wolf form, before forcing himself to instead hold back.

“Eloise!” he shouted finally. “Come back here! Do you hear me? That's an order!”

He waited, but all he heard was the sound of the trees swaying in a late night breeze.

“Eloise!” he screamed. “Come back!”

Chapter Nineteen

Today...

Sitting alone on the steps at the front of the cabin, with tears drying on her cheeks, Lisa stared down at the rough ground and tried to come up with a new plan.

“I'll find you,” she whispered. “Eloise, I -”

Before she could finish, she heard a rustling sound coming from the edge of the clearing. Looking up, she expected to see John slinking back into view, but instead there was no sign of movement at all. The sound continued for a few more seconds, seemingly moving around a little to the right, before silence fell once more.

“You might as well go back to your pack,” she sneered, looking down again. “If -”

“It's me, Lisa,” a voice said. “I didn't think you'd ever come back here.”

She froze, not daring to believe what she was hearing, before finally turning. In that moment she felt a jolt of shock in her chest as she saw a bloodied and bleeding figure standing in the middle of the clearing, wearing the same dark clothes she remembered from before. She stared at him, blinking, half convinced that he was going to disappear at any moment, but finally she slowly got to her feet and began to wonder whether she should run.

“It can't be,” she whispered. “I have to be imagining this.”

“At first,” Michael explained, “I was confused by the scent. I couldn't work out why you were out here again after all this time. I ignored it, but it was so insistent and eventually I realized that it was a message of some kind. John Tench... in his wolf form... he was calling to me and letting me know that I needed to come back to you.”

“You're dead,” she replied, barely able to get the words out. “You died.”

He hesitated, before slowly shaking his head.

“John said -”

“John must have realized once he was a wolf that he could sense me again,” Michael said, interrupting her. “The truth is, after that night, I very nearly died. Once I hauled myself out of the river, I decided that I might as well play dead and let everyone believe that I was gone. There seemed to be no point coming back and... scaring you all again.”

“I should have known,” she replied. “I think I did know maybe, deep down. It seemed too simple and easy for you to have died like that.”

“I don't have to be here,” he told her. “If you want me to leave, I'll leave. I've been trying to keep a low profile, there are certain... ways I can cover my scent. I think I've managed to hide my presence from the rest of the pack. Even Saint Thomas seems to think that I'm really gone.”

“They've got Eloise,” she continued. “I tried to protect her but... they got her.”

“I sensed that too.”

“I should never have run,” she sobbed. “We should have stayed here with you. At least then she would have been safe.”

“No, you were right,” he replied. “They were going to come for her eventually. Somehow... something would have intervened. I don't know what, and I don't know when, but... my plan was never going to last forever. I should have recognized that a lot sooner. In a way, by trying to protect her, I was just driving her straight into their arms.”

He stepped forward.

“Lisa -”

She immediately stepped back, as if terrified by the idea of letting him get too close.

“I understand,” he continued. “We need to put our differences aside for Eloise's sake. The longer she spends with them, the more danger she's in. Whatever you might think about me, Lisa, you have to understand that together we're the only ones who can find Eloise and bring her home. That home doesn't have to be this cabin, not now. I get that. But she sure as hell doesn't belong with Saint Thomas and the others.”

“If they truly think that you're dead now,” she replied, “then what do they even want with her?”

“Saint Thomas want to control her,” he said firmly. “She's the heir to the throne, so he needs to have her close. Killing her might get messy, at least for now, so instead he's going to manipulate her. But as soon as he no longer has any use for her... she'll be tossed aside and left in the dirt.”

***

“I never thought we'd be here together again,” Lisa said as she and Michael stood inside the cabin, with a candle burning in the window. “I can't believe I spent twenty years here, trapped as your -”

She caught herself just in time.

“As my prisoner,” he replied. “It's okay, you can say that word. We both know that it's true.”

Stepping past him, she looked down into the hatch and saw all the roots still criss-crossing the tight space. She wasn't sure just how many times she'd been thrown down there over the years and left alone for days on end, but she still remembered how she'd felt each and every time Michael had slammed the cover shut, trapping her in darkness. During the daylight hours she'd been able to read occasionally, thanks to a sliver of light that sometimes broke through a small gap at the hatch's edge, but this had only worked on days with a lot of sun. For the most part, her time down in the pit beneath the cabin had been filled with darkness and fear, and with the worry that one day she might never be let out again.

“In the end it was Clanath who saved her,” Michael said after a moment of silence. “I think. She found her in the forest and took her to the lake just as the cold spell hit. That's how she ended up frozen down there.”

“Have I ever met Clanath?”

“I don't think so,” he replied. “She's gone now. Sheriff Tench finished her off, but in truth he was really only putting her out of her misery. She was as good as dead for many years before that.”

“Do you know where Eloise?”

“I can guess, but the pack's territory is huge. It all depends on exactly what use Saint Thomas has for her right now.”

“But he won't hurt her, will he?”

She waited for an answer, but already she was starting to fear the worst.

“I need to go and see how things are out there,” he said finally. “If you wait here, I'll be back as soon as I can.”

“I don't want to just sit around while Eloise is in danger.”

“I won't be long, I promise,” he told her. “I can put out some feelers and get a few ideas, and that'll save us a lot of time. If I'm lucky, I can narrow down her location to just a few square miles, and then we'll have a much better chance of finding her. I'm sure you don't need reminding, Lisa, that we don't have long.”

“Hurry,” she replied. “I don't care what happens to me, but we have to find Eloise and get her as far away from here as possible.”

He nodded, and then he turned to go to the door.

“Thank you for coming back,” she added.

He stopped, with his back still turned to her.

“I don't know if I could have done this without you,” she explained. “John and I were trying our best, but to be honest we were mostly just wandering around out there and not really making much progress. Saint Thomas knew where we were most of the time, and I imagine it would have been easy enough for him to keep Eloise well away from us.”

“We have one advantage right now,” he told her. “I'm pretty sure that he still hasn't figured out that I'm back, so that should buy us some time. Plus, technically I'm still the wolves' ruler. I always swore that I'd never take the throne, but if it's the only way to save Eloise...”

He hesitated again, and then he hurried out.

“I really won't be long,” he called back to her. “In the meantime, hold tight here and watch out for any unexpected visitors. Saint Thomas is going to have scouts stationed all through the forest, and they'll be reporting back to him.”

Once he was gone, Lisa stood alone in the cabin and looked all around. In that moment she felt completely helpless, and she hated having to rely on Michael, yet at the same time she was glad that he'd returned. She could only hope that with him on her side now, she at least had a fighting chance of finding Eloise.

“Hold on tight,” she whispered, convinced that somehow Eloise would be able to stay strong. “I'm coming to get you. And when I do, I won't ever let you go again.”

Chapter Twenty

Earlier...

“You never should have done this!” Michael yelled, dragging Lisa up the steps at the front of the cabin and finally throwing her down against the wooden boards. “Every single time I think you've finally listened to me, you turn around and do something stupid!”

“I did what I had to do,” she stammered breathlessly, starting to sit up.

“Did you seriously think you could get away from me?”

“No,” she replied, turning to look up at him. “Not for one second. I learned a long time ago that getting away from you is impossible.”

“Then why did you do it?” he shouted.

“To get her away from you!” she snarled. “I took a calculated risk. I figured that if she and I went in opposite directions, you'd be so frantic to catch up to me that she'd have a chance to get away. I don't know where she is right now, Michael, but she's a smart girl and I'm pretty sure she'll have followed my instructions to the letter. She'll have reached the town and she'll be safe.”

“Safe?” he replied. “How can she possibly be safe in a human-infested nest of sin like Sobolton?”

“Because she's away from -”

Catching herself just in time, she realized that perhaps she didn't need to say the next part out loud.

“So tell me,” he continued after a moment, “if Eloise made it to Sobolton, what's stopping me going after her? What's stopping me going down there and ripping that place apart until I get my hands on her again?”

“And start a war?” she replied. “Do you actually want to start a full war with the humans? Think about it, Michael. If you do anything to really draw a lot of attention to your pack, the humans will respond with force. They might even call in reinforcements from outside. Most people around the world would never for one second believe that creatures like you even exist. Do you really want to risk changing that?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but for a moment he simply glared at her as he felt his anger once again starting to grow.

“You'd be drawing attention not only to your own pack,” she pointed out, “but to every pack in the entire world. I bet there are quite a few dotted about, aren't there? And humans don't tend to like things that are different to them, or things they can't control. How do you think that situation would develop, Michael? I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure you'd eventually go down in history as the wolf whose actions led to the destruction of his entire species. Are you really willing to wear that particular crown?”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” he stammered unconvincingly. “There has to... be a way.”

“Let her go,” she continued, struggling to hold back tears. “You've got me again, and I'm all you ever really wanted, aren't I? I'll trade you, you can keep me if you let her go. Let's face it, Michael, you lost interest in Eloise as soon as she came out and you realized she was a girl.”

“That's not true,” he said, but again he didn't sound particularly certain.

“Does your pack even allow girls to take the throne?” she asked. “When it comes to your royal bloodline, does Eloise even count?”

“The matter has never come up,” he told her. “There are some... different views on the subject. Some would accept her and some undoubtedly would not. There would be a lot to discuss.”

“Just let her go,” she insisted. “She'll be safe. Humans might not be perfect, but they won't ignore a lost little girl who shows up all on her own. Someone will take her in, and she'll be looked after, and she'll get to grow up away from all the madness that made you who you are today.” She paused, hoping for some sign that she was getting through to him. “She might get to live her whole life without ever knowing what she really is. Isn't that a good thing, Michael? Isn't that a chance you would have taken, if you could?”

“She's still my daughter,” he replied. “True, a son would have been less complicated for the pack as a whole, but Eloise is still my child too. You don't get to tell me that I have to let her go.”

“I'm not telling you,” she said, slowly getting to her feet until she was standing directly in front of him, looking up into his eyes. “I'm asking you. Please, for Eloise's sake, just... try to let her live a normal life.”

“I'm going out there to find her,” he said firmly. “And when I do, and when I get back here, I'll decide exactly how I'm going to punish you. And until then, you know exactly where I have to put you.”

***

He made his way swiftly through the forest, barely even noticing as the temperature continued to drop. Finally, reaching the side of the road leading into town, he stopped for a moment and tried to get his breath back.

After a few seconds, he began to notice that snow was starting to fall more heavily now.

“Where are you?” he whispered, trying to figure out which way Eloise had gone. “You have to be close.”

He waited, but in truth his senses were terribly dulled now. Although he felt tempted to change into his wolf form so that he might be able to track her more effectively, he quickly told himself that there had to be a better option. Stepping forward, he began to make his way down the slope until he reached the far end of the road, and he saw a few houses at the edge of the town.

“Eloise?” he called out, hoping that by some miracle she might be nearby. “Eloise, if you can hear me, I've come to take you home. There's no need for you to be scared, I'm not angry at you. I just... I want to take you home, that's all.”

Again he waited, but now the town – which had always seemed so pathetically small – suddenly looked huge. Setting off again, he made his way along the street, not even bothering now to conceal his presence. The night was still dark and he figured that very few humans, if any, would be out; besides, he knew he needed to move fast and that soon someone was bound to notice a lost and scared little girl wandering through the town.

Reaching the next corner, he looked all around. He could feel the electricity buzzing in the air as a set of streetlights changed to red. Wincing slightly, he found himself once again wondering how humans could possibly live with such strong charges flickering in the air all around them, but he knew that they were simply unaware of such things – at least on a conscious level. Subconsciously, however, he felt sure that their minds were constantly being twisted and warped, and he hated the idea that his daughter would end up getting caught in the same toxic miasma.

“Eloise, where are you?” he said plaintively, not even raising his voice very much now as he set off along another street. Not really knowing the layout of this part of town, he was vaguely trying to reach the center. “I'm here. I'm right here. Come back to me.”

He walked along street after street, trying his best to avoid the occasional electric lights that – to his senses, at least – sparkled and crackled in the night air. Snow was falling harder than ever, but he saw no sign of other footprints in the white carpet that now covered most of the town.

Eloise seemed to have simply vanished into thin air.

Finally he reached the main street. He saw a shuttered bar, and then he stopped as he spotted Lisa's old office over on the far side of the parking lot. He remembered all the times he'd loitered near that place, hoping to catch sight of her; sometimes he'd seen her hanging out with that Wade guy and he'd struggled to contain his fury. Now the surgery building was clearly empty and shuttered, having apparently been left to rot. There had been a time, after Lisa had eventually remembered him, when Michael had truly believed that they could be happy again. Never in a million years had he even contemplated the possibility that things might go so catastrophically wrong, that she might end up hating him.

“I've done everything I can for you,” he whispered now, as he remembered the sight of her stepping out of that building and heading over to her car. “Why can't you understand that? It was all for you.”

A flicker of true horror ran through his chest as he recalled the hope he'd felt, but now he knew that all the hope was gone forever. Lisa was in the cabin now, where he'd always wanted her, but she was in the narrow pit beneath the hatch and he wasn't sure that he was ever going to be able to let her out again. He'd fooled himself so many times, he'd convinced himself that she was finally going to trust and love him, yet every single time she'd ended up betraying him. The thought of going through that disappointment again and again filled him with absolute dread, but he knew he couldn't give up on Lisa, not when there was still a chance for their story to have a happy ending.

For now, however, he had to focus on Eloise.

“I'm here!” he called out, daring to raise his voice a little louder as he trudged through the snowy streets. “Eloise, can you hear me? I'm here and I just want to take you home!”

Chapter Twenty-One

Today...

Once again sitting on the steps at the front of the cabin, Lisa listened to the sound of rustling trees. A few seconds later, however, she heard a different kind of rustling, and she looked to her left just in time to spot John's wolf slipping through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing.

“Hey!” she called out, waving at him. “John!”

He glanced at her briefly before slinking out of view.

“John, wait!” she shouted, getting to her feet and making her way across the grass. “John, I'm sorry! I was wrong earlier, I never should have believed that you were the Walker or... or thrown those rocks at you.”

Stopping, she listened to the sound of him still moving somewhere nearby – but out of sight.

“John, can you try to forgive me?” she continued. “I know I got it all screwed up, okay? I hope I didn't hurt you too much.”

Again she waited.

“And I'm really sorry I called you a sniffer dog,” she added. “That was a low blow.”

After a moment, John stepped out from the undergrowth and made his way toward her.

“There you are,” she said with a slight smile, reaching down and patting his flank as soon as he was close enough. “You know, I get it now. I understand why you brought me back here. You were leading us through the forest in an attempt to get Michael's attention, weren't you?”

As if in response, he let out a low, rumbling growl.

“That's pretty clever,” she added. “I guess the world must be a very different place when you're a wolf, huh? I guess everything just... works in a whole bunch of new ways.”

Again, the only response was a faint growl.

“Michael seems to be on our side,” she pointed out. “At least for now. I've got to admit, it was strange to see him again, but I've never doubted his commitment to Eloise.”

Taking a seat on the grass, she watched as John sat next to her.

“I remember when you found me in there,” she said, looking over at the cabin. “I was so terrified. To be honest, I think I was pretty much losing my mind. Michael was so furious when he realized that I'd helped Eloise to get away, he was madder than I've ever seen him before. I always hated it when he punished me, but that last time... I was genuinely scared that he might be going to kill me.”

Leaning closer, John briefly pressed his muzzle against her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said to him. “I know you've only ever been trying to help, and I don't think I really thought you were the Walker. I was just scared and angry.” Looking at his face, she was once again struck by the intelligence in his eyes. “You're really in there, aren't you?” she continued. “John Tench is behind those eyes, staring out at me, but now he's got all these... wolf senses. I've got to admit, I've often wondered what that's like. Not that I'd ever want to become a werewolf, of course, but you know what I mean.”

He tilted his head to one side.

“I hope Michael gets back soon,” she added, turning and looking out into the forest once more. “I hate sitting around like this and feeling like I'm not actually doing anything. My little girl's lost out there in the forest, John. Nothing's going to stop me bringing her back.”

***

Making his way slowly through the forest, Michael continued to listen out for any sign that he had company. He knew full well that the pack would be keeping tabs on any movement, and he'd finally abandoned the little tricks that had been keeping his presence hidden. This time, he was more than happy to broadcast his return to anyone and anything that might be listening.

Sure enough, after a few more minutes, he stopped as he heard the sound of a twig snapping.

Ordinarily, in his wolf form, he would have instantly known who was nearby. In his human body, however, his senses had already been dulled and weakened even before decades of decay had a chance to degrade his abilities further. In truth, he knew that now he wasn't much more alert to the forest's secrets than any ordinary human, yet he still refused to even contemplate a change. He remembered how horrified Lisa had been when she'd seen his true form, and he recalled how he'd vowed on that day to never change again.

A moment later, hearing something moving nearby, he turned to see a wolf stalking his position from just a short distance back, keeping its eyes fixed on him.

“Who are you?” he called out. “I recognize you, but I'm afraid I'm not too good with names.”

Stopping, the wolf let out an angry snarl.

“I get it,” Michael continued. “You're surprised to see me. To be honest, I'm surprised to be here too. Believe it or not, part of me thought that I was simply going to skulk away forever and leave this forest far behind, but I couldn't do that. Not when Lisa and my daughter are here.”

The wolf took another step forward, while slowly baring its fangs.

“You're not going to attack me,” Michael said, before turning to his left as he spotted a second wolf. Looking the other way, he also saw a third. “You've been sent by my brother to keep tabs on what's happening,” he continued, “but none of you expected to bump into me. I don't know if you've quite forgotten, but I happen to be the head of our pack. You know what that means, don't you?”

He waited, but he couldn't help noticing that the wolves were very much preparing to attack. Even if he still assumed that they wouldn't actually try to hurt him, he felt surprised that they were daring to even give that impression.

“I'm ordering you to stand down,” he said firmly. “I might not have taken my throne for a long time, but I'm still the head of this pack and you will obey my commands or -”

Before he could finish, one of the wolves let out a low, angry snarl. Turning again, Michael realized that the three creatures were acting in a manner that went against every rule the pack had ever followed.

“You're making a big mistake,” he told them. “Did my brother put you up to this? I don't know whether he truly believed that I was dead, but now he's going to find out pretty quickly that I'm still around so -”

Suddenly one of the wolves lunged at him, almost knocking him off his feet. Shocked, he slipped out of the way and pulled back against a tree, but already the other two wolves were starting to make their way forward.

“Stop!” he shouted angrily. “I command you to stop! This is treason and if you don't grovel for your lives right now, I'll make sure that you don't live long enough to see another sunrise! My father was your king and now I stand here in his place. Or would you rather follow my traitorous brother?”

He gave them a chance to back down, yet instead they simply held their ground. Still growling at him, they seemed to be promising another attack at any moment, and Michael knew that in his human body he had no hope of stopping them. Yet again he understood that switching back to his wolf form would give him a much better chance, but that option remained very much off the table. Whenever he even considered the possibility, he found himself replaying the awful sight of Lisa's terrified reaction.

“Okay,” he said after a few seconds, “I can see that you've made your decision. You'll regret it, but for now I only care about one thing. Take me to my daughter. I want to see Eloise right now!”

As those words left his lips, one of the wolves lunged at him again, this time biting down hard on his right arm. Letting out a cry of pain, Michael dropped to his knees and tried to pull free, only for the other two wolves to strike as well, biting his shoulder and leg. Struggling desperately to break away from the beasts, he felt hot blood running from his various wounds. He quickly reminded himself that he was still the king, and finally he turned and grabbed the first wolf, forcing its jaws free and then shoving it back before doing the same to the other two.

Stumbling to his feet, he backed away as the three wolves once again began to advance.

“You're fools, all of you,” he said breathlessly. “I might be in a weakened state, but I'm still more than a match for you. Come on, then. Who's going to be foolish enough to come at me next?”

He waited, and after a fraction of a second the largest of the three wolves began to advance.

“I'm going to rip you to pieces,” Michael snarled, “and then -”

In that moment the largest wolf jumped at him, slamming into his chest and knocking him down while digging its fangs into one side of his face. Although he tried to push back, Michael quickly found that all he could do was let out an anguished cry.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Earlier...

“Wow,” a voice called out as the first rays of morning light began to spread across Sobolton, “talk about a cold snap. The temperature just plummeted at some point during the night.”

“I wouldn't want to be out on the roads this morning,” another voice replied as a man emerged from the back of the Barrabuy store and set a crate of empty bottles down on the cracked concrete ground. “I hope this bad weather doesn't stick around too long. We've got a delivery coming tomorrow and people'll riot if we run out of almond milk.”

Watching from a distance, Michael couldn't help but feel a growing sense of disgust. The two men – evidently employees at the store – were the first people he'd encountered since entering the town a few hours earlier. Having spent a while aimlessly wandering the streets and trying to spot Eloise, he'd finally been drawn to the source of these two voices, and now he was observing them as they carried out some early morning duties in the glare of an electric light in the yard.

Many of his other senses might have been dulled by that point, but he certainly couldn't miss the stench of sweat emanating from the two men.

“Isn't it today that the new sheriff starts?” the first man asked. “Old Joe Hicks isn't gonna be happy about handing things over to some guy from out of town.”

“I heard he's seething,” the second man said, still a little breathless from his exertion as he leaned against the side of a recycling bin. “Absolutely seething. I wouldn't put it past him to try to cause trouble for the new guy. What's his name, anyway? I heard it's something like Trench or Trounce or Titch or -”

“Tench, I think,” the first man replied, turning and making his way back into the loading bay. “John Tench. I sure hope he knows what he's getting himself into, because Sobolton's not like any other town anywhere in the country. If he thinks he can just show up here and use a load of new methods to maintain law and order round these parts, he's in for a rude awakening.”

“Part of me thinks Joe Hicks wasn't really that bad,” the second man said as he began to follow. “Sure, he cut corners and occasionally pursued his own little vendettas against people he didn't like, but overall the town's not been doing so badly since he took over. And if we got rid of every corrupt person in a position of power... well, there'd be no-one left to get anything done anywhere in the world, would there?”

As the voices disappeared inside, Michael stepped forward and looked around the yard. He felt exhausted and part of him was starting to think that perhaps Eloise hadn't made it to the town after all; he thought of her lost somewhere out there in the forest, and once again he was struck by the thought that Lisa had potentially put the girl in a position of extreme danger.

At the same time, he couldn't quite bring himself to wonder what might happen to Eloise if she fell into the clutches of Saint Thomas.

“She's here,” he said under his breath. “She has to be. I just need to stick around and find her.”

***

“There he is,” a woman said, lowering her voice to a whisper as she and a friend stood outside a store in the town. “Do you see him? That's the new sheriff.”

Now that the sun had risen and people were out and about, Michael was having to be far more careful. Sticking mostly to the alleys and back streets, he'd managed to move around the town without attracting any attention. He knew that if any of the humans saw his awful appearance, they'd most likely scream. Having reached the end of an alley that ran around the back of an old ice cream parlor, he stopped and peered around the corner just in time to see a man in uniform heading toward the sheriff's station at the far end of the street.

“He's a little older than I expected,” the second woman said. “Not old, exactly, but... definitely older.”

“He's still a lot younger than Joe Hicks,” the first woman pointed out. “You know me, I don't like to say anything mean about anyone, but Joe Hicks... you wouldn't exactly bet on him to catch anyone in a chase, would you? He'd be more likely to keel over dead from a heart attack.”

“I don't get why they had to bring in someone from out of town, though,” the second woman replied. “Something about that decision just doesn't quite sit right with me. What's wrong with promoting from within?”

“You think Tommy should have been given the job?”

“Of course not,” the second woman said, “don't be silly. But someone like Toby might be okay. It can't be nice getting overlooked like that and ending up having to answer to some complete stranger. Like I said, I'm not necessarily against it but the whole thing just doesn't quite sit right with me. I hope I'm wrong, though. I hope it all works out just fine.”

Michael watched as the distant man disappeared into the station, and then he pulled back. While ordinarily the arrival of a new sheriff would be worthy of note, on this occasion he figured that exchanging one useless human for another was hardly a matter of great concern. Besides, the Walker was particularly well-placed to keep an eye on things and he knew that she'd report back to the pack if there was ever any reason to worry. Speaking of which, as he headed back along the alley and took another route through the town, he couldn't help but wonder whether the Walker might be his best hope. After all, if Eloise had shown up, it was reasonable to believe that Carolyn would know something about what was happening.

“Morning, Al!” a voice called out nearby as Michael darted across the road and hurried around behind Lisa's old surgery. “I'll be in to see you later!”

“Make sure you are!” Al Major yelled, waving as he headed toward McGinty's. “Someone's gotta keep drinking enough beer to pay the bills!”

Frustrated by these constant interruptions, Michael slipped along the narrow gap behind the building and then stopped to look over at the sheriff's station. He knew that Carolyn would be in there already, but he had no obvious way of drawing her outside so that he might quiz her about any unusual events. Spotting movement at a window, he saw Joe Hicks looking outside, and a moment later the door behind Hicks opened to reveal first Carolyn and then the new sheriff.

For a moment, Michael watched as the two men shook hands. He couldn't hear what was being said, but he felt sure that they were simply exchanging the usual pleasantries that seemed to make up roughly three quarters of all human conversations. Then he saw Carolyn leaving the room, and the two sheriffs – one on his way in and one on his way out – sat on either side of the desk and began to talk. Something about the scene was strangely mundane and calming, but Michael was frustrated by the fact that he'd still been unable to attract Carolyn's attention.

And then, turning and looking at the forest rising high above the town, he realized that all he could sense – when he searched for some hint of Eloise – was absolute emptiness. He knew she had to be out there somewhere, that she couldn't simply have disappeared, yet her scent remained completely hidden. If she was hurt, or lost, or if she'd been taken by Saint Thomas or even by some other dark force in the forest... whatever had happened to her, her scent should be detectable, even for one as wrecked and hopeless as he'd become. Yet somehow she was gone, and he couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of force or shield might be able to spirit his own daughter's presence away from the natural world.

For a moment he tried to reach out to her, to use his mind to search for her thoughts. The town's constant hum of electricity made that task more difficult, but not impossible, yet he still found himself coming up with nothing. Trying not to panic, he nevertheless felt as if Eloise had simply been plucked out of existence and spirited away from reality. And he knew, deep down, that this was unlikely to be something she'd managed without help. Someone had intervened and had hidden her away on purpose.

“Where are you?” he whispered. “What have they done with you?”

***

“Calvados! Calvados, what have you got there?”

Several miles from town, Jerome Mackenzie shoved his hands into his pockets as he began to pick his way out across the ice, trying to reach his dog.

“Calvados,” he continued, struggling to stay upright as he shivered in the cold. “This isn't the kind of morning to be pulling tricks. Why are you always so stubborn?”

Ahead, the dog was pawing at the ice. As he got closer, Jerome reached out to grab the animal's collar, only to stop as he spotted a shape frozen under the lake's frozen surface. He opened his mouth to tell Calvados to get back, but as he peered down into the ice he realized that he could just about make out a human shape trapped down there.

“What the...”

A little girl had been left frozen in the ice, as if suspended in glass, and her dead eyes – at least, any reasonable observer would assume that they were dead – stared back up as Jerome took a panicking step back and began to fumble for his phone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Today...

“Okay, this is the archive,” Robert said, standing in the doorway and looking through at a load of boxes that had been haphazardly shoved into the small room. “Over the years, anything that successive sheriffs didn't want to throw away ended up bundled in here for someone else to worry about.”

Leaning on his cane, he carefully picked his way past several boxes that had been left on the floor.

“I'm not sure how old the oldest things are,” he continued, “but we've checked pretty much everywhere else in the station. Unless someone from that goddamn mob accidentally took what we're looking for, this is the only place in the entire building where there's still any hope of finding that pendant.”

He looked around for a moment longer before turning to glance back at Carolyn.

“Well?” he added. “Are you up for a good old rooting around?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but in truth she was watching the room with a growing sense of apprehension. Her usual chatty mood had dissipated, replaced by something more akin to genuine nervousness, and even now she was eyeing the various boxes with what appeared to be dangerously close to a hint of actual fear.

“Spiders?”

“What?” she replied, turning to him.

“I get it,” he continued. “I've never had a problem with the little critters myself, but I've known a lot of people who do. And to be fair, I imagine there might well be a lot of them in here.”

“Spiders...” she whispered.

“Yeah, like...”

He paused, before stepping toward her.

“Boo!” he added.

“Boo?”

“What's up with you?” he continued. “Has the cat got your tongue? Or the spider?”

“No,” she replied, still watching the boxes and wondering whether the silver pendant – the weapon that could be used to kill not only her but most of her kind – might have been simply packed away all along. “No, I'm fine. I just... don't really see that this is going to work. Isn't there a risk that we might be wasting our time?”

“I don't know what else to do,” Robert admitted. “I'm too old and crippled to be an action man, and to be honest I don't seem to be very good at coming up with complicated plans that might save the day. I'm not much use when it comes to lightening the mood and I sure as hell suck at diplomacy. All of which means that I'm probably best used as a terrier, chewing away at simple problems and refusing to give up.”

Holding out his cane, he tapped the sides of some nearby boxes that had been left on the shelves.

“See that handwriting there?” he asked. “Joe Hicks. I'd recognize it anywhere. The man was a hate-filled lump of bitterness and corruption, but he might yet turn out to have had his uses. But I get that your arachnophobia means you can't be in here, so do you mind if I ask you for a favor?”

“Shoot,” she replied, still somewhat dazed by the manner in which the situation was playing out.

“There's a portable camping stove in my office, hooked up to a gas cylinder.” He managed a faint, slightly sad smile. “You wouldn't mind using that to rustle me up a nice cup of instant coffee, would you?”

***

“Anything?”

Glancing up from the spot where he was perching on a particularly large cardboard box, Robert saw that Carolyn had finally returned with his coffee.

“If I'd found the damn thing,” he said dourly, “don't you think I'd be cheering and whooping by now?”

“I guess,” she replied, before stepping into the room and carrying the mug over to him. She spotted a large spider scurrying away, and she couldn't help but marvel at the fact that those creatures – which had once been one of the most powerful species in all of existence – had now become nothing more than little pests hiding away in gloomy corners.

A fair warning, she supposed, for her own species.

“Did you ever hear about spiders?” she asked as she placed the mug on a shelf next to Robert. “About where they really come from, I mean...”

“Don't they usually fall out of sweaters or hang down on webs?”

“I'm talking about further back,” she continued. She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but nervousness was forcing her to keep talking. “I know it's probably just a fairy tale, but when I was younger I used to hear these tales about spiders. It's said that long ago there were three powerful creatures in the world. Vampires lived in a big palace named Gothos, werewolves had some kind of church called Sangreth, and spiders... spiders had a fortress or castle or something of that nature, and they called it Karakh. And these three species co-existed for thousands of years before eventually a pesky little new thing turned up, and that pesky little new thing happened to be humanity.”

“Sounds like a load of bunkum to me.”

“Probably, but I always think about it whenever I see spiders,” she said, as she noticed another spider crawling up a wall behind some shelving. “How could a species decline so far and so fast? How could they fall from such heights? I mean, the vampires had a war, so at least you could understand what went wrong there. And the werewolves... well, Sangreth was also the name of their leader and apparently he went completely mad, so again... that makes a certain degree of sense. But the spiders just fell, as if fate decreed that they had to be crushed so that humanity could rise. And now here we are, with humanity having taken their spot as the third of the three dominant species, and somehow – despite all their idiocy and stupidity and poor planning – it's humans that have damn near taken control of everything.”

Robert raised an amused, bemused eyebrow.

“They even spread across to other worlds,” she mused, lost in thought now. “I wouldn't even be surprised if one day they took over the Great Library. Of course, they'd probably ruin it and flatten most of it, and digitize it and add a whole new layer of bureaucracy. Then they'd go and start poking about in the realm of Attaroth himself. But that's the thing about humans, isn't it? The other species know their place, they keep to themselves as much as possible, but humans spread out with this well-meaning instinct that drives them to keep exploring. It's admirable, really, and indomitable. I guess that's the difficult part... in some ways, I find that aspect of humanity to be...”

She paused, trying to come up with the right word.

“Inspiring,” she added finally.

Still lost in thought, she spent several more seconds watching the spider on the wall before turning to see that Robert was watching her.

“Sorry,” she muttered, shaking her head, “I think I've been reading a few too many of those fairy tales.”

“You sure have,” he replied, sighing as he looked back down into the open box before him. “I didn't take you for someone whose head got stuck in the clouds much, Carolyn. Then again, I've often wondered how you manage to deal with the sheer boredom of sitting at that desk all the time, and I guess now I know.”

“What are you going to do when you inevitably don't find anything in here?” she asked. “Is this the last chance saloon?”

“I don't really see that there'll be anywhere else to try,” he admitted. “Then again, you never know, something might pop up. I'm convinced that I'm onto something, even if I might very well be looking in the wrong place. That's the most frustrating thing of all. I'm certain that this damn pendant must be around somewhere, but there's absolutely no guarantee that we'll ever find it. There's this one little item sitting around that might mean the difference between life and death for the entire town...”

His voice trailed off as he held up a framed photo showing some people in the station's foyer a few decades earlier.

“... and we might never find it,” he added with a sense of horrified wonder. “We might all die, and our salvation could well be sitting untouched and unnoticed in our midst. Wouldn't that suck, huh?”

“I suppose it would,” she replied, before turning and heading out of the room. “Let me know how the search goes, and if you want another cup of coffee. I'm going to go through some old files. You never know, there might be something useful in there.”

“Sure,” he murmured, glancing up and watching as she walked away, then looking back into the box. “Where are you?” he continued, unable to shake a sense that perhaps he was on a hiding to nothing after all. “You've got to be somewhere, but if you're not in here... where the hell would someone have put you?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Earlier...

“So what are you gonna do now?” Carolyn asked, standing on the steps at the front of the station as snow continued to fall. “Get a hobby? Get a life?”

“Just because I'm no longer your boss,” Joe Hicks replied, turning to her slowly, “doesn't mean you can suddenly treat me with disrespect.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” she told him. “Sorry, it's just that you've always seemed like the kind of guy who lives and breathes his job. You've been Sobolton's sheriff for twenty years, and now suddenly here you are with nothing but a huge amount of time on your hands.”

“I'm very much aware of that fact, thank you,” he told her, clearly a little irritated by her tone. “To tell you the truth, I've got a few ideas that I'm still mulling over. Loretta wants us to take some big vacation and go to Europe, or maybe take a big cruise around the world. I keep telling her that my pension won't quite cover something like that, but she'd nagging away at me and I've got a feeling I might have to cave eventually.”

“I can't quite imagine you sitting on a cruise ship in your swimming trunks,” Carolyn replied, before furrowing her brow. “Actually, that's one image I'd definitely like to keep out of my thoughts.”

“Don't you worry about me,” he continued. “I've also got my research to be getting on with.”

“Still fascinated by local history?”

“Everything except folk music,” he replied, having spotted a poster on the noticeboard advertising another meeting of the local folk choir. “You know, there's something about that stuff that really grinds my gears. I keep meaning to listen to the CD recordings I've gathered over the years, but I just can't quite bring myself to stick the damn things on. I guess I'm what you might call a country music kinda guy. Give me the good old boys, any day of the week. I keep telling Al he oughta get some proper singers to play in the bar, but he'll never do it on account of it meaning he'd have to actually lift his finger and do some work.”

“Whatever you end up doing with your time,” she said with a smile, “I hope it keeps you busy. And I hate to admit this, but... I'll miss you.”

“You will?”

“A little bit,” she added, taking a step back. “No more than that. But, hey, I'd better get back in there. I'm sure Sheriff Tench'll be on the phone soon. I've got a feeling that he's going to have to hit the ground running, if you know what I mean.”

She turned and headed back inside, leaving Joe standing alone in the snow. He watched as she disappeared from sight, but in his heart of hearts he could already feel a sense of bitter disappointment. Looking around, he saw people going about their business in the town, heading in and out of the various stores, and he felt nothing but contempt for the lot of them.

“Well, you got what you wanted,” he said under his breath. “You got rid of old Joe Hicks and installed some saintly out-of-towner in his place. I sure hope you don't come to regret that decision, because if you've got it wrong... we're all gonna end up paying for it with our lives.”

***

“Did you hear the news?” Monty muttered as he wandered out of the barbershop with his buddy Frank. “About the girl in the ice?”

“I heard someone mumbling something about it,” Frank replied, stopping to admire his haircut one more time in the window. “It's not true, though, is it? I mean, it can't be.”

“They're not saying anything officially,” Monty continued, as he too took advantage of the opportunity to inspect his cut. “They probably won't for a while, but you know how gossip spreads round these parts. I heard from Danny, who heard from Tom, who heard from Eddie... that they found a dead little girl frozen in the ice up at Drifter's Lake. And apparently they're having trouble getting her out.”

“That sounds a little... improbable.”

“It's true,” Monty told him. “Just wait, it'll all come out soon. They found her yesterday, I think. Or it might have been today. My memory's not as good as it once was.”

“So who is she?” Frank asked.

Monty shrugged.

“She can't just be no-one,” Frank continued. “Think about it, if some girl has shown up in the lake then she must have disappeared from somewhere else. If a little girl was missing within five counties of here, don't you think it'd have been all over the news by now?”

“I'm only telling you what people are saying,” Monty countered. “I'm not claiming to have solved the whole damn case.”

They set off along the street again, sauntering at their own pace and with nowhere in particular that they needed to get to.

“That'll be for the new sheriff to sort out,” Monty continued. “What's his name? Trout? John Trout?”

“Tench,” Frank said, correcting him. “I think so, anyway.”

“So this Tench guy's gonna have to deal with a dead little girl in his very first week,” Monty pointed out. “I don't envy him that. There's gonna be a lot of pressure on him to find out what happened, and he won't have much time.”

“Do you think old Joe Hicks would've done a better job?”

“Joe always had a way of smoothing things over,” Monty reminded him. “I guarantee you, if anything bad happened to that little girl, Joe would have had someone banged up in jail inside of a day.”

“Yeah, but would it be the right someone?”

“Doesn't matter. Not to Joe. The way he sees it, he fits a fella up for a crime he can't solve. Then later, when he manages to solve it, he fits the next fella up. There's a whole bunch of guys sitting in jail right now, all fitted up for each other's crimes, but at the end of the day they're off the streets and that's what matters.”

He stopped at the corner and turned to Frank.

“If this Trout guy comes in and insists on doing things the right way, by the book and so on, he won't have much luck. Joe understood the art of cutting corners and making sure he got the job done at all costs. John Trout won't succeed if he can't do that.”

“You might be right,” Frank said, checking his watch. “And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and see a man about a horse. Or part of a horse, at least. One that's scheduled to race a week from today, and I've been offered a chance to buy his nose.”

“His nose?”

“A share of him,” Frank continued, patting his friend on the shoulder as he turned and began to walk away. “About a nose's worth, apparently. If another share comes up, I'll let you know. It might be a good investment opportunity if this horse is even half as good as Harry Garfield says he is. Not that I'm an expert on horses, so I'll have to take his word for it. But the thing is, the pedigree – that's what they call it, by the way – is supposed to be right up there with the best, and the only reason Harry got involved is that this guy from the Middle East backed out at the last minute and...”

Still talking as he got further and further away, Frank seemed lost in his own world. Monty, meanwhile, checked his haircut again – this time in a mirror hanging in the window of the furniture store – and then he began to head along the next street while pondering what it must be like to own a share of a horse. He had to admit that he quite liked the idea; even if he too knew next to nothing about the damn things, he figured that owning a horse would bring a smidgen of excitement to his retirement, and he quite liked the idea that he could bang on about the damn thing whenever he met up with the guys at McGinty's or Harry's Bar.

Sensing something nearby, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. For a moment he felt as if he was being watched, although he quickly forced himself to ignore that sensation.

“Who in their right mind would bother watching an old-timer like me?” he chuckled as he passed the end of an alley that ran between the candle shop and the florist. “They'd sure be bored out of their -”

Suddenly a hand grabbed him by the collar, pulling him off his feet and swinging him around before slamming him into the wall in the alley. Shocked, Frank found himself staring into the bloodied eyes of a man with chapped, peeling skin.

“Where on the lake?” the man snarled, leaning closer. “Where exactly did they find her?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Today...

“Where is he?” Lisa whispered, standing next to the old bones in the clearing and looking at the growing darkness between the trees. “Come on, Michael, this shouldn't be taking you so long.”

She watched for a moment longer before turning to look back at the cabin, only to realize that there was no sign of John. Whereas a moment earlier he'd been sitting at the top of the steps, now he seemed to have wandered off.

“John?” she called out, heading back over to look for him.

She waited, but something about his sudden disappearance struck her as a little unusual. She headed over to the steps and listened for any hint that he might be nearby, and then – walking around to the side of the cabin – she saw him standing in the grass.

“Are you okay?” she asked cautiously.

She waited for a reply, but something seemed a little strange about the way he was simply frozen in place. Although she was still by no means an expert when it came to wolf body language, she'd picked up a few tidbits over the years and this seemed entirely new; he looked strangely awkward, almost as if he'd been caught doing something wrong, yet he made no attempt to turn away or hide. Instead he merely kept his eyes fixed on her, almost as if he was waiting for something else to happen.

“I'm worried about Michael,” she told him. “I know I probably don't need to be, but he said he wouldn't be long and now he's been gone for a few hours. It's getting dark and I hate the idea that Eloise might still be all alone out there.”

Again she waited, but he still offered no hint of a reply.

“Fine,” she muttered, looking back over at the treeline. “I guess I'll just go and -”

Before she could finish, she heard a loud cracking sound. She turned and look at John, and in that moment she realized that he was changing again. She pulled away a little, and she could only watch with a mounting sense of horror as he twisted and turned; bones were splitting and fracturing beneath his fur, and she could already see that his legs were becoming dislocated. She'd witnessed something similar many years earlier, when she'd first seen Michael change his form, but John's transformation somehow seemed slower and more awkward.

With Michael she'd been filled with the utmost horror, yet now – as she watched John undergoing the same process – she felt strangely fascinated.

Already, patches of fur were starting to slip beneath the surface and bare human flesh had begun to emerge. For a couple of minutes Lisa felt as if she was staring at something that was no longer a wolf but – equally – wasn't quite a man yet, either. The cracking sounds now carried a distinctly sickening, almost squelchy quality, but gradually parts of the body in front of her were starting to look more recognizably human, and she realized after a moment longer that the wolf's muzzle was somehow twisting inward – and that, in the process, the mangled face of Sheriff John Tench was starting to return.

As a human being, she was still horrified by what she saw, but as a veterinarian – albeit one who'd been out of practice for a few years now – she wanted desperately to understand what she was seeing.

Unable to look away, she watched as John's naked body finally became much more recognizable, and she realized that the process was almost complete. For almost ten full minutes, she'd been watching as he very slowly and very painfully reorganized ever part of his form, until the naked figure of John Tench was complete and he emerged desperately trying to catch his breath on all fours.

She opened her mouth to ask him if he was alright, yet she held back as she realized that she really didn't want to disrupt the apparent solemnity of the occasion. Finally she hurried into the cabin and grabbed the uniform she'd been holding onto for him, knocking the map aside in her haste, and then she made her way back outside and set the clothes down onto the grass.

“For you,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily. “I mean...”

Reaching out, John fumbled for the clothes before pulling them closer. He rose and turned his back to Lisa, and over the next couple of minutes he got dressed before eventually turning to face her again.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he told her. “It wasn't very... dignified.”

“It's fine,” she stammered. “I... should have looked away.”

“It's getting more difficult each time,” he admitted. “Almost as if...”

His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he shook his head.

“That doesn't matter right now,” he continued. “Thank you for the clothes. I've got to admit, the whole process of transforming isn't very... streamlined. You'd think that these wolves would have come up with a slightly more convenient way of doing things, but I guess there are no other options. Not unless they stash piles of spare clothes all around the forest and -”

Letting out a gasp of pain, he held his his right hand, which was still not quite properly back in its human shape. He winced, concentrating for a few seconds, and he watched as finally the bones finished their change and cracked into place.

“Either I'm really not very good at this,” he added, “or something's making it more difficult. I'm honestly not sure that I have a limitless number of these changes in me. I'm worried that one time soon I might find that I can no longer do it.”

“What did your senses tell you while you were a wolf?” she asked. “Were you picking up on anything that us mere mortal humans might miss?”

“That's why I changed back,” he replied. “Michael's not too far away, but I wanted to warn you... I can't be sure, but Eloise's scent has changed too. I think she might be in her wolf form now.”

***

“He's somewhere up here,” John explained a short while later, as the pair of them carefully made through the darkening forest. “It's strange, but after I change, there's still a lingering element of my wolf side for a short while. I can't work out how that functions, but it's almost as if...”

Stopping suddenly, he saw a shape on the ground. He quickly rushed forward, and sure enough when he looked down he realized that Michael was in a bad way.

“Michael?”

Racing over to join them, Lisa dropped to her knees and began to roll Michael over, just as he let out a low, pained groan. She saw blood glistening all over his body, and although she initially reached out to try to help him, she finally held back as she realized that she might inadvertently cause more harm than good.

“Michael, what happened?” she gasped. “Who did this to you?”

“Wolves,” he murmured, barely able to get the worlds out at all. “My own pack... three of them...”

“The pack attached you?” Struggling to make sense of this news, she looked up at John. “That shouldn't be possible. It's one of the biggest sins in the entire wolf world. They argue from time to time, they even fight, but one thing they all know is that they can't ever go against the leader of the pack. If any of them dared to do that, they'd be killed immediately.”

“Obviously something has changed,” John pointed out. “Michael, how bad is it? Can you heal?”

Sitting up, Michael let out another pained gasp.

“Healing... isn't so easy,” he admitted. “Not these days. Even just holding myself together takes effort.”

“Then change,” Lisa told him. “Stop being so stubborn and change back to your wolf form.”

He turned to her, but she could see the fear in his eyes.

“John just did it,” she continued. “I've seen John transform and I didn't look away once. I know my reaction all those years ago scarred you, Michael, but a hell of a lot is different now. In a way, I actually find it quite interesting.”

“I'm fine,” he replied, clearly in a huge amount of pain as he got to his feet.

“Don't take this question the wrong way,” John said, “but... why are you still alive? Why didn't they finish you off?”

“I might look like I'm almost dead,” Michael murmured, “but that doesn't mean I'm defenseless.”

He nodded past them both.

Turning, John realized that three dead wolves had been left on the ground nearby; or, rather, parts of three dead wolves had been scattered all around, with even their heads having been ripped into pieces. Blood had been smeared across the trees and tattered strands of flesh hung from some of the branches.

“They might have got a few bites in,” Michael continued, seemingly slightly proud of himself, “but I'm still their king and I still know how to fight, even...”

He held up his bloodied, trembling hands and stared at them as if he almost couldn't believe such a shocking sight.

“Even like -”

In that moment he collapsed, and it took both John and Lisa to hold him up.

“He fainted!” Lisa stammered. “John, he can't keep going like this, we have to help him!”

“We'll get him back to the cabin,” John replied, “and then we'll figure out what to do next. You're right, he's not as strong as he wants to seem but those wolves turning on him has to be a bad sign. Something fundamental must be changing in their world and I don't think we have long left to figure it out.”

He hauled Michael up and put him over his shoulder, before starting to carry him back to the cabin.

“When I left our trail for Michael to follow,” he continued, as Lisa hurried alongside him, “I naively thought that he'd arrive with a whole load of answers. I thought that he'd know what to do, but now it's clear that things are moving too fast – even for him.” He stumbled slightly, but he just about managed to stay on his feet as he continued to make his way toward the distant clearing. “The rules of engagement are changing,” he added, “and if we don't act soon, Saint Thomas might well end up with everything he's ever wanted.”

“He can have Sobolton and everyone in it,” Lisa replied ruefully. “Let him wipe the place off the map for all I care. I just want to get my daughter back.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Earlier...

Racing through the forest, pushing on despite the pain in his body, Michael finally reached the treeline and stopped. He dropped down onto his knees in the snow, breathless and struggling to hold himself together, and he looked out across the lake just in time to see a small congregation of uniformed men on the far side.

A tiny body was being removed from the ice.

“Eloise,” Michael gasped, horrified by the realization that people – humans – from the town had got their hands on his daughter. Even from such a distance, she looked so unbelievably helpless. “Wait, I'm -”

He inched forward, determined to get her back, but at the last second he froze. He knew full well that even in his weakened state, he'd be more than a match for those people down there, but he also knew that by launching a full attack he'd only end up drawing attention to himself. Worse, he'd be drawing attention to the entire pack, and he couldn't even begin to imagine the consequences if the wider world came to know about his people. Even though every sinew in his body was straining for the fight, he managed to hold himself back and now his mind was racing as he tried to think of some other way to get Eloise back.

“There has to be a solution,” he whispered under his breath as he felt the frustration threatening to overwhelm his senses. “For once you need to be smart. Don't just try to go charging in there like some kind of wild beast. Use your brain and figure something out.”

Even as those words left his lips, however, he felt as if he was all out of ideas.

“Brother,” a voice said suddenly, “this is a tough old situation, huh?”

Turning, he saw Saint Thomas standing a little way back.

“You look like shit, as usual,” Saint Thomas added with a smile. “You're out of shape, too. So tell me, what's the plan now? How exactly are you gonna fix this mess you've cooked up for yourself?”

“This is none of your business,” Michael sneered, slowly getting to his feet. “How do you always know how to show up at exactly the wrong moment?”

“The health of the pack is my business,” Saint Thomas pointed out. “Seems to me, you don't care about that at all. Don't you think it's sad how they're all still acting like you're our leader, but you don't think about the rest of us at all? Doesn't that seem like an unhealthy and rather lopsided arrangement?”

“This isn't the right time!” Michael snapped.

“The pack'll be concerned about Clanath,” Saint Thomas countered. “Turncoat'll be -”

“What about Clanath?” Michael asked, interrupting him. “Why are you rambling on about Clanath now? Why would I care about some aged old wolf who hangs around like a bad smell?”

“You don't know what happened?” Saint Thomas asked, before hesitating again as if he was greatly enjoying the fact that he had the upper hand. “That figures. Clanath died last night, Michael. She finally let go of her grasp on life. Nobody quite knows how old she was, but she must've been pretty ancient. You know how it is with us, we have this knack for clinging to life until we realize that the time has come. Well, she clung and she clung, and she left a lot of little cub bones all through the forest. The whole thing's pretty tragic.”

“I... didn't know,” Michael admitted. “What about -”

“Our dear brother?” Saint Thomas hesitated, before stepping toward him. “Gone down to the bottom of the lake,” he murmured, looking out toward the officers. “By all accounts, he gave the new sheriff quite a fright and then he sank like a stone. He had a hell of a time toward the end. Part of me wonders whether he's actually dead down there, but I don't see any sign of him coming out. Maybe he prefers it at the bottom of the lake, now that his lady is gone. He can sulk all he wants without getting interrupted.”

“I didn't know about any of that,” Michael replied, “but... I have to focus on Eloise. And Lisa. They're all that matter to me now. Without them, I wouldn't even know how to exist.”

“I know that,” Saint Thomas said darkly. “I also know that the pack needs leadership, now more than ever. Undying loyalty's only gonna last for so long, Michael. Eventually the pack might just start wondering whether they can do better. And when that day comes, who do you think they're gonna turn to?”

“I don't have time for this,” Michael said as he looked over his shoulder and saw a vehicle driving away from the lake, no doubt carrying Eloise. “Those filthy creatures have got their hands on my daughter. I have to find a way to get her back.”

***

“And I told you!” Carolyn hissed, as she stepped toward Michael in the alley that ran alongside the rear of the old veterinary surgery. “I can't do anything to help you! Not right now!”

“Can you give me one good reason,” Michael replied, “why I shouldn't go over there right now and take her back?”

“For one thing, Doctor Law's prepping for an autopsy.”

“Who the hell is Doctor Law?”

“He happens to be a decent man,” she insisted. “Believe it or not, there are a few of them around in Sobolton.”

“What's he going to do to her?”

“It's one of their procedures,” she explained with a weary sigh – and the tone of someone explaining matters to a recalcitrant child. “They're gonna want to know who she is, and how she died, and how she ended up frozen in the lake. When bodies show up in the human world, they tend to want to know what happened.”

“It's none of their concern,” he replied.

“They sure as hell don't agree with you on that,” she continued. “Michael, if you really thought that storming in there was a good idea, you'd have done it already. You wouldn't be wasting your time trying to get my opinion on the matter. Deep down, you know that this is out of your hands now.”

“An autopsy,” he whispered as he saw Sheriff John Tench making his way out of the station in the distance. “That means they'll cut her open.”

Carolyn nodded.

“She's not dead,” he continued. “She'll be able to feel it.”

“Part of it, yes,” she told him. “I imagine so, at least.”

“The pain...”

“She'll be okay,” she pointed out. “In the end, at least. She's young and she's strong. From what I can tell, she's not really conscious right now but eventually she's gonna wake up. I don't know how long that'll take, but it's gonna give Tench and the others a hell of a shock when the moment comes. In the meantime, I doubt they'll make much progress in their investigation. They're gonna be trying to figure out her name, but how exactly are they gonna do that? They won't learn anything at all about her. Then, when she wakes up, you'll get your chance to take her home. You just have to be patient.”

“I've never been a very patient person,” he sneered.

On the far side of the parking lot, Tench and another man were making their way toward the old garage.

“Everything's up in the air right now,” Carolyn reminded him, “and it'll take time to settle. Last night, and the night before, were pretty chaotic. I heard about Clanath and Turncoat, I'm sorry things ended that way for them but... a tragedy was always on the cards for those two. I just hope they're at peace now.”

She checked her watch.

“I need to get back to my desk,” she added, taking a step back and then turning to leave. “You've just got to wait this out, Michael. It's the only way.”

“How do you manage it?”

She stopped.

“Manage what?” she asked, without turning to him.

“Existing in this town,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Pretending to be one of them. How do you do it, without screaming every single second of every single day?”

“I disappear into my character,” she told him. “She's like a story I tell myself every day, she's this... fictitious version of the real me. To be honest, sometimes I actually like her. She sits at her desk and makes small talk with the guys and gals of the department, she offers advice and... occasionally I almost forget that she's not real. If she's supposed to be sad, I actually get sad. If she's supposed to cry, the tears are real. I think most humans act as the version of themselves that they really want to be. In that respect, I'm not very different to the rest of them.”

“That sounds like madness,” Michael replied.

“It probably is, on some level,” she admitted, before managing a faint smile. “But it's the kind of madness I like, because it helps me to keep going each and every day. I know I won't be the Walker forever, but when it's over and I return to the pack in the forest, I think I'll miss this version of Carolyn. You know, Sheriff Hicks retired this week and when I told him I'll be sad to see him go, I actually meant it. Imagine that, huh? The guy's a mean little bully, he's a horrible person really, but I'll truly miss interacting with him.”

“Don't you ever worry that you're getting tainted?” he asked. “It almost sounds to me like you're turning native and becoming more human than you should.”

“Oh, I'm still very much a wolf when it matters,” she said, turning to him with a slight glint in her eyes. “Trust me. If push comes to shove, I won't forget which side I'm on. You don't have to worry for one second about my loyalty. If the time comes, I think I might even enjoy killing a few of them.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Today...

“He's not healing,” Lisa said as she sat in the cabin, dabbing once again at Michael's wounds by candlelight. “Even a few years ago, his body would have begun to fix these cuts by now, but it's not happening.”

She wiped a particularly large patch of blood away, although more was already oozing from a particularly deep set of cuts; she wiped again, but deep down she was already starting to feel as if nothing she tried was ever going to work.

“He's getting worse and worse,” she added. “John, I really don't like this. His body's breaking down faster than ever and I'm not sure he can keep up with it. If he doesn't change his form soon, he might die.”

She turned and saw that John was standing at the window, looking out at the moonlit clearing.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

She waited for him to answer, but in truth she knew that he likely had no idea. Although she wanted to scream and demand some kind of new plan, she knew that yelling wasn't going to help. When she turned to look back down at Michael, however, she realized that he was showing no sign that he might wake up soon.

“Something's coming,” John said suddenly.

“What do you -”

“Through the forest,” he continued, cutting her off before she could finish the question. “I can't explain how I know, but... I know. Even in my human form, I can pick up on something out there. I don't know what it is, but it's large, and I think it might be coming this way.” He turned to her. “There's been a shift in the balance out there, it's moving through the entire forest at breakneck pace and I'm not sure that anything can stop it.”

“Care to be a little more cryptic?” she asked.

“I'm sorry,” he murmured, making his way back over and looking down at Michael. “This is their king, yet they attacked and almost killed him. If he hadn't been able to fight them off, I'm not sure that they would have left him alive. Doesn't that strike you as pretty unlikely behavior?”

“It strikes me as impossible behavior,” she countered. “A wolf should rather die than move against the leader of the pack, so this can only mean one thing. The pack no longer recognizes Michael as its leader, perhaps because they thought he was dead. And now that he's back, clearly something must be stopping them accepting his return.”

Watching as more blood oozed from Michael's wounds, she tried to make sense of everything she was seeing. She'd been hoping that John – now that he possessed a wolf side to his soul – might have some kind of special insight, although that hope was now rapidly draining away. A moment later, before she had a chance to give further voice to her fears, she heard a distant rumbling sound coming from somewhere outside.

“You hear it too now,” John said softly. “I know you do.”

“What is it?” she asked. “It's like... it sounds as if something's waking up out there.”

“At first I thought it was something large,” he replied, watching the window once again, “but now... I think it's lots of smaller things all cascading through the forest.”

“Like wolves?”

He turned to her and nodded slightly. “Like wolves.”

***

As soon as they stepped out of the cabin, they both heard the noise so much more clearly. The entire forest seemed to have come alive with a furious torrent of movement, all heading in one direction. Trees were rustling and the ground continued to shake as Lisa made her way past the bones and over toward the far end of the clearing.

“Wait!” John called out, hurrying after her and grabbing her arm. “It might not be safe.”

“Safe?” she replied, watching the darkness for any hint of movement. “At what point did any of this feel even remotely safe?”

“It's not coming straight toward us,” he pointed out, before listening for a moment longer. “Unless... some part of it might be peeling off now. It's so hard to be sure.”

He turned and looked toward the other side of the clearing.

“The town,” he added finally. “It's heading toward the town. Hundreds – maybe even thousands – of wolves are heading for Sobolton.”

“But if they've got Eloise, then why are they doing this?” she asked. “I thought the whole point was that they'd only attack if they didn't get hold of her.”

“Plans change,” John pointed out. “My impression of this Saint Thomas guy is that he'd never satisfied. When he gets what he wants, he just revises his ambitions upward. The wolves have always resented Sobolton's existence and now they clearly know that we no longer have the pendant. The Walker must have reached them and given them the news. As far as they're concerned, Sobolton is entirely defenseless.”

“It'll be a massacre,” Lisa whispered, before turning to him. “There's no way they'll be able to fight them off. John, what do we do? It's going to be -”

“There!” he gasped, looking past her.

Turning, Lisa realized that something was starting to stir in the undergrowth. She watched, and a moment later a small wolf emerged, picking its way carefully through to the edge of the clearing and then stopping to look at her.

“Is that a cub?” she asked. “It's not a fully grown adult, that's for sure. It's like -”

In that moment, as she saw moonlight catching in the cub's eyes, she felt a sudden shocking sense of realization.

“No,” she whispered, starting to make her way over to the wolf before stopping just a few feet away. “It can't be...”

Staring down at the creature, she tried to tell herself that she was wrong, that she had to be wrong; at the same time, she could somehow feel the intelligence emanating from the wolf's eyes and she knew that she'd seen this precise intelligence before. Slowly she got down onto her knees, and as she reached a trembling hand out toward the wolf she finally understood that there could be no further doubt. No matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise, she knew she couldn't deny the truth.

“Eloise?” she stammered, barely able to get the words to leave her lips. “Eloise, is... is that you?”

The wolf flinched, as if she might be about to turn and run. The ground was still shaking as more and more wolves raced through the forest, but Eloise managed to stay in position as Lisa touched the side of her muzzle.

“Eloise, you came back!” Lisa gasped.

“Lisa, be careful,” John called out.

“Eloise, I was going to tell you about this side of your soul,” Lisa continued, with tears in her eyes now. “I swear I was going to tell you everything one day.”

Eloise's wolf tilted her head slightly.

“It's all going to be okay,” Lisa insisted. “If -”

Before she could finish, she heard a loud snarling sound coming from somewhere nearby. Turning, she was horrified to see the one-eyed wolf stepping into view between two trees, baring its fangs in what she could only interpret as a warning. In the distance, more and more wolves were pushing through the forest on their way to Sobolton, but for a few more seconds Saint Thomas merely stood his ground as if he was waiting for something.

“She came back to me,” Lisa said, still touching her daughter's muzzle. “Don't you see, Saint Thomas? You lost. She doesn't want anything to do with you, she came back to me and -”

In that moment Saint Thomas let out a louder, angrier snarl.

“You can't have her again!” Lisa hissed. “She won't go with you!”

Reaching out, she began to pull Eloise closer.

“She's mine and I'm going to look after her and -”

Suddenly Eloise snarled and lashed out, slicing Lisa's hand with a claw. Shocked, Lisa pulled back and saw pure anger in the small wolf's eyes, and then she watched as Eloise turned and hurried over to join Saint Thomas in the undergrowth. As blood ran from the wound on her hand, Lisa got to her feet and watched in horror as the two wolves turned and began to disappear into the darkness.

“Eloise, wait!” she yelled frantically. “Everything I did was all for you! Whatever your uncle told you, it's all lies! Don't listen to him! Don't -”

Saint Thomas snarled again and turned away, racing away into the darkness. Eloise glanced back at Lisa for a moment, as if caught in a moment of indecision, and then she too snarled before turning and rushing off after the rest of the thundering pack.

“Eloise, no!” Lisa screamed, clutching her injured hand as John made his way over to join her. Tears were streaming down her face now and she couldn't stop replaying that final awful moment over and over again in her mind. “Eloise, come back! Don't go with them! Eloise! Come back to me!”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Earlier...

“Eloise, run,” Lisa whispered, shivering in the dark space beneath the cabin's hatch, caught in a twisting nest of tree roots. “Don't look back. Don't stop. Just keep running until -”

Suddenly she heard the familiar sound of footsteps above. She looked up, just in time to see the hatch swinging open and Michael glaring down at her.

“Where is she?” she stammered as she felt her heart racing in her chest. “Did... did you...”

She waited, but she could already feel the anger and fury radiating from his body.

“Did she get away?” she asked, and now her voice was trembling with fear. “Michael? Please, tell me that she got away. I'll stay down here forever if that's what it takes, but please, tell me that she escaped.”

“Escaped?” he replied, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“From this,” she continued. “From... us. From this cabin.”

“You sent an unarmed, defenseless young girl out into the world,” he pointed out, “with no-one to help her and no-one to guide her. Worse, you sent her into the forest, and you know that there are dark things in that forest. Things that even I would rather never face. Things -”

“I'm trying to save her!” she snapped.

“There are things in that forest that even the wolves are scared of!” he shouted angrily. “There are things in Sobolton that we're terrified of too!”

“Michael -”

“Do you really think that we're the worst of the worst?” he asked. “Do you think the big bad wolves are the only thing a lost little child should fear out there? You worry so much about the wolves, but you don't have a clue about the evil that exists in your pathetic little town. Hell, there's a house on Sycamore Street in Sobolton that no wolf will go anywhere near! But you know about some of that dangers that exist, you know they're out there and you still let our daughter go out there to face them alone!”

“She'll be fine,” she stammered. “She'll... she'll find her way to the town and -”

“It's already too late for your promises and prayers,” he continued, watching her with an expression of growing contempt. “I'm going to fix this, Lisa. I don't know how, not yet, but I'm going to find a way to make it all better, and then I'm going to have to work out how we move forward. Obviously you're not making any progress, you're not starting to come around to my way of thinking and I see now that you never will. I'm sorry you're so stubborn, but I guess maybe that's something you have to deal with alone. I'm going to be too busy saving Eloise.”

“Saving her?” Lisa asked. “Saving her from what?”

She waited, but after a moment Michael merely closed the hatch.

“Wait!” she shouted, struggling to climb past the roots, finally pushing against the hatch's underside but as usual finding that she couldn't force it open from the inside. “Michael, come back!” she yelled as she heard him walking away. “Michael, don't leave me here! If Eloise is in danger, you have to let me help! Michael, listen to me! What does she need saving from? Where is she?”

***

“Funny old day,” Herb Wallentrip said as he closed the cabinet in the corner of the museum's main hall, before turning a key in the lock. “Yep, it's been a funny old day, alright. One heck of a funny old day.”

“You always say that,” Harriet Duggings pointed out, watching from the doorway. “Herb, have you ever had a day that you don't think's been a funny old one?”

“Well...”

Pausing, Herb seemed well and truly stumped by this question, as if he couldn't quite get the gears of his mind turning properly.

“Well,” he continued, “some days are funnier than others, that's for sure.”

“And how long have you been working here at the town hall?”

“Oh, fifty years soon,” he replied brightly, turning to her. “Yeah, soon it'll be half a century I've spent tootling around in this place. Of course, I used to get paid until I was put up for retirement, but they couldn't get rid of me that easily. I just applied to be a volunteer, and I was back the very next day, doing exactly the same things but this time without expecting payment.”

He furrowed his brow, as if he suddenly understood that this perhaps wasn't much of a victory.

“You're a decent guy, Herb,” Harriet replied with a faint smile. “We could do with a few more like you.”

“I don't know about that,” he muttered, making his way over to her, passing the cabinets filled with various items from Sobolton's history. “I just like telling stories, that's all, and the best stories are the ones that are based on facts. There's still so much we don't know about the history of our little town. I keep plodding on with my research, but every single time I discover something new, it just brings up a load of new questions.”

He flicked the switches on the wall, turning off the lights high above and plunging the room into darkness.

“Then there are the Wallentripisms.”

“The what?”

“Have I never told you about Wallentripisms?” he continued, clearly amused by her lack of knowledge. “I didn't actually come up with that word, it was one of my former colleagues who used it to describe certain facts that kept on bugging me.”

She rolled her eyes.

“A Wallentripism,” he explained, “is a fact that's real and definite, but that no-one can ever figure out.”

“You mean it's too hard?”

“I mean it's impossible,” he told her. “Think of it like this. How many steps have you taken in your life?”

“Steps?”

“Footsteps,” he continued. “How many total footsteps have you taken in your entire life?”

“I have no idea.”

“Exactly. There's an answer to that question. There's a definite, exact number, but nobody can ever know what that number is. That's what makes it a Wallentripism. It's a fact that's a fact no-one can quantify. It's like... how many people have lived in Sobolton? How many have died? There's a precise number, but we can't ever figure out what it is. No-one can.”

“You're starting to give me a headache, Herb,” she said as she turned and headed toward the office.

“A lot of people say that,” he replied, setting off after her. “Here's another Wallentripism, though. How many people from Sobolton have ever seen a wolf out there in the forest?”

“Easy. Zero. There aren't any wolves in Sobolton.”

After grabbing her jacket and bag, she switched the lights off and headed back out to join him in the foyer.

“Are you so sure about that?” he asked.

“It's what everyone says.”

“Sure, but everyone says a lot of things,” he countered. “My point is, the number of people who've seen a wolf in and around Sobolton is almost certainly not zero.”

“I guess a stray wolf might pass by occasionally.”

“I think it might be a little more than that.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Herb,” she said, leading him to the front door. She took a moment to prime the alarm, before opening the door as a beeping sound began to ring out. “I never had you down as one of those conspiracy theorist type of people, but each to their own.” Once they were outside, she shut and locked the door before looking around and seeing several people hurrying home though the snow. “I've certainly never seen a wolf here,” she added, “and I don't know anyone who has. So if there are any out there, they sure keep themselves to themselves, and that sounds just swell to me.”

After patting him on the side of the arm, she turned and began to walk away.

“See you on Wednesday, Herb,” she called back to him. “And try not to worry too much about wolves! I'm pretty sure you won't wake up one night with one panting over you from the end of your bed!”

“I wouldn't much like that,” Herb admitted, considering the possibility for a moment before turning and heading off in the opposite direction. “I don't think I'd like that much at all.”

“Oh, and you need a better name for those Wallentripism things!”

“I do?” He thought for a moment. “How about Herbwallantripism?”

***

Inside the town hall, the alarm box on the wall continued to beep for a few more seconds before letting out a brief, sustained tone and then falling still.

Now, with the lights off and the alarm properly set up for the night, the entire building stood in darkness and silence. Moonlight was streaming through the windows but the entire scene was as motionless and as calm as a photograph, as if time itself had stopped moving. A few specks of dust occasionally drifted through a patch of light, but this was as close as the shuttered town hall got to any kind of excitement.

In the museum wing, relics of Sobolton's past remained in their cases, alongside neatly-printed labels describing their history. Again, though, nothing moved and nothing reacted.

All was still and – most importantly – all was silent.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Today...

“It's not here.”

Standing in the reception area, Robert looked at Carolyn and felt the full weight of failure starting to settle on his shoulders. He'd tried for so long to keep his spirits up, to convince himself that somehow he was going to pull through with some kind of miracle, but finally he'd hit the end of the road and he understood that there were no miracles on offer.

Just cold, hard truth.

“It really isn't,” he continued despairingly. “I've looked everywhere. Unless that damn pendant has been literally buried beneath the building, it's not here. I was on a wild goose chase all along.”

“At least you tried,” she pointed out, as a candle burned on the desk next to her. For a moment she watched Robert and felt genuinely sorry for him. “You did your best and it's not your fault that things didn't work out. At least you weren't part of that mob.”

“Is that the low bar a man has to clear around here now?” he asked. “Is that all it takes to be seen as a decent person? Not joining a rabid mob?”

“It's something,” she said wistfully.

“Do you know the worst part?” he asked. “The worst part is that I still think it's around somewhere. If not here, then somewhere else in the town. Something that important can't have simply vanished. I just feel that if I could be a little bit smarter, I might be able to figure it out. This is like completing almost all of a crossword and then finding that you just can't crack the final clue.”

“Maybe we should get out of here,” she said, standing and making her way around the desk. “If -”

Before she could finish, she looked over at the broken door.

“What is it?” Robert said. “Do you hear something?”

Swallowing hard, she realized that somewhere out in the forest an army was gathering, preparing to move down into the town and attack. Although she'd known for a while that this moment was coming, she still felt a sense of shock as she understood that this was going to be the night when Saint Thomas launched his final assault on Sobolton; by morning, everyone in the town would be dead and the wolves would start dismantling the place piece by piece, ripping to shreds everything that had been built up in the valley over the centuries.

“Carolyn?” Robert continued, stepping over to her. “You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she replied, with tears in her eyes as she turned to him. “I'm really not sure why I'm reacting this way.”

“Reacting to what?”

“You're a good man,” she told him as she tried not to imagine him meeting his own grisly fate. “You might not want to admit it, but I've always had you pegged as someone honest and reliable. I just hope you realize that. For all your crankiness, Doctor Law... you've always been my favorite round this place.”

“What do you want?” he asked, clearly suspicious. “What are you buttering me up for? I don't -”

Suddenly she stepped closer and hugged him, holding him tight for a few seconds before kissing him on the cheek and then pulling away.

“I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you,” she explained as the rumbling sound continued in the distance, getting louder with each passing second. “I think a lot of people in this town appreciate you, even if they never told you. But time's running out. You hear noise that, don't you?”

“What is it?” he murmured, limping to the door and looking out across the dark parking lot. “I hear something, but I'm not sure what's going on. Is it help? Do you think somehow John managed to get through to the outside world?”

“It's not help,” Carolyn said under her breath, as she realized that the moment had finally arrived. “It's the opposite of help.”

***

Somewhere at the far end of the street, a woman screamed; her anguished cry rang out for a few seconds before being cut short, and a moment later several people hurried around the corner.

“What's going on?” Robert asked, limping as quickly as he could manage as he made his way from the station. “Can somebody please tell me what's happening?”

“A wolf!” Lucy Ward stammered, stopping next to him and looking over her shoulder. “Lots of wolves! They're in the forest but they're starting to come into the town!”

“That's impossible,” Robert replied, although he quickly realized that he was wrong. “How many are there?”

“I saw twenty or thirty at least,” she told him, speaking so fast now that she was tripping over her own words. “Millie Gordon saw more. They're everywhere, they're coming in from all directions.”

Robert opened his mouth to tell her that she needed to stay calm, but at the last second he held back as he saw more and more people rushing along the dark street. The entire town seemed to be in a state of complete panic now, and he couldn't help but notice that the ground was starting to tremble slightly. Whatever was happening, it was clearly getting worse by the minute.

“They're going to rip us all apart!” Lucy sobbed, running away toward the diner.

“It's like in my nightmares,” Robert whispered as people raced past him on either side. “It's exactly like -”

For a moment he could only think back to the nightmares that had been plaguing him for a few days now. He'd seen terrible images in his mind, images of people getting torn apart by packs of crazed wolves; he'd told himself over and over that he was wrong, that the nightmares couldn't possibly reflect anything real, yet on some deeper level he'd long since come to believe that they were some kind of prediction. Now, as the people of Sobolton ran past in search of shelter, he understood that the nightmares were about to come true and that the entire town was at risk of being overrun. For a few seconds, he felt as if there was no possible way to fight back.

And then he saw them.

At the far end of the street, a handful of wolves strolled leisurely into view as if they had all the time in the world. They weren't hurrying, they weren't snarling or chasing anyone; instead, they looked as if they were confidently inspecting their new territory, as if they were confident that their victims couldn't get anywhere, and something about their sheer cockiness told Robert that they still had to be fought.

“You think you've won, huh?” he whispered. “Well, you're about to learn that the people of Sobolton aren't going to go simply roll over. Even if we know we're gonna lose... we still have to fight.”

As those words left his lips, however, he knew that they were hollow if they weren't back up with actions. In truth, he had no idea how the town was supposed to fight back, and already he could see another dozen or more wolves joining the earlier arrivals. He wasn't sure exactly how many of the creatures lived out in the forest, but he was starting to realize that the town's human population was about to be overwhelmed.

Turning, he saw that people were gathering in front of the station as if they were frantically hoping that someone would take charge.

“John,” he muttered under his breath, “I don't know where you are, but we could sure use your help right about now.”

He thought for a moment, before setting off across the street, determined to do whatever he could. More and more people were flooding into the center of the town, and John quickly realized that they were going to need somewhere they could hide out for a while.

“It's over!” Toby screamed somewhere nearby. “We're all going to be eaten!”

“That's really goddamn useful,” Robert sighed, picking his way around the side of the crowd before spotting the town hall up ahead. With no time to try to think of a better plan, he realized that at least the town hall might be able to hold the gathered crowd, and he could only hope that everyone else in town had managed to hide themselves away in their homes.

“I told you!” Toby shouted at the crowd. “I told you they were going to do this! Why didn't anyone listen to me? I was right all along!”

As Robert limped toward the town hall, he saw Carolyn standing in his path.

“Robert,” she said, with fresh tears in her eyes, “there's no -”

“This way!” he shouted, turning and waving his cane in the air. “Everyone get into the town hall! We're gonna break in and then we're gonna seal the doors shut! Then we're gonna pray for a miracle!”

“I want to tell you something,” she replied. “I'm a -”

“There's no time for talking! We need to move!”

“Robert, this isn't going to work,” she continued, putting a hand on the side of his arm. “You need to listen to me. The more you fight them, the harder this will be. If you make them angry... they won't just kill everyone in the town, they'll slaughter them, and they'll make it so much more painful.”

“We're not just rolling over for them!” he snapped as several people hurried past, heading toward the town hall. “I can't believe you don't want us to fight! Carolyn, what the hell's wrong with you?”

“You need to understand,” she said firmly, gripping his arm tighter now. “This isn't a fight you can win, Robert! You can't stop them! You can't even slow them down! It's over and you need to find a way to make it as painless as possible.”

“I never thought I'd hear you give up,” he replied, looking deep into her eyes for a moment before pulling away and waving his cane once more. “Everyone! This way! We're not beaten yet! Get to the town hall!”

Across the street, scores of wolves were calmly advancing through the town now, emerging from different directions as Sobolton's human population continued to panic. Finally, as they stopped for a moment to watch the citizens desperately trying to break into the town hall, the wolves began to bare their fangs – and then one by one they started to advance again, picking up speed now and starting to pick off a few stragglers, dragging them down onto the ground and tearing into their flesh.

Chapter Thirty

“Eloise!” Lisa shouted, pushing through the depths of the forest as the thundering sound of wolves faded into the distance. “Eloise, come back!”

“It's too late,” John replied, struggling to keep up with her. “Lisa, you need to be logical about this. We have to go back to the cabin and -”

“She's my daughter!” she yelled, turning to him with tear-filled eyes. “Why did she go with him? What's wrong with her? Why did she follow Saint Thomas?”

“He must have... turned her.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that he showed her another way of living,” he explained, before hesitating for a moment to let his words sink in. “Another way of existing. She's eight years old, right? Something like that, anyway. She's not fully grown, but she has a mind of her own and she can be swayed. That's not a phenomenon that's reserved only for wolves, Lisa. We've both been young and impressionable human kids, we know what it's like.”

“She's too smart to fall for any of his tricks.”

“But what if they're not tricks?” he asked. “What if he awakened her wolf side, and what if he made her feel as if something new is possible? I'm not saying for one second that he's right, or that he's doing it for anything other than selfish reasons, but if he made her aware of a whole other side of her existence... could anyone resist at least exploring that?”

“She came into the forest to try to stop him hurting anyone else in the town,” she sobbed. “She'd never turn around and start helping them with their attack.”

“Lisa -”

“You don't know her!” she snapped. “I'm the only one who knows her properly! I'm her mother!”

“You're thinking like a human,” he countered. “Trust me, I've only just begun to explore what it's like to become one of those things, and it's not as simple as a quick change of body. When I'm a wolf, I'm still myself but it's as if a whole other aspect of the world has opened up to me. I see things differently, and I sense them differently. If it's even remotely the same for Eloise, she might very well have come to the conclusion that the pack deserves to reclaim the land that was taken all those years ago.”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I refuse to believe that. Eloise has a good heart.”

“Eloise has a divided heart,” he insisted. “I'm struggling as a grown man. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for a child to go through the same thing.”

“She's not lost,” she whimpered, before looking down at her hand and seeing the thick claw marks her daughter had gouged into her knuckles. That brief moment of unrestrained violence felt impossible. “She can't be lost, and she didn't... she didn't mean to do this to me. She was scared and she lashed out, that's all. She's confused and scared, and she's in the middle of something that makes no sense to her, and she's being manipulated and dragged in different directions and -”

Staring at the the cuts on her hand, she relived that moment over and over again. Deep down she'd always been terrified that Eloise's wolf side might one day awaken, but she'd never considered the possibility that her daughter might actually turn against her. Now, however, she couldn't help but wonder just how Saint Thomas could have forced his way into the girl's head, or how he could have twisted her so badly that she'd now run off with him. For the first time since escaping from the cabin, she felt as if she was completely lost and powerless, and as if nothing she did was ever going to make any difference.

“We need to follow them,” John said.

“Why?”

“Because we need to stop them.”

“How?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I... I don't know,” he admitted, “but we have to try.”

“We tried!” she hissed angrily. “What the hell have we been doing all this time if we weren't already trying? We tried everything we could think of, and none of it was enough. We lost, John. You saw Eloise just now, I can't even talk to her, I don't even know her language anymore! She's been with him for... what... twenty-four hours? And already it's as if he's banished her human side entirely. John, I don't even know how to begin to fix this.”

She waited for him to answer, but already she could tell from the expression on his face that he was all out of ideas.

“You understand their world better than I ever can,” she pointed out. “You're one of them. When you're in your wolf form, John... are you still yourself? In your heart of hearts, are you still the same person you are when you're a man?”

“Yes,” he replied, before hesitating for a few seconds. “No. Sort of. It's complicated. I feel as if I'm the same, but it's the world that's different. The world sort of... opens up somehow and becomes so much more alive, and some of the old human certainties fade away and seem unimportant.”

“If that's how Eloise feels right now,” she continued, “then how can I get through to her? How -”

Before she could finish, she spotted something bright in the distance, far behind the spot where John was standing. Stepping past him, she peered into the darkness and watched as a flickering orange glow seemed somehow to be rising up through the forest.

“What is that?” she asked. “It can't be the town. It's back the way we just came, isn't it? It looks like...”

“The cabin,” John said with a trace of shock in his voice. “That's the cabin. It's burning.”

***

Racing through the forest, Lisa and John finally got to the edge of the clearing, only to stop as they saw that flames were engulfing the cabin now and rising up high into the night sky.

“There were some old cans of gasoline stored round the back,” John said as his eyes caught the inferno's reflection. “That must have been enough to -”

“Michael!” Lisa screamed, rushing forward – only for John to grab her at the last moment and hold her back. “Let go of me! I have to save him!”

“You can't save anyone who's in there now,” John said firmly, struggling to maintain his grip on her arms. “Lisa, look at it! The whole place is -”

In that moment, as if to prove his point, the front of the cabin began to collapse. Lisa and John could only watch helplessly as the entire front section crashed down onto the steps, bringing the rest of the roof down a few seconds later and sending more flames roaring up into the darkness. Wood was splitting and cracking now, and already within just a few minutes most of the cabin had been completely destroyed. The inferno was intense, burning through the cabin's wooden structure with such ferocity that parts of the building were already breaking down and crumbling away to nothing.

“Why did they do this?” Lisa sobbed, already able to feel the heat against her face.

“I don't know,” John murmured, still struggling to understand. “Unless... maybe they didn't.”

“Then who did?” she cried.

Before he had a chance to answer, John spotted a figure moving in the flames. He knew that nobody could possibly survive the cabin's destruction, but this figure appeared to have been loitering near the edge of the clearing, as if he'd been taking shelter; now the figure stepped more fully into view, and as he began to walk away from the burning building he was silhouetted against the shimmering orange heat that still raged behind him.

“Michael?” Lisa stammered, getting to her feet again as she saw him making his way closer. “You're alive!”

He took another step forward, before dropping one of the gasoline cans onto the ground.

“Who did this?” Lisa asked, stopping in front of him and seeing now that – other than his damaged flesh plus the wounds he'd picked up in his earlier fight with the wolves – he seemed mostly unharmed. “Michael... who attacked the cabin?”

“No-one,” John replied, looking at the gasoline can. “Michael... why did you do this?”

“Because we can't go back,” Michael said through gritted teeth. “I thought I could hide away from the pack. I thought I could refuse to serve as their leader, and that they'd accept that, but I reckoned without my brother's interference.”

“Michael,” Lisa said cautiously, “what -”

“He's got Eloise and he's leading the pack into town,” he added. “He wants to wipe Sobolton off the map, but I'm not going to let him do that. I finally understand that my way of doing things, that my attempt to hide away out here, is never going to work. So now I'm going to get Eloise back and then I'm going to deal with Saint Thomas once and for all.”

He looked at John for a moment, as the cabin continued to burn behind him, and then he slowly turned to see the fear in Lisa's eyes.

“And if it's war that he wants,” he continued finally, “then... fine. I'll take the pack back under my control, and it's war he's going to get.”

Books in this series so far:

1. Little Miss Dead
2. Swan Territory
3. Dead Widow Road
4. In a Lonely Grave
5. Electrification
6. Man on the Moon
7. Cry of the Wolf
8. In Human Bonds
9. Blood of the Lost
10. Red-Eyed Nellie
11. Echo of the Dead

Coming soon:

12. Dead End Town
13. End of the World

Coming soon

Dead End Town

(The Horrors of Sobolton book 12)

The final battle approaches as the Horrors of Sobolton series draws close to its shocking finale. Humans and wolves are at one another's throats, but as they battle to the death will any of them realize that they're being manipulated?

Lisa Sondnes thinks she's alone in her fight to save Eloise, but she's reckoned without the ragtag group of allies she's managed to gather along the way. Venturing deep into wolf territory, they all know that the odds are stacked against them, and that Saint Thomas will stop at nothing in his plot to restore the honor of his species.

For John Tench, the battle is also internal as his body threatens to rip himself apart. He thought he had a choice, but now he's starting to realize that the natural world won't let him go. Literally torn between two forms, he knows that he's running out of time, but will his indecision condemn not only his own soul but also the entire town of Sobolton to a terrible fate?

Dead End Town is the twelfth book in the thirteen-part Horrors of Sobolton series, which tells the story of one small town's struggle to deal with the paranormal monstrosities on its doorstep. Each book tells a standalone story, but there are cliffhangers and readers are recommended to go through the series in order.

and

End of the World

(The Horrors of Sobolton book 13)

The Horrors of Sobolton series coming to a shattering conclusion as the forces of good and evil are forced to team up against something even more deadly.

For centuries, humans and wolves have lived under the terms of an agreement. With that agreement in tatters and the wolves searching for their new leader, Sobolton itself is under threat. Old ghosts are returning to observe a battle that might yet have ramifications far beyond the borders of this small, isolated town.

Having once believed that the war was over, Lisa Sondnes realizes to her horror that hatred never truly dies. She still needs to find a way to protect her daughter, but she knows there's one person who might yet be able to help her. His name is John Tench and he holds the key to the town's survival.

If only she can find him...

End of the World is the thirteenth and final book in the thirteen-part Horrors of Sobolton series, which tells the story of one small town's struggle to deal with the paranormal monstrosities on its doorstep. Each book tells a standalone story, but there are cliffhangers and readers are recommended to go through the series in order.

Also available

THE GHOST IN ROOM 119

Something dangerous is lurking in room 119 of a Barcelona hotel. Something vicious. Something evil. Something that wants revenge.

Arriving in the city for a short break, Penny and Steve are looking forward to a week of sun, sea and sand. Those plans are ruined, however, when Steve thinks he recognizes a woman at the hotel bar. Ten years ago, he dated a girl named Annabelle, but the relationship ended badly. The woman at the bar looks a little like Annabelle, not enough for him to be certain that it's her, but enough for him to worry.

Soon, Steve finds himself drawn into a nightmare. He's starting to see the strange woman everywhere, and now he's worried that he's being followed. Has Annabelle returned to his life? If so, has she turned up in Barcelona by accident or by design? And how is her apparent appearance connected to the strange noises and flickering lights that can be heard every night, coming from room 119?

Also available

THE GHOSTS OF MARSH HOUSE

Marsh House stands abandoned in the heart of an English seaside town. A local ghost tour guide regularly stops in front of the house to tell its grim tale, but no-one has actually set foot in the building for more than forty years. Until now.

Desperate to get away from his troubles in London, Andrew heads to Marsh House and sets about trying to fix it up. Between rotten floorboards and bug infestations, he's got his work cut out for him. And that's before he even notices the strange noises in the night, and the fact that a strange presence is watching his every move.

When he invites a new friend to move in with him, everything changes. Andrew might not have paid attention to the darker side of Marsh House, but his new guest quickly realizes that something's very wrong. Does the ghost of a long-dead woman still haunt the house, cursing anyone who dares to fall in love? And is this malevolent entity somehow also responsible for the death of a local woman whose body was found on the beach?

And by the time he uncovers the shocking truth, will it be too late for Andrew to ever return to his old life?

The Ghosts of Marsh House is a horror story about a man who's trying to run from his own mistakes, and about a woman who'll stop at nothing to make others pay for her misery.