The Witch and the Werewolf Read Free

looking for us. They’d
like nothing more than to take us and make us their own as they
have so many of our coven.”
    “ Coven? What coven. We
aren’t witches, mother.”
    Her mother looked about in
a panic. “We must flee. Right now. I will tell you everything once
we get back to the fortress.”
    “ It’s a basement, mother.
Not a fortress. And you’re freaking me out here.”
    “ You should be freaked
out, Cassandra. The world as you knew it is ending, but it’s just
the beginning. And you’re not going to like what it looks like
tomorrow morning.”
    Brad got out of the car
and started towards them. “I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Kent. I… ow…
wow. Look at that.”
    Bright light filled the
dark, turning it to an off white daytime. Her mother gripped her
head, preventing her from looking up as the missiles slammed into
Worm Wood.
    “ Do not look at them,
Cass. Look at me.”
    The urge to look up at the
source of the light show was overwhelming but her mother held firm.
Instead she stared into her mother’s deep blue eyes, locked on her
gaze. Brad screamed out and dropped to his knees.
    “ Oh shit. I can’t see.
What…”
    She was able to angle her
eyes down enough to see the gory muck of his eyes, melted by the
nuclear explosions in the sky, running down through his fingers.
She gasped and turned back to her mother, now afraid to look
away.
    “ That’s right. Look at me,
child. We’ll live through this night, you and I. We will survive
this. And then I have to show you the real world. They’re out there
now, looking for us. They can smell my fear. But we’ll beat them.
We’ll have to or they will overrun the world.”
    Cassandra heard a growling
from the bayou’s edge and felt her mother tense, hands clasped even
tighter around her face.
    “ They’re here,” her mother
said dramatically and, when she said it, Cassandra felt it as well.
It was a crawling feeling of fear and dread in the pit of her
stomach. There was something out there, in the wood line. “Remember
not to look at Worm Wood. No matter what happens, don’t look
up.”
    The first creature burst
from the wooded edge of the bayou and Cassandra couldn’t help but
stare at it. It looked like a wolf crossed with a man, though it
was like nothing she’d ever seen in a werewolf movie. It stood
nearly eight feet tall and, even beneath the scraggly brown fur,
she could make out the solid muscles of its body. Its arms were
long and dangly, its fingers tipped with inches long claws. The
thing had the face of a wolf, long and elongated, and its mouth was
filled with razor sharp yellow teeth. It stared at them with all
too human eyes, though, and licked its chops through a
growl.
    The thing howled in the
night when it saw her mother, licking its chops.
    “ Get in the van and
drive,” her mother ordered, pushing her aside . “And whatever you
do, don’t look at the comet. Do not wait for me.”
    Her mother pushed her
towards the van and then stepped back, drawing the two silver
swords from the scabbards beneath her long coat. She looked like an
avenging angel in the nuclear light of Worm Wood, a warrior
queen.
    “ Wolf,” she said simply,
her voice untouched by fear. “Begone this night.”
    The wolf laughed at her
and watched as Cassandra pulled Brad towards the van. “She smells
like you, Eleanor. Does she taste like you?”
    “ You will not find out
this night,” her mother said as she, amazingly, leapt into the air,
blades pointed in front of her. She cleared the thirty feet between
she and the wolf in a single bound and Cassandra was sure the two
blades were going to, at any second, impale the wolf. It moved in a
flash, though, and she came down on grass.
    The thing laughed at her.
“You are slowing in your old age, Eleanor. You used to be much
quicker.”
    Her mother turned and
threw one of the swords at the wolf. It arched across the expanse
of grass like a silver arrow and cut the wolf’s arm as the beast
stepped out the