Young Writers Society

Chapter Six

They skirted through the city like fugitives, running wherever they grew brave enough and padding cautiously whenever their nerves broke. The stranger had calmed down a lot, and trotted along dutifully behind Seb like a faithful spaniel. Seb, however, wasn’t coping as well - a night in the basement had become a very attractive prospect.

Every too-bright light made him flinch and wheel backwards into the stranger, every drunken shout made his heart stop for a moment, every glug of the canal’s filth made his legs shake. Seb’s hackles were up and his mind raced, morphing every shadow into a hunter, or animal control. Of course, it was - probably - nonsense but no amount of logic would convince him otherwise. He’d never been so helpless. No matter how much he wanted to shift back, he couldn’t. It was so horribly different to running around with his human form just seconds away, and Seb hated it.

Through a haze of fear and uncertainty, they arrived at the scrappy half-woods by the motorway. Stinging nettles and lanky, malnourished grass kept them safe. Plastic and beer cans bloomed in the place of flowers, choking the scrawny birch trees chocolate wrapper by chocolate wrapper.

Seb dumped his clothes in the dirt, pushing aside syringes with his nose. He watched the racing lights on the motorway through the brambles and the rubbish before he lay down by the trunk of a larger birch tree.

He watched the stranger put his clothes down on top of his, expecting to feel the first prickling of anger. Seb felt no such thing as the stranger tip-toed over, flopping down next to him. The stranger folded his spindly legs beneath him, bringing his tail around his paws. Though he wouldn't admit it later, Seb curled up to the stranger ever so slightly. The warmth and just the safety being so close to someone else helped his heartbeat and breathing become comfortable again.

They fell asleep to the mellow roaring of the motorway.

-

The talk he’d gotten from Tanvi’s father was, as predicted, awful. Once the full moon had waned and given them back their human disguises, Tanvi’s father hadn’t hesitated to launch into a university-grade lecture that would probably be entitled ‘Reasons Why Sebastian Sutton is the World’s Worst Werewolf’. To make it even worse, Riley had joined in on their way home, nagging and yipping and drawing curious looks from passers-by.

“How could you have done that?” She’d said, for the forth or fifth time. Her hair was unbrushed and wild, sticking up in strange places like her fur had. Seb and the stranger had run back at the crack of dawn, making it in time for breakfast at Tanvi's.

“I told you!” Seb had hissed, feeling his face crinkle with anger. Why wouldn't Riley just accept it? "We had to go someplace else. No-one saw, okay? No-one."

“Yeah, whatever,” she’d thrown a glance behind her, to the stranger. “I suppose you didn’t do too badly…”

Seb had sighed and turned away, refusing eye contact with Riley and the stranger all the way home.

He’d met with Tanvi at the abandoned factories just after midday. Predictably, the stranger had followed him, silent, demonic, and drifting like skeletal ghost. Tanvi had been bursting at the seams with questions about the night before, to which Seb had given a curt, “you don’t want to know,” and transformed, leaving his clothes and his phone, like always, in the rusting ventilation shaft. Tanvi and the stranger had followed suit.

Seb pulled himself onto his favourite crumbling wall, wincing as the wounds on his stomach complained. The rest of the city loomed.over a demolished factory in a neighbouring yard. Another plane circled. Sirens screamed and traffic rumbled. Tanvi leaped up beside him.

She was a head shorter than Seb, and a lot smaller and coyote-like. She had a sharp, sly muzzle and the same dark eyes as her human body had. Her pelt was rich and mossy and brown, starting to thicken for winter. It was wonderfully patchy and speckled with black hairs.

He turned his face away and looked off in the opposite direction, to where the scrawny stranger was exploring. Tanvi sniffed inquisitively, pointing her muzzle up to the sky. She nudged him, and Seb copied.

It was the same smell as the day before, the one his stupid human nose had picked up, the same scent that had trapped his mind but this time its strength was tripled threefold. Seb clambered down, landing too hard on the concrete and jolting his spine horribly. He took off and followed the mind-numbingly delicious smell through the air, flinging himself over bushes like a springer spaniel as his thoughts turned into warm, hazy soup.

He dug his claws into a break in the ground and bought himself to a jarring halt, shoving his nose into the base of a stunted tree. Bronze leaves fell into his fur as he pushed the branches aside, desperately trying to get closer to the scent. It was as if getting close to the scent was one of his core instincts, like the built-in drive to breathe, to live, to carry on. It was like it had drowned any coherent thought and turned him into a zombie. Somewhere faraway, a familiar voice whined. Just one paw closer. A shrill warning bark ripped into his mind.

Wires tightened around his front paw. Seb tried to dart backwards, crying out with a high-pitched yelp as the metal cut into his leg. There was no way he could shift back - the metal would sever his wrist. Fear grappled with the scent and won his mind back. Tanvi’s ears were flat against her skull, and the fearful whites of her eyes were flashing.

Seb pulled and twisted, working himself up into more and more of a frenzy. Tanvi paced to and fro. Bushes crunched under her paws. Blind panic tore at his insides and the wounds on his stomach reopened and leaked blood into his fur.

A bony hand closed around his paw. Seb stood terrified as the stranger started to work on the snare. Seb’s blood stained his tanned, scarred hands and arms as his fingers moved like a carpenter’s, blurring in tight, skilled little movements until the wires had been dug out of Seb’s flesh and lay, grotesque and smelling distinctively of blood, in the undergrowth.

Seb sat back, staring as the stranger shifted back into his scrawny, spindly wolf form and trotted off toward the ventilation shaft to fetch his clothes. Seb trembled, gingerly testing weight out on his paw. Tanvi padded up beside him, brushing up against his shoulder. She made a low sound that rumbled around her throat. Seb stayed quiet.

-

“That was a snare. I’ve read about them before,” Tanvi said matter-of-factly. They were making their way back home via the canal path, the filthy, stained stretch of dirt that always smelt slightly ominous.The stranger trailed behind with his eyes on stalks.

“It bloody hurt,” Seb grumbled, rubbing his left wrist. A thin red line traced around his wrist. It had only just stopped bleeding, “but what kind of idiot sets a trap in a factory yard?”

“Only foxes come through there.”

“Yeah. Foxes and werewolves.” Seb said dryly, hiding how shaken he really was. “What if it’s a werewolf hunter?”

“It won’t be. No-one one knows. Besides, there aren’t many hunters around this part of the country,” she assured. It was true, for the most part. Of course, no werewolf family could live without sparking too many urban legends to count - and they were no exception. After particularly rowdy weekends, rumours would spread like fleas. Whispers would even filter down to the darkest corners of public schools, right to Seb’s smug ears. Despite all of these rumours, there had never been the even a hint of a werewolf hunter, no strange scent, no menacing shadow. Not until now.

Seb turned to face the stranger, waving a hand to get his attention, “do you know what that could’ve been, or who could’ve put it there?”

The stranger stared him down until Seb looked away and retreated back to Tanvi.

“I guess not,” Seb muttered. They were silence that fell and stayed during their journey home was as grim as the clouds. Riley was the first to break it, as soon as they all fell through the front door of Seb’s house.

“Hey, guys,” she grinned and welcomed them inside. The smell of baking bread made Seb’s stomach gargle as they were led through to the cramped kitchen. “Did you have fun?”

“We did, thank you Riley,” Tanvi replied softly. Seb always wondered how being so polite all of the time never seemed to wear her out.

“Good.” Riley smiled, “Tiffany’s just baking a loaf of bread, so if you’ll stay for a bit then you can have a piece.”

“That would be lovely,” Tanvi jabbed Seb hard in the ribs, gesturing to the wound on his arm, as soon as Riley turned her back to put the kettle on. The stranger watched, transfixed.

“Uh, Riley,” Seb began, pulling his sleeve up, “I have something to show you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” Seb’s voice hushed even more as Tiffany came in, carrying a more-wolf-than-girl Juana. She squealed something happy when she saw him and Tanvi. He pulled his sleeve down, hasty, until Tiffany prodded Juana out and turned to face them.

“Well?”

Seb took a deep breath that shook when he didn’t want it to, “there was a trap. And I think it was meant to catch wolves.”

Riley took his wrist in her hand, holding it with an iron grip that kept him from pulling away. She shared a look with Tiffany. It was a look that Seb knew too well.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” she didn’t look like she meant it.