Mike The Werewolf: A Humorous Werewolf Thriller, page 15
My point is, I’d been working to find a balance without becoming some sort of town pariah. Mom and Dad both understood that. Nonetheless, it was one thing to keep a lid on things during dinner, quite another for me to outright disappear for two weeks.
In the backseat, Spud continued to whine, not helping the already tense mood. As for Winston, I had no idea what he might be thinking, other than being certain he was enjoying my discomfort.
Guess it’s up to me to break the ice. “Listen. I know you and Mom were worried sick. I get that. Trust me, I didn’t disappear off the face of the planet because I wanted to. Things just got ... weird.”
Dad glanced at me, one eyebrow raised, but again said nothing.
“I’m not sure how much I can say. Heck, I’m not entirely sure how much of it was real and how much was my imagination.”
He gave me some more side-eye but that was all. Suddenly I felt like an eight-year-old who’d just gotten caught breaking the living room window with my football.
“I got caught up in something big, okay? And no, I can’t really explain it other than it was scary and weird as all heck. The important thing is I’m done with it, along with any nonsense going on in the city. None of it is any of my business. I know that now. So, there’s no need to worry.”
Dad inexplicably let out a laugh. “Oh, you are so dead wrong it’s almost fucking hilarious.”
My eyes opened wide, but it wasn’t because the silent treatment was finally at an end. No. The words may have come from my father’s lips, but it hadn’t been in his voice.
The pitch was too high, too feminine. In fact, it almost sounded like...
Spud’s whine turned into a growl as the air around the driver’s seat began to shimmer and distort. In the space of seconds, as the illusion finally dropped, my father’s greying hair became a luxurious mane of bright red, while his body became considerably more ... voluptuous.
The woman who’d replaced him, an all too familiar if unwelcome sight, turned to me and grinned.
“Hell, this party’s just getting started, lover.”
Myra!
HEX WITH THE EX
“What are you doing here?”
“Giving your pedestrian butt a lift, obviously.”
“Where’s my father?”
The shapely enchantress let out a cackle. “Probably at home wondering who stole his car.”
“What?! But that’s... Never mind. Pull over.”
“Aww, but we just started rolling.”
“I said pull over.”
“Okay, okay, relax. Hold your dog collar. I just need a second here.”
“I said...”
“Give me a minute, will ya? I got something I need to do first.”
“What?”
“This,” she replied, taking one hand off the steering wheel and tapping it to my head. I felt a jolt, like a static shock, and saw a brief flash of bright yellow.
“What the fuck?”
The words came from my lips, but they weren’t mine. Great! Winston had lasted all of five minutes before deciding to announce himself to the world. Albeit I suppose the circumstances were anything but normal.
“Ooh, look at you using big boy language,” Myra said, still grinning.
“That wasn’t me. I mean it was, but...” Crap! I hadn’t meant to sputter like an idiot, but I could somehow feel Winston stirring within me. I didn’t know what Myra had done to us, but he was apparently taking exception to it. I needed to take control of this situation before he did something we’d regret, like ruining Dad’s leather seats. “Calm down. I’ve got this.”
Myra glanced my way, one eyebrow raised. “Honey, in case it ain’t clear, I am cool as a motherfucking cucumber. You, on the other hand, ain’t got nothing ‘cept a handful of shit.”
“Do you have to be so vulgar?”
“Seriously, that’s your biggest fucking issue right now?” Winston spat.
“Will you shut up already!”
Myra stared at me, head cocked. Then she let out a laugh as if she found the whole thing hilarious. “Jesus, Mike, I didn’t zap you that hard. And yet they say I’m the one who should be in the loony bin.”
“It’s ... can you please keep your eyes on the road?”
She refocused on driving just in time to avoid wrapping us around a tree, giving me a moment to gather my thoughts.
♦ ♦ ♦
Myra Tabitha Wallanger had never been what you’d call a meek girl. Growing up, she’d hung with a different crowd, one that never gave me so much as a second glance. They weren’t exactly what you’d call mean girls, but they very much kept to themselves.
I didn’t know it at the time, but part of the reason for this was because her friends were all witches like her, the offspring of a small coven that had secretly established itself in Harris County.
I had no insight into how long they’d been there. Heck, I couldn’t even say whether it was sheer coincidence they’d chosen to settle in a place also populated by latent werewolves. Myra had never seen fit to grace me with that knowledge, and by the time I had a clue, things had already gone sour between us.
I’ve mentioned how everything changed roughly five years ago. Well, that goes for Myra too. While many of us were dealing with the end of the ritual, Myra and her coven found themselves without magic for the first time in their lives.
I have no idea what such a dramatic change in lifestyle would do to a person, but I can’t imagine it was pleasant.
Though I’d never been morbid enough to check the obituaries, I would’ve bet good money these ex-witches accounted for some of the suicides from around that time. As for the rest, I’m guessing they eventually learned to adapt to a world without magic. Myra was one of them.
All I knew was she eventually landed a job at McNalty’s Realty and started saying hi to me whenever we’d run into each other during our respective lunch hours.
Quick hellos turned into short chats. Chats turned into hanging out. And eventually romance bloomed.
Sadly, this particular flower’s season wasn’t meant to last.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Myra I’d fallen for was a far cry from the cackling siren sitting in the driver’s seat. She was sweet and friendly, not to mention marginally sane.
The return of magic had changed all of that. All at once, I was no longer worth her time, but it turned out I wasn’t the only one. At some point during the intervening years, Myra had a serious falling out with her coven – one bad enough to turn her against them.
Whatever happened between them, it couldn’t have been pretty because, far as I was aware, it was a scant three months after magic’s return and there was no longer any sign of Myra’s old crew to be found in Harris County. It was possible they’d simply packed up and left, but somehow I didn’t believe it.
If you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you the Myra I’d known and loved, the one who’d enjoyed many a weekly dinner at my folks’ place, wasn’t capable of such things. The Myra sitting next to me now, though, was not someone to be underestimated. It was a real pity, since that’s exactly what I was doing, sitting there and talking to her like this was nothing more than a blind date gone bad.
Winston, however, wasn’t having any of this. Just as Myra started to slow the car down, my extremities went numb.
No! Not now!
Myra was no longer my girlfriend. Heck, she wasn’t even in the friend zone anymore. I knew for a fact she and Hobart were up to no good and needed to be stopped.
But that didn’t mean I wanted her dead.
I thought back to the Chadworths and the absolute mess made of them. Winston might as well have run them through a woodchipper ... twice. Angry as I might’ve been with her, I didn’t want to see her splattered across some living room like human paint. Such a thing was inhuman, a heinous crime only a true monster would commit. And I was no monster. Not yet, and not ever if I could help it.
As the flood of euphoric brain chemicals coursed through me, I tried to stop the change the same as I’d done at Barley Hills.
Except, a moment later I realized there was nothing to stop.
The rush of chemicals was meant to dull the pain of transformation, except no transformation followed. My body didn’t begin to swell, my hair didn’t grow, and none of my bones started rearranging themselves.
I was just sitting there, same as I’d been two minutes earlier, save I was now enjoying one hell of a natural high.
Whoa. Had I known my own brain was capable of this kind of rush, I wouldn’t have bothered with all those weekends soaking up suds down at Jasper’s.
“What ... the ... fuck?” Winston asked. I think he meant it as a snarl, but it came out as more of a giggle.
“Let me guess,” Myra replied, just as we pulled into a shallow turnoff on the side of the road. “You were trying to change, right here in the front seat of your daddy’s Ford, weren’t you? ‘Cept ain’t nothing happening.”
“You bitch,” Winston spat.
His remark only caused Myra to grin even wider as she shut the car off. “You know something? I kinda like this new you. Shit, maybe that wild beast you got inside is finally rubbing off a bit.” She slowly lowered her gaze to somewhere south of my chin. “Well, will you look at that. Seems to me like something else could use a bit of rubbing.”
I was about to ask what the hell she was talking about when realization hit. That flood of brain chemicals had caused another unintended side effect, one that was pitching a solid tent against the interior of my jeans.
No. She couldn’t possibly think...
Behind us, Spud once more began to whine.
“You hush now,” Myra told him, sliding her seat back. “Adults are talking, although not for much longer.” She reached beneath her skirt, then slid her panties off.
No way! Uh uh. This is not happening. I tried to unbuckle my seatbelt but found my fingers too numb to work the latch. “Wha-what are you doing?”
“You, stupid.” She clambered across the front seat, straddled me, and began working the buckle of my pants.
My left hand raised in response, curling into the shape of a claw.
Oh crap! “Don’t do it!”
“Come now, honey bun. Your lips say no, but your stick shift is most certainly saying yes.”
“I didn’t mean...”
Rather than throttle her as I feared, Winston grabbed the collar of her shirt and ripped it away, taking most of her bra with it.
What the hell?
“Goddamn,” Myra whooped. “Now this is what I’m talking about.” She pressed her lips to mine and forced her tongue into my mouth, not that there seemed to be much resistance. My other half bit down on her, drawing hot blood, but that only seemed to encourage them both.
Things were getting weird way too fast. I needed to stop this before it went any further, so I reached up to push Myra away with the hand I still controlled.
“I don’t think so, stud.”
My body erupted in blue sparks instead, leaving me unable to do much more than flop like a fish in the front seat, which didn’t seem to dissuade her in the least.
Myra leaned back, eldritch energy crackling up and down her body as her voice became a throaty whisper. “That’s more like it. Now listen here and listen well, cowboy. I’m aim to ride you until your head explodes. Which head, mind you, depends entirely on how nicely you treat a lady.”
No doubt about it. She’d gone completely around the bend.
I continued to struggle, only to realize half of me wasn’t making any effort at all to resist. My left side seemed quite fine with what was about to happen. What the hell was Winston doing?
All at once, I understood. For all his obstinance, aggression, and insistence that he found humans disgusting, the sick son of a bitch was enjoying this as much as she was.
This was no longer just about me and Myra. I was now stuck as the unwilling participant in the world’s strangest threesome, powerless to do anything but sit there and take it.
ROACH MOTEL HELL
“Hot damn, Mike, when did you learn to fuck like such an animal?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, pulling my pants back up while trying not to think about how wet and sticky everything now felt. I swear, would it have hurt my father to keep a pack of wet wipes in the glove compartment?
“Is this a werewolf thing? Is it insensitive for me to ask? I mean, shit, we didn’t even do it doggy style.” Myra let out another cackle as she finally slid back over to the driver’s seat. “Don’t get me wrong, sugar, the sex wasn’t bad before, but that... No offense, but if you’d hammered me like that back then, I might’ve stuck around a bit longer.”
“’I gotta admit,” Winston blurted out, “that wasn’t half bad for an ugly hairless bitch.”
Oh crap.
“Say what now?” Myra’s eyes lit up with magical energy.
“I said...”
“You shouldn’t have ... taken advantage of me like that,” I interrupted, wresting control of my mouth from the moronic beast inside my head. “I ... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be hurtful with my words, but ... it’s just ... I’m not some piece of meat.”
Myra smirked. “Aww, does little Mikey need to cuddle-wuddle?”
“No! It’s just...” What I really needed was for Winston to shut up, so I lowered my voice to a bare whisper. “Remember what we talked about. No one can know.”
Myra raised an eyebrow as she continued straightening her clothes. “I see someone’s got a high opinion of himself. Just for the record, lover, it was good, but not good enough to brag about. You owe me at least one more orgasm for that.”
“Think I’ll pass.”
“Your loss.” She leaned forward and stared at me hard, the grin never leaving her face. “Now don’t be sitting there all pouty. Sometimes you gotta give your inner devil his due, consequences be damned. Although if it’ll make you feel better, we can stop at Ketchum’s Pharmacy so you can pick yourself up a Plan B. Y’know, in case you’re worried about catching pregnant with pups or something.”
I cocked my head, forgetting for a moment she’d just used me as her own personal sex doll. “What are you yammering about?”
“Ain’t that a werewolf thing?” she replied with another cackle. “I seem to recall reading about it in a book somewhere.”
“Seriously, are you on drugs?”
“Why? You got some?”
“No, it’s just...”
I needed to turn this around. I didn’t want to hurt her and it’s not like I could anyway, not without changing. But she’d walked all over me enough for one day. “I think you should worry less about bad fiction and more about what Hobart’s gonna do if he realizes what you’ve been up to. What do you think he’s going to say if he smells me all over you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t see why I should care.”
“Are you seriously telling me your new boyfriend’s not going to have an opinion?”
Myra threw back her head and laughed. “Hobart and me are business partners, but that business ain’t got nothing to do with my coochie. I’m insulted you’d think otherwise.”
“No? Then how come...”
“Good idea,” Winston replied. “We should find out if Hobart’s got any other bitches and mount them too.”
Jesus! “Will you shut up already?!”
Even as the words came out of my mouth I realized my mistake. The look on Myra’s face said as much.
“Did I zap you too hard back there, Mike?” she asked, studying me like a bug under glass. “Because not only do you have a whole new vocabulary, but it sounds like you’re having a sidebar with whatever voices you got in your noggin.”
I couldn’t help my eyes opening wide in surprise. I knew she was just spouting off but she’d come way too close to the truth for my liking.
Myra leaned in close enough to kiss her had I wanted to, which I didn’t. “What happened after you disappeared?”
What? “Listen, Myra...”
“Don’t give me any of that Listen Myra bullshit. You aren’t mansplaining your way out of this. I know something happened to you. You ain’t the type to vanish off the face of the Earth, not without telling that burnout friend of yours.”
“Dallas isn’t a burnout.”
“It’s funny you knew exactly who I was talking about without me even needing to mention his name, but that ain’t neither here nor there. They got to you, didn’t they?”
Huh?
“Let me guess,” she continued. “They fucked your brain over real good with mind magic, maybe not as good as I fucked you, but they worked you over nonetheless.”
“Mind magic?”
“You heard me. It’s not just for keeping a fella in his rightful skin.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m guessing they were happy as clams to filet your grey matter trying to figure out what you are and why their precious archives barely make any mention of you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She waved me off. “Of course you don’t. They would’ve fucked with your memories too. That’s what they do. And why not? To them, you’re nothing more than an animal, just like those bloodsuckers. Subhuman trash to be used and abused.”
“Pretty rich coming from someone doing the abusing.”
“Oh, honey, what you call abuse, I call rocking your world. You’re just too much of a prude to admit it.”
“I am not a...” Okay, deep breath. She’d gone off on a huge tangent, one that sounded kinda important. Now was not the time to change the subject.
Spud picked that moment to sit up in the backseat, having had the audacity to fall asleep while Myra was having her way with me. So good to know I could count on man’s best friend. Regardless, I reached back and patted his head. It reminded me to treat this situation with kid gloves since I wasn’t the only one here that Myra could vent her crazy upon.
“All right, let’s back up a bit. Who are they and what did they do to me?”
Myra finally scooted back behind the wheel of my father’s car. “They really did a number on your noggin.”
