The Night Has Teeth (10 page)

In this moment of quiet stillness, I glance hastily
around for an escape route, but I feel the wolf’s muzzle press into
my face. I freeze. My eyes squeeze shut as I brace myself for a
painful end. I’ve seen nature shows. It isn’t pretty when the
predator takes down its prey. A cold, wet nose presses up against
my face. I remain very still, waiting. When I have the courage to
look again, the wolf is an inch or so from my face. Black eyes
stare into mine. Like a dog looking for attention, the wolf gently
paws at my hand. I reach out tentatively and my fingers brush
against the velvet-soft fur of her neck. And then it becomes too
real for me. I pull my knees into my chest and cover my face in my
hands.

“What is the matter?” Amara’s voice
asks.

I rub my hands over my eyes before I can look into
her face. Her human face.

“You’re ... a werewolf,” I whisper.

She smiles then whispers back. “I know.”

I shake my head repeatedly until she reaches out and
softly touches my face. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel alright
again.”

Amara’s face is close enough that it fills my entire
view, and it’s as though I’m seeing her for the first time all over
again. I’m struck once more by the rawness of her beauty, like the
kind you see in the most exotic of wildflowers, and in the most
dangerous of predators.

“Would you mind?”

Her voice wakes me from my reverie, and I follow her
gaze. Her long, sable hair flows down, covering her still-naked
body like a shimmering black shawl. Heat rises on my face as I
promptly glance away.

“Uh, yeah, I ― here, let me get your...”
Flustered, I gather up her clothes and hand them to her while
averting my gaze. “Sorry. Here. Sorry.”

I sit on the fallen tree trunk and Amara joins me a
moment later, fully clothed. We sit silently to allow a new reality
to soak in. A reality that includes werewolves. I wonder what else
might exist in the world that didn’t before today.

“That went much better than I had expected,” she
says with a slight smile, breaking the silence.

“How’s that?”

She tilts her head. “From what I have seen in the
movies, I half expected you to scream, or faint at the very
least.”

“Well, you obviously can’t read minds, because I
was screaming on the inside the whole time.”

“Do I frighten you?”

“Not right now, no.”

“I do not like the sound of that.”

“Look, it’s not you. It’s...”

“...it is me, is it not? I have heard that in the
movies, too.” She actually seems to be enjoying herself a
little.

“You watch a lot of movies for a
werewolf.”

She shrugs. “It kills the time.” That word,
kill
, sends
shivers through me, and I can tell that she regrets using
it.

“Do not worry, I am not dangerous,” she says with
a grin. “No more than any other girl.”

“I think you have a very loose understanding of
what constitutes danger.”

Her smile fades and her face seems suddenly serious,
but kind. Leaning across the tree stump, she peers reassuringly
into my eyes. “Connor, believe me when I say this: we are no danger
to you.”

I open my mouth to protest, since I’m sure it’s only
a half-truth. The other half of the equation is Arden, who clearly
has it in for me. Everything I know about werewolves tells me I
should be afraid, but I’m not. In fact, I am mesmerized like a
mouse caught in a snake’s hypnotic gaze, lured in by her enticing
nature. One moment to pause before I find myself in the jaws of a
predator.

Amara speaks softly. “You are the first human with
whom I have ever shared my secret.”

I should be flattered, I suppose, but I can’t help
thinking how much better off I might be without this knowledge.
Reels of horror movies spin through my head, but it’s hard to
reconcile the on-screen menace with the woman who’s sitting by my
side, too lovely to be dangerous.

“So,” I start, “did the movies get it
right?”

“It depends.”

“How about you give me the
Everything You Wanted to Know
About a Werewolf But Were Too Afraid to Ask
rundown?”

She gives me a funny look. “Alright, what would you
like to know?”

“For starters, I guess the full moon means
nothing. Can you change any time you want?”

“I would not say that,” she answers. “The lunar
cycle has a certain pull to transform. Often it is difficult to
control when the moon is full, particularly for the young or newly
bitten.”

“Good to know,” I say, making a mental note to not
put myself in a dark alley during a full moon. “Newly bitten. Is
that how werewolves are ... made?”

“Like anything in nature, we are born,” she
answers reproachfully. But she adds matter-of-factly, “The bitten
are the damned. Not quite human, not quite wolf, but something
grotesquely in between the two. They rarely survive. Either they
lose their minds or end their lives while in human
form.”

“And silver bullets?”

“Any bullet can kill us, provided it hits the
right spot. Silver ones are just deadlier because we have an innate
allergy to the metal.”

“Are you immortal?”

“No. But we can live for a very long
time.”

“How long?”

“Time takes on a different meaning when one has so
much of it.”

“Well, how old are you then?”

“It is impolite to ask a woman’s age, is it
not?”

“You’re too young for that rule to
apply.”

“Am I?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

She smiles mysteriously. I feel myself grinning,
despite her obvious ploy to halt the conversation. Clearly that
road is blocked, so I take the most natural route back to the
beginning. “Why did you tell me?”

I can see her processing what she’s about to say,
like she can’t quite find the words. It’s unnerving.

“There is something ... different about you,” she
says. “And I am not the only one who thinks so.”

“If you’re talking about Arden, that doesn’t
really surprise me,” I admit, casting a glance at the wolf, who’s
resting his head but watching me with attentive amber eyes. “He
looks at me like I’m a turkey leg at Thanksgiving.”

“Not him,” she responds, looking a little
perplexed at my attempt at humor. “The werewolf who followed us
back from the club.”

A shudder runs through me as I recall the flash of
green eyes under the streetlight.

“
What did he want?”

“She,” Amara clarifies. “And I believe you know
her by name.”

It clicks then. Boadicea Faelen. The strawberry
blonde with the emerald eyes. The wolf that Arden fought had the
same coloring. I should have known that her coming on to me was too
good to be true.

“What did she want with me?”

“I do not know. But she works for a very dangerous
man.”

I don’t like the sound of that, so I say, “I don’t
like the sound of that.”

“I should think that is the point. He is sending a
message.”

“What message?”

“He is coming.”

It doesn’t help that there’s a snap of a twig in
woods at that exact moment. Even from this distance I can see the
hair on Arden’s withers bristle as he lets out a low growl. His
head picks up immediately while his nostrils flare in an attempt to
catch a scent. He glances over at Amara, who nods once before he
disappears into the shadows. Meanwhile, she rises and motions for
me to do the same.

“We should go. It is almost dawn.”

“What about Arden?”

“He knows his way home.”

It’s not what I meant, but I don’t pursue the point.
Instead I follow on her heels, and we almost collide when she
pauses for a moment by the front gates to hand me a pair of my
sneakers, which I put on gratefully. We make our way to the nearest
Métro station as the first rays of daybreak paint the sky.

“Maybe you should tell me who he is,” I suggest as
calmly as I can muster, given the ominous turn the conversation has
taken.

“A long time ago—” she starts, like fairy
tale.

“How long are we talking here?”

“Lifetimes,” she answers obscurely before
continuing her story. “There was a man named Henri Boguet. You
might recall the name Boguet Biotechnology from the business card
you were handed last night.”

The redhead’s card. The very one that Arden was all
riled up about. He disposed of the card so quickly, I assumed he
was just being his usual disgruntled self, out to show me up. I
didn’t really have the time to process much more than her name, let
alone that of her employer. All the same, what an effed up way to
have my back.

“He was a very powerful man in a very troubled
time. Boguet lived in Saint-Claude on the border between France and
Switzerland. The villagers of this mountain town had suffered a
terrible drought earlier that summer and, in the dead of winter,
they were starving. Worse, so were the wolves in the
forest.”

“By wolves, you mean...”

“Yes,” she replies. “Werewolves. It was a harsh
winter all around. Food supplies were scarce, so
naturally...”

My mind doesn’t want to fill in the blank, so I
pursue the point. “Naturally?”

She lowers her head and is silent for a moment. “You
must know that some packs have not always seen humans as equals. To
some, such as Arden’s pack at the time, humans were considered by
many as lesser creatures, much on the same level as deer or wild
hare. What I mean to say is, they thought of humans as―”

“Food,” I interrupt flatly. “What you mean to say
is Arden thinks of humans as nothing more than talking
meat.”

“Connor,” she says softly, “it was a long time
ago.”

“So what ― he developed a conscience? Became a
vegetarian?”

“Those were different times,” she insists. “Humans
were not any better then. Sometimes they are not any better
now.”

“So that makes it right?”

“No,” she says firmly. “But it should put things
into perspective for you. Do you not ever wonder where your food
comes from? Your hamburgers and chicken strips do not simply appear
in boxes. They come from animals confined to a life imprisoned. How
is that different? Because they are not human?”

I stammer at her reasoning. “I ― yeah, I guess
so.”

“Well, that is how some werewolves view humans.
But with time, many have changed their views and recognize your
kind as sentient.”

“That doesn’t explain Arden,” I note.

“His pack ... at that time ... would pick off the
weak, the elderly, the young who strayed too far into the
woods.”

An image from the Discovery Channel flashes into my
mind of a pride of lions stalking antelopes. I shudder when I
transpose werewolves and humans respectively into the scene.

“It is where we differed in our views,” Amara
continues.

“So, you’ve never ... hunted humans?”

She shakes her head. “Never, Connor.”

“Why?”

The look on her face borders on hurt. “I feel the
same disdain for it as you do.”

“So, this Boguet character,” I say in an effort to
return to the story, “what was he? A knight or
something?”

Amara lets out a quick little laugh, but there’s no
humor in it. “Hardly. The history books are deservedly unkind to
him. He is known as the Witch-Finder of Burgundy. We called him
Wolf’s Bane.”

“That must have been hundreds of years
ago.”

“Roughly four hundred.”

“He’s dead then,” I say, sensing a glimmer of
hope.

“So we thought,” she agrees, smiling grimly.
“After all these years of believing so, it turns out he is not. He
was bitten by a werewolf, by Arden, but the wounds were not fatal.
He survived. He is one of the damned.”

A gasp escapes from my mouth. “But you said they
rarely survive for long. He’s gotta be one pissed off dude to have
waited this long to surface.”

“Precisely.”

“That still doesn’t explain what any of this has
to do with me,” I observe, feeling panic starting to well again.
“What do they want with me?”

“We do not know, Connor. But we will help you find
out.”

9. Poor
Misguided Fool

D
aylight is fading outside the window when I wake up in my
bedroom. I stretch, working the kinks out of my neck and shoulders.
Every bit of me is banged up and bruised, particularly where
Madison’s knee crushed my windpipe and Arden threw me down on my
side. In the instant before my memories of this morning flood back,
I nearly jump out of my skin at the sight of a black wolf lying at
my feet. I manage to remind myself that it’s Amara before the sound
of a gasp can rise in my throat, and I close my eyes for a moment
to calm myself. She spent the morning at my bedside while Arden was
out hunting whatever crept in on us in the woods of Vincennes Park.
There’s no doubt in my mind that she could sense I was freaked out
by the prospect of being on the most-wanted list of a
four-hundred-year-old werewolf, so she stayed nearby.