Kitty's House of Horrors (kn-7) by Carrie Vaughn (christmas read aloud txt) 📕

I became as much Wolf as I could without shifting entirely. If someone had spoken to me then, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. I’d have had to pull myself back from that edge first.

Jerome was stronger and faster than I. He pulled ahead, but only by a few strides, then adjusted so that he could see me by looking over his shoulder. We kept to the edge of the trail; the ground was softer and trees offered some shade. We probably couldn’t continue this all day, but we could slow to a trot during the heat of the afternoon, pick up the pace again after resting, and still make good time. My vision collapsed, focused on the way ahead of me, while my other senses expanded. I tasted the air, which was filled with scents of pine sap, insects, heat; and sounds roared around me—wind in trees, birdsong, our steps padding on the road.

I was still in that zone when Jerome pulled up suddenly, backpedaling to get away from something ahead. I nearly collided with him, but stopped myself and knelt. He also ducked to a defensive crouch and stared ahead, as if making a challenge. I took a breath through flaring nostrils, and smelled something out of place, metallic.

Crossing the trail a few yards ahead of us, a shiny object. I focused on it as a human rather than a wolf.

“Is that what it looks like?” Jerome said.

It looked like three coils of razor wire strung on hastily planted steel T-bar fence posts. Like someone had tried to rope in a prison in a hurry. I crept closer for a better look. The stuff was so shiny it gleamed, even in the shaded forest.

I put my finger on a section of wire, well away from the protruding sharpened spikes. In a few seconds, my finger started itching. A few more seconds, the itching was painful enough I had to pull my hand away. An allergic rash reddened my fingertip.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. “Silver,” I said, glancing back at Jerome.

“Shit.”

Someone hadn’t just wanted to rope in a prison—they’d wanted to make a prison for lycanthropes. We couldn’t make our way over or through the fence without risking cuts and scrapes, and if the silver taint entered our bloodstream, we were dead. I looked one way and the other, trying to see how far the fence went. From here, I couldn’t see the end of it.

“It can’t go on that long,” Jerome said. “You know how expensive that would be, stringing this whole place up with silver wire? Someone’s just trying to keep us off the path.”

That mysterious someone again. When I got my claws on that someone…

“Which way?” I said. “Left or right?”

Jerome considered, then started walking to the right. Right was downhill, a little easier. I followed him. Even though we followed the silver fence line, we kept a respectable distance between it and us.

Vagrant breezes carry information to a wolf’s nose: what’s going, what’s coming, what passed this way before and how long ago. How to find food, water, friends; how to find your way home. A sudden, intrusive smell can cut across the normal tapestry like a razor, sharp and sudden. Destructive and wrong.

I stopped cold and turned into the slight breeze, trying to catch hold of what I’d sensed for only a second. I turned in place. My feet throbbed; my muscles ached at being wrenched out of their rhythm. I’d lost track of time, but the sun was high, probably well past noon. Several hours at least had passed. We’d run maybe half the distance.

Jerome stopped a few paces ahead of me and looked back. His body heaved with deep, steady breaths. He didn’t speak, just gave me a focused look, then turned his own nose to the air, looking for what I searched for.

Skin, sweat, clothing, rubber—human. Just a glimpse. Maybe hikers, maybe a mountain biker. I’d caught only a hint. It was gone now. Maybe moving away, maybe gone downwind.

I looked at Jerome. He shook his head.

A sound like a whip cracked past us; Jerome twisted, dropped to one knee, and clapped a hand over his shoulder, where a rod, maybe ten inches, protruded. Blood dripped in a thin line from the puncture wound.

Breath left me in a gasp. I knelt beside him and touched his arm. At the same time I looked out, toward the direction the arrow had come from. Where I’d sensed a trace of human hunter. When would the next one strike?

Jerome’s breaths heaved, and his face twisted with pain.

“Jerome?”

“Get it out, get it out—Jesus, get it out!” He bared his teeth, and his skin prickled under my hand, rippling with newly sprouting fur. His face was changing, stretching. Pain was pushing him over the edge, making him shift.

“Jerome! Hold on, keep it together!”

“Get… it… out!” He screamed.

I braced my hand on his shoulder, grabbed the arrow, and yanked. Jerome arced his back and howled—part human shout, part wolf cry of anger.

The wound was shallow, the arrow stuck in the outer layer of muscle. It wasn’t even bleeding much. But Jerome was shivering, wracked with pain. I looked at the arrow in my hand, short and sleek—a bolt for a crossbow. The tip—smooth, not barbed—gleamed, even through the sheen of blood. I touched it, held my finger against the metal—and my skin started itching, burning, in an allergic reaction.

Silver. The point was silver.

When a silver weapon struck lycanthropes, the wound didn’t kill them. The silver poisoning the blood did. Jerome was dying. His wolf was trying to take over, trying to battle it. As if it would help.

“Jerome!” I cried, clinging to his arms, trying to meet his gaze. My heart was racing, a howl building in my throat.

Another arrow ripped through the air. Jerome lunged into its path—between it and me. It struck his back.

“No!” I gave a full-throated scream.

He looked at me. He was trembling, his eyes wide, glazed,