Cabin Fever - An Erotic Novel

Chapter 25 - Whisky breakfast (FINAL EDIT)

I returned to the master bedroom with the axe in one hand, and a pair of glasses and a whisky bottle in the other. I suppose I could say it was a bottle of Jack Daniels. That would sound really badass, wouldn't it? Like some internet meme featuring a bottle of Jack and a nude butt. I like me some Jack and nude butts, no quarrel there.

Only there was no Jack at the cabin. Greg would never bring such low-born whiskey home. No, no. Greg was all about the exotic Scottish single malts. Preferably from small distilleries up in the highlands, places where you had to walk for days just to get hold of a single bottle. That was a slight exaggeration, but you get the point.

He was also big on the peat. Peat, you say? You know, the stuff they cut out of the moors, dry, and then use to smoke the barley grains. I can appreciate a good, peaty Scottish single malt, but the stuff Greg wanted? It was way over the top. You opened a bottle, and your eyes would start running – it felt like sticking your head into a particularly damp campfire. Once you began drinking, it tasted like someone had mixed turpentine into the liquor. Campfires. Turpentine. Plus, some of that pine tar you use on wooden boats. That's what it tasted like. It's certainly an acquired taste. If you aren't a man before drinking the stuff, you will either become one, or it will flat out kill you.

Whisky antics aside. My mind was still reeling: the fight – and the whole werewolf, witch, warlock thing. I was trying hard to rationalize it away. It was dark. Greg was doing drugs. I was tired. Werewolves didn't exist. I would wake up soon. That sort of stuff.

The supernatural was easy enough to deny – the rest of the cabin looked perfectly fine. No witches, no warlocks, no werewolves. But I couldn't quite make the rest of it go away: my throat was still sore, my ribs hurt, I had claw marks on my back, there was blood – and I was still lugging around the damn woodchopper. I decided not to think about it too much. Maybe things would go back to normal if I pretended nothing had happened.

When I got back upstairs, Greg was gone. A window had been opened at the back of the boudoir. The wind was blowing a steady stream of snow into the room. I walked over and looked out. Darkness and snow, but no Greg. Of course.

I deposited the whiskey and glasses on one of the many useless little tables Bella favored but kept the axe in case Greg was lying in ambush. Pretty sure he wasn't, but I didn't feel like pushing my luck. I found a small lamp on the table and switched it on. I picked it up and used it to look around, as far as the power chord allowed.

There were vague, bloody footprints in the snow just inside the window. The crazy bastard had actually jumped out through the window and vanished into the snowstorm. Badly injured and wearing only a torn bathrobe? He wouldn't get very far before the cold got him.

Or would he? He had seemed unusually fit for a man who had just been cleaved nearly in two. And he did have fur, didn't he? The cold and the snow wouldn't actually bother him – he'd just turn into a wolf. Good for him.

It all came rushing back. The fight, the fur, the claws, the teeth, the howling, and the growling. Greg really was a werewolf, wasn't he? The lamp fell from my limp fingers and hit the floor. The lampshade came off, but the light stayed on. I stumbled back, found a chair and slumped down. My fist was clenching the wooden haft, hard, and my breathing came in ragged gasps. The world seemed to heave and buck, I clung to the chair and my weapon like I was a knight on a galloping stallion, heading straight for the enemy lines.

Werewolves and witches? Were they for real? Did they live among us, pretending to be people? How was that even possible? If they existed, surely there would be some signs.

Those were the questions running through my mind, over and over. Stuff like this didn't happen to real people. It felt like I was an actor in a movie or a character in a book. That was the only place the supernatural was real.

Except here I was: the survivor of a genuine werewolf attack. And the creature that had masqueraded as Greg had claimed my boss, my lover, was a witch. Like with magic powers and everything. Well, the magic bit was only guesswork on my part, but when shape-changing werewolf tells you someone is a witch, he probably means she can do magic.

Werewolf. Right. Was I going to turn into one now? He'd scratched me up pretty good. Or was it only bites that made you into a werewolf? Or didn't it work like that at all? I didn't know. I mean, I'd seen quite a few werewolves on the screen, like True Blood and Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, where werewolfism (or whatever it's called) was more like an inherited thing, not a disease. But other sources, all of them equally fictional, claimed the opposite.

In the end, I decided I was in the clear: if lycanthropy (that was the word) was like a transmittable disease, I hadn't been bitten. A few scratches wouldn't be enough. If it were, the world would be overrun by strange beasts. But it wasn't. So that meant I was not going to get hairy come next full moon.

The thought of hairy werewolves made me laugh. I remembered all these fit, bare-chested werewolf actors on the screen, all hot and mysterious. Not a single hair between the lot of them. No siree! The local beauty salons were no doubt making brisk trade in full-body waxing wherever werewolves lived. I laughed some more.

I was calmer now, and the laughter made me relax even more. I set down the axe, returned the shade-less lamp to the table, and poured myself a good shot of whisky. Then I poured one for Greg as well.

"Cheers, Greg," I said to the darkness. "Cheers for hairy, little werewolves!"

I tossed down the contents of my glass in one gulp.

I picked up the other glass and pretended to speak in Greg's voice. "Wait until you see the lady wolves!"

I laughed like crazy at that – the girl werewolves definitely didn't have body hair, bad eyebrows, or bushy hair. Like the men, they always looked fresh out of the beauty parlor. Made me wonder if it was like that in the real world. Did bad-looking supernaturals exist?

"You know, Greg," I said and refilled both our glasses. "How about I make us some eggs and bacon, and then we make this into a whisky breakfast for two?"

"That would be nice," I replied in a Greg-like voice as I helped myself to some more turpentine-smelling liquor.

"Then you can tell me all about the little werewolf missuses." I drained my glass once more. With four slugs of whisky in my belly, I felt about ready to start the day. The first day of my new life, so to speak.