Love Bites (Crescent City Werewolves: The Short Stories)

A Crimson Howl

Wax dripped down carved bone as the candles guttered in their holders, and Annalie quickly lit four more, not wanting to lose their warmth. Even a mausoleum as grand as this had been built with little thought for comfort, and wind slipped through cracks in the stained glass windows and marble walls. When the light steadied again, she knelt before the upright casket that bore her grandmother's name, trying not to shake while she looked at the remains carefully posed behind the glass.

Polished bone rested in a shroud dyed deep red. Gold gleamed where sinew and muscle had once been, pinning the skeleton together so that it stood upright, hands pressed together as if in prayer. Her grandmother had faithfully served The Lady of the Dead, and even now her silver-edged blades gleamed at her feet, nestled in their own crimson cloth.

Once, she had promised to bequeath them to Annalie if she'd wanted them. But Annalie hadn't, not then. Did she wish to have them now? No. The fighting callouses had long faded from her palms, and her body had the leanness of a starving beast, not a seasoned warrior. Even her faith had left her, first abandoned and then lost. Why had she even come here? What comfort did she hope to find in the company of the dead?

Still, she looked up at her grandmother, the flickering candlelight creating the illusion of movement. For a moment, the bones seemed to shift with breath, and the jewels braided into the thick, grey hair glittered as if the hollow skull bent toward her. It was enough to coax forth words that might have otherwise remained silent, unheard.

"What do I do?" she whispered, ashamed at having to even ask such a question.

The vast walls around her breathed silence. The little tongues of flame glittered like fireflies against the forest of caskets, so many wolves lost to time and yet still revered. Beyond the thick windowpanes, the moon rose huge and full, a sweet promise of hours of night to come.

Yet Annalie knew it was all an empty sort of peace. Somewhere out there, George slumped in a drunken stupor, and she flinched at the thought of what would happen once he roused. She had slipped away from him only once in their three years of marriage, and what he had done in response to that burned on her arm even now.

She inched closer to the glass, seeking comfort of any kind, and found herself tucking her legs beneath her just as she had as a child. The gesture was still familiar, still natural, ingrained from so many nights of settling at Grandmother's feet with one of the little chocolate marrow cakes that Iselda had been known for—the rich treat baked right in the split stag bone that the marrow had been scooped from—and listening to her spin stories by firelight.

Annalie's favorite had always been about the she-wolf who had crept out of the forest one winter night, slinking in her fur to find warmth from human fires. A villager frightened by her glowing eyes shot her from his window like a coward and she fled, hiding in the gloom of the churchyard for safety. There, her blood stained the graveyard roses red, and that was how the petals bloomed every year afterward, long after she had bitten the bullet free from her flesh and limped away.

"But why wouldn't they bloom white, again? If a wolf can shift into a woman then shouldn't a red rose be able to shift back to white?"

Annalie had asked the same questions each time, always hoping for a different answer, a happier answer.

And her grandmother had always smiled and given the same response.

"Sometimes one's nature changes too much. We can travel by foot or paw, child, but we can never go back along the path and choose differently, not without whatever scars we picked up in the meantime."

"Then I must make the safest choice, always."

Ah, what a bold declaration from one so young, and her grandmother had laughed, although perhaps with a tinge of sadness. Annalie now felt she understood the reason for that sadness: the knowledge that such innocence couldn't last long in life. And it hadn't—just long enough to get her into trouble.