The House of the Wolf

25

"Slow down, Chantal!" Katharine called. "I can't keep up!"

Chantal turned and waited for her cousin. Now well advanced in her pregnancy, Kath walked more slowly than usual and Chantal kept forgetting to move at a matching pace. The older girl smiled. "You always were a fast walker," she said. "But today you're almost running! What's the hurry, hon?"

Chantal wondered why she was moving with such haste. Was it that being on a woodland trail made her uneasy? The undergrowth to either side of the narrow earthen track was so thick and interlaced: anything might be skulking in there... "Sorry, Kath," she said, trying to sound normal. "I'm just so eager to show you everything. It's great that you decided to visit."

She did not want to alarm her cousin, but she was finding it hard to hide her nervousness. Why had she brought Kath out here, deep within the maple plantation? It was so much safer back at the community centre with the others. She called out to her cousin, who was lagging behind again. "Let's go back to the hall, okay? We can get some food, and then you can have a rest – "

There was a swift blur of movement a short distance back and on their right, barely visible to her peripheral vision. Then with explosive speed a dark shape sprang out of the bushes and launched itself at her cousin. Kath gave a cry and fell, hands futilely attempting to fend off the fangs from her throat. Chantal screamed too, but could not seem to move, nor do anything at all. The black wolf straddling Kath's prone form looked up at Chantal, teeth gleaming in a savage leer, and she thought in disbelief: But he's dead! How can Jules – ?

Even as she thought this more wolves burst from cover to either side of the path, converging on her and the helpless Katharine. But she still could not move or change her own shape or do anything at all but stand there paralyzed with terror –

Chantal woke with a start and sat up in bed, shaking.

Just a dream, she tried to reassure herself. Yet another nightmare spawned by stress. She'd been having lots of them of late, all relating to her fears for her family back home. They had started with the sorcerer's strange pronouncement. M. Lavallée had quickly recovered from his curious fit, professing to recall nothing of what he had said. But still the warning words he had uttered continued to trouble Chantal, a vague but nagging worry at the back of her mind. If werewolves existed, who could say what other things in the old myths might be real? They abounded with tales of seers and oracles. What if Lavallée had truly had a premonition, a glimpse into her future granted him by some unknowable power? If so, its lack of specificity only made it more alarming: she worried about everyone she knew, both here and back in America. The sense of looming tragedy was impossible to dismiss. As May turned to June her apprehension grew, and she tried many times to reason her way out of it.

M. Lavallée just had a fit or something. He's old and his health isn't too great. Honoré Dubois has been watching our enemies; he's been extra careful since poor Dr. Hébert was killed. He'd let me know if any suspicious activity was going on.

But when she was alone, or lost in dream-haunted sleep, her confidence evaporated and the fears that she believed she had vanquished stole back into her mind. The enemy, she thought, was being much too quiet.

When she entered the common room Raoul reminded her that she had promised to teach him how to interact with ordinary humans of the outside world. "I have shown you what it is to be a wolf over these past weeks," he said. "I have nothing more to teach you. May I now receive your instruction?"

"All right," she told him. "Why don't we go to the city, then?" More people around means more witnesses, she added silently to herself. We're actually safer there than here, in my opinion. No chance of a wolf attack, anyway... She still could not shake off the lingering horror of her nightmare.