Ravenwood(98)

“I’m here, Uncle.”

Caleb stepped out from behind Elinore, so quiet that she almost hadn’t known he was there. Hayter too seemed surprised.

“Well, don’t you look well for someone who had their intestines handed to them a short while ago.”

Elinore never took her eyes off Hayter, although she could see, out of the corner of her vision, Caleb’s face had started to shift, his own canine teeth coming out. She heard the tack-tack-tack as his claws moved against one another.

“I assume you’re thinking that you can best me?” Hayter asked, incredulity coloring his voice. It made Elinore’s ears twitch. Hayter huffed in laughter. “Hardly, pups. I’m your sire,” he said to Elinore. “And I’m your Alpha,” he said to Caleb. “There may be two of you, but you’re not as strong as me. I’m Alpha of Ravenwood.”

Elinore snarled again at Hayter. He wasn’t the Alpha of Ravenwood. The staff was afraid of him, he disgusted Elinore and he’d tried to kill his own nephew. He was no Alpha. She wouldn’t let him be an Alpha.

“You’re wrong,” Caleb replied. “You may be an Alpha, but not of Ravenwood. Or you wouldn’t have forgotten our motto.”

Hayter quirked his head, like a dog that hears a sound it doesn’t understand. The gesture helped something wild loosen in Elinore and she ran her tongue over her own sharp teeth. She could feel something happening to her body. Like a strong wave, coursing and rushing and beginning to drag her down. She didn’t fight it.

“When you call the wolf,” she managed, her voice lilting slightly as her tongue moved over her unfamiliar teeth, “you call the pack.”

Hayter tilted his head even further, still confused until sudden comprehension spread across his face at the same time that Elinore heard the inhabitants of Ravenwood make their way out of the woods. They were armed as she had asked, with pitchforks, guns, knifes and bats - ready to fight Hayter at Elinore’s request.

“Little girl,” Hayter began, pacing slightly sideways as he spoke. “You can’t possibly expect to win. I can kill them all to teach you a lesson.”

Fear pricked at her nerves. She didn’t know what he was capable of. Perhaps he was right. He could kill them all and she would be responsible for dragging them out here. Elinore could feel her own teeth, sharp against her tongue. She jerked and twisted, feeling the animal beneath her skin writhe and shimmy. It wanted out. She wanted to let it out. Hayter snapped his teeth at her, at her pack and something inside her broke.

In sharp, broken movements, she clawed at her dress, felt the fabric tear under her fingers and fall away from her body, but she wasn’t shy or embarrassed. She was too focused on the pain. There was pain everywhere. It shot through her joints, spreading along her tendons and meeting up at the next juncture of bone and sinew and then the next and then next… She howled in agony even as she fell to the ground and panted, gasping for air, each breath like knives against her lungs. Hayter leapt at her and Caleb was a dark blur, colliding with the older Alpha, both of them partially shifted. Elinore could hear snarling and snapping and the horrid sound of flesh tearing, but didn’t know if it was them or if it was her own skin, breaking and splitting under the pressure and the excruciating pain.

She clawed at the ground, but she didn’t feel her fingers. She felt claws and padded digits. She gnashed her teeth and tasted blood as she bit through her tongue and her cheek. The sounds around her grew - clashing weapons and people crying and bodies hitting the dirt. Hayter. Hayter was hurting them. He was hurting her pack. She growled and felt her feet, no, her paws settle beneath her. She shook, feeling the heavy pelt of fur along her body. With eerie precision, her neck snapped to the side and she focused in on Hayter, locked in a battle with Caleb, even as Mrs. Davenport shot at the older man, her herb packet nicking Caleb’s arm and settling deep into Hayter’s shoulder with a wet squelch.

She wasn’t human anymore. She didn’t think so much as intuit, feeling her haunches crouch, coiling strength and then launching herself into the fray. She wasn’t Elinore, she was the she-wolf - sleek, white and unafraid. She vaguely recalled that Mrs. Davenport hoped her packet would keep Hayter from shifting, keep him human. The potion would be painful and Elinore felt a savage surge of satisfaction at the sound he made as it spread through his body. She collided into Hayter with a bone-jarring thud, knocking him away from Caleb and sending them into a mad tumble across the forest floor. She snapped and snarled, her teeth trying to find purchase. Hayter clawed at her and she yipped in pain as his sharp talons dug into the tender, meaty flesh of her flank. He bit at her, sending his teeth deep into her shoulder, although his human jaw wasn’t strong enough to rip his teeth back out - though he tried. She scrabbled at him with her paws until one of her sharp digits found purchase and ripped through a portion of his not-quite-human ear. Alice was beside them suddenly, screaming Elinore’s name and brandishing some kind of a paddle or bat. The young girl was supposed to stay at Ravenwood to watch over her father, but clearly disobeyed her mother’s decision. Alice swung her paddle wildly, connecting with Hayter’s jaw. Hayter howled - not a howl of victory or of triumph, but of pain. He punched out hard, catching Elinore across the muzzle and she was stunned as she flew through the air and landed hard on the ground, feeling something in her chest snap with perfect, awful precision. Having pushed Elinore off him, Hayter turned to Alice, snapping at her as he prowled forward on all fours, bleeding from his shoulder, from his flank and from his torso. Caleb leapt in front of the young girl and Hayter swiped with massive claws, tearing open Caleb’s chest anew, spilling hot, red blood in an arc across the floor. The scent of Caleb’s wound filled Elinore’s nostrils and she whined even as Mrs. Thistlewaite, seeing her daughter in danger, cried out and shot at Hayter with a rifle. The round caught Hayter in the chest, sending him staggering back. Elinore could see him shifting further - slowly, but steadily becoming more wolf-like. His hair went coarse and short, his body hunched over, his snout elongated. Elinore could already recognize him as the wolf that bit her that first night in the woods, with its horrid yellow demon eyes glaring at her - a hellhound stranded on earth.