Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (19 page)

That was when Aradia
finally lit upon the real truth.

Holy crap, I’m
fighting a werewolf.

Aradia bellowed in pain
as the werewolf’s teeth sunk into the meat of her left forearm.
Using her right fist she beat at the wolf's face in an effort to
force it off. She did not pull her punches.

Every time her fist
connected, she heard a heavy thud and felt the wolf recoil against
her strength. It held fast, however, and using its greater weight
forced her to the ground.
This will not
end well
.

Close as she was to the
werewolf’s face, Aradia got a good look straight into its eyes. She
was caught by them, surprised not only by their humanity, but also
by their familiarity.

Hoping she wasn’t
making a mistake, and with the knowledge that she was gambling with
her life, she grabbed the wolf by its muzzle. She wrenched the
wolf's teeth from her arm, and both she and the beast
yowled.

With the creature’s
head held fast, she stared into its eyes once more. Only this time,
Aradia did more than just stare. Calming herself as much as she
could, given the circumstances, she reached into the other being’s
mind. Her psychic power usually just gave her visions but if
necessary she could use it for things. Touching an animal’s mind
had always been odd for her, but she hoped the fact that this
wasn’t exactly your PetSmart type of pooch might be of aid to
her.

Contact
. There was indeed a
sentience in it. She searched the wolf's mind, and tried to soothe
it. As often happened when using her powers in this manner, Aradia
lost track of the flow of time. Seconds or hours might have passed
as far as she knew.

Then her mouth fell
open in disbelief.

"Roy!" she shrieked,
“Is that you?"

The wolf wrestled away
from her grasp, and bore its teeth viciously. Roy was in there, she
was sure, but the guy she’d had a relaxed meal with earlier
definitely wasn’t calling the shots now. Aradia felt around quickly
for a weapon. Her right hand settled on a tree branch. Her left arm
hung limp, throbbing and seemingly useless.

Once again, the
Roy-wolf stood on its hind legs ready to attack its prey. Aradia
backed up, slowly dragging the branch with her, and pressed her
back against a tree. Her foe followed with her, measuring her
actions. Carefully she inched herself up the trunk until she was
standing, and looked the werewolf straight in the eyes. She hoped
to get through to the Roy inside the monster, so that he might take
control and cease the attack.

Aradia was sorely
disappointed.

The wolf lunged at
Aradia. With superhuman agility she darted to her side, and tossed
the branch from her right hand to her bloody left one. With her
injured left arm she swung the branch and knocked her friend out
cold.

At first, she
contemplated just running straight home. After a bit of
deliberation, she shook her head at that idea. She couldn’t just
leave Roy here like this, for his sake and for everyone else’s.
Resigning herself to the task, she retrieved her rucksack, bandaged
her arm up as best she could with her first aid kit, and grabbed
Roy by his ankles.

Where to?
she wondered. Her house? Out of the questions.
There was no way she’d expose her parents to an out-of-control
werewolf. Roy’s? Maybe, but if his family didn’t know he was a
werewolf, she didn’t want to be the one to out him.

Just then she again
noticed the glow of lights from the police station.

I suppose it’s worth
checking out

Chapter
Fifteen

“Worth checking out,
huh, Aradia?” she grumbled to herself. She had underestimated the
difficulty of dragging an unconscious werewolf through a mile of
forest. She’d kept off the road. She really did not want to explain
the situation to a passing motorist.

Her blood soaked
through the quick and dirty patch job she’d done on her wound, but
she didn’t think she was at risk of losing too much blood. The bite
itself was filthy with saliva and grime and bacteria, but she’d
always proven naturally resilient against infections, so she was
content with her own health for the moment.

She was tired, though.
It was past three now, and using her powers as she had under combat
conditions had taken a toll on her as well.

The Salem Police
Department was not large, and given the time of day, was only
lightly staffed.
Am I really trying to
rationalize breaking into a police station?

As stealthily as she
could with Roy in tow, Aradia snuck around to the back of the
building.
Maybe I can find an extra set
of keys to the jail cells, sneak Roy into one of them, and wait it
out until morning
…

She considered her
options for a while before finally admitting aloud, “This is nuts.
Time for a new plan, Rai.”

Her first step would be
dragging Roy back into the woods. However, as soon as she turned,
she found herself face to face with a uniformed police officer, and
it wasn’t one of the two she knew.

Aradia’s breath caught
in her throat. She was so scared that she didn’t notice his
disheveled appearance, unkempt hair, untucked shirt, or twitching
nose.

“What have we here?” he
demanded in what Aradia thought was a very un-police-officerish
tone.

“Just, um…” Aradia
replied awkwardly. Avoiding eye contact, she mumbled, “Walking my
dog.”

The man grunted in
response and advanced toward her slowly. She backed up, stumbling
over werewolf-Roy. She scrambled to her feet as he reached out to
her and she wondered if she was getting arrested.

To her surprise, he
reached right past her and inspected the wolf. She observed, not
sure what to make of it. He felt for Roy’s pulse and counted as he
timed on his wristwatch. Thirty seconds later and seemingly
satisfied, the officer checked Roy’s injuries.

“So, uh, are you also a
vet?” Aradia asked, not sure if she was joking or in
earnest.

He ignored her. She
briefly considered bolting, but there was no way she could leave
Roy helpless in the hands of this odd man.

“You had a fair idea,”
the officer said, “if a piss-poor plan on executing it. Give me a
hand here.”

Aradia stood stock
still.

“Well, what are you
waiting for?” he said to a confused Aradia. “Animal control? Help
me get him inside into one of the cells.”

She still didn’t know
what to make of this guy, but it was her plan he was helping her
complete. Reluctantly, she grabbed Roy’s legs and hefted him up.
The two of them were able to carry him with relative
ease.

When they got to the
building, they carefully set Roy down. Officer Scruffy pulled out a
set of keys and entered a code on a keypad beside the door. Aradia
noticed he put his body between her and the keypad as he did so,
blocking her from seeing the code. The pad chirped a happy noise, a
green light flashed, and she heard the door click
unlocked.

He held a finger to his
lips and slowly exhaled, “Shhhhhh,” before motioning to pick up Roy
again.

This dude is
seriously creepy
, she thought.
Nonetheless, she figured he couldn’t be too bad of a character if
he was guiding her into a police station. She obeyed his directive
and again helped lift Roy.

Together they hauled
him into one of the cells. She was pleased to see the other few
cells were empty and nobody was overseeing the area.
Crime must be down
,
she deduced.

When they’d completed
their task, Aradia whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

Officer Scruffy thought
for a moment, glancing from the incarcerated wolf to Aradia and
back a couple times. Finally he replied, “Part of me thinks I
should kill you.”

She backed up a step
and said, “Whoa, really not an appropriate answer to my
question.”

“Keep your voice down,”
he chastised her.

“You just...” she
caught herself speaking loudly, and tried again in a whisper, “You
just said you might kill me!”

“I probably should,” he
said quietly. His nose twitched again, and he looked contemplative.
“I figure, though, if you can knock out a pureblooded werewolf, you
must be hidden.”

“Werewolf?” Aradia
repeated, playing dumb. “I think somebody’s been reading a little
too much
Twilight
there, buddy
.
I was just, um, walking my dog.
He’s an Alaskan husky. Mix. An Alaskan husky mix. That’s why he
looks like a wolf. Sorta.”

He chuckled, but did
not press the point.

“What did you mean by
hidden?” she asked.

He looked at her
curiously, cautiously. After a tense silence he said, “If you’re
still playing dumb, then fine, I can play that game. If you really
don’t know, though,” he flicked a thumb in Roy’s direction, “just
wait until he wakes up and ask him.”

She rolled her eyes.
“He’s usually about as forthcoming as you are.”

He smiled, and for the
first time since she’d met him, he didn’t seem so menacing. “That’s
good. He must be careful with how much he divulges. You should be
too, though I suspect you know at least that much
already.”

Abruptly he turned and
headed toward a doorway into the forward portion of the structure.
After keying in another code, he left Aradia and Roy
alone.

Muffled by the door,
she could make out a brief conversation on the other side. “Repairs
still going on,” Scruffy called out. “Have to keep the area clear
till morning.”

She couldn’t quite make
out the response, but she got the gist of it as being another
officer astonished at repair work being done at that
hour.

“Thanks, Scruffy,” she
whispered. Finally able to release her tension, she actually
chuckled.

She pulled her phone
from her rucksack and started a text to both her
parents:

Some stuff happened. I’m at the police station. Not arrested. Can’t
talk. Explain everything later. Trust me.>

She did not get an
immediate response, for which she was grateful.

There were a couple
chairs lining the walls. She grabbed one and pulled it near Roy’s
cell. She was careful to keep enough distance that he could not
lunge and reach her, in case he woke up and was angry.

She cast a glance at
Roy sleeping in his wolf form. When she hadn’t been looking he’d
curled up in a ball, and his legs were twitching like he was having
a running dream.

“What a weird night,”
she muttered to herself.

It was a little over
two hours later, at the first light of dawn, when Roy shifted back
into his human form. Aradia had dozed a bit, but had never fallen
into a very deep sleep. She was exhausted, but when the
transformation began, her grogginess disappeared.

She could not help but
stare as she watched. His fur retracted back into his skin, and his
bones shrank and adjusted into their proper places. His skin grew
tight and rippled, like the surface of a pond under a light breeze.
His snout disappeared altogether, and his dog-nose morphed into a
human one. His fierce, carnivorous teeth dulled and turned into
that cute smile she knew so well. He slept through the whole
process.

She hadn’t noticed in
his wolf form, but he still wore some tatters of the clothes he had
worn the previous day. That made her wonder if perhaps the initial
transformation had come sooner than he’d expected it to. He’d been
concerned about the full moon, so he must have known he would
change. Why wouldn’t he have taken his clothes off? That would
start getting expensive, fast, if he had to buy new clothes every
full moon.

There wasn’t really
much left of his t-shirt and jeans. He was still wearing, though, a
set of elastic-looking boxer briefs. She noticed with a chuckle
that he’d apparently cut a hole in the back of them, presumably for
his werewolf tail.

I wonder where you
find elastic underwear. I guess at a werewolf clothing
store
.

She had just seen him
transform, and yet it was so hard for her to believe that the guy
now lying on the floor of the jail cell had fought her as a
werewolf the night before. Looking back at her experiences so far
in Salem, she supposed it did make some sense.

It explained his keen
sense of smell, and his ability to keep up with her on the track.
His strange warning about the full moon at his family diner made a
sort of ironic sense. He’d been warning her about himself.
I can’t believe he’d let himself turn into a
werewolf outside like that. If it hadn’t been me he’d found, he’d
have killed somebody tonight.

Just then, a horrible
thought struck Aradia with such force that she feared she’d vomit.
What if Roy had, in the past, killed people?

Aradia looked and
studied Roy's form and thought back on what she knew of werewolves.
She’d never really been too interested in fantasy, but she
had
True Blood
and
Being Human
on her DVR. He’d definitely looked wolf-like, but
he’d been much bigger than any conventional wolf. He’d had some
very human features as well. She thought with a shudder about how
he’d reared up on his hind legs and come at her. She glanced down
at her still throbbing arm. Then she thought about those eyes,
still so familiar even while his teeth were latched on to
her.