Page 90 of Only Human in Strangeville

Moments later, a bone-chilling howl rose up from the wolves’ territory and abruptly stopped mid-cry. The sound didn’t die; it simply stopped as if something had cut it off.

Bridger and I shared a look before we both jumped to our feet, the remains of our ice cream forgotten.

Nimbus grew to giant cloud-dog-sized and ducked his shoulder, grumbling at me to get on.

I climbed up on his back, grabbing fistfuls of his ruff. At Nimbus’s encouragement, Bridger got up behind me. Then the dog bounded off toward the forest.

Belatedly, I hoped this wasn’t some sort of trap, but if something was wrong with the werewolves, we had to try to help.

And if it was a trap? Well, we’d have to do our best not to get caught in it.

Someday I was going to do this for fun. Riding on Nimbus’s back was a treat I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Unfortunately, I’d only ever done this when we’d been in danger or someone else might be in danger, so I couldn’t fully enjoy the experience. Mental note, go for a ride on a giant dog sometime when you’re not in mortal peril.

Nimbus crashed through the trees and skidded to a halt at the edge of a large clearing.

“What the fuck?” I murmured.

“Shiiittt,” Bridger said. “What the fuck is right.”

The clearing was full of wolves, as if the pack had gathered to have a howl together or something. Except they were frozen. Not like, on ice, but immobile. An irritating current of energy thrummed through the air, and I opened my senses. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the origin, but I did know that whatever it was, the energy caused the frozen wolves. Not only that, but as I looked closer, some of the wolves still wore shreds of clothing, and I guessed it had forced them to shift.

“What do we do?” I asked, already knowing the answer. We had to find the culprit and reverse the spell.

Nimbus growled, the sound vibrating through me.

“Yeah, buddy, right there with you,” I replied, assuming he was thinking the same thing I was.

“Can you trace the energy?” Bridger asked while Nimbus backed farther into the trees.

We climbed off the cloud dog, and he shrank back down to his normal size.

“It’s that way, but I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Good enough. Can you do anything to keep us from being seen?”

I considered before nodding. “Yeah, I’ll do my best.” Focusing, I drew my magic around us and concentrated on being invisible. To my vantage point, nothing changed, but I did feel the magic settle onto my skin.

Nimbus gave a full body shake but didn’t otherwise complain. Bridger set off in the direction I’d indicated, skirting around the clearing full of frozen wolves. Nimbus and I followed.

It took me a while to notice, but the sky overhead, which had been a bright robin egg blue, was shot through with black. The shadows amongst the trees deepened, making it harder to pick our way and adding an eerie air to the statue wolves in the clearing.

“What the hell is that?” Bridger stared up when he noticed my attention.

“Hell if I know.”

Nimbus rumbled, sounding disturbed.

By the time we finished our conversation, all the blue was gone, replaced by a deep black and plunging our world into darkness.

“You know,” Bridger said in a deceptively conversational tone. “If I were a super powerful vampire with super powerful magic users at my disposal, I’d have them blot out the sun so I could attack during the day when my enemies were basically sealed underground.”

I couldn’t even find words to express the horror I felt at that idea.

“Do you think they’ll attack the vampires?”

“No, but I do think they’ll do their best to keep our vampires contained while they take over the rest of the town. And when they do let them out, it’ll be a bottleneck.”

“They have to have a backdoor.” I wrung my hands together before shoving my glasses up my nose again.

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