Page 42 of Wind with a Chance of Wolfsbane

The black wolf was back, standing just outside of the cave, growling at us and clawing at the ground.

We backed up in unison, Mina’s breath quickening as my pulse raced, our gazes never leaving the black wolf.

The smell of rotten eggs filled the cavern. It was so overpowering that we began to cough as we continued to walk backward.

Some super slayers we were turning out to be.

I wasn’t about to point it out since retreat sounded like the smartest option to me.

The wolf went nuts then, snarling and baring its teeth at us.

I yelped.

Mina screamed.

Yeah. We were total badasses.

The wolf tried to charge at us, only to slam into what seemed to be an invisible barrier, blocking him from entering the cave. We scrambled deeper into the cave, still facing it.

The area filled with a sound I couldn’t place at first. It wasn’t until I saw what looked like hundreds of bats surrounding the wolf suddenly that I understood what it had been. The bats converged right behind the massive wolf. They then took the shape of what I first thought were six women. I closed one eye, peering through the less-broken lens of my glasses, and realized it was only three. Not that three weren’t worrisome or anything, especially since they’d manifested from bats.

With the moon at their back, they should have been casting shadows into the cave. They weren’t. I didn’t need fully functional glasses to realize as much.

“Holy shit,” whispered Mina.

I nodded in agreement. Holy shit was right.

The women each had on long, flowing white gowns that were tight around their more-than-ample chests. The material looked soft, yet everything in me said it wasn’t. That it was merely a façade. Their gowns rustled, lifting slightly with a wind that blew in what seemed to be all directions.

The one in the middle had long, dark hair. The woman to her left had long, dark red hair that seemed to light ablaze as a streak of lightning slashed through the sky behind her. The third woman had long, curly blonde hair and eyes that looked as blue as sapphires. She was the shortest of the women.

Instantly my head filled with snippets from Stoker’s novel. From Jonathan Harker’s journal entries. He’d described women like these, even down to the sapphire-like eyes of one of them.

I gasped. “The Weird Sisters.”

“What are Weird Sisters?” asked Mina.

I motioned with my free hand to the women. “Vampires who serve Dracula.”

I knew Stoker’s novel forward and backward. Knew every single nuanced word. I’d spent years obsessed with it all, memorizing the story and the annotations in my copy of it. In the margins, whenever the Weird Sisters were mentioned, were varying accounts of what horrors they were capable of inflicting on a person. That while they may appear alluring and beautiful, they were downright deadly.

“Wait,” said Mina, jerking around to face me fully, her hand still in mine. “As inTheDracula? The big fanger? The mack daddy of vamps? The prince of—”

“Yes,” I said, cutting her off, knowing nerves were making her spiral.

The redhead smiled wickedly, fangs showing as she did. If the annotations in my book were to be believed, she was the sister who was quick to violence and the most impulsive of the three. She looked at the woman in the middle. “Sister, they know of us. We are famed the world over,” she said, her voice reminding me of a campy B-movie.

The blonde giggled and rocked back and forth slightly in a way that was more Betty Boop than an evil vampire. The notes I’d read about her mentioned her being the most out of touch with reality—living in a world of make-believe while her sisters indulged her. “They are the same. Pretty. Like dolls.”

The redhead, who was the tallest of the sisters, nodded, lifting an arched brow, her dark eyes flashing to red quickly and then back to obsidian. She ran her tongue over a fang. “Very pretty.”

The wolf snarled, looking back at her.

She shrugged, her attention off us for a moment as she looked at the wolf. “Mind your tone. You are notmymaster, wolf.”

It snarled more.

She rolled her eyes, her focus returning to my sister and me. “Our master wishes for you both to come to us.”

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