When they didn’t say anything back, I changed tactics. “Where’s Babette? How does she come into play here?”
The wolf dragging me stopped to look back at the two on our heels. “The witch that brought you to us and countless others?”
Countless others? She’d been bringing witches to them? My shoulders sagged under the realization. I nodded, unsure of what to say.
He dragged me up to his disfigured face and looked into my eyes. “She made us this way.” He shoved me back just as quickly, and my shoes slid in the mud. One of the wolves at my back caught me easily, but my mind spun. She did this to them?
“Why continue to work with her then?”
The wolf man shook his head and walked ahead of us, and I knew that was the last bit of information I would get out of him for a while.
The moon washigh in the sky as I was dragged into a circle of deformed wolf-people. Their eyes glowed silver in the moonlight and drool dribbled down their disfigured snouts. A few snapped their maws at me as I was dragged by.
A massive golden fire cast shadows upon their faces, making them seem even more grotesque and frightening.
The fire popped, sending sparks spiraling into the humid air. Every single pair of silver eyes tracked me as I was shoved forward into the circle. The air smelled like wet fur, blood, and rot—thick enough to coat my tongue.
One of them stepped forward—taller, broader, with a patchy pelt running down one arm and over his bare chest. His jaw shifted as though the bones underneath didn’t quite agree on which shape they wanted to be in.
“She’s the one,” he said, his voice like gravel dragged over metal.
The others murmured, a low ripple of sound that felt more like a growl than words.
My pulse slammed in my ears, but I kept my chin high. “If you’re planning to kill me, at least do me the courtesy of telling me why first.”
That got a few twisted smirks. The leader circled me, his nails grazing my arm—not sharp enough to cut, but enough to remind me exactly how vulnerable I was.
“Why should we tell you anything?”
I blinked up at him, unsure of what to say or do with myself. I shrugged. “Because apparently, I’mthe one, whatever that means. I would love to know what that means, actually. I’m so sick of people telling me stuff and then waiting for me to figure it all out on my own. Can’t you just help a girl out and get this over with?”
A few murmurs sounded around me.
“You’re the one they foresaw would save us,” one wolf-person called out.
“Or kill us all,” another voice rang out.
“We should kill her and be done with it,” someone else said.
“We aren’t going to kill her, that isn’t why she’s here,” the leader’s voice shouted above all the others and silenced the murmurs. He crouched down in front of me and leveled his molten gaze on mine. “The witch that brought you to us said that she would break our curse, but the longer we suffered, the more we could taste her magic and influence inside of us. She was using us for her gain—whatever that was. She told us wehad to drain the magic from the witches she brought. We never thought… We never knew… We just…” He closed his eyes and shook his head as regret rang through his words. “We thought they were sacrificing themselves to help us. We never could have imagined that it was only her until the Voodoo King came to us himself, to plead on behalf of his people.”
Rune’s father. “And when you didn’t get what you wanted from him, you killed him too.”
The wolf-man reared back.“We didn’t kill the Voodoo King.”
“Then who did?”
I knew before the question even left my lips. Babette.
But it didn’t make sense of why. Why would she kill Rune’s father? Why would she get so far in bed with all of this? Why did she curse them to begin with? My head only continued to spin as I considered every possibility, but none of it made sense.
“How long have your people been cursed?”
The leader looked out through the sea of his people and shook his head sadly. “Too long. It’s been two long years. We’ve lost most of our kind to this magical blight, and it only gets worse with each passing day. I can feel the magic calling me to make memore. To completely take away my humanity even as we speak.”
The wolf-people around him nodded their heads in agreement.
“Each full moon, we lose another of our people. The magic just takes them; they erupt in a cloud of mist before our eyes. We never see them again.”
