READ FEVERCHAIN 21

Voiceover by , whose generosity is outshined only by her talent.

BIANCA IS NOT MEAT. She is more than I deserve.

I don’t have to remind myself of that anymore.

She is the lap I rest my head on. What am I to her? My lap isn’t soft; I can’t keep still and my knees jab. I look up at her.

Her eyes are empty and dark under the forest shade. It’s been just the two of us. And Smokey. After Rainy was killed, Erica split. Sienna and Anna never showed. We all might find each other again. Hopefully, we won’t.

Bianca and I haven’t spoken about any of it, not until earlier today. We drove what we carjacked to a little library somewhere in PA and tied Smokey’s leash to the bike rack outside. He loves to nap in the sun, even under all that fur.

Bianca got on a desktop. She typed P-I-N-E-T-O-W-N-N-J.

I’m not sure what did it: the photo of the abandoned diner, or the bloggers cheesing in front of it, or the articles quoting the Twitchells about the Dyers, about the murders, about the speculations, about Elena Panco—they actually said they thought she was involved with the Mafia.

It’s the Jersey Devil, it’s Satanists, it’s a lion, tiger, bear someone illegally kept as a pet. Some people guessed the correct answer, but they’ve got the story all wrong.

Meanwhile my awesome family, excluding me obviously, has been canonized into sainthood. Miss Panco didn’t get that treatment.

“The Twitchells are totally rebranding Pineworld Adventures,” Bianca explained as she closed twenty tabs. “They’re opening it up for adults and doing tours near the sites of the deaths.” She flicked strands from her eyes with her stub-pinky, not used to being without glasses. “Including my house.”

“What the fuck,” I said. “Guess they lost campers this summer.”

“We’re gonna make them lose everyone. We’re gonna kill Pinetown.” She typed, searched, found their next tour scheduled during a full moon and scribbled the dates into her pink notepad.

I pet her hair. “OK.”

Not itching to go back there, but I am hungry. And maybe it would be a healing experience for us or something. Bianca’s excitement alone is a relief. And after this, we’d never go back.

So, that’s our plan. Hit them in… a week? I don’t know what day it is. Bianca always does.

A spring breeze blows hair over her face. Smells sweet. Only a little different than before.

I’m scared of what I smell like.

Bianca strokes me, temple to jaw, and inhales. Maybe she likes how I smell. Maybe she loves it.

THE END.

A note from the author (BIG FAT THANK YOUS)

Of course this has meant the world to me and consumed at least half of my waking thoughts over the last few months.

reached out to me offering to provide a voiceover. I was stunned. Then I listened to her and was stunned again. Not only is she an excellent voice actor but a fantastic writer, reviewer, and all around stellar person. Thank you, Emily, for making FEVERCHAIN come alive. It is a story we share.

also reached out to me to ask whether he could create a song for FEVERCHAIN, and wow did that excite me. The songs are dynamic, gritty, cool, atmospheric. I fucking love them and have listened to them so much that they’ve wormed into my brain 4ever.

I want to thank for writing the first review for FEVERCHAIN in his incredible . I’m not used to being reviewed like that (see: taken seriously). I want to thank as well for her idea about starting The Chapter One Club and her #protectsmokey campaign which may or may not have reigned in the author’s brutality.

you know what you did. Mainly, you told me this story had juice and genuinely encouraged me in ways that will keep me motivated after this project and beyond. And although Emily’s Bianca can’t be beat, your falsetto was magnifique.

has supported me since I started here and had basically 0 subs. I wouldn’t have even thought to attempt this without her presence (I knew that at least she would like it), and I am continuously inspired by the work she shares. Don’t miss her hilarious FEVERCHAIN fanfic, but better yet, read as much of her as you can. She is a treasure, and we do not deserve her.

I want to thank my hot & sexy girlfriend for inspiring me and pushing me to write about lesbians even though I was scared because it felt vulnerable. It still does, and maybe that’s the point.

Finally, I want to thank Dan Scamell and Iris Tanner for beta reading each installment before I posted and giving me honest feedback so I didn’t look like a total moron. I may have stolen a joke or two from you both.

If you like Vonnegut or Douglas Adams or sex or aliens, get Dan’s fiction here: https://dvsfiction.com

Until next time!!! You all inspire the fuck out of me 🩷 go pet a dog

∧,,,∧

( ̳• · • ̳)

/ づ♡ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ ᴛʀᴜᴍᴘ ᴀɴᴅ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ ɪᴄᴇ

READ FEVERCHAIN 20

Voiceover by , my hero and favorite villain!

THERE’S PAIN—not period pain in my breasts—it’s deeper. A big splinter twisting through my fleshy little heart into my stomach and crotch.

Only two things relieve it: masturbating and screaming—usually not at the same time. Every morning I wake up crying, tangled in my sheets, sweating. Bad dreams I can’t remember.

It’s the end of March, and tonight, the moon will be full. Makes me sick. With excitement.

Last week, police interrogated me. For real this time. Interrogated Mom and Clyde too, and a bunch of other people. Not sure exactly who.

The cops didn’t catch Gwen—soccer legs. And she knows the woods, better than the park rangers, I’ll bet.

But where is she? I told the police she’d talked about running away, hitchhiking, “your guess is as good as mine.”

While the internet, which I’ve stopped checking, believes Gwen killed her family in addition to Reverend Kerrigan, the police don’t. That’s because some of them saw the bodies, their missing flesh, split bones, fang lacerations, and figured there was no way a person did that. I sort of took cops’ hints and said yes, what happened at the funeral was that Gwen had a psychotic break, and there were already warning signs that something like that could happen.

Opinions in Pinetown, however, are split. Emilio’s “possessed by the Jersey Devil” theory has gained traction. Mostly with other kids and Ms. Pileggi. She moved away because of it.

Thornton claimed to Mom that he’d “seen this in Vietnam.” Not sure if he meant somebody’s throat getting ripped out or what.

Sheriff is about to get in trouble for shooting every coyote he sees. He had two other cops ask me questions—he just sat in the claustrophobic interrogation room and watched me. Cold eyes. Didn’t take notes.

He doesn’t come to the diner anymore. No one does, except strangers. Reporters. Worst of all: bloggers. I had a dream about one, (April Spencer). I cut her open with giant scissors and film reels spilled out in curls, covering my feet—Emilio would love it.

At the diner, I work exclusively in the kitchen now. Mom rotates from the back to the front, kitchen door always swinging when there are actually customers. We need someone else to help at the counter, but no Piney wants to work here. We’re cursed, like a cold no one wants to catch.

Cutting onions gives me an excuse to cry. Mom bought me a finger guard, but I’ve already managed to stick my thumb with the knife. Oops.

I’ve been playing with the flap of the skin loosened under my nail—the cut curls around the side of my thumb into the meat through my fingerprint. Doesn’t even hurt, but it bled a lot when I peeled the bandage away. Red turning brown on my lavender comforter and I don’t care. Menstrual blood stained sheets. As long as I don’t go clean it, no one in the house will see it.

I don’t let anyone in my room except my husky.

At 5 p.m., I drag Smokey from under my bed and barricade him in my bathroom by shoving my dresser in front of the door. I haven’t had the strength to make more of a plan than this.

Find my old Bluetooth speaker, which is powerful for its size, and turn up some music to cover any weird sounds from his transition.

Unlock, relock my bedroom door and collapse on my unmade bed. Smell sautéed tomato and garlic creeping towards me from the stovetop.

As the sun goes down, the ache in my chest sharpens, makes me wrench open my window. Swear to god, I hear a howl. Faint and sad. Far, but not too far. I gasp, scramble to turn down the music, lean through the window for a better listen, tip and fall into the scrubby grass. It isn’t even that cold anymore. Pleasurable under my bare hands and feet.

“Fuck it.”

Into the pines I go. What am I supposed to do, ignore that howl? I can’t die like I have been, gradually.

A river of coyotes runs past me, pelts, eyes, teeth, tongues reflecting moonlight. They’re drenched in it, drink it. They rustle soft between snapping sticks and firecracker leaves. I imagine their fur between my fingers, wiry, then soft.

They don’t look at me. And I feel a chill.

It hits me on the way back that the coyotes were running away. Away from what? From her?

I look over my shoulder. No, she’s not here. I sense something, but not Gwen. Whatever it is, it soothes the stinging throb in my chest. Still, I feel… tricked. I’ve tricked myself.

Must be losing my mind. How many coyotes were there? Eight? Ten? More? Am I dreaming? Pierce my palms with my nails, which have grown uneven, and decide I’m probably awake.

As I prepare myself to crawl back through my window, Smokey’s high whine pierces the pop song. I shouldn’t have left him. Add that to the long list of things I shouldn’t have done, but it’s too late. “I’m here, bud.”

He barks twice in pitches of distress. Danger! Danger!

“I’m back, alright? Relax.” Gotta get inside before my mom investigates. I lift myself and slide into my room, relieved to land on two feet.

He barks again and beats at the door with fists, knuckles rapping sloppily.

“Sh!” Fine, I’ll close the window. When I do, I feel a pang, a computer error ping. Wonder again whether the coyotes were real. Wonder whether the howl was even real because sometimes after listening to synths for hours on blast, I start hearing things—

“Bianca?” Mom calls. “Bianca, what’s that knocking?”

“Nothing!” I turn up the music on my laptop, taptaptaptap.

“Nothing?”

Smokey whines. The air smells bad. Does he already stink?

“Just Smokey!”

I spy shadows from her feet through the crack under my door. The handle rattles gently. “Dinner’ll be ready in ten, OK?”

“OK!” taptaptap…

Her shadow retreats, and suddenly, I want to cry.

Instead I’m forced forward, my hand spasming on the keyboard. My face is ground so hard into the mattress I can’t get air. It’s like a truck hit my head, now it’s stalling there, the weight of it, 3 ton pressure. My arms and legs squirm and I feel damp jeans with my toes, rough fingers in my hair, keeping my head down.

I hear smacking, smacking, SMACKING as a mouth moves to my ear. I hear her swallow the gum, and her voice sprays hot spit. “This is my patience, pig. This is my patience, ending. You should’ve stuck to your own species, you selfish”—she pulls her face from me and I feel her convulse, my lungs start screaming—“mmmm, mm, oh, you’re not gonna like this, baby!”

Rainy Williams lifts me and I gasp just before her hand clamps over my mouth—smells like dirty pennies and burns like a black road under the sun. The spindly bones in her palm shift and stretch over my lips. Her nails poke, drill.

Smokey screams like a man; a pop chorus blares.

“Wait,” Rainy grunts. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Her heart pummels my back and my body bakes, sweats so much I could almost slip free, but her grip’s digging into me, drawing blood.

“Know why I’m losing my cool?”

No, please, wait, let’s talk, let’s get outta here, but all that comes out is, “Nggghhh!”

“You know—you know what you did. You ruined her. You fucking totaled her, so I’m gonna give her a real reason to hate me before I snap her neck and start over. It breaks my heart, baby, it does. But she’s too much trouble, you’ve made her too much trouble. The pigs want her more than me, and she’s got no sugar to make up for it. Not one goddamn granule. Now I’ve gotta start all over, like I always do—that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s lonely, baby, I’m alllllways hurting. All I’m asking for is a little sympathy, yeah? So I want to meet—I mean, eat—your mommy, daddy, and doggy. Then maybe, juuuuusssst maybe, you’ll start to understand how I feel.”

Try to jerk my head but her finger-joints are pliers, palm bolted to my flesh. I shriek, try to warn them, but it’s snuffed out to a low, incoherent muffle. Smokey barks and beats on the door, seems to catch on to my failed distress signal. Mom’s gonna come check on me and him, force my door open, get herself killed. Quiet, I say but can’t say. Calm down, calm down Smokey.

I jerk again, stamp my feet on her boots, try to raise my arms but hers is around me like an iron bar.

Rainy’s laughter sprays my neck. She wheezes, and her claws stab through my cheeks and gums, only stopping to scrape my teeth and the bone under my eye. Rainy shakily licks blood from the thumb she’s stuck in my face. “No… You don’t taste like multi-millions.”

My dresser topples over with a slam that quakes the floor and the bathroom door bangs open. Smokey-man’s dark figure seizes us, and I’m dropped as I hear an ear-splitting yowl behind me. I crawl away and scream, “RUN! RUN! DRIVE! DRIVE AWAY!” Smokey-man is flung over me—hits the corner of my room, shrinks to a whimpering slouch. The howling and flesh tearing aggravate and expand behind me, heat licking the back of my neck, I adjust my glasses and look.

A silver beast is becoming, the scar on Rainy’s elongating head cracking and tearing down the side of her neck until it meets her shifting, hulking shoulders, and another head emerges from it. In an instant, twin wolf faces snarl in hellish harmony. The left head, the new, still wet head—its eyes gleam wide and wild with wrath, but the right head’s eyes have been punched into red-black holes. I slide away numbly, hit the opposite wall and turn to Smokey-man. His shag-carpet chest is heaving, and his black-nailed thumbs are bloodied. Good boy.

Stomping echoes down the hall. Rainy’s left head, then her right, swivel towards the sound.

“NO!” My throat rips.

“Bianca?!” Clyde roars. My door handle shakes violently. “Bianca?!”

“RUN! SHE’LL KILL YOU! RUN AWAY!”

The door handle breaks and I wail. But it was already too late. Clyde’s wielding a baseball bat, ripped apart before he can react. His disembodied arm hits the ceiling, painting it and landing with a meaty thud. Mom sees it too, screams and slams her bedroom door. Then I hear it splinter.

“No!” I bawl. “Please! I’ll do anything—”

With a set of jaws on each leg my mother is dragged into my room and I cannot look away. I cannot look away as Rainy’s heads take turns gouging into her.

I leap. Onto the back of the wolf-thing. I yank its tail into my mouth, and sink my teeth as deep as they’ll go. I suck the rank, seething blood through the fur. I growl, I gnash, I groan.

The house is breaking—it sounds like thunder and glass busting. Night blasts through the opening, and I feel the beast pull forward, out of my weak grip and into the jaws of another.

I hear familiar snarling, and the air charges with Gwen’s musk. She’s too late. She’s too late, I tell her so.

A fever takes me and my mouth runs dry as I watch a sandy wolf and a black one trap Rainy at the end of the hall outside my opened door. The black one glances at me with Erica’s eyes.

Clumsily, I crawl to Mom, the wet snapping of jaws and pop music like a storm above me. Her stomach and chest have been ripped open, her organs half-consumed, some trailing past her head and I can’t even see where they end.

Her eyes are wide, dark lashes trembling with the rest of her, each shallow exhale peppers her lips with blood.

I don’t know where to touch her, so I don’t touch her. I don’t know. Her mouth moves, her gaze glides slow to me. If she says something, I can’t hear it over the entangled beasts shaking the house and denting the walls.

Frantic, I pat her pockets for her phone. It isn’t there.

A low crack and a high cry distract me. Thoughts fissure.“M-M-Mom.” I shiver. Try to refocus. When I open my mouth again, my teeth fill the ever expanding space. My own tongue gags me. Mom, her face dims, but I see her react. Her brows twinge with worry, worry for me, while her guts hang out.

My heart explodes, splinter splitting and my body grows around it, consuming and regurgitating itself with searing heat. I collapse in a heap of resetting joints beside her, limbs and spine spasming.

I want to tell her I love her, but I can no longer speak—BLOOD, MEAT, so much of it and Rainy will die. She cries for Sienna and Anna but they are not coming, there are no new scents on the wind. She will die crying and alone. MOVE, let me do it.

READ FEVERCHAIN 21.5

READ FEVERCHAIN 19

Voiceover by , and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Once again, she fucking nailed it. 🔨🌪️

PULLING INTO THE DYERS’ DRIVEWAY after sundown again is moderately traumatic, but I try to clear my head. There are other cars parked here too, a Buick that must belong to Gwen’s grandparents—both alive on Marie’s side.

I get out and approach the front steps, a shudder nearly unspooling my bowels.

“You are being recorded.”

I flinch at the doorbell camera’s monotone. My hand hovers over the button as I breathe in the pines, trying to calm myself. Before I can press it the door swings open and Gwen ushers me inside.

“Good timing.”

“Y-yeah?”

“My grandma is asleep in the guest bedroom, my grandpa is asleep by the fireplace, and my aunt is drunk watching reality TV.”

I run my hands over my hair. “Guess I’ll meet them tomorrow.” The floorboards creak under my feet and I wonder if anyone has seen the basement. Gwen’s coverup story? Her parents were remodeling it. That won’t explain the dog smell, though.

We creep upstairs, careful not to make a ruckus.

“Wait,” I whisper. “They know I’m here right? Or that I was coming?”

“Um.” When we reach the top of the steps, Gwen points left. Long hallway, lots of pictures I don’t want to focus on. We enter what must be her parents’ bedroom. A chill cuts me as I cross the threshold. Their belongings are in the process of being boxed and packed. There is a pile of books stacked by the foot of the bed. Werewolves in Western Culture, crammed between Notes on Shapeshifting, and Practical Tips: Fighting Inflammation.

Gwen leads me through a bathroom and into a walk-in closet. Flicks on the lights.

There are rows of tracksuits in various jewel tones but that’s not why we’re here. Gwen stands in the middle of the too-big room of mirrors, looking grim.

I move towards the dress section. “Here’s a start.” It’s organized by color. The outfit must be black, of course, for the occasion. My hands skim silk, feathers, furs. I seek out something modest and simple, which wouldn’t be the first words you think of when describing Marie Dyer’s style.

A sleeveless, ruffled high-low with frayed edges. It was pretty chic, actually. Tommy Hilfiger.

I take the hanger, wow that’s a nice, sturdy wooden hanger, and show it to Gwen. She immediately starts throwing her clothes off. “You like it?”

“I don’t care. I just want to get this all over with.” She slips it on. In the black dress, with her short hair, she looks kinda like a flapper from the 1920s. An extremely tense and unhappy flapper.

“You look beautiful.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. The oval scar on her collarbone shines. “Thanks.”

“Would you be more comfortable in a suit?”

Gwen grinds her teeth. “I’m never comfortable, so it doesn’t matter.”

Bite my lip. “Does your mom have a jumpsuit?”

“I don’t want to play dress-up!”

Have to wipe her spittle off my face. Rude. I’m here because she asked for my help. Some of us have work in the morning, and no one else knows I’m in this house except maybe the Dyer family ghosts. My skin feels like cold spaghetti noodles in here. “OK… so you’re good? Should I leave?”

“Please don’t.” She turns from me to clutch the island containing shelves of shoes. The fake orchid on top trembles. “Grandma asked if my speech was ready today, and I said yeah.”

“Speech?” My jaw drops. “Do you have a speech—”

“NO!” She whisper-shouts on the verge of tears. “I just didn’t know what to say!”

I sigh. Wonder if she feels guilty or if she’s just frustrated at the inconvenience. It’s a joint funeral for the family. The entire town will be there, and then some. At least it’s closed casket. “Keep it short ‘n sweet.”

“Bianca.” She tilts her head to plead. “Can you write it for me?”

“Oh god, Gwen.” I wipe the tears from her burning cheeks with my thumbs. “Really?”

“I have nothing to say.”

Pinch my brow. “Then maybe, you should just say that. But in, like, a mournful way.”

“I lost my family, there’s nothing to say.”

“Nice. And?”

“They’re nothing to me.”

“No. Say you love and miss them, look sad, and step away.” I doubt she’ll struggle to start crying. “No one’s gonna expect a song and dance from you.”

“Gam Gam is…”

“Too bad!” I lower my voice. Hopefully Gam Gam isn’t wearing hearing aids. “A speech is a lot to ask of someone who lost her family last weekend.”

“That was the only good thing to come out of last weekend,” Gwen mumbles. Looks at herself in the mirror again and grimaces. Wiggles free of the dress and regards it like it’s diseased.

“Only a little bit more of this and we’re out of here,” I comfort thoughtlessly. I shouldn’t be making such promises about what “we” are gonna do. My heart prunes up; I do my best not to let it show.

“You’re right.” Gwen exhales. Glances back at me with exuberant eyes. “The lawyer said the life insurance should pay out after they look at my claim, in thirty days, maybe. The trust stuff, I don’t get that until later. It’s a bunch of phased payments but—” She takes my hand and beams. “The life insurance is a lump sum.”

I swallow. Can’t resist. “Did he tell you how much?”

“Should be ten million.”

My legs go Jell-O. I sink to my knees. I stare into the cruel heavens—the off-white ceiling and tit light of Marie Dyer’s walk-in closet. FUCK. FUCK RAINY. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. FUCK!

Gwen kneels beside me.

I try to collect myself. Grit my teeth so I don’t sob. I wish I didn’t know that. Oh god, I wish I didn’t know that.

“Bianca?”

“Mhm?”

“You OK?”

I nod. “That’s just—that’s just a lot of money.”

She laughs. “We could get a nice camper van and hit the road. What do you think?”

↟↟↟

The Bridgeton Chapel is a long building built in stone. Nondenominational, abandoned then revitalized, it’s said that the Jersey Devil refused baptism here. Maybe that’s another chapel. Whatever. Anyway, now they charge a boatload if you wanna get married here because it’s pretty during fall.

The sign outside the chapel reads: HOPE TO THE PINELANDS above ALL ARE WELCOME. Double wood doors are wide open as townsfolk clad in black stream inside. Derek Gugger and the Guggers, Cam LaBorde and the LaBordes, and Thornton shamble in after the owners of Pineworld Adventures, the Twitchells, who might be richer than the Dyers, but who knows. Reverend Kerrigan’s silver head is bobbing in solemn greeting as people pass inside.

It’s a cloudy afternoon. Mom and I left the diner early to get ready. I’m wearing a long-sleeved black sweater dress, high neck to cover-up my unmournful breasts. Mom’s wearing a black shawl over her maxi dress, her skin deep olive from hours under the Bahamian sun. Clyde doesn’t own anything black besides t-shirts and socks. He’s wearing a navy sweater Mom panic purchased from Walmart, which I guess is good enough.

We walk inside, Mom holding my hand and already teary.

Everyone is here. Emilio in his green cast with his parents and three-year-old baby sister. The receptionist from Molly’s hotel. Robby Bob and Billy Bob from the bar. Ms. Pileggi, who’s been wearing black ever since her Chihuahua, Peanut, was eaten by coyotes anyway. People I know from high school who have stuck around, and people I know from high school who are visiting from afar. It’s like looking at my whole life. Yikes.

Mr. Nowack waves—he thinks he saved me and I don’t think he’ll ever let me forget it.

The air is thick, dense with hushed voices, and the cool breeze is too weak to cut. In front of the modest altar are three shiny caskets of amber hue, each with a portrait on an easel so you know who’s who. There’s another portrait of the family all together that includes Gwen, even though she isn’t dead. Each casket is topped with a wreath of white lilies and white roses.

I look to the front, righthand side of the chapel as we make our way to our seats. The back of Gwen’s head is beside two aged ones: a white beehive and an spotted scalp with a few strands of white combed overtop.

“No, no, no!” The Reverend’s petulant holler turns heads back to the doors. He’s blocking the entrance from a small crowd of cameramen and reporters.

A man with a ginger beard and a wrinkled button down gestures to the sign outside. “Your church sign says ‘all are welcome’?”

“Very funny. Yes, that’s for tomorrow morning. You’re all welcome then, but this is a private funeral service!” Reverend’s chicken neck is turning pink. “Please, leave! Or I’ll call the police!”

I scan the audience for Sheriff and I find him seated, uniformed, facing forward and rolling his eyes.

“Fine, that’s fine.” The reporters’ spokesman retreats. “No need to shout.”

“God bless you!” Reverend spits. “Now clear the path for the mourners.”

I study the back of Gwen’s head as people trickle in, happy I can watch her from my seat. She’s very still, only nodding when the beehive turns to whisper, black jewel-drop earring swinging. I want so badly to see Gwen’s face. My heart is thrumming into my throat. Mom must notice something is up because she squeezes my sweaty hand.

The chapel doors slam with an echo. The room falls silent except for one or two coughs. Reverend Kerrigan struts stiffly down the middle of the aisle and perches behind the altar. He closes his eyes and exhales before surveying the crowd.

“I believe most of Pinetown is here.” His voice is calm, resonant as it bounces from stone to stone and ear to ear. “That doesn’t surprise me at all, no, not at all. Over 150 people, and we’ve had to set up extra seating in the back.” His lips stretch into a smile. “And I know that even more still are thinking of the Dyer family. All across the Pine Barrens, people are thinking of this great family, remembering them as fierce protectors of the forest, leaders of our community, and liaisons to the outside world, boosting our economy and increasing tourism and awareness about our way of life here. We Pineys are a resilient people. I remember when Pierce and Marie moved here with little Wade. He was a toddler, and Marie was still carrying Gwen. They were coming from Cherry Hill, so I said to ‘em, that’s a nice place, why would you come here?” He pauses for the scattered laughter. “And I’ll never forget what Pierce said. He said, the people. The people, and the lives they’ve built among nature, negotiating with nature.”

I’ve never ‘negotiated’ with nature. Is he talking about weed whacking?

The reverend takes a solemn breath. “We know Pierce was a man of passion, only to be outdone by his wife. They raised two beautiful children here. They passed ordinances to protect our environment and restore historic buildings, such as this very chapel. Marie worked with scholars to create the placards out front. And they raised money for the fire department! Remember the parades? Wade and Gwen would sell tickets to the firetruck parade—the kids just loved it! People would come from out of town for that, and you know, the other towns copied us.” He chuckles, shakes his head. “We owe so much to this family. They made Pinetown into what it is today, the capital of the Pine Barrens!”

I watch the Twitchells twitch to glance at one another, furious, I’m sure, that the Dyers are getting all the credit.

“Of course, they weren’t superpeople. They were good people. Good people that had to face real world complications, but let me tell you, they relished a challenge. When Pierce was in a pickle, he’d call me up. That man, I can say, always put his family first. He fought for his family like he fought for his town.” Reverend Kerrigan’s face pinkens as he sniffles and suppresses emotion. “We must honor their memory.”

Must we?

He clasps his hands together. “We must vow, as a community, to be there for Gwen, and for each other, during this incredibly difficult time. This time when the world seeks to exploit our tragedies. This time when nature seems full of danger. Lord, we need you! And we need one another to heal. Let us pray.”

The prayer is equally drawn out. It’s kinda funny that Reverend Kerrigan has nothing of substance to say about Wade. I don’t blame him. Besides working on some summer camp stuff, he didn’t really do anything. “When Wade wasn’t too busy getting drunk or high, he was a great help to his parents and their murder plots.”

A random violinist comes out. She really came out of nowhere, and there’s a musical interlude.

The reverend returns to the altar and drawls out a poem: “...Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, and, lost each human trace, surrendering up thine individual being, shalt thou go, to mix for ever with the elements…”

Et cetera. I’m glad we only go to church for Christmas. Mom likes the music.

“Before I read each eulogy,” holy shit I thought he already did that, “I will step back to allow for family and friends to recite brief, informal tributes.”

Gwen rises from the pews. She’s wearing her mom’s Hilfiger dress and black flats. She’s even got on tights—perfect. Almost giggle despite myself. Her sandy hair is tamed tight to her skull. I wonder whether she’s wearing makeup but I think it’s just her fever-flush—lips, cheeks, and chest deepening to crimson. That’s mildly very concerning, but her expression is calm and appropriately solemn.

Reverend Kerrigan pats her shoulder as she steps in front of him, stuttering her stride. When she’s behind the altar she death-grips it. Have to stop myself from whispering, “Oh no.”

But her shoulders relax and she begins, no notes or anything. “It’s hard to find the words.”

I’ll bet. Her voice is much smaller than the reverend’s. No way people can hear her in the back, but that’s fine.

“Mom was my biggest cheerleader. Dad was my favorite coach. Wade was—Wade gave me a lot of older brother advice I didn’t want to hear at the time. I know they had my best interest at heart, and they did what they could so that I could succeed. All the memories we have, I don’t know what to do with them—they don’t even feel like mine.”

The death-grip returns. She’s staring at the lip of the altar, not at the people. I think she’s found a good stopping point. I stare at her, trying to will her attention to me so I can smile and nod. Just step away…

“I have all these memories, and they just get to be done.” Gwen starts panting. “It was—it doesn’t feel finished. It doesn’t feel finished, not with me. And it’s mine, I don’t care how you feel. I don’t care if you put a fucking bow on it.”

The reverend’s brows knit together. He must feel it too, a shift in the air. Bad electricity. Gwen grimaces. The altar creaks and shakes. Most are silent. Some burst out crying. I don’t breathe.

“I have to live and remember how they… smelled.”

Oh god. Is she gonna talk about how they tasted next?

She laughs a little. Looks drunk, hopefully people think she’s drunk. Lowers her voice, but I can still make it out. “You try to cover it up, but you can’t—you sweat oil. Why do you all sweat like….”

The reverend approaches from behind to pat her shoulder, orienting his body towards her empty spot in the pews. That’s enough. It’s getting harder to dismiss, but if she stops now, there’s a chance.

She resists him. Bares her teeth to the audience. Says something I can’t hear. I scoot forward in my seat. The altar groans as Gwen’s fingers dig into it with nonexistent claws.

“Step away,” I beg under my breath. Mom side-eyes me. “Step—”

When Reverend Kerrigan touches her shoulder again, Gwen snaps around, seizes his neck, and bites into it like it’s a yellow apple. Blood bubbles from the hole like boiling stew, soaking his white shirt collar, overflowing onto the altar. She drops his dying body; it smacks the stones. Her eyes finally find mine, stained lips trembling.

The town gasps.

Gwen’s waiting, I realize, for direction. There’s really only one thing she can do. After that, I can’t help her anymore.

“Run.”

She does. Good thing she isn’t wearing heels. People start to scream as she nears the exit. Sheriff lunges to grab her, but she shoves him to the floor. When the doors open, cameras flash, but the crowd of reporters parts enough for her to sprint into the pines. Through the arched chapel windows, I watch her disappear. A mob follows.

I stand with my mouth open, unable to hear my mom until sirens blare.

READ FEVERCHAIN 21

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Voiceover by , who makes this cast of characters come to life!!!

TOO AFRAID to watch Smokey shift into a grown man, I lead him by the collar to Mom’s bathroom when he starts pacing and panting. Put his bed cushion in there with his water bowl and kibble. Then consider how Gwen’s diet has changed. Maybe I should be giving him the human fare. Food fit for humans, I mean—jeez. I boil some rice with frozen peas and carrots and make a peanut butter sandwich for him. Of course right after I stick the food in there he devours everything at once. “Don’t puke.”

What the fuck am I going to do during the next full moon with Smokey? I have to move out. Like, for real this time. Can’t talk myself out of this one. Oh yeah Mom, that guy, don’t worry about him. Gwen and I got a third who wears nothing but a dog collar. It’s totally chill. Also, you’ll never see him and our husky in the same room.

But I’m grateful he’s here, even as he bellows wordlessly and beats on the door. Guard dog. Or some sorta guard… the point is, I’m not alone.

I try to comfort myself with that fact, TV strobing as I morph myself into a tight ball on the couch. Try to sleep, but every time I do I remember when I dismounted from Rainy’s motorcycle and handed her my helmet. She’d flipped it over and made a show of snorting whatever I’d left of myself in there.

I can’t tell Gwen any of it. Can I? She’d try to run or fight or do something reckless. Then I would be blamed, and Mom—she’s still vulnerable. Rainy had made it clear enough; she knew where to find us.

It’s hopeless. I have to hide the truth from Gwen. Again. Can’t be free from this shit for a moment. I can only hope that the biker gang will back off after they get the Dyer inheritance and move to Canada. Rainy’s story is credible, after all. I’d seen her digital “WANTED” poster myself.

Gwen would go with them, and that gives me more dread than relief. Imagining myself so separate from her makes my chest ache, even if it’s for the best.

Pale light filters through cracks in the blinds that I’d thought I covered with curtains, blankets, and towels. Morning already. I’ve done nothing but stare at the screen, processing zilch, picking my toenail polish off. Wishing my life was normal—like the people in commercials.

I don’t think anyone else was killed last night according to News 12 New Jersey, so that’s a win. Yay.

THUMP. Weight slides against the bathroom door. A strangled howl. “Smokey?” I rush to remove the chair I’d wedged under the knob.

Smokey-man is on his side in the fetal position, snout lengthening, hands collapsing into paws, ribs cracking and clicking into a compact spine. His hips lift and legs bend, his tail regrows, looking like a giant rat’s until the fur returns. I note that he’s also neutered as a man, which is probably a good thing—ew. His eyes are wide and vacant, he foams a little at the mouth, moans, high and breathy between gurgles. Rapidly becoming familiar and uncreepy. He recovers just as quickly, jumping up to lick and nip at my hand excitedly. I feel bad I’ve been depriving him of affection, but realize it would be a bad idea for him to bite me too, and draw back. I also realize his entire left side is wet from lying in a puddle of piss.

He turns to the hallway, aims for my bedroom and wags his tail. “Sorry buddy, you have to go back in the bathroom.” I herd him in, and he starts to pant anxiously. “I’m gonna come back with a Milk-Bone and bathe you, OK?” He sits on the bathmat and mews, showcasing his lower front teeth as he tries to relax. “Thanks.” I’ve always pretended like he understood me, but now, who knows. Maybe he sorta does. Should I teach him how to read?

BRATBRATBRATBRATBRAT against my bedroom window. Then the predictable BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK. I close my eyes but the noise doesn’t let up. I have to go and see.

Gwen is in the glass pane, pine needles in her hair. She’s glancing behind herself and smacking my window. I’d locked it.

I wait for her to really look at me. When she does, she lifts herself and presses her tits against the glass. “I’M NAKED.”

“Jesus.” I unlock and lift the window a crack. She finishes the job with her super strength.

“What was that?” she asks, breathless. “You’re not gonna let me in when cops are around? I’ve been running—” Water streams from her expensive furniture eyes. “I’ve been having a real shit time, Bianca.”

I inspect her sides or anywhere else for injury. I flip her around, she lets me. Her ass almost distracts me from my task. “I’m—I’m glad you’re OK.”

“Are you OK?” She whips around. “Why do you sound like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like a… dying robot.” Gwen embraces me. Exhaust and pinesap. I breathe in her breath and want to cry. “Bianca, I’m so sorry.” Her hand pets my tangled bedhead and I feel her tense. She smells the hair along my temple, behind my ear, on my middle part. Then she cups my face. “What did she do?”

“Who?”

“Rainy.”

I move to close the window but Gwen does it, not breaking eye contact.

“She came to tell me you were OK,” I say. “That they took the bullet out of you and were gonna make sure you didn’t get caught.”

“No one would tell me where she went. What did she want with you?” Gwen sniffs. “Did you wear her hat or something?”

“No I—she took me on her motorcycle.”

Gwen growls and rakes her hands through her hair. “What did she do?”

“I just told you.”

She sits on my bed, hands smearing dirt on the comforter. I don’t even care. “She’s messing with me. Why did they come here? Why do they give a shit? Oh, by the way.” Gwen smiles sour. “Erica is with Rainy. She told them about us. I couldn’t even do anything about it. Rainy and my ex and the other bitch she cheated on me with came all the way here to fuck with my shit.”

“Rainy told me they were just passing through,” I say to the wall.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t believe a word of that. Something is up.” She looks at me. “We need to get out of town.”

“Gwen.” I shuffle to the bed. “You know you’re a missing person, right?”

“Good.”

“Your family’s funeral is this Saturday.”

She makes a face like I’d just stuck a turd under her nose.

“Catherine Von Bergen is dead,” I say.

“OK?”

“Llama lady. Overalls. Goats. Ring a bell?”

“Not really.” A flush spreads over her chest. “I mean, I know the farm.” Gwen lies back and sighs. “Can we stay in bed all day and do nothing?”

“I have to bathe Smokey first. He pissed himself, but it’s not his fault. He’s a wereman.”

“I’ll help you.” Gwen blinks. “He’s a were-what?”

↟↟↟

Two days later and I’m back wiping the confetti counters of the diner. What can I say? The town needs us Pancos and our greasy comforts. Mom wants to support how she can.

Morning pours in golden. I avoid looking at the window with the black tarp taped over it, a hole in my world. The biker gang stole the sixty dollars we’d left in the register. We don’t have a lock box. Never thought we would need one.

The loss from the register is nothing compared to the cost of fixing that window. I think they wanted to break something, just to hurt us. To scare me, probably. Fucking whatever.

Emilio is here, wearing a neon green cast. Crutches rest against the stool beside him. He’s gotten us all to sign his leg so he “doesn’t look like a loser” at school. Mom asks him a million questions about his healing process, scheduled physical therapy, etc. Her face is toasted from the Bahamas cruise. She and Clyde made it back here, to hell, yesterday.

Unfortunately, Mom told me that she and Clyde got even closer on the ship; the alone time took their relationship “to the next level.” “I was so stressed because you weren’t responding, and he was helping me through it. He’s such a rock, really. So solid—” And so on. Gag Central Station.

I should be happy for her.

Mom didn’t find out about the animal attacks until they touched land. There has been much crying and hysterics and more crying and hysterics at my lack of reaction. My ‘dying robot’ voice.

Gotta figure out how to rebuild myself.

Gwen sets a firm hand on my wrist. “You’ve been cleaning that one spot for a while.”

I scoff, flop the rag on the counter. I’m frustrated she won’t acknowledge her murder of Catherine von Bergen. If there’s nothing to explain, just predator and prey, I’d rather her say so. I’m sick of mysteries. Sick of them. But she’s stonewalling me, going to make me ask the question point blank: you killed her, didn’t you? I haven’t had the strength for that.

Yet in some ways, I’m proud of Gwen. She did go to the police… to lie. Told them she didn’t see the attack on her family, but thinks it was the coyotes (she’s got a grudge against them, I swear) because some chased her. She followed Pitch Pine Path until she “got lost,” then found her way to my place days later, somehow missing all the police and park rangers everywhere.

Didn’t make much sense, but nothing does lately. They’ll probably want to talk to her again.

Now Gwen’s staying at the Dyer house with her grandparents and aunt. I’m going there tonight to help her pick out an outfit for the funeral tomorrow.

A glare out the window draws my eye. Sheriff’s patrol car putters in, earlier than usual. He approaches the diner, haggard and hungry. No sense of mission in his step, which relieves me as the handcuffs on his pants jingle-jangle.

“Morning,” he coughs. His mustache is crooked in a half grimace. He approaches the chrome and red-cushioned stool like it’s a life raft. He plants himself two seats from Gwen.

“Whatever you want, it’s on the house,” Mom says with a sad smile.

“Appreciate that, Elena, but it’s just my job. I know we weren’t ready for this. I wasn’t—” He clears his throat. Looks at Gwen with wet eyes. “The mayor was a good friend of mine. I haven’t had the chance to tell you personally, I’m sorry.”

“Uh.” Gwen gulps. “Thanks.”

Sheriff’s mouth opens, but he just inhales sharply and stares at his hands, stache quivering.

The door chimes with the vigor of a newcomer.

A plucky woman with a full face of makeup and amber highlights clacks inside on impressively high heels, a giant rectangular phone glowing in her hand and indicating she’s on a call. “Excuse me, are you—” The woman takes a moment to look at each person sitting in the diner, her black-lashed eyes going so wide they might pop out and dirty up the floor I just mopped. “Excuse me. My name is April Spencer, and I’m with South Jersey Today.”

“Christ,” Sheriff mutters. Mom sets down his generous mug of coffee, nearly spilling it.

The reporter clacks closer. “I want to ask how you all are doing, considering the recent deaths.” She unsubtly snaps a photo of us with her phone. She’s got the audio turned up and everything, nails clicking loud against the screen. “Sheriff Christo…doloo…”

“No updates.” Sheriff slurps loud.

“Well, I do have questions for these young ladies. And gentleman. If you could share anything about what you’ve experienced, it would mean a lot.”

Emilio straightens in his chair and whispers to himself, “Jersey Devil.”

Mom, meanwhile, pats my shoulder and turns to the stranger. “You can put that camera away and be a customer, or you can get the hell out.”

The reporter lowers her phone. “I didn’t mean to offend—”

“You did!” Mom shouts. “You did, so you go and tell your friends they’re not gonna be let in here unless they put the damn cameras away.” She shakes her head with disgust. “Have some respect.”

April Spencer clamps her lined, glossy mouth, and clacks to the exit. Once outside, she talks on the phone, peering at us through the window beside her white SUV.

I touch my lips. Can’t remember the last time I wore makeup like that.

“They’re everywhere,” Sheriff laments. “ABC. CNN. NBC. EFG. WXY and Z. The whole damn alphabet is here.”

“Sheriff,” Mom begins. “We can’t have them crowding…” She looks between Emilio, Gwen, and me.

“I’m taking interviews.” Emilio’s gaze darts between the door and the woman outside. “Maybe somebody out there will believe me.”

“Kid,” Sheriff begins. “If I go out there and say, yup, it’s the Jersey Devil, you know what’ll happen? I’ll lose my job.” He flicks his silver badge.

Emilio slams his fist on the counter. “Did you find my camera?”

“Got other priorities at the moment.”

“Shoddy police work.” Emilio grits his teeth. “I remember its eyes! I caught it on video! I’m telling you, it wasn’t just an animal. Find my camera and it’ll prove it.”

“Even if I could believe you, I already told you.” Sheriff sips his joe. “It is what it is.”

Emilio turns to Gwen. “Don’t you believe me?”

She looks ill. “Sure.”

That doesn’t validate him enough. His pleading eyes meet mine. “Binks? Didn’t it attack you? I saw the news—”

“I think we should change the subject.” Mom attempts sternness, still flushed from yelling at the woman. Or maybe that’s the sunburn.

Emilio keeps his dark eyes on me, adamant.

“I didn’t see clearly,” I sigh. “It was, like, traumatic. So drop it.”

His head droops, limp shag exaggerating his disappointment. “It wasn’t a freakin’ bear.”

Silence like a wet, scratchy blanket falls over us. Sheriff says he’s in a bit of a hurry to meet up with animal control, so Mom bustles into the kitchen to make him a pork roll egg and cheese saltpepperketchup to-go.

“Bianca.” Gwen’s jaw clenches. One of her knees is bounce-bounce-bouncing.

“What is it?”

“Make them go away,” she whispers. “Please.”

“What?”

Emilio’s shag flicks rightward. “Huh?”

Sheriff eyes us over his steaming mug, then gazes beyond us, gray brows rising.

“Yo!” Emilio points at the windows. My chest tightens. Too afraid to look.

A horn honks outside. Another. Another. Tons of unfamiliar cars are turning into the diner, blocking Emilio’s dad from picking him up for school. There’s traffic. In Pinetown. In March.

Gwen slaps her hands over her ears and retreats to the bathroom before the next car horn blares.

Sheriff again calls upon a higher power to ask for assistance. Or just to curse.

I watch in horror as vans with satellites stuck to the top crowd our tiny parking lot. Other cars start to park on grass and the street; you’d think it was summertime during Pineworld Adventure’s Annual Jamboree. April Spencer looks at me through the window and waves. Expensive cameras and cellphones surround the diner, their operators drooling over Pinetown’s unexplained deaths.

The culprit, after all, is still at large. Actually, she’s locked herself in the bathroom.

Emilio, ecstatic, hops from his seat onto one leg and uses the counter to balance as he adjusts his crutches under his pits. He licks his thumbs, swipes each eyebrow. “My time to shine.”

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’s voiceover is, as always, excellent and elevates the work. Give it a listen!

BEFORE I GOT BIT by my plug, it was simple with Gwen and me.

I met her at Twin Oaks Dispensary what feels like a lifetime ago but was only two years. When you travel a long distance, time slows, and when you turn into a werewolf, same thing. You have to digest all that new info, inside and out.

Gwen’s hair was long then. She looked like a lost cocker spaniel and I was interested even before I saw she was a big spender. I gave her some freebie pre-rolls I really liked (Fig & Cherry) and wrote my number on the back of her receipt.

We went hiking and kissed behind a waterfall—my idea. Gwen told me she quit, no actually got fired, from her sales rep job and warned me she was thinking about moving to Alaska for this soccer coach gig at this fancy summer camp. I fucked her so nice she forgot all about that. She didn’t know anything about Oregon, queercore bands, or double dildos.

I taught her what I knew, and I remember when she didn’t refuse to drink from my steel water bottle or act like some kinda moral superior. Erica is almost as bad, but at least she has a leg to stand on. Big time coyote chaser, that one.

“Stop being a bitch and drink.” I jostle my bottle at Gwen. She’s sitting bare-ass on the pine straw with her back to me, picking at her elbows, right side still crusty from the bullet removal. She refuses to wear any of our stuff because we “smell bad.” Erica’s wearing my velcro retirement home clothes (great pockets on those) and Anna’s jean jacket, sitting on a stump. Her attentive eyes meet mine a second before retreating. Unlike Gwen, Erica’s accepted our kindness. Baby steps in the right direction.

Anna refolds the map we got at the Delaware rest stop and takes a deep breath. I know she’s about to keep lecturing in her steady, relentless way: “You’re gonna wanna be a lazy bitch because you haven’t learned. Well you better learn. You can’t just eat whoever. You have to plan that shit, before and after. You have to distance yourself, right away.”

“Kill me,” Gwen rasps.

“Yeah well, people are easy to kill, basically overconfident pigs, but the consequences are a pain in the ass,” Anna continues. “Tonight we’re gonna hunt wild game and if you get distracted by sitting ducks, I’m gonna nip your ears.”

“I’m not doing anything with you.”

“I’m down,” Erica says.

Anna eyes her, licks her lips to taste her scent on the air though she made fun of her green hair just yesterday. “You babies need adult supervision.”

Gwen clutches her head. “If someone calls me ‘bitch’ or ‘baby’ one more fucking time—”

“What bitch?” I smile.

She turns to me red as a beet, mouth tight. Anna chuckles. Then Gwen’s eyes well up like a little baby bitch’s. So predictable. Good thing that act doesn’t work on me anymore.

Gwen would’ve done what I did if she didn’t have that money cushion to fall back on—that’s the truth.

“Erica,” Gwen pleads, then sounds like she’s playing soccer: “Come on. We could take them.”

Anna loses it, red hair flying as she doubles over, laughing so hard I’m afraid she’ll shift, but she clenches to still the tremors. If she keeps that up, she’ll get hemorrhoids.

I keep cool despite the hot jolt in my spine. “You forgot we kicked your ass already, fishbrain?”

Gwen ignores me, brown eyes boring a hole through Erica.

“OK, let’s say we take them,” Erica starts. “Then what? You kill more people?”

“No!” Gwen tries to snarl. “Then they leave us alone. It’s two on two now, we can handle their third later. After that, we get away from people ‘til the full moon is over. No more killing.”

“You didn’t help me.” Erica shrugs. “Why should I help you?”

Gwen looks struck. “I didn’t—how could I have helped you?”

Erica rolls her eyes. “Exactly.”

“Please, don’t trust them.” Gwen directs her hate at me, and a thrill threatens to stretch my bones. “I dated one, and she was a liar. Pathological.”

“Ungrateful bitch! We came all the way here to check on you.” I shouldn’t have said that. Anna gives me a flat look that confirms I shouldn’t have said that. Have to bite my teeth to keep them in place. Don’t be a baby—I don’t want to be the baby anymore. I spit pink. “It’s not like you were a perfect partner.”

“Check on me? Why?”

Anna clears her throat. “Not many of us survive, so.”

There used to be nine of us. Even more birthed and died before me. I know Gwen reminds Rainy of someone long gone. Anna won’t tell me about it.

“You live in a good, woodsy place, but, ‘specially after your behavior last night, I’m surprised you’ve stayed alive.” Anna raises her brows. “You even managed to reproduce.”

Gwen glances at Erica, then away, both of them looking repulsed. “You’re not gonna get me to leave with you,” Gwen says, as if we haven’t been cleaning up her shit and saving her life. “Not now, not ever. I’m going my own way.”

A lone wolf. I laugh, can’t help it. She must think she’s special. She must think she’s good.

She just smells like money.

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has done it again with a thrilling voiceover! Enjoy 🛞🛞🛞

I RETURN to my doorway in jeans with a pair of small scissors in the back pocket (for self-defense) and a hoodie I’d stolen from Gwen two weeks ago.

“Hurryyyyy,” Rainy Williams croons. She jitters like she’s going through withdrawals. “Hop on and hold on. I’d like to keep you in one piece.”

I consider slamming the door and running, but Smokey is poking his snout between my legs, growling.

“Weird cat you got there.”

I shut the front door and lock it. “What do you want?”

“Just to chat. Keep cool and I’ll bring you back before you can say blueberry pie.”

She takes the helmet from under her arm and shoves it over her head, unlatches another helmet strapped to her backpack and tosses it to me. When I put it on, it smells like smoke and candy.

“Come on, we’re wasting gas.”

In a series of jerks, I slide onto the vibrating motorcycle seat. Shaking like a dead branch, I don’t know where to put my hands.

“Under my pits, waist or hips.” She ties her hair up with a rubber band, and I watch her strands tear before she shoves her helmet on. Stiffly, my fingers crimp her leather jacket.

She rips out of the driveway and I squeal, feeling myself tip and nearly topple into the street. I don’t hear her laugh, but her sides clench, clench, clench against my palms.

“Where are we going?” I yell when we reach the highway, the wind pressure scathing my ears with a blaring hum.

“Wally World!”

“What?”

We lurch as Rainy slows to a normal speed. A stream of cop cars pass us, lights off. One, two, three, four, five, six. I turn my helmeted head away. She waves and doesn’t look back before accelerating far beyond the legal limit.

Blood froths in my skull as we weave nauseatingly into the Walmart parking lot. I’m relieved. Rainy can’t kill me here. It’s morning time and the store is open, a couple people are milling about, pushing metal carts. An old man waddles, a toddler screeches and tugs at his mom’s pant leg—I stare achingly, but no one looks back, the veil of our helmets creating an impersonal distance.

We pull behind the gargantuan store and park in the remotest corner where weeds split the cement curb and the woods encroach.

Rainy tosses her helmet and backpack onto the corporate-owned grassy knoll and lies on it. Pats the earth beside her. I sit, knees pulled tight into my tits.

“Want a gumball?” she smacks.

Shake my head, sick of the false pleasantries from the criminal werewolf. “I know who you are.”

She pops a pink-gray bubble.

“You’re Gwen’s ex. You bit her, didn’t you?”

Rainy smiles. “Not me. I’m not much of a dater, but Sienna and I are intimate, yes.”

“Sienna?” I internally gasp and try to remember her police sketch. She was the one with a mean little face. Evil Tinker Bell. “What do you mean? Sienna is Gwen’s ex?”

Rainy nods. “She runs with Anna more than me now, but it’s all loosey-goosey.”

Anna was the ginger with the underbite, I think. My gaze darts between Rainy, the motorcycle, the backside of Walmart. Then the motorcycle again, and the bones wired around her headlights.

“Whatcha staring at? Oh, those are Drew’s ribs.”

“Wait like—from his body?”

Rainy hoists herself on one elbow to look at me, jacket squeaking from the effort. “Relax. I just wanna level with you.”

Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Excuse me for not being trustful. I press my right asscheek into the crimped, yellow grass and feel the scissors.

“We’re in neutral territory.” Rainy gestures to the parking lot. “Don’tcha feel safe here, in your habitat?”

“You’re a werewolf,” I say.

“I’m not into labels, but sure.”

“You’re wanted by the Oregon police… for drug dealing?” I don’t really remember. That’s gotta just be the tip of the iceberg.

“Yes,” Rainy sighs. “The piglets know my face, which is why I need sugar, chickadee. Brute force can only getcha so far in the 21st century. I need to pay this guy, well it’s really a series of guys, a network of guys, to falsify some paperwork and get me Canadian citizenship and a new name and birthday.” Smack, smack. “Didya know I was born on Christmas? Maybe my new name should be Frosty.”

“So you left me the serial killer note.”

“Killer? Killer? I haven’t been the one killing, baby.” I watch her index finger loop around three rubber bands on her wrist, pull and release. The snap makes me flinch. “You know that, you already know, don’t you? How it must be?”

“How what must be?”

“You have to let Gwen go.” Her fire eyes widen. “Go with us.”

I dig my nails into my pants. “What? I don’t even—I don’t even—how do you know who I am? How do you know about us?”

“You both reek of it,” she says, lip curling slightly. “And we met your pal, Erica. She’s disturbed about Gwen’s parricide plus.”

Erica? She’s talking to these freaks?

“Parricide plus. You know what that means? There’s all sorts of words for different types of ‘cides…”

“Gwen’s family was abusive,” I blurt. “They tried to kill me!”

“Erica doesn’t know that. Regardless, it remains a…” smack, smack, “disquieting fact.”

“If you think it’s so messed up, why are you smiling about it?”

“I like to smile. Don’t be upset. Erica’s the reason we picked up that scrawny kid.”

“Emilio?”

“Sure. Erica said he was important to you.”

I stand in a flurry. “Where is Gwen?!”

Rainy cringes and makes a show of plugging one ear.

“Where is she?” I yell louder.

“We’ll bring her back.”

“What! You can’t—”

“We’ll bring her back tomorrow morning. Then she’ll stay with you until she gets the familial wealth in her possession and so you can break up with her. Do what I say, end it when we visit you again, and I’ll make sure she doesn’t come back to stalk you or tear you to shreds in a fit of grievous rage. Good deal?”

“She wouldn’t do that!”

“Bet your life on it?”

I exhale sharp and close my stinging eyes. “Yes.”

“You’ll have to keep betting—that’s bad odds, baby. Two nights in a row, one more to go. Then there’s March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and Happy New Year. All will be bloodyyyyy.”

I wipe away snot, try to think. If Gwen really killed Catherine von Bergen, it’s like when Erica was bit—a breach of trust. A breach from who I thought she was. How well did Gwen even know Ms. Bergen? Did she hold anything against her? Or was she just standing in the way of getting to some goats? I don’t know if Gwen’s being impulsive, animal-stupid, or some kind of vindictive—maybe all of the above. Where does instinct end and decision start? I remember Gwenwolf navigating the bear traps and shudder.

“We’ll make sure tonight’s festivities are out of Jersey for a change,” Rainy continues as if I’m not bawling my eyes out. “We’ve got to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.” Her fingers snap to punctuate her words. “Last night was a close call.”

I sniffle, envisioning Gwen’s gunshot wound. “Is she OK?”

Rainy nods. “Got the bullets out. She’s mostly healed—she’s in great shape, physically. Like Erica, I bet she’s relieved to be around those who’ve been through it. You see, I’m not your everyday stray, I’ve been playing this game since childhood.”

“I mean…” Shove my hands in Gwen’s hoodie. Imagine her warmth, and imagine it leaving me—her flushed face never again between my thighs, my fingers never again stroking her feathery hair. Tears fall, leaving dark blots on the heather-gray fabric. “Does she want to go with you guys?”

Rainy’s face hardens; she stops chewing. “She will once you end it.”

“Oh, god.” Turn away to ugly sob. I want to make it work. I want so badly to make it work.

“You’re doing the right thing. It’s not sustainable. A human and a werewolf?” Rainy whistles.

There is one way it could work. Maybe the only way. Then I’d understand her. All this confusion could wash away, and we could love each other clearly. “What if I was…”

“Oh no, you don’t want that, do you? You can’t get on a plane. You can’t live in a city, can’t really even visit one. You can’t hold a job—can’t focus. Can’t handle crowds. You get all these new phobias. A personality crisis. Memory of a goldfish for a long while. You become more fearful, if you can believe it. No longer at home with humanity, but the animals don’t want you either!” She thinks for a moment. “You can’t reproduce.”

“That’s fine.”

“The bite can kill you if the wolf doesn’t feel safe to come out. That’s how most of us die, really. If the wolf doesn’t feel safe, you boil up with a fever, and the hospitals can’t help you. There’s no cure. Only death.” Her eyes scour me, bottom to top. “Besides, you’re not a predator. Why would you want to be? It’s a miserable existence—much easier to go to the grocery store. You think Gwen is happy?”

“I love her,” I choke out.

That doesn’t seem to impress. “You’ll find another, better blondie in no time. There are more people than pigs on the planet, much more. And people can live anywhere, they’re so adaptable. They make themselves available, anywhere, anytime… There are so many of them. So many people.”

Stab my stubby, chipped nails into my eyebrows. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t think I ever will, and I’ll be fucked up forever—

“Think of your mother.”

I whip around. “What about my mother?!”

Rainy’s dark brow lifts and blood drains from my face. She keeps smiling, eyes bright with satisfaction. Her eyes—they move strangely, the left seems to chase after the right. It’s subtle, but they do not move in unison. “Relax, baby. All I mean is, our lifestyle is very immoral. From a human perspective.”

I drag a clammy hand down my face. “I get it, OK? I get it. I’ll—end it.”

Rainy smacks happily, claps her hands together. “Sweet! Wait until after she gets the sugar and we come into town. We’ll visit you first to check in—at your diner. Sorry about the window, by the way. Then ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ and your life will be fur-free.”

What other choice do I have? Gwen can’t protect me from them. She can’t even protect me from herself. It’s almost a relief to not have a real choice, ‘cause I doubt I’d make the right one. “Can I ask you something, before you bring me home?”

Rainy’s already standing, helmet on. “Shoot.”

“Are vampires real?”

She cracks a laugh. “Real as Santa Claus. Oh baby, you’re funny!”

My ears ring with silver bells the whole ride home.

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Voiceover by the funny and sometimes scary 🫣❤️‍🔥

THE BIKER GANG is here. No question about it. Who else would leave that serial killer note? The biker gang is here—why the fuck are they in Pinetown, NJ?

I remember their names—their dumbass names—Rainy, Sienna and… Anna? Maybe it was Hanna…

I smooth the crumpled paper on my thigh and walk back into the house. “Gwen?”

Silence. It’s only like five thirty, according to the microwave clock. I glance again at the note’s crazed scrawl: BROKE A WINDOW AND EMPTIED THE CASH REGISTER. NOT WORTH IT NEED SOME MORE SUGAR.

I’m guessing SUGAR = cash and that the bikers broke one of the diner’s windows and stole from our sad register. Hope you’re having fun with the rolls of nickels and quarters, assholes.

“Gwen?” I repeat, harder this time. Emilio is alive—but how trustworthy is this letter written on the back of a lawn service ad? Not very. At least I know Gwen didn’t eat him. That would be a dealbreaker!

“Smokey?”

Nothing. I call him again, my heart beating into my throat and I don’t think my body can take this much strain anymore. At this rate, I’m gonna die at age forty.

The paper crinkles in my hand. Keep wanting to ball it up. “Emilio is at the diner—behind the diner.” My lungs rattle. “He’s hurt. Someone’s gotta go get him.”

I hear a tongue smacking against a wet mouth, working on something with hypnotic repetition—the sound isn’t from Smokey because it’s too loud and low and reality bending.

My imagination conjures up a horror of my dog half-eaten. DEALBREAKER. I bolt to my room, ready to die.

Gwenwolf is sprawled on my bed, licking my underwear between her paws. She looks at me like, what? I shriek and slam the door.

Too late for the spray bottle.

She looked so big on my purple bed. So insanely out of place. But she was calm. Every time I’ve seen her when she’s like this, she seems calmer. All her pent up energy has room to disperse and settle, almost like she’s at peace. Gwen’s never like that when she’s human.

I want to cry, still dizzy. Steady myself with one hand on the wall. “Smokey?” I don’t want to go back into my room. He has to be under Mom’s bed. He has to be. I just need to check on him, no—take him with me, and we can get Emilio to the hospital.

I turn into the darkness of her bedroom. Mom and Clyde’s aroma lingers—basil and sawdust. In the dim light my chest slams into something hot, hairy. Smells like my husky. My eyes adjust and I see the form of a man. He’s pulling at the collar around his neck—Smokey’s collar. Copper tag catches the hall light.

Whatever sound comes out of me permanently damages my vocal cords. I run. I run outside until I fall onto the dead, crispy grass. Lose total control of my body. Feel myself shake and shake and shake. My fingers sink into the cold, hard dirt, strings of spit snap into my face as I gasp for air.

The air surges with electricity behind me, and I know that Gwen has come outside. I peek to see whether she’s human. Nope. Guess she figured out she can open doors with her paw-hands.

The sky is a glowing bruise. Sun just set. It must be too late, too hard to resist the moon or whatever the fuck. Her canine silhouette stands on two legs in front of the yellow light emitting from my house’s windows. She sniffs the wind then crawls to me, cautious.

I bury my face into the sparse grass. “Emilio!” My voice is a harsh whisper. It’s all I can muster. “I know where he is. And I know who—who the stranger is. The stranger you smelled.”

With a yank, my sweatpants twist and the ground slides under me. She’s bitten the loose fabric by my left thigh, and I can feel the outline of her smooth-stone teeth between pulls. I’m being dragged back to the house. “Gwen? Are you listening?” I pat my pockets for the note.

She groans humanlike when we reach my front steps. Lets go of my pants and stares into my face, nose first, eyes second.

I reach to pet her snout, hesitate, then touch it, warm and fuzzy. “I get it, I get it,” I soothe. She wants me to stay inside. With Smokey-man. It has to be Smokey, doesn’t it? If that was some random dude, Gwen would’ve eaten his guts by now. Yeah, maybe she won’t hurt Smokey. Maybe she thinks we’re all one ‘pack.’ That’s sweet.

See? I’m starting to get used to my freakshow life, starting to understand its freakshow logic. “But do you get what I’m saying? Emilio is really hurt behind the diner, understand? I have to go get him—get someone to go get him.”

She whines and backs up, claws scraping the cement driveway. Notices Emilio’s cracked camcorder. Smells it—her eyes go huge. Spins around and nudges me hard with her muzzle. Just as I prepare to rise, I feel her flinch and a shot rings out.

Another shot, and she staggers into me, paws stepping and grasping, bruising and cutting. “Run!” I hiss. “Hide!”

I flip to my stomach to watch her limp into the woods. I see a dark spot on her side, blooming. “No! No, no, no…”

Bleary and smudged, I watch Mr. Nowack trot to me with his rifle, his hair chaotic shocks of white, breathing hard and emitting wordless, old man sounds of panic. “Are you hurt?”

I glare at him. My shirt and pants are slashed. Her claws had caught my skin, but it was an accident. When she was afraid, she’d clutched me…

“What was that thing?!” He adjusts his glasses, blinks at me. “Oh! Oh! Your stomach! It’s bleeding.”

“Get away from me.” I sit up, skin aching and stinging. Press my fingers into the scratches on my sides. My anger distills itself into something manageable, little tears. “D-do you have a phone?”

He pulls it out of his flannel’s breast pocket. “You’re right. I should—I should call the cops. Oh god! Have you seen the news?”

“Emilio’s hurt. He’s behind the diner. Tell them that.”

“Oh! Oh! The principal’s kid? The missing principal’s kid?”

“Just call them!”

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh god.” Mr. Nowack keeps glancing at the woods, jowls trembling. Finally, he taps to dial.

↟↟↟

On my couch, I drift in and out of consciousness. I feel sick. I feel dead. Smokey-man is curled up on the opposite corner, body covered with a blanket. He watches me with ice eyes, blinking one at a time.

The cuts on the sides of my stomach are pretty superficial. I poured hydrogen peroxide on them, washed with soap and water. Every time the scratches burn, I think of Gwen, and wonder whether she’s free or caught, alive or dead. She’d left her sandy fur on my bed. When I touched it, it disintegrated. Ran my hand over the entire sheet—all the hairs turned into dust. I could be crazy.

I stare at Smokey as he’s lit up by the flickering television. He’d tried to get closer to me, but I wouldn’t let him. Some things I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. “Why did you have to bite her, you idiot?” Guess the contagion goes both ways.

He sighs and turns his head to rest on one ear. His human lips move beneath his gray-black beard and I almost believe he’ll speak. He drifts off instead.

Maybe he wanted to be human. He’s failing miserably. He peed on the kitchen floor. Keeps falling over, making weird noises—weird, even for a husky-human hybrid. High-pitched little moans between the occasional distressed “bark!” I can’t let him outside like this.

Mr. Nowack is on the news for like the fifth time. “Oh, had to be a sick sort of animal. A sick grizzly bear!”

Grizzlies aren’t native to New Jersey. We only have black bears. And the Jersey Devil.

The authorities still don’t know if they’re hunting a pack of coyotes, a bear, or an escaped zoo animal, despite Mr. Nowack’s insistence. I hid inside, away from the cameras. They can’t make me talk to them. I only agreed to speak with an officer so I could mislead her. She had pencil-thin eyebrows and said I could call her “Penny.” I’d made sure Smokey was locked away during what felt like my interrogation. She asked me where Gwen Dyer was. I said I had no idea and shed honest tears.

It became clear to me that they’re not gonna stop searching until the predator is dead. The governor has declared a state of emergency for seven counties in South Jersey, authorizing lethal force against the offending animal(s) to protect livestock and people. News is spreading across the state, across the country, across the world.

My eyes are swollen. The TV screen blurs. We need help. We need help badly.

I take the crumpled note from my pocket, rub my thumb over its creases. Where can I find you, biker gang?

No one left a number. And why would they come here now, with cops sniffing around?

Feel so helpless. Sick of feeling helpless. But if I was a werewolf right now, I’d be similarly vulnerable. As much as I feel like clawing through my own flesh and forgetting… the reason I’m safe is because I’m human. Like this, I can try to protect Gwen. I’d told the police that she went right when she went left. I said she probably went towards town, when I know there’s no way she’d do that.

I don’t think they put much stock into anything I said (I was hysterical!), but it doesn’t really matter—people are searching everywhere. Even the Wildlife Alliance is helping hunt Gwen down, fucking traitors. They’re adamant that “it’s not the coyotes!” inspiring a billion Emilio-style conspiracy theories.

After informing me that Panco’s Diner was indeed burglarized, police said E was fine, just broke his leg and was scraped up, now at the hospital getting fluids and tearfully berated by his parents. If something worse had happened to him—I wouldn’t recover.

I lean to check the microwave clock. It’s almost 3 a.m. After the sun rises, I wonder whether Gwen will come back to me. She probably shouldn’t. Just keep running.

Things have blown up so far beyond our control. And there’s another fucking night of this tomorrow if Gwen survives tonight. Was she shot once? Twice? Three times? Fuck. Nowack came out of nowhere. When I didn’t need him, of course.

A commercial for a prescription drug plays deranged, happy music. I close my eyes. Just a few more hours Gwen. Can you survive for a few more hours?

↟↟↟

Wake up to a wet nose in my face. Smokey. He’s back to being a husky, morning light shining in his eyes from cracks in the blinds. I focus my gaze on the TV.

THE ‘JERSEY DEVIL’ STRIKES AGAIN! — MASSACRE AT BERGEN’S BLUEBERRY FARM

Massacre? I sit up. “Shit.” Catherine Von Bergen is dead, along with six of her goats, Jesus fucking Christ. I never really knew her—she was one of those wealthy, isolated, eccentric people. Owned llamas at one point. Wore colorful overalls all the time.

My head drops into my hands. I did kind of know Ms. Bergen. She’s the type to risk her life for some screaming goats.

Bergen’s Farm is like… thirteen miles away. Could Gwen have gone so far, injured like that? I couldn’t tell whether she was shot in the hip or what. Maybe the biker gang did this. Or Erica! Can’t forget about Erica…

Gwen has to be alive. She has to be. They would’ve found her if she’d collapsed. Right?

Smokey licks my face and I push him away. I have no idea what to do. I can’t trust Gwen or Gwenwolf. Either could come back here, endanger themselves or someone else. Either could meet the biker gang on the road.

At least I know Emilio is at the hospital, safe. Mom is on a cruise ship, far from this hell. I hope, god I hope she hasn’t heard about any of this shit. I hope she can actually manage to enjoy herself, but I’m sure my lack of response to her texts and calls isn’t comforting. I don’t even know where my Dyer-phone is.

I sink back into the couch, forehead pounding. I almost fall asleep again, until I hear a deep, metallic purr.

Pop! Putt-putt-putt…

Still in my bloody, half-ripped t-shirt and sweats, I open the front door, breathless.

Rainy Williams. Can’t forget that face, even when it’s obscured by exhaust—her mugshot is seared into my brain. Yellow eyes, underlined by pink-purple brushstrokes that only make her look more awake. Her nose is flat, nostrils flared. She’s let the shaved half of her head grow—it almost completely covers her scar now. Her hair is every shade of silver. She’s not old, or young. Chews gum psychotically, and I can see a million micro-muscles in her face and neck. Her motorcycle is low to the earth and black, coated in a film of pineland dust, rumbling. The headlight sits between two rib-bones attached with wire.

She’s stalling in my driveway. Glances at me quickly, eyes like candle flames. “Hey baby.”

Her note is in my hands. I crush it.

“How ‘bout you change clothes and we go for a ride?”

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Strap on and strap in, is about to take us on a chaotic journey!!!

WE HOSE EACH OTHER down and chug water from the metal tip. Fucking freezing, but I’m already numb from spending the night outside, tied to a chair. Numb is good, almost warm. Then my muscles spasm, keep spasming. Gwen holds me for a minute.

Find my glasses on a patio table, between flashlights. Lenses smudged.

We go inside, soaked naked skin and searching for Smokey. We find him in the downstairs bathroom near the kitchen. Every door in this house has a dead latch at its top, shiny and recently installed. Gwen has to reach to open it, I can’t. Smokey runs out panting. There’s glass on the floor, and a bowl of water. I wonder whether this is some fucked-up-Dyer-torture-ritual, but I notice the glass is from the broken mirror.

“What the…?”

He couldn’t have done it himself. I check his paws for glass. There are pieces, but they’re big enough to pick free with my nails. I wipe away any traces of his blood and take him upstairs with me. Gwen is in the shower.

Her bedroom is bigger than any bedroom should be, the queen sized mattress takes up too little space in the big, off-white square. The bed looks sterile. Sensible footwear is strewn against the wall: hiking boots and sneakers.

Above one of the nightstands is a human-sized hole. I peer up at it, past the insulation pulled apart, beyond the supporting beams into the blackness and remember when Gwen showed up at the diner with a broken foot after jumping off the roof of this house.

I turn to the bathroom door.

Everything smells like eucalyptus mint. A refreshing change. But when I get closer, I can’t deny the slight reek of copper. Open the door and steam envelops me. Slide the curtain aside, step into hot rain. The water pressure is strong, hits like it means it.

Gwen’s got a sudsy mohawk and she’s buffing her back with a scrub brush. Thousands of red lines on her skin. There’s no trace of blood except for a faint, pink ring around the drain.

She rinses the brush, strangles the rest of the body wash on it—half the bottle. “I’ll clean you,” she says. Because I’m exhausted.

The brush works up and down my body rough and fast. Gentle over my flushed neck and breasts, lingering.

“Later.”

She smiles. Clean teeth. Fluidly hangs the brush to a hook and grabs the shampoo bottle. “Bend over.” She’s having too much fun.

I try to smile back but my cheeks are stiff. While she massages my forehead, the shampoo stings cuts on my scalp that I didn’t know were there. I jolt upright.

She freezes.

“Did you claw or bite my head? Last night?”

“I—I wouldn’t do it there. Too weird.”

Grip my scalp. I feel where my skin parts into two thin, curved lines on my flesh. Too precise to be from tooth or nail.

“There’s no way.” She starts breathing from her mouth. “No way. You’d—you would’ve turned under the moon last night, I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I bend over again. Marie and the gang must’ve sliced me while I was drugged. God knows why. “I’m sorry.”

She resumes massaging my head, avoiding the cuts.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “About the other night. About last night. About all of it. I bet it only gave you more reasons not to want… what I have.”

“I’m glad you get it.” I stand upright, rub my slick curves across hers as I move past to rinse my hair. “But don’t be too sorry about last night…”

Gwen grimaces, touches her throat.

“You good?”

She coughs in her fist. “Something’s—” Doubles over, hacks. A shiny, golden string drops heavy from her mouth with a line of spit. Marie’s cross necklace. “Shit.” Gwen kicks it down the drain like it’s a silverfish.

I laugh before I can stop myself. We look at each other. Nothing feels real.

“Oh god.” My skin’s too hot. “I don’t know why—I don’t—”

“Don’t act like you killed someone.”

Can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny. I almost apologize, but that would only make it worse. I stumble out of the shower, spin through the curtain. Dizzy.

Borrow her clothes—sweatshirt and track pants that are too long. Tossed my bloody garbs from last night in a trash bag outside with the discarded zip-ties and red-stained rags and paper towels. When we return downstairs, Gwen fetches a rope from the garage and ties it to Smokey’s collar for a makeshift leash. He tugs as a test—dislikes it.

Quickly, I find the TV remote. Flip on the local news channel. News 12 New Jersey. 7:42 a.m. A snowstorm is coming, maybe. No, reality hasn’t caught up with us yet.

Turn it off. Think about my fingerprints that are all over the place. Maybe they’ll look for those. Hope not. It would be worse if they found us here with a suspicious trash bag full of blood-crusted clothes, though.

Gwen knows the way to my house through the woods. A couple miles. Five? She hoists me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, holds Smokey’s leash and the trash with one hand. It’s sort of mortifying, but I like being held. Wrap my arms around her like a damsel and shut my eyes, imagining waves crashing on a soft sand shore.

The ocean boils. Gwen gets so hot she wakes me. I squirm against her flannel, damp with sweat. “What—”

“Coyotes. They’re eating the bodies.” She gazes over her shoulder.

“Good. That’s good cover, come on.” I slap her butt. “Giddy-up.”

Not funny. She digs her heels in and I feel her joints shift all together, loosening.

“Gwen—”

She drops me, shoves Smokey’s leash and the trash bag into my arms. Every second notches her up. Red blotches all over her skin, eyes glazed over. “I gotta check this out… I smell something… someone…”

“Do not do this now. Please, please, please no.”

“They don’t respect us.” Her lips peel back on elongating teeth. “They want to take and steal.”

“Are we talking about coyotes?!”

“Yes!” Her knees hit the forest floor. “Yes, yes, yeeeeaaaaas!”

Her back arches unnaturally as she falls on her side, legs snap backward and her arms and face stretch and she sprouts fur like a time-lapse. Her clothes split as her body cracks and reforms. Gwenwolf exhales long and slow, rolls over and shakes on all fours. Bounds away.

Alone with Smokey, I do anything but scream, anything but draw attention to what I’m sure is another shitshow beyond comprehension. I hardly breathe. It’d happened so fast. Look into the sky and spy the day moon.

I flick it off.

Coyotes yelp and Smokey whines. Not sure what he’s contributing to their conversation. I should still try to get home as fast as I can, only I’m pretty deep in the woods and I don’t know where to go. No breadcrumbs, just monotonous pines. Oaks and other shit too, probably, but I’m not an ecologist. When I look down, the twigs warp and wiggle.

Minutes pass. I pick up her ruined clothes from the sandy dirt and stuff them in the trash bag. At some point, I trip on roots and stay on the ground. Afraid she won’t come back.

But she does. She runs to me, naked, panting, and human.

She yells something.

“Gwen?”

“Have to talk to you.” She’s gasping, shaking. Shaken. “I have to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“Bad…” She takes my hand (stove-hot!) and brings me to standing. Pinches her brow. “I smelled something bad. Something covering my scent.”

Eye her warily. “OK.”

“It was strong, stronger than the coyote smell.”

“I need you to take me home.”

She looks back again with a drunken gaze. “Something pissed all over everything.”

“I’m cold. I’m tired. You’re naked.”

“Bianca, I’m—” Gwen glances at herself. “I’m trying to tell you, warn you about… a stranger. A stranger that thinks they own us.”

“How about we leave before a stranger sees us?”

“We’ve already been seen. We’ve been fucking pissed on. It’s gonna keep happening. It’s gonna keep happening, unless I stop it.”

“Gwen.” I don’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is, I can’t handle it right now. “You can stop it after you take me home, OK? Please.”

She lifts me up and over her shoulder, bends to pick up the trash bag and Smokey’s leash.

Her footfalls rock me, we both settle into a rhythm as she softly cries. She smells like soap, but it’s fainter now. I’m the eyes in the back of her head, in case anyone follows.

↟↟↟

When we get to my house, I sleep like I’m dead. My mom chases me as a headless corpse. Or maybe she’s running away. Have to force myself awake. Gwen is perched beside me, staring. Sticks an overflowing glass of water in my face.

“Drink.”

I do. “Can I have some orange juice?”

She practically leaps to my door, holds onto the frame. “Food?”

I’m starving. “Eggo waffles. Six of them. We have the blueberry ones in the freezer.” They’re off-brand but I like saying “Eggo.”

“Alright.”

In the meantime I call for Smokey, who rests his head on my bed. I scratch his forehead, making his white-tufted brows rise and fall. Can’t wait to cuddle him, all warm in bed—

Tonight.

“Gwen?” I call. “What time is it?”

“Four… fifteen.”

“Are you heading out soon?”

The toaster pops. Plastic crackles as she refills it and presses down. Chick-chick. Reminds me of pumping a shotgun.

“Yeah. Just wanted to make sure you were OK.”

Smile to myself, but it’s short-lived. “Have you put on the news?”

A pause.

She can’t pretend she doesn’t hear me. “Gwen?”

“You should eat. Digest.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe we can pause time. She brings me breakfast in bed. I eat the Eggos like cookies, no syrup. Texture and taste of a blueberry, orange childhood. My head doesn’t feel so heavy anymore.

“The news,” I say.

“Kiss me, first. Before I have to wait again.”

Stupid. I press my body into hers, fits like a glove. Savor the inside of her mouth. Her lashes flutter. She is squeezable, solid heat; I thaw against her hungry tongue. My clit beats, commanding my hips, soft and cool, into her burning hands.

“Quick,” I exhale, shimmying free from her track pants and underwear. She gasps into a smile, still naked.

I mount myself between her thighs and plant my pussy on hers—slippery. Gwen has one hand on my asscheek and the other in her hair. From our positions, I’d be hard to bite.

I try not to think about that. Try not to think about anything but getting off.

Roll my hips, rub my hills into her valleys mercilessly; it’s a workout. Her thighs flex and her abs are a hopscotch grid. We watch each other, moaning because we know we have to be separated, tonight, tomorrow night, cyclically, over and over. She cums between our velvet lips. I dismount and lick her, sizzles my tongue.

“To make sure you come back,” I whisper, droplets down my thighs.

She breathes in deep and grabs my hair, grip hot and sharp. “What about my turn?”

My eyes widen at the rash that’s spread sporadic over Gwen’s heart, breasts, stomach, neck, face—

“Fuck! You’re shifting!”

Gwen lets go of me and whimpers, hiding her face in her hands. I take the water from the nightstand and chuck it at her. Steams off. Her breathing slows. Rashes dissipate.

“Ohmygod, did that work? Did that actually work?”

She lowers her hands, swallows. Jaw clenched tight. She wipes away her drool—embarrassed.

“I’ll have to get a spray bottle for you!”

She shudders, scratches her arms. “You better tell me to leave.”

“Wait! We gotta see what’s going on—” I sprint to the living room.

“You better put on some clothes!” Gwen shouts through her teeth.

Turn on the TV. News 12 New Jersey.

BREAKING: FATAL ANIMAL ATTACKS flying across the screen in big red letters.

!!!

The Dyers’ house is on TV, lit up by police lights and the setting sun. They’ve taped it off and they’re taking pictures.

They cut to the press conference. Seems rushed, informal.

Sheriff appears, looking small. Dark eyes dry, blinking too much. He looks at the reporter, not the camera. “So far, we’ve found three deceased victims near this residence. Once we confirm their identities, we’ll announce it as soon as possible.”

Everyone already knows who.

“‘Til then, we’re investigating. We’ve got other counties involved, this is an area-wide emergency. No one goes in the forest except law enforcement. Trails are closed. This is a coyote, possibly a bear attack. Could be an escaped zoo animal or exotic pet—we don’t know. If you see something, stay away and call 911.” He glances at his notepad.

Cut to the news anchor. “Two individuals are missing. Gwen Dyer and Emilio Valenzuela, a minor—”

I clutch my stomach.

A wail echoes off the walls as I hunch down the hall, lurching into my bedroom.

Gwen is sitting up stiff with moon eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t—”

I hold myself with two arms on the bed. “WHERE IS HE?”

She won’t look at me. I slap her. I think I scream. Before I can hit her again, she catches my wrist. “Find him,” I pant. “Find him right fucking now. Find him and bring him back or I never want to see you again.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m dead serious. Get the fuck out and find him, Gwen! Now!”

She stands, picks a wrinkled t-shirt from the floor and throws it on, chest heaving. “Why are you acting like—” can’t finish.

I rip her track pants from the bed and throw them at her.

She pulls them on, turning red.

“Let’s go find him,” I say, trying to calm her more than myself. It’s already too late, though. It’s fucked. From the sea of laundry on the floor, I slide on sweatpants. “L-let’s go.”

Smokey watches silent, ears pinned back and head lowered as I scramble around for my jacket and shoes.

I turn to leave. “Meet me outside.”

Gwen snatches my arm. “It’s getting late.” Dark shards poke through her fingertips as she groans, “I can’t help you.”

Yank myself away and run out of my room, out the front door. A smashed camera, flecked with dried blood, is on my doorstep. Scrawled across the cracked casing in permanent marker, it reads: MAILBX

Nothing to do but go to the mailbox. Concrete cold under my bare feet, pebbles stabbing soles while I scurry. Open and reach inside—there’s a letter, no envelope. It’s scrawled on the back of an advertisement for lawn services:

THE KID IS BEHIND THE DINER A LITTLE MESSED UP BUT ALIVE THIS TIME KEPT HIM SAFE FROM LAST NIGHT’S FUN I NEED A LITTLE SUGAR. BROKE A WINDOW AND EMPTIED THE CASH REGISTER. NOT WORTH IT NEED SOME MORE SUGAR. I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU WILL SOON HAVE MORE SUGAR SAVE SOME FOR ME SEE? IM SWEET IF YOU SHARE BABY

FEVERCHAIN 17

READ FEVERCHAIN 14.5

Voiceover by and yes, it is flawless.

CONTENT WARNING: Self harm

I COME TO feeling like an ice block. My glasses are missing, so it’s all a little blurry and headache-inducing but the Dyers’ backyard is illuminated by porch lights. The black expanse of pines lies ahead. Zip-ties chafe my skin—I’m stuck to the adirondack chair’s arms and legs.

Straining my neck, I try to orient myself. Keep having to force my eyes open, and telling them to stay open. In a navy athleisure get-up, Marie Dyer surveys the woods ahead, shotgun in her hands. She’s walking the perimeter of where the light touches, where there are black metal rings in the somehow-still-green-grass. What the hell are those? I squint. On the porch I see them too, black spiky rings—bear traps.

Open my mouth and it’s bone-dry. Hurts when I swallow; I’m running out of spit to drink. “My dog,” I croak. “Where’s my dog?”

Marie spins around startled, blonde tail flicking her face. I shouldn’t surprise her while she carries that gun. “You’re awake.”

“Where’s Smokey?”

“Don’t be silly.” Marie scans the dark expanse once more before walking towards me, her face fuzzy and blank but eyes trained on my restraints. “We have no reason to hurt him.”

And so many reasons to hurt me. At least now, the only life they’ll hold over my head will be my own. “You’re gonna kill me?”

Marie ducks her chin, rolls each foot in her laced hiking boots. Her ankles click. “What would you do in our shoes?”

“Not this.”

A long sigh, a knowing smile. Every time she adjusts her armed stance, I flinch. “You’ve never had a child, Bianca.”

Here we go.

“Having a child—it should change everything. I want you to know that what we did, what we do… is for her benefit. We’ve made some mistakes, of course.” She glances at me, face backlit by porch lights. “Mistakes are inevitable. Not irremediable.”

“If you kill me, she’ll never forgive you.”

“Oh, honey. You don’t even know her.”

I make fists. Don’t speak, don’t react. She’s holding a big gun.

“Gwen hasn’t been herself for months. She wasn’t always so emotional. So… full of hate.”

I raise my brows. She was just better at hiding it, yet I’m the one that doesn’t know her. Right.

“She was responsible. She used to take care of herself.”

That stings.

“I don’t blame her, I don’t even blame you, Bianca. What’s happened is terrible. Incomprehensible. So we must be terrible and incomprehensible to survive it. Do you understand?” She leans in close to me. Her eyes still freak me out. “Do you understand how hard it is to keep a family together?”

As someone subtly trying to break up my mom’s relationship, not really. Plus, I never knew my dad. I think his name is Mike, and Mom thinks he’s in Miami.

There’s a strange intimacy between Marie and me. One or both of us will be dead soon. Each of us might as well be talking to the void—death yawns when we open our mouths.

“What was it like—the first time?”

“What do you think? It was awful.” I think she’s through talking, but she surprises me. “We were in the car. I thought I was losing my mind. Pierce pulled over and knocked Gwen out with a fire extinguisher. Then I lost my mind for a second time, because I thought he’d killed her.”

That isn’t the sort of thing you can tell your therapist. I wonder how many times they’ve hurt her, how many ways, and hold back bile.

“You know.” She hesitates. “Before you got involved, I really wondered whether she was a ‘werewolf’ or if the four of us had all gone crazy, all at once. Folie en famille.”

“What?”

“A delusion, shared by a family. I thought that’s what we had. So, in a way, you had to get involved. Because I had to know if it was true.” Her smile is slight. “We all had our reasons for letting you in. We’d just hoped you’d be more manageable.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s a little late for apologies, honey,” she says over the butt of her shotgun. It’s angled at the patio floor, but I can tell she’s comfy with it. “I’m sure you feel the same.”

I nod, press my ankles against their restraints. “So, you think there’s a cure or what?”

Her brows pinch. “We’ve tried things.”

“Like?”

She puts a finger over her lips, eyes ever-roving.

Wind disturbs the pine canopy in pacifying rushes, an inviting abyss. If it weren’t for the moon, I wouldn’t be able to make out the tops of the trees. I keep imagining figures in the dark, shapes emerging into our view. But the imaginings are weightless. Phantoms. Gwen is solid—she sends tremors through the air. She affects me.

“Thought I heard something,” Marie whispers.

I try to quiet the chattering of my teeth. Sleep, no, not sleep—collapse tempts me again—my mind still foggy from the tranquilizer or whatever they put in me. I keep nodding off, but the plastic pinching my wrists reminds me to stay awake. Pay attention.

“Where’s Wade and your husband?”

She ignores that question. I spy the vein in her forehead.

They’re out looking for Gwen. Maybe lying in wait nearby, I don’t know. I purse my lips, make eye contact with Marie’s shotgun.

Shiver. I need water, but there’s no use in asking for it.

Marie strides away, form fading into the night. I can feel the world spin. I can feel time move, too slowly.

Come on. Come on.

After I don’t know how long, Marie’s footsteps are behind me. It’s still the dead of night.

“You want to know about a cure?”

I do.

“We tried wolfsbane. Silver. Bloodletting.”

“Bl-bloodletting?”

“For blood transfusions. We have a contact at the hospital who doesn’t ask questions.” Marie appears beside me, on my left. The shadows on her face twist sinister and I don’t know if it’s real. She’s slowing my heart, tightening a fist around it and juicing it like a fruit. “We fed her a fetus.”

I jolt against my restraints. My head is heavy on my shoulder—neck kinked, spasms.

Marie and her shotgun are on my right. “Did you hear that?”

I shake my head. But I feel something, inside and outside of myself. A node of heat building, drawing closer.

“I thought I heard a scream.” One of her hands falls to the walkie talkie strapped to her waist; she clutches it. “You didn’t hear it?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Don’t lie!” But she’s not asking the walkie talkie—she doesn’t want to know.

“I was dreaming.”

Marie shudders. Now her hand clutches at her neck. Her cross necklace catches the light.

I’m not cold anymore, and I wonder if it’s from the drug. Sweat trickles down my spine as tears trickle from Marie’s otherwise stoney face—whatever hold she had over my heart is gone. There’s no more pain in my chest. Just pressure.

I moan. It comes from the bottom of myself.

Marie clamps her hand over my mouth, her nails digging into my jaw.

I wail, I want it to rise over the pines but it stops against her cold flesh.

“Stop that,” she snaps.

Besides her breathing, it’s so quiet. My skin prickles hot pin needles. My voice vibrates against Marie’s hand again.

I’m feverish?

Marie gasps, eyes wide as she stares into mine. “You’re calling her.” She releases my face and wipes her palm on her hip. She stares at me with lip-curled awe as I do my best pitchy scratchy howl at the moon.

Then we both hear it, a soft, thudding gallop. Marie stares at the woods.

And the woods stare back with reflective eyes at a height no predator should be. The pressure built up in me starts to subside into pleasure. I can’t help it. My toes curl at the idea that Gwen comes when I call, and it’s a fulfillment I’ve never felt, a validation so alien and divine that I feel my sense of self expand like a pool of water.

A tall dog, still too thin, is dark and wet with red, skulking fast like wild animals do—blink and you’ll miss her.

Marie must catch her because she’s desperate enough to sizzle and spit into her walkie talkie. “Pierce, Pierce? Wade? Hello? Anybody? I’ve got it. I’ve got it. Pierce? Wade?”

No answer from the boys. The walkie talkie hits the patio—the plastic back ricochets and the batteries roll out. Mrs. Dyer, a fresh widow, whimpers.

Gwenwolf weaves in and out of where the light touches, as if the illumination is uncomfortable but she is drawn here. She pants as she wades in and out of the artificial glow—whines at a pitch and volume I feel in my teeth.

I glance at Marie and realize Gwen is not wavering from the light but from her mom’s shotgun. Her mother, eyes icy shiny, aims steady. Manicured finger on the trigger.

“NO!” I shriek. “Don’t.”

Marie doesn’t look at me. Pumps it—chick-chick. Flips the shotgun, barrel under her chin, BOOM.

And I’m covered in Marie Dyer. When I scream, I taste her. Spit and I can’t even wipe my face. Iron and gunpowder burn my nostrils.

The shot’s echo seems to linger. A piece of something hard slides down my temple and I don’t want to know what it is. Whatever trance I was in is over.

Gwen is missing. Spooked. I weep with shut lips.

When she slinks back, I’m wide awake to see her. She’s unsettled, tensing and sharp ears flattening when she refocuses on the illuminated circle.

The circle. Circle.

“Gwen, stop! There’s bear traps!”

She lifts her head, slightly.

“Bear! Traps!” I rasp and wheeze. Try to charades it with sound. “Shhh CKK! Shh CKKAH! Ow!” I don’t know what the fuck a bear trap sounds like. Probably not like a cartoon trap door, but that’s all I got.

My limited vision can sorta spot where they disturb the grass, loosely staggered in a ring. If she steps over one, she might hit another. She’s almost upon them now.

“ERRT!” I make a sound like a negative buzzer on a game show. It always stops Smokey in his tracks. “WAERRT!”

She finally looks at me, just for a moment. Bends to sniff the open, iron jaws.

“Watch your nose!” I squawk. “Jesus.”

One paw at a time, she steps over that trap and the two behind it. Her control is surprising, gaze focused and scary in its humanity over cautious black curled claws. After she avoids the layer of snares, she surveys the ground with her snout and looks at me. Waits. For direction.

“Y-you understand me?”

She just stares.

My throat tightens. “I don’t think there’s anything else—any more traps, I mean.” Marie’s blood and brain fluid have chilled my bones. And now I see that there’s nothing between me and Gwenwolf. She sees it too, and beelines to me.

I squeal and she halts, close enough that I can smell her acidic, animal tang. Between pine needles and leaf bits, there are dark globs and strings stuck in her fur. A particularly offensive gelatinous hunk hangs from her neck—some piece of Mayor Dyer or Wade, probably. Hopefully.

Bile rises to my mouth. Gwen comes closer, dog breath and death. I can’t speak. Her nose, hot and slick, nudges my wrist where it’s zip-tied to the arm of the chair. She licks it, tracing the thin, plastic shackle. I feel the slightest twinge of teeth on my skin and scream again, but it’s more air than sound. She backs off.

“Use your hands! Your—paw-hands!” I flex my fingers, tab them on the adirondack arm. I think Gwenwolf has opposable thumbs, but I haven’t seen her use them.

She turns and puts her nose in my face. “No,” I say, but she licks my cheek and scalp, cleaning or tasting or both. As she angles her mouth over the top of my head the gelatinous chunk, cold and wet, kisses my chin, almost my lip.

I swerve my head, willing to break my own neck.“GET THE FUCK OFF!”

She adjusts, sticky fur tickling me in the worst way, and keeps licking. I scoot, straining against my zip-ties to hit my head into her nose, soccer-style.

She recoils. Muzzle quivers. Moon fangs flash, long and thick. Oh fuck. Oh god.

“Gwen?”

More teeth.

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming. Goodbye, weird world. Her head flies back, her body tenses rock hard.

She sneezes. On me, in a wet whoosh. I hack out a deranged laugh.

Gwen shakes, getting more shit on me. I’ve been kind of extremely overwhelmed, but it dawns on me that holy shit, the police are gonna be here soon and find me zip-tied and covered in blood beside Marie Dyer’s headless corpse. I couldn’t have done it tied up, right? But it might elevate their investigation from ‘animal attack’ to something more intense. Something where they search the Dyers’ house and find evidence of Gwen’s condition. And interrogate me. What the hell would I say? Yeah, the mayor and Wade died in an animal attack, then Mrs. Dyer found out and shot herself. Easy enough. True enough.

I was zip-tied to the chair and encircled with bear traps because…

“I gotta get out of here.” Gwen’s probing her mother’s corpse. “We gotta get out of here.” I peep above the dead woman’s neck. All that’s attached to it is a thin flap of skin, barely cradling the back of her emptied skull-shell. A strip of blonde hair’s attached to it, trailing into where the blood has gathered between the patio’s bricks.

I vomit on myself. “Fuck.” Lean back in the adirondack and try to slip my feet free, but the ties are too tight.

“Gwen. Get me out of this chair.” She could break it, maybe without breaking me.

Her breathing deepens, and I hear her lapping. Don’t want to look.

“You have to be kidding.”

She’s nibbling at the corpse’s catastrophic wound.

I turn away. “Please don’t.”

It gets so much worse. She punctures, grips, and tears—opening her mother’s body. It steams into my face like opening an oven full of rank pork belly.

That’s it. I grit my teeth and stretch against the zip-ties, shake until the chair wobbles. I lean left, lean right. Left, right. Totter on one leg, then the other. I lean too far left and Gwen’s snarl warbles at me as something is popped and pulverized in her mouth.

“Hey!” I bark. Teeter totter again. “Don’t fucking growl at me.” I groan and press all my weight against the back of the chair. Tip it. My backside slams the patio. The zip-ties rip my skin and blood rushes heavy into my head, puke-soaked hair slapping my face.

Fantastic.

Feel like the top of my head’s gonna burst like Marie’s. The bodily odors around me are strong, each flavor like a dirty dish shard to the brain. My vision blurs to black wool, and I’m too tired to be afraid.

When I awake, the sky is gray. Gwen, so coated in blood she looks like a zombie, is crouching beside me, warm hands gripping and smearing something syrupy on my arm.

“Bianca? Bianca?” Her stained mouth trembles. “Are you OK?”

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” I flipped this fucking chair myself.

Gwen sobs. She still has dog breath. “What happened?”

I look behind her and see bones poking through a mangled, pink hulk. “I think it’s pretty obvious, baby.” I lick my lips and instantly regret it. Thinking is like cross-country skiing on peanut butter. “Scissors… Get some scissors, get me out of this chair. We clean ourselves, get Smokey, and go home.” My bed with the lavender comforter and the radiator on, please.

“They’re gone, right?”

Her family, she must mean. I regard her gore-drenched, naked frame. “I’d say so, yeah.”

She sobs again. This time, with happiness.

READ FEVERCHAIN 16

YES (Grimelight) WROTE, SANG, PRODUCED A FEVERCHAIN SONG. As a lover of electronic/ambient music, I find this incredibly sick. Now is the perfect time to share it as we reach this climax of the story, (one of many, we’re dealing with lesbians after all, har har har). FUCKING ENJOY AND ASK FOR IT TO BE PLAYED AT THE CLUB AHHHHHHHH ⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️⛓️

READ FEVERCHAIN 14

Voiceover by the versatile

BRENNEKE ORIGINAL SLUGS are good for dangerous game defense due to their deep penetration. They can go more than 40 inches into ballistic gelatin in a straight line. They can go through thick muscle and bone.

Each of us have Brenneke slugs loaded in our Mossberg 500 Slugsters, mounted with tactical lights that cut white beams through our dark backyard, on the grass where the pool used to be. We got rid of it a few years ago ‘cause I almost drowned while I was high. If Derek hadn’t saved me, I’d be dead or brain damaged. More brain damaged.

Yeah. Derek was a lifeguard for a couple summers in high school so he knew how to give CPR. Cam still calls us gay because he gave me mouth-to-mouth, but it’s way more gay to let a dude fucking die because you’re too afraid to give him CPR. Like, think about that.

Dad has the tranquilizer gun. He’s slumped in an adirondack chair, watching clouds pass over the moon.

Bianca is in the adirondack beside him, but she’s zip-tied to it, unconscious. Gwen hasn’t come. Even after we spread Bianca’s blood around to try and draw attention to her scent. Mom just cut her scalp a little. Bianca is on morphine, doing fine. I’m fucking jealous, actually.

“We have to go out there tonight,” Dad says. There’s an “order of events” we’ve decided on. If it attacks Dad before he can tranquilize it, then I shoot to kill. Aim for the chest (heart/lungs) or the head if I’m close enough—under the jaw to hit the brain/internal organs ‘cause skulls are tough.

To hunt it, we’re gonna take our ATVs. They’re technically prohibited in the state forests, but who gives a shit. These can go over 80 mph. I put my hair in a low ponytail that’ll fit under the helmet.

Mom’s staying behind with a tranquilizer gun, Slugster, pistol, and a walkie talkie that has up to a 16-mile range. She and Bianca are encircled with bear traps.

Gwen doesn’t turn into a bear, but into something skinnier and faster. That’s a problem, particularly for aiming. But she—it’s not falling for the bait so we gotta hunt it. Sheriff’s already told people to stay out of the woods for the coyotes, and it’s night. Hope that’s enough for people to steer clear. And the fact that it’s freezing out, 30 degrees. I wish it would snow. Fucking love the snow.

“This is a test, Wade,” Dad tells me before we start our ATVs, facing the forest. “Don’t be afraid.”

Fuck my life. “I’m not.” I breathe in the piney stink of home. Dad is kind of a weird hardass because his dad was a vet who died when a horse kicked his face into the back of his skull. Dad married Mom because she’s kind of a weird hardass, too. Both of them and Gwen always made me feel like a fuck-up because they’re tryhard freaks. But you know what?

I’m a good fucking shot.

It’s ‘cause I’m calm and aim straight. I have this breathing method. Obviously I hold my breath when I pull the trigger, but before and after I keep my heartrate steady. Take it in for four seconds. Hold for two. Release for six. Yoga, bitch. And I practice shooting targets practically every night, especially since the werewolf situation.

We tie bandanas on our handles soaked in Bianca’s blood. Wack as fuck but we have to do it. Can’t wait to burn them later and forget about this.

Dad’s probably gonna kill her and I don’t know what the fuck he’s gonna do with the body. Maybe the overgrown mutt will finish the job. He won’t tell me and I don’t wanna know. Some things I’m not involved with. Other things, I am.

He’s been needing my help more and more, ‘cause Mom’s acting like it’s a lost cause. She’s not having fun with it. Not fully on board with Dad’s spiritual approach. I’m not either, but the sooner this shit is over with, the sooner I can get back to my life.

When we get Gwen again, I know she’s not leaving that basement until she’s cured or we have to put it down. My parents have tried having it both ways. It’s not working. They don’t want Gwen to hate them, but it’s too late. They’re fucking delusional. It’s because Gwen was their favorite. They gave up on me.

Something happened when I was a kid. Something bad. At Pineworld Adventures Summer Camp, I threw this kid’s backpack in the lake—it was a big joke. I didn’t know it had his EpiPen in it. I barely knew what an EpiPen was. I was nine.

Anyway, that kid got stung by a bee, swelled up like a strawberry and never breathed again. My parents gave up on me after that. They’ll never admit it, but that’s the truth.

Dad drives in front of me. We both have our high beams on. We want to be seen. Wind whips the exposed sliver of skin on my neck. We’re going fast, surprisingly smooth as we kick up sand.

It’s true that Gwen could be gone. She’s been missing for a couple days. If that’s the case, then we wait. We wait for the news report of an animal attack and do some vigilante justice.

“It’s our responsibility,” Dad had said. “That blood is on our hands.”

How? It’s on Gwen’s hands for being a selfish cunt and on Bianca’s hands especially because she wouldn’t fucking listen. How did she not realize how dangerous this situation is?

We were trying to be proactive.

Dad yells, slams the breaks, and I rear-end him.

“Dammit Wade!” He punches the steering wheel. “Dammit!”

I leap out of my ATV. “What is it?” We were going fast. Way too fast. “Why’d you stop?”

“Came out of nowhere…” he mutters with his hand over his mouth and I realize that he’s the one who fucked up. He hit something. Now he won’t meet my eye. I almost smile.

A weak groan sounds beneath the purrs of our running ATVs. Dad dismounts, removes his helmet. I do the same, look at what he’s staring at. There’s a kid on the ground, leg at the wrong angle. The principal’s kid, Emilio.

“Hey.” Dad crouches. “Can you hear me?”

Emilio doesn’t respond, too busy trying not to cry. There’s a camera in his hands. Dad snatches it.

“Wait!” Emilio cries. “D-don’t touch that. Don’t press anything.”

Dad tosses the camera to me. “Check this.”

The kid wails, “Don’t! Don’t throw it!”

“What the hell are you doing out here at night?” Dad kneels to get a better look. “Good god, your leg.”

“I think it’s broken,” Emilio blubbers.

I put the camera under my ATV wheel, but Dad tells me to hold it.

“What’s on the camera, Emilio?” he asks, forcing calm.

“I’m an avant-garde filmmaker, so. Lemme edit it and you might see it one day.” Emilio grimaces. “I need to go to the hospital, man. I mean, mayor…”

I flip open the camera screen and see shaky footage of sneakers snapping sticks, lit by a flashlight. I fastforward until he points the camera at two reflective eyes in the distance—two eyes at a scary fucking height.

“My Panasonic,” Emilio whines. “Give it back. Please, man.”

I show Dad the camera screen and play back the footage. He swears. Shakily, he removes a little baggie of pills from his front pocket with a gloved hand. Gives the pills to Emilio with his water bottle.

“Take these. For the pain.”

Emilio eyes the pills. “Gimme back my camcorder first.”

Dad does. “We’ll take care of you, son.”

Emilio winces. Takes the pills because, yeah, he’s hurting bad.

Those are sleeping pills. Very strong. Should give him short term memory loss. He immediately passes out and pisses himself.

Dad takes the camera from Emilio’s limp hands and rubs his forehead. “We have to handle this.” He looks at me. “Can you take him?”

“What’s our story?” I dread relaying this to Mom on walkie talkie. “We aren’t supposed to be riding ATV’s out here—”

“You were riding your e-bike.”

“Me? You’re the one who hit him!”

“Wade, for Christ’s sake. Then say you found him like that, I’m sure it won’t raise any suspicion. You’re all still children. At your age, I was raising you.” He looks at me, so disgusted he has to turn away. Like I’m the monster. “I have to stay out here. It’s out here. It’s close. He saw it.”

“Shit.” This is already a fucking mess. I move behind the kid and prepare to hoist him without twisting his leg more.

“Take him home. Swap places with Mom and have her clean him up—”

A surge, a scream, and the ATV flips. I fall on my back. Smell it before I see it. Hear it, too.

Wet choking and squeaking. There it is. The soft animal features pulled back, creased with hate, revealing the white fang conveyor belt between dark pink gums backlit by my dual spotlight highbeams. Dad’s telling it no, Dad’s telling it stop, Dad’s calling it Gwen as it seems to chug the sopping ropes of his innards, the smell of sweat, metal, and shit slapping me in the face making my eyes water.

I’ve had this dream before.

Inhale four seconds. Hold two. One, two… I hold my breath too long padding for my shotgun and gasp. Start over: one, two, three, four but the dog smiles over me with dark slobber. Humid heat and hair as it rips my shotgun away, the strap wrapped across me snapping. I reach for my pistol, like I’d practiced, and it aims its snout to stamp my hand off. Our eyes meet.

“Fuck you, Gwendolen.” She hates her full name. “Mom should’ve aborted you, you ffffreak.”

It digs claws into my chest, dragging them until they catch on something hard. Watches my face. I’m not feeling the pain it wants me to feel because—adrenaline. Dreaming. I don’t feel anything, you stupid cunt. But yeah, I see my split abdomen and can imagine. A slick tangled mass of pink, red, purple, gray. Carefully, it pulls a bloody hose from me to disappear down its black, dribbling maw. I think that’s my colon.

Dad gurgles a low lament. The mutt blurs in my vision, over its pointed ears I see its long body arched and swaying, it rumbles like a motor, it methodically crushes the bones below my knees with the side of its mouth and consumes like a machine. The kid is partially beneath it, getting sprayed with my blood and stuff while stuck in a drugged doze. I can see the whites of his eyes. He’s never been in my dream before. My dreams usually aren’t this complicated.

Doesn’t matter. They always end the same way.

READ FEVERCHAIN 15

READ FEVERCHAIN 13

A TENSE voiceover from ! Enjoy.

AFTER WORK, I stomp into the woods without Smokey. Make my presence known. The sun is already half dead. A dog or coyote or whatever howls until my spine tingles. Fury keeps me warm, but it doesn’t reach my fingertips. Clench my fists.

“Gwen!” I’m already hoarse. “Gwen!” I shout, through a pang of shame and dread I don’t know how I’ll ever shirk.

Silence presses on my chest. The forest is flat and gray. For miles, it seems, there’s nothing but trees like stakes in the ground. If she was here, I’d know. “Wade came to see me today.” I speak like she’s beside me. “They know you left.”

Each icy word shoots up my root canals. I stumble, weak and wobbly. So fucking weak. “They know. They probably embedded a GPS tracker in your skin or have cameras or wiretapped my house.”

I prop myself on a skinny pine, feels like I’ve been breathing through a straw. “They know something. Maybe everything.”

Cold air scratches my lungs. Cold air leaves me dry. Thousands of tiny cuts in my throat and nostrils. Isn’t she cold? But I know better. Where does she sleep?

I press my forehead into the tree. My glasses haze over. “You can’t just leave when I hurt your feelings.”

I’ll hurt them again.

“I couldn’t find their cameras.”

They’ll hurt more than my feelings.

“I’m scared, Gwen.”

Doesn’t she care?

They’re gonna come get me. Leaves crackle. My heart contracts, swells.

I turn around.

Should’ve known—it’s a fucking squirrel, kicking up dust. Looking for lost nuts.

I slam my hand on the bark until it stings through the numbing chill. “I’ve given up my whole life! My whole fucking life!” Smack, slap. “Maybe it wasn’t much of a life. Maybe that doesn’t impress you.”

I take the package of pork roll from my grocery bag. “It’s all I have.” Chuck it, to stress my point. Watch and wait until stars poke through the sky. The moon—almost full. Almost perfect. And totally uncaring.

On my walk home, pass the spot where we roasted marshmallows and fucked. She could’ve bitten me then. She could’ve bitten me many times. She didn’t.

But if Gwen abandons me like this, she is a monster.

↟↟↟

Thursday, February 25th. The internet claims the moon will be full on the 27th.

Before the sun rose, I went back to the woods to check on the pork roll. It’s still sitting in its plastic package. Untouched.

Then I went home and made myself throw up. Told Mom that Gwen must’ve given me that stomach bug after all. A week later, but whatever. She believed me. Or believed I didn’t want to go on the cruise anymore, at least.

I’m wrapped in a blanket on our front steps shivering slightly, Smokey’s head in my lap. I’m hoping he’ll alert us if he smells, hears, or senses anything strange.

Clyde is packing the car. It’s 39 degrees, but he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and flip flops.

A hand clasps my shoulder. Smells like nail polish. Steadies me. While Clyde puts suitcases in the trunk, Mom bends to my ear, “Bun, you sure you’re still feeling too bad? I know Clyde is excited, but, if you’re feeling up to it, you should come.”

I shake my head, resist the urge to grab her and never let go. “Being stuck on a boat with a stomach bug seems like a bad idea.”

“OK.” She can’t hide the disappointment in her tone, and it makes me feel like shit. “Let me know how you’re feeling. I’ll be texting you.”

“Don’t. I’ll be fine, Mom. Just relax, swim in the heated pool…” Smokey’s head jerks, ears erect. A shiny black truck is descending the shallow hill of our short neighborhood, slowing, slowing. Stops.

Parks with a click and a clunk.

My muscles tighten at the thunk—the driver’s door opens.

This is bold. Concerning.

“Oh, that’s the mayor!” Mom moves towards the car as Mr. Dyer steps out clutching a bouquet of fresh fruit. Bright orange slices, spikes of melon and pineapple, skewered strawberries—all of it unnatural against the barren winterscape.

“Hi there. Sorry to disturb, but my wife made this for you.”

I can hear the entirety of my mom’s gasp from here. Clyde watches warily, leaning on our beat-up Prius.

“We wanted to thank you for taking care of Gwen.”

“Oh, no! She’s always welcome in our home,” Mom sputters. “No need to thank us.”

He touches her arm, lays it on thick. “We really do appreciate it, Elena. You’ve been a lifesaver.” The mayor turns to Clyde and smiles. “Where ya headed?”

“The Bahamas!” Mom’s head is covered by the fruit bouquet. “Bianca won a weeklong cruise!”

“Did she?”

Mayor Dyer’s eyes land on me. His forehead shimmers panic under the late morning sun; his stare is stiff, holds me too long.

I grip Smokey’s collar. He shakes, whines at the restraint. Shit, I’m trying to restrain myself. The world reels around the gun in Mayor Dyer’s holster.

“Yeah, one of those marketing survey things,” Mom explains. “Unfortunately, she’s not feeling well. Stomach bug. So Clyde’s using her ticket.”

“Aw, that’s a shame. For Bianca, that is.”

Clyde huffs a laugh over his crossed, burly arms. Looks pretty stand-offish. Though his back is facing me, I imagine his signature scowl. For once, he’s getting it right, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. He never forgave the Dyers for hiring contractors from outside of Pinetown for their renovations instead of him. That dislike extended to Gwen. Clyde’s petty like that.

“Marie will make her some soup—miso lemongrass! Easy on the stomach and full of nutrition. I’ll drop it off tonight.”

They think they’re too fancy for me, Clyde had said.

“Oh.” Mom looks back at me. I feel like a child, innocent and ignorant of adult conversations and insinuations. Wish that were true. “Oh, there’s no need for that. You’re too kind, really. We have some soup for her already, and Bianca’s a little picky—”

“Marie’s soup heals the gut, I swear by it. And when you get back,” the mayor glances at me, “you’ll have to come over for dinner. All of you, please. I insist. You Pancos are always cooking for everyone. You should be served, for a change.” Every curated smile and word tells me he is performing and overselling it. I guess my mom is interpreting the mayor’s behavior as belated embarrassment that we’ve been housing his daughter for weeks without a clear reason.

But I recognize his dinner invite as an explicit threat. I force myself and Smokey inside. Mom calls for me as I shut the door.

Don my long puffy coat, gloves, and, what the hell, I grab the bolt cutters. And Clyde’s Swiss Army Knife keychain. Smokey’s following me all the while, panting.

Smokey. Oh my god.

I have to take him with me, wherever I’m headed. They won’t let him in the emergency room, will they? I’ll have to drop Smokey off at some kind of daycare first—Emilio can’t watch him. E can’t get involved in this.

I’m pushing at my window to escape, sweaty hands leaving smears. Then they enter the house.

“Bianca?” Mom’s voice resonates down the hall. “Mr. Dyer wants to speak with you—”

I throw off my coat, kick the bolt cutters under the bed and Mom is at my door.

“Bun. We’re about to leave. Are you alright?”

“Nope. Privacy please.”

She cracks the door. “Are you wearing gloves?”

Fuck. I hide my hands behind my back. “I feel nauseous.”

“Are you gonna be OK here? Without us?”

“Mhm.” This could be it, the last time I speak to her. I don’t want it all to be a lie. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too. Text me! Drink water.” She closes the door. Opens it. “Oh, and do you know where Gwen is?”

Real pain twists my guts. “The woods.”

“The woods,” she sighs. “I’ll tell him. Text me, Bun. And don’t go outside looking for her… not when you’re sick like this.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“I mean it.”

“I’m fine. She’s fine. You have fun. Go on, don’t miss the ship. It’s already 11:45!”

“Alright, alright. Buh-bye Bunny. Hope you feel better.”

The door shuts. With all my strength, I open the window. Gather my coat and random shit, a lollypop, a crumpled water bottle I fill up in the sink. I try to lift Smokey out the window, but he’s 56 pounds of fur.

“I’m sorry, bud.” His legs scratch the wall and kick as I lug him over. The drop from the window is short, but he’s not a cat. “Stay!” I beg. Grab the Squatty Potty from my toilet and use it as a step stool to get my ass through. I roll the landing. Smokey licks my face. Mom, Clyde, and the mayor’s voices float over from around front. Sounds like farewell.

I need to get the hell away from this house and hide. Hide and figure out what to do with Smokey, then myself. It’ll take Mom and Clyde a little over an hour and a half to reach Cape Liberty, even longer to get on the cruise ship. In the meantime, I decide to trespass through my neighbors’ backyards, whispering at Smokey to follow. I didn’t account for this. For the Dyers just… showing up. Maybe because I’ve been sleep deprived and totally unstable. Speaking of unstable, I hope that trying to kidnap me in the middle of the day in a neighborhood is out of the question for the mayor, but he’s clearly cracking.

I’m directionless, bolt cutters stuffed in my pants, hitting my hip. Between the squat, beige houses, their sparse trees and sad shrubs, the shiny black truck is stalking me, window rolled down. No way. No fucking way.

“I’m gonna call 911!” I scream.

“Where’s my daughter?”

As if I know. I curse under my breath once I reach the last house on my street. Beyond this, it’s just woods. In the woods, he can shoot me and call it a hunting accident. So I retrace my steps. No one is outside, but I spy Mr. Nowack through his kitchen window. He’s adjusting his glasses, staring at something that gives them a white-blue glare—a phone screen. I jump. Wave. Yell. He turns away, wearing earbuds, and disappears behind a wall, attention swallowed whole.

I scream again when the truck stops and Mayor Dyer steps out. Smokey halts between us. I pull my phone from my back pocket and wield it like a weapon.

The mayor has a jar of peanut butter. We stare at each other over my husky without moving. A standoff.

This town ain’t big enough for the both of us. But Dyer isn’t stupid or crazy enough to whip out his gun. I hope. I delude myself.

Unlock my phone—or, try to. My password fails. Fails again.

The mayor grins. “That’s a rental, remember? You don’t own it. You’ve violated our terms.” He opens the peanut butter jar and kneels down, becoming Mr. Friendly. “Come ‘ere, boy! Come ‘ere!”

Smokey bolts before I can hold him back. Fucking traitor.

“No! You can’t—he’s stealing my dog!” I yell at the kitchen window. But Mr. Nowack is no longer there. “Smokey! Smokey, come!”

Too late. The mayor shoves Smokey into the back of his car. Thunk. “Stop shouting and get in.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll drive away.”

And I’ll never see Smokey again. He’s panting in the back, fogging the tinted window. Lets out a muffled cry for help.

“Please. I don’t know where she is, but she’s gonna come back any minute—”

“Car. Now.”

You’re not my dad, fucker. I swallow bile and approach. Once I’m close, he wrenches my arm and sticks me with something. I see the syringe and gasp. All my weight falls to my legs and I slump against the truck, cold metal sapping the life from me. Peel my eyes open as far as they’ll go, and through thin, quivering slits I see that I’m in the truck and Smokey is breathing in my face. He’s never liked car rides. I can’t even raise my arm to comfort him. My gaze drops and I see legs under my feet, across the floorboards. Wade is there, sitting against the passenger door with legs outstretched, something silver in his hand catching the light. He’s been there the whole time, waiting. I want to speak, but my jaw is slack—too tired.

Mayor Dyer presses a button to start the engine. We glide away from the curb and up the street. Everything lags like loading video.

“You’re our peanut butter,” the mayor says. My mind sinks into black water.

READ FEVERCHAIN 14.5

READ FEVERHCHAIN 12

Voiceover by !!! I’m really putting her to work here with all these characters, and she performs them all differently and beautifully! So tasteful! So tonal! My ear buds are tingling…

GWEN’S FACE, red getting redder, is blurring in my vision. I think she’s speaking, her expression all “I can explain.” I turn away from her and shove the door open, blood loud in my ears and jaw popping, eyes already stinging before the outside cold hits them.

I forgot my jacket. Erica is wearing some kind of pajama shirt off one shoulder, her flesh pink and fevered. She’s fidgeting with something in her hand and sighs as Gwen appears, hunched and looking angrier than me. That pisses me off.

“You can’t just come here,” she seethes at Erica, stopping in front of me.

“Excuse me?” Erica tilts her head. “You don’t own this establishment.” She shoots me a grin and offers Gwen the squat vial pinched between her fingers. “I need your cheek swab. Then, I’ll go. Easy enough?”

Gwen swats it from her hand, and the vial tinks on concrete.

“Whoa!” Erica and I harmonize.

“Why do you want that? Why?” Gwen is too loud, veins too visible on her neck. I reach for her arm, but she flinches from me before I can touch, glancing back with glassy eyes.

“To test your DNA—”

“No.” Gwen sniffs, collects herself marginally. “You need to leave. Right now.”

“I can’t take ‘I’m a werewolf’ at face value.” Erica’s eyes return to me to assess my reaction; I offer none, but inside, inside… I pee a little. I think I pee out whatever my heart thought was solid.

“You still need proof?” Gwen’s grasping and wrenching at the pockets of her jeans, bandage starting to leave a dark stain. “I showed you my scar.”

On her left collar bone. My guts twist like someone died.

“I warned you to stay away…” Gwen’s increasingly talking with her teeth.

“I drove all the way here for your sample, and I’m not leaving without it,” Erica snarls back, steps closer. She’s hot too, I can feel it from here. “Want me to take a blood one?” She lunges for Gwen’s wrist, just misses it. They’re breathing hard, taking wide steps as they circle each other, steaming.

“Want me to rip your lungs out?”

“What!” Erica almost smiles. “The least you can do is let me rip your lungs out—”

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey!”

They stop.

“What the fuck is happening?”

Erica points. “She fucking bit me.”

My face quakes. I turn my wrath towards Gwen, who shrivels.

“She, uh, smelled like a coyote—”

“YOU SLEPT WITH HER, DIDN’T YOU!”

Gwen blinks, short-circuiting.

Erica covers her mouth before convulsing with cackles, nearly rolling head-first onto the dead grass.

I peel my eyes from her to Gwen, who takes a shuddering breath. “No, Bianca. I was sleeping and felt something on me. I smelled coyote, but it was Erica carrying all those fucking fur samples.”

“Sorry I have a job?”

“Yeah, well.” Gwen rubs her neck. “Good luck getting that PhD now.”

“Oh, I’m getting my PhD. Also, you weren’t just ‘sleeping.’ I thought you were—”

“Shut up!”

“Stop it! Both you. Wait a second.” I hold up my hands. They tremble. “What are you saying? Erica’s a werewolf now?”

“So she claims,” Erica says, voice more confident than her expression.

“It’s true.” Gwen stares at the pavement. “I’m sorry.”

Erica looks between us and scoffs, but her eyes are bright with panic. “Just give me your sample.”

“Are you trying to get us locked away?”

“There’s no ‘us.’” Erica picks the vial from the ground and inspects it. “I’m giving you one more chance before—before I contact the authorities.”

“Erica, please,” I beg.

“This is bullshit,” Gwen says. “You know what you are. You couldn’t stand being in the city, could you?”

Erica makes a fist around the vial.

“Could you sleep there?”

She stares at Gwen like she has three heads.

“Last night, could you sleep in your apartment?”

Erica’s nonanswer answers.

“Where’d you sleep?” Gwen smiles joylessly. “In the woods?”

Silence.

Gwen nods once. “Werewolf.”

“Or you fucked with my brain chemistry. Have you seen a doctor? I should see a doctor.”

“Gwen’s telling the truth,” I interject. “I’ve seen her shift.”

Erica squints at me. “You’re in on it, too? This has got to be the stupidest way to try and cover your ass.”

“You almost ate my hand!” Gwen flashes her red bandages.

“Only after you bit me!”

“Duh! Are you getting it now, professor?”

“Stop yelling!” I plead. Sheriff would be here any minute.

“Give me a DNA sample!” Erica waves the vial. “Give me proof!”

“Fine!” Gwen snatches it, steals a glance at the empty road. “If you show anyone, know that you’re only screwing yourself over. ‘Cause we have the same condition.”

“There’s nothing to show, understand? The DNA that I’d extracted from myself immediately decayed to the point of unreadability. I used multiple samples. The whole batch was busted. The machine isn’t broken.” She watches as Gwen jabs the inside of her cheek with the Q-tip. “If the same happens with your DNA, I’ll start believing something.”

Gwen presses the vial into Erica’s palm. “Believe whatever you want. I don’t care as long as you keep quiet. And stay away during the full moon.”

“The full moon? Please.” Erica places the vial in her black denim mini purse and removes her car keys. They jingle and judder in her grasp. While her back is turned, her shoulders tighten and she asks, “What am I supposed to do? Find my own campground to terrorize?”

“Yes,” Gwen says. Behind her, through the diner’s huge windows, I see Emilio watching us inside her reflection. I don’t know how long he’s been there. “Find your own campground.”

↟↟↟

“She’s gonna come back.”

February’s moon is full next week. Gwen is beside me in the darkness, keeping me warm as she sniffs the wind coming through my opened window. She said it’s like watching TV. Apparently, it’s just as distracting.

“Gwen.”

“Hm?”

“Erica. She’s not going to give up on finishing her thesis.”

Gwen rubs her face and laughs at that. “We’re not gonna be in Pinetown much longer, anyway. She can take it, coyotes and all. I’d like,” her eyes focus on me, “I’d like to be gone before the end of next month.”

I frown and she turns away. “We can’t just bolt. There’s going to be a funeral, a will, insurance stuff, bank stuff.”

“They have a lawyer.”

“Someone has to talk to the lawyer,” I sigh. “I can’t do this for you. I can help you. But you’re going to have to stick around and manage things for a little bit. Use your business administration skills.”

“Very funny,” Gwen growls. Her skin flashes hot and bristles, probably against the prospect of spending so much time inside. Opening my bedroom window has been our most recent compromise. Just hope Mom doesn’t notice it and ask more questions.

I press my face into Gwen’s back and stroke the side of her body until her breathing slows.

I’m slipping into unconsciousness when she whispers, “If you were like me, we wouldn’t have to worry about money.”

I jolt up, wide awake. She watches me sidelong. Braces herself, biting the inside of her cheek.

“What the hell are you talking about? If I wasn’t poor?”

“No! God.” She covers her face. “If you were like me.”

I gasp. “I’m not, and you’re human most of the time. Where would we live? What would we wear? What would we eat?” I imagine us half-naked, running around in the Pine Barrens or some Northwestern woodland like a fucked up version of The Flintstones. Maybe an RV is involved. I’m not cut out for that life—I was thinking we would have more of a cottage situation—

“I’m not fully human, even when I’m human,” Gwen says. I try to speak, but she holds up her hand. “That’s why I bit Erica before looking—I have different instincts.” The same hand wraps around mine, hot and insistent. “One day, you’ll get it.”

I pull away; she tenses. “I don’t want you to bite me. You said you could manage that.” Her cheeks are flushed but her expression, cold.

“The moon is full for three days, Bianca. Three.”

Dread licks and sticks to me. “And?”

“That’s a long time to… manage.” She raises her lips to my ear, panting lightly. “Better to get it over with while it’s safe.”

I slide from her, from the bed. Smokey stirs beneath it.

Gwen’s timing, her approach—it infuriates me. So thoughtless and reckless and—

“Please,” Her voice strains. “It’d be harder for my parents to hurt you. You could help me, even—I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“You’re happening to me. You bit Erica.” Even from where I stand, I feel her shudder. “We already have a plan, Gwen.”

“What am I supposed to do for the two nights after?”

“Run around in the woods like you always do. Stay away from people.”

“You know what happened to Erica, and I wasn’t even turned then. Clearly I—” Gwen yanks the hair on her scalp, folding into herself. “It doesn’t matter what promises I make.”

I suck in a breath, imagining when her mouth becomes bigger than her brain. “You said you love me. Does that matter?”

“And you said you love me!” She gestures to herself. “Knowing this.”

I shut my eyes. She’s right, but I know I don’t want to be like her, I don’t want to be like Erica, I don’t want to be more beholden to the lunar cycle than I already fucking am. “Get out.”

She does. Without another word. It disappoints me, and I feel like the idiot I know I am. I cry as my fingers crimp and struggle to push the window down, my head rocking in and out of my visible breath. I weave, sink to the floor, and sleep there with my dog, wondering about the chasms between us, and between Gwen and me.

↟↟↟

Gwen doesn’t reappear in the morning, or later, at the diner. So that’s great.

She’s my only hope for saving Mom. For saving me. For saving herself—yet she doesn’t trust herself. She didn’t set out to bite Erica, it just happened.

Un-fucking-fortunately, this is significant.

Gwen has another point: It’s true that I, Bianca Panco, would rather be a werewolf than dead. But right now, my desire starts and ends there. Thinking about it forces me to think about the future, and I really can’t get past the upcoming moon, protecting Mom, getting through the death of Gwen’s family (fingers crossed!) and moving on somehow with something like a healthy relationship and mental state. The hope of maintaining normalcy, or my life as it currently stands, is rapidly crumbling like the stale coffee cake I tried to eat, then threw up, after breakfast.

Once again, I watch the diner’s windows, waiting for Gwen. It’s almost noon, but the morning fog still stretches out from the woods, obscuring the road.

After one o’clock, the gray oblivion births an evergreen Jeep. It parks in the diner’s lot. I watch it idle there, staring me down until Thornton leaves. I curse Gwen for refusing to have a phone. Maybe I should run out back and scream.

Instead I’m seduced by pretending everything is normal, and that Wade can’t, wouldn’t hurt me. Mom is singing in the kitchen. I’m drying and stacking our oval, checkered plates, eyeballing the tremor in my hands as it expands to my arm and chest and entire being. When Wade Dyer finally walks in, he doesn’t even glance at me and sits at a booth. He looks stressed—hair unbrushed and greasy, but he can’t feel worse than me.

The plate I’m holding clatters as I stack it unsteadily. I hate him for making me this way. Ignore him for as long as I can until he starts clearing his throat.

Before I reach his table he has the audacity to ask, “How are you?”

I slap a menu down in front of him and he flinches. “Like you care.”

“Look,” he sighs. “It’s a bad situation.”

I press my chapped lips together, holding back a torrent of emotion. “Why are you here?”

“You lied about Gwen staying with you last night. Don’t ask how we know.”

I grit my teeth.

“Where did she go?”

My heart trips and falls. “The woods.”

Wade pretends to look at the menu. Furrows his brows. “Did you two get in a fight or whatever?”

“No I—I can’t control what she does.”

“That’s not good.” He lowers his voice. “If she doesn’t come back soon, my parents are gonna take matters into their own hands, if you, uh, catch my drift.”

I look out the window, helpless. “Did they tell you to say that?”

“Jesus, Binny. I’m trying to warn you—”

“YOU DON’T GET TO CALL ME A FUCKING NICKNAME!” I catch myself on the table, trembling all over. His eyes are huge, but he isn’t watching me. The kitchen door swings on its hinges.

“What’s going on in here?” Mom asks, shyly stern.

Wade forces a laugh. “We’re just messing around, sorry Miss Panco.”

I do my best to fix my face, and smile back at her. “Sorry, got carried away.”

“Thank god no one else is in here.” Mom frowns and ducks back into the kitchen, eavesdropping for sure.

“Listen, Bin—Bianca,” Wade whispers. “Whatever happens, I want you to know I’m sorry. For everything. For not telling you the truth, until now.”

I stare daggers and sharp teeth and bullets and death, death, death.

“We just have to control this situation, because, like, what if people get hurt? Then it’s all over.”

It’s already over, but I bite my tongue.

He bends closer to whisper, covering his mouth with the menu. “My dad thinks the werewolf thing can be cured. We’re getting close to starving it out. It’s getting weaker, and I think it’s about to give up. After that, everything will be normal again. The nightmare is over. That’s all we want.”

“You threatened my mom, you piece of shit.” My voice shakes with the rest of me.

“I didn’t threaten anyone. And my parents… they wouldn’t actually hurt your mom. They’re trying to get everything back to normal. Murder isn’t really the path there.”

“I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but—”

“This is the truth. No more games. My parents are more bark than bite, they just thought they should scare you. Now they’re worried you’re planning something stupid. So I’m warning you not to do anything you’ll regret, got it?”

“Got it. Thanks, Wade. Want some coffee? You’re so full of shit, a laxative might help.”

“Nice one.” He stands. “I know you hear me. I’m sure you’re getting to know how dangerous her condition is, day by day. So, yeah. Just—think about what I said. If you really care about Gwen.”

I don’t speak. Flick away the tears on my cheeks. Gwen was right. I want him gone.

Thank god he’s too fucking stupid to actually manipulate me.

The door chimes as he leaves and my mom enters, her footsteps careful as she places a hand on my shoulder.

“Bun, that didn’t sound like playing around.”

I swallow a sob. It burns.

“Why is he messing with you? You’re both too old for that.” She hesitates. “Did something happen between you and Gwen?”

I shake my head.

Mom whispers sharply, “Does she have an STD?”

I choke on my spit.

“I’m sorry, Bun. It’s just, the other day I heard that girl with the green hair come in and say Gwen’s contagious. You’ve been so upset that I’ve been too afraid to ask but, Bunny, I want you to know I’m not gonna judge. Still, you need to go see the gyno.”

I laugh, almost honestly. It gives me time to think. “Mom, that was about—that was about a stomach bug.”

“Oh, god. Really?”

“Yes. Erica wanted to know if Gwen was contagious, but I told her I felt fine.” I smile, but Mom remains suspicious.

“Alright,” she sighs. “I don’t mean to pry. You’re an adult, after all. But remember, you’re my baby, too.”

We hug. “Mom I—I can’t wait for the cruise.”

“Me too, Bun.”

READ FEVERCHAIN 14

READ FEVERCHAIN 11.5

Voiceover by the brilliant and possibly magical ✨

“HOW DOES SEVEN NIGHTS in the Bahamas sound?” Had to dip into my savings a bit. The total was $1353. Interior cabins, but whatever. It’s nice!

“What, what, what?” Mom jumps beside the kitchen sink with a soaked sponge, flicking suds onto the fridge. She’s never been on a cruise before, or left the country. Me neither.

I muster more excitement. “The tickets are paid for and everything. All we have to do is drive to the Cape Liberty cruise port.”

“I can’t believe you won these!”

“Yup, just got lucky.” I said it was from some advertising survey I barely remember doing. Now my mom is determined to scour the internet for more surveys in hopes of winning prizes.

“You’ve always been a good luck charm, my lucky girl!” She beams, puts her hands over her heart. Then she sobers. “Oh, Bun. Are you sure you wanna go with me? What about Gwen?”

Rosacea outbreak. I adjust my glasses. “No, I wanna go with you. We haven’t hung out in a while.” I’ve avoided her. She knows I’ve been stressed, but not how stressed, and she could never guess why.

Her dark eyes sparkle with tears. “I couldn’t ask for a better daughter, you know that?”

We embrace. Emotion rises to my eyes, nose, and mouth, threatening to spill all over the place. I have to act normal. Hug her tight, savor her warmth and familiar, herby smell.

“I think this is just what we need, Bun,” her voice vibrates in my ear. I sigh, wondering if I’ll ever be able to go on a vacation. We finish up the dishes. She washes, I dry, talking about what we need to pack. I almost believe I’m going.

I’m brushing breadcrumbs from the table when I hear the floor creak. I glance up and notice Clyde, his broad frame filling the hallway, bald head glinting. He frowns at my bedroom door before he saunters to the kitchen, arms swinging. “Why’s your shower running?”

Gwen must’ve come in without telling me. Weird. And she’s later than usual. That can’t be good.

“Earth to Bianca.” Clyde waves a hand. “The shower. Why running?”

The floor stops tilting. “Gwen’s in there.”

He crosses his arms. “She gonna contribute to the water bill?”

“Babe!” Mom chides from afar.

The pet name freaks me out. “I’ll pay double my share, alright? Goodnight.” I slink past him to my room. They keep whispering, about me, about Gwen, about the cruise or god knows what. Smokey rises from his spot on the couch and follows me.

I shut my door—too hard. Hear the squeak as the faucet’s turned off. Smokey crawls under my bed, the perv. He sleeps with both of us now.

My bathroom door opens with a burst of steam and wild cherry blossom bodywash. Gwen appears, raking and shaking out her hair, towel tied low around her waist, pelvis poking out. But she looks healthier. Or maybe I’m just used to how visible her bones sometimes seem.

“If you double your share, I’m paying for it.”

What? Oh.

“God. You heard that. Clyde’s such a bitch, please ignore him.” I follow the perimeter of my bed, kick the opened package on my floor, pick through its cardboard carnage, then show her the bolt cutters with a big grin. “Surprise! Look what came in the mail.”

Gwen tries to smile, one hand behind her back. “What are those for?”

“To cut your chains. Here’s my plan. First, I’ll shut off the electricity. Does your house have an exterior main breaker?”

“Huh?”

“I have to turn the power off so they can’t see me with their cameras.”

She grips the doorframe, sockets shadowed as she stares. “Are you serious?”

I purse my lips. “Just spitballing.”

She closes the space between us with her steaming body, wet locks dripping on me. “You’re not going anywhere near that house.”

I frown and offer the bolt cutters. “How do you plan on getting out?”

She sighs and sinks into my bed. I notice her right hand, the one she’s been hiding, is wrapped in soggy bandages. “My jaws have to be stronger than these.” Sets the bolt cutters on my nightstand, runs her tongue over her teeth. “If those chains could be broken, I would’ve gotten out a while ago.”

I chew on my cheek. Wasted thirty bucks on those damn things.

She stiffens. “Look, I have an idea, but you’re gonna hate it.”

“What is it.”

“My bones would break more easily than the chains. If I crack ‘em while turning to get out of the shackles, then they should heal…”

“Should?” I feel my face turn gray. “You’re going to break your wrists and your ankles? Hands and feet?”

She shrugs.

“No offense but fuck no. I’m not letting you get shackled in the first place. You hide in the woods, then I’ll hide. Somewhere public.”

“Where?”

“I’ll figure it out.” My face pinches. “It’ll be night when you first turn, right?”

“Then there’s two more nights of it. Where would you go? My parents will come after you. You can’t hide forever, and your mom will be coming back—”

“Let me think!”

Gwen leans back on pillows, fist and jaw clenched.

I focus on the first night—what’s available then? I don’t want to go to anyone’s house and get them involved. It has to be somewhere crowded… staffed. “An emergency room—I’ll call an ambulance!” Gwen’s eyes widen. “I’ll say my stomach hurts, whatever.”

“They come for that?”

“I’ll say my chest hurts, too. I smell burnt toast. I can’t breathe, I’m numb all over! They’ll come. They just won’t keep me for long.” I pat the phone in my butt pocket. “We can even lure your parents with my location—I’ll give my phone to you, and you can chuck it somewhere. Somewhere strategic, obviously.”

Gwen props herself up with one arm and ogles me. “Damn. I like this plan.”

I can’t help but smirk. “I’d do anything for you, baby.”

“I’d do anything for you.” She closes her eyes. “It just—it has to work.”

I give a curt nod and step towards her. “I’ll be in the emergency room for a few hours, hopefully the entire night. I’ll try to stall as much as I can to stay there, rack up that medical bill.” Or just camp in the lobby. What are they gonna do, kick me out? I stick my thumbnail between my teeth. “Will that be enough time to… get rid of the problem?”

“Feel like I’m in The Godfather,” Gwen chuckles. Clears her throat. “Uh, yeah. Definitely.”

I sit on the bed’s lip. “What about Wade?”

“Least of my worries.”

“No, I mean…” Bite my nail, stop before I split it. “What if we let him be?”

Her eyes narrow. She waits for an explanation, but I can’t find the words. Wade’s complicit, but he’s passive. When he threatened me, it sounded strained, like he didn’t want to. Like Gwen was forced to play soccer, maybe Wade was forced to play his parents’ games. Then again, the whole “jizz-tits” thing really pissed me off.

“He’s gotta go,” Gwen says.

“After your parents are gone… he might just… leave. Leave all this behind—”

“No. No. Not after what he’s done. He doesn’t get to drive off into the sunset. He knows too much. He knows the truth and will use it to fuck with us.” Her voice is soft, but barbed with rage. “I know my brother better than you do.”

I stare at my bunny slippers. At Smokey’s snout sticking out from under the bed.

“OK?”

“OK.” I take a cleansing breath, and Wade vanishes. Easy. So easy my insides liquify, along with the rest of the room. “OK.”

“It’s not like I’d be able to stop myself,” she blurts out. A tremor passes over her face. “Sorry.”

“No—I mean, it’s your...” family. I don’t want her to regret anything. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s right, but I’m afraid she won’t regret it at all. That she’ll enjoy it.

“It’s your call,” I say.

Gwen grunts, eyes distant.

For a long while, silence. Wind rattles my window. Criminal Minds plays from the living room. Gwen’s bandages scratch my comforter.

I focus on her wrapped wound, damp and pink. Stained with a dirt smudge. She looks at me. Then away.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

The bandages are concentrated on her palm instead of her fingers. Still, I assume she gave it to herself. “Did something happen?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

Ugh. Won’t be able to sleep until then. I rub my brow, keep my lips tight. She extends her arms for me, hangs her head. “Please?”

↟↟↟

My first and favorite customers this morning: Gwen and Emilio.

E comes in a rush, tugging at his beltloop. “I’m about to shit myself, but can you make me a soda?”

I give him a two-fingered salute as he sprints to the bathroom, not even stopping to take his backpack off.

Gwen grimaces.

“Lost your appetite?”

“Impossible,” she sighs.

“OK, I’ll make you eggs if you promise you’ll tell me that thing you didn’t tell me about last night. Or when we woke up.”

She rubs her face. “Fine. But we can’t talk here.”

“We can go on a walk after Thornton and Sheriff come in.” I fill a glass with ice and Fanta, set it on the counter.

“You always have the answers, don’t you?” Gwen smiles. “I’ll do whatever you say, whatever it takes for you to keep me around.”

My eyes roll. I ruffle her hair, feathery soft. She brushed it today. “I need you to tell me what’s going on with you. Don’t hide from me. It isn’t safe.”

“You make me so happy,” she whispers, pushing her forehead into my palm. “I don’t wanna mess it up, but I think I already have.” Emotion is building in her voice, warbling it.

“Gwen…”

“I think—I think I ruined your life.”

“That’s not true. We know who ruined my life.”

“If I never talked to you—”

“Stop. Please, Gwen.” I squeeze her good hand. “Save it for the walk.”

She wipes her face on her flannel sleeve. I can feel her skin burning from behind the counter. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

I go to the kitchen to give her space and whip up some eggs. We can’t both look miserable all the time. People will start to suspect something.

While I grab a carton from the fridge, I note the book Mom is perusing over the empty coffee mug in her lap. It’s titled Why Men Date Bitches, with “Bitches” written in lipstick. “A Woman’s Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship,” the subtitle reads. We make eye contact.

“I thought it looked interesting.” She taps the cover with a hot pink nail. We’re painting each other’s toes tonight for the cruise. “Psychology.”

“Uh huh.” Maybe by the time she finishes it, she’ll be convinced to leave Clyde. With a spatula, I fold the scrambleds. Get two plates, set aside a little for myself. Squirt mine with ketchup.

Gwen’s eagerly awaiting, money on the counter.

“You don’t have to pay me, you know.” She acts like I’m broke. I am, but I don’t need the reminder.

“This is nothing.” She leans over the counter to whisper in my ear. “Wait ‘til I get my parents’ life insurance.”

I gasp. That additional motive hadn’t crossed my mind. I set down her plate, shell shocked. She starts eating, almost smug as she watches me.

I’m not hungry anymore because for the first time, I feel like a murderer.

In a show of great restraint, Gwen pauses between bites. “Was that too much? I’m trying to stay positive.”

“It’s—you’re fine.”

“That’s convincing.”

I wave a dismissive hand. “I’m just stressed.” I eat a tentative forkful of eggs, praying I can keep it down. I’ve been struggling with that again. And the ketchup makes the eggs look bloody. I know actual blood is darker, but whatever. “Is Emilio still in the bathroom?”

Gwen’s fork clatters on the plate. She swallows hard. Her eyes, huge.

I’m too afraid to ask.

“Erica’s coming.”

Not what I expected. “What? Why?”

“Uh…”

“Oh, god. Is this about that thing you didn’t tell me?!”

The door chimes. It’s Erica. Her hair is loose and disheveled, clothes crumpled—she looks exhausted. She has a bandage on her right hand, just like Gwen’s.

“Good morning, Gwen.”

Gwen goes pale. Her hair seems to rise and I can tell her teeth are clenched.

“Can we chat outside?” Erica’s tone is ice. All bubbliness popped flat.

“Hold on,” I say, brushing greasy fingers on my apron. I look between them, land on Gwen. “What’s this about?”

She lowers her head, makes a wordless noise.

“It’s about my freaking DNA decaying before it can be visualized—wait.” Erica refocuses on the ever-shrinking Gwen. “You haven’t told her?! Does she even know what you might be?”

My body goes cold.

“Her mom is in the kitchen,” Gwen growls quietly.

And Emilio is in the bathroom.

“Then get off your ass!” Erica hisses. “I have questions. And I’m getting a swab from you, it’s the least you can do for me.” She flashes the canines under her lips before storming outside.

Gwen and I stare at each other, my mouth open, hers clamped.

Before I can speak, the door chimes again. Erica pokes her head inside, neck swerving. “By the way, Bianca—your lover’s condition is contagious.”

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FEVERCHAIN 11

THAT’S RIGHT ’s VOICEOVER IS ALREADY ATTACHED. Aaaaaand action: 🎬

A NICE, CRUNCHY layer of sleet makes it a perfect day to look for tracks. I’m all bundled up and moisturized, hair pulled into spacebuns, ready to kiss Mother Nature. It’s been nice to drive out of the city, get off campus, get out of the lab. Like leaving one planet for another.

I sing behind the wheel and leave the rest behind.

In the forest I brush hairballs from the rub pads we stuck to bark, note the yellow snow, dot my map. With the larger study looming over him, Dr. Leo doesn’t have time to figure out whether something is poisoning the coyotes, let alone what is poisoning them. But the Wildlife Alliance asked our department for help—it would be super shitty if we gave up. Someone had to keep trying. Someone had to offer a real explanation.

So, the reputation of our ecology program is yet again on my shoulders.

I like it, most of the time. Academia showbiz. You have to sparkle and shine to keep that fickle funding. Dustin didn’t want to commit. It’s not his thesis, it’s mine. I wish I wasn’t alone, but whatever.

Small towns don’t intimidate me, nor do forests. In the city I’ve been followed. Threatened. Fetishized, dehumanized, doxxed, and more! That doesn’t mean I don’t go out.

Animals are far more predictable than people, anyway. I only carry bear spray for the potential axe murderer—there isn’t enough food to support bears in the Pine Barrens. And the axe murderer thing—my dad showed me slasher movies when I was way too young. It gave me all these irrational fears.

Bootprints do catch my eye. And, what do you know, they aren’t far from the discarded boots. After that, bare footprints. A littered baby wipe, stained red.

Axe murderer, is that you? There’s his opened duffle bag, unsuccessfully disguised under pine straw, leaves, and twigs. Inside of it, discarded clothes. A sports bra, maybe a victim’s? Or I have this all wrong. Girls can be axe murderers too—I’m the last person to be a gender essentialist. I check my cell: SOS. No service.

I should probably get out of here. I hold my compass flat and aim it at the Pitch Pine Path’s parking lot, out of sight. It’s too far. If things get spooky, my safest bet is to flag someone down on the highway. Luckily, I don’t have to abandon this curiosity to get there.

The footprint trail continues towards the sounds of speeding cars. I follow them. They aren’t that big. Unthreatening feet, taking careful, wide steps…

A copper creek trickles through the sleet sheet. Between gnarled pines, I see the highway. Then, its carnage.

The top half of the buck is intact, a ruby line drawn from its mouth to the frosted pine needles. Its antlers are magnificent but never stood a chance against a Chevy going seventy. Poor creature.

Its bottom half stops me. Human shoulders, torso, legs, and the offending feet. The head hidden inside the deer’s ribcage.

I stop breathing. The deer is obviously dead. But the person... Their bare ass is out, and that seems like a bad sign. The killer’s fucked up scene, his/her/their sense of twisted humor. For a moment, I wonder whether I’ve stumbled upon a horror movie set. But when I step closer, nothing suggests it’s fake.

Are they really dead? Schrödinger’s head. I’ve never seen a human corpse before, not in the flesh, anyway. My gaze leaps from the earth to the branches to the shrubs for the hundredth time. We’re close to the highway. It’s right there between the pines, providing potential witnesses. That emboldens me.

The human’s midsection moves. A slow, repetitive rise and fall, AKA: breathing. Good! But why are they stuffed in a deer carcass?

“Hello?”

As I close in—cadaverine, putrescine, indole, dimethyl disulfide trisulfide. Fishy mothballs. Death smells. I pinch my nose.

The buck’s back legs are bent away, almost detached, spine exposed, a whole person under it, their head where the heart, lungs, intestines should be. I sense, rather than recognize, who it is. Oh, my god. With a surge of warm confidence, I pinch her arm—hot. I don’t know if it’s from the contrast with the air—

After a blur of motion, my hand sinks, Gwen’s head forcing it and the rest of me to the ground. I slap the forest floor, an antler piercing a spacebun, scarily close to my scalp. Crazy, stinging pressure on my hand like a heavy beehive, venomous teeth sinking into muscles and ligaments. My muscles and ligaments. A shriek rips from me, fire shoots down my arm and into my heart—it thrashes, tries to kill me. I choke on adrenaline.

Bear spray is inches from my free fingertips, I flex. Released, I grab it, shaking so violently I drop and forget it. I try to stand. My hand wound fizzes. Numb thumb.

Gwen bit me. She bit me. Hard! Who does that? Was it a seizure, or something psychiatric?

Before I can speak, my mouth fills with froth. I fall forward. Behind me, stifled, squeaking sobs. In front of me, forever, screaming. No, I don’t scream like—never have screamed like that before.

The wound is burning. It must be infected.

Cadaverine, putrescine, indole, dimethyl disulf… Death smells LOUD.

When I look back, my body tenses—she’s already upon me, shoves me back, knees stabbing into each arm, pinning me to the frosty ground. She covers my mouth and I sink my teeth into the wet rubber of her hand. Snag it. Her filthy face is crying, hot tears, blood, and spit dripping on my forehead: a flavorful broth. Her palm—I chew it like bubblegum. It loosens against my tongue, spills down my throat.

Almost every tooth she has is on my neck, vibrating with indecision. Her pulse, convulsive. A growl that rattles my skull.

I gasp open, gurgle, cough. I’m boiling. Insides roiling and empty. A new, stronger impulse to bury into her, excavate tendon and bone. My vision narrows to nothing. Decay, resin, syrup, butter, sulfur, taste what I smell, salt, salty. My girldick and fingers twitch; my skin sunburned without the sun. I feel each and every hair follicle expand and retract, I’m jumpy.

I don’t like it.

Hyperventilating, Gwen shifts on me to tear away a long strip of my shirt, her hand’s weeping skin flap snagging on my bra strap before she smothers my cheek with it. I savor her blood. Metallic promises fresh meat. Fear leaves me.

My neck jerks, but she’s strong. Hitch my hips, again and again, but it hurts my biceps. I imagine chomping into her naked shoulder—she stuffs my mouth with fabric. At least there’s something to bite. She keeps her good hand over my muffled cries.

Her knees are crushing my arms, crushing. When the pain becomes unbearable, I can see through my tears again and think. I don’t remember how Gwen got on top of me. The air is damp between us, a cloud ascending to meet a sad-sounding anthem from a sparrow.

A car billows down the highway like an impending storm. Under me, below the frost line, something mammal shifts in a burrow. We’ve disturbed the decaying earth, but it’s quickly settling around and inside me: a new equilibrium.

Gwen reeks of rot. Her deodorant is failing.

“Ou… ugged mee,” I speak against her hand and the soaked shirt strip in my mouth. She drugged me. There’s no other explanation.

Gwen’s tears cut through her gore mask. When she tries to speak, drool dribbles out. She coughs.

“Eee aoh!”

She won’t get off. “Wait.” Her breath fascinates me. There’s a lot of information there. Earthy, meaty, marrow, pebble, asphalt. Faint spearmint. “I gotta,” her mouth twists, “tell you something…”

“Whuh!”

Gwen sobs into her arm. It’s like thunder in my eardrums, I hear every spittle and snort separately, clearly. Her body flowing and bubbling and heaving, always movement. “Please, Erica. Don’t run.”

I nod; she takes the gag from my mouth. Sensation expands. The air tastes like something I want to roll in. Strange wants grip me. Scare me. Again, the urge to eat her carrion-marinated face off, now that I’m free. To tear into her thin throbbing throat. Why do I want that? Why would I ever?

Though I can tell, Gwen wants to do the same to me. Our eye contact is fixed, not friendly.

I force my jaws shut. Instead of crying, I grind out a plea, “Explain.”

READ FEVERCHAIN 12

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IS BAAAAaaaaaaAACKKKK with another masterful voiceover. Her performance made me cry. I don’t do that often. Don’t look at me.

THE DINER is empty except for Thornton in his spot, masticating on Mom’s “To Die For!!!” blueberry pie. He probably will die from it because he eats it every day.

I wrench my laptop from my bag. Lug the bulky, dust-crusted thing with me now because I’m scared the Dyers have bugged my phone to track my internet history and who knows what else. I deposited the Dyer hush money in my bank account this afternoon, after Erica left. With it, I book a weeklong Caribbean cruise for two during the next full moon.

I’ll tell Mom I won it from an online contest or something. I’ll pretend it’s for her and me, but a few days before the ship leaves I’ll feign sickness and say, you know, Clyde should just take my spot. He probably won’t be busy (and if he is, he’ll probably cancel his plans) and they’ll go. If he can’t go, well, I can’t save everyone.

That’s the extent of my scheme—I’m hoping Gwen can fill in the blanks once she’s caught up. She knows what her family is capable of. I don’t.

And I can’t afford to wait and figure that out on my own. I don’t know these fucking people. Last week, I never would’ve guessed they would Mafia-style threaten me and my mom’s lives.

Come to think of it, I don’t really know Gwen. I understand her generally, but the details? Murky.

Lives are on the line and the mystery isn’t fucking cute anymore. I can’t keep food down, I can’t sleep.

I’m tired.

Gwen returns to the diner before closing time. My mom is here, so hopefully nothing crazy happens. Gwen has a split lip. I point at it.

“I tripped.” Dismissive. A lie. How much does she really know? Clearly enough to hide things from me.

“You fell on your lip?”

She tries to kiss me, but I stop her with my hand. “What do you do all day?”

Gwen looks down at my hand still pressed against her chest. Looks at me. “Walk around.”

“You walk around all day?”

“Sometimes I sleep. Read.”

“OK… What book?”

“Am I in trouble?” She brings my fingers to her mouth and kisses them.

“I’m curious about you.” I rub my thumb over her split top lip. The cut originates from the inside of her mouth, like she bit something sharp. “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

On the drive home she shows me the book. I laugh when she pulls it out because it’s massive—not in length. It’s a coffee table book.

“100 Hikes of a Lifetime.” I suppress a laugh. “Cool.”

“Are you a hiker, Gwen?” Mom interjects from the driver’s seat, using the same tone she employs when she’s afraid I’m about to say something rude to Clyde.

“Sort of.” Gwen runs her fingers around an edge of the leatherbound cover. “When I was in Oregon, that was how I spent my weekends.”

Mom says something like that sounds nice, and I hear an opportunity. “Who did you hike with?”

“My friend and her friend.” Gwen doesn’t miss a beat, but that wording was weird. “They were backpackers and had all the stuff, let me borrow some of it.”

So her ex and her ex’s friend were backpacker-bikers and maybe the ex’s friend was more than a friend because the corner of Gwen’s mouth twinged and I can tell she’s bothered—not quite bristling at my interrogation until that last question. “Cool,” I say. Knowingly.

Gwen glances at me. Her expression reflects that whatever happened Northwest was very not cool and maybe we’ll talk later about it if I insist.

I do insist.

After a lasagna dinner that Gwen tried and failed to refuse, she’s on my bed topless in boxers. Can’t get too excited because she’s lying on her stomach with her chin and arms resting on a pillow… Beautiful broad shoulders but I avoid eye contact with her spine and ribs.

I lie beside her on my back, sweats and t-shirt on because we’re talking business. “I feel like I don’t know a lot about you.”

Gwen chuckles into the pillow.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just saw this coming. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Really?”

“Sure. I was born on July 3rd, 1997 at 11:47 p.m. Fireworks were going off, but I don’t remember that.”

“Come on. I mean, what are you into? Soccer and hiking—that’s all I know.” I consider mentioning the vegan thing, but it feels touchy.

“I’m not into soccer.”

“What?”

“I hate soccer.”

I roll on my side to squint at her better. “Didn’t you play all throughout—”

“From when I could walk until two years ago? Yeah.” She sighs. “I was good at it. Not good enough to go pro. There was always someone better, at a better school.”

“You went to a great school.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t learn anything. Just got a couple concussions and tore my ACL.”

“Ouch.” I rub her shoulder. The split lip gives her a pout. “Did you have fun? I mean, at parties and stuff?”

Gwen exhales a laugh at me.

“I don’t know, I never went to college! What did you major in?”

“Business administration.”

“Did you like it?”

“I cheated the whole time and graduated.”

“OK, well, what do you like?”

She clutches my breast.

“Gwen, be serious.”

“I am.”

“What else?”

She gives me one last squash. “Mm. I dunno. That’s the problem with being forced to play a sport all your life and then one day it’s over.”

“Forced?”

Gwen rolls her eyes. “When I was little, if we lost a soccer game, my parents would punish me. Even if it wasn’t my fault. Most of the time, it wasn’t.”

I sit up. “Punish?”

“Make me train and do nothing else.” Her gaze drifts. “I think it messed me up.”

I place my hand on her thigh, tilt my head.

“I’d lash out at my teammates, take everything so seriously. Their mistakes were my mistakes. So I would scream at them, throw their shit around in the locker room… It was like this the whole time, even after my parents couldn’t force me anymore. I just kept doing it ‘cause it was all I’ve ever done. All my eggs in one basket, whatever.”

“Oh my god, Gwen.”

“It’s stupid. I could’ve gone to therapy or something but I didn’t feel like I had time, and the coaches liked my energy.”

“I wish I knew you better then.”

She smiles. “You wouldn’t have liked me. Besides, you always had boyfriends.”

I scoff.

“I always thought the boy-crazy girls were mental.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Yeah, fuck me.” Gwen rolls on top of me and kisses my neck, lips slick and soft.

Her hips press into mine with delicious pressure. Resist! “Wait, I still wanna talk.”

“About what?” she grumbles.

“Wade.”

Gwen cringes from me.

“Were your parents harsh on him, too?”

“Ha, no.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t good at anything. Claimed he was gonna be an entrepreneur with some private campground idea, like Pineworld Adventures for adults. Even with Dad’s connections, he couldn’t get the investors or the land. He’s completely dependent on my parents. He always will be, and he’ll get that inheritance to live off of—” She shuts her trap.

“Oh. All of it?”

Her face reddens. I immediately regret asking. “There’ll be enough for me, too,” she says. “Guess I’m not that different from him now.”

“But… you’re sick. You need someone to care for you.”

“Do I? Because I always feel way fucking worse when they care for me and feel a lot better when I care for myself.”

“What do you mean?”

She gets off me to sit on the edge of the bed. Heat follows her. “Maybe I should run away. I should run away somewhere and you meet me there and we keep running.”

My heart hurls itself into my throat. “We can’t!”

“Why?” she snarls. “Aren’t you bored here? Don’t you want to do something with your life?”

“Sh!” Mom and Clyde are watching TV in the living room, but the walls aren’t thick.

“You’re the only reason I’m here.” Tears streak her face. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be gone.”

I’m crying too, and hate myself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but you really can’t go.”

“I can’t leave you.” Gwen grabs me, pulls me to her face. “I know it isn’t normal, but I’m in love with you.”

I kiss her. The truth is on my tongue; though I’m held like a doll I’m the one who has her now, and I know she will do terrible things for me.

Droplets meet on our cheeks. I strangle out the words, “I love you too.”

“Let’s go,” she pants. “We can hitchhike. Take a train.”

“We can’t. My mom…” My lip trembles.

“She’ll be fine! It’s not like you’ll never see her again.” She glances at the dog toy on my bed. “Smokey can come with us.”

“No.” I push my forehead into her shoulder. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what?” Her grip hardens around my arms. “What is it?”

“Your parents said—”

Gwen bares her teeth and I feel her nails sink into my flesh. Before I can speak, she throws her hands up; I fall back on the bed with a bounce.

Tssk, tssk. Smokey scratches at my door and whines.

Gwen’s pulling at her scalp, squeezing her eyes shut tight, standing over me. “What did they say?”

“I can’t tell you.”

She glowers at me. “Biancaaa.”

“I can’t tell you when you’re upset.”

Her crimson chest heaves, nipples hard and furious.

“Stop pulling your hair.”

She lowers her arms, slowly. Ejects a lungful of sweltering air. I glance at her hands, expecting claws. But they’re normal. She didn’t break my skin.

“I’m calm.” Her voice wavers.

I pull myself upright. “Ready? Because it’s insanely bad.”

Tssk. Smokey scratches again.

“Let him in!” Gwen runs a much-needed hand through her spiky hair. “We’re cool.”

I do. He licks my knuckles and regards both of us before crawling under the bed.

“Tell me, Bianca. I won’t react.”

I raise my brows.

“I’m serious.”

“OK.” I crawl over my bed, sit on it and face her. Then I vomit it out. “Your parents said that if I leave or you leave, they’ll kill my mom.”

Gwen doesn’t breathe. By the look of her, doesn’t even think. My mouth dries up.

“They said if I tell you you’re a werewolf, they’ll kill me.”

She does react to that. I swear I’m hit with a pulse of heat, but she doesn’t yell. “A what?”

“Werewolf.”

“Pinch me.” She holds out her forearm. “Pinch me hard.” I pinch her medium. Her hair rises, her skin prickles. “This isn’t a joke?” Her tone darkens. “You and Wade didn’t… set this up?”

“No, no! Wade took me into the basement and I saw you—“

Gwen shudders so hard she stumbles, back hitting my closet. For the first time, she isn’t flushed. The blood drains from her face, flowing backwards from her skin towards somewhere deep within herself, maybe her heart. She tries to look at the bite on her collarbone. “I’m not crazy.” Her eyes blow wide and take me in. “That’s not good.”

I open my arms so I can catch her if she passes out. Gwen steadies herself instead. Then seems to marvel at me. I speak once her stare starts to freak me out:

“That bite from your ex—did you know what she was?”

“No. No.” She laughs in jitters. “How could I guess that? I thought she was acting different because she was cheating on me.”

“Oh.” I resist asking more questions, though I have about a hundred. Most involving whether or not her ex was in or somehow connected to a biker gang. “I’m sorry.”

Gwen touches her lip. “How much—how long have you known?”

“Since Saturday. I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to tell you. Your parents can’t know you know or—”

“No.” Her eyes flutter shut. She sinks to the floor. “They’re done.”

Motivated through my nausea, I tell her about the cruise tickets. The timing.

Gwen nods like she’s heard it before. “Alright. We’ll pretend until then. After that, it’s over. We run.”

Smokey appears from under the bed and curls up beside her. She scratches behind his ears. He winks at me. Wants to come with, I’m sure.

“Don’t worry about them.” Gwen has this strange serenity.

“How can you say that? They have guns!” I strain to lower my volume. “The basement. Have you seen it?”

“I’ve smelled it. Can’t help but smell it. It smells like my death.”

“They’re going to chain you. They might… shoot you.”

“I told you, don’t worry.” She crouches. “I wanna tell you something.”

“Please.”

“In a way, I already knew what I was. Especially after we started talking, my thoughts started coming together like shaking a bottle of oil and water. I think I would’ve figured it out without you telling me. But I was scared.” Emotion jams her throat. “I’m scared to make it real. Because you won’t want to be with me.”

“I do want to be with you.”

“How?”

“We can figure it out.”

Gwen smudges her tears with the heel of her hand. Eyes of polished wood. Looking doubtful.

“I like—I like it.” An inconvenient truth that is, currently, convenient.

The flush rushes back to her.

I separate my legs and suddenly, she knows all. That I can’t get enough of her, whoever and whatever she is.

“I can’t tell you how scared, how I’d hoped—how hopeful you make me.” Gwen seizes my hips, lowering the elastic band of my sweats. “I’ll be good for you. I’ll be gentle.”

Lust pools in me as fabric pools around my ankles. Her touch, warm and reverent. Her eyes, shimmering and happy, skim my bare legs.

“You’re unreal,” she whispers to my flesh, smelling and groaning into it until the words are incomprehensible, dragging her incisors along and inside my thighs, leaving trails of hot saliva while her hands grasp my sides, possessing me with savage anticipation. Just when I’m about to lose myself, it turns too toothy.

With muted terror, I flip to my stomach and show off my ass. “Don’t bite.”

READ FEVERCHAIN 11.5

READ FEVERCHAIN 9.5

Voiceover by the mesmerizing ! Many thanks to her for making this story come alive.

I’M TIRED of looking up. Straining my neck at the night sky. Currently, through the kitchen window.

The moon is full for three days. The earth, moon, and sun only align in a single, fleeting instant—but near full is enough—Gwen is a werewolf for three nights. For three nights out of, roughly, every month. If there are twelve full moons every year… twelve times three is 36. 36 wolf nights. I can make that work.

It’s been four days since I saw her in the basement.

Four days since Smokey’s been missing. Panco’s Diner has been closed. Mom posted, called, knocked on doors with me—told the entire town there was a manhunt for Smokey. No one saw him.

“At what point do we stop…” Can’t finish, clawing my scalp at the dinner table. My chicken tortilla soup is going cold.

“Stop looking?” Clyde says.

Mom gives him a look, puts her hand on my shoulder. It’s a nightmare.

“It’s OK,” I lie. “I know we have to open tomorrow.” Shut my eyes and somehow there’s water left.

She rubs my back. “You need sleep, Bun. You need to eat.”

My phone buzzes between my butt and seat. I wince.

“A lot has happened,” Mom continues. “I can run the diner by myself for the rest of the week. The Dyers paid for the cleaners to come today so we don’t have to worry about that. Take a break.”

I shake my head. The Dyers make me sick.

“Didn’t you talk to Jordan recently? Gosh, it’s been forever. Take my car, go visit them.”

“I can’t!” I feel nothing but the phone in my pocket. My new phone. I flee from the table, shuffle down the hall.

“She’s acting like a teenager,” I hear Clyde grumble.

I slam my bedroom door and collapse on the floor. Peep under my bed, half expecting my husky to be there, but there’s nothing but old shoes and dust bunnies. I don’t want to look at my phone. I haven’t left, I haven’t said anything, I haven’t done anything wrong. Not yet.

Tap. Taptap.

On the glass. Of my window. I look up—my face slackens. I almost believe in god. I scramble to stand, rush to the pane.

“Smokey!” Someone is holding him. Guess who.

Shakily, I unlatch the window, push on the glass. Fuck, I suck at this. Squeaks as it inches up. From outside, fingers curl through the gap. The window gapes open in a gust of cold.

“I made a friend.” Gwen smiles, holding my panting husky in one arm. He whines, sniffs, licks my hand. I almost fall out the window. Luckily, our house has one floor. And I’m starting to get used to these miracles.

I hear the door open behind me. I must’ve shouted at some point.

“Oh my god!” Mom shrieks. Clyde stomps over.

I’m a mess, so he takes Smokey from Gwen’s arms into my bedroom.

“Smokey! Gwen!” Mom whirls around like a bat in an attic. “C-come around, I’ll let you in—”

“That’s alright.” Through the window, Gwen slides into my bedroom. I cover my face, it’s too much. Snot is running into my mouth. I bury myself into Smokey’s fur. He stinks—wet dog. I swing my head away to shiver.

“Where on earth did you find him?!” Mom’s a yeller, like me.

“He was in the woods, trying to find his way back.” Her hands are in her pockets. “Not too far from here, actually.”

“I just can’t believe this! Thank god you were… outside.” Mom’s mouth twists slightly as she regards Gwen, unblinking and surely wondering why the Dyers’ daughter was walking around in the forest at night.

We give Smokey lots of water, then kibble. He’s pretty dirty, so Mom and I bathe him while Gwen watches, touching my arm tentatively, bringing towels, attempting to engage with Clyde. So honorable.

My hero.

Still haven’t checked my phone. Don’t want to. But maybe Gwen’s mom and dad are speeding over here to kill us all with their arsenal.

“I gotta, um, use the other restroom.”

Gwen turns to watch me go. I lock the door, take out the surveillance phone and sit on the toilet.

A message from Wade. My empty intestines kink.

Gwen’s heading your way

A second message: confirm?

I send a thumbs up.

Once Smokey is dried and settled in Mom and Clyde’s bedroom, I’m finally alone with Gwen, which wakes me up more than a cup of coffee. I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how much she knows.

We sit on my bed. Her hand envelops mine, warm.

“How did you find him?” I rasp.

Gwen laughs a little, averts her eyes. “Just saw him. He wasn’t too far from here, really.”

I stare at her until she looks back.

“What is it?” She blinks. Amish oakwood.

“You smelled him,” I whisper.

Her hand tightens around mine. “I think we all did.” Smiles again.

“No,” I say. “That’s how you found him. You smelled him. Where was he, Gwen?”

She drops my hand.

“How far away was he?”

She stands, shoves her hands into her hoodie pocket. Doesn’t face me. “Three, four miles north.”

I squeeze my lavender comforter. “How did you catch him?”

“He was tired.”

“He let you pick him up?” 56 pounds of fur for how many miles?

“Yeah.”

“Why doesn’t he freak out around you anymore?”

Gwen shrugs, peeks back.

I swallow.

She whips around and grips my cheap metal bedframe. The whole thing shakes. “How’d you know about my smell thing?” She smiles. “Sorry. It’s just—I don’t remember telling you. Telling you I thought it was real, at least. You believe it?”

I nod. Gwen leaps onto my bed. The whole thing shakes again. “Crazy, right?”

“Y-yeah. You hear better, too?”

“They’re trying to be quiet but… I hear your mom and her boyfriend right now.” She wrinkles her nose.

I put a hand over my mouth. “Ew.”

“Smokey’s used to it, I bet.”

“I’m not.”

“How long have they been together?”

“Like four months. Almost five. Shit.”

Her eyes scan my room, over photographs of me down the shore with my grandparents while they were still alive. “You don’t like him?”

I cross my arms. Uncross them. “He’s kind of an ass.”

Gwen smirks at me. “I picked up on that.” Pauses. “Sounds like he might have some redeeming qualities.”

It takes me a moment to process her words. Immediately, I regret it. “Jesus!” I slap her arm. “I’m gonna gag.”

She scoots closer, grin growing. “Now you have to suffer with me.”

“Ha, ha.” Too fucking real. “Please spare me.”

Her rosy cheeks fall. Sunken in. “You really believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I just do.”

Her brows furrow. “How?”

Because I saw, oh, what big ears you have. I press my tongue against my teeth. “I believe you when you tell me things. You should… believe yourself.”

“Careful.” She takes my wrist, stamps my knuckles to her forehead. “I’m crazy, remember? Delirious.”

“Then how come you found Smokey?”

Her eyes gleam. “Don’t make me think I can’t scare you away. Then I’ll tell you all kinds of things.”

“Like what?”

Gwen nuzzles my hand, wet lips. “Like how much I think about you,” she murmurs into my palm, sending a shock to my pussy.

I pull her close. She follows my arms until she faces me as we lie on pillows. A muffled squeak sounds. Gwen finds stuffed elephant under the sheets.

“Smokey’s toy. He sleeps with me, usually.”

“Aw.” I’m sure she could tell. He sheds like mad.

I grip the front of her hoodie. “Gwen.” My eyes mist. I want to tonguefuck her mouth, but my lip quivers. “You found him for me.”

“I wish I could’ve sooner.”

I cry, into her chest. So warm, the good kind. I writhe against her to dry my tears. Burn me alive. “Even after he bit you…”

She stops patting my head. “Bit me?”

I sniffle.

Gwen’s forehead scrunches. “He never bit me.”

I bolt up, electrified. Try to snatch her arm.

“What are you—”

“Let me pull up your sleeve just let me do it.”

She does. No injury. Those purple punctures—gone. “What!”

“Bianca?”

I look at her hands. Both of them. One was scabby and one was bleeding only four days ago. Now they are pristine and blemishless. My gaze flicks to hers. “How’s your foot?”

“My foot?”

“You broke it when you jumped from the roof?” Gwen looks afraid now, and I feel bad. “I’m sorry.” I bite my lip. “Nevermind.”

“Tell me Bianca. Tell me. I don’t remember.”

I tell her. I tell her about how she showed up at the diner, bleeding. I don’t tell her she broke my phone. I tell her how her parents tranquilized her and carried her away. Not about their guns.

“Guess it healed.” She rubs her jaw. “My parents must’ve treated it. They care for me while I’m… out of it.”

“Bones don’t heal in three days.” Neither do bites and cuts and crumbly scabs. Not without marks. But she has much more skin and bone than I can see right now and maybe the wolf swallows wounds, too.

Her breathing quickens. “Then I guess it wasn’t broken.”

This is too much, too fast. “Yeah,” I comfort. I don’t know what lies her parents told her but I can see that house of cards toppling behind her stare. “You OK?”

Her eyes refocus on mine. She strokes my face. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” Gwen falters, voice thick. “I’m sorry I’m—if I wasn’t selfish, I’d stay away.”

“Shut up.” I can’t tell her the whole truth. Not tonight. I wrap my leg around her hip, caress her lips with mine. “I want to see you. I want to know you.”

She exhales, hell from her lungs hazing my glasses.

“You will.” Gwen catches my bottom lip with her teeth. Blunt, but my breath shudders, and she smiles before her tongue lolls to my throat.

↟↟↟

8:10 a.m.:

we’re at the diner

8:47 a.m.:

Gwen’s gonna walk around in the woods for a bit

K. If we can’t find her it’s on you

Thx, wade. Have a good one

Im serious [gun emoji]

She said she’ll be back before we close

Wade fucking thumbs up the message.

I slam the phone on the counter. Breathe through my teeth. This was his—no, his parents’—plan all along. They needed leverage over Gwen, human leverage. Enter: Bianca Panco. She won’t run away without me. How convenient I am.

They’re wrong.

Last night I dreamed of the wolf. A rolling ocean of muscle and pelt, descending with open jaws like a tsunami. Inevitable.

I made Gwen eggs for breakfast and this time she did not hesitate. I cooked them in bacon grease. She licked the plate.

It’s always in the back of my mind. I’m not trying to figure out what ‘it’ is. Why would I do that when I already know? This is some Hansel and Gretel shit.

“More water?” Sheriff swallows whatever remains of his sandwich.

I adjust my glasses with a tremor, grab his cup from the counter. “Yeah, sorry.”

“That’s alright.” He cushions his curtness. “I, uh, heard about your dog.”

Before I can respond, Thornton enters. Right on schedule.

“Hi, Mr. Thornton.”

He lifts a claw at me and shambles to his booth by the door. Keeps his cigarettes in his pocket.

I return my attention to Sheriff. “We found him last night.”

“Oh.” His stache quirks. “What a relief.”

I smile and nod, ready to step away but his lips curl back:

“Because I’m ‘bout to go Rambo on these coyotes. I don’t care what that ‘Wildlife Alliance’ says.” He snickers to himself. “Or that Ivy League. It’s not like they’re from Princeton.” Sips his water.

“Did something happen?” This is the longest conversation I’ve ever had with Sheriff.

“Noise complaints. Somehow I control when the animals howl at night.”

“Complaints? How many?”

“More than ten on Saturday night. Worse than a high schooler party,” he chuckles. “Anyway. Glad you found your pooch.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.” Saturday night. While Gwen was turning. I remember the legion of coyotes outside of our Molly’s Motel room. She’s affecting their behavior. She’s the answer to the researchers’ questions.

Well, they’d never fucking guess this. What would happen if the wider world found out about Gwen, anyway? Would scientists kidnap her, run experiments? Would the army come? Would the President just nuke Pinetown?

And if werewolves are real, which I guess they fucking are, then why the hell doesn’t anyone act like it? Maybe it’s like Area 51.

The Dyers were right in this respect: I have to guard this secret.

The day passes. Clouds over the sky shift the lighting inside, along with the falling sun. Puffs of steam float from the kitchen. A little smoke. Mom’s singing—I would die for her, I realize. Kill for her, obviously. It’s a sudden and overwhelming feeling. I try not to cry as familiar faces fade in and out. Around three, Erica walks in. My heart rate jumps.

The student approaches me with a small smile, so coy. Her green and black hair twisted into space buns. Equipped with a heavy duty jacket, backpack, gloves, water bottle—she was outside. Gwen is outside. My eye twitches.

“Hi, Bianca. I’m back.”

“Hey—what?”

“Back in Pinetown. Didn’t notice I was gone?”

“No.” That sounded mean. “Sorry, my dog went missing and it’s just been a shitshow.” Erica’s face expands in horror. “Don’t worry, we found him. Well, Gwen found him…”

A breathy, relieved laugh. “Oh yeah, Gwen!”

“Yeah.” I need to watch my tone. “Are you still, uh, researching?”

Erica nods enthusiastically, buns flopping. “Dr. Leo and Dustin are moving on, but I’m staying to observe more of the atypical coyote behavior. Dr. Leo decided the findings here could only serve as outliers and skew the data. He thinks these coyotes are neurologically poisoned by the pesticides the blueberry farms use. That’s his theory, and he left it at that.”

“What’s your theory?”

“It could be brain damage, but it also could just be… stress. Because they seem healthy to me in every other way. I’ve figured out that the coyotes’ behavior here is the complete opposite of their usual responses to lunar cycles.”

Oh Jesus. Is the whole town catching on? “Interesting.”

“It’s about visibility; the fuller the moon is, the brighter it is outside, and the more coyotes can rely on sight. While hunting,” she pretends to prowl with her arms, swiveling her head, “they have to keep quiet, need more cover to stay hidden. Under newer moons,” she chirps, “when there’s less light, they rely on other senses. They howl more to communicate with their pack and protect their territory, and will be bolder, go into more open areas under the cover of darkness. But in Pinetown…” she grins, wags her finger, “in Pinetown there’s the opposite effect. Reports of coyotes howling and prowling near residences increased during the most recent full moon here.”

I look into her eyes. “Why do you think that is?”

“I need to keep watching for a couple more cycles, but I think there’s a territorial dispute.”

“Between who?”

“Primarily coyotes versus coyotes, but also, coyotes versus us, you know?” She giggles at my blank expression. Her dark eyes draw towards the kitchen door behind me. “Coyotes ever get in your trash?”

“No.”

“Have you ever heard about that happening to anyone here?”

“I’m not sure. Raccoons, maybe.”

“Ugh.” She slides onto a stool and rests her chin on her hand. “I should just sit here and interview whoever walks in.”

I’m kind of offended she hasn’t asked for my number at this point. “Were you in the woods?”

“Yes,” she sighs. “Checking the rub pads. Collecting samples.” She picks up a menu. “I’m exhausted.”

I set down a water for her. “Let me know if you need recs.”

The door chimes. Emilio walks in with a wild grin and points at me.

I nod at him, discouraging his mania.

He jogs over, open backpack sloshing notebooks and papers. He’s holding his camera. Sets it on the counter and leans to me, side-eyeing Erica. He puts a hand over his mouth. “Who’s that?”

“Erica.”

Emilio wolf whistles. The student snorts at him.

“Don’t harass my customers,” I say.

He puts his hand back over his mouth, black bangs obscuring semi-circle eyes. “Binks, I gotta show you something.”

“I’m working,” I glance at Erica. “And I don’t want to see any more roadkill pics.”

“No!” he strains. “This is different. This is, like, big time.”

Now I’m worried. “What is it?”

He climbs over the counter and scoots until he’s behind it with me.

“Don’t do that.” But I’m looking at the camera in his hands. Strange how Emilio doesn’t just record with his phone, but uses this dinky compact camera instead. It’s covered in scratches. “How old is that thing?”

“From 2008. It’s a Panasonic SDR-S7, dude. Thrifted.” He wiggles his fingers before flicking open the mini screen. “OK—check it.” He pushes buttons to select his most recent video. Set in the woods.

Fuck.

He grins at me, grins more at my earnest anxiety. “Don’t tell my parents bro because they won’t let me in the woods again.”

“OK… bro.”

He presses play. Fastforwards. Pause. Play. Fastforwards. Pause.

Exhales. Play.

It’s shaky footage of the forest, endless trees and pine straw. Something dark moves—a leg. Emilio zooms in. It’s Smokey.

“Wait—” His breath hitches. Two of Smokey’s back legs peek from behind the tree. Pause.

Anger fireworks in my head. “When was this?”

Emilio’s face creases. Play. Smokey backs up, looks at the camera. Emilio gasps.

“What?”

“Yo…” Fastforwards. Pause. Play. Rewind. Rewind. Rewind.

“Emilio.”

His mouth and eyes are open wide, chest rising and falling under his layers. “It’s gotta be…” He jams the buttons, looks through all his videos.

“When did you take this?”

He ignores me, keeps shaking his head.

“Hello?”

“The fuck!” He swings the camera to his side. Bites on his thumb. Erica studies us.

“Emilio. When did you take that video?”

He stares vacantly at the organic peanut butter jar under the counter. “Yesterday.”

“You saw Smokey yesterday and you didn’t tell anybody? You didn’t tell me?”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head again. Looks like he might cry.

“E… it’s fine. We got him, it’s fine. I just don’t get why you didn’t tell us you saw him.”

“I didn’t see him.” He opens the camera. Clicks the video and rewatches the grainy, zoomed-in footage of Smokey. “Fuckcakes!” He storms out growling, blank algebra papers spilling from his bookbag.

I watch him walk briskly down the sidewalk from the window, still bleeding paper.

Erica lowers her menu, as if she weren’t watching closely. “Does he know his backpack is open?”

READ FEVERCHAIN 11

Voiceover by the versatile .

I CAN SEARCH for Smokey and film cool forest stuff. Not deer. I have so much friggin’ deer, they’re boring. Last week, I spotted a coyote, but it ran before I could record it.

Currently got six shots of roadkill. I would have more if Mom would stop the dang car. “It’s creepy, it smells,” yeah, duh. That’s the whole point, Mom. It catches the eye before you can look away. You wanna pretend it isn’t there—Bambi with brains exposed—that’s how I know it’s powerful. All these dead things with no funeral. Left to rot. To be forgot. Kinda messed up. Kinda more disturbing than anything you’d find at Spirit Halloween or in the CGI horror movies. And roadkill is free to film.

What if I found… Smokey’s body? That would be fucked! Real sad.

Apparently Smokes just walked out their front door last night, even though Miss Panco swore she locked it. If she really did—that’s one smart dog. Or maybe he’s stupid. There’s coyotes. Got my blowhorn out for a reason. Locked and loaded.

“Smokey! Yoo-hoo! Smokey!” I try to whistle, but only spit comes out. Step over and between dead shrubs, my sneaks crunching pine straw. Maybe if I find him, I’ll get money. Even if I don’t, this whole thing could be inspo for a screenplay, a mystery: Dog Dissolved. Everyone thinks the dog got lost but actually someone kidnapped it (I recorded Binks while she was crying… such a pretty crier… I probably should’ve asked her first). The CIA kidnapped it because the dog has nuclear codes in its brain. Or it’s secretly an extraterrestrial.

I’m not heartless, alright? I’m worried too. Especially with the coyotes being rabies babies. I jiggle the blowhorn.

“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”

Branches wave and rustle at me. From the distance I hear “Ruff!” from a domestic doggie. Coyotes don’t sound like that. They scream.

So it’s gotta be Mr. Smokes! I turn on my camera and sprint, calling yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo…

Where is that motherfucker??

“Smokey?”

Some shadow moves between the trees. Moving strange. Is he hurt? I zoom in with my Panasonic, fingers trembling in fingerless gloves. My blood and breath are wooWOOwooWOO—I gotta chill. Focus.

Behind the pine trunk I see a leg. A black curly carpet hairy human leg. Then another one. It backs up to look at me on all fours, eyes super freak blue. WHAT THE FUCCCKKKKK. I back up, keeping my camera on the thing, trying to keep quiet as I swallow my lips.

It’s the Jersey Devil. It’s Bigfoot. In real life. Real life!—I slip. Hit my butt. Survey everything everywhere, left right left. Whatever that thing was is gone. Nowhere! I listen. Nada.

“Hello?”

I shouldn’t have been such a bitch and gotten closer. But what if it was just a really hairy naked guy in the woods? Sitting on the sandy dirt, I blow the dust from my camera and tap buttons to look at the footage. Yeah, it’s a human leg. Man nose over the mustache and beard. Just a hairy guy. Almost Ripley’s Believe It or Not! hairy. I grimace and turn from the screen, but I don’t think his junk is in it. Why did that dude bark?

Why’s he messing with Emilio, eh?

Something ain’t right. My head and hair swish around, meeting pine tree, pine tree, pine tree, pine tree. How the heck do I get outta here when I don’t know where ‘out’ is? “Dad?” I shouldn’t have run ahead. That wasn’t cool, especially ‘cause he has knee problems. “Dad?”

A shadow figure against the pines. It stands. Barks.

Not a doggie. Not. I snatch my camera, remember to press record, and bolt. “DAD DAD DAD DAD!”

FEVERCHAIN 10

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READ FEVERCHAIN 8

Voiceover by the enrapturing .

THE FINISHED BASEMENT looks unfinished, walls punched with holes and insulation guts exposed. Lying very still is a mass of gray rippled tan fur chained to weights and exercise equipment. I can see its ribs—a big, long emaciated dog, resting its snout between its paws. Like every ASPCA commercial mashed together. At the same time, distinctly wolfish. And distinctly human—its shoulders substantial, paws elongated, clawed, thumbed hands. Chained to an elliptical, a treadmill, and weights, the shackles are flush with its flesh, digging, irritating. Ankles and snout pink with blood. The carpeted floor is ripped to the concrete, scratched deep.

It looks at me. Eyes reflective, expressive. Brown. It looks at me, with recognition. Wet nose twitches, ears not quite pinned back until the eyes fall on Wade, or perhaps on the crowbar he’s holding. I try to see whether Smokey’s bite is still visible on her, but fur covers it.

“Gwen?”

The ears turn. She emits a sonic whine. My chest shatters.

Just when I’m about to step, Wade says, “Don’t.”

With a shaky hand, I hide my face.

“Around Christmas, the second time she turned with us, I tried to touch. When I got close, I saw its muzzle, the drool. I drew back. Once I did, it snapped. Right where my hand was.” He looks at me without turning. “It isn’t her, Binny. You gotta understand that. If you don’t understand it now, you fucking will. One day one of us will slip up and it’ll be a fucking bloodbath. I dream about it. Every night.” He shivers, lowers his voice. “If my parents don’t kill you first, it will. If I were you, I’d drive. Drive west ‘til you can’t.”

Gwen is deathly still. Her gaze shifts between us, breath audible but shallow. She’s sick, I realize. She’s weak.

“I have nowhere to go. M-my mom, she’s all I have. She won’t leave, won’t believe me.”

“Take my car. Tonight.”

Behind the dog’s forehead and brow—is Gwen’s mind? She watches me closely, like she’s reading my lips… If she can’t understand my words, she must understand my fear. My affection. Licks her nose.

“I’ll shoot my parents, burn the house down, and go with you.”

I gawk at Wade. His knuckles are white around the crowbar. “That’s the only way we live. Your mom lives.”

“Stop it!” I hiss, glancing up the stairs. “There has to be another way. I could never do that,” I say to Gwen. “Never.”

Wade sighs. Relief or disappointment? His eyes scan me. “Correct answer.” He gestures up the stairs with his crowbar.

While I ascend, the exercise equipment strains, plastic fissures and chips away, weights ding against each other, chains and claws cut concrete. I look back. She’s crawling low, eyes, bloody legs, and teeth glinting. Wade flicks off the light, shoves me up. Neither of us like that. She panics, pants, and before Wade deadbolts the door, I hear her guarantee.

↟↟↟

Somehow, I make it home unscathed. Unfollowed. Part of me wants to believe none of that actually happened, now that I’m away from it, away from the Dyer house and back at mine where the world feels real. I sit in the driveway, holding my new phone in my hand. It’s cold, black, and glossy. I look at myself, my long nose and mouth wheezing through cracked lips.

The Dyers “gifted” me with it. Tracks my location like I’m on probation. Then they tried to convert me. So I pretended to be afraid of Gwen, instead of afraid for her.

“The petting zoo attacks. Peanut. She did that?”

“No,” they’d said. That wasn’t during a full moon! “It would kill more than a couple pets.” Almost with pride.

“We’ve kept it contained.”

It, they’d repeated.

“But how do you know—when did you realize she was dangerous?”

They didn’t have an answer. Not really.

“Has she hurt anyone?”

“We won’t let it.”

Maybe she tries to attack you people because you’re crazy and fucking abuse her, OK?

I didn’t say that. I pretended to eat what they fed me. Washed it all down with their bitter coffee. But first chance I get, I’m telling Gwen everything. That’ll crack the Dyers’ control like an egg. I will help her, and she will help me.

When we saw each other in the basement, we reached an understanding.

That basement. I wipe my eyes and swallow hard. Wonder if I can convince my mom to go on vacation for a while. Go out of reach. Shifting, I feel the envelope full of money in my jacket pocket. Ticket money. I look out my windows, at my mirrors to see if anyone is watching, somehow listening to my thoughts.

This is going to be a fun way to live. Hopefully not until the end, if I can get through this. And I have to. They threatened my fucking mom. They will regret that.

I open the car door, cautious.

It’s 4:30 a.m. No one should be awake, and I won’t be able to sleep. I’m about to plan this vacation, this fabulous, (mediocre if I include Clyde), untouchable cruise, on my laptop. Then I see our front door. It’s wide open.

READ FEVERCHAIN 9.5

Lost?

Here’s what’s on the menu:

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

• FEVERCHAIN 1 [Fanta]

• FEVERCHAIN 2 [good coffee]

• FEVERCHAIN 3 [marshmallows]

• FEVERCHAIN 4 [eggs]

• FEVERCHAIN 5 [milk]

• FEVERCHAIN 6 [chicken parmesan]

• FEVERCHAIN 6.5 [children]

• FEVERCHAIN 7 [porkroll]

• FEVERCHAIN 8 [whiskey]

• FEVERCHAIN 9 [bad coffee]

• FEVERCHAIN 9.5 [roadkill]

• FEVERCHAIN 10 [kibble]

• FEVERCHAIN 11 [blueberry pie]

• FEVERCHAIN 11.5 [venison]

• FEVERCHAIN 12 [ketchup]

• FEVERCHAIN 13 [Q-tip]

• FEVERCHAIN 14 [peanut butter]

• FEVERCHAIN 14.5 [Ambien]

• FEVERCHAIN 15 [pork belly]

• FEVERCHAIN 16 [‘Eggo’ waffles]

• FEVERCHAIN 17 [sugar]

• FEVERCHAIN 18 [gumball]

• FEVERCHAIN 18.5 [fig & cherry]

• FEVERCHAIN 19 [Milk-Bone]

• FEVERHCHAIN 20 [trachea]

• FEVERCHAIN 21 [tail end]

• FEVERCHAIN 21.5 [Pinetown]

  To stay updated:

  

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Watch the recorded live reading of FEVERCHAIN 1 from The Chapter One

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Feverchain, Live From The First Line: The Chapter One Club

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2 months ago · 20 likes · 13 comments · Alex Shifman, Wendy Russell, and Tom Schecter

READ FEVERCHAIN 7

Voiceover by the unmatched . 🌪️

GWENDOLEN MARIE DYER is not in the hospital. Cotton in my mouth as I sprint out. I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t have been gullible enough to waste time driving here instead of the Dyer residence.

I’m almost more furious than afraid. Mom’s car is clanking and shaking down 206. I’m breathing as fast as I’m speeding until I see holographic eyes reflect my high beams. “Fuck!”

I slam the breaks. Not supposed to do that. My chest hits the steering wheel. The doe outside my windshield is frozen in place.

“Move! Please move!”

She stares like she’s already dead. I see headlights in my rearview. Gotta keep driving. I honk my horn. Unsteadily, the deer strides away. I keep it 70 or below. Can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with Gwen if I flip this tin can and break my neck.

The Dyers live on the western edge of Pinetown, past the big blueberry farm in a wheat and cream farmhouse style home they renovated half a decade ago with two garage doors and a pool in the backyard. In their front, an overturned soccer goal. I notice a blue tarp over part of the roof. Oh my god.

I pull in behind Wade’s Jeep, palms slick with cold sweat. It’s almost 2 a.m. Mom and Clyde are sleeping. The Dyers have the lights on, creeping out through cracks in the shades. Incriminating. Inviting.

I open my driver side door. Music is playing. So loud I can hear it from out here, some hypnotic, bluesy tune.

I walk the stone path to the front door. A resinous scent from the woods wafts to me, and I know I’m about to step in something sticky. Of course there’s one of those camera doorbells, glowering at me with a red light. “You are being recorded,” it warns. I’m aware. Thumb it in the face, and chimes ding dimly behind a gravelly voice, singing.

I ring again. Smother the button.

The singer howls a lament, a-whoo-hoo-whoo.

I knock.

A-whoo-hoo-a-whoo-hoo-hoo.

“Hello?” I shout. “Is Gwen there?”

The song cuts off.

I miss it. Music was more sympathetic than this silence. The back of my legs are shivering, making my ass twitch. Maybe I should get back in the car.

The door swings open. Mrs. Dyer literally pulls me inside. “Oh, hurry in, Bianca, hurry in!” I’m engulfed in warm light, warm tones. I haven’t been here since before it was renovated, since I was dating Wade sophomore and junior year.

“It’s so cold, honey,” she says, closing the door. With a deft hand, she locks it. Locks many locks that jangle and clack. She’s wearing the same outfit, the same weapons. “Go on, go down the hall, by the fireplace.” Like she’s been expecting me.

I begin to follow her instruction. “Where’s Gwen?” I ask the house. It answers with a low scrape, some ponderous dragging below my feet, below the floorboards. I feel it, vibrating up my bones into my teeth.

“Just this way honey, just this way.” Behind me, a scuff. Metal against leather.

My shoulders go tight. But what can I do, when she can put a bullet in my head?

“Does anyone know you’re here?” She confirms the threat.

“No.”

“Good, honey. That’s good. Go on.”

I step, locking and unlocking my knees down the red rug runner. The house is warm, smells like cinnamon smoke. A deadbolted door draws my eye.

“Go on,” Mrs. Dyer whispers. The danger is there, so heavy she had to lighten her voice. So great it shakes this house, from bottom to top.

I was right, everything is wrong.

Breath bursts in and out of my mouth until it’s bone dry. I’m so thirsty, so awake. I continue and turn into the living room. The fireplace is lit.

Wade is on the leather couch, staring at me and strangling a remote control. Books are strewn on the wide wood coffee table, ancient pottery pictures. Furniture looks antique. Nothing is dusty. Stuffed pheasants hang on the wall. Smart looking TV. My gaze returns to the coffee table and follows the boots, jeans, shotgun. Mayor Dyer cocks it, the gun’s stock catching amber in the lamplight.

I turn. Mrs. Dyer is pointing her pistol at me, just as I’d imagined.

“Well,” the mayor says. “You took the carrot. Now you’ll have to take the stick.” He sets the gun down in his lap and pats it. Raises a short, full glass. “Whiskey?”

I shake my head, keep shaking it, backing into a hutch, rattling the items inside. All the curtains are drawn.

A constellation of pictures on the wall. More of Gwen than Wade. Tiny Gwen with blonde pigtails. With her mom, wearing soccer gear. Photos of Gwen in high school, hugging her dad after a win.

The mayor downs his whiskey. Makes a face like he doesn’t even like it. Clicks his tongue.

“Sit down, Bianca. Next to Wade.” He leans to pick up an opened book, pages printed with pictures of black and white bowls. As he’s bent over his gun, I wonder if it could accidentally fire into the kitchen. And maybe that could catch someone’s attention, and they’d call the police, and someone could save me. But there’s about a mile between this house and the next. And Sheriff doesn’t strike me as a hero.

“Sit.”

I sink into leather cushions. Wade’s head is in his hands. He isn’t crying, but he’s elsewhere. Also armed with a pistol, I note.

Mayor Dyer taps the picture book with a calloused finger. “A thousand years ago, the peoples of the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico painted men combined with birds and animals. See?” He flashes the image at me. The bowl has a big hole in the center, and it’s painted with figures of people and pointed-eared predators along its inner curves. One person with a tail is holding a baby. He sets that book down, picks up a smaller one. “The human-animal figurines of ‘Ain Ghazal.” He tosses it on the table pile. “The evil eye of Ethiopia. Witchcraft. Bad spirits. Invoke god’s name!” He throttles the heavens. “But what if he’s the same? In Greek mythology, gods became beasts. The Christian god turned King Nebuchadnezzar into one for seven years. Seven.” His voice chokes.

Oh. They’re insane. Got it.

“The point, honey,” Mrs. Dyer interjects like a switchblade. “Get to it.”

The mayor takes a breath. His forehead glistens. “We don’t want to hurt you, Bianca. We won’t have to if you listen, very carefully.”

My stomach hardens to stone. If I try to leave, will they really shoot me? Wouldn’t that totally ruin their lives? I consider running, calling their bluff. But if they’re insane, which they might be, they wouldn’t hesitate—

“You came here because you… care about my daughter?”

I try to swallow so I can speak. “Yes.”

“Hm.” The mayor tilts his head, thoughtful. “Do you believe in god, Bianca?”

“Pierce.”

The mayor’s eyes twinkle at his wife’s impatience.

Wade sighs beside me. I decide to be honest. “I-I don’t know, really.”

“The Bible says god made man to subdue the Earth. Are you familiar?”

“I—” just go with it “—yes.”

“And so we did. We did. Perhaps too easily. Care, love, it requires sacrifice. Stakes. Maybe god is trying to challenge us again, to call forth humanity’s greatness through subduing this disease.”

“Lupus?” I croak.

“Canis lupus.”

What?

“Lycanthropy.”

I think I’ve heard it in a movie. A fake word, sounding fake-scientific.

The mayor frowns at me like my trigonometry teacher used to. “Gwen is a werewolf.”

I look at Wade, but he’s staring at his hands. I look at Mrs. Dyer, and she nods behind her steady pistol.

“Gwen is a werewolf. Knowing that, you have two options. The first: welcome to the family. You guard this secret. That shouldn’t be hard. No one will believe you, even if you try to gather ‘evidence.’ You guard this secret, and you help us protect our child. Especially from herself. She doesn’t know she’s a werewolf. She. Can’t. Know. We four, in this room, are the only people in the world who can ever know. Understand?”

My mouth hangs open, but I bob my head. If I just go with it, if I just go with it they won’t hurt me. He said that. He did.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

“OK.” He sighs, strokes his gun. “Option two. You die. I wish it didn’t have to be that way. But it must. If you agree to our terms today, but later violate them? Try to leave town? Try to call the police, tell them everything? Sheriff won’t believe you. By the time someone does, it’ll be too late.” He leans, levels his face with mine. “Your mother is not beyond our reach. And you will never be. Understand?”

Scrape, scrape. Below, something drags. The mayor closes his eyes. Lids twitch.

“I don’t believe you,” I tell him.

He laughs. “Show her, Wade. Keep it short. Then bring her back up here to further discuss our terms.” He rises, taps his phone. The blues careen through ceiling speakers. “I’m making coffee. We’ll need it.”

Wade looks like he could hurl any second. “You stupid, nosey bitch,” he spits. “You stupid, nosey fucking bitch.”

His honesty relieves me. “Wade. Please. What’s happening?”

“You shouldn’t have come here. Can’t you take a fucking hint? I told Gwen not to get involved with you, but no. This is what she forces us to do.”

“She was lonely, Wade,” Marie says. “She has to keep her sanity.” A pause. “And please, watch your language.”

“Jesus fuck, Mom! This isn’t any better than it was. This is worse!”

“Bianca will be a smart girl. Won’t she?” Her gun isn’t pointed at me anymore, but she’s holding it, and her words hit like lead.

Wade rises. “Get up. I’m taking you to the basement.”

“No.”

“Wanna see Gwen or not?”

“Don’t—don’t lock me down there.”

“Better hope we don’t have to. Come on, you need to see it.”

We go to the door. The deadbolted door in the hall. He unlocks it and there’s a staircase descending into darkness. He picks up a crowbar left on the first step and wields it. I hear the scraping sounds, clear and close. Makes me shiver, like I can feel them run over me, cold and hard. Chains and groaning equipment.

The steps creak as we walk down. I smell ammonia and copper. Musk. The scraping stops. A guitar twang slides from the top of the stairs.

It’s wet dog. I smell wet dog. Goosebumps prickle all over. “Wade.”

“A couple more steps and I’ll turn on the light.”

“Wade.” My lip trembles. The air is dense. The smell is overwhelming. “I believe.”

“Come on. Almost there. Gotta prove to you we aren’t crazy.”

“I can’t.”

He sighs, flashes the crowbar. “Just do what I say because my parents—they might kill you. I can’t stop them. They do CrossFit.”

I step. I step. I step. Closer to a threshold I don’t want to cross. My universe bends, about to snap. Wade halts. Light from the open door upstairs doesn’t reach this far—an expanse of darkness ahead, thick with the presence of animal. Worse than looking down the barrel of a gun. Nothing moves. A harmonica cries.

“Sorry I couldn’t warn you.” Wade flips the lightswitch.

READ FEVERCHAIN 9