Silver Claws: Blood Twins

Chapter 2

2.

We ran all the next day, then slowed our pace. We had to leave the deep forest and head for terrain unknown to the pack. I turned east, Rhea at my side. East to where the humans had built towns and train tracks and villages. Away from the wilds of America where we werewolves intended to rebuild our dying race. No river ran west. We had to leave that talisman and go to unknown lands.

My nostrils filled with human stink.

Smell that? I asked Rhea, mind to mind.

She sniffed. A village. Father wanted us to join the humans.

I shook my head. Too close to the pack. They’d hear stories of twins coming out of the forest and have us by nightfall. They have ears everywhere.

We could get food there, human food.

Humans. In the towns many of the men had long guns my father called Winchesters. The men’s whiskers were longer than our werewolf coats and they seemed as quick to anger as any wolf, werewolf or plain that I had ever seen.

 Everyone carried a six shooter and a grudge, or that’s what it seemed like to us. Father said never to show them our wolf form. They’d fill us full of bullets.

“Stay here in these bushes,” I said.

 Rhea pulled at a clutch of withered grapes. “Why? What are you doing?”

“Checking if it’s safe.”

I left, keeping my body low and hidden, staying on the outskirts of the village. I found a deserted house and barn. Not in ruin yet, but nearly. The land was poor, I sniffed the fields and the garden close to the house. Nothing could grow here. The family was right to leave. I sped up until I reached the next farm house. It was occupied. The land was poor but not dead. I had drifted too much into the open sniffing the dirt when a gunshot cracked the air.

“I hate them crows. They’re Satan’s handmaidens! They take my seed corn and make me waste my bullets. And they’s so full of themselves they sit on my scarecrow while they eat my seed.”

A tall rangy man shouted to the blue sky above his plowed field. Crows wheeled about cawing. Animals understand each other’s language and I knew what they were shouting at him.

“Look at them. Them devils is laughing at me.”

Not quite. It was swearing. And it was ear curling.

A woman, rangy as her husband, her eyes blue in her brown face came from the hen house. “They are a worry. We’ll pray on the problem tonight. But, look here, Thomas, those layers gave us fourteen eggs today. We’ve never had so many.”

I had an idea.

I went back to the deserted farm. Yes, there was a pail, better, two of them. I found a place in the shadows and looped into human form, dressed. I grabbed both the pails and walked to the neighboring farm.

The man and the woman came out of their house when they saw me striding up their lane.

“Well, now, who’s this?” The man said.

“Hello, sir, ma’am. My family bought the farm down the road. We just got here. My Mother and Father would have come but that farm is in a site worse shape than the seller it made it out to be. Father’s trying to mend the shed to keep the horses from getting loose and Mother’s crying her eyes out in disappointment.”

The man shook his head. “It’s gonna get worse, son. That’s a bad luck farm if there’s ever been one.”

The woman glared at him. “Why don’t I come down and give your Mother a hand?”