The wolf jogged along the shoulder of Virginia Avenue, weaving through the thin treeline that separated the road from a sprawl of low-slung commercial buildings. The night air was humid and heavy, thick with the mingling scents of oil, asphalt, and the faint tang of salt from the Cooper River. Streetlights cast long shadows between the trees, their light flickering against the passing silhouettes of freight trucks and the occasional growl of distant engines.

  Overhead, the steady drone of tires on the expressway added a low, constant hum to the nightscape, blending with the soft buzz of street lamps and the rhythmic rasp of insects. It wasn’t quite peaceful—too industrial for that—but it had a rhythm. A beat. One that matched the wolf’s steady, if sluggish, pace.

  The tracks we’d been following—the Old North Charleston Rail—now ran on the opposite side of the road but would soon cross over to join the CSX and Norfolk lines as they merged and made their way to their final destination: the North Charleston Port Terminal.

  Across the road, just beyond the tracks, stood the Amalie Oil Company: a sprawl of storage silos, a fenced-in employee parking lot, and a private port for petroleum transport. A bold red-and-black street sign proudly proclaimed their oil to be "Better than it has to be? since 1903."

  After gorging ourselves in North Charleston's garden of earthly delights, we’d peeled off the rooftop and began our slow, northbound trudge. Back in our wolf form, leaner but stuffed, we moved with labored steps. The wolf’s belly noticeably round. Her pace was sluggish, each stride weighed down by a gut full of stolen dinner that went well beyond surf and turf—land, sea, and sky were all accounted for.

  I once had a classmate—a distance runner—who swore jogging after a meal helped with digestion. Said it "churned things up."

  Personally? In my experience, it just led to cramps and regret.

  Normally, after a feast like this, the wolf would curl up somewhere dark and quiet and slowly slip into a food coma. And, in such cases, come morning, I’d awaken in someone’s yard or garden, naked and disoriented—and feeling a bit bloated.

  At which point someone would call the cop. A threat that still hovered over me like a greasy sword of Damocles. Always dripping. Constantly reminding me it was still there.

  Fortunately, tonight, the wolf had a reason to stay awake. Boden and Coy were still out there somewhere, and she wasn’t going to rest until they were home—until the pack was whole again. Only then would she sleep soundly, surrounded by her adoring entourage.

  I’d handed the wheel back to the wolf once we’d left the Culinary District, and found myself feeling oddly less apprehensive at the idea. We'd come to a bit of an... understanding. And, despite my regrettable lapse in judgment earlier, and the voiding of my dietary commitments, I'd earned myself some brownie points with the wolf.

  If nothing else, she’d warmed to me. If just a little.

  Wolves, like all dogs, were rather food motivated.

  I basically just needed to follow the same dating advice I was given when it came to men: that the best way to their heart was through their stomach.

  Shame I never learned to cook.

  It felt like our relationship had shifted—less adversarial, more cooperative. A few nights ago, she would’ve yanked the wheel from me the second I hesitated. Back then, she only came to me for information—facts, directions, context—and would rifle through my thoughts like a junk drawer, only grabbing what was immediately useful.

  Now, though, it felt different.

  She was listening. Not just scavenging. She was actually turning her attention toward me, actively seeking my input. Asking for thoughts. Suggestions. She wasn’t just tolerating the presence in the passenger seat—she was acknowledging me as part of the ride.

  It wasn’t about control anymore—it was collaboration. That shift was new. But it mattered. Her thoughts felt more open, her intentions easier to sense without having to dig.

  The wall between us was still there, but it wasn’t a fortress anymore. More like a picket fence. Clear boundaries, but easier to speak across. Chat with your neighbor. Pet their dog.

  Not that I was cozying up to her. She was still hijacking my body, after all. But for the first time, some form of mutual collaboration didn’t feel entirely out of the question.

  And it helped that she was no longer fixated on food. One less impulse to keep under control.

  I still felt conflicted about what we’d done tonight. The heist. The indulgence. But it had taught me something—not just about her, but about how to work with her. The key wasn’t brute force. It was redirection.

  Not to tame her instincts, but to guide them. Manipulate them. Place what she wanted on the other side of a constructive goal.

  What she wanted was simple: food, a pack, a forest to call home. All I had to do was convince her to follow my lead to get it.

  Which meant I had to find a way to deliver.

  The answer, of course, was money. Money and a job. Money for food, and a job to make said money. And a job needed a car—public transportation wouldn't cut it. The job I'd taken for Sandy, could provide the wolf with the two ingredients to her happiness, but that was predicated on holding onto the position, and securing a tenant position with Sandy. Which seemed ever more dubious by the second, especially considering that we'd assaulted my supervisor and her brother, JT.

  But that kind of forward thinking was still too abstract for the wolf. She didn’t think in long-term plans—her world was made of immediacies. Hunger. Safety. Pack. Maybe she could stretch her focus to tomorrow, but anything beyond that was fog.

  But at least reasoning with her was always easier on a full stomach. Blood sugar was required for her to think properly. And stop her gut-brain from usurping her head-brain.

  Not only that, but I'd learned that my wolf was rather susceptible to positive reinforcement. Dinner had bought me goodwill. Better to lead her with the carrot, and not the stick.

  Or, perhaps, a bone with a bit of meat—but it was still an apt analogy.

  If I could make her happy and comfortable, I could domesticate her.

  Kill her with kindness, so to speak.

  Too many sticks spoil the broth—and you could still beat people with carrots.

  We reached the parking lot I’d visited earlier—the one where Boden’s scent had hit a dead end. It belonged to the Ingevity Corporation, a football-field-sized sprawl of cracked pavement hemmed in by industrial buildings and a thin treeline. The lot was mostly empty, save for a scattering of cars parked near the front entrance. Maybe they belonged to custodial staff or an office worker putting in weekend hours. But my bet? Most were just from people looking for a free spot to leave their car for the holidays. Out-of-towners, probably. Locals wouldn’t risk it—Charleston didn’t mess around when it came to parking enforcement. With the city growing faster than it could handle, any empty space was a battleground, and towing companies were more than happy to cash in.

  A few high-mounted floodlights lit the center of the lot with glaring intensity, leaving the far corners mostly in shadow. Around the edges, low-hanging branches from the bordering treeline helped obscure the view, making the outer stretches feel like the edge of somewhere long forgotten. The depot and parking lot were divided by that same treeline, with the Old North Charleston running straight through it on its way up to the port terminal.

  The depot was of moderate size, wedged in a triangle between Virginia Avenue and the tracks that ran up toward the port. At its center stood a light-blue warehouse, large and boxy, operated by a chemical leasing company. Tank trailers lined one edge of the property, their silver sides dull in the moonlight, while rows of refrigerated cargo containers were stacked like oversized ice chests along the opposite side. Scattered industrial lights cast uneven pools of yellow across the rust-stained pavement and chain-link fencing, giving the whole place a disjointed, sterile look.

  The wolf slipped through the same damaged section of fence I had used earlier, her nose twitching as she padded across the gravel. The scent was faint, older, but still present. She moved with purpose, tail high.

  She retraced Boden’s steps like reading a story faded by time. The scent trail was over a day old, but still legible—written in sweat, pawprints, and the tang of cologne. There had been dogs here—several. And the man. The wolf read blood in the dirt, both canine and human, and the distinct chemical whisper of gunpowder. A scuffle, brief but violent. The man had fired a weapon, and been injured in turn. Bitten most likely. But he hadn't bled a lot. Either he'd staunched it quickly, or the wound had been shallow. Whatever happened here had been messy. And sudden. Someone had come looking for trouble, and found it.

  Boden’s trail followed the man closely. Mirroring it. Not so much dogging his footsteps, but accompanying him.

  And both trails vanished at the same spot: an empty parking space.

  Boden had been with the man. That much was clear. He’d followed the cologned stranger into the depot, sticking close, container to container, like a second shadow. He’d been there during the scuffle—present when the man drew his weapon, fired, got bit. The wolf could pick up the sequence from the mingled trails: Boden hadn’t panicked or bolted. He’d moved with the man, left with him.

  Whatever Boden was doing with that man, he’d chosen to go with him. And he hadn’t come back.

  the wolf replied, turning back toward the depot.

  She circled back to the epicenter—the place where the blood and gunpowder smells were strongest. But unlike me, the wolf wasn’t revisiting the scene for reflection. She was reconstructing it.

  Her nose filtered through the overlapping scents, isolating one from the next. The other dogs. Their numbers. Where they’d entered. Where they’d exited. The wolf wasn't interested in why they’d come—only in how. The direction of their paws, the density of their prints, the tang of sweat and adrenaline—they painted a map clearer than any satellite image.

  Most of the dogs had come from the west, from the direction of Park Circle, and had fled the same way. That made sense; I’d guessed as much based on where the missing dog posters I'd seen clustered on the boards at the community center.

  They'd come from Park Circle and had returned to Park Circle.

  All except two.

  Daisy and Matty.

  The two dead dogs I'd found earlier. They'd fled to the north.

  We found the bodies—Daisy and Matty—curled up in the wooded stretch beyond the fence line, just past the edge of the depot's lights. They were stiff, collapsed near one another like they’d tried to run but hadn’t made it far. Probably wounded and fled. Matty looked like a Boxer—stocky build, cropped ears. Daisy had the look of a Setter, or maybe a mix of something similar—leaner, with a long snout and feathered fur around the legs. Not huge dogs, but sizable enough to hold their own.

  The wolf approached slowly, hackles raised. At first, I thought I understood her anger. I felt it too. I'd seen these dogs on the community boards and in posts from worried owners. They weren’t just animals. They were companions, family. Someone had loved them. And now they were gone. Shot down in some senseless chaos. No answers. No justice.

  But as we drew closer, the wolf’s anger didn’t fade. It grew.

  And that’s when I realized—it wasn’t grief. It wasn’t sadness twisted into frustration.

  It was hate.

  It poured off her like heat from pavement, and the longer she lingered, the more it bled over into me. Our pulse picked up. Our jaw clenched. It was the kind of feeling that made your vision tunnel and your thoughts snap sharp.

  And it didn’t feel like her.

  The wolf wasn’t hateful. She was feral, sure. Fierce. But when she hunted, it was instinct. Clean. She didn’t hate the deer she took down. If anything, she loved the deer. Loved deer in general. They way they smelled. The way they moved. The sound they made when frightened. She loved to stalk them, loved to chase them. To sink her teeth into them.

  A love for food.

  The kill wasn’t cruel. It was natural.

  Even the poor worker she and Elmo had scared shitless behind the restaurant—she hadn't hated him. Sure he’d been an obstacle. Annoying, maybe, but not hated. He’d brought food, after all. Which counted for something. An overall net positive review.

  But this?

  This rage was foreign. Thick. Wrong. The emotional version of a chemical burn.

  It was bitter. Metallic. Like burnt ozone and copper. It smelled foul.

  Smelled like...

  I said, reaching for the wheel, forcing her to move. To step back.

  She recoiled, the fury vanishing like voltage in a short circuit.

  And that confirmed it.

  I'd suspected that something had been affecting the dogs. Something that manipulated them. Compelled them to violence. I'd sensed the magic on the dogs earlier. Smelled it. Felt it. But it hadn’t affected me. Aside from giving me the heebie jeebies. But that was because I was human. Sure, I’d been part wolf at the time, physically, and perhaps even mentally—I’d had to believe I was a wolf to get the transformation right. But deep down, I was still a normal person, still knew I was human. A wolf in all but spirit.

  But the wolf, despite being a manifestation of my lycanthropy, was still a dog.

  Could magic really work like that? Could it target the spirit of something? The soul?

  Well, I mean, it was magic after all.

  But something else also bothered me.

  Not all the dogs had carried this scent. Only Daisy and Matty. Their bodies still radiated that foul smelling magic. It didn’t just cling to them—it emanated from them.

  They weren’t just cursed. They were a source. Transmitters for whatever had cursed them.

  I said to the wolf.

  But the wolf was undeterred. She turned away, picked up a new trail.

  I told her.

  A huff of agreement—she knew the score.

  She also knew what our next move should be: we had a new scent to follow.

  The wolf didn’t follow the crowd into Park Circle. She didn’t need to.

  Out of the many trails crisscrossing the depot, only a few bore the heavy stink of magic. Daisy. Matty. And one more.

  A third.

  One of the cursed dogs had gotten away.

  The thought struck me—whoever, or whatever, had done this would have needed time. These dogs had likely gone missing before the others. Long enough for whatever that had been done to them, to be done to them. If I went back and checked the dates on the posters or cross-referenced the Facebook page, I might be able to figure out which dog it was.

  Or I could let the wolf follow her nose. That would probably be more expedient.

  The trail continued northward, hugging the shoulder of Virginia Avenue. It was easy to follow. The dog had left a blood trail.

  Huh. Three cursed dogs, and the cologned man had managed to hit all three.

  Quite the stroke of luck...

  No. Not luck at all.

  The wolf and I realized it at the same time.

  The cologned man had known exactly which dogs to shoot.

  But how?

  I could sense the magic, smell it, because of what I was. That was a quirk of my lycanthropy, and an ability the wolf and I seemed to share.

  But the cologned man couldn't have been like me. Hell, if he was he wouldn't have been able to tolerate the god-awful cologne he was wearing. His nose would be too sensitive. So he must have had some other way to tell. Perhaps he too could sense magic. Or maybe there was some kind of tell that gave them away—like glowing red eyes or something.

  Then again, he had Boden. Perhaps he too could sense magic like Coy and I could. Could smell it.

  If the information in Sandy's book was to be believed, that would be well-within Boden's ability.

  But if Boden could sense magic too, then how would he have communicated that information to the man?

  Odds seemed pretty good that the man in the cologne had some tricks up his sleeve.

  All the more reason to figure out where the cursed dog had been taken and twisted. I felt confident that wherever this wounded dog had gone, it was likely back to whatever was pulling the strings.

  And if the wolf and I found that, then chances were good that the cologned man would already be there, or, at least not far behind.

  Back on the hunt.

  We didn’t have to travel far before learning the fate of our third dog.

  Barely half a mile up the road, the trail cut past the Kinder Morgan and Buckeye Terminals—oil storage facilities, just like the Amalie terminal we’d passed earlier—before reaching the T-intersection at Virginia and Lincoln Avenue. Just beyond the crossing, the Mark Clark Expressway loomed overhead, its offramp descending to merge onto Virginia Avenue, just beyond the intersection. Though the roads were mostly quiet, the occasional car came barreling off the ramp, blowing straight through the stop sign and zipping down Virginia like it had someplace urgent to be, all while lacking a sense of self-preservation.

  Lincoln Avenue itself was a stretch of warehouses and truck yards, home to outfits like Quality Transportation, Port City Transportation, and Bull’s Bay Diesel and Rig Fix—the kind of places that kept the freight economy rolling and gave eighteen-wheelers a place to park, rest, and get patched up.

  Directly across the intersection stood Ralph Hendrick Park and its small boat landing—just a sliver of green along the industrial corridor, mostly grass and gravel, dotted with benches facing the water and flanked by a fair number of trees that grew thick just before you reached the riverbank.

  It was here that the trail veered off-road, and a pungent smell hit the wolf’s nose.

  Death.

  So our dog hadn't made it after all.

  The wolf circled the intersection slowly, triangulating the direction of the scent. It didn’t take long to figure out where the body was. Across the street, in the shadows of a park. They were probably somewhere amongst the trees.

  I found myself resenting the cologned man. He’d shot the dogs. There was no getting around that. But I also had to admit he hadn’t done it without cause. Matty and Daisy hadn’t exactly been lapdogs, and if they’d come at him under the influence of whatever this curse was, what choice had he had?

  So, maybe he wasn’t the villain. Maybe he’d been defending himself.

  But that didn’t make the whole thing less tragic. Those dogs hadn’t asked to be cursed. Someone—or something—had made them into weapons.

  And the one who did that? That was the real enemy.

  The wolf dipped low as a car hurtled past, its headlights slicing through the dark. We stayed still, hidden in the shadows near the park’s treeline.

  That’s when I saw it—reflected in the brief sweep of high beams.

  An innocuous blue and yellow sign hanging on the fence across Lincoln Avenue from Quality Transportation.

  Elite Towing

  I seized control, turning use towards the lot.

  The wolf didn’t resist, though I felt her confusion. Wondering why I'd decided to deviate from our course. What about the dog?

  I answered.

  But these assholes? These assholes stole my car. That had consequences.

  Sure, Elite Towing was just carrying out a repo order for Dixie Nissan. But let’s not pretend that gave them any moral authority. They were the ones who hooked my car and dragged it off. Leaving my stranded, far from home, taking my clothes and my cash. They'd fucked me over and were the primary reason I now found myself running around town in the body of a wolf.

  That made them the ones who earned my full attention.

  Let me be clear: I didn’t hate the concept of towing. I understood the necessity. Charleston was growing faster than its infrastructure could handle, and with limited public transportation, congested downtown streets, and an overflow of tourists and residents alike, towing—legitimate towing—had its place. Illegally parked vehicles in fire lanes or abandoned cars blocking loading zones do need to be moved. I got that.

  But what we Charlestonians ended up with was’t a public service—it was an extortion racket hiding under the thin veil of municipal necessity.

  The companies that swooped in to fill Charleston’s gap didn’t act like public servants. They showed up like vultures—only worse. Because vultures were at least beneficial to the environment. Whereas these guys were parasites.

  They thrive on ambiguity. Vague signage, quick-trigger tows, and the refusal to even tell people where their cars were taken without demanding cash upfront. And sure, there were ordinances—fee caps, signage rules, even laws saying if you catch them mid-tow they’re supposed to release your car for eighty bucks. All written down, nice and official.

  But writing a law isn’t the same as enforcing it. They still broke the rules. They still demanded illegal cash payments when the code says they have to accept cards. They stash your car for days, stacking up fees, knowing the worst they’ll get is a fine that costs less than a tow. That wasn't punishment. Just overhead.

  And they didn’t prey on tourists so much as they prey on people like me. Students, shift workers, single parents—anyone who needs their car to survive. Where one day without your card was a missed paid check, or a lost job. And they could charge you whatever they wanted to. Cause it you couldn't pay, your car was forfeit.

  They were not just unethical. They were functionally predatory.

  So I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for what I was about to do.

  Because stealing from thieves? That wasn’t theft.

  That was justice.

  I glanced both ways down the road, checking for any stray drivers who might catch a glimpse of something hairy and suspicious hopping a fence in the middle of the night. The road was clear.

  I stepped up to the fence—standard chain-link, about head-high, topped with a foot of vine-covered barbed wire. Nothing I couldn’t vault.

  The lot beyond was wide and cracked, filled with rows of cars lined up like cattle waiting for auction. A mobile trailer with a porch light served as their office. Just to the right of it stood the front gate. One half was a sliding gate, probably remote-operated. The other half swung open on a hinge—and someone had left that swinging side wide open. Probably by one of the drivers. Lucky me.

  I crept inside.

  The place reeked of grease and resignation. Rusting sedans and dented pickup trucks lined the cracked pavement, some with flat tires, others with hoods popped open and windows shattered—a genuine wreck. Puddles shimmered with rainbow sheens under flickering security lights, and litter—soda cans, food wrappers, and bits of broken bumper—clung to the chain-link fence like forgotten confetti.

  It looked more like a junkyard than a storage lot.

  And that was basically what it was.

  These weren’t just impounded vehicles. These were forfeitures—cars that people had no hope of reclaiming. Victims of fees that ballooned past reason. Their owners had been forced to walk away—because without a car to drive, they were pretty much forced to leave on foot.

  There it was: my black Nissan Altima, parked near the front, not far from the office. No boot on any of the wheels, and not flat tires, thank God. The doors were still locked of course, but that wasn’t a problem. I had a spare key hidden inside the passenger side mirror, held in place by a small, innocuous metal clip.

  I'd locked myself out often enough to always make sure a spare key was hidden somewhere on my car.

  The wolf stirred in the background, wary.

  she seemed to say.

  I snapped.

  She huffed but didn’t argue.

  I circled the lot, watching for cameras. They were aimed at the gate and nowhere else. Fortune was on my side. Elite Towing was obviously relying on its remoteness to protect them. Not even the buses came this far up Virginia Avenue, so there was basically no foot traffic.

  I shifted. Back into werewolf form. Clawed, furred, but with thumbs. Good enough to pluck out the key and put it in a lock.

  I unlocked the trunk and pulled out the spare tires—the ones with the GPS-enabled boots. I dragged them under a row of cars and tucked them out of sight.

  The plan from there was simple: hop in, start the car, drive out.

  There was basically nothing stopping me.

  And then my gut made a noise.

  A deep, sudden churn. A slow swirl of dread started in my abdomen, curling low and tight. I knew that feeling. We both did.

  Transforming and lugging the tires around must have been the trigger.

  But so soon?

  We’d just eaten. Barely an hour ago.

  Either the wolf’s metabolism was supernaturally fast—or this was the deer and Purina from earlier finally reaching the end of their long and noble journey.

  Nature had called.

  And had dialed #2.

  And when the call came, it wasn’t the kind you could easily ignore.

  There wasn’t a public restroom in sight. Not this far out. I scanned the surrounding lots for a porta-john, some kind of outhouse, anything that might pass for a toilet. No dice.

  I turned my attention to the trailer. This office trailers would certainly have a restroom. It was my best bet.

  I sidled up to it quietly and peeked through the side window.

  Inside: a cluttered desk, towers of paperwork, and a man slumped in a rolling chair, mouth slightly open, one hand still loosely clutching a pencil. Dead asleep.

  I squinted, eyeing the narrow walkway between the desk and the back wall. If I stayed low enough, moved fast enough, maybe I could slip in and out without him ever knowing.

  Maybe—

  Then the wolf interrupted my train of thought with what I could only describe as a feeling of exasperation.

  Oh.

  Right.

  I was a werewolf. I had were-privileges.

  As a wolf, all of nature was my toilet.

  We could go anywhere. Behind a tree, in the grass, between two parked cars.

  Or—

  Right on Elite Towing’s front goddamn doorstep.

  Because fuck these guys. I was going to give them a piece of my mind.

  A big ol' one-poo review.

  The wolf's exasperation intensified.

  I eased my car into the parking lot at Ralph Hendrick Boat Landing, finding a quiet little spot with just enough cover to hide us from the road. The kind of place where no one asked questions, especially not at this hour.

  I took a long breath and sat there for a moment, gripping the wheel. Smug satisfaction simmered beneath the surface. It wasn't just about getting the car back—it was about proving I could. That I wasn't entirely at the mercy of bureaucratic extortion or magical chaos.

  A small, vindicated part of me wanted to do a victory lap. Or howl. Perhaps both. A little wolf on the brain, you might say.

  Driving in werewolf form wasn’t that hard either. As long as I had thumbs and could reach the pedals, I could manage. Pawed, clawed, or not.

  I'd been in the driver’s seat when I'd been force to duck down. Shifting back into a wolf and hunching low as one of the drivers came rolling back into the lot, hauling a car behind him—looked like a Toyota Corolla. He dropped it in the space right next to mine, then peeled out again, probably off to chase another call.

  Once the coast was clear, I shifted into my werewolf—just humanoid enough to safely buckle up. And after adjusting my seat of course. I checked the lights to make sure they were off before starting the engine, then eased out of the lot. I followed the path the driver hadd taken: turned right onto Virginia Avenue, and a short while later, veered left into the boat landing at Ralph Hendrick Park.

  I parked and turned off the ignition, climbed out, locked the doors, and slipped the key back behind the mirror where it belonged. Then I stretched—long and slow—feeling every vertebra pop as the tension unspooled from my shoulders, savorying my victory.

  I told the wolf.

  I turned to head deeper into the park, toward the waterfront. Just ahead, I spotted a small building—a squat, cabin-shaped building that I immediately recognized as a public restroom. And next to it, gleaming under a faint halo of lamp light: two green porta-johns. Probably dragged in for the sidewalk construction nearby.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I stared at them for a long moment.

  "Whelp," I muttered.

  The park was still. Peaceful, almost.

  I was still in my werewolf form, and as with the meal earlier in the night—when our combined senses had elevated taste into something transcendent—so too were all my senses now heightened and interwoven. The world didn’t just look or sound different; it felt more immediate, more present. I didn’t have to focus to notice everything around me. It simply arrived, all at once.

  The deep background hum of the city pressed in from every direction. Cars whispered along the Mark Clark overpass above, their tires hissing like serpents against the concrete. Beyond it, the WestRock paper mill loomed in the dark, rusted and hulking but still present in scent and sound—pipes ticking, metal groaning faintly, the occasional thump echoing through the night. The Cooper River carried its own symphony: distant water lapping against the bank, and somewhere farther upstream, the long, hollow bellow of a cargo ship's foghorn as it navigated the channel.

  Closer to us, Virginia Avenue cut a scar through the quiet. Every so often, a car screamed down it, tires whining as they tore past. The Buckeye terminal across the way hummed with latent life, the hiss of compressed air and the low hydraulic chuff of industrial systems powering down for the night. The marsh beside the park crackled with tiny life—fiddler crabs bubbling and popping through mud, insects clinging to tall reeds.

  The park itself was calm. Just a sliver of city green tucked between the industrial seams. Insects thrummed steadily, a familiar chorus of crickets and cicadas. The only electric light came from a single lamp above the restroom facility, casting a warm, amber halo across the parking lot. But the moon did the rest, pale and bright, washing the world in silver. Everything had the soft contrast of a black-and-white photo. Shadows long. Colors bleached. But to me, it was clear as day.

  And there, at the base of a tree near the fence line, lay the dog.

  He looked peaceful, from a distance. Curled neatly with his head resting on his paws, as if napping after a long day of exploring the park.

  But this picturesque tranquility only endured if you could ignore the smell.

  That—more than anything—shattered the illusion.

  The air was rich with smells: oil and ozone drifting down from the overpass, the brackish sweetness of the Cooper River, the sulfur-laced industrial tang from the nearby paper mill. Beneath it, the softer scents of the park—pine bark and damp soil, trampled grass and warm wood. The story of a city in flux, laid bare through scent alone.

  But all of it paled in comparison to the strongest smell of all:

  Decay.

  And woven through it, sharp and unnatural—

  the stench of that foul magic.

  I crouched beside the dog and reached for his collar. The tag read "Tyson," with a cute little paw print etched on the back. Behind it, a second tag listed his owner’s number, but no name. I recognized the dog. I’d seen his face pinned to the board at the community center and posted on the neighborhood Facebook group.

  His body was curled at the base of the tree, tucked in as if he’d laid down intentionally. I examined the wound: a bullet hole in the abdomen, low and off-center. Not the kind of shot that would drop a target instantly. Lethal, sure, but not clean. The angle suggested he’d been close—facing his shooter, maybe even rearing up when it hit him. It looked like a shot fired in panic. A defensive shot.

  Compared to the precise hits that had dropped Matty and Daisy, this was sloppy.

  It wasn't hard for me to speculate this dog was the one who'd wounded the cologned man.

  He was a pit bull—big, burly, full-blooded. The kind of dog whose sheer presence made people cross the street to avoid them even when muzzled and leashed. Built like a brick wall with fur. A dog like this could take a person down without much effort. Especially with supernatural rage fueling him.

  Which was a shame really. I'd known several such dogs growing up—purebreds and mixes alike—as my dad, every time we sought to adopt another dog, could always find a young pit in need of a good home. People practically gave them away for free. Loyal, goofy, eager to please. Sweet-natured dogs with better temperaments than most of the yappy little cotton-ball mongrels people insisted on keeping as indoor pets, if you asked me.

  And yeah, I’d heard the horror stories—headlines about maulings, sudden attacks, joggers pulled down in broad daylight. A single outburst from a dog like Tyson could mean a trip to the ER—or worse.

  They were a breed built to bite. Bred to take on creatures many times their size—bulls, bears, opponents far more imposing than any person. A Chihuahua might go ballistic at the drop of a hat, but that rat of a dog wasn't likely to maul anyone—though their spirit may be eager and willing, their bodies just weren't physically capable. Just a nip at your ankle, and bite on the wrist, but nothing that was likely to land someone in surgery.

  A pit didn’t need to be mean to be dangerous. That same strength—the one that made them formidable fighters—also made them risky to own in a modern world.

  Even the best-trained, most even-tempered dog had a razor-thin margin for error. And for pits, a single bad moment could mean stitches. It was why they were a tricky dog to own. Why so many neighborhoods banned them. Why shelters across the country were full of them. Not because they were bad dogs. They just didn’t fit into a world they weren't bred for.

  And yet, despite being bred to fight, they could be so loving. And someone had loved this one. No one puts a cutesy paw print tag on a pit unless they really, truly love dogs.

  Maybe he was a rescue. Or maybe his owner was like me—someone who lived alone and needed protection. I'd considered getting a big dog when I first moved into an apartment all by myself. But my old lease had that 'No Pet' policy.

  So I’d opted for a gun. And if we were being honest, guns didn’t have a great track record in this country either.

  It made me angry. Angry that it had come to this.

  Tyson hadn’t deserved to die—not like this. He’d had someone who loved him. Someone who probably went through hell trying to give him a good life. A dog like that wasn’t just a pet. He was a companion. A friend. Family.

  And now that family had lost him.

  But I couldn’t even blame the cologned man for pulling the trigger. A dog like Tyson, when compelled into violence, left little room for alternatives. He was strong—strong enough to hurt someone. Strong enough to keep going even after he’d been shot.

  That strength was probably the only reason he made it this far. Past the depot. Through the lots. Across the treeline. Until he found this quiet patch of grass beneath a tree, where he could finally lie down.

  He’d died slowly. Stubbornly. Hours after he'd been shot. Because he was strong. Because he was a fighter.

  No. My anger wasn’t for the man who shot him. It was for whoever had twisted Tyson into something he was never meant to be.

  The wolf had shut herself off completely, giving me room to move freely and examine the scene without her instinct getting hijacked. Here, this close to the source, I didn’t just smell the magic—I felt it. Tasted it. It wasn’t a physical thing, not really. It didn’t hit the nose or tongue in any tangible way. It registered in the mind, like the idea of a scent more than the scent itself. An impression.

  It brought back a memory. One from years ago.

  I’d helped my dad and brother clean out the truck after a hunting trip. They’d field dressed a deer and collected the blood in a five-gallon bucket. Most of it had been tossed, but no one had rinsed the bucket out. It had baked in the back of the truck for a full day, soaking up the summer heat.

  When I went to move it, I got a full whiff of it—thick, clotted, old blood that had dried and cracked like paint.

  And I'd wrecked.

  That’s what the magic felt like now. Rank, metallic, corrupted. Like dried blood, long forgotten, gone rancid in the heat. A scent that struck some deep and visceral chord in me. Something primal.

  Yet, once plucked, it elicited not further response. Whatever the mechanism it sought to hijack rusted away, lost to time.

  It probably had something to do with why it had such an affinity for dogs. Or maybe why dogs had an affinity for it—a distinction as pointless as the chicken and the egg. My own magic, if it could be called magic, seemed to vary by species as well. Strongest with dogs. Decent with birds and reptiles. Barely there with spiders. Almost nonexistent with cats—granted, that was based on a single test. One smug, pompous cat.

  If my magic worked that way—had a preferred target—why not this? This magic that seemed to reach into dogs and pull at the chords that had once made them beasts.

  That was why, even the lingering trances, had affected the wolf so acutely. She was basically the optimal target. I was why we’d had to shut her off entirely. Taking the passenger seat hadn’t been enough. She could still sense the magic from there. Still be influenced by it.

  That scared her.

  Not just the involuntary loss of control induced by the magic, but the voluntary loss of control that shutting herself off would entail. Letting me take over completely meant surrendering control. With no oversight. No safeguards.

  It wasn’t that she didn't trust me. Not when we, who knew the others thoughts, had no means to deceive the other. When we could know the other implicitly.

  I knew she was a wolf—instinctive, narrow-minded, impulsive. She knew I was human—clever, manipulative, opportunistic. And also a little impulsive at times.

  And she knew I had my car back. Knew that I could hop in, floor it, be home in ten minutes, lock us in the barn, and pretend none of this happened.

  She knew that I wasn't above the temptation. Or any temptation really.

  But she also knew I had a reason to stay—beyond having trapped myself in a sinking ship fallacy.

  This wasn’t just about finding Boden anymore.

  Tyson’s corpse confirmed it. The magic that twisted him was the same that had poisoned Daisy and Matty. It wasn’t just an affliction—it was a mechanism of control. A tool. And I was pretty sure I understood how it worked.

  The curse hadn’t forced Tyson into violence directly. It had driven him into an emotional state—rage. Not a command, but a feeling. A powerful one.

  And I understood why.

  Because that’s what I would’ve done.

  Though if it were me, I wouldn’t have chosen rage. There were plenty of strong emotions that left animals vulnerable to suggestion: curiosity, hunger, excitement, confusion, lust, pride. You didn’t have to fight instinct—you just had to give it a new direction. That was the trick.

  I’d used it before, with Sandy’s dogs. I didn’t bark orders—I redirected their emotions. Got them excited and turned that excitement into momentum, got them to follow me into the yard, just as the wolf got them to follow her into the woods and to dog-pile JT. I’d done the same with the wolf, luring her with hunger or lulling her to sleep with fatigue. Even when she was at her most obstinate, I didn’t break her will. I just adjusted her aim.

  That’s what this was. That’s what someone had done with these dogs.

  They hadn’t given orders. They’d instilled rage.

  And once the dogs were brimming with it, they gave that rage a target.

  Whoever had cursed them hadn’t sent them into a frenzy for chaos’s sake—they’d weaponized them. Directed them. Created mobile, emotional bombs, able to slip in anywhere, spread the curse further, wreak havoc, and disappear. No evidence left behind but blood, paw prints, and teeth marks.

  The cologned man hadn’t been caught in a freak incident. He’d been targeted.

  Which meant someone had sent them after him.

  And that someone? They could do the same thing I could.

  Sure, JT could compel animals, sure—but not like this. He couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t reach inside them. Couldn’t stir their thoughts or plant his own.

  But whoever had done this could.

  And that begged the question—how?

  My ability came with my lycanthropy. I hadn’t been born with it. It was something done to me.

  So how had they gotten theirs?

  Could they be like me?

  A werewolf?

  It was a far-flung and far-fetched idea. That I would just stumble across another like me so happenstance. But the idea wasn't without merit.

  I thought about Nevermore’s theory. About my tattoo and the spellwork to hide it. Someone had done this to me. And if they did it to me, they could’ve done it to others.

  And a curse the spread from animal to animal, inflicting a mindless rage, was pretty damn similar to some renditions of lycanthropy.

  As well as zombies.

  But that's besides the point.

  I had to find this puppeteer. Not just to stop them, but to find answers. Answers about what had happened to me. If there was even a slim cause that our abilities were connected, I had to know.

  Even before I’d examined Tyson, the idea had been forming in the back of my mind. The wolf had felt it—sensed my priorities shifting—and that’s why she gave me space. No conditions. No negotiations. Just a quiet concession.

  Because she knew.

  Our goals were aligned now.

  Now I too was on the hunt.

  She wanted to find Boden. To do that she needed to find the cologned man. And the best way to do that was to beat him to his target.

  My target.

  When I was done examining Tyson, I backed away and called to the wolf. She stirred, reawakened, and I relegated myself to the passenger seat so that she may take the wheel. I shared what I’d learned with her to get her up to speed as she returned us to full wolf form. Together, we began canvassing the park, searching for signs of where Tyson might’ve gone before he died.

  A part of me hoped he'd been trying to return to his puppeteer, to the source of the magic. It was a thin hope, but better than none. Because if he'd just wandered off aimlessly after being shot, then our search was liable to turn into a wild goose chase, and we'd be forced to start scoping out other nearby depots one by one until we found another lead. The idea of spending the rest of the night scouring the more than two dozen other storage depots just in the nearby vicinity—even with my car—wasn’t exactly appealing.

  But, fortunately, we found what we were looking for.

  More paw prints and the scent of other dogs.

  Dog that bore the telltale stench of that foul magic.

  More curse-bearers.

  They’d passed through here recently, headed out into the city.

  Had they been sent out to assault the cologned man again?

  No, that seemed unlikely. My intuition told me that it was still too early for him to have made a move yet. It wasn't quite midnight, and it had been closer to two or three in the morning when the man had gotten in trouble last night.

  If I had to guess, these dogs had been sent out preemptively in preparations to gather more forces.

  A recruitment campaign.

  Following them would be pointless. They could be anywhere by now.

  Better to follow the trail they'd left behind and figure out where they came from. Follow the strings back to the puppeteer.

  The trail led us to the marsh, where it met the remnants of an old rail bed. Most of the tracks and pilings were gone, but the raised foundation remained, a crumbling spine of gravel and dirt stretching through the wetlands. We followed it as it passed beneath the Mark Clark overpass, the rumble of engines echoing overhead like distant thunder.

  And at the end of the tracks: the WestRock paper mill.

  The WestRock paper mill rose ahead, sprawling and silent—but far from unnoticeable. Towering concrete smokestacks pierced the night sky, silhouetted against the clouds. The main buildings, tall and blocky, were painted a weathered baby blue, while the adjoining refineries gleamed white beneath the orange-yellow glare of sodium floodlights. Steam billowed from countless release valves and tangled pipes, the hiss and churn of pressure echoing faintly across the marsh. Toward the southern end of the site, wide circular retention ponds shimmered in the darkness, collecting runoff like stagnant mirrors rimmed with algae and iron stains.

  I remembered this place from childhood—not from visits, but from the smell. When the wind blew the wrong way, everyone within twenty miles downwind caught a lungful of it. A sulfurous stench, the fumes that smelled like pluff mud but sharper, refined. An odor that bored its way into your subconscious such that you never forgot it.

  Which was ironic, really, given the mill only employed about 500 people. A facility that inconvenienced nearly the entire city for decades managed to employ fewer people than a Costco.

  Its main products were containerboard and kraft paper under brand names like DuraSorb and KraftPak. Useful, albeit it not glamorous—industrial staples that kept the city’s shipping lines fed. But even that wasn’t enough to save it.

  As Charleston's economy leaned harder into tourism, pressure to shutter the mill grew. Gentrification crept outward from Daniel Island and Mount Pleasant, bringing new homeowners and real estate interests who didn’t want suburbs that smelled of rotten eggs. Once the new Cooper River Bridge opened, connecting the city with a new main artery, the calls to clean up Charleston's air became harder to ignore.

  In May, WestRock finally caved, announcing the mill's closure. The Charleston Port Authority bought the land outright, announcing plans to expand the North Charleston Port Terminal, and the efforts to start decommissioning the mill would begin by the end of August. One unit at a time, the facility was being taken offline.

  But decommissioned didn’t mean abandoned.

  The chemical refineries, warehouses, and port access still worked. The infrastructure was still valuable and profits could be made in the time left. But the major paper producing capabilities were offline. So the mill no longer produced its signature olfactory experience.

  Beyond the paper mill lay the North Charleston Port Terminal—Charleston's third largest port and the logistical backbone of its economy. Five towering Panamax ship-to-shore cranes rose into the night, their arms illuminated by countless white lights, while steady red beacons pulsed at the tops of the central support towers—cautionary markers for any low-flying helicopter or careless pilot. Ships the size of apartment complexes were moored along the terminal's edge, their deck lights glowing softly against the water, reflected in long golden streaks. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of shipping containers stood in orderly stacks, painted in sun-bleached reds, blues, and greens. Toy blocks for giants, organized into a silent, steel city.

  And just beyond its west perimeter, the CSX rail line came to an end.

  That was the piece I’d been missing.

  The cologned man—he’d been following the rail line. Hitting depots, one after the next. And if I connected those dots on a map, they’d form a line. Pointing straight here.

  He hadn’t just been searching at random.

  He’d been closing in.

  No wonder he got attacked when he did.

  He’d made it to the puppeteer's doorstep.

  Whatever he was trying to hide, it had to be in there. Somewhere in the northern terminal.

  We kept tracking the scent, looping around the edge of the mill. The trail led us to a squat utility building tucked between two fenced-in supply yards. The door’s lock hung uselessly from the latch, clearly busted. The wolf inspected it cautiously, then nudged it open with her snout.

  Inside was nothing but an empty vehicle bay. A concrete floor, a grease-stained drain, and the faint scent of coolant. It looked like the kind of place meant to house a single maintenance vehicle—maybe a small truck used to service equipment across the mill site.

  The wolf slipped in first, nose low to the ground, sweeping from one side to the other. There were faint traces of the dogs—Tyson’s curse-bearing kin. The path had led here, but this wasn’t where they came from. Just a pass-through. A waypoint. The magic lingered in the air like stale cigarette smoke, but only just. They hadn’t stayed long.

  Perhaps, the dogs had been dropped off here by car or van, quickly prepped, then released. It seemed a little far-fetched. If the puppeteer had used a vehicle, why not just let them out on the side of the road. It wasn't like using the bay would have hidden anything, not with all the cameras all over the place.

  Perhaps there was still something I was still missing.

  I scanned the walls, sniffed the air for anything unusual. The scents of a few people lingered—likely workers. None of them stood out.

  The wolf huffed and padded out. No answers here. No Coy. No Boden. No cologned man.

  We pushed onward toward the western perimeter, sweeping the edge for any new sign, any scent that might redirect us.

  Nothing.

  Maybe they weren’t here yet. Maybe the man was licking his wounds after last night’s run-in. Or maybe he was checking another depot nearby.

  As for the one controlling the dogs? I had no clue where they could be now. I'd been banking that the dogs' trail would lead me to them. Did they need to be somewhere close to the dogs to issue commands? Or could they direct them from a distance?

  If I could find one of the cursed dogs, I could potentially probe its thoughts for answers. But I'd have to find one of them first.

  I could follow the trail in the other direction, but trying to chase one of them down would take forever.

  Unless...

  What if I called them to me?

  With the wolf, and the moon this full, I could project my thoughts, my command much farther. Louder. Stronger.

  Strong enough to reach damn near every dog in the city.

  That would certainly throw a wrench into the cologned man and puppeteers plans—a wolf jumping into their game of cat and mouse.

  If that didn’t force our prey to come crawling out of whatever hole they were hiding in, I didn’t know what would.

  We perched atop a double-stacked row of shipping containers at the heart of the Norfolk Southern Rail Yard. The air was cool and heavy with the smell of steel, grease, and old rust. From here, I could see the whole system sprawled out below me like a breathing machine—the CSX and Norfolk Southern mainlines intersecting and splintering into more than two dozen tracks, all curling around the depot like a steel spine. Most of the tracks were full—freight cars lined up in rows, rusted, graffitied, and waiting.

  The depot itself lay nestled in a crook between those sprawling tracks and the wide, steppe-like clearings that ran between the mill and the North Charleston Port Terminal. It wasn’t just a depot. It was the epicenter—not the point where the city’s veins met, but the heart from which they branched out. This was where rail met road—where cargo flowed into Charleston and back out into the world. You had the port, which fed the industries, which in turn fed off the port. Supporting them were the fleets of logistics companies, mechanics, truck yards, chemical processors. And past them, stretching outward like a floodplain, were the neighborhoods. Whole subdivisions built around the people who made this system run.

  Even the military had a foothold here. Just beyond the northern terminal sat the grounds of the US Army’s 841st Transportation Battalion and Reserve Center—a reminder that even Uncle Sam had skin in the logistical game too.

  Everything, all of it, was all about logistics.

  And I’d chosen this spot for a reason. It was central. A vantage that gave me a full view of everything: the industrial stretch of Virginia Avenue on one side and the sprawling patchwork of North Charleston and Hanahan on the other.

  It felt like Pride Rock from The Lion King—if Pride Rock had been made from rusted old shipping containers. The wolf stood at the edge, her posture proud and commanding, overlooking her steel and concrete savannah. All that the sodium lights touched.

  It was the perfect spot.

  I let the wolf take the honors. Howling was more her thing anyway. My focus was on the compulsion, the call. But even as I tried to channel it, I couldn’t stop thinking about JT—the way he’d commanded those dogs with nothing more than posture and tone. Just a single word. Not one he projected into their minds, but spoken aloud, and that was all it took. They responded like disciplined soldiers, yielding to their commanding officer. He hadn’t coaxed them like I did. He didn’t lure them with redirected instinct or careful nudging. They obeyed him—immediately, instinctively—because they acknowledged his authority.

  Was that the trick I was missing? Authority?

  My own way of influencing animals had always been subtler. More surgical. I redirected their intentions, bent their instincts gently—never forced them outright. JT’s method was blunt. Do as I say. No questions. It worked because he believed his words were law. Belief that his commands, his magic, was absolute.

  So what authority did I have to command anyone? Dog or otherwise.

  That question was one which had an obvious answer.

  I was a werewolf. The apex of apex predators. A fusion of two dominant species—human, the cerebral conqueror of the planet, and wolf, the instinct-driven pack hunter. Beast and brains. Sharp in mind and sharper in tooth and claw. I could run as fast as a car, jump small buildings in a single bound, and despite the muck, grime, and unmentionables currently matting my fur, I could still confidently admit: my hair was perfect. Long, thick, smooth, and the color of night.

  Like everything else about this form, it was both feral and refined. A contradiction, and a crown.

  Just needed some pina colada from Trader Joe's to complete the image.

  Ah-hoo, werewolves of Charleston.

  But conviction? That was harder. I’d never been good at absolute belief. Even going to my stepmother’s Baptist church every Sunday until I left for college hadn’t instilled me with any such unshakeable faith. I doubted myself too much, second-guessed everything. Even my supposed principles—like the whole vegetarian thing—fell apart the first time the wolf got hungry. I wasn’t a paragon. I was petty, uncertain, and painfully aware of my own hypocrisy.

  But the wolf? She had no such reservations.

  She didn’t wonder if she had the right to lead. She simply did. She was Queen of the Moonlit Night, and her reign was absolute.

  That was the balance between us. My role was to question. To think, plan, second-guess. Hers was to rule.

  So, yeah.

  She could handle the howling. It was her snick after all.

  The wolf drew in a deep breath and howled—long and loud. A sound so raw and powerful it seemed to shake the steel beneath our feet. I howled with her, channeling every thought, every fragment of intent into a single, simple, undeniable compulsion:

  .

  No flourish. No ambiguity.

  Just the call.

  The sound rolled across the depot like a wave, spreading outwards into the city, only to be join in by countless others. More and more dogs joining the howl, their collective voices swallowing the sounds of the city, the clack of distant rails, the groan of parked train cars, even the sporadic crack of fireworks from the suburbs. It rippled outward like a signal flare, a reverberating noise carried by the night wind.

  And then—stillness.

  The kind of quiet that prickled against your skin. Like the whole world was holding its breath.

  First came the wings.

  Dozens of them.

  Owls. Hawks. Night herons. Nocturnal raptors of every shape and size glided out from the marshes, the suburbs, the wooded creases of Charleston. They perched along the rail yard’s edge, atop containers, in the trees, silent sentries drawn in by the power of the wolf's compulsion.

  Wasn’t aiming for birds, but hey—bonus points. I was becoming a right a proper Disney-fucking-princess.

  Then came the footsteps. Paws

  They trickled in first—soft pads crunching across gravel. A few sets at first. Then more. And more. From the treeline came the rustle of leaves and brush, the shuffle of paws through grass and undergrowth. The sound of panting. Collars jingling. A slow, swelling tide of movement drawn from every corner of the city.

  Dogs. Dozens upon dozens of them. Domestic and stray. Even a few wild coyotes slinked in, hanging at the edges like wary cousins. They came from all directions, filtering into the depot with cautious purpose. Some limped. Some barked. Some paused to sniff or circle. Most looked disoriented, but determined—pulled by something deeper than what they could hope to understand.

  The wolf leapt down from our perch and strutted among them, tail high, posture regal. A queen returning to her court.

  And all of them came to her.

  They drew near, hesitant but compelled, surrounding her in a loose, respectful ring. None came too close. Heads dipped. Tails lowered. Submission, not fear. Reverence. The wolf towered over nearly all of them—powerful and undeniable. All except one tall, lanky Great Dane who stood a good head higher than her. But even he knew his place.

  Some of the dogs began to act up—growling, barking, not used to being packed this close to others. The wolf silenced them with a deep rumble in her chest. A low, vibrating warning. She demanded order.

  Then she spoke.

  Not aloud. Not like JT had. She projected her thoughts outward, clear and strong. Asking questions and scanned their thoughts.

  Had they seen Boden? Coy? The cologned man?

  None had. Not directly. A few recognized Boden's scent, confirming what we already knew: that he’d passed through Park Circle

  None had encountered the man in cologne, but several had caught his scent—strong and lingering in a parking lot not far to the west. Odd. Suspicious. Was he staging something different tonight?

  The wolf shifted focus. She searched for the curse’s scent. Most of the dogs couldn’t detect it—but we could.

  It clung to some them. We saw the bite marks. The wounds.

  The ones it touched stood tense, on edge. Wounded. Bite marks. Gashes. Still healing. Still infected.

  That was how it spread.

  The bite. The blood.

  She called them forward. They came. Not eagerly, some even resisting, but each obeying all the same—the tug of the curse being overwritten by something greater, more immediate. The wolf. The strings of the puppeteer might have still been there, faint and coiled through their minds, but they weren’t strong enough. Not here. Not now. Not with the wolf standing before them in flesh and fang. Her presence alone was a gravitational pull—one too strong to resist. And even a curse knew when it had met something stronger.

  She projected again, pushing deeper into their minds. Forcing them to remember. To share. To show her who had done this to them.

  Flashes. Thoughts. Smells. The scent and figure of a large dog, one that had chased them, run them down, and bitten them. The one responsible. That was all the wolf needed.

  Now she had targets she could hunt.

  We began searching the crowd, searching for traces of that scent, looking for the ones who wore the magic like a second skin.

  The search didn’t take long—because while we were hunting them, apparently they were hunting for us. We who’d yanked on all of their strings.

  Three of them. Three curse bearing dogs. They'd circled around the wolf, and closed in for all sides. Larger than the rest. Muscular, snarling, eyes wild with rage. Primed to attack—but something held them back. It felt like standing in front of a tripwire, or staring at a loaded gun, ready to fire.

  The puppeteer hadn’t pulled the trigger. Not yet.

  The curse-bearers stared us down—eyes locked onto the wolf like they were reading more than just my posture. Their gaze wasn’t wild. It was precise. Focused. Like they weren’t just watching me.

  Like someone else was.

  A presence behind their eyes, listening with their ears. Someone using them to study the wolf in turn. A puppeteer peering through their marionettes, waiting. Gauging. Planning their next move in this game of cat and mouse and wolf.

  I had to take the initiative.

  Even with the yards between us, the magic radiating from the curse-bearers still reached the wolf. I could feel it filling her with that same unnatural rage—boiling, directionless. We had known this would happen and she'd relinquished the wheel, moving to the passenger seat. It would’ve been safer for her to shut herself off completely, wall herself away where the curse couldn’t reach. But I needed her. Needed a co-pilot for what I was about do.

  I didn’t want to hurt these dogs. I wished I could save them. But I wasn’t a wizard—I was a werewolf. My magic, if you could even call it that, wasn’t a tool for miracles. It let me talk to dogs. Share thoughts and feelings. Barely more than emotional telepathy.

  And that magic told me there was no saving these three.

  I could sense it in their minds—the curse burning through them, consuming everything insider. Rage so intense it had hollowed them out. And once extinguished, there’d be nothing left but ash and instinct.

  But the others—the dogs who’d only been nipped by the curse, the afflicted who hadn’t been remade by it—could still be saved.

  I had to make a choice.

  Sacrifice the few for the many.

  There were three dogs and one me. But such favorable odds weren't going to save them. This was the eve of the full moon after all. I had all the strength I needed. And by allowing the wolf’s rage to bleed into my own, I didn’t need to fake resolve.

  I moved.

  Not as the wolf.

  But as a werewolf.

  Bet the puppeteer didn’t expect that.

  The wolf projected her will, compelling them to sit, to stay, to freeze in place, as I sprang forward—our body reshaping in the blink of an eye. I didn’t go at them with tooth or claw. That wasn’t the goal. I needed it to be clean. Bloodless.

  If the curse spread by drawing blood, then I could risk drawing a single drop.

  A blow to the back of the head to stun. A twist of the neck to end.

  One down.

  The second, still held in place by the wolf’s compulsion, hadn't even time to flinch and was dispatched just as swiftly.

  The third, breaking free of the wolf’s hold, lunged.

  But I was already moving.

  I caught him mid-air and drove him to the ground. Before he had time to recover, I took his back and locked my arms around his neck. A textbook rear naked choke—Muerte del León

  Just like Candace had taught me.

  The chokehold allowed me to control the head and worked on anything with a neck—would have worked on Monty too if she hadn't launched me into a pool. The choke itself didn't crush the windpipe but compressed the arteries to the brain, cutting off the blood supply. No pain, just a gradual fade into black.

  And it bought me time.

  The dog thrashed. Growled. Clawed.

  But I held on.

  And as I held, the wolf and I focused together. Forcing our way into the cursed dog's mind. The curse's rage surged between us, a shared heat just beneath the surface, clawing for control. Even now, I could feel it boiling in her veins, echoing through mine.

  We didn’t go in gently.

  So we forced our way in—no surgical finesse, no subtle touch. Just brute force.

  But, then again, it's not like you can go gently into an inferno.

  The dog’s mind felt like a forest razed by wildfire—memories like charred fragments, scattered and flickering. I searched, sifting through the ruin, hunting for the one moment that mattered. The moment it had happened. The moment the curse took hold.

  And then I found it.

  That memory.

  I seized it. Peered into it. So that I might see the face of the one who had cursed him. Know their scent.

  But the face I saw was familiar.

  Too familiar.

  The face of the dog's owner.

  I knew this, because the dog knew this—his own thoughts etched into the memory. It was the face of the one he was bound to in loyalty and love. The one he trusted. The voice he obeyed without question.

  But something was wrong. Even in the memory, even through the haze of affection, there was a scent. One that I myself could identify.

  It wasn’t his owner’s scent.

  It was foul. Metallic. Off.

  Like old blood.

  The person bore the face and the voice of the dog's owner, but not their smell. And they had hurt the dog. Forced him to ingest something. Something that burned in his throat, in his stomach. And then burned throughout his mind and body.

  And something else, a smell of the place he had been. A sulfurous stench—stronger and sharper than the usual rot of the pluff mud. It was refined. Industrial. Processed and acrid.

  The smell of the papermill.

  But that smell shouldn’t have been there.

  The mill hadn’t been active in months.

  So how was this memory only a few days old?

  There was nothing else I could gleam from the dog's mind.

  The memory started to fade. The dog’s body slumping in my arms. He wasn’t struggling anymore. Just drifting.

  In a single twist, it was over.

  I released the dog, his limp body falling from my arms. Even before I stepped back from the three curse-bearers, I could feel it—the curse fading. Like a tide retreating from the shore, the curse receded from the surroundings, withdrawing into the motionless bodies of the three who had borne it most deeply.

  I turned to the others—the crowd of gathered dogs. They'd stood back while their regent wolf eliminated the threats before. Many of them, the ones wounded and afflicted with the curse, now seemed dazed and confused, as if just waking from sleep into a place they didn't recognize.

  That was how it worked. The curse-bearers weren’t just controlled. They were contagious. They carried the magic out like a disease, spreading it in droplets of fury. Creating a daisy chain of influence for their puppeteer, each new link bound with that singular burning emotion.

  But cut out the source, and you broke the curse.

  I felt it in the silence. In the stillness. The fury had drained from the air.

  And with it, so had mine.

  I staggered back, leaned against the side of a container, and slid to the ground. The fire inside me had burned itself out too, leaving only a vacuum. An aching emptiness.

  I buried my face in my hands and breathed. Slowly. In and out.

  I’d done the math. Weighed the risks. Even if I could have subdued and captured the curse-bearers—potentially trapping them in a container alive—that wouldn't have solved anything. The puppeteer would still have control over the afflicted, could just call more to their side. Twisting and changing them into more of the cursed.

  I hadn’t wanted to do this, but it had been the safest path forward.

  And now the other dogs were safe.

  They came to me—collared and stray alike. Sniffing. Nudging.

  Dozens now safe.

  For the price of just three.

  I scanned the thoughts of the dogs that had been bitten and found the fog in their minds lifted.

  No strings left to pull.

  None of the other dogs approached the three I had slain. Seemingly aware that something was off about them, that they weren't safe to approach.

  I directed my attention to the gathered dogs, and barked an order: .

  It wasn't a command command, more of a request, one imbued with my desire to see them return home safe. Return to where they were meant to be.

  Some seemed to listen, seemed to know where to go, had faces they wished to see, voices to hear, a scent they knew. They slipped away, into the woods and the fields around the depot.

  Some stayed, perhaps strays with no place to call home, or dogs still eager to spend at night out with their kin.

  I didn't care which. Now I just wanted to find Boden and Coy and go home. To be done with this night. This had been more than I asked for. Was over my head.

  I was only meant to pet-sit, how did it end up like this?

  Why did I think I was cut out to hunt some faceless magic practitioner who seemed to use some kind of mind magic with a splash of blood sorcery on dogs, to do... what actually?

  I still didn't even know what the point of all of this was. What the puppeteer was up to, or why the cologned man was after him. I'd literally stumbled upon all this while in search of just a dog.

  I felt something move on the back of my neck, and reached back to cup Elmo in my pawed hands. Once again, he'd hung on for the ride, nestled himself in the thick fur of my mane. I stroked the back of his fuzzy red body while many of the dogs sniffed at him curiously. Once he’d gotten his fill of attention, he proceeded to scuttle up my arm and atop my head.

  In the distance, the birds began taking flight, returning to the trees and the marshes they'd been summoned from, in a slow, trickling wave of flapping wings.

  I sat there for several minutes. Just listening. Just breathing.

  Then came a familiar scent.

  Boden. And Coy.

  Relief washed over me, lifting me to my feet. The wolf, who had stayed silent to give me space, shared in this subtle joy—her own tension ebbing in kind.

  They were approaching from the south end of the depot. Together. The wolf and I set out to intercept them. To lay eyes on them. To know that they were safe.

  I let the wolf take back control, and we shifted back into a wolf. I was tired, and she was eager enough for the both of us.

  We found them, trotting side-by-side. Between them, held in their jaws, a long, heavy stick. More accurately, Boden was carrying the stick, and Coy, who was trying to hold on, was being dragged along as well.

  The wolf ran to them, checking for wounds. Checking them for traces of the curse. Of that foul magic, and finding none. Yet finding the smell of a different kind of magic instead. This one less of a stench and more of a fragrance. Like incense.

  It was coming from the stick.

  The wolf and I examined it.

  The stick was polished. Shaped like the kind of stick you'd use for hiking. Etched along its shaft were symbols. Symbols that resemble many of the ones I'd seen in Sandy’s book.

  And it reeked of magic.

  I asked Coy.

  he answered.

  Yeah, no shit sherlock.

  I sighed, directing my attention to Boden.

  Boden replied with a thought. An image and a smell.

  A man.

  One wearing too much cologne.

  Of course.

  The cologned man was also a practitioner.

  A magic cat chasing a magic mouse.

  And I was a wolf that had no business dealing with magic of any sort.

  Yet again, things had gotten far more complicated. But that didn’t matter anymore. The wolf and I had Boden now. And Coy. Nevermore wasn't with Coy, do that didn't surprise me. He was a big bird. He could take care of himself. Meanwhile, the rest of us could go home. Trot our little tails back to my car and be off.

  Leave the rest to the wizards or warlocks or whatever the fuck they were.

  I didn't need to be part of this anymore.

  But something didn’t sit right.

  , I asked,

  he thought.

  The wolf and I both stilled.

  Our ears flicked forward.

  In the distance, we heard it. An engine. Four cylinders, by the sound.

  Boden had led him straight to us.

  Shit. Neither the wolf nor I had planned for this. We thought that by finding the man, we'd find Boden. Not the other way around.

  And he was a practitioner on top of that.

  We had to scoot. Now. Before he arrived. Before I got caught up in any more bullshit tonight.

  I'd already filled my quota.

  But... then again. What if I didn't leave? What if I stayed?

  , I said to Boden and Coy as the wolf and I slunk into the shadows between the cargo containers. I'd decided that after everything I'd been through, that the wolf and I had been through, from the moment I'd awakened on Sandy's guest bedroom floor, to this very moment, I wasn't going to leave so empty-handed.

  I was going to stay. Just long enough to confront this man.

  And get some goddamn answers.