Free Preview of Dreadful: Wolves in the Ice

This is a new short story series I've been working on. I wanted to have it out by Tri-Con, but things always to seem to take longer than I think or hope they do. This is NOT the final version, but it is pretty close minus any typos or a few tweaks here and there. Thanks for reading!

Dreadful: Wolves in the Ice

2

Lynn swore she would never come back to Alaska. She hated this place. The cold, it got to her. She had spent the last eleven years where the weather shifted. She got used to semi-normal seasons. Her dad would have taken the term 'normal' personally. He loved Alaska. He was heartbroken when she left to live her own life. She couldn't stay forever, she told him. She didn't think that would be the last time she saw him. She couldn’t have known.

The storm was getting pretty bad. These rural roads were hell on a good day, but this was not a good day… well, night at this point. She just wanted to get to her dad's cabin. He left it to her in his will. It was the only thing he left her. Lynn's brother got everything else. Of course he did. He never left. He was perfect and everyone in the family just loved him. Her, not so much.

Lynn needed to be alone. After what happened in New York. After what Allun did, she just needed to be away from everyone. Just for a while. She started to cry again, "Goddamn it," she said out loud, "You're not going to let him hurt you anymore," she wiped the moisture from her cheeks.

She was having a hard enough time seeing without crying her eyes out. The snow was really picking up. She slowed down below twenty miles an hour. Her headlights could barely cut through the white static in front of her.

THUD! She heard it. She felt it. She had hit something with her car. Oh my god, she thought. Did she hit a person? Surely not. Who the hell would be out in this blizzard? No, she thought. Lynn exited her car. Snow and ice hit her in the face with a dozen little stings. She pushed her way through the blistering wind and sleet.

The figure on the ground looked like a person, "Oh shit. No, no, no," she said frantically, "Mister?" she could tell it was a man as she crept closer," she noticed he was breathing. She felt a bit relieved, but he could still be really injured.

She noticed something else as she was right on top of him. The man was naked. Completely buck-ass naked, "The hell?" she bent down to check his pulse. He wasn't going to last long like this, she thought. Why the hell is he naked? Maybe this is like a mob hit or something. Alaska-style. Throw someone out in a blizzard and let them freeze. That's silly, she dismissed the idea. It didn't matter. She needed to get him back in the car. She needed to get him to a hospital.

The man's eyes sprung open. The man leapt up onto his feet. The naked man grabbed Lynn and slammed her against the car. He was so strong, "What the hell happened? Who are you?" he shook his head. He tried to clear his head from the car impact, "Did you hit me with your goddamn car?"

"It was an accident. I couldn't see. Are you okay?" she squeaked out. She was scared for a totally new reason now. This guy was crazy. She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but his hands acted like vice grips. Not just for a naked skinny guy in the middle of a blizzard, but strong for any person. She couldn’t budge an inch.

The man let go of her and grabbed his head, "It's too late," he whipped his head around. His eyes were bright yellow, "I put it off for too long. I can't control it," Lynn heard bones cracking in the man's body as he screamed in pain, "Guess you'll have to do lady," he gave her a sinister stare as his incisors grew a few inches in front of her eyes. Blood started pour out of the man's mouth as the bones and muscles in his body shifted in a grotesque manner. His grin split the side of his cheek as he let out an inhuman shriek. A distorted howl.

Lynn ran to her driver's side door. The contorted, naked man was distracted as he... whatever was happening to him. She put her foot on the accelerator as hard as she could, but only spun out. She forgot what it was like to drive in real snow. She gently put her foot down and she got traction. Lynn went around the man as she swore she saw his head was stretching. Every inch of change audibly fractured his bones and ripped at his tendons. His teeth were sharp and jagged. Those yellow eyes burned through her with insatiable hunger.

Whatever the hell was going on, Lynn was getting out of here. She was well on her way. Suddenly she felt another impact. This time on the back of her car. Like something had slashed her back left tire. She spun 180 degrees. Lynn had no control and just held on. She closed her eyes until she heard the clatter of shattered glass and denting metal. Lynn swore she was screaming, but it didn’t seem to rise above the chaotic crashing around her.

Lynn felt blood flow down her face. Some of the glass hit her like a shotgun blast. Lynn saw that the passenger side had hit a tree. She shook the dizziness from her head. She needed to get the hell out of here. She reached for the door with her bleeding hand. Blood smeared on the handle as she fumbled the door open.

Lynn saw her back tire as she fell into the snow, still off balance from the impact. It had been ripped open. Were those claw marks? She looked around. The snow was coming down even harder, but she somehow could feel that the contorted man could still be after her.

Her father's cabin couldn't be more than half a mile east into the woods. She could make it. She knew it. Lynn put one foot in front of the other. She wrapped herself in the only blanket she had and headed into the white nothingness.

3

Lynn was running now. As fast as her legs could propel her through the snowstorm. She knew these woods well enough. She spent a lot of time here as a kid, but a lot had changed. She just needed to keep running. Lynn reached into her pocket for her cell phone. She hadn't even thought about calling someone. No one was going to be able to get to her soon, but it was worth a shot. She kept looking up at the path in front of her. She did not want to run face first into a tree. Lynn looked at her cracked screen. It must had been damaged in the crash. She hoped it would still work.

Lynn brushed her red hair out of her face as she dialed 911. There was a voice on the other end, "Hello," Lynn tried to yell over the wind, "I'm near Elk Clearing, there's been an accident," she couldn't hear the person on the other end. It wasn't likely they could hear her, "Shit!" whether it was the wind or the damage to the phone, help wasn’t coming.

Lynn shoved her slightly damaged phone into her coat. She realized that drunk asshole said he was going to be at Elk Clearing, "No," she said. It was worth a shot. The guy might have a gun. If that naked... thing was still after her, then a gun would come in really handy.

Lynn made a slight detour to the right. She trudged through the two-foot-deep snow. The crunching of the already freezing snow was all she could hear for a moment. She focused on pushing her way to Elk’s Clearing. It was the only thing that mattered.

That's when she heard snarling. Through the howling wind, she heard an animal growling. Lynn spun around to see those yellow eyes. Even through the swirling dots of white, she could see those eyes. It was all she could see as she quickly turned around to sprint toward that clearing.

Lynn tripped over a downed tree as she stumbled through the woods into the clearing. The snow was actually starting to let up. She could hear herself think for a moment. She shook the snow off of her head as she heard a voice further into the clearing.

"The bloody hell?" the voice called out. The man's accent was distinctively British, "What are you doing here?"

She made out the man's face, "The asshole from the bar?" it was indeed the man from the bar, but he wasn't disheveled and drunk. He was in an insulated trench coat with a sock hat wrapped around his head and ears. She shook off the disbelief and just rolled with it, "You were going to go hunting! You have a gun, right? There's a vampire or something chasing me."

"No, love," the man said, "Not a vampire," he saw the yellow eyes peeking through the tree line. They were at least seven feet off of the ground. A white fur-covered hand grabbed the tree next to it as a massive creature stepped out from the forest. Black claws scratched into the bark. The deep trails were carved into the wood with almost no effort. Its foot wasn’t flat like a person’s but arched up, like an animal. Unlike an animal, it was standing up straight on two feet.

The man smirked, "That... is a werewolf."

4

The British man pulled a silver sawed off shotgun out of his dark blue trench coat. The single barrel wasn’t rounded like a normal shotgun, but cut into a point on the top of the barrel. He pumped the weapon one time as he walked toward the over seven-foot werewolf that had revealed itself.

It snarled as it carefully analyzed its two prey. One was utterly defenseless and not worth one ounce of worry. The other it seemed to know from somewhere. It may have just know his kind. Armed and formidable. Clever and dangerous.

Lynn was beyond frightened. She couldn’t scream. She froze in both absolute terror and due to the fact she was literally freezing while sitting in the thick snow. She just watched the two figures squaring off in front of each other. Both of them used an equal amount of caution. Neither made a move for more than a few seconds.

The Britain stepped to the side while keeping his pointy shotgun aimed right at the creature, “So, you got my invitation. It had been said that part of you remembers what happens when you’re a wolf,” the monster just deeply growled at him, but kept its distance, “Now you realize that when I ‘drunkenly’ and purposely brayed that I was going hunting; I meant I was hunting you. You just walked into a trap. You. Not the other way around,” the wolf actually looked angry as the man taunted it, “Now you don’t have the smarts to fully understand how screwed you actually are. Do you, Fido?”

The werewolf called out with a rage that surprised Lynn. Was this thing still a person, she wondered, on the inside that is? Lynn crawled backward as the white monster couldn’t hold itself back anymore. The wolf ran at the Englishman on all fours, instead on two feet as it had been using this whole time. The wolf had indeed taken over.

That’s when a metallic snapping sound cut through the blustery wind. A red spray of liquid jutted into the air. The wolf rolled around as it lost footing. It yelped like an injured dog. Blood could be seen in the white snow. The man casually walked up to the creature. Its leg had been caught in a silver, shiny bear trap. The snapped shut apparatus almost cut the thing’s leg off. A burning scent accompanied smoke in the air. The silver was burning through the wolf’s leg. The monster clawed at the trap, but only succeeded in burning its paws.

The man strolled along through the snow, “All it took was a little ridicule,” he aimed at the wolf’s face, “And you lost yourself to the animal,” he pulled the trigger. The monster’s face basically disintegrated in a blitz of blood, fur and bone. Its snout was gone. Those yellow eyes burst like grapes. The faceless werewolf fell forward into the snow. Blood spread out onto the snow and quickly froze.

Text Copyright © 2017 by Jacob Harris (Jake dh)

All Rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission of publisher/author.

Dreadful created by Jacob Harris (Jake dh)

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