Wolf Spell: Shifters Bewitched #1

stepped into the cold night and took a deep breath of the fresh air.
Fresh was probably a relative term, Pottsboro wasn’t exactly a picture of bucolic splendor. But the air was free of the greasy weight of the diner, which made it fresh enough for me.
I cut through the little alleyway that led toward home.
When I reached the end, I had a choice - walk the long way on the sidewalk and be home in twenty minutes, or cut through the cemetery and be home in ten.
My Chem book seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds in my backpack and the styrofoam box with my dinner was warm in my hands. It would be so nice to eat it before it fully congealed.
I marched forward through the black metal gates of the cemetery.
The fronds of the weeping willows at the entry wavered, though there was no breeze. The trees in the cemetery were so beautiful. The first hints of the coming explosion of fall colors had just begun to creep in. I had always loved all kinds of trees, even though we lived in places where they were rare.
Other people might be spooked by cemeteries, but in towns like Pottsboro, they were like an oasis of nature. Jon and I had played in the one at the old churchyard near our apartment in Philly as if it were a park.
Most of the gravestones here in the Pottsboro cemetery were low-lying granite, or old-fashioned marble. The few larger monuments and sculptures served as my landmarks.
I had just reached the marble angel at the center of the cemetery when I heard footsteps.
My heart thudded in my chest and a sudden wash of adrenaline already had sweat prickling at my brow.
My first thought was to run.
Well, my actual first thought was that I was an idiot.
I had risked my safety for a warm grilled cheese sandwich - another clear case of going from believing something was important to wondering what the hell I’d been thinking.
But my second thought was to run.
I spun, expecting to see the creep from the diner. I had a pretty good hunch that I could outrun him.
But it wasn’t him.
The figure behind me was silhouetted in moonlight. It wore a hat and trench coat, but there was something strange and stooped about its posture.
More than that, there was an aura of wrongness all around it that brought back my unease from earlier, but a thousand times stronger. The breeze carried a hint of something rotten and sickly-sweet, like the time the power went out at the diner, and I had to help Daniel clear the spoiled meat out of the walk-in.
I didn’t so much forget about the idea of running as I just completely forgot how my legs worked.
Run, run, run, my mind screamed.
But my feet just wouldn’t obey.
The thing lurched toward me, its movements jerking and odd, like a lagging video game. The limbs moved at the wrong angles, as if its bones were broken, or maybe it didn’t even have bones at all.
Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human. And something deep inside me told me that it never had been.
It was only pretending.
The whole world blurred and then slowed.
The man-creature moved toward me like it was underwater. My pounding heart thudded once, the sound too deep in my ears.
A familiar sensation filled me - something I had only felt once before, and tried my best to forget.
I tried to blink away the memory of falling, falling…
Do something, Bella.
Instinctively, I lifted my hands to shield my face.
The creature was only a step away when it stumbled and looked down. Snakelike vines from the nearby willow tree crawled over its feet, wrapping around and holding it fast, rooting it to the spot as sure as my terror held me to mine.
But it only stopped for a moment, then lurched forward again, leaving its worn boots behind to reveal the gleaming white of bones beneath.
“Stop,” I moaned as it raised an arm to strike.
As if on command, the willow branches lifted again, swirling around my inhuman assailant, tangling in its long coat.
Did I… make that happen?
The idea was almost more frightening than the thing that was after me.
Almost.
My vision blurred at the edges, but my body surged back to life. I sprinted for the path to the gate that would take me out the other side of the cemetery, my footsteps thudding on the damp grass, then crunching along the gravel path.
I flew as fast as my feet would carry me, not daring to look back, darkness creeping around the edge of my vision until there was nothing left but the flat gray of the path. I was almost at the gate when another figure stepped out of the trees to block my path.
A woman, unmistakably human, but with an icy gaze that made her nearly as intimidating as the thing I was running from. She was tall and slender, with stylish dark hair. She sported a snowy pantsuit that definitely didn’t look like something a local would wear - more like she’d just stepped off the page of the kind of catalog that didn’t even get delivered to a town like Pottsboro.
I don’t know if it was just a trick of the light, but the color seemed to have drained away from the woman, leaving her like some kind of charcoal drawing, or retro movie star.
She looked at me, then lifted her hand like the world’s most overdressed crossing guard and spoke a single word that I didn’t understand, but that reminded me of one of the sea of Latin terms I’d been learning in my Anatomy and Physiology class.
I was close enough to realize she wasn’t speaking to me, but to the thing that followed.
I turned just in time to see the pile of clothing crumple to the ground, whatever had been in the coat scuttling away into the overgrowth along the edge of the path.
“I would have saved you sooner, but I had to be sure