Yesterday I was having trouble with my blog, which are still a mystery. Basically, my RSS feed looks fine everywhere except Google Reader. While trying to figure out which plugin was causing that, I did a series of test posts, about 30 of them and was tossing a single line of fiction into each by way of apology to the people who had to endure them.
I’ve pulled all the test posts off the website, so they aren’t cluttering my site or LJ friend pages. But, by request, have assembled all of the fiction into a single post. It does, by the way, stop abruptly. Sorry about that. I’m planning on finishing it, but after the novel is done.
Untitled Werewolf Story
The bottle of blood lay on its side on the hardwood floor, nearly empty. Two splotches stained the wood next to it in the pattern of human toes. When Kuang-yu knelt to touch it, the blood was still sticky and bright red. This close, she could spot the fine gray hairs trapped in the blood. She nudged the bottle so it rolled to reveal the white label, stained with red fingerprints. “Paramount Stage Blood.”
That would be reassuring, except the blood on the floor was real and still relatively fresh.
Kuang-yu sighed and wiped the blood off on her jeans before she turned to the man hovering in the doorway. “My best guess is werewolf.”
Evan wrinkled his nose, freckles standing out like a spatter of blood. “I don’t smell anything except lilacs.”
“Maybe he’s exceptionally clean, for a werewolf.” She stood, knees popping. “Doesn’t like that doggy scent.”
Evan stuck his tongue out, revealing sharp canines. “That is racist.”
“Can’t be racist if it’s caused a disease.” Kuang-yu checked her nails to be sure they were clear of blood, before tucking a strand of her dyed pink hair behind her ear. “Are you going to track him or not?”
“Her.” Evan leaned back and looked down the hall. “The werewolf is a her. And my dad was a werewolf, and so was his dad.”
“Please don’t tell me she’s at the end of the hall.” Kuang-yu reached for her pepper-spray, which beat holy water to high-hell.
Evan shook his head and walked down the hall to the front door. “We missed some blood on the back of the front door.”
Kuang-yu stuck her head out of the room, unwilling to let go of the pepper-spray just in case Evan was wrong about the werewolf. On the back of the door, in dried blood, was the smudged print of a woman’s shoulder and breast, as if she’d been slammed against the door. That wasn’t what disturbed Kuang-yu, though. The cross drawn in ash above it, that was a problem.
With his back to her, Kuang-you could see the hackles on the back of Evan’s neck standing straight out from his body like orange needles.
“Hey.” Kuang-yu kept her voice low and resisted the urge to touch Evan. “We need to call this in.” The moment they found the blood, it had become more than a missing person case. The ash cross, that spun it into a whole different camp altogether.
Without answering her, Evan pulled out his phone and dialed the number to the local precinct from memory. In terse tones, he described the situation as they had found it and dealt with the hard part of explaining why they were in the apartment in the first place. It didn’t matter that they were authorized — if they weren’t extremely careful, just being Feds could seriously tick police off and that sort of territorial display didn’t do anyone any good, least of all the missing girl they were here to find.
While Evan dealt with the locals, Kuang-yu went back to the blood in the small room off the hall, wondering why the hair in it was gray. Commonly, werewolves’ hair in their human form was the same color as in their wolf form, which meant that they were probably looking for someone with gray hair and hence older.
She was still kneeling by it, drumming her fingers on the floor in thought when Evan got off the phone. “They said they’ll be here in five, which means we have half an hour.”
Looking up at him, she said, “Okay, why did you think the werewolf was female? Hair here is gray and the… body print looks young, which is consistent with the ash cross. So… why a she?”
Evan shrugged. “Lilac. It’s not a scent a guy would wear.”
“Sexist” She stood and backed away from the blood. “Can you get a scent off this?”
Crouching, Evan went to all fours and put his nose almost in the blood, nostrils flaring like a wine connoisseur. Whenever she saw him in human form, but in a canine posture, Kuang-yu always had to surpress a shiver at the uncanny valley people like Evan embodied. Ironic, that the understanding which had led to a cure for the disease, also let people with lycanthropy stand up and claim it as a sub-culture. How different, they asked, was being a werewolf from the community of the hearing-impaired?
“I smell stress.” Evan snorted and inhaled again. “High volume of adrenalin, plus overtones of lactic acid, and definitely estrogen.”
“Same as the door?” Not for the first time, Kuang-yu envied his sense of smell but not enough to accept the side effects that came with it.
“Hard to say, it’s a thinner layer so it’s dried already. Mostly I just got the ash scent down there. Sage. Saw smudging by the windows in the living room, too.” He pushed himself upright.
Just because I have the need for some kind of closure, I am going to tell myself this is the ending for now:
Suddenly, there is a full sonar eclipse in the sky. Kuang-yu became a werefox.
“Ahaha, bet you didn’t know I turn into a werefox during snoar eclipses, and this is my vacation home. It was me all along.”
Evan is shocked but realized why Kuang-yu did not need to bleach her hair before she dyed it pink – it was gray underneath!
And then she ate him.
That has my vote for final line, too! Ha.
Can’t wait to read the rest of it! It rocks!