Not a wolfman who walked on two legs and had an overabundance of hair, but an animal, one that walked on four legs and couldn’t speak a word but could understand everything going on around him.
He didn’t understand it. He almost didn’t want to—it was freakishly sci-fi. He’d even paused to wonder if his old high school friend and fellow geek, Anson Swarkowski, would be jealous. Because this was the stuff their high school fantasies were made of.
But the curious, academic side of him begged for an answer. How did someone’s entire physiological makeup simply change with one bite, or in his case, one sip? And if it could change one way, why couldn’t it change back?
If in fact this was all magical and mystical like Nina had declared, why couldn’t he find someone who possessed the magic to reverse it? If one existed, why couldn’t the other?
This is what had thrust him out into the frigid night and pushed him to find a solution.
He didn’t want to be a werewolf. Maybe when he’d been twelve, this nightmare of a graphic novel would have been super cool. Okay, maybe even when he’d been sixteen and sneaking off to Trekkie conventions, it still would have been cool.
But not now. Not when he had two children he was responsible for raising. How the hell was he going to hide something like this from them? Hang on, kids. Uncle Harry has to shift into the scariest thing you’ve ever seen because the full moon’s calling?
Add in the fact that he wanted to tear everyone’s throat out with his teeth and it didn’t make for a healthy role model.
And then there were the tufts of hair on his face that he’d shaved no less than three times during the course of the evening.
Sure. Nina and Marty said that would pass. His emotions would level out and he’d be right as fucking rain, in Nina’s words. He’d also be part of a pack and have an alpha leader, Marty’s husband Keegan, as per her welcome to the group conversation. But how did they know for sure his rampant desire to gnaw his way through Nina’s throat would pass? They had one example of a human turned werewolf.
Marty. While he’d listened to the outlandish tale of her “accident” he couldn’t help but wonder whether there was any hard-core, recorded proof to back up the fact that everything would be fucking right as rain. That he wouldn’t experience any backlash just because Marty hadn’t. What if something in him was irreparably damaged now—and just as Marty was the first case of eventual adjustment, maybe he’d be the first case of not so great adjustment?
What if.
No. He wanted this problem solved and he wanted it solved now.
Thanking whoever was in charge that he’d forgotten to lock his car when he got home tonight, he popped the door open and gave it another push until he’d rolled all the way down the small hill of his subdivision and hopped in.
Turning the key in the ignition, he clicked his phone on and looked at the ad on Craigslist again, fighting the impulse to label it ridiculous with his haughty science.
But, hello, he was a werewolf. That didn’t get much more ridiculous.
Who was he to say that this witch doctor that advertised on Craigslist, touting his ability to reverse all curses, was any less real or useful than the ladies of OOPS? Who knew the ladies of OOPS would really have been useful until they actually were?
Okay, so the witch doctor didn’t have a flashy website with glitter and a dozen testimonials like the women, but he’d been the only person to answer his email after a dozen or so inquiries to other alleged witch doctors and their ilk.
And he was open twenty-four-seven.
If he had any hope of getting away from those women who were convinced he couldn’t change this, now was the time.
As he hit the highway, heading toward the rural area where Guido the Witch Doctor was located, he had one thought.
Holy shit. I’m a werewolf.
Bet Anson Swarkowski wishes he were me.
* * *
“OH, dude. You’ve done it now.” Nina pinned the man in the colorful headdress, whom Mara assumed was Guido, up against a wall with one hand, holding him by his throat to secure him there. His petrified face, thin and long, glowed white in the light of his establishment’s sign hanging just outside his shack.
Their arrival at Guido’s House of Witch Doctoring, after a long, torturous journey through the most rural areas of Buffalo, with Nina racing at breakneck speed to get to Harry before he did something stupid, had left Mara rattled. She’d finally fallen asleep, wedged into a corner of Harry’s very uncomfortable couch, only to be awakened an hour later to Nina’s colorful brand of swearing at Harry’s disappearance.
After skimming the history of his computer’s browser, in which her favorite genius had forgotten to clear his cache, they’d found a vast array of purported witch doctors’ websites and become privy to yet more information.