A hard-edged werewolf crashes into the life of an isolated witch who has temporarily given up her magic. They must overcome their differences and learn to harness their dangerous powers to stop a supernatural evil from corrupting their small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains.
The Witches of Claw and Fang
by Zach Stivers
Genre
Paranormal Romance, Thriller
Welcome to the cozy mountain town of Pineville, Virginia.
It’s autumn, the leaves are gold and orange, the apples are crisp and sweet,
town residents are going missing, and a bloodthirsty monster with ten-inch
claws is loose in the forest.
Morgan Reaves tries her damndest NOT to use magic. That’s why she hid in
Pineville, after all. But now, Morgan needs to dust off her spell-casting
skills, ASAP. Problem is, she may have lost her touch.
She has another problem, too, and it smells like wet dog.
Max: AKA the naked man with rip-cord tight muscles that stumbled out of the
woods near Morgan’s house, ranting about curses and conspiracies and a coven of
witches.
Is he a werewolf? Well, yes. But he’s also the only one who can help her defeat
whatever evil is threatening her adopted hometown. That is, if they manage to
not kill each other first...
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She leaned into the car and reloaded the veggies one at a time back into the bag, her head pressed against the seat as she rooted around on the floor mats.
Joey started barking.
“I said he’s not there!”
She felt the final onion just on her fingertips, but she couldn’t quite reach it. She adjusted and stretched out her hand… Joey’s barking got louder, closer, and more frantic.
What the hell was the matter with the dog?
The car jolted sideways, slamming Morgan in the shins, knocking her legs out behind her, wrenching the breath out of her lungs. A massive vice-like hand gripped her ankle, yanked her upward and tossed her haphazardly into the air. She crashed down into the lawn some twenty yards away, her skull bouncing hard off the ground. She blinked, trying to clear her head. She was in the middle of the lawn.
How was she in the middle of the lawn?
Joey yelped. She looked over as a massive furry brown thing slapped Joey halfway across the yard. Bear, she thought, in a detached, concussed sort-of-way, but it was clearly not a bear.
It was taller and thinner than a bear and it looked more wolf than bear and it looked more demonic than either wolf or bear and it glared at her with ferocious golden eyes. It took a step toward her, and she could see it had a thick scar running up its ribs onto its neck, could see sinewy muscles under brown fur, could see absurdly large white teeth inside a snarling lupine mouth. Could see a torn piece of her mail haphazardly dangling from its sickeningly large, clawed hands.
A scream got stuck in her throat.
Fear flooded her mind, pushing out the fog of the concussion. She knew she needed to act, before the monster turned her and Joey into dinner. But she felt pressed frozen into the ground.
Joey found his courage before she did. The dog barked and lunged at the monster. The beast leapt toward Joey.
“No!”
She pushed out her hands, fingers dancing, wrists snapping with an instinctual twist. The wind gusted behind her, and she heard a musical sizzling zap and the demon-wolf-thing, mere moments from striking Joey, yelped and leapt back, fleeing for the woods. Joey barked at it and chased it to the edge of the property but did not follow it past the tree line. Morgan ran for the front door, pulling the keys from her sweater pocket.
“Joey, come!”
She fumbled at the deadbolt. She tried the wrong key at first in her panic, flipped and flipped the key chain around, almost dropped the key chain completely, found the right key, jammed it at the door and it bounced off the hole and then it bounced off the hole again and she knew the beast-monster must be emerging from the woods by now, surely it was coming for her, blood-red slobber dripping off its fangs, and she realized she still was using the wrong key and she groaned and then she found it, the correct key, finally—thank god—but her hands trembled and the key wouldn’t slide in the hole, and then the keys slipped out from her sweaty fingers and they dropped onto the deck, and then, as if in slow motion, gravity pulled them through a crack between the wood planks and the blackness under the deck consumed them.
She wanted to scream and yell and pound on the door.
Focus.
She heard rustling in the woods.
Joey began barking again at her side.
It’s coming.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
She pressed two fingers against the keyhole, extended her other hand out into the air, flicked her fingers, and visualized the lock turning.
Remember.
Remember the old ways.
Remember what your father forbid.
The door unlocked.
Zach Stivers lives with his wife in Virginia, at the foot of the Shenandoah National Park. He loves to tell people they do lots of hiking in their free time, but usually they just go for a short stroll in the woods with their dogs and then stop off for a drink or two at the local brewery. That still counts as hiking, right? He has a degree in English Literature from Florida State University, runs really slow half-marathons, and leads an overly competitive book club that reads a book a week … or else.
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