Chapter 1 - Harvey

Winter was unforgiving this year. The darkness brought with it a terrible and pervasive chill that seemed to penetrate the very walls of my newly constructed cabin. The wood was barely a month old when it had been chopped down, sliced, and erected into its current state. For something hastily tossed together, it proved sufficient, and the fireplace held a captivating fire.

I should have been warm while sitting at my desk. It was just a few feet away from the flames, yet I felt the icy fingers of winter on the back of my neck as I bowed over the papers in front of me. A blond man with stony black eyes, a frail frame, and a slight hunch stood with his hands behind his back near the flames. They danced in his eyes, and his glossy midnight irises appeared mysterious and feral.

To anyone else, he was a demon wolf named Clancy; to me, he was my best friend and my right-hand man. He knew how to calculate the measurements of any standing structure just from a few minutes of observation. His capabilities were amazing—so useful that he earned his position without much effort at all.

The rest of the pack was highly supportive of him being at my side. For the most part, none of them opposed my choices and were receptive to him taking command whenever necessary. Clancy had always been an excellent supporter, and everything he did was for the pack and for me.

My desk felt foreign, although it was also freshly-built and had a coldness to the wood. It reminded me of the penetrating winter wind smacking the side of the cabin that faced the ocean. We weren’t too far from the shore, and easy food came from living close to such abundant waters.

The living room was compact but not uncomfortable, though if filled with enough people, it would feel crowded. With Clancy present, it was more like a foyer with a torn couch, a desk, and a small circular table that was too tall to be a coffee table. It was strange seeing all my things cast with firelight; it was as if I were witnessing the room for the first time. It just took some getting used to.

If things became somewhat more normal, perhaps we could get a little better. Many fish filled our nets, yet our appetites seemed to grow stronger. Such was the burden of a possessed wolf. Without a name for my demon and the appropriate ritual, I couldn’t exorcise it. I could shower in holy water all day and still suffer its incessant whispers.

Those things that usually worked in the movies didn’t work in real life. Even if I did know its name, I couldn’t perform the ritual myself. I had to hire someone—a wise witch who had been practicing for many years. Since our pack witch abandoned us, things haven’t been the same. That was where Clancy kept stepping in, using his connection to his unnamed demon to provide us with the magic we desperately needed. It was a valiant offer that came with a heavy price.

I sighed as I rubbed my forehead. “Please tell me you have good news for me tonight.”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Harvey.”

“I was afraid of that.”

He nodded briefly, pushed himself away from the mantel, and shuffled toward me, his hunch growing more evident being backlit by the fire. “Five more members have fallen ill.”

“Again.” That word sounded so defeated, coming from my lips. “With what this time?”

His demeanor was sour. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

“Demon sickness?”

“There’s no sign of the blood being infected. Yet.”

I raised my eyebrows at his pointed punctuation. “Yet.”

“They have fevers of one hundred and four. They’re having seizures and hallucinations.”

“That sounds like the flu.”

He nodded. “A demonic flu.”

“From their possessions, I presume. Where’s that list of ailments?”

Ever since we were cursed ten years ago, I’d been keeping track of our collective suffering, calling it a Plague Journal of sorts. It was really just a chronicling of how wretched our lives had been since I broke that deal with Francois Dubois, and Mabel did his dreadful bidding.

It was me; I did that. It was my fault my people had been suffering this whole time without a witch to guide us. The witch we did have had left us high and dry from the stress of it all. Ten years had seen our pack of fifty dwindle down to a mere twenty members—all because I failed to deliver the ammunition ordered by Francois for his part in the vampire-wolf wars.

My fingers curled over the worn binding of my so-called Plague Journal. Irritation coursed through my veins, a product intensified by the demon that lurked in the shadows behind my solar plexus. That was where he resided, and that was where he liked to sleep whenever he wasn’t occupying my throat to manipulate my words.

I closed my eyes, sighed, and unwound the brown string from the faded leather book. After tossing the string haphazardly aside, I opened my eyes and focused on the pages that drifted past my fingers with barely a visible touch. Another one of the tricks of being possessed meant I was able to do things as a shifter that were typically only available in my wolf form. But with the aid of the demon magic that rippled through my body, I could perform my own little tricks without wasting bits of my soul. My demon called it a perk. I called it an annoyance—until now, of course, when I was using it to speed my way through the thick tome I kept on the right side of my desk.

There. The pages ceased flipping upon reaching the precise location of the ailment list. An assortment of treacherous symptoms had cropped up in many of our members: high fevers, hallucinations, uncontrollable twitches or seizures, rapid-eye rolling, and the blackening of the eyes until they were like glass marbles made from obsidian stone.

There were the more common symptoms of possession listed, like vicious whispers in the dark and visions. Threats were consistently paired with sweet nothings. Deals could be made, or wolves could choose to allow their demons to take over entirely. Their humanity would be choked by the darkness that resided within, and they would become a merged being capable of absolute chaos.

A lot of my previous members succumbed to their demons. I didn’t blame them for it. To perpetually fight a demon for years was exhausting, thus many members fell sick. Most of the time, however, it was unclear how the sickness started. One member, Kirk, was prone to hallucinatory delusions that forced us to strap him to the cot in my basement every week.

I checked my calendar; he was due for another one of those fits. If only we had a witch to help us out.

My fingers traveled the page, line by line, looking for all the recorded incidents we had experienced since our recent relocation. “I suppose leaving those cursed lands did nothing.”

“Winchester, Virginia was home for us.”

“This is our new home, Clancy. We need to get used to it.”

He bowed his head, hummed, and squinted at the page. “The symptoms are just overlapping now.”

“They’ve gotten worse.”

“We could always move again.”

I shrugged, even though I wanted to chuckle. What a bleak thing to say in our darkest hour. It was the kind of humor I would have appreciated if I wasn’t responsible for finding a way to lead my people out of the drab existence that tortured us.

That was my job, and I was failing at it.

I nodded. “Right you are, Clancy.”

“What should we do, Harv?”

“We don’t have a lot of options left without a proper witch.”

His nostrils flared as he trudged toward a chair on the right side of my desk. The wood creaked under his weight as he sat down and propped his feet up on my desk. I grunted, the sound inspiring him to migrate his dirty boots to the ground where they belonged.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Any ideas?”

“I can always consult my demon.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not a great one, but an idea by definition.”

“I could always give in to him, too.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

His demeanor remained serious, unflinching. “It’s an option—by definition.”

I focused on the tome in front of me, running my hands over the fine parchment and focusing on the coarse yet flat texture of the paper. He wasn’t wrong, and I hated that it was an option at all. Although, if I were being honest with myself, I’d already considered whether doing the same would make me a better alpha or not.

Wouldn’t the alpha of a demonic wolf pack need to be a fully realized demon to keep them safe?

Yes.

I sniffed indignantly at the voice that appeared too easily in the back of my mind. That was my demon. I wouldn’t pay him any heed while having this discussion with my right-hand man.

You could give in to me, my demon whispered. It is the path of least resistance.

I clenched my fist over my knee, trying to fight through the waves of pain that came with his demon influence. Because the more I fought against the bastard, the more pain I experienced in my body. It was just another manipulation tactic he could use to convince me that my life would be better in his arms.

And in some ways, it was true. My fight with him would be over. Our consciousness would melt together, and we would no longer be two separate beings warring over the same body. Demon wolves were faster, stronger, and far more perceptive. They were ruthless and persistent beings.

With such power, I could secure shelter for my pack. I could accomplish every one of my goals. My desires would be fulfilled—especially my desire for companionship. It wouldn’t be difficult to mate with a demon wolf woman and make her my queen, my left hand. No more nights would be spent tossing and turning in my cot-like bed with cold sweats and nightmares.

My demon would let me sleep in peace because I would become him.

I tightened my arms over my chest, doubling down on my resistance. “Yes, it’s an option, Clancy.”

“We could face our hunters.”

“No one is hunting us. That’s your paranoia speaking.”

Clancy sighed. “What about the raid last week?”

“That was a nightmare.”

“Was it?”

I hated second-guessing myself, let alone my best friend, but that was the nature of being possessed. We had to be willing to ask questions and get answers to those questions, too—even if we didn’t like the answers.

Clancy mulled over the question for a moment, turning his blackened eyes to the cabin. At this rate, it appeared as though he had taken a backseat to his body and was allowing his demon to peer through his eyes. But when he turned back to me, they were crystal green, an iridescent sea foam that felt brilliant and alert.

A smirk spread over his lips. “I suppose we don’t know, do we?”

“Don’t play mind games with me.”

“How do I know you’re not the one playing mind games?”

I sighed as I leaned toward the opened tome. While extending my hand to the parchment once more, I felt the air around us shift. The flames in the fireplace flickered. Winter hardened outside, repetitively beating on all sides of the cabin. To the east and then to the west, the wind gave no real preference for which way it whipped so long as it got to slam against something.

That something was my cabin and, by extension, my sanity.

My fingers drummed the book as I attempted to resist the annoyance growing in my body. “Demon overwhelm.”

Clancy adjusted his position, making the chair legs wheeze. “Same.”

“You think it’ll just… Stop sometimes.”

“And then it gets louder.”

Outside these walls, the world seemed like it was going haywire. The noise of the wind had tripled since I noticed it, turning my fingers into claws as I felt my irritation billow in my core. I couldn’t stop it either. That was the nature of the beast that had burrowed into my heart. I just had to grit my teeth through it.

A gentle hand touched my forearm. Within minutes, the racket of noise diminished, returning to its normal volume as it steadily slid around the cabin. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to urge my heart to drum a regular beat. Clancy appeared through the muck. He carved through it with the scent of his wolf, a clary sage that reminded me of the days before we were cursed, of altars overflowing with coins, gifts, and incense.

The rhythmic sound of a drum thrummed at my ear, and then I realized he was cradling my head to his chest. I was sweating profusely, my eyes spinning wildly in my skull as I tried to figure out what the hell just happened.

“It’s alright,” he assured me, his voice a thunderous drone in my right ear. “You were just going through another bout of overwhelm.”

Overwhelm—that was the term we used to describe the side effects of a demon trying to claw its way to the surface. It was like our senses got overwhelmed with everything around us, as if the sound and the lights were turned up to eleven on an amplifier. Distortion made the overwhelm worse, and it typically was one of the things that drove a wolf right into a coffin.

Clancy knew well that I wasn’t the kind to succumb to my overwhelm. I hated when it happened, but I usually pushed through it. Tonight was worse than usual. I wasn’t sure why the strain was too much, and I didn’t like showing any kind of weakness in front of anyone. But Clancy understood.

If only I had a mate to understand me like this when things were going wrong through the night. Clancy could only do so much and could only sacrifice so much of his time to our pack and me. I couldn’t expect him to hang around forever in this capacity.

I breathed deeply as the sound of the wind died down. My mind settled and my soul felt like it was vibrating with irritation, but it was more manageable. I rubbed my palm against my chest in a wide circle.

Clancy smiled gently while mimicking the gesture. “From kitchens to this, am I right?”

“You always could make me smile.” I did one more circle for good measure. “I’m sorry.” I signaled my apology to him silently by way of my gesture, but I just wanted to be truly sure that he understood I meant it. “I’m really sorry I did this.”

“You didn’t do this.”

I scoffed. “Clancy, don’t. I’m the one who broke the deal and didn’t deliver the ammunition in time to Dubois.”

“That asshole was just waiting for an excuse to have us cursed by Mabel.”

“Yeah, and I should have seen her deceit from the start.”

The weight of my mistakes felt heavier than usual. That was probably my demon’s doing as well, but it was hard to tell at this point. So much of him—of it—was becoming a part of my everyday thinking and behavior. Ten years of captivity could do that to a man.

At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do. I cast a look at Clancy that I had been giving him for the past few years, which reflected my inability to figure this curse out.

Clancy nodded silently. “I can always check the archives.”

“Did Anise leave anything behind worth looking over?”

“Other than her romantic ramblings about you…” His smirk grew sinister and then turned flat as he observed the fire. “I don’t know, Harvey. I haven’t checked them in a few years.”

“Get the boxes. I don’t care if it takes all night. We need to look over her journal with fresh eyes.”

With a sigh, Clancy obeyed my directions. He was understandably reluctant to review the scribblings of a mystical woman who had gone insane while dealing with a pack of possessed wolves. That was another horror of being possessed—those around us were tortured as well.

Before the end of her life, Anise had attempted to observe each individual possession and record every possible outcome. She did wax scrying, read tea leaves, and even read palms at one point. Everything she did was recorded in a leather journal, much like the tome that held a more concise collection of symptoms.

In the end, madness was the biggest symptom of a demonic possession reaching breaking point. Anise didn’t make it. Most of my pack didn’t make it. But maybe I could help the ones who were left and willing to be healed.

We poured through the rugged and weathered journals for what felt like days. In reality, only a few hours had passed. By the time the sun was peeking over the horizon, I found exactly what I was looking for.

I waved Clancy over to the desk. “Anise wrote that mating could possibly break the curse.”

He frowned while leaning over the book to read the scratchy handwriting. “Demons seem opposed to kindness. I show it constantly and see no real improvement in the host other than the light in their eyes growing brighter.” His frown deepened. “Harvey, that’s…”

“Pulling straws. I know.”

He sighed.

“It’s something, right?” I clenched the binding of the journal. “Right?”

“Yes,” he agreed in a low voice. “You’re right, Harvey.”

I nodded while pushing the book aside and thumbing through the Plague Journal to see who was left. Only a handful of women were in our pack, and they were either already mated or beyond the mating age.

I shook my head while shoving the book off to the left.

Clancy patted my shoulder. “Get some rest, Harvey. You’ll think better after some sleep.”

How was I supposed to do that when I could barely get any rest from my demon?

Not more than a few minutes later, Clancy left. The cabin—what should have been my home—stood silently around me like the empty walls were judging my position. What was I supposed to do now? Go out hunting for a mate like she was some kind of rabbit? It wasn’t like a possessed wolf would help at all. My pack was slipping through the cracks. Already, a couple of people were caught being reckless in town. I had to do something before they were spotted.

I didn’t know where to begin. I was too paranoid to go into town, but I didn’t want to risk the salvation of my pack by doing absolutely nothing. So, I did as Clancy suggested. I went horizontal on the couch with my arms crossed over my chest, facing the last dying embers of the fire, and within the minor blips of sleep I was able to obtain, I ran. In those brief dreams, I chased after a woman with olive skin and long black hair like midnight.