statue. He had asked me why not, and I told him that things were already complicated enough without throwing the wandering statue into the mix. But at the sight of the blood weeping from the statue, I couldn’t help but make a connection from somewhere deep inside of me. I had seen myself almost turned to stone as I had stood before my mirror, my body covered in cracks, just like the statue that now had Murphy’s cross. Whoever that girl was — had been — perhaps she had once been like me? Maybe that girl had started to see cracks in her flesh. Maybe she had been stronger than me and resisted the red stuff and she had completely turned to stone. But not completely, because it was like when she wasn’t being watched, she moved somehow.
As we stepped from between the trees and onto the rain-soaked lawn that lay before the manor, I could see by the lights burning dimly in the windows that Kayla and Isidor had returned. The electricity worked in the part of the huge house that we occupied, but there was still no light in the ‘forbidden wing’ as Mrs. Payne had liked to call it.
Potter pushed open the giant front door and we had barely had the chance to shake the rain from our wet clothes when Kayla rushed into the hallway. She was excited and skipped from foot to foot as she told us about what she and Isidor had seen and heard in the little town of Wood Hill.
Isidor joined her, and passing Potter and me a fresh towel each, I rubbed my damp hair with it. While Potter dried his chest and forearms, Isidor told us about the owner of the shop.
“He said that they had taken their children,” Isidor explained.
“Taken them where?” I asked him.
“They’ve killed them already,” Potter cut in. “I told you they wouldn’t change. The Lycanthrope are murdering scum.”
“They’re not called Lycanthrope any longer,” Isidor said, looking at the both of us.
“What are they called then?” Potter growled. “You’re not the only one who has left the grounds of the manor. I’ve seen the wolves too.”
“They look like wolves,” Kayla said, “and just like the Lycanthrope did, they can look like humans and then change into wolves. But this time around, they are different.”
“Different?” I quizzed. “How?”
“Come and have a look at what Isidor has found on the Web,” Kayla said, leading us into the large kitchen.
We followed her, and sitting before the laptop that was on the table, Isidor started bringing up pages of information. With Potter beside me, we peered over his shoulder and looked at the screen.
“See,” Isidor said, pointing at the laptop, “the werewolves aren’t called Lycanthrope in this version of reality. They’re called ‘Skin-walkers.’”
“Skin-walkers?” Potter spat, lighting a cigarette. “What the fuck are Skin-walkers?”
“Shape-shifters,” Kayla cut in, not trying to impress, but more out of fear.
“See here,” Isidor said, pointing at the screen again. “They are trapped permanently as wolves — that was their curse.”
“They were captured,” I whispered to myself as I remembered how Nik had been trapped as a wolf.
“Captured?” Potter quizzed me.
“They can’t change from wolf back into human form,” Isidor said on my behalf.
“So how do we defeat them?” I asked, for the first time realising the true nature of our enemy.
“Not easily,” Kayla answered.
“It will be piss-easy. I’ve killed plenty of wolves in my time,” Potter said, blowing a cloud of blue smoke into the air.
“Don’t be so sure,” Isidor said, looking back over his shoulder at Potter. “These Skin-walkers have the power to steal the body of any person. So how do you know if you’re killing a Skin-walker or an innocent human?”
“Bullshit,” Potter snapped. “How do you steal another person’s skin? There’d be blood, piss, and snot everywhere. These Skin-walkers would stick out like sore thumbs.”
“They don’t actually steal the skin and wear it like a coat, silly,” Kayla giggled. “By looking into your eyes, they can absorb themselves into you. It’s like they take you over — control you and your soul.”
“Just like the Lycanthrope could stare into your soul and control you,” I said, thinking of how Jack Seth had tried to control my mind with those depraved images of him taking me.
“But they do have a couple of weaknesses,” Kayla explained.
“Like what?” Potter snapped, as if eager to know so he could start hunting these creatures.
“They don’t like the sunlight very much,” Isidor said. “They much prefer the night. And secondly, when they are in human form, they only have the strength of a human.”
“So what do they hunt?” I asked Isidor, my stomach tightening as the enormity of what they had discovered became clear.
“Just like the Lycanthrope, they love to hunt children,” Isidor said, his already-pale face turning grey.
“Different name, but the same scum,” Potter said.
“But what I don’t understand,” I said, “is if all this information is readily available on the internet, why don’t the humans stop them?”
Kayla pulled up a chair alongside me and sat down. “The guy in the store back in that creepy town told us that the humans and wolves — these Skin-walkers — had signed some kinda treaty over two hundred years ago.”
“And guess where that treaty was signed?” Isidor quizzed, looking at Potter then at me.
“Where?” I breathed.
“Wasp Water,” Isidor said.
“You’re shitting me!” Potter exclaimed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Nope,” Isidor said, turning back to face the laptop. “I looked it up and basically the humans fought with the Skin-walkers for as long as is recorded. But a truce was made two hundred years ago between them. The Skin- walkers got tired of being hunted and the humans grew tired of having their children snatched and slaughtered in the dead of night. It seemed that no side could win.”
“So what was this treaty that both sides were happy with?” I asked.
“That every five years, the Skin-walkers would be free to take the children from one village of their choice,” Kayla explained. “If the parents resisted, then they too would be slaughtered.”
“So they just arrive in the village, round up all of the children and kill them?” I gasped in disbelief.
“Not exactly,” Kayla said. “There were some rules negotiated during the treaty. The wolves couldn’t take children under the age of thirteen or over the age of eighteen. They could pick one village at random, but they couldn’t kill the children. There were certain conditions.”
“What conditions?” Potter snapped.
“The children would be housed at the nearest school,” Isidor said. “Held prisoner, I guess. And here they would be matched.”
“Matched?” I asked.
“Because the Skin-walkers are captured as wolves and unable to shape-shift back into human form, they are matched with human children,” Isidor said.
“But why?” I asked him.
“Because once the wolves grow from yearlings into juveniles they are the same age as teenage humans,” Kayla explained. “So each juvenile wolf that is ready to leave their pack comes to the school and seeks a match — a human child that they can steal the skin from — absorb themselves into. Any human teenagers who aren’t matched are set free.”
“And what about the ones who aren’t freed?” I asked her.
“The wolf spends the rest of its life living inside of them — inside their skin,” Kayla said.
“So why every five years?” Potter asked, grinding out his cigarette end on the stone kitchen floor.
“That is the time that it can take a yearling Skin-walker to reach the juvenile stage,” Kayla continued, her eyes growing wide. “This is the treaty that the Wolf Man negotiated.”
“Who is this Wolf Man?” I asked her.
“I’ve found a picture of a Wolf Man on the web,” Isidor said, clicking on a new page on the screen before him. “I think this could be him. Scary, isn’t he?”
Potter leaned forward and stared at the screen, then said, “Are you taking the fucking piss?”
