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  THE LAST WEREWOLF

  CATHERINEBANKS

  The Last Werewolf

  By Catherine Banks

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Catherine Banks

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Crimson Phoenix Creations

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of the book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized printed or electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  My name is Lily and I’m the last werewolf.

  Twenty years ago, the werewolves declared war on the vampires. The werewolves were tired of being under the vampires’ control and used like slaves. One by one, each alpha joined the rebellion until eighty percent of the werewolves in the world had joined the fight. It took ten years of planning before the big battle finally happened.

  As you can imagine, it wasn’t a pretty battle and, unfortunately, the werewolves lost. There were about eight hundred werewolves at the time the battle started and only two hundred of us left when the battle ended. The vampires ordered the rest of the werewolves to be exterminated, to cull anymore ideas about rebelling against them. They wanted to make an example of us so that no future groups tried the same thing.

  Vampires, Hunters, and humans looking to make some cash hunted us mercilessly. They killed men, women, children, infants, it didn’t matter to them. The only thing that mattered was the extinction of the werewolf race.

  Our numbers plummeted until last year when my brother, Aiden, and I were the last.

  The night Aiden was murdered was an especially chilly night in the middle of September, September twentieth to be exact. Aiden and I were huddled together inside of a cave, waiting for the storm to blow over so we could continue traveling. We didn’t dare start a fire since we were on the run from a couple of vampires hunting us and they’d smell the fire miles away.

  Our bodies run at a higher temperature than humans, but the cold wind and snow was enough to make us shiver. Aiden rubbed my arms as I rubbed his back, trying to warm each other up. He was five years my senior and he seemed to have aged an additional five years since we’d been on the run. We were both focusing on warming up when the smell of corpse hit our noses. Vampires were near. Aiden pushed me behind him, into the shadows of the cave. He faced the mouth of the cave, waiting anxiously for the vampires to appear.

  A voice like ice whispered, “We can make it quick and painless, werewolf. Or we can make you suffer. There are two of us and two of you, but we both know that we outmatch you and your little sister. Come, let us end your lives without pain.”

  Aiden growled and yelled, “You’ll never have my sister!” His body twitched twice and then he stood in front of me as a giant grey wolf. I loved Aiden’s coloring and envied him since I was a plain red wolf with no beautiful silver undercoat like he had.

  Aiden lunged forward and began fighting with the vampires. I knew what I was supposed to do in situations like this, but I just couldn’t leave him alone to fight the vampires. I changed forms and ran forward, biting one of the vampire’s legs and tearing it in half. The vampire screamed angrily and backhanded me. I flew across the cave and landed on my side, skidding across the ground until I was in the shadows of the cave once again.

  Aiden bit one of the vampire’s heads off and rushed towards the injured one. I stood up, unharmed, and prepared to aid him if he needed it. Aiden bit into the vampire’s neck, severing its head, when the crack of a gunshot echoed in the cave.

  Aiden dropped the dead vampire and staggered backwards before falling on his side. I wanted to run forward to him, to help him, to protect him, but I was hidden in the shadows from the shooter and I couldn’t risk being seen. I stared at Aiden’s ribs and willed them to move, but they lay still. I watched in horror as his body reverted to his man form, something that only happened when we died.

  I crouched low to the ground and suppressed the whine and pain for my own survival. Aiden taught me above everything else, I had to survive.

  A man in a black trench coat walked forward with his gun on his shoulder. “Looks like I got the wolf just after he finished the vampires. A three-for-one kill.”

  A Hunter. Hunters are dhampirs, half human-half vampire who kill vampires, werewolves and any other violent preternatural they can get their crosshairs on. They are the most hated being on the planet and are forced to live as nomads since no one can stand having them in their towns.

  This Hunter was old, I felt his age like a hand against my back. He nudged the two vampires’ bodies with one of his booted feet and then nudged Aiden. I bit back my growl and held my breath as the Hunter looked towards me. I lowered my eyelids in case there was any reflective light that might shine off of my eyes. The Hunter sniffed twice, staring straight at me and then turned away. “I just killed the last werewolf!” he yelled to his apprentice outside, raising his arms in the air in victory.

  The apprentice was no more than twelve years old and struggling to hold the pack of weapons the Hunter carried. The apprentice smiled for him and they walked off together.

  I stayed in my crouch for two more hours just to be sure they had truly left and weren’t waiting for me to reveal my hiding spot. I changed forms and cradled Aiden’s lifeless body in my arms. Tears streamed down my face and sorrow filled every cell of my body. I wanted to howl my sorrow to the moon, but howling would alert anyone in a one-hundred-mile radius that there was a werewolf still alive.

  Wolves are pack animals and for the first time in my life I had no pack and no wolf I could try to form a pack with. I was alone. I was the last werewolf.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two years have passed since Aiden’s death. After visiting a witch who had been friendly to the werewolves, I learned a spell which masks my scent and allows me to move freely among other preternaturals without being detected. Every day is a struggle for me to stay sane without any other wolves around me, but so far, I’ve managed. I may be slightly off kilter, but I’m sane enough for anyone who’s been in a traumatic situation such as mine.

  I sat in the middle of the forest listening to the animals and their daily noises. Children played somewhere in the distance. Their laughs would have brought a smile to my face except that I knew they only had until they were ten years old before they would be taken to the Master Vampire. The vampires ruled the world, leaving most alone and staying out of site except when a human was ten years old or if there were problems they needed to take care of. The children were taken to the vampire and bitten, so that the vampire would have control of them and prevent them from acting against them. Fortunately, this was only the case for human children.

  Werewolves had always served the vampires, until the uprising and since I wasn’t even supposed to be alive, I wasn’t bitten. T
he other races had a truce with the vampires and as such didn’t have to be bitten either. No matter where you went you were sure to see a variety of preternaturals such as ogres, fairies, shapeshifters, warlocks, and witches, but humans were still the largest population. Villages were usually safe havens because bandits refused to enter a village and pillage it when they had no idea what lived there.

  I usually didn’t stay in one place this long, but I was hoping to find a place to permanently live. I’d lived in this village for a few weeks and so far, it seemed great. My stomach grumbled, so I headed into town to do some work so I could earn money for food. I stopped at a few merchants, but none needed help that morning. I finally found work at the pub, washing the floors before the townspeople came in for their lunch. I worked at a relatively fast pace, not too fast for a human, but fast enough that it wouldn’t take me more than an hour to scrub the floors and wipe the countertops.

  The pub owner was a burly man with a belly as round as the kegs he poured ale from. He slid me five coins and set a leg of pig on the counter. “If you come back tonight, after midnight, I’ll pay you twice this for scrubbing the floors and then you won’t have to wake up so early.”

  I smiled and clasped arms with him. “Deal.”

  He smiled back at me and went back to scrubbing the mugs. “If you don’t mind my asking, where are you staying?”

  “I don’t have ‘nuff for a house yet, so I’m camping in the woods,” I said around my mouth full of food. “I sleep close to town though, so I avoid any problems with predators.” That wasn’t true, but I knew it would make him feel better.

  He nodded his head. “That’s smart of you.” He looked towards the back where his wife was preparing the food for lunch. “If business stays as it is, I might be able to make this a permanent thing. And if you work as hard as you do every day, I might even be able to pay you a little more.”

  I set the cleaned pig bone on the plate and smiled. “Thank you. That’s really generous of you.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “If everyone does their share, there’s nothing generous about it.”

  I nodded my head. “I’ll be back after midnight.” People were beginning to come into the pub so I made my way out the side door and towards my camp. It was only eleven o’clock so I had thirteen hours before I needed to come back. That gave me enough time for a run in the forest, in human form unfortunately, a swim in the river and then time to find a meal and cook it. After climbing the tree to where my bag was hidden I put the coins I’d earned with the growing group of others and hid them all in the secret compartment I’d created in my bag. I’d be completely out of luck if someone stole my bag, but then again, I could probably track their scent and get it back before they found my money.

  I made sure to camouflage my bag again and then hopped down and started my run. I hated not being able to change forms, but it was too risky except when necessary. I calmed my inner predator by going on long runs through the forest and catching animals such as rabbits for dinner. The forest here was flat, which made my runs easy and sadly boring compared to home.

  Home. That was a word I longed for, but knew I would probably never have again. My home had been on the peak of a tall mountain surrounded by dense forest. My parents, I couldn’t even remember their faces anymore, had raised me exactly as I am, half human and half wolf. Half of my day was spent in wolf form running and hunting and playing, while the other half was spent as a human learning to read and write and speak properly. Dad had made sure to take extra time to teach me arithmetic as well, saying that it would come in very useful. They’d been killed when I was nine by vampires. Aiden had grabbed me and run for miles before forcing me to change and run beside him. We ran until our paws bled and then changed forms and he carried me when my feet hurt too bad to walk.

  That was the first night I’d realized how desperate our situation was and how grateful I’d been that my parents had taken the time to build a home for me. I increased my speed, running faster as I tried to evade my memories. I’d known love and lost it. Those who said it was better to love and lose are idiots. I would rather not know what love was like, than to endure the emptiness of missing their love.

  I had searched every part of the continent for signs of other wolves, but found none. I’d thought about going to other parts of the world, but was frightened of the unknown. At least in this continent I knew what to expect and could survive. Another continent might have different plants or animals that were poisonous to eat that I didn’t know. I wouldn’t chance my survival on the hopes of finding another wolf.

  My skin started itching, so I stopped running and started my walk around the outer rim of the forest towards the river. I drank from the river, glad for my immunity to the nastiness that humans could get from drinking from it, and then waded into the water. I had walked far upstream and floated on my back, letting the current take me down the river. I steered myself away from the large boulders and logs in the river and enjoyed the cool water.

  I passed by the town and was at the outer limits when I saw a man in the river ahead of me. I planted my feet and almost fell on my face in the water as the current pushed at me. A man with a finely muscled body was standing in the center of the river staring down at it. I couldn’t see his face or tell what age he was, but judging by his supple movements I was betting early twenties. He hadn’t seen me yet, so I hid behind a large boulder in the river and watched. What was he doing just standing there? Was he crazy?

  He raised his hand above the water and then with lightning fast reflexes struck his hand down and then out of the water. But when his hand rose above the water a fish was clutched in it.

  I needed to learn that trick. He raised his eyes and would have seen me if I hadn’t ducked back behind the boulder. I leaned hard against the boulder and waited ten minutes before peeking out. He was gone.

  I quickly climbed out of the water and ran into the woods. I did not need to get shot for trespassing. Again. I followed my nose to a rabbit’s burrow and killed two for dinner that night. I preferred vegetables with my meat, but this would do. I’d buy vegetables the next day and make a stew for dinner.

  The fire dried my skin as the sun set and I cooked my meat slowly. The night crept by as I ate my dinner and then midnight finally rolled around. I walked into town and into the back door of the pub. The owner’s wife, a short stout woman with a fist like iron nodded her head once at me. “He’ll be sending ‘em out soon, girl. Start mopping up the kitchen while we clear out.”

  I nodded my head in understanding and began scrubbing the floors, which were caked in grease and oils and fats. The lady came back a few minutes later and watched me curiously. “Girl, where your parents at?”

  “Dead,” I answered nonchalantly. “Vampire attack.”

  She grunted her disapproval. “Nasty buggers. Wish they weren’t the ones running the show around here, but you know we can’t do nothin’ about it.”

  “Shame,” I said in agreement.

  “You staying in the forest, is that right?” I nodded my head. “You safe out there?”

  I stood up and pulled one of my daggers from my boot and showed it to her. “I stay armed.”

  “You throw?” she asked and then pointed at the large watermelon on the counter across the room from us.

  While looking at her, I threw the dagger sideways and sliced the melon clean in half. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She smiled, showing me her cracked and rotting teeth. “Good girl. I knew there was somethin’ I liked ‘bout ya.”

  I smiled back. “Thanks.”

  “All’s clear,” the owner called.

  “Go on out and clean. I’ll fix you some supper.”

  “I already ate, ma’am. I could eat in the mornin’ if that’d be alright?”

  She smiled. “You’ll be a good addition here. Go on and clean then. When you come to clean in the mornin’, I’ll fix you up somethin’ special.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said sinc
erely as I made my way out to the main room. It smelled like a pig had vomited and was rotting in the room. I had no idea how humans could stand the stench, let alone eat in it. It took me twice as long to clean because of the amount of food, spilled ale, and mud from the day’s work which was on the floor.

  I finished my work and said goodnight to the owner and his wife before heading out to my camp and curling up for the night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I wore a pair of black pants, a black cloak and a black t-shirt made of thin material as I walked. Luckily, I have a small chest so I didn’t have to worry much about the thin shirt material as long as I was wearing a bra. My boots were calf high with a small dagger hiding inside each of them. My sword, which is lined with silver, was strapped to my back in a thick leather and wool lined sheath. Silver hurts many forms of preternaturals and I prefer to have both metal and silver to protect me.

  Why the dramatic all black outfit? It’s my mourning outfit to remember Aiden’s death and his sacrifice to protect me. I wear it for one week around the day of his death.

  I walked through the town towards the fruit and vegetable market at a slow pace, trying not to draw attention to myself. Ten more feet and I would have been inside the market place, but instead, a man in a grey cloak stepped in front of me. I moved back a few feet to give myself room, but the man wasn’t paying attention to me. Another man in a red cloak was attacking him with some type of scythe.

  “Is today ‘wear a cloak day’?” I asked out loud as I noticed five more people walking down the street in various colored cloaks.

  The scythe swung over the grey cloak’s head and towards me. I ducked at the same instant the grey cloak pushed me out of the way. I backed up even farther to avoid being collateral damage. I had just turned back to face the action when the red cloak burst into flames and dropped the scythe. I stared in shock at the running and burning red cloak until I realized only one thing could cause you to burst into flame like that. A magic user.