on the table, squats down to give the sweet potato to the pup. He jumps up on her knee, his skinny tail wagging furiously until she cups his little face in her hand and marks him. Then she stands and, without looking around, leaves.
“I have saved this coven many times over.
“You have killed your own kind!”
“By the moon, Sigegeat, mute it!”
The door bangs. I extract my legs, making ready to follow her, but Poul puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Get off me.”
“Constantine WhateverTheFuckYourNameIs. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors, I, Poul Ardithsson, challenge you for Cunnan-riht—”
“Stop,” Silver says, loudly now. Authoritatively. “He is neither Pack nor table guest; he cannot be challenged for Cunnan-riht.”
“Mæþ holmgang, then.”
“What makes you think that if the law doesn’t allow you to challenge for fucking rights, you can challenge for honor? Your only alternative is to challenge Constantine to prove himself worthy of the Pack. But, Alpha, if you fight him and he wins, there will be a Thing and the Great North will decide on whether he brings strength to the Pack.”
“Like there’s any chance he would win,” Poul snaps. He takes one step toward the door before Silver’s voice cuts through the room, cold and sharp.
“The challenge, Poul Ardithsson, Alpha of the 10th Echelon of the Great North Pack, must be spoken.”
Without turning to face me, he starts again: “Constantine WhateverTheFuckYourNameIs. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors and under the watchful eye of our Pack and Alpha, I, Poul Ardithsson, challenge you to prove your strength worthy of the Great North. With fang and claw, I will attend upon you the last day of this Iron Moon.”
“Down in front,” someone yells. “You’re blocking the screen.”
* * *
Neither of us sticks around for the rest of the movie. Poul is long gone by the time I take a seat on the stairs.
Finally, the film howls in triumph.
“Lucian,” says a comically deep voice. “It is finished.”
“No,” says another voice, softer, almost gentle. “This is just the beginning.”
The music builds and wolves begin to straggle out in groups, in pairs, and alone. Many of them stripped down while the credits were still rolling. Like Eudemos. Hirsute and chewing on an antler, he seems half wolf already.
“That shows there’s a practical reason for eating them,” he says to a female I think is named Eawynn. He taps his throat with a gnawed prong. “A sword through the throat didn’t do it, but if Lucian had eaten Bill Nighy, none of it would have happened.
“Did you know he’s a scientist too?”
Ah, Ziggy.
“Hey, is Elijah coming out?”
Eudemos puts his head back through the door. “Elijah, you coming?” he says and someone roars out the name of the 9th’s Alpha. “Thea’s in the bathroom.”
“He’s coming.”
“Maybe the vampires taste gross,” says the female. She is carrying, of course, a well-thumbed edition of Passing the New York State Bar Exam and has a pencil above her ear.
“You do what you have to. We ate a state trooper. There is no way a vampire tastes worse than a state trooper.”
“They’ve been dead forever,” she says and the two of them leap from the porch, landing softly and surely on the ground. “I think they’d taste like humans crossed with roadkill. And dry.”
Even in skin, the Pack has no trouble negotiating darkness: the moon is low, there are no porch lights or path lights, only a weak nimbus from one of the windows as Ziggy packs up the AV equipment and holds forth from his trove of obscure and deluded movie trivia.
Elijah moves much more slowly and carefully even though he is wild. Thea, who has her hand buried in the long fur at his shoulders, slides her feet cautiously forward as he pauses at the top of each step. I wait until they are safely at the bottom before approaching them.
“Hello?” she says, turning toward me.
“I need to talk to Elijah.”
“You can walk with us to my cabin,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Is this about you looking like John? I knew that was going to cause trouble.”
Elijah chuffs and scratches at the moldering leaves with his hind legs.
“Not really. Poul wanted to make me angry. I shouldn’t have let him, but I did and now I have to fight him. I’ve fought…a lot…but never tooth and nail.”
“I think it’s fang and claw.”
She stumbles on a rock, but before I reach out to help her, Elijah darts forward and she