Chapter 23
The Call of the Wild
Mosavi sat on the grass next to me, staring out into the pasture seemingly without a care about his expensive clothing. He stayed quiet for a while, his expression uncharacteristically mellow.
“Your wife said you’d leave me alone.”
“No one controls me. Not even her.” His phone buzzed, and when he pulled it out of his in his front pocket and looked at the name, his eyes shifted sideways. “One moment.” He held the phone to the side of his head and lowered his voice. “Yes, azizam?”
Though I couldn’t understand the word, I assumed it was a term of endearment from the way he said it. Willa was obviously on the line. I crossed my arms, giving the mayor a half-cocked smile.
“Of course,” he said softly before hanging up the phone.
“You should have ended the call with the same confidence you showed a minute ago,” I said, wondering how short a leash Willa actually had him on.
He bared his teeth; however, it wasn’t quite as intimidating in human form. “You are walking a thin line with me.”
“And what are you going to do about it? This is a free county, and I’ll say what I want.”
“Are you asking for me to punish you the way I did your werewolves?”
“I don’t think your wife would appreciate that.” I gave him a smug grin, but when he grinned back, my stomach sank.
“You definitely do not know Willa.” He adjusted the gold chain around his neck.
“Is she a witch?”
He nodded. “She and I go back about a hundred years, and I would trust no one the way I trust her.”
“A hundred years? How long do witches live?”
“It depends. Without the vironoct, they wither away in a few years. With a steady source, they can live for as long as they desire,” Mosavi replied.
“So I’m guessing your relationship with her is more symbiotic than anything.”
“Do not speak ill of her, and never belittle our bond,” he shouted, the seams of his shirt popping as he held back his werewolf form.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I actually like her, but she kinda scares the hell out of me.”
Mosavi placed a hand on my shoulder. “Instinct. Sometimes it’s useful. When you feel that kind of impending dread, that is when you run. Willa may be a witch, but she renounced her coven long ago—after saving my life.”
“Did you meet her in Iran?”
He shook his head. “There are no witches in the old country.” He turned to me. “How much do you know of our history?”
“Nothing concrete. I’ve been looking everywhere, but there’s hardly anything about us.”
“Admirable curiosity. Stories of our origin have been passed down by word of mouth for thousands of years. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes!” I pulled back my excitement the moment his eyes narrowed. “I mean, of course.”
He grunted with a nod and leaned back on his hands while staring at the sky. “Long ago, a powerful demon seduced twenty of the most beautiful women, bringing them together between the banks of the two rivers of life. The cradle of civilization.”
“The Garden of Eden?”
“It is called many things, and every myth has an ounce of truth,” he replied.
“Human civilization had risen and fallen many times throughout the eons, and the last cataclysm happened around seven thousand years ago. Those that hadn’t died off settled in the last habitable areas on earth.
One such place was Mesopotamia; the other was central America.
It is why many know the latter as the Garden of Eden, but it wasn’t where humanity started. It was where humanity restarted.”
“How do you know this?”
“The demon I mentioned earlier? In exchange for their eternal loyalty, he granted them forbidden knowledge and power—knowledge that was passed to me. They were the first coven, and they drew from one of the earth’s few places of power where the line between realms was weakest. This area would grow to become Babylon, and the witches ruled in the shadow of kings.
Their reign wouldn’t last forever, and when Cyrus the Great conquered the empire, the witches were exposed.
Those that did not escape were stoned to death or burned alive, and those that did used the ancient power one last time to cast a curse so powerful that it severed the connection between this world and hell itself.
This meant that their ties to the demon were also destroyed, and without a source of power, they died off within a few years. But that was not the end.
“It is said that one out of every fifty thousand males will develop lycanthropy, and one out of every two hundred thousand females will become a witch. The curse was a last-ditch effort to ensure the witches would still be able to serve the prince of hell that granted them such blessings for eons to come. The places of power no longer exist in the earth, but”—he touched my chest with his finger—“all of that magic had to go somewhere. It cannot disappear now that the weakness between realms has been destroyed. Werewolves contain fragments of that magic, like batteries used to store electricity. Instead of sacred ley lines, the witches use us, and they know how to draw it out.”
He turned toward the woods.
“When a new werewolf moves to this town, I meet with them and establish the rules. The reason towns like this do not exist is because they draw a lot of attention not only from humans in power, but from the witches in the wild and the Whasha looking to bolster their numbers. We can keep them away, but once we venture into the woods, they have the upper hand. They will lure the most potent of us to their rituals, drain us of our will, and keep us as thralls. They use our essence for their magic and longevity.”
“Then how do they and the Whasha coexist in the woods?” I asked. “I met a few of them out there, and they seem to be fine.”
“Do they appear fine to you?” he snapped.
“The woods have always belonged to the witches, and the very trees are cursed. They call us to them, and once the wilderness has us, we start to change into something they deem more desirable. Our bodies transform and we become more bestial, losing our ability to speak. The reason the Whasha did not fall to the witches is because they learned to tap into the magic within using sacred herbs. They make their little trinkets to keep them safe, but they live as disgraceful beasts.”
“They seem happy,” I said, catching more of Mosavi’s disapproval. “When I was out there, it felt kind of nice.”
“Just because something feels nice does not mean that it is. Alcohol feels nice when you imbibe, but drink too much and it will destroy you.”
“That’s rich coming from a guy that uses his jail as a sex dungeon,” I muttered, turning away. “If you and Willa can work together in harmony, why couldn’t we work out some kind of way to live together with the witches and the ferals?”
Mosavi rubbed his forehead. “What you’re suggesting would damn us.
When I arrived in this country, I had never met a witch before, but I was lured into their clutches.
All my memories from that time are gone, and I lived only to be used as a never-ending font of magic and pleasure.
The pleasure was all theirs, and all I can recall from then was a blue, formless mental torment.
Whether it was because she was greedy or she fell in love, Willa broke her ties to the coven and pulled me back into the conscious world.
She told me what I really was and where I should go, but I also owed her my life.
She would grow old and die being away from her kind, so we made a pact.
I would learn the secrets of the elders, enhancing what I was, and in return, I would also give her what she needed. ”
He turned to me and grabbed my chin.
“There is no living together with witches of the wild. Most have been driven mad by their magic, and they would not hesitate to pull werewolves into their webs, making eternal meals of us.”
Mosavi’s shirt started to tear again, and he scrambled to his feet before mashing out a quick text on his phone. Like last time, he could only maintain human form for so long, and from the painful expression on his face, he was struggling to hold it back.
“Why do you have to keep hiding behind a human face?” I asked, standing to meet his eyes. “Are you ashamed to be a werewolf?”
“Far from it,” he said. I followed him to the road as a black Mercedes drove by before pulling over.
“I’ve explained this before, and I have my reasons.
” The seams of his blazer popped as muscles grew thicker.
“I hadn’t intended to use this time for a history lesson, but I did want to tell you that you handled your werewolves nicely.
You need to learn how to tap into the vironoct’s true power, and that is only something you can learn from an elder. ”
“I don’t like your methods,” I said nervously. “You really messed up Austin.”
“Maladjusted werewolves have been culled throughout history or have had their wills stripped using vironoct rituals. He is lucky I decided to leave his fate to you,” he said in a deeper voice.
“You unlocked something the other night that you need to learn to control. If you want to be stubborn, I’ll let you learn the hard way—Willa’s way. ”
He climbed into the back of his car and shut the door. The window tint was so dark, but I saw a silhouette of Mosavi growing larger, his head morphing into that of a beast as the vehicle sped away.
The house was surprisingly cleaner than when I left, the strong scent of pine cleaner stinging my nostrils as I hung my coat next to Roscoe’s orange hoodie.
The television was streaming a movie, but the volume was too low to hear anything.
A heavy snore drew my attention to a pair of huge furry legs dangling from the arm of the sofa.