Free The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) by Anna Roberts

again,” he said.

 
    5
     
    They could smell it a dozen or more miles away.
    It carried on the wind – a fleshy scent that almost made your mouth water, until the sweetness of rot came and poked you in the back of the throat like a blunt finger, tripping your gag reflex and leaving you with no question about what it was you were smelling.
    The black dog was walking.
    “I heard they saw it down in the Keys.”
    “Nah, man – it was here. Right here. I seen the fucker plain as daylight – paws like dinner plates, eyes like nothing you’ve ever seen on earth. Walked straight past my front door and growled at me. I just about pissed my pants.”
    One of the younger ones shook his head. “Come on,” he said, one eye on his iPhone. “There is no black dog. It’s a fuckin’ superstition.”
    “Oh yeah? Then what are you doing here?”
    “Dude, how the hell should I know?” He jabbed at the screen with an impatient finger. “I can’t explain it. It’s like an instinct. Like how some things migrate, you know?” Another jab.
    Charlie reached past him and grabbed a pack of baby carrots from the shelf. “Migrate?” he said. “What are you? Some kind of weregoose?”
    A couple of the others laughed, but the youngster didn’t look up. Like a lot of the kids he looked dazed, blinking in the lights of the convenience store as if he had only just woken up. “Wait a sec,” he said. “I’m trying to get Wikipedia.”
    “Yeah,” said Charlie. “Try ‘weird smells that make you drive to Florida’. That should be good for a laugh, if nothing else.”
    He carried on through the aisles, his stomach roaring in protest as he passed by Twinkies, peanut butter cups, Cheetos and Little Debbie snack cakes. The ferocious appetite came with the moon, but he couldn’t afford the cholesterol, not at his age.
    When he caught sight of himself in a mirror he saw that his cheeks were still gratifyingly hollow. Good bones. At thirty-two he was a long way from the blue-eyed golden boy he had been at twenty-five, his hair already turning tow-colored with streaks of premature gray. And sure, his teeth had never been up to Hollywood snuff, but he had the bone structure there. If you had great cheekbones you were much less likely to turn jowly.
    He grabbed a couple of bags of beef jerky - for protein - and then headed for the counter. The girl behind it was a skinny little blue haired thing with old cutting scars on her wrist and the word BREATHE tattooed in loopy black letters on the inside of one arm. Her eyes were large and brown and the sight of her sloppy dark red lipstick set Charlie’s stomach rumbling again, stirring other appetites to life. Shaved, he thought. Not very well shaved, so she’d be just a little prickly to fuck, but it wouldn’t matter, because she was nutty enough to cut herself. Crazy in the head meant crazy in the bed.
    “Gimme a pack of Marlboro, hon,” he said. He spotted the cool cabinet beside her and caved. “You know what – fuck it. And one of those bottles of tea. Sick of that sugarless Yankee shit I’ve been drinking.”
    When she turned back the chill had tightened her nipples and he grinned at her across the counter. “I like sweet things,” he said.
    She flinched at his smile the way they often did, these fucking kids with their weird notions that everyone should look like they’d been airbrushed or whatever. Like she was a goddamn picture, with her lipstick all over her teeth and her bra strap hanging off her shoulder.
    There was a warm wind blowing in the parking lot, wafting the carrion breath over them all. A couple of old timers – bike kuttes, white streaked beards – were talking as he passed.
    “...well, there’s the boy, I guess...”
    “...that fatass kid? He even old enough?”
    “About twenty, I think.”
    The geezers spotted him and stopped talking. Charlie bared his yellow fangs at them and strolled on by. They looked guilty as shit at being caught out gossiping, or