Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy

said.
    “I forgot to bring a Frisbee.”
    With shamanic gravity, Peter raised his middle finger. He glanced at the last of the sun puddling into the horizon like red mercury and got down on his knees, head bowed and hair hanging over his face. He was still. He waited for the calling of his secret name. Lynda clutched Roman’s arm. Fetchit sauntered over and sat with one leg splayed, licking himself.
    Then there was a spasm in Peter’s shoulders. His toes curled and his fingers clutched the dirt. Lynda’s grip tightened and Peter let out a cry like nothing Roman knew walked this earth. Peter fell to his side, his face contorted as though pulled by a thousand tiny hooks and muscles quivering in a frenzy of snakes under the skin. The cat fled into the trailer. Peter clutched at the pulsing flesh of his abdomen and raked, leaving pulpy red gashes with wet bristle poking through. He gripped the pulp and tore decisively, the flesh coming away with the slurp of a wet suit to reveal a blood-matted vest of fur. Roman put a hand over his nose as a stench of carrion filled the air and the sloppy, ramshackle operation that moments ago had been known as Peter thrashed its hind parts, the lower half kicking free of its man coat. A wet tail protracted and curled. Its howls all the while more plaintive and lupine as a snout emerged through its lips and worked open and shut, its old face bunched around it in an obsolete mask. It rolled onto all fours and rose shaking violently, spraying blood in a mist and divesting itself of the remnants of man coat in a hot mess.
    Now standing before them in the gloaming was the wolf. Roman leaned against Lynda; he had lost his center of gravity. He had not actually known what to expect in coming here tonight, much less that it would reveal to him two essential truths of life: that men do become wolves and that if you have the privilege to be witness to such a transformation it is the most natural and right thing you have ever seen.
    “Fuck,” Roman whispered.
    The wolf was a large animal, tall and sleek and regal as the moon its queen, possessing the yolk sheen of the newly born and lips curling back to reveal white fangs as it yawned and stretched out its forelegs, rump wiggling in the air. Lynda’s eyes moist with ultimate maternal egotism and Roman weak-kneed with admiring envy of those fangs, white fangs gleaming, gloating over the purest dichotomy of having/not having. Of course the fangs of a werewolf are of an exaggerated length and curvature more typical of the feline family. They are the final say; once the jaws are closed nothing on earth can escape them. Lupus sapiens : the wise wolf. This, Roman, who had lived here all his life, finally saw, is the lord of the forest. You are a serf.
    The hurly-burly settled, Fetchit reappeared and inquisitively approached the wolf, which gave the cat a peremptory and aloof sniff before turning its attention to the slop of flesh from which it had been born and burying its snout within with wet gnawing sounds soon following.
    “Can I … pet him?” said Roman, somewhat recovered. To the extent he ever would be.
    “Not while he’s eating,” said Lynda.
    “Peter,” said Roman.
    The wolf finished its supper and looked over, snout comically wreathed in red pulp, but whether or not there was any recognition in those old eyes it would have been impossible to say. What, however, was with certainty absent was any conventionally canine display of interest or affection. Werewolves, unlike either species of which they are representative, are not pack animals. It defeats the whole point of being a werewolf. This was a wild thing as cosmic and inscrutable as all truly wild things, and having an entire world of smells waiting, it turned and walked intentionally to the trees and with a rustle disappeared.
    *   *   *
    Three days after the Hunter Moon, Christina Wendall cut through a wooded path behind her house to the Walgreens to make a secret purchase.