Claws Painted Black

//TW: body horror//

She half expected to hear organ music - Toccata and Fugue in D minor to be specific - as they crested the hill and pulled in front of the mansion. The sun had already set and dusk was giving away to a chill, misty twilight. Her dad killed the engine and sat back a moment, hand resting on the keys.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Ricci?”

Ricci nodded, keeping her eyes on her black-painted stiletto nails. “Too late to turn back.”

The full moon stared down at her through the windshield. She had no choice.

Two others joined them at the steps of the abandoned house. The decrepit garden and drive prophesied what they would find inside: the rot and ruin of something once beautiful.

Lidia, an old friend of the family, was a tall woman with shocking white hair and an equally shocking roundhouse kick. She wore an impeccable midnight blue blouse and tailored black jeans, fashionable yet glaringly impractical for searching through dust and termites.

Ricci forced a smile at Elle as the girl cautiously approached. She still wore her signature purple, her curly hair brushing against her jawline. They had been friends once, but time and Ricci had both changed. Elle had not.

“Thank you for coming,” Dr. Chey said, “I know how much Morgan meant to us all, and with the investigation closing, this house is our last hope for some closure. Let’s find some answers.”

Ricci flicked a lock of faded magenta hair from her eyes. Morgan had been missing for three months. She wasn’t sure they were ready to find what they all knew could lay beyond.

Of course, she knew. There was no corpse, not anymore at least. But she had to make them believe, hope, for a little while longer.

Behind heavy oak doors lay the foyer, dusty and relatively bare. The lights still worked, luckily, and they flickered on with a warm yellow light.

They splintered off to different rooms in relative silence, slowly opening doors, testing light switches and floor integrity as they went.

Once in a while they'd regroup and reveal what they'd found:

Morgan's leather jacket, a revolver with three bullets left, a bundle of ancient dynamite, and splintered bones in a scattered mess.

Ricci let them search. She wandered, keeping an eye out one of the many windows. The moon was almost at its zenith, she only had to keep them all here a little while longer. She sniffed the air. Already her senses of smell and sight were sharpening, it was nearly time.

Turning to a tall paned window, she let the light of the full moon spill over her face. She sighed.

Her bones twisted sharply, snapping tendon and muscle as the transition began. She let out a primal scream, even after all this time the pain was exquisite.

She heard the others come running. Let them come. It was too late now.

Her agonized wail morphed into a snarl. She felt her spine lengthen and curve into a tail. Her shoulders cracked up and back and her hands curled into paws and claws.

She stumbled, steadying herself. Everything looked different at this angle, in her werewolf form she was nearly a foot taller and her eyesight was… wrong. Less colorful but worlds more acute.

Lidia, Elle, and Dr. Chey burst into the room and immediately reared back.

Ricci looked over her shoulder and curled her lip in a wolfish smile. She’d discovered months ago that she could still speak in this form, but it was harsh and little more than a growl.

“Surprise.”

The window shattered as a pack of wolves leapt through, positioning themselves between her and her companions. She’d promised the starving creatures a feast in exchange for a place in the pack, and she was ready to make good on her end of the deal.

The humans scattered.

Lidia and Dr. Chey bolted through a door that would only lead them to the basement, and a dead end. Two or three wolves gave chase.

Ricci leapt after Elle, who fled across the foyer down a hallway. The girl ran like a rabbit, mindless, and almost immediately cornered herself in a bedroom.

She whipped around and brandished the revolver. Two shaky shots rattled the room.

Ricci dodged easily, then lunged and sank her claws into Elle’s stomach.

She fell, head slamming against the floor.

Dead.

Shouts and yelps sounded from the basement below, a battle Ricci could only guess at. Lidia’s scream echoed up through the floorboards. She cocked her head, listening as a satisfied howl drowned it out. She was distantly surprised that the woman had not been more of an adversary. But a hungry wolf was not an easy opponent. She turned her attention back to Elle.

Blood pooled around the girl’s head where it rested on the stone floor, forming a dark red halo in her curly hair.

The old revolver still lay wrapped in Elle's hand. Ricci stooped to pick it up. It was small in her paw but usable. She wouldn’t say no to a ranged weapon, it was always a nightmare to try and clean up after she transitioned back, and if that meant less time scrubbing gore and guts out from under her nails, so be it.

She turned away as wolves gathered around Elle’s body.

Coming back into the foyer, she felt the house tremble. She remembered vaguely the old elevator in the basement, but she had assumed it was long out of service. She’d spent many full moons exploring this place in the early days of her lycanthropy, and knew it like her own home. It was where she had first met the pack, earning their trust by becoming their hunter. That’s why she’d lured the three others here tonight, and why she’d brought Morgan here three months ago. Morgan had been the first sacrifice.

Now, someone might have figured out how to escape their hungry teeth. She could not let that happen.

The elevator creaked up from the basement as Ricci stalked up the stairs. Of course it would be her dad she faced last. Her dad, the doctor, the only one who could have helped her. If only he'd noticed how withdrawn she'd become, if only he'd spotted the blood stains under her nails and the circles under her eyes, if only he cared enough to truly check in on his daughter… their relationship the last few years had become a long, disappointing line of "if only's".

She cocked the gun with a black-painted claw

A small bell chimed as the elevator ground to a halt. The doors opened.

Doctor Jonathan Chey stared at her, a stick of lit dynamite clutched in his hand.

"Ricci-"

“Sorry, dad.”

But she wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t sorry at all.

She pulled the trigger.

The dynamite exploded.

The rickety elevator shuttered.

She heard the pack thunder up the stairs, yipping and yowling. They surrounded her, sniffing at her paws, snouts wet with blood. Tails began to wag. Ricci didn't know wolves could even wag their tails. One whined happily then turned to the half charred body in the elevator. She turned and descended the stairs.

Ricci the werewolf threw back her head and howled.