“The whole place reeked of Wolven,” Scale continued bitterly, banging his paw on the leather dashboard of the Hummer. “Gabriel Gruber made an enormous mistake underestimating the child,” he growled. “In my experience it is always a great folly to do so. All children are willful, crafty, wicked, smelly …”

Vincent coughed politely, interrupting Scale’s fervent musings.

“They can’t have gone far, sir,” he said. “My senses indicate an hour, at the most. They must have seen us arrive and sneaked off just before we got out of the car.”

“What do you think Gruber will do to us if we go back to the Halt empty-handed?” asked Scale. “Hmmm? Got any ideas? Because if you don’t, I do.”

Angelo stared straight ahead, Vincent down at the floor. They were getting fed up with Scale’s attitude.

“Sniff them out and round them up!” screamed Scale, a crazed look on his misshapen face. He was furious with himself for walking into a trap. He should have known better. The woman had been a witch, and in a place like Temple Gurney he should have been prepared.

Angelo pulled the car over to the side of the road. As they climbed out, Scale scrabbled over to the driver’s side, his orange eyes blazing with ill temper.

“What are you waiting for?” he yelled. “Go! Fetch!”

With that, he drove off, manically kangarooing down the road, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake. Vincent and Angelo stood there in the cooling heat of the evening in their designer suits and black patent shoes.

Vincent sniffed the fragrant summer air, wrinkling his lip slightly at the rich stink of exhaust fumes, blacktop, gasoline, and burnt rubber, all offensive to the overdeveloped olfactory system of the werewolf. Underneath lay more pleasing smells: wild marjoram, bird’s-foot, summer anemones, and the pungent stench of wild garlic. Between the layers, in a kind of smell sandwich, was the scent of the boy and the Wolven.

If anyone had driven by, they would have been astonished, and not a little disturbed, to see two large Italian gentlemen removing their clothes and carefully folding them by the side of the road. If they had ventured within the outer perimeter of the woods, they would have been even more astonished to see the same two Italians crouching on all fours, grimacing and sweating as though in agony. Their bodies contorted as muscle and sinew stretched and writhed within their rapidly expanding skin. In turn, their skin, once smooth and tanned, became covered in long black hair. Then the Spaghetti brothers howled, long and hard. They were complete.