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Logan hated the new moon. He wished they’d name it something else. The sky yawned above him empty and black, the stars obscured by the thick silver clouds.

It felt like a night for thieves, he thought. Or anyone else that thrived on the cover of darkness.

Logan huddled more deeply into his thick, quilted flannel shirt and tore off another chunk of the flaky scone he’d picked up at the Black Dog Bakery. It was dry in his mouth; he chased it down with a gulp of stale decaf coffee.

He reached into his pocket and extracted his car keys, fingering them idly. It felt lighter now that his old key wasn’t on it anymore. He congratulated himself on his exit from the house that used to be his. Cool, calm. Nothing to give away that she’d gotten under his skin. He was done with Carol, moot once she let him know she was done with him first.

He should have seen the signs.

A loud clatter down the long slope from his cottage startled him from his musings. It sounded like a dog was getting into his garbage cans. They’d made a godawful mess that last time, littering the perimeter with less savory items like the foam packing from a pound of hamburger, coffee grounds, banana peels, and some overripe tuna salad. Logan didn’t need the neighbors knowing what he ate…

They were quiet enough folks, if a little nosy. He’d gotten the clichéd “welcome to the neighborhood” speech and played twenty questions with the young couple who lived in the two-story house that reminded him of something out of a Hardy Boys novel he’d read as a kid. Logan kept to himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t like people; he just preferred his own company the best.

A quick trip back into his rental found him emerging with a large lantern and wearing a thicker coat and gloves. He knew it wasn’t old lady Adler’s poodle, since she never let him out. If it was anything bigger, at least he was wearing more layers, in case it decided to get unfriendly.

He was just tired of whatever it was getting into his damned trash. If he could finally see it, he could call animal control.

The sandy gravel crunched beneath his short duck boots and the wind bit into his nape, creeping beneath his collar. He cursed the lack of stars. He smelled winter in the air, wagering it would snow before the month was out. Thanksgiving was only two weeks away. It felt weird knowing he was spending it alone.

Logan heard raspy, crunching sounds up ahead. Yup, it sounded like a dog, complete with faint huffing, guttural sounds and the scrabble of short claws on the ground. He rounded the corner and saw an aluminum trash can lid lying on the ground, several yards away from the large wooden bin housing the containers.

A large form was limned in the light from his lantern as he held it up, right before he reached for the lid. He planned to bang on it to drive the dog away.

“Scram! Get outta there, mutt!” he growled. The figure’s body tensed, and instead of a short yelp and the scuffle of feet that Logan expected, a low, guttural snarl reached his ears and made his hair stand on end.

It was a huge black wolf. He made the mistake of looking it in the eye as it leveled him with a gaze that nearly made him piss himself.

Blood raced through his veins like quicksilver. Steely, lupine eyes peered out from above a long snout, a silver mask of fur around them punctuated by its shaggy black coat. A cavernous mouth full of jagged teeth vibrated with the creature’s growl as it defended its territory, staking its claim. Its fur was bristling in sharp spikes. Logan sucked in a breath, the icy air burning his lungs.

Time stood still. He was frozen on the spot. The wolf sized him up, crouching as its paws scrabbled against the ground. He wanted to step back. Running spelled his death if he couldn’t make it quickly enough to his front door.

The wolf made up his mind for him, coiling neatly and springing through the air, closing the gap between them. Fear wrapped strangling talons around his heart, yet he felt some strange sense of awe in witnessing the wolf’s arc, its body undulating in a clean, fluid ripple of muscle.

He was bowled over, knocked flat onto his back. He struggled under its bulk, craning and leaning his face as far away as he could from its maw. Hot breath and misty dampness bathed his cheek, making it clammy, yet he couldn’t tell the difference. There was that growling, that thunking sound that a lion makes in its throat as it resumes its place in the pack from chasing away interlopers.

He reacted without thinking, bringing up the lid to bash it in the chops. Its bark was staccato, enraged and still too close. He merely knocked it off-balance. Claws tore into his coat, and it caught Logan’s arm in his teeth, worrying it back and forth to expose his vulnerable throat.

No matter how miserable his life was in recent weeks, he never planned to die this way, to go out this soon. He struggled and brought up the lid again, plowing it into the beast’s muzzle. He heard the sickening scrape of bone against metal. Air was being crushed out of his chest from its weight.

The beast flung away the lid, snatching it from his shaking fingers. He stared death in its slanted, burning eyes. It lunged at him again and again, diving for exposed flesh. Searing pain erupted in his jaw as his blood spurted into the creature’s mouth, hot and thick. He was raked by those claws, tearing deeply through his skin at the base of his throat, tearing through his thick flannel.

He didn’t know how his lantern found its way into his hand. He just aimed it with all his might, and it struck home.

The creature’s scream could be heard for at least a mile. Its fur singed and charred, sending up the stench of kerosene. It reared up, shock and pain distracting it from its prey, and it tore off into the night. Logan lay wearily on the ground, spent and stunned. His body throbbed; he felt the blood trickling down his neck, running back into his ears.

He heard a muted thump several yards as an oncoming car rounded the curve in the road too late, striking the animal and putting it out of his misery.

All he could remember the next day were the voices hovering over him, and hands lifting him onto a stretcher. Sirens chased him into blurry sleep.





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