Page 62 of How to Seduce a Slender

Melody placed her hand on Carl’s belly, rubbing it tenderly. The beast let out a low whine.

“Oh, poor baby, what’d you eat,” she whimpered, trying to catch his mouth.

“He’s an undead dog, so, my buddy can’t die, but he can get hurt. I just…before I go and ask Lord Rosemont to open his belly, you wouldn’t…I mean, you’re part dog, right?”

Melody barked out a laugh, flashing Kevin a smile, “On a technicality, I guess.”

“Werewolf means wolf. Wolves are dogs without a collar, so yeah?” Kevin, sweet faced with bones popping out and a worm for a lip ring stared at her with worry.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Melody rolled her eyes and shook her head. She wasn’t a vet. She wasn’t even a doctor. She was an artist with claws.Sometimes.

But she’d come to love Carl. Maybe he recognized her as a wolf from the first day. Maybe that’s why he rarely left her side when Kevin was inside the house. Maybe he knew she needed another set of paws in her life.

Melody crept to his mouth.What would Giovanni do? He often got stuff out of my gullet.She peeked through the open, flaming maw of Carl…

And saw something moving. Melody tested a finger into Carl’s mouth, then two, then three.Everyone’s got a gag reflex.And she might not remember what happened to her brother, but she remembered him doing this to her. Melody slid herself to his backside to avoid whatever would spew out. Then, just as Giovanni did long ago when she was a baby wolf and ate a hawk by accident, Melody jammed her two fingers back against Carl’s throat. Carl heaved. She ripped away from him but was unable to stop the hacking up. Carl immediately spewed. Like a dragon spraying fire, Carl lit the field of tall grass on fire as lava spewed from his mouth.

Melody scrambled backward as the dog was on his feet in seconds. He heaved harder, globs of dark lava falling out of his open mouth. Carl hacked again and again, more globs launched from his mouth. Kevin was already stomping out the cooked grass when Melody watched something wriggling and awful leave Carl’s body.

The Hellhound launched backward on his haunches, barking up a storm.

Instinct kicked in as Melody snatched the thing out of the burning lumps that ate through the earth. Her skin sizzled, but the pain didn’t register. And it never would. Not as her claws were out and the world was in red. A snake made of ink dribbled in her hand. Its head snapped viciously back and forth like it wanted to bite her. The tail whipped until it was able to wrap around her sleeve and forearm. However, it could do nothing as she held its head pinched between her thumb and side of her finger.

“Where have I seen you before?” she breathed, her thumb claw digging into the beast. It hissed. The muscles down its long body tightened. A memory tugged at her brain. It begged to be remembered. Clawing at her skull like it might come to the surface. But the harder she tried to see it, the worse the fuzziness got. Then a spike, like someone ran a blade clean through her left eye hit her nerves. Pain finally hit her system. Melody shrieked, clamping a hand over the pain while the other strangled the beast.Fine.She roared, “Fuck you!”

Melody squished the beast into a pulp, its blood and flesh spread across her claws. Rage pumped through her as she tossed it to the ground. With a frustrated scream, she stomped on the beast until it was nothing but goo.Fuck you! Fuck you, and your stupid memory magic, and your fucking beast!

“Such…big…emotions for a little girl.”

Melody’s body went still as she glanced up. It wasn’t her vision that was red. It was the world. Melody was in a world of red. Orange sky and ruby, dusty earth. On a gravel path that led beyond the hazy horizon, purple tree trunks broke up along the side of the road with a canopy she couldn’t see, they were so tall. And the world felt so big. She shrank as she glanced around at the massive world around her.

Trembling, Melody finally faced the voice. A hag stepped out of the tree line. Her fingers wrapped around the air in front of her. Flashes of reality and the dream filled her eyes like a bad television screen. Stripes of the iron fence between them, the haunted woods beyond were replaced with the image of an elderly, gnarled fingered woman stepping up before her.

The nagging Deja vu hit her again like a punch to the gut.

“Who are you?” Melody snapped.

“You don’t remember me?” The woman grinned from pointed ear to pointy ear. Rotten teeth with spoiled gums smiled at her, maggots crawling between open spaces in her teeth. Melody recoiled but not in time. Not as the woman reached through the bars and snatched her by the forehead. She had just a moment, a split second to see the real world. Kevin at her side, trying to shake her awake. Carl barking at her side, worry etched into his flaming, fluffy face. Melody arched backwards like a haunted puppet on taunt strings. And when that moment passed, Melody wasn’t an adult.

She was a child again, racing through the world of red. Purple tree trunks with branches that reached for her. Gnarled fingers wrapped around her hair and tugged. Melody screamed. She wrenched back and forth, trying to free her. Only after a pair of claws flashed before her was she free. Giovanni, fully wolfed out, snatched her in his long maw and ripped her away from the tree’s fingers.

“Vanni! Where are we?” Melody panted for air as her brother set her down in a clearing, his wolf slowly going away. She’d already spent her strength earlier.Couldn’t remember why…But Melody’s wolf was dragging inside her. Legs weak, arms like noodles, her hair a rat’s nest, she wanted to go home. There was dried blood sprinkled on her face.

Giovanni panted on his hands and knees. Drenched in sweat, he looked about the same as her. Just as frightened and confused, “I don’t know, I’ve never seen this place before.”

Melody remembered begging in her mind as she looked around the endless forest with trees that danced from spot to spot.I wanna go home. Please, I wanna go home. I wanna go home!

“And what do we have here?” The hag crept between two trees with a wooden walking stick and a raven on her shoulder.

I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home.

“I can help you do that, my little lost wolves.”

The hag let go of Melody’s forehead and she was on the road again. Tears poured down Melody’s cheeks as she stared at the woman, leaning heavily on that walking stick again. But this time, there was no raven. A wolf limped behind the hag before sitting beside her. Not just any wolf…Melody’s wolf.

“No!” Melody lurched forward only to be pressed against hard iron. The worlds clashed between reality and the red. “Give me back my wolf!”

“No can do, little girl. Remember? You traded me your wolf fair and square.”

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