Mel took out Gus’s phone and held it out so both Kit and Carter could smell it. “I hope you were right about this place being nearby.”

Both wolves snapped their heads up at once. Kit took the lead, slowing now and then to let Carter catch up without throwing Arthur. For his part, Arthur held on tight and stayed quiet.

They traveled for roughly a mile in this way. Mel kept watch for any people, hunters or otherwise, allowing the wolves to focus on Gus’s scent. As they moved, she noticed just how silent the woods around them fell at their passing. The local wildlife wanted nothing to do with this strange party.

Distant lights shone between the trees— too many to be a house. They came upon a chainlink fence. Mel asked, “Are we close?”

Kit nodded as Carter sized up the fence. She steadied herself and asked Arthur, “How are you doing? Are you staying on okay?”

“The fuck do you care?”

“Carter, does he seem to be doing alright?” Carter nodded, then shook himself to demonstrate Arthur’s ungraceful but sure grip.

“Good. Hold on tight. We’re jumping the fence.”

Before Arthur could protest, the wolves leapt into the air: Kit cleared the fence in one bound, while Carter hit the upper portion, scrambled over the top, and dropped to the ground on the other side.

She gave them a moment before ordering, “If we see anyone, try intimidation first, but I’d rather run than get into a confrontation.” Mel led them forward.

The reality of her mission sank in as they neared a mound of fur and bones half-buried in the ground. The spot was marked by strips of white plastic tied to a nearby tree.

However strange Carter claimed it might have been, werewolf decomposition clearly happened in some form. She took some comfort in knowing that what she was about to see, Arthur would have to see, too.

They moved more carefully now. Wolves were laid throughout the property in different conditions: one dissolving into a wet marsh, another wrapped in plastic sheets, one left fully exposed in a clearing. The occasional human body stuck out of the ground as well. Gus might have been the first Carter came across, but he was far from the first to die in human form.

It occurred to Mel that the number of corpses didn’t align with the rarity of werewolves. Carter had confirmed it highly unusual to see even two, but here lay at least two dozen yet to fully decompose. She didn’t know what to make of it yet.

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They came to another clearing. Kit and Carter brought them near a small still pond, no bigger than ten feet across, likely constructed to see its effects on the pale body laid in its shallow edge.

Kit lowered himself so Mel could climb down.

“There?” she asked, shivering. Kit whimpered in affirmation. “Arthur. Pull him out.”

“Why?!”

“You’re the one who turned him in. You need to see the consequences of your actions.”

Sliding from Carter’s back, Arthur whispered as though to himself, but clearly audible, “This is sick.”

Mel positioned herself so she could keep her eyes on Arthur’s face. In the light of the full moon, she could see him well: angry, tired, and hesitant, but not sorry. Never that.

He bent over the body, working out how he would get a good enough hold to release it from the grip of the mud, and then Arthur suddenly yelped and fell backwards.

Voice cracking, he yelled, “He’s not dead!”

Mel ran forward, so dizzy with shock she felt as though she were falling. She sensed Carter moving behind her. Gus lay motionless on his side, submerged in the mud up to his left collarbone, and as she circled around him she could see his eyes were open. Mel didn’t have much knowledge of medical science, but he bore no sign of having been the subject of an autopsy.

Carter was trying to push calm into her mind. Mel asked, “Is he alive?” The old wolf shook his head.

With great care, he reached out one claw and cut a line across Gus’s exposed arm. The cut lasted for no more than a few seconds before closing in on itself. No trace remained. Mel dropped to her knees and fought to catch her breath.

One week dead, cut open and studied, dumped onto the slimy bank of a cold pond, and Gus looked for all the world as if he’d simply gotten lost in thought. It was no wonder they had so many werewolf bodies to study. The ones that had begun to break down might have been years or even decades old.

Closer now to Gus’s body, Mel could see a small hole in his chest half above the water line. A silver bullet through the heart. Just as she’d always heard. The fatal wound was the only one that refused to heal.

“He’s dead.” Mel picked herself up and left the water. To Arthur, she snapped, “I told you to pull him out.”

He opened his mouth, but froze when Kit took a silencing step toward him. Arthur begrudgingly returned to Gus’s side.

It was slow, awkward work dislodging the body. Arthur panted, groaned, and once even retched, but he made no attempt to argue his way out.

“Turn him over on his back,” Mel instructed, “face up.” Arthur did so. “Look at him.”

She waited the space of a minute.

“Do you see what you’ve done?” she asked him.

“No,” Arthur answered in all honesty. “I don’t see because I haven’t done anything.” He no longer sounded defiant, but rather desperate, if not a little confused. “I can’t understand why you’ve spent this entire night trying to convince me that I’m some kind of horrible monster. I don’t know what made you hate me so much. Why do you keep doing these awful things to me? What do you want from me?” He sounded on the verge of tears, voice wet and breaking.

Anger from within herself, from Kit, and even from Carter flooded Mel’s body. A terrifying resurgence of the sense that she could do anything, that she was both capable of and would permit herself any course of action, made her look away from Arthur in fear of obliterating him with nothing more than a thought.

Energy poured into her skull. She hadn’t invited it this time. It wasn’t traveling through her, either. It burrowed there and screamed for annihilation.

As Mel had already known, as she kept pointlessly proving to herself over and over and over again, Arthur wasn’t capable of understanding how his actions affected other people. He couldn’t fully grasp the concept of other people to begin with. Either that part of him had been broken, or it had never been nurtured into existence in the first place.

Getting genuine remorse from him wasn’t a matter of confrontation. It was a matter of repair.

The cacophony in her mind quieted with the promise of direction. Bracing herself, she pushed her ego to the forefront and asked Kit, Carter, and the will of the universe to follow her.

Mel looked to the pond with burning eyes. Directing her energy to it, and likewise leading everyone else there, she blessed and brewed the entire pond into a luminescent, melodious, extraordinary healing potion.

Arthur thrashed. He made as if to run away, but it was already on him, already soaking into and illuminating his skin. His entire body glowed. The pearlescent light pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He soaked up the magic in its entirety until no sign of it was left in the water. With one last flash, the light withdrew into him, disappearing completely.