Beyond Help

Havermouth, Present Time

Cameron was exhausted and his water-logged wolf body was beginning to feel the cold as a painful bone-ache that he knew wasn’t good. He wasn’t surprised when Rhett led the way back towards Lauren’s house. Please, he thought, let them stumble on the little girl on their way back. He hoped that Rhett’s pessimism would be proven wrong, that Jessica was somewhere safe and warm, perhaps even back in her mother’s arms.

They had covered every street around Lauren’s house, within a distance that they felt a little girl on foot could travel in the weather, sniffing at every door in search of a lingering trace of scent, but the rain washed almost everything away.

Most of the houses were lit only by candlelight, and every home with a fireplace had it burning both to combat the dark and the cold left by the loss of electricity. They encountered no cars on the road – something that didn’t surprise him because the roads ran with water, the wind was vicious, and the cold was