Mongrels. Stephen Jones Graham

       Copyright

      Published by HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2016

      Copyright © Stephen Graham Jones 2016

      Illustrations by AldanNi/Shutterstock, Inc.

      Stephen Graham Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008182427

      Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008182441

      Version: 2016-04-18

       Dedication

       Thea Lucas

       1914–1999

       thanks, Pop

       Epigraph

      Eventually I went to America.

      There no one believes in werewolves.

      —JAMES BLISH

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Chapter 1: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

      Chapter 2: The Heaven of Werewolves

Chapter 3: American Ninja

Chapter 4: The Truth About Werewolves

Chapter 5: Billy the Kid

       Chapter 6: Werewolves on the Moon

       Chapter 7: The Lone Ranger

       Chapter 8: How to Recognize a Werewolf

       Chapter 9: Layla

       Chapter 10: Here There Be Werewolves

       Chapter 11: Bark at the Moon

       Chapter 12: Year of the Wolf

       Chapter 13: Sad Eyes

       Chapter 14: The Werewolf of Alcatraz

       Chapter 15: The Sheep Look Up

       Chapter 16: Never Say Werewolf

       Chapter 17: The Mark of the Beast

       Chapter 18: Wolf Like Me

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Also by Stephen Graham Jones

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER 1

       The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

      My grandfather used to tell me he was a werewolf.

      He’d rope my aunt Libby and uncle Darren in, try to get them to nod about him twenty years ago, halfway up a windmill, slashing at the rain with his claws. Him dropping down to all fours to race the train on the downhill out of Booneville, and beating it. Him running ahead of a countryside full of Arkansas villagers, a live chicken flapping between his jaws, his eyes wet with the thrill of it all. The moon was always full in his stories, and right behind him like a spotlight.

      I could tell it made Libby kind of sick.

      Darren, his rangy mouth would thin out in a kind of grin he didn’t really want to give, especially when Grandpa would lurch across the living room, acting out how he used to deal with sheep when he got them bunched up against a fence. Sheep are the weakness of all werewolves, he’d say, and then he’d play both parts, growling like a wolf, his shoulders pulled up high, and turning around to bleat in wide-eyed fear, like a sheep.

      Libby would usually leave before Grandpa tore into the flock, the sheep screaming, his mouth open wide and hungry as any wolf, his yellow teeth dull in the firelight.

      Darren would just shake his head, work another strawberry wine cooler up from beside his chair.

      Me, I was right at the edge of being eight years old, my mom dead since the day I was born, no dad anybody would talk about. Libby had been my mom’s twin, once upon a time. She told me not to call her “Mom,” but I did, in secret. Her job that fall was sewing fifty-pound bags of seed shut. After work the skin around her eyes would be clean from the goggles she wore but crusted white with sweat. Darren said she looked like a backward raccoon. She’d lift her top lip over her teeth at him in reply, and he’d keep to his side of the kitchen table.

      Darren was the male version of my mom and Libby—they’d been triplets, a real litter, according to Grandpa. Darren had just found his way back to Arkansas that year. He was twenty-two, had been gone six magical years. Like Grandpa said happened with all guys in our family, Darren had gone lone wolf at sixteen, had the scars and blurry tattoos to prove it. He wore them like the badges they were. They meant he was a survivor.

      I was more interested in the other part.

      “Why sixteen?” I asked him, after Grandpa had nodded off in his chair by the hearth.

      Because I knew sixteen was two of eight, and I was almost to eight, that meant I was nearly halfway to leaving. But I didn’t want to have to leave like Darren had. Thinking about it left a hollow feeling in my stomach. All I’d ever known was Grandpa’s house.

      Darren tipped his bottle back about my question, looked over to the kitchen to see if Libby was listening, and said, “Right around sixteen, your teeth get too sharp for the teat, little man. Simple as that.”