The Wolf Sisters Part One

Blurb
To be a wolf is a thing of spring loaded joy, of black gummed panting death. Of pack and ground. Torn tendon and blood and broken bones in feasting abandon beneath a split and howling sky. But to be a wolf with the mind of mortal man or woman? No-we can't be trusted with that kind of power without being broken by it. Not even wise women of The Clutch. Not even them.

Plot Synopsis
Jubal Tucker is a wealthy man living in Baker’s Gap, Tennessee, and the narrator assures us that, while the woman who had his child and the baby itself go on to lead long and prosperous lives, something entirely different befalls Jubal.

He occasionally pays women from the town to tend house for him, one of whom is named Dolores, a woman with Mexican ancestry.

Near Baker’s Gap is a holler called The Clutch where a group of women of varying ages and ethnicities and backgrounds make their home. No men live with them. Sometimes women pass through, others stay long-term. Dolores lived in The Clutch herself. The town of Baker’s Gap both looks down on the women of The Clutch and seeks them out for magic.

Jubal falls in love with Dolores, and she moves in with him. Dolores becomes pregnant, and Jubal decides he’ll marry her regardless of what the town or his family thinks.

His mother Mavis arrives and rages at him and threatens to hurt the pregnant Dolores, so she flees for The Clutch. They never see each other again.

Mavis plans to have a man named Junior Metcalf kill Dolores and the baby. The women of The Clutch smuggle the mother and child to Arkansas, where they live out their lives peacefully.

Junior arrives at The Clutch to find the women taunting him. He finds himself unable to run away, and when he looks up from the ground, a wolf closes its jaws around his throat.

The next morning, a woman goes to town and gives Mavis a bag containing Junior’s hand, teeth and tongue.

Jubal’s uncles come to town to find out what happened and wander around The Clutch. The men were found with their throats torn out and their hands chewed off.

Brokenhearted, Jubal returns to Baker’s Gap, where he dreams of wolves. He wakes to find his house surrounded by the women of The Clutch, where they transform and kill him slowly.

That spring, a record number of men are attacked by wild animals. Upon investigation, The Clutch is found abandoned.

Marcie Walker of the former Pleasant Evenings house of ill repute, and the current Walker House for Wayward Women In Need, is contacted to do something about the situation. Bad attention for some witches is bad attention for all, and the power of wolves is too much to allow humans to possess.

She sends a man named Melvin to fetch her sister Ellie. 1917, she reflects, is shaping up to be a hell of a year.