The Wolves of West Virginia

By Eoghann Irving

A wizard searching for a missing student discovers a small town’s worst-kept secret: werewolves!

Why is a Scottish born wizard living in small town West Virginia? Douglas Brodie likes to keep a low profile, unfortunately strange things have a way of happening around him. Douglas finds himself called on to help find a missing student in a nearby university town, but of course it’s not that simple. And how come no one mentioned the pack of werewolves that live there?

Urban Fantasy, in the mold of Harry Dresden, with an Appalachian twist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eoghann Irving
• Release date: Jan 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311496874

Eoghann Irving

Hates writing these silly little bios on every page he logs in to.

Book preview

Part 1: A Wizard In West Virginia

Shepherdstown is overrun with werewolves.

That’s Shepherdstown, West Virginia for those of you who are wondering.  Most of you probably. It’s a small university town in the eastern panhandle of the state. The bit that’s more like an annex of Northern Virginia.

And if you’re just passing through (lovely tourist spot as it happens) you certainly wouldn’t notice werewolf activity. Dig under the surface though and all sorts of things are going on.

How do I know this? Well I spent one particularly memorable night being chased by a whole pack of werewolves. If I’d bothered to do some proper research, which I finally got round to afterwards, I’d have known that this is an open secret amongst the locals. But I’m not a local, I didn’t see any mention of giant hairy man wolves in the university’s brochure and besides I’m too lazy for research. Who reads the manual anyway?

It does make perfect sense when you stop and think about it though, which I had plenty of time do while I was hiding from those very angry wolves. Shepherdstown combines both the obscurity of small town America with the regular influxes of fresh blood that are provided by a university and a tourist trade. Nobody stands out in that town. Well… not unless they grow fangs anyway.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though. After all the werewolves wouldn’t have chased me in the first place if I hadn’t stuck my nose into their business. I wouldn’t call them civilized precisely, but they do have their rules. It all started off quite innocently, but I have a bad habit of getting involved in things.

My name is Douglas Brodie and I’m a wizard. Okay lets get the standard questions out of the way first. No I don’t wear a pointy hat. I don’t have a long white beard. I do have a walking stick somewhere round here, but it is neither a magic wand or a staff.  I’ve also never had the opportunity to yell You Shall Not Pass!, but I keep hoping.

I live in Charles Town, West Virginia. How I ended up there is a long story in its own right, but let’s just say I’m not from round these parts. In fact I’m not a native of the United States at all. I was born and raised in Scotland. If you’d asked me when I was growing up, I’m sure I would have told you I had no interest in travelling anywhere. But life likes to play tricks on you, or at least on me.

Anyway, there I was, recently relocated to America and since city living is more than a little expensive, I ended up somewhere close enough to Washington DC to have access to all the city amenities I could want, but far enough away to offer me rents I could afford.

America is the land of opportunity. Or at least that’s what everyone feels obliged to tell each other on a regular basis. Somehow I don’t think they were talking about Wizards when they came up with that particular slogan though. There’s not a lot of paying work. The problem is that while lots of people believe in magic, most of what they believe is actually wrong. And they don’t like you telling them that.

Magic is very, very real. And it’s powerful too, but it’s not showy. People expect to see fireballs and explosions. That’s not how it works. For a start there are rules and there’s also physics. Magic is a lot more than just slight of hand, but you simply cannot ignore the law of conservation of energy.

Along with magic comes lots of other things, like werewolves. All those other things are why people need wizards. Even if they don’t know it. And of course, that’s where I come in. Or at least, it’s where life intervenes and I am generally standing in the wrong spot at the time. People in need of assistance have a way of