Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 4

  Now I sat in the living room at Joanie’s and Leo’s house with them, all of us wrapped in sheets, as we waited for the moon to rise and for its light to sing in our blood. We could change without it, but it was easier in its light, which compelled us when it was full. I suppressed the urge to giggle at the sight, like we were at the most boring toga party ever. Joanie caught my eye, and her lips twitched like she thought the same.

  The moon rose, its light spilling through the bank of windows.

  “It’s time,” Joanie murmured.

  My inner wolf stretched and yawned, unfurling to her full spiritual presence.

  “We can change? she asked. Really change?”

  “Yes, just be gentle with me.” Again I stuffed the urge to laugh. I hadn’t said those words in a really long time.

  I gasped when my human spirit shrank. The sensation was that of hurtling down a long hallway, then landing in a warm pool and expanding within it to fill a new shape. The inner wolf and I became one. I heard tendons snapping and bones cracking in new arrangements and suspected I would be sore the next day.

  “Not sore. Strong and healthy and whole. We are one.”

  “We can’t be one. I am not a wolf.”

  But I was. I shook the sheet off and looked around with new eyes. Although my senses were heightened in human form now that I had these new abilities, in wolf form, they were almost painfully acute. The moonlight through the windows had been beautiful and cool—now it sparkled on the floor and every surface with opalescence that made me want to run and yip and bathe in its light. The forest beyond the windows beckoned with a thousand scents and rustlings and scurryings, each one of which begged to be investigated.

  A light nip to my shoulder brought me back to myself, and I shifted my weight so I stood evenly on all four paws. Leo, a black wolf, sat and looked at me, his tongue lolling in amusement. Joanie, a petite brown wolf who could probably pass for one of the Arkansas red wolves, had nipped me.

  “You were quivering like you were ready to explode with the sensations of it all,” she said telepathically.

  “It’s different from when we spirit-walk,” I responded. “I feel heavier but more powerful.”

  “Do you remember anything of the first time? When Iain and I chased after you?”

  “Only that I wanted to get away and be free. And Gabriel…”

  A low growl from Leo halted that line of conversation. Not that I blamed him. Gabriel had tried to claim Joanie first.

  “Moonlight’s wasting, girls,” he said but waited for Joanie to lead us out of the house through a—oh, the shame!—doggie door in the mud room.

  “It was the easiest solution,” Joanie told me once we were through. I heard the wry smile in her voice.

  Once we were fully in the moonlight, the dry brown grass under my paws, I didn’t care that we’d been relegated to the status of mere canis domesticus or whatever the hell regular dogs were. I chased after her, nipping at her flank, and she mock-growled at me. We tumbled and tussled before I drew back.

  “The baby! I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” she reassured me with a canine grin at Leo. “He’s done worse.”

  “And that’s all I need to know.” I trotted to the edge of the woods and smelled pigeons and squirrels and deer and all manner of things that seemed to taunt me. “When do we hunt?” It came out as a vocal whine.

  “When Matthew arrives.” Leo looked around, his ears perked. “He should have been here by now.”

  “Maybe he got delayed by something? Too much traffic on the road, perhaps, or the cubs wanting to come with him?” The image of the playful pups didn’t dispel the concern in Joanie’s mental voice, and I remembered Matthew saying they never hunted alone anymore.

  Leo paced back and forth on the lawn. “He said he’d be on time.”

  A gunshot rang out, and all of us sat up, ears swiveling back and forth.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Okay, I know what it was, but what was it?” Human logical processes weren’t exactly working well, but they knew what I meant.

  “Danger!” Joanie yelled in her mental voice, and we scrambled for the house, but another gunshot and a puff of wet dirt and grass in front of Leo, who had the lead, sent us toward the woods.

  “Son of a fucking bitch!”

  If I hadn’t been so panicked, I would have been shocked by Joanie’s language. She’d promised me she thought in expletives, but I’d heard very few from her.

  “It’s a fine line between thought and speech in this form,” she said. “We have to hide so we can change back.”

  “But we’ll be naked!”

  Leo scoffed. “I’ve got no problem with that.”

  “You wouldn’t.” Joanie didn’t sound amused. “Stop thinking like humans. Get off the path.”

  We did as she said, but we weren’t exactly quiet. There were no more gunshots, so we laid low in a hollow behind a downed tree trunk, panting.

  The breeze came from behind us and didn’t give us any good clues as to what was going on up ahead. I heard Joanie curse mentally again and Leo calming her down, but I’d sensed something that made my knees—all four of them—turn to gelatin: the smell of fuchsia on the breeze.

  “Guys… Guys! We’ve been lured into a trap.”

  “How do you know?” Joanie looked around, her ears alert.

  “I can smell him, the fuchsia wizard.”

  “Where?” Leo started to rumble, but Joanie knocked into him.

  “Behind us.” I stood and ignored Joanie’s growl to get the hell down and stop being an idiot. I bared my teeth. “It’s one thing to hunt me at my apartment; it’s another to follow me here. How dare he?”

  “Go ahead if you like, but we’re staying here,” Leo said. “I won’t let you endanger Joanie and our cub.”

  I shot a look over my shoulder at him. “Your cub? You mean your child. Remember who and what you are.”

  “You do the same,” he said.

  “I am a human, but I’ll use what I have. He’s after me. I’ll lead him away, and you two get to a safe place.”

  “The boathouse,” Joanie said. “We can get in and defend ourselves if we need to. There are guns hidden in there, and clothes.”

  “Go,” I told them. “Keep yourselves safe. I’m sorry for bringing this on you.”

  “Maybe it will help us with our other puzzles,” Joanie, ever the scientist, said. “But Lonna, be careful!”

  “I will.” I crept away, keeping low to the ground. I knew that humans would be unable to sense half of what I could as a wolf, so I suspected I’d be able to surprise whoever it was. I circled the scent, moving downwind so it would be strong enough for me to pinpoint its exact location. I couldn’t say with certainty, but I suspected it followed me and only me. Finally, it stopped, and I did as well, curious.

  The sounds of the night chorused in my ears, and I panicked, sure I’d lost it. Then I smelled a fire and heard human breathing. I snuck closer until flickering light cast strange shadows in the trees and on me.

  It stopped and made a campfire? This didn’t compute with either the wolf or the human parts of my brain.

  “It did,” an unfamiliar voice said in my brain.

  I growled, then, careful to keep any thoughts of my two companions out of my mind, but I was too late.

  “They’re safe. They’re not after them, only you.”

  “Your pronouns confuse me, sir. Who are they? Who are you?”

  “And who are you?” The mental tone held amusement. “Come here in the circle of my fire and change so you’re out of their reach.”

  “I’ll be naked.”

  “I have clothes for you.”

  I slunk closer until I could see the speaker. It was a man who sat close to a fire. The flames gleamed in the blond highlights in his reddish brown hair, and I recognized him from the doctor’s office. Now he wore slightly tinted lenses, and I could barely see his eyes behind their smoky panes.

 
“Doctor Fortuna?”

  He stood and bowed in my direction. “Maximilian Fortuna at your service. Call me Max.”

  “Son of a fucking bitch… Sorry.”

  He laughed, the lines around his sea-blue eyes crinkling. “Not to worry, milady. I’ll forgive your harsh language due to my having surprised you so rudely. Won’t you come have a bite?” He gestured to two rabbits on the ground. “I can roast them if you’d prefer.”

  “No!” my inner wolf cried as my human side said, “Yes.”

  “You seem to have some conflict,” he observed, speaking out loud but quietly. His lilting accent came into his physical voice more than his mental one. “You seem to not know who or what you are.”

  At that point, my nose was twitching from the scent of the blood on the ground. He took one of the rabbits, skinned it with expert motions, and placed it over the fire on a simple spit made of three sticks. The fat sizzled as it hit the coals. He put the other rabbit, skin still on, beside the fire and stepped back. I lunged for it, but I pulled back just before biting it, my jaws snapping at air.

  “Food, food, FOOD!” my inner wolf wailed, then piteously, “I’m hungry.”

  “Down,” I commanded her. Wary of weapons, I watched him. He fanned the smoke from the cooking rabbit toward me, and I inhaled, my mouth watering. Everything smelled more intensely when I was in wolf form. A whine escaped my throat.

  “You are still very much of two minds,” he observed. “Very interesting.” His eyes flashed yellow in the firelight, and I drew back, growling. Then I remembered something important: I was in the form of one of the most powerful predators on the planet, and he was unarmed and human, as far as I could tell. I snarled and stepped closer.

  “Why are you playing with me? Why did you follow me?”

  He held his hands in front of him. “I am unarmed. Do no harm to me, and none shall come to you.”

  “Answer my questions.” I stopped my advance but continued to growl low in my throat.

  “Stop making all that noise. Do you want us to be discovered?”

  “Says the guy who built a fire in the middle of the freaking woods.” I forced my throat to stay silent, but I kept my teeth bared. “I’m giving you one more chance to answer my questions, or I’m giving my wolf self full permission to rip your head off.”

  “There is no danger of discovery from the light in this circle, which was here long before your Crystal Pines subdivision and even before the little village known as Piney Mountain,” he said so quietly I doubt I would have been able to hear him if I’d been human. “I can harness the power of the woods without losing too much of my own, but sound is not my realm, so I am unable to manipulate it.”

  Indeed, he seemed to gather the firelight around him, and the trees around the circle were invisible even to my wolf’s sharp eyes. I remembered how the lights had popped and sparked with him—or was it him?—near. The rabbit on the spit sent sizzling drippings into the fire again, and I jumped.

  “Look, I have a robe if you would like to change. I promise I won’t peek.”

  “Why would I give up my only advantage?”

  “Trust me, Ms. Marconi, that’s not your only advantage.” He gave me a look that said he was aware of my human form and its assets.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better. Again answers or throat ripping and evisceration. I’m keeping it simple for you.”

  “I’ve been assigned to watch you because you’re in danger.” He sat cross-legged so we were eye to eye, a very vulnerable position for him since he wouldn’t be able to get up quickly and run, and I was in easy lunging distance of his assets. “You can trust me because I’m trying to protect you.”

  I snorted, but my instincts told me he spoke the truth. However, I wasn’t sure how much I could trust myself. “Why should I believe you? We were shot at!”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. It’s why I decided to show myself to you. My orders were to follow at a distance and observe.”

  If I’d been in human form, I would have asked more questions, but as a wolf, I sat back to consider his words. This close to him with the flames flickering over the planes of his face and his glasses, I couldn’t help but notice again he was a good-looking guy. I also smelled the meaty, bloody aroma of the two rabbits, one raw and the other cooking. Part of me wanted to change to human so I could enjoy it and maybe him as well, although my wolf side wouldn’t turn cooked food down.

  “Focus, Lonna,” I told myself. There were too many distractions for my wolf’s brain to handle, but I was reluctant to change into my human form.

  Another gunshot split the night’s silence, and Max jumped to his feet with startling agility. The fire extinguished itself, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the trees.

  “That was close,” he said, once again using his mental voice. “Where are your friends?”

  “There’s a boathouse. They were going to head there and change, then make their way back up to the house.”

  “Why change?”

  “Because whoever’s hunting us is looking for wolves.”

  “As far as you know.”

  Max seemed to wrap the darkness around him. I would say it was like a cloak, but it was more like he blended in as a part of the scenery, more camouflage than cover, which was impressive considering his skin—although tanned—was still paler than the background of the rest of the woods. We listened for others, but there was nothing, not even the soft footfalls over wet leaves one would expect of humans.

  I smelled blood and rushed forward, afraid of what I would find. The supine form of a large brown wolf lay across one of the trails. The scent: Matthew.

  “Matthew, wake up!”

  “He’s not likely to any time soon,” Max said, his hand on my head.

  “He’s not dead. I can hear his breathing, his heartbeat.”

  “He’s been tranquilized.” He put a hand on Matthew’s side. “There are no life-threatening injuries.”

  “We can’t just leave him here! Why would someone do this? Other predators could come and harm him while he’s asleep.”

  He straightened up and looked around. “It could be a trap, or they could have done this to him thinking he was like you.”

  “Isn’t he like me? Again, why?”

  “It’s too much to go into here, and we have to keep moving.”

  “But it’s dangerous for him. Can’t you move him?”

  The look he gave me told me no, but the corners of his mouth turned down.

  “I’ll try.” He crouched and slid his arms under Matthew’s body. With a grunt, he lifted him and tottered a few steps. He didn’t drop him, though. He laid him gently at the base of a tree off the path. I couldn’t help but be impressed by his strength.

  “He’s too big and heavy for any human to drag him all the way to the house. The best I can do is to put a spell on him so he will be invisible to those who did this to him and to anyone or anything else that comes along unless they step right into him.”

  “Thank you.” It was less of a possibility now he no longer lay on the trail.

  “It will give us time to go up to the house and get Leo to help me.”

  I looked at him, surprised. “You would help him? Help us?”

  “I told you, I’m one of the good guys. I’d rather not be out here with a crazy person with a gun, tranquilizer or not, but if it’s important to you, then yes, I’ll help.”

  “Follow me.”

  Something hissed in the air behind me, and my flank stung. The woods wobbled.

  “Go! Use your nose. I’ll follow. You don’t have much time.” Max looked around with a frown.

  “Before what?”

  “Don’t worry about it! Just go.”

  When we reached the house, I guessed Joanie and Leo must be inside because the curtains were drawn over the bank of windows in the back. I ran through the doggie door, leaving Max waiting outside, and Joanie almost dropped the spoon she was stirring the pan of hot chocolate on the st
ove with.

  Leo grinned. “I told you she’d come back.” Then he looked closer and frowned. “What’s that in your flank?”

  “Matthew’s out there. He’s in trouble.”

  Buzzing filled my ears. The room tilted, and I collapsed on to the floor, panting.

  “What’s wrong?” Joanie looked at Leo. “Lonna, can you change back?”

  I closed my eyes, wishing the floor wouldn’t spin so. Then I identified the prick in my back leg: a tranquilizer dart.

  “He’s outside,” I managed to get out before everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  It’s a bad thing when you wake up not being able to remember the end of the night before. It’s even worse when you wake up in a doggie bed, albeit a large one. Now it was my turn to think in expletives, specifically, “What the—”

  Max wouldn’t approve of my inner monologue. I opened my eyes, and each little sunbeam stabbed at my vision like a tiny dagger. The worst part? I was curled up but in my human form and completely naked. At least someone had put a sheet over me. I felt like I’d drunk a bottle of wine with a side of whiskey and a tequila chaser.

  Isn’t there a song about tequila and nudity? How did I change? Then I sat up and ignored the lurching of my stomach. Normally my wolf side would have chimed in by now.

  Wolf? Where are you?

  Nothing.

  What happened? Where did you go?

  I screamed and passed out again to the thunder of feet running toward me over the hardwood floors.

  The next time I woke, I was in my bedroom tucked between the sheets. I wore a T-shirt and a pair of boxers, and Joanie sat on the bed beside me.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said. Her eyes sported dark circles.

  “What happened to me? I dreamed I woke up in a doggie bed, and I’d changed back to human, and my wolf side was gone.”

  The look on her face told me it hadn’t been a dream.

  “Oh crap,” I said. “This is like those people who get drugged by a stranger in a bar and wake up without their kidneys, isn’t it? Except in my case, I had a wolf-ectomy.”