by E. A. Copen
Nina tucked Leo’s swinging feet under her arm and cradled his head before turning and leaving in a huff. Valentino gave Shauna an unusually formal bob of his head and turned to follow his family.
I turned to Shauna. “Torches?”
“If you’re going to hang around, you need to learn more about our customs.” She gestured toward the back of the house. “This isn’t a dog fight. It’s sacred, a tradition that goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years. There are rules and roles for all of us. It’s not something that either Sal or Valentino took on lightly.”
“Do you do this every time someone wants up a rung on the werewolf ladder?” I asked coming to stand beside her.
“Vampires have ladders,” she corrected. “We have a pack. All of us have a place in it, but only one can be the alpha. Only one has the strength of mind and body to lead.” She paused as if she were waiting for me to say something. When it became clear I didn’t have anything to say, she continued. “Chanter brought Sal in long before Valentino or any of the rest of us. When Nina brought Valentino back, Valentino was forced to submit to the two wolves already in power, Chanter and Sal. But there’s always been a rivalry there. At one time, Valentino might have bested Sal for the spot if he could have kept his temper in check, but his brother kept him distracted enough he never wanted it. This is Nina’s doing.”
I studied Shauna’s face. “If Nina wants the top spot, why doesn’t she challenge Sal?”
“Because she can’t match him for strength. She could win the mind game. She’s proven that. Both she and I know that I would be the top female if I wasn’t mated to Daphne.” Shauna gave a smug smile.
“I don’t understand. If you’re stronger, why aren’t you higher in rank?”
Shauna gave a smooth but bitter laugh. “Because Daphne is... Well, I suppose the term that might make the most sense to you would be submissive, but that word fails to grasp the entirety of it. There’s also the fact that werewolf packs aren’t the most progressive groups in the world. The Silvermoon pack is more open than most, but you’d be hard pressed to find a gay or lesbian werewolf ranking high in any pack, especially with people like Nina and Valentino around. They’re not exactly open-minded. The point is, I’m mated to Daphne and that means, even if I’m stronger, I should bow to Nina for now because it’s what’s best for the pack. A day’s coming where that’s going to change. Not yet. Someday.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side. “But I’m content to be where I am today. I would gain nothing by making the challenge. Nothing but enemies.”
When she opened her eyes, the tension had lessened in her face. She just looked tired.
“Why did Valentino choose Ed as his second?” I asked her. “Does that even matter?”
Shauna nodded solemnly. “Of course. Rules and roles, like I said. Ed and me, our job is going to be to make sure those get followed. The second is responsible for that, preparation, clean up. If either one of them decides to walk away before the fight is done, it’s our sacred duty as his second to rip out his throat.”
I winced.
“So,” Shauna continued, not noticing my reaction, “choosing Ed—Ed who would never do that—was just Valentino’s way of saying he didn’t plan on backing down, I suppose. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I answered quickly.
“You should go around back.”
I looked up at her. “You’re not coming?”
She shook her head. “My job is to stand guard and to appear with him, just as Valentino and Ed will do. I expect it won’t be long now. If you want a front row seat, better go and get it.”
Shauna was right. It wouldn’t do for me to walk out with Sal, not as someone who wasn’t part of the pack. All that would do was generate even more animosity toward me. I nodded to Shauna and walked around the house the way Nina and Valentino had gone.
The back of Chanter’s house had a cement patio, a shed, and some basic lawn furniture. Someone had taken the time to stack all the furniture next to the shed and out of the way. Beyond, the small crowd of onlookers mulled around. The Kings were there in force, some of whom I hadn’t even been introduced to yet. Daphne and Nina, being the only members of the pack who weren’t involved in the upcoming event, moved among them. Daphne sat on the ground with Leo, her hand over his, showing him how to shake a wooden rattle. The rattle had been painted in bands of red, gold, and orange. The top was a piercing shade of blue and bore a yellow moon and the head of a white wolf. Nina paced close by, arms over her chest, ever watchful over Leo even among friends.
I took a step and paused as the crowd of leather-clad bikers parted. Istaqua and Bran stood off to the side of the shed, their prisoners kneeling, gagged, and bound. Bran’s sword wasn’t drawn, but he stood gripping the sheath in one hand so that it was at the ready should he need it.
When I saw them, I changed course. Istaqua turned his head as I approached, the look on his face one of boredom. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “Ah, speak of the bitch and she will appear.”
“I’m nobody’s bitch,” I spat back and leaned in, lowering my voice so that only Istaqua, Bran, and I (and presumably the prisoners) could hear. “And whatever your game is, you don’t get to win it. Sal is done being your pawn.”
Istaqua’s smile widened into a snake’s grin. “Is that so? Did he send you with the message, girl? Or did you think that up yourself.”
I didn’t answer him so he stepped out from behind his prisoners, circling me. I didn’t move. Istaqua wasn’t the first to try that trick, walking around me with judging eyes, sizing me up, thinking about how many bites it would take to chew through me. He wasn’t near as scary as he thought he was. Coyotes weren’t half the predator a wolf was.
They were, however, faster and I misjudged his intent. When he paced around behind me, he was a good five or six feet away, too far to be within arm’s reach. If he made a move, I should have had plenty of warning to counter. Had he been a werewolf, his body language would have betrayed him first.
He jumped forward on the balls of his feet and back, more like a playground bully throwing out taunts than a monster trying to eat me. I jerked back and he smiled, pleased at my reaction. The second time he moved, I stood firm, determined not to let him think I was afraid of him. It was the wrong move. Istaqua dove forward. I thought he was going for a tackle and shifted right. At the last second, he threw himself into a graceful roll that took him through the narrow space of desert between his prisoners. When he came up, he was holding the silver chain bearing Chanter’s feather and talon. My hand went instinctively to my chest even though reason should have told me there couldn’t be two of those and I wasn’t seeing things.
Istaqua lifted the necklace above his head, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed at it. Then he lowered the feather into his mouth.
“Hey!” I shouted and several of the Kings turned our way to see what was going on, though none intervened.
“Did you know,” he said after pulling the feather back out of his mouth and smacking his lips, “that both Coyote and Raven were tricksters in the old stories? Of course, Coyote was often depicted as a sort of folk villain, bearing the brunt of the story’s lesson. And Raven... Raven just had a twisted and dark sense of humor. People today do not remember Raven, not like they do Coyote.”
I pushed past the two kneeling men and reached for the necklace but Istaqua jerked it higher. He had me when it came to height, and short of climbing up his arm, there was no way I was getting it. Restrained laughter came from behind me as I stretched and stood up on my tiptoes to get it.
Istaqua’s unbearable smirk widened, and he lowered it after I gave it a few tries. When I grabbed the chain, he danced behind me in such a way that the chain tightened against my throat. I had to let it go or let him wrap my neck in it. Istaqua leaned down and sniffed my hair. “Without your werewolf pet here to protect you, you’re just another pretty face, aren’t you? Does he own you or do you own him? Which is it?
It cannot be both.” His hand came down on my shoulder.
I brought my elbow back against his nose with a loud crack. The old timer stumbled back, his head lifted toward the sky and spurting blood. He left his head up and pinched it with a hiss of pain.
“Touch me again, old timer, and I’ll break more than your nose.”
Chanter’s back yard grew silent.
The coyote shifter grinned at me showing bloody teeth. “What does a woman have in common with a horse?”
I ignored him and bent over to pick up the chain he’d dropped in favor of stopping his bleeding nose. The feather was damp and coated in dust but that was all the damage he’d done.
“Both are only useful if you can ride them.” Istaqua chuckled at his own joke. “You have the horse spirit in you. Too wild for your own good. Like a horse, you’ll only know your true potential once someone breaks you.”
I closed my fist around the necklace. “Anytime you want to try that again, feel free. I’ve got more where that first one came from.”
He took his hand away from his nose and spat again. The blood had already begun to clot. “Did I say I would break you? That’d be a waste of my time. Perhaps you have the raw talent but you waste it breaking old men’s noses. Such energy would be better suited to something more fun... like fireballs.”
His eyes flashed a deeper shade, and for the first time I realized they were mismatched in color. Istaqua’s right eye was a pale, icy blue while the left was a yellowish shade of green.
I had no idea what he was talking about. It seemed he’d slipped into that strange mode of speaking old Indians often fell into. The twinkle in his right eye, though made it seem as if he was laughing at a joke I didn’t get.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I growled and stomped away.
The rest of the Kings wisely paid me no mind as I stormed past them only to come to a sudden halt when I reached a drop off that had not been there before. The sandy desert had been dug out, the dirt gathered into a pile around it to form a mound. The walls of the pit were practically sheer ninety-degree angles until the bottom where they sloped into a circle. It was maybe thirty feet in diameter, the center of it marked with a cross of stones.
I looked out over the pit. It was clearly marked with oil burning torches. While I’d been confronting Istaqua, Nina had begun walking around the circle, lighting the torches with a long stick that held a small fire on the end.
Rules and roles, Shauna had said. This is sacred. Standing on the edge of the circle, I finally understood what she meant.
Almost all traditions of magick have the circle in common. The circle is a symbol of perfection and order, called upon by practitioners to serve as both a barrier and a buffer between magick and bystanders. Any circle could be powered, from the pit in front of me to a hula hoop, if enough of the right conditions were met. Powering a circle usually meant shedding blood. The more blood used, the more powerful the circle was, and the more you could do with it. But make a circle, charge it and leave it open, and it creates a strange vacuum of power. Most people wandering into a powered but open circle just get a jolt of uneasiness or exhilaration—depending on who had made the circle and for what purpose. They’d move on without any ill effects. Because I was blessed with a sensitivity to auras and the flow of magick in general, stepping into such a circle would make me light headed and nauseous, maybe give me a headache. It was a form of sensory overload.
The circle that I had almost stumbled into was just one such circle. Someone had spent the day digging it out, marking it, placing torches, and then poured a metric ton of raw magick into it. Who might have done that? Everyone in the pack that had magick had been busy doing something else. So far as I knew, only Shauna and Daphne had been here all day preparing.
Nina came to light the torch on my left. I wanted to ask her about the circle and who had powered it, but she hadn’t acknowledged me. Her lips moved in a fast cadence, mumbling quick and rhythmic words I couldn’t understand. I blinked as I looked at her and saw a mirage of color—her aura—bleeding down into the pit. Then, as I looked around, I saw the same bleed of colors trickling down from Daphne and Leo. Another stream flowed out through the air from the house and another came from the shed where Valentino was preparing. Of course. It wasn’t one person powering the circle; it was all of them, the whole pack.
My understanding of werewolf magick being as limited as it was, I hadn’t even thought of that. I knew the alpha of every pack could wield a sort of magickal compulsion, bending the will of those in his pack to his own. That’s why it was important to select a good leader. Chanter and Sal had both used the same compulsion magick on me before to a lesser effect, but that was only one aspect of what they could do. I’d known there was more. How much more had always been in question because I was an outsider. Here I was, intruding on a thing Shauna had called sacred. It should have felt more wrong than it did.
Nina finished lighting the torches, and as she did, the shed door opened. Ed emerged, his face more serious than I had ever seen him. He had stripped off his shirt and wore only some loose, gray sweatpants that made his pale skin look even paler. His dark, curly hair was even more unkempt than usual and he’d neglected to put on his glasses. He didn’t squint or bump into anything on his way over, though, so I found myself wondering whether the glasses were an aesthetic choice or if he actually needed them.
He came over and said something I couldn’t hear to Nina who nodded and pointed toward the house. Ed turned to follow where she’d pointed and paused when he saw me. Before, there had always been a casual, if not outright playful quality to Ed’s face. That was gone, replaced by ragged exhaustion and dark circles. Maybe he’d neglected the glasses because he’d been crying. If he had, he didn’t show tears to me, or anyone else gathered. Ed gave me a respectful nod that felt weird coming from him, and then trotted off toward where Shauna was standing guard.
The crowd of people wandered closer to the circle, sure to leave a gap where the contenders and their seconds might enter. Istaqua and his prisoners remained over by the shed. The coyote shifter stood in amused contemplation, his hands perched on his hips, and his elbows sticking out like wings. His nose wasn’t bleeding anymore. When he caught me glaring at him, he offered a wink and a smile.
It was another ten minutes or so before Ed came running back to the shed as a skinny wolf. He pawed the door open and ducked inside.
Just a moment later, Sal came around the corner of the house with Shauna at his side in wolf form. Shauna’s wolf was a beautiful mix of tawny red and black fur standing half as tall as Sal. It used to be that, whenever I saw a werewolf, I didn’t think they looked much different from a wolf except for a few small details. The more time I spent with them, though, the more details I noticed. Werewolves were bigger, their limbs bent in the wrong places. The size difference varied from werewolf to werewolf and didn’t have much correlation with how big they were in their human forms. Chanter, for example, had been smaller than Shauna. Or maybe Shauna was just working hard to make herself look big.
Sal looked much changed from when I left him. He’d found some of the confidence that he so badly needed. No one looking at him would have guessed he had been in tears as recently as an hour ago. While he was inside, he’d found the time and materials to weave his hair into two long braids. White paint traveled in a straight horizontal line under each eye, two vertical lines—one black and one red—crossing on each side. I hadn’t expected to see war paint but it felt appropriate, especially the way he wore it.
He and Shauna walked straight to the edge of the circle. Shauna moved to go in first but Sal stopped her. He jumped down into the pit and landed almost soundlessly. Shauna took two steps back and had to take a jump to clear the mound of dirt. Her landing was not quite as graceful or quiet. Sal took up a spot on the far side of the circle and waited, arms crossed while Shauna sniffed around the edge of the pit.
Ed and Valentino came next. Valentino didn’t wear any pa
int. He didn’t need it. Valentino had an impressive smattering of ink on his person. Sal had tattoos, too, but not as many as Valentino, and certainly not as colorful. Ed had told me once that getting tattoos was a waste of money for werewolves. Even with silver needles, they didn’t stick around for long periods of time and had to be touched up frequently. It looked like Valentino had gone recently. One on his chest bore a paw print and Chanter’s name. It was still very red and raw looking. Valentino vaulted over the dirt mound. When he landed, the loose dirt all around the pit jumped. Ed cleared the mound in a jump and landed beside Valentino. As soon as he landed, he lifted the weight off one leg. I winced. It was an old injury that had never healed right. An injury he’d gotten because of me.
Ed and Shauna greeted each other in the center with some friendly sniffing and then walked the perimeter of the pit one more time together. Meanwhile, Valentino stalked back and forth on the south side of the circle, staring at Sal. Sal stood and waited patiently, but his eyes tracked every twitch of Valentino’s. Once they were satisfied, Shauna and Ed parted. Ed sat down in the middle of the pit and barked once. Someone on the side of the circle—I couldn’t see who—lowered a board down into the pit that served as a ramp. Shauna trotted up it and went to sit at the point of due north. Ed scrambled up the board with some difficulty and limped over to sit due south, panting.
The magick of the circle snapped closed. The sudden motion of it made me flinch. The torch next to me sizzled as the first drops of rain fell on a silent crowd.
“I’ve brought my challenge to you in accordance with the laws and customs of the pack,” Valentino said, raising his voice so that he could be heard over the rain. “Our seconds have both indicated that the arena is as agreed.” He paused and I saw his chest swell with a deep breath. “I should offer you the chance to step aside gracefully. There doesn’t need to be blood between us.”