The five attacking wolves were launched in every direction, howling and snarling in terror. Glass burst as Andrew rocketed through a greenhouse wall. Zar shot past me. Jason and Kage were thrown into the brush. Jed’s flight was stopped short when he smashed into the enormous compost pile.
The wave spread out with the blast in a liquid, shimmering explosion of air like gel, earth like fire, and silence like a clap of thunder that left my own ears deafened—the concussion of impact without any gunpowder. The fanning blue-white glow spread in a fast wave like Saturn’s rings splashing out from a central point and spreading until they vanished. A light which only faded all the way across the fields, lost to the horizon. I have no idea how far it really traveled. Perhaps miles. The greenhouses trembled, pots and glass rattling. Dogs barked several times. Electric lights behind us flickered.
Then everything was quiet.
Isaac staggered, shook himself, and found a firmer stance. His face and more were wet with dark blood, looking black in moonlight. Mostly that horrible gash across his foreleg from Zar, where the flesh was laid open as if someone had slashed a carving knife down his arm. The blood ran onto his large paw. More seeped from his ear, his cheek and muzzle, his hind leg, even his stomach, where Andrew and Jason had bitten him.
Blood dripped off his tongue as he panted, ribs heaving. He’d probably snapped his own tongue in the fight, or his gums were cut and bleeding from the fangs of his packmates.
Around us, the wolves were scraping themselves up and fleeing. There was no groveling or wide-eyed looks of terror at my magic this time. They vanished like ghosts, running with their tails between their legs and their ears flat, their paws blurs in moonlight. In seconds they were gone without a backward glance.
Only Isaac remained, shaky on his paws, and Andrew, trapped in the greenhouse. I heard him stumbling in there, crunching on broken glass, knocking a pot over with a crash, maybe trying to get an angle to jump out.
With my own knees shaking, I walked to open the greenhouse door.
The red wolf shot past and vanished into darkness like a peregrine falcon, gone by the time I could blink.
Chapter 35
I returned to Isaac, who backed away, flattening his ears, limping and almost falling again.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, sinking to my knees. I felt dazed, cold, my head spinning.
His nose was ice to the touch and I recognized from my own symptoms his going into shock.
“Shhh…” I kissed his bloody muzzle. “Come back to the guesthouse. You have to change. If you can’t change … I’ll get Joseph. We’re going to need more vigilante medical care. Or a vet.”
I walked with him to the patio, legs shaking, numb fingers twisted into the thick white fur of his ruff where it wasn’t sticky with blood. Isaac limped and stumbled, blood flowing unchecked from that right foreleg, but got there.
He almost fell into the hallway with the door still open. My eyes were so used to the dark I didn’t bother with a main switch. I had no desire for a better sight of that wound but turned on the range hood light in the kitchen beside us. One of their bath towels lay on the counter there and I grabbed this and spread it on the hardwood below him as Isaac sank down on his stomach.
He lay on this, still panting, tongue dripping blood, eyes shut. His right foreleg now showed no sign of white fur. Like a skinned log of meat stuck to his chest.
“Isaac?” I slid down the wall to sit on the floor in front of him, dizzy and seeing black spots. I put my head between my knees and gulped several long breaths. “You need to change.”
When I looked at him again, he hadn’t moved. The towel was turning scarlet around his foreleg.
“Isaac,” I repeated, sharper. “Listen.”
He blinked and looked at me.
“You’re in shock. You need to change before you keep losing blood. Or show me that you can’t. Should I get Joseph? Can you not change with this?”
He looked down at his own arm, nosed it, then nosed my hand. I reached to stroke his head.
Isaac extended the bloody pulp of his limb beside my shoes. He licked the wound once, then turned his muzzle against my arm, prodding my hand.
“You think I can help?” My voice was breathless, as weak as I felt. “I can’t stitch a wound. I’m going to bring Joseph.”
I made to stand, but Isaac kept nudging my hand and I didn’t feel much like standing anyway. He opened his mouth again to clasp my hand in his teeth. I hardly felt them as he drew my fingers down.
I finished the motion, touching the gaping, hot wound though it made my skin crawl. When I did touch it, I realized what I was feeling. That long flap of skin and tissue where it had been slit open. If that flap was back in place, held there, perhaps it would have a chance to heal with the change as if it had stitches in it.
I nodded, trying to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.
“Okay,” I murmured. “I’ll hold on.” I had to get my face down close to the wound to see what I was doing in the dim light and with the whole thing painted crimson. With both hands, I felt along the slash in the skin and fur and folded it back in place where it should be, like folding over the side of a shirt.
I slid my legs back until I was also on my belly, so we each lay along the hall, facing each other. Then I clamped both hands over the wound, covering as much space as I could to hold in place.
“Go,” I said, and dropped my forehead on my upper arm, breaths coming short through my mouth as I hid my eyes.
It took him a minute. I had no idea what sort of mental or constitutional effort it actually demanded to change. But, after several breaths, I felt his arm flex in my hands. His skin heated and moved like warm rubber. His bones shifted and popped into place. The arm changed size and feel and texture.
Then it stopped.
Still, I lay there, holding on. Listening to Isaac continuing to pant in his new skin.
It must have been a few minutes before he stirred enough to touch my hair with his left hand. He kissed the top of my head and I finally looked up only as far as his arm that I clasped.
It was hard to tell since my own hands were soaked in blood and so was his skin, but at least the flap was obviously stable. My bit was done. But he was still hurt. I withdrew, feeling his arm. Still a deep wound there.
I wanted to say it didn’t work, that he needed attention, yet my mouth was so dry, and my throat so tight, I didn’t try to speak.
I rested my head on the wood floor, faced toward him. Isaac had the side of his head on the towel, his eyes shut. I thought his rapid breathing now was from the struggle of the change as much as pain. It didn’t seem to be easy for them.
“Isaac,” I finally started.
“I have to go back,” he panted.
“Can you? It’s hurting you.”
“Yes. But it’s also healing. I have to. I only … won’t be able to change again for a while.”
We lay still for five minutes, maybe ten, before I roused myself, feeling more clear-headed with the break.
“Isaac? You’re still bleeding and you’d already lost a lot. Change if it’s safe.”
He pushed himself up slightly on his left elbow, nodding. “It always looks like a lot more than it is when it’s spread out.”
“Even if it’s half of what it looks like you’ve still lost a lot of blood.” I also propped up, too close, heads almost at each other’s shoulders, faces downturned.
Isaac kissed my temple. “Thank you, Cassia.” A whisper. “I love you.”
Tears flooded my eyes. “I thought they were going to kill you.” My voice broke and I stopped, shivering again.
I assumed he would say no, these fights happen, or something to the effect that he wasn’t afraid of them: his usual.
Instead, Isaac answered, “So did I.”
I wanted to lift a hand to his face, but both were covered in his blood and the position was too awkward anyway. I only slid back a little so I could kiss him.
“I lo
ve you too,” I murmured. “Change. Please. You’re scaring me.”
It took him another minute but I turned my face away—even the glimpses I’d had of the change were unnerving—and he shifted back.
This transformation was remarkable in more ways than one. Isaac’s Arctic fur grew in new and fresh, no longer soaked in blood, but clothing his skin like a miracle. Even so, I wondered what it hid below and I pressed him to sit up.
While he shifted himself to sit above the blood-soaked towel, I also struggled to my feet so I could wash my hands at the kitchen sink. It took a couple minutes, having to wash to my elbows just to get most of the blood. More remained around my fingernails. My blouse and jeans were also stained, though I wasn’t sure how.
I dried my hands and returned to examine his arm through thick fur. Isaac sat stoically as I studied the limb, then his ear, gums, the hind leg. The long, raw pink wound remained visible up his foreleg, but that seemed to be it. Even his ear, which I’d been afraid was going to be missing a piece, looked okay.
I set his paw down after a second look in the low light, still unwilling to blind us with a real one, and stroked his face. He sat against the wall with his eyes shut, panting again.
How long did he mean when he’d said he couldn’t change again for a while? A few hours? A few days? What did it do for them to go back and forth like that?
“You shouldn’t stay here,” I said, watching him on my knees. “It’s not safe.”
Isaac apparently disagreed. He rallied himself to stand and make his way, not to the stairs, but to the futon down here, around on the other side of the stairway. I thought he was only avoiding steps, until I saw his rucksack was down here.
“You’re the one on the futon? I assumed everyone would have voted Jed out of sharing. Or Kage and Jason would have fought for it to get their own space.”
Isaac, moving as if with arthritis, hopped his forepaws onto the duvet and looked around at me. He wagged his tail and I sat down beside him, feeling as unsteady on my feet as he looked. He jumped the rest of the way up and sank onto the soft cover.
I drew up my knees, turning to face him, cold and aching to go to bed myself.
Isaac watched me with those green eyes in the dark. He’d finally quit panting and looked more or less normal again, if exhausted.
I gazed back into his eyes. “It’s not just about me, is it? You being separate from the rest? You’re not like them.”
He lay still, head up, watching me.
“And it’s not about you being from a different pack. So was Andrew and he’s accepted.” I stared back into his eyes. “What are you hiding?”
I thought his gaze flickered in the gloom.
“Do you keep your secrets from them too? Or does everyone else know and it’s only from me you’re hiding?”
Isaac rested his chin on the duvet, eyes still trained up to me.
“Why don’t you come into the house? Stay in my room or just sleep on the couch. You shouldn’t be out here. They’ll be back sooner or later.”
Isaac showed no more concern for this than he had a minute ago. He wagged his tail a little, his eyes closing, blinking drowsily.
“Isaac…”
He thumped his tail at this sound but his eyes were shut. He seemed to be drifting off.
I stroked his head. Another wag.
“Okay… If you’re sure you’re not in danger here.”
Tiny flop of the tail.
“I’m glad you’re all right.” I leaned across to kiss his soft fur between his thick, rounded ears. “Moon bless.”
I left, taking the blood-covered towel and the hand towel to soak overnight in the main house’s washing machine.
In my room, I lay awake for a long, long time, the glasses and parcel from Andrew on my bedside table, window open, mountains capped by silver moonlight beyond.
Out in the night, after an hour staring at the ceiling, I heard distant songs of the hunters: a mournful, low cry, starting with two, then three, gradually growing to five voices coming, it seemed, from multiple locations.
And I wondered, as I went on lying there, if they were crying in regret for what had gone before. Or bemoaning their failed hunt.
Chapter 36
My sleep remained fractured and uneasy all night. I kept thinking of needing to apologize to our host family and make amends for the greenhouse damage and slain poultry. Then about Isaac in his fur, the white soaked in red. But, again and again, what kept haunting me was the image of those five wolves, especially Zar at the end, tearing at the one white wolf, as if trying to take down an elk. As if trying to kill.
These were individuals, people, with whom I’d been traveling for over a week. Jason had slept in my bed. Andrew had put my fingers in his mouth, offered me trades, just given me a gift. Kage had kissed me, trying to get my clothes off on the train to London. Jed had curled himself around me to keep me warm when he’d taken me to meet the pack he could never be a part of. And Zar… The hayfield in the setting sun, gentle kisses, the tiny deerskin bag as if made by elves, his help and friendship.
And his teeth in Isaac’s arm, trying to break the bone. Then going for another, which he would have broken if not for the interruption.
I was the crazy one, of course. I’d known from the start what they were. Yet I’d allowed myself to get carried away in their charms and attention and my own interest and curiosity to know them. So much there, I would never grow tired of learning about them, watching them. Each was so beautiful they were hard not to watch, in skin or fur, each with his own look and feel, his own moods that I was just starting to sort out.
Maybe this was exactly the rude awakening I’d needed. Before things went too far. Very soon, I had to fly home to Portland. They would be on their own. Until then, I had a job to help them with. But no greater obligation than that.
They weren’t human beings. They were shifters. This thing between us, whatever it was, had to stop. I’d been right all along to keep distance between us.
Get this job done. Go back with them. Let them visit Dieter on their own. A couple days with Melanie and go home.
A learning experience. What travel was about, wasn’t it? Continued education.
I slept, woke, slept, blinked to the noise of a rooster while it was still dark out. Finally got up.
There was a light on in the kitchen when I reached it.
The elder female, Martha, was in there pouring tea from the kettle.
She bid me good morning in German again, offered the kettle as an invitation, gestured around the kitchen as if I should make myself at home, and shuffled to the gloomy sunroom.
I put on coffee and, by the time I was pouring it, Joseph was downstairs and stepping out front to pull on his work boots.
I hurried to the front door to see him.
“Joseph?”
“Guten Morgen. Up early. You all right?” He smiled at me.
“I just wanted to tell you, we had … um, trouble last night.”
“Yes, we heard. Everyone fine now?”
“I don’t know. I think so. But we broke your greenhouse. And a chicken or duck casualty. I’m sorry about the mess. I might be able to fix the glass with magic. If not, we’ll pay the damages. And for your bird.”
“Did you make the sonic boom?”
“Oh … I suppose so.”
He nodded thoughtfully, looking across the farmyard in dawn light, the eastern sky just pale and morning birds calling.
“Well…” A drawn out word, sounding like “vell” with his accent. He finally looked at me again, smile returned below his beard. “Do not hold it against them too much. They brought us a nice doe with an infected leg injury, probably from a car. And we can always replace some glass.”
“They killed a deer?”
“Brought her in just a little while ago. I was down helping them clean her out and get her in the fire. She will bless us for days. No hard feelings.”
I just stood there while he started down the
steps.
He looked back. “Moon watches. Sun watches. They do not watch together. I must see to the milking. Blessed morning.” He walked on.
What did that mean?
I returned to get my mug and sit out in the cold sunroom with Martha, watching for the sun to crest mountains.
She didn’t start her spinning wheel, but sat quietly in an old armchair, rolling bits of wool in her fingers, sometimes sipping from her tea that rested on an end table.
I sat in a plain wood chair, coffee mug in both hands, and felt only more confused and upset.
“How am I supposed to not hold something like that against them?” I asked. “Five members of the pack tried to kill the sixth last night.”
“Too much fire,” Martha said clearly to the eastern sky.
I looked at her—the back of her head. “Isaac said there are only two fire signs in the group.”
“Moon or Sun?” she asked.
“Sun signs, I suppose.”
“And the soul of the wolf? Moon in each heart? Sun casts his truth in a wide arc. He wraps us in a blanket of clarity. Sun is right here, right now. Moon cradles us in gentle arms, casts us in a shadow of knowing and deeper self. She guides our path when we cannot find our ways. Sun is the open road. Moon is the quiet path we follow in our sleep.”
“Are moon signs as primary to wolves as sun signs? We always emphasize sun signs as humans.”
“Your Moon brings your fire.”
“Yes, my moon sign is Aries. I haven’t had a chart done since my mother was alive, over a decade, but she always said first house and Mars were as powerful in my chart as seventh house and Venus.”
The edge of the sun crested a purple mountaintop. Yet the elder did not watch it. For the first time, she shifted in her seat to stare at me. Although she seemed old, her gray eyes were clear and she fixed me in the unblinking stare of a hunting wolf.
“Your Sun is Libra and your Moon is Aries?” She asked after an unnerving pause.
“That’s right.”
“You bring the fire. You are your own guardian. There is an intense power in both, and a special kind of magic in anyone carrying guardians as their duel houses.”
Moonlight Hunters: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 2) Page 22