The Shifter's Choice

by Jenna Kernan

  A new scent came to him and he turned toward the woman. Now Johnny smelled fear. He glanced at Touma noting the strain on her face as she watched the captain depart. Was she dismayed at being alone with the big bad wolf?

  She should be.

  Mac disappeared down the trail and Touma blew out a breath. The smell of fear ebbed. Then Johnny realized something odd. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of Mac. But that made no sense at all.

  Had she thought that Mac’s glare had something to do with her? He wanted to ask her and then was instantly annoyed at himself. He didn’t need to ask anything. What he needed was to get rid of her before this got any worse.

  The woman cleared her throat. Johnny emitted a low growl. Her eyes flicked to the hated easel and then back to him.

  He wondered if she was stupid enough to pick up that red marker. She turned to the board and dropped the cell phone into the tray. She wasn’t calling for rescue. Strange. But he found himself impressed with her bravery.

  She met him with a direct look. “You want to show me around?”

  Johnny stared at her for a long moment. She stared back with dark soulful eyes that seemed a little sad to him. He wanted to ask her what she’d done to get this shit job, but he didn’t know sign language. If he learned he could speak to her. But that would be giving up. Sometimes he thought that all he had left was the daily fight to hold on to his hope. Learning sign would kill it.

  “Listen,” she tried again and this time, when she spoke she accompanied each word with a sign. “I’m stuck here for an hour and I’d like it very much if you didn’t eat me while I wait.”

  Johnny exhaled in a short blast that was his laugh.

  “So, do you want to show me your home or do you want me to go sit over there for the hour?” She finished signing and pointed at a bench facing the treetops and beyond that, the blue waters of the Pacific. Johnny spent a lot of time looking at those waters...imagining.

  “Sit or tour?” she asked, making the signs for both.

  He continued to stare, refusing to imitate her signs.

  She smiled. “Great. My choice, then.”

  She walked to the bench and folded stiffly into the far corner. He remained where he was. She sat gazing out at the vista, a slight smile on her face. When fifteen minutes passed it became obvious that she was quite happy to sit there and wait him out. He worried about her. Why had she stayed?

  It was one thing for him to give her the heave-ho but another for her to ignore him. He wasn’t used to being ignored and didn’t like it.

  Johnny grabbed the dry-erase board and broke it into a manageable size, then retrieved the black marker and then returned to her.

  He wrote one word. Quit.

  She glanced at the board and crossed her arms, glancing back at the water. “Fat chance, furball.”

  He blinked at her. Had she just called him furball? He could snap her in two like a twig. He could throw her fifty yards like a football. He could...

  He pointed at the word. She uncrossed her arms, lifted the broken piece of board from his hand and then threw it like a Frisbee over the edge of the embankment. Was she demented?

  She started signing as she spoke. “Listen, I can’t leave. You got it? I’m stuck here for—” she glanced at her watch “—thirty-one more minutes. So run along if you want to but quit bothering me.”

  Johnny growled and leaned in so that his nose nearly touched hers. She turned her back on him. Johnny stomped around in front of her and gave her the finger before jumping over the embankment.

  Her voice followed him, a shout and a challenge filled with fury and dripping with a mocking sarcasm that twisted him into an angry knot. “Oh, so you already know how to sign!”

  * * *

  Johnny tore through the undergrowth using his claws as his own personal machete against anything unlucky enough to get in his way. He could slice through metal as easily as he used to tear through paper so the foliage stood no chance.

  What the hell was that? Furball? Run along? The woman must be suicidal or crazy. Maybe both. Where did Mac find these people?

  Johnny slowed as he thought there might not be a waiting list of people willing to tutor a surly werewolf. He swung at a tall fern and greenery fell about him in tiny bits.

  Beside him the dense, wet jungle clung to a cliff so steep that even he had trouble holding on. On more than one occasion he’d imagined just letting go.

  “Johnny!”

  He recognized the voice. It was Mac heading up the hill to collect his tutor. He sounded pissed.

  Johnny took another step in the direction he had been going.

  “I can hear you, damn it! Turn around or, so help me, I will take a chunk out of that tough hide.”

  Johnny knew Mac could do it, because his captain was also a werewolf. Bitten the same night as Johnny and in the same fight. Neither of them had known what they were up against, but their commander had.

  Johnny turned back toward his captain. He turned for the same reason his friend hadn’t given up on him—duty. Duty to each other, duty to the Corps, duty to himself, duty to his departed father, his struggling mother and the little sister he swore would go to college. He was so damned tired of doing his duty—but still he held on.

  Nobody but Mac could keep up with him when he climbed this volcanic rock. Was it Johnny’s fault that his new set of playmates couldn’t keep up? Not that it was their fault. They were good guys. But they were still human and slow as shit.

  Johnny crawled from the undergrowth a moment later. Mac met him, wearing a frown. You’d think being a newlywed living on a lovely tropical island would make his former squad leader happy. Johnny knew, if not for him, Mac would be.

  Mac exhaled heavily as he rummaged in his pack withdrawing a black slate. Johnny snarled and Mac met his eyes and then scowled. Johnny didn’t like writing because he couldn’t really control the pen. It made him feel stupid, so he revealed his three-inch canines to no visible effect. Mac was one of the very few who could meet his gaze without turning away. That was saying something because Johnny knew what he looked like. In his werewolf form, he was nine feet of hideousness that could easily step into any number of horror flicks or out of every child’s nightmare.

  So Johnny avoided looking at himself. His long snout and black wolfish nose disturbed him nearly as much as the deadly claws and the thick canine pads on his feet. His eyes were no longer soft brown. Now they were as yellow as the rising moon. He still had black hair, but it covered his entire body, right up to his pointed ears and the knuckles of his distended fingers. Once upon a time in that old life, he’d kept his nails trimmed short. But he’d given up on that along with other things. So many other things.

  Mac had gray fur when in werewolf form and his eyes were blue. Johnny wished Mac would run with him instead of sending his substitutions. His captain withdrew a broken nub of chalk from the depths of his pack. The bag and its contents had been his new wife’s idea. Brianna knew that her husband transformed naked from wolf to man and that he and Johnny had an ongoing communication problem. So she’d modified a bag so it would fit around his wolfish neck. Then when he reached his destination he could transform and get dressed which explained why his clothes were often wrinkled.

  Bri said she would make Johnny the same pack one day. But so far he didn’t need it. They’d been here six months. A year and four months since the attack and still Johnny had to use shampoo on his entire body and had no need for clothing since his fur was so thick it covered his junk. Johnny picked the twigs and bits of moss from his furry shoulder and smoothed his glossy coat.

  Mac held out the slate to Johnny. He took it and briefly considered throwing the thing as far as he could.

  “You ditched her?” asked Mac.

  That answer seemed obvious.

  “Why not give her a chance?”

  Johnny growled.

  “Why do you keep ditching them?” asked Mac. “The guys, too. How can I help you if you ke
ep running off?”

  He meant the wounded warriors. Johnny’s own private trial-by-fire team. One member was even a double amputee, as if having the name Dugan Kiang wasn’t handicap enough. Dugan could really run on those kangaroo legs, as he called them, but none of them had experiences that quite matched Johnny’s. They could all visit their mothers, for example, and go on leave and walk into a bar without people screaming. And they could talk to each other and they’d all had women since returning Stateside. All but him.

  He shrugged.

  “Are they bad company?”

  Not bad. They were good guys and good marines. Better than Johnny. At least they still followed orders. While Johnny had been second-guessing orders since they’d entered that building in Afghanistan.

  His new comrades talked about what most men talked about. Sports, getting laid, work, drinking, getting laid. But alcohol no longer affected Johnny and as for women, the only ones who had seen him since the accident were the medical professionals with top-secret clearances. None of them touched him unless absolutely necessary and he could smell their fear as clearly as he could scent the wild pig that had tracked past here last night.

  There was one woman who didn’t avoid him but she was taken. Mac’s wife, Brianna, had some very special circumstances of her own and that gave her an understanding of Johnny. At least her friendship did not stem from duty or pity or guilt—like Mac’s.

  “Johnny?” Mac extended the chalk.

  He didn’t like having friends assigned to him like the most unpopular kid in class and he didn’t want a teacher that ignored him. He accepted the chalk, holding it in his large hands with difficulty. It twisted in his fingers, breaking the unsteady white line he scrawled but he managed to write “They’re young” on the slate.

  “Twenties. Same age as you,” replied Mac before Johnny had finished writing. “Touma is only twenty. On her second assignment.”

  Johnny released the chalk and dusted off his fingers on his hairy thigh. The fine motor control required for moving the chalk was a real pain in his ass. His handwriting had once been a source of pride. Now his words looked as if they had been penned by a preschooler. Johnny scowled at the slate.

  “They’re all learning sign language. They want you to start talking to them. But you have to learn first.”

  He shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. By not learning he could only listen to the guys’ conversation. By not learning he was keeping himself apart. But he still couldn’t do it even though he knew that his refusal hurt and confused his captain.

  “Aren’t you sick of answering questions with a yes or no?”

  Johnny answered no.

  “Now you’re just being a pain in my ass.”

  He was. And if not for Johnny, Mac could spend more time with his wife and less with his guilt. But Mac couldn’t walk away—not ever, because Mac had been the second werewolf that had attacked Johnny.

  The scientists said it was Mac’s bite, that second attack, that now made it impossible for Johnny to change back into human form.

  Johnny wiped his words from the slate and tried three times to pick up the chalk before succeeding. Then he wrote “Combat duty?”

  Mac shook his head. “They said no. Christ, Johnny, you don’t follow orders. You come and go as you please. And you want them to trust you in a combat zone? Not gonna happen. Stay inside the perimeter, follow orders, stop acting crazy and maybe you’ll get an assignment.”

  Johnny threw the slate.

  Mac watched it disappear into the foliage. “Damn it,” he muttered. Mac’s gaze flicked back to Johnny, hands on hips. His captain looked like his mother when he did that. “Give her a chance. Learn to sign and maybe then you can have a field assignment.”

  Johnny raised his lips, showing his teeth. Mac blew out a breath.

  “I have to go get Touma. She better not be crying. I hate crying women.” He stepped past Johnny and then paused turning back. “Bri wants you at dinner tonight.”

  Johnny shook his head. He hadn’t been to Mac’s place since reassignment from the mainland, even though his quarters were only a half mile away. A new couple needed privacy. While he missed his friend, Johnny was happy for him; though, adjusting to life without his captain as a bunk mate had been hard. Nobody understood him like Mac.

  “Yeah. She said you’d say no and said to tell you that if you don’t come she’s coming to your place and cooking supper there.” Mac waited.

  Johnny glanced toward the rain forest feeling the urge to run again. That pig was upwind.

  “She thinks you’re mad at her for taking me away. I told her that’s bullshit.”

  Johnny met his gaze and held Mac’s stare. The pain and regret was back in his friend’s eyes.

  “Is it bullshit?”

  Johnny picked up a stick and scratched his answer in the dirt. “What time?”

  Chapter 3

  The following day, Sonia’s escort to Sergeant Lam’s quarters was Corporal Del Tabron who was missing his left arm from the elbow. He said he was part of the squad that worked out with John, though she’d come to think of him as Johnny since everyone referred to him that way, every morning and sometimes hung with him at night. Each of the five members was missing something. Sonia asked what Johnny was missing and was met with a blank stare.

  “He’s a werewolf,” said Tabron, his brow knitting as if just now considering that she might not know this.

  Yes, she’d been made aware of that she assured him, but it seemed that these men were all dealing with loss, while Johnny was dealing with change. The two seemed very different to Sonia and assigning these men to Johnny seemed comparable to giving a gorilla a kitten. The gorilla might love the kitten but the kitten didn’t really get the gorilla.

  Del didn’t know why Johnny didn’t want to learn sign but they all agreed that nobody except the captain could ever get Johnny to do anything he didn’t want to do. But lately, he admitted, the captain had struck out a few times, too.

  Sonia said nothing to this as she was already familiar with the captain’s charming powers of persuasion.

  Del gripped the wheel with a claw that looked like a bent pair of kitchen tongs. Despite her apprehension, he was a competent driver and he delivered her all too soon.

  Sonia stared across the open ground to his quarters. She really looked at the building closely for the first time. Nothing about it said military. She wondered if the home was here before the base because the lovely bungalow was set on stilts and surrounded by banana palms and ringed with greenery covered with tiny orange blossoms.

  How much rain did they get up here that they needed to put all the buildings on stilts? The angle of the hillside put the second floor at ground level in the back, but from her seat she could not see the rear. The house was all stained wood with a wide porch facing the ocean. There were several chairs on the porch. The roof was tin and painted red. A stream snaked along beside Johnny’s yard and then dropped down the hillside and out of sight. The same stream that threads past the captain’s? she wondered. She must have jumped it yesterday, though she didn’t even remember. Or had she used one of the large gray rocks set as stepping stones across the gap?

  She lifted her attention to the small house. It looked like an adorable honeymoon cottage instead of quarters for a surly werewolf. She recalled his chasing her yesterday. He was all huff and puff, she decided. She had to believe that or she wasn’t getting out of this Jeep.

  Del called for Johnny who did not appear. “Sometimes he does that.”

  “What?”

  “Ignores us. Takes off.”

  Good, she thought. Stay away.

  “He might not be home,” said Del. “But my orders are to leave you here either way.” He gave her an expectant look and she wondered what he would do if she refused to get out of the Jeep. They stared at one another.

  “Fine,” she said and threw open the door, sliding to her feet. She slammed the door and stared at Del through the open wind
ow. He handed over the bag that included another set of smaller dry-erase boards and markers, paper, pens and a book of sign language. Del scratched his chin with his hook and put the Jeep in Reverse, but kept his foot on the brake and his eyes on her.

  “He might come back.”

  Sonia didn’t care if he stayed away for hours. She’d sit on that porch and stare at the Pacific, breathe the warm, tropical air and pretend she was here on vacation with a husband who adored her.

  “Oh, and the captain said that he is picking you up and that he wants to see some progress.”

  “Progress?”

  He shrugged.

  “From the invisible man?”

  “He’s probably around.”

  Sonia stepped back as Del turned the Jeep around and vanished down the road.

  Her heart rate increased at his leaving, but not from fear of the werewolf. The captain wanted progress. Johnny was screwing with her freedom. That made Lam’s disappearance a problem.

  Sonia’s search of the grounds yielded nothing. His quarters were locked. She had one lesson to teach an oppositional werewolf some signs and she hadn’t even seen Lam.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called him furball,” she muttered.

  Sonia was shaking now with a dangerous cocktail of adrenalin and fury. This monster marine was not going to be the cause of her going to a military prison. She’d rather die right here on this mountain than end up in a cage.

  “So you want to play hide and seek? I’m good with that.” Sonia dropped her bag of supplies on Lam’s porch, squared her shoulders and crossed the stepping stones over the rushing water, aiming for the place she had last seen him yesterday. She knew she couldn’t follow his trail. She could barely read a bus map and had completely blown orienteering in basic. Three steps into the deep cover of the tropical canopy and the temperature dropped, the air turned damp and the smell of rot mingled with the fragrance of jasmine. She paused to look about. The birdsong was everywhere, but she could not see a single bird.

  “Johnny?” she whispered. He didn’t answer of course. Though her surroundings were inviting they were also unfamiliar, so she turned around and walked back to the clearing. But after six steps she didn’t find it. A little jolt of panic popped inside her, but she held it down. She’d only taken a few steps. Think, Sonia.