Wolf in League

by A. F. Henley

  *~*~*

  It would be no surprise to anyone, not even Matthew, that he considered himself to be a spiritual man. The act of prayer, however, was not one he participated in to any great degree. The momentary ones, yes, of course: please just let me make it through this snowstorm without putting the car in the ditch; please forgive me for looking at that teenager's ass; please let my mother's blood tests come back okay. Everyone did those; at least Matthew was pretty sure they did.

  That afternoon, though, in the O'Connell/Connor living room with cloudy sunlight sloughing lazily through the windows and Isaac sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, writing in a spiral notebook in the painstakingly-slow, overly cautious way that kids do, with Hannah slumped in a chair across from him with headphones on and a stare so direct that Matthew figured she was probably seeing directly into his soul, Matthew prayed.

  He didn't close his eyes. He didn't mumble the Lord's Prayer or Hail Mary or anything else he'd heard that people do along the way. But he did pray. He prayed for guidance and deliverance and redemption. He prayed for understanding and consideration. Because at that point in his life, Matthew had no idea what his next step should be. And he wanted to. He needed to.

  In truth, it felt like all his plans and ideas of the future had veered so sharply to the left that he'd never be able to pull them back on track. Knowing what he now knew, having experienced what he'd experienced not just with the GDBCG and their surprises but with Arius's little stunt, none of his prior hopes and dreams seemed either obtainable or necessary. So much for making a difference with the things he'd thought he'd known about mankind. He hadn't known a darn thing.

  So he prayed. He begged and he promised. He explained his fears, and when the exchange seemed to come up short on the right words, he tried to merely emanate his emotional response to things. He imagined himself breathing out plumes of bewilderment. He saw himself forcing waves of madness to stream out of his head. Out with the bad and in with the good. Breathe out the angst of things too messed up to understand, and breathe in the peace and the calm that a connection with a greater good brought with it.

  He only seemed to succeed in pushing some of the more horrific image and disorienting thoughts out, though. The usual clarity refused to come. God had never felt so far away as He did at that moment.

  He supposed that wasn't such a wonder. He'd made a deal with the devil—there was really no other way to look at the agreement he'd let the GDBCG talk him into. They'd wanted him to spy on the O'Connell wolf clan and instead of backing up and telling Volos and Dyball that he was a researcher, a doctor, darn it, and he didn't participate in anything so shady, he'd let himself get charmed by stories of magic and interest. Spying was not the same as researching, no matter how close those two things might seem to be.

  It all came down to a single word at the end of the day: consent. A researcher watched and recorded, collected personal information and studied data, but they did so with the knowledge and consent of their study participant. That was the truth that Matthew had allowed himself to forget when he'd run off to chase fairy tales. Greed for this newfound knowledge had pushed aside his oath to always put his patients needs first.

  He'd been raised with the belief that anything that resulted in a need to lie to a loved one—and his mother had always said that the omission of a known verity is as much a lie as an outright fib—was bad news. Not only had he not told his parents that he'd taken a new 'job,' he hadn't even told him that he'd moved. He hadn't told them about Gavin, with or without the added bonus of Gavin's vampirism. And why? Because telling them any of it would have meant having to tell all of it. At the very least, too much of it. It had been easier to pretend nothing was happening. It had been easier to lie.

  Greed and mistruth could be forgiven, though. Murder was not so easy to overlook. It couldn't be forgotten with a dose of tear-shedding and cross-clutching. He could call it self-defense, and in the eyes of man and law that's probably exactly what it had been. It didn't feel like that, though. It felt like murder. He'd heard Dali's screams. He'd heard Dali say that Dali hadn't wanted to be there. He didn't even doubt it to be truth. He remembered the way Arius had mocked Dali about "joining" the "group." And even that didn't really matter. Even if Matthew didn't feel guilty about the death of a vampire that likely hadn't wanted to be a vampire at all, he still felt he'd done something terrible.

  "It's going to rain," Hannah said suddenly. She sat up and tugged off her headphones. "I'm going to make sure Dad closed the windows on the truck. Anyone want a soda or something from the kitchen?"

  That's where the rest of them were: Vaughn and Randy, Lyle and Rafe, Gavin and the rest of Vaughn's pack, shifter and non-shifter variety. They were comparing notes, making plans, even doing a bit of arguing if the occasional bursts of raised voices could be assumed to be that.

  "I'll have one," Isaac said without lifting his head from his task. The pencil never stopped. Journal, story, whatever the pencil was leaving behind, it was as determined as its owner to get it out.

  "What are you writing?" Matthew asked. Not that he was interested, because he wasn't. It just seemed like asking might distract him from his head for a while. He didn't like the dark corners that were cropping up there.

  Instead of looking at him, Isaac turned to look at Hannah. She nodded, smiled, and the look in her eyes was the expression of a woman four times her age. Eight was the new thirty, apparently. "I'll be right back," she told her brother. "You should tell him. It's a good one."

  Matthew cast a glance at each of them. "Oh?"

  "It's a story," Isaac said. He looked at his pencil, sighed as if to make it apparent that he was not ready to let it go at all, and set it down. "About a mouse that was raised with lions."

  Matthew forced a smile on his face. Isaac was, after all, just a kid. And praise for creative endeavors did wonderful things for young ambition. "That must be a pretty stressful life for a mouse."

  Isaac shook his head. "Nope. It made him the toughest, bravest mouse of all."

  "Did it now?"

  "Of course," Isaac said matter-of-factly. His expression was dead serious. "A mouse raised with lions doesn't know it's just a mouse."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "'Course not. The lions might know the mouse is different, but the mouse doesn't. And unless one of the lions have got a mirror and show the mouse its round ears or it's pointy nose, there's no way for the mouse to know."

  "Except it can't hunt. Or keep up with the lions when they run."

  Isaac tilted his head and scrunched his face in an expression of distaste. "Sure it can. It has to. That's the whole point of the story. The mouse becomes a lion just because the mouse already believes it is one."

  "Okay," Matthew sat forward. "First of all, understand that I get what you're trying to say with your story. And I think it's a valuable lesson and I give you kudos for even thinking up something that intricate. It's a fantastic idea for a story. But let me play the part of your critic for a second. Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why does the mouse want to live with the lions in the first place? Why wouldn't it scurry off and go find its own kind? But the real why—the big why—is why are the lions letting this little drain on their resources stay? What benefit could that possibly have?"

  Isaac rolled his eyes. "The lions are its kind. The lions are family. There is nothing else to go find. "

  "But—"

  "But he just can't see why the big strong lions would put up with the teeny tiny mouse," Hannah said from the doorway. She held two cans, one in each hand. "He just can't see where the..." She looked at Isaac. "What did he call that?"

  "Benefit," Isaac said. "Where the benefit would be for the lions."

  "That's it." She handed Isaac one of the sodas. "I won't spoiler. You go."

  Isaac popped the tab on his can. He sipped soda through his front teeth. "Okay," he said, swallowing. "There are like... a hundred things a mouse can do that a lion can't. Maybe
a thousand. You know what I mean, doc? They can see like a hawk, they can smell like a dog, they even have expressions that they use to talk to each other. They can eat just about anything, have a billion babies, and they're smart. They can think almost like humans. I know, I Googled them. Being a mouse is pretty good business the way I got it figured. In the animal world, anyway.

  "So, think... if a mouse can learn to be a lion, then a lion can learn to be a mouse. And little paws can do things big paws can't do. Little bodies can get into places big bodies can't. The lions and the mouse become each other and they get better because of it. They… uh... they… um..."

  He looked at Hannah, searching for the right phrase. As he had known the word she'd been grasping for earlier, she seemed to know what he was looking for this time around. "Evolve?"

  "Yes!" He slapped his palm on the coffee table. "They evolve! The whole family gets stronger together because of each other's special things. Plus, think about this: can you imagine being big and strong and yet too big and too strong to manage the littlest of things? Can you imagine what it'd be like to have a little thing around to help with stuff like that? Have you ever read the story about the lion with a thorn stuck in its paw?"

  Matthew nodded. "I have. Sounds like you're taking it to a new level, aren't you?"

  Isaac shrugged. "Not me. The mouse is taking it to a new level. The lions are taking it to a new level. And they're doing it 'cause each of them wants to do it." He sat back, took a slurp from the can and set it back down with a clank. "I'm just writing it down for them."

  "Ah," Matthew said with a smile. "One of those 'I'm-just-writing-the-story' kind of writers, hm?"

  They both answered him at the same time, Hannah and Isaac. "Something like that."

  Isaac stood, sliding from seated to upright without even using his hands. "Gotta pee."

  "Interesting story," Matthew said when Isaac had left the room. He glanced from the notebook to Hannah. "Your brother's got a great imagination."

  Hannah shrugged, almost the spitting image of her brother mere seconds ago. "It's a great story. If you get it, it's an ever better one."

  Matthew chuckled. "I get it." He stood up from the couch and tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It felt weirdly good to have clothes on again. "And now I think I'll go get—"

  "Do you?" She asked seriously. "Like... really? You get that there's nothing wrong with being a mouse? Or being a mouse in a lion's world? That it's being the family that's important, not being born into the family."

  Matthew tilted his head, studying Hannah carefully. Suddenly he didn't think Isaac's story really was just a story at all. "I get it."

  Hannah nodded. She picked up her headphones. "Cool."

  Matthew walked out of the living room and made his way toward the kitchen—toward the sound of voices. And he couldn't shake the idea that he was about to help some very big lions get some very uncomfortable thorns out of their paws.

  *~*~*

  The light in the kitchen was on, and due to that, Gavin sat at the table with sunglasses on, head ducked. The natural light, what was left of it anyway, had been blocked out in a way that might have made Matthew laugh had it been any other day—with an opened pizza box shoved into the window frame.

  Lyle leaned against the counter, his arms around Rafe who stood with him, Rafe's back to Lyle's front. Rafe looked completely, unmistakably lost, bereft of ideas. The mental light was on, but the psychic was not at home.

  Vaughn also stood—stopped now in the middle of the room as if he'd stopped mid-pacing, but turned toward the door with a frown. Matthew could imagine it. Vaughn seemed liked a pacer. Even now, standing there trying to be still, Vaughn's fingers twitched with unspent energy, his forehead pinched with unspoken thoughts.

  Randy, Gavin, and four of Vaughn's pack members sat around the table. One picked at the cuff of his shirt; another drummed his dirty well-bitten nails in front of him. The oldest of the four had his elbows propped on the table, his hands fisted at his throat, and his chin propped on those fists, while the youngest of the pack rested with his back against the hard kitchen chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his fingers gripping his biceps. They looked like models for a New Age version of The Last Supper. Except, at that moment, they were all staring at him instead of their pious Lord.

  There was so much tension in the room that Matthew figured he might suffocate on it; it had choked out the oxygen in the air.

  Gavin glanced up as the kitchen silenced. "Matthew!" He began to rise. "I thought you were going to lie down?"

  Matthew lifted a hand to stop him. From rising, from speaking, from who-even-knew-what. Just stop.

  Gavin stopped. As Gavin sunk back into the chair, Matthew stepped to the table. He locked gazes with Vaughn as he spoke. "We have to go to the GBCDG."

  At once, voices began to tumble out at him: mocking, discrediting, refusing, barking strange laughter. Once again he held up a hand, trying to direct the gesture to everyone at once. "Hold up. Just give me a few minutes."

  He began to walk, giving up Vaughn's gaze to meet each of the men's in turn. "I am not a member of your pack, and I am new to this entire scenario. However..." he dropped four of his fingers to hold up one, "I ended up involved and here am I and all I've heard from this kitchen for the last hour is bickering. Those two kids in there are acting more mature than the lot of you are. Someone needs to take control of this venture once and for all."

  He looked pointedly at Vaughn, then Lyle. "Because this has to stop."

  He expected questions. What has to stop? What are you talking about? Who do you think you are? He didn't get any.

  "You can't just sit around waiting for this to happen again. You can make all the plans you want to fortify your defenses, strengthen yourselves, and keep a better watch, but at the end of the day, all you're really doing is sitting around waiting for the next time Arius shows up. If you're lucky, one of these times you just might kill him. If you're not, he's going to end up getting one of you. Worse—one of the kids. He's going to keep coming until he gets what he wants, and to be honest, I don't think any of us really even knows what that is. Lyle? Rafe? All of you?"

  There was no reply.

  "And that's my point... we don't know what he wants. Maybe he wants the same damn thing that we do. Maybe he knows exactly what's going on the GDBCG and his attempts to get his hands on Lyle or Rafe or Vaughn are all about using them to affect an advantage over the men that are trying to annihilate his race. What I do know is that there are going to be more answers at the GDBCG than there are here. We need to find those answers, gather some evidence, and when we know the truth about them, we can decide what we're going to about it. And what we're going to do with Arius."

  "They'll never give us the truth," Vaughn said. "Assuming they would makes no sense at all. If what Gavin says is true, and I have to assume it is, they've lied to us for years. They've been systematically trying to destroy all of us for decades."

  Gavin sat forward. "But they don't know we know any of that. They're going to want updates. If we go in there under the pretense that—"

  "No pretenses," Matthew snapped. "No lies. No more! Don't you see what's happening here? Lying and manipulating, cowering from consequences and sneaking around is their thing. It's Arius's thing. If we hate them for what they're doing, then for heaven's sake let's make sure we cut all ties to it ourselves. Becoming them is the biggest mistake of all."

  Lyle nudged Rafe away from him. He rested both hands on his hips and eyed Matthew as directly as Matthew eyed him. "So what exactly are you suggesting? We storm on in there and demand answers?"

  Matthew nodded. Then he shook his head. "Why storm in when we can just walk? Why demand when we can just ask? We still don't know that they're not on our side. We don't really know a thing."

  "They killed my wife!" Vaughn hollered.

  "We believe that might be the case," Matthew replied. He kept his voice quiet and his expression calm. "But until w
e have evidence of that, we can't confirm it as truth."

  Gavin breathed a short huff of annoyance and opened his mouth to speak. Matthew continued before Gavin got the chance, though. "We killed two men today. Yes, we were under threat. Yes, it makes sense to believe that Arius and his men had every intention of killing, stealing, or otherwise harming the wolves that he thought would come looking for us. But I have to repeat this, and I have to make sure you understand what it is I'm saying here... we killed two men. Not Arius. Not the GDBCG. Two men who may or may not have had any say in the fact that they were there doing what they were doing. So how are we any different from the GDBCG? For that matter, how are we any different from Arius himself?"

  Matthew lowered his voice. "I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong in this. I can't, because I don't know." He turned his attention to Gavin. "You were the one that told me blind superstitions would get me killed. That real knowledge is the only way to fight things. You told me that faith couldn't always be trusted. All I'm saying is that we have to find out the truth of things, and we have to do it while remaining true to ourselves and our beliefs."

  No one said a word while Matthew glanced at each man in turn. "Don't you guys see that you're playing right into their ideas of who you are and what you do? Do you really want to be the villains here? Or do you want to make this right? Isn't the idea to stop the killing?"

  Lyle answered him first. "So we go and we ask. We see what they have to say."

  Matthew nodded.

  Lyle looked at his father. "It can't hurt. Not if we go together. They can't touch us if all we're all together. How could they?"

  Vaughn took a breath. He studied his son for a moment and then nodded. "As long as we go together as a team, keep our eyes open and our heads on tight, I don't think they can." He nodded at Rafe. "Maybe tomorrow night, hm? After a good sleep and a chance to catch up on some dreams?"