by RJ Blain
Emily nodded in a confident fashion, as though my role explained everything to her in a way she understood. Her brother stared at me, gave a short nod, and resumed pulling me along.
Instead of werewolves, I suspected them to be angels in disguise, because no human children could be so tolerant of change. Could they?
Once again, I found myself wishing I could take my phone out of my pocket and call Samantha. We’d been a pair so long, now that she was gone, I didn’t know who to turn to. She had been my witch. I had been her wolf.
Had she somehow known her fate? Except instead of both of us being ambushed and killed, only Samantha had been targeted by the posse.
I’d been left behind.
The funeral was held in front of the Washington Monument, not far from where his body had been found. The casket was closed, a beautiful thing of dark wood and gleaming silver. It rested on an elevated platform, visible to everyone in the gathered throng.
Hundreds, if not thousands, milled together around the monument. Black dominated, though a few wore navy and other dark tones.
“This isn’t wise,” James hissed in my ear.
I nodded. “I know.”
I had been the one accused of murdering him, although my Allison Ferdinan identity was as good as dead in the Inquisition’s eyes. But whether as a result of Samantha’s death or the stress of the past few days, I had a few new wrinkles. I didn’t look like a kid fresh out of college anymore.
Tilting my head back, I stared up at the sapphire sky, vibrant in the way only the chill of autumn and winter could make it.
“Take these,” James ordered, thrusting my bottle of allergy medication at me.
It was the third time that morning he had suggested I take them. I shrugged, took a pair of the pills, and swallowed them back. At the rate I was going, I’d have enough of the antihistamines in me to down a horse before noon. Then again, I probably needed them, since the drugs kept the symptoms from manifesting.
An entire unit of K-9 stood on guard near the fringes of the crowds, watching with alert wariness.
“Let’s get a bit closer,” I said, jerking my head towards the casket. After a moment of hesitation, James nodded in agreement.
We weren’t able to get too close before the eulogy began. It was short and sweet, but I was too dazed by exhaustion and the medication to focus on what was being said. I breathed deep.
The scents of dogs filled my nose, as well as the wilder, more natural scent of wolves. I felt my eyes widen.
The Inquisition liked making examples of their victims. But I hadn’t thought that the murder of Alan Oleran had been both warning, announcement, and intended execution bundled into one slaying. I shuddered.
Had the Inquisition decided to open hunting season on werewolves? I couldn’t deny my nose. The crowd reeked of my kind, and the scents weren’t from just James and the kids.
“Let’s get out of here before something happens,” I said, tugging on the Emily and Alex’s wrists to turn them. They fell into step with me.
If looks could kill, James had me dead to rights. “Why? Do you think something’ll happen?”
“Just a feeling,” I mumbled.
The Brit seized my shoulder, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “Your allergies are warning you, aren’t they? Alan Oleran was a werewolf, wasn’t he? Do you think there are other werewolves here?”
“How would I know?” I asked mildly, nodding my head towards the lines of policemen and security circling the crowds. “They think something is going to happen, though.”
“What?” James twisted around to glance at the edges of the crowd, a startled expression on his face. “Oh. You saw the police.”
“Yes, I did,” I replied, beginning the tedious process of fighting my way out of the crowd.
Why did James care if there were other werewolves present? It wasn’t like he didn’t have a nose of his own. He could’ve confirmed the scents himself. Why was he asking me?
Unless, of course, he hadn’t been taught to use his nose. I frowned, staring at him. James shrugged his shoulders in what I thought was some form of an apology for his assumptions.
A pop accompanied a whizzing noise. Every one of my hairs stood back on end. Before I could identify the source of the sound, I jerked Emily towards her brother and shoved them both behind me.
A detached part of me eliminated the possibility of a silencer causing the sound. While a silenced bullet did make a popping noise, the tone was different.
A bang followed a few seconds later, and recognition slammed into me as the concussive force drove me to my knees. Both kids screamed, but their cries were drowned out in the panic. Another pop sounded moments before the acrid, burning bite of pepper spray blew over my face. Before I could draw a breath, someone slammed into me from behind and everything went dark.
Chapter Seventeen
I didn’t really wake up. I fought my way out of the black void of unconsciousness with fang and claw. Pain radiated from my heart and lungs, engulfing my entire chest. The simple act of drawing breath hurt, as though I was swallowing rusty nails. On an instinctual level, I held my breath to avoid the agony, but a sharp, solid pressure on my chest forced the air out of my lungs.
Without wanting to, I sucked in a gasp of air. The bruises from Donnie’s bullets throbbed in time with the erratic beat of my heart. The pressure returned to the spot.
I meant to lash out, but something held my wrists in place. Straps bit at my skin. Opening my eyes wasn’t happening either. I tried to remember where I was, but everything was black. My thoughts slid back to focusing on the pain.
Panic tightened my throat, and my breath wheezed in and out of me.
I couldn’t remember where I should have been. The faint memory of a pop and a bang taunted me. Before it could elude me, I focused all of my attention on the recalled sound. A pop and a bang?
It wasn’t a gun. The vague recollection of having deduced that once already came back to me. What was the sound, then? There was something familiar about it, something frightening and sickening about the concussive boom heralded by the innocent-sounding noise. Through the waves of pain, I managed to gather my wits enough to realize the whizzing had been some sort of projectile.
I went cold from terror.
It hadn’t been gunfire.
It had been a grenade.
Another unwanted memory that matched for the pop and whiz hammered through me. For the brief moment between the surges of pain, I was in Saigon again, throwing Samantha to the ground and covering her, unable to do more than look over my shoulder as the grenade dropped outside of my reach.
Then the pressure to my chest resumed, and the memory evaporated. I couldn’t remember anything else. Had I gotten caught in the blast? Maybe I’d been trampled. That matched the bone-deep, sharp pains rippling through me. Something was missing. I managed to get a single breath through my nose. Pepper?
Tear gas. One of the pops had been a canister of tear gas thrown into the crowd. Why weren’t my eyes burning?
The truth struck me with even more force than the explosives. Someone—possibly several people—had shot a grenade launcher into the crowd at Oleran’s funeral. Something cool pressed against my face, trickling into my nose. The sound of a siren filtered in through the buzz in my ears. An ambulance? It made sense. Part of me registered and identified the presence of the oxygen mask while the rest of me tried to comprehend why someone would attack a funeral.
Then I remembered James questioning if Oleran had been a werewolf.
Rage secured me to consciousness when my body wanted nothing more than to slip back into the inky void of sleep. The Inquisition had millions of reasons to want me alive. Mr. Bond had millions of reasons not to care if I died, obeying Donnie’s wish to keep me out of the Inquisition’s hands.
I couldn’t blame him. If I had believed for an instant that the Inquisition was about to catch me, I would’ve thrown myself on top of the grenade willingly in the hopes of it finishing me off.
Then again, I doubted he could be one of the ones behind it.
Donnie would hunt him down on his dying breath.
James Bond wasn’t stupid.
The Inquisition, however, was more than capable of orchestrating such a slaughter, especially if they had a reason to believe they could hit more than one target at a time. The deaths of dozens of normal humans didn’t compare to the victory of eliminating the dangerous freaks of nature posing as people.
Tossing a grenade into a crowd full of police officers, judges, lawyers, and their families was a small price for a bounty hunter after a large fee.
The cold was back, stealing my breath. Had I been the target? I wanted to cry out, but the sound never emerged from my throat.
What had happened to the kids? They had been my responsibility, and I had brought them to a funeral. I hadn’t thought the funeral would be targeted by the Inquisition despite knowing werewolves were being hunted. The things I hadn’t done ran through my head, and my guilt clawed its way through my chest. I had to teach them how to cook, how to read, and find them a Mom and Dad who wouldn’t think they were weird for having a fixation on the full moon even though they’d be safe from its lure.
They needed someone who’d understand when they howled their grief.
Had I killed them too, like I had killed Samantha?
Maybe that’s why I was still alive. Death was too good of a fate for someone like me.
~*~
The wolf in me was frightened, and that scared the hell right out of me. If there was an admittance exam for angels, I’d probably pass for the first and only time in my life. I was dumped out of the quiet comfort of sleep to a world of pain and uncertainty.
The wolf in me was frightened, and I didn’t know why. Keeping still was easy enough. Weights pinned my muscles. If lying still and playing dead was a sport, I was a world-class champion set to go to the Olympics. Did the victory count if my canine competition ended up too frightened to try to best me?
At least I was almost the right species to do tricks on command.
A ringing in my ears brought me back to reality, or what served as reality, considering I hadn’t managed to open my eyes or figure out where I was. Bits and pieces of memories rattled about in my head, and most of them were accompanied by pain. Forcing my scattered thoughts to focus was a little like trying to catch rain in my hands. Through the buzzing in my head, I thought I heard a faint beeping from somewhere nearby.
The rational part of me discounted the possibility of a bomb. Why use a bomb when a grenade was effective? Then again, it hadn’t been, not really. If it had been, I would’ve been dead.
Dead people didn’t wonder about things, did they? Heaven was supposed to be some sort of paradise, not that I had any expectations of actually going there. What would I do in heaven? I was a werewolf.
I had killed people. I would kill again. Most of them would be innocent, like Samantha, who had done nothing more than try to stop me from hurting others.
Hell would’ve been far more appropriate, but hell was either bright and really, really hot, or dark and really, really cold, depending on who was asked. Hell should’ve hurt, but I didn’t.
The ringing in my ears and head was annoying. The rest of me felt like someone had wrapped me in a really warm blanket made of fleece and down, with a layer of something softer and smoother than silk against my skin.
The beeping continued. What was it? I tried to force my eyes open, but they refused to obey me. Something cool tickled my nose, but I couldn’t even sneeze. Another oxygen mask? If I had taken a hit from a grenade, an oxygen mask was logical. I didn’t think I was in motion, so I couldn’t be in the ambulance anymore.
A life support system was the only thing I could think of capable of beeping so much.
“Any news on our Jane Doe?” a man’s voice asked from right over my head.
I would’ve jumped out of my skin if my body hadn’t been busy imitating a sack of rocks.
“Nothing yet, Doctor,” a woman replied. “We’ve made inquiries with the police, but her prints aren’t in the system.”
“Clipboard,” the doctor ordered.
I was alive, then, and at some form of hospital. That was good; at least, I thought it was. The whole ‘Jane Doe’ thing I could’ve lived without. I guess my cheap-ass purse had gotten lost at the funeral. Had I even brought it to the funeral? I couldn’t remember.
“Have her scheduled for an MRI and a CT. I want a closer look at Ms. Doe.”
“Both, sir? How soon?” the nurse asked. Something didn’t seem right about calling her a nurse. Is that what they called doctor’s assistants still, or had they gotten fancier names like a medical technician? It wouldn’t have surprised me. There were way too many people who couldn’t accept a good, simple role like ‘nurse’ without wanting to improve their status.
“Bump her in as a priority.”
“Anything else?”
“Page me before she’s scheduled to go in. I want to oversee it myself.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
I heard them take several steps before the ringing in my ears drowned out their sounds. An MRI and a CT? Long life hadn’t granted me a doctorate, but at least I knew an MRI was used for head injuries. Judging from the dual gongs banging in my eardrums, I was comfortable enough with my guess.
It didn’t explain why moving or opening my eyes was problematic. Was I paralyzed? Once again, fear welled up and choked off my breath.
No wonder my wolf was frightened. Until I got a hold of myself, we were helpless, and not even all of the witch powers in the world could save me if the Inquisition came calling.
Being a Jane Doe would only hide me for so long. They would find me if I didn’t keep moving. They could very well find me, as they had found Samantha, even if I did keep moving.
Once again, I was in a lot of trouble.
It was the never-ending story of my life.
~*~
I drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to fight the growing disconnect between my body and my mind. Every now and then, I heard snippets of conversations, though none had the same clarity of when I’d first awoken. The sharp edge of my wolf’s fear had dulled to wariness, although she cringed each time I sank back into the darkness of sleep.
The wolfish part of me I so often denied couldn’t be ignored, not when she was the only thing anchoring me to the life. I was dimly aware of being poked and prodded, but the jabs of pain didn’t last long, smothered by the eternal creature hiding within me.
Each time the pain started, heralded by the infernal ringing in my skull, my wolf drove it away, her fear growing in strength.
Her worry gnawed at me, and our unfinished business kept us both tethered to life. If I could have shivered, I would have. Werewolves were dangerous, but a witch not yet done with the world could manifest into something far, far worse than a mere wolf trapped in human flesh.
I might not have been good at masking my appearances like normal witches, but I was the Caretaker of the Seasons. The power I too often closed away in the deepest parts of me would boil over and run rampant if I neared too close to death and stayed there.
Some witches immolated. While the Inquisition did burn some witches at the stakes, most of the tales were nothing more than frightened humans trying to justify away too many incidents of spontaneous combustion. Some witches melted, flesh and bone dissolving into pure water. Others dried away to dust.
What would I do? Would I turn to snow and ice, spreading in a wave of cold to smother those near me? Would I herald spring, shunting away the winter? Or, would things just continue on as they always did, with nothing to remind humans that the things that went bump in the night might actually be real?
I don’t know how long I chased those thoughts, but my wolf sheltered me as I considered the repercussions of my life and death. At the end, I was certain of one thing: If I lived, I could seek vengeance for Samantha, for the mother of the two children left alone in the world
, and all the others touched by the Inquisition.
If I died, I could do nothing.
Death was the easy way out, which was unacceptable. My wolf agreed with me.
In a moment of lucidity, when I wasn’t drifting in a too-relaxed state somewhere between living and dying, approval wasn’t the only feeling I picked up from the wolf in me. The similarity would’ve made me smile, if I could have.
We were both tired and worn, though in different ways. She was tired of her cage, of her careful restraint, and of the illness keeping us both helpless. My allergies bothered her as much as me, and in those moments, I grew aware of her clamping down on her scent, borrowing my powers as a witch so I could breathe.
No, so we could breathe.
We were wolf, woman, and occasional witch, and the boundaries between the three shifted and blurred until I couldn’t tell where one element of myself started and the other ended. The wolf took from the witch, the witch hunted the wolf, and the woman watched, mediating the pair so neither was assimilated by the other.
All three of them, balanced in their struggles, became me.
I was too weary to fight them. It was easier to let them in, letting the wolf prowl through the parts of me I’d always denied her. The witch was content to follow, though she wanted to meddle with everything in her efforts to restore order and normality.
Maybe I really was dead. The ‘I think therefore I am’ stuff only went so far before the fear of insanity started creeping in. My thoughts amused me a little, but not enough to outweigh my fear of the lack of touch, smell, and sight.
The beeping of the life support machine faded in and out until I wondered if I was imagining it as a way to convince myself I was alive.
The prospect of life and death couldn’t hold my attention forever. When I exhausted every possibility I could think of without an independent debate partner, the wolf and witch in me didn’t bother adding to my self-driven conversation. Me, myself, and I weren’t getting anywhere fast.
Mind over matter wasn’t doing me any good, either. In rare bursts, as though my brain was figuring out it wasn’t a separate entity from my body, I was aware of little things. The prick of the catheter was my favorite. It jabbed through the numbness, awakening tingles from fingertips to shoulder.