by Karen Ranney
My father made enough money to support my mother and two concubines. We didn’t talk about the other two families much, but it was a given that when my father was absent for more than a day or so, he was visiting one of his other families. One was in Dallas and the other in Houston. At least he had the decency to spread his sperm equally throughout Texas. I’m sure I had a few half-sisters. All of whom were probably subservient if not downright docile.
My father would approve.
How my mother accepted the other two families I’ll never know. If she was disappointed in her life, it didn’t show. Her smile brightened the room. Her hug was warm and welcoming.
“Torrance, I didn’t expect you, darling. I’m so glad to see you but what brought you all the way out here?”
Before I could answer, she grabbed my arm, wound hers around it, and pulled me into the family room. Just as I’d expected, five of her friends were sitting there and in the midst of them was Sandy, looking absolutely enthralled at the index cards she was arranging on the table in front of her. Recipes? Sex tricks? Useful polite small talk? Trust me, it could be any of those.
My sister looked up at my entrance, then glanced away. Normally, I got a smile from her, too, but not today.
I knew all the women, had grown up with them as my mother’s friends. Two of them weren’t Weres and didn’t know that my mother grew a snout once a month. Yet all of them, Were or non-Were, were content to sit around talking about recipes, fashions, and problems with servants.
God help us all.
“Have you got a minute?” I asked my sister.
She frowned at me, but nodded. Standing, she excused herself with all the grace and poise of a nineteenth century debutante. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sandy wearing a hoop skirt and flirting with a fan.
My sister wasn't like me. She enjoyed the antediluvian rituals. She liked being admired for her appearance above all. She didn't mind having to walk behind a man, or never speaking if he was in a bad mood, and letting him eat first. Everything I hated simply sailed over her head. She wasn't stupid, either. She just didn't see anything wrong with the culture in which we lived. It was normal. It was right. It was just our clan.
More than once, she told me that I made things difficult for myself because I challenged the unchallengeable.
She was probably right, but I wasn’t going to change any more than she was.
“What is it, Torrance?” she asked me once we left the family room and into the garden.
It was spring in South Texas, which meant that it got to be in the middle seventies in the afternoon. The walled garden made it even more pleasant by blocking the wind.
I passed the first of the Koi ponds. My father had gone a little ape here. There were five ponds in graduating sizes in the garden plus a series of waterfalls, one large enough that it blocked getting from one side to the other. The landscaper had created a walk below the waterfall and that’s where I headed. Once past it, I moved to an upholstered L shaped bench in the corner.
Here the water features had been pushed aside for rosebushes. Hundreds of them were already budding. In the summer it would be almost impossible to sit here for the bees and the butterflies and the sheer overpowering scent of roses. Just another case of my father going farther than he had to go.
Not only were the Boyds royalty but, by damn, we could outspend you.
When Sandy sat beside me, I turned and looked at her.
Sandy was my father's favorite child and I say that without an ounce of bitterness or envy.
She’d gone to college but attended Trinity in town. She never lived in the dorm, but came home every night. She didn’t do anything with her liberal arts degree. Instead, she spent time learning how to be the perfect wife to the Were she would eventually marry.
In all ways my sister and I were opposites.
Her hair was blond, long, and always gorgeous. Mine was black, the same shade as our father’s, and I kept it shoulder length but often put it in a pony tail so it didn’t bother me. My eyes were blue, but hers were a piercing blue that you didn’t forget easily. She always smiled while I had to remember to be pleasant. She had a tinkling laugh and I sounded like a braying donkey.
She was beautiful, sweet, and ten years younger.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, frowning.
“I’m here on a mission. Dad is worried about you. I’m supposed to find out what’s wrong.”
“What did he say?”
“Just that he was worried about you. He thinks you’re crying all the time.”
To my utter horror, Sandy burst into tears.
I put my arm around her and squeezed, saying silly things like “There, there.”
What I really wanted to do was to shake her and get her to shut up. Tell me what was wrong; don’t just cry. Note to self: before having a baby, it would be a good idea to learn some maternal skills. For that matter, where was my mother? My mother could solve the situation by pulling Sandy into her arms and patting her on the back, and telling her that everything was going to be fine, just fine.
Sandy would believe her.
I tried that. I repeated the fact that everything was going to be wonderful. She kept crying. Finally, when I thought there were no more tears possible, she pulled back and looked pitifully at me.
“He won’t have anything to do with me,” she said.
“Who won’t have anything to do with you?”
“Duncan.”
Oh damn.
She didn’t even have to mention his last name because I knew who she was talking about. Duncan, the youngest Palmer brother, the one born the same year as Sandy.
Why the hell were the Palmers featuring in my issues lately? First Joey and now Duncan.
“I wanted to be with him tomorrow night, but he said that he didn’t want to see me. It’s all your fault, Torrance. It’s all because of you.”
What?
What the hell had I done?
Chapter Four
Have you lost your two front teeth?
Sandy was nearly inconsolable. Once the dam broke, I got another ten minutes of tearful recriminations. From what I could understand, Craig had forbidden Duncan from having anything to do with Sandy, including running with her during the Hunt.
Can I be brutally honest for a moment? When a boy and a girl want to be together, they find a way. With us, if you run together, that’s as blatant an announcement as a neon arrow pointing to both of you.
These two are having sex.
The Hunt isn't particularly erotic, but the change does something to the human hormone system. You’re supercharged with friendly feelings. You want to go out and hug the world. When you come back to yourself as human, you want to share those emotions with the first person you see.
I’ve never known of any two people who went running together who didn't have mind blowing sex afterward.
We rarely gave into the need to mate on four legs. Of course, there were always exceptions, like Joey Palmer, for example, who was known to nip at the neck of his partner and mount her while she was still a Were.
“It’s the tail,” he told me once. “It turns me on. I don’t want to wait until she’s standing on two legs. I want to experience the tail.”
I avoided Joey during the Hunt.
Occasionally, you’d see these pumping beasts halfway concealed behind a tree trunk. Actually, most of them didn't give a flying flip if they were concealed or not. They looked a little larger than domesticated dogs and if a human happened on them, he’d probably say something along the lines of, “Go, Spot, go.”
Most of us, however, waited until we became human again. Speaking Were wasn’t all that sexy. Human speech was best. Even rough words, sex words, or coarse words were better than whining and low growling.
I am waxing eloquent on Were sex because I didn’t want to think about Craig Palmer. Or maybe I'm just waxing eloquent about Were sex because whenever I think o
f Craig Palmer that's what I remember.
We didn't have all that many intellectual conversations, to be honest.
Craig had bedroom eyes, dark brown eyes that seemed to sear into your soul. I’d never thought that a man could smile at me and make me horny, if you pardon the word, but he did and I was. The first time it happened I was eighteen.
He’d been a senior in college, but the age difference wasn’t a big deal in Were circles. The older the male, the better. That meant he was stable, had a good income and some wisdom. We are a patriarchal society. Women have a role, and it’s an important one - so say the men - but it’s always behind a man or subservient to one.
I’d been bucking my place in our stratified society for years when I became aware of Craig. I don’t know why I never noticed him before. Maybe a switch needed to be turned to On. But the minute it was, I was a goner.
There was something about his smile, crooked and charming and more than a little sexy. Even all these years later, I could still recall what it did to me. For two years, I was his adoring female slave. He was more than happy to bask in my adoration because I was a Boyd, a trophy, and the fact that we had sex catapulted him into the stratosphere in the eyes of the Weres.
Once you’ve impregnated a Were, you’re mated for life. You can marry. You can divorce. It doesn’t matter. You’re hooked. Being connected to Furry royalty would have been a big deal for Craig. Luckily for me, I was smart enough to take the pill in the middle of my lustfest. Female Weres weren’t supposed to take birth control pills. It messed up our metabolism and our ovulation. A female was tossed aside if she couldn’t bear a child.
Oops, part two. Put that under the heading of: what they don’t know can’t hurt me.
After we’d broken up, Craig had taken his masters degree in business and worked on Wall Street. In the intervening years he’d made a fortune, returning to his family a hero. He bought up land along the Guadalupe River and built a resort development that employed every one of the Palmers and a lot more people as well.
Most humans would see it as a lovely place to go, play cowboy or hunt or fish. But if they ever compared vacancies to a lunar calendar, they'd be surprised to find that they couldn't book a room on the night of the full moon.
I don't know why the strongest desire to become a quadruped happened on a lunar schedule. We can change at any time of the month. The more we do so, however, the greater the risk of developing severe arthritis in our later years. You could always tell a Were who went a little crazy in his youth. He used two canes or a walker and he was as bald as a billiard ball.
Those of us without good control can change at the drop of a hat or when we feel extreme emotion. Stay away from biker bars. Half the guys in leather were Weres, and if you got enough booze in them and made them mad, you're going to be surrounded by four-legged hairy creatures in just a matter of minutes.
That’s another thing: when we change, it’s only on the outside. Our organs remain human. Although some Weres gravitated to occupations requiring bulk and brawn, we aren’t an aggressive species. Oh, and if you shot one of us with a silver bullet, the silver wouldn’t affect us. The bullet would.
I suspect that once upon a time werewolves were a separate species. Maybe we climbed up out of the primordial ooze along with lizards. As we evolved alongside the Neanderthals we probably looked at each other, felt a surge of lust, and said, “Why the hell not?” We mated and created what we now know as Weres. Of course, there are no records, no books, and no learned scientists to prove my theory. All I have - all we Weres have - are wise men, one of which was my father.
The gist of what I got from Sandy was this: Craig refused to let Duncan have anything to do with our family because of me. Evidently, he wasn't a happy camper about the way we parted. But that was eight years ago, and a hell of a lot had happened since.
I’d grown up, for one. I was no longer a teenager, no longer so easily swayed by masculine beauty. In the intervening years I’d seen a lot of good looking guys, even those with a magnetism and an appeal I found difficult to resist. But that was the other change: I could resist. I didn't have to go staggering behind a male just because my hormones were out of kilter. Or whatever it was called when a woman loses her mind around a man.
I’d attended my last two years of college out of state and then vet school in Pennsylvania where I’d frozen my ass off. I was so grateful to come home to Texas that I nearly kissed the tarmac at DFW.
Eight years. Eight years had passed since I’d seen Craig Palmer and he was just now getting his snit on? I didn’t believe it.
"Why would he say something like that?" I asked Sandy.
“He says you disrespected his family. That you were rude to the Palmers. He doesn't want that to happen again."
At that, Sandy's sobs increased.
“How long have you and Duncan been dating?" I could probably have said: “How long have you and Duncan been running together?” But I thought I’d try for tact.
“Two years," Sandy said. "He knew we were together. Why would he forbid Duncan to see me now?”
“Does Father know?” I asked. He would have nipped Craig’s temper tantrum in the bud.
She didn’t answer, only looked away.
“Sandy? Why doesn’t he know?”
She glanced at me. “Because he might punish the whole family if he did.”
On reflection, she was right. My father would have had a cow to learn that Craig was acting all high and mighty. After all, we were Boyds.
"You have to do something, Torrance. You have to talk to Craig, get him to change his mind.”
The easiest way to crush Craig was to get my father involved, but that would definitely ruin Sandy’s chances for a future with Duncan.
I should have segued into some older sister heart-to-heart conversation at this point. I should have told Sandy that there were other Weres in the woods. She could find someone else who intrigued her as much as Duncan. But there was something about the Palmer boys. I don't think anybody could have changed my mind about Craig back then so I didn't even try with Sandy.
She grabbed my arm and looked imploringly into my face, her blue eyes reddened by her tears.
"Will you call him, Torrance? Please? You've always been able to get Craig to do anything you want.”
Not hardly, but I didn’t say that to my sister.
I agreed and said goodbye, wanting to get out of the house before my mother waylaid me with a list of things I should do or hadn’t done. I ducked out by going through the garden door and following the winding path around the garage. Once there, I gathered up all the little atoms of my courage, stuck them together, and dialed Craig.
Strange, that I didn’t have any trouble remembering his number. Even stranger, that he hadn’t changed the number in the last eight years.
He answered the phone on the second ring, which surprised me. I honestly had the feeling that once he saw who it was, he’d ignore me. If he didn’t want Sandy to have anything to do with his family, I could just imagine what he thought about me.
We hadn't exactly parted amicably.
“You’re calling about Sandy, aren’t you?” he asked in lieu of hello.
I didn’t bother with hello, either.
"Why are you being such a horse’s ass about them? Do you think it's a way to punish me?”
“Is that what you think?”
“What’s going on, Craig?”
"I don't want to talk about it over the phone, Torrance. Come to the resort and I'll tell you exactly why I've done what I've done.”
“No,” I said. “This doesn't need a face-to-face. We can handle the situation over the phone.”
"It's been eight years since I've seen you, Torrance. Have you gained a hundred pounds? Have you lost your two front teeth?"
I frowned at the road leading down the hill.
"I haven't changed all that much. You don't really need to see me in person."
“What are you afraid of?”
>
I laughed. “Nothing.”
“Duncan can't see Sandy until I see you," he said. “Come tomorrow. And if you don't want to, that's fine. Just tell Sandy it's because you’re too cowardly to see me.”
When he hung up on me, I just stared at the phone, more than a little annoyed. Yet something deep inside was doing a little pitter patter of a dance. Excitement I hadn’t felt in years woke up, stretched, and yawned. Or maybe it was my long dormant libido. I was going to see Craig. I was going to see the man who had once been the love of my life, the same man who nearly destroyed me.
No, damn it, I wasn’t.
I dialed his number again and this time he let it ring awhile. When he finally picked up, he said, “I’m not changing my mind, Torrance.”
“Have you seen Joey lately?” I asked, addressing my second problem.
“A few days ago, why?”
“Not lately?”
“Like I said, a few days ago.”
“Was he okay?”
“He was fine,” he said, caution entering his voice. “Why?”
There was no way Joey the dog was Joey Palmer. I’d just gotten a little loopy in my thinking.
“No reason. Just curious.”
“Are you coming?”
This time I hung up on him.
Chapter Five
My libido got all squirrelly and squeaky
I went back to the clinic, making up the time I had lost at my parent’s house.
A young couple came in with a three year old dog they called Baby. I recognized his symptoms right away and a quick blood test was all I needed to diagnose him as suffering from heartworms.
The husband went on and on about how he could barely afford food for the dog. The wife chimed in to say that everything had gotten more and more expensive.
Our practice offered heartworm preventative medication for $10 a month if you needed assistance. They hadn't come in to take advantage of the offer, but that wasn’t what sent my temper into the stratosphere. The husband had a top-of-the-line phone, the newest one out and the wife carried a purse I knew cost a couple hundred dollars even as a knockoff.