by RJ Blain
The prevalence of the scents warned me they had the advantage of numbers, a risk for a lone hunter such as myself. My wolf’s eagerness for the hunt was tempered by my cheetah’s demand for patience. My spirit beasts squabbled in my head, annoying a low growl out of me before they settled and observed my approach, although their anticipation fed my own desire for the thrill of the chase.
Hunting as a lone wolf involved equal parts patience and luck, waiting for an animal to isolate itself from the group. Hunting as a feline was different because of my sharp claws. If I couldn't frighten the herd into bolting, I would harass them, darting in to slash open their hides and fill the air with the smell of blood. The shallow marks I left behind weren't enough to kill them, but they were ideal for my needs.
Once one bled, it became so much easier to goad them into flight.
When they ran, and they would, I would be in my element. I would rake open the hindquarters of my prey, clawing at its warm hide until I reached its throat. I would tear open the tender part of its neck until its life fled its body.
I would feast and leave only bones and offal behind for the scavengers.
I abandoned the burden of my human ways and hunted.
Chapter Thirteen
I thinned the herd and devoured every scrap of meat, leaving bone and little else in my wake. When the dawn illuminated the eastern sky, my wolf and cheetah stirred, and I reassured them.
My stomach was full. I had hunted well and long, sating the gnawing cramp of my hunger. Grooming the evidence of my success from my fur, I watched the sunrise. My cheetah wanted to return to the woman we had left behind in the house surrounded by roses.
My wolf wanted to prove we were worthy of her, and the lust for the hunt surged.
Wolves didn’t tolerate competition for mates. Until I rid myself of the one who had made me into one being with my spirit beasts, I couldn’t make Andrea mine. My wolf’s desire was strong, the clearest emotion I’d yet sensed from him.
He wanted Andrea in all ways, as did my cheetah, but it fell to me to win her for us.
Removing the threat of the rival female likewise fell to me, for it was my fault she plagued me. She had violated the honor of wolves by forcing my wolf to bond with me when he wasn’t ready—when I wasn’t ready.
I was the only one who could execute pack justice, and if I took the hunt to her, I could ensure she wouldn’t harm Andrea.
My prey had a name, and it was Idette.
To kill Idette, I needed to find her. When my wolf’s fury abated enough for him to communicate with me, he surprised me with the strength of his confidence. He knew where to find the one who had turned us into a union of man, wolf, and cheetah.
Until my wife was dead, I would thrive as a beast and kill her as she had meant to kill me. The underlying worry Idette would hunt Andrea drove me on. My wolf lent me his endurance and my cheetah lent me his speed. I raced from the forests and chased the rising sun until it hung high overhead.
Idette was to the east. When I could no longer rely on the sun to orient me, I relied on my wolf. It tired him homing in on Idette, and he loathed every time I needed him to guide me.
I slowed only to hunt, and on the third day, I transitioned from cheetah to wolf, satisfying my wolf’s need to run in his shape. In the back of my head, I was aware I needed to eat more. My cheetah’s body couldn’t sustain the way I abused it, and my wolf was a far larger beast. I lost weight, and my fur thinned despite the chilling air.
I stayed a wolf for several days, and the entire time, I fought his desire to den and mate. With my cheetah’s help, I won the dispute despite my cheetah’s equal desire to return to the den we had left behind.
Idette posed too much of a risk to the female we intended to claim as our mate.
My pace slowed as I took more time to hunt, concentrating most of my efforts on thinning deer herds until my fur grew in sleek and glossy. Whenever I drew close to the acrid fumes of human inhabited lands, I retreated back into the wilds, growling.
Humans would stop me from what I needed to do. They wouldn’t care if a pair of wolves fought and one died, but if Idette was a human, they would hunt me as I hunted her. The cold logic of the human part of me stung.
As long as I hunted Idette when she was a wolf, no one would care. Then I would be free to den and mate.
I worked my way east and north, trusting my wolf to find our prey.
The nights grew long and cold, and the bite of snow on the wind filled my lungs with every breath. My wolf anticipated the winter and welcomed it, and his eagerness to mate so we might have puppies for the spring and summer infected me. Our potential mate was somewhere far away, and I buried every memory of her so she wouldn’t distract me from what I needed to do.
My world narrowed to the hunt. As the full moon hung heavy in the night sky, wolves sang in the distance. While my wolf’s shape called to me, I prowled as a cheetah.
Idette would fall to my fangs and claws as a gift to the wolf who had saved me on my cheetah’s behalf. Once her body cooled and I left her to the scavengers, I would court the female we so desired.
Cheetahs couldn’t howl as wolves could. The yowl I loosed was as close as I could get, short and loud, and I chirped as the sound died away although I knew it was pointless.
I had neither pack nor family, and there were neither puppies nor cubs to answer my cries.
The wolves sang once more, and I took to the trees, balancing on thick branches and watching the dark forest below. My scent would likely confuse them; a feline’s musk partnered with the spice of a wolf blended with the faint undertones marking my human heritage.
Crowded old trees allowed me to traverse the forest by leaping from branch to branch, digging my claws in deep to secure my hold on the wood. I longed to chirp my excitement, but I remained silent.
Idette was close; the bitter sourness of her scent burned my nose. Discerning the nature of the odor, strong enough to smother most of her Fenerec cinnamon, was beyond me or my cheetah, but my wolf recognized the stench, and his rage was tempered with wariness.
I concentrated on my wolf, questioning him with a soft chirp.
Emotions passed readily between us, but he struggled to explain what he knew, until in his frustration, he dug at the memories of my return to human form. I couldn’t remember much of my illness, except it had frightened both my wolf and my cheetah until it had subsided.
My scent hadn’t been bitter and sour like Idette’s, which had kept my wolf calm during my convalescence. A sense of foreboding radiated from both my spirit beasts, which made me as wary of Idette as they were.
She was sick, and if I understood them correctly, there was no cure for her affliction.
My wolf’s confirmation flooded through me. It didn’t take long for me to realize my spirit beasts worried her contagion would spread to other Fenerec and to me as well. I bared my fangs, crouched, and soared from one branch to the other, scrambling to find purchase in the bark.
I had no pack yet, but I would in time, and I couldn’t allow Idette’s sickness to spread.
My wolf’s approval matched my cheetah’s, and I hunted with renewed purpose. Not only would I earn the right to court my future mate, I would serve all the packs by culling a wolf who couldn’t be saved.
I breathed deeply of the cold night air and followed Idette’s scent through the trees.
Idette wasn’t the only sick wolf. Both my cheetah and wolf were reluctant to approach the pack. My determination to win my mate drove me on. As I jumped from branch to branch and stalked the pack through the trees, a new scent captured my attention.
A human lurked somewhere ahead, and the shock of my cheetah’s recognition of the man’s scent ignited a fury so intense I froze in the trees, trembling with the need to shed the human’s blood. Hatred, anger, disgust, and the cold of my cheetah’s loathing settled into my bones, until even Idette’s existence came second to the human’s.
My cheetah wanted me to take a man
’s life, and I saw no reason to deny him what he desired.
The human among the wolves was willing and eager, and in his putrid stench, I identified his arousal. I flexed my claws, prowling from branch to branch, the tip of my tail lashing as I considered how to best hunt my prey.
I hunted best in a chase, my sleek body flying across the ground to take my prey from behind. Perhaps some felines hunted better from the trees, but it wasn’t something I practiced often.
When my cheetah and I had been younger, we had experimented, and we had made it work, bringing death to our prey from above, crashing down on the delicate spine of our next meal.
My fangs and claws were a lethal combination, as long as I didn’t miss my target. Missing hurt and risked predator becoming prey. I breathed in deep, working to isolate the scents of the nearby pack. I knew Idette’s, and my cheetah identified the human’s, but my wolf was the one to deduce I faced at least six other wolves.
The challenge of fighting a small but proper pack enthused my wolf. Eager to scatter them, drive them apart, and take them out one at a time, I drew closer.
The human would die first, and I would offer the kill to my cheetah, who loathed the man’s existence. While I wanted to kill Idette second, I would hunt as opportunity allowed, and the fledgling plan garnered the approval of my spirit beasts. I would favor quick, clean kills with as little bloodshed as possible.
It wouldn’t do if their contagion infected me.
The wolves and their human gathered beneath the boughs of an ancient oak. Most of the wolves were young, far smaller than I was as a wolf, and even smaller than my cheetah’s lithe form. My wolf’s dismay flooded through me.
Idette was pack with sick puppies, and I would have to put them down for the safety of everyone. The thought nauseated me. I turned my attention to the human seated among them.
The shock of recognition froze me in place, and my human memories flooded through me. I sank my claws deep into the bark, trembling from fury entirely my own.
Douglass Roberts should have been rotting behind bars in prison, not keeping my soon-to-be-dead wife company in the forests far to the east and north of California. The burden of my human life crashed down on me, and the memories I had tried to suppress demanded justice.
Justice was something I was supposed to earn in the courts for the victims and those left behind, not in the woods using my fangs. I had always been a predator, but I had given the task of punishment to others.
Somehow, Douglass Roberts was free.
Most of my human memories faded, leaving me cold in their wake, but one remained. I had been dressed in my darkest suit with a matching black shirt. I had forgotten my tie, which was unlike me, and my nervous habit of adjusting its knot threatened to get the better of me. While those waiting for Michael Andrews’s funeral to begin gathered and murmured to one another, I lurked unfashionably close to his casket, hands stuffed in my pockets, wondering what I’d say to my friend’s wife—or to those gathered, expecting me to send him off with words of comfort.
Marcello hadn’t spoken to anyone in the days leading up to the funeral, and I understood. Albano and Andrews had been brothers in arms, serving in the force together from their first days of training right up until Douglass Roberts had killed our friend.
I had already won the right to prosecute the case, although I hadn’t known I would face Andrea Morgan in court.
I couldn’t remember what I had said for Andrews’s eulogy, and I wasn’t sure if it mattered. The man who had cut out part of Marcello’s heart was beneath me, within my grasp. The man who had raped at least four women was loose and would rape again; his arousal was still strong in the air and growing stronger.
The pack of wolves circled Roberts, and I recognized the pattern as the one Idette had performed against my will, luring my then unwilling spirit beast to me and leaving me to die. Unlike me, however, Roberts’s scent carried only his excitement and arousal.
He wanted what had been forced on me.
I couldn’t allow Idette to turn a monster into a living killing machine. Leaping to the end of my branch, I gathered myself and lunged through the air, dropping on my prey from above, extending hind and front claws to tear into Roberts. He opened his mouth to scream, but my weight smashed him to the leaf-strewn ground. The force of impact crunched bone in the body beneath me. I snapped my fangs around Roberts’s throat, and with a single shake of my head, I broke his neck.
I threw back my head and yowled my triumph to the full moon. The pack of wolves froze, and their glowing yellow eyes focused on me.
Instinct took over, and with my prey dead and his meat unfit to eat, I focused on the smallest of the wolves and threw myself into the fight, chirping my eagerness to spill the blood of those who would willingly join forces with the likes of Douglass Roberts.
The wolves howled and surrounded me. While most of Idette’s pack were puppies, they had the advantage of numbers, and they were as eager for blood as I. I killed the smallest of them with a swipe of my paw, catching his muzzle with my claws and snapping his head to the side with such force his neck broke.
The rest swarmed me, tearing through my fur and flesh with their teeth and raking me with their nails. Wolf claws were less effective than mine, but I bled nevertheless. Dwarfing me and the rest of the pack, Idette’s massive gold and red body would prove my undoing if I let her get a hold of me. Lashing out with my claws and snapping my teeth, I slashed and bit my way free of the smaller wolves.
Wolves, like cheetahs, forced herds to run and isolated the weak, the old, or the young. I lunged from the midst of the puppies, but instead of fleeing, I flung myself towards Idette, my gaze focused on her throat. I screamed my fury, my yowl piercing the night in a far higher pitch than a wolf could ever hope to match.
We collided, and to reach her muzzle, I had to rise on my hind paws and stretch with my forepaws, slashing my claws down the length of her nose. She snarled and snapped her fangs at me.
She could have latched onto my throat with ease, her weight and size far greater than mine, but she hesitated, her nose flaring as she breathed in my scent. A good man would have backed away, answering her unwillingness to engage in a battle we both knew she’d easily win if she decided to fight me in earnest.
Instead, I smacked both paws to the sides of her muzzle, dug my claws in deep, and slashed with all my strength. She howled her pain, thrashing and pulling away from me. I let her go, turned tail, and ran for the woods.
I made it a single stride, too short a distance to reach my full speed, when I felt jaws close over my hind leg. A crunch heralded blinding pain, but before I could do anything other than scream, Idette locked her jaws and jerked her massive head to the side. As though I weighed nothing at all, she flung me away. I crashed into the trunk of one of the ancient trees, and everything went dark.
Chapter Fourteen
I had no memory of shifting from cheetah to wolf. The jolting pain of my broken leg bouncing against roots and rocks roused me and kept me conscious. My awareness narrowed to two points of agony, and the first was my leg.
Shifting forms had never been a cure-all for me, but the rare times I had broken something, transforming to or from my cheetah’s shape had fused the bone enough I could function. I was a wolf, but I either hadn’t healed or my leg had broken again.
The second point of pain radiated from my spine. I was far larger than a natural wolf, and my body rebelled against the pressure of someone—something—dragging my limp body by the scruff of my neck.
While my eyes were open, the darkness was broken only by a few hazy slivers of light, too erratic for me to distinguish where I was or who was dragging me. Even my nose betrayed me, unable to distinguish more than the earthy scent of the forest and the metallic bite of fresh blood.
It was my blood, which should have alarmed me a lot more than it did.
Somewhere nearby, a wolf howled. Instead of the expected jerking motion of being dragged, I was dropped, and I
didn’t realize my head was lifted until my muzzle hit the ground. The lack of motion lessened the pain in my leg to a dull throb, and without the constant barrage of stabbing agony, I forced my eyes to focus in the darkness.
A pale shape ghosted through the trees. As the form drew closer, my nose informed me the newcomer was a bitch, and her fury drowned out the signature of her scent. She barked a short warning, which was answered by a growl over my head.
Without the pain hampering me, I was able to sift through the other scents. My cheetah snarled in my head and hissed feline curses. In the time I had been her captive, Idette’s scent had been branded into my memory as something to hate.
Idette had dragged me away sometime after I had shifted from my cheetah form to a wolf. The memory of her breaking my leg and slamming me against a tree drew a growl out of me. Her red and gold furred leg was just beyond my reach. I wanted to close my jaws around the bone and break it as she had broken mine.
My growls, however, drained me of the little strength I had, and I fell silent, my gaze shifting back to the wolf prowling closer.
Black fur marbled through her pale coat. She ducked her head to protect her throat as she approached. She came in silence, and my wolf approved of the bitch’s behavior.
A hunting wolf was a quiet wolf, and while Idette growled, the rival bitch remained silent, pinning her ears back and baring her fangs. My spirit beasts watched through my eyes; all I could think about was the way the marbled wolf protected her throat.
I remembered my life bleeding out from Idette’s tearing teeth, and I shuddered.
Maybe I didn’t recognize the female challenging Idette, but I didn’t want her to share my fate. My hind leg wouldn’t support my weight, but my wife had moved within my reach. I bared my teeth, fixed my gaze on Idette’s leg, and bit down as hard as I could.