Relinquished Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  I shared his frustration on that, but I didn’t really know what to do. Every attempt I’d made to snoop around was blocked by security, and the others with whom I worked were either too far embedded to be trusted, or too ignorant to be useful.

  Maybe Caleb could become a resource? After all, he’d shared a boatload of sensitive information with me, without me having to work all that hard to get it. All it would take would be a few subtle threats implying he wouldn’t want those secrets to get out to get him telling me what I needed to know.

  I shook my head, and threw away the notion. No, I wouldn’t rely on my mother’s tactics, even if, currently, it might be my best option for actually learning anything. I sighed, lying back on the ground, observing the play of cloud and moon above. We’d need to go soon, or risk being caught in a tizzy of a thunderstorm.

  I threw my hands up to the sky, fanning my fingers like the air was the fur I could pet. “Don’t you love when there’s a storm coming? Even in the city, you feel a little like being in Paradise. Oh, if only...”

  “You really like it there, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, it’s home. Or at least, it used to be.” I turned to look at him. “It’s funny, that while I’ve always wanted to get away from my mom, I never actually wanted to leave home. I love where I grew up. I always pictured myself living there.”

  Tobias grinned. Maybe he and Kara had had plans too. “What would you do there, though, if you weren’t a hood?”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “Will not.” He crossed a finger in an x-pattern over his heart.

  “I wanted to be a school teacher,” I admitted. “I always pictured myself grading papers at night and making scones on weekends. And I’d have a dog. Not a wolf. Not even a German Sheppard. I’d get a pug or a corgi that wouldn’t even be able to walk full speed because I’d fatten it up so much. Yes, Tobias, that’s what I wanted. Maybe it’s what I still want. What about you? You planning to go back for feuernacht?”

  “That’s what you guys call it. To us, it’s just full moon.” He finished buttoning up his shirt. “I survived three months here just fine. I don’t need to run back to Paradise every lunar cycle.”

  “Just fine? You were on the edge of lunacity.”

  “The edge of it?” He looked over his shoulder at me. “I’m living with the daughter of Red Matron in one of the biggest cities in North America, helping her infiltrate a corporation run by chemical-happy vampires. If this isn’t mad, I don’t know what is.”

  I chewed on that for a moment, surprised at how little offense I felt. “If you stay, we’ll need to find a place for you to spend the full moon. What were you doing before?”

  He raised a hand in the air dismissively. “I’d tip off animal control about an out-of-control stray, then make sure I stayed on mark until they came to pick me up. In the morning, I’d fall back to human and just let myself out before any of the workers came in.”

  “I love how you say that like it’s obvious.”

  “Isn’t it? Why, you have any better ideas about where I should pass the moon?”

  For a moment, I thought about the dungeon under Igor’s lab back on the UWC campus. Despite the bad memories, it would serve the purpose. Except, that would require me to make amends with Igor. No way in hell.

  “I don’t suppose I could just lock you in the bathroom?”

  “Not unless you have great faith in that flimsy, hollow door and its ability to keep me from busting through to hunt you.” Tobias’s face screwed up. “Geri?”

  “Tobias?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Seems that way.”

  His eyebrows became arches. “What?”

  “Never mind. Yes, go ahead. Ask away.”

  He pitched himself up on an elbow and turned to me. “When you took me to Paradise, it was full moon. Our instincts those nights are crazy, more animal than man. How were you so sure you could go into the heart of the packlands and not get yourself killed?”

  It was a question I had been asking myself since it happened. “I didn’t.”

  “And yet, you did. Why?”

  I shrugged, as well as I could while lying on the ground anyway. “It was the only way I could think to save you. I knew that if I couldn’t convince Cody’s dad to take you into his pack, I was basically signing your death warrant.”

  “And then you showed up, and instead of Bob Ryland...”

  “It was Cody who was alpha,” I said, cutting him off, my voice cracking. “No good deed, et cetera...”

  Silence clouded the air around us as he sank back to eyeball the sky. A few moments later, his voice turned unusually gentle.

  “It’s hard for him too, you know.”

  Confused, I turned my head toward the non-sequitur.

  “For Cody,” Tobias clarified. “He loves Lisa. How could he not? They’re mated, but... I don’t know. A wolf can’t commit adultery; it’s biologically impossible. But I guess what I mean is, where you’re concerned, there’s a lot of regret and... guilt?”

  “You two must have got close in just a month if you’re having those kind of heart-to-hearts. What an inspired bromance.”

  “We don’t talk about it.” The werewolf’s flat tone admonished my presumptions. “I recognize it in his eyes when he looked at you, that day in his kitchen. If anyone else had asked him to let some foreign, strange wolf into the pack, he would have said hell no. But he felt like he owed you. He was making amends.”

  Nerve endings that had grown dull with time twitched in response to the stimuli. Despite that I was coming to think of Tobias as a friend, I feared I’d still be willing to cleave his heart from his chest with my silver dagger if someone assured me it could bring me back Cody’s affections. But what was done, was done. I had to just get over the fact that that ship had sailed. It had been a stupid fantasy any ways, thinking a hood and a wolf could ever truly be together.

  “He didn’t owe me anything. And neither do you. Want to go another round? We might have time before the storm hits.”

  Tobias shook his head. “There’s no point.”

  This time, it was me propping myself up to glare down at him. “What do you mean?”

  The werewolf lifted himself off the ground, then turned to offer me a hand. A useless, although not totally unappreciated gesture.

  “I can’t sneak up on you, and you have no problem chasing me down. Your peculiar special skill makes chases pointless.”

  “We could try a little hood-to-paws,” I suggested, boxing the empty air. “Maybe just a frontal assault. I used to do that with Cody, but I think he went soft on me whenever things got too heated.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Get your head out of the gutter, Somfield. I mean we trained together. It’s actually how we first discovered we were attracted to each other.”

  The werewolf clicked his tongue. “No point in that either. You’re no match for me. As long as you’re a nascent, you’re hopeless.”

  “Oh, come on, Tobias! Give me something to work with here?”

  He squared me. “Work with this: Until you take your rites, you’re no match for me. Do it, and you actually stand a chance. Maybe.”

  An ache registered in the back of my mouth as I ground my teeth. Was he secretly in collusion with my mother? “I’m afraid that might cause more problems than it would actually solve right now. Anything else?”

  “Full moon is in two nights,” Tobias resumed. “Maybe you can call in the tip to Animal Services instead? Otherwise it might look like the same irresponsible owner keeps losing the same dangerous dog.”

  “You’re giving me permission to call the authorities on you? Sounds fun.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You really don’t have to stay. I’ve done this before.”

  Tobias shimmied out of his worn jeans and folded them neatly before handing them to me. It was still a few hours until sunset, but it was better that Animal Services seize him before
he fell completely under the moon’s influence, when he’d have little ability to clamp down on his instincts. Wolves were not irrational killers, but werewolves did hold a primal instinct to detest hoods. All the more reason he didn’t want me near when the sun finally set.

  “Would it be bad if I admitted I’m here for the entertainment?” I stuffed his clothes into my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “If I wasn’t so conditioned not to take pictures of anything relating to supes, I’d be snapping this like Jimmy Olson.”

  My eyes lingered on the sinewy muscles moving under his fair skin. Tobias’s thighs could crack coconuts. He looked like a body of water, his navel the place someone had tossed in a stone and his muscles the corded ripples that radiated outward. He was... a fine example of the human form of a werewolf. I was a hood, yes, but I was still female. Only a few hours until full moon, my emotions were raw and near the surface, including those typical of a college-aged girl without any sexual outlet.

  “You know what you need?” the werewolf asked.

  I licked my lips, thinking of all the naughty ways I could answer. “What?”

  “Feuernacht,” he said, snapping me back to reality. “How long has it been since you danced around a fire? It does for you what running with a pack on full moon does for us, resets our humanity. You don’t vent that energy soon, it will take you bad places.”

  My argument caught in my throat, and somehow the truth slipped past. “If I go home, even just for feuernacht, my mother will force me through my rites. I couldn’t come back to Chicago.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “It’s not too different from alpha’s prerogative,” I said, referencing the compulsion a pack member fell under when his alpha gave him a command. It wasn’t that it was impossible to disobey, but only the strongest wolves could try. Even then, it often got them disowned. “If my mother opens my Gate of Fire rites, and I pass through, I’m hers to command. Then, all this...” I motioned to me, then him, then the city at large, “is over.”

  “I get why you wouldn’t want that.” He planted his balled fists on his hips, concentrating. “Then you need to toss yourself off.”

  The heat within me shriveled as a bucket of cold water washed over it. “What?”

  “I don’t like saying it either. But this power you have, this connection we share—” He looked up at me from downcast eyes. I didn’t know if the heat in them was anger, or lust. “I feel it, what you feel.”

  My mouth took on guppy status as I struggled for words. What was I supposed to say? It wasn’t untrue, but if he thought a few merry-go-rounds at the edge of a sacred fire or me getting my jollies were the problem, he didn’t know that much about hoods.

  I cleared all confusion from my expression, making my face rigid, my voice, detached. “I’d feel this way about any naked man in front of me. It’s not about you. It’s about the moon.”

  Tobias took steps, bringing him inches from me, and sending my instincts into overdrive.

  Kill him.

  Take him.

  He leaned in, bringing his lips inches from mine. “Tell me you’d resist if I tried to kiss you right now.”

  My hand twitched, though I didn’t know if it was from the impulse to pull the silver dagger from its usual hiding space, tucked into my braid, or if I wanted to reach out and run my thumb over Tobias’s bottom lip. I was a hunter, but what was I hunting? If I kissed him, the distraction could be used against either of us.

  “Don’t forget what I am, wolf. I’m still as likely to slay you as avenge your losses.”

  Our standoff ended as a truck at the end of the alley pulled to a stop and two doors closed, followed a moment later by a male voice. The air shifted around me, and I didn’t have to look to know that Tobias had taken on his wolf.

  Two people came around the corner of the alley. One, a stout mocha-skinned woman, and the other, a tall, scrawny white man. They both wore black slacks and khaki-colored uniform shirts. The man held a long poll with a retractable noose on the end. The woman held out a cell phone, her eyes alternating between the screen and the alley. Even from this distance, I could read the names on their embroidered tags.

  “Miss, we got a call about a stray,” Simon said.

  I looked around. Tobias was still near, but had somehow hidden himself from open view. Made sense. How weird would it look for a “feral stray” to be calmly sitting, awaiting capture?

  “Yeah, that was me,” I said, exaggerating the act of looking around. “He was here just a minute ago. Not sure where he got to.”

  Right on cue, the massive red wolf emerged out from behind a garbage bin, teeth bared and a growl rumbling in his chest.

  It hit too hard, too fast, and in a whirling moment of clarity I knew that I should have listened to Tobias and just left. Here, there was a wolf, and behind me, there were Hueys. A full moon rose overhead, dragging away my ability to be rational, propelling my instincts.

  Protect them. Defend them. Destroy the wolf.

  I bit my tongue, fighting the urge to pull my dagger out and attack. Tobias must have sensed my urges; a moment later, he was sitting primly on his back haunches, then fell to the ground, and rolled over, offering his belly. It was a display for me, not the Hueys. He was reminding me he was no threat, then I didn’t need to take him on. That we were not enemies.

  “That him, Doris?”

  “Yeah, that’s him, alright.”

  The gun fired before I had a chance to think. Panic filled me, all blood draining from my face. They shot him? They shot him? My instincts threw themselves into reverse, and my pull to destroy became a need to protect. Without thinking, I dove, throwing myself over Tobias’s body, my silver dagger wielded in my hand.

  The two officers, the woman still holding the gun out, took a step back. The man leaned in to the woman.

  “I hate calls from PETA nuts.”

  Doris, however, ignored him. “Whoa, there, young lady. Put the knife down, and step away. You don’t want to be anywhere near that dog. It could take up to a minute for the sedative to set in.”

  “Sedative?” I dropped my knife and turned, examining Tobias. On his neck, a red-feathered dart peaked out from his thick coat. His eyes were glassy, but there was still a hint of fight in them.

  No, not fight. What I saw, I soon realized, was a reflection of my impulses. He wanted to protect me, but the drugs flooding his system prevented him.

  “Yes, a sedative,” Doris said, closing in, attempting to pull me back from the limp canine body on the pavement. I didn’t resist, taking to my feet. “We’ve dealt with this stray before. Third or fourth time we’re picking him up. We need to make sure it’s the last time.”

  “The last time?” I repeated, as though that was a foreign term, the meaning of which I couldn’t grasp. “What do you mean, the last time?”

  Simon approached with his stick, putting the loop at the end around Tobias’s throat. It barely fit. A werewolf was twice the size of their animal world kind, and even the mightiest Mastiff would pale on comparison to his bulk.

  “He keeps escaping,” the man said, tightening the restraint. “Might have tried adopting him out, but that growling thing he’s doing? Aggressive behavior. Too risky. We’re going to have to put him down. Damned shame. Every time we’ve picked him up, he’s been a sweetheart. Such a beautiful dog, too. Probably some sort of wolf-mastiff hybrid.”

  “God save us from the wolf hybrids,” Doris muttered, maneuvering me behind her back. “Never lose their wild streaks.”

  Not knowing what else to do, my mind took fantastic leaps. “I’ll adopt him!” I blurted out. “Give me a few minutes to go grab my truck, and I can take him home right now.”

  Doris’s sappy expression suggested she’d pegged my type perfectly. “We understand where your heart is at, sweetie, but after a dog of this size shows this kind of aggression and habitual escapes, we can’t risk it. Besides, he’s not safe enough to leave roaming the streets.”


  Safe? You’re going to be the one who should worry about being safe if you hurt my wolf.

  With desperate eyes, I turned to Tobias, hoping he could somehow tell me what to do. He labored just to keep his eyes open. The sedative was dragging him under. I had to fix this without his help. Unfortunately, I could only think of one way to do that.

  Crow wasn’t my favorite dish, but I’d eat it if it meant saving Tobias.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the horizon, the pink blush of dawn grew warmer by the minute. Chicago was to have one of its bright and beautiful summer days, full of sun, dangerous conditions for a vampire to be out and about. With that in mind, I rushed to close the door. Even then, he winced in pain. The orientation of the street put the rising sun at my back, flushing a curtain of ambient rays over the professor when the door had opened.

  It was hard to say who was the more rigid as the car moseyed away from the curb outside my building, me, or the undead vampire behind the wheel. On the phone, I had been straight-forward about what I needed, and totally upfront about how awkward I felt asking him to help me after our last encounter. He in turn had admitted that he wasn’t sure I’d have spoken to him again.

  “So, how did he get taken by the dog catcher exactly?” Igor asked.

  I explained the fact of the matter, then went silent once more.

  The summer sun peeked up around 5:30 AM this time of year. The shelter wouldn’t open until 8, but it maintained a twenty-four hour emergency pet drop with someone always on duty.

  “I’ll use that as our in,” Igor explained. “Once I take the attendant under thrall, I’ll get him to lead me back to where the strays are kept. If they really think Tobias is a public safety hazard, they’ll have him separated somewhere.”

  “Won’t you look strange coming in without any animal, though? I checked their website. It says the night attendee has to buzz you in.”

  Igor notched his head toward the backseat. “Already thought of that.”

  I turned, and gasped the moment I saw the little ball of fluffy joy. I’d always been told by schoolmates that cats hated riding in cars, but the silky white Persian in Igor’s backseat looked as concerned with our mobility as a tree with the rain.