Moon Dancer

by Aimee Easterling

  Because I didn’t think it was a coincidence Dr. Hart had turned up so soon after the wolf mask was sighted. He was trolling for antiquities. No way was he following us tonight.

  Instead, it was just the wolves and Val who headed out by vehicle then on foot once night shrouded the valley. The moon hadn’t yet risen and the sky was darker than I ever remembered it being. Maybe because of the overhanging evergreens and lack of city light pollution. Or perhaps because my wolf had thrown a temper tantrum just as we were leaving the motel, forcing me to knot the pack bonds tighter to prevent a shift.

  I hadn’t severed the bonds as threatened, but they were dwindling. Shriveling on the far end of the knot like a tied-off umbilical cord. My connection to Claw, Harry, Jacob, and Theta gradually rotting away.

  Which was good—it meant the upcoming wolf transfer was more likely to be successful. Still, my wolf’s subsequent rebellion made it tougher to travel through the dark.

  No wonder I stumbled, my left snowshoe catching on something invisible in the forest. Hands caught my shoulders just as I connected with rough tree bark, turning what might have been deep bruises into minor scrapes.

  “No wolf eyes?” Theta asked, putting none of the sarcasm I would have expected into her question.

  I shook my head, knowing she would pick up on my answer even if I couldn’t see where I was going. Perhaps I shouldn’t have vetoed using flashlights, but the spot I’d settled upon as the likely location of the cave girl’s sacred place was surprisingly close to a well-traveled highway. And we couldn’t wait until daybreak given the increasing interest of the human members of our pack.

  “Then you’ll need to join the train.” Val’s good humor grated. Her hand poked my hipbone before snagging on my waistband. “All aboard! Choo choo!”

  Theta snorted. But she guided my hand to her belt loop with more care than I would have expected, starting us all walking again at a pace feasible for those with human-only eyes.

  The experience was oddly reminiscent of a trust walk I’d been roped into during my freshman year in college. I’d been far younger than the other new students, so they’d thought it was funny to lead me into a candy store and leave me there. I’d sat for hours until I finally tore off my blindfold and discovered their not-so-funny joke.

  This...was nothing like that experience. Instead, Theta warned us of fallen branches before we tripped over them. She adroitly guided us around obstacles. Each time, I passed the same information back to ease the path for Val.

  My pack bond tried to widen. The knot kept it throttled down to a mere thread width. The push and pull of pack togetherness felt like wiggling a loose tooth.

  Then the moon rose and I saw why we’d been able to stumble through the darkness so easily. It wasn’t the power of pack. It was—

  “A deer trail,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Only, apparently the obvious was incorrect. The wolf at my knee shimmered upward into Claw’s familiar body. “Not a deer trail. A people trail. And look.”

  He motioned at the hole in the ground before us, a darker well of blackness amidst the grays of moonlight. Four vertical lines led from a tree branch straight down into the cave’s entrance.

  “What...?”

  “It’s a mineshaft elevator,” Theta said, recognizing the structure a moment before I did. “Looks like this place isn’t so secret.”

  For a split second, my gaze hit Claw’s and stuck there while he asked one last silent question. Do you still want this?

  No, my wolf answered, breaking free of my restraint for one split second. I....

  “Let’s get it over with,” I answered, teeth gritted as I wrangled my wolf back into submission. Hands slipped into my pockets, tracing the ears of two stone statues. One was powerful and warm, the other powerful and cold....

  But Claw wasn’t done with his questions. “Jacob’s choice...?”

  The Changed shifter limped closer and peered up at me with eyes that were entirely lupine. There was no boy in there at the moment. This choice had to be mine alone.

  I took a deep breath, accepted the inevitable. “He’s my student. I’ll decide for him.”

  Claw’s face was unreadable. “Then we’ll guard your back.”

  THEY LOWERED US DOWN gently, even though none of the shifters managing the ropes approved of what was happening. Down, down, down, until the moon disappeared behind the rock walls and the trickle of water drew us off the platform and into the dark.

  This time I flicked on my flashlight, but I didn’t really need it. The sacred place called me just as it had called the cave girl. A thrumming that set all of our legs in synchronous motion. Timeless, we walked and walked and walked and walked.

  Then the drumbeats slowed. Stopped. We’d achieved our destination.

  Off to our right, darkness yawned, deep and enticing. This was it. I froze, unwilling to peer inside.

  Would the space be empty? Would it be full of wonders?

  Which would I rather? I wasn’t quite sure.

  At my knee Jacob whined a question. I was suddenly certain that Claw was right and I was wrong and we should hightail it out of there as quickly as possible.

  After all, Jacob hadn’t granted his permission. And I wasn’t sure Val would find shifterdom as delightful as she hoped it would be....

  Then Val’s right hand settled into my left. “We made our decision a long time ago.”

  She wasn’t referring to our recent pact.

  No, she and I had made choices much longer ago than this past winter. There was the scar around Claw’s neck reminding us all of the day Val had chosen him as her brother. For my part, I could trace my own choices back to the moment in college when I’d given up on befriending older students and had instead settled for filling my emptiness with books and with dreams.

  We were both lost and this sacred place was our salvation.

  “You’re right,” I answered.

  Together, we walked in.

  Chapter 28

  For one second, I saw the sacred place in all its modern glory. Like the petroglyph, it was still active. There were not only ancient artifacts but also modern offerings. A chainsaw, a snare drum, a large-screen TV.

  Renewed drumbeats drew me deeper. One step, two steps...then the past consumed me.

  There was no drum here. Only the cave girl, spinning in and out of firelight. The pounding of her feet matched the thudding of my heart.

  My heart...or rather the pup’s heart. The body I inhabited wriggled. She wanted to dance, to caper. I begged for patience, but it was swaddling furs that held us in place.

  Swaddling furs...then her mother’s arms as we were scooped up and added to the ceremony. We spun, dipped, never quite touching the ground.

  Scents spiraled to our nostrils each time we turned in the entrance’s direction. Someone was approaching. Multiple someones. Multiple wolves.

  Hurry! I screamed inside the puppy. The cave girl didn’t falter. Human only, she couldn’t smell the proximity of the hunters on her heels.

  Instead, her free hand rose, grasping a statue warm with power. It pressed into our forehead—not even our mouth?

  Now the wolves were audible, at least to our pup ears. Toenails clicking on stone as they advanced toward us. The sound was too low for human hearing, but our pursuers had to be close.

  And the cave girl was trying the same ceremony she’d failed at earlier. Would a change of venue be enough to tip us over the edge?

  “All it takes is belief and intention,” Benjie had told me days earlier. And he was right. Because just as the scents of wolves became clear enough to be distinguished as individuals, the pup and I drew one last breath together. Then our body shifted...

  ...and I was back in the present. Bare feet tapped beside my nose as a naked student pounded on a modern drum.

  Jacob grunted, strength and warmth slamming into us all as the past receded. Something had come along with me. Not a frantic spirit, but a sensation of invincibility.
The wolf in my belly was strong and wise and fully there in a way she’d never been before.

  “Huh.” Val’s eyes sparkled.

  “Wow. Cool beans.” The drumbeat ceased as Jacob reveled in the sensation. But we weren’t done yet.

  I forced the cave girl’s possible fate out of my memory then struggled to my knees so I could nudge Jacob’s fingers back toward his instrument. “Play,” I croaked. Too bad no one stashed a bottle of water beside the chainsaw.

  I didn’t need my voice, however, because Jacob took instruction easily. His rhythm restarted. The pounding of my heart sped up to match it. In the red glow of the flashlight, I found Val’s hand and drew her into the cave girl’s swaying dance.

  My separation from the past this time had come with the weight of finality. The baby had divorced her lupine half, so I would have no more invitations to that party.

  But I wasn’t sad. Instead, the world glowed with rosy possibility. Together, Val and I wrapped magical potential around us like a hand-wound pocket watch.

  The magic snagged on the knotted pack bond, then wove right over it. Potential was building.... Was building....

  It was ready at last.

  I reached for Jacob’s statue...

  ...and drew out the wrong stone wolf by mistake.

  THE INANIMATE WOLF leapt beneath my fingers like a living animal. It bit my finger, drawing a single droplet of blood.

  Intention....

  There was no time for intention. My wolf wrenched out of me like bloody vomit. Drumbeats faltered then steadied and sped up.

  “Grab the wolf.” If my earlier words had been a croak, this was the caw of a diseased raven. Val somehow understood, but she couldn’t see the animal who’d left me. With eyes that were human only, she blundered wildly around the chamber like a child playing blind man’s bluff.

  “I can’t...”

  I couldn’t either. And not just because I was no more werewolf than Val was at the moment. No, something was happening to the statue. Something was drawing strength from my legs and blurring my vision....

  Then the wolf in my hand exploded. Not into shards of stone...into floral awfulness. The wave of perfumed filth struck Val dead center, knocked Jacob away from the drum, and dropped me down to my knees.

  They were shifting...and I wasn’t. I struggled to draw my wolf back inside me. Breathed through my mouth to avoid Val’s newly Changed furry avocado stench.

  For one second, she wore my wolf. My breath caught. She wasn’t a monster. She was beautiful....

  Then...she wasn’t. The charring started at one heel, progressing across Val’s newfound body. Like a match lit to a sheet of paper then blown out, black instead of red raced across her fur.

  The charred wolf who was neither mine nor Val’s rose in a stench of smoke and flowers. The black hole of emptiness before me sucked hair into my eyes, ruffling Jacob’s fur as he lay caught in the middle of his own slower transformation.

  The awfulness took a step toward him. “No!” I yelled, diving between not-Val’s charred wrongness and Jacob’s writhing body. I’ll call Claw then everything will be alright.

  Fingers flew to our tether...then I lost my balance as nothing supported the hand I’d extended. Right, I wasn’t a werewolf any longer. There was no pack waiting to bail me out of disasters. No mate ready to come when I called.

  Not-Val growled, revealing teeth as black as the gums around them. Her stomach rumbled. She continued to advance.

  She looked less like a wolf now and more like a hellhound. Let’s not get fanciful....

  Fire emerged from her tail and her feet.

  Okay, so maybe fleeing is the best alternative after all. Thankfully, Jacob was finally up, four-legged and moving. He leapt, not at our enemy or at the exit, but toward one of the niches carved into the wall.

  “Jacob!” I yelled, the alpha commandment I’d meant to don coming out as a girlish shriek completely lacking in power.

  Jacob turned anyway, something clutched between his teeth.

  Then we were running. Jacob and I in front, not-Val stumbling behind us. At least she lacked practice walking four-legged. Otherwise, I had a feeling we would have already become lunch.

  Her breath on my back was frigid and overpowering. I could barely inhale through the stench of honeysuckle and rose.

  Then...a yelp. I risked a glance backwards, saw the beast who wasn’t Val tripping in a tangle of limbs and fire.

  We’d won maybe ten seconds, long enough to round a corner and lose ourselves to blackness. I hadn’t thought to grab the flashlight, had been depending on the illumination of not-Val’s fire....

  Jacob whimpered around whatever he’d thought was important enough to grab before fleeing. Then human fingers reached out to touch me—practice at shifting, apparently, made perfect.

  His words, on the other hand, chilled me. “Dr. Hart,” he panted, “we went the wrong way.”

  CHILLED ME...UNTIL I remembered my earlier conclusion. “There’s a back door,” I explained even as I continued trotting forward, drawn to the sound of running water. My nose bumped against something soft—Jacob. He’d taken point with his werewolf eyes. I hadn’t heard him slip past me. For the first time ever, his human body moved without the compulsion to drum pencils against the walls.

  Still, his voice trembled as he requested reassurance. “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I answered, timing my speech to match my exhales so I wouldn’t be responsible for slowing our footsteps. It was too complicated to explain that our mere existence suggested the cave girl and pup had made it out in the face of pursuing werewolves. Plus, the copper mask in the present day had ended up in a river....

  “We need to head toward water,” I added as the glint of light behind me suggested not-Val had untangled herself.

  To my surprise, Jacob laughed a soft snort of amusement even as he turned us toward the trickle—now roar—of moving water. “That’s lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “The bug-out bag. From the cave? It has an inflatable kayak inside it.”

  Jacob must have had time to explore the offerings while I was lost in the mists of prehistory. I was glad he’d made himself useful. Still—

  “We’re not going to float down an icy river in winter,” I countered. “We’ll climb out, find Claw, then figure out how to fix my mistake.”

  Mistake was such a small word for the floral awfulness I could now smell rolling down the bend toward us. On the other hand, the water ahead was sounding more and more like a river. If we crossed over, would the liquid stop a fiery hound?

  Only...I couldn’t see well enough to continue forward, let alone to cross an underground stream without Jacob’s assistance. And he’d stopped dead beside me. A rustle of plastic, then the long exhale of someone inflating a massive balloon.

  Or a kayak. “Jacob, we don’t have time for this.”

  Not-Val’s scent enfolded me. Could she have turned off her fire so she could creep up on us? The cave was pitch black and I was effectively blind....

  “We have to.” Jacob seemed unmoved by the scent as he spoke between exhales. “I didn’t make that statue.”

  “The one I used? I know. It was the wrong one.”

  And this was the wrong conversation. Not-Val’s scent was growing stronger. It caught in my throat, threatening to make me gag.

  “No, not that one. The one that Changed me. Benjie gave it to...”

  Jacob didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. His face was now visible, which meant there was a source of light behind us.

  I turned, hoping that Claw had entered the cavern to check on us. Instead, not-Val leapt over my shoulder and directly at the teenage boy.

  Chapter 29

  One breath Jacob was human. The next he was lupine.

  If we survive this, he’s going to be an impressive werewolf.

  The thought danced through my mind as I searched the cavern for a weapon. Because even if not-Val seemed uninterested in me
at the moment, I couldn’t leave Jacob to fight this battle on his lonesome. I was his elder. I’d gotten him into this. It was the job of a professor to make sure her students didn’t get eaten by black beasts of doom.

  My hysterical laughter wasn’t enough to catch not-Val’s attention. Instead, her single-minded focus remained riveted upon Jacob. She lunged; he evaded. She leapt; he slid across the rock floor on his belly, stopping one inch shy of the water’s edge.

  Water! Of course. That was the obvious solution.

  Because not-Val seemed to be avoiding the river. And while we couldn’t cross it—the opposite side was a stone wall that soared straight up until it curved into the ceiling—we could hop into Jacob’s kayak and follow the flow downstream.

  Downstream...past the waterfall roaring in the near distance. We might survive a sheer drop downwards. We wouldn’t survive much more of not-Val’s game of cat and mouse.

  She swiped at her prey with a fiery paw, and Jacob spun end over end across the cavern away from her. I grabbed a rock, threw it at not-Val...watched as it flew straight through where her ribs should have been.

  Not-Val didn’t even acknowledge my attack, just waited for Jacob to rise before advancing the next time. Waited...why?

  On her next strike, I had my answer. With each contact, not-Val grew larger. Fire tendrils licked not just from her feet and tail but from her entire body now.

  She wasn’t an ember any longer. She was a bonfire of flame.

  Her power was unfathomable—surely sufficient to squash one measly human. But she ignored me while I skirted the battle and came up beside Jacob’s kayak. She didn’t even glance in my direction when I poked my toe against the thick plastic, found it half-inflated at best.

  There was no time to finish the job. Jacob yelped as not-Val upended him for the dozenth time.

  She was as tall as a horse now. Jacob was slowing. One way or another, this battle would end before long.