Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  The real test came when Ki invited him to the cabin for Leslie’s birthday party.

  “No,” Malcolm said immediately.

  Ki had set out sandwich fixings for lunch, and Malcolm had put at least four thick slices of meat in his sandwich. That was all. Kelly, at least, had added some cheese in hers. She had also told herself to put some tomato on, just for variety, but she only tolerated that.

  “Enough of this sneaking around, Malcolm,” Ki said. “Leslie’s been really worried about you. He doesn’t let on, but the fact you haven’t talked to him, haven’t joked with him, it makes him more withdrawn than usual. I know he’s already pretty solitary, but wasn’t that what you two had in common?”

  “I stay away because I care,” Malcolm replied in frustration. “I don’t want to hurt any of them.”

  “And we’re expendable?” Ki asked, gesturing to the other shifters in the barn.

  “No, I just…”

  “You’re just scared. Well, get over it. We’re scared, too. Renee is afraid of everything all the time, and she manages to get out of the sanctuary now and then.”

  Malcolm clenched his teeth, making the tendons near his eyes twitch.

  “Yeah, I know you’re a bit raw where Renee is concerned, but she lets you stay here, she let Kelly stay to help and she shot Grant dead. I don’t know what you expect her to do to make you okay with her,” Ki said. She pointed a plastic fork to punctuate her lecture, which took away from the gravity of it a little bit.

  “Except when she leaves the sanctuary, I’m pretty sure lives aren’t on the line,” Malcolm said.

  “She didn’t used to know that. Remember after her father died? She was a mess,” Ki said, raising her voice. “She knows better now. Mostly. But the point is, she worked damn hard to get over being terrified. You’re just sulking. She wants you here, Leslie wants you here and Kelly’s helping you stay. But if you’re just going to brood alone in the woods and moan and groan about your situation, then why the hell are you staying in the first place?”

  Ki threw the fork on the table and started clearing up. She laughed with Lotus, but it seemed forced. Lotus didn’t seem to take it the wrong way. He knew what was up. Everyone could hear everyone else’s conversation at the lunch table.

  “I suppose you’ve got an opinion on it,” Malcolm said to Kelly where she sat on the edge of a cot, eating her sandwich.

  “Of course I do,” Kelly said. “I’m your sponsor.”

  Malcolm snorted. “Why don’t they see that I’m trying to keep them safe by not putting everyone in a confined space with me? I want to be there, I do. I want to be able to be around them. But they’re asking too much too quickly. God, I’ve only been coming here for, what, a week? Such a big step, I’m sure, enduring about an hour a day without killing anyone.”

  “If it would make you feel better, I could be there with you,” Kelly said. “I don’t have to get in the way or interfere with any of your time together, but I can be there as moral support. And to beat you down if you get too wolfish.”

  “You do have a way of putting things,” Malcolm muttered.

  “Oh, I’m not joking,” Kelly said. “If you need a fight, I’ll give you one. You know I will.”

  When he met her eyes, the storm grey grew paler. She didn’t look away. He still had a lot to learn, but Kelly had already learned all these lessons. She would not return to the shame that he desperately wanted her to allow him, not with all the good things that being a werewolf gave her. Such as the tentative warmth in those light eyes.

  “So you’ll go,” Kelly said, her voice low and a little rough. She swallowed that back, cognizant of Ki approaching.

  “Yes,” Malcolm said.

  When she blinked, he shook his head slightly, as though waking up from a daydream.

  “Did you just do that to me? Make me say yes?”

  “No,” she replied. “I don’t do that.”

  “Could you?” he asked, his bewilderment shifting to curiosity.

  “In theory,” Kelly said. She took a sip from her hot chocolate.

  “Have you ever made someone do something like that?” he asked.

  “You mean compel them to do my bidding?” Kelly asked. She shuddered. “God, no. I’ve used a bit of what they call psychokinesis to make people move before, but that’s not the same thing. That’s altering the physical. But I don’t do that other thing. I don’t make people want to do things.”

  “But you could?”

  “I’ve never done it before,” Kelly said, almost whispering. What she didn’t say was that she sometimes felt she could.

  Most of her magic was intuitive. A lot of the witches she had met since her transformation and introduction into the world of magic were by the book, the covens using Books of Shadows with written-down spells passed down through generations. Other witches led magic where they wanted it, but for most of her life, Kelly had stumbled blindly over magic’s path. It swept over her, sometimes threatening to take her over if she didn’t understand whatever it wanted her to do or know.

  “So if I was going to attack someone, you could stop me?” Malcolm asked.

  “Hmmm?” Kelly returned back to herself. “I wouldn’t even have to use magic, if that’s what you’re asking. Come on, Malcolm, go to the party. Surely you’ve noticed how much better you are during the days now that you let the wolf free at nights.”

  He stared at his hands, loose and relaxed in his lap. “It has been better,” he said.

  “What better way to celebrate that than with your friends?” Kelly said. “Isn’t that what you wanted, to control the wolf so you could be with your dogs? That’s why you stay. You should probably do it now that you can.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Malcolm replied.

  “I’ll make sure you can,” Kelly said.

  “Leslie could really use a boost and so could you,” Ki said, finally returning to their side of the table. “And Renee would really like to know you’re okay. She’s the one who asked me to ask you.”

  “Why doesn’t she ask me herself?” Malcolm asked. “Oh, right, she’s afraid.”

  Ki poked him in his abdomen. Malcolm jumped and clutched his stomach.

  “If she’s afraid, it’s only because you’ve literally snapped at her every time she tried begging for forgiveness,” Ki said.

  For such a little woman, she could make a big werewolf cower.

  “She wasn’t the one who bit you, Malcolm,” Ki continued. “Grant did, and Grant did it because you were a good man and tried to kill him to protect her.”

  “So I should blame myself for going out there?” Malcolm asked. A flush surfaced on his cheeks, and the white silver in his eyes returned, but with a different kind of heat.

  “No, you should blame Grant,” Ki replied. “So get your head out of your butt and stop blaming her, okay?”

  In spite of the subtle perfume of fear, Ki was a small, dark virago. Kelly thoroughly approved as she watched them over her hot chocolate.

  “Look, I’m going, all right?” Malcolm said, getting to his feet and nearly breaking his side of the table from the way he gripped it.

  “Good,” Ki said. They glared at each other, but their fight had the tenor of old arguments rather than werewolf temperament.

  “Glad that got cleared up,” Kelly said mildly.

  “Screw you,” Malcolm said.

  Kelly repressed the urge to rap his knuckles with an invisible ruler.

  He stalked out. Kelly heard him start to run the second the door closed. Ki collapsed onto the bench where Malcolm had been sitting.

  “Is he going to be like this all the time?” Ki asked. She rubbed her eyes.

  “For a while,” Kelly said. “I didn’t have this problem.”

  “Why not?”

  “I spent all my adjustment time as a wolf,” Kelly said. “There wasn’t opportunity for me to annoy the crap out of everyone.”

  Ki smiled weakly. “Like I said, he wasn’t exactly Mr Co
ngeniality before. I swear he got monthly mood swings like a woman. But at least I knew when he got in a funk before, he’d get out of it after a few days.”

  “Just keep pushing back at him,” Kelly said. “You might consider carrying silver, though. Just in case.”

  “So I should push back at him, but he might get dangerous if I do?” Ki asked. “What kind of advice is that?”

  “He needs to learn to control his temper. He can’t do that if you capitulate to it. Would you do that to an aggressive dog, walk on eggshells around him and cater to his every demand? Or would you show that dog who’s the alpha in the relationship?” Kelly asked.

  “It’s different with the dogs,” Ki said. “For one thing, I’m not alpha.”

  “I’ve seen you with the dogs. You’re assertive with them,” Kelly said.

  “Dogs are more reasonable, even the ones that need to be corrected,” Ki said. “And the ones that can’t be corrected, well, we don’t accept them here. If we can’t work with them when we’re dogs ourselves…”

  “But those are the ones that can’t be helped. Malcolm can be helped,” Kelly replied.

  “With silver,” Ki said, dark eyes a touch cold.

  “For your protection, not for his punishment,” Kelly explained.

  “He’s different from the dogs because even as a man he’s substantially larger than me. As a werewolf… Geez, Kelly, I’m just a hound mix when I’m a dog and just this as a girl,” Ki said. “And you want me to make him mad? Size does matter, you know.”

  “Hence the silver.”

  “I don’t want to kill him,” Ki said. “Britt told me what happened to Grant. I don’t want to do that to him.”

  “If you carry silver, even if you just wear a silver necklace, he’ll smell it as surely as he can smell you,” Kelly said. “He’ll recognise it as the warning that it is. I know I do. Grant was reckless.”

  “Aren’t all werewolves reckless?” Ki asked.

  “Most of us,” Kelly said. “Some of us don’t have that luxury. Malcolm’s wolfish side needs to learn he’s one of those. It helps that he has a family, something at stake.”

  “But he doesn’t really.” Ki ran her fingers through her hair. She looked tired. “He’s been part of the core pack for about six years, and he had a cordial relationship with all of us, but he was never as much a part of it, kind of like Leslie. It’s always been me and Max and then Jake and Britt and Renee. He’s just not a pack kind of guy.”

  “He’s more pack than you think he is,” Kelly said. “Maybe more pack than he thought he was. Do you know where he was before he came here?”

  Kelly had seen glimpses of Malcolm’s past before the sanctuary, but it was buried deep within him in places he kept locked. Most of the time people’s thoughts and memories and wishes just came to her. She rarely sought them out—she didn’t like to pry.

  “No, not really,” Ki said, brow furrowing. “He talks about his childhood. He was raised in the city, New York City, so this is kind of a big change for him. After that, when he left home, he doesn’t really talk about that. I’m not sure if it was traumatising or he got in over his head or something. But I do know ours was his first pack. Knowing he was always so alone, that’s what I don’t want for him now.”

  “And it’s what he doesn’t want to return to,” Kelly mused. Her vision blinked, a momentary blackness, but it may have just been the lights flickering—hopefully without her influence. She wasn’t particularly stressed at the moment.

  “You’ve trusted me so far to take care of Malcolm and help him,” Kelly said.

  Ki nodded.

  “Then trust me now. I don’t think you’ll need the silver, but it can only help.”

  Ki sighed. “I’ll ask Renee whether she has any jewellery. I don’t want to carry around her knife. And just between us, I don’t think she wants me to carry it either. She’s been keeping it under her pillow. I saw it one day when I was doing the linen laundry. There it was under her pillow, even though half the time she sleeps with Britt.”

  “Why do you think she does that?” Kelly asked, although she knew why. She didn’t even have to read Renee’s mind for it, but Ki seemed to be more concerned than she needed to be.

  “Well, with Malcolm angry at her, I told Max she keeps it with her in case Malcolm tries to kill her in her sleep. She probably doesn’t do it because of you. We can all tell she likes you,” Ki said.

  Kelly smiled a little and inspected her pale fingernails. It was no secret in the sanctuary that Renee had a bit of a crush on her. Neither Britt nor Jake minded, and neither did Kelly. It was a minor infatuation, nothing more.

  “No, the knife isn’t for me. But if you, Max and Malcolm need reassurance, it’s not because of Malcolm either.”

  “Then why?” Ki asked.

  “It’s to do with Grant.”

  Ki looked confused. “Grant’s dead. She killed him. Why would she still be afraid of him?”

  Kelly shook her head. “That’s not for me to say. It’s for her to figure out.”

  She understood the compulsion to keep a weapon, to remember old blood drawn. Kelly couldn’t get rid of her own weapon. Her weapon was herself, her wolf. She could never throw it in a river.

  But as soon as the detective had returned the knife to Renee as a personal effect—no charges filed—Renee had kept it as a reminder not just of her own vulnerability or her ability to overcome it, something which Kelly knew was important to Renee. But Renee also kept it to remember what she was capable of, because that was enough to give anyone nightmares if one had even a smidgeon of conscience.

  “I don’t think Renee owns much jewellery,” Ki said, getting up again to start cleaning the dishes.

  “Ask her if her mother left anything.”

  Ki turned around, disquieted by Kelly’s suggestion. “I don’t know if I could do that. I mean, it’s her mother.”

  “Give it a try,” Kelly said with absolute confidence.

  “You know, you get really weird when you do that,” Ki said. “When you talk like you know things before they happen. It’s eerie.”

  “I’ve been told that,” Kelly replied. “I’m just used to it, the precognition. It’s always there, more or less.”

  “What’s it like to know things most people don’t get to know?” Ki asked over the sound of the sink faucet.

  “I don’t know what it’s like not to,” Kelly said.

  “I bet it’s not as cool as it sounds,” Lotus chimed in from where he was eating his third sandwich at the table. He had been listening and watching without comment prior to that point.

  “You’d be right. It used to be completely out of control,” Kelly said. “You wouldn’t think so, but it’s calmed down a lot since I was bitten.”

  “Yeah, I never got that,” Lotus said. “Why did your becoming a werewolf make you more in control?”

  “My magic was too much for the human,” Kelly said. “The werewolf was just big enough to handle it. It isn’t completely in control, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting on top of a suitcase that’s only just closed and latched but will burst at any moment. Maybe if I had grown up knowing I was a witch and around other people like me, I would have been better. But it just kind of oozed out of me like a radiation leak. Some teens have acne breakouts and breakdowns. I had prophecy blackouts and electrical failures. Now it’s fairly mellow.”

  As long as I stay mellow, Kelly thought to herself. As long as I don’t push it too far. But she didn’t say that. She had been in control for the last four years. She knew her limits.

  “Still, even though I got the magic reined in, I was initially out of control as the wolf,” Kelly added. “We all have to go through a variation of it. David let me get it out of my system.”

  He had been a patient man. He had patiently stalked her, made sure that she was something he wanted. Then he’d patiently waited for the wolf to run itself ragged. He’d ended up with the prize for his patience for four g
ood years. But somehow, after all that time and in spite of all that patience, David still hadn’t understood what he’d worked so hard to possess.

  Kelly thought that only Grant had ever seen what she really was, and that was the only reason she’d let him spend time with her, run with her, fuck her, watch her magic and be a part of it. David had seen her magic as an accessory. Only Grant had known how much she kept under the surface.

  Grant’s wildness had been a welcome counterweight to Kelly’s personal control. Sometimes Kelly wondered whether she had been the reason why Renee had caught Grant’s eye. It wasn’t magic that had attracted him to Renee, because Renee didn’t have a magical bone in her body. But they had that same almost pathological self-discipline—except he had been able to break through Renee’s. Grant had screwed Kelly for the same reason that Renee had screwed him—because they liked playing with fire. Of the three of them, Renee was the one most easily burned, but Grant had immolated himself in the end.

  Grant had been a grade-A prick, but Kelly missed him anyway. And that was why Renee kept the knife. She missed what Grant had been to her as well. He would always be a part of her. A part she could never poison with silver, even if she sometimes wanted to.

  Just like Kelly could never outrun her magic. All she could do was keep pressing down and hope that the worst was behind her.

  * * * *

  Kelly had forgotten how expansive yet cosy and comfortable the cabin was. Renee welcomed her in with a hug around her waist and invited her to eat with them. Kelly initially wanted to refuse, since she had promised to keep her distance. But Ki couldn’t hide a smile at Kelly’s conflicted expression when Renee offered Kelly the rare steak that Jake had cooked for her.

  It would just be rude if she insisted on going to the living area in order to eat her dinner, so although she wasn’t part of the main pack, she sat next to Renee and across from Malcolm at the dining room table.

  Kelly periodically checked on Malcolm, but he was doing better than even he had expected he would so near Renee, who smelt positively delicious given the amorous activities in which she’d engaged with Britt earlier that evening. Neither Kelly nor Malcolm—indeed, none of the shapeshifters for that matter—had to walk in on them to know what had occurred. It didn’t matter that Renee had washed.