Wolf Dreams

by Aimee Easterling

  I also understood his question without the need for human words as go-betweens. What was I doing? What did I see/hear/smell/guess?

  Instead of answering, our body pivoted and arrowed toward the tasty tidbit. Visions of blood and meat inundated our shared mind.

  Abruptly, I realized what was happening. I was a wolf, about to take down some wild animal...if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, we might be close enough to civilization that I was smelling a dog, cat, or even a stray child. How could we be so certain this was dinner when all we smelled was blood?

  No. Uh-uh. Absolutely not. Turn around immediately.

  The monster ignored me just like I’d ignored her when she spoke suggestions inside our shared brain hours earlier. Our pace picked up, the trot turning into a canter then into a run.

  Beside us, Claw’s shoulder bumped against ours companionably. Without the necessity of words, he’d understood our purpose and decided he was willing to help.

  In fact, he was nudging us slightly downhill now, guiding us closer to the source of the blood scent. My wolf picked up her pace even as I attempted to drag in our heels.

  Rationally, I understand that hunting was, perhaps, the best way to survive a plane crash in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Rationally, I understood that Claw and the monster were being realistic while I was not.

  But I wasn’t prepared to kill a living being with my teeth, ripping out its jugular and subsisting on its life blood. Too bad I apparently had no choice.

  I HAD NO CHOICE...BUT this time the wolf didn’t thrust me into darkness in retaliation for disagreeing with her. Instead, I was entirely present as we bounded through snow drifts in search of the blood scent, an aroma so strong I expected to stumble across a scene of mayhem as we neared its source.

  A wolf’s nose, however, is a powerful organ. Or so I realized when we stopped moments later atop a cluster of pointy tracks colored by a single blood droplet. Nothing had died here; it had barely even bled.

  Plus, the cloven hooves, were instantly recognizable. Deer. One larger and one smaller. I’d eaten venison before, so this hunt wouldn’t be much different. I’d just ignore the fact we were unlikely to cook the resulting meat.

  Claw seemed to sense my relief because he sidled up beside me. His side rubbed my side; our breath slowed and synchronized. Even through two thick layers of fur I could feel his heat.

  Pack, the monster murmured, and this time I was in complete agreement. Glancing sideways at the raven clinging to Claw’s rump with sharp talons, I included Adena in that designation even once she hopped down to peck at the darkening blood.

  Our pack mate was hungry...and we were also. So we ran. Along the trail in the direction the hooves pointed. Claw gave us the lead, and for long moments I lost myself in the wolf.

  She was beauty and power, and Claw was our partner. Two wolves plus a raven just barely made up a pack.

  The moon set and the sun rose while we hunted. Whatever had harmed these deer must have been terrifying for them to flee so intently. Or maybe they could smell us the way we’d smelled them. Maybe they sensed our interest as we picked our way across an icy stream then slunk on our bellies through a gap in a briar patch.

  Still, wounded deer can’t run forever. Eventually, the tracks came closer together—the animals were slowing. We were almost there...and electricity sparkled between me and Claw like lightning bolts.

  No, not visibly. But I could feel the tingle every time our bodies brushed fur. No wonder my monster and I were both ebullient. Together, the pair of us pirouetted into Claw’s personal space a second time. Slid our flank beneath his chin and across his neck.

  This was flirting. Wolf speak for “I like you.” In my human body, I would have been more circumspect. But at that moment I was one with the wolf.

  Our nose slid lower, sniffing at Claw’s anus. I would have expected the scent there to be revolting, but instead it felt like the human equivalent of peering across a candlelit table into the eyes of a potential partner.

  Hints and secrets blossomed around us. Claw was virile, healthy, ready to mate.

  Then his scent, sweet at first, bittered. One millisecond of warning before Claw whirled, growling. He flipped us sideways. The ground punched us breathless. Huge, sharp fangs closed around our snout.

  Our pack mate—we’d thought our partner—stood above us stiff-legged. Growled. Bit harder until I felt his teeth slide into my flesh.

  Claw’s gaze burned through us for one long moment. His eyes were hard, flinty, warning.

  With a snort, he relaxed his jaws.

  Relaxed his jaws and leapt away as if we were offal. Spun with teeth snapping, startling Adena so much she tumbled into the snow.

  “Caaw!” the raven complained, leaping skyward. My throat tightened as my wolf and I expressed whimpered confusion.

  Claw was uninterested in either reaction. Instead, he turned back toward the deer tracks and sped along their path, not bothering to wait for us to find our feet.

  OUR KILL. I’d like to say that assertion came from my wolf only. But Claw’s rejection made me more bloodthirsty than I’d ever been.

  It was only a deer, and I was angry. Hurt and confused and ready to hunt.

  Whoever drove our shared body, rage was a fine fuel. We caught up with Claw and overtook him. Bounded down into a gully where the deer had likely holed up just after dawn.

  A doe...and her fawn. The latter was half-grown, spots faded but legs much shorter than its mother’s. Deer and offspring startled as we burst upon them, the smaller animal struggling as it rose to its feet.

  The scent of blood here was overwhelming. As if the mother had licked the wound on her child’s leg to clean it, thus restarting the bleeding that had led us to this spot.

  But the fawn wasn’t too hurt to flee from danger. Tasty, my wolf suggested as the baby darted sideways. Spindly legs struggled to escape a snow drift and we swerved, intent upon taking down the easiest prey.

  My wolf was intent, but I was human enough not to want to kill a half-grown baby. Human enough to exert control I hadn’t realized I was capable of, pivoting our body around to the left.

  There, Claw had cornered the doe up against the rock outcropping she’d sheltered beneath. She had no escape other than through him, and her forelegs lashed out in a preemptive strike.

  Forget the fawn. We have to help our partner, I begged the monster.

  She had already wrested back control of our shared body, but she listened. My wolf and I leapt before my plea fully materialized. Darted beneath the doe’s belly in search of the soft skin between her hind legs.

  Only, we didn’t make it. There were hooves back there too; our lack of experience was telling. The brush of air, a twist away. And still one hard hoof glanced across our shoulder, knocking us down.

  Knocking us down onto the broken leg we’d been cradling. Wolf body crumpled as agony engulfed both me and the wolf.

  Distantly, I noted Claw barking a belated warning. Vaguely, I caught a glimpse of the doe leaping over us. Then she was atop the rock outcropping and out of our reach.

  High in the air, Adena cawed annoyance even as the pain in our leg receded. Closer, Claw’s frustration was evident as he assessed our status then silently turned away.

  I saw all this as I breathed slowly through lessening agony. Smelled the reek of urine where the frightened deer had voided her bladder as she ran.

  A crunch came from behind me. Teeth through bone, death in an instant. I knew what I’d see even before I turned to face the direction in which Claw had gone.

  The fawn hadn’t run as far or as fast as its mother. Hadn’t been able to prevent a wolf from leaping atop its back.

  And when the body I currently inhabited completed its revolution, the formerly pristine snow around our partner was bathed in a harsh, dark smear of young blood.

  Chapter 17

  I was horrified...and my monster was starving. For one long moment we struggled—stay, go; eat, flee. Then my wolf
won yet another war.

  I wasn’t even able to close my eyes to block out the carnage as she dove onto the kill to rip and tear and slurp and swallow without chewing. Adena, darn her traitorous feathers, landed beside us and went straight for the eyeballs. Stiletto beak piercing orbs that looked like Bambi’s...then like nothing so much as a small pile of extremely unappetizing goo.

  Adena and my wolf were ravenous animals, and Claw wasn’t much better. More fastidious maybe as he gnawed raw meat free of the hide before crunching the bones in half to get at the marrow. But the lack of blood splattering his fur didn’t make up for the fact that he’d killed a baby deer and was eating it seconds after its heart had ceased beating.

  I wanted to vomit. Wanted to expunge the flesh that was warming my belly. Wanted to run back in the direction from which we’d come, to rewind time, to change my mind about releasing my inner beast.

  My father had been right. Losing control was unimaginably foul.

  Of course, there was one way out. If this wolf and I were two beings in one body that flipped and flopped between human and animal, I would be back in control if we dropped the fur and regrew our thumbs.

  I focused every ounce of my being on that one outcome. I let the wolf feast, let her sate herself on steaming liver even as the scent of iron grew so strong I could barely breathe through my nose.

  Then I pushed her sideways with all my strength, trying to regain command of our shared body.

  The frigid snow that had been unnoticeable through our deep fur coat grew colder. Blood thrummed in my ears as hair started receding....

  Then Claw barked once: Stop. Stay wolf.

  The words bonged through my brain, deep and masculine and as impossible to disobey as his order to protect the President. Meanwhile, the wolf body I inhabited shuddered and reformed as easily as if she was shedding water droplets after a swim.

  Shaken loose, I fell from my perch in our brain, plummeting down into the monster’s belly. Roiling among chunks of barely chewed flesh and liver, I lost my hold on reality and allowed the world to go dark.

  THIS TIME, THOUGH, I wasn’t out for hours. Instead, after dragging my way back up the monster’s spine and into her brainstem, I noted that the sun had moved no more than a fraction of an inch across the sky.

  Meanwhile, the world was white again rather than filled with the gray-black that represented blood in my color-blind vision. I padded after Claw through a sun-streaked forest, my body sated and sleepy but my monster understanding the need to abandon the carcass and find a safer spot to spend the day.

  Together, we walked for a timeless eternity until the murmur of a stream called us. Or rather, it called me, offering a way to wipe the taste of blood out of my mouth if not out of my mind.

  Perhaps that’s why I drank until my belly sloshed with liquid. Drank so much that even snuggling down beside Claw’s warm body wasn’t enough to keep me sleeping when we finally curled up for a nap in the noon sunlight. After waking twice to racing thoughts and bulging bladder, I finally pushed myself out of the cocoon of pack togetherness and slipped away from Claw to find a spot to pee.

  Here, my wolf suggested repeatedly and wearily. She saw no reason to wander off into the forest to answer the call of nature.

  I countered that I wasn’t going to squat anywhere that Claw might catch sight of me. I’d become a fawn killer, but I wasn’t into public displays of indecency.

  Disgusted with my prudishness, the monster drifted back into slumber, leaving me to manage four paws that were suddenly difficult to coordinate on my own. Above my head, trees creaked ominously with the weight of heavy snow fall. Flashes of memory darted through my vision while the forest rustled with unseen life.

  Adena’s beak tearing through Bambi eyes. My own teeth ripping past the fawn’s belly and into its lungs.

  The air stunk with a fog of self-loathing. Hairs rose along the length of my spine.

  I was scaring myself silly out here in broad daylight. Was turning woodpeckers and squirrels into monsters so I wouldn’t have to remember the monstrosity of myself.

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I squatted and released a flow of urine. Turned and headed back toward the sleeping wolf whose warm body would help me forget the morning’s traumas. Claw might not be pleased with my flirting. But he’d accepted my changed self far easier than I accepted myself....

  I smelled the real reason for my discontent a split second before something huge and heavy crashed into me. Damp, snowy fur and unripe avocado. The signature aroma of a troubled werewolf.

  I spun upward, powered by a heavy male body. Gasped at an unplanned shift back into humanity even as my attacker lost his fur one second before slamming me into a tree.

  Rough bark bit into my backside. My healing arm twinged but, thankfully, didn’t twist sideways and rebreak.

  “What?” I tried to say, but couldn’t. Because the naked man pressed up against me had his hands clenched tight around my throat.

  WELL, THIS IS FAMILIAR....

  “Where is it?” His breath was foul...not that mine was likely much better. The lesson here is: werewolves need mouthwash far more than the average Joe.

  My brain was going off on tangents. A side effect of terror. With an effort, I struggled to focus on my opponent’s face.

  Unfortunately, the wolf vision that had assisted me while four-legged wasn’t as effective in human form. I squinted, lack of glasses making the world around me fuzzy and dim. His features were a blur.

  “The wolf!” my attacker continued, dragging my attention back to my predicament. His face was red with anger and his hairline was receding—or at least I thought that was a shiny forehead. It might have been a pale splotch on his otherwise dark-topped head.

  The man shook me vigorously, clearly annoyed with the time I’d spent perusing his features. Unable to fight back, my teeth rattled and my cranium pounded hard against the tree trunk.

  “Tell me!” he finished, relaxing his grip sufficiently so I could speak if I kept my voice low. And I did speak, although not from fear of further shaking. I had a feeling that my sleeping partner could make short work of this malcontent if we headed back toward his napping spot.

  “Claw is...” I choked out, eyes watering with the effort. This wasn’t working. I used my working hand to point back in the direction from which I’d come.

  A working hand. Yes, that meant I had a way out of this predicament. Well, a way out other than waking up my sleeping monster and letting her rip my opponent apart.

  I was trying hard not to be that person. So I took matters into my own hands...or rather into the hand at the end of my unbroken arm.

  Without allowing myself to think too much about it, I made the peace sign with my fingers and swung them up to bore out my opponent’s eyeballs. Just like Adena did, I thought, swallowing down bile.

  Memories of the fawn’s dismemberment slowed my hand. The werewolf who held me in his power released my neck to swat aside my fingers then changed direction to slap me across the face.

  Ow. Tears sprang into my eyes, obscuring my already fuzzy vision. Bark bit into the back of my shoulders as the hand around my neck clenched harder.

  “Bitch. Answer me or else.” His voice so gritty that I understood his inner wolf was seconds away from emerging. But it was the slapping hand coming to rest on the tree trunk inches from my nostrils that froze me in place.

  This close up, I could see what I’d missed earlier. My attacker’s fingers were bruised black at the knuckles. As if he’d punched a wall...or shut his hand in a door.

  Which meant the mugger from the vault had somehow found me after an unexpected plane crash in the wilderness. Had followed me to a location no one knew I’d end up at, then followed me again when Claw and I ran off to gain control of my wolf in the snow.

  I couldn’t quite snap sufficient puzzle pieces together to figure out how he’d managed that feat of sleuthing. I could, however, broach the more important corollary.


  Why would a complete stranger bother following me here? Perhaps because he wasn’t a complete stranger.

  “This is your last chance,” the mugger growled. And I knew he wasn’t bluffing because a monster just like mine glared out from behind his expanding pupils. “Where. Is. The. Wolf. Statue?”

  I was so far out of my depth that I was drowning. So I did the only thing I could think of—I called for my inner monster.

  Called and called. Then called again.

  Only the monster was absent, lost in my belly just as I’d been lost in her intestines. And as I strained to find her, I descended into a protective trance.

  Chapter 18

  Tiny ears. An elongated snout. The barest indication of ripples in stone fur.

  A wolf sculpture was forming beneath my fingers as the rough rock in my right hand gradually abraded away the softer limestone in my left.

  The ancient artist—back in her cave—set the figurine on the flat surface of a boulder-turned-altar, allowing us to view it from all sides.

  The wolf she’d carved was more slender than the one I’d been given in the airplane. Well, more slender in most places. Its belly bulged as if it had just feasted...or as if this was a mother ready to give birth to young.

  I shivered—or would have if I’d had any control over my current body. Instead, all I could do was watch as we began to chant and twirl.

  Around us, the light of half a dozen lamps provided flickering illumination. The painted animals on the cave walls appeared to spring to life. And was the sculpture on the altar stretching and moving? I couldn’t tell if it was illusion or reality that made its jaws open as if to bark or howl.

  The cave reverberated with lupine cacophony. Yips and growls so intense they couldn’t have come from any stone statue. Instead, each time we twirled closer to the yawning entrance, the sounds grew louder, as if a pack was drawing ever nearer to our painted cave.