by Marcy Jacks
That made one goal appear in his mind.
He needed to have this human. This male. This creature belonged to only him.
So it was good that he was to come closer.
A struggle to keep from growling at every worm that put their hands on what belonged to the wolf, but he'd quickly learned to put his ears back and show his teeth to keep the male away from him.
And the wolf wanted that scent.
So did the man buried inside.
That was right. He was a man.
A male mating with another male? Well, he would figure this out later. For now, wolf and man were in agreement with each other for the first time in a very long time as the human side of his brain started to wake. Started to rise from the ashes of his mind.
Just a little more of that scent. Just a little more…
* * * *
Jason only let himself sit next to the cage when he checked his phone and saw that the money had been deposited in his account. He sighed then. This was real.
He spent ten minutes there, Mr. Forg watching him, smiling and nodding to the guys in white jackets before he seemed satisfied with Jason’s courage.
Or maybe it was something else.
“All right, let’s get everything settled, and we can come back down to finish your hour and maybe decide if you’re willing to do more?”
Jason nodded, trying not to look back at the wolf, though it felt as though his eyes were being compelled to glance over at the thing.
“Right.”
Could he get in the cage with it? It was so…big. One bite and it could take his head off, but it looked almost like a big dog just sitting there. How was he supposed to feel threatened by that?
Remember what it is.
Jason shook his head, walking out of the basement with Mr. Forg, still looking down at his phone with disbelief. The wolf rustled and growled a little as Jason got farther away from it, toward the doors and then the elevator.
He tried to ignore the clenching in his stomach.
“Does it always do that?”
“It’s restless. No doubt because it can smell you.”
Jason nodded. “Right.”
The first half of his payment, and not even the whole thing if he decided to go a little further with this, was right there in his bank account. He didn’t have any reason to worry. This was a professional setting, and he was going to be all right so long as he did everything he was told.
Just let this thing sniff at him for an hour and he would be good to go. Perfect.
So excited at having such a huge amount of money in his account, Jason immediately started paying some bills as he rode the elevator back up to the first floor, just in case this whole thing turned out to be some kind of crazy dream that he ended up waking up from.
Then he went to see Lisa.
She was in the guest room with the other kids.
She didn't sit in the corner by herself anymore. She sat at the little round table with the other kids, coloring when he walked in, though her head was still down and she barely looked at him when he put his hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, kiddo, look, I'm going to leave you with a babysitter for a couple of hours, all right?"
Lisa hesitated then shrugged.
"You'll be with Mrs. Walker again. You remember her? You seemed to like her."
He was hopeful for that, but Lisa just shrugged again.
So Jason took a look at what she was drawing.
That was an awful lot of red crayon she was using.
Maybe that wasn't a river of blood he was looking at and those stick figures were only sleeping.
Jason sighed, taking the paper and pulling it away from her, getting to his knees and turning her chair.
"Lisa, look at me. I've got some great news. The people here have offered me a job. It's not going to take up a lot of time. I don't think. I'll only be doing this for a couple of days, but it'll save the house. We can get the roof fixed, and I get maybe get you some nice new dresses and that new Nintendo console your friends have."
Her eyes finally brightened at that.
She was quiet, but the other kids in her school still brought their games, and he'd seen her looking at them whenever he'd come to pick her up from her school.
He was glad for that. It meant she was slowly getting back into normal things.
If she wanted to bury her sorrows, he'd rather she did it with a Mario game than with whatever the hell she was drawing.
"I've already been paid, so I need to work right away. If you're a good girl, we'll try to get to the store tomorrow. Your birthday is next month. Maybe we can get you something early to celebrate, right?”
Lisa nodded, a hesitant smile on her face, but then she stopped. "You won't be walking home, right?"
She rarely said anything to him anymore, so this was clearly important.
Jason was glad to be able to shake his head and tell the truth. "No, and no waiting at the bus stop at night either. I'll be able to afford the Uber tonight. Sound good?"
Lisa nodded, leaning in close. "When will you be home?"
"Uh…" Good question. He glanced back at Mr. Forg, who waited by the door, but he didn’t think the other man knew exactly either. "I honestly don't know, so if Mrs. Walker puts you to bed, make sure you go to bed, all right? I don't want to come home and find you awake watching Night of the Living Dead again."
He didn't want her watching any of those things, and he got the feeling she had already gone through a library of horror flicks way outside of her age range before he’d found out.
It wasn't as though they had cable anymore, but Lisa was pretty good at finding what she wanted online, and since their neighbors didn't have a password to protect their Wi-Fi…
Yeah, he was going to have to start paying for his own Internet soon. There would be no excuses with the amount of money he would be paid.
"Lisa, look at me and promise you're not going to be up past your bedtime. All right?"
Lisa hesitated again. Then she nodded.
"Look at me and do that." Sometimes it seemed she was willing to stick to her word when he made her look at him.
She did. Lisa looked at him with those eternally sad eyes, and she nodded.
Considering that was one of the better talks Jason had in a while with his sister, he hugged her and was happy when he felt her little arms holding him back, even if he could barely feel them.
Then he turned the care of his sister over to Mrs. Walker.
She'd watched Lisa for him before, so he was confident with leaving her in the other woman's care.
Also, every time Mrs. Walker went to Jason's house to watch Lisa, he always came home to the scent of pastries having been baked.
With that out of the way, Jason signed the papers put in front of him by Mr. Forg. He barely read them, only noting the parts where he would get promptly paid.
That was all he cared about.
Then it was back down into the basement to sit next to the wolf.
One hour. He had to do at least one hour next to the giant wolf and he would get more money.
And pull his phone out to pay some more bills.
God, he still couldn't believe something like this had fallen into his lap. He was too thrilled about the whole thing that, for a while, he forgot to be afraid of the enormous wolf in the basement.
He would have offered his services a long time ago if he'd known he could make money off being a wolf soul. Why hadn't his mother ever done this?
The wolf looked as though it had been laying down when Jason walked in because it promptly sprang back up to a stand the moment he was within range of the cage.
A fold-out chair had been put near the bars. A little too close for his liking, but he supposed he didn't have to actually know how the people here were going to study this.
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
Mr. Forg gestured to the chair. "Have a seat. Pay attention to anything…interesting you might notic
e. You can even play on your phone if you like. We would just like to note if there is a change."
Jason looked at the wolf. It stared back at him. As though giving him some sort of challenge.
Maybe it was.
He wondered if he could open the cage…
Jason shook the thought from his head.
Where did something like that come from?
"Something wrong?"
Jason shook his head. "Nope. Right as rain. All right, let’s do this."
He clapped his hands together and went to the seat. The people in white coats stepped aside as though Jason were somehow parting the Red Sea.
So strange.
He took a seat, noting the way the people here looked at him.
"Uh, how long should I sit here for again?”
Mr. Forg wouldn't stop smiling. One of the men in white stepped forward, handing him a clipboard and a pen.
"We'll try something simple. We’ll keep to an hour. Take notes on whatever looks…out of the ordinary. If he changes, make note of that. If he speaks, make note of that. Any changes in your own feelings on the matter will also be welcome.”
Jason thought that was the biggest sign of anything out of the ordinary he should be looking for, but he didn't mention it.
He didn't think getting snippy with the people who were paying him a huge sum of money would be a wise idea.
So he sat, and then he was stunned when everyone started to walk away.
"Uh, wait, am I going to be here by myself?"
He looked up at the cage.
The wolf stood over him, and Jason inched his chair away.
He didn't think the bars were wide enough that the wolf could reach through and grab him, but just in case…
"It's just for the first hour," Mr. Forg said. "You'll be right as rain. Trust me."
Jason swallowed hard, reminding himself that this was a professional setting and that he didn't have anything to worry about.
The people here knew what they were doing, and he could definitely put his trust in Mr. Forg.
"You're right. Yeah, it's fine. I can do that." Jason rolled his shoulders, priming himself for what was to come. "This will be easy."
"Good man. I'll see you in one hour."
"Right. Hey, Mr. Forg?"
The other man looked back at him as he was about to walk away.
Jason wanted to let the man know how grateful he was for this and to let him know that he wouldn't be throwing away this opportunity he was being given.
"Thank you. For real. Everything you've ever done has been—"
"That's enough of that. It's I who should thank you. This is a great service you will be providing to our cause. If we can determine the real cause for why shifters are drawn to people like you…” He shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps the hunters can stop their hunting if there is a cure to be found."
Strange comparison. Well, whatever. Jason supposed the Humanity Now would want to stop hunters on some level.
They were humans who went out and either hunted the shifters or kidnapped wolf souls to sell to them.
Either way, people were hurt, and that seemed to be the main reason Humanity Now existed.
To help people.
"Right, yeah, that sounds great."
Mr. Forg smiled at him. "I knew you would understand. See you in one hour."
Jason nodded then felt the eyes of the wolf on him. He turned back as Mr. Forg walked away.
"Right, one hour."
The doors closed, and Jason couldn't believe he was alone with this huge thing.
Maybe they thought the lack of other scents would be helpful.
He swallowed hard as the wolf continued to stare at him, head bent, eyes intense.
A shiver went up Jason's spine. He quickly looked away from the wolf, swallowing hard, trying to ignore the stare, but he felt it on him even as he turned away from the creature.
Not much could happen in one hour, right?
God, he hoped so.
Chapter Three
The wolf stared at the man ahead of him. Interesting creature. Smelled good.
Good enough to eat, but not in the way the wolf was used to.
The wolf wanted to curl around this human and sniff him, perhaps groom his hair. It was all over the place, but something deep inside began to stir. The man half, the side that had been dormant for so long while the wolf ran and hunted and played on his own.
Clarity. That was what started to seep into his mind. The wolf was aware, but it didn’t mind. It didn’t seek to slip back into the mindlessness of existence.
It wanted more of that scent. It wanted to communicate with the human.
With his human.
The wolf wagged his tail. Then whined when he could not get the attention of the male with the sweet scent that tickled his nose.
He placed his nose close to the cage, close enough that he felt the warning buzz of the heat and fire that attacked him whenever he touched the metal…
He wanted his human. He sensed the human wanted to come to him, as well, but he stayed back for some reason.
He knew words. If he could just let them come forward from his mind, perhaps he could convince the man to step over here, where the wolf could get a proper sniff.
* * * *
Jason wrote down on the clipboard the time and the whining noise.
Did the wolf cry like that when the doctors were in here? The way it had been attacking the cage earlier, he doubted it. It seemed too tough for that, so for it to turn into a whining puppy over nothing…
They might want to know about this.
Another whine. A thumping noise.
Jason turned to see the tail going and the saddest expression he'd ever seen on an animal.
As though he'd just kicked it in the face for no reason.
Jason's heart tugged. He turned his chair to face the wolf, which was starting to look a lot more like a real-life, terrifying version of Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Only not a dog and not red.
"Ah, I'm sorry. I'm staying right here, though. You've got to stay there until we find out why you're not shifting back."
The wolf lifted its ears up high and raised its head.
Jason flinched at the movement, but he recovered quickly.
"Can you tell I'm talking to you?"
The wolf tilted its head to the side, as though trying to understand him.
"Huh." That was…kind of exciting. Jason wrote that down. He should keep talking. Maybe doing more than sitting there and ignoring the thing would help it out if his scent was really calling to the animal like this.
"You know, I still can't believe you've been down here for months and no one knew it. I can't figure out how Humanity Now would have caught you, but whatever. If this helps other shifters…if it stops what happened to my parents…"
The wolf regarded him, head still cocked, and Jason felt so utterly stupid.
"God, you have no idea what I'm saying, do you? You're just…you like my smell, and I'm probably one of the first people to talk nicely to you, am I right?"
And now the head tilted in the other direction. The ears flicked.
Jason wanted to touch those ears, to see if they were as soft as they looked.
Jason wanted to laugh. "I'm being paid a lot to do this. It will help out so much, so I guess I should thank you, but at the same time…God only knows how many people you've killed. Do you get that? Do you understand at all that you've probably attacked people and really hurt them while you were stuck like this?"
The wolf whined, lowering its head. As if it were ashamed.
Jason was going to take that as a coincidence.
He had to look away from those eyes when he felt himself pulled into them again.
He kept finding himself wanting to get closer.
Was this strange effect on him supposed to be normal? Maybe this was how some wolves pulled their prey in to them. Luring them with eyes like that, catching their victims of
f guard.
But shifters didn’t have the power of hypnosis as far as Jason knew.
Jason had heard of other people getting a deer-in-headlights effect when confronted by shifters, but these eyes pulled him close in a way Jason didn't think he liked too much.
It was…a little frightening. He inched his chair closer and then closer again, knowing it was a bad idea, but the wolf wagged its tail again, and seeing such a frightening creature up close and personal like this when there was a protective cage between them made it a little easier for his brain to handle.
"You don't look so scary all locked up like that, but I know you can be fast if you want. All your kind are fast. Some are pretty mean, too."
The wolf inched closer to the bars.
Jason flinched back, but he needn't have bothered because the wolf's nose apparently came close enough that a single touch was all it took for him to feel the shock of the bars.
He yelped, yanking his head back, and Jason rushed out of his chair but then stopped himself.
What the hell was he supposed to do about that, exactly?
"Don't touch the bars," he said, still hoping against hope that, somehow, the animal in that cage would understand what he was saying. "It'll shock you."
Then release me.
Jason tensed. He blinked. He stared at the wolf, which looked back at him with those golden, intelligent eyes. He waited for what he just heard to make sense, for it to be revealed to him that he'd heard something on a PA system or maybe…
“I just made that up in my head. That’s all.”
And he was not writing it down on his clipboard either.
Still, he spoke, as though answering the wolf.
"You need to stay in there. You're a…you're a danger to yourself and to anyone else who might get in your way. The people here are trying to help you. I'm…”
Jason had to think about that.
You're mine.
Again, he jumped, and then he looked around.
"Is someone there?"
Jason looked at the wolf, as though expecting it to give him some kind of answer.
It just…looked at him.
And Jason was getting pissed off. "You're lucky I have to spend at least one hour in here. Otherwise they won't pay me anymore."