“Do you need permission?” he asked.
“Not as such.” I stabbed a forkful of salad. “But I’d like some advice from people who’ve been doing this longer than I have and know the ramifications better. I’ve been given to understand that torches and pitchforks weren’t so long ago, and we’d all like to avoid a repeat, I’m sure.”
My phone chirped, and I glanced at it. “Okay, meeting tonight at seven-thirty.” He opened his mouth, and I pointed at him with my fork. “No, you are not invited.”
I found time to call Ben, and his answer was exactly as I’d predicted. He had a surveillance job, so he couldn’t join us at the restaurant. I slid into the booth beside Megan and across from Claire.
Megan was tall, blonde, and willowy, while Claire was a no-nonsense brunette of average height. We were all werewolves with corresponding appetites, and the steak house was a place we’d picked because it was quiet and didn’t overload our sensitive ears. Also, it smelled good. I’d walked out of more than one eatery because my nose told me the food would be terrible.
“So,” I said after we exchanged pleasantries and ordered dinner. “The director of this movie has asked me to shift on camera because of budget constraints. I’m not real comfortable with the notion, myself, but I wanted to run it past you two. I could be talked into it.”
“We stay hidden for several very good reasons,” Claire said. “A movie budget is not worth outing us, and your director is a jerk for even asking.”
“Would it be outing us, though?” Megan asked. “The audience will just put it down to special effects.”
“How many crew have to be there to see you do it?” Claire countered. “Ten? Twenty? The more there are, the more likely it is someone will blab. Probably several someones.”
“Munroe already knows. So does Barnson, the gaffer, because the producers think there’s werewolf causing trouble on the set and hired him as a hunter.” I glared at my soda. “He was a nasty surprise. Ben’s last encounter with a hunter didn’t go so hot.”
Claire looked at me sharply. “What happened with Ben?”
My chin lifted. “The hunter was after a couple of rogues, there was some collateral damage, the hunter tried to murder Ben. And Ben took him out first.” I gave her a look that had sent a billionaire mad genius scurrying for cover. More than once. “Is there an issue?”
Claire grumped into her daiquiri. “Since we never found out about it, seems the tracks got properly covered. So I suppose not.”
“Good. I like to think that self-defense is something even a big bad wolf gets.”
“It is, most of the time. But, Janni, I still don’t like the idea of you shifting on camera. It’s one thing for your director and a hunter to know—they need to. The guy who brings the coffee manifestly does not.”
“This role is a huge step up for me, Claire, and I don’t want to botch it. I’ll talk to Munroe and find out exactly how many people need to be there for that scene. We’ll go from there?”
“We’ll go from there,” Claire said. But she still looked grouchy about it.
Running feet accompanied by shouting and sirens woke me up the next morning. I stuck my head out of my trailer to see everyone racing in the direction of the set. I slipped on a pair of shoes and joined them, still clad in my penguin-patterned flannel pajamas.
Barnson stalked furiously up and down, not quite shouting into his phone. “Yes, it was sabotage! You think I don’t know my job and what it looks like when someone’s deliberately tampered with the lighting on a set? And now Andrea’s hurt. I think her foot’s broken.”
Our best boy, who assisted the gaffer, was actually a girl, and I inhaled and grabbed a passerby. “What happened?”
“One of the lights fell off the ceiling and hit Andrea. Someone yelled a warning and she barely dodged in time for it to miss her head.”
No wonder Barnson was so hot under the collar. The lights were his responsibility, and someone had screwed around with them. Not cool. He spotted me and stormed over.
“I need your nose,” he said without preamble. “I want to know every damn wolf on this set, right now.”
I crossed my arms and glared up at him. “‘Damn’ wolf? I know you’re upset, Barnson, and so am I.” Andrea was a perky kid in her very early twenties, cheerful and enthusiastic about her job. Everyone liked her. “But you’d better check yourself.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly and nodding. “Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“We don’t even know for sure that it’s a wolf causing the accidents.” I looked down at the cartoon penguins on my pajamas. “And I should put some clothes on before I go sniffing around.”
“Do that. I’ll wait here for you.”
I wasn’t scheduled to film until the afternoon, so that gave me a little time to help Barnson find the other wolves. After taking a quick shower, I threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and met Barnson at the site of the accident. No one had touched the light, and I knelt beside it and let my nose go to work. A few seconds later, I sat back on my heels, frustrated.
“Whoever it was used heavy leather gloves. I can’t get a human or a wolf scent through that.” I stood up. “What about your crystal thing?” Hunters had a detector that worked via a hunk of moonstone on a string.
“It keeps pointin’ at the nearest werewolf,” Barnson said sourly. “That’d be you right now.”
“Maybe we should split up, then. Call if we find anything.”
“You take the north side, I’ll take the south.” He stalked away, shoulders stiff. I hoped he wouldn’t cause me any problems. We had enough of those.
Any wolves were keeping themselves to themselves, and I had no luck finding one other than an errant whiff that disappeared nearly as soon as I caught it. Munroe caught up to me next to the craft table, during a break in filming while they reset the sound stage. “Have you thought any more about shifting on camera?” he asked.
“Trust me, other than the sabotage on the set, that’s all I’m thinking about.” I sipped from a cup of fresh coffee. “The Protectorate doesn’t like the idea, and neither does my alpha. I’m not seeing the upside, Kev.”
“I might be able to finagle a bonus for you. I’d still be saving a ton on the budget, even with that.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about my privacy, and the repercussions if we suddenly get outed to God and everyone.” My lips compressed. “How many crew would need to be there when I did that? How are you going to break it to all of them beforehand? People tend to freak if you throw a sudden werewolf in their faces. And how would you make sure they kept their mouths shut afterward?”
“Nondisclosure agreements. I’ve been asking around, discreetly. There’s a few on the crew who already know about werewolves, though not you in particular.” That was worrying, but not surprising. Werewolves weren’t thick on the ground, but in a close-knit community like this, secrets were hard to keep. “We’ll use them for the essentials and close the set to everyone else, just like you wanted. That leaves your two costars.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Sure. Those guys will just take it in stride.”
“Maybe. This place isn’t called Hollyweird for nothing, right?” He snagged a chocolate donut with sprinkles. “You’d be doing me a solid on this, Janni.”
“I’m still thinking about it. It’s not a definite no at this point.” The coffee was good. This wasn’t a given on a movie set. “Let me get used to the idea, Kev.”
“Okay.” He took a bite of the donut and swallowed before continuing. “We’re filming that gunfight in a little while. Be sure and get a good vantage point. You know how Temp likes to do his own stunts, and he’s really good at shootouts.” This was an understatement. Temp was famous for researching his parts with live ammo at actual gun ranges.
Ben would be jealous, even if they were shooting blanks. “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. My character wasn’t in this scene, so I could
relax. My own gunfight came later.
Munroe finished his donut and headed back to supervise the set-up of the scene. I snagged a sandwich and followed him a few moments later, and he waved me into a tall chair nearby. This particular shootout took place between my training officer and the bad guy’s lieutenant. I hadn’t had much contact with that actor, Roberts—he was an older guy, oddly avoidant of me, and a well-known character actor. We hadn’t had any scenes together.
“Places,” Munroe called. Everyone nodded. The training officer and the lieutenant crouched behind cars on the opposite sides of a city street, and the script called for the lieutenant to die, while the training officer escaped unscathed.
It was a fairly standard shootout scene. The training officer was off duty and not in uniform, and the lieutenant had ambushed him. They exchanged gunfire and verbal barbs across the hoods of the cars—
And then blood sprayed from Temp’s bicep and he fell backward with a pained shout.
I exchanged a wild glance with Munroe. “That wasn’t a squib,” I stated.
“No it was not,” he answered, coming off his chair with wide eyes.
My head swiveled nearly of its own accord to spear Roberts with my gaze, and I leaped from my seat hard enough to send it flying backward. The set armorer never allowed live ammo anywhere near his precious guns, and yet somehow a real round had ended up there anyway. Only one person could have done that, and I was looking right at him with eyes that had gone amber.
Purely on instinct, I ran toward Roberts. From the other side of the set, Barnson did the same.
Roberts dropped his gun and booked it, maneuvering around café tables and other obstacles on the set’s sidewalk, pulling them into my path. But I was more wolf than woman at that point and hurdled them with contemptuous ease. He burst out of the set and into the back lot, and I chased him around golf carts, craft tables, crew, and rolling props, more and more furious with him and the entire situation.
I didn’t even realize I was half-wolfed until I tore out of my clothes and completely shifted, tripling my mass while still running. The shift was practically instantaneous, smooth as a stream flowing downhill and just as painless, though stretchy and weird until you got used to the sensation. And then the chase was truly joined. Roberts glanced over his shoulder, let out a yelp, and put on a burst of speed that did him no good whatsoever. He didn’t shift; maybe he had better control than I did.
He skidded around a corner with me hot on his heels—and bounced off Barnson. I landed in the middle of Roberts’s back and smashed him to the ground, with my teeth fastened into the back of his neck, growling like a chainsaw.
If I crunched down, he’d be finished, and he froze under me. “Okay, okay, I give up, don’t—” He choked and swallowed hard.
I was fortunate. Most male werewolves had a visceral aversion to hurting women, and I used that to full advantage, pressing a paw into his back and holding him down. I rolled my eyes to look up at Barnson.
His silver-loaded gun pointed at my head. I spat Roberts out and shifted back to human, naked, glaring up at him.
“Are you serious?”
Barnson blinked, looked sheepish, and aimed the gun toward Roberts instead. “My apologies, Miz Lockwood.” So maybe all hunters weren’t jerks after all.
I bitchslapped Roberts on the back of his head. “What the hell is the matter with you?” Not quite shouting, but … emphatic.
“Your part was written for a man,” he said, sulking like a child instead of a grown-ass adult. “I should’ve gotten it, not this bone they tossed me instead.”
“I got this part because I nailed the audition, asshole.” He wasn’t wrong about it being written for a man, but it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a role not written with a woman in mind. Hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. “So you decided to sabotage the production, and then to put a cap on it, you thought shooting Temp was a good idea?” I was emphasizing words and should probably stop. Maybe I’d picked that habit up from my husband. “You could have killed him! Are you out of your tiny mind?”
“Janni,” Barnson said. “The Protectorate will deal with him.”
“Oh, yes they will.” I shoved myself to my feet, not being either gentle or particular about where my knees pressed into his spine. “Get him out of my sight, Barnson.”
We’d drawn rubberneckers by that point. A giant wolf chasing a guy through the film lot wasn’t something we saw every day. I lifted my chin and stared everyone down in a challenge, and most of them dropped their eyes.
“Someone wanna get me a robe or a blanket or something?”
“I guess the wolf’s out of the bag now, at least as far as anyone who was there is concerned,” I said. Claire and Megan had met me at the steak house again. I stabbed a piece of medium-rare meat with more emphasis than I needed to. “So that’s awesome.”
“Is Temp all right?” Great, now Megan was calling him that.
“Fortunately, only a flesh wound. But that could have gone way south. Roberts is an idiot.”
“I suppose shifting on camera is a moot point now,” Claire said. She didn’t look happy about it. Honestly, I wasn’t either, but plenty of the people who’d seen me shift to wolf hadn’t believed their own eyes, and no one but Barnson and Roberts had seen me shift back. Small mercies.
“The extra money will come in handy, and I might as well. If I have to. I guess.”
“You don’t have to,” Megan said, taking my hand. She still hadn’t come completely to terms with her own lycanthropy, and held a lively horror of wolfing in front of strangers. “You don’t, Janni, and if he’s putting unwanted pressure on you, Alex can have a word with the producers.” Alex didn’t throw his billionaire weight around very often, but was singularly effective when he did.
My voice grew thoughtful. “No, you know what, it’s okay. It’s fine. I can do this.” It would be a hell of a thing to put on my résumé, anyway.
“Are you sure?”
The steak had disappeared without me noticing. I smiled. “As sure as I want dessert.”
“Ready?” Munroe asked.
“As long as someone’s got a robe handy.” I rubbed my arms nervously. “I didn’t sign up for nude scenes.”
“Yep. Okay, then. Places.”
Temp and I hit our marks, and when the call for action sounded, we started a foot chase after the lead villain. The training officer was soon huffing—we’d written his injury into the script, and he wasn’t faking all of it—and my character glanced back at him, glanced at the bad guy …
And shifted in mid-run. I heard a soft “whoa” from Temp that wasn’t in the script.
I’d only taken a couple of strides before I heard “Cut!” We all stopped in confusion, and someone settled a robe across my shoulders. I shifted back to human and pulled it around me while Munroe came trotting up with a hangdog expression.
“Is that all it is?” he asked, clearly disappointed.
“Yeah, Kev,” I said. “It’s not like in the movies. It doesn’t even hurt.”
“Oh.” Munroe pinched his nose. “I thought it would be more … dramatic. Than that.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Well. I guess we gotta go CGI and rubber masks after all. Emote for me, would you, Janni? Reset!”
Julie Frost is an award-winning author of every shade of speculative fiction. She lives in Utah with her family—a herd of guinea pigs, her husband, and a “kitten” who thinks she’s a warrior princess—and a collection of anteaters and Oaxacan carvings, some of which intersect. She enjoys birding and nature photography, which also intersect. Her short fiction has appeared in Straight Outta Dodge City, Monster Hunter Files, Tales of Ruma, Writers of the Future, The District of Wonders, StoryHack, and many other venues. Her novel series, Pack Dynamics, is published by WordFire Press. She whines about writing, a lot, at agilebrit.livejournal.com.
Hyde Park
Shannon Fox
Hyde Park
Cassian drummed his fingers against t
he steering wheel of his car as he waited for the gate that blocked his long private driveway to fully slide back. When the way was clear, he pressed his foot against the accelerator, and the Ferrari F430 shot forward with a growl.
Dusk was falling, and as he crested the top of the driveway, the sun had already slipped below the horizon, its light painting the ocean below in a wash of red and pink hues.
After parking his car in the garage, Cassian hurried up the short flight of steps to the house’s main level. His footsteps echoed through the front hall as he strode towards the kitchen. When he had first toured this house with his mother, she had described it as “cold.” Even the jaw-dropping ocean views hadn’t been enough to soften her distaste for all the concrete and glass. But to Cassian, it was perfect. The sterile surfaces and hard edges lent a particularly masculine energy to a house that had been specifically crafted to take advantage of the incredible panoramic views.
In the kitchen, Cassian poured himself a finger of whiskey and took a sip before walking down the hall to his bedroom. His guest would be arriving soon.
The sun had fully set by the time Cassian entered the master suite. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, drinking whiskey and watching the last of the light drain away as night descended.
“Cassian,” a voice rasped.
He didn’t turn. He knew who was in the room with him and didn’t care to look upon his face.
“The new film premieres tomorrow night,” Cassian said, swirling his glass. “At the El Capitan. They’re calling it the blockbuster of the summer. I think the studio will green light the next film by week’s end.”
“You should be proud,” the visitor said.
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