Lost Little Wolf

by N. K. Vir

  “I know about the curse Lucas,” she revealed as if she were discussing the weather. “I do more than sit down here and stare at scratches made of ink.”

  She reached down and pulled hard at a drawer to her right. The faint squeak of swollen wood rubbing against unoiled metal assaulted his sensitive ears. She leaned over, the palm of her left hand pressing into the book of Ogham for balance as she dug into the drawer searching for her invisible prize. She paused, as if struck by something. He watched her chest rise slowly and then fall, as if she inhaled a problem and then quickly exhaled a solution. Her fingers wrapped around something, drew it out and handed it to him.

  He eyed the contents of her delicate fist. He recognized the small leather bound journal by the faded brand that had been pressed into the cover. It bore a seal, the ancient mark of a never-ending braided circle, which had once been the seal of the Stride pack; his pack. He had stumbled across it when he was young, when the elders still believed there was hope that he would die early. Strangely they saw no harm in educating a dead child. They wanted him to know, wanted him to see the insanity that waited for him if his parents let him live. They had hoped to instill a deep fear in him that would force his parents to see reason. They could have abandoned him to the wild shortly after he was born; keeping in line with what their ancestors had done in the past, but his mother had refused. She had clung to her newborn son, a son that had been born so soon after the death of his older brother. The heartbreak both of his parents had suffered when the son that had barely preceded him had died in his infancy was still to raw and painful; his father could not deprive his mother of a replacement for the son they had both lost. During their moment of grieve and relief they had never taken into account that the curse did not account for the death of a boy in his infancy. A seventh son was still a seventh son; the council of elders had reminded them more than once. A child born was still a child that had drawn breath.

  “Do you recognize this symbol?” Wills asked pulling him quickly from the painful past.

  He nodded quickly before correcting himself and voicing his reply. “Yes,” he managed looking over her shoulder.

  Slowly his eyes were drawn down to that harmless looking little book but his hands shook as he reached out to take it. He remembered the tiny leather bound pages well. It was a book his first mentor had waved in front of his face whenever his mind had wandered beyond his studies.

  “You don’t have to-“

  “I’ve read it,” he assured her taking the small volume from her hands. His thumb traced the edges of the brand. “I know the mark,” he whispered.

  He knew he’d grabbed the book but when he looked down it was her hand he had clasped firmly between his own. With a mind of their own they drew her hand up and pressed it to the piece of his body that rested just above his heart. Even through the layer of cotton the outline of the mark was traceable. An old scar, one of the first he was gifted in this life; only one was older, and it was the same as every other being that existed in this world.

  “A birthday gift,” he answered her silent gasp.

  He allowed her fingers to trace the rough outline; allowed them to memorize the full braided circle and the slash that canceled out the never ending image that had been branded into his skin. He watched the thumb of her free hand trace the copy of the image imprinted upon the rough leather of the small journal. He had been branded a few days after his birth. A violent memory for his parents to relieve every time they saw the naked chest of the son they had allowed to live.

  “You were the first-“

  “In three centuries,” he finished for her. “But you knew that,” he guessed only slightly surprised. She lowered her hand from his chest and relinquished the small journal into his hands. He accepted the book but refused to open it.

  Yesterday she had managed to string a few words together that sent Kane retreating angrily. Marian had been the Historian for more than a quarter of a century; Wills had taken on the mantle a few weeks ago, and in that time she had uncovered more than Marian had in her entire tenure. There was more at play then an amazing brain shoved into the humble skull of a college librarian. As much as he wanted to solve the many questions swirling around his head, in truth they were not important. He wanted to understand how; how she was capable of solving so many mysteries in such a short space of time. It was a conversation for another time. What was important was how these seemingly unconnected books were going to save Tanith from execution.

  “There’s a strange sort of…download,” she finally finished settling on a word. “That’s happening up here,” she tapped her forefinger on her temple. “Almost as if all of this has happened before; I know it sounds strange, it’s the only way I can think to explain it to someone who isn’t inside my head.” She closed the small desk drawer and shrugged her shoulders.

  “There are holes in the story that I remember from the past. The download, in a way, fills in the blanks in my mind when I stumble across books like this,” she emphasized squeezing the small leather bound journal clutched in is hands. “And this,” she whispered gently raising a hand to once again press her palm against the brand on his chest. “They’re connected, like lost puzzle pieces to that,” she concluded turning her darkened eyes towards the infuriating Ogham book. “That book shouldn’t exist,” she insisted. “Ogham was only ever written on disposable, or rather biodegradable substances. Unless…,” she allowed her thought to hang in the air silently pleading with him to make the connections.

  “It marked a grave or property line,” he easily replied amazed at how quickly the information was pulled from him.

  She smiled proudly up at him. “That book shouldn’t exist,” she repeated. “The druids were too careful, too afraid that their secrets would fall into the hands of their enemies.”

  “Neither should this journal,” he retorted waving it in front of her. He had been told by the council that all of Benny’s personal writings had been burned.

  “Read the first page,” she instructed as she spun her chair back in front of the controversial Ogham text.

  His eyes drifted down to the old worn leather journal she had pressed into his hands. The small book was more than familiar to him; it was like a ghost from his past visiting his present. He wanted answers but for a brief moment was afraid to uncover them. He inhaled a deep steady breath, fortifying himself for a journey into the past and the specter of a man that had been a good friend.

  As he opened the book the first letter of the carefully written script screamed at him so loudly he nearly dropped the journal to cover his ears. Instead he clutched the book tighter and forced himself to read the entire inscription.

  Never is a curse placed without an escape.

  Never is a curse placed without cause.

  Time will pass a blind eye over the past only to reveal that which should decay.

  ~Benjamin Lucan

  “I’ll take a wild, yet educated guess,” Wills said timing her interruption perfectly. “You knew Benjamin Lucan very well.”

  His head snapped up pinning her with a stunned gaze that was lost on her. His mouth opened and closed as it tried to form a reply. His mind, so preoccupied by the past, found that words were not easy to come by.

  Yes, he knew the author. He knew him well. Benny had been one of the elders of the pack, a historian in fact. His parents, in a desperate attempt to save their son, entrusted the later years of his youth to the care of the elder pack member. The barrel chested old man had brushed close to the curse himself being born a seventh son. He had been saved from touching the curse first hand when the sixth son born to his parents had been born stillborn. Benny had taken a very special interest in Lucas, and had, for a time, served as a surrogate father to him. His own father had recently inherited the title of Alpha from his father and little time to deal with his own small pack of wild boys. With pack politics weighing heavy on the newly installed Alpha he was encouraged to distance himself from his tainted son.

&
nbsp; Benny’s legendary influence in pack politics protected Lucas from the scorn of the pack and the bullying of his older brothers. Benny kept him focused on pack history and lore, a passion that quickly and easily bled over to a love of all folklore. Under Benny’s influence the skinny runt he had been had grown into a well-respected scholar well before the muscles beneath his skin began to grow.

  Time passed and with each year the whisper of the ancient curse grew quieter. When he reached the age of twenty all the murmurs of an ancient curse ceased to be spread from ear to ear. Lucas was no longer looked at as a cancer the Alpha couple had given birth to. Benny had taken him in, groomed his as a replacement, all the while knowing that the curse slept still and quiet within Lucas. It was a fact Benny never was allowed him to forget.

  “The years may have passed kindly over you since you have come to live with me,” Benny had once told him. “But one mistake will wipe out years of forgotten memories and the whispers of the curse will begin to spread again,” he had warned.

  When Benny died a few years back, Lucas had panicked. He had become so convinced that the old lone wolf had encased him in a spell that ended with his life. It had been Tanith that had convinced him, assured him, that Benny merely showed him that myth was not fact. He wished she had been right.

  “He was a very good friend,” Lucas mumbled to his memories.

  Wills, misinterpreting his words handed him a small sticky note. He quickly cleared his eyes of the past and focused on the tightly scrawled script on the tiny scrap of neon paper. Again it was a hand he recognized. Wills had given him complete access to her hidden library. Something that even a few decades before would have been unthinkable. The Historian always worked alone. That was how it had always been. Wills had been working hard, and quickly, to change that; and she had convinced him that he was essential to the plan she had conceived. A plan she intended on implementing with or without the Trinity’s blessing.

  Every Historian was expected to enter their tenure with a goal. Wills had decided that hers would be to solve the problems of those in the magickal community who had always circled outside of the norm. She had begun by tracking down rumors and whispers of the birth of a new magick that seemed to be spreading through the human population as well as examining the rumors and legends that had existed for centuries. He just never realized she had dug so deeply into his silent, hidden past.

  He reached out taking the scrap of paper more out of instinct than need.

  “Read it out,” she instructed.

  “A gift from Benjamin Lucan, to the Historian Marian Willows,” he read out as instructed.

  A faint tapping sound drew his attention away from the innocuous note before he had time to attempt to connect the pieces. Wills was tapping her index finger on the slightly burned Ogham book. “Somewhere in here is the answer to your curse; and the reason why Kane has such a hard on to see Tanith erased. In here is the answer to all our problems. This was the gift Benjamin bestowed upon my aunt,” she explained.

  He shook his head, aware that she couldn’t see the sad body language he was portraying. “Wills this is beyond reaching,” unwilling to believe that the cure to his curse as well as the way to save Tanith could possibly be contained in the same book.

  “No!” she shouted slamming her hand on the table. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. When her eyes opened a calm look overtook her face and her next words magnified not only a calm attitude but the sound of truth.

  “Nothing happens by accident Lucas. Once you accept that the rest is easy,” she explained with a sagely nod of her head. “For example; you placed a book on this table that was bound in wood. When you did that I saw a word.”

  “You saw a word?” He asked doubtfully. “What was the word?” he asked playing along.

  “Birch,” she replied with a quick smile.

  He waved hand in front of her face, stuck his tongue out at her; he continued for a few moments trying to prove that she had suddenly regained her sight. When he failed he peered over her shoulder and quickly scanned the text looking for the word hidden in the strange ancient text. Again he failed.

  He saw nothing.

  With the tiny sliver of hope destroyed he pushed away from the desk in disgust. Wills instantly lashed out and seized his wrist pinning his hand to the tome with and uncanny strength. She began to speak but the voice that passed her lips was not her own.

  “Never is a curse placed without an escape. Never is a curse placed without a cause.”

  He knew that voice.

  Benny was speaking to him.

  “Find the girl a piece of birch,” the breathless voice continued. “Learn what I was unable to teach you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Honesty and Policy

  The warmth of the sun healed his skin and the layers of blood vessels buried beneath it. His internal temperature had plummeted when the ghostly voice of Benny had used Wills as a megaphone to pass him a message in the present. He wanted to believe that a deeper magick existed, that it propped up the world that surrounded him with a neat and ordered foundation. Unfortunately, he knew better. Magick could barely be classified as ordered chaos. It was a battle of will and power that was based solely on one simple rule.

  Magick came at a price.

  Wills was the perfect example at the steep price magick extracted. She hadn’t stumbled; she hadn’t slowed down despite her newly acquired disability. The dawning new day could have had her screaming against the unfairness of life. Instead; she was still toiling away; doing what she had promised…trying to find a way to save Tanith. He might not agree with the books she had chosen to spend the next couple of days studying, but at least she never gave up. In the end; despite her hard work he feared even the great new Historian would be unable to save Tanith.

  He closed his eyes and turned his face up towards the sun. He tried to let the heat of the early afternoon melt away the tension he had been carrying for the past twenty-four hours. While his mind marveled at how quickly his world had been tipped upside down. His thoughts, started to turn dark. Wills stumbling around in the dark for the rest of her life, deprived of her precious books. Kieran, devastated by the damage his reckless magick had inflicted, would have to carry that burden with him for the rest of his life. But it was the images of Tanith’s life filled body sucked dry of everything that made her perfect that nearly drove him mad.

  Others saw only the pretty package. Her unusual two-toned eyes set in a flawless face, hid a goofy sense of humor. The lush curves of her strong, well-muscled frame obscured the sensitive, lost little girl she had always been. The harsh words that often fell from her tongue covered up her insecurities. She was an alien orphan planted upon the earth and left to find her own way. Everyone often missed the fact that the beautiful wrappings that encased her body hid a soul that was loyal to a fault. She had stayed with him not because of who he was but because it kept her in close proximity to the magickal community. It kept her close to Kieran. It was that romantic sense of loyalty that should have eaten a jealous hole deep into his heart; instead it had the opposite effect; he loved her even more because of it. He had always hoped, always known, that one day she would wake up and realize that she was in love with him; not Kieran. He had been patient; he had all the time in the world, or so he had once thought.

  Shifters, although rare, lived just as long as Weres. With an expanded lifespan he could afford to be patient and wait; wait for her to realize that he was the one who had always love her. That he would be the one that always would. He knew that he was batting well above his average when he had set his sights on her. She was gorgeous. He had seen her face reflected back on him in the magazines she had collected. Every time they had ventured out in public he was always glancing over his shoulder, waiting for the man who would replace the tiny space he had captured in her heart.

  Before she had dropped into his life he had no expectation of achieving a long, ancient age. The instant he had met the strange dirt
y girl the Sinclair’s had dropped on his family’s doorstep he knew she was the thing, the one who would free him, even if it was for just a few short years. Somehow, he had lost time, lost the short scope of precious minutes on a clock. Once she appeared in his life a boyish sense of optimism had falsely convinced him that time was a luxury he could afford. She had chased away his demons with just her presence had he had, foolishly, thought that his love for her would be enough.

  Today he was feeling the curse of his kind. His skin itched, as if it felt too tight to contain his skin. His soft cotton shirt felt like an irritating rash forced upon his sensitive skin. His muscles wanted to shift, and his blood was begging him to run. Usually he was able to contain such desires. He was one of the rare Weres that did not feel the need to feed his animal. A normal shift, one that was demanded by the full moon was usually more than enough for him. Of course it had not come without a price. His animal was not as strong as others within the pack.

  When he was younger he had shaken off the need to hunt, replacing it with the need to learn. Knowledge was usually reserved only for the Weres that had parted from their prime, or, by those had who had chosen to retain the history of the pack; a position usually reserved by those who had reached the age the position had entitled them to, in other words the old and infirmed.

  The need to change had only become essential during the rising of the full moon. Others of his kind were more in sync with their wolves; giving them the freedom to run more often. He had always kept his more tightly reined. Knowing that one day he would lose himself to the wolf, and unlike Tanith, never find his way back.

  When he was younger and the curse had finally become something he could understand, he had breamed with a sense of youthful optimism that the curse would bless him with freedom and a sense of power that he could eventually accept. He had imagined leading a pack of wild wolves that were born only to hunt and run. He had assumed that his human intelligence would follow him.