Humanity for Beginners

by Faith Mudge

  "Is Eben asking you to?"

  "Eben!" Louisa threw up her hands. "All his friends know he's bisexual, but he's still in the closet at home. Like I used up all the gay in our family, and he has to be the token straight child. I think he's got a terror of Dad having a stroke or something, and it all being his fault, like in judgy Victorian novels. He doesn't want me to tell Dad I'm a werewolf. He's not stupid. He wants me to come back to London and pretend I had a nervous breakdown."

  "Would your dad believe that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. It's sort of what happened, when you think about it." Louisa kicked at a table leg. "We had a fight before I left. Dad assumed I took off to cool down."

  "Six months is a pretty long breather."

  Louisa smiled crookedly. "Wouldn't be the first time."

  Gloria had a feeling Louisa wanted to say more and waited a few minutes to see if she'd continue without prodding. "And?" she said, when Louisa just frowned at the floor.

  "I… miss my friends. I miss uni." Louisa's expression was both defiant and a bit pleading, like she was hoping Gloria would offer a perfect compromise. "Do you think I have enough control? I'm not going to, I don't know, claw out on someone like that harpy who tore into me? If I go, that is."

  Gloria's heart fell with more force than she had expected, and she clenched her teeth against the growl that wanted to rumble through her chest. She remembered what Nadine had said when Eben first showed up, about how badly she had wanted her family to come after her. Of course a brother and father would trump the rest of them. This was not a pack.

  "You'd need to establish a safe zone," she warned, drumming her fingers on the lid of her laptop. "A locked bedroom won't cut it at full moon. A cellar might do, a garage, somewhere with a really solid door and as soundproof as possible."

  "Eben says he'll help."

  "Then he needs to see what he's getting into," Gloria said. Louisa's eyes widened and she started shaking her head, but Gloria kept talking. "This full moon, he should watch. If he can handle that―"

  "He doesn't have to watch! Even Damien doesn't watch!"

  "If he's going to be your support system in London, then yes, he does." Gloria folded her arms. "You asked for my advice. That's about it. And, Louisa―" She was in two minds about this one, but she was already waist-deep in everyone else's problems, so why not? "Before you go, can you please decide whether or not you're in love with Lissa?"

  Louisa went very red. "I have no idea what you mean."

  "She'll let you go if that's what you want," Gloria said crisply. "She was a loner for a long time, you know, and she's not used to the idea people want to stick around her. If you do choose to make a go of things, don't mess with her."

  Louisa snarled. "I wouldn't." Then she blushed again, realizing what she'd admitted. "She's... you really think she wants me?"

  "Louisa, love, there are probably alien species who know she wants you," Gloria said patiently. "Just… think about it."

  Lingering indecisively in the doorway, Louisa grinned suddenly. “Okay, mum. Good talk.” Gloria threw a pen at her and she darted away, laughing.

  For a long time after Louisa left, Gloria just sat there, staring at the accounts but not touching her keyboard. The waxing moon heightened her senses; she recognized Nadine's footsteps in the hall before a quiet knock sounded at the open door and a cup of tea was pushed gently under her nose.

  "So, she talked to you, then. You're letting her go."

  "It's not about letting," Gloria gritted out. "I am–"

  "Not an alpha, yes dear, you've only said it a thousand times." Nadine gave an exasperated huff and leaned both hands on the desk, the better to transfix Gloria with her unimpressed eyebrows. "And you call Damien impossible. You know, I've believed a lot of wrong things in my life. I've let people tell me I'm a bitch, a slut, a monster–"

  Gloria's hands fisted involuntarily; she only realized when her nails, thicker and sharper than usual, dug painfully into her palms. The thought of someone saying any of those things to Nadine made her feel more than a little homicidal.

  "―and yes, I used to believe that being an alpha meant being the one in control," Nadine continued, one eyebrow arching even further as she looked at Gloria's hands, "the one who set the rules and made the rest of us obey, but that was only until I met you. I don't stay here for the pay. Frankly, I'd like a raise. I stay here because I've never felt safer than I do with you, and I guarantee the others feel the same way."

  Gloria mouthed for a few seconds, too shaken to frame a single word.

  "Drink your tea before it gets cold," Nadine advised, and left her to it.

  *~*~*

  Gloria woke on the day of the full moon with that feeling like her teeth did not quite fit right in her gums, her limbs already aching with the onset of the change. It took an extra effort to get out of bed, but once she was up it was a relief to go for her usual run, her legs eating up the ground with fierce strength. The air smelled fantastic, clean and fresh―she kept to the side lanes, away from the exhaust fumes of the main roads. By the time she returned home, she was ravenous. Pigeons were looking worryingly appetizing.

  Nadine, treasure that she was, was prepared with a huge carnivorous breakfast. They would all need the energy desperately today. She had the counter-top television tuned to a mindless morning show and was watching it with slightly alarming intensity, only looking up for a moment to give Gloria a tight smile. From the dishes already in the sink, Damien had been and gone; he made an effort to be less annoying around full moon, which mostly meant staying out of the way. Louisa came in later, plunging towards the coffee machine and forsaking her usual daintily quartered toast in favour of bacon.

  She filled a second plate and left without a word; Lissa would still be in bed, she always got up at the last possible minute, and by the time she arrived under her own steam, her breakfast would have gone cold. Louisa had made a habit of bringing it to her. Gloria smiled into her mug then tried not to look embarrassed when Nadine caught her out.

  There was a careful routine to full moons. Gloria avoided taking bookings for these days if she possibly could and minimized all contact with outsiders, since all their tempers were more variable as the change loomed over them. It was an ever-present awareness, gums aching, nail beds sore, every muscle stretched taut. Since they had no male―or for that matter, straight―werewolves around, at least Gloria didn't have to deal with moon-amped testosterone or the awkward issue of shapeshifter contraception. As she always reminded herself, it could be a lot worse. She hoped those boys from the supermarket had taken themselves away to join the pack they so obviously wanted and would not be sniffing around for trouble.

  She spent the morning helping the last guests depart, then located Eben, who had been stolen by Damien to do weeding, and propelled him inside for a Talk. She had been having far too many of these in recent days and had to remind herself it wasn't really his fault.

  "You do understand what's going to happen?" she said sternly.

  Eben nodded. "No running. No screaming." He stood in front of her desk, looking awkward and very human. What a vulnerable species they looked from this angle, Gloria thought, and how bloody deceptive that was. A wolf couldn't handle a gun or set a trap.

  "You're in no danger," she told him.

  He gave her a small smile. "That's good to know." She couldn't tell whether he believed her or not.

  It was a day to just get through. Gloria checked and re-checked the basement, which she had built under the extended wing during the renovations and pretended was for storage. It was a big clean space with natural light from a row of strip windows, all too high up to reach in wolf form.

  Sometimes Gloria thought wistfully of running in the woods, the smell of grass and earth all around, but control only went so far and that was how bystanders got turned. She would not inflict that on anyone. As a kind of compromise, she had set up the basement with chew toys and a paddle pool. It was only humiliating if you thou
ght about it like a human.

  This was not the time to be thinking like a human.

  As the sun went down, the werewolves assembled on the basement stairs. They were all wearing loose dressing gowns or, in Louisa's case, a large bath towel. She was the first to come down, sitting with her back against the door. Eben hesitated at the top of the stairs for a minute or two, then went down to sit with her. Nadine was next, having made Damien promise to record Antiques Roadshow. Gloria ran her perimeter check, locked all the doors and went to collect Lissa, who was folded up on her bed with her hands over her ears. The full moon had an unusually intense effect on her hearing, and the hours just before the change left her dizzy with sensation.

  Lissa had coped on her own for years; she was tougher than she looked. But standing in the doorway, Gloria was overwhelmed by the need to guard her, to make this small safe space as big as it could be, to never ever let her feel ashamed or forgotten again. This one's mine, Gloria thought, and for once didn't care how possessive that feeling was. She held out her hand and Lissa took it without hesitation, letting herself by guided downstairs.

  When they got there, Eben was saying something to Louisa so quietly that Gloria could not hear, but Lissa's face split into a wide warm smile, and as Eben stepped back, she gave him one of her blink-and-you'll-miss-it hugs before slipping into the basement. Louisa followed, looking tearful. Gloria was the last in, shutting the door and locking it from the inside with a key. The wolves would not be able to get out. Anyone else couldn't get in.

  Moonrise tore through her veins like an ocean rip, dragging her away.

  It would be easier if it only hurt. The pain was agonizing, a stretching, cracking sensation as if she was being very slowly torn apart, but what was worse was how right it felt―the shedding of a mask to reveal the true skin, the raw beast with its powerful limbs and fierce teeth, its acute senses that could smell out the young man's sweat and fear beyond the high window and the rat that had been through this room yesterday and the women who were not women any more, sisters all, pack.

  Not pack, Gloria thought helplessly, but there was not enough human left to fight it.

  *~*~*

  A wolf was not inherently vicious. A human was not inherently homicidal.

  Well, mostly.

  Meld the two, though, and it was a madness of sensation and reaction, overwhelming. Parts of the brain shut down completely. In the first rush of the change, you were stripped down to animal instinct, but were not animal, not quite one thing or the other, just hurting and hungry, and what was that noise? The wolf wanted to run. It wanted to hunt, to feed. The human was screaming, panic or exhilaration or some terrible space in between. It wanted blood too, to lash out, to make all this stop.

  The blood wouldn't help, but try telling the monster that.

  Six

  Gloria woke up naked on the floor with a pounding headache and a soreness in her limbs like she'd been running all night. Maybe she had. It was a big basement and the wolf liked testing the boundaries its human self had so carefully set. Someone had used the paddle pool because the floor was splattered wet and there were paw prints on the wall beneath the window like one or more wolves had been leaping for it. The chew toys had been dismembered.

  Gloria rolled stiffly onto her knees and groped for her bathrobe, folded up on a high shelf. Nadine was already up, stumbling for the door. Curled in a ball in a corner, Lissa whimpered softly in her sleep–Louisa, wrapped around her protectively, twitched and stirred. Gloria let them sleep it off, following Nadine out.

  The news was never good around full moon. Disturbing footage from the Forest of Dean―evidence or hoax? The Big Bad Wolf: hiker reported missing from camp ground in Scotland. What Big Teeth You Have (how to tell if you're dating a werewolf).

  "Do they have to make the Red Riding Hood reference?" Gloria grunted.

  "The day they stop is when they take us seriously," Nadine said. "It's still a joke."

  "Do you think the hiker was taken by werewolves?"

  Nadine shrugged tightly and didn't answer. Gloria threw aside the paper in favour of a hot shower, trying to wash the smell of wolf off her skin. It wasn't until she emerged that she realized she had not seen Eben. She debated with herself whether to check his room and decided to leave him be for now. Probably best not to seek out conflict when a part of you was still convinced you had claws.

  With no bookings, the day after full moon was a kind of holiday at the guesthouse. Gloria was bad at spare time; she spent the morning scrubbing the pavement around the fishpond. It wasn't until early afternoon that she noticed Eben's car was missing.

  Apprehension curdled in her stomach. Hurrying upstairs to check his room, she found his suitcase of clothes tucked under the bed, but his laptop bag was gone and so, obviously, was he. She looked at the empty room for a few blank minutes.

  "Shit," she said at last, with feeling, and went to find Louisa.

  When she knocked at Louisa's bedroom door, there was a shuffle of movement inside and a long pause. Gloria knocked again and this time the door opened a fraction, Louisa flushed and frowning on the other side. "What?" she demanded.

  "Eben's not here," Gloria said. "He appears to... have gone for a drive."

  Louisa's expression changed. "Shit."

  "He left?" Lissa appeared behind Louisa, wearing a T-shirt that definitely wasn't hers and not much else. Gloria raised an eyebrow; Louisa flushed, but Lissa was too distracted to notice.

  "He seemed nice," she said, sounding so hurt that Gloria was visited by a strong desire to break Eben's nose. Her brain was flickering through worst-case scenarios: what could have been filmed, who might buy that footage, what the authorities would do if they found out. It wasn't illegal to be a werewolf. You had to believe in something to make it illegal. Lesbians as urban myth, Gloria thought, and remembered those headlines from the Forest of Dean. How much evidence did the world need before general consensus tipped over?

  Louisa grabbed her phone and paced while it rang. "Where the fuck are you?" she shouted abruptly. Gloria winced. She watched Louisa's eyes go wide.

  "Oh. Christ. I thought you told him you were in Scotland–oh. Right." She paced some more, throwing Gloria a grimace. "No, that's such a bad–you can't tell him that! Don't tell him anything! You can't–no, no, this is all your fault for picking a terrible lie, you don't get to think up cover stories anymore."

  She pressed the phone against her shoulder. "He doesn't know any camping sites in Scotland," she said disgustedly. "So Dad calls to find out if he's okay, because the media's going crazy, and Eben panics. Someday I will teach him how to lie properly."

  "Where is he?" Gloria asked.

  "He's with Dad, who has left London," Louisa said, in the same tone that might be used to describe God driving down from Heaven. "He wants to see me."

  Lissa rubbed her arms. "You don't like your dad."

  Louisa shrugged expressively and brought the phone back to her ear. "Say I'm shacked up with an anarchist, then." Lissa wrinkled her nose; Louisa mouthed an apology. "He can't come here, he―"

  "He'll work it out soon enough. Let him come," Gloria said.

  Louisa stared at her. "You can't be serious."

  "Better that than leave him with your brother who can't lie."

  "Good point."

  *~*~*

  The Louisa Gloria had come to know over the past six months was the kind of woman who would have chained herself to fences during the suffrage movement. She would do ridiculous things to win an argument and thought backing down was for lesser mortals. This Louisa was perched on the edge of her chair like she might bolt at any minute. Eben, sitting beside her, seemed fascinated by the courtyard pavement. They had both reverted to the age of about fourteen.

  Gloria was not an alpha. Graham Seymour definitely was.

  He was trim and elegant, like his children, in good shape for his age with excellent posture―that was who Louisa learned it from, then―wearing the kind of tailored bu
siness suit that offered no hint as to what he did exactly, only that it made him a lot of money. He smelled of shoe polish and nice cologne. He shook Gloria's hand in a firm grip, briskly dismissed Nadine's offer of tea, and occupied his chair with the air of someone mentally composing a Talk. Gloria knew that look, and resented it.

  Lissa had taken one look at him and slipped away into a corner out of his sight range. Nadine was hiding her discomfort better, but she sat very close to Gloria and had curled her fingers into balls under the table. Gloria wasn't sure whether that meant Nadine wanted to rip out his throat or bare her own in submission. Maybe both. The smell of authority was very strong.

  "I appreciate your kindness to my daughter," Seymour said, glancing at Gloria. "I admit I wasn't expecting to find her somewhere quite so... practical."

  "I'm right here," Louisa snapped.

  "So I see," Seymour agreed, with a note of steel. "Why is that, Louisa? I was offering you my full financial support, I think I have the right to some input in your academic decisions. I expect you to take that advice with more grace."

  "I am an adult," Louisa gritted out. "You can't tell me what to study."

  "When I talk to an adult, I expect mature discussion, not a hysterical explosion and a six-month rural sabbatical with nothing more than that rather useless note telling us you were 'fine'. Eben was very anxious." Seymour turned his attention on his son. "I understand you were trying to protect your sister, but I'm very disappointed you didn't tell me what you were really doing. I expected better of you."

  Eben murmured an apology without lifting his head.

  "Your daughter has been an enormous help to me," Gloria said mildly. "I didn't employ her out of charity."

  Seymour looked at her. Gloria made eye contact, tilting her head a bit to the side.

  She really, really didn't like alphas.

  "I'm glad to hear it," Seymour said, after a pause. He looked at Louisa. "I'm still waiting for an explanation."