The Unforgettable Wolf

by Jane Godman

  Believing this to be part of the show, the crowd went wild. Violet could see the sign of the beast being made throughout the stadium as howls of appreciation rent the air. Rick was yelling instructions into his two-way radio, and Ged moved closer to the stage.

  Onstage, everything went from stillness to action in the blink of an eye. Unable to believe what she was seeing, Violet did a double check. No, it was real. Instead of being afraid of the werewolves who had invaded their stage, Beast turned as a group to face them. Was it her imagination, or did they actually seem pleased at the prospect of the coming confrontation? Khan, leading the advance, had a bring-it-on snarl on his face as he moved with muscle-bound stealth toward the werewolves.

  In the blink of an eye the stage erupted. The werewolves sprang from their crouching position, and Violet cringed in expectation that the members of Beast would be torn apart before her. Instead, a series of incredible transformations took place. Khan’s clothing burst apart. Beneath it rippled brilliant orange fur slashed across with diagonal stripes, each as thick, black and straight as a hand-drawn charcoal line. In Khan’s place a giant tiger covered the distance across the stage in one bound, his lips drawn back in a snarl that revealed huge white fangs.

  Tiger Boy. That was what Ged called Khan. The thought hit Violet at the same time that the tiger plowed into the wolves. She had always assumed the half-sarcastic, half-affectionate name was a reference to Khan’s larger-than-life persona. Now she knew the truth.

  She barely had time to process that idea before she realized that there were two other big cats on the stage. Diablo had disappeared and, in his place, a muscular black panther was prowling the space before joining the tiger as an unlikely ally. Finally, Dev cast aside his guitar, shifting stealthily as a ghost into a huge snow leopard, sharp and white in contrast to the blur of color around him, before throwing himself into the fray. Landing on the back of one of the startled wolves, the mighty creature lowered his head and used its lethal fangs to tear a chunk of flesh from its victim’s neck.

  The crowd, still convinced they were watching a series of awesome special effects, continued to cheer and howl. Rick and Ged were screaming at the security team to get everyone out of the stadium and bring down the emergency screens. Meanwhile, Violet’s eyes were drawn to the startling new phenomenon that was unfolding before her eyes.

  Striding across the stage, Torque was raising his hands and unleashing a series of explosions in his path. As he walked, he grew in stature until he towered over everything around him. Even from a distance of several feet, Violet could see his eyes were bright red, the color filling the entire surface. The pupils had become vertical black slits. As he blinked, both top and bottom lids moved in time to meet each other.

  As Torque broke into a run, his clothes tore from his body. His arm and leg muscles thickened, and he dropped onto all fours, giant claws the size of a mechanical digger churning up the surface of the stage. His skin was replaced by shimmering scales that reflected back the neon colors of the strobe lighting. Giant wings unfurled, and a spiked tail flicked out before he opened his mouth to shoot a stream of blue-white flame in the direction of the wolves. Transfixed, Violet watched as her friend Torque became a fearsome, beautiful dragon. He rose and hovered, his wingspan covering the entire stage.

  Next minute, she was almost knocked off her feet as Nate cannoned into her, catching her around the waist and propelling her along with him. “Time to go. This is about to get messy.”

  * * *

  Nate lifted Violet onto the tour bus, diving up the steps behind her and clambering into the driver’s seat. Ged had handed him the keys as they met in the middle of the stage, and Nate shouted the words, “This is about Violet” at him, seconds before Torque shifted. The good thing about Ged was he didn’t ask questions. There were never any recriminations, unless a sex scandal was involved. He just acted.

  Starting the engine and locking the door, Nate spun the wheel, tucking his arm around Violet as he pulled her into the seat next to him and swung the huge vehicle out of the underground parking lot.

  “Where are we going?” Violet’s voice quavered slightly, but he was pleased to hear she sounded quite lucid. Not many people would cope so well with seeing a group with whom she had spent the last week living in close proximity suddenly shift before her eyes.

  “I’ll drive around the nearby streets until Ged sends me a message to come back and pick him and the guys up.” He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Let me know when he does.”

  “So we’re the getaway vehicle?” She gave a nervous giggle. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  “Once or twice.” He kept his eyes on the road.

  “It was all real.” Violet’s throat gave an audible click. “What I saw back there...”

  “It was real.” He allowed his eyes to briefly flick from the darkened streets to her face. “How much does that bother you?”

  “Probably not as much as it should,” she confessed. “It was a shock, and Beast was magnificent, but I don’t understand how it could have happened in front of all those people. How did your bandmates shift and become—” she ticked off the different creatures on her fingers “—a tiger, a black panther, a snow leopard and a dragon and that didn’t cause a riot? Instead, the audience seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Because this has happened before, Ged has a contingency plan. He projects an image of the band onto the stage, so it looks like we are still playing even though the real band has shifted and might be creating havoc behind the scenes. The crowd might get a glimpse of something surreal, but it looks like a special effect.”

  “Ged really does think of everything. What bothers me more is those werewolves.” Violet drew a shaky breath. “It wasn’t a coincidence. They were the same werewolves who attacked Roko and his friends in Vermont. They were there for me, weren’t they?”

  Nate nodded, his expression grim. “It looks that way. It looks like someone did recognize you from those pictures of the Paris after-party. They just decided to introduce themselves in an unconventional way.”

  “But why? Why not approach me in a normal way? Why this? Whoever those werewolves are, or whoever they represent, why couldn’t they come to me and say, ‘Hey, Violet, we know you. We’re your brothers, or cousins, or whatever.’ Why the violence?”

  “I don’t know. But until they offer us some explanations, I don’t think you should go anywhere with them.”

  Nate examined his motives. Were they pure? He wasn’t just saying that because he couldn’t bear the thought of parting with her? Yes, he could place his hand on his heart and say he was unselfishly looking out for Violet’s interests. No one in their right mind would hand a vulnerable young woman over to a pack of snarling werewolves. The fact that he loved her? That meant he would go to the ends of the earth to keep her away from those evil bastards. He would use everything at his disposal. And that included a formidable group of shape-shifting friends.

  As if in response to his thoughts, his cell phone buzzed. Violet checked the display. “Ged says to collect them from the rear exit.”

  When he turned the bus around and retraced their route, the streets around the front of the stadium had become busier with departing fans and other vehicles. Everything was calm and there didn’t seem to be any panic. Just as Ged had planned, the crowd was still laboring under the mass delusion that they had just witnessed one of the greatest displays of special effects ever.

  He shook his head. It was hard to believe the way Ged pulled this trickery off. Thousands of people must have taken camera phone footage of that scene. It would be scrutinized and analyzed in minute detail. The world’s finest special effects geeks would pore over it forever. He couldn’t wait to hear the theories about how it had been done and see the attempts to replicate it. You want to transform your lead guitarist into a flying dragon? Stage a fight between
wolves and big cats? No problem. Just press this button...

  Violet clutched his arm as they neared the rear of the stadium. “Over there.” She pointed to a shadowy side street.

  Nate didn’t dare risk taking his eyes from the road for too long, but he caught a glimpse of what she was looking at. Five men were walking briskly away from the stadium. Something about their build and stance was familiar. Could he swear they were the same five men who had dragged Roko away from that party in Vermont? Maybe not in a court of law. Did he believe in his heart it was them? Hell, yeah.

  He has something belonging to our master. That was what they had said as they hauled Roko and his friends away. Nate’s heart gave an abrupt lurch. It was starting to look like that “something” might be Violet. So who was their master? That was the all-important question.

  Rick was keeping a lookout for the tour bus at the rear entrance to the venue. As Nate pulled up, the big security guard gestured to someone just inside the building, and the four band members burst out of the door and bounded onto the vehicle. They were followed at a more leisurely pace by Ged.

  Nate knew from experience that they would be on a post-shift high for some time, but this took those energy levels to an all-time record. They were almost ricocheting off the sides of the bus with elation as they relived every second of the action back at the stadium.

  Rick took the wheel so that Nate and Violet could join the band members in the seating area. The bus was soon thundering along the coast road, keeping just under the speed limit. Ged gave a terse order to keep the noise down while he took calls and fielded questions, doing his best to convince a constant stream of reporters that the whole thing had all been a trial run of Beast’s latest special effects software.

  Nate kept his arms around Violet as she huddled into a corner of the sofa, listening to the conversation with wide eyes. He could sense the emotion running through her. Beast were shifters. She was one of them, yet she couldn’t find her inner wolf. He could see the changing play of emotions on her face. He saw admiration, envy and sadness in differing degrees.

  “Five puny werewolves?” Khan’s voice was disdainful. “Didn’t they know who they were dealing with? No offense, guys, but that party was over before any of you had shifted.”

  “Why were they there?” Torque’s eyes always remained disquietingly red for some time after he had shifted. They narrowed now as he looked at Khan. “Don’t tell me. Have you been getting some wolf action?”

  “Fuck off.” Khan turned to Dev with a taunting grin. “Was your little friend in Paris a werewolf, is that it?”

  “It’s me.” Violet’s voice shook slightly as she cut across their banter. “They were looking for me.”

  “You don’t have to do this.” Nate could tell by her face how much she was hurting. She didn’t know how the band was going to react to this confession. Would they be sympathetic because she was a fellow shifter? Or furious because she was responsible for bringing about the chaos that had brought their concert to an abrupt and premature end?

  “Yes, I do. I can’t keep pretending.” Her hand shook as she raised it to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I’m a werewolf, but I’ve lost my memory, so I don’t know how to shift. I don’t know who those werewolves were, but they had come to take me away from Nate.” A single tear tracked down her cheek as she looked around the group. “And I don’t want to go.”

  “Then you don’t have to.” The voice was gruff with emotion. Ged, leaning against the door frame, met her eyes with a reassuring look in his own. Ged, who had been through his own hell, would never allow another shifter to experience pain if he could prevent it.

  “Fuck, no. You are one of us.” It was one of the longest speeches Nate had ever heard Diablo make.

  “And we know how to look after our own.” Torque’s still-red eyes blazed inner fire.

  “What if they come after me again?” Violet’s voice sounded very small.

  “Then we’ll be ready for them again,” Dev growled.

  “Yeah.” Khan’s lips drew back in a snarl. “I doubt those pathetic mongrels will try it again, but, if they do, they’ll get another taste of Bengal.”

  “We are all agreed on that.” Ged came to sit on one of the sofas, stretching his long limbs wearily. He gave Violet a look that said there would be no more discussion on that matter.

  “We have to consider the practicalities not only of keeping Violet safe, but also of making sure those bastards don’t disrupt the tour any further,” Nate said.

  “We’ll kill them all.” Khan was so wired, Nate thought he might just try to jump off the tour bus in the middle of the freeway and go in search of the werewolves.

  “No one is killing anyone.” Nate’s voice was firm.

  “Nate is right.” Ged nodded agreement. “The only reason we will get away with convincing the press that tonight was a supercharged visual effect is that no one died. If there had been werewolf body parts on that stage, we’d have all been screwed. Beast would have been over. None of us want that.” He cast a glance around the room. “Right?”

  That had the desired effect. Nate knew what Beast meant to each of them. The band was all they had. It was their oxygen, their lifeblood. It kept their hearts beating and gave them a reason to live. The broken, beaten beings Ged had brought together had nothing without this. They didn’t do this for the money or the fame. They were part of this band because they had to be. Because without it they were nobody. It had been the same with him. Once. It used to be how he felt about the band. Now it was how he felt about Violet.

  Because Nate had hustled Violet out of the stadium while the chaos was still going on, he hadn’t seen the ending of the onstage fight. He had assumed the worst. Knowing how vicious his friends could be, both individually and as a group, he believed he had left a massacre behind him.

  “How did you make sure it didn’t end in a bloodbath?” Nate asked Ged.

  Ged’s tiredness vanished as a mischievous grin lit his features. “I shifted, as well. Haven’t done that in as long as I can remember. Man, it felt good.”

  “Spoiled all our fun,” Khan said, with a suspicion of a pout. “Those wolves ran like frightened puppies when a giant werebear joined us on the stage.”

  Chapter 12

  Violet was tired. So tired she could barely hold her head up. She didn’t want to worry Nate, so she forced herself to pretend everything was fine, but this awful fatigue had been getting worse for days. Even her appetite had deserted her.

  She knew what it was now, and wished she could find a way to make it go away. I need to be able to find my inner wolf. She is inside me somewhere, but until I can set her free, I am only half-alive.

  I don’t belong here. The thought became more terrifying with each passing minute. How could that be true? How could she love Nate so much but be destined not to share his world? Surely fate couldn’t be so unkind. Yet, as her strength continued to fade, it seemed fate might have the cruelest trick of all up her sleeve. I don’t know where I belong, but I can’t stay here. This world is draining the very life from me. Nate’s world is slowly killing me.

  She could temporarily reenergize herself in the fresh air. A walk, or better still a run, in a forest, would give her a renewed surge of energy that lasted for several days. A secretive little smile touched her lips. Sex with Nate in the outdoors—preferably in a woodland—now that was the best medicine of all.

  After leaving Marseilles, they had traveled across the border into Spain and their next venue. Violet had been right when she questioned Ged about their convoluted route. They had traveled into the heart of the country, staying in a hotel in the center of the capital city of Madrid. There, Nate had been so worried about Violet’s safety that he had extracted a promise from her that she would not go out alone. Since then, she had been a virtual prisoner, able to snatch only brief spells of fresh air when
Nate was with her. And that was part of the problem. Cooped up indoors, unable to release the excess energy trapped inside her, burning with a half-understood restlessness, searching for a lost memory, she saw her health had taken a nosedive.

  Everyone connected to Beast had been on high alert since Marseilles, but the werewolves had not made another appearance. The band had played in Madrid, then traveled south to Valencia before moving along the coast to perform in Barcelona without interruption. The only problem at each venue had been the disappointment of the crowd. Word had traveled fast about the incredible special effects and stunts in Marseilles, and the Spanish audiences wanted a similar show of their own. Alongside the familiar sign of the beast, there were calls for el dragón and los felinos grandes to make another appearance. Beast audiences never went away disappointed, but there was a definite sense of anticipation. When would the dragon and the big cats appear again? Which concert would be the next to get the full impact of Beast’s genius special effects?

  Now the band was spending the night in a beautiful, exclusive hotel just outside Barcelona. Set in elegant parkland, it was a two-floor traditional Spanish-style building of terra-cotta brick with wrought iron balconies and intricate plaster work. The hotel was arranged in a U shape around a central courtyard onto which the balcony of each room opened. The mingled scents of citrus, geraniums and red carnations filled the air.

  Violet sat with Nate on the tiny balcony to their room, listening to the flamenco music that filled the air and thinking how happy she should be. This was surely the most idyllic setting in the world, and she was here with a man she loved so much it hurt.

  She was conscious of Nate’s eyes scanning her face. She knew he was desperately worried about her. “You’ve hardly eaten anything.”