Way of the Wolf: Shifter Legacies 1

by Mark E. Cooper

  David looked toward the entrance. Farris was Lawrence’s wolf, or Lawrence was Farris’ human? But he wasn’t human... person then? He shook off the strange thought and the mood it brought it on. They were one, just as Mist and he were one. They were together now and forever.

  We are one, Mist agreed sounding very satisfied with the arrangement.

  Lawrence entered the barracks and paused just inside, obviously looking for someone in particular. He was alpha as David himself was, but lesser. Not in body, oh no. Lawrence was something a little bit special in the size and good looks department—according to the females anyway, and even David who was a staunch fan of the female gender and hetero himself, could admit there was something there. Lawrence was a rare breed of shifter in that he actively worked hard to improve what Farris and the lycanthropy virus bestowed upon him in such abundance. David had asked him once why he put himself through so much work and pain to overcome the virus’ reluctance to allow modifications to its host. Lawrence replied just a little grimly, he now thought, that when everyone else could tear a car in half too, being average no longer cut it. Well, Lawrence was not average in body or power. He was alpha, just not the Alpha. Stephen was that, but David was also stronger than Lawrence. Much stronger, but that was all Mist not him.

  We are one. There is no difference, no division. As it should be. Lawrence and Farris are also one. The sum of our Presence is greater, that is all.

  That was very perceptive of the wolf. David had come to suspect that much of what went into creating an alpha was how well the two personalities merged and complimented each other. Cassie and Onida were fine people, but they were not alpha. Onida rarely spoke at all. Contrast that with the conversations he had with Mist and it was a telling difference. The wolf rarely shut up! He grinned at Mist’s rumbled warning; he was pretending anger, but David could feel his amusement. They were perfectly matched, and that made them strong.

  Mist sent his satisfaction and agreement.

  Lawrence finished his brief scan of the room’s occupants, not pausing on all the naked perfection it contained. Most shifters preferred going unclothed in private like this. It let them shift with ease, but it was more than that. All shifter senses were heightened and wearing clothes often irritated sensitive skin. They had to wear natural fibres because of that, but even so, they felt confined in anything but skin or fur. So out of sight of easily shocked humans, shifters tended to strip at the drop of a hat. David hardly noticed any more. He just didn’t care; shifters weren’t body conscious at all, taking their lead from their beasts in that regard. He had lost that particularly useless human emotion surprisingly quickly he now thought, but then as a medical professional, he hadn’t exactly been a prude before his change. Embarrassment; what was the use of it? Besides, the only naked shifter he wanted to look at was Ronnie, and she was avoiding him.

  Callia likes me, Mist said smugly.

  “And we like her and Ronnie, so it’s three against one. She’ll come around.”

  His first weeks at Lost Souls had been a bit trying for Ronnie. He could admit that he’d been a little out of his depth and had followed her around like a second tail. That did not sit well with her, but her wolf, Callia, had liked it well enough. She was interested in Mist and apparently wasn’t shy in telling Ronnie so. David snorted as he imagined some of their conversations.

  “Hey, David,” Lawrence said sitting upon the bed next to his. “Edward just posted the roster.”

  “Oh?”

  Lawrence nodded and gestured back and forth indicating the two of them. “Main doors again. Security.”

  “Again?”

  “He says there’s always less trouble when you’re on the doors.”

  That was because a lot of the club’s clientele were monsters and able to sense his power. Shifters could always tell how strong another shifter was; it was part of what made the pack structure work. Shifter magic. His Presence was often enough to keep the peace all on its own. Other non-humans sensed different things in their own ways, but all of them responded to power. And the human thrill seekers? Well, that was why Edward partnered him with Lawrence most times. He was impressive in other ways—physically very imposing as well as being alpha.

  “What’s he expecting, World War Three?”

  Lawrence shrugged. “Nothing good. There’s trouble out there, big trouble. The vamps are upset about something, and some of the smaller packs are running scared. The Alley Dogs are agitated about,” he shrugged. “You know.”

  He meant Ronnie, but it went deeper than that. Stephen needed his army, but because it was mostly comprised of lone wolves, it rubbed the packs the wrong way. Traditionally, rogue wolves had the right to enter a territory and visit briefly, but they weren’t supposed to take up permanent residence. If they wanted to do that, they had to petition a pack and join it. By giving so many rogues sanctuary and his protection, he had inadvertently challenged all the established packs. They didn’t want to fight Stephen, and Stephen didn’t want to fight them—everyone liked the status quo in LA—but by turning a blind eye to Stephen’s unorthodox not-pack, they undermined the system that made the pack structure so successful.

  Until now, the blind eye approach had rubbed along not without irritations, but nothing more serious than that. The Alley Dogs however were a powerful pack and force in the community, and this time they had put their foot down. They wanted Ronnie back, or the Alley Dog’s Alpha did. Raymond Pederson. He had been Stephen’s most powerful ally until Ronnie came between them, but no more. It still surprised him that Stephen had not made the pragmatic choice of just throwing Ronnie back, back to the wolves so to speak, but he hadn’t. Instead, he had stuck to his—seemingly ruinous—policy of welcoming shifters into his vampiric embrace if they would give themselves to him body and soul.

  David grimaced. He hadn’t been subjected to the body part of that deal. Yet. It could only be a matter of time though before he had to feed Stephen or one of his people. Blood was part of the deal. The fact they were so well fed made Stephen and his people a power among the vamp Houses of LA. Shifter blood had power and imbued them with it. Stephen wasn’t the oldest vampire in LA; Gavin Lochlin was, but he was close in power to Gavin because of his feeding habits. Michael was second in age to Gavin, but he was actually weaker than Stephen. That was a stark reminder that in vampire circles the old saying ‘you are what you eat’ held literal truth. Well-fed vamps were powerful vamps.

  He checked his wristband. Stephen had hours yet before he woke, but the club would be opening and hopping long before he rose for the evening. He had to get dressed now if he wanted to open the doors on time, and he did. Monsters were no more patient in a queue than a human would be. He didn’t need to start his day breaking up fights and banging heads together.

  He put aside his book and swung his legs off the bed. “Give me five minutes here and I’ll be with you.”

  Lawrence nodded absently and picked up the book. “What are you reading?”

  “Research, sort of.”

  “Children of the Gods,” Lawrence said reading the title and then flipping open the book to a random page. “If you want to learn more about what you are, ask one of us. This bullshit won’t teach you anything.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, but I agree a lot of it’s junk. Flip to the appendix.”

  David stripped out of his jeans and shirt to pull on his uniform. He thought of it as a uniform because it was Lost Souls approved clothing, but it wasn’t really a uniform. It was 1920-30s style formal wear. Stephen wanted his theme reflected in his employee’s manner and dress as well as the acts performing in the club. The interior decor of course perfectly mimicked the era. David wasn’t averse to looking the part; it was nostalgic, but a doorman’s uniform complete with cap might have strained his patience. Stephen hadn’t gone that far. He wanted the ambiance from those swank nightclubs that Lost Souls emulated, but needed his people to be able to mingle when necessary to keep things peaceful.
/>   His ego had become quite flexible all things considered, but he was glad he didn’t need to wear a real uniform. One area where he had become less flexible and not more was in his inability to accept anyone weaker trying to dominate him. Hoberman would receive short thrift from him now if ever they met again. If that bigoted idiot had a scrap of sense, he would stay well clear. His new attitude was all Mist’s influence and his changed nature. So far, it hadn’t been too much of an issue here, because shifters could be very pragmatic once shown where they stood in the hierarchy. They usually settled down after a brief demonstration of why they should, but it was equally true that they wouldn’t back down for less. It was programmed into them or something. They just weren’t happy with uncertainty. They had to know where they belonged to be truly happy with their place in the pack. He supposed he could understand that. He hadn’t liked uncertainty before his change. Why would he like it afterwards?

  “I see what you mean,” Lawrence said. “All that research and effort and he produces a trash book? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. This is good stuff.”

  “We all have blind spots.”

  Lawrence grunted noncommittally.

  David finished dressing and headed up to the club with Lawrence. “Do you ever wonder where you would be if not for Farris?”

  “Dead,” Lawrence said grimly.

  That made him check his stride. “Dead?”

  “Dead.” Lawrence sighed and glanced at his wristband. Obviously deciding they had time, he ran a hand through his hair and launched into his story. “Most of us have an attack in our past to blame lycanthropy upon right?”

  David nodded. He hadn’t met anyone who didn’t.

  “Not me. How long do you think I’ve been a shifter? Have a guess.”

  “Five, ten years?”

  “I’m thirty-five and I’ve been a shifter twenty of them.”

  David’s jaw dropped.

  “I wasn’t attacked. I was in a car accident. My parents didn’t make it, and I was paralysed. Broke my neck at C3.”

  David winced. “Paraplegic?”

  Lawrence nodded.

  “I’m sorry, but they fixed you up.”

  “No, they couldn’t fix me. I was on life support for almost five years slowly going mad. I begged them to let me die. Begged! They wouldn’t of course. Sedona loves life; those who follow her cannot kill or allow harm to come to someone under their care… blah, blah, blah. Their rhetoric is sickening.” Lawrence said bitterly. “As if forcing me to linger wasn’t harming me. The clerics tried everything, but gradually one by one they stopped coming. Then it was the turn of the doctors to try all their crackpot ideas. Eventually they gave up too, and I was left to rot in a private room paid for by the insurance company.”

  “How did you become a shifter?”

  “I couldn’t do anything for myself. Nothing. I would have refused food if I could have, but they put tubes into my stomach and fed me that way. I have no family. None. There was no one I could beg to kill me, and the nurses were horrified when I raged at them. They stopped listening to me long before it happened.

  “One night this woman put her head into my room looking for her friend. I told her to bugger off and leave me alone, but thank the Goddess she didn’t. She said her name was Liz as if she hadn’t heard me, all smiles and charm she was. She came into the room, sat down without asking, and just started talking to me. I ignored her of course, and eventually she left. She came back to see her friend off and on and stopped by to talk with me.

  “Anyway, a couple of weeks later she came by one last time to tell me her friend was being discharged and they were going home out of state. That’s when she offered to try to fix me.”

  “She was a shifter.”

  Lawrence nodded. “She hadn’t told me before because,” he shrugged. “You know. She didn’t want me to start yelling about monsters and causing a fuss. I wouldn’t have done that, not even back then. I was almost fifteen by then, and looked like a skeleton. All my muscles had atrophied. I was a real mess. You were a doctor, you know what happens.”

  He nodded, easily imagining it. Muscles waste away from lack of use and tendons shrink causing limbs to curl up. Without regular physiotherapy, Lawrence would have curled into the foetal position eventually. The hospital staff would have worked to reduce that, but they couldn’t prevent such changes completely.

  Lawrence continued. “So she offers to try, and I say I’ll do anything to get out of that place. Anything. She could do whatever she wanted; bite me, kill me and eat me… anything. So she bites me. I wanted her to smuggle me out first, but the life-support machines couldn’t go with me. She said if the bite didn’t fix me, she would turn off the machines and let me die.”

  “And Farris saved you,” David said quietly.

  “Yeah. The bite worked but the change was very hard. Farris and I became one, but I was a mess. I still couldn’t move as a human. Farris was mobile, but so weak that we nearly died turning wolf that first time. The change takes energy and I had none. I was the worst looking wolf ever. All skin and bone, but I could move again. I didn’t care if I never turned back. As far as I was concerned, Farris could have our body and welcome to it. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the situation.”

  David grinned. “Liz took you with her?”

  “I stayed wolf for weeks. I had to play nice doggy around the humans we met until she could get us into the boonies and out of sight. She fed us up. I just let Liz and Farris get on with it, and basked in the freedom of being out of that damned room. Then one morning I woke up naked without fur. Farris, the sneaky bugger, had triggered the change in the night. I was human again, and weak as a baby, but I could move. I staggered into the house and here I am twenty years later.”

  “Explains all the gym time.”

  Lawrence shrugged. “I’ll never let myself be helpless again,” he said grimly. “Never. As for the body building, I enjoy it, but I wasn’t kidding the other day when you asked about it. When everyone you know is strong, any edge is good to have. You should think about it.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve no interest in that. Besides, Mist is strong enough for both of us.”

  We are one. We are strong enough for both of us.

  True enough.

  “You can never be strong enough,” Lawrence said. “Ask the vamps. There’s always someone stronger. Always.”

  All vamps were paranoid suckers... ha! Paranoid blood suckers! “We better get on the door before Edward comes looking for us.”

  Lawrence nodded and together they headed for the elevator.

  * * *

  21 ~ Alley Dogs

  David rolled his eyes and said it again. “Dress code.” The guy looked crushed. David checked the next in line and nodded in appreciation of the tux. “Nice. Armani?”

  The guy grimaced. “It’s a knockoff, but a good one.”

  “You’re in.”

  “Thanks man.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair!” the first guy said as the faux Armani-clad shifter side-stepped him and disappeared through the lobby doors. “Where do you get off treating a shifter better than me?”

  David’s eyes ignited as he glared down the steps at the nuisance this human was fast becoming. Said nuisance swallowed and paled at the sight of the glowing orbs, but he was too stupid to leave. David sighed, reining himself in, and looked the client over again. The fool had the era all wrong; he’d chosen the worst ensemble imaginable. Stephen would have his head if he let a 70s disco wannabe in.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, trying for friendly and reasonable. “If you go home and change into a plain tux, even one as cheap as the junk you’re wearing now and I’m still on the door when you get back, I’ll let you in and authorise a couple of free drinks. But if you keep flapping your lips at me and making these nice people wait, I’ll have my friend here rip your goddess be head off and hide the body!”

  Lawrence grinned slowly.

  “Now then, I c
an’t say fairer than that, can I?”

  The waiting shifters chuckled. Some even gave suggestions or alternative punishments. Not all were anatomically possible, and he should know. He was a doctor after all. The human finally realised he wasn’t getting in tonight, and slunk away muttering threats but keeping them low enough that David could pretend not to hear them. Stupid little man. Any one of the waiting shifters could have broken him in half. Even the weakest amongst them.

  “Sorry about that,” David said to a party of four who were next in line. “We get all sorts of crazies here.” He gave them a quick once over and let them in.

  The line flowed smoothly through the doors for a while before another dress code violation. David was almost on autopilot by this stage. He could have been saving lives with Andrew now. They would probably have been making rounds, or debating a new elven healing ritual, but no, here he was safeguarding the club from the horror of black shirts and white suits.

  “Dress code,” he sighed.

  “What?”

  “The theme is 1920s speakeasy. Most of our male guests wear a tux.”

  “Oh, does it really matter? Double breasted is back in, and gangsters wore them didn’t they? I’m sure I read that. Look, I even have the hat!” He put the fedora on and tweaked the brim expertly.

  David smiled. He liked this one. “Put a tie on, and I’ll let you in.”

  The guy’s face fell.

  “No tie?”

  He shook his head.

  David held out a hand to Lawrence who rolled his eyes and retrieved one from a pocket. David passed it to his new best friend, but had to tie it for him. The young human hadn’t seemed feeble-minded a moment ago, but suddenly he was all flustered fingers and thumbs.

  He likes you.

  Oh, it was like that? The young man was a thrill-seeker and didn’t discriminate by gender. At least the guy was circumspect and didn’t try to touch. Not always a given. He allowed David to get the tie on him properly, standing silently flushing with pleasure.

  “I’m going to trust you to hand this back in before you leave.”