by Lorena Black
Foehammer: Part 1
A Paranormal Crimes Division Novel
by
Lorena Black
Published by Jaume Viladrosa
Copyright 2016 Jaume Viladrosa
This book is dedicated to:
Brandy.
Thank you for showing me the meaning of friendship.
When I started out to write this book I was naive enough to think that authors worked alone. In the time since then I've grown enough to know better. With that in mind I want to thank the friends and family who helped me and understood that I needed to be left alone sometimes. I cannot possibly name you all, but I could not have done it without you.
Lynn, my editor, thank you for being my number one cheerleader and the queen of comas. I don't know what I would have done without you.
Thank you Jaume, the publisher, for seeing the potential in my work. Seriously. This book would not exist without your support.
Sarah, the incredibly talented artist who put so much time and effort into taking my blurbs and turning them into visual art. I cannot thank you enough.
To The Golden Rejects, my writing group, I am forever in your debt for not only helping me get the best out of my work but for being an inspiration.
Thank you Timmy, for letting me take up the whole couch with all of my notes and print outs, highlighters and half finished meals. Your patience was incredible.
Preface
Bishop, New Hampshire
There was blood on her hands, and it was not hers. The brilliant shock of red that shimmered against her pale fingers bordered on hypnotic. Its thick coppery smell was the perfume of her prey. She could not ignore it. The metallic scent stirred the Creature within, waking it from the careful slumber she had locked it in. It pulsed and unfurled in the deepest part of the mind.
“No,” she whispered. “Please don't.”
The Beast, however, was not listening. It swam up from the depth of her core stretching out like a soul through the molasses of her subconscious. It was a shadow inside her mind waxing between her own self and a lupine creature.
The change happened in seconds that felt like hours. A dull angry ache began in her knuckles. She wrapped one hand over the other willing it to go no further. The feeling spread up her arm, becoming a harsh grate of tight tendons over bone. One bloody hand stretched forth of its own accord, elongating into claws.
“No,” she breathed through the blooming pain. “Not here, not now.”
Muscle, deaf to her pleas, slid beneath skin, becoming monstrous. The ache in her hand spread. Her wrist became thick with unnatural strength. The skin darkened, starting at the fingers and working its way up her arm.
“No, damn it!”
But the full moon was only three days away. Her mind was fuzzy with clear thoughts of blood and its promise of soft palatable flesh. A lupine creature moved inside her core, thrusting under her flesh, and turning the dull ache of her partially changed arm to a harsh throb. The wolf wanted to hunt.
The struggle to remain human dimmed with the gathering force of the Beast’s darker cravings. Images of meat and viscera swam behind her eyes. She couldn’t remember where they were. She wasn't sure why it should matter. Her jaw ached with hunger.
She forced her body to breathe. That is what they had taught her. Draw the air in slowly, push it out slower. Block out the entire world and remember who you really are. Remember the things that matter.
My name. What is my name?
She shut her eyes and blocked out the red tinged vision of her altered hands. She ignored the coppery scent and breathed in until she could not hold anymore. She held the air in her lungs until it burned and breathed out until her chest ached. Only then did she breathe out. The Beast stopped moving beneath her skin. Her mind began to clear.
Lillian. Her name was Lillian Lawson. Good. At least she knew that much. Everything else would come eventually if she just kept going. Where was she? She was home. Better.
Why was there so much blood in her home?
Piecemeal images flashed through her mind, a small New England house with white paneling and blue shutters. A wrought iron fence circumnavigated a green yard bespeckled with stubborn patches of brown. Memories of a beat up minivan and a short driveway invaded her mind. The mailbox decorated with the dents of time. The heavy oak door with its sunflower stained-glass window sparkling in the sunlight.
The door to her home had been open when she came back. But where had she been?
She struggled to remember. The scents of blood and flesh spun in her mind beckoning her to roll in them. Darkened flesh crawled along her elbow. The joint screamed.
She growled and forced the thoughts away. Where did she go? It had only been moments early. Come on, Lillian, you can do this.
Running. Lillian went for a jog every morning, a habit left over from high school. It settled her like nothing else could and being calm had become the focus of her life these past few months. She had gone running and came home to blood. Whose blood could it be? She felt her heart give a wild lurch. The darkness resumed its indefatigable stretch across her arm.
No, Lillian! The slap of shoes on pavement, the feel of your heart beating hard and rhythmic in your chest. She forced herself to feel it all. Let it steady her. You have to remember. What happened this morning?
The New Hampshire dawn had broken cool and clear over the White Mountain Valley. It was hardly upper Boston, but Bishop had its own bantam charm. The crime rates were lower. The people were friendly. But it was the crisp mountain mornings that she loved most. Lillian had greeted it as she always did, with a nylon windbreaker and worn running shoes.
A hot throb in her shoulder ripped her away from her carefully cultivated peace and shoved her back into the moment. The smell of blood was becoming a white noise to the other scents in her home. Scent meant a great deal more to her now than it had a few months ago.
Lillian lifted her face and closed her eyes. Baby powder and strained pears. The babies. Her heart thundered suddenly. The twins, Conner and Erick, were her boys, only eleven months old and already so different. Conner, quiet and easy to put to bed and demanding Erick who would eat only if he had his bib and sat in his chair.
She lowered her nose to the ground and sniffed again. She smelled her young in the blood. Her pups were wounded. The Beast rose up until a possessive growl escaped her throat. Her babies were bleeding. Where was her husband, her mate? Where was Pete?
Dear precious Pete who held her hands after the attack. Her gentle sweet man who had kindled her love with his quiet affection. The man who promised to love her even when the tests had come back positive. Where had he gone? She tilted her still human head to the air and took in a low breath seeking the familiar aroma of Mountain Breeze soap, skin, and Colgate. Underneath those was the tang of Pete’s own special scent.
Lillian skulked forward, loping along the ground on all fours. Her ears were deaf to the shift of nylon as she edged towards the bloody bouquet. She moved past the twin high chairs, ignoring the odor of baby food still open on the counter. She paused at the spot where the linoleum of her kitchen ended and her living room carpeting began. A flood of crimson marked the threshold. Her eyes scanned the landscape until she sighted a thick pulpy chunk of something on the ground. One sniff told her it was human. A second told her whose. It was a wad of her mate’s flesh. Her gut rolled with savage desire even as her mind screamed its disgust.
Where was her family? That thought was enough to distract her from the forbidden treat that lay upon the ground. She prowled across the ruined carpet. On her hands and knees feeling the squish of fabric mixed with fluid that dirtied her sweatpants. She felt it
, but it didn’t matter.
A long stretch of red guided her vision towards a beat up couch decorated with vibrant flowers, and for just a moment, she could not make her mind understand what it was she saw there. A long bodied man lay across it. She knew him. She knew that soft round jaw-line. She knew his dainty, almost effeminate lips were prone to easy smiles. He was stretched out with one arm and one of those long legs dangling over the floral edge. Red dripped from his fingertips making a steady plop plop plop upon the sodden gray carpet. A large rosette puddle had formed beneath the hanging digits. Her eyes traveled up the flow till they reached a gaping wound. His ribcage had been pried open, his lungs a morbid parody of cupboard doors ripped open to reveal the treasure of his softer organs. The gentle swell of his pink stomach hung against the edge of the wound, tempting her to take a bite. Pete was ripped open, and it made her hunger for...
NO! She struggled to pull away. Lillian wanted to ignore the human buffet laid out before her. Her eyes drifted to the darkened muscular arm, and it stirred the beast that lived within her body. A second mind was prowling to the top of her consciousness. Something tribal and strong. She tried to stay Lillian, but the Wolf was hungry.
She teetered on the edge of a dark fence, herself on one side, her Beast on the other. She tore her eyes away from the man and sought something, anything to distract her. She needed something to keep from tipping that tenuous balance. Her eyes wandered across the room avidly seeking some hope of life.
Two tiny forms were laid upon the carpet not three feet from the male. Piled one on top of the other like slabs of meat. Their bellies looked as if something had chewed them, turning the soft youthful flesh to ground beef. One tiny head was dark, dark as Pete’s with delicate curls forming upon his brow. His sweet mouth was slack as if asleep. A blotch of some fluid clung to his cheek. Pears. He still had his breakfast on his face. Sweet little Conner who never cried, had he cried about this? Had he shrieked while something ate him?
Erick lay on top of his brother, nestled in the cavity of the older twin. His bright green eyes that had always demanded something better were open and empty. She wanted to hear him tell her no. Wanted him to scream with dislike over mashed green beans. Please, let her little boy throw something he didn’t want. She looked at his arm. His fist was still clenched. Erick’s fingers were white.
She crawled closer. Her body moved of its own accord. She leaned her nose down, vainly sniffing at the flesh for some remnant of life. She nudged them. Their bodies were limp and growing cold.
Her babies were dead.
The Beast surged to the forefront of her mind. Its essence poured through her slim frame. She felt the muscles of her jaw crack and realign until a lupine howl echoed from a newly formed throat. The Change was coming. This time she welcomed it. Mother Wolf was a protector. Lillian was the Wolf.
The steady ache that she had kept at bay with pathetic breathing exercises and force of will bloomed into a liquid fire that pulsed through her body forcing the bones to snap and realign. Her ribcage spread until it became a thick barrel shape. Her spinal column snapped back until she resembled a shivering arch. Lillian clawed at the air as her legs grew and shifted. Harsh mewling sounds crept out of her throat as she felt everything shift inside of her. Muscles grew where there were none before. Bones thickened and lengthened. She fell to the ground, her cheek landing in the puddle of blood next to the couch. With one huge shake her skin sloughed off, and thick dark fur bloomed in its place. The pale skin dissolved into a puddle on the ground, her last remnant of humanity.
