Lunatic Fringe

by Allison Moon

Lexie whispered, “I want you,” and it was true. Archer searched Lexie’s face with half-gentle, half-hungry eyes and the faintest hint of a smile. This was fun.

  In one swift move, Archer dove onto Lexie, pinning her left wrist above her head and sinking her teeth into her neck. Lexie gasped a quick, startled breath. Archer’s mouth remained fixed on Lexie’s bare throat, teeth gripping the skin. Oh God, oh God. Lexie held her breath as Archer’s teeth dug into her flesh, saliva dripping down her neck and cooling in the evening air. Archer’s tongue slid against Lexie’s throat, catching her pulse through her skin. Archer sighed through her nose. As her breath released, Lexie’s body relaxed. She was not in danger or under attack. She was being loved.

  Archer squeezed Lexie’s wrist tighter and with her free hand unzipped Lexie’s jeans. Lexie closed her eyes as Archer’s fingers reached into her underwear and stroked her hair. She tensed and released again, a flood of warmth overtaking her, starting at the crown of her head and moving downwards, bathing every cell of her body in watery moonlight. Archer’s fingers danced, stroking, teasing. Lexie wanted Archer to be rough, to grip her with strength, to pin her and pull her hair. Instead, Archer played, teasing her, and Lexie knew it.

  But not teasing for long. Archer grabbed the front of Lexie’s panties in a fist, pulling up, rubbing the fabric roughly against her and forcing her hips to rise. She slipped Lexie’s jeans over her hips and to her ankles, where Lexie kicked them off, along with her shoes and socks. A chill sank into her skin, fighting with the heat of her body. Lexie felt grateful for the deepening darkness; being exposed to someone like this was new and thrilling, but intimidating all the same.

  Archer slid her fingers around Lexie, learning from touch, a delightful trial-and-error of pleasure response. She slipped one, then two fingers inside and stroked, making Lexie’s spine coil and release in spasms and stretches of joy, each muscle and nerve ending pinging with delicious tension.

  Lexie opened her mouth wide and inhaled from her lower belly. She tightened around Archer’s fingers as they slid along the ridges of her inner landscape, pushing forward through her flesh and triggering pulses of electricity to jolt to the surface of her skin.

  Lexie’s eyes shot open, the purple in the sky had given way to inky black. The stars peered down to them, and Lexie’s eyes fixed on Cassiopeia, the jagged shock of the five brilliant stars like the scar from a bite wound. Over the tree line was a hint of the hazy corona of the full moon.

  Lexie rocked back and forth with Archer’s hand. Her vision sharpened, the edges of everything crisp, the lights brighter, the shadows deeper. Lexie took in everything in her field of vision at once, with no judgments or discernment, every aspect of the world carrying equal weight as it bathed her brain in beauty.

  Desperate to feel Archer’s flesh against her own, Lexie pulled at the hem of Archer’s shirt. Archer took her cue and threw her shirt over her head, allowing it to hang at the wrist of the hand she pressed into Lexie. Archer unbuttoned her jeans and kicked them off. Lexie dared not shut her eyes and erase this image of her lover undressed beneath the night sky, despite the sensations in her body demanding her undivided attention. Archer pressed against her again, kissing her, her tongue rolling over Lexie’s like thick, warm syrup.

  Lexie squeezed her eyes shut, creating a catalogue of sublimity. Lips on breast. Fingers tangled in hair. The gentle scraping of teeth on flesh. The weight of body upon body. The sound, a quiet vocalized breath, of Archer’s own pleasure as she moved her hand in Lexie. Like trying to catch a torrent in a teacup, Lexie felt ashamed for missing all the subtleties flowing over her now.

  Lexie’s fears and anxieties untangled and dissipated, leaving only one emotion to take their place: gratitude. Her eyes welled with it, her heart swelled with it, her spine stretched with it. The cells of her blood rose to the surface to exalt the beauty she witnessed. Like flakes of steel to a magnet, her nerve cells reached skyward in a unified sensation of grace. She imagined that this was what salvation felt like to religious types, a concerted gratitude to have life with which to experience such beauty.

  Archer’s jaw tensed, and the pressure of her fingers inside Lexie increased. Leaning back on her haunches, her back curled with engaged muscularity, Archer’s hand worked Lexie hard and fast. Lexie had never felt such a sensation before; it was like needing to pee, but pleasant and sweet, like a desperate thirst quenched. Through the layers of muscle and skin between Archer’s hand and the open air, fervent energy moved, pacing within the confines of Lexie’s body like a predator caged. Her flesh expanded, each cell breathing with its own needs. Lexie’s moan came from that deep, predatorial place: a guttural, animal sigh. Archer thrust hard and smooth against her insides, bicep flexing powerfully with each stroke.

  Archer traced a path with her tongue from Lexie’s throat to her pubic bone, sampling the multitude of flavors her body offered. As Archer’s tongue eased over her flesh, tension gripped Lexie’s body like an aura of surging spring water, swirling through her abdomen. Tasting her, Archer sighed a low growl of lust, the vibrations of her voice driving into Lexie’s pelvis, buzzing throughout her skeleton.

  Behind Archer’s curled back, the edge of the full moon peeked over the shadowy tree line. A breath caught in Lexie’s throat as the silvery light draped their naked bodies. The warmth grew unbearable. Too much, too much, her brain sighed. But her body refused to listen, praying in its own language. Yes. Yes, it sang. Archer’s hand heeded the latter’s call until Lexie’s brain ceded its call for queller.

  Moonlight limned Archer’s body in silver, her dewy flesh reflecting the moon, prostrate as if in prayer between Lexie’s legs. Tongue, lips, spit shared, fingers curling, arms strong, cheek, voice, back, all driving forward toward an edge.

  Instead, she sank. Into warm depths beneath the surface of the world where it was dark and silent, far below the crashing waves that swirled overhead. For once, the voices did not follow her into this dreamtime. She was utterly alone in this hidden place, at peace away from the chattering nonsense. Lexie could hear and feel her breath, but nothing more.

  From the distant and invisible horizon, a voice. Her voice, dragging her to the surface of the world. It surged forth from the deepest part of her belly, a shattering, plaintive howl that echoed against the rock faces, flying to the ocean to dive into the breaking waves. Tree branches shuddered around her, shedding their orange leaves in the wake of startled birds. Her cry seemed to outlast her breath, a howl that Lexie was unable to control, she could only release. For the moment that she cried out, Lexie forgot that she was in the woods, surging beneath Archer’s body. She forgot and was happy to do so. She ceased corporeality and for that sweet moment became a flood of simple grace. It pitched her like a seaweed forest in the high tide, curling and tangling, mingling and dragging apart. Her howl echoed and faded.

  Then, silence. Neither woman breathed, neither moved. The first thing Lexie noticed when she came back to herself was the warmth. Like incense in a church, it spread from a central point just below her navel to every part of her being. Then came the scent, potent and undeniably hers. It was her body, her sex, her signature. It was herself, and it was everywhere. As clear as a written word, she understood the smell swirling around her head to be her own person. She inhaled deeply, learning the subtleties of her nature as clearly as the letters in her name.

  As Lexie blinked open her eyes, Archer eased her mouth away and raised her face to meet Lexie’s gaze. Lexie could barely see in the lost light, but the moon now full-bodied above the trees cast depth on Archer’s features. Her amber and blue eyes gleamed deep in their sockets. Short black fur feathered against the edges of her eyes like charcoal. A ridge of mottled grey ran from the tip of her moist, black nose up her forehead, where two pointed, furry ears twitched. Her mouth curled at the edges into a lupine grin, highlighted by cream-colored fur that curved in the shape of a butterfly wing on each cheek.

  Tiny sirens sounded somewhere deep within her brain.
Lexie grasped the thick coat of scruff on Archer’s neck and pulled her back into the moonlight. Lexie inhaled, not losing sight of those eyes, inexplicably knowing that Archer was still inside of this creature.

  Archer’s throat trembled, like the stifling of a cough. Tiny, high pitched chatters came from Archer’s lupine mouth, though her black lips barely moved. Lexie’s ears perked up, trying to catch the subtlety of her sounds.

  Lexie, Archer said, so quietly, so strangely, Lexie wasn’t sure if she was really hearing her name at all. Lexie, Archer said again. This is a gift. It belongs to you.

  Lexie smiled, unsure of Archer’s meaning, still reeling from the hormones that cascaded through her body. Lexie floated against her love, freeing the scruff in her grasp to stroke her lover’s furry face. She smiled at Archer’s softness.

  The gentle moment shattered when she noticed her own hand, curled in the shape of a paw. Five long claws curled from it like polished scythes. The sight hit her like a punch in the kidney. She pulled her hand away from Archer’s face and placed it inches in front her eyes to be sure she wasn’t the victim to any passion-induced tricks.

  Horror grasped at her with its icy fingers as she scanned the rest of her body, still open below Archer’s. Her flesh was covered in light brown fur. A tail rose from between her legs, entwined snakelike with Archer’s.

  Lexie whipped to her feet in one movement, throwing Archer onto her back.

  Lexie, it’s okay, Archer chattered urgently. You’re okay.

  But Lexie’s shocked mind saw nothing beyond the black haze of her own horror. She launched herself off the platform, hitting the ground on four feet with a soft spring before tearing off into the dark forest, running from Archer and the beast she had made her become.

  Chapter 13

  Lexie ran until it occurred to her that running was ridiculous. Archer was not pursuing her; no one was. Each pace only reminded her of the beast she now was. A creeping disgust seized her for taking such profound pleasure in something so wrong. She wanted to slough off this skin like a sunburn. She didn’t want this new body to fit, though she knew it did. She was disgusted with herself, a feeling she had known years before but tried to forget, a perverse pleasure in the midst of something very wrong.

  Her thick paws bit deep into the dirt as she ran, and her muscles flexed and stretched against her bones. The breeze blew the tiny hairs on her neck. She felt beautiful. It unnerved Lexie that her body needed such a transformation to feel right.

  In the distance, Lexie could hear the rushing of the Rogue. She had run northwest, up into the mountains where the air smelled like clouds and salt. She arrived at the cusp of the forest and the mountain, where a wildfire years before had obliterated all the foliage, leaving a black-scarred tract of rock and char. Tree trunks, as naked as match sticks, stood tall and ashamed, mourning the bounty they once possessed. A thousand questions poured through her mind, but she could not bear to face any of them. Alone in the vast landscape, she felt bound and gagged by circumstance.

  The night deepened and expanded, while Lexie remained still and silent in the void. She tried to silence her mind like the charred tract, empty, stoic and dead. Though the woods behind her bore the hiding places and infinite dark instincts of fierce creatures, here in the dead zone at the cusp between the trees and the alpine lichens, she felt more vulnerable that she had ever felt as a girl exploring the forests near her home. She considered turning back and heading home to Wolf Creek but shunned the thought immediately. How would she get there? Run the seventy-plus miles? And once she was there, she would surely be shot on sight. No. She’d have to stay here, hidden until this witchcraft was sure to burn off with the sun.

  The silence grew oppressive as she mourned the loss of her human frailty, of her belief in only the things she could see and understand. Staring sadly at her furry feet, Lexie realized that the universe was filled with things she could never understand, menacing her in the darkness, chiding her foolishness. She was clumsy and plain, painfully tiny in the face of the malevolent grandeur of the world. Her anguish struggled to form tears, but none came, a cruel byproduct of her new biology. Her throat clenched, like forcing a cough to save oneself from choking. The clench became a gag, and the gag a lupine whine as her sadness begged for release from her body in any way possible.

  A tiny growl formed from the struggle and revved into an engine of sound. The sound reverberated through the echo chamber of her throat and clattered out of her mouth in a long plaintive wail. The sound knocked her head back on her neck, stretching her skull to her spine and exposing her throat to the full white light of the night. Like a hundred unclenching fists, her muscles eased and released. The howl felt like the first breath after surfacing from a great and deadly depth. Her lungs expended, she ballooned them again for a second, palliative bellow that echoed off the barren mountainside, shattering into rays of her despair. The high note of her wail descended a slow, arcing scale, where it trilled on a few notes before fading into emptiness.

  The last echo ricocheted off the mountain and rolled back toward town. Lexie wondered, ruefully, if Renee could hear her howl and was priming her crossbow now. With that thought came a dozen others like it. She recalled nights when she would listen through an open window to the packs roaming just outside town. Her father had killed a couple rare wolves when he was on the job. Despite the namesake of their town, Ray, like all the working folks in Wolf Creek, held a particular distain for this odd breed of wolf. Not a lumberjack or hunter was sympathetic to the creatures, which killed or injured several humans each year. Lexie always imagined the mauled men were inexperienced fools, seeking pelts for glory and overcompensating for their lack of efficacy with oversized guns. She had kept such thoughts to herself, however, knowing her father and all the other people of her town would consider her disturbed for siding with the menacing creatures rather than her fellow, innocent citizens.

  Now, her own fur coat ruffling in the quiet breeze, the irony of her past was obvious. More damning was the horrifying truth that these creatures were no more animal that she was, and that the villainy attributed to them was really being cast on her neighbors. And Archer. And now herself.

  As her howl faded into the distance, Lexie groaned at the realization that Blythe and the rest were right. They didn’t hunt men, but werewolves. The Pack that she had hoped would become her family now looked more like her enemy.

  That her consciousness was untouched by the transformation chilled her. She was no more a violent creature now than she was the day prior, though her body was now endowed with its own weapons. The wolves the Pack killed must have died with the minds of men intact. Why would the wolves attack humans if their minds remained? Was Archer ever one of the culprits?

  Lexie shooed the questions again from her mind, having neither the energy nor the peace to confront them. She sank on her belly and wished for sunlight and for the clattering conversation of the Pack to distract her thoughts.

  From the forest, Lexie heard the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath a paw. The step was tentative, downwind, like the slow approach of a hunter. Perhaps Archer had followed her after all and sat watching from a distance as Lexie’s world tore apart. Lexie was ashamed but relieved that Archer had followed to witness to her complete breakdown. She stood to face her lover, emerging from the forest’s edge.

  Another soft footstep accompanied a slow growl, an unmistakable warning of the teeth and claws to come. From the shadowed guard of the trees emerged a wolf, lips curled back baring white teeth. It stepped towards her, ears back flat against its skull, head low in line with its shoulders, tail swaying like a charmed cobra. Its deep growl shook her ribcage and its yellow glare froze her in place. Behind its eyes was the urgent lust of a predator cornering prey. A chill tickled Lexie’s skin as the hair along her back rose in spikes. She stepped back, clattering across burned wood and sharp charred rocks.

  She had never seen one of the rares alive. Until now, they were merely pub tales or cru
de drawings accompanying newspaper stories. The rare looked like a normal gray wolf, but larger, heavier, nastier. Each paw was articulated, each claw able to move independently of the others. Its legs were long and lean, holding the bulk of its body five feet above the ground. Everything else was pure wolf.

  Lexie tried to shout, but the sound that came out was a quick, sharp bark. She barked again, and once more, each yip backed her farther up the slope of ash, each step matched by her hunter.

  Its growl crescendoed into a thunderclap, stunning her heart into a moment of bloodless shock. The wolf recoiled on its haunches and launched itself, bridging the fifteen feet between them in one great bound. It knocked Lexie onto her back with its thick skull and pinned her. Her paws battled against its snapping jaw. She drew back her lips to bare her own teeth, each claw tearing at her attacker. She pushed with all her strength, but its weight pinned her as if beneath a tractor, all rusted steel and menacing moving parts.

  Then it relented, falling back for one merciful moment. Lexie whipped back to standing. Her fur bristled up her neck and down her spine, the chilly air dripping in between the tufts, pulling at her skin. Her tail made her feel longer and larger, and she swung it over her back in a mocking facsimile of a pageant queen’s wave. She let a growl echo through her throat, proud of the way the sound filled the space between them.

  The wolf did not waste a moment rebounding towards her, but this time Lexie allowed her instincts, both lupine and human, to guide her. She recalled stalking the woods with her father, matching orange vests over flannels, matching rifles at their sides. With a silent finger in the air, her father would delineate the tender places on a quadruped to aim, shoot, or slice for a clean kill. When the beast leapt again, she met it in the air with open jaws, sinking her teeth into its throat and jerking it to the ground. A gurgled cry surged from its mouth as it wriggled free, rolling onto its back and then to its feet to regroup. It growled again, pacing in a circle. She spat fur from her mouth.