Black Wolf

by Steph Shangraw

  “Maybe not.” It trailed off into a sob.

  Kevin just held him while he cried, wondering how long it had been.

  “I promise,” he whispered to Jess. “I’m not ever again going to let you down when you need me, wolf-cub. I promise I’ll be here always.”

  It took a very long time for Jesse to finally quiet, still sniffling and trying to catch his breath.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “How did I know that would be the first thing you’d say? Don’t be. You needed it.”

  “I’d tell you everything if I could,” Jesse said, voice low. “Only I can’t, there’s some things I just can’t say…”

  “It’s okay. I’m here if you ever need me, but take it easy on yourself, would you? Old pain that goes that deep takes time.”

  “I think I’m about to fall asleep.” He pulled away.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Jess got up, swayed briefly, then caught himself. He paused by the door. “Hey. I know Gisela’s mad at Shaine for how he acts with me, and I bet she told the rest of you he treats me really badly or something. Leave him alone. I know him too well for it to hurt. If he didn’t care I’d be dead a million times, and lots of those times he would’ve been safer staying out of it.”

  Kevin thought of Shaine standing alone between an unconscious Jesse and an angry demon-summoning elvenmage. “I hear you. Sleep well, Jess.”

  41

  The sunset ahead of them was gloriously colourful. Aindry watched it with a lingering sadness that it was only she and Jaisan to appreciate it.

  There were no cars on this road, so little known, to disturb the peace of the moment. They could simply walk quietly, each lost in their own thoughts, Jaisan toying with his favourite amethyst.

  Ahead, she saw orange lights blinking.

  “Jais? Look.”

  He pulled himself out of his daydreams to obey. “Looks like a car.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. It has the hazard lights on.” A number of times, she’d picked up extra cash by being in the right place at the right time when someone was stranded by car troubles.

  Both quickened their strides to a walk that was just shy of a lupine trot.

  It was a mini-van, in fact. A blonde woman in a stylish skirt and blouse was busy with two children, one about twelve and one a few years younger; she didn’t notice their approach at first.

  Aindry called a greeting; the woman spun around, panic flashing across her face briefly, then relaxing into wariness.

  “Not a good road to be stranded on,” Jaisan observed.

  Aindry gave him a dark look, then smiled at the woman. “Anything we can help with?”

  The woman hesitated, then shrugged and said, “My car just up and died on me.”

  “Can I take a look? It might be just something simple.”

  Another shrug, this one followed by a helpless smile. “Please. I unfortunately know nothing about how cars work.”

  “Do you have a flashlight?” Her night-sight was good, but not quite that good, and even if it were she wasn’t about to give it away.

  “In the glove box.” The younger child, Aindry thought it was a girl, tugged at the woman’s hand, sniffling, and the woman made a gesture Aindry interpreted as, “Get it yourself.”

  She found it, in the cleanest glove box she’d ever laid eyes on, and swept it over the dashboard. Still half a tank… she wasn’t out of gas, at least.

  It took only moments of looking under the hood to find the problem.

  “I can fix this pretty easy,” she called to the woman. “The wires to the distributor cap are loose, that’s all. Jais? Can you grab my backpack?” There were a few tools she kept in it for such purposes, stolen from various hardware stores.

  He brought it to her, but leaned close and murmured, “Something doesn’t smell right.”

  “What do you mean?” She sniffed, found only the strong familiar scent of oil and metal and gas. Jaisan had been edgy to the point of paranoia lately, constantly tense; was he going to start jumping at shadows now?

  “Them, I mean. Something’s not right. I can’t get close enough to really smell them. But I can’t find any scents on the car, either.”

  Come to think of it, he was right: even inside the car, she’d noticed no particular scent. Maybe this time it wasn’t just nerves.

  “I think we should get out of here,” Jaisan whispered urgently.

  Aindry hesitated. She didn’t like the idea of abandoning a woman and two children over paranoia, but in order to survive the increasingly frequent and tricky demon attacks, they had to suspect everything and everyone.

  “Hey, lady?” she called. “Could you come here? I need someone to hold the flashlight.”

  The woman started towards them, then the older child burst into tears, and she had to turn back. “I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “They’re just so frightened…”

  “Let’s go, Aindry!” Even at low volume, Jaisan sounded really alarmed.

  Aindry nodded, and retied the knot she’d just managed to get undone on her backpack. Warily, they retreated away from the car and the woman and the two children.

  “Where are you going?” the woman said. “Is it fixed already?”

  “No,” Aindry said. “I was wrong. I can’t do it. I’ll call a tow truck when we find a phone.”

  “At least let me thank you for that much. I don’t have a lot of money with me, but…”

  Aindry shook her head. “No thanks. It’s no problem. Really.”

  The woman strode forward, her children at her heels, with much more speed and force than either wolf expected. “Oh, I couldn’t think of letting you get away without expressing my gratitude.” There was something grim in her voice now.

  “Jais, change,” Aindry murmured, making sure she was between the strange trio and her brother. She heard his pack fall, heard him start to strip quickly.

  “Oh no you don’t.” The woman reached forward; Aindry grabbed her wrist before she could touch Jaisan, suddenly aware of the long stylish nails that gleamed blood-red and looked wet.

  The woman tore away and growled, her form rippling and changing.

  A creature that bore a superficial resemblance to a horse, save the clawed feet and tarnished-gold scales, reared above her and screamed a challenge, showing carnivore’s teeth that did not belong in an herbivore’s mouth.

  Aindry held her ground, determined to keep it off Jaisan long enough for him to shapechange. She kicked off her boots, let her pack slide down her arm to her hand, and shrugged her jacket off her shoulders, without ever looking away.

  The horse-like creature dropped to all fours, and snaked its head towards her, mouth open to grab her.

  Aindry swung her pack at its head, and heard a rather satisfyingly meaty thunk as the tools inside connected and slammed the monstrous head violently aside, drawing a grunt from it and leaving it visibly dazed.

  Jaisan darted forward from behind her, ears back flat and teeth bared, to crouch in front of her and return the favour. He snapped at the demon’s neck, and it jerked back reflexively. Aindry abandoned her pack and peeled off her clothes as fast as she ever had in her life, and willed herself wolf, while Jaisan held off not only the demon-horse but two smaller demon-ponies as well.

  Aindry launched herself directly at one of the smaller ones as it reared. It toppled over backwards, and by the time they hit the ground Aindry had her teeth clamped tight around its throat. It squealed and writhed madly, clawing at her. Jaisan raced over to help, and got a mirror grip on its spine from behind.

  In seconds, it stopped struggling and melted away.

  Aindry whipped around to face the other two, and they halted just out of reach. Jaisan shook himself, and turned to stand beside her.

  Deadlock, each pair waiting for the other to move first.

  The smaller demon broke it, by lunging at Jaisan. He evaded its attempted bite, but his own attack glanced off the hard scales. Aindry gathered her
self, ready to go for its open side if Jaisan could just get it to turn a little more…

  The other demon raked its claws down her side while she was distracted. She yelped, and had to leave Jaisan to his own fight and concentrate on her own.

  Stupid, Aindry, very stupid. You are not doing well today. Get with it before you get both of you killed!

  She and the demon-horse circled one another, never looking away. It darted towards her again, that deceptively long neck extended, and teeth penetrated fur and skin on her left shoulder, shallowly, scarcely damaging the muscle beneath at all.

  Inspiration struck: she yelped in more pain than she really felt, and stumbled; when she caught her balance, she kept her left forefoot tucked up under her body. It would hold her weight still, but the demon didn’t need to know that.

  Clever though it was, the demon fell for it. She retreated, her tail between her hind legs, snarling defiantly.

  You think you can drink this wolf’s wild blood, do you? You’re about to learn otherwise!

  The demon feinted to her right, then attacked from the left.

  She evaded it, made a point of staggering as she came down on her left foreleg, and the claws missed her with no room to spare.

  With a high-pitched growl that made her wince in discomfort, it reared, the obvious intent to come down on top of her.

  Aindry waited, praying to Cassandra and the Moonwolf.

  At the last instant, she writhed her body out of the way of the descending forefeet, and twisted upwards to clamp her jaws on its throat. The scales were finer there but still tough, she couldn’t puncture them but pressure alone should suffice if she could hold it long enough. She bit down harder, grimly resisting all its attempts to fling her off. The forefeet tore savagely at her, and she felt claws score more than once, but if she let go she’d be in worse trouble. She put all her strength into holding on.

  Slowly, the demon weakened, and finally went limp.

  She didn’t let go even then; one of the first demons she’d ever fought had pretended to be dead, and she’d barely escaped alive.

  Sure enough, after it laid quite still long enough that it realized she wasn’t convinced, it began to thrash again.

  Jaisan limped heavily over, favouring his right foreleg for real; as with the first, she held it and he crunched its spine.

  It melted away into nothing.

  Aindry shifted to human, checking her wounds. Only one shallow bite, mostly claw-marks, and since the faint cold fire she could feel was centred around the bite on her shoulder, she suspected only the teeth had poison.

  Jaisan also changed, on command, and held still to be inspected. He, unfortunately, had a much worse bite on his right forearm, but otherwise like hers they were all claw-wounds, and none were serious.

  “Get dressed,” Aindry said. “Once we reach a gas station or something we’ll get cleaned up. Right now, since we can both walk, let’s get out of here.” Two demon attacks ago, or maybe three, they’d had a narrow escape when another demon appeared on the battleground just when they thought they were safe. Better to get away from here.

  They followed the road in the direction they’d been going, in hopes that civilization might be closer than they knew it was behind them. Exhausted, injured, though at least they’d escaped with little poison this time, even a short distance was going to feel like a very long way.

  Aindry prayed that they’d have enough time to recover before the next attack; the intervals grew ever shorter. If they came much more quickly, the demons would soon win simply by exhausting them and wearing them down by inches.

  That can’t happen, she vowed to herself. We’ll survive. This can’t go on forever. Maybe we’ll find Mom or Jess soon…

  42

  Footsteps on the stairs drew Jess’ attention away from a rather interesting novel Shaine had handed him in response to yet another growl of boredom—he was, at least, capable of functioning for brief periods, but he tired annoyingly easily, which made it difficult to do much. Those weren’t Gisela’s footsteps, or Shaine’s, or Kevin’s, he thought, frowning.

  Gisela’s voice was audible, with the door ajar to let Hob in on his frequent visits. “Bane! Get back down here! Jess is off limits!”

  “Not to me, he isn’t,” Bane retorted, and there was just enough growl in his voice to be a warning, though not actual threat. “This is pack business. Back off.”

  Jess closed the book with hands that trembled, and set it carefully on the floor next to the loveseat before sitting up, legs crossed, facing the door.

  “Bane…”

  “This needs to be taken care of.”

  Pack instinct howled at him that the alpha wolf was certain to be angry at him, that was bad, almost anything was better than that. Reason utterly failed to silence it. Shivering, he laced his hands together in his lap and tried to slow his breathing down. At least he was in magesilks, if Bane showed any signs of aggression he could change and show his throat…

  Bane went so far as to rap lightly on the door before opening it, which was a good sign; as soon as he came in, Jess dropped his gaze, and heard Bane close the door. He’d resented it, for a while, the power over him wolf instinct gave Bane and Eva, and to a lesser degree the rest of the pack; he’d resented it only until he’d realized that his trust in Bane, as simply Bane, as a friend, even as a teacher, was something else, something all his own that had nothing to do with respective pack status. Once he’d stopped fighting it, stopped seeing it from a human interpretation of pride and strength and superiority, fitting into the pack and knowing his place in it—even if it was at the bottom of the hierarchy—felt right and safe and somehow comforting. He couldn’t remember ever, even in his most frightened and angry moments, truly believing Bane might hurt him.

  At the moment, he wasn’t sure what to believe, so he stayed very still, eyes fixed on the rug in front of the loveseat, not daring to do anything that might possibly look like a challenge.

  What difference does it make? a small, logical part of his mind asked coldly. You ran away from the pack, cut yourself off from them. So what if he thinks you’re challenging him? You aren’t part of the pack anymore.

  Pack instinct completely disregarded it. That part desperately wanted reassurance, approval, to be part of the pack again, and didn’t care what that meant to Jess’ self-respect.

  There are definite drawbacks to being a werewolf… shapechanging is way cool, and so is healing fast, but all this instinct shit makes it awfully hard to figure out what’s going on in my head sometimes. Harder than usual, even, which is saying something.

  Still, he was pretty sure it wasn’t entirely that instinct wanted the forgiveness of the alpha wolf; partly it was yearning for the sense of belonging again.

  “Jess, relax.” He couldn’t remember ever hearing the alpha wolf sound so weary; he took a chance, looked up just enough to watch Bane walk over to sit next to him, though he carefully avoided eye contact. “Honestly, between Gisela acting like I’ve only been trying to get up here to eat you alive, and now you acting like I’m going to…” Bane sighed. “I have enough trouble apologizing at the best of times, let alone all this.”

  “Apologizing?” There was no scent of anger, nothing aggressive in Bane’s body language; if anything, what he was picking up was… distress? That helped the almost unendurable tension, but not much. God, what is with me today? Reacting to the alpha wolf is one thing, but it doesn’t normally make me this wired. “But I’m the one who screwed up.”

  “Funny, I could’ve sworn Kev mentioned you two spent a while talking yesterday. He didn’t mention details, but I know him well enough to know that he told you that it wasn’t your fault. You admittedly didn’t react in the smartest way, but you had reason for the way you did react. Much better reason than Kev and I had, not staying with you or bringing you back here.” His tone turned gentle. “What’s scary is how very much pain was caused, to you and to Kev and to all of us, by a few hours of none of us think
ing rationally. I had every reason to know better, but somehow I completely failed to think through the consequences. In other words… yes, you made a mistake, but it was hardly the only one made that day, it was just part of a whole series of mistakes and misunderstandings. And one of them was mine, I failed in my responsibility to the members of my pack, and my responsibility as a friend. And I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Does that mean you aren’t going to chase me out of your territory for real this time?”

  “I’m not in the habit of chasing my pack out of my territory.”

  Which means I’m still part of the pack! wolf instinct sang joyfully. Everything is okay now!

  Learned reflexes of paranoia and insecurity weren’t banished quite so easily. “For real?”

  “I apologized. Don’t push it, wolf-cub.” There was no anger in it, though. Bane leaned back, pulled Jess down against him—the playful-rough, dominant-affectionate kind of behaviour Jess had adapted to readily as soon as he’d accepted the way pack structure functioned. Jess curled up against his side willingly, closing his eyes as Bane began to stroke his hair and back lightly—that tension inside, knotted almost too tight to bear, loosened and faded, leaving behind a powerful sense of release.

  Alpha wolf’s accepted me home, so all’s well, Jess sighed to himself in resignation. Well, if that keeps all the wolf instinct stuff settled down, maybe I can figure out the rest in peace.

  He didn’t really believe himself, even as he thought it, that that was all there was to it.

  “As for this mage who is much too interested in you…” There was a definite growl in Bane’s voice now, but it wasn’t directed at Jess. “If I’d known he was going to be a danger to you, I would’ve ripped his throat out the first time, while phoenix had him backlashed.”

  “Seriously?” Jess said sceptically.

  Bane considered, then chuckled. “Well, if I’d known he was going to be a danger to you and that I’d start to value having you around, instead of being tempted daily to chase you off. You’re right, at the time, I didn’t know you’d be worth it. But I still rather wish I had. He’s dealing with demons. If you see him again, don’t mess around. For all intents and purposes, he’s chosen to make himself into an extremely dangerous predator. Treat him as one. If you’re absolutely sure you can kill him fast, do it, but otherwise, run.” His tone turned thoughtful. “Sam seems to know an awful lot about demons, she might actually be a good one to go to. Or Kev or Lori or one of the Adepts, since he seems to be using heightened elvenmage abilities. Or to me—I know how to take out a mage.”