Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines)

by Lia Silver

  “I know.”

  “You know it in here.” Roy tapped his temple. “But until you’ve taken someone’s life, you can’t know it in here.” He touched his heart. “If there’s three of us, DJ and I can take care of that part and you can do something else. You’ve never killed anyone. Let’s keep it that way. It doesn’t matter so much for me and DJ. As far as we’re concerned, that ship has sailed.”

  Please don’t ask me what it feels like, Roy thought.

  “Gregor’s a murderer,” Laura said. “If we don’t stop him, he’ll kill more people, and Donnie will help him. He nearly killed me! Honestly, Roy, I think I’d be okay with it.”

  “It’s not about what’s justified. It changes you, that’s all.”

  Laura lifted her chin stubbornly. “If it does, it does. Freeing the pack will be worth it.”

  Roy wished he could explain it better. But maybe it was impossible to explain, and could only be understood by experience. “This isn’t your call. I’m commanding this mission, and we’re waiting for DJ.”

  Laura didn’t look happy about it, but she backed down. “Fine.”

  Roy’s head was aching again. “Let’s be wolves.”

  It was a relief to change, though his weariness carried over. So did Laura’s. They walked rather than trotted home. The scents and sounds and sights of the forest soothed Roy, letting him exist in the eternal now of a wolf.

  As soon as he became a man again, everything he didn’t want to think about popped into his mind.

  You two have gone through so much together.

  Roy pushed that away, trying to think instead about how much he’d like to have Jim teach him to hunt with a bow.

  I didn’t mean the shrapnel.

  Roy hurried inside the cabin, dropped down on the sofa, and grabbed a book. He read the same sentence five times without taking in a single word of it, realized what he was doing, and carefully read it again. A moment later, he still had no idea what it had said.

  That ship has sailed.

  He felt dizzy and anxious and not quite present, as if reality had slipped one degree away from where it ought to be. But maybe that was from talking on the phone for an hour. Lots of things felt like one thing when really they were another. His “panic attack” in the car hadn’t been a real panic attack, but a near-deadly side effect of his transformation. The all-too-familiar sensation of being a fraction out of step with the world didn’t have to mean anything would happen tonight. For all he knew, he’d gotten too much sun and was suffering from mild heat exhaustion.

  In bed that night, Laura snuggled up to Roy, kissing and caressing him. He tried to respond, but his heart wasn’t in it. Before he could figure out how to explain, she’d noticed his lack of enthusiasm and pulled away.

  “Sorry.” Laura sounded hurt and even guilty, as if it was her fault that he wasn’t up to making love to her.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Roy said, stroking her hair. “I don’t feel that great. By the end of that phone call, my head was killing me.”

  “Want some ibuprofen?”

  “I’m fine now. Just tired. Let me take a rain check, okay?”

  “Okay. Good night, Roy. Feel better.” She kissed him lightly, then stretched out with her arms around him.

  Roy lay debating whether he should warn her that he might have a nightmare. If he didn’t warn her and he had one, she’d be startled and upset and maybe even scared. But if he did warn her and then nothing happened, he’d have worried her—maybe even upset and scared her—for no reason.

  If he warned her, he’d have to explain why he hadn’t warned her before. And what had happened today to knock him off-kilter. And what had happened to give him nightmares…

  He gave serious consideration to waiting till Laura was asleep, then getting up and spending the night reading in the living room. He always woke up before her anyway. She’d never have to know. But that would only put it off till the next night.

  Besides, things had changed. He had a pack now. He had Laura. He wasn’t alone. He was in Yosemite. Maybe nothing would happen.

  Roy touched Laura in the pack sense, getting a faint impression of her personality and a solid one of her presence. He couldn’t discern any emotions; she’d already fallen asleep.

  He certainly wasn’t going to shake her awake to warn her about something that might not happen and she might not even notice if it did. Waking her up would make it seem like some huge, dangerous deal.

  Roy had to stop thinking about it. He was probably psyching himself out. If he kept obsessing over it, he’d give himself nightmares that he might not have had if he hadn’t kept worrying that he’d have nightmares.

  Laura turned over in her sleep, settling on her back. Now that she was no longer holding him, Roy felt cold and uneasy. He rolled on to his stomach and put one arm around her, but that left his back exposed. He ended up turning over again, to lie facing away from her with her side against his back, gripping the Raven under the pillow.

  She’s guarding my back, he told himself. I’ll wake up if anyone breaks in. I’ve got a weapon in my hand. I’m safe. DJ’s alive. I’m in Yosemite, with Laura. She loves me. She’s guarding me. I’m in Yosemite. DJ’s alive…

  Chapter Seventeen: Laura

  Ten Percent

  Laura awoke, fully alert, her entire body humming with anxiety.

  Gregor!

  But moonlight shone bright through the window, and she could see that the room was empty, except for her and Roy.

  Roy lay curled up in a tangle of sheets, fists clenched, muscles bulging and tense, sweat running off his face and soaking into the pillow. It was the harshness of his breathing that had awakened her. He sounded as if he was sobbing in his sleep.

  Laura’s anxiety faded, replaced by concern. “Roy?”

  He didn’t stir. He’d said once that he wouldn’t lash out if she touched him while he slept, but she hadn’t imagined him ever looking like this. Nervously, she laid her hand on his shoulder.

  Roy jerked awake with a gasp, eyes opening wide and unseeing, hands still balled up in fists.

  Did I look like that when I dreamed of the bank robbery? Laura wondered. Like I wasn’t even there in the room with him?

  She couldn’t put anything in his hands, so she squeezed his shoulder. “Can you feel that? What does it feel like?”

  He didn’t reply for so long that she wondered if he’d heard her at all. Then he said, “Warmth. Pressure.” He sounded half in dreams still.

  “Okay, good. What else can you feel?”

  He turned his head, his eyes slowly focusing on her. The moonlight made them glint silver. “I can’t open my fists.”

  Laura wrapped her hands around his clenched right fist, gently pushing at his fingers until they came loose. After that, his left hand opened by itself. His palms were bleeding from where his nails had broken through the skin.

  “Find three white things—” Laura began.

  He interrupted her, sounding weary and desperate. “Can you please just hold me?”

  Laura put her arms around him, holding him close. The sweat was cold on his skin, but the flesh beneath was warm. As the locked tension in his muscles released, he started shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

  “It’s all right,” Laura said. “You’re not alone, Roy. I won’t let you go.”

  She grasped their bond, hoping that her calm would ease his distress. Laura was instantly caught up in a dizzying wash of terror and grief and disorientation, of pain so overwhelming that it threatened to suck her in like an undertow. She could do nothing to comfort him; the more she tried to synch with him, the farther she got pulled into his own private agony.

  She released the bond, returning to herself, and simply held him tight. Every shuddering breath he took vibrated through her own chest.

  It seemed so unfair that she could be so close and want to help him so much, and yet be unable to do anything but lay her body against his. But that seemed to be e
nough. Gradually, his breathing steadied. The shaking slowed to an occasional tremor, then stopped.

  “Thanks.” His breath was warm against her cheek. “I should have warned you, I don’t sleep well. I’ve been crossing my fingers this wouldn’t happen. Or you’d sleep through it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. What were you dreaming about?”

  Roy rolled away from her and lay on his back, hands folded under his head. “You don’t want to hear about that.”

  “You mean you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That too.”

  “Are all your nightmares about the same thing?”

  “No.” After a long silence, Roy said, “After I became a werewolf, I started dreaming about being lost and alone. I think it was because I needed a pack.”

  “Was that was this one was about?”

  Roy stared up at the ceiling. He looked drawn and exhausted, the few lines in his face etched deep. “You don’t have to do this. I’m all right now. Go back to sleep.”

  The jittery readiness of adrenaline still flowed through her veins. If Roy wouldn’t talk, she’d have to get up and pace around, maybe go make some tea, take a shower, anything but lie down with her eyes closed. “I’m wide awake. Could you sleep right now?”

  “No,” he confessed. “Can… can you come closer?”

  She claimed half his pillow and lay on her side with one arm tight around his chest, her head propped on her other hand so she could see his face. He was trembling again.

  “Was it the helicopter going down?” Laura asked.

  “No.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, obviously trying to steel himself. “It was about something that happened a while before that. I’ve dreamed about it a lot, actually. Not the whole thing, different bits and pieces of it. Tonight it was…”

  Roy’s hand went to his throat as if the words were literally stuck there.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Laura suggested. “You may as well. It could be a long time before you come across a werewolf therapist.”

  She was glad to see that her attempt at humor worked: he gave her an almost-smile, and said, “I won’t get into all the details, or we’ll be up all night. But basically… It was evening. We were headed back to our base.”

  Roy stopped again. Laura could see already that he was having much more trouble telling this story than the one about becoming a werewolf.

  “Just you and your team?” Laura asked, to get him talking again.

  “My squad. Three fire teams and a squad leader. We were ambushed. One IED went off in front of us, one behind. We started taking fire. Machine guns, RPGs—rocket-propelled grenades. Another bomb went off, and DJ was thrown about fifteen feet. I went after him.”

  This time Laura waited. After a while, Roy went on. “He was completely covered in soot, and he smelled like someone had doused a raw steak in lighter fluid and set it on fire. I dreamed of that smell.” A muscle twitched at his jaw. “I dreamed that when I picked him up, pieces of his body came off in my hands.”

  The horrified look that Laura had been trying to keep off her face must have shown through, because he quickly added, “That didn’t really happen. In real life, his uniform was burned and the straps on his body armor were damaged, so some of what he was wearing fell off when I lifted him. But I thought, for a second…”

  He took a deep, ragged breath before going on. “I picked him up and ran for cover.”

  Roy stopped again, like he’d hit a wall. Finally, he said, “When I put DJ down, a charred patch over his ribs cracked open. There was white at the bottom. I was looking at his bones.”

  “My God,” Laura muttered.

  “He didn’t speak. He didn’t moan. I could see he was conscious, but he didn’t make a sound. He told me later that the pain was so bad, he was afraid he’d start screaming if he opened his mouth at all. But if he had screamed, I wouldn’t have been quite as scared. If you can scream, you can breathe. If someone’s down and silent, it’s usually because they’re in shock or unconscious or not breathing.”

  Roy ran a hand through his hair and drew it out dripping with sweat. “DJ looked really bad and he was quiet as a fucking mouse, which was not like him, and every time there was enough of a lull for me to stop shooting and check on him, I expected to find him dead.

  “We were pinned down for hours. Then, who knows why, everything stopped. Everyone attacking us just evaporated back to wherever they’d come from. We got the hell out of there.

  “I ended up jammed in the back of a Humvee with DJ and Suarez, the radio operator. He and I were the only guys in the platoon from New Mexico. I’m from Albuquerque, and he was from Taos. He was nineteen, and he’d been shot in the head. He was alive, but only barely.

  “About two minutes after Alec started flooring it out of there, Suarez stopped breathing. I tried giving him mouth-to-mouth, but…”

  Roy’s face was again running with sweat. He scrubbed it off with his pajama sleeve. “DJ still hadn’t said a word. I thought maybe he’d inhaled just as the bomb went off and burned his lungs or throat. I thought his throat would swell shut or his lungs would fill up with fluid, and he’d suffocate before we could get to help.”

  You know so many ways that a person can die, Laura thought. She remembered kneeling beside the red-haired man—Andrew—and feeling his life run out, wet and hot, over her hands. How many times had Roy had people die in his arms?

  Roy went on, “Suarez was dead. I thought DJ was dying. I felt like the floor dropped out from under my feet. Literally, I couldn’t feel anything touching me. It was like I was falling. No—it was like I didn’t even exist. I had no idea why we were doing anything or why any of it mattered. Everything—not just the war, everything in existence—felt completely meaningless and pointless. It was like I was watching a movie that I didn’t even care about.

  “Then we started taking fire again. Honestly, I was glad. I know that sounds terrible.”

  “No, it makes sense,” Laura said. “It gave you something useful to do. And something else to think about.”

  “I guess. Well, I let go of Suarez, I grabbed on to DJ with one hand so he wouldn’t get thrown around, and I started shooting out the back with the other.

  “DJ said, ‘Where’s my rifle?’

  “I was so glad to hear his voice, I can’t even tell you. I passed it over to him, and, obviously, we made it back. I got out of the Humvee and fell over. I’d been hit and I never even noticed.”

  “There.” Roy guided Laura’s hand to a pitted scar on his thigh. “DJ was medevac’d out, and I was treated at the base. The wound wasn’t serious, but I’d lost a lot of blood. I thought maybe that was why I had that—that breakdown. But I didn’t feel any better after it healed.”

  He went on with a mixture of guilt and determination, as if he was making some terrible confession. “I know I let you get the impression that everything that was wrong with me started when the helo went down. But I was already falling apart. I couldn’t eat. I was afraid to sleep. I’d stay up until I more or less collapsed, and then I’d dream of that ambush and wake up having a panic attack.

  “I’d be sitting around doing nothing and I’d have a panic attack. I wouldn’t literally panic, you know, but for no reason, I’d feel anxious, my heart would rev up, I’d get short of breath, I’d start shaking, and I’d sweat through my shirt. I tried and tried to keep it together, but I just couldn’t.

  “When I first heard that DJ would make it, I thought, ‘I was afraid that he’d die, but now that I know he won’t, I’ll be all right.’ But I wasn’t. He came back about a month later, with one hell of a scar. Then I thought, ‘I had to see for myself that he’s fine, but now that I’ve seen it, I’ll be all right.’ But I wasn’t then, either. I haven’t been all right since that IED went off, and that was six months ago. I don’t know if I’ll ever be all right again.”

  “Oh, Roy…” Laura tightened her arm around him. “Didn’t anyone try to help
you?”

  “Sure. I got sent back to the doctor on base. He said I was having a normal, temporary reaction to the stress of war. He pulled me off duty for twenty-four hours, gave me a sleeping pill and a shot for nausea, and told me I’d be fine once I got some rest. I made out like it fixed me.” Roy hesitated. “That happened twice before DJ came back.”

  “But your buddies—your team. Didn’t they realize you were in trouble?”

  “Of course they did. Marco was the one who sent me to be treated. He was the team leader, so he could do that. He kept an eye on me, made sure I ate and tried to stay near me when I slept. Alec did his best to cheer me up. DJ…”

  He fell silent for so long that Laura prompted him, “What did DJ do?”

  The muscles of Roy’s chest and side were rigid against Laura’s body. “This is really hard to talk about.”

  Harder than telling me how you and he both nearly died? Laura thought. Harder than admitting that you haven’t been fine for a long time?

  She wanted to know, but she didn’t want to cause him even more pain. “Do you think you’ll feel better if you tell me anyway?”

  “Maybe?” To Laura’s surprise, even the possibility seemed to inspire Roy to keep talking. “You have to remember, for everyone else, this happened gradually. But for DJ, one day he was patrolling with me, then he spent a month in the hospital. Then he came back and saw me. He seemed shocked. All else aside, I’d lost weight. He started pestering me to go back to the doctor and tell him that twenty-four hours of rest didn’t cut it. I said no. I wasn’t going to make everyone else pick up my slack just because I didn’t feel good.”

  “How well could you actually work?”

  “It wasn’t so bad while I was on duty and had something else to focus on. Then I’d go off duty, and that’s when it would hit me. Finally… I feel terrible about this.” Roy took a deep breath. “I had no appetite and I felt sick all the time, so I wasn’t eating enough. I used to like the Pop-Tarts that came in some of the MREs. DJ found me one and told me I needed to eat something and he wasn’t leaving until I did. I thought, no problem, I’ll eat it and he’ll go away. If it made me throw up later, he’d never have to know.