The Sound and the Furry

by Karen Ranney

  The Sound and the Furry

  The Furry Chronicles - Book 2

  Karen Ranney

  Karen Ranney LLC

  Copyright © 2017 by Karen Ranney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. My ankles were beginning to itch

  2. I don't like being startled

  3. I was the Keeper of the Kibble

  4. I've never been pure in the Wolfie way

  5. I was the dangerous one

  6. With that everyone - including me - finally breathed

  7. Dear Torrance, you're too much effort

  8. Whoever said ignorance was bliss didn’t have an ounce of curiosity

  9. His legs aren't broken

  10. I was a horror?

  11. My libido was singing an aria

  12. What could you say about a man who came prepared?

  13. I wouldn't have shaved his leg

  14. Hope springs eternal and all that jazz

  15. I'll bet you money that there was a pond nearby

  16. Good grief, was I a walking lie detector?

  17. If all else failed, maybe I should try conversation

  18. My father was not going to be happy

  19. Witpire blood. Woo woo

  20. Right now she looked terrified

  21. My tank had been topped off, in a manner of speaking

  22. The Universe snickered in response

  23. I was just trying to avoid fainting or having a meltdown

  24. I was going to have to hit something

  Also by Karen Ranney

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  My ankles were beginning to itch

  To say I was nervous was an understatement.

  It had been three months since I'd been given the transfusion from a witpire, a word given to me by a five-year-old wizardess. I wasn't sure there was such a thing as a wizardess, but whatever the child was it was special and probably one of a kind. A witpire, according to Antonia, was the combination of a witch and a vampire.

  The transfusion would have been special enough if I had been human. I'm not. I’m a Were or, as I like to call myself, a Furry. Perhaps a better label would be Hairy, since I hadn't even taken off my bathrobe yet and my ankles were beginning to itch.

  For the past three months I’d been a little afraid of what would happen after the transfusion so I’d continued to take Waxinine, a prescription I’d been using for years. It had started off as a blood pressure medication in the civilian world. Someone discovered that it could keep Weres from changing during a full moon, but that benefit was off label. I bet the company who manufactured it thought there was an epidemic of hypertension going around.

  Waxinine had a few side effects that would affect me in my senior years which was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to take it forever.

  Right now I felt as if the pelt just below my skin was popping out in places. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see that my wrist was adorned with a bracelet of hair. Or that my toes were furry.

  I’d once walked into a meeting of my mother’s book club. Instead of talking about that week’s book, they’d been discussing the changes that women of a certain age experience. I stopped at the door, fascinated not only by what they were revealing but by my mother’s expression. She’d been sitting in one of the comfy chairs in my parent’s den with the oddest look on her face. After a few minutes I understood why.

  “I can deal with the hairs coming out of my nose. But my ears?” one of the women said.

  Another woman laughed, then said, “Or what about your upper lip? You turn fifty and you’re growing a mustache.”

  “It’s the boobs.”

  All of the women turned to look at the speaker, a woman I’d met before at my mother’s house. Peg had bright red hair that I suspected wasn’t entirely natural and skin that was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Again, not entirely without help.

  “The boobs,” Peg repeated. “Why the hell do you start getting hairy nipples?”

  Try growing six nipples, all of them topped with clumps of hair, then coming back to yourself as a human. First of all your breasts ached for days and you have to resort to plucking your nipples constantly.

  No wonder my mother looked like she was swallowing her words. Most of her friends didn’t have a clue that she got Furry once a month. Nor did they realize that the coyote they heard at the full moon was my mother. She did like to vocalize.

  I wished I could hear her now.

  Had I made a mistake coming to Kerrville alone?

  Weres were communal animals. We lived together. We played together. Once a month, we went on the Hunt together. We didn’t actually hunt for anything. Oh, a few of us might chase a rabbit now and then, but unless you liked waking up with your hands and arms covered in blood, you tended to avoid little creatures. Maybe originally, the Hunt had been a real hunt, but now it was just a way for us to express who we were together. Members of a pack, animals who gloried in their true nature.

  That was one of the reasons I’d moved back to San Antonio. For years I’d been semi-estranged from my family. I’d lived among civilians and avoided the Furry culture. The older I got, however, the more homesick I became for what I’d always known as normal and real. Even if it drove me nuts.

  For the past three months I’d held myself apart from people, as much as I could. I saw my mother from time to time. More often, if she got her way. I saw Marcie, especially valuable since she was the witpire in question. And, of course, my partners at the clinic and my patients and their owners.

  All in all, it was a large group of people I interacted with, but they couldn’t ease my loneliness.

  Tonight I should have been with Mom or my sister, Sandy, instead of being alone for the first time since the transfusion. I was worried, however, that something odd would happen and I didn’t want to have to explain.

  There was every possibility that I wouldn’t change. After all, my basic nature had been altered. I was now a Pranic Furry. To the best of my knowledge there were only two of us, Mark Avery and me. I didn’t want to think about Mark at the moment so I concentrated on my surroundings.

  Instead of going somewhere familiar, I’d come to a hotel in Kerrville, one that catered to Weres on a full moon. It wasn't something written on the hotel’s brochure. But we Weres knew which establishments would set out bathrobes for us and keep the back door unlocked. This hotel was also famous for its dawn breakfast.

  I’d already changed into my white fluffy bathrobe and followed a few people out of the hotel and down the path. Triangular signs along the way pointed to Camping Site, Overlook Platform, Guadalupe River, and other sites. I was careful to follow the signs with the barely visible wolf ears on the bottom.

  I followed the incline that was a little steeper than I’d expected, wishing I’d worn my sneakers instead of flip-flops. Sometimes I misplaced whatever footwear I wore. Either they were tossed in a big pile — if I was with a large group — and someone else made off with them or I was neat and orderly and stashed my stuff beneath a bush and forgot where the hell I put it. (I wasn’t that scatterbrained normally, but after the Hunt I was emotionally and physically exhausted.)

  On two momentous occasions, I’d also lost my bathrobe. I’d been bailed out the first time by my mother.

  “I have an extra robe,” she’d told me, rushing to get the carryall she packed for just such a contingency. “Now stay right where you are.”
/>   Since I’d been naked at the time, and hiding behind a tree, that hadn’t been hard to do.

  The second time, Craig had stripped off his own robe and tossed it to me, laughing the whole time.

  There wasn’t anything I could say, so I’d just shut up and put it on.

  Maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about tonight. It would probably be a perfectly normal change. I’d become my wolf and spend hours exploring my surroundings, reveling in the freedom to express my secret nature. When I became human again I’d be grateful for the experience, and would feel energized and joyful.

  After all, other than increased strength, which had been handy on a couple of fronts, there were no other indications that I was Pranic. Not like Mark, who seemed to be able to do a host of other things, not the least of which was hearing my thoughts.

  That wasn’t an ability I wanted.

  What did you do if you overheard someone thinking bad thoughts about you? You couldn’t ask them what they meant, could you? Nope. You’d just have to suck it up and pretend you didn't hear anything. What if you heard something confidential? What if you overheard a terrorist plot as you walked down the street? How did you explain that to anyone in authority?

  I’d already given this scenario some attention.

  I didn't have the ability to levitate things like Mark could. That would've come in handy when vacuuming under my grandmother's Victorian furniture. Not even the Roomba could get under some of that stuff, because the ornamental wood molding almost touched the floor.

  I suspected that Mark had a great many other talents that he hadn’t divulged to me, such as the magical ability to disappear.

  Of course, I could always call him. I could leave him a message, a friendly haven’t-seen-you-around-for-a-while kind of greeting. I’d be very breezy with a touch of insouciance.

  Hi Mark, it's Torrance. Just wanted to say hi. If you get a chance, call me. If not, I totally understand. Have a nice day!

  That would do. Then, if he didn't call me back, I would wipe him from my memory. That might prove to be a little easier said than done due to the fact that we’d had mad, insanely great sex. But only once.

  My little libido had been sprawled on her cave floor, arms and legs akimbo for days afterward. She was just now starting to get to her knees. It would take a few more weeks until she began whispering to me to get busy.

  I heard other Weres rustling about in the bushes and deliberately walked a little farther along the riverbank. I didn't know the people I would be running with, but that didn't really matter. I knew they were part of the Celtic Clan and that they were Weres.

  I couldn't help but wonder if the residents of Kerrville knew that their beautiful town was overrun once a month.

  Weres could, of course, change more often than at a full moon, but doing so posed a few problems. First of all, we could get caught and that was a grave concern. We’d survived all these years because of our secrecy and it was the first thing a young Were learned. We didn’t talk about being Furry. We certainly didn’t discuss it with anyone outside of the family. If we had any questions, we brought them to our parents, no one else. We never, ever discussed the subject in public.

  The second reason we didn’t change often was because of the side effects. Our pelts were located just below the skin, ready for that propitious moment when the change began. Our pores opened and it sprouted forth. We didn’t grow that amount of hair in the seconds it took to change from human to Furry. If we did, the process would take much longer and we’d be expending more energy.

  The more we changed, the more visible the results. Our skin appeared to grow darker — like a permanent tan — and since most of us were pale, that was a dead giveaway that someone among us was uncontrollable. Nobody wanted to be around an undisciplined Were. Since we were a communal species, pack animals who socialized with each other, avoiding someone was tantamount to banishment.

  Some of us, like me, have done the self banishment bit. I went to school among civilians, which was acceptable, but after school I didn’t come home. I lived in Austin instead of San Antonio for a few years. I’ve only been back a matter of months. Three eventful months, as a matter of fact. Three miserable months if you factored in my sense of isolation.

  I finally found a likely site, a concrete pad with a wooden picnic table bolted to the ground.

  After sliding my feet out of the flip-flops I took a look around. Moonlight graced the trees, making them appear almost silver. The grass around me was tall, the wind creating patterns in it. I sat at the picnic table, wishing I hadn’t been so quick to separate myself from the others. Wishing, too, that I’d gone to a more familiar area for this first change after the transfusion.

  Slowly, I unbelted the robe.

  I felt alone and isolated. Not only had I made myself different from the other members of my clan, but the only creature on earth who was like me had left, disappeared, vanished. In other words, I’d been abandoned. Mark had left me. I still longed for him and if that wasn’t sad I didn’t know what was.

  I wasn’t all that keen about dredging up those memories, so I took off my bathrobe and stood naked in the night.

  Chapter Two

  I don't like being startled

  I felt vulnerable standing there as a human, waiting to change and feeling the breeze summoning goosebumps on my skin. I walked off the pad into the long grass and knelt, then got on all fours, my hands digging into the soil. I lowered my head between my arms, waiting.

  This moment was as close as any creature could come to being reborn again. It was an eternity of seconds strung together with wonder. I didn’t feel the transition, the reforming of bones and muscles, the opening of my pores to allow my pelt freedom. Instead, nature seemed to have spared us that agony, wrapping the change in a blur. The next seconds, half human, half wolf, felt almost religious, and if I had to describe what it was like I’d say that it was the instant when you first walked into a magnificent cathedral. Your breath halted in awe. Your heart raced. Your spirit soared.

  And then I was different. I was wolf. Yet I was still Torrance with my human consciousness and enhanced senses. I could smell the damp earth beneath me, recipient of rains in the past few days. A rabbit leaped from the underbrush to find safety in the woods. A bird ruffled its feathers on a nearby branch and tucked its head beneath its wing.

  The air was cool, the breeze riffling the hairs in front of my ears. For some reason, my ears were always sensitive when I changed. Tonight was no different, but I pushed the momentary discomfort to the back of my mind. I was more concerned about whether or not there had been anything different about this transformation. Had I suddenly grown two noses? I put my paw over my snout. Nope. Everything was fine there.

  My tail was like an extra muscle on my derrière. Although it was made of bone, I could, with the twitch, make it sway right or left or up, or even tuck it between my legs. The latter was more an autonomic response than one I consciously summoned. When I was afraid or forced into a submissive posture, there went my tail.

  Maybe that's why I liked dogs so much. I understood them in a species kind of way. When their ears went back and they hunkered down, I reassured them that I posed no danger. If I had to hurt them in any way — like giving them a shot — I apologized beforehand and told them that sometimes a little pain now meant they were healthier later.

  My favorite vet tech once told me that she liked hearing me talk to the dogs.

  "It's like you really understand them," Susie said. "Do you think they understand you?"

  "No," I said. "I wish they could, but I think it's your tone of voice and how you handle them that counts.”

  Still, I had to smile when Susie started talking to our canine patients.

  Cats were an entirely different story. I had to greet them with almost a bow, then address them as if I were a submissive. Cats seemed to expect that.

  The day had been hot, the temperature in the upper nineties, but tonight was at least twen
ty degrees cooler. I lay on the ground, my front paws digging into the earth, feeling a oneness with nature in my Furry form that I could never quite reach as a human. Sometimes, I dabbled in my garden, but even with my hands in the soil, planting seedlings, I’d never gotten the feeling like the one I experienced as a wolf. I felt like a droplet in the ocean, part of a larger and more important whole.

  Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply. The small animals that inhabited this place were each giving off a pungent odor of fear now that I’d invaded their home.

  I began to explore, slowly at first, given that this was unknown terrain. My feet felt odd. It had been months since I’d changed and my paws were sensitive.

  Most Weres I knew changed every month without fail. I was probably odd in that I didn’t. Even as a teenager, I chose not to follow my friends on the Hunt consistently, but took the adolescent version of Waxinine from time to time. That is, until I decided that I was madly in love with Craig Palmer.

  Teenage love was filled with unbearable angst. Fortunately, we outgrew it most of the time. Unfortunately, some people didn’t realize that teenage love was something to abandon after a certain age. People like Craig Palmer, for instance.

  The last time I changed, it had been with Craig. When it was over, he’d invited me to partake in a little whoopie. I’d declined and I’ve never regretted that decision.

  I walked deeper into the woods, the surrounding trees giving me a feeling of claustrophobia. I hadn’t felt this way on that last Hunt with Craig. I don’t know when I started to dislike the darkness, but my human emotions carried through to my wolf self. I walked with caution, not freedom. I didn’t bound through the woods with joy in my heart. Each step was calculated. My ears were pitched forward to catch the smallest sound.