Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Kelly had thought that she might be of some help. And fortunately, Renee had agreed.

  Kelly had accepted that her werewolf nature would make it hard to live with the canine shapeshifters and the sanctuary dogs, neither species at all compatible with lycanthropes. So instead of living in the log cabin with the main shapeshifter pack or in the shapeshifter barn with the rest of them, she had her own small piece of land at the edge of the forest to park her trailer. Renee had even offered space in the greenhouse for Kelly’s potted herb garden she maintained for her small magic business.

  Kelly thought that part of the reason the shapeshifters had been warming up to her these last few months were the potions she provided. From Kelly’s birth control potion, better for Ki than pills, to the poultice that Kelly had made for a young pit bull rescue with wounds from a dog fight, to the potion for Lotus’ migraines, Kelly had proved herself and her motives to be quite different from Grant’s. And after a few weeks, the dogs had become just as excited to see her as any human or any shapeshifter. They still kept some distance, but they happily hopped around a few yards away from her, and they didn’t bark anymore when she transformed.

  Kelly sipped her hot chocolate on the trailer stairs as the morning sun saluted her skin and Butch Cassidy played with her toes. She gamely flared them for his amusement until he headed back into the trailer away from the cold.

  The only resident left at the sanctuary who had not quite warmed to her was the new werewolf, Malcolm. Even during the full moons when he couldn’t hold back the transformation, he refused to run with her. He would jump the property fence and leave her behind whenever she tried to entice him to follow. Every morning after, he would limp back in human form, the hair on his body tipped with frost.

  The rest of the time, Malcolm stalked his broody self around the sanctuary and avoided everyone as though he could spread lycanthropy to his friends by proximity. But he particularly stayed away from Kelly—as if he were afraid that if she got close enough, he might actually like her.

  But Kelly wasn’t going to let another moon pass without a confrontation. The shapeshifters, well-meaning as they were, were never going to get his dog skin back for him. Malcolm had fundamentally changed from the animal he had been before, and the mourning had gone on too long. It was time to cast away the black crêpe and veils and reveal the mirrors, time to introduce Malcolm to his new pelt before the moon ripped it out of him again.

  There was plenty to not like about being a werewolf. Kelly had visited that self-loathing state many times before and would probably stay in the vacation home for years to come. However, Kelly firmly believed that lycanthropy didn’t have to be all bad. It was best to embrace what you loved and discard the rest. She’d always been strange among the other wolves because she didn’t accept her wolf skin wholesale. She hated the way human beings smelt so appealing to her sensitive nose, but on the other hand, nothing beat a wolf run.

  Sometimes, she thought she outran magic.

  * * * *

  “That’s just sick,” Jake said from where he, Max and Lotus were digging through the snow between the shapeshifter barn and the dog barn. They were all bundled in their coats. Their breath fogged the air around them, and their nostrils were red from the cold. Jake mock-glared up at where Kelly stood barefoot on a snowdrift, although any one of them would have fallen straight through.

  “I know, isn’t it?” she replied. She sipped again from her hot chocolate.

  “Ever thought about giving us a hand, witchy woman?” Lotus asked, panting slightly. He was the youngest shapeshifter at the sanctuary, a lanky but strong and disciplined young man of about seventeen. His coppery skin and bluish black hair especially contrasted with the bright snow. Kelly had never seen him transform, but she saw his other skin just by looking in his eyes—a sleek black Australian kelpie.

  “Thought about it,” Kelly said with an impish grin.

  “And?” Lotus said.

  “Probably not a good idea,” Kelly said. “You think I’ve got all this easy-peasy magic and that I can do anything, Lotus baby, but I’m liable to start a blizzard trying to get rid of the snow from specific places. I’d better stick with what I’m best at.”

  “And what’s that?” Max asked.

  “Walking on frozen water and watching,” Kelly said, raising her hot chocolate mug in a toast.

  “Excuses, excuses,” Lotus said. “We see right through you. You just like to watch the big, strong men digging.”

  “Precisely,” Kelly replied. “Do I smell pancakes?”

  Jake sniffed the air and shook his head. “I don’t know. Do you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Ki was going to make them,” Max said, adjusting his scarf. He needed a haircut. Jake liked keeping his hair long, but Max’s ash blond hair was starting to look less carefree and more dated.

  “I’ll be sure to leave you some,” Kelly said, leaping easily over them and landing on the other side. Not even a dusting of snow trickled down into the path.

  “Just sick,” Jake muttered. Kelly heard the amusement under the grumbling. She waved at them without looking back.

  Once she had reached the shapeshifter barn, she landed on the cleared earth in front of the door and entered. The odours of maple syrup and pancakes assaulted her, but after four years, Kelly was so accustomed to the strength of scents that she didn’t reel back from them anymore. They were just a part of life, the good and the bad. Some of the good and bad had changed with the transformation, for which Kelly was also sometimes thankful. Having humans smell mouth-wateringly good was a bit of an adjustment, but at the same time, carrion and excrement didn’t have quite the negative effect that it had had when she’d been human.

  She preferred pancakes, though.

  “Oh, hey, Kelly,” Ki said, putting a platter stacked high with buttermilk pancakes on each folding table. “Join us.”

  A rough dozen shapeshifters drifted towards the table from their morning routines. Most of them lived in the shapeshifter barn, although a few of them sometimes slept with the dogs in the dog barn. The core pack, which Ki was a part of, had earned certain privileges by taking on greater responsibilities in the sanctuary. They lived in the cabin with Renee and tended to take their meals in the cabin’s kitchen or dining room. Ki was a notable exception, because she cooked for the shapeshifter barn.

  The shapeshifters didn’t like Kelly’s smell and she didn’t particularly like theirs, but they made a concerted effort not to wince away, which she appreciated and reciprocated. The pancakes helped. She poured hot syrup over her stack and dug in. About halfway through her pancakes, her nostrils flared and caught an even better scent. Ki had taken bacon out of the walk-in freezer.

  Ki cooked the bacon and put it on the tables. Kelly caught Ki biting back a smile as Kelly grabbed a few before any of the shapeshifters could. Then Ki sat down on the bench on the other side of the table.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Kelly asked, chewing more slowly, a little self-conscious at her enthusiasm.

  “Yeah, in a minute,” Ki said.

  “I can’t guarantee there’ll be any bacon left if you wait.”

  “I can always make more,” Ki said. “Look, I’ve kind of danced around the issue.”

  “I’ve danced around the issue myself,” Kelly replied.

  “We wanted to give him some space,” Ki said. “I mean, Grant didn’t give him a choice like he was giving Renee—well, like he was pretending to give Renee. But Malcolm hasn’t even come to the cabin ever since the change. He says it’s because he can smell Renee when he’s in there.”

  “What he doesn’t say is that he can smell the rest of you, too,” Kelly said. “No offence.”

  “None taken. I can smell him, too,” Ki said. “It’s just… He doesn’t really have anywhere else. He can’t go off and live as a stray or in a shelter like we can, although we came here because we didn’t want to do that. He’s got all these woods to run, but—”

  “But what if h
e encounters people?” Kelly finished for her. “And with the winter waning, the sanctuary’s going to get more visitors soon.”

  “He’s afraid of himself, he’s angry at Renee and he’s all alone. I thought when you came, he wouldn’t be so lonely.”

  “He’s avoiding me, too,” Kelly said. She quickly polished off the rest of her pancakes and bacon. “I don’t have the history that all of you have with Malcolm. I didn’t feel it was my place to go around telling him what to do.”

  “Well, consider this your permission,” Ki said.

  Kelly reached for the last piece of bacon on their table. Her hand shook as she offered it to Ki. Ki had been looking like someone had kicked her kitten, her black eyes downcast. However, at Kelly’s offering, Ki couldn’t help but grin a little. “You have it. Like I said, I’ll make my own.”

  “You sure?” Kelly asked. She wiped drool from the side of her mouth with her free hand.

  “You are so funny. Yeah, go ahead.” Ki had to laugh. “You know, I noticed that Grant ate a lot of meat, and now Malcolm picks around his vegetables, but neither of them are as excited about meat as you.”

  “That sounded really dirty,” Kelly said as she polished off the rest of the bacon.

  “I know, I realised that as soon as I said it,” Ki giggled.

  “I do love meat, though. And it’s a wolf thing, because I used to practically be a vegetarian. Can’t explain it.”

  Like a dog who had eaten its meal too quickly, Kelly stared longingly at the empty bacon plate but forced herself to return to the subject at hand.

  “Don’t worry about Malcolm,” Kelly said. “I think I’ve given him enough space until now. He can’t run away from it forever any more than I could. And the rest of you should start treating him like normal. I mean, don’t rub his nose in the fact that he isn’t a shapeshifter, but you don’t have to tiptoe around him either. If he explodes, just hit him on the back of the head or something. There’s no need to feed his behaviour.”

  “He’s always had a solitary streak,” Ki said. She traced the table’s wood grain with her finger. Her black hair fell in a curtain on either side of her face. “He wasn’t moody, per se, but he wasn’t like me and Max or Britt and Jake. Now he’s all shut into himself. I worry it isn’t good for him.”

  “It isn’t,” Kelly said. “He’s a pressure cooker. The wolf doesn’t like holding things in. It’s not in our nature.”

  “You do pretty well,” Ki said.

  “I have to let her out of the cage in order to convince her back in again. Malcolm needs an outlet before someone gets hurt, more than just a run every full moon. I intend to give him that.”

  Kelly didn’t miss the flash of possessiveness in Ki’s eyes that she tried to hide from Kelly. Kelly understood. Ki was mostly with Max, but she was sometimes with Malcolm, too. It was normal for her to be a little jealous. Kelly reached across the table and touched Ki’s hand.

  “You might eventually find a way to be with him as he is,” Kelly said, “but it will never be as it was. You know that, right?”

  Ki nodded, but she looked down at her lap. “He wasn’t mine often, but when he was, I knew he was with me. He’s not with me anymore, and I miss that. I miss him.”

  “I just want to help him, Ki. He’s too strong and volatile at this point for you to help him like that.”

  “You’re taller, Kelly, but you’re not that much bigger than me, you know,” Ki replied.

  Kelly smiled wryly, slipped under the table then lifted it up with her arms and shoulders, Ki and two other shapeshifters still on the attached benches.

  “Okay, I get your point,” Ki said, gripping the bench and giggling in spite of herself.

  Kelly put the table back down. “And that’s just werewolf strength. You can make love to him again if you still want to, Ki, but only after he gets some of the pent-up energy out of his system.”

  “Britt talked about how Grant treated Renee,” Ki said. “That it was rough. I don’t mind that, you know. He wasn’t before, but…”

  “Grant had been werewolf for over twenty years,” Kelly reminded her. “I’ve been werewolf for four. Malcolm needs to learn how to control himself in human skin, and the only way to get him to a point where he’d be safe with you is to let the wolf free. I know what the wolf needs, Ki. He may need to release certain tensions, certain desires. He may just need someone to beat the crap out of him. I need to be able to do those things. I want to help him. By any means necessary.”

  “Any means necessary,” Ki agreed after a deep breath. “Anything you can do for him. I guess you don’t really need my approval, since he’s never been completely mine, but I appreciate that you care about it.”

  “I do,” Kelly said. “Like I said, I’m new here. I don’t want to just barge in and start barking orders.”

  Ki covered Kelly’s hand. “Hon, you are worlds away from Grant. Trust me, we’re thrilled that you’re not psychotic. Shifter feud aside, most of us are fine with you being here.”

  “Most of you are fine with the fact that I live separate,” Kelly said.

  “It’s more than that. And it’s not just because of Malcolm. He won’t do anything to hurt himself, will he, Kelly?” Ki asked, eyes pleading and desperate.

  “Something needs to change, and soon. I see blood, but not whose,” Kelly said. “But you don’t need to worry. It’s a warning, not a prophecy. That’s only the future if it goes unchanged. And I intend to change it, for the safety of this sanctuary.”

  “If there is anything we can do to help…” Ki said.

  “For now, I think we just need to let him explode safely,” Kelly said. “And he can’t kill me.”

  Ki furrowed her brow in confusion. “Werewolves can be killed. You know that.”

  “Yes. I know,” Kelly said. “But I’m not just a wolf. No one wins a fight against me. No one.”

  Chapter Two

  Kelly kept an eye on Malcolm as he hovered along the perimeter of the compound during the afternoon, walking the edge of the woods in his jeans. He twitched like a junkie, fidgeted, darted forward and fell back, jumped up and down a few times before trying to walk again. At one point, he started running, perhaps trying to run fast enough to leave the pelt behind him, but he wasn’t running in the skin that really wanted to run. Kelly could have told him that his efforts were futile.

  The moon was waxing crescent, so Malcolm didn’t have the pressure of the full moon to pull the wolf out of him like the evening tide. Kelly didn’t want him to wait until he had no choice. She needed him to change of his own accord.

  Usually, she kept her distance from him out of respect. But today she followed him, staying far enough that she could only ever just see him, pale against the forest and dark against the snow. Her feet made little sound on the snowdrifts and even lighter prints. She was not so much trying to stay undetectable as she was waiting to see how long it would take him to notice her.

  When she walked into his scent and it smelt like fear, she knew he had noticed her. She paused. She wasn’t stalking him. She didn’t want him to see himself as prey.

  “Stay away!” Malcolm shouted before ducking behind a tree and into the forest.

  Kelly abandoned her silence and ran after him. Her robe—the sheer one she loved so much in spite of the fact that David had bought it for her—trailed out behind her like wings. Her hair, too, streamed loose behind her. Yet she somehow managed to keep both of them from snagging on a single branch or bush as she followed Malcolm into the forest.

  “Wait,” she said, swerving into his path. Her voice came out strong, not at all winded by her exertion.

  Malcolm reared back to avoid running into her. His limbs flailed, and he slid to the ground, splayed in all directions. Kelly stood calmly in front of him, her clothes and hair settling after the run.

  “How’d you do that?” Malcolm asked. “Jesus, what are you? A ninja?”

  “I’m faster than you,” Kelly said. “The trees get out of m
y way.”

  “Really?” Malcolm asked. He caught his breath and sat up.

  “That’s what it feels like,” Kelly said.

  She took a step towards him and he flinched.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m certainly not going to hunt you.”

  “Just stay away from me,” Malcolm said. He ran a hand through his hair, where there were bits of brown leaves, pine needles and snow. The loose curls clung to his fingers. If he weren’t wearing his jeans, he would have seemed like some kind of mythical forest creature. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  “That’s not the impression I got when I came here,” Kelly said, clasping her hands behind her back. “I could have been simply imagining your relief. I imagine a lot of things. But I know the relief I felt when I realised that I wouldn’t be alone, although I still wish it hadn’t been under those circumstances.”

  “Oh, well, it’s nice to know you felt bad about it,” Malcolm snapped. “I don’t expect you to understand what it felt like to be…” He swallowed thickly. “For that werewolf to rip me away from everything that made this life worth living.”

  “I know better than anyone in this sanctuary what it’s like to be turned into something you didn’t ask for,” Kelly replied. “But running from it isn’t going to make it easier.”

  “You’re a witch,” Malcolm said.

  He held out his hands. Kelly noted how big and lovely they were, how much they could hold—of promises and other things, things that made her lick her lips.

  “Why can’t you take this away from me?”

  “Renee is the one with the silver,” Kelly said. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I want my life back!” Malcolm arched his spine as though he had hackles, on his hands and knees in the snow.

  “Your life doesn’t have to end just because a new one begins,” Kelly said.

  “Quit with the faux pagan bullshit. It’s not helping.”

  “I’m not one thing or another when it comes to that,” Kelly said. “I’m just a witch. I know things, I feel things, and I follow that knowledge and those feelings. It’s all I know how to do. I’m not intentionally cryptic. It all makes sense to me.”