Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  * * * *

  When Kelly entered the greenhouse, she caught Renee working with uncharacteristic listlessness.

  “Why did you make me drink all that whisky last night?” Renee asked.

  “All my fault, I’m sure,” Kelly replied with a low chuckle.

  Renee fell forward and hid her face in her arms, her red hair contrasting with the pale rosemary.

  “You want me to make it go away?” Kelly asked.

  “No,” Renee groaned. “Yes, but no. I need to remember that this is what happens when I don’t realise how much I drink and I have a lack tipsiness to tell me when to stop.”

  “Check. Crushing guilt and regret in the form of a stomp team banging wildly behind your eye sockets,” Kelly said, moving past Renee to the shelves that had been cleared for Kelly’s herb garden.

  “I shared more of the whisky last time I had it,” Renee muttered into her sleeve. When she straightened up again, wincing a little at the sunlight, her face was smudged with soil. For a girl who liked to be clean, she had an uncanny ability to get downright dirty in the greenhouse.

  “Did you drink that entire bottle?” Kelly asked, incredulous.

  “Except what you drank,” Renee replied.

  “Oh, honey,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah. Info assimilated. Drink in moderation, no matter how sober I am. Last time I did this, it was a bottle of vodka, but I don’t remember it being this bad.”

  “Seriously, I can make the pain go away. It’s not hard,” Kelly said.

  “That’s all right. I just need things to be quiet. And no sudden movements.”

  Renee reapplied herself to trimming the rose bushes. Grinning, Kelly turned her attention to tending her own plants. She used a series of strings above her section for drying plant parts, and the area smelt like candles burning in an old library. It was her favourite smell.

  Max leaned in the doorway. Kelly sensed him before he said anything. She pretended she didn’t and continued handling her fennel.

  “Renee, you have dirt on your nose,” Max said.

  Renee winced at the sound of his perfectly ordinary inside voice.

  “Like, a lot.”

  “You don’t say,” Renee replied. She took a washcloth from the scrap pile in a basket in a corner and wiped her face.

  “Yeah, that didn’t help.”

  “Do we want to have another talk about what you smell like when you come in from dog shit detail?”

  “Touché, fearless leader,” Max said. “Kelly, can I talk to you?”

  “Absolutely.” As she passed by Renee, she touched three fingers to Renee’s brow. She absorbed the headache before Renee could protest. Renee only appeared grateful.

  Max led Kelly back into the kitchen and gestured her to one of the bar stools that surrounded the butcher island.

  “Ki told me Malcolm wants some quality time with her tomorrow,” Max said.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” Kelly asked. “I thought Malcolm had an arrangement.”

  Max waved that away. “No, I don’t have a problem with Malcolm being with her.”

  “But you’re wondering if it’s safe.”

  “Partially,” he said. “I just didn’t know if you knew about it. I mean, I know the two of you have been… You know.”

  Kelly raised an eyebrow.

  He sighed. “He gets this look when he’s been satisfied, but it used to be a long time between those looks. Then again, it used to be a long time between his looking frustrated, and now that’s almost all the time.”

  Kelly leaned her elbows on the counter. “Okay, spill. Something’s bothering you.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew first,” Max said.

  “Hard not to. They were practically yelling it during breakfast. It’s part of the reason he’s been having ‘you know’ with me in the first place, to see if he can still be with all of you, particularly with Ki.”

  Max ran his hand through his shaggy blond hair. “Maybe I’m off base. I just thought I saw something between the two of you. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to hurt you if they got together again.”

  Kelly touched her hand to her heart. “Why, Maxwell, I didn’t know you cared.”

  He winced at his full name.

  “No, really,” Kelly said. “Given this sanctuary’s experience with werewolves, I’m touched you’ve given some thought to my welfare. However, something else is percolating in that little skull of yours, and it’s less altruistic, yes?”

  Max crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “It wasn’t an accusation, just stripping the meat to get to the bone. What are you afraid of?” Kelly asked.

  “I love Ki,” Max said. He had none of the aversion to saying ‘love’ as he did to saying ‘sex’ in front of her. “I’m not like Jake and Britt and Renee, and I never have been. I don’t know how they manage to share each other’s time so well without it bothering the other one in their relationship.”

  “How did you manage before?” Kelly asked. She played with the end section of her braid in the quiet that followed her question, giving Max the space he needed in order to confess to her.

  “Like I said, Malcolm didn’t come around all that often,” Max said. “We shared the Chamberses’ old bedroom, because it’s the biggest and because it fit another bed in it for Malcolm. He didn’t mind Ki and me making love while he was there. He just turned around in bed and kept his back to us. Or he watched. I wasn’t threatened by that. Then Ki whispered in my ear one day asking if she could go over to his bed, and I said yes, thinking it would just be one time. Maybe I liked the idea of watching them. And then it started happening more than once.”

  Max shrugged. “They seemed to have chemistry, and I think that’s the real reason I never said no. I saw that they meant something to each other, and sometimes I think he even looked my way to make sure that I was a part of it as well, although he’d never admit it out loud. But most of the time, he was all sanctuary business. He’d go to sleep in his own bed while Ki and I made whatever noises we wanted in ours. Then, when he wanted Ki, he made sure to take care of her. I appreciated that—and that it wasn’t often.”

  “So what are you concerned about?” Kelly asked. “That his amped-up sex drive is going to cut into your time with Ki?”

  “I know it’s selfish to think of Ki as mine when she’s clearly chosen someone else,” Max said.

  “Not everyone is made for the unique life that Britt, Jake and Renee have carved out for themselves,” Kelly said. “Sometimes people are only made for one at a time. It’s not selfish. Does Ki know how you feel about it?”

  “She has an inkling. But I can’t deny her anything she loves,” Max said. “She doesn’t love him the same way she loves me, but she does love him. And the poor man has been through enough in his life without my telling him he can’t be with Ki when he needs…” Max tried to search for the right word.

  “Intimacy?” Kelly said.

  He pointed at her. “That. That’s exactly what he needs when he’s with Ki. Not just wants. Needs. He’s just always so alone, even when he’s surrounded by dogs or when he’s sleeping with us, which was why this werewolf thing packed a real punch for all of us.”

  Max sighed, deflating a little.

  “I’m also concerned that he can’t take care of her like before. He doesn’t have to change to hurt her. I don’t know whether you noticed, but Ki is a tiny person and Malcolm is much larger,” Max said.

  Kelly laid out her hands as though asking for his palms so that she could read them.

  “First, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Malcolm encroaching on your time with Ki. He isn’t looking for intimacy from every single encounter. I can help fulfil those other needs,” Kelly said.

  “You make it sound so clinical,” Max said.

  “I’m just practical,” Kelly said. “Second, your devotion to your mate is honourable. The real reason Ki continues to be with Malcolm is because you let
her, and you let her because you know her truest devotion is to you. Malcolm is secondary because he hasn’t desired anything more than that. Maybe you only knew that subconsciously. Let it now be etched into your conscious mind.”

  Max lowered his gaze, his expression a queasy mix of shame and relief.

  “Third, and most important, if you wanted me to join you, you could’ve just asked,” Kelly said.

  “I wasn’t asking for that…” Max sputtered.

  Kelly laughed. “I’m kidding, Max. Ki will be wearing silver, which will help. And I’ll sense if something goes wrong. I’ll come running as fast as I can to defuse the situation. If necessary, though, I’ll oversee the entire process from a distance, voyeuristic though it may be.”

  “I think I’d feel more comfortable if you were actually there,” Max said, “I mean, not comfortable comfortable, but safer.”

  “Both Ki and Malcolm would object to my being there in person. It’s pretty clear Malcolm wants Ki tomorrow night, not me,” Kelly said. “I have an unsettling feeling about them being together so soon, but it’s not a premonition yet.”

  “What’s the difference between your feelings and premonitions?” Max asked, brow furrowed. Now that she had planted her worry in his head, he wasn’t going to leave that alone any time soon. It had already set in roots.

  Kelly wished she hadn’t said anything about her concerns, but at the same time, she hadn’t wanted to mislead Max about Ki’s safety.

  “My feelings are just instinct. They’re sometimes inspired by magic, but they’re not precise by any means, any more than a mind can trust déjà vu. My premonitions, however, are never wrong. They may not happen, because they show only a possibility, and possibilities can be changed as soon as they are known, but they aren’t wrong. The prophecies, however…” Kelly said, thinking of the writing and drawings on the barn door and the wall. That indescribable feeling returned deep in her gut when she thought of the name ABRAHAM once again. “The prophecies are like an emergency warning system. They always come true, although I don’t always know what they mean. There’s nothing to do but brace yourself for a storm.”

  “The painting thing you did last night,” Max said, “when you freaked everyone out, those were prophecies?”

  “As usual, they came in threes—the past, the near present and the more distant future. Distant is relative. It could be the distance between a day and a week or a year and ten years,” Kelly said.

  Her stomach clenched from explaining her least favourite magic. She took a few moments to relax her spine from the rigid pole it had become.

  “So you don’t see anything bad absolutely happening, right?” Max said. “I mean, for Ki and Malcolm.”

  “No,” Kelly said. “Not that it gets the rest of us out of the woods, so to speak. Something’s going to happen. The magic just hasn’t given me the courtesy of letting me know what it is. It’s resorted back to pictures and riddles.” Kelly hit the counter with her fist. “I thought I was done with this after I turned. I thought I had a handle on it.”

  Max tilted his head curiously. “You and Grant seem to like being werewolves. Is that common, or are they more like Malcolm? I can’t imagine seeking it out. Not with the problems our kind tends to have with yours.” He gestured between the two of them.

  “Do you have a problem with me?” Kelly asked.

  “No, not you specifically. You smell wrong, but a person gets used to it.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “No offence.”

  “You smell like a meal,” Kelly said.

  “Sorry.”

  “It requires some adjustment,” Kelly said to answer his question. “When you don’t have a choice in the matter, you learn to live with it. I don’t like all of it, like what your scent does to me, but it’s given me a few things in return. Grant liked the freedom, but he turned it into anarchy. Malcolm will find his non-lethal silver lining eventually.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Max asked.

  “I think he’s already started.”

  “If he doesn’t?” Max insisted.

  “There have been massacres, followed by bullets to the head,” Kelly said, telling it to him straight. “But like I said, Malcolm is already adjusting. He just needed someone to tell him it was okay to do so.”

  “We tried,” Max said defensively. “We tried to tell him he was okay by us.”

  Kelly held her tongue this time. She couldn’t explain it to him in a way that he would understand.

  Telling Malcolm he was okay by them implied that there was something he needed to be forgiven for. He didn’t need someone telling him that he was okay and that they could handle him being around, regardless of the ingrained animosity between their two species. He needed someone like him to show that being a werewolf didn’t mean stalking the countryside looking for a bloodbath. A man could still have all his principles and live in his old world, with some modifications.

  And more than anything, he needed to know that he never had to be alone.

  “Whatever I’m worried about Malcolm doing, Max, it’s not killing Ki or changing her,” Kelly said.

  “Then what is it you’re afraid of?”

  “That in the heat of the moment he won’t know his own strength. The same thing you said you were worried about before we got into the beating heart of your concern,” Kelly said, remembering the bruises and scratches on Renee. “Still, those things can be healed.”

  “Whoa, wait,” Max said. “What needs healing?”

  “You’ve never woken up in the morning with something that needed a bandage?” Kelly asked.

  “No,” Max said, raising his eyebrows. “Why, have you?”

  “Werewolves rarely need bandages,” Kelly replied. She stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s really no point in worrying too hard about something that even I can’t see, honey. All you’ll have to do is call me with your mind.” She scratched her nails over his scalp, making him duck. “By that time, I’ll probably already be on my way.”

  Before she left the kitchen to go back to the greenhouse, Max called after her, “Don’t tell me Malcolm being with someone else doesn’t bother you too.”

  “Not in the same way,” Kelly said. She didn’t think Max had heard her.

  * * * *

  No buzz from the gate signalling visitors, no knock on her door, and yet she knew…

  Company’s coming.

  Kelly closed her computer, where she’d been handling some of her online magic business affairs. She pulled on her robe and climbed out of her trailer. Her bare feet met greyish brown grass, but they occasionally encountered patches of melting snow. She carefully made her way to the middle of the open lawn between the buildings and the forest. Dogs came up to her, sniffed with their usual caution then darted away.

  “Renee, I need you now,” Kelly thought.

  The log cabin door squeaked as it opened and closed. Renee ran out to her.

  “Usually I’d be worried if I started hearing things. Good thing I know the sound of your voice, even if it’s in my head. What’s going on?” Renee asked.

  “Get the dogs in, as many as you can. I don’t think the pack will attack them, but just in case,” Kelly said.

  Renee stared at Kelly with that closed-off gaze that made people uneasy when they didn’t know her. With Renee, it was all or nothing. She’d either aggressively avoid a person’s gaze or stare right at them, barely blinking.

  “Should I find Malcolm?” Renee asked.

  “It might be best,” Kelly replied.

  “Okay.”

  Renee ran back into the cabin, turned on the compound intercom and said as calmly as she could, “Wolf pack visiting. Please return the dogs to the dog barn as soon as possible.”

  Kelly stood eerily motionless as frantic action occurred around her. Dog packs were led back to the compound. Some of the shapeshifters stayed in dog skin and joined the dogs for their own safety, but Renee’s primary pack came out to join Ke
lly after they had squared all the dogs away.

  Ki was wearing a silver necklace she had never worn before, a small stylised bird. Kelly could sense that it was real silver. Max stood behind her, his arm around her shoulder as though ready to pull her back at any moment. It was funny in a way, because Ki was small, but in dog skin she was significantly bigger than Max’s Yorkie terrier. Not that a hound mix would be much of a threat to any werewolf.

  “Are they close?” Jake asked, the set of his jaw tense.

  He put himself ahead of Kelly by habit, which she would have to correct eventually, but it warmed her from the inside that he thought of her as part of his pack to protect, lycanthropy notwithstanding. Britt, too, was there in malamute form, standing a little ahead of Renee, her back leg pressed against Renee’s jeans.

  “They’re in the sanctuary, running in wolf skin. They’ll get here quickly,” Kelly said.

  She heard the click of a gun behind her. Renee lifted her rifle, the sterling silver knife duct-taped to the end to form a makeshift bayonet.

  “Is that really necessary?” Malcolm asked. He warily approached, his eyes trained on the knife.

  “Even if it isn’t necessary, it’s my duty,” Renee said. “I need to protect my dogs and my shapeshifters, and I can’t do that with anything other than this. Am I going to have to use it, Kelly?” Renee asked.

  “Probably not,” Kelly said. “I think they come in peace. You may have to establish that you’re armed, though, if the alpha thinks you’re easy prey.”

  Renee removed her finger from the trigger but continued to hold the gun.

  “Is there anything I have to be prepared for?” Malcolm asked in Kelly’s ear. His energy was all werewolf on edge, fidgeting and shifting his weight from side to side.

  “You’re not obligated to obey the alpha, but it can open you up to a dominance fight,” Kelly replied, “since you’re a free agent and thus a threat.”

  “I don’t want a fight,” Malcolm said.

  “You might feel differently when you see him. But if you don’t, I suggest you let me do the talking,” Kelly said. “An alpha will be less threatened by a bitch.”

  Rogues were an unknown quantity. They could challenge the alpha or the head bitch and had the potential to completely upend pack dynamics. Tensions could easily run high, and werewolves were not known for their ability to reign in emotions.