coming in again, and the aggressive rattle of pans and cutlery as she heated up rice and canned stew, and slopped it in a bowl. And suddenly, I was really, really hungry. Something in the smoke must have kept my metabolism quiet. I hadn’t eaten in days, and didn’t notice until just now. And more than that, I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, painfully thirsty.
“She's drooling,” the woman said. She was standing over me, shoveling food from her bowl into her mouth. “Did you top up the fire? Smoke seems thin.” Baz must have responded satisfactorily. She peered down at me, but didn’t ask him to reach her the incense burner. “Huh.” I kept my eyes closed, and slowly let my mouth relax. “Drooling in her sleep,” the woman concluded, turning away.
“C’mere, Baz!” She handed the guy the bowl, and he stuck his head into it and scarfed up her leftovers. She sighed heavily. “All the stuff you can do, and you can’t use a spoon. Stupid dog.” But her voice was forgiving, caressing, even. I let myself fall asleep again as the two of them curled up on the couch and turned on the television.
I snapped awake when they came in from night rounds, and Baz turned off the lights, and followed the woman down the hall. He had an annoying prance to his walk. It made me want to bite him. It was an hour before all the sounds died away. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. It made me wish for a bit more of that smoke, though. Honestly.
At last the house was asleep. It was my time.
I needed my left foreleg to be my left hand again. Then I could deal with the bandage that held the hook into my wrist. So, all I had to do was change… But I couldn’t change. I tried again anyway, because that was me, that was my power, and if I gave it everything I had, it had to work somehow. I gathered myself, aimed for that place where the change always happened—and broke into a cold sweat as the place receded infinitely and the tendons of my wrist and ankle went from a cold dull ache to a sudden, breathtaking, fiery flare.
Okay. That really wasn’t going to work. I lay still, panting for a bit, trying to think. This was the heart of the magic that held me bound. I wasn’t supposed to be able to change. Or rather, I was stuck, changed both ways at once, and held there, by these hooks. For a hook to work, it has to be the right size. And one thing I’d learned, during my recent adventures, is that I can be just about any size I want. So, all I had to do…
I made myself small, in both my forms. The hook in my tendons flamed a little, sensitive to my powers but not geared for this. Then I stifled a cry as my arm and leg were stretched against the hook and the manacles because I was nearly too small to reach the edges of the cage…
Okay. I went back to my usual length, about five feet nothing as a human, about the same as a wolf. And both at once. I breathed for a few minutes, summoning my anger from the place it lives just above my heart. When I thought of this cage, and lying here practically helpless, and someone doing this to me— my fury peaked and I got larger, curling as much as I could to keep from breaking out of the cage right away. I didn’t want the dog waking up or the woman interrupting my escape. I wanted this to be quiet.
When my wrist and hind leg were pressed hard into the cuffs, and the tendons were three times their normal size, I felt the hook slip from the enlarged tendon of my rear paw, but it did not quite dislodge itself. I made myself even larger, ignoring the bite of the cuffs, scrunching down to make more room, and then felt the hook slip from the tendon of my right wrist. I felt a huge wave of relief, and took in a deep, involuntary breath, and reverted to my usual size. Whatever this device or spell was, it was leeching into the heart of my power, of my self, and it had been doing it for days. And now I was able to change, and it was easy, as it should be. I took my wolf form, feeling the power of my wolf nature engulf me. I slipped my right forepaw from the manacle, and pulled my left hind foot free too. I ripped the tape off my wrist with my teeth.
Under the tape and the surgical bandage I was wearing a tight braided leather band, woven with copper wire. The wires all met and threaded through a silver eye that pierced the leather bracelet and then, I assumed, me. I bit at it, feeling the tingle of power on my tongue, and managed to part the strips of leather, but the wire held firm. I nudged at it with my muzzle, but that wasn’t going to do any good. I stopped, and changed back to my human form, ripped the tape from my left ankle, and found another bracelet there, humming with power. I reached my fingers through the bars and unclipped the latch of the cage. The door opened.
I was naked. Huh. Whoever had taken me prisoner had taken my clothes off when they put me in the cage. When my kind changes, ordinarily, we take whatever we’re wearing next to our skin with us, and it comes back—mostly—when we change back. So someone had stripped me while I was in human form. I looked forward very much to meeting whoever that was again. On my terms, this time.
I nearly fell back when I lifted my right leg out of the cage. The wound in my hip where I’d been shot was deep though not wide. It started to bleed again. It smelled of blood, pus, and tar. A livid bruise rose round it wider than both my hands, and it hurt like mad when I stretched my leg.
The bright porch light reflected through the windows. I limped into the kitchen and found a sharp knife in the dish drainer. I sat down on the floor, favoring my right hip, and sawed away at the bracelet on my ankle, and when it fell loose, I gently pulled the silver hook out of the wound. Oh, what a relief. I cut the one off my wrist as well, and sat for a moment examining them.
The copper wire was twisted into curious patterns, and wound around the bloody little silver hook. It still tingled to the touch, alive with the power, whatever it was, that had worked on my ability to change. I pulled them apart, tore the wires into a tangle and then balled them up. The silver hooks still tingled. That was the spell. The leather bracelet, the copper wire, were just a distraction. And I was losing time. I needed to get rid of them. And I needed to get away.
I unlocked the glass door and pushed it open gently. I slipped outside into the open air. Whoever had wanted me naked, helpless, drugged, caged, manacled, and bespelled, had better watch out. I was the hunter now.
I
stepped out onto a wide porch made of splintery pine boards that hadn’t been painted in years. The brilliant porch light, besieged with bugs, made it impossible to see further, but I could smell… sheep. The night was cool, but not cold. After the smoke, the cleaning fluids, the cooking odors, the dog, and the woman's fetid breath, the open air tasted wonderful. I limped to the steps and down into the yard to get out of the light to where I could see, and get a sense of how to get out of here. On the right, a beat-up old pick-up and a dented green hatchback stood parked on a sparse layer of oily gravel. It was too much to hope that my car had been brought here as well. But I would be happy to take one of hers.
She had not conveniently left the keys in either the truck or the car. And the doors were locked anyway. What an untrusting nature. Beyond the cars, a dusty gravel drive sloped up the hillside between two fences, and around a bend toward the ridge beyond. The sound of traffic, never distant anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area, came from beyond those hills, and a little to the south. A pale smudge in the dark sky indicated the direction of the city.
My feet were bare. They’re fairly tough, but probably not up to miles of gravel road. My ankle hurt, my hip ached, and I was limping hard to favor them both. Blood was dripping from my ankle and wrist, though the puncture in my hip had closed up again. I would be slow, easy to track. Wounded and naked as I was, it would be hard to blend in once I reached traffic and habitation. Walking away up the road was not my best option.
Across the yard a large building loomed in the shadows from which emanated the scent of horse, hay, and old wood. I limped on past, because from beyond I caught the scent of water. I was so thirsty it hurt. I changed with relief to my wolf form and dropped into the brimming horse trough on four feet. I hunkered down, lapping and lapping, letting the water wash my sores and clear my head as I filled my stomach. The darkness was not very dark. I was in a shallow valley, northwest of Los Angeles, not far from the ocean. The ridges all around were dotted with lights indicating scattered houses. Heading off toward the darkest ridge was probably my best bet. My ankle throbbed at the very thought of so much walking or running, but it was a better choice than the road, at present.
I stood up on two feet and stepped out of the trough, which was much quieter than heaving out on all fours. The dog might be man-shaped, and sated with sex, but I didn’t want to risk being heard. Once out of the trough I changed again to my wolf form and shook off the water. I padded along the side of the barn until I reached the fence where the sheep pens began. I opened my mouth to draw in the delicious scent of many, many sheep, of wool and lanolin, manure, milk, and blood… and lambs.
It was the tail end of lambing season. The pen right in front of me held about two dozen big fat ewes on the verge of dropping the last lambs of the season. Half a dozen dim solar lights, strung on fence posts, gave just enough light to see if there was a new lamb. The sheep lay about the yard in little groups, sleeping or chewing. One was off in a corner, wandering back and forth. Probably about to drop. My mouth watered.
I changed back to human form so I could go on past the lambing pens without rousing all the sheep, which would be bound to wake up the dog, and probably the woman as well. She was a shepherd, after all. I walked slowly toward the rutted lane that led along the fence to the gate into each field. The next pasture was scattered with bales of straw built into square pens where new lambs lay curled up with their mothers. The field beyond stretched all the way across the valley and up the slopes of the hills. Here the rest of the flock, the ewes with older lambs, the yearlings, and a few rams, lay in groups scattered over the field.
I stopped and leaned on the fence post. My hip was a little less sore for the exercise, but the wounds on my wrist and ankle were bleeding again. The ridges beyond the sheep fields seemed a long, long ways away. I am much faster on four legs than two, but being wounded in two opposite legs was really going to slow me down. Besides, crossing the field in wolf form was going to cause a sheep riot. After all, we’ve been teaching the woollies for thousands of years what it means when a wolf shows up in their midst.
In front of me, a little lamb, his frame still hollow and curled from his time in the womb, trotted from ewe to ewe, crying for his mother. A nicker, a surge, and mom charged up to him, trailing her other lamb, and nosed him all around while he went straight for her udder and head-butted it hard. He grabbed a teat and started sucking like he was starving. He probably was. I certainly was. He smelled so good I wanted to cry.
I started down the lane that ran along the fence of the sheep pastures, heading for the hills across the bowl of the valley. I caught the scent of dog, and stopped. On the other side of the barn stood three adjoining chain linked dog kennels. I opened my mouth to catch a whiff to see if they were occupied, but a moment later in the ambient light I could just make out three, no, four border collies. Two lay on top of the old oil drums that served as den and shelter for each of them. Two more lay in the corner of the kennels. All four stared out at the sheep. Not good.
I was down wind, for the moment. The breeze had changed directions a couple of times since I’d stepped out into the night. They hadn’t seen me, but if I continued along the lane they were going to, and then there would be a whole lot of noise. If the shepherd heard the ruckus, and loosed them, I’d have to be really fast to get up into the hills before they ran me down. And at the moment, I was very decidedly not fast.
I could probably kill them if they came at me. I would face them in wolf form, after all. But four of them, all at once, meant I would probably get bitten, even if I did kill them all in the end. I was already wounded. They would know that; they would smell the blood, see from the way I stood and moved, and they would attack me where I was weakest. I would end up hurt worse than I was already. You don’t see crippled wolves. Crippled wolves die. It's a mercy that they do. I was not getting out across the sheep fields. Not tonight.
I retraced my steps to the barn and pulled open the door just enough to slip inside. I felt the presence of power as I entered, as though someone had given the air shape, and organized it. Huh. The energy centered on the workbench against the far wall of the barn. A peg board of neatly organized tools stood above an ancient table. Someone had been raising a fair amount of power here, and for a long time.
The hair on my neck stood up as the still air stirred. I smelled my scent on that table, and my blood. That was where they had done this to me.
I had an impulse to leap over there in my wolf form and snuff out every trace of evidence of who was there, and what they were. Being wounded and sore gave me a moment to think about that. I couldn’t feel any wards that would alert the shepherd to my presence if I touched them. It was possible, though, that whoever had bespelled me over there on that table, had the power to make wards sneaky enough that I wouldn’t sense them. I did walk over close enough to try and see if any of my clothes were there, but I didn’t see them.
To the right, bales of fresh alfalfa were stacked high. Old sacks of feed and dog food stood next to them. The rats and mice had been at them. I grinned to myself. I limped along the wall toward the pair of stalls on the left. One was lit by a dim bulb hanging from a loop of wire above the door post. A tired old horse stood inside with his head lowered, not bothering to mouth his wisps of hay. In the stall beyond, the shepherd had piled broken farm tools, stacks of lumber, tailings of wire fencing, twisted tee posts, and old animal cages of various sizes. The old horse watched me as I poked around, looking for a discarded pair of boots, a rag made from a shirt, paint-splashed overalls. There was nothing.