Way of the Wolf: Shifter Legacies 1 (11 page)

“Silver?” George said grimly and Onida whined. She was still chewing at the air trying to rid herself of the taste. “The bastards meant business, he won’t heal like this. I have to get whatever they used out of him, but it’s going to hurt like a bitch. He can’t change if it
is
silver, and we can’t leave it—he’ll be dead in a day from silver poisoning.”

Mist listened in growing puzzlement, but David understood what it meant. Silver would kill them, that was easy enough to understand, but David had not known that it would prevent them from changing form. Their joining was new to both of them. Mist closed his eyes and tried not to snap at George as he poked and prodded with his fingers.

“I can feel them in there, but I can’t get them. I’ll need your help, Onida. I need Cassie.”

Onida trotted out of the room.

“Don’t worry; she’ll be back in a minute. She has to change.”

Cassie returned few minutes later and immediately took charge of Mist. She lifted his head into her lap and held him there.

“This will hurt,” she said looking directly into Mist’s eyes. “It will hurt really bad. If you must bite, bite me. If you bite George, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Mist whined.

“Here goes,” George said and pushed his pocketknife deeply into the wound.

Mist howled at the new pain and scrabbled to get away. Cassie held him down with all her strength, but he was stronger. He snapped and snarled and almost threw her off, but David was fighting him, helping Cassie against him.

“I think I’ve got it. I’ve got it!”

Mist collapsed back to the floor panting and whining, but already he could feel the difference. The burning was less.

“Ready for the next?”

“Go ahead, I’ve got him.”

Mist yelped, but it didn’t hurt as much as last time. He didn’t fight so hard. The burning was replaced by the natural itchiness of a healing wound. He snuffled at his fur and licked the place he could reach, but he was too exhausted to do more. He collapsed back to the floor.

Let me out, and you can rest.

Mist agreed and let go with a sigh of relief. It was like falling into dreams for him, while for David it was waking to a nightmare of pain as the change took hold. He couldn’t help crying out this time. The wounds in his side stretched and tore open as his muscles changed and realigned from a four footed critter into a two footed one.

He opened his eyes and groaned. Something wasn’t right. “My hands.”

“Concentrate,” Cassie said urgently. “You must complete the change. Think about your feet, five toes not four. Come on, you can do it.”

“So tired.”

“If you don’t finish now you’ll regret it. Believe me, I know you’re exhausted, but it will hurt a hundred times worse tomorrow.”

He looked down and imagined he saw his feet as they had always been. Slowly the huge paws at the end of his very human looking legs shrank with a cracking of bones and more pain. His hands had five fingers; that was right, but the fingernails looked like Mist’s blunted wolf claws. He concentrated and they slowly reformed.

“Good. Can you stand?”

He coughed and winced at the pain in his side. He clapped a hand to his ribs and groaned. He ached all over. “I think so.”

“Get up and walk. We can worry about your eyes later.”

“My eyes?”

“Later I said. Make sure everything is working properly, you have to make certain you do it right the first few times. It takes practise. I remember waking up with a tail once—”

George chuckled. “I remember that.”

Cassie scowled. “It wasn’t funny. It hurt like hell.”

“Here,” George said offering David a robe. “I don’t need the competition if you know what I mean?” His eyes flicked down then back to David’s eyes. He grinned.

David blushed and thrust his arms into the robe and quickly belted it to cover his nakedness. Cassie sighed, but she was fighting not to laugh at his blushes.

“You’re new aren’t you?”

He nodded. “I’m David. This was my first time.”

“Your first change?” Cassie said. “I’m sorry. The first time is always hard, something about changing against your will makes it worse than if you change voluntarily.”

“I changed on purpose. AML sent people to murder me. I had to change to get away.”

“But you said this was your first time,” George said glancing uneasily at Cassie. “Your first change is always involuntary.”

“Always?”

“Always has been as far as I know and I know quite a bit,” Cassie said with certainty. She shook her head. “That can wait; you need rest and time to heal. You can use our spare room and we’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

“Will you teach me what you know?”

“Tomorrow,” Cassie said firmly and George led David away.

* * *

7 ~ Lost Souls

“So you’re saying there’s something wrong with me?” David said and took another mouthful of Cassie’s excellent Cajun Lamb.

She shook her head. “I’m saying there’s something different about your relationship with Mist, something very right if what I believe is true. Look, when a shifter is made it’s always the result of violence. Even those of us born with lycanthropy have an attack in our mother’s past to blame it on. The bond with our beasts reflects that. Danger, fear, anger, blood—violence or any strong emotion can trigger the change, and the first change is always involuntary because of that. Our beasts always come out to protect us.”

“You said my first change was unusual.”

“Because you chose it, it wasn’t forced on you. What do you know of natural wolves?”

David shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Our wolf form doesn’t make us natural wolves. We may look like a natural wolf, though we’re usually much larger, but we aren’t wolves. We are a mixture. Wolves are pacifists you know?”

“I’m not sure I follow. I’m sure I’ve read of wolves attacking people.”

“It’s very rare. A wolf will always run away from a confrontation if it can and will only fight if cornered. Dogs are different. They can be vicious and will fight each other to the death, but wolves don’t do that. There was a story a few years back of a wolf hand reared by a man and his family. The wolf regarded them as his pack including the family pets—a pair of Alsatians. The story goes that these two dogs got into a fight over something and the wolf became very distraught. He was shaking and whining with his tail tucked—he just didn’t understand. Eventually he grabbed one of the dogs by the tail and physically pulled him off the other.”

“Your point being?”

“The point I’m trying to make is this: don’t be fooled by appearances. A natural wolf wouldn’t come anywhere near us. We may look like wolves in our other forms, but we are not wolves. We fight and kill over things no wolf would understand or be interested in. Our human side curses us with feral natures.”

His eyebrows climbed. “Our
human
side does? I would have thought the opposite.”

“No. Wolves are very social creatures; they never fight among themselves. Shifters do, all the time.”

David nodded thoughtfully. Wolves were innocent creatures that had no concept of good and evil—those concepts were labels put on the world by man to explain it.

“David... when you talk to Mist...”

“Go on.”

Cassie took a deep breath and tried again. “This is considered very rude among us. Rude is too mild a term for it. Asking personal questions is considered wrong because we can sense so much about each other that asking for more is an unwanted invasion of what little privacy we have. Our relationships with our beasts are very personal.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw Mist yawn widely and close his eyes. “I understand. I have no problem with you asking, and I know Mist doesn’t care.”

“Just so you know not to ask others without invitation. When in wolf form, can you... I mean do you...” she sighed and rushed on. “Do you remain in contact with Mist?”

“Yes.”

Cassie gaped. “
You do?
”

“Of course. Why, is that unusual?”

“Let me be sure we understand each other. You can talk aloud—or silently in your head—to Mist and he responds with images in your mind. Correct?”

“Sometimes,” David agreed. “Mostly we just talk. He’s shown me memories using pictures, but it was more like a dream. It was as if I were him.”

Cassie stared silently.

David fidgeted under her scrutiny. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing is wrong with it, it’s marvellous!”

“It is?”

“Yes! It means you have a very strong bond with your beast. Onida says very little. She sends strong images to me, but she rarely forms them into words.”

“When I fought with AML at home, I
was
Mist,” he explained. “We were one, not two people—I was him all the way. Later, I sort of drifted and watched as we escaped. We talked a little, and then Mist found your scent.”

Cassie looked excited for a moment but then her face went blank. She was talking to Onida. “When I change, Onida is completely in control. I can’t do anything but wait for my turn. I’m lucky, because she never forces her way out, but I know she could if she chose. Her will is stronger than mine and that’s normal for most of us, but not for you it seems.”

He didn’t mention his aborted struggle for control when he realised AML had come to kill him. He wasn’t sure now whether he could have held out against Mist when he was determined to come out and fight. “But what does it all mean?”

“It means you have strong Presence—power enough to rival the strongest of us. Certainly you have enough to match anyone I’ve ever met. You might have problems when you meet others like us.”

“What kind of problems?”

“You’re alpha. Do you know what that means?”

David shook his head.

“It means you’ll be dominant within the pack structure. How dominant depends on how strong the others are. Alphas are pack leaders, David. You can be a pack leader.”

“But I don’t care about that. All I want is to work with Alex at Mercy.”

“He told you what he found at your place. They wrecked it,” Cassie said shaking her head in sympathy. “Do you really think AML will leave you alone and let you go back to your old life?”

Alex was the one who notified the police of the break in. He had dropped by to talk and found the windows smashed. When he went inside, he found that someone had trashed the place. Luckily, the AML lunatics had taken their dead friends with them to hide their involvement. Lying made David feel guilty, but it was better for Alex. He had made up a story about escaping his attackers without a fight. Alex had readily accepted the story and was kind enough to bring a few things from home for him. Cassie and George had liked him right off, and so did Onida.

“Probably not, but I can hope.”

“Hope is a fine thing, but you’re a shifter now. There’s only one thing you need to think about and that’s survival. AML isn’t the only thing you need to be wary of. Almost anyone you meet on the streets will curse you or worse if they learn what you are, so you have to hide it, but you can’t hide it from another shifter. The strength of your bond with Mist is a good thing. It might be all that stands between you and them soon.”

David nodded grimly and tried to ignore Mist who was grinning toothily and sending amusement to him.

Cassie waved a hand at his plate. “Have you finished? There’s more if you want it.”

“It was delicious, but I can’t eat another bite.”

She stood and took the empty plate away. “Not for an hour or two anyway.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that part.”

“You will. It takes time to adjust. You should know something about that being a doctor.”

“Knowing it and living it are two different things.”

“Very true,” George said just then entering. “Cassie said much the same.” He wandered over to his wife who was wiping down the kitchen counter and gave her a quick kiss. He turned to David and held out the package. “I got it.”

David stood and took it. “Thanks for this.”

“You sure you want to go through with it?”

He unzipped the dust jacket and fingered what it contained. “What, the Tux?”

George’s grin was brief. “Not the suit. I meant what you intend to do with it.”

“I don’t see that I have much choice. Ronnie knows who Georgie is and I need to know that. Besides, with AML after my blood I can’t stay here. Maybe Ronnie will help me figure something out.”

“I still say you can stay with us,” Cassie said. George hesitated but nodded his agreement after a moment.

“It’s kind of you,” he said knowing George was right to hesitate. “But it’s too dangerous. If they find me here, it could get really nasty. It’s better that I go.”

“A hotel?”

“A public place seems a good idea right now, so yes at first. Later, who knows? Maybe Ronnie will put me up.”

David stepped into the club full of trepidation. He had no idea what to expect, and from the strange looks he was receiving, he had already made some kind of social gaff. He would like to say the hell with it and leave, but that wasn’t really an option. AML wanted his head on a platter, and none of his friends wanted anything to do with him any longer. Only Alex and Jan had stood by him, and he didn’t want to put them in danger.