Hey guys, been a while huh?   Well, here's the deal: I've been working my ass off editing WWR, and am finally ready to put the revised first chapter up on the chopping block.   I'd appreciate if you would please review/critique this, be as merciless as you like, I need to hear it if I'm going to make this thing any better.   Some things I'm interested in hearing are: does the story grab you?   Are you curious to read Chapter 2?   Do you get a strong sense of the people and the world they live in?   Does the story-line flow and immerse you, or is it sporadically paced and superficial?

Thank you all so much for helping me,

~B

Walking Wolf Road 

By: Brandon Herbert

            The wind shifted.   The slightest chill in the night’s air, the subtle lengthening of the shadows, it mattered little what the actual signs were; he could feel the seasons in his blood.   His body knew that summer was dying, and the metamorphosis of fall would soon consume his world.   Just another time when the Earth changed her skin; changed all life….....

            He turned his eyes toward the light of the sun as it neared the horizon.   Her voice still echoed in his brain from the murky depths where dreams dwelt.   He absently spoke Her words, while the furious mechanisms of his brain worked and wondered.   There was something in the wind; the smell of dust and leaves he knew… but now a new scent blew down his street with them...   Strangely familiar…....

            “Soon…He will come to you….”....

            Amber eyes blazed in the setting light…....

Chapter 1

Why does life have to suck?

I mean, seriously, why?

I suppose I could have just been a very naughty boy in my last life, but more often than not I figured God just enjoyed toying with me for idle amusement.

I shrugged my backpack higher onto my shoulder, it wasn’t heavy yet but it would be all too soon.   Inside it, my new class schedule and orientation handbook sandwiched the advisory slip from my new counselor, with whom I’d spent the last few hours taking placement exams and scheduling my courses for the coming year.   I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d seen when he looked at me, the fat new kid with the small eyes and oddly shaded skin; did he see a dullard or a miscreant?  

I knew better than to expect anything else with my record.

I sighed and pushed my glasses back up my nose, then squinted through the glare of the sun until the dappled shadows of the trees shimmered back over me.   I turned onto Wolf Road and spied the orange roof of our U-Haul trailer down the sidewalk a couple blocks ahead.   After packing for weeks, we’d loaded all our worldly possessions into the back of that trailer and crammed the entire family into the SUV.   What followed was a gauntlet of McKentucky Fried Taco Kings, delivery pizza, and carryout Chinese; with abundant restroom breaks for my six-year-old brother Jacob.  

Our house in Chicago had been in a somewhat prestigious (read: expensive and pretentious) suburb in on the west side where every single house was virtually identical except for perhaps the minor variations and nuances of beige.   It was Crayola’s waking nightmare, every house was some sterile sort of ‘taupe’, ‘salmon’, ‘mauve’; or if they were being particularly risqué: ‘fuchsia’…

This street was the polar opposite; huge elm and maple trees dominated the neighborhood and even uprooted the sidewalk in spots while each house stared out at the street with a different color, design, personality, even memory.   It wasn’t like the bland mass-produced structures of some areas in Chicago or Miami.    It almost felt like the place remembered, like it lived…   Not just these houses but the town in general; it was claustrophobic and sorta creepy…    And really just cute enough to be disgusting…

My shoe was loose; so I bent down to retie it by the U-Haul and a cool breeze swept down the street and tousled my hair.   The sun was hot overhead, but the air was already growing cooler here as autumn began its slow invasion.   The atmosphere was drier and much thinner than I was used to, but after a hundred degree summer with eighty percent or higher humidity, it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant departure.   I settled my pant leg over my shoe, then straightened and looked up at our new home.

It was an older house, Mom had said it was built just after World War II, but it’d been very well taken care of.    She’d fallen in love with the place when she and John flew down here house hunting, and convinced everyone (but me) that it would be the perfect place to settle down.

The midsized little craftsman boasted a deep porch that stretched the width of the house’s front.    A couple windows peeked out from the roof overhead and watched the street like a pair of eyes while the porch swing squeaked in the breeze.   The sage green slatboard siding had recently been painted, along with the ivory trim, and it contrasted with the dark red and black bricks of the porch’s columns and the chimney that jutted from the left side building.

I shrugged my bag higher onto my shoulder, then walked up the worn stone steps and through the doorway.   It was currently propped open, but I’d totally done a double take when I’d opened it the first time.   The damn thing was like a solid two-inch slab of mahogany or something, it was freakin heavy!   It was inlaid with decorative beveled glass; couldn’t see through it very well, but it was pretty.   I negotiated the treacherous sea of brown cardboard boxes through the living room and toward the kitchen.   Mom was cooking something, I could smell garlic, and the familiarity of the scent seemed incongruous with the foreignness of the new house.   In the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, there was a door on either side.   The right hand door led to the main bathroom, but the left was mine.  

I smiled briefly at the little “Welcome to my Dungeon” printout that was tacked to the door, before I slipped through it and fumbled for a moment to find an unmemorized light switch then shuffled down the stairs into the basement.   I liked the name really; it suited the place and myself just fine.    The bare concrete walls and small high-set windows that allowed the light of the dying sun in columns past the silhouetted barricade of the previous owner’s flower garden.   Suitably institutional for me.....

I kicked an empty box out of my way, sending it flying across the room, then dropped my backpack onto the bed and flopped down beside it.   Sighing, I pressed my fingertips under my glasses and into my eyes, then ran them up through my short black hair.   ....

I fucking despised moving; the pointless ‘fresh start’, the ceaseless cycle of upheaval… even the toughest goddamned houseplant would have died after being uprooted as often as I have…    Mom and I had lived together in Idaho until she married John, since then we’d been dragged to California, Florida, Illinois, and now Colorado within the scope of a decade.   My Stepfather simply couldn’t seem to allow himself to settle anywhere; and so he hauled the entire family with him whenever he took a new job.   All that moving had wreaked havoc on my already shaky performance in school.   And just when things had started to settle down and my marks were coming back up; he’d packed us up and moved us to the sphincter of Colorado, just in time to murder my chances at saving my grade point average.....

Senior year.   The year every one of my classmates looked forward to with hope and anticipation; their glorious launch from childhood out into the adult world, respected by all, feared and envied by freshman…    I just wanted out.   I’d put in eleven years of this crap, and like the icing on a shit cake, I’d get to spend Twelfth Grade in a brand new school halfway across the continent.   Classes hadn’t even started yet, and I was already clawing at the walls.

I turned my head and glared at my deflated backpack, as though it was somehow responsible for everything.   School started tomorrow, and we’d just moved to this God-forsaken little town less than a week ago!   

My frustration made me restless so I stood up and crossed the room.   My tall black bookcase stood against the wall, half occupied, and I knew I should probably finish unpacking my copious collection of books.   That was exactly why I walked right back across the floor and picked my guitar up off its stand instead.   In no way could I be considered good at it, but it was my only release besides reading.   Not to mention it royally pissed off my Mom and Dad.   They were completely opposed to me playing, but I’d bought it two years ago with the money from my first summer job and taught myself how to play.   I’ve been happily addicted to metal for a long time now.   I powered on my amplifier, and started running through the intro to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”.

Mom must have heard me, because moments later a light flooded down the dark stairway.

“Jimmy, turn that thing off and come upstairs, it’s time for dinner!” She yelled down at me.   I sighed irritably and rolled my eyes, but flipped the power switch back off and stomped upstairs while I pushed my glasses back up my nose.

“Jimmy, would you please set the table and make a salad?” She called over her shoulder as I walked into the kitchen, and she poured a steaming pot-full of pasta into a colander in the sink.   It took me a few minutes of fruitless cabinet opening before I figured out where she’d hidden all the plates and glasses.   When everything was ready Mom went out back with her apron still on to retrieve John and Jacob from their task in the storage shed and I used the restroom.  

As I washed my hands, I deftly avoided my reflection in the mirror.   I knew what I’d see; an overweight loser with spiky black hair, thin eyes, and pallid skin with dark shadows around my eyes and deep creases on either side of my mouth.   Flabby, ugly, and visibly stained by the genetics of a deadbeat father.   I clenched my jaw as I scrubbed my hands and struggled to shove my dark emotions back into hiding deep inside where nobody could see.   Even then, as I looked at the dark pigmentation accrued in the creases and lines of my hands, all I wanted to do was lash out with them and smash the mirror, then cut off all that hideous skin and fat with the shards.   It was as though all the sinister feelings, thoughts, and urges I’d shoved inside the hole had congealed and coalesced into some sort of dark dragon that gnawed at my soul and was hollowing me out from within.   Sometimes, I could almost feel it shifting its coils inside me.

I looked up into the mirror and pulled on one of the many masks I wore for the world, then watched as my eyes grew a little deader.   This mask, with the gentle smile and amicably distant expression, was my favorite for dealing with my parents because I could hide a great deal behind it and they’d never know it.

I looked away and walked back into the kitchen just before Jake arrived like a minor natural disaster.    Mom followed shortly after with John, who looked exhausted and weary…   he was probably being ‘helped’ by Jacob, which was a job not unlike herding cats.   John and Jake washed their hands at the kitchen sink and then sat down at the table and we all started dishing ourselves up with liberal helpings of linguini and garlic bread.

John moaned at the first mouthful, “Oh, this is heaven.   I’m so sick of fast food…” He rolled his eyes, and I noticed a bit of tomato sauce caught on his dark blonde goatee.   I couldn’t help but agree with him, just this once.

“How’s it going out there in the shed?” Mom prompted before she took a bite herself.

The conversation hovered on the move for a while, and I pretended to be interested as I chewed and watched the three blonde haired, fair skinned members of the family eat and chat.   Eventually though, John looked at me and asked the inevitable question.

“So, what did your counselor say at registration today?”   Shame flushed my cheeks red, and I ground my teeth together briefly as I chewed and swallowed.    John seemed to take perverse joy in calling out my failures whenever he could; and there was no end to his supply either, I just kept giving him ammunition.

“I will be allowed to graduate this year, if my grades stay high enough.”   I kept my eyes tethered to my plate as I slid what little pride I had left across a cheese-grater, “though the academic probation means I’ll be suspended if they fall below the minimum.”

John’s face remained impassive, but his cold blue eyes impaled me as he chewed a mouthful of pasta.   “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“Go to class, do my homework, ask for extra credit, kiss the art teacher’s ass…” I muttered as I pushed around a slice of sausage on my plate, “You know, the usual.”

“Well, I know you know how to tell me what I want to hear.   How about you pull your nose out of those stupid books you waste your time with, and actually get your ass in gear.”   He took another bite as I quietly seethed inside.

“Listen, Dad, I’ve been trying really hard—“

“Do you think this is some sort of game?” He interrupted me as he raised his voice, “This isn’t playtime anymore Jimmy; your grades now are going to decide how you live the rest of your life, not to mention whether or not you go to college!”   I think I visibly flinched at the accursed C-word, and my mask started to slip as my temper flared.

“Oh, sure, and moving us all to Colorado days before Jake and I start school is bound to do marvelous things for my G.P.A.   I guess you’ve conveniently forgotten what happened when we moved from Miami.   And Corona.   Oh, and amazingly enough, even Idaho!   Of course, that couldn’t possibly be at all responsible for my grades dive-bombing, oh no!” I gestured sarcastically as I spoke, but John ignored it all and just took another bite of his food.   I glanced at Mom, but she just stared resolutely down at her plate and said nothing; refusing yet again to stand up for me to her husband.   Where had the loving mother I remembered from Idaho gone?   Sacrificed at the alter of marriage apparently….

“Excuses never hold water in the real world son,” he said around his mouthful, “so stop making them and start doing the damn work.”

Oh, that was it…....

Something snapped inside me at the word ‘son’, and I smiled a smile that was cruel and ugly in every way.   “You know what John, I’m so sorry…” I stood up, “I’m sorry I’m stupid…” I set down my fork, “I’m sorry I’m not good enough to have your goddamn genes.   Maybe, just maybe… someday you’ll call me ‘son’ because you’re proud of me, not because you think you fucking have to!”   His mouth was full, so his cry of outrage was muffled as I launched past him and Jake, and out the back screen door, which banged against the back of the house.   I shoved open the back gate and took off running down the alley, ignoring Mom’s shouts behind me.

The dark haze of my thoughts clouded out everything as I ran, tripping over sidewalk and curb alike, until the desperate pain in my side brought me to my knees panting.   My heart thundered in my ears as I sucked desperately at the thin mountain air, broken only by the occasional hiccup.   My glasses slid down my nose on the sheen of sweat and tears, and I fiercely shoved them back into place as I looked up and saw that I’d stumbled into a park.   It wasn’t large, just a triangular slice of turf stuffed in the bend of a road.   The grass was dry and browned in spots where the overhead trees couldn’t pacify the raging heat of the summer sun, and there were a couple picnic tables over near the wide end in the shade of a pair of massive elm trees.

Behind me, I heard John yell my name.   I glanced back, and then hurried over to a maple with some low-hung branches, and after a couple embarrassing tries, I managed to haul my fat ass up into the limbs and climbed up until the leaves obscured me.   From my vantage point, I watched John drive by in the SUV looking for me and occasionally yelling my name.   I angrily shoved the tears out of my eyes, and let my head fall back against the trunk with a dull thud.  

Eventually the angry tide subsided and my tears slowed.   As the rage washed out of me and drained down into the dragon’s hole, all that was left inside me was cold and slightly numb.   I slowly opened my eyes and the first thing to come into focus was a single branch of leaves, already turning yellow, contrasted against the hot amber glow as sunset blazed on the brutal teeth of the mountains.   The only sounds were the drone of cicadas and the occasional barking dog.

Damnit…

Damn him…

John was always like that.   No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did do right, there would always be something; some minutia or monstrosity somewhere somehow that was utterly insufficient.    Nothing, not a single damn thing was ever good enough for that bastard.   Sometimes I felt tempted to set it all on fire; just to show him how fucking awful it could be.   Now, I looked back at my past quests for his approval with shame, how foolish that I could honestly hope for a father’s love and pride from someone who only took the job because it came packaged with marrying my Mom.

He was not my father…....

I dug my nails into my palms as a small inconsequential thing in the left side of my chest began to ache, and tears threatened to spill again.   Only pain lay down that road, and witlessly as I often stumbled upon it, I would not tread its familiar path again this time.   I’ve walked it enough to memorize every last twist and turn of the unfortunate tale.   I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment and took a shaky breath through clenched teeth.

Why couldn’t I pull myself out of the past, even as my future was shredding because of it?

Why couldn’t I?

The barest tenacious edge of the sun’s corona was still caught on the fabric of the world, and on that shard of light I prayed for the first time since I was a small boy.

“It’s gotta change.   My life, my grades… my world… everything needs to change right now…” I sighed deeply and closed my eyes again as the clouds burst into flame and the sun itself vanished.

Or may death release me to an angel’s lullaby…

I didn’t say the last out loud, but it whispered through my head regardless.   Message parceled, postaged, and sent out to the universe.

I dropped down out of the tree and turned back in the vague direction of the house.   I glanced up and was surprised to see a half moon already riding up into the navy twilight, watching me like a slightly tinted amber eye as it rose from the horizon.

Okay universe, it’s up to you now…....

Chapter 51

Pain is verification of one’s existence.    Proof of life.   I wonder if it’s perhaps that the very process of living, the constant division, multiplication, and death of the body’s cells that creates a nearly constant white noise of pain.   But, like any other white noise, eventually we grow so used to it that we don’t even notice our body’s slow constant death anymore…    But then your foot falls asleep, or something else happens, something that grants you a brief reprieve from the cycle of death and rebirth; and when it reawakens you feel the burn of cellular death anew…    No wonder babies cry…

Beeping woke me.   That, and the dry ache in the deep of my throat.

My first thought was ‘Ow…’ my second was ‘Where’s Loki?’ and my third was a puzzled ‘Wait, I’m still alive?’

Even though I couldn’t breath through my nostrils thanks to the breathing tube, a familiar antiseptic mortuary stench lingered in my nose.   I could tell from that where I was, so it didn’t surprise me to find a hospital’s ceiling tiles when I finally persuaded my eyes to open.   I slowly blinked the bleariness out of my eyes and when they’d cleared enough for me to make out the pores in the ceiling panels, I tried to turn my head to look around, the trach tube resisting the movement in a nauseatingly internal way.   To my left was the bank of monitors and my I.V. drip, slowly I let my eyes drift across the room, over the blue blanket that covered my body, the brace that held my left arm close to my chest, and the little metal clip around my right index finger, and finally to my right were a few uncomfortable-looking chairs.   Mom was passed out in Dad’s lap, his head slumped over her breathing noisily as he slept, just shy of an actual snore.   I couldn’t speak with the tracheal tube in, so I started to sit up, only to have a hot bolt of pain liquefy my muscles.

Ooh, SO not gunna try that one again…

Looking around my bed I finally located the ‘call nurse’ button and reached for it with my good arm, trailing the tether that connected one of the machines to the blood pressure reader on my finger.   A minute or so later an older man with hair and a goatee just beginning to salt and pepper came in, a strongly build woman in lavender scrubs with thick brown ponytail following.

“Welcome back to the land of the living Mr. Walker, nice to see you awake.” He said in a gruff rumbly voice, he used a pen-light to check my pupils while the woman picked up a clipboard from beside my bed and started writing down things from the various machines attached to me.   I pointed over toward my parents with my meter-encumbered finger; he followed my gesture then nodded and stepped over to John and touched his shoulder lightly, speaking his name.

John startled awake, and looked quickly around the room, before he noticed me looking at him.   I raised my eyebrows and saluted him sardonically with my tethered fingers.   He whispered my name and emotions I’d never seen in him before crashed through his wide blue eyes and around the room; sorrow, relief, joy… and love…   Shaking Mom awake, they both rushed over to me.

“Oh Jimmy, thank heavens!” Mom cried out as tears burst from her eyes and she threw her arms around me in a huge Mom-Hug.   My shoulder immediately flared up like a hot poker, making my eyes bulge as I flailed my arms, my reflexive gasp conflicting with the machine doing my breathing for me, rewarding me with a hurried beeping from the E.K.G.   Thankfully she got the picture, and stepped back into John’s arms.   “I’m sorry baby, I got carried away…” and she laughed, while tears still poured down her cheeks, but they were happy tears now.   John held her shoulders and she put her hands atop his.

I looked meaningfully at the doctor and pointed at my breathing apparatus, and then threw my thumb over my shoulder; universal sign language for ‘This. Out. Now!’.

“You want that tube out?” He clarified, and I nodded while pleading with my eyes.   “That should be fine now.   Nurse, could you please help me sit him forward…” They helped me sit up, and I clenched my eyes around the pain from my shoulder and my right side.   “You okay son?” He asked, and I nodded despite the perspiration that filmed my skin.   He unhooked the machine from my mouthpiece and I got my first lungful of unfiltered hospital air, “Okay, we’re going to count to three, on two I want you to take a deep breath, and push out on three, understand?”   I nodded again, and he grasped the end of the tube.   “Here we go now, one… Two…” I sucked in a deep breath through the open tube, “And three…” and as I pushed out the air in my longs, he pulled the impossibly long tube out of my throat.   It felt like being attacked by an alien face-hugger in reverse, I could feel the end of the tube work it’s way up from impossibly deep inside my chest and up my throat.   As soon as my throat was clear I started coughing violently and reached up to hold my throat with my good arm.   I really wanted to vomit, but thankfully I was able to hold my stomach in check as the nurse to got me some water.   I took the little plastic cup from her with shaky hands and drank greedily; it didn’t quite cool the fire in my throat but dear God it felt good!

“I was afraid we’d lost you…” A soft voice spoke beside me, and at first I didn’t recognize its owner, I’d never heard John speak like that before.

I looked up at him and grinned, “Oh c’mon, you’re not rid of me that easily…” I croaked in a horrifying parody of my voice, which sent me into another coughing fit.   John looked at me while the muscles in his jaw worked, it looked like he was chewing on words, and trying to find the ones he wanted to say.   Finally, his blue eyes shimmering, he just put his hand on my good shoulder and squeezed, “I’m proud of you son…”

My heart clenched.   I wanted to say something witty and sarcastic back at him, but I couldn’t make my voice work around the tears that were burning my eyes, so I just smiled at him instead, putting my hand on his.   We stayed there for a moment, until out of the blue the perfect words came to me.   I grinned a little wider, “Gee Dad, if I’d’a know all it would take to make you proud of me was to pass P.E, and face an insane bloodthirsty religious zealot; I’d I done it sooner!”

He laughed, “You little shit…”

“Admit it, you wouldn’t want me any other way…” I teased as the nurse ran a loop of clear plastic tubing around my head and situated a piece in my nostrils to feed me oxygen.

He sighed wearily, “Yeah, you’re probably right…”

I reached out and took Mom’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly as my smile dropped.   “Where’s Loki, is she alright?”

“Loki’s here, she’s doing fine.” She said softly.    “In far better shape than you I daresay; she’s been here with us as often as she could while we were waiting for you to wake up.   The bullet broke a rib, but they removed it fine and she’s recovered marvelously.    They’ve got her stuck in a wheelchair, but she’s almost back to her full hellion potential.” She looked away from me sadly, “Not everyone else has done so well though…”

“Bo…” I said it like it was both a question and a statement.

“He’s in a coma, unresponsive so far…”

Judging from the light coming in under the drawn curtains of the window, it was sometime during the day.   “How long have I been out?” I asked suspiciously.

Mom sighed and her smile slipped, “The three and half longest days of my life…”

I smiled at her sadly, trying to tell her that everything would be all right now, even as my brain started trying to regain control over everything that had transpired.   I swallowed hard and winced.   I remembered everything perfectly… everything… even killing a man…

“Jack…” I said quietly.

“He’s dead, the police are still puzzled about the whole thing though…   There are a lot of things that don’t make sense, like how a dog managed to get into the school, and why it would attack him…” John thought aloud.   My eyes drifted over to Mom’s, trying to impress the importance of silence upon her with my eyes.   She smiled and winked subtly.   I love my Mom!

“Yeah, weird…” I muttered.   “When do I get to see Loki?”

“Nurse Catlynn, would you mind getting Jessica for us?” Mom asked, smiling at the nurse.   She still hadn’t spoken a single word, but she nodded and left the room.   Returning a short while later pushing my mate in a wheelchair.   My breath caught as I saw those familiar emerald eyes, those eyes I thought I’d said goodbye to forever in a dusty school closet.   I strained my arm out for her as far as the pain would let me.   And at the first touch of her skin on mine; joy flooded through me from her touch.   Her hands were shaking but she leaned forward in her chair to rub her cheek into my hand, spreading the wetness of her tears over my fingers.   I closed my eyes and heaved a deep breath, my chest feeling tight, and yet liberated at the same time.   She turned her face to kiss my palm, and looked up at me with glistening eyes and ruddy cheeks.

“You son of a bitch, don’t you ever do that again!” she cried, and then laughed sadly, tears falling out of her eyes and rolling down the tracks on her cheeks in fat drops.

“I’m sorry baby…” I started.

“I thought I’d lost you!” she screamed at me, clenching my hand so hard it would have hurt if I didn’t have bullet and knife wounds to compare it to.

I looked away and muttered softly, “You almost did.   They… sent me back, they wouldn’t let me go.”

“Who?”

I looked back at her sadly, “Corwin… and Fen…” That was the last straw, my mouth stretched taught in a grimace and I clenched my eyes shut as the tears came again; great sobs racked my chest, aggravating my wounds, but I couldn’t stop them.   I could hear Loki and my mother crying anew; Loki’s face in my hand, Mom’s buried in John’s shoulder as he rubbed her back and held her.

Raw emotions churned through the room and pressed heavily on my chest.   Finally a chirping sound startled us out of our reverie, and John let go of Mom with one hand to pull his cell phone out of his pocket.   “Hello?   Oh, where are you?   We’re right down the hall, three-oh-six.   Okay.”   He flipped his phone closed, and looked down at Mom, “They’re here.”

“Who’s here?” I asked, and a moment later there was a rap on the door.   I sighed irritably “Well, come in I guess.” I’d already killed the only person (that I knew of) that was after my life, so if someone came in gunning for me; it pretty much meant God was smiting me and there wasn’t much I could do about it…

My annoyance evaporated into a smile as a familiar pair of dark-skinned faces peeked around the opening door.   “Taylor, Rene!” I shouted happily.

“We flew down here as soon as we could, I’m glad to see you’re awake!” Taylor gushed, his face spreading into a relieved grin.

“Had a hell of a time finding the place too, Mapquest would have had us ten miles out of town if I hadn’t just told him to follow those blue ‘hospital’ signs instead.” Rene said, somewhat breathless as though she’d just been jogging, “And then, once we finally found the damn hospital, we got lost in it!”

“I’m glad you’re here, it’s really good to see you.   And besides, it gave you an excuse to finally come to Colorado!”  

Rene smiled and pinched the bridge of her nose while shaking her head.   “You know, there are better ways to get somebody someplace than getting yourself shot…”

“Hey, whatever works!” I shrugged.

Rene opened her eyes and looked at Loki, “Ah, and you must be the infamous Lady Loki that stole this poor boy’s heart.”

“Yup, and now he’s stuck with me whether he likes it or not.   I took a freakin’ bullet for him, and now his soul is mine!” she said, clenching my hand to her chest.   “All mine!”

“Okay, the suspense is killing me; now that we’re all here, will somebody please tell me what happened after I left Loki in the closet?”

“Well, first off, I just have to say…” Loki started, looking at me sternly, “If I am ever in a life-threatening situation again; do not EVER leave me with Kat!   She’s a nice girl and all, but I’d rather just fend for myself thanks!   She wasn’t even injured and she still went into shock, virtually worthless!   She just sat there all deer-in-the-headlights, muttering to herself.   The only useful thing she managed to do was open the damn door with me leaning on her, and it still took her three tries!   I mostly carried my own ass out to the cops.”

“Sorry hon, but I didn’t really have a lot of options…” I muttered sullenly.   “And she did just watch someone she knew shoot up her school.”

“It’s all right babe, I’m just bitching.   Anyway, I heard more shots as we went out what used to be the front foyer, but it still took the police a couple more minutes to get there.   They went in, got everybody out, I had no clue if you were even still alive until your parents came to see me after they took my bullet out.   Police came, interviewed all of us, though what happened in the library is between you and him.   And unless the police have a necromancer on retainer, you’re probably the only one who knows.   You were found shot, stabbed, knife still in your side, bleeding, unconscious, and naked of a pile of your shredded clothes.   They found that bastard’s body in the quad, throat gone, dog prints and fur all around him.” Her eyes narrowed, as she looked sideways at me, while Taylor and Rene looked deeply at each other.   “The cops are baffled, nothing makes sense to them.”   Implying it made sense to others, such as those in the room now looking at me like I had lobsters crawling out my ears.

“Okay, so what’s the final tally?   Damage report please?” I asked, steering the conversation away from carnivorous lunar activities.

“Tracy Walsh and Officer Jenson are both dead.   Tracy was knocked down in the rush and those goddamn sheep trampled her.   I never much cared for her, but she didn’t deserve to die like that…   And then that fucker used Bo as a shield and shot Jenson through him…”

“Bo?” I asked.

“Bo’s…” Loki started, but the doctor picked back up when she faltered.

“He’s in a coma, like you were.   He’s still hanging on for now, but he’s unresponsive.   He suffered a serious blow to the head, and the lung he was shot through collapsed: a machine is doing all his breathing for him.   He made it through surgery, but some of us are afraid he might be locked in a vegetative state.”

His body was still alive, but no one was home…   It just might be possible…

No one seemed to notice that my eyes had focused just a little beyond the room, and Loki continued when the doctor was done, squeezing my hand.   “I think the paper said that there were about 60 injuries, mostly from panic or broken glass, only ten were serious though.   Three fatalities, including… him…   So far anyway.” She sighed and pressed her face into my hand again.   I could feel her emotions flowing from her hand and into me, flooding through those channels that were always tuned to her.   Relief and love for me, hatred for Jack, fear for Bo, grief for Fen, and sadness for everyone else.  

She was very busy inside.

I twisted my hand around so I could cup the back of her head and pull her into my shoulder while I turned my head to look at the doctor.   “Hey Doc, is there any chance I could see Bo?”

He closed his eyes and crossed his legs, a stern crease forming on his forehead.   “Not right now, we still have to finish checking you out.   Maybe later, if his parents are alright with it.”

“Well then, lets get this show on the road!   Time’s wasting, and I can’t afford it, so let’s get rolling!” I smiled cheerfully, free for the first time of any overshadowing fear.   The shadow from my dream, the shapeless darkness that pursued me, was finally gone and no longer dogging me like a specter of fate.   While hope still remained, there was one more soul that I wouldn’t let that madman tear from me.

The doctor seemed surprised, “Are you sure you’re ready?   You’ve been through a terrible ordeal—“   

“And have had sixty-plus hours of beauty sleep!” I cut him off, “I’ve had plenty of rest, and I’m about ready for some action now thank you.”

He shook his head bemusedly while the rest of my family looked around the room, and a tense little typhoon of auric energy boiled between John and Taylor, who were pretty much sizing each other up in true manly-man fashion.   One of the few benefits of bisexuality is that I really didn’t feel the urge to prove my masculinity like so many of my perfectly straight counterparts.

“I just don’t get it…” The doctor muttered, “Both you and her have both bounced back from your injuries and surgery as though nothing serious happened.   Your shoulder is slower, but both of you are healing at an amazing rate and I just can’t figure out why…”

I smiled impishly at him, flashing my fangs, “Good metabolism?”   And May’s Full Moon…

*          *          *          *

Several hours, a multitude of tests, and most of my patience later; they finally loaded me into a wheelchair and rolled me down the hall to the elevator.   Movement led to the sensational discovery of my catheter, which was delightful in a permanently-kicked-in-the-balls, deep-in-your-gut, why-God-why-did-you-put-nerve-endings-there kind of way.   Once I was situated in the chair however, I quickly relegated that discomfort to the background noise of pain; really not that bad compared to my shoulder and the myriad of general aches and pains from too long without activity, and we set out.   My phantom ears swiveled to catch the little bits of nurse gossip that were passed as the new nurse and I, followed by Rene pushing Loki, wheeled by.   Mostly having to do with Loki and I’s ridiculous recovery.   Almost disappointing that we didn’t have the normal human healing to help us blend in with the flock…   My remorse lasted about as long as a shark devouring a guppy.

We were loaded into the wide elevator and lifted up another couple floors to where they had Bo hooked up in intensive care.   They wheeled me into the room and I took in Bo, lying in a bed much like I had that morning.   Finger in clamp, blue blanket, tracheal tube, intravenous drip, and a cluster of machines either metering or assisting his body’s life system.   One of his eyes was swollen purple blue, and a large bandage was wrapped around his head.   His parents looked up at me when we entered, their eyes sunken and weary, their vitality and soul sucked out by the endless hell of not knowing if their child would wake up or not.   I reached out with my good hand and introduced myself.   We exchanged pleasantries, though their words were as hollow as their eyes, practiced routines that didn’t require thought or conviction.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to try something.   I don’t know for sure if it’ll help or not, I just know it won’t hurt to try…”

Eyes too hurt and afraid to hold hope looked at me, really looked at me for the first time.   “What will you do?”

“I’m going to try to find the soul that should be in this shell, and put it back.”

They looked at each other uncertainly.   Then Bo’s father seemed to make the decision; he took my hand between both of his rough dark-skinned hands.   Bo had his father’s skin and build, but his mother’s bright blue eyes.   “Do you really think it could help?”

I smiled at him, “It brought me back…”

He closed his eyes a moment, his face long and somber and then nodded, releasing my hand and taking his wife’s back.

“Just promise me that you won’t make a sound, and that no matter what; you won’t try to interrupt me.”

They nodded at me, and sat forward in their chairs to watch while I kissed Loki and then had Rene wheel me over next to Bo.   My good hand had been getting quite a bit of attention today, and I reached out and took Bo’s hand with it, mindful of the IV taped into his arm.   I nodded at Rene, who began tapping out a rhythm on one of the hospital tables.   I missed my Great Grandfather’s drum, but it would have to do.   I moderated my breathing and focused in on myself.

For a moment, I thought nothing would happen, that perhaps a painkiller or something would prevent me from accessing the Lowerworld, but eventually I felt myself sliding out of myself and down the pipes, through them and into the soil, into the Earth, and the etheric realm.

A great roar grew until my motion came to a stop and I felt myself rise to a watery surface.   Opening my eyes, a great waterfall fell toward the pool where I rested, tapering off into the distance through the spray of mist.   I closed my eyes again and smiled, feeling the mist condense and roll down my face.

So good to be back…

Rolling over onto my stomach I shifted smoothly into Wolf, just like I did in my dreams; like changing a thought and form followed.   I was happy; the pack killer was dead and now we were on our way to recover one that almost lost to us as well.   I paddled over to the side of the pool and got out, shaking myself off in a miniature spray like the waterfall crash.   Putting my nose down to the moist tannic soil and underbrush I started scenting, lifting my muzzle into the air to cast about for the scent that I hunted, seeking it with all my will.   A hissing breeze swayed through the upper canopy, and with it… There!

I took off down the river and then away up the hillside leading down to it.   I flew over the ground, and past other animals that bore little to no scent.   There was something stinky here; something that smelled like Human; and it was that which I sought.   I ran further and further uphill, my tongue lolling out the side of my mouth as I panted and fought, my shoulder aching a little, but the knife wound nonexistent.   Silver bullets…   Spiritually charged metals…

Up I went until the massive trees of the waterline thinned out into sagebrush and the scent of Human grew along with another fainter scent; fur.   Finally, panting, I came upon a path of worn dirt that curled around a large rock on the side of the hill I’d just mounted.   Shifting back into human form, I willed clothes to appear around myself more for his benefit than mine, and started walking down the trail.   I was still breathing heavily when I came around the corner and saw Bo sitting there on a rock, looking out over the breathtaking valley with one hand absently rubbing the ears of a dark grey wolf with bold black markings and a broad (for a wolf) chest.   I didn’t have to be told to know what it meant.

I walked up and sat down beside him on the ground, looking out over the forest with him.   Out over the treetops a broad eagle soared smoothly in slow circles, while all around us the air was filled with birdsong; chirps and warbles of a Meadow Lark, the rapid thrumming of a Woodpecker, and the deep, throaty, and eerily human voice of a Raven nearby.   The sun shone brightly just behind us, bathing us both in a warm golden aura.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” Bo asked absently, still stroking his spirit animal and staring out into space.

“They both are.” I replied, nodding at his wolf, and then back out at the expanse.

He sighed and closed his eyes; “I’m guessing this means we’re both dead then?”

“Not quite…” I muttered as I watched him.

“No?” he turned at looked at me for the first time, his wolf doing so as well.

“If you want to live, you still have a chance.   You’re body is still alive, I can try to take you back to it if you like.”

Bo laughed gently, and looked back out across the valley. “You know, I always thought the heaven with clouds and little harp-playing angels was crap.   I always thought it made little sense in relation to God and the things he created.   So when I followed the light here; I thought this was it.   I’d never imagined heaven to be this beautiful, this… perfect…”

“When did you meet him?” I asked, nodding over to his wolf, who turned his head and grinned at me like only a wolf could do, tongue lolling out with his ears halfcocked as Bo scratched a good spot behind one.

“That’s the funny part, he was here with me the whole time.   I don’t remember meeting him anywhere, he was just sorta with me already.”

“He’s you, Bo, he’s part of your soul that you didn’t let it.”

“Yeah, makes sense.   It would’ve made more sense if you’d told me more about all this stuff.” He chided me, still smiling.

“Well, I was getting around to it.   Not my fault we were attacked and shot before I could tell you more.”

“But you never really trusted me.   Not enough to tell me the whole truth; you are one, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry Bo, but I didn’t know who murdered Fen yet, so I couldn’t trust anybody.   I even started to suspect Geri…”

“It was Jack, wasn’t it…” He asked softly, sympathy in his eyes.

“Yeah…” I took a deep breath, willing down my emotions, “But you wanna know what the real bitch about it is?   He was trying to kill me, wanted to kill me the whole time… Fen just got in the way, like you…”

Bo was silent for a moment, “Is he gone now?”

“Yes…”

Bo sighed and looked down at his feet, “Did you do it?”

“Yes…”

“Good.   Mad dogs need to be put down.” Bo’s wolf sensed his agitation, and looked up at him, whining softly, and rubbed his head against Bo’s side.   Finally he lifted his head back up and smiled at me cleverly “So… Have I earned your trust yet?”

“Maybe…” I grinned at him, teasing. 

“I want to go back…   But I don’t want to leave him either, now that I’ve finally found him…” He resumed rubbing his wolf’s ears, smiling with true happiness.

“So bring him back with you.”

“Can I do that?” He asked surprised.

“Yes, but there are consequences.   Are you really ready to become whole?   You’ve always been fascinated by werewolves, because you had a wolf deep inside you.   If you fully embrace it, you will become like me.   And then there’s no going back.”

He thought for a moment, “Yes.   I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now; and this is what I really want…”

I smiled happily and stood up.   “Good, let’s go.   Oh, and just a warning; it’s going to hurt like a bitch, and I’m not even capable of expressing the joys of catheters and tracheal tube removals.” I teased.

“Oh goodie…” he moaned.

“It’s not going to be easy for a while, but I’ll be with you and so will Loki.   We’re a pack now right?”

“Right.” He smiled and held out his fist.   I hit my knuckles to his and turned to guide him back to the pool.   His wolf however whimpered in fear, and lingered behind.   “Jimmy, I’m not going without him.”

Just then a shadow moved on the silhouette of the boulder, I turned and there She was, her pure white coat shimmering golden in the sunshine like a fiery halo.

“We’ll be all right Bo, our guardian’s here to help us…” She hopped down from the rock and approached Bo’s wolf, which cowered uncertainly.   She sniffed noses with him, and rubbed her flank along his, then turned toward the path and looked behind her at him, waiting for him.

“Bo, you like to run right?”

“Yeah, why?” He asked.

“Because you’ll need to soon…” and I shifted into my wolf form to greet Bo’s wolf.   He stood taller than me in the shoulder, but he lowered himself in difference to me.   I licked his muzzle and then jumped back, splaying my paws out and lowering my torso.   Grinning a huge wolfy smile, I invited him to play.   He was reluctant at first, but after repeated invitations I finally got him moving.   Once he committed to move, we romped for a while Bo watched and laughed.   The Great Wolf Spirit changed to her human visage and whispered something to Bo, who smiled at her and then started running down the hill toward us.

Bo’s wolf and I started chasing him and then ran with him as the wind flowed freely through our coats, She caught up to us easily so the four of us ran back the way I’d come earlier.   Running freely and happy, all of us laughing in our own ways, we arrived back at the pool below the impossibly high waterfall.   I shifted back into human form, and looked at Lupa smiling, “Thank you, for saving my life…”

She smiled back, “My warrior wolf, this battle is over but the war of life still remains ahead of you.   At least now you have a good Beta, a strong knight by your side.   And I’ll always be with you in my way.”

I closed my eyes and bowed to her respectfully, and then waded waist-deep into the water.   Bo followed me, but his wolf stayed hesitantly on shore whining.   Lupa nudged him, but still, the unknown unnerved him.   He sensed that something was about to change in a very big way, but he didn’t know what or how.

“Bo, guide him into the water and hold him to you.”

Bo went up to him and held out his hands for him to come.   They were both still a moment, Bo staring off into space, “He told me to put my hand in his mouth.” He said puzzled.

“Then do it, he just needs some reassurance.”

“But what if he bites me?”

“Bo, he is you.   He’s just afraid and that’s how you can reassure him to come with you.”

Reluctantly, Bo held out his hand and his wolf wrapped his jaws around Bo’s wrist.   Then, wrist in mouth, they both walked into the water until his wolf could no longer touch bottom and started to doggy paddle.   They swam toward me, and as they reached the middle of the pool, I took hold of Bo’s left hand with my right, my good hand in the middle world.   “Now hold him close to you and don’t let either of us go, got it?”   He nodded while treading water, and I just closed my eyes and let myself float reaching out to the tempo of the drum echoing up from the bottom of the pool.   “Bo, one more thing.   Relax…” he stopped kicking and let himself float.   Only then we sank below the surface, the sunlight on the water’s surface casting rippled shadows over my closed eyes and then we were flying back up through the soil, the pipes and back into my aching, heavy body in Bo’s hospital room.

I could feel them inside me, not as two forms, but as a single egg of vapour lodged like a weight in my chest.   I summoned Wolf and my shifting energy and focused on it as I lifted Bo’s hand; careful not to let his parents see my eyes, which had surely changed color.   “Remember, don’t interrupt, I’m not hurting him…” I re-warned everyone in the room, and then placed his hand in my mouth, biting down onto the yielding flesh of his palm.   My teeth sharpened just enough to break the skin the slightest bit, and when I tasted the copper tang of his blood I pushed.   I shoved my shifting energy into Bo’s inert body, and with the flow I pushed out that pressure that was his spirit inside me.   The weight lifted from inside my chest, and I just sat back in my wheelchair, feeling truly exhausted for the first time since waking.

Suddenly a hand had me by the front of my hospital gown, shaking me roughly and flooding my brain with agony.   All I could do was gasp in pain as Bo’s father shook me, yelling and threatening.   Rene and the nurse quickly grabbed his hands and removed them from me, yelling back at him.   It all seemed muffled and far away.   I clenched my eyes shut a moment a focused through the pain, willing it down, just in time to hear the heart monitor pick up speed and intensity.

The fight stopped, everyone looked over at Bo.   I slumped forward with exhaustion, breathing hard, but turned my head to look at him as his un-bruised eyelid twitched and then opened.    The only sound for a moment was the clicking, wheezing, and beeping of machines, and then Bo’s mother let out a keening sound that was the joyous version of despair and lurched for his hand.

Loki pushed herself over to me, and I took her hand while we watched a family that had been crushed by despair, be crushed all over again by hope instead.   After his parents settled down a bit, Bo reached for me, smiling with red tearful eyes.   I let go of Loki for a moment and took his hand.   A familiar tingle teased at the nerve endings of my fingers as he squeezed my hand, a silent ‘thank you’ in his eyes.   He let go of me and reached out for Loki, and at his touch Loki gasped softly and looked up at him, then over at me and I just smiled.   She smiled too and then let him take his hand back.

She pushed her chair back next to me and I whispered low enough that only she, and perhaps now Bo, could hear.   “In the spring everything starts over…   I’d like you to meet our new Beta…” We smiled at each other and hugged as much as our wounds and chairs would allow, then we kissed long and deep.

Like Lupa had said, the battle was over, but the war was just beginning.   There would be more challenges and pitfalls, new joys and anguishes; but we would survive through all of them.   We would endure.  

To be Wolf, is to survive…

And we would…   Loki and I, and now Bo too.   We would all walk Wolf Road together, down the path of life destined for us.  

And no matter what, we would survive…

The bullet tore through the upper left side of my chest, just under my collarbone.   In bizarre detail I distinctly felt every inch of its passage into me, through me, and then out the other side in an explosion of wetness that instantly drenched the back of my shirt.   It felt as if the bullet had been made of fire and that now I was burning from the inside; I actually expected to see flames spurting out of it, my nervous system couldn’t even quite process the agony of it.

The book hit him dead in the face, and had knocked him back; not enough to avoid injury, but enough that his bullet didn’t pierce my heart or my brain.   A thick leaden weight fell on my stomach, so familiar…   I almost couldn’t believe it, but with the extreme clarity of shock I almost started to laugh; the fucker made silver bullets for me!   He made fucking silver bullets to kill me!

I fell onto my back, the fire spreading over my body; the agony from my shoulder was so extreme it spilled through all my other nerves until my entire body felt like a fishnet of pain! I was only dimly aware of my own whimpering sounds as my back arched and my legs spasmed; my nervous system struggled to cope with the incomprehensible agony assaulting it

His face appeared over me, gloating.   His voice came hollow and distant.   “So, the big bad wolf does bleed red.   It’s too bad Jimmy, but there’s only one way to save your soul…” He lifted his foot and stepped down on my chest, holding me in place.   Then he pushed another round into the chamber and took aim, while sniffing at the blood leaking out of his broken nose.

            Like the moment, seemingly decades ago, when Fen’s teeth sank into my hand and changed me forever; time seemed to stand still.   An instant stretched into a lifetime.

            I realized that this fiery agony, the silver bullet tearing through living flesh, was the last sensation Fen ever felt in this world.   Possibly the last Loki would ever feel too.   Unless I could stop him here…now!

            Sensation such as I’d never experienced before rushed over me, adrenaline screaming through my bloodstream.   Wolf, no, I snarled in rage and grabbed onto the barrel of the rifle, still scalding hot from unleashing the bullet that pierced me, and with a roar of rage only half human I tore it out of his hand and sent it flying across the darkened Library, clattering like so much plastic as it bounded around and came to rest in the shadows

            Shocked and disarmed, he took a reflexive step back and tried to run, but I was much faster than him, even wounded and bleeding.   I threw myself after him and tackled him to the ground before he could turn to run; his skull collided with the hard concrete floor with a dull clunk, barely buffered by the thin carpet.   He twisted around underneath me, and started screaming and blubbering; no longer invincibly armed… no longer any semblance of human.   Just another ape in the jungle captured by a predator.   He tried to punch and claw at my face and eyes with his pitiful clawless hands.   I snapped and caught one of his hands in my jaw and viced down on it until I tasted blood and felt some of the bones snap, he dislodged me with a hook from his other arm.

            He failed to wound me much worse than I already was; but it knocked my cross out of my shirt; the silver cross that Fen had given me for Christmas, and it snagged on his flailing hand.   With an audible snap the silver chain broke, and the membrane that held Wolf caged within me ruptured and fell away…

Finally, the magical item fell from my flesh; and the last wall keeping Wolf from fully integrating with me fell away, taking its ward with it.   He surged upwards, no longer held in check, and the sensation of wholeness and rightness, for a moment, eclipsed the agony from my shoulder, and I felt my eyes shift even further, the rich royal amber slowly consuming any remaining trace of the brown.   Sensations like those of my first two nights overwhelmed me.   Blood roared in my ears, sounds amplified to an almost painful point, color bleeding out of my sight except for yellow and blue.   Most clearly though, scents flooded my brain with an intoxicating cocktail of blood, my own and his, and the thick musk of his fearful sweat.   And I felt… completed and truly alive at last!   Finally… finally whole...

            And we…I…wanted only one thing.   My hand struck out and captured his neck, felt his racing pulse beneath my fingers, and clenched.   This pitiful squirming creature underneath my hand killed my alpha; my friend, my family, and dreadfully wounded my mate.   The true horror of a werewolf; all the ferocity of a force of nature, fueled with a human’s wrath and rage.   Not even operating with words anymore; my brain merely conjured images for the concepts of my will.

            I…want…it…dead!

            My nerves surged to life such as I’d never experienced before; spasms and convulsions racking my entire frame.   My lips pulled back from my lengthening teeth, and a roar more bestial than human tore from my throat.   He redoubled his efforts to escape me but to no avail.   My breath came in shuddery gasps as my diaphragm clenched and contorted.   Underneath me, the hand holding him down and the wounded one hanging half-limp beside me begin to visibly change.   The tendons in the back of my hand stood up raised under the skin, as the nails grew long, dark, and curved.

            Dear God it’s happening, it’s really happening!  

The bones slowly elongated and shifted, my innards churning and changing to match.   I smiled with absolution until my stomach purged itself all over him, laced with blood. 

            His screams reached a new pitch, and what little sanity might have remained in him was quickly crushed by the sight of a teenage boy physically transforming into a wolf… Right on top of him...   My human side was sadistically delighted with his panicked squeals and the fear he emanated.   Wolf was simply angry…

            A spasm shot down the arm that held his neck with a half human hand, clenching the hand armed with semi talons.   The supernatural berserker strength coursing through my veins cut off the sound from him as the changes continued to consume me.   I just let go of myself and let Wolf and I become one…

            The thick gray pelt sprouted first, joined soon after by the coarse black guard hairs.   My hind legs began to shrink as my forelegs grew, and my hands became more and more pawlike until eventually I couldn’t hold him down anymore.

            He scrambled out from underneath me, making strange hiccupy gasping sounds.   I was incapable of pursuing him in my current condition, but as the cloying stink of fear trailed behind him; I knew I would easily track him down…  

            My diminutive tailbone elongated and gradually developed into the physical counterpart of the phantom limb I’d experienced for so long now.   I could also feel the bones of my face shifting, elongating.   My ears lengthened and moved up the sides of my head while my nose and mouth projected into a muzzle.   With audible popping noised the bones of my chest reconfigured themselves, deepening and narrowing my torso, while the muscles of my neck thickened and changed to hold my head up in front of me instead of over my neck.   My clothes fell off me in tatters, not torn apart by my changing body but strangely shredded just the same, while my shoes burst along their top seam.   With a final satisfying shake, I rid myself of any remaining scraps of clothing, and any vestigial remnants of my human form.

            Panting with my long wet tongue, I stretched my newly reformed muscles.   My left shoulder still burned fiercely, but at least it was functional, and with my transformation fulfilled; the hunt could begin…

With only a slight limp, I locked onto and followed the ridiculously traceable scent trail he left behind.   Besides, his was the only blood spilled besides mine…   I moved out of the aisles of books, and pushed the door open with my muzzle.   I quickly adjusted to quadrupedal travel, and launched myself in pursuit; my claws clicking on the linoleum flooring in the hallways.

            His head start was no match for my sense of smell and relentless pace.   My padded feet moved in a steady rhythm down the hallways, as his stench grew stronger and stronger.

            Finally, I slowed to a stop.   His smell was extremely strong, and I could hear him gasping for breath around the corner by the auditorium.   To restart the delicious chase again, I inhaled deeply and lifted my head back to let loose a full-throated howl.   A primeval warning and promise of his fate… apparently he got the message…

            With a choked cry he took off running again; or rather, stumbling along exhausted and delirious.   I followed along behind him, cloaking my black coat in the deep shadows as I crept behind him silently; until he stopped for breath again and leaned up against a row of lockers.    Seemingly unable to decide on a direction to flee, he gasped heavily and looking around; caught in the deepest throes of ancient fear.   My prey ran, I hunted, and now the hunt was over...   Soon, both vengeance and justice would be achieved…

            I slunk through the shadows of the lockers until I was right behind him, and growled very quietly; my muscles twitching with anticipation.   He reacted as predicted; throwing his gaze hurriedly in every direction, before he finally took a step back and threw himself through the window into the Quad.  

I gathered myself and sprang immediately behind him, and then recloaked myself with the shadows of the bushes on the other side; the thick tang of juniper tingled sweetly in my nostrils.   He hadn’t seen me follow him, but he suddenly remembered one last weapon; and he pulled the three inch pocket knife out… a poor delusion of protection against my fangs, as he backed away from the broken window; watching… waiting… never realizing that his personal demon had already followed him through.   I moved back behind him and growled again very softly, just enough to toy with his imagination.   He whimpered and began to shake as he spun quickly toward the sound I made.   But I had already moved, and crouched behind a bush just to the side of him when I snarled again…

            He backed up until his back was against one of the cottonwood trees’ trunks, his eyes flickering too quickly to actually see anything of worth.   Moving opposite his tree put me downwind and I got a snout-full of sweat and blood.   Without the ability to focus his ears like I could, he was utterly incapable of pinpointing my location.   But I could hear sirens drawing closer to the school, and I grew weary of my own game.   I decided to end the suspense for him…   Slinking up directly behind his tree, I inhaled deeply and then howled out to the sky.

            He screamed and broke to run...   Instinct kicked in and I pursued; he’d just made it past the next tree when I drew alongside him and snapped out, severing his Achilles tendon in a quick flash of my teeth.   He fell and loosed his bladder into his pants; then he lifted himself into a desperate crawl toward the door that would let him out of this chamber he chose for his demise.   I knocked him over again and pinned him down with one of my massive forepaws; just like he had done to me in the Library.   I stared down at him; any shred that was left in him that was human had died and shriveled away.   His eyes were empty, completely devoid of soul; his madness eclipsing everything but a weak animal struggling pathetically for life.   For the barest caress of moments, I felt pity for him; I had made him this way.   I was the one responsible for driving him up to and over the breaking point…

            He seized this barest hesitation and plunged his knife up into my side, and a snarl of pain tore from my throat.   Behind my eyes I relived the moment that he split Jake’s lip…   The light faded from Fen’s eyes and his hand fell away from my face…   Loki collapsing in the closet, my hand stained russet with her blood…    The pool of crimson growing around Bo’s crumpled form…   And with a continuation of the same snarl; I brought my fangs together into the soft tissue of his neck and yanked backward.

            His blood washed over my muzzle, and his struggles weakened until his eyes rolled back into his head and he became still as death.

            I released his lifeless corpse and lifted my nose to the sky; to the pale ghost of a moon just visible in the eastern sky.   I howled for liberation… for the fulfillment of Fen’s dream… for atonement…

            Blood poured from me as I sang again; an anguished dirge of pain and sorrow for stolen love… for friends robbed of life…  and for the human blood that would forever stain my soul…

            A child of the night crying to his mother in the sky; before the world twisted out from underneath me and pitched me into the black abyss.

            *          *          *          *

            My poor child, my sweet warrior, you have fought so hard…

            That voice seemed so familiar, “Mother?”   I asked the darkness.

            Out of the dark, I saw a body, so strikingly familiar, yet strange and different to me.   The body of a wolf, lying on its side in a puddle of blood while it’s tongue lolled out; his great furred sides unmoving…

            My great knight…

            The White Wolf appeared and walked up to my body…   A deeper part of myself finally recognized my other form as such.

            Your sacrifice was not forgotten…

            The Great Wolf Spirit looked up from my body and pierced me with her stare; bringing again that ageless primal stirring inside me.   Then she stretched out, her body disappearing into mine; she laid herself down into me…

            I was floating so freely, so weightlessly in the light; when I felt the tug.   An urgent pull drawing me back down.   I felt so weary; I could bear no more struggle, all I wanted was an end to my pain…

            Suddenly I could feel Fen and Corwin beside me; their hands on my shoulders pushing me back down as they smiled serenely at me.

            “This is what it means to be Wolf”, Fen whispered, and I could have wept for hearing that voice again, “To be Wolf, is to survive…   No matter what; you face pain, you face trails, you face all the adversity of the world, and with pride: you survive…”

            You do not die here…

            The features of my body began to melt back into my human form, and I reached out desperately to Fen and Corwin as I was pulled back toward the pain.   They shifted into their animal forms before my eyes, and I watched as the wolf and the raven faded into the light.   But I was denied; I was drawn in and devoured by my material shell; into the suffocating weight of flesh and pain like wildfire…

The clacking of plastic objects, and a beeping noise; the roar of a truck engine, and the howling of a siren…

A strange man’s voice in the darkness...

Jack flowed up the steps with unnatural grace; his insanity overshadowing any remaining human flaws.   My eyes shifted completely and hardened; I pulled Loki behind me though the ruined window and dead-on into the sea of panicked people trying to escape and not knowing what direction the threat came from.   Faces I recognized, and names with them; Jeremiah, Rebecca, Morgan; none of them showed any more than the most base of human instincts: survival.   The humans were abandoning their reason and falling back on their herd mentality to save themselves.   They would be of little help more than a herd of stampeding cows, and only marginally more intelligent.  

It was like swimming upstream; I grit my teeth and grunted with every blow I took, elbowed, kneed, and punched by the onrushing mass of students.   When I looked behind me though, my plan seemed to be working as our hunter fell back from the onslaught of humanity as well.   The grim satisfaction in my eyes was mirrored by the fanatical frustration in his.

I heaved harder, lowering my center of gravity to pull us through the mob; the muscles of my left arm burned from their deathlock on Loki’s hand.

Shots cracked through the air, creating a wave of screams bouncing around the crowd; the upbeat dance music still blasting incongruous to the events unfolding in the lobby.   After the screams I heard familiar voices yelling; and glancing back I saw Bo locked in a match of strength with Jack, the back of Bo’s suit jacket was stretched taut with strain as he fought to overpower his old friend.

The crowd was momentarily cowed by the gunshots and I seized my chance to pull Loki out of sight and around the corner.   Kat cowered there, and I grabbed her too, virtually lifting her over my shoulder with an incongruous show of strength.   My ears remained trained behind us on Bo though, bellowing at Jack to stop, and my skin crawled as Jack answered with a high keening laughter that betrayed the demon inside him, an absolutely inhuman shriek of glee.

My eye flashed down and latched onto a door handle, which thankfully opened when I turned it.   I pulled Loki and Kat inside and locked the door as soon as it was closed.   Even with my eyes fully shifted, it was difficult to make out the interior other than it was some sort of janitorial closet, and I felt over the walls for the light switch.   Loki clung to me panting heavily, the back of my shirt was damp from sweat and I had to clench my eyes shut about to flip the light switch.

“Jimmy… I feel cold…” her voice was so faint, a wave of fear staggered me as I flipped the switch.   Hot pain pierced my eyes as I opened them too soon, but swung around to look at Loki; she seemed to be fine, aside from a few places where sweat had soaked through her dress, and her unusual pallor.

“What…” I was about to ask her; and I put my hand on her side over a patch of sweat.   But the spot was hotter than it should have been, and looking down at my fingers, a thin film of crimson colored them.   That stain wasn’t sweat, and it was getting bigger…

“Oh no, Loki no!” I yelled as her knees collapsed and I caught her from falling.   Kat seemed frozen, and useless; looking around with the wide deer eyes of weak prey.

“Jimmy…   Jimmy it hurts, it hurts so bad!” She moaned as she hyperventilated.   I tore my vest off and wadded it up behind her.    “Jimmy, I love you!” she cried as I pulled her forward to prop her up against the wall to hold it in place.   ‘Stop the bleeding, make her safe, stop the bleeding, make her safe’ recycled over and over again through my head like a mantra.

“Okay Loki?   Loki?   Listen to me, Loki?   Here’s what we’re gunna do, okay hon?   Here’s what we’re gunna do.   We can’t stay here, you need help.   I’m going to draw him away; wait a minute or two and then come out, okay?   Do you think you can walk?”

She grimaced, “I can drag my ass if I need to…   No…   No, Jimmy, don’t leave me!   Don’t go out there, he’ll kill you!   I’ll be fine, but… I can’t live through losing you!   Please baby, don’t go!” her slender hands fluttered, clenched onto mine, then reached for my collar; the pain was too much for her to hold still.

I grinned as wide as I could, “Don’t worry hon’, there’s no way I’ll lose!” I said with forced cockiness.   “Kat?   KAT!” I shouted, and finally shook her out of her shocked reverie, “Kat, I need you to get her out of here safely, and get help.   If the coast is clear, I’ll come and get you; if I don’t, then wait for me to draw him away, and get her out of here to help.   Do you understand?” She nodded shakily, and I made her repeat my directions back to me before I turned back to Loki.   “Loki, you simply do not have the option of dieing on me, got that!   I’ll come find you when I lose him.”   I grabbed her face and stole a kiss from her; a kiss like no other before, because I didn’t know if there would ever be another after.   “I love you!”

Her choked cry of loss cleaved my heart as I quickly ducked back out the door, locking it behind me and quickly surveyed the hall.   People were still screaming in the Gym, so I knew not everybody was out yet.   My ears shifted, and identified a few trampling victims nearby mewling with pain.   I eased around the corner and looked back out into the Lobby, a couple people were on the ground.  

A grinding squeak shot through my jaw as I clenched my teeth together.   Bo was lying facedown in a dark pool that was soaking into the industrial weave carpet.   Another one…   One after another this fucker was trying to destroy all that I held dear in my life.

The faintest click behind me and I was in motion; pushing my muscles to the point where they instantly screamed in acidic protest.   Jack was still in the motion of raising his rifle when I blurred backward and around to rake my fingers against his face; realizing too late that I lacked anything as effectual as claws to back the intention of the attack.   I made out a blossoming splotch of red and purple on his opposite jaw as his head whipped around.   Bo must have landed at least one good hit.   Too bad anything that could have been knocked lose had come undone a while ago…

Too close to Loki…   Jack was standing almost directly in front of the closet I’d hidden them in, so instead of standing to continue the fight right there, I dashed past him and around the corner that led to the hallways; all mostly darkened.   For the briefest of moments, I had actually entertained the delusion that I would do just as I’d told Loki I would; lead him away and double back for her, but in a flash of realization I knew.    This fight would end tonight; and I would end it, either with my life or his.

“Fuck!” as I rounded the corner, I nearly ran right into the security fence that had been pulled across the hallway to keep students out of the hallways.   Praying my skull was just thin enough to make it between the vertical poles, I shoved myself into the gap.   It felt like one of my ears got partly ripped off, and I popped several of my shirts buttons off as I shoved through; but I made it, thankful again for the thin rangy build of my lupine self.

Jack came around the corner and snapped off a shot at me as I tried to pull my other foot through.   Sparks showered over me as it ricocheted off the steel fence, but then I was through and running.   Jack’s broader build would make the fence a much greater obstacle than it had been to me.

My body screamed in protest from its exertion, and demanded I rest.   My legs almost buckled, the acid build up was so extreme that my limbs almost felt numb from it; and my chest heaved in a struggle to get enough oxygen to my starving cells.   When I saw a shadow detach itself from the others at the end of the hallway; I lurched to my feet and started running; hearing our footsteps echoing around the corridor.

I could hear the difference when he came into the hallway behind me, and I knew I couldn’t risk staying within line of sight of him and I threw myself into the hallway toward the Library.   Wolf’s instinct liked that; the Library would give me cover, and deeper shadows to hide within.   Finally, a chance to turn the hunt on the hunter…

I slowed down a little bit to make sure Jack knew where I was heading, and then slammed against the bars on the Library doors with enough force to instantly bruise my shoulder.   But I succeeded in forcing the doors open; I instantly dove over and underneath the computer desks and pulled the shadows over myself.   Jack could have easily shot me through the windows as he passed; but I couldn’t stay here because this would probably be the first place he would look when he entered.   I crawled under the table and rolled under the gap on the bottom.   Hugging the bookcases by the windows and keeping their shadows pulled around me like a velvet cloak, I loped on all fours past the windows into the actual heart of the Library, and the concealing forest of eight-foot tall bookcases.

As soon as I was in the shadows of the tall shelves, I heard click of the door mechanism opening, and my breath caught.   As I’d guessed, the first thing he did was crouch down and sweep his gun across under the computer desks, searching.   Upon confirming I wasn’t under there he popped the magazine and loaded in another clip; how many shots did he think it’d take to kill me!

“You know Beast, none of this was necessary…”   ‘Beast’?   “If you’d just made yourself an easy target like you were supposed to; none of this would have happened.”   He began searching through the audio/video and copy rooms, methodically isolating my location.

“Well, excuse me for not wanting to die as flippantly as you seem to want to murder!  If I was the one you were after, why did you hurt all those other people; why did you murder Fen?”   I felt confidant enough in the concealment of my shadows that I could draw out the answers to the questions that burned inside me with hate for this monster.

“I told you!   His was a wrongful death!” he shouted, “I was up on the ridge waiting for you, I didn’t even know if I had the strength to do what God told me must be done; but when he stepped out and looked right at me through the scope, I… I panicked!   He wasn’t the one I was meant to kill; the demon inside you was all that needed to be exercised!” From the tone of his voice; I realized that this was probably where the rot of his insanity had taken hold.   The cold hearted murder of an innocent.

“And you call me a monster!   Is that how you’ve justified the blood on your hands?   That it was God’s will?   That you murdered a child in his name?   Somehow I don’t think that’ll endear you to Him at your judgment.”   He was about to enter the rows of bookshelves, and I covered my hand with my mouth to direct the sound away from myself.   I knew he couldn’t see me in passing, but I didn’t want him looking too hard at where my voice was coming from.   I’d never tested my shadows under that much scrutiny before, and this was not the time to experiment!   I needed a way to take him out in ambush; remove the advantage his weapon gave him…

“Be silent demon!   I lost everything because of you!   My friends, my reputation, my grades… My fucking pride!   You took it all from me!”

“Oh, you poor blameless soul; of course none of that could have come at you from your years of sin, from attacking a six year old boy, or from treating your so called ‘friends’ like peasantry that must obey oh-mighty-you!   I bet you even think that I made you pull that trigger don’t you?”

“’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”   He recited the quote as though it was his shield and sword all in one, I could help but shake my head in disgust.   He walked by the end of the aisle, looking down with his rifle poised at her shoulder ready to spit out its deadly contents into my flesh, and then thankfully past and out of eyeshot.   I slipped out of my shadows and crept silently down the aisle.

“That’s really fucking pathetic you know that?   You’re an embarrassment to Creation, blaspheming the children of God’s design to fit your own flawed assessment of good an evil.   You’re so twisted that you don’t even realize that you are the evil one!”

“You’re a freak!   An abomination!” his voice cracked, and I could almost imagine spittle flying from his mouth in fervor.

“Oh, on the contrary; I’m far more natural than you are!   At least I don’t decay my soul trying to be something other than the way God made me!   You’re the reason some mothers eat their young!”   He snarled wordlessly and slammed a fist into some shelf

“Just show yourself already!   I’m tired of this!”   His talking had masked any noise my shoes made.  

“Aww, poor baby tired of loosing the argument?”   I had to stop him!   I had to do it for the pride of our pack, for the lives of my friends, no!   My family!  The urge to run, the instinct of self-preservation, was slowly devoured by a rising anger, all my vengeance, waiting like a patient devil, just when I needed it most.  

I prepped myself, and then selected a hard-back book from the shelf.   I opened it to make sure it made a loud enough noise that even a human could hear it then dropped it, whispering “Shit!” and then dove around the end to the next row of bookcases as both he and I silenced our breathing.   I laid down on my stomach and watched his shoes move underneath the bookcases.   Wolf was struggling to surface as hard as he could, but again I could feel that thin but unrelenting membrane that held his power back.  

As predicted, he walked down my previous aisle toward the lure I left for him, the sound of his breathing feeding his location to me through my sensitive phantom ears.   The sound of his too human, too loud footsteps while he tried to stalk me, made it laughably easy to triangulate.   When he was in position I picked myself up silently, took a deep breath, and made a silent prayer for protection.   And then I braced myself and slammed all my weight into the shelf between us.

Several hundred pounds of paper come crashing down, the sound of a panicked gunshot and his startled cry seemed lost in the roar of cracking, splintering wood and falling books.   I went down with it, carried by my own inertia.

            The billowing cloud of dust and debris began to settle, and I tried to regain my senses.   As my stun faded, I registered a metallic clicking noise to my left.   I froze, a cold shock running down through my belly like mercury, and I slowly forced my head to turn.

            Jack stood just outside the pile of rubble, with his rifle aimed at my head, a smirk on his face, the cross on the chain around his neck glinted incongruously in the darkness.   In a sinking moment of horror, I realized that I had waited just a hair’s breadth too long and missed him.   Now it was his turn…

            And my last…

            The barrel of the weapon was only a couple feet away from me; there was no way he could miss that close.   Jack’s face was a mask of triumph, with the fire of religious zeal burning with insanity out of his eyes.   In a defiant last reflex, Wolf’s rage flared inside me.   My hand seized one of the books underneath me, and flung it at his face just as a crack of thunder flashed out of the muzzle and the sickening sensation of tearing flesh and cracking bone registered in my shocked brain.

            I love you Loki, I’m sorry!

            I watched my own crimson blood spray over the books, my snarl cutting off in a sharp yelp.

Walking Wolf Road

By: Brandon Herbert

Chapter 47

“So, explain this whole ‘shifting’ thing to me again?” Bo asked.....

I paused momentarily from memorizing his Government notes to answer him, “There are different types.   Most Therians can only shift in one or two ways; the most common is the mental shifts in which the animal spirit comes up to the surface in the mind.   You cease to think like a human; you think more in images and emotions than in word forms.   But you remain yourself throughout, remember that your animal self in just a facet of who you are as a whole; not a separate uncontrollable being.   Sometimes there are minor physical changes that accompany a mental shift, usually a change in eye color, sometimes an increased metabolism or hair grown through the duration of a shift.   Also, a mental shift accompanies or preludes almost all the other kinds of shift.....

“The next most common is the etheric or astral shift.   That’s when someone’s energy body shifts over to that of the animal; they usually experience a variant of phantom-limb syndrome, and in the case of astral shifting, sometimes leave the body and travel the astral plane in a wolf’s form.   This can happen to varying degrees, usually with at least a light mental shift, but even then not always.   Hey, what’s this word?”....

He leaned over to check where my finger pointed, “Corruption”.....

“Your ‘R’s seem to be rather mutated…”....

“Just keep talkin’…” ....

I rolled my eyes, “Finally, there are the physical based shifts.   These usually only accompany the deepest of mental shifts.   There are some who exhibit almost superhuman, berserker-like strength and speed; and then there is also the supposed full physical shift where your flesh actually metamorphoses into the body of a wolf.”....

“But that’s just myth right?   You don’t really believe that’s possible do you?”....

Yes, I do…....

I censured myself just in time, “It’s up to you to decide what you believe in regard to that.   Any physical shifter, who expected to survive, wouldn’t advertise their ability; not even to others of his own kind.   I wouldn’t even expect them to socialize with others if they held a secret like that; something that would truly prove to be a risk to their life…”....

“Wow, so where do you fit into all that?”....

“My pack is… something of an oddity…   Judging from what I’ve been able to learn from the Internet and from books; we actually sorta skirt the line of what’s ‘normal’ for other shifters.   Most others don’t have as many psychic quirks as we do, and they don’t feather the lines between what phenomena occur with what kind of shift.   Fen’s eyes were amber twenty-four-seven; but that wasn’t their natural color, and he wasn’t always shifted.   We’ve all tapped into some of that berserker strength and speed, usually with just a light mental shift.   We walk between the worlds, so we can communicate more easily with the spirit world than even most mediums; but at the same time we end up with this sort of wall between us and other normal humans.   I think they can sense the wildness in us, and it sets off some primitive subverted part of their brains.....

“Also… I haven’t found mention of any other packs of Therians that actually had some sort of patron spirit, much less a territory belonging just to us in the spirit realm.   Yet we always have; she was the one that told Fen that I was coming, and foretold that I would join his pack.”....

“Has she told you about anyone coming?”....

“No, that’s not what she normally does; it seems like there was something particular about me coming here; but I still haven’t been able to figure out exactly what…”....

“What would you say if I asked to join your pack?”....

I laughed, and immediately apologized for my rudeness, “I’d said ‘Wait your turn, Pup!’   You’ll need to prove your devotion to the pack and to our secrets before I’ll even consider changing you!”....

“So how does the change work?   Is it like in the movies, with a bite?   Or is it more of a ritual, like in the old legends?”....

I shook my head smiling, “Sorry, that’s all for today!   I won’t tell you more until I feel absolutely confidant that I can trust you with what you already know.”....

“Bastard…” he glowered at me and snatched his notes back, it was alright though; I’d already memorized them, “Who the fuck am I going to tell?   You and your girlfriend are about the only people who still talk to me anymore…”....

“Oh?   What happened to all your sports friends?”....

“Well, most of them stopped talking to me when I dropped all my sports at the beginning of the year.   I decided to focus on my grades for the last stretch and to be perfectly honest… I’ve been bored out of my fucking mind!   I used to hang out with Malcolm and Jack because they didn’t wig out on me like the others did; but lately…   I dunno, Jack’s been acting weirder and weirder.   It’s really been creeping the shit out of me, and even Malcolm too… God, and he’s such an follower too; I figured he’d follow Jack to the ends of the Earth if he told him to…   But lately I see Jack sitting at the lunch tables alone more and more often, I… I think he’s even talking to himself…”....

“Graduation stress?” I ventured.....

“Maybe, God knows he doesn’t have the brains necessary to outwit a sloth.   He’s better suited to the Paleolithic than a computer lab.   He’s all about macho shit like hunting and the Army and stuff; but I don’t think even the grunts would take him with his grades…....

“But… I dunno, it doesn’t really bother me.   You may have judged me when we first met, but once you got a chance to actually get to know me, you’ve been really accepting of who I really am.   I dunno, it’s weird; I’m just really comfortable around you.   I don’t have to pretend to be some big dumb jock just so I don’t threaten your world-view.   I always had friends when I played the part; just be strong and good at sports and they’ll love you for it.   It’s fun and all, but…   I wasn’t happy pretending to be stupid…    And then everybody felt threatened when they found out ‘Oh my God, the jock can read!’…”....

“Well, to be honest Bo, I like you better when you’re true to yourself.   And don’t care so much about what everybody else thinks; I’m a bigger freak than anyone else at school, and you’re always welcome with me!”....

He threw his arm over my shoulder, “Thanks Jimmy, that means a lot…”....

Feeling the solid granite of his muscular arm over my shoulder prompted a cruel little thought, “So, what if I told you the metabolism boost from becoming a werewolf might burn off most of your muscle?”....

His face looked stricken, and I laughed maliciously.....

.. ..

*          *          *          *....

.. ..

After Bo and I finished ‘studying’ (me ganking his notes, while he pumped my brain for information about werewolves), we headed over to Loki’s where his drum kit was still set up in the garage.   We screwed around a little while, then I had Loki start teaching me her song, Bo throwing out drum ideas every now and then.   I’d been in a couple garage bands when I was younger, but it had never felt so… natural, to make music with other people, as it did now.   I had never cared about my band members back then anything like I cared for these two; my lover, and my unexpected friend.   We played until the sun set and got most of the song put together before Loki’s Dad came out to enforce noise curfew.   Bo took off with the promise to get back together soon and finish the song.....

I felt so proud of her when I heard her play, especially her song; it was a little piece of herself that she had offered to us in good faith, and I was honored to play it with her.   We went inside to hang out in her bedroom for a while, just chatting like any other couple out there in the world, except I knew that at least one of us had a phantom wolf tail that would wag happily at random intervals.....

“Oh, did I tell you I got an email from Geri?” She twisted around so she could look at me.....

“What?   No, you didn’t!”....

“Yeah, he told me he was going to try and make it back down this weekend; right around Prom!” she said excitedly.....

“That’s funny, why didn’t he email me?”....

“I don’t know, I didn’t even think of that…”....

I was quiet a moment, thinking.   “Hey Loki, can I talk to you about something?”....

“Sure hon, what’s on your mind?”....

“It’s about Geri…    I feel weird even thinking this, but before he left I went over to Geri’s house.    That was when he told me he was leaving, and he also told me… about how Fen used to treat him…”....

Loki dropped her eyes from mine, “It was pretty bad…   He took out all his frustrations about… someone else and I…    He internalized all of it, but it would sometimes come lashing out, and Geri was always the Omega, always in the Alpha’s line of fire.   That was his ‘job’ in the pack but…  I never liked it.   And I wasn’t able to do much to help it.”....

“Loki… I know about Corwin…” I whispered.....

She reeled from his name like a slap to the face.   “What?” she gasped, “How?”....

I shook my head and rubbed my temple, even with her this was going to sound crazy, “I’ve been uh… talking to him for a while now…”....

She gaped at me speechless, so I plowed onward “It started just before Halloween; I heard someone calling me into the Auditorium.   I went in and met him, though I couldn’t tell at the time that he wasn’t… there…   He made me promise not to tell any of you about him yet though.   He was trying to reach to Fen through me—“....

“He what!” she squawked, and I winced.....

“That sounded bad; he’s been trying to talk to Fen for a long time, but Fen is pretty much a psychic null, he tried to reach you before, but that didn’t work either…....

“Finally he found someone who could speak to Fen, perceive beyond the veil, and who wasn’t… blocked by memories of him.”....

“So he tried to use you to get his revenge on Fen?” she asked coldly.....

“What?  No!  No, that’s just the thing, he doesn’t blame Fen; he wants to apologize to him for the pain he caused.”....

“That’ll be a little harder to do now, won’t it…?” she whispered sadly.....

“Well, I’m not out ideas there yet; but I got off track.   Geri, he seemed to resent Fen very much and only stayed because it was all he had in this town.   Anyway, you know better than I do what it was like for him, do you think Geri would have…    Do you think he could have been angry enough to… murder Fen?”....

Loki was speechless for a moment, “Jimmy, how could you say such a thing?    Your own Packbrother!”....

“He’d already stopped considering himself part of the pack long before he left    Just answer me, do you think he could have hated him enough to kill him?”....

“I—I don’t…” The fact that she couldn’t immediately say ‘no’ said it for me; and as she realized this as well she looked at me, afraid.....

“When I was leaving his house, I saw hunting rifles hanging over the fireplace in their living room… within easy reach…    And who else could have known where the Den was?”....

“Oh my God… Jimmy, oh my God!” she whispered, shocked.....

“Loki, let me ask you something; it’s very important.   Do you think Geri ever had a crush on you?”....

“What?   Why?” she stuttered.....

“Please, it’s important!” I urged her.....

“I… I don’t know, it’s possible I guess…   He never said anything about it to me…”....

“Do you really think Fen would have let him?”....

Loki started banging her head against the wall, “Goddamnit!   As if high school drama wasn’t bad enough; we have to have ‘Days of our Freaking Teenage Werewolf Lives’ going on here…”....

“Easy hon.   We don’t know for sure yet, but when we see him this weekend; we’ll just have to get him alone somewhere and get our answers from him.   I really hope I’m wrong…”....

“And if you’re not…” her question was open ended, but I neglected to answer it… I wasn’t sure if I would be able to hand him over to the authorities.   Intact anyway…   And then there was the other problem; if Corwin was still catching murderous thoughts directed at me, and Geri didn’t email me, only Loki, what if he was coming down this weekend to do to me what he did to Fen…?....

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes…” I said to both her question and my own thoughts, and a picture on her dresser caught my eye, “Hey, when was this taken?” I asked, picking up the picture and looking at it.   In it was a much younger version of my Loki, with milk chocolate brown hair, smiling with a bright blue sky overhead, a couple other girls her age with her in the picture.....

“Oh, that was seventh grade.   Those were friends of mine in ....Montana...., the one on the left was Adriana, Kim’s the spastic one.   We promised to keep in touch when I left, but they never did.   Not a big loss…”....

“Your hair’s not black?” I asked, feeling rather stupid.....

She just laughed though, “No, that’s my real hair color there.   I’ve been very diligent about maintaining my color for the last three years or so, so I’m not surprised you didn’t know.   I don’t think anybody here even remembers me with brown hair…” she quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully.   “Nope, doubtful…”....

“That’s strange…” you look so familiar from somewhere… somewhere I can’t quite place…....

.. ..

*          *          *          *....

.. ..

That night I dreamed familiar dreams, more remembered than dreamed; dredged up by my subconscious…....

.. ..

I darted through the leaves and the underbrush.   He was hunting me…   Somewhere out there where I couldn’t pinpoint his position.....

He had told me that if I could touch that old maple tree, he’d let me leave alive.....

I could smell the sweet sap of the tree with my powerful olfactory sense, the scent leading me straight up to the house I grew up in.   Except, it wasn’t any single house; it was all the houses I grew up in, but at the same time, only one house.  ....

In a burst of speed I made it up into the house, feeling the crosshairs of the hunter’s rifle on me the whole time.   Inside, Loki and Taylor and the rest of my family where there; they were all trying to help me.   They tried to tell me where the hunter was, tried to distract him so I could make my final run… I could see the old maple tree there, not fifty feet from the back door.   And somewhere with a perfect vantage point of that gap was the man with the gun.   Unwittingly I had trapped myself.....

I readied myself, there was no easy way to do this than to just make a break for it, and hope that my luck was better than his.....

I launched myself over the back fence, shifting form in midair and landing on four paws.   I zig-zagged and changed speed as I ran, bullets pinging all around me.....

Not ten feel from the bass of the tree, something hot and agonizing tore through one of my hind legs.   I tried to drag myself those last few feet to the safety of the tree’s roots, but a shadow fell over me.....

The hunter kicked me over onto my back and I stared up at him past the barrel of his gun, his face silhouetted by the sun, unrecognizable.....

I was so close…....

My world ended with a bang, my blood sprayed all over the trunk of the tree.....

.. ..

I tossed restlessly, nearing the surface of consciousness, and then submerged again.....

.. ..

            The war had claimed many lives, and now; we awaited the original seers who would tell us how we would defeat our enemy with the conclusion of their prophecy.   The banquet hall on the colony was packed, and I sat off to the corner, sipping my drink and staring out the window at the stars...   Friends and fellow warriors would pass by and greet me, a couple of them joining me at the table.   Eventually, my commander arrived at my table with a beautiful woman with soft brown hair, and brilliant green eyes.  They sat down at the table, the lady to my left, and joined the conversation.   She didn’t speak much, but her voice was soft and clear, and gradually the conversation deepened.....

            I could not tear my eyes away from her; her very presence captivated me…   Whether under the compulsion of drink or not, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “I think I might be falling for her…”....

            Just at that moment, completely unexpected, I felt her arms slide around my chest and pull me into her.   My heart started pounding as she inhaled my scent deeply and whispered into my ear, “I don’t know why… but something about you… calls to me…”....

            Suddenly we were interrupted by the arrival of the prophets, the Ice Queen and the Queen of White arrived, very late, and after much blustering and grand standing, immediately tried to leave again.   We forced them to stay and reveal the rest of the prophesy, that which they had withheld from us.   With a sigh, they warned that some of us would not like what we would hear.   The Ice Queen drew herself up and pointed across the room at the woman sitting beside me, “You girl!   You are the one who holds this fate!   The Enemy cannot be slain by weapons or poisons, the only way to destroy it, is for you to go into the very heart of the Enemy, drink the Tea of Eternal Darkness, and use your death to bring death into the Enemy’s heart, then the Enemy will break!”   The room erupted after her announcement and I roared defiantly, while she sat silent, still, and cold beside me.  Half the room defied the Queen’s announcement, while half shouted for her to get on her way; one death for many lives was a small price to pay… especially since it wasn’t them or their loved ones doing the dieing…....

            The Queen of White stood and the room silenced, “The rest of the prophecy, the man who bears the mark of the star; he is the one fated to deliver her to her destiny!”  My heart dropped out of me, and all sensation stopped save for a burning spot on my upper arm, where my pentagram birthmark blighted my skin and my hope.   None knew about it save me, but it was undeniable… once mere coincidence, now fate…   We were drawn to each other before… and now we were bound to each other…   “He is the one, who must feed her the tea…” No…....

            The Queens turned to depart, and this time there was so much turmoil in the room that they were able to leave.   She turned to me and I held her head to my chest against my pounding heart, as we watched the Queens’ ship depart…   “I swear to you, I will find some other way… I won’t let you die…” I won’t sacrifice you…....

.. ..

            I shifted fitfully, almost opening my eyes for a moment, the rest of the dream dissolving into splinters like a half-remembered sci-fi epic; with one image remaining lodged in my mind’s eye…   I held her dying body in my arms, trapped in some confined place like a closet or something, while chaos reigned outside.   I whispered my love to her even as I held her, and felt the chill creeping into her flesh…

            And then the dreams consumed me again, with one far more familiar than the rest…

.. ..

It chased me, the dark being just behind me without any face or body; yet real nonetheless, and inescapable.  I ran with all my might down the forest path, passed people I knew from school; I ran by Fen, and tried to shake him but he merely gazed into space with empty eyes, and with a wretched powerless feeling in my gut, my body continued running against my will, leaving him behind.   I watched in horror as the onrushing wall of darkness enveloped him and tore him away from me all over again.......

I ran and ran, with my chest burning with exertion and my eyes blurred by tears.   As I ran with all my might down the path, there again loomed the massive black iron gate, the cold moon hanging with it’s blue halo overhead, almost centered above the gate’s frame.....

I tore open the gate and ran inside my classroom; but the room kept shifting, I’d look one way and it was my old English room, I turned again and it was Mrs. Ashcroft’s Art room.   Finally I turned around completely and stood in the middle of a dark cavern; the girl with the brown hair and emerald eyes from my other dream standing in front of me, smiling.   I screamed as I ran for her, seeing the darkness crawl into the room behind her.   She held out her hand and smiled beautifully at me as my words of warning were choked off by fear; unable to scream, my legs were bound in cement and no matter how hard I fought, I just couldn’t reach her!....

With victorious hunger, the faceless silhouette of darkness reached out to consume her…....

.. ..

With a blood curdling shriek I thrashed, fighting free of unfamiliar blankets in a sinister room, until finally falling completely out of my bed onto the floor, hyperventilating.....

I kept panting out one word, and that was how John found me when he came downstairs to check on me.   Shaking, disoriented, and weeping; whispering over and over…....

“Loki… Loki…   No, not Loki…”....

.. ..

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Loki hissed at me after we’d parted with Bo and were on our way home.

“Loki, do you trust my judgment?” I spoke softly.

“What?   Of course I do, but I don’t have to agree with everything!   Why did you do that?   You don’t know him!   How can you possibly trust him with that kind of information?”

“I know him better than you think; and he already knows most the truths about us.   I think we trust him with it, because he already knows a lot of it.”

“But don’t you see that’s what makes him dangerous!   How did he learn these things?   What if he’s the one who murdered Fen, once he found out the truth about him?”

I flinched, and she quieted for a moment.

“Sorry, that was low blow wasn’t it?” she lowered her face, posturing submission and apology.

“Don’t think I’m about to hand him everything on a silver platter; he’s going to have to work for every little piece of information.   But… I can see it in my mind.   I can see him as one of us…”

We drove in silence until I pulled up to the curb in front of my house.

“It’s spring Loki.” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I looked into her eyes, “In the spring, everything starts over.   Life begins anew, things grow, families… packs… grow...” I tried to deliver the impart of my intention through our gaze.

“You really mean to make him…” She questioned me.

“I’ve already seen it.   Already seen him as one of us…    Hmm, I wonder what he would look like with amber eyes?”

Loki sighed and shook her head; “You’re sooo going to owe me for this…” she seemed to pause on a thought.   “Hmm, maybe we’ll start with Prom…”

With a four letter word; suddenly any worries about revealing my lupine nature to a potentially deadly stranger seemed so utterly benign beside the threat of the school dance to end all school dances.

“I thought you didn’t do any school events?” I tried subtly to assuage her.

“Well, you only get one Prom.   Well, I guess I could get two, but I want to be taken to prom, not be the one taking...   Don’t worry, I’m not expecting all the extravagance the other students have been twittering about lately; but I’d be nice just to experience it, ya know?”

I resisted the urge to bang my head bloody on the steering wheel.

 “But I don’t know how to dance!   You remember how big I was, I didn’t exactly frequent the dance circuit; and nobody missed me for it!”

“Oh, don’t worry about it!   Everybody there’s gunna be off in their own little la-la land; the guys are gunna be wondering if they’ll score, and the girls will be wondering if their hair is still perfect.   And don’t forget; I’m making an unusual exception for you to bring Bo into this, so you fucking owe me anything I want, a-ny-thing!”

“Okay.” Was about all I could squeeze through my constricted throat.

I had about a week and a half to prepare for an ordeal I’d foolishly assumed I wouldn’t be subjected to.   Not to mention I had a really bad feeling about this…

I just had to hope for the best, maybe a compound fracture… or the Ebola virus?

*          *          *          *

Of course Mom and Dad were ecstatic when they heard Loki’s announcement over my welcome-home dinner.   I figure they’d probably given up on any school dance fantasies for me somewhere around 10^th grade; a few years after I did.   I wanted to crawl under the table and die while my face turned beet red; but I managed to suffer through dinner in silence.

I felt unnaturally exhausted when I returned to school the next day; and each of my teachers had small mountains of make-up work waiting for me.    I lucked out though in World History; they’d watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the last half of the week I missed, so I only had one small assignment to make up…   American Government was a completely different story; but Bo told me he’d help me out.   Of course, he was expecting a return for his generosity; but that was fine with me.

After the bell rang, I loitered briefly before slipping into the Auditorium and reaching for the shadows in the corner.   They came to me willingly, like an old friend, their touch like a cool brush of silk on my skin.   After Mrs. Cartwright walked past me and turned off the lights; I switched over to Wolf’s eyes and made my way up the grayed out aisles.

I’d missed my next best chance to cheat the veil on the vernal equinox; but now I wasn’t so sure I needed that natural weakness anymore to find what I needed…   I laid down on the stage, and closed my eyes; breathing deeply through my entire body and tried to focus only on the remembered rhythm of the drum…   At first I wasn’t sure it would work; but then I felt the shift that marked my transversal of the veil.   When I opened my eyes and looked around, the auditorium looked almost identical on the other side and I thought I’d just tricked myself.   But as I moved my head around to look, that small movement didn’t seem enough to pull me out of trance, I noticed minor changes in the place.   Mostly I could feel the mood of the room; my empathy tuning in to a flowing stew of joy, laughter, sorrow, betrayal… and… there!

That lingering trace of despair that wound away from Corwin; the circumstances of his death staining him here in his afterworld.

“Corwin…” I called, pulling toward him on his emotional signature.   And a spurt of surprise shot into the emotional sea as he took note of me.   He coalesced from thin air right beside me, looking down at me curiously.   “Hey mnachalqs, what’s up?

“Jimmy, what are you…   How did you cross over?” he cocked his head to the side, “…And why are you lying down like that?”

“The last one’s easier to answer; I can’t make any major movements or else I’ll pull myself out of the trance that lets me cross the veil.”

He laughed, and crossed his arms over his Dragonball Z t-shirt, then smiled at me bemused.   “Well, whatever works!” he sat down next to me, “There, this doesn’t feel quite as weird…   Not that I mind the visit, but what brings you over?”

“We were interrupted last time; I want to know what happened to you.   You promised to tell me everything…”

He sighed and ran a hand through his blue-black hair, “You’re a tenacious bastard, you know that?   When I was a freshman; I moved here with my mom after she and Dad separated.   I felt… so achingly alone, Mom was too absorbed in her own pain to be of any help with mine; and I was desperately searching for friends.   Fen was a sophomore, and Loki was a freshman like me at the time.   I shared a drama class with them, and you know what it’s like around here; if you can’t find a niche to fit into, and fast, you’re pretty much screwed out of ever fitting.   Fen was kind to me, and… I wanted to be his friend, wanted for him to smile whenever he saw me like he did for Loki.   The Spirit had already spoken to him about the ‘one marked by Brother Raven’ that would be coming; and so with very little hesitancy; he told me about the wolves.

“I wanted to belong; I wanted to be a part of them so badly; I virtually begged for him to change me…   And he gave me what I wanted.   But when I had my first mental shift; I…   I was horrified; I was some stupid black bird.   I was supposed to be a wolf ‘marked by raven’, not a freakin raven lock shock and barrel.   I was ashamed of my animal spirit’s form, and tried to push it back down; tried to find the wolf I should have been.   And I tried so hard, I pushed too hard to be something I wasn’t, until… something broke inside me.   I though I was loosing my mind; I would mentally shift at the worst possible times.   I don’t know if the Spirit disciplined Fen, or if he did it to himself; but he drew back from me.   I felt so lost, so abandoned…   Eventually I couldn’t control myself, hardly at all…”

“Cursed…” I whispered…

“Yeah… pretty much…    Nobody but Fen and Loki wanted anything to do with me; because we’d never know when I’d do something strange, something… inhuman…   I felt more and more separated from everyone around me; like there was a wall between myself and anyone who wasn’t a therian.   And then even Fen and Loki… when Fen drew away from me, I thought he was disappointed in me, but I guess he was disappointed in himself.   Even though he spent just as much time with me as he used to; he didn’t engage with me, it was like there was a wall there as well.   Loki tried to help me, but eventually the weight of my mood just wore her down too.   That’s the funny thing about true depression, it’s more than just a ‘case of the sads’, it’s… like the very hope that someday you could hope again has been torn away and crushed in front of you…  

“Well, to make a long story short; I was tired of forcing myself to live a life I didn’t feel any want to even pretend and live anymore…   Before we left, Mom had stolen Dad’s pistol…   I stole it from her, and had it in my backpack for nearly a week, waiting for some force to either save me from myself, or to hand me the perfect way out.

Finally, poor Fen unwittingly tipped my hand…   We had been arguing that day; I’d confronted him about avoiding me, and… well you know how Fen’s temper can be…   He pushed me down and walked away from me, and as he left, he told me “I wish I could unmake you…”

“What I heard was the anger in his voice, not the guilt, not they self direction of his fury.   I didn’t know then what I’ve come to know now…   He was furious at himself, the thought that he’d stolen my life from me, and he truly wanted to undo what he did to me; make me as if it had never happened.   I heard what I wanted to hear though; and I crept back into the school and hid in the Auditorium…   I felt drawn to the place where I had felt so happy; felt that I’d belonged for a time with Fen and Loki.   I waited for some divine intervention, waiting for someone to miraculously come and save me, but no one did…   And since I didn’t want to save myself… since I didn’t think about anyone but myself…   I put my father’s gun into my mouth and pulled the trigger…

“I wish I could tell people about it; about how as soon as the cap fires off, you instantly regret doing it.   It was in that last brilliant flash that I finally realized something beyond myself, and that instant regret is what kept me here.   I still felt despair, I still felt angry at Fen for leaving me, but as I watched what my death did to their souls; I remembered the love I felt for them, and more than anything I wanted to talk to Fen… to tell him I was sorry…

“He put on a strong front for everyone around him, especially Loki; but as I discovered I could travel some distance away from this place.   I became anchored here in death, and my form dissipated as I drew further away, but I could still sometimes breach the veil, and manifest either in sight or sound in my animal form.   So, I would fly after him as an invisible raven he could hear but couldn’t see, and I followed him home time and time again; I watched him tear and his hair and scream silently till it seemed his heart would rupture.   You asked me before what kept me here, if it was unfinished business.   Well, it was nothing I had to do, more something I needed to do for myself; I swore that I would find a way to apologize to Fen, to ease the pain of his grief with the truth.   That it wasn’t his fault, that I don’t blame him for my death…”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked quietly.

“How do you mean?”

“With Fen… gone… are you still bound here?   Or are you free to go?”

He sighed again, “I am bound here until Fen forgives himself for my death.   I tried to reach him before, like I did you, but he was always pretty much a null when it came to psychic sensitivity; you and Loki got the lion’s share there.   With him dead, I don’t know…” he hung his head, “I haven’t tried to leave yet, not until I know you and Loki are safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“I… I don’t know…   I can’t feel others like you and Loki do, but…    Every once in a while something comes through to me; I can’t tell who murdered Fen… but I’ve caught scattered thoughts, flashes of emotion that tell me he’s still out for blood, and more fixated on you than ever…   There’s not much I can do, but I can’t just stand by and leave you at risk…   You’re such a strange creature Jimmy Walker; I started off resenting you for being what I couldn’t be… and now I love you as if you were my own brother…”

I smiled at him, “Etsmeysn, tsut lut ch'ul nuk'włsetkhw, pintch chsentse'i'wes…   Maybe, it’s because we are brothers.   We were born to the same pack, were we not?   Just because you’re no longer alive, doesn’t mean you’re not my Pack-brother…”

Corwin smiled at me, bittersweet tears dancing in his spectral eyes.   Then he stood, “I’ll see you around, Jimmy…”

“See ya Corwin…”

And as I stood, he dissolved from view.   I stood there a moment, looking at where he had been, and raised my hand up to where it should have touched his shoulder.   I felt the slightest cooling of the air there, and smiled sadly wishing I could do more to help him, and then I turned and walked down the aisle and out the Auditorium doors.

*          *          *          *

I walked home though the alley, enjoying the patterns in the shade from the trees that overhung the dirt roadway.   I came in through the kitchen and was about to head down into the dungeon when Mom called my name from the living room.

“Hey Jimmy, why are you so late?” She asked as she came into the hallway.

“I stayed late to talk to a ghost in the Auditorium?” I smiled disarmingly.

“Huh?” she quirked her face.

“Nothin, I was just taking care of some make-up work.   Why, what’s up?”   Once upon a time I would layer lie upon lie without hesitation, but now… I felt so weary of untruths, especially to her… 

“Oh-kaaaay…   Lets take a road-trip, come on, I’ll pay for gas.”   She grabbed her purse off the counter and headed for the front door.

“Ugh, why are we taking a road-trip all of a sudden?   I just got back from one!   I’ve got all this make-up work to do, and—“

“Just humor me,” she cut me off, “Besides, we bought you the damn car, the least you could do is be appreciative enough to help us out with it once in a while.”

My mother was the queen of subtle guilt-trips…   I sighed and dropped my bag by the door to the Dungeon, then followed her out the front door.   I unlocked the car and we got in.

“If you’re really tired, I could drive…” She offered.

“Nah, it’s fine; I figure I’m gunna have a cast-iron road-butt by the end of the month” I joked smiling as I pulled away from the curb, “So, where are we going?”

“I was thinking the Citadel Mall, I should be able to find something decent there…”

“What are you looking for?”

“Well, now that you’re in the car and have no hope of escape, we’re going to get you something to wear to the dance.”

I groaned inwardly, it figured…   The way she said ‘The Dance’, it almost felt like it would have been spelled with capital letters.

“Think this would count as ‘cruel and unusual’ in court?” I growled.

“Not if the judge has a teenager they were proud to see going.”

I sighed, “Where’re Dad and Jake anyway?”

“Oh, John took Jacob down to the ....county.. ..Rec... ..Center.... to register him for some sports this summer.”

“Convenient…” I muttered.

“Isn’t it though?   I was proud of my ingenuity in orchestrating this mother-son torture session so flawlessly.” She chirped.

“So, what brought this on?”

“You mean aside from the fact that I don’t think you even have a single dress shirt that fits you anymore, and I don’t want you to look like a slob at what’s probably going to be the only school dance I’ll ever see you attend?”

“Yeah, aside from that…”

She was quiet a moment, then spoke very softly, “I miss you…   I hardly ever get to see you anymore, never get to speak with you.   I know you’re growing up, and I need to let go, but… for the longest time you were my entire life, my reason for living.   And I just can’t help but shake the feeling that I don’t even really know who you are anymore…”

Curse a mother’s intuition; if they could harness that power for radar systems, we’d never fear a surprise attack again…

I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her, even to try to allay her fears, so I remained silent as we drove.

The sun was setting on the far side of ..Pikes Peak.. when we parked by the JC Penney’s, and walked in.   Fortunately, she didn’t feel the need to drag me through too many stores before we headed back to Penney’s; they had a sale.   Finding pants that fit wasn’t as hard when I was overweight, but now that I was tall and slim instead of just tall and wide; it was considerably more difficult… 

Finally, the undergarments were all in order and I stood in front of the angled mirror in a pair of pleated black slacks, a deep crimson dress shirt almost the color of blood, and a black dress vest that mom tightened in the back.   Much to my dismay, I found myself rather liking the way it made me look; somehow just dressing up made me hold myself just that little bit higher, my back a little straighter.   I looked good, respectable… and almost incongruously human…

The clerk, a middle aged man with a salt and pepper beard, helped us select a suit jacket that fit to my body in just the right way, even right off the shelf.   My shoulders looked broad and masculine, and the dark gray base color helped bring out the little splash of crimson that spilled over the V of my vest, and an inside cinch that pulled the coat tighter around my waist.   I buttoned it and stood in the mirror to look, Mom busied herself smoothing down the fabric on my back, and adjusting my lapels.   She then picked out a tie that had all the other colors of the ensemble, with the addition of little bits of gold that brought out the light bronze my skin had soaked up in ....Idaho.....   She had this ephemeral smile playing at her mouth as she tied the knot in the tie for me and adjusted it.   Then she stepped behind me and looked with me into the mirror.

I had never before truly realized just how much taller than her I had become, until I saw her peeking out from behind me in the mirror.   Her hand was on my shoulder, and as I met her eyes in the reflection, she smiled sadly and tears began to slide down her face.

“I guess you’re not my little boy anymore, are you?”

I turned to hug her, and she pushed me away, “No, I don’t want to cry all over your new suit, I’ll be fine just give me a second…”

The clerk stepped up quietly and offered her a box of tissues.   She laughed, “I guess you get this a lot don’t you?”

He smiled kindly, “Lets just say this isn’t an uncommon occurrence in prom season, so don’t worry about it…”

I nodded at him in thanks as Mom cleaned herself up.   We rang everything up, and I almost had a conniption fit on my mom when I saw the total, but she steadfastly held me off with the fact that I could use this suit for several occasions, so it was an acceptable investment.   I was angry at her for spending so much money on me but figured I might as well let her do as she liked, she’d only get to do this once.

We went back out to the car, and I thanked her.   The sun had set already, leaving only a lighter blue aura over the mountains, the stars were already brilliant in the sky through my car’s moon roof.   We drove in silence, while I collected my thoughts and made a decision.

“I’m still your little boy, yet at the same time I’m really not…” I spoke abruptly.   She didn’t reply, but I knew she was listening, waiting for me to explain.   “For a while now, I’ve been… changing.   I’m not who I was before in most ways; but trust me, that’s a good thing.   I wasn’t being true to myself before, trying too hard to be several people I wasn’t; and only in this last year have I found out who I really am.”

“So, who are you?” She asked rhetorically.

“I’m Jimmy Walker…   I’m a half Schitsu’umsh descendant from a long line of Shamans; I can speak to the dead, disappear into shadows, and I have the soul of a Wolf.”   It didn’t even feel real, spelling it out without deception for my mother.

She looked at me, and for the first time I feared her scorn.

“You really believe this?”

I looked at her, pulling Wolf to the surface and forcing my eyes to shift.   When I could see clearly far beyond the garish pools of my car’s headlights, I turned them off.

“Jimmy, what are you doing!” Mom screeched, grabbing on to the handle of the car.

“Proving my point…   Relax Mom, I can see fine… actually, I can see better without the headlights…” And I really could.

Mom refused to settle down though, and started demanding that I pull over and stop this insanity.   I refused and kept driving, “You really should just relax and stop distracting me.”

The unspoken threat of what could happen if she distracted me finally silenced her; and we drove several miles in tense silence.   A deer dashed across the road in front of us, and I swerved to miss its rear end and then pulled back into line.   Mom’s heart almost gave out.

“Dear God I thought we were going to die!   What happened?”

“Deer.   Just swerved to miss it.” I stated simply.

“Jesus, you really can see can’t you?” she said incredulously.

“I can’t really see colors when I let Wolf see through my eyes, but I trade a few thousand shades of color for a few thousand shades of light.   If you can imagine it, it’s like watching a black and white movie but with less contrast.”

“How… how did this happen?   You weren’t always like this…”

“No, I always had the potential inside me, but it wasn’t until Fen bit me on our camping trip, that Wolf woke up inside me.”

“Fen bit you?   Oh, that’s right!   Your hand, you said you cut it climbing!”

“Yeah, sorry about that.   I was sorta covering for him, though I didn’t know why at the time.”

“So… So, wait, is that why you—“

I anticipated her question, “Lost all that weight?   Yup.   It takes a lot more fuel to sustain the demands of both a human and wolf energy body simultaneously.   My metabolism shot through the roof, and started absorbing all the fatty stores my body had made.”

“So… if you and Fen were like this, I supposed Loki is as well, huh?”

“Yeah, she’s actually been at it longer than I have; Geri was too, whether he’ll admit it now or not.   Jake knows too, he saw me shift once.”

“Christmas break…” she whispered, and I could still feel that smoldering anger beneath the surface.

“Just… please promise me you won’t tell Dad?   I don’t know how he’ll react…”

“I won’t lie to John.” She stated coldly, and the implication of all my lies was there, and I swore I would apologize to her for them all eventually.

“Don’t lie to him; just don’t volunteer it unless he asks okay?   I’d rather tell him myself when the time’s right, okay?”

“Okay…” she agreed eventually.

I sighed and flipped the headlights back on.   “We’re getting closer to town and I don’t want to get a ticket.” I explained without her asking.   We rode in silence for a while, and I let her digest everything I’d laid down.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I noticed that you don’t call John ‘John’ anymore…” she ventured.

I smiled at her, “I love how observant you are, it makes it easier on me.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass…”

“Sorry, it was meant to be a compliment!   After my trip, Dad and I had a discussion; and I think we finally understand each other now.   ....Taylor.... may be my biological father, but John has always been my Dad, and always will be.”

“I’m glad you got that sorted out…   I was about to shoot the both of you!”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and she smiled.

We pulled up to the curb behind Dad’s S.U.V. and got out.

“Mom…” I started and walked around.   I took her face in my hands and made her look into my eyes, which I could tell were still Wolf’s golden amber.   She started wide-eyes at me in return, and I could feel her pulse raise a little bit between my hands, “Your little boy is still here…” and I eased Wolf back so that my eyes shifted back to their normal shade of brown, “He’s just whole now…”

She wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug, like only a mother could give.

“Just promise me one thing, okay Jimmy?” She spoke muffled against my chest.

“Yeah Ma?”

“Just… Don’t eat any babies, okay?”

I barked out a laugh, “What is it with you and eating babies, should I be worried?”

She gave me a look that could have liquefied platinum, “Okay! Okay! I give!   Don’t worry; Wolf has no interest in baby…   If, however, we found a meat market around here that sold elk; I’m not so sure I could hold back…”

And I knew that she accepted me, not because she told me as much; but because she teased me about it.   Gotta love my family dynamic…

The next morning Rene’ woke me up by poking me in the side and demanding to know where her breakfast was.    I had thwarted Taylor’s attempts to pry the story of what happened on the other side of the veil the whole ride home and then fallen into a deep dreamless sleep as soon as I hit the hide-a-bed.   So, with yesterday’s clothes still on, I shuffled groggily into the kitchen and expelled Taylor forcefully from his current occupation, and took over cooking breakfast.   He resisted, of course, but after a short exchange I finally won with “Don’t make me maul you”.....

After we all ate, Taylor grabbed his drum again and we headed outside into the warm sunshine in the meadow behind the house.   Rene’ began by explaining to me, from the very beginning to avoid any confusion, what she did since it could be different for any shaman.   As the day progressed, she taught me how to relax myself, and allow the rhythm of the drum guide me.   I didn’t re-enter the Lowerworld that first day; but the next day when Rene’ returned, another unexpected turn occurred.....

I’d closed my eyes, and felt something shifting about me, but none of the pulling rush I’d seen when I’d journeyed with Rene’ and the other Shamans.   Yet, when I opened my eyes; things were not as they should have been.   It looked like the meadow we had been in; but it was a little different.   There were more animals, more trees, as if trees that weren’t there anymore were suddenly still standing.   Also, Taylor and Rene were gone from my sight, even though I could still feel the drum, and as I looked for them; I saw what looked like little clouds of roiling flame where they sat; fire that radiated out from them in a spectrum of colors.   I looked around, and Taylor’s house was like a transparent ghost of itself.....

I decided to stand up to look around this place, but as soon as I moved I felt things shift again and like a dissolve in a movie, fade back to the physical realm right before my eyes.   I was on my feet here too, and as Taylor and Rene looked at me curiously, I plopped back down.....

“What the hell was that…?” I asked to no one in particular.....

“What did you see?” Rene’ asked me.....

I described to her what it had looked like, and asked her why it had poofed when I moved.   Her brows drew together slightly in puzzlement and the corners of her mouth turned down.....

“I… honestly have no friggin idea Jimmy.   The only think I can even theorize to explain it is that maybe you were just barely into the other realm, so your physical body responded to your commands and it pulled you out of your trance.” She shrugged, and her brows furrowed even deeper.   “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this sort of thing happening before so really, your guess is as good as mine…   Usually when Shamans go over, the body is pretty much left in stasis, and the Shaman’s consciousness is fully immersed in the Lowerworld, not just the fringe.   What you described sounds almost like the Astral or Etheric realms, those layers of energy that lay between the physicial and the Spirit; where it’s almost identical to the physical, still bearing the fingerprint of the physical realm upon the spirit of the place.   Nobody I know of can actually slip into that buffer dimension between the spirit and physical; but then again, you just seem to be smashing my expectations left and right anymore…”....

We kept practicing throughout the day, and I finally succeeded in going all the way over after another couple tries ‘skimming’ the surface of the spirit realm.   After dinner, Rene’ left and Taylor and I sat in silence for a while.   He seemed to be working something over in his mind, and I gave him all the time he needed before he finally spoke.....

“You know Jimmy, I feel really bad about your trip out here.   You came out here to meet me and for us to finally get to know each other, and it seems like it’s just been one distraction after another; first you almost die on my watch, and now I think we’ve exchanged all of a dozen sentences today.   I… I feel like I’m no closer to knowing who you really are, and you’re leaving tomorrow; I feel like let my chance slip by in a sea of triviality…”....

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’d say you know more about me at this point that Mom and Dad do.” I said laughing.   My attempt to cheer him seemed only to backfire though and the grimace on his face deepened.....

“I know a couple more facts about your existence; but I don’t really know ‘who’ you are.   ‘Who is Jimmy Walker’, ya know?   I was…” he laughed, a short humorless bark, “I was sorta hoping that by the end of your visit, you’d be calling me ‘Dad’, but in the end we’re still only a couple steps past complete stranger status, aren’t we?”....

“Well…” I said after a moment, “We still have the rest of the night together; let’s make the most of it!”....

Taylor smiled at me, still a little sad around the edges, but starting to regroup.   Twilight was starting to eat at the sun’s glow, and we gathered some wood and started a fire in Taylor’s back yard.   We roasted marshmallows and burned random bits and pieces while volleying questions and stories back and forth at each other as the dark of night consumed the sky and the first waking crickets sprang to life in the field around us.   From teasing Taylor about his apparent crush on my shamanic tutor, to telling him about how I met and fell for Loki, to the stories he could tell me about his family, those experienced and inherited through storytelling.....

We grew quiet as the stars came out and sparkled above us in a sparsely cloud-veiled sky.   Wisps here and there obscured the details, but the rest of the Milky Way’s arm was easy enough to discern with the remoteness of Taylor’s house preventing light pollution from blocking it.   The moon had risen earlier and now the light of it’s quarter crescent pierced the navy velvet of the cosmos with her borrowed light.....

Taylor excused himself and went inside.   I had thought he was going to the bathroom until he re-emerged a minute or so later with his flute.   I smiled at the prospect of hearing the wolves sing again.   He paused by me and rested his hand on my shoulder, and though it was unexpected; it wasn’t unwelcome.....

“Come on…” he said so softly I could barely hear him over the crackle of the fire and the nocturnal creatures.   He squeezed my shoulder and started walking off into the field.   I pulled myself up and followed him, dusting off my rump as I went.   Away from the flickering light of the fire, my pupils opened and the darkness bled away from me.   Some of the colors drained away as I shifted a little bit without even thinking about it; and the grayish kingdom of night was clear to me; as far into the forest as the foliage would allow, and across to the far end of the meadow.   The air was chilly out here, but not enough to make me uncomfortable.....

We stopped about halfway out, and Taylor stood for a moment looking around at the dark ring of trees that I realized he couldn’t see anything in.   He raised the flute up to his mouth, took a deep breath, and played the little calling melody he had before.   I looked up at his face in the cold blue starlight, seeing the way the illumination of the stars clung to the lines and angles of his face.   His dark skin reflecting a bright contrast that defined the key shapes of him, his high cheekbones, broad hairline, and strong jaw were all clear in the darkness, and if I didn’t notice his clothes in my peripheral vision, could easily imagine that face standing outside a longhouse in the days before even the French fur trappers happened upon the tribe, playing this same music to the wolves that lived free and wild, alongside the First Nations in harmony.....

He waited and looked around and then played again, the notes bouncing around inside the trees before fading away.   Again and again he called but no responding call echoed back to him.   Finally he sighed and looked down at the long field grass and wildflowers around our legs.....

“I’m sorry Jimmy, I really thought for sure it would work tonight.   I was thinking that’d be a great way to send you off…” He pursed his lips is frustration, and turned to walk back to the house.....

Without even thinking about it, I pulled Wolf up to the surface and we lifted our face to the crescent moon and howled!   We sent our song up from our soul and out into the night, rising and falling in pitch, and picking our ears up to listen to our own voice bouncing back at us from the woods.   Taylor stopped cold in his tracks and turned to look at me.   I just smiled at him, feeling my phantom tail wag with mischief, as I threw my head back and howled again; calling out for any other wolves to answer me.....

“Play…” I whispered at him, as he stood holding his flute in front of him, his jaw gaping at me.   He blinked and shook his head, but lifted the flute up to his lips and blew out another melody.   I latched onto the key and launched my voice up into the air again, harmonizing with his notes.   About a minute or so later, my sensitive ears latched onto a faint sound filtering through the trees.   So faint, I don’t think Taylor heard it at all, especially not over the din we were creating ourselves.   When another voice joined the first, I held my tongue and just listened as they continued to sing with Taylor’s flute.   Shudders ran the length of my frame as every hair I had, physical and otherwise, stood at attention.   Wolf was inside my head running an analysis of the song; there were two wolves, both young, probably a mated pair that had come up from the Nez Perce lands, or maybe even from Canada.   They were curious about us, we could tell from their song; but at the same time it was like they were saying ‘We like it here, we aren’t going anywhere else, and you can’t make us’.   I smiled as I listened; such defiance mixed with inquisitiveness in an intriguing combination.....

I lifted my voice up again, hoping my message would be as clear as theirs was to me.   I wanted to say ‘I am not a challenger, just a friend.   Just sing with me tonight for I will be gone tomorrow’… well, not in so many words anyway…....

Their responding calls seemed to be an acceptance; and so we all continued to sing with each other, yammering and soaring through scales; Taylor through his flute, swaying back and forth with his eyes closed; and the wolves and I trying to harmonize with each other and the flute on the fly.   It almost felt like a game.....

Finally, with my throat dry and beginning to ache.   I nodded at Taylor, who smiled and I saw the glistening of unshed tears in his eyes.   I lifted my voice one last time in farewell to my wild friends; and their response sounded for all the worlds to be like a pair of kids saying ‘No, don’t’ go, I wanna play some more!’   I smiled as I walked with Taylor back to the house, feeling my spirit brimming to the edges of my physical shell; feeling fuller and more sated than any meal had ever made me.....

.. ..

*          *          *          *....

.. ..

The next morning I woke up to the soft notes of Taylor’s flute coming from right outside.   I threw on my clothes quickly and stepped outside quietly, then stopped dead as I came around the corner and saw why he was playing.....

Rene’ sat next to him, one hand on his shoulder, as they both carefully watched the pair of grey wolves walking warily around in the clearing; the early morning mist just beginning to pull back into the forest away from the gradual sunlight.   They weren’t yet fully grown, still somewhat juvenile; I could tell by the proportion of their paws and ears to their bodies.   Their curiosity had apparently won out and they’d come down last night.....

The male was sitting and watching Taylor, cocking his head alternately side to side as the tried to figure out the strange contraption that allowed Taylor to sing without using his voice.   The female, slightly larger than the male for now, but closer to full grown than him paced behind him, torn between distrust of humans and her curiosity.   She had long slashes of auburn along her forelegs and muzzle, while the male had very distinct black lines like parentheses on either side of his eyes.....

Wolf immediately surged up inside me, and I dropped to all fours, grinning a wide lupine smile.   I could feel my phantom limbs moving to assume a position of friendly greeting, my ears wide and my tail wagging freely, as a part of me wondered if they could see these things.   The male jumped up as soon as he saw me and swung back with his mate, to take in the strange newcomer.   I could see the lips of his nostrils flaring as he took in my scent, and I assumed a playful stance; arms spread in front of me with my rump in the air; and open invitation to play.....

Cautiously they approached me, and I sat and waited for them, calmly impatient.   I wondered what they smelled when the scented me; did I smell like a human, or a wolf, a little of both?   Or maybe like neither, like something else entirely?   Finally the male grew bold enough to walk up to me and sniff all along me, I held still until he finished his first round about me, and then stretched my strange blunt face out to take in his scent.   His smell was musty, damp and dusty with just a hint underneath of rot; that smell all carnivores had no matter what they rolled in to disguise it.   He also smelled just a little like ‘wet dog’, and that made me smile wider. ....

He and the female came around for another pass and my face brushed against his fur, just a little moist from the morning condensation, and the guard hairs brushed coarsely against the skin of my cheek.....

I wanted, more than anything else in the world then, to go running off with them.   But as I rose to play, they jumped back from me.   Suddenly Wolf recognized the confusion in their body language, the distrust, and I realized that I did in fact smell like something else entirely.   With a cold dark blanket, realization washed over me that I truly could never be entirely wolf, never be able to run off into the wild with these two young wolves, nor could I ever belong inside the human herd; always the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the pariah forever…....

This hit home as the mates bounded off across the field, even more afraid now of me than they had been of Taylor and Rene’.   I could feel the humans looking at me curiously, and I smiled wanly back at them to try and disguise the pain.   I got up and walked back inside, Wolf whimpering inside me all the while, and I started packing up my luggage.   I was folding a shirt and about to place it in when I noticed the little dark dots on it.   At first I thought they were stains from something, but then I realized that it was just water; I hadn’t felt the tears falling from my eyes.....

But as soon as I noticed though, the pain inside my soul roared up and I dropped the shirt and raised my hands to hold my face.   I curled up on the hide-a-bed as the sobs racked my body, a wail building inside that I couldn’t release because I didn’t want Taylor or Rene’ to see me like this.   I may still be able to control my shifts, but I’d just discovered another way to be ‘cursed’.....

‘You will walk forever between worlds, never able to fully belong to either; spirit bound to flesh, wolf bound to man, but never one or the other.”....

I clawed at my face, hating this form now more than ever.....

.. ..

*          *          *          *....

.. ..

Taylor hefted my other piece of luggage into the trunk of my car, as he turned around I held my arms out to embrace him.   We hugged each other for a moment and I whispered to him, “Lim limt.sh Pipe’”, ‘Thank you, Father’…

“Ne’ u’lts gwichstmin Hnt''lane'.   Le e hntsetkhw, kuchnek'we'et…”, ‘I’ll see you later Wolf.   When you are under my roof, you are one of us…’ Then he smiled at me and tousled my hair, “In case you missed the gist, that means ‘Don’t be a stranger!’”   We laughed, and I turned to hug Rene’.

I squished her until she made a funny noise and then I dropped her to catch her breath again while Taylor and I chuckled.

“Okay, okay enough!   I’m gunna miss you kid, even though I only met you a couple days ago I’ve grown rather fond of you.   You’re like nothing I ever dreamed of encountering in this world; and you’ve given me an interest in existence that I’ve been missing for a looooooong time.   So here,” she pulled a small wrapped box out from behind her, “It’s not much; but it’s something to remember me by.”

I smiled and thanked her as I opened the box and took out a tourist tee shirt, emblazed with a howling wolf and “Coeur D’Alene, Idaho” across the front.   When I removed the shirt, a small piece of paper came fluttering down, and I bent down to retrieve it.   It was Rene’s card, with her phone number on it.   She told me I damn well better call her, even if just to ask what the weather’s like.   I hugged her again and whispered in her ear, “You know, just ‘cause I’m going; doesn’t mean you should stop coming by here.   I think Taylor likes you.”

I could hear the smile in her whispered reply, “You think so?”

“He’d be crazy not to…”

“Well, with a son like you, there’s no tellin’—Ow!”

I smacked her playfully on the arm as I drew away, smiling.

“Maybe we were wrong and you’re not a wolf at all.   You’re a freakin’ Coyote punk!”

I grinned widely at her, displaying my slightly elongated eyeteeth, “Well, I am in the same family!”

“Get outta here you freak!   And drive safe, you should give us a call when you get home, let us know you got there okay.”

“Sure, sure… Oh!” I cried and dove into my car to retrieve the camera from my backpack.   “I need a picture of you two before I go!”

I made them stand side by side, and encouraged Taylor to put his arm over Rene’s shoulder.   I couldn’t keep myself from trying to egg him on a little bit.   Hmm, maybe Rene’s Coyote comment wasn’t that far from the mark…

After I took a couple shots of them, I jogged over and threw my arm around Taylor’s neck to snap off a ‘Myspace Shot’ of him and I together, grinning.   Rene’ grabbed my camera and snapped off a couple of us; then it was Taylor’s turn to steal it and catch a few of Rene’ and I; one of which captured a priceless look of horror as I scooped her up off the ground and held her like a way overgrown baby.

Finally I recovered my camera and hugged them both again; planting a kiss of Rene’s cheek, and then I got in my car and started driving.   I looked back in my rearview mirror to see the two of them looking at me drive off, and I felt a wash of affection.   It wasn’t love; but it was similar to the way I felt about my pack members, which I sorta guess they were now to me…

The glow of the jovial farewell managed to last me until the end of the unpaved drive, before I turned back onto Highway 95.   I had not had any time since arriving to just be alone and get my thoughts in order, and I found myself pondering.   Taylor just didn’t feel like the dad I’d always imagined meeting.   It wasn’t that he was bad in any way, just that he… he seemed more like a new friend that just happened to possess half my genetic structure.   This was an unexpected train of thought, and I was curious to see where it would lead as I cut through Coeur D’Alene, and joined I-90 and passed the massive lake that reflected the colors of the sunrise back from the sky like a shimmering mirror.   As I looked out at the warm hues swimming in the reflection I remembered something Taylor told me about our tribe.

“The Creator owns the lake,” he’d said, ‘But he put the Coeur D’Alene here to take care of it.”

Our people had always had a job; and so it was with he and I.   And I noticed for the first time the light bronze my skin had taken on from the sun in the meadow; I really felt a little more complete, I finally felt that I belonged with these people; that I was a part of their tribe.   And as such, I began to realize the job that had been assigned to me; and as soon as I recognized it as such, pieces that had been floating around upstairs began to fall together into place.   Once the outline of the picture began to appear, I started to brainstorm how I was going to fulfill my duties.

I pushed the speed up a little higher as the plan began to form.....

.. ..

Walking Wolf Road

By: Brandon Herbert

Chapter 43

Taylor dropped his drum and rushed toward me, while the shamans, startled, tried to hold me down as my body convulsed in pain.   I struggled against their hands, the fire of numb nerve endings flaring back to life all over my body and the oppressive weight of dense flesh after spending so long in the spirit world disoriented me and sent me into a panic.

Fortunately though; a familiar feeling swept through me and with rapture I let my wolf rush up to the surface; where it seemed he smashed into a glass ceiling just as he was about to fully emerge.   I plunged into a deep mental shift, my wolf taking the helm to protect us in our disorientation.   I vaguely realized I had someone's hand in my mouth; and I was thrashing about and snarling like a beast… and I was only too happy to do it.

Finally, they all got the hint and backed off, I backed to the wall on all fours, snarling, and bristling with my phantom fur.    I dared them to come closer with my burning amber eyes and bared throbbing teeth.   I could feel my wolf trying to push itself out completely; but it was like some silvery crystalline tether was holding him back just shy of the finish line.

The shamans scrambled backwards and started yammering amongst themselves; talking too fast for me to make out; though I realized that strangely I recognized most of the words they were saying.

"Hnt'llane'!" One of the men gasped

"Why didn't your Suumesh protect him like it was supposed to?" one of the native men demanded of the woman.

"My song did protect him!   His own Great Grandfather was his guide; nothing went wrong!" She tried to fend off the barrage of accusations flung at her.

"You were obviously deceived; and now you've brought a demon back into the boy's body!"

They continued arguing as Taylor, looking at me with wide eyes, moved slowly toward me.   At first I snarled at him; but then as he got closer I could smell him more clearly…

I know you…   I thought in the wolf's language of imagery, You smell like part of me, I know you…

As Taylor drew closer, I began to relax, and when he reached his hand out to touch me I didn't bite him.   Instead I could feel my anger and disorientation fading as I nuzzled my face into the palm of his hand, his scent familiar and… familial…   My wolf began so settle, and ease away from the full stretch of his tether, as he did so, my ability to construct words returned to me, though it surprised me when I heard what came out of my mouth.

"Pipe', lim limt.sh…" I looked up startled into his eyes, feeling mine fading back to their normal tone.   And as he looked at me, he suddenly wrapped me up in his arms and crushed me to him as he started to weep.

"Jimmy… God, I was so afraid I'd lost you…" He started to sob openly, his body convulsing hard with emotion.   He pushed me back and held my shoulders at arms length.   "Don't you ever, EVER, punch a bear again!"   He started to laugh a little, though tears continued to run from his eyes.

Something worked in the space behind my eyes, "Hnlamqe'?" I asked, tilting my head to the side.

Taylor's brow furrowed with confusion, "Yes, 'bear', but… where did you learn these words…?

I shook my head puzzled, "I…   I don't know…" I looked up into Taylor's equally confused gaze, then as one we both realized that the shamans and quit bickering, and were instead watching us with cautious interest.

"What?" I challenged them, staring back at them boldly.

"Your… shoulder…" One of the men stammered, pointing.

I looked down at my bare shoulder, and could actually watch the wounds from the bear's claws sealing themselves up and soon they were covered with a thin layer of shiny scar tissue.   I wiped some clear fluid away from the wound, realizing it was plasma that had leaked out of my wounds as they forced themselves shut.   "Oh!   Well, at least that's back to normal…"

"Normal?" they all seemed to cry in unison.

"Okay, maybe a little bit faster, but yeah; normal for me!" I shouted back.

"What are you?" One of the white shamans asked, the one with the red hair and the goatee.

"I'm… a wolf." I shrugged, "I can't think of any other way to put it that you might understand.   I'm a therianthrope; an uh… a 'werewolf', but without the stupid horror movie bullshit."

"He's an human with an animal soul."  Taylor came to my rescue.

"Oh please, there's no such thing!" the redhead spoke again.

"You'd think a guy who travels to a spiritual plane on a regular basis would be a little more open-minded."   Taylor sneered, glaring at him.

"Heh, one would imagine…" I closed my eyes and chuckled softly, trying not to offend one of the people who had helped me find myself again.   My stomach tightened, and I realized that I was once again 'eating for two'.   "Um, Taylor?   I don't mean to rush anything, but food would be really nice; preferably sooner than later."

*          *          *          *

Taylor had been too scattered and exhausted by the day's activities to even try to pull something together for dinner.   Thankfully though, the female shaman – who's name I found out was Rene' – offered to take us out to dinner so we could talk more freely about things.

We thanked the other shamans who'd helped; I didn't know if Taylor had paid them or what, but they all dispersed rather quickly with a couple lingering stares at the freak of nature.   When they had all departed, we followed Rene's car into Coeur D'Alene and then turned east on I-90.   We exited a little out of town, and headed north opposite the lake.   Finally, she led us into a gravel parking lot of a building that looked like a triangular red transplant from an Old-West farm.   The red barn-looking building stretched to either end of it's parking lot, the words "Wolf Lodge Inn" were spelled out in white pieces of wood all across the façade.   I quirked my eyebrow at her when we got out of the cars.

"What?" she responded grinning peevishly and shrugging her shoulders, "I like their steaks!"   I rolled my eyes, smiling sardonically, and we walked up the wooden steps and through the pair of heavy darkly painted wooden doors, a cowbell clanged overhead.   The restaurant was rather dark inside, though that didn't bother me for long.   I smiled as my eyes automatically shifted to take in the decreased light, so much so that I had absolutely no problem making out any of the rustic antiques, taxidermied heads, or ancient yellowing newspapers that decorated the walls where they could be seen through the thick wooden beams that supported the ceiling.   The smiling waitress walked us all the way to the back of the restaurant, past several vacant booths and eating nooks to a back dining room where we were seated fairly close the open fire grill that was raised from the floor in a stone pillar; the scents of grilling meat sent both Wolf and I into barely restrained tantrums.  

When the waitress arrived to take our order, we all selected some kind of delicious-sounding meat product, though unanimously we declined the 'Rocky Mountain Oysters', that the menu so proudly exclaimed 'don't come from a shell'.   Rene' led the charge by ordering the "Cowgirl", a twenty ounce sirloin, which Taylor followed with a New York Strip.   They both looked patiently at me to see what kind of steak I wanted; but I asked to hear the specials.   A wolfish grin spread across my face as the waitress was speaking, and without hesitation I ordered; "I'll take the Elk Medallions, please?   Rare, thank you."   Wolf squirmed excitedly inside me like a hyper little puppy.   I realized then just how much more aware I was of my wolf than ever before; and how much more pronounced his individuality was, he wasn't just some amorphous presence that occasionally showed itself that I referred to as 'my wolf' anymore.   He was Wolf; he was me, and yet at the same time he was more truly himself, more free and unbound within me than ever before.   I smiled and squirmed my butt against my seat a little to appease the urge to wag my tail happily.

"So, how did you, uh… come to be like this Jimmy?" Rene' asked when the waitress departed.

I explained to her as best I could the various theories Fen and I had come up with.    The most probable to me, especially considering recent revelations, was that it was something that had lain dormant in my bloodline that Fen was finally able to wake up with his bite, and the infusion of his own shifting energy that shocked my system to life.

"So, you didn't know anything about your great grandfather, or your family's history until just this morning?"

"Yup, pretty much." I stated flatly.

"Why is that?   Why didn't your father tell you sooner, why didn't he bring you up to know the people you are descended from?"

I started intently at a bleached cow skull on the wall opposite me, pretending I hadn't heard her.   Then Taylor cut in with the response I had decided not to speak; "Because I ran away from him before he was even born, and he didn't even meet me until yesterday afternoon."

"Oh…" she muttered, averting her eyes from the both of us for a moment.   She was quiet for a minute until the waitress returned and set salads down in front of Taylor and Rene' and a bowl of vegetable beef stew for me, and we all began to pick at our appetizers with varying degrees of enthusiasm (inside me, Wolf was nearly chanting 'Elk! Elk! Elk!' in his visual language).   "So, I'm guessing you haven't heard any of the stories then?"

I shook my head as I blew on a spoonful of stew to cool it.

"That's too bad; there's a lot of identity to be taken from the Old Tales…" She sighed and speared another leaf of lettuce, "I wish I knew any of the Schitsu'umsh tales; all I know are a few of my own ancestor's."

This seemed to interest Taylor, "So, you're not Coeur D'Alene?"

She smiled and shook her head as though slightly embarrassed, "No, I'm Coast Salish.   I grew up on the Olympic peninsula in Washington.   I came out here on a camping trip with a few friends back when I graduated High School, and just fell hopelessly in love with the lake and the woods.   It's a bit dryer here than where I'm from so it's easier to enjoy the woods without a raincoat!" she chuckled a little.

"That's funny, you fit in so well here; almost everybody here just assumes you're at least part Coeur D'Alene!" Taylor said, smiling at her.

"Excellent!" she exclaimed clapping her hands together, "The ruse was a success!"   She choked on a little piece of lettuce and covered her mouth while she coughed lightly.   "So, back on topic.   Would you like to hear the stories I know?"

I nodded my head enthusiastically since my mouth was full.

"Hmm, I think I'll tell you the Athabascan story first, I think it would be a better place to start.   I'm no good at storytelling, but I'll get it across to you as best I can, it's the story of how Raven created Wolf.

"According to most of the First Nation's legends; Raven was the creator of the world, as well as sort of a trickster spirit, much like Coyote in the Southwest.   Well, Raven created the world, and the was making all the things in it; he made the trees and painted their leaves onto them, he shaped the mountains with his hands, he made fish for the waters, deer and elk, cats and bears, even all the peoples of the world; and then all of this he painted with a loving hand into the colors he most adored, arranging every single feather on every bird's wing.   He brought beauty into this world with all his heart.

"One day, Raven decided to make a creature to be a teacher for human beings.   He made this creature furry, with four feet and a big fluffy tail.   He gave to this creature intelligence, humor, strength, compassion, courage, and love; all the traits he himself held so highly in regard.   He gave it sharp teeth in a long snout, pointed beautiful ears sensitive to even the slightest sound, and long strong legs to cover the Earth.   And its fur was the dazzling white of freshly fallen snow in the sunshine.

"Raven decided, since this new creature was so much like him; that he would put feathers on it's front legs and teach it to fly.   He threw his new creation high into the sky, where it flapped its feathers and tried to soar.   But though he flapped his legs like Raven, and the feathers moved, he could not fly and he plummeted back to Earth.   Faster and faster he fell, so fast that the feathers were singed, his beautiful white coat turned to gray, with black tips from the burning fall.   Raven realized that it was best if his latest creation stayed on the land and walked with his Earth-eating stride.

"Raven made a family of these creatures, in many different colors.   Their coats were black and red, and brown and white, and of course the original gray; all were tipped with the singed black of their forebear.   Their eyes were of amber, or gray or brown; but all bore the light of Raven's gifts.   And when he made this first pack, and placed the mother and father in charge, he gave them their name; Wolf."

Wolf squirmed inside me; he'd ceased his elk-obsessed chanting and instead seemed to be listening to the story through my thoughts.   He couldn't understand the human words of course, but he could read the images my imagination conjured easily enough.   He seemed to be thinking, "Hey, she's talking about us!"

"So," Rene' continued, "Raven spoke to his creations and told them, "I cannot always be everywhere to teach others how to behave and how to hunt; so I want you to be models; I have given you beauty and intelligence, and taught you how to live as a family and be leaders and teachers for others.   Because I made you so like me, you have my sense of humor.   You may be tempted to tease and trick others, but you must always remember; if you are asked in the right way, with politeness and respect, you must help them as I do.   This is your duty."

"And so Raven taught the wolves many things; how to hunt, to make medicine, and how to sing.   Raven loved the voices of his wolves, so they sang for him at the rise and fall of every day.   They sing to thank the sun and the moon for their light.   Raven taught the wolves to pray for good game when hunting, and the right prayers to say to thank the soul of the animal that gave its life to them.   Above all, he taught them to love and respect all other things; never to waste, never to scorn, and never to be cruel.   He also taught the crows and magpies how to play with the wolves in a teasing game; but in return, he told them that they must help the wolves find food; and only then could they play their game.   So the birds would tease the wolves, and pull on their tails, and the wolves would pretend to be annoyed, but was all in good humor.

"And so this first pack of wolves was blessed and happy, and they spread with all their colors around the world.   Today, it still is as it always was; the wolves continue to teach; tolerance, love, strength, family, and humor.   And they will still obey Raven's instructions, for those who ask with politeness and respect.   And… that would be our dinner!" Rene' switched tracks so abruptly that it took me a moment to realize what she was talking about; but when the smell of the dishes washed over me, it was all I could do to keep myself from mauling the server in my haste.

We quickly dove into our meals, devouring lustily while the juices flowed down our throats.   You don't have to be a wolf to love a good piece of meat.   It just helps…    And oh God!   That first bite of elk sent shivers down my spine, triggering a light mental shift.   This felt so right, I remembered this… flavor, this texture with a part of me older than time.   This is my prey…   This is was I was supposed to eat, what my kind has eaten since the dawn of our species.   I only felt a little sad that I hadn't caught it myself, and been able to thank its spirit.

"So," I prompted Rene' around a mouthful of warm flesh, "Please continue."

"Oh, the story's done; that was it."   She said while she cut off a piece of her steak; "Oh!   But I just remembered one last line from it; something to the effect of "As it goes with wolves, so it goes for the entire living world made by Raven"…   I remember I always liked that line.   And… it's taken on a bit of a new meaning for me now that I've met you, mister 'Amber-eyes'."

I smiled at her, knowing full well that my eyes were still glowing their inhuman tint in the dark restaurant, and she smiled at me in return.   We were silent for a minute, each of us enjoying out meals in silent reverence; completely immune to the distractions of the rowdy people filling the restaurant.   Inside I was at war with myself, trying to prolong the ecstasy of the elk, fighting the longing to just wolf it down… pun intended…

Rene's steak was absolutely humongous!   She could only eat a quarter of it, before she sat back holding her stomach.   With sadness I looked down and realized that I had ravished everything on my plate sooner than I realized, and I felt more than a little sad as I too sat back, my belly still yearning for more.   Rene' must have see this, because she laughed again and slid her plate over the oilcloth table cover to me.

"Here you go boy, wolf this down too, I'm full!" I mock glared at her and stuck my tongue out, but I fell upon her leftovers ravenously as though I hadn't just eaten a full plate of my own.   It was delicious, but it couldn't even compare to the elk; there was none of the spiritual connection there; it was just a chunk of a cow on a plate.

Taylor finished his, and he and Rene' ordered deserts; I politely declined in favor of my carnivorous tendencies.   When we were finished, Rene' suddenly exclaimed, "Oh!   I just remembered another one!   It's Tsimshian I think…" It took me a moment to realize she was talking about another of the old legends.   "Your dinner just reminded me of it!" she said joking.   I didn't understand the inference, but encouraged her to continue anyway.

"Okay, so long, long ago in a galaxy… not so very far away actually…   In the autumn of the year when the trees were turning to red and amber, and the salmon filled the rivers; the wolves all came together to have a potlatch; a ceremonial exchange of food and gifts.   Entire packs came, from the Alphas to the pups; even the lone wolves came in search of mates and friends.

"Once they assembled, they began to sing long wolf songs; so loud and so strong was their song that it traveled from the river to the ocean and back again to the mountains.   All of the forest creatures heard this howling, and it was so loud that they had to flee.   Even the fish in the streams tried to hide under rocks it was so loud.   The poor salmon's ears were so sensitive to the sound that they leapt over waterfalls and rapids to escape the wolf songs.   They say that is how salmon learned to jump and overcome all obstacles in their journey to the sea and back again.

"Finally, even Father Son was overwhelmed by the wolves' singing; and he set early that day and hid his head in the clouds shut out the noise.   Sister Moon however, loved the wolves' voices, and she climbed to the very tips of the pine trees to hear them better.   Her beautiful pale face threw light onto the wolves, and they were so delighted to have such an elegant audience, that they sang even louder to please their Moon Sister.

"Eventually though, once they'd sung all day and half the night, and their voices were growing tired; and they began telling stories about their wolf heroes and their deeds.   Wolf warriors showed the cubs their battle scars, and when not engrossed in story; the wolves would gossip about this and that.   The talked and told their stories all through the night, and when the mist crawled over the river and dawn came, the tired little cubs fell asleep.

"Now, as the noise had died away and the dawn was coming, a group of stags gathered across the river; listening to the wolves' stories, safe inside the mist.   Finally, one started laughing at the wolf adventures and then the whole group broke out in mocking laughter as well.

"The wolves across the river heard the laughter, and Gray Wolf, one of the oldest leaders, spoke.   He cried sternly across the river, "Who dares to laugh at us, at the tales of brave wolves?"

"The stags didn't answer, the just laughed harder and harder; snorting and snickering.   But suddenly, Father Sun jumped back into the sky and burned away the thick morning mist.   When the mist was gone, the wolves were waiting, looking across the river.   "Who is it that laughs at us, that finds our stories and our heroes so very funny?" they cried.   And then they saw the stags and their beautifully pointed antlers, and they saw inside the mouths of the deer as they laughed at them, oblivious.   They saw that their teeth were not sharp, and now the wolves were very hungry for breakfast after singing and talking all day and all night.   Their mouths watered as they gazed across the river at the stags.

"Within an instant; the hunters had leaped into the river and were swimming to the other side.   The stags finally realized their danger then; and they scattered as the wolves burst from the water and chased them."   While Rene' was speaking the waitress slipped by our table seemingly unnoticed, she placed the brown leather billfold on the corner of the table and I subtly slipped my hand over to take the bill.   "To this day, wolves still hunt deer; they know that they are good to eat and have yet to forgive them for mocking their heroes and stories at that ancient potlatch.   And what do you think you're doing?" Rene' challenged me in the same breath.

"Nothing; just covering the tab.    You've done so much for me today, the least I can do is pay for dinner."

"Where's the money coming from?" Taylor asked skeptically.

"It was part of my birthday present from Mom and Dad, they gave me some extra—"

"Whoa, when was your birthday?" Rene interrupted me.

"Um, about four days ago I think… Hmph, it's been a loooong four fucking days—Hey!" I protested as Rene' smoothly snatched the leather billfold out of my hand.   "Give that back!"

"Nuh-uh…" she shook her head smiling as she stuck her card in and set the bill on the farthest corner of the table from me.   "Consider this a belated birthday present from me…" she smiled irritatingly at me as a low growl of annoyance rumbled unnaturally low in my throat.

"I would have considered you saving my life to be a surpassingly adequate present." I growled out between my teeth.

"Well, I was just doing what I do.    That was my job; this is my gift.   Besides, it was really your great grandfather who saved your life…" Taylor shot a glance at me that virtually screamed 'we're so going to talk about this later'.   "Anyway; I was wondering if it would be okay if I met this Fen guy you were talking about earlier, I'd been thinking about a road-trip lately, and Colorado's dry forests seem promising!" she winked at me, but her smile quickly faded when she saw me flinch.

"Meeting Fen would be… hard…" There was an extra weight on my chest as both Wolf and I mourned our former alpha again.

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you not friends anymore?" She asked so innocently.

"Fen…" I sighed, this never got any easier.   I clenched my teeth together and took a deep breath; steeling myself as I opened my eyes "Fen was murdered back in February…"

Rene' and Taylor both gasped, Rene' seemed too shocked to speak and we concluded our transaction and left the restaurant before any of us spoke again.

"Rene'" I started, scenting in the cool night breeze off the lake, "Are you doing anything tomorrow?"

"Um, no I don't think so; why?" she replied puzzled.

"Do you think you could… I don't know, I feel so stupid asking this but... do you think you could teach me some things about shamanism?   That is, if you want to…" I mumbled.

The edge of a smile began to peek out from behind the clouds I brought down upon her.   "Jimmy, I would love to.   When do you want me to come by?"

I smiled at Taylor, then looked back at her; "How's breakfast sound?"   She laughed as she got in her car.

"I'll see you tomorrow then!" she winked at us as she turned the engine over and pulled out.

Taylor and I loaded up and buckled in; and as soon as we were back on I-90, Taylor spoke, "So, tell me about Papa."   And I just smiled at him with absolutely no intention of spilling the beans just yet.

Walking Wolf Road
By: Brandon Herbert
Chapter 42

Fucking bear…

He didn't mess me up that bad did he?   Why wasn't I healing like usual?   My awareness slowly caught up with me as I dumbly realized that I wasn't exactly in my body anymore.   I had this strange shifting perspective of the things going on around me; my normal first person kept sliding in and out of third.    It almost felt as if my soul had been knocked loose from my body and kept phasing in and out of place…

I vaguely remember hearing Taylor's voice in the darkness, telling me that help was on it's way, and slipped out of my body again some time later and saw people around me from the other side of my closed eyes.   But, it was not a paramedic, but to a group of five people in loose fitting clothes.   Two of the men were native, the others and the woman were caucasian.   I perceived Taylor sitting in the corner of the room, beating steadily on an ancient looking drum.

My body had been laid out flat on the floor, and two men sat on either side of me with decorated planks of wood beside them like oars on a boat, one of the native men sat at my feet, and the woman was up above my head shaking a rattle over me while she sang a song in another language.   I began to feel a force pulling on me, beginning to draw me out of my body completely.   The woman moved and lay down alongside my body, touching at the shoulder and along the arm.   I just barely realized what was happening, that they were Shamans, before an irresistible tug pulled me down with them.

It felt as though we melted into the earth and before my un-closable eyes we were no longer sitting in a pattern on the ground, but barreling through an aquifer into the earth in a canoe that appeared very, very real.   The man by my feet seemed to steer us through the tunnel deeper into the earth, until finally we were all covered in a swirling marble net of blue light for a moment of pristine clarity, and it seemed I held my breath…   Then the canoe broke through the surface of what seemed like a spring, birthing us dry and whole into the Lower world.   The spirit realm…

The air felt very still around me as I took my first glimpse of the world of my great grandfathers, before a gentle wind caressed me with the touch of satin.   I stretched my face toward the sky, and blinked when a flock of geese high above flickered through the light of the warmest most soothing sunshine that could possibly be imagined.   I looked down and around the massive green valley that our spring had spilled us into.   A titanic wall of uplifted granite rose like a sentinel to our left, under which our spring ran past; and to our right up a gently sloping hill, a thick lush forest sprawled out across the landscape, while misty blue mountains of a far off range delineated the horizon ahead of us with its jagged edge.   A feeling of complete… serenity ebbed and flowed through my body like another bloodstream superimposed over my own.   

The woman who led us looked around briefly and then did a double take when her eyes passed over me.

"What are you doing here?" she asked bewildered, and as soon as she spoke the other shamans seemed to wake up to my presence and they turned to look at me.

I suddenly felt taken aback; was I not supposed to be here?   "I… I don't know, I just felt this tug and then I was going down with you.   Why, is something wrong with me being here?"

She shook her head, and paused a moment, "No, I don't think anything's wrong; it's just unusual for the patient to actually go on the journey with us…" some thought seemed to pass behind her eyes and her brow furrowed.

"You all need to stay behind and guard the boat; also, try to keep your senses open to his body.   His soul must have come loose and joined us on the journey.   Right now his body is a comatose shell; make sure no harm comes to it, and summon help immediately should the body falter.   Come," she wrapped her hand around my upper arm in a surprisingly firm grip, "We haven't much time; things are worse than I thought.   It seems like the bear… something caused your soul to begin to separate from your body, like some kind of 'soul sickness'; we must find your power animal as quickly as possible, the longer we are away… well, I don't want to even guess at this point; I've never seen this happen before…"

Despite the fact that her words should have worried me; I could only feel calm in this place as she let me toward the forest on the side of the valley.   As we reached the shadow of the trees, she stopped dead in her tracks.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she said, "I… something isn't letting me go any further.   Jimmy, listen to me, it's imperative.   Something is keeping me out, which means you have to go in there alone to find your power animal.   Just let yourself go wherever you feel drawn; you will likely see many creatures.   The animal that chooses you will appear to you four times in different aspects.   Beware insects, and any fish or reptiles that bear their teeth or stingers."   She drew a deep breath and sighed, "I wish I could go in there to protect you; but I think there's a greater power at work here than just happenstance…   Go Jimmy, quickly, and good luck!"

She turned me around and pushed me into the trees.   I stumbled a moment on the bracken, and when I turned around she wasn't to be seen.   With an eerie calm I turned and walked into the trees, heading toward the heart of the forest.   The woods were quiet and calm; just the whisper of the warm breeze through the leaves; and the occasional song of unseen birds.   As I wandered, so did my mind.   Contemplating the strangely detached knowledge that I could very well be dead already, and just waiting for my body to shut down.   The thought didn't bother me like I rationally knew it should… and even that knowledge didn't bother me either, though it should have.

The forest grew darker and as it did so, I withdrew deeper into my mind until a shadow stood out in the corner of my eye.   I froze and turned my head to look, and there I was standing there, looking at myself.   My sleek black pelt, and feral amber eyes gazed back at me without a hint of humanity, but brimming with knowledge and power.   My wolf lowered his face toward the ground and sniffed, seeming to recognize me.    He damn well should, he was me!

I turned my body to approach him and he raised his head up high, his ears and tail upright, and then turned and bounded away toward the dark of the forest heart.   A worm of irritation broke its way through the calm for a moment, and I followed him without saying a word.   Usually a 'damn' or something would have been called for, but for the first time since I turned twelve I didn't feel the compulsion to swear.

I followed a faint path through the underbrush, and looked down to step over a log.   When I looked up there was a massive black bear standing directly ahead of me.   I felt surprised as though from a distance, none of the usual physical reactions accompanied it though.   The bear simply stood, dark ebony in the shade of the dense forest.    I felt a great weight from his gaze, as though energy was radiating off of him, some sense of contained power about him.    He made no aggressive moves toward me, so I stepped forward along the path and walked around the side of him; and stopped at his shoulder and looked into his gaze that had followed all of my movements.   He and I simply regarded each other calmly for a moment before I looked forward again and continued along the path.

I didn't have to look to know that he'd disappeared.  

A low layer of mist began to cover the ground almost as soon as I passed him, and it swirled around my bare feet as I walked forward through the trees that grow darker and darker until…

"I know this place…" I whispered to myself as I came around a massive boulder; the trees had faded beyond dusk to deep obsidian…   There were the woods there She had brought me.   I came forward into a clearing that was almost a perfect circle around; the full moon shone brightly centered in the opening of the trees just like it had that first night; casting a pallid blue light upon a burnt out fire pit.   Instead of the cawing of ravens though, a strange hissing sound seemed to come from all directions at once; a rattling that triggered something instinctual inside me, making me look around anxiously seeking the source of the sound.   Finally the sound focused into a single location and recognition hit home.

I looked down by my right foot and there, coiled by the trunk of one of the trees; a diamondback rattler was poised to strike at my leg just scant feet away.   Its mouth gaped open displaying hypodermic needles from hell.   I remembered the shaman's warning as I looked at it; but it was already too late.   I would never be able to move fast enough to evade its readied venom; I was so close that I could clearly make out the strange red cross-shaped mark atop its head.

The calm cushioned me as I realized my end was lying at my feet as it struck in a blur.   But the pain never came; another blur, a dark one, smashed into the serpent from the side in mid-strike and in the space of time to blink my eyes in reflex, the snake had been flung dead on the ground; it's body writhing in on itself as the head flopped around strangely, its throat torn and missing.   Small beads of yellowish venom gathered on the tips of its fangs as I tore my eyes away to look at my defender, only to see a lupine black rump disappearing through the trees, the mist swirling in it's wake.

I crashed through after him, and looked up just in time to see him bound up the boulders of the waterfall; and then disappear; with a flash of something porcelain white just past the edge of the rocks.

"Well, that's two…" I muttered and followed; missing my strong lithe form more than ever as my clumsy human shape struggled to climb the boulders it had bounded easily over to the top of the falls.

As I pulled myself up over the last rock at the rim, I felt the shadow to my right watching me with his quiet brown eyes.   The bear stood in the flow of the river watching me, and I pulled myself up and after my spirit animal, feeling his gaze upon me until I dove back into the secretive shadows of the trees.   I pushed onward through the woods, deeper and farther than I had ever explored with her at my side in dreaming before.   I perceived the temperature dropping steadily, and eventually the perfect onyx of the forest became broken by blowing plumes of snow drifting through the trees.   Thicker and thicker it became until I burst out of the trees quite unexpectedly and I was…

Completely blinded by the bright high moonlight shining off the mirror of ice that lay sprawling before me.   A cold land of permanent frost, the tundra; stretched out from a blazing crimson sunset to far right horizon to the dancing colors of the aurora borealis to my left.   High overhead, seemingly framed and hanging in the dead center of the sky was the full moon; just as it was in the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />midnight forest.

Motion caught my eye and drew it toward the aurora; shadows were bounding across the tundra, small sprays of disrupted snow flung behind them.   A pack of five or six wolves, all led by the large black one with an air of infallibility.   With sinking despair I watched as they drove through the snow away from me, toward the darkness of night.   Well, that makes three, but how the hell am I supposed to catch up with him now?

But then my eyes were drawn toward the sunset, and the shadows moving there, silhouetted against the blood red horizon.   A group of humans, one tall male, two females of almost equal height, and a youth half as tall as his father.   It seemed to me that I knew them, could almost recall their names if I tried, though right now that was not what was important.   They too were walking away from me, toward the calling light of day.

I puzzled over what I was seeing for a moment, until Her voice purred behind me, and I turned my head about just as She emerged from the misty forest like a ghost of white shadow. "The time has come my little one…" Suddenly my arms were yanked out to the sides and a fiery pain sliced down the middle of my chest like a line of flame, dividing my heart in two.

"You have dawdled too long, and now you must choose."   A fresh lance of pain drew a sharp breath from me and my face whipped forward as my muscles convulsed, trying to hold me together.   "It is time you choose who you will be…"

It was then that I saw the cords, long shimmering strands that seemed to be made of the moonlight itself stretched from my wrists out to the diverging packs of wolves and humans, drawing me in half between them as they still strained toward their opposing horizons.

With an icy plunge of shock I realized; the bear had forced my hand…   Knocked my soul loose so that I could be drawn to this place that I had somehow disconnected from; it was time for me to decide what I would give up.   But… how could she possibly ask me to give up something I could never live without?   I would die either way; if I chose to continue as a wolf, I knew my human body, teetering on the edge of the abyss, would die in its strange slumber.   But if I chose to return to my human body, I would be giving up my soul, my identity…

A fresh flare of pain down my sternum drew an anguished scream from my throat.   How could she?   What right did she have to divide me this way?    My life is mine, it always has been; and always will be…   With a rush of defiance I opened my eyes and pierced her with my glare.

"You cannot ask me to give up half of who I am; I would die either way; so at least this way I can die with pride.    At least be merciful and end this for me with your own fangs; there's nothing unnatural about that death.   I choose neither side, so at least death can take me whole to the other side!" I bellowed at her, and she gathered herself to lunge.   I smiled and closed my eyes, waiting for release.

I never felt her fangs pierce me, but the pain left quite suddenly.   It made sense, why should it hurt to die here?   I wondered if I would see my body one last time, and so I slowly opened my eyes hoping to give one last goodbye to Taylor or the shamans so that they could tell my family that I loved them, and that I was sorry I had to go…

But instead of Taylor's living room, I opened my eyes to the tundra field, with the full moon blasting with full intensity overhead.   It was then that I realized why the tension had stopped.   Just to my right, She held the cord that bound me to my family in her teeth, and she turned her amber gaze one me.   Then to my left, I saw a powerful looking man, dark of skin with a strong jaw and no facial hair; wrinkles folded around his eyes as he smiled at me and I realized with a shock that I recognized him.

"You realize what you are asking now, don't you Jimmy?" my Great Grandfather asked me, holding the cord that drew out to my sleek black wolf in one hand, a rock knife with an antler hilt in the other, waiting to cut the line.   "If you chose this middle road, you will truly walk forever between the worlds; you will never… never be able to belong completely in either world.   You will never be human again, and you will never be completely embraced by the wild either.   This is a lonely road that has claimed far too many lives with its unending trial and conflict.   Is this really what you want Jimmy?

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath as I felt the isolation looming ahead of me, but what choice did I have?   My eyes opened with determination, "Yes…   I choose to walk between the worlds."

With a swift motion, my t'upye' drew his knife along the wolves' cord, as simultaneously, the Great Wolf Spirit clenched her teeth down and both tethers were severed.

My family disappeared into the light of the sun that finally fell completely below the horizon, taking them away with it.   And I looked desperately toward my wolf soul, waiting for it to come back to me just as the pack passed over the line of the horizon and the aurora disincorporated itself into some last dancing wisps of light before dying out completely, leaving us completely alone with the cold light of an impartial moon.   He left…   He'd left me…

I fell down to my knees as the burning tears came rushing up; an agony far greater than the physical pain I'd felt from the cords rushed up and consumed me…   Isolation, abandonment, loss, rejection, and a crushing loneliness came roaring over me.   Even though I'd chosen to give up part of my humanity to keep my wolf… I'd never realized that my wolf might not want me…  

T'upye' knelt down in the snow beside me and wrapped his arms around me, trying to console me, and the spirit came over and brushed Her soft fur against me, leaning into me as a pack-mate would to comfort another.

"Shhh, it's going to be okay.   I'm so proud of you Jimmy," Great Grandfather whispered to me, and the wolf spirit growl-purred her assent.   "You chose the hard path, but it is the path of strength and pride.   You made the right choice…"

The Great Wolf Spirit shifted and walked around in front of me and looked my Great Grandfather in the eyes.   He smiled at her, and muttered, "Hello again old friend…   I guess the time has come hasn't it?"   As he spoke an eagle cried, flying high over us behind my t'upye'; and with silent stealth the powerful Spirit Bear emerged from the woods and stood by Her.

I realized that he had presented himself to me three times as well, and unlike my wolf; he seemed to have great interest in me.   But…

"T'upye'...  I don't want to offend him but…   I don't want to be a bear, it just doesn't feel… right…" I whispered even though I knew only too well that he could hear me.

"Jimmy, you need to learn faith…" A strange voice spoke and I looked over my shoulder to see a raven emerge from the woods and shapeshift into the woman shaman right before my eyes.   She must have been kept out until I had passed my trial and made my decision.   "Sometimes, the way you want things to be, isn't how they are supposed to be…   You need to trust that things will occur as they need to, whether you like it or not; it is best.

"But… Why doesn't my wolf want me?"   I asked desperately, but she only smiled at me, and nodded in greeting to my Great Grandfather, the powerful shaman of a generation past.

My t'upye' smiled warmly at all of us in turn, as though looking around for the last time.   He gazed up at the circling eagle, the waiting Spirit Bear, the woman shaman, myself… and then finally his eyes settled on the Wolf Spirit.   They smiled at each other; her face stretching into a wide lupine grin as he leaned over toward her and closed his eyes just has his nose touched hers.   Right before my eyes, he changed…

His warm hued human skin seemed to blur at the edges, and in a wave washing back from Her touch, his old human form melted into a powerful black form.   He turned his familiar amber eyes to me and I realized that it is my wolf that he became.   A wide lupine grin spread across his face, and I heard my Great Grandfather's voice in my mind, though at the same time it was my own voice, the voice of my wolf.   "Who ever said I didn't want you?   You just had to show that you wanted me…"

With a cry of joy I spread my arms and leaned in to embrace my wolf self; and he in turn curled his face down around my shoulder, and I drew in deeply the warm furry musk of his mane, the itch of the long guard hairs against my face.   He raised his massive paws up onto my shoulders and pushed me down onto the ground, and I laughed with joy.   And… then he began to eat me.

Detachedly I realized that I should be afraid; but I couldn't feel fear through my joy.   I closed my eyes and jubilant tears leaked from them, and continued to laugh as though it was the last thing I would ever do.   I was aware when he finished though, when I had been completely devoured, and I opened my eyes.

Instead of looking around from a ruined carcass, I opened my eyes to a world alive again with color and light, the shadows no longer holding their secrets from me.   I looked around through my wolf's eyes again after far too long; and I knew that I had not been eaten to destroy me; I had merely been taken into him in the only way a wolf would know how; made whole again.   I threw my head back and howled with all the emotion I had been holding inside since I'd started to feel us disconnect.   The Great Wolf Spirit joined me, and it seemed the entire forest came alive and began crying out in response to us.

"It is time" she said to me, and touched my nose with hers.   Then we both looked back to the shaman.   She nodded and walked forward, then I felt a great tug when she took me to her chest and we were being drawn back through the woods and past the lake with breathtaking speed, we passed out of the mist, and the light grew and grew until we plunged back out into the searingly bright sunlight where the other shamans still stood guard around the canoe that conveyed us between the worlds.   I perceived a slight arrhythmia in the pulse of my heart, and I realized that it wasn't my heart; so much as it was Taylor's drum on the other side of the Veil.   She climbed into the canoe, still holding me to her chest; and I held myself calm and still as the canoe plunged back into the waters of the spring like a perversely ancient submarine.

The peace of the Lower World lingered with me even as we re-emerged into the Middle Realm, and they returned to their bodies.   I looked down at my own form and saw that my chest had stopped moving.   Had we dawdled too long, had my body ceased?

I was still held to her chest though, and she leaned over my body and seemed to lay my spirit down over the body, and then she blew into her hands, and I could feel my soul expanding to fill the flesh like a balloon filling a mold; forming me into place though I still couldn't force my body to respond to my consciousness.   But then she sat me up and cupped her hands over the top of my head, over the area that had been a soft spot of ungrown bone when I was an infant, and blew in there too.   I had forgotten the pain of being physically alive until sensation roared over me with unrelenting ferver; and my eyes snapped open.   My senses overloaded all at once making my stomach convulse and I drew in a breath that was part scream as my corpse returned to life…

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!
Howls!
~B

Walking Wolf Road
By: Brandon Herbert
Chapter 41

I looked out over the shimmering cobalt water from a rocky cliff about twenty feet from the lake's shore.   Even as a child I'd never seen this part of Lake Coeur D'Alene; the far south end of the lake just before it entered the reservation's jurisdiction.   Mom'd just taken me to the little areas right by the city where I'd go and splash in the cold water, and stare at the other children who played and laughed with two parents instead of one.

"Mommy", I'd pulled on the sleeve of her shirt, barely tall enough to stare her belt in the eye, "Where's Daddy?"

"I don't know baby, he left before you were born." She smiled tenderly at me, and ran a hand through my dark curly hair.

"Did he leave because I was bad?" I asked her, the only reason my toddler mind could present as argument to try and understand.

"Oh no Jimmy, you weren't bad, you couldn't have been bad, you weren't even out of my tummy yet!" she laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

"But he didn't have to do anything… all he had to do was love me…"

"Oh, Jimmy!" she grabbed me and hugged me tightly to her, "I love you enough for him and me!"

"Mommy…?   Mommy why are you crying?"

I looked over to my right at my father; the wind was blowing his long dark hair back away from his face and tangling it behind him.   Out of nowhere, I got the sudden impulse to push him off the cliff.   To punish him for all the hurt he caused us, she and I.   I closed my eyes and my hands clenched into fists, but I quickly reined my temper back under control and breathed out, stilling my hand.   I think he was too distracted by the view to notice the spike in my emotion, because he didn't react at all.

With an abrupt chill, I felt the wind shift; the strong pulse off the open water was suddenly overpowered by a gust from the south, throwing Taylor and I's hair around our faces.   We turned and looked south at about the same time, and dark clouds boiled toward us at an alarming rate.   The edge was white and fluffy, roiling and expanding like milk poured into water; only in the middle of the cloud was the darkness and intent visible.   It looked much like the storm I had driven through in Montana the day before; though far more concentrated and menacing.

"Shit, I thought we had more time before the front moved in.   We need to go, right now!"   He turned from the increasingly agitated waters to lead the way back home with a focused look on his face.   The wind picked up steadily, only buffered somewhat by the trees; and darkness fell very quickly as the edge of the forming cloud ate through the sunlight.   Soon, hard cold drops began to fall around us amid the delicious smell of ozone.   Colorado's rain was much harder and colder though, probably something to do with being at a much higher elevation…   This really didn't bother me, but Taylor quickened his pace regardless.

With a screaming bolt of lightening however, it seemed the sky ripped open and a deluge pounced upon us.   Visibility dropped steadily to the point that I could only just make out his form ahead of me in the rain   We came up to a hill made of uplifted and eroded stone, and I saw a concave hollow in the side of the hill under a tall pinnacle of rock.   I grabbed Taylor and pointed at it, "Hey, we should take cover until the storm passes!" I yelled over the deafening hiss of the rain.

"No, we're almost home, we can make it!   Come on!" he yelled and instead began to climb up over the rocky hill.   I stood behind in a moment in indecision; it made sense damnit!   Why wouldn't he just wait out the storm like logic dictated?   I began to scramble up the hill following Taylor's vague outline up along a ridge, and looked down to make sure of my footing when I heard some kind of sharp cry, almost completely drowned out by the patter of rain on stone.   I looked up and Taylor was nowhere to be seen.

As I reached the top, my foot slipped on a rain-slick stone, the fine layer of dust that had resided upon it had combined with the rain to make a slick film of mud.   As I caught myself, and began to right again something caught in my periphery vision and I glanced over at a dark shape with a backpack laid out on the ground.   Part of his torso was hanging over the side of the rock formation; and to my horror was slipping even further as I watched!

"Taylor!" I yelled and dove to snatch at him as the overhanging weight pulled him off; the wet stone lubricating his unconscious descent.   I grabbed a hold of his pant leg and tried with all my might to halt his downward motion, only to have the mud-saturated denim slip from my fingers with a sick squelching sound that mirrored the feeling in my gut as he disappeared over the edge.

I screamed his name again, and propped myself over the edge as far as I could without sending myself on a similar fall, desperately looking…   At first I saw nothing but plants and some fallen rocks, but then I realized that that one of the rocks down there was shaped strangely… rather like a man's hiking boot…

"No…  Oh no, oh no, oh no!" became a chanted mantra as I cast about me for a path that would lead me down to him.   Carefully, I made my way back down the way I'd come up, and found a snaking path that led toward the side of the uplifted mass of rock.   Finally, pushing though a dense tangle of shrubbery, I saw him laid out on the ground, unmoving as the rain pummeled around him and turned the ground to slurry of mud.

I ran over to him, almost slipping and face-planting myself in the muck as I finally reached him and turned his limp form over so he wouldn't inhale the mud… If he's still breathing…   The sudden thought sent a burst of fear down into the very core of my being.

I heaved him over onto his back; the rain washed the mud away from his face, and ran down from an ugly gash in his forehead stained pink.    "Taylor?   Taylor…!    Dad!" I screamed desperately as I shook him, trying to rouse him.   When it became obvious that wasn't going to wake, I hooked my arms under his shoulders and struggled to pull his boneless form into the dry shelter of the rock overhang that I had originally suggested we seek haven in.

"Goddamnit…" I muttered, wishing for the entire world that I knew CPR, or even just the basic knowledge necessary to help him.   Forcing myself to calm down; I struggled through mostly forgotten shades of memories back to my first health and fitness class I'd taken in Sophomore year of High School, it was back in Chicago, my first year in the city, and they'd covered basic first-aid.   I hadn't paid attention though; I didn't care!   I was too consumed in my own self-pity to even try to engage with the class.   What did she say though, focus!

"Check for vitals…" I muttered to myself, hovering the back of my hand over his slack mouth.   A quick flying spark of hope pierced the fear as I felt his soft breath barely move the fine sensitive hairs on the back of my knuckles.   Galvanized, I fumbled clumsily around his neck, feeling for the carotid artery to seek a pulse.   Finally I found it; it was slow, but it was steady, my musical training helping me gauge the timing for consistency.

I pulled his backpack out from under him, and started rifling through it, looking for anything that could be of use to him.   Nothing particularly useful, no blankets or anything, and the 'First Aid' kit consisted of a few Band-Aids and a tube of Neosporin in a sandwich baggie.   Other than a couple snack bars and bottles of water, it was empty.   No lighter, no matches, nothing…   I resisted the temptation to smack his already damaged head.   A bright idea sparked in my brain, and I fished the cell phone John had given me out of my pocket and flipped it open to check the reception…

The 'No Service' icon was blinking at the top of the display and I almost chucked it at the wall of rock in frustration.   Fuck you Murphy's Law; fuck you so hard!

Finally, I pulled my legs up to my chest and just tried to keep myself warm.   The cave was dry, but we weren't; and I could only hope he'd wake up before we both died of hypothermia…

*           *         *          *

I don't know how long ago I'd dosed off, but I awakened with a start.   Something was wrong, something was very wrong…   My head snapped around and I checked Taylor again; he'd moved slightly and the blood had stopped flowing though was half his face was covered in a thick crusty ribbon, but was still unresponsive to his name.   His pulse was faster though, stronger…

Then what was this feeling…

I instantly entered a state of hyper-alertness when I heard a grunt and the snorting breath of something large.   Something moving through the brush very close to us…   I stood and cast my eyes about.   The rain had stopped, with nothing more than the soft pat-pat of water dripping off trees and rocks to break the silence; not even a bird sang.

A twig snapped out in the brush, and my head snapped toward it.   I could make out the sound of heavy breathing, like something sniffing… scenting…

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath myself, something coppery and bright zinging through my brain with recognition.   My head snapped around and my eyes locked in on the dark crimson blood that covered half of Taylor's face, and fairly loaded the air with the scent of the wound… a scent that any predator would be drawn to…

I turned back toward the direction of the sound as a thick brownish black muzzle pushed its way through the brush, and turned to focus its dull brown eyes and short rounded ears on us.

A low growl rumbled deep in my throat; it was the best I could do, though if my wolf were with me, the sound wouldn't have sounded near as pathetic to me as it did now; my weak warning to the bear to stay away.   It wasn't a particularly large bear, but I had no delusions about what it could do to me… or to Taylor if I failed…

It took a couple steps toward us, its head sweeping back and forth as it scented the air through its big black nostrils.   I stood and made myself as large as possible; standing between my father and the bear.

"Stay back, you can't have him."   I spoke calmly and clearly, though I don't really know why I spoke at all, he couldn't understand me.   It walked around to the side, still drawing in the air through its nose, and then turned and came back the way it had.   I realized that if it could have it would have circled us, but the stone wall prevented it from doing so… and also ruined any hope we had of escape and evasion.   It opened its mouth and let out a whining growl; the reek of rotten berries and old dung filled the space.

"Get back!" I postured dominantly; careful not to look directly into its eyes but watching every movement just the same.   It backed up a few steps after I shouted, but then turned and began working it's way toward us; emboldened by the smell of blood and the invitation of an easy meal.   I snarled at it as fiercely as my frail human body could, and my heart pounded in my throat in fear.

Suddenly, it rushed at me.   My panicked sound of fear turned into a roar of rage as I refused to back down and it drew up short at the very last minute.   It stepped back another short distance, and roared at me again; growing obviously more agitated.   I wanted nothing more than to back away and leave us both to our lives; but leaving Taylor behind was simply not an option.   Never mind that I had contemplated pushing him into the lake myself, but leaving him to be eaten alive was just…

I didn't have time to finish my thought as the bear rushed me again, but this time though he wasn't bluffing.   I became subconsciously aware of the shift in his balance, and pushed myself backward as he swiped at me with his great black paw.   The shattering blow that could have been easily avoided if I was whole was far too sluggish as his claws shredded the sleeve of my shirt, and I felt the heat of my own blood running down my arm.

Before I'd even gained my balance back, he was on me again, barreling me down into the mud and batting me side to side with his brutish limbs.   The reek of rotted fruit and fetid breath was overpowering with him bearing down on me.

"I finally found him…" I spoke to no one as I covered my head to protect it from his claws and teeth.   "I'VE FOUND HIM, AND YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM!" I roared furiously and grabbed a hold of the bear's face and bit down into his muzzle as hard as I could; tasting dirt, fur, and blood as my eyeteeth broke through the skin.   Its growl changed to a pained yowl, and he switched from mauling me to simply trying to push me off of him with his paws.   Finally my teeth slipped, and the force with which it'd been shoving at me propelled us away from each other.

Without a moment's respite I was at him again, my arm thrown back and then launching a punch that jarred the nerves of my entire arm and shoulder when it connected with the bear's eye.   It squealed, but still didn't retreat, still intent of winning it's prize from me, my father.   "He's MINE!" I shrieked and grabbed a hold of a fallen log that should have been far too heavy for me to lift, hallelujah for adrenaline!    With an anguished cry of exertion and rage I smashed the branch into the bear's face with enough force that the 6-inch log splintered and snapped over its head.   With high grunting yelps, it turned on its haunches in a rolling motion and scrambled away into the bushes, yowling as it went until finally I could neither see nor hear any sign of him.

As if someone had physically pulled the plug out of my body, all the adrenalin sieved from my blood stream and I felt every pain, every cut, ever bit of exhaustion as I'd pushed my body well beyond its limit.   I fell to my knees, my right arm hurting so bad that my brain was completely censoring all nervous feedback from the limb.   I looked down at it and saw my knuckles split open, the flesh of my bicep striated with bloody lines of varying depths, and all over my face, arms, and sides bruises and cuts were finally blossoming into agonizing fullness.   Blood seeped from my body in a number of places, and a bone-weary exhaustion set in.

It's not unnatural to die…   I thought suddenly.   Clearly.   There's nothing wrong with a natural death, and I sure chose one hell of a way to go out…   I thought of Loki with regret, feeling numbness taking hold of my extremities first, and then a strange detachment as my eyes began to drift closed with weariness.   So tired…

"Hnlamqe'…" a soft voice whispered, pulling me back from the charming darkness.   And I opened my eyes to look at Taylor, only one of his eyes was open, the other was scabbed shut by the curtain of dried blood, but he was awake!

"Taylor!" I cried, rousing my battered body to go to him.   I touched my hand to the wound on his forehead, and he hissed and gritted his teeth, "Ene'!   No, don't touch…   It hurts like a bitch…" He pushed himself up and closed his eyes as his head swam.

"Can you walk?" I asked urgently; all care for myself forgotten as I tried to help him stand.   He wavered unsteadily on his feet for a moment, with his hand out against the wall of stone.

"Yeah, I think so…" I had him lean on me as I led him out around the base of the hill and back up the rocks that we'd begun to climb some hours earlier.   He had been right, we had been very close to home, and we walked across the familiar meadow as the last of the clouds blew out of the sky leaving the sunlight bright once again and the grass waved like a field of emeralds.   I took a moment as we stumbled toward the house to flip off the sky and the weather in general.   We stumbled through the door and we both collapsed, bloody, muddy, dirty and exhausted on the unmade foldout bed.

I must have fallen immediately asleep, because I woke a short while later with Taylor's face hovering over mine.   He'd cleaned the blood off his face, and a large bandage was stuck to his forehead, the kind that one would usually use on a skinned knee.   I realized that he had pulled off what was left of my shirt, and was cleaning the scrapes and gashes on my chest and arms with an implacable expression on his face.

"You're a beautiful mess Jimmy, your mom's never going to let you come see me ever again after she gets a good look at you."

I laughed tiredly, "Oh yeah?   You shoulda seen the other guy!"

"Actually, I did…   Big hairy brute of a fellow, caught a glimpse of him right before you smashed his head in with a small tree…"

All exhausted humor drained away from me.   He stopped cleaning out my wounds and looked at me as though he was seeing something other than a human being.   Perhaps something less…

"Jimmy… You beat the shit out of a fucking black bear…"

"Yeah…" I muttered deliriously as my eyes slid closed again of their own volition, "Yogi don't fuck with this…"

But beneath the humor, I began to feel this odd sort of dread.   Something was wrong…   I tried to sit up but the world swam around me, and for a moment it almost felt as though I began to slip out of my body only to fade back in again with the bear's cut scorching like hot pokers.

"Taylor… Dad something's wrong…" I muttered breathlessly until I began to slip again and the world went black.

Walking Wolf Road
By: Brandon Herbert
Chapter 40

Exhaustion finally won me over, and my sleeping brain quickly blurred to the next morning, when Taylor's activities in the kitchen roused me from the darkness.   I was vaguely disoriented at first, but that quickly faded as the scent of coffee gave my brain direction for my body to follow.

"'Morning, did you sleep alright?" He asked as I stepped into the kitchen, the sizzling scent of fennel and pork rising from the sausage in the pan in front of him.

I grunted a non-committal reply, and made straight for the coffee maker.   I sat down at the table and shivered as the first searing sip began to thaw out my brain.

"So…" I began, setting my elbows on the table and propping my cup up by my mouth, "Tell me about the wolves…"

He froze and looked at me, "I'm sorry, come again?"

"You heard me."   I stated coldly, meeting his gaze steadily.

He just stared at me, as though his mind was reeling and he was trying to come up with some lie to appease me.

"Goddamnit Taylor, talk to me!   You owe me some fucking answers!" I snarled, slamming my cup down on the table as I felt my eyes shift.

He muttered indiscernibly in another language and took a step back from me.    "You're… you're one of them…    But how did you… where…?"

"Then you know what I am…?"

"An animal's soul, in man's flesh…"

"How do you know this?   Tell me everything."   I said forcefully as I licked some of the spilled coffee off my hand, I hadn't even felt it burn…

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*     *     *     *

Much to my disappointment, he didn't know much beyond the basics.   Sometimes, people were born into the world, which weren't people at all; but animals in man's flesh.   Mostly it was spoken of as old legends, the kind that nobody really paid attention to anymore, and just passed off as primitive fancy.

With a renewed wash of distress, my inexplicable eye shift slipped away and left me just as barren as before…   My anger must have pulled my wolf back in for a brief moment before abandoning me again.

"But…" Taylor continued, "I can tell you something that might shed some light on this.   Your family, my grandfather, and his fathers before him; were held in high regard as Shamans, the walkers between the worlds…" My eyes grew wide at this description, so similar to the way Fen had described us therians.   "You probably don't know what a shaman is, but—"

"A healer," I interrupted him, "A medicine man who would go to the spirit world to heal someone."   Yes, I read too.

He looked at me with a strange mix of surprise and wonder.   "Yes, they would travel to the lower world to bring back spirits to help people.   They were often said to be accompanied by their power animal, and sometimes to… shape-shift into an animal in order to gain access to some areas of the lower world…   My grandfather told me when I was a little boy, that Wolf was very fond of our family, and that he would usually present himself as a power animal to us, very early on."

I took another sip of coffee, "So you said your grandfather was a shaman, why didn't you or your dad follow in the tradition?"

"We both grew up in the 20^th century, shamanism was hocus pocus to us; just some quaint stories Papa used to tell about the old days, and we'd humor his antics for the sake of 'preserving our traditions'…"

"And now… it's gone."

He sighed, "Yup."

"How does that make you feel?   Knowing you turned your back on your heritage?"

He looked at me pointedly, "Until this morning, it hadn't even really been an issue for much consideration.   Even if I had wanted to learn, Papa passed away when I was six; so while my father made his choice, God made mine for me…   All I have left are strange stories from an old man in the deepest vault of my memory.

"I knew though," he started, taking a deep breath, "From very early on that we weren't exactly like the other families.   It seems like, even if we don't' know how to take a spirit journey, the spirits like us anyway; my father and I had uh…    How to put it, Strong intuition, almost bordering on precognizance?   We'd know things, just because we did, not because we were ever told them.   We would see things, either dreaming or waking, that would occur later; either later that day, or years down the line.   Mostly what it boiled down to for me was a lot of déjà vu, and the occasional conversation with someone who, I would find out later, was never there..."

"Have a hard time with any auditoriums?" I muttered.

"What?"

"Nevermind.   So, your relationship to those wolves out there…"

"I just play flute with them; that's all.   Happened by accident one night when I was just sitting outside playing and someone answered; nothing more…   I've grown quite attached to them though; just got it in my head last night to go out, and couldn't get the bug to leave me alone.   Sometimes, I just cannot bring myself to sleep when I get an idea stuck like that"

"Damnit" I muttered, trying to keep my face neutral, but feeling bitter frustration build inside me.   I was hoping for some kind of answer… some secret that would allow me to find my wolf again and reclaim my soul and my life.

"Calm down Jimmy, that's one hell of a temper you've got there."

"What are you talking about?" I asked as serenely as I could manage.

"Emotions, we all feel them."

"Well, yeah…" I caught myself short of saying 'duh'.

"No, I mean, we feel them.   Other people, places, memories; we can feel their emotions, it's called empathy.   Haven't you ever noticed that before?   I would assume you have, since you seem to have struck the master vein of your great-grandfather's legacy."

I nodded slowly, as I thought back at all the times it seemed like somebody's feelings were swimming around me like a fog; like I was feeling what they felt.

"I didn't know there was a name for it, I just thought everybody was like that…"

He barked out a laugh, "Do you think people would lie cheat and steal half as often if they had to feel what their victim's felt?   No my boy, not everybody feels it; though, I guess, many do to some extent."   He leaned back in his chair and took another drink of his own coffee.   "Still, my mind is reeling.   I'm just… amazed that someone like you with no training, no knowledge of who you are or where you come from; could come so far, and become so powerful…"

"And who do we have to thank for that?" I asked acidically.

"Touché…" he winced, then stood up and walked over to the armchair by the hide-a-bed and started pulling on a pair of worn-looking leather hiking boots.   "At any rate though; it's going to be a beautiful day today; and I have no intention of staying inside…   Am I correct to assume that your nature pulls you outdoors as well?"

I laughed, "As much as it can, considering just a handful of months ago I was just some overweight teenage angst-bomb who would hide away in my room from shame…"    I considered adding in that I hadn't felt much of my 'nature' for a while now, and that I died a little more inside everyday that my soul was cut off from the air that would sustain it.

"What were you ashamed of?"

I realized he didn't know what I had looked like before, "I dropped about 70 pounds…" I looked at him pointedly, "In less than four months…"

"Holy Shit!   Isn't that, like… unhealthy?"

"Typically yes, but my body didn't give me a choice; I didn't change my diet or my lifestyle… the only thing different was that my wolf woke up."

"Huh…" was his only response as he resumed lacing up his boots with a furrowed brow.

I dug into my luggage and pulled out a worn pair of jeans and an old Metallica t-shirt that would be perfect for hoofing it anywhere we wanted to go… and expendable if they didn't survive whatever trip Taylor had in mind…

I went into the bathroom to change, and by the time I came back out, he had finished packing a daypack and was waiting for me by the door.

"Ready?"

"Sure," I shrugged, and followed his lead out the door. "Where are we going?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," he announced as he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, "I just felt like we needed to get out… that's all.   Hmmm… where to go though…" he thought for a moment, then opened his eyes.

"Okay, west it is…" and he turned and started walking, and I followed him.  

"What's west?" I asked.

"Someone I think you should meet."   He replied simply as he cut across the corner of the field behind the house, and we both wordlessly fell in line on a barely seen trail through the foliage.   I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply and let the pollens and the assorted scent of the forest exploding to spring life run through my nostrils and down to the bottom of my soul.   The dappled sunlight crawled over my closed eyelids and the sweet perfume of honeysuckle and Russian olives colored the air for a moment.

The woods where I was born… and my ancestors…

We walked for some time, until we came up on top of a hill where the trees had thinned to a few bushes and rock formations.   Taylor sat down to rest on one of the boulders to unsling his pack and take a drink of water, and I walked forward a little ways, stepping along the ridge of exposed rock.

A chill suddenly shot down my spine and I shuddered in spite of the hot sunshine.   I felt the hairs rise on my neck with the familiar sensation of someone watching me.   I looked around for a raven, wondering how Corwin could be out this far, but there wasn't a single bird to be found, save for a large raptor circling some distance away.   But the feeling was there, and as a breeze pushed the limbs of the trees and bushes into a whispering chorus, hidden beneath, I thought I heard the word…

"'Pathfinder'…?"   I muttered out loud.

"What did you say?" Taylor asked, recapping his bottle and looking up at me.

"I said, uh… 'Pathfinder'…"

His eyebrows furrowed together, "Where did you get that from…?"

"I don't know, I just… thought I heard someone say it."   I looked away from him so he wouldn't see the color flooding my face.   I didn't feel comfortably telling him the trees had told me.

Taylor closed his eyes and took a deep breath, quietly I heard him mutter something.

"What did you say?" I asked, curious about this other language to which I should belong.

"I said 'Qhipe'… 'Grandfather'."

"But, why would you say that…" Another wave of awareness washed over me, though it was without any malice whatsoever, indeed, it seemed I saw a flash in my minds eyes of a square dark face, craggy with lines and creases, folded into a warm smile.

"This is where he died.   He would often go out and walk through the forest, and my father sent me to fetch him for dinner, I had a knack for knowing exactly where he was.   Well, I walked all the way up here and found him sitting here with his head bowed as though asleep, and when I tried to rouse him, he was cold… he had passed some time earlier.

"He used to… he always called me a 'Pathfinder', like it was some official title; all it meant was that I found and followed trails easily.   But, I think… wait, you said you heard someone say it?"

"Yeah, it was like… it was like it was whispered by the trees when the wind blew through them." I said, feeling a little foolish.

"He spoke to you, and you heard him." Taylor said looking amazed again.   "I've always felt safe here, but I've never heard his voice…"

It made me uncomfortable when he looked at me like that, as though I were some shiny little thing on the shelf of a curio shop.

He looked up into the sky, and spoke clearly and purposefully, "Skwist-s khwe Jimmy Walker, Jimmy khwe hi-t'upye'."

"What was that?   I heard my name…" I asked; feeling a little unsettled.

Taylor just smiled, "Nothing, I just introduced you him and told him you're his great-grandson, though I suppose he probably already knew that…" and he laughed so loudly that it seemed as though the evergreens threw his laughter back at us like a warm reverb.   "I think he was calling you 'Pathfinder'; you're the one who's finding the paths and trails now.    Or rather, you're blazing new ones; I just find the old worn-in ones!"

I stared at him with my mouth open for a moment, then just closed my eyes and reached out with my mind…   When I reopened my eyes, for just a moment I thought I saw another figure sitting beside him on the rock looking at me with a smile, but he evanesced when I blinked.

Taylor stood up and slung his pack back over his shoulder.   "Come on, we should start moving again; I want to make it to our destination before the shower moves in this afternoon."

As we once again fell into line on a barely cut trail through the brush, I paused and looked back at the place where my great-grandfather had passed away.   No other specters presented themselves to my eyes, nothing moved except for the eagle circling in the far sky.