General William T. Sherman’s life was incredibly well documented. He even wrote a celebrated memoir. But he couldn’t talk about being a werewolf. A framework didn’t exist for him to talk about it. Who would he tell? Who would believe him? Of course he never mentioned it. But all my new questions—How had he become a werewolf? Did he have a pack? How did he cope with being a werewolf on the battlefield, surrounded by blood and aggression?—would never get answers.
He never talked about being a werewolf. If he’d wanted to reveal the information, he’d have found a way, left clues, given a sign that someone in the know—another werewolf, maybe—could interpret. But he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Shumacher. I can’t tell you. I promised I’d keep that information confidential.” Who had I promised? Sherman, I decided.
“Does this tell you what you needed to know?” she said.
“Yes. It does. Thank you.”
ROMAN SAID werewolves were slaves. Maybe some werewolves thought so, too. But they were wrong. San Francisco’s Master vampire had told me that it had been a long time since a werewolf stepped forward to lead. To speak for our kind, to take a stand. But other werewolves had stepped forward and stood up for themselves, once upon a time.
I wondered who those werewolves were, what they had done. What I would have to do. I tried not to be daunted by the task.
Sherman was the one who originally said that. He would lecture students at military academies, assuring them that their dreams of glorious battle were phantoms, destined to die in blood and horror. He’d done what he did—the burning of Atlanta, the March to the Sea—because he saw those tactics as a way to end the Civil War as decisively as possible, so such a war would never have to be fought again. Like a badass alpha wolf would.
He’d been one of those werewolf leaders, I was sure of it. I printed off a copy of his photo, the surly one, and pinned it to the wall next to my desk in my office. I could almost feel him looking at me, looking out for me, saying, “You can do it.”
Because you have to.
THE NEXT Friday, I sat in front of my microphone at the start of
I couldn’t talk about Sherman. In the month since the Chinatown adventure, I hadn’t said anything on the air about what had happened. I’d had no interest in raising questions about the existence of God and/or gods and what that meant for religion. I was not keen on igniting that firestorm, so I dodged it. I couldn’t say anything about Li Hua, the merchant’s daughter who became a slave of Kublai Khan and then a Western vampire. As much fun as I thought it would be, I didn’t invite Rick on to tell stories of Coronado, the Santa Fe Trail, and being the only vampire in North America for a hundred years.
The weight of what I wasn’t talking about pressed on me, and I didn’t know what to say. I knew too much to be able to talk. What did I do? Where did I go from here?
Matt counted down on his fingers, the on-air sign lit, my intro music—CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”—played through my headset. And away we go …
“Good evening, this is
The monitor lit up as it always did, but which still surprised me a little when it did. I skimmed the calls and punched one up that looked good—in this case, meaning one that I could actually help.
“Hello, Angela, you’re on the air.”
“Hi, Kitty? Am I really on?”
“You really are. What have you got for me?”
“Okay. Well. I’m a werewolf—I’ve been one for a few years now, and I’m doing okay. I’m part of a pack; it’s a good group most of the time. But I’ve been arguing a lot with my alphas. They’re a couple, and they’ve taken good care of me, but it seems like lately they’ve been coming down really hard on me for every little thing I do wrong. I argue with them about the stupidest things when I should just be rolling over and taking it. I’m talking back, mouthing off, calling them names, and it makes them more furious. I’m thirty years old and I feel like a teenager!”
I smiled. “Would you believe this sounds very familiar to me? I went through something similar.”
“Really? How did you handle it?”
Um, I ran away, came back with a posse, killed the alphas, and took over the pack? “It’s kind of a long story. The important thing here is that what you’re going through is normal growing pains. You’re getting more comfortable with being a werewolf, gaining confidence, and you’re starting to assert yourself. Your alphas see this and are worried about a challenge to their authority. You may even start moving up in the pecking order, and that kind of disruption is always going to make a pack’s alphas twitchy.”
“Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It explains
“I’m going to suggest you to try and deal with it as a human being instead of a wolf, and ask your alphas to do the same. I know it always sounds cheesy when I say it, but I think the three of you need to lay this out on the table in order to deal with it without anyone getting hurt. Because if they haven’t already, they may start getting physical, and that’s no fun at all. Maybe you can have lunch or dinner, tell them that you’ve noticed what’s happening, and that you want to work out the problems. Offer compromises—if they stop picking on you, you won’t make any challenges. Or maybe you can take on some responsibilities in exchange for higher status in the pack. What would be best of all is if you can somehow make them think this was all their idea.”
“Actually, I think they may listen to the show. They may figure out it’s me calling. I hope they don’t get angry…”
“Or what may happen is they’ll call you first and start the whole conversation. How about that?”
“That would be such a relief.”
“Basically, Angela, you have two choices: work something out, or leave town and go it alone.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that. I like it here, I like my pack, I really do. It’s just they make me so angry sometimes.”
“Then there’s a lot of incentive to work something out.”
“Yeah. Thank you, Kitty. I feel better.”
“I’m glad. And good luck to you.”
Sometimes I really could imagine that I was making the world a better place.
BEN PICKED me up after the show, as he sometimes did, and we drove to New Moon, as we often did, to have a couple of beers and decompress. It was a good spot to be. Billie Holiday was playing on the stereo. Shaun was bartending. Between customers he was chatting with Becky and Tom, who were two other werewolves from my pack. Seeing them there, smiling and contented, gave me a warm and happy feeling. The pack was all right. Everything was fine.
Cormac was waiting for us at our usual table in the back. He already had a beer and a basket of buffalo wings, and was leaning back in his chair, surveying the place like he owned it. My alpha Wolf should have bristled at that, seeing his appraising attitude as a challenge. But I didn’t, because he was Cormac, and while he may not have been a wolf, he was part of the pack.
