The Thing About Weres

nasty. In the perhaps ten seconds it took me to recollect our problems with the NAW, a fight broke out. One of the visiting wolves snapped the air in frustration, stirring the aggression of another, who chose to respond by turning to mount one of the Creemore wolves. Well, no self-respecting, Maple Leaf-loving Were would stand for that. With a snarl, the offended wolf pivoted and lunged, jaws agape.

“Stop!” I yelled.

It was like I hollered “Go!” instead. In the blink of an eye, the two-dog spat became a tail-bristling, teeth- baring, three-dog tussle as another wolf leaped into the fray. Before the fight instinct swept through the ranks, Harry barreled through the pack, cutting through the milling wolves like a hot knife through butter. He leaped—all one hundred and fifty pounds of graying fur and stringy muscle—bringing down one wolf who broke away with a yelp. Then, he spun for the next. They postured for a second. Noses crinkled, napes bristling. The other wolf was younger by decades, and leaner in a way that spoke of sly strength.

Cordelia’s paws did a prelunge cha-cha.

Time to flare, time to flare.

Not for the first time, I wished flaring really were as easy as pulling a bunny out of a hat. It’s more complicated than that. First, you need to be stirred by a strong feeling. Fear, love, hatred, pain …

Quickly, I pulled up Trowbridge’s face—sharp cheekbones and long curly black hair—and was rewarded by an almost immediate burn in my eyes. Almost there. I thought about his scent, wrapping around me, slipping along my skin, filling in my pores. Yes. I could feel the throb of the green comets spinning around my dark pupils. And now, for the presto! I remembered the moment I’d shoved his limp body into the Gates of Merenwyn. How his fingers had twitched as the portal’s suction had pulled him deeper into its maw.

And I flared.

Light—green-blue and electric—spilled from my eyes.

Need a visual? Think Superman. Perhaps a little more diffused. His gaze is a pulsing beam complete with vibrating sound effects, right? Mine’s cone shaped and silent. Also, unlike the Man of Steel, I’ve never really found my talent particularly useful. It can’t do cool stuff like melt something into a puddle of metal, or lift a tank. Okay, come to think of it, my flare is nothing like Superman’s.

Bottom line, my light amounts to the pack’s music—its touch soothed the savage breast. Or more literally, their savage beasts.

I swept my gaze over the transfixed pack. The younger ones lifted their heads to my caress, as if it were a blessing from their favorite rock star. The rest did a collective canine shudder of pleasure. Yup, puppy Prozac, that’s what my talent amounts to. I kept it moving, touching briefly on furry flanks, skimming tips of pointed ears. Never focusing directly, never landing too long on one spot. The trick was to wash their bodies with the gentle touch of my soothing blue-green light.

Harry limped toward the woods.

“The moon is calling you,” I said, in pretty much the same soft but firm tone my mum used to say, “Time for bed.”

From the head of the trail, Harry issued an imperative bark. The wolves turned and funneled toward the path, tails lifted, tongues peeping through happy lips.

Hurry up. My eyes are burning.

This was the point they all were supposed to melt into the trees to chase a few rabbits and run down an unfortunate deer. Instead, they inexplicably lingered, a logjam of wolves near the mouth of the forest. Jostling each other. Milling about. Anticipation crackled in the air, the way it might before the hunt master lifts the lid on the fox’s cage.

“Animals,” I heard my Fae murmur.

My Fae is talking in my head again.

Oh Fae Stars, shut up.

Because we had problems. The pack wasn’t melting into the woods. Safely out of the range of my flare, the energy that had fouled the mood earlier started to percolate again. Golden eyes turned back toward the near- empty field, their feral attention centered on the group of four wolves who stood in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder wedge. George Danvers was in the lead. He lifted his snout, and let a little lip show.

Oh no he didn’t.

“The moon is calling you,” I said more firmly.

A low growl, from deep in his throat.

Oh yes he did.

Up until then, I’d never been frightened around the pack. Well, not since the first night when I watched them back up the trailer on the Stronghold ridge. And though, over the last six months, I’d intuited an evolution of emotions from them—curiosity, unease, distaste, and more recently, faint flashes of cloaked dislike—the slow diminishment of their good opinion hadn’t really impacted me. My feelings had been simple. They exist, I exist. We try to exist together as we wait for Trowbridge to return.

Until now.

The first faint stirring of real fear trailed icy fingers down the knobs of my spine and poked a hooked nail at my shivering Were. No help from my inner-bitch. Hoping to crank up the wattage on my flare, I pulled up a memory—one that I usually tried to stifle—of Dawn Danvers, the girl I dispatched to doggy heaven six months ago. Not of her face as she lost her life—that was a thing of my nightmares. Instead, I thought of the way she wanted to hurt me and mine. Of the anger and naked aggression in her face as she stalked over to where I held my lover braced in my arms. And how I’d grimly vowed, “None will hurt this man.”

The recall of it stirred my own aggression, perhaps a little better than I anticipated. My flare sharpened, no longer a gentle hand smoothing their pelts. Claws extruded. Languid strokes turned into a heavy hand pressing on those who dared to challenge.

“Yes,” hissed my Fae.

Danvers’s muzzle crinkled but he stood firm under my censure, stiff-legged in front of his wolf brethren. Submit. Despite a few growls of disapproval from the watching pack, I didn’t dare soften my focus. I kept my angry eyes resting on that group until they trembled and every last one of them sank to their bellies, including the oh-so-aggressive George.

Mutiny quelled. I released a bit of the inner heat and let my cooling gaze drift over them, waiting until their scents joined into one collective aroma of forest and wild, then I let my flare peter out, softly, like the last flicker of a blue flame before the fire turned into a spiraling wisp of gray smoke.

Turns out, my relief was premature.

No sooner had my light dribbled away than George rolled upright. He stood, feet firmly planted, his eyes steady on my own watering ones. Tail fat, and quivering. From where I stood, the thought bubble over his head either read “Chew” or possibly “I shall rend the Fae-bitch’s flesh into itty-bitty pieces.”

Whoops.

George charged.

It was instinctive. I’ve looked back at it over and over again, and it’s always come down to that. As the old wolf with more balls than brains streaked for me, three things happened relatively simultaneously.

My Were screamed “Danger!,” my Fae magic hissed “Murder!,” and my right hand sprang out. Without pausing, without asking, without even waiting to be told, the essence of my Fae self streamed from fingertips in a long coil of fluorescent green. Before Cordelia or Harry could run interference, it surged across the field and intercepted George Danvers with a bitch-slap of purely epic Fae proportions.

The impact lifted the brown and buff wolf off his feet. Back legs pedaling, he dangled some five feet in the air, held aloft by my invisible rope of magic.

“Detach!”

My Fae serpent of doom gave one last squeeze then tossed the wolf. Old George did an undignified tuck and roll in mid-space then landed on his left flank in the clover with a high piercing whine.

Amazing how fast an old wolf can move when motivated. He scrambled onto all four paws then tore across the field toward the safety of his brethren, followed by his wife, his son, and some other wolf whose identity I never did nail down.

Oh crap.