Bewere the Night

trying to make it right.”

She stroked a hand down the side of my furry neck. Then she slipped the chain off and I heard her begin her own change, clothes ripping.

I did the one useful thing that occurred to me. I filled my lungs, reeled my head back, and howled.

Other howls responded, closer now. I strained to listen and heard them brushing against undergrowth in the woods. I howled again. A dozen gray wolves charged from the hedgerow into the gravel lot and bodies of red and gray clashed in growling whirlwinds beneath the brightness of the full moon. I couldn’t tell which were loyal to the alphas and which were loyal to the packs.

Peter, now a huge red wolf with a dark muzzle, watched me. His fur twitched once, and half a heartbeat later he bolted for David, who’d been handcuffed to a parked car and was trying desperately to get away.

A small red wolf darted past me and hopped on Peter’s back, biting at his face and snarling like a demon.

I ran to Ginny, who had changed and gnashed her teeth like she had gone mad, spittle flying from her mouth. She was bigger than me, the gray wolf. Her injured foreleg was still bandaged. I nosed towards her but she snapped at me and I backpedaled and then she saw Mae, the only human standing.

I smelled something foul and swiveled my ear towards Mae, hearing a hiss of aerosol. Mae sprayed something from a small perfume bottle. I bared my teeth at the rotting stench of vampire odor, but I was able to control my predatory urge to rush her.

Ginny wasn’t.

She charged Mae. I blocked her path. I didn’t want to hurt her but she snapped at my throat and got a mouthful of fur as I flinched away. I didn’t want her to hurt me. I caught her on the injured foreleg and bit through the bandages; she yelped in pain and kicked me loose.

She rushed at Mae again.

I jumped on her back, letting instinct lead me, and clamped down on the back of her neck with my jaws. Please, I begged silently, please stop.

I held her with my teeth as the battle raged around us. Wolves stalked towards us but never reached us, either blocked by another dogfight or engaged in one by Jules’s supporters.

Ginny raged beneath me like a gray hurricane, but I clamped down harder and prayed that she’d snap out of it. She was stronger than me but her leg was lame and I’d pinned her.

I had no idea how long the drug-induced rage lasted. I tried to think back to the video recording of last night. It hadn’t lasted long, had it? Seemed like hours now.

My jaw ached, threatening to lock up. Ginny settled down and I must have dropped my guard because she wrenched free and spun on me, black lips peeled back from deadly fangs. I wasn’t quick enough. She bit down on my throat and rolled me onto my back. Her growl vibrated against my neck.

She had me. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable crush of my windpipe. Or was it the jugular first? I clung to the memory of last night’s tenderness. I wanted that to be my final thought in life. Joy, not pain, not betrayal.

The sounds of fighting faded around me, as did Ginny’s growling. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Instead of oblivion, the jaws lifted and a wet nose pressed against my face a moment later. I wasn’t dead. I squinted one eye open.

The gray wolf licked it.

When I regained consciousness, I had my jaws around a red wolf’s throat. Was I fighting or asserting dominance? Not knowing frightened me.

The red wolf smelled like pine boughs and pumpkin seeds. Claire. Oh, God. I pulled away immediately and searched for signs she was all right. She seemed to be.

I scanned the area. Were we in danger? I smelled Seeonee, but other wolves too, and blood, and anger. A large black-muzzled male lay bleeding out beneath the shadow of a parked car. A human lay slumped and bleeding against the same car.

In the distance I saw another car’s taillights receding and heard the boom of an accelerating engine. The stink of vampires faded in a whiff of car exhaust.

Claire nudged me to my feet, though my foreleg threatened to give way beneath me. She sniffed at my face and I smelled a mixture of worry and relief on her. She was a wolf but … she seemed aware. She wasn’t impeded by her infection at all.

One by one, wolves—all except the dead—shifted back to human form, the moon’s demand sated for another month. When I shifted back, I wobbled and sat in the dirt, my head swimming. Claire wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me so hard it almost hurt.

Almost.

I sat in the waiting room of the clinic while Ginny got dressed in the medical wing. The doctors had checked her thoroughly; she’d been so pumped full of drugs.

Jules came back from speaking with the toxicologist and sat on the plastic chair beside mine with a sigh. “Peter’s dead and hell if I know where Mae ran off to. If we catch her, she’s dead. But that’s really Geneva’s call.”

I didn’t know what to say. My first reaction was to protest talk of execution, but the world and its rules were different for me now.

“David is still alive,” Jules added. “Infected. But if he wants our drugs, he’s welcome to them. I doubt we’ll see the human backlash Mae and Peter dreamed up.”

“I’ve had enough of your drugs to last a lifetime,” I said.

She nodded, not meeting my gaze. “But that’s what I can offer you.” She reached into the pocket of her torn jeans and pulled out a prescription bottle. “If you want them.”

“More sedatives?” The wolf inside me bristled.

“No,” she said, balancing the bottle on the armrest of my chair. “What I gave you tonight. Clarity of the natural-born. I can’t take back what I did to you, but I can … I can make it easier.”

“Thanks,” I said quietly, not sure what else to say. I watched the others—Seeonee or Rothschild, in human form I couldn’t tell them apart—filter out from the exam rooms. They looked tired, and sad. They stayed close together, like they were waiting for something.

“I am so sorry for everything,” Jules said. She scrubbed her face with her hands, looking exhausted. “Jesus, what a day.”

“Jules?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. I squeezed her shoulder in gratitude and stood, going into the back of the clinic. I wasn’t content to wait anymore.

Ginny came out into the sterile hallway. She smiled at me, that dimpled smile, and I couldn’t wait the length of the corridor. I ran to her and threw my arms around her, claiming her mouth with a kiss. She wrapped her good arm around my neck and tangled her fingers in my hair.

“I had a feeling you were coming for me,” she said.

“Jules has these pills,” I blurted out. “She’s going to offer them to infected werewolves, to keep control during the change and I … I was wondering if … but I won’t if you don’t want me to pretend to be—” She gently tugged my hair, bit her bottom lip in a wicked grin, and I stopped rambling. “If you’re going to be a Seeonee wolf,” she said, “you might as well do it properly.”

I smiled at that. I pushed her through the nearest door and when we were alone, she lowered her good hand to my hip and pulled me against her.

“Good to know you’re not an elitist,” I said.

I flicked off the fluorescent light and let our hands and noses and mouths take over in the ensuing darkness. My mate’s scent bewitched me and I breathed it in: cinnamon, woodsmoke, and a November breeze.

THE SINEWS OF HIS HEART by Melissa Yuan-Innes