Chapter 5
Two bunnies is more than I really wanted, but when you kill something, you have to make that death meaningful. I take the second bunny to the pups, who would much rather fight over a still-warm bunny than a spit-covered cheese chew.
As soon as I sneak into the basement, Kayla catches me.
“John knows you’ve been stealing,” Kayla says, leaning against the entrance to the basement. “They smelled you in the med station.”
“Hey, Kayla. I’ve missed you too. I’m not stealing. I’m giving Pack supplies to a potential Pack member.”
“If you’d really thought that way, you would’ve simply asked rather than sneaking.”
There’s a reason Kayla was picked to become my echelon’s lawyer.
When we first settled here, our Alpha decided that we needed specialists to help us deal with the human world. At first, we had doctors and lawyers. Now we have doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, fund managers, hackers, and more lawyers. Every echelon has at least one. Lawyer, that is. But they’re all here to protect us. They work to make sure that every i is dotted, every t crossed, every p and q is minded, so we are never vulnerable.
Anyone who gets a thirty-page contract for the sale of a used coffee maker is dealing with Pack.
Luckily, Kayla likes me. She watches out for me. Slightly older and a lot bigger, she always set aside a rib with a bit of meat still clinging to it from the bigger kills.
“So tell me, what’s he like? The Shifter. Do they stink like humans even when they’re wild?”
“He’s still healing, so I haven’t seen him wild.” Kayla doesn’t need to know that he’s healed, and all I know is that he can probably change. My stomach clenches around my bunny breakfast. “But I think…I think Shifters may have become carrion eaters? I brought him a really nice, fat bunny, and he refused to eat it.” I put a bag of pistachios in the bag. “He wanted bacon.”
“Gross,” she says, her nose wrinkled in a grimace, but then she leans in closer, sniffing delicately at the air near my ear. “You’re receptive. Do you think maybe he’d cover you?”
I ignore her; she’s just being a jerk. “Do you know where those dried marinated tempeh strips are?”
“No idea. But I’m being serious. They’re not like us. Tessa said she heard Shifters will even”—her voice drops—“cover humans.” She pulls an elastic tie from her wrist and loops it around her thick auburn hair. “I mean, if they’ll cover humans, they’ll cover anything.”
Funnily enough, I do consider Kayla to be my friend.
I finally find the dried marinated tempeh strips. The ones we use for bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches.
* * *
An otter bites down on a bullhead with a satisfying crunch. The red-edged sugar maple gives way to tamaracks that are in that beautiful and especially short phase between summer green and autumn gold. Even in skin, a lot of animals either run from me or go silent, because whatever I look like, I smell like something that will hunt them.
My hearing isn’t great in skin, but under the endless honking of the geese heading to that other home, I hear an unusual sound. Something big is fumbling around in the distance. I can tell it’s not running away. Bears will, when they scent us. Probably moose. We’re reintroducing them, but John says we’re not to hunt them until the population is truly self-sustaining. They’ve gotten pretty complacent, which is putting a strain on tempers and appetites across the Pack.
But the longer I listen, the more certain I am it’s not moose. I think it’s bear, and a badly injured one. Clambering up one outcropping, I take off my clothes and fold them into my backpack, then I hang it over the highest branch I can reach. I start quietly and carefully toward my prey.
If its injuries aren’t too bad, I will call the Pack. But if it’s as badly wounded as it sounds, I will hunt it myself.
Creeping around the bog mats near Beaver Pond is tricky. Never can be sure when you’re just going to slip right in, which would alert my bear. Once I get close enough, I realize the wound must be mortal—a bolt maybe. It will be a kindness to put it out of its misery.
What bullshit. All I care about is a chance at the blood-rich chewiness of bear heart. Which I will eat all by myself before I call the Pack. If I weren’t so full, I’d eat a lung too, just because those choice bits are always long gone by the time I get to any kill.
Under cover of laurel bush, I finally get a good glimpse of my prey across the inlet. It is the size and color of a black bear, but with the long muzzle, slim face, pointed ears, narrow torso, and tail of a wolf. His teeth shine, sharp in enormous jaws. His thighs are coiled muscle above huge paws. His coat is the color of midnight and thickening beautifully, like an autumn coat should. He smells of wild and steel.
Tiberius is quite simply the most glorious wolf I have ever seen. Or would be, if he were stuffed with sawdust on a metal armature and mounted in a prettily painted diorama surrounded by glass and sticky-fingered children.
Here, he is an abomination. His legs are splayed out to the sides. His head sticks up high like a horse. His back is curved the wrong way, and his tail drags along the ground.
“Hey!” I yell. “That’s beaver water.”
He looks at me with those gold-flecked obsidian eyes.
“Who drinks beaver water?”
He makes some peculiar motions with his mouth before snapping his jaws shut. He tries to walk toward me.
His back legs move forward one at a time until they meet with his front paws. He hobbles forward with a kind of little old man shuffle. He stops and rewinds and begins again.
We are so toast.
The little bones in my feet start to lengthen, and I fall to the ground, my body contorting, the world fading from my consciousness, but the moment my change is over, I race around and snip at his flank to nudge one of his legs farther under him. He bats me with his head and falls straight to the ground.
I prod him with my nose until he gets up again. This time, I stand back. Clearly, the first thing that needs to be fixed is his leg position. He stands like a nursling, with his paws wide apart. Makes me wonder when he last shifted.
This time, I swing my head, bumping against his legs. I pull my own bum leg down as far as I can. It doesn’t matter that a tearing pain shoots through my hip. I have to be able to show him what a proper wolf stride is supposed to look like, with his legs nearly lined up straight down the center of his chest.
I walk slowly in front of him. Rear right paw forward to meet the front right paw, which then moves forward, while the left rear paw moves forward, then left front paw. I bark at him, trying to encourage him to move, but he startles and his hind legs wobble, and he sits on his tail, mystified. He holds up his paws, first one then the other, and opens his mouth, his tongue flapping and his gums slapping, like he expects something to come out.
I slump down on a bed of soft moss, watching my life flash before my eyes, followed in quick succession by a roly poly and an oblivious shrew. I bat at the shrew. They’re not particularly good eating, because their spit tastes bad and numbs the tongue, but I can’t help myself and bat at it again. And again. And then I’m up on my paws and running around and herding the angry shrew toward Ti. Maybe all he needs is prey to get him up and moving.
He hasn’t had much to eat, and I hear his stomach grumble, but he shows no interest in hunting the shrew. Maybe…I hold its hind quarters under my paw and bite off its head, so Ti can eat it without having to deal with shrew spit.
He just stares at me forlornly and then jerks to the side and stumbles away.
What a crappy wolf.
Available February 2018