CHAPTER ONE
An old song once said, “We didn’t start the fire.” The people of Reynolds Hollow did not know, and would likely never know, what started it. All they knew was where it came from on that terrible April day, right at the start of spring, and what it did.
A forest fire or wildfire may seem to come out of nowhere, but it always has a cause. Sometimes it is nature, by way of a cruel bolt of lightning striking a log or a part of a broken tree that happens to be just dry enough to spark and ignite. But more often than not, it is the result of careless, mischievous, or deliberate human action: someone tossing a cigarette or a lit match into the brush, heedless of the consequences; or someone not putting out a campfire well enough and leaving smoldering embers in his wake.
What caused the fire would be discussed and argued in Reynolds Hollow for years, with most people coming down on the side of reckless, unthinking humans having started the blaze. Some of the people who lived in Reynolds Hollow called the fire “an act of God,” and there was some small agreement from a few of their neighbors. This was their way of absolving human beings of any responsibility for a disaster that was beyond human control.
It was always the way of some humans to shift responsibility for misfortunes onto someone or something else. There were those in Reynolds Hollow who did not take kindly to that kind of thinking, for they knew exactly the kinds of things that humans had always been responsible for, all through history.
That was why they had come to live in Reynolds Hollow in the first place. And that was why certain subjects were not brought up in certain company, or at least when they were, it was with the greatest care and tact. This prevented people from losing their temper and perhaps becoming too angry to consider the consequences of their actions. And that was what kept the people safe—except from things like this.
Reynolds Hollow lay in a valley between mountains on the east and on the west. It was from the mountains of the west that the fire came. It was a gigantic, crackling, burning monster of orange flames and grey-black smoke that moved as if with a mind and will of its own, descending the mountainside and devouring everything in its path like a colossal amoeba of ravenous flames.
Trees and undergrowth disappeared into it, and mighty cliffs of smoke rose billowing into the air behind it. The thing rolled its burning way down the slopes, and anyone who saw it might well have thought it had a mind of its own, the way it bore directly for the town nestled at the bottom of the valley. It was like a creature out of a Hollywood movie, hungry for everything it could consume, with a limitless appetite. The people of Reynolds Hollow fled their homes and businesses and took to the roads and, if they could, the stream at the approach of the beast of fire.
It was to the credit of the local firefighters and those of the nearest communities outside the valley that the worst-hit areas of the town were those at the western outskirts of the town. At that end of Reynolds Hollow, the damage was terrible. Some homes there were completely gone; others would have to be torn down and completely rebuilt. Some businesses were simply burned away or would remain vacant for a long time. There was a segment of the population that was now completely displaced, living in shelters and tents or temporarily relocated to the homes of their neighbors. The school gymnasium was converted to a makeshift shelter to accommodate some of them in the evenings after school hours, and similar provisions were made in the basements of some of the churches and the Town Hall. Some of the displaced were talking about leaving Reynolds Hollow and starting over someplace else. The Mayor and Town Council were quick to appeal to the state for relief funds, but how much the little community would receive to get back on its feet was in doubt.
Any other significant damage to the town was sparse and scattered, and mainly the result of sparks and embers that flew off the larger fire and settled on trees and rooftops beyond the main blaze where the firefighters concentrated their efforts. Some homes further into the town suffered damage, requiring sections of them to be covered over in plastic and tarpaulins, or be taken down and hauled away while awaiting repairs. These places were still mostly livable, their residents frightened, stressed both emotionally and financially, but thankfully, not completely displaced.
One such home was that of Crystal Shaw, a young girl just turning eighteen.
By any measure or standard one cared to apply, Crystal was a beauty. She was a honey-blonde with brilliant blue eyes and an equally brilliant smile. Her parents owned a tavern in a part of town that mercifully had escaped the fire, thus her family was not as hard hit as some. Crystal was popular. She belonged to a book club at school and was a member of the Varsity track team. She was long-limbed but not lanky, with curves in exactly the right places. She had a bosom, but not large and heaving breasts.
Once or twice, when they thought she could not hear, she had overheard boys speaking of her breasts as being “just the right size to grab a handful,” which she took with a mix of amusement and insult that she kept mostly to herself—though occasionally, she would cast a shady glance at one of those boys to tell them that they were not as clever as they thought they were.
Crystal’s favorite thing to do was to run. She had always loved to run ever since she was small. Her parents sometimes teased her that she was running the day after she took her first step, which she knew was an exaggeration, but it felt as if it could be true. That was one of the things that had made her so good in Phys. Ed classes, and had at one time made her consider going out for track and field.
Crystal was also good in school, a curious sort of girl whose favorite subjects were English and History. She had applied for scholarships and had it in mind to go to school out of town after she graduated. She thought perhaps she would even broaden her horizons and join the track team in college. She wanted to see bigger cities and different kinds of people, people unlike the ones she knew in Reynolds Hollow.
She wanted to know the world outside her home, to see it, smell it and taste it. Her good academics, she hoped, would carry her out there and give her a chance to experience what the world was. Her plan, now that a section of her family’s roof was burned away in the fire, was to take some time off from school to work in her parents’ tavern, and apply to colleges for the next fall term. The Shaws did have a college fund for Crystal, but they’d had to divert a portion of it to home repairs to cover the insurance deductible and the increase in their premiums that would surely follow. Delaying school for a year would give the family a chance to get back on its feet and handle whatever school expenses financial aid and a scholarship did not pay for. Crystal, knowing how fortunate she was in comparison with some people in town, decided to make the best of it.
The fire and everything that came with and after it, had diverted Crystal’s attention to how springtime was setting in so beautifully. The sorrowful sight of the scorched and blackened mountainside to the west, like a gigantic scar rising up on that side of town with its slopes of fallen and blackened trees, was in stark contrast to the way things looked to the east.
On the other side of the valley, everything had broken out in shades of green with splashes of other colors where the flowers bloomed. It was almost like the difference between day on the side where the sun rose and night on the side where it set. Except for the vista of death on the charred western mountainside, nature was waking up from its long winter sleep.
Crystal’s senior-year class schedule was lighter than it had been the first three years, as she had met most of her graduation requirements. She had opted to put some of her non-class time into volunteer work, helping with serving meals and distributing clothing and supplies to displaced residents. One day after she finished a couple of hours of volunteering at the Town Hall, Crystal stepped out onto Ryan Avenue, the Main Street of town.
For the first time since the fire, she was aware of how bright the late afternoon sunshine was now the days were getting longer, and the springtime air did not smell of smoke. She realized she had not gone out for a run since the fire struck. Smiling, she ran home with long strides, her muscles singing with how good it felt to be used that way again. And there was one more thing that would make them feel even better.
Arriving home, Crystal took her backpack from her bedroom and sped out the back door past her mother, who was busy preparing dinner and told her not to be too long. At once, she was in the backyard and did not bother to look behind her and up at the section of the roof that was blackened at the edges and covered over in plastic and duct tape and tarpaulins to stop the rain getting into the attic and leaking into the rest of the house.
She had no time for depressing sights now. Before dinner that day she felt would work up an appetite by indulging in something she had been doing much too little lately. She bolted from the backyard and through the field on the other side of it, making for the edge of the forest of the eastern mountains beyond. With every bound she took, her heart leaped in time.
Soon she was in the forest, drinking in its smell and relishing the cool shade of the blooming trees. Crystal paused at one tree at the bottom of a hill from whose other side she could hear the rush and babble of water. She hung her backpack on a branch that some stiff gale had conveniently snapped, and began to strip off her clothes and stuff them into the backpack, making her lean and taut eighteen-year-old girl body naked to the cooling spring air. She carefully zipped up the pack and turned on the heel of one bare foot to face the hillside. Her skin flushed and goose-pimpled slightly. This was only the beginning of her change.
Crystal’s body stooped forward. The locks of honey-blonde hair that rolled halfway down her back, which she would put up when she was competing, disappeared, and her entire nude body broke out into thick brown and grey fur. Her limbs, shoulders, and back changed form, and she turned from a creature of two legs to a creature of four. Her hands and feet became large, padded paws. She sprouted a tail, and her human head morphed to that of a large and powerful canine. Thus, rendered from human to wolf, Crystal was ready to give herself a real and proper run.
With an enthusiastic snuffle from her wolf snout, Crystal took off up the hill, her long furry legs carrying her up the incline as fast as a spring breeze. As much as she loved to run in her human form, it was running this way that filled her with a joy that only a wolf in the embrace of nature could feel. She reached the summit of the hill and started to bound along the hilltop, racing with the rushing water of the stream at the bottom of the other side.
Her fanged mouth hung open, and her wolf tongue lolled slightly out. This was the perfect day for a run, and it was exactly what Crystal needed. She picked up her pace, running faster than the water, and began to race and bound her way down the other side of the hill towards the gravelly bed of the stream, her paws beating exuberantly on the ground. In seconds, she was down the hill and taking full, sinewy strides along the edge of the stream, filling her nose and all her senses with awakened nature. It was then that she sensed, and saw, that she was not alone. Further down the stream in the direction she was running, in the shallow part of the stream, there was a shape.
Crystal slowed down, sniffing the air and training her eyes on the shape wading in the stream. It was bigger than she was, and covered with charcoal-grey and black fur. She came to a walking gait, studying the figure that turned around, sensing her as she had sensed it. This was another wolf and, from the scent of him, definitely another werewolf. She could distinctly pick up the morphing hormones from him—yes, him. This was a male.
The grey-black werewolf watched Crystal through amber eyes that looked shocking, set into his dark shape. She came to a stop, strangely riveted by the sight of him. He shifted his body enough to keep himself in a wolfen form while turning from four-legged to two-legged, and rose up out of the water to what Crystal guessed was a height of about six feet. Crystal sniffed at him again. She knew all the male lycans in town, and this was not one of them. This was one she had never seen or scented until now—a stranger. What was he doing here?
As Crystal watched, the now bipedal lycan shrugged his head slightly and began to release his wolf body. His head and ears morphed, his tail receded, his fur vanished as if absorbed into his skin, until what stood before Crystal was the most incredible-looking naked male she had ever seen. His stubble-shadowed face was ridiculously handsome; he looked as if he belonged in the soap operas that she sometimes watched with her mother. His brown hair was almost as dark as his wolf fur was. His muscles were like something out of a fitness magazine. The mighty columns of his legs were dusted with hair. The broad chest sported slabs of pecs and rocks of abs with luxuriously bristling hair spreading and cascading all the way down his torso. Hanging from his crotch was a long, thick, uncircumcised limb of maleness with a head like a mushroom cap. He put his hands on his hips and just stood there, looking at Crystal from the ambling waters of the stream.
As much as she was a wolf, Crystal felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights. She could not move. Being in the gaze of the most phenomenally beautiful-looking man she had ever seen in her life, who had just morphed out of the body of a powerfully built grey-black wolf, had her pinned to the spot. In the way that most humans considered her kind a myth, she could hardly believe this man existed.
He shifted a bit, putting all his weight on one leg in the way that Crystal had seen in ancient Greek statues, and his motion sent a sudden jolt through her body. She let out a yelp and became a blur of hair and fur, scampering off the way she came down the bank of the stream, her paws making skittering and crunching sounds as she breathlessly shot away.
The naked man in the stream watched Crystal streak off into the distance and go tearing back up the hill, over which she disappeared. He shook his head, a sparkle in his hazel eyes, and lifted the corner of his lips into a wry smile. In the back of his mind lurked the thought of running after the little wolf female who had just been so transfixed to see him. Though she had vanished up the hill, he could easily pick up her scent and perhaps even catch up with her in spite of the considerable head start she had.
He wondered how she looked when she was human. From the look of her as a wolf, he could guess that she was young—likely very young. She was not a pup, but she was not his age. She was a young one, perhaps even a virginal one. The idea of being spotted in his naked human form by a virgin female lycan intrigued him—more than intrigued him.
Soon, he would have business in Reynolds Hollow on the other side of that hill. Perhaps he would see her again. Perhaps he would even seek her out. The question was, how would he know which female in the town was that girl? He could go the way she had run and pick up her scent well enough, but that would tell him only her scent in that body. Her human scent would be different. He could walk within an arm’s length of her in her human body and never be the wiser.
Be that as it may, the time was drawing near for him to visit the town, and when he was there, he would be seeing any number of females. He would see females of different ages and no doubt different experiences when he and his pack approached the people of Reynolds Hollow with their business that would prove so critical to the future of both his pack and the town. Yes, in another day, perhaps two, he would have business in the little community on the other side of the stream, and any number of things about the future—especially his own future—would then be decided.
He shrugged his shoulders and let his human body go. Returning to the flesh and fur of a grey-black wolf, he sank back into the stream and paddled his way back across it. Time would tell what time would tell.
The feeling of being charged with lightning stayed with Crystal every step of her run back to the tree where she had left her backpack. Shifting back to human, she continued panting like a wolf while throwing on her clothes faster than she had ever dressed in her life. Once fully dressed, she gave out a long, hard puff, fell against the tree, and sat there, breathing heavily, her mind reeling from what had happened at the stream.
Leaning back on the tree trunk, Crystal shut her eyes and tried to gather her wits, but in the dark behind her eyelids, the image of the lycan hunk in the water remained as if it had been burned there. She almost whined like a frightened wolf at the picture that would not leave her mind.
And she honestly asked herself why she felt the way she did. Granted, the man was a creature of mythical masculine beauty. And yes, he was stark naked—but what of it? Crystal was not a human being. She was a member of a community of werewolves, and her kind did not share the fear, shame, and loathing of the body that so inhibited and encumbered humans. As they had to make themselves naked, often in the presence of other lycans, before becoming wolves and then after leaving their wolf forms, the concept of body shame was one that her people had discarded ages ago as a senseless, irrational human folly.
She had seen naked boys and naked men all her life while out playing with other lycans in the forest and the meadows and the stream. She knew the way a naked male body looked. She knew how a boy’s or a man’s body differed from hers. And she had been raised without any taboos about nudity. So why then did the sight of this one man—this one spectacularly naked specimen of manhood—unsettle her so?
Was it only that she was unprepared for him, that she had come upon him by surprise? Was it that he was a stranger, someone she had never seen before in town—likely someone from the eastern mountains? Crystal thought about this latter idea. She knew that while there was not a regular werewolf community in the eastern mountains—in fact the only community where her kind lived in this area was in Reynolds Hollow, and they shared it with humans—there were those who frequented those mountains.
She had heard about them, heard her parents and other people in town talking about them. From what Crystal remembered, they were a pack who traveled rather than a pack who lived in just one place. They were originally from around here, but they had left, gone out into the world where there were mostly humans; however, they periodically returned to these mountains, to the valley, and even at times visited Reynolds Hollow. She tried to remember other things that she had heard about them, but the thoughts were a tumbling jumble in her head just now, sent into a spin by the lingering memory of that one werewolf standing in the water.
Crystal guessed that the one she saw was one of them, a member of the traveling pack, returned for a visit. Odds were that he had not come alone. When werewolves traveled, it was almost always at least in pairs if not greater numbers. If this one was here, others of his pack—perhaps even the whole pack—might be here as well. Perhaps she would see them in town in the days ahead. Perhaps she would even see him again.
She wondered if he wanted to see the werewolf from the stream again. On some level, she certainly did. What healthy female werewolf would not want to lay eyes on that specimen again? What healthy woman would not want to feast her eyes on that slab of magnificent manhood again? Truth to tell, she had a few male classmates who would welcome the sight.
Of course, if she saw him in town, he would doubtless be both human and fully dressed. Still, she found she had no objection to having another look at him in any state, man or wolf, clothed or nude. Then it occurred to her that he was older than she was. Whoever she had spied, he was not a high school boy or even a college boy. What if he was…thirty? Crystal made a sickly expression at the thought of having looked at someone naked who might actually be that old. Was he really thirty? Or even older?
She shook her head. She had not had sex yet, but suddenly she felt so utterly virginal, the embarrassment of it made her want to go and crawl into the bushes and not come out. If this man were really that old, and if he really lived out in the human world, he had surely been to bed with dozens of females, both their kind and human. Perhaps many dozens. He was older, he had a werewolf’s looks and a werewolf’s sex drives, and he was very, very experienced.
And Crystal had found herself looking right at him in the very state in which he was prepared to do what a male werewolf liked to do best.
She frowned, shook her head again, and hoped that when he looked at her, he did not think of her in that way. Perhaps it would be better, all things considered, if she did not see this particular werewolf again. Let him come to town as he liked, if he liked. Just let him turn his attention to some other female of Reynolds Hollow, a female who was not just turning eighteen.
Crystal picked herself up from the ground and brushed off her jeans, resolved that she need never set eyes on the werewolf from the stream again. She had things to look forward to that had nothing to do with possibly thirty-year-old lycans. Taking her backpack from the branch, she set her mind on other things, and at a trotting pace, she headed home.