Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
My name is Claire.
Four months ago, Jules told me she was a werewolf. We were already sleeping together. She should have known better, but I should have been more careful.
Lycanthropy, unless you’re born with it, is debilitating. Contracting it is easier than you think, even when you’re just experimenting with some rough play in the bedroom.
It’s all in the bite.
I went to the clinic—not just any clinic,
the
clinic, if you’re connected enough to find it—to get tested. The clinic’s only open at night, catering to the sensitivities of their clientele.
The test was just a smokescreen, my way of trying to cross paths with the Seeonee Pack.
I sat by myself, reading a pamphlet on lycanthropy. Jules had sworn to me it wasn’t a disease, but she’d been born with it. She could control it. I couldn’t. So, every full moon, her pack pumped me full of sedatives and muscle relaxants to keep me from changing. The Rothschild Pack ran a pharmaceutical company.
The clinic’s pamphlet talked about smells and instincts, about tapping into the primitive brain of the human psyche, all neatly arranged in bullet point factoids.
A nasty mechanical smell drifted from where the vampires sat, reeking of preservatives and rotten fruit.
I closed my eyes and focused on smells coming from the other side of the clinic instead, smells that reminded me of childhood trips to my grandparents’ farm: muddy creek water and cedar wood shavings. Comforting and familiar. The smells of a pack.
A clean, earthy smell came closer. Cinnamon, woodsmoke, and a November breeze. The plastic cushions of the bench shifted as someone sat beside me.
I opened my eyes and flinched when I saw how close she’d sat. She was early twenties, same as me. Her auburn hair had that short, tousled, bedhead look that I was pretty sure had taken an hour to style. Her amber eyes reminded me of white wine. Moon earrings jingled from her lobes, matching the long necklaces that draped over the cleavage her spaghetti-strap top displayed.
Her face dimpled with a devil-may-care smile and I instantly felt small and pathetic by comparison. She was gorgeous. I realized I was staring. My face heated with a blush and I instinctively looked away.
“Hi. You’re all alone. I’m Ginny Donnelly; would you like to come sit with us?” She gestured to the group from whom the earthy smells emanated.
“Please,” I said, and introduced myself.
“We’re the Seeonee,” she said. “Named so for
The Jungle Book
.”
“Never read it,” I said. I hoped I didn’t show reaction, even though my heart skipped a beat. I’d found them.
She tilted her head to one side, hair and earrings tumbling in the appropriate direction. “Really? You should. It’s one of my favorites.”
Her pack stood as we approached, and they all pressed in around me, touching my shoulders, shaking hands. Ginny pressed me forward to the only packmember still sitting, a pregnant woman of about fifty, golden trinkets interwoven in her salt-and-pepper hair.
“Mae is our pack leader,” Ginny said. “Her obstetrician works here.”
She turned to Mae. “Mom, this is Claire.”
“A new friend, Geneva?” I detected a note of criticism, but Mae reached her hand out and pulled me down next to her on the seat. “I smell you’re new to the wolf magic. Thankfully you don’t look harmed.”
Catching lycanthropy was normally a violent act, like being impregnated by way of rape, the pamphlet in my hand had told me.
“N-no, nothing like that,” I said. “It was an accident.” Should I be so nervous? What happened to a lone wolf when she encroached on a pack’s territory? The Rothschilds had kept me in the dark.
“Who infected you?” Ginny asked, sitting down on my other side.
Jules had instructed me to be honest with them. About anything except the plan. “My girlfriend.”
There was a subtle shift in Ginny’s posture. “What’s her name? We might know her.”
“Um,” I said, “Julia Straus.”
Mae and Geneva didn’t know her, but they asked the others. A boy with spiked hair nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve heard of her. She’s with the Rothschild Pack.”
Mae grumbled beside me. “Oh, them.”
I looked at Ginny, feigning ignorance.
“They’re a territorial rival of ours,” she explained. “They’ve recently been encroaching on Seeonee hunting ground.”
I absently watched the vampires across the room, not wanting to betray that I already knew that. My ears and nose, however, were busy sifting out the individuals of the Seeonee beyond Ginny’s clean autumnal scent.
“Does that make me a Rothschild?”
“Nah,” Ginny said, patting me on the back. I roused at the touch but stayed quiet. “You’re free to do as you want.”
Was I crazy? Why had I agreed to do this?
I was only dimly aware of a gothed-up vampire hissing at me from across the room.
“Never mind them,” Mae said quietly. “We don’t associate with that kind.”
I didn’t lower my gaze from the vampire staring back at me; a cold oily feeling poured down my spine. I’d never been a confrontational person, but I didn’t break eye contact with him, not until I heard the nurse call my name, crisp and clear.
When I stood, Ginny stood with me. “Can I go in with you?”
I nodded. We went into the back room where a nurse in scrubs took my height and weight, blood pressure, and a blood sample.
Ginny took out a length of looped string from her pocket and we played Cat’s Cradle while we waited, sitting cross-legged on the exam bed. She wore her sleeves over her palms, the same way I did with the cuffs of my hoodie, and I liked that about her.
No
, I told myself,
don’t get sappy
. The Rothschilds had told me these people hated anyone who wasn’t a natural-born. I didn’t know why Ginny was being nice to me, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to make a friend.
“So, you come here often?” I asked.
She laughed. “A pick-up line? I’m disappointed.”
I blushed furiously. “No, that’s not what—”
“I know,” she said, amused. “It just sounded funny. Yes, this is our one-stop shop for healthcare. We have to put up with the awful vampire smell but at least this way we can take note of which ones are in our territory. So, your mate let you go alone?”
“What?”
“Julia. She didn’t come with you to the clinic,” she said. Her expression turned serious.
“She’s not my mate,” I said, suddenly defensive.
“But you said she’s your girlfriend.”
“Well, yeah. Sure, I guess.”
“Oh,” she said, and avoided my gaze. “I’m sorry, I just assumed. I guess it’s a lupine thing. Sometimes I forget it’s not human nature to mate for life—I mean, you have to admit, people are flakes.”
“I guess,” I said. I suddenly hated that she was being nice to me.
When they came back with my test results and started explaining options and lifestyle changes, I didn’t understand why it hit me so hard. Maybe I’d held out some fool’s hope that this test would tell me it was all just a false-positive. That I was normal after all. I don’t know. All I knew was that Jules had done it to me. By accident, but it happened all the same.
I questioned helping the Rothschilds take over the territory. They hadn’t told me what I was supposed to do, exactly, except that I had to be among the Seeonee when I changed for the first time.
I had a week to get used to the idea.
My name is Geneva.
I carry in my veins the last legacy of Ireland’s wolves since Oliver Cromwell’s campaign of slaughter destroyed the packs all those centuries ago. We Donnellys aren’t strictly Irish, not anymore. Donnelly blood mingled with the American timber wolf and eventually the pack changed its name from Donnelly to Seeonee. I’m third-generation. Also, my mom’s Italian.
Even though a Donnelly bite can infect, we protect people who live in our territory. That includes culling the number of infected weres in the area, lest they run around spreading mayhem.
The problem started when Mae got pregnant, around the time my dad died, and her wolf magic went dormant. It only made sense that our rivals would try to murder the Seeonee’s alpha in her vulnerable state. We had a choice. We could spend nine months wearing ourselves out, worrying that at any moment we’d be attacked, wage fights and risk vampiric infection or death.
Or we could kill a human.
The human community would respond with all the fury of modern technology and send all of us—including our enemies—underground. I’d argued long and hard over the implications of the humans hunting us and our cousins the wolves, but it was all for nothing.
Mae suggested that if we could get an outsider to do the deed, we wouldn’t have to sacrifice any pack members as the culprit. We had no control over vampires, but we could dupe a hapless infected werewolf, serve them up to the humans and rid ourselves of a potential troublemaker all at once.
It was the will of the pack. That’s why, against my better judgment, I went to the clinic in search of a patsy.
And I hated myself for finding Claire.
The clinic gave me some pills. Some sort of suppressant that was nowhere near as strong as the Rothschild sedatives—which I was no longer taking. At the next full moon, the change would hit me no matter what.
A few days later Ginny, who’d gotten my cell number at the clinic, called and asked me to meet her for lunch. We met at a sandwich stop.
“Lost your appetite, I see,” she said.
I picked at my salami but otherwise didn’t eat. “Must be nerves,” I said.
“No, it’s those pills they give you.”
“What the hell else can I do?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “You’re natural-born, I’m infected. It’s different for me.”
I’d been reading as much on the subject as I could get my hands on. Jules had, of course, loaned me some books, but she was natural-born too and couldn’t understand any more than Ginny could.
“I’m afraid,” I said. “The nurses said it’s going to hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. They say I’m not going to be able to control it.”
With three days until the full moon, the lunar cycle was already twisting my insides, making me snap easily. I had no idea what I’d be like if I wasn’t on the pills. Feral, maybe.
“Your hormones are all misaligned,” Ginny said. “Those drugs are messing with your emotions.”
“You natural-borns can control it, right? The change?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Ginny munched on a potato chip before continuing. “We feel the pull of the moon just as the tides do. But we don’t go mad. And aside from the moon, we can change whenever we want.” She shrugged. “It’s easier if you’ve got other wolves around. A pack to submit to.”
“I’m afraid,” I said again, and hell if I didn’t mean it.
She reached over the table and took my hand in hers, offering a little smile. “I already talked to my pack and they agreed to help for your first change. We’ll go into the woods, somewhere private, don’t worry.”
I shrank back and the wolf behind my eyes flattened its ears in embarrassment. I didn’t want a bunch of calm, collected werewolves watching me totally lose it. I’d never be able to look them in the eye. But this was what Jules had asked me to do.
Ginny tilted her head to the side. “You can trust me.”
I don’t even know you
, I thought. But the wolf inside me wanted to say yes, trust her. Could instinct tell me if I was going to get hurt? Could instinct protect me?
“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s do it.”
“Good. You couldn’t be safer, I promise you that. Here, I brought you something.” She took an old Rudyard Kipling paperback out of her satchel and put it on the table between us.
On the bus ride home, I read about the wolves of the Seeonee, who called themselves the Free People and protected the jungle’s laws. I imagined Ginny’s family being like that. Whatever the Rothschild Pack had planned, if it was supposed to hurt these people, I couldn’t do it.
Jules
hurt
me. She
gave
me this, put this on
my
shoulders. I didn’t want anything more from her. I didn’t want to contribute to whatever she was planning.
So I called her that night and backed out.
When I tried to sleep, later, I heard distant howls with my increasingly sensitive ears. They sounded so sad.
Behind my eyes, the wolf responded to the terrible yearning brought on by the sounds. I wanted to empty my lungs and cry out yes, I want to join you.
Outside my window, the moon waxed.
I sent Claire a text the next morning letting her know where to meet me. Then I spent the day arguing with Mae, asserting that we couldn’t use Claire for our scheme. But my mom had already found us a victim, currently bound and gagged in her garage.
The plan was to take Claire and the victim into the woods, let Claire change and then ravage him. As an infected she wouldn’t remember the event, and we could make up whatever story we liked.
But she wasn’t just a nameless werewolf to me, not anymore. She was alone and frightened. One more victim of a pack that didn’t take care of their own.
I’d started hating myself for even considering the plan. Of course I wanted to protect my mom, but the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to kill anyone. And I didn’t want to do it at Claire’s expense.
I hung up with Mae just before dinner time, when Claire was due to arrive at my place. I had invited her to spend the night with me, afraid that she might change early. The first change had a general twenty-four hour window, but any more specific than that was a guessing game and I could tell she didn’t want to be alone for it.
I didn’t share any of this with Mae, who wanted me to keep an eye on Claire and bring her to the Seeonee meeting at tomorrow’s full moon.
I’d baked a ziti dish but I was too conflicted to have much of an appetite. Claire only poked at hers, too. She wore her dark shoulder-length hair down, smooth as silk. Her dress flattered her figure and she pulled off a casual, girl-next-door charm even when she was obviously nervous about the full moon.
I knew I couldn’t put her in harm’s way.
We sat on my balcony after dinner and sipped coffee, looking out at the hedgerow and the patch of woods beyond.