Changeling (10 page)

Trey wasn’t so easily perturbed. He stepped into the room and took up a seat on the settee facing his uncle. He heard the dog-flap in the back door swing open and shut.
Coward
, he
thought.

‘Do you get scared?’ Trey asked when it was clear that the old man had calmed down a little.

‘Scared?’

‘Of the Change. I don’t know what it feels like for you. I know that the talisman means that I can change to and from my particular werewolf form without too much pain, but I
remember the first time that I almost changed involuntarily and the pain was—’

‘It’s like being ripped apart from the inside,’ his uncle interrupted. ‘Like something reaches up your arse, grabs hold of a big handful of you and then turns you inside
out like a pair of jeans. You feel like you’re going to die. And the pain doesn’t stop. It just keeps going, more and more of it piling in on top of itself until all you are
is
pain. You want to die it’s so bad. You want to smash your skull into the nearest wall and let your brains fall to the floor so you can stamp on them and stop the pain.’

Frank turned his head to look at Trey through blind eyes. ‘Is it anything like that for you?’ he asked with a sneer.

‘No.’

‘Didn’t think so,’ Frank said and lifted his glass to his lips.

‘Tell me about the LG78,’ Trey said after another long silence.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Uncle Frank . . . please.’

The old man sighed and closed his eyes. ‘LG stands for Loup Garou: the French word for werewolf. I always thought it sounded much more elegant – more refined, you know? The first
time a bunch of us got together in 1978, we called ourselves the LG78. We formed a pack – a pack of werewolves. It took quite a while, but I finally bought this land and then got some demon
lord to place some Netherworld hoodoo-voodoo on the place to protect us from your friend Lucien’s brother, who at that point was intent on killing anything and everything that even smelt
wolfish. I paid a heavy price for that protection, but it was worth it because we knew we could be safe here, we could exist together.’

‘We?’

‘Me and a bunch of other lycos.’ He turned his head to face Trey, his eyes dancing backwards and forwards in their sockets. The spite and anger that had been in his tone moments
before had dissipated now, and he continued. ‘There are advantages to being in a pack, Trey. That feeling of running through a forest with the other members of your group, the feeling of
unity and trust and . . . love that you have for your pack members. It’s exhilarating. Truly, there is nothing like it. It’s the best feeling in the world.’

Trey frowned, trying to assimilate what his uncle had just said. Finally, he voiced his concerns to the old man who was still looking over in his direction, a smile forming on his lips as if he
could read the boy’s thoughts.

‘You told me that you don’t remember what happens to you during the Change. You told me that you’d wake up in the middle of nowhere not knowing how you got there . . . or what
you had done.’ Trey thought back to the morning after he had experienced his first ever Change and the amnesic void that he’d felt – his room and possessions all destroyed without
any clue as to who, or what, might have done it.

‘That’s right.’

‘Then how—’

‘You’re talking about a moon-induced Change, like the delightful little episode that I shall be experiencing tonight, or indeed an accidental change that can occur if a lyco
completely loses control of his emotions – unabated anger can bring that change about. And yes, an unfortunate – or fortunate, depending on how you look at it – result of that is
an almost complete memory loss for the lycanthrope. Once the transformation is complete, there’s nothing. Maybe the odd snippet – the tiniest fraction of a memory, like a rogue image
here or there, but nothing that you can put your finger on.’ He paused, letting this sink in, before adding in a small voice, ‘You normally get to read the results of your actions in
the papers the next day, when some poor soul gets found with his throat torn out.’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘But as I said, there are advantages to being in a pack.’

The old man waved his fingers in the air before him. ‘All of my memories of being a Wolfan – all of the emotions and experiences that I’ve just described are from Changes that
were
not
during a full moon.’ He stopped, waiting for an interruption that didn’t come. ‘That’s only possible in a pack because the members of a pack can induce the
Change in each other whether the moon is on the wax or the wane. Day or night, they can become lycos.’

Trey stared at his uncle, trying to take this in. ‘So it’s like having the amulet, it’s like—’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. We were still Wolfan, still animalistic in our needs and urges.’ He stopped again, trying to find the best way to explain. ‘It’s as if
the pack exerts a mass will. We discovered it quite by chance. A few of us found each other over the years. We kept in touch and became friends, sharing experiences and concerns. Eventually, some
of us – those first few, back in 1978 – decided to get together at a full moon for the Change, have a group lockdown, as it were. We found a strongroom that was large enough to take us
all and we settled in together for the night. It wasn’t until the next morning, when we were all talking, discussing how frustrating it was not to be able to remember and wishing that we
could, that it happened. We began to morph. All of us. All at the same time. But it wasn’t like it was the night before; the pain was nowhere near as bad or as long, and afterwards we could .
. . remember. We were able to remember what had happened.’ He shook his head, recalling. ‘That first time . . . it was out of this world. It was the most exciting thing that I’d
ever experienced.

‘I had a bit of money back then. Some of the others pitched in with what they could, and eventually I bought this place. A huge swathe of land that we could live in. We fenced it off to
keep out intruders, and we all moved out here and set up a community by the lake. We had cabins built. We were happy . . . really happy.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing at first. Like I say, we were happy. But then we had a few problems. A few . . . breakages of the rules.’

‘Rules?’

‘Yeah, we had rules. You can’t have twenty lycos living together in a community without rules. So we had specific days that we would set aside to morph as a pack. Nobody was allowed
to go off in a splinter group and do their own thing. You need a minimum of three, you see? Three is the magic number.’

Trey shook his head, ‘Three what?’

The old man shook his head and sighed as if he was in the presence of a simpleton.

‘You need three or more lycos to enforce the Change, and they need to be in close proximity to each other. A pair of lycos can’t get it to happen.’

‘What other rules did you have?’

‘We could date outsiders – non-lycos – but they weren’t allowed anywhere near the community on one of these set days.’ He nodded as though remembering the
importance of this rule. ‘Anything on four legs was fair game as far as hunting was concerned, but there was a strict rule on never killing anything on
two legs
– if you know
what I mean. And finally, we would still lock down during the full moon – we were very strict on that.’

‘Which rules were broken?’

‘All of them,’ he said and looked away.

‘All of them?’ Trey said, thinking about the third rule. ‘People were killed by the pack? Hunted?’

His uncle batted the questions away. ‘Bad things happened. The community went into meltdown. I blame your father.’

Trey blinked, surprised by the way that Frank had casually thrown this remark in at the end. ‘Why do you blame my dad?’

‘He undermined me. He came to visit me with his new girlfriend, your mother Elisabeth – they weren’t married then. Said that he wanted to see what we had set up over here. He
was being nosy, sticking his muzzle in where it wasn’t wanted. He threw the whole community into disarray.’

‘How?’

‘That thing around your neck for one. Some of them had heard about the amulet and the powers that it gave to the lyco wearing it. I guess it must have seemed strange to them that it had
passed to my younger brother and not me. His presence undermined my authority as the Alpha. Oh, he never made any attempt to displace me or anything . . . not openly. But Daniel had a way about him
– he was so confident and sure of himself that some of the pack thought that maybe
he
should be the Alpha. Your father said that he had no intention of staying and taking over as the
pack leader, but I think he was lying. The pack started to in-fight and it was impossible for me to stop it.’ He stopped and sucked at his teeth, considering how to go on. ‘Then there
was the incident with your mother.’

Trey held his breath, waiting. The clock ticked loudly on the wall.

His uncle lifted his glass, finishing off the last of the whisky. ‘She was walking down by the lake one evening when she was attacked. She was lucky to survive.’ He shook his head,
letting the statement hang in the air between them. ‘Nobody admitted to doing it. It wasn’t a day when the pack had planned to hunt, so there shouldn’t have been any Wolfan about.
Like I say, you need at least three lycos to force the Change, and everybody could account for their whereabouts at the time of the attack. Everyone except your father, that is. People said that it
might have been an accident, that something had gone wrong and that he attacked her; others said that he had planned it, that he wanted to turn her – make her into a female lyco so that he
wouldn’t have to endure the curse alone. I think that it
was
an accident, that he lost control over the werewolf inside him and attacked her.’

Trey looked over at the old man, his vision blurred by tears, unable to take in what had just been said.

‘But he had the amulet . . . he had control over his powers.’

His uncle set the glass down, shrugging his shoulders as he did so. ‘What can I say?
Maybe
that amulet that he and your grandfather were so damn keen on isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be. Maybe we lycos are so dangerous and unstable that even if you’re wearing a thing like that, you’re not safe to be around. Maybe it’s love that makes the thing go
haywire because love makes you vulnerable, protective, threatened. Maybe love takes charge of the most primal and base emotions and overrides the influence of that thing around your neck.’
The old man turned his face towards Trey’s, his upper lip lifting in a sneer. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never got a chance to wear it.’

Trey was glad that his uncle could not see the tears that flowed freely down his face.

‘It was decided that your father was trouble. He was banished, and he took your mother home to France.’ His uncle stopped and frowned and the silence seemed to press in on Trey from
every angle. ‘Luckily for her, and for you I guess, Elisabeth survived her injuries.’ Frank nodded his head as if answering some unspoken question.

The ticking of the clock seemed to have grown so loud that Trey thought he could feel the molecules in the air jump each time the hand leaped forward another notch. He shook his head and stared
at the carpet in front of him, unable to believe what he had just heard.

‘You
did
know that, didn’t you? You did know how your mother came to be one of us?’

‘No. No, I didn’t.’

‘Aw, kid, I’m sorry. I thought that you must have known. I thought that someone – your friend Lucien, maybe – would have told you.’

‘No.’

His uncle shook his head. ‘Well, I’m sorry that you had to hear it like that. At least you now know what your father was and what he was capable of.’

Trey looked over at his uncle. Despite what the old man had said, Trey doubted that he was at all sorry for telling him what had happened all those years ago. He hadn’t sounded sorry. Trey
stood up.

‘What happened to the pack?’ he asked, his voice cracking with emotion as he struggled to get the words out.

‘We disbanded not long after your mother and father left. The whole thing had got out of hand and there was none of the unity that we had had when we first formed. People were splintering
off into their own groups – Changing in small packs and hunting when they shouldn’t. A few of them refused to lock down, and then people on the outside started to get killed. The whole
thing went to hell in a handcart, so I threw the worst offenders out and disbanded the pack.’

‘But there’s a new pack now,’ Trey said. ‘Ella told me that there was a new pack and a new Alpha, Jurgen. If everything went so wrong with the original LG78, what would
possess you to allow a new pack to begin again here?’

‘Money.’ The old man let the word hang in the air between them. ‘That’s right, money. This Jurgen guy approached me about a year ago, telling me that he wanted to try and
form a pack again. I told him that it was futile, but he was pretty insistent. He’s a rich kid, and when I say rich I’m talking
seriously
wealthy. His dad used to be a member of
the original pack, but he didn’t stick around – went off to Russia and made a fortune in natural gas. Anyway, the kid offered me a load of cash if I would let them use the land in the
same way that we used to. There’s elk and moose here to hunt, the cabins are all still down by the lake and the fences are still up to keep out intruders. His dad had told him stories about
the old days, and this Jurgen fell in love with the whole idea. He even wanted to keep the old name. For old time’s sake, he said, he still wanted to call it the LG78. They’ve been here
for about six months now.’

Trey stared at the old man in disbelief. ‘Ella. The girl who came here yesterday. She’s a Bitten. She was attacked like my mother.’ He waited for a reaction. ‘Did that
happen here?’

Frank let out a long sigh, puffing out his lips as he did so. ‘What can I tell you? History has a way of repeating itself, kid.’ The old man reached for his bottle, frowning when he
discovered that it was empty. ‘While you’re up, how about getting your uncle a fresh one, huh?’