Lunacy (12 page)

"Jesus, Conner... I'm sorry! I had no idea..!"
Elomina was beside me and her hand fell reassuringly on my
shoulder.

"I told you it would be painful for him. But with
some rest and food, he'll be perfectly fine. As his Ulv form, he is
whole, so shall he be once he shifts back. There's no need to fear
for him. But now you must do the other, and that will likely knock
him out cold."

I looked up at her, uncertainty clouding my eyes that
were filled with the light of the winter snow. "So soon?
Seriously?"

She nodded. "It could be a matter of life or death
someday, Kacea. The fact that you actually succeeded on the first
try, without too much effort, honestly does surprise me. This will
be the best way to determine if you do have the potential to be as
powerful as I truly believe you can be."

Conner whined again, his mouth still open. "Let me at
least get him some water or something."

"No," she said simply. "If he were inflicted with
some terrible wound that could take his life, would you want to
send him to death in comfort, or inflict a bit more pain to keep
him alive?"

I was silent, and my silence was answer enough. She
was right. "I'm sorry, my dog friend."

“Don't worry, Kaysh. I'll be fine.” His mental words
sounded strained, and that wasn't very reassuring to me.

I was already covered in gobbets of gross, and I had
a pretty good idea that it was only going to get worse when I
forced Conner back into his human form. I put my hands on his furry
wolf shoulder and closed my eyes, focusing fully on the image of
him human and whole in my mind. Much to my surprise, and slight
dismay, it didn't take nearly as long to bring him back this
time.

The sound of flesh bursting outward like a grenade of
gore made my stomach churn and I had to swallow back bile from the
smell of it. Fur, bone, flesh, and enough blood for a low budget
horror film erupted from the body of the wolf before me and a naked
Conner now lay under my hands on the wet grass. He was curled up in
the fetal position, shuddering slightly. I made a point not to
mention the tears that made clean trails through the macabre mess
on his face. I knew better than to wound a man's ego like that.

Elomina clapped lightly and I couldn't fight the hint
of anger that ran its way up into my eyes. I looked away from her
to keep it from intensifying. She was helping me, all of us. It
wasn't her fault. Conner had known what he was being volunteered
for, and he seemed to be okay aside from the residual agony that
had him trembling. I brushed some of his blood soaked hair back
from his face with gentle fingers that were just as streaked with
fluids. "So much for being a masochist, you putz..." I said
lightly.

He chuckled through a wordless sob, struggling to sit
up. Jynxx came and knelt beside us, giving the naked young man his
jacket. Conner held up his hand and shook his head. "Dude, I will
wreck that thing with how gross I am right now."

"It'll wash out. Leather’s good like that, and the
jacket wasn’t cheap so the liner’s pretty good quality. Put it on
and get your ass inside before you freeze to death. I'm gonna need
you to do the same for me in a bit, from the looks of it." He
spouted mundane details so we could try and pretend nothing was out
of the ordinary. I realized I'd been staring at Jynxx and settled
my eyes back on the ground. I'd almost forgotten he was there; he'd
been being so quiet.

Insistently and before Conner could protest again, he
put his coat on the more slender man. Conner wrapped it around
himself like a blanket and his shivering stopped almost instantly.
"I'm gonna go catch a shower," he said, getting to his feet and
walking back to the house.

I made a point of not staring at the curve of the
bottom of that perfect ass that was just barely peeking out from
under the bottom of Jynxx's jacket. Well.... Made a valiant effort
to not stare, and managed to be sneaky about watching. My eyes came
back to Jynxx and flicked to Elomina. "Can we wait a bit before I
have to put him through this fucking torture..?" My voice came out
thready and shakier than I would have thought. Maybe I was going
into shock. Too much weird shit all at once. Entirely too much.

Her silver eyes were frosty and held no sympathy for
my plight or that of the wolves I was abusing. "I think that it
would be in the best interests of all parties, present and not, for
you to learn and perfect this skill as quickly as possible."

"I suppose you're right," I murmured, still not happy
about it. I turned more fully to Jynxx where he was kneeling in the
goo from both human and ulven Conner that was now soaking into the
earth like the precipitate from a rain storm. The ground swallowed
the blood as greedily as a hungry vampire and the hunks of flesh
disappeared in short order. It was disturbing as hell, and a chill
ran down my spine from watching the ground consume the tissue. That
shit was not natural.

"Are you ready for this?" Elomina asked, and I wasn't
sure if she was talking to me or to the not-yet-werewolf beside
me.

Jynxx shook his head. "Hell no. But we don't have a
lot of options, or a lot of time for me to become accustomed to the
idea of having my body essentially self-destruct. Let's do this and
get it over with. If it will help me keep everyone I care about
safe, and give me the potential to see my parents alive and in
person again... I'm all about it, Kaysh."

His dark eyes told me otherwise. He was scared. Just
as frightened by this discovery as I was. And there was nothing
that either of us could do to fight against it or deny it. I held
his hands in mine and closed my eyes.

Chapter 12

He shuddered under my touch and my eyes darted back
and forth beneath my eyelids, almost as if I'd entered a rapid eye
movement state of sleep. "Don't worry. Everything will be fine," I
murmured softly, more to myself as a mantra of peace to maintain my
sanity than to assuage Jynxx's fears.

Inside of his mind, rather than the shared space
Conner and I had created where I'd found his Ulv sitting serenely
in a forest glade, everything was dark. I could see, with the help
of the luminescence provided by the glowing white eyes of the
goddess Skadhi, but everything was in shadow. It was well into
night in the place where Jynxx's werewolf form dwelled, as if it
were afraid to come out. Frightened of what it was capable of,
scared of the world at large and how it would treat him. And more
importantly, I sensed a feeling of anxiety towards me from him. How
would I treat him when I saw the monster he was on the inside?
Would I look at him differently? Would I look at him at all? Would
I turn from him and run?

I didn't respond to any of the thoughts he had that
raced past me in the darkness with their sharp teeth of insecurity.
I didn't want to let him know that I could hear the things he
wouldn't ever want to share aloud with anyone, much less with me. I
was a beacon of light in all that blackness, my eyes lighting up
the dark around me. I walked through the dense underbrush with
confidence, as though I'd been here before. If Skadhi was truly the
Beloved of the Wolf, surely she had seen many shaded forests like
this one. I knew, as did she, that not all wolves were prepared to
accept and embrace what they were. Like our Jynxxie, many were
afraid that they would become soulless, mindless beasts. Victims to
their rage with no control over themselves.

While my eye sight was passable in the shadows, I
decided that there had to be a better sense I could be using to
operate more efficiently. I'd been wandering for several minutes
now and had seen no sign of any sort of wolf, much less of Jynxx's.
I closed my eyes and relied on my ears instead, listening intently
for movement. After standing still for a few seconds, I heard
something. It was far off and muffled, and I knew without needing a
second guess that it was Jynxx relocating. My ears were sharper
than they should have been, my hearing more acute than that of the
best hunting dogs money could buy, and I could hear the soft tread
of his padded feet on the moist and rich earth a short distance
off.

My own feet fully silent on the forest floor, I
followed the sound, moving swiftly as though the wind at my back
helped me speed along. When I finally found him, I wasn't prepared
for what I saw. I was taken by his beauty, firstly. Ulven Jynxx was
larger even than the pony sized wolf Conner had become. He stood
taller than he had in person, easily towering over me in the mien
of Skadhi by a foot and a half or so. That made him an astonishing
nearly seven feet tall. His fur was as glossy and black as his
hair, and his eyes were glimmering softly in the darkness. He
crouched back, having effectively cornered himself with a few trees
at his back that he couldn't scuttle back between and away from me.
Rather than being receptive and playful as Conner had been, Jynxx's
hackles rose and a rumbling growl that rattled my ribcage bubbled
from his lips. I held my hands out to him in a non-threatening
gesture usually used when meeting a new dog whose intentions you
were unsure of. You put your hands out there like a treat and hoped
and prayed that they didn't smell something that made them think
your fingers were snack food.

Jynxx's reaction to the scent of my hands made both
Skadhi and I pause and lower our position, squatting down closer to
the ground to seem less threatening. "Come now, dearest Kongen. You
have nothing to fear. You will retain your humanity unless you wish
to will it away. You are more in control of yourself than you may
seem to realize. This first change is the only one you will not be
in control of..."

That made the unnaturally large wolf snarl and gnash
its teeth at us menacingly. If it were just me, I probably would
have thrown my hands up and said the hell with it. But Skadhi knew
that he wouldn't hurt us. That he couldn't hurt us. He was like any
other animal in unfamiliar territory, frightened and unsettled. So
I moved forward towards him, tempting fate.

Jynxx continued to growl for a minute before the
rumbling finally faded away to a soft whimper that tugged at my
heart strings. So frightened. Why was he so afraid? Conner had no
problem with it. Hell, he seemed to enjoy it aside from the side
splitting pain the forced change had put him through. The giant
beast sat back on its hind haunches and those amber eyes caught
mine, and his thoughts flowed unbidden into my mind.

He'd always been a freak in school. Many people had
blamed him for the death of his parents, which we now knew wasn't
true at all. People were afraid of him as it was, because of his
size and the way he dressed. Would they be able to smell the
monster on him? Was that why they'd always been afraid, from the
get go? I had no way of confirming or denying how well people could
sense a person who had the potential to become a werewolf, but I
had a feeling there was a nugget of truth to it. I don't want to
risk actually becoming the freak they think that I am. Once I do
this, there's no going back...

I moved closer and he winced as I touched his furry
muzzle. I cupped his Ulven face in my hands and gave him a soft
smile. Skadhi let me speak with my own voice, rather than her
echoing and commanding one. I sounded tinny and hollow in
comparison. "You’re only right about one thing, Jynxx. There is no
going back from this. But you're not a freak, you're not a monster.
You're gorgeous, and one of the most caring people I've come
across, Jynxx. Not that you'll be telling many people anyway, but
if they don't like you because you’re different... Then fuck
them."

He seemed uncertain, but a long tongue came out to
loll against my hands, his ears back slightly against his head
showing that he clearly wasn’t happy about it. "Can you come out
from the darkness for me, Kongen?" We spoke and it was Skadhi's
voice again, softer but still insistent.

Ulven Jynxx stood and we gave him a reassuring smile,
placing our hands on his front left haunch and closing our eyes. I
sank fingers into that thick and inky fur, feeling a pull that
dragged at both of us like we were swimming upwards from far below
the surface of the ocean. The forest glade around us wavered and
disappeared as we broke through that barrier and came tumbling back
into the physical world, Jynxx's human form bursting like a ripe
melon under siege by an AK-47. I was smart enough to close my eyes
and mouth this time as more pieces of human showered me. I had a
moment to be pissed off enough by my clothes getting wrecked that I
really wanted to tell Elomina she owed me a new outfit. I realized
that the likelihood of the apparently ancient woman taking me
shopping was relatively non-existent, so I shook it off, literally
shaking some of the gore from my body and hair, and moved to kneel
beside the very exhausted body of a very furry werewolf Jynxx. He
whined softly for a moment, his breathing labored as Conner's had
been.

"I'm sorry," I said softly, stroking the velvety fur
of his muzzle. I knew it would be horrendously painful, but I
didn’t want to wait at all to send him back into his human
form.

This time it was much easier to do as I'd done to
Conner. Just from one execution, I'd managed to master the
technique. Well, maybe not master it, but I definitely did a damn
good job, all things considered. I didn't even bother to close my
eyes this time, merely holding my palms to his side and willing all
that glorious obsidian fur to melt away and reveal the porcelain
pale flesh of Jynxx's human form. There was less of an explosion
this time around, and more like a bubbling, rushing, oozing of
flesh and fluids as though someone had dropped hunks of meat into a
vat of acid. Everything just sort of ran from his bones, looking as
if someone had hit him with the super strong spray from a fire
hose. A fire hose strong enough to make hunks of meat be ripped
away from bone, like someone peeling pieces from a turkey. Not
exactly the sort of thing you'd want to be messing around with.