Walking Wolf Road (Wolf Road Chronicles Book 1) (33 page)

“Nothing, nothing… just… k
eep going.” she said in a small voice, wary of the unknown that had become an irrevocable part of me.

“Loki… I need your help. You know that trick I do with the shadows? My grandfather said I could do it because I can walk between worlds; just like how Raven walks between the living and the dead. Now that I have my wolf back, I want to see if I can enter the Lowerworld. I need to try to find out who killed Fen.”

Loki was quiet, and then wrapped her arms around me and buried her face against my chest. “You know, you scared me yesterday; I was afraid you were dead…” I sighed and lowered my cheek to the top of her head while the scarred shield over my heart ached at her touch. “You’re a stubborn freak Jimmy, but I’ll help you if I can. Just be careful…” she whispered as I held her in return.

For the first time since Fen died, I knew what I needed to do. I had a rudder. I could finally focus on the duty I’d let slip through the grip of my depression; and Wolf was ready to hunt.

Loki and I made a shopping run to the new-age bookstore in Colorado Springs and bought up half their stock on shamanism and animal magick. We spent the first few days of spring break consuming the books to try and learn as much as we could.

For
Loki’s lesson that week, we went over and jammed with Bo. After playing for a while, Bo cracked a joke and Loki threw her pick at him. As I watched them I was hit with a wave of déjà vu. I’d learned, better than most, just how blatant fate could be when twisting her threads. My resentment and jealousy ebbed a little as different images moved through Wolf’s mind; the three of us together, as wolves…

Loki gasped as her eyes changed color when Wolf moved. “God, look at me, I’m such a wreck!” She shook out her trembling hands as she tried to play off her shift. “Jimmy, would you play us one of your own songs?” She bit her lip as she forced her wolf back and the gold faded from her eyes.

I thought about it, “There’s a new song I wrote over the last couple months, but I’ve never played it in front anyone before…”

“Please?” Loki pouted until I sighed and switched my amp over to its clean channel and started picking out the opening chords.

“The storm comes from the east, the wind howls like a starving beast. This shadow, moves through the storm. A dark wraith, walks alone… walks alone… In the dark night of your soul, who will find you there? In the darkness of your mind, how long until you wake up?”

I’d never sung for anyone before, but my hesitance gave way as the emotion of the song took hold of me.

“As sleep comes, so too rests pride and rage. The shield falls, the curtain falls on the stage! This shame! A lie to save yourself! The dream falls, and the black wolf runs! In the dark night of your soul, who will find you there? In the darkness of your mind, how long until you wake up? You walk alone… You walk alone!

“Come,
enter the forest! Sleep, under emerald boughs! Dream, of a Pack lost! Sing… alone… to a cold sky…

“In the dark night of your soul, who will find you there? In the darkness of your mind, how long until you wake up? You walk alone… You walk alone!”

I felt tears roll down my face as I sobbed the last refrains and felt loss and isolation wash through me. I heard
Qhipe
’s words in my head, “If you choose this middle road, you will truly walk forever between the worlds. You will never—
never
completely belong to either. Spirit bound to flesh, wolf bound to man, but never one or the other.”

I’d found a new way to be cursed.

Loki hugged me and Bo laid his hand on my shoulder, and I realized that I wasn’t really alone. I never had been. I just had to be brave enough to trust them. Loki and I gathered our gear up to leave as an itch festered in the back of my mind. As we left, I gave in to the itch and said something I never thought I’d say in my life, “Hey Bo, how’d you like to learn the truth about werewolves?”

Bo’s eyes grew wide and Loki dragged me outside. She forced me into the car and made me drive off before Bo could interrogate us. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” she hissed as soon as we were safe inside the car.

“Loki, do you trust my judgment?” I spoke softly.

“What? Of course I do, but I don’t have to agree with everything! Why’d you do that? You didn’t even ask me! You don’t know him! How can you possibly trust
Football Hero with that kind of information?”

“I know him better than you think; and he already knows a lot about us.” I said and tried to calm her down.

“But don’t you see? That’s what makes him dangerous! How did he learn those things? What if he’s the one who murdered Fen, once he found out the truth about him?”

I flinched, and she quieted for a moment.

“Sorry, that was low blow wasn’t it?” She lowered her face in apology.

“Don’t think I’m about to hand him everything on a silver platter; he’s going to have to work for every little piece of information. But I can—
see
it in my mind. See him as one of us.”

We stood in silence as Loki glowered at the ground

“It’s spring Loki.” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I looked into her eyes, “In the spring, everything starts over. Life grows, families—packs—grow.” I tried to deliver my intention through our gaze.

“You really mean to make him…?” she asked me.

“It’s like I’ve already seen it. Already seen him as one of us.”

Loki sighed and shook her head; “You’re
sooo
going to owe me for this—” she paused on the thought. “Hmm, maybe we’ll start with Prom.”

With that four letter word; any worries about revealing my lupine nature to a potentially deadly stranger suddenly seemed benign beside the threat of the school dance to end all school dances.

“I thought you didn’t do school events?” I tried subtlety first, but I knew it would degrade to begging soon.

“Well, you only get one Prom. Well, I guess I
could
get two, but I want to be
taken
to prom, not be the one
taking…
Don’t worry, I’m
not expecting anything extravagant like the other kids have been twittering
about lately; but it would be nice to experience it once, ya know?”

I resisted the urge to bang my head bloody on the steering whe
el. “But I don’t know how to dance! You remember how much I used to weigh; I didn’t exactly frequent the dance circuit!”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! Everybody’s gonna be off in their own little la-la land. The guys are gonna be wondering if they’ll score
,” her words triggered images in my mind and I felt my face heat, “and the girls will be wondering if their hair is still perfect. Don’t forget; you’re asking for a
huge
exception to bring Bo into this, so you fucking owe me anything I want—
a-ny-thing!
”

“Okay.” Was about all I could squeeze through my constricted throat.

I had about a week and a half to prepare for an ordeal I’d foolishly assumed I would never be subjected to. I just had to hope for the best, maybe a compound fracture… or the Ebola virus?

When Loki came over for dinner, Mom and Dad were ecstatic to hear
her announcement that I was taking her to prom. I figured they probably gave up on any school dance fantasies for me somewhere around tenth grade; a few years
after
I had. I wanted to crawl under the dinner table and die while my face turned beet red, but I managed to suffer through dinner in silence.

Loki and I spent the rest of spring break dodging Bo’s badgering phone calls while we worked on breaking through the veil. Loki loaded a bunch of shamanic drumming tracks onto her MP3 player, and we spent hours outside while she read and I struggled with mounting frustration to break through the wall.

On the last day of break, we sat together in the field behind Loki’s house, though neither one of us could bring ourselves to go
back to the den. Another day pissed away as I tried to clear my mind of the constant noise and clutter, while Loki tried to reassure me that the books said most shamans took months of training before
they could achieve a spirit journey.

I couldn’t help it; there was something arrogant inside me that insisted I could do better than them. Like having
Qhipe
’s blood was supposed to be some kind of shamanistic cheat-code.

As the sun set, something moved in the brush along the irrigation ditch and Wolf stirred inside me.

Something shifted, but not like the pulling rush I’d felt when Raven dragged me over. I opened my eyes and gasped. The field was still there, but it
looked vastly different. Trees stood everywhere, like imprints of long-fallen trees still stood, some of them nothing more than faded outlines. Loki was surrounded by a cloud of fire in a
spectrum of colors, and her house was nothing but a ghostly outline of itself.

I stood up in surprise and it all faded back to normal, like a dissolve in a movie. Loki looked up at me as I plopped back down.

“What the hell was that?” I thought out loud.

“What did you see?” Loki asked, and her eyebrows furrowed I described it to her. “I… Honestly Jimmy, I have no clue.” She flipped through her book, “I’ve never heard of anything like what you just described—are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?”

I glared at her, “Why would I imagine something that lame when I know what the Lowerworld looks like. This was different, like it wasn’t as—deep?” I struggled for an analogy and it hit me, “Oh my god!”

“What?”

“I think I saw the etheric plane! The… buffer between the physical and spirit worlds. I didn’t even think that was possible… Let me try again.” I tried to focus and relax, but my excitement wouldn’t relent. I tried unsuccessfully to slip back between, and wondered what I was doing wrong.

I remembered how Wolf stirred and it finally made sense. Wolf and
Qhipe
were one and the same now, and Wolf existed primarily on the etheric plane; like on Halloween when my mental shift in Fen’s bathroom amplified the voices.

Wolf was the key that allowed me to break the veil.

Duh…

This time, I let Wolf rise and I pulled the shadows of the trees around myself. As I disappeared, I pulled deeper and the etheric overworld faded into view. The colors of Loki’s aura swirled with
surprised flashes of yellow when I vanished, and I could see her wolf’s ears, tail, and muzzle.

Testing my control, I pushed Wolf down and everything returned to normal. Then I flexed my new muscles and Wolf and I
pulled back into the shadows, but this time I pushed as hard as I could and felt my heart sync with the rhythm of the drums I listened to.

Now that the buried terror from my snakebite didn’t rule me anymore, I slipped out of my flesh and down through the roots and soil. I followed the water down and came up in a lake, the sun sparkled brightly off the water as I looked up into the Lowerworld sky. I smiled at my accomplishment as possibilities formed in my mind.

Now… how do I get back?

After an ‘oh-shit’ moment, I felt the throb of the drums resonating through the water. I focused on it and used it as an anchor to pull myself back across the veil. I settled back into my flesh and opened my eyes as I released the shadows.

“I did it!” I grinned at Loki as I pulled her headphones off.

“Took you long enough,” she laughed, “Most people take weeks or
months, so your slacking is unforgivable!” Underneath the joke, I could tell she was nervous. Almost scared of me.

Inside my head, I remembered what
Qhipe
had said, “Weapons are tools, Jimmy. A hammer can build a house or crush a skull; it all depends on the person who wields it. Never confuse the two, and never forget where the accountability lies.”

I’d never realized quite the arsenal I’d collected over the months. I’d never thought of them as weapons before; it just depended on how I used them. On their own, they were nothing but freakish attributes, but together… I just hoped they’d be enough. I could feel emotions, disappear into shadows, speak to the dead, enter not only the spirit world but the etheric middle plane as well, and perceive with the senses of a wolf.

My goodness Jimmy, what big teeth you have…