Bitten
Page 20
"Ouch. You will be busy. I'll miss you."
"It'll only be a couple days."
"Good. Talk to you soon. Love you."
"You too. Bye."
As I hung up, I closed my eyes and exhaled. See? Not so bad. Philip was still Philip. Nothing had changed. Philip and my new life were out there, waiting for me to return. Only a few more days and I could go back to them.
***
After lunch, I went to the study to check my dossiers, hoping to find something that might help me figure out which mutt was causing trouble in Bear Valley. One of my jobs with the Pack was to keep tabs on non-Pack werewolves. I'd built a dossier of them, complete with photos and behavioral sketches. I could recite over two dozen names and last known locations, and separate the list into the good, the bad, and the ugly-those who could suppress the urge to kill, those who couldn't, and those who didn't bother trying. Judging by this mutt's behavior, he fell into the last category. That narrowed it down from twenty-seven to about twenty.
I turned to the cupboards below the bookshelf. Opening the second one, I cleared a path through the brandy glasses and felt around the back panel for an exposed wooden nail. When I found it, I twisted the nail and the rear panel sprung open. Inside the secret compartment we kept the only two condemning articles in Stonehaven, the only things that could link us to what we were. One was my book of dossiers. When I looked, though, it wasn't there. I sighed. Only Jeremy would have taken it out and he'd left for a walk an hour ago. Though I could always go looking for him, I knew he wasn't just taking in exercise but was finalizing the plans for our mutt hunt that night. Interruptions were not appreciated.
As I was closing the compartment I saw the second book lying there and, on a whim, pulled it out and opened it, though I'd read it so many times before I could recite most of it from memory. When Jeremy first told me about the Legacy I expected some musty, stinking, half-rotted tome. But the centuries-old book was in better shape than my college texts. Naturally the pages were yellowed and fragile, but each Pack Alpha had kept it in a special compartment, free from dust, mildew, light, and any of the other elements that could kill a book.
The Legacy purported to tell the history of werewolves, particularly of the Pack, yet it wasn't a straightforward account of dates and events. Instead, every Pack Alpha had added what he considered important, making it a mishmash of history, genealogy, and lore.
One section dealt entirely with scientific experimentation on the nature and boundaries of the werewolf condition. A Pack Alpha during the Renaissance had been particularly fascinated with legends of werewolf immortality. He'd detailed every one, from the stories of werewolves becoming immortal by drinking the blood of infants to the tales of werewolves becoming vampires after death. Then he'd proceeded with well-controlled experiments, all involving mutts that he'd capture, work on, then kill and wait for their resurrection. None of his experiments worked, but he'd been remarkably successful at decreasing the European mutt population.
A century later, a Pack Alpha became obsessed with the pursuit of better sex-the only surprising part of this being that it took several hundred years for someone to do it. He'd started with the hypothesis that human-werewolf sex was inherently dissatisfying because it involved two different species. So he bit a few women. When they didn't survive, he concluded that rumors of female werewolves throughout the ages were false and such a thing was biologically impossible. Moving right along, he tried variations on sex in both forms-as a wolf and as a human with both normal wolves and humans. None approached being in good old-fashioned human form having human sex, so he went back to women and started experimenting with variations on positions, acts, locales, et cetera. Finally, he found the ultimate act of sexual satisfaction-waiting until the first notes of climax struck, then slashing his partner's throat. He described his formula in vivid detail, with all the flowery emoting of a new religious convert. Fortunately, his practice never gained popularity among the Pack, probably because the Alpha was burned at the stake a few months later, after having depleted his village's entire supply of eligible young women.
On the less factual side, the Legacy contained countless stories of werewolves through the ages. Most of these were "my father told me this when I was a child" sort of yarns, many dating back to before the first edition of the Legacy was written. There were tales of werewolves who'd lived their lives in reverse, staying wolves most of the time and changing to humans only when the physical need demanded. There were stories of knights and soldiers and bandits and marauders who'd supposedly been werewolves. Most of these names had vanished from history, but one was still known, even by those who'd never cracked open a history book in their lives. Human history tells of the legend that Genghis Khan's family tree started with a wolf and a doe. According to the Legacy, that was more truth than allegory, the wolf being a werewolf and the doe being a symbol for a human mother. According to that line of reasoning, Genghis Khan himself would have been a werewolf, which explained his lust for blood and his near-supernatural abilities in war. It likely wasn't any truer than the countless human genealogies that include Napoleon and Cleopatra in their family tree. Still, it made a good story.
An equally good tale is one that was also found in human werewolf mythology. A newlywed nobleman's village was plagued by a werewolf. One night, while staking out the beast, the nobleman hears a noise in the bushes and sees a monstrous wolf. He jumps from his saddle and gives chase through the woods on foot. The beast flees from him. At one point, he gets close enough to swing his sword and lops off one of the wolf's front paws. The creature escapes, but when the nobleman goes back to retrieve the paw, it's turned into a woman's hand. Exhausted, he returns to his home to tell his wife what happened. He finds his wife hiding in the back rooms, binding the bloody stump where her hand used to be. Realizing the truth, he kills her. Now, the human version of the story ends there, but the Legacy goes further, giving the ending a pro-werewolf twist. In the Legacy tale, the nobleman kills his new wife by slicing open her stomach. When he does so, out tumbles a litter of wolf pups, his own children. The sight drives the nobleman mad and he kills himself with his sword. Now, as a female werewolf, I'm not particularly keen on the thought of a bellyful of puppies. I prefer to interpret the pups as an allegorical symbol of the nobleman's guilt. When he realizes he's killed his wife without giving her a chance to explain, he goes mad and kills himself. A much more fitting end.
"It'll only be a couple days."
"Good. Talk to you soon. Love you."
"You too. Bye."
As I hung up, I closed my eyes and exhaled. See? Not so bad. Philip was still Philip. Nothing had changed. Philip and my new life were out there, waiting for me to return. Only a few more days and I could go back to them.
***
After lunch, I went to the study to check my dossiers, hoping to find something that might help me figure out which mutt was causing trouble in Bear Valley. One of my jobs with the Pack was to keep tabs on non-Pack werewolves. I'd built a dossier of them, complete with photos and behavioral sketches. I could recite over two dozen names and last known locations, and separate the list into the good, the bad, and the ugly-those who could suppress the urge to kill, those who couldn't, and those who didn't bother trying. Judging by this mutt's behavior, he fell into the last category. That narrowed it down from twenty-seven to about twenty.
I turned to the cupboards below the bookshelf. Opening the second one, I cleared a path through the brandy glasses and felt around the back panel for an exposed wooden nail. When I found it, I twisted the nail and the rear panel sprung open. Inside the secret compartment we kept the only two condemning articles in Stonehaven, the only things that could link us to what we were. One was my book of dossiers. When I looked, though, it wasn't there. I sighed. Only Jeremy would have taken it out and he'd left for a walk an hour ago. Though I could always go looking for him, I knew he wasn't just taking in exercise but was finalizing the plans for our mutt hunt that night. Interruptions were not appreciated.
As I was closing the compartment I saw the second book lying there and, on a whim, pulled it out and opened it, though I'd read it so many times before I could recite most of it from memory. When Jeremy first told me about the Legacy I expected some musty, stinking, half-rotted tome. But the centuries-old book was in better shape than my college texts. Naturally the pages were yellowed and fragile, but each Pack Alpha had kept it in a special compartment, free from dust, mildew, light, and any of the other elements that could kill a book.
The Legacy purported to tell the history of werewolves, particularly of the Pack, yet it wasn't a straightforward account of dates and events. Instead, every Pack Alpha had added what he considered important, making it a mishmash of history, genealogy, and lore.
One section dealt entirely with scientific experimentation on the nature and boundaries of the werewolf condition. A Pack Alpha during the Renaissance had been particularly fascinated with legends of werewolf immortality. He'd detailed every one, from the stories of werewolves becoming immortal by drinking the blood of infants to the tales of werewolves becoming vampires after death. Then he'd proceeded with well-controlled experiments, all involving mutts that he'd capture, work on, then kill and wait for their resurrection. None of his experiments worked, but he'd been remarkably successful at decreasing the European mutt population.
A century later, a Pack Alpha became obsessed with the pursuit of better sex-the only surprising part of this being that it took several hundred years for someone to do it. He'd started with the hypothesis that human-werewolf sex was inherently dissatisfying because it involved two different species. So he bit a few women. When they didn't survive, he concluded that rumors of female werewolves throughout the ages were false and such a thing was biologically impossible. Moving right along, he tried variations on sex in both forms-as a wolf and as a human with both normal wolves and humans. None approached being in good old-fashioned human form having human sex, so he went back to women and started experimenting with variations on positions, acts, locales, et cetera. Finally, he found the ultimate act of sexual satisfaction-waiting until the first notes of climax struck, then slashing his partner's throat. He described his formula in vivid detail, with all the flowery emoting of a new religious convert. Fortunately, his practice never gained popularity among the Pack, probably because the Alpha was burned at the stake a few months later, after having depleted his village's entire supply of eligible young women.
On the less factual side, the Legacy contained countless stories of werewolves through the ages. Most of these were "my father told me this when I was a child" sort of yarns, many dating back to before the first edition of the Legacy was written. There were tales of werewolves who'd lived their lives in reverse, staying wolves most of the time and changing to humans only when the physical need demanded. There were stories of knights and soldiers and bandits and marauders who'd supposedly been werewolves. Most of these names had vanished from history, but one was still known, even by those who'd never cracked open a history book in their lives. Human history tells of the legend that Genghis Khan's family tree started with a wolf and a doe. According to the Legacy, that was more truth than allegory, the wolf being a werewolf and the doe being a symbol for a human mother. According to that line of reasoning, Genghis Khan himself would have been a werewolf, which explained his lust for blood and his near-supernatural abilities in war. It likely wasn't any truer than the countless human genealogies that include Napoleon and Cleopatra in their family tree. Still, it made a good story.
An equally good tale is one that was also found in human werewolf mythology. A newlywed nobleman's village was plagued by a werewolf. One night, while staking out the beast, the nobleman hears a noise in the bushes and sees a monstrous wolf. He jumps from his saddle and gives chase through the woods on foot. The beast flees from him. At one point, he gets close enough to swing his sword and lops off one of the wolf's front paws. The creature escapes, but when the nobleman goes back to retrieve the paw, it's turned into a woman's hand. Exhausted, he returns to his home to tell his wife what happened. He finds his wife hiding in the back rooms, binding the bloody stump where her hand used to be. Realizing the truth, he kills her. Now, the human version of the story ends there, but the Legacy goes further, giving the ending a pro-werewolf twist. In the Legacy tale, the nobleman kills his new wife by slicing open her stomach. When he does so, out tumbles a litter of wolf pups, his own children. The sight drives the nobleman mad and he kills himself with his sword. Now, as a female werewolf, I'm not particularly keen on the thought of a bellyful of puppies. I prefer to interpret the pups as an allegorical symbol of the nobleman's guilt. When he realizes he's killed his wife without giving her a chance to explain, he goes mad and kills himself. A much more fitting end.
