Biteclan's Daughter (Lands Forlorn Saga Book 1) Page 2
***
The other tomwolves had been gathering around the pond since well before nightfall. Actually the term pond was generous – it measured not even ten meters across, and looked more like a retention basin, in a place where the terrain was depressed enough to collect some of the nearby snow-melt. But for tonight’s purposes it would serve.
Almost fully encircling it were tall, older pines that had long ago shed their lower branches. This provided a clear view for some distance under the forest canopy, where they could spot any interlopers. Ratula kept his eyes fixed on these approaches, while his colleagues rolled several boulders with their paws into position at even intervals around the water. It was a windless night, and the long thin tree trunks reflected off a calm surface under a quarter moon that neared its zenith above.
His colleagues trickled in by ones and twos, some looking edgy and furtive while others appeared quite spent from holding their human forms across a long plane flight. The newcomers were mostly females of the old country, here to assist their small but growing number of mages. But it wasn’t until Ratula spied one particular late arrival that he moved from his position, and padded along the water’s edge to intercept him.
A young charcoal-pelted tomwolf, with a pouch strapped across his back, was just clearing the trees. This was one who had traveled with their lord occasionally as an aide, ever since his arrival from a company in the Balkans seven years ago. Everyone else had been waiting for him tonight.
“Then it’s true?” Ratula said, scouting the forest floor in vain for any other new arrivals.
The youth hung his muzzle near the ground. “I found him with the remains of their hunting party.”
“Krau.” Ratula raised his gaze skyward and almost let out a howl, before remembering himself. “Such a warrior, and a lord. A far better pelt than the enemy deserves. Who else knows?”
“I thought it best that you tell them.”
“Wise of you. Was it the American soldier? Or the child?”
“Had to be the girl. He was in no shape to do it.” The youth slung his pack to the ground. “I’ve just come from the hospital, and he might not survive the night. Most of their party perished in the battle. Their blood was still moist upon him.”
“And she?”
“Less hurt. She saw me coming. I could not gather the bloodwine myself – from either of them.”
“Then are you any use whatever?” Ratula bore his fangs and reared up to his hind legs.
“See for yourself.” The youth slid the pouch open with his muzzle and gingerly removed a severed black claw. Ratula recognized his master’s scent at once, mingled with several others. “It seems our lord wounded each of them, before his fall.”
Ratula tapped the paw pads with his nose. Such impudence. And yet such ingenuity. For this the boy deserved to be praised in ceremony. And killed, though it would be unseemly to do both. He took the claw up at one end and climbed the nearest boulder. “Brothers and sisters! Hear and attend to me!”
The company fell silent at once.
“All that you have heard in whisper and rumor is true. His trusted aide confirms it. Krau is taken from us, felled by the one you have each been seeking in your corners of the earth. The Clan-Daughter. The prophecy of Pax Ominus is now being fulfilled.”
A murmur rose from the other tomwolves, and Ratula snarled for silence.
“You need greater counsel than mine, for what comes next. Mages of Anubis, take your stations!”
Presently Ratula dropped the claw on the rock and bounded away, disappearing into the pack. Eight females padded their way forward and perched atop the rocks, facing each other across the water. In quick, convulsive movements they each stood erect, raising their ears above their heads until they looked like ancient idols from a long-buried temple. Straightening the sashes across their chests, they sat upright on the rocks and fetched a tiny blade from pouches at their belts, slicing open one paw and letting the blood trickle into the pool. The water began to swirl, gently near the center but racing near the bank.
The priestess sitting where Ratula had stood now took up the severed claw and fetched a kind of powder from her pouch, sprinkling it lightly and evenly. She tossed it into the pool near the center, and the group began chanting something indecipherable to him.
The others kept a respectful silence. The waters rose in a bulge at the center of the whirlpool, and two green lights rose from its depths. As they surfaced they began focusing into the shapes of eyes, and soon water itself rose around them, taking the form of a large lupine head. Every wolf bowed low around at the pond, at the sight of it.
“Lykoreia! Queen Regent!”
“Kinsmen! Our mages see as you have seen. Our time has come.” The head of swirling waters turned this way and that, casting a green glow that illuminated their faces. “The humans call her Kira, daughter of Scott, and she lives in the city nearest you. She is the one.”
“But what must we do?” It was Ratula’s voice, from the ranks of the pack. “If she is truly come to rule us—”
“She will do no such thing! The prophecy only states when her hour comes both our peoples will turn to one female, and call her queen. That is why I’ve taken power here, and that is why we have all planned so diligently for this moment. That queen, cousins, will be me!”
The wolves exchanged glances. Then another voice rose from the crowd. “What must we do? They still vastly outnumber us in this land. And if the humans become involved as well…”
“I am coming to join you, kinsmen. Tearing down the Pax, coming from our world to yours with a company of my elite guard, to do what Lucius and the kings before me could not. The gap between us is narrower this season, and your mages will have to pick a gathering point and study the rituals.”
“And then?”
“Her pack still lives. Her family. Her elders. You will rend them all.” The head began to lose shape, and the waters retreated. “Biteclan must fall.”
“Biteclan must fall!” The response came up like a chorus, from every edge of the pond.
“What of the girl?” It was Ratula again. “What of Krau?”
“Kill her if you think you can. Avenge your lord. You have my permission.” Lykoreia appeared to retreat into the pond. “But take her people from her. The pack must die, of that there is no question. You can leave the rest to me.”
II
“Scott? Wake up. Can you hear that?”
Nothing at first. A mumble, and a dream of tall trees that started to swirl into lost green.
“Scott! What’s that sound? It’s inside the house!”
Scott turned and surfaced from a pool of sleep. Sharon’s laptop still sat across her belly, her face fully illuminated with its screen glow. She slid upright at the head of the bed and dug her fingernails into the sheets.
A soft and high-pitched squeal came from the hall outside. Almost electronic, he thought, if it weren’t pausing for breaths. Bat in the attic? Scott rubbed the back of his head and got to his feet, thinking it was still the wrong time of year.
“You’re checking?” Sharon slid the laptop onto her nightstand and tucked her knees in close. “It sounds awful. Are you– ?”
“When did it start?” He wondered what time it was, and plodded toward the bedroom doorway. “Just now?”
“A few seconds ago.” She shut the laptop and the whole room slipped into darkness. She was often awake about an hour after he went to sleep, catching up on emails or streaming a comfort TV show before bedtime. “Do you need the—”
“Shh.” He held up a hand, almost invisible to her in the gloom, and filled the doorway checking the hall. He had assumed that p
osture she had only come to know since he had returned from the war. “Not coming from the twins’ room. They’re still asleep.”
“Is it an animal?”
“It’s her.” He sniffed the air, twice. “It’s time.”
Sharon swung her legs around and off the bed, searching for her slippers in the dark. Scott found the pen light he often used to read, on nights when his wife went to sleep first, and tucked it in the waistband of his boxer shorts. Kira’s bedroom shared a wall with theirs, but he was already stepping past her doorway when Sharon entered the hallway wrapped in her bathrobe.
A patch of moonlight from Scott’s study windows marked a square on the corridor wall, and as her husband passed through it she could see his irises had turned a shade of gold that lacked warmth. She shivered as he closed the study door.
“Not in here?” She peeked into Kira’s room, which they had painted in two hues of pink after moving in last year, and fished around for the lamp by the door. The bed was empty, a lavender sheet reaching across the floor from the bottom of her mattress toward the dresser. Sharon could see a patch of carpet through a tear near the edge. “Where–?”
“Sharon.” Scott whispered in the hallway, his voice changing. “Get her bunny. Get Cutie.”
“Okay.” She sifted through a gaggle of stuffed animals at the foot of the bed. Kira was a mature seven-year-old, more conversant with adults than other kids and very adaptable to change. But in stressful moments she could lose her composure much sooner, without Cutie close at hand. “Here. Got it.”
Scott paused at the top of the stairs that descended to the dining room, staring down into blackness as he took the toy from her. He scratched at a patch of skin under the R.E.M. concert T-shirt he often wore to bed, fetched a penlight and aimed it down the stairwell.
Kira stood with her back to them in a floral nightshirt that reached her knees, on a landing halfway down where the stairs had reached a corner of the house and turned left to continue to the ground floor. She faced into the forward wall as if the turn had stymied her descent, her hands clutching wallpaper on each side at waist level. She did not react to the light.
Sharon gripped her husband’s arm.
“Kira?” Scott said in a low voice. “It’s Daddy.”
The squeal paused for a moment, then she caught a deep breath and resumed it.
“Is she sleepwalking?” Sharon whispered.
Scott motioned her to stay and descended. “Kira, I’ve got Cutie. You want your bunny?”
No response. The pen light fell stronger on the landing as Scott approached it, and Sharon saw her daughter’s fingers now looked elongated and bent. Her skin had lost some color, and looked silver against the pattern of taupe squares on the wall.
Scott stopped on the landing and knelt beside her, setting a hand in the small of her back and pressing his ear against the wall to get a better look at her face. She still seemed oblivious. He glanced up at his wife, and then paused to clear his throat, before letting out a low and inhuman growl that made Sharon retreat briefly around the corner to the upstairs hallway. It reminded her of a dog in her childhood that had gone mad, before her father had put it down.
“Daddy?” Kira said without moving from the wall. “I made a mess.”
For a moment Sharon thought Kira had wet the bed, or the floor. But she remembered the smell of that from her daughter’s potty-training phase, and there was no trace of it here. Scott felt around on the floor at her feet. A viscous clear liquid dripped from his hands, and formed a damp webbing between his fingers.
“It’s okay, honey. I made this same stuff too, at the beginning.” He wiped a patch of it off the wall as she stepped away. “Here, take Cutie.”
She embraced the rabbit absently and stared at his feet. The squeal had given way to a softer gurgling sound, and Sharon noticed that Scott’s winter beard had changed. The usual chestnut brown had become tawny, and coarser, and his jaw looked thicker in the ambient pen light. Kira’s eyes, usually her mother’s bluish green, now matched his gold hue perfectly.
“Do you see me?” He cocked his head. “What do you see, butterbear?”
Abruptly the child released a great wail. Sharon started to descend the stairs, but then stopped cold at her husband’s glance. She grimaced, baring a mix of baby teeth and much larger permanent ones that were growing in, and suddenly convulsed from the neck upward as the bicuspids lengthened. Scott scooped her into a quick embrace and she dug her transformed fingers deep into his shoulder.
“Daddy, my hand!”
“Shh, it’s OK. We’re going to go outside. Do you want some fresh air?”
The gurgle continued. She said nothing else at first.
“Are you hot, honey? Do we wanna go outside and get cooler?”
“Uh-huh. Am I sick?”
“No, no honey. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your hand will get better soon. Come on.”
Sharon tied the sash of her robe to close it. “Should I come with you?”
He shook his head. “She’s gonna scratch a lot. Get me some of her clothes from the dresser?”
By the time he had dressed her and scooped her up in his arms, Kira’s hair had completely changed color, to match her argent skin. There also seemed to be twice as much of it, but Scott tucked it all neatly behind her neck. Hair was sprouting under her knuckles as he carried her through the front door, and Sharon shut off the deck light outside in case any neighbors were still awake.
By the time Scott had crossed the yard and reached the trees, Sharon heard a sound she could only hope would be taken for a barking dog in the neighborhood.
***
The first image Kira registered seeing that night were a pair of paws in the grass. She stared straight down at them, thinking of the paws on a dog that she and her mom visited and fed whenever Mommy’s friend went away. Only she could move these, and it occurred to her they were her own paws. Somehow she was the dog, or she was inside of it.
This frightened her at first. But then the fur shrank away from her wrists and palms, and the claws retreated to become fingernails. She recognized her own skin again. The air became colder, as if she were taking off her clothes for bath time at home, when the heater was out.
Someone threw a blanket over her back. Glancing to the side she saw Daddy’s work boots in the grass beside her. A warm hand ran through her hair, and it reassured her.
“It’s over, butterbear.” Her father knelt beside her, and in his hands she saw a folded bundle of her clothes. “It’s over now. You’ll feel better in a minute.”
“Daddy, I saw my hands and they looked like a doggy.” Her back ached, and she pulled the blanket tightly around her as she sat up. “But they don’t anymore.”
“I know! You’re a silver pelt. Or I think you’re going to be. You didn’t change all the way tonight, just above the waist. It’s too early. You looked like a cute little puppy, with pants. It made me chuckle.”
“Changed? Did I change into a puppy?” She felt her face and looked at her fingers. “I don’t remember anything. Why would I do that?”
“It’s because of me, honey. It’s in your family. And you weren’t a puppy, you were a wolf. Listen, Daddy has a lot to explain.”
“I’m scared,” she said, taking the shirt from him and throwing it on. “I don’t want to be a wolf, Daddy, what’s wrong with me?”
“Shh, butterbear. It’s okay, really. Nothing is wrong with you. With either of us. Look, put your jacket on. I’ll show you something.”
They knelt together under a row of trees that lined their backyard. Through the thicket she could see the moon was low in the sky, descending between a pair of pines in the Chabbani family’s yard down the street. She slipped her arms into the jacket sleeves, and watched while her father dug his fingers into the soil at their feet.
Scott looked both ways towards the woods and the row of houses, like a child about to cross the street. Then he began to shake
, twitching from his shoulders down through his hands, which became two enormous tawny paws. His ears lengthened and climbed above his head, in matching fur. Abruptly his face lengthened and threw a furry snout forward, while his eyes glowed with a gold Kira had never seen. Her eyes went wide.
Then it was over. He twitched again, and the ears and fur retreated. He was her father once more, with a big welcoming smile and well-groomed brown beard. He straightened his hair, rose to his feet and reached out a hand to help her up.
“Wh-what just happened?” she said as he stepped from the trees onto the lawn behind their house. The porch light snapped on ahead of them, silhouetting his figure. She followed him into the light. “Are we okay, Daddy?”
“Sure we’re okay.” He fetched his phone from a jacket pocket and glanced at a message on the screen. “I just change sometimes. Now you do too. It’s something we share. And you’ll be able to control it more, later, like I did just now. Don’t forget the blanket.”
Kira turned back and snatched it up from the grass, then followed a few steps behind him. “But why? Why do we do all of this?”
“Come with me. Your mom’s brewed us some tea.”
They ascended the steps to the deck behind the house, and Mommy emerged through the back door with two steaming mugs.
“Blow on it,” he said. “It’s still a bit hot.”
“Everyone good out there?” She beamed a warm smile at her daughter, and glanced at her husband’s hands as he took the cups. “You’re hurt.”
“Scratched me pretty good. I’ll be all right.” He directed Kira over toward the bench seat porch swing they kept on the deck, for warmer nights. She climbed into it and threw the blanket around herself, swinging gently. “How about you, butterbear? Feeling okay?”
Kira said nothing.”
“I want to hear all about it from you later, honey,” her mom said, then gave a wink and retreated back inside. Scott threw a leg up onto the deck rail and leaned back to sit on it.
“Why are we staying outside?” She clutched her mug and started rocking her legs, to get the porch swing moving.