It's only a game, she told herself, to see if I can snare him. But she wanted to know what was in a human head to make him write that poem, and she wanted to know why he'd stolen the breath from her lips.
As she reached home the front door opened. Gabriel, the inspiration for her mother's latest fight, was leaving. He filled the door frame, blocking her way. His T-shirt clung to his wide chest.
"Hi, Viv," he said. "Lookin' good." His voice rumbled like lazy thunder.
The teasing in his blue eyes made her want to spit. "Save that for Esmé."
Gabriel rubbed his chin and grinned. She noticed the puckered white scar tissue on the back of his right hand. The tip of another scar showed at his throat. "We don't see you down at Tooley's," he said, ignoring her anger.
She glared up at him. "I'm too young to drink."
He looked her over, taking his time. Before she could help it she tugged at the hemline of her shorts. Her shirt felt too tight. She was aware of a droplet of sweat that tickled its way down between her breasts. "Could have fooled me," he finally said.
She stared him in the eye, challenging him; she was out of her depth, but defiant anyway, willing her lip not to tremble. There was silence for a moment and she couldn't read his strong, chiseled face. He reached for her. She jerked back. Then he laughed like a giant and moved aside. She slid past him into the house, angry that she'd flinched, but showing him that she dared go by. She closed the door on his arrogant face.
"Mom!" she yelled shrilly.
Esmé poked her head out from the dining room.
"How long's he been here?" Vivian demanded.
"Only a few minutes," Esmé answered. She looked smug. "He dropped by to invite me for a late-night drink."
"Dammit, Mom. He's twenty-four."
"So?"
"You're almost forty."
"Well, rub it in." But nothing was wiping the smile off Esmé's face.
"Don't you think it's a little bit disgusting?"
Esmé flung her hands in the air. "Well, for goodness' sake, I'm not serious about him."
"Oh great. Now he's your boy toy."
Esmé smirked. "Some boy." She danced up the stairs, her rear end wagging like a tail. Vivian followed Esmé up and slammed the door of her room.
Rudy had gone to Tooley's bar after work, so there were just Vivian and Esmé at the dinner table. Vivian was still brooding about Gabriel's visit. She thought of her father and the aching emptiness that still gnawed at her. Her parents had seemed so happy together. She'd thought her mother shared that ache, but now Esmé was acting like a stupid fourteen-year-old.
"Didn't you love Dad?" she finally said.
Esmé looked startled at this question out of the blue. "Yes, I loved him."
"Then why are you out running around?"
"A year's a long time, Vivian. I'm tired of crying. I'm lonely. Sometimes I want a man in my bed."
Vivian grabbed her plate abruptly and headed for the kitchen. Couldn't her mother talk to her as if she was a daughter? She scraped her leftovers into the trash with a squeal of knife against porcelain.
"Watch those dishes!" her mother yelled.
That's more like it, Vivian thought.
An hour later Vivian was on her bed doing some halfhearted studying for Chemistry, when the phone rang. She picked up the phone on the second-floor hallway expecting to hear one of the pack, but it was Aiden.
"There's a free concert at the university this weekend," he said. "Sunday afternoon. You wanna go . . . maybe?"
Her eyes half closed and she licked her lips. "Maybe. Who's playing?"
He mentioned a band she'd never heard of in reverent tones that suggested it was well known and one of his favorites. He was sharing a special treat with her. "I'll have to see if my family has anything planned," she told him. "I'll let you know tomorrow." No sense in letting him think her too eager. "No. Don't worry. I'll find you."
Vivian hung up and stretched her arms to the ceiling contentedly arching her back. Should she go, or was having him rise to the bait good enough?
But a shadow slid across her pleasant mood. If they went on a date he would want to kiss her. Would he be safe if he came close enough to fill her nostrils with his scent?
Esmé walked out of her bedroom. She was wearing the tight black dress she used for waitressing. "Who was that?" she asked casually as she put in an earring.
"A boy from school."
Esmé paused. "Oh?"
"He asked me to a concert."
"One of them asked you out?" Her mother's expression combined repulsion and surprise. "I won't allow it."
Vivian bristled. "You can't tell me who to date."
Esmé put her hands on her hips. " 'Don't date if you can't mate,' the saying goes." Human and wolf-kind were biologically incapable of breeding.
"I'm going to a concert, not having his baby," Vivian snapped. "And don't tell me wolf-kind only start relationships when they want children. I know better."
"You've got a smart mouth, girl," Esmé called as she walked off.
Now Vivian was sure she was going.
He had phoned, and she wasn't an outsider anymore - untouchable and strange, perhaps invisible. But why should she care so much? He was a human after all: a meat-boy scantily furred, an incomplete creature who had only one form.
How sad, she thought, and suddenly she craved the change.
Like all her people, at the full moon she had to change whether she wanted to or not, the urge was too strong to refuse. Other times she could change at will, either partway or fully. Right now the moon swelled like a seven-month belly, and she wanted to change because it was possible. She wanted to run for the joy of it.
She stalked through the backyard dusk, across the bat-grazed clearing in the narrow ribbon of woods out back, over the stream, up the embankment, and down into the wide grassy valley that held the river.
The grass was already high. Here and there might be nests made by kids making out or getting high, but she sniffed the air and smelled no human flesh.
Down by the river was a giant tumble of rocks that screened the riverbank. Behind the rocks, amid the shoulder-high weeds, she slowly slid off her clothes. Already her skin prickled with the sprouting pelt. A trickle of breeze curled around her buttocks, and her nipples tightened in the cool air off the river. She laughed and threw her panties down.
Her laugh turned to a moan at the first ripple in her bones. She tensed her thighs and abdomen to will the change on, and clutched the night air like a lover as her fingers lengthened and her nails sprouted. Her blood churned with heat like desire. The night, she thought, the sweet night. The exciting smells of rabbit, damp earth, and urine drenched the air.
The flesh of her arms bubbled and her legs buckled to a new shape. She doubled over as the muscles of her abdomen went into a brief spasm, then grimaced as her teeth sharpened and her jaw extended. She felt the momentary pain of the spine's crunch and then the sweet release.
She was a creature much larger and stronger than any natural wolf. Her toes and legs were too long, her ears too big, and her eyes held fire. Wolf was only a convenient term they had adopted. Those who preferred science to myth said they descended from something older - some early mammal that had absorbed protean matter brought to Earth by a meteorite.
Vivian stretched and pawed at the ground, she sniffed the glorious air. She felt as if her tail could sweep the stars from the sky.
I will howl for you, human boy, she thought. I will hunt you in my girl skin but I'll celebrate as wolf.
And she ran the length of the river to the edge of the city slums and back, under the hopeful early-summer moon.
Chapter 4
4
By eight o'clock the large parlor of Vivian's home was full. The pack spread around the room on couches, chairs, and the floor in a rough semicircle that faced the fireplace - except Astrid, who lounged apart on the seat set into the bay window at the front of the house, and the Five, who loitered to the side of the window, bantering and exchanging playful blows.
Among the crowd were strays who had gravitated to the pack when it came to the suburbs, and others Vivian didn't know well who had worked at the inn when she was much younger. Many of those who had gone to join relatives when the trouble started hadn't come back.
Vivian felt a pang of loneliness. This is all that's left of us, she thought. And no one I feel close to. Not even Mom anymore. She curled up smaller in her armchair.
Astrid laughed at the boys' antics. When she tossed her head, her red hair flamed against the green curtains.
With her sharp features and plump rear, she reminded Vivian more of a fox than a wolf.
Gabriel paced restlessly in front of the fireplace. Astrid glanced over at him repeatedly until she finally caught his eye; then she winked. His grin was slow and smoldering; she sat back with a satisfied smirk.
Vivian's mother saw the exchange, too. "Bitch," she muttered. She leaned across Vivian to complain to Renata Wagner, then looked over at Gabriel and licked her lips pointedly.
Renata laughed. "Stop it, Esmé."
Vivian turned away, embarrassed.
"Can we have quiet, please," Rudy shouted.
Jenny Garnier flinched and clutched her baby closer to her. She'd been as raw as a trapped rabbit since she'd lost her husband in the fire. Rudy reached out from his perch on the overstuffed arm of the couch to pat her shoulder reassuringly.
Everyone looked his way expectantly. Well, almost everyone.
Willem and Finn cackled and batted at each other to either side of Ulf, who dodged between them, a panicked look on his small, pale face. Rafe was telling the awestruck Gregory how big some girl's breasts were.
Rafe's father, Lucien, twisted around in the easy chair he slouched in. "Quit it," he growled, and raised a fist. Rafe glared at his father, but he waited until Lucien turned away before he gave him the finger.
"The insurance money's come through," Rudy said into the silence. There was a brief hiss of whispers. "We've got enough to do what we want now."
Vivian bit back a yelp of outrage. This was the news they'd been waiting for and Rudy hadn't told her. They had eaten breakfast together, for Moon's sake.
"And the funny thing is," Rudy continued, "we wouldn't have got the money if Sheriff Wilson hadn't spent so much effort covering up the evidence that the fire was arson so his buddies wouldn't get in trouble."
"Three cheers for Sheriff Wilson," Bucky Dideron called, to gales of laughter.
Rudy raised his arms. "Okay, okay."
The room quieted.
"My agents checked out some viable properties," Rudy said. "It's time to choose where the pack will go."
"And who'll lead us," Gabriel said. Vivian was irritated to see Esmé smiling. There was no mystery about who she supported.
On the floor in front of their oblivious mother, Gabriel's sisters - disturbingly similar eight-year-old triplets - were intent on finding out who could sit on top of the others the longest. Vivian itched to go over and smack them till they yelped. Before she gave in to the itch Gabriel leaned over and whispered something to them and they settled down.
Old Orlando Griffin spoke up in a quavering voice. "Rudy, you're the one who's pulled it all together. You took us in when we were homeless, helped us settle in an unfamiliar place, found the lawyers, and found the agents. You've been a good leader while we've been here." He pointed to Rudy with a burn-scarred hand. "I vote you leader for the move."
"I appreciate your support," Rudy said. "But I'm not going with you."
"Rudy!" Esmé exclaimed.
Rudy ran his fingers through his badger-gray hair. "My life's here. I was willing to help while I could and get things going again, but now it's time for you to move on, and for that you need a different type of leader than I have the strength or the will to be."
"You're assuming a lot," Astrid called from her window perch.
Rudy's brow creased. "What do you mean?"
"What if we don't want to go?"
Vivian was amazed when Astrid wasn't immediately shouted down.
"You've got to go," Rudy said. "This isn't the place for the pack. There are too many humans, too close together. With this many of us, sooner or later someone's going to make a mistake, and this time it might mean the end of us. Look at those boys." He pointed to the Five. "Don't tell me they've got the common sense to stay out of trouble."
"They're only being boys," Astrid said, smiling indulgently at the Five.
"And maybe they got a point," Lucien Dafoe said. "Maybe it's time to change the rules. Maybe it's time to hunt instead of be hunted. That's my opinion."
"We know about your opinions," snapped Aunt Persia, the elderly healer.
And your drinking, Vivian thought. He hadn't handled his losses well. If anyone was a menace, he was. What if he lost control and revealed himself in some bar one night? Rudy was right. They had to get out of the city.
"But we've only now settled in," Raul Wagner said. "We've got jobs." He nodded toward his wife, Magda. "We've finally got a decent house."
"And look what's happening to our kids while we're busting our asses trying to earn enough to live in this city," his brother, Rolf, answered. "We need to live somewhere where we can afford our own business again, where we can make our own hours, make time for the kids."