Kelley Armstrong - Bitten

When Jeremy was twenty-one, his father had returned from a trip with a strange story. He'd been passing through Louisiana when he'd scented a werewolf. He'd tracked it and discovered a preadolescent werewolf living like an animal in the swamps. To Malcolm Danvers, this had been nothing more than an intriguing dinner tale, since no one had ever heard of a child werewolf. While hereditary werewolves didn't experience their first Change until adulthood, usually between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, a human bitten by a werewolf was a werewolf immediately, regardless of his age. The youngest person known to have become a werewolf was fifteen. It was assumed that if a child was bitten, he would die, if not of the bite, then surely from the shock. Even if he miraculously survived the attack, a child couldn't have the fortitude to survive the first Change. This boy in Louisiana looked no more than seven or eight, but Malcolm had seen him in both forms, so he was clearly a full-fledged bitten werewolf. The Pack chalked up his survival to sheer luck, a fluke of nature having nothing to do with strength or willpower. The wolf-child may have lived this long, but he certainly couldn't survive much longer. The next time Malcolm visited Louisiana, he expected to find the boy long dead. He even laid a few hefty wagers on this with his Pack brothers.

The next day, Jeremy caught a flight to Baton Rouge where he'd found the boy, who had no idea what had happened to him or how long he'd been a werewolf. He'd been living in the swamps and tenements, eking out an existence killing rats and dogs and children. At such an early age his Changes were uncontrollable and he vacillated continually between forms, reason having almost given way to madness. The boy had looked like an animal even in human form, naked with matted hair and nails like talons.

Jeremy had brought the boy home and tried to civilize him. As it turned out, the task was as impossible as civilizing a wild animal. The best you can hope for is to tame it. Clay had lived on his own as a werewolf for so long that he no longer remembered being human. He had become a wolf, more of a true wolf than any normal werewolf could be, governed by the simplest of instincts, the need to hunt for food, to defend his territory, and to protect his family. If Jeremy had questioned this, Clay's first encounter with Nicholas had banished any doubts.

As a boy, Clay would have nothing to do with human children, so Jeremy decided he should meet one of the Pack sons, thinking Clay might be more willing to accept a playmate, who, while not a werewolf yet, at least had the blood in his veins. As I've said, sons of the Pack were taken from their mothers and raised by their fathers. More than that, they were raised by the Pack itself. The boys were indulged and cherished by the whole Pack, maybe to compensate for a difficult life to come, more likely to foster the bonds necessary for a strong Pack. The children would often pass their summer holidays moving from one house to another, spending as much time as possible with the "uncles" and "cousins" who would become their Pack brothers. Since the Pack was never large, there were usually no more than two boys of a similar age. When Clay came to live with Jeremy there were only two Pack sons under ten: Nick, who'd been eight and Daniel Santos, who'd been almost seven-the age Jeremy decided Clay would officially be. Of the two, Nick would be Clay's first playmate. Maybe Jeremy picked Nick because he was the son of his best friend. Or maybe he already saw something in Daniel that made him decide he'd make an unsuitable playmate. Whatever the reason, Jeremy's choice was one that would resonate throughout the lives of the three boys. But that's another story.

At their first meeting, Antonio brought Nick to Stonehaven and introduced him to Clay, fully expecting the two boys to run off and play a good old-fashioned game of cops and robbers. As Antonio tells the story, Clay stood there for a moment, sized up the older and taller boy, then sprang, pinning Nick to the ground with his arm on his throat, whereupon Nick promptly pissed his pants. Disgusted at his adversary's lack of worthiness, Clay decided to let him live and soon found Nick had his uses… as a wrestling dummy, an errand boy, and a devoted follower. Which isn't to say the two never engaged in a good old-fashioned game of cops arid robbers, but whenever they did, no matter which role Nick was given, he always ended up being the one gagged, bound to a tree, and sometimes abandoned.

Clay eventually learned better instinct control, but even now it was a struggle against his nature. For Clay, instinct ruled. He'd learned tricks he could employ if he had advance notice, such as hearing hunters on the property in the distance. But without such warning, his temper took over and he'd explode, sometimes endangering the Pack. No matter how smart he was-his IQ was once measured at 160-he couldn't control his instincts. Sometimes I thought this made it harder, having the brains to know he was screwing up and being unable to stop himself. Other times I figured if he was so smart, he should be able to control it. Maybe he just didn't try hard enough. I liked that explanation better.

Jeremy and Antonio returned from their talk and we all moved to the study, where Jeremy explained the situation. There was a werewolf in Bear Valley. The wild dog story was a plausible explanation devised by locals desperate for an answer. There had been canine tracks around the body. The kill itself was canine, throat ripped out and body partly devoured. Of course, no one could explain how the young woman had come to be wandering around the forest at night in the first place, particularly in a skirt and high heels. It looked like a dog kill, so the locals had decided it was. We knew better.

The killer was a werewolf. All the signs were there. The surprise was that he was still in Bear Valley, even that he'd arrived there at all. How had one of the mutts gotten so close to Stonehaven? How had he killed a local woman before Jeremy and Clay had even figured out he was there? The answer was simple: complacency. After twenty years of not seeing a werewolf set foot north of New York City, Clay had relaxed his guard. Jeremy had continued to monitor the papers, but he'd paid more attention to events in other parts of the Pack territory. If he expected trouble, he expected it elsewhere, maybe in Toronto, or Albany where Logan kept an apartment, or the Catskills, where the Sorrentinos' estate was, or across the border in Vermont where Peter lived. But not near Stonehaven. Never near Stonehaven.

When the dead woman had disappeared Jeremy knew about it but paid little attention. Humans went missing all the time. There had been no suggestion that the disappearance had anything to do with a werewolf. Three days ago the woman's body had been found, but by then it was too late. The window of opportunity for quickly and safely dispatching the trespasser had passed. The townsfolk were up in arms over the killing. Within hours hunters were combing the woods looking for predators, human or canine. As much as Jeremy was respected in the community, he was still an outsider-someone who lived there but held himself apart from the community. For years people in and around Bear Valley had granted the Danvers their privacy, prompted in part by the large checks that came from Stonehaven each Christmas earmarked for school improvements or a new library or whatever else city council was struggling to pay for. When danger came calling, though, it was human nature to look to the outsider. It wouldn't be long before someone looked toward Stonehaven and its generous yet mysterious inhabitants and said, "You know, we don't really know them, do we?"

"What we need to do first is find this mutt," Jeremy said. "Elena has the best sense of smell, so she'll be-"