Michael Stackpole: Wolf and Raven

With her head up, and just the tips of her ears peeking out through the long veil of her midnight hair, she walked toward me. I gave her a smile intended to inspire hope and confidence, but she ignored me and only saw the black and red raven patch on the shoulder of my jacket. She blinked twice and then I thought she was going to faint.

I reached out and steadied her. "Easy now, Ms. Alianha. We're almost home."

She touched the patch with incredibly slender fingers. "My husband sent you?"

I frowned and figured she was confused. "I work for Richard Raven."

Moira smiled. "Yes, my husband to be.6"

I almost swallowed my tongue. "Huh? Say what?"

She just looked at me with vibrant green eyes.

Suddenly everything seemed to run to chaos in my head. "Does anyone else know who you are to Raven?"

Moira shook her head. "No, not here, why?"

I let her question drift by unanswered. "Don't tell anyone, period."If anyone finds out that she's close to Raven, her life won't be worth a melted sim and she could be used against Raven when dealing with scum like La Plante. His aides, folks like me and Val, accept the dangers connected with belonging to Raven's group. Moira was lucky that La Plante had no idea of her true value, or this little exchange would be lots more rude.

6This was a shocker. I didn't even know Doc was dating. Turns out he wasn't, but that's a story for another time.

The Chauffeur shouted at me. "Let's save the tea party and true confessions for later. We want the chip, now!"

Carefully, slowly, I reached into my jacket pocket. I withdrew from it a white piece of plastic about three centimeters square. The chip itself showed up in sharp contrast to the snowy plastic wafer to which it had been mounted. "I'll just put it down here…"

I felt the plastic quiver and the chip explode as the bullet shot through it at Mach 4. The booming, rolling echo of the gunshot followed the bullet by a split-second, but I'd already turned and started to push Moira to safety. My right hand dropped the piece of plastic and enfolded the MP-9's pistol grip. I swept the gun around and snapped off two shots, one of which sent a headless grunge pitching back to the warehouse floor. I heard the staccato roar of Zig and Zag's AK-97s and saw three more grunges drop out of sight amid sparks lancing from the limo's armored frame.

Gunmen hidden on the rooftops slowly stood and their weapons lipped flame as I dragged and pushed Moira out of the killing zone. With so many people concentrating on just the pair of us I was sure we'd be blasted to ribbons before we'd gone a half-dozen steps, but the men on the roof started shooting at La Plante's grunges. The confused orks returned the fire, but did so ineffectively because of the wealth of targets and the babel of orders being shouted by The Chauffeur.

I'd just propelled Moira through the narrow warehouse doorway when a bullet finally caught me. It blew into the back of my left thigh and ricocheted off to the left after it shattered my femur. It ripped free of my leg five centimeters left and seven below the entry point, tearing a chunk out of my femoral artery as it went.

I screamed, but as the echoes of the scream died in my head I heard the howl of a wolf rise in their place. Stumbling forward, I spilled onto the warehouse floor. My left knee hit hard and sent another shock wave of pain through my leg. I tried to choke back another cry, but it came out as a lupine yelp.

I rolled over onto my back and pulled the MP-9 to me. "Move it, campers. Get Moira out of here."

Val stared at the hole in my leg. "You're hit!"

I bit back the pain. "Yeah, my days in the big league are over. Maybe you can retire my uniform." I looked up at Zig and Zag. "Move it! I'll hold them off if I can. It's got to be Fujiwara yaks out there shooting the granges up. That'll buy you some time, and I'll buy you more. Go!"

Zig made for the back door, but Moira shook her head and knelt beside me. "No, I'm not going. You need help."

She started making all the hand motions for a spell, but I closed a bloody hand around her fingers. "Save it, sister. You'll need all the magic you can muster to get the hell out of Seattle. Val, get her out of here."

Valerie crossed to Moira and rested her hands on her shoulders, but the elf shrugged her off. "No. I can save you. I can fix your leg."

Inside my head the Old One growled seductively. "Let her fix you. Let her fill you with magic. Do as she asks and I assure you the others will not follow."

"No!" I shouted at both of them.

Her eyes flashed with an anger that told me my stay of execution had been denied. "Wait." I pulled the Viper from my belt and tossed it to Val.

She stared at it as if it were commercial software. "I don't want this."

I swallowed hard. "You might." I reached down and dipped the fingers of my left hand in my blood and painted twin parallel lines beneath each eye and across my forehead. "Do this, Moira, and then leave. All of you, get out of here. Don't look back, no matter what. Don't go looking for me. I'll find you, when I can."

Zig and Zag stared at me as if I'd gone mad and Val shivered. Moira ripped my pants away from the wound and pressed her hands to it. She subvocalized a chant, but I felt warmth and a tingling flow from her hands into my leg. Almost instantly it nibbled the pain away. The energy continued to build and tissue began to heal, my body motivated to restructure itself at a rate that should have taken months. Even so, I knew the spell she'd cast was more than I needed.

And it was more than I could control.

I grit my teeth and shoved her away. "Go, go!" I snapped at them. "Run!"

They vanished from sight just as the first tremor hit me. I shrieked as fire filled my ribs with molten agony. I heard the crack as my breastbone parted down the middle, thickened and broadened to accept the new angle of my expanded rib cage. I gnashed my teeth at the pain and the growing canine teeth split my lower lip.

"Don't fight it, Longtooth. It won't hurt so much," the Old One whispered.

Gotta retain some control! Can't let you run wild!

My long bones telescoped back down, shortening but strengthening my limbs. The muscles flowed into protoplasm as the transformation continued, then congealed into new muscles with new insertions able to exert more powerful pressure and leverage than before. My fingers and toes likewise shrank-the latter far more than the former-and organic claws grew to give me some new weaponry.

My head felt as if it were exploding when my jaw and facial bones broke. My whole face grew into a muzzle and my tongue lengthened along with it. The top of my head flattened somewhat and my eye sockets sank back to a more protective position. According to the only person to watch me go through this lunacy, my eyes do not lose their silver color or the Killer Rings.

The bodily transformation almost complete as my pelt thickened and ears lengthened, I felt the Old One begin to gnaw on my resolve and humanity. I clung to the image of Dr. Raven sitting across from me as I changed and the sound of his voice telling me how to concentrate so I would not surrender to the beast inside me. "You have been blessed by Wolf, greatly blessed, but that blessing will be a curse if you surrender yourself to him."

The Old One whimpered with disgust. "Someday Raven will fail you and you will become mine."

Stuff it, you mangy mutt. I've won this round.

The advent of three grunges storming through the warehouse door precluded any remark the Old One might have made. I gave them a toothy grin from the shadows. "My, my," I growled in a voice that even grunges knew to fear. "What fine little piggies we have here.?"

It took a bit more than a fairy-tale huffing and puffing to blow them all down, but the grunges didn't offer much more than that for a fight. They've never been much for hitting a moving target, and in my more compact wolf form I don't stay in one place very long. I left them in a broken heap on the warehouse floor, then dashed out into the killzone, doing my best to spit out grunge blood.