C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Like getting out of the itchy human clothes. That was the work of a moment, while I growled over the nice warm lump of bleeding flesh right in front of me. It would sate the hunger in my belly. I’d been so long without food as a human I’d temporarily forgotten the need to eat. Shifting awakened the need, and the bloody, barely breathing body on the floor looked like lunch.

Gary put his hand on my ruff and pulled me back as I dipped my head toward Méabh’s gut wound. I snarled and turned on him, teeth snapping a whisker from his nose.

He didn’t even flinch, just scruffed my spine and then my furry cheeks. My angry wolf brain went blank for just a moment. This was not how prey was supposed to act. I lost some of my aggression, and inside that moment of confusion, Gary said, “You ain’t gonna bite me, darlin’.”

No. No, I wasn’t. That was Gary. My friend Gary. Gary, who’d come back. I kept to short ideas, important thoughts. Gary was my friend. I wouldn’t bite him. I would never bite him. I would never make him a monster. I wasn’t a monster. Not if I could keep from biting Gary. Over and over, the same litany of promises: I had Gary back. I would never risk him again.

Inch by itching inch, my hackles flattened. I edged my front feet forward centimeters at a time until they, too, lay flat, and I had my chin on the floor. Gary kept hold of my face, just like I was still a real girl. He even smiled, all calm and natural, as if holding off a crazed werewolf was all in the line of duty. “There you go,” he said in approval. “That’s better. Now, what’s goin’ on, Jo? You said shapeshifting. Didn’t think that meant eating your buddies.”

I didn’t think much at all, but his voice was soothing. I listened to it, an easy rising and falling cadence, and began to fall asleep. A hint of danger flared as I recognized the oncoming nap, but it was too late: the wolf’s thoughts became stronger than my own, more focused. Food would come later. The old human would weaken. He could be taken then. The Master would be pleased. The Master knew this old man. His scent was familiar. Familiar to all the Master’s creatures. The old man had fought the Master once, long ago. Before my ancestors had come from the earth to do the Master’s bidding. Killing this man would be the Master’s desire. If I brought this man to the Master, he would forgive me and all my kind for their weakness in being captured by Méabh.

Familiar scent flared again and my eyes opened wide. Méabh. The Master knew the dying woman’s scent, too. My kind would be elevated above all others if I brought him the dying woman and the old man. My tail hit the floor once, hard. I gathered my feet under me and sprang away, out of the old man’s reach. Out of reach of the food/dying/Méabh-woman, too, but that wouldn’t matter soon. I made my throat long, gathering breath for a triumphant howl to the sky.

Something I couldn’t see kicked me in the head.

I wobbled, too surprised to howl or whimper. Nothing nothing nothing: my senses were afire, searching for what had attacked me. No scent. No body. No footstep on the floor. I backed away, shoulders hunched, head lowered, teeth bared. Growling at the nothing. Willing it to go away. Willing it to be seen, so I could fight it.

Its scent came first. Heavy, earthen, animal. Prey animal: deer. But not weak, not a doe, not a fawn. A stag. In his prime, musky scent growing stronger. Not easy prey. Not wise prey for a single wolf. A pack could take him, but I had no pack. My kind scattered from each other after the change was forced on us. We hunted alone now. We did not hunt the healthy, the strong. We did not hunt the stag.

But there was the old man and the dying woman, and the promise of the Master’s forgiveness. I was young. Strong. Perhaps I could take the stag. It would fill my belly. I crouched lower, growling.

Something wrong came into the scent. A not-prey smell: dominance. So strong I almost lay down, almost rolled to expose my hungry belly. Maybe it would think me a puppy. Forgive my mistakes.

No. I had to remember. Master. Old man. Dying woman. I sprang up again, snarling.

The scent became a shape. Like a man, but not. Too thick in the torso, the neck, the head. Antlers there, like the stag. Green eyes, not like the stag. Relentless gaze. No prey animal would lock eyes with me, the wolf, the quick and strong one. I made myself larger, ruff standing on end, and the stag-man said a word: “Enough.”

It made me small, that word. Made me quiver. Made my bladder tighten and made me lie down with only the tip of my tail moving. Pleading for forgiveness. I did not understand. The stag-man should be prey. Should be afraid. Should be careful .

I rolled onto my back and stretched my throat long for the second time, but this time in submission, and didn’t know why.

The stag-man knelt beside me and took my fur in his hand. Over my throat, squeezing, pressing, warning as he whispered, “Foolish shifter. Do you think you frighten me? I am Cernunnos, god of the hunt, and you, foolish beast, are a hunter. You are mine, first and so long before you belonged to that thing they call the Master. You have made your allegiances, but never dream that I cannot still master you . Now release my shaman, foolish shifter, or I will destroy you here, in this place so close to your birth space that you will be called back and will never again see sunlight.”

He could. He would. I knew it in my bowels, in the way my tail curled between my legs in terror. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t destroy me without destroying her, the one who wasn’t wolf. My tail uncoiled a little, and the stag-god smiled. Sharp teeth in that smile. As sharp as mine. “It would be a shame,” he said, “but do not imagine her life is so unimportant that I would let a monster live in her place.”

The wolf whimpered and flowed away. Pain shot through me again and I lay there, Joanne-shaped, naked and with Cernunnos’s mouth half an inch from mine. Had his hand not also been crushing my windpipe quite so thoroughly, it would have been a supremely erotically charged moment. Good thing Morrison wasn’t here, which wasn’t something I often found myself thinking. “…thanks.”

Cernunnos raked a glance over me, ending with a smile so repressed that it obviously said, “Oh, anytime!” Without looking, and with consummate grace, he caught my coat in his free hand as Gary tossed it our way, and covered me with it in some semblance of modesty. I sat up to shove my arms in the sleeves, somewhere between dismayed and relieved that my left arm responded properly. It didn’t hurt anymore, either, but it was still shiny and infected-looking. Amputation was starting to sound like a viable option.

“You are damaged, my gwyld, ” Cernunnos said, too softly for Gary to hear. I shot a “no duh” look between my arm and him, but he shook his star-filled hair. “More deeply than that wound can say. Pain remains in your soul, and until that pain is excised you will be susceptible to magics like this one. Shall I offer again?” He sounded almost lonely. “I offered once, Siobhán Walkingstick. Shall I offer again, to take away that pain?”

I closed the coat at my throat and shook my head. “I’d still say no. I have to. I’m sorry.”

“Then see to the wounds that scar you,” he advised. “Face them, Joanne. You cannot go on this way.”

I thought of my mother, of the few things we’d managed to say and all the ones left unsaid, and nodded. “I’m working on it.”

Without condemnation, he said, “Work harder,” and drew me to my feet. “She is yours to watch over now,” he told Gary, and my big buddy lumbered over to hand me my shirt and hug me.