Ekaterina Sedia - Running with the Pack

I’d turned into a solid, conservative businesswoman—a model citizen. I was a member of the chamber of commerce. I paid my taxes like a good little girl and didn’t even complain all that much about how they were being spent. About the most radical thing I did anymore (besides run an all-night feminist bookstore) was sign petitions.

I felt sick.

I was disgusted with myself.

I’d betrayed all my earlier dreams.

Suddenly, I shoved my hand in her mouth. “Bite me,” I said. What was I thinking? Was I even thinking? As the words flew from my mouth I realized I should’ve had her bite me someplace else, that I’d be crippled with only one hand to use. Still, sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good and I didn’t pull my hand back.

She waited for me to reconsider, then bit down.

I flinched, but it was only a pinch, and then a prick, like having your blood type tested at the doctor’s office, the kind of prick you had to give yourself in biology lab.

And then the world dropped away in a flash of pain as her teeth broke skin.

I howled.

I have no idea what my body did. I think I thrashed about and convulsed. But my mind was numb to anything but pain. That pain was liberating, setting me free from my body. I looked down at myself, sitting on the porch of my bookstore with a wolf biting my hand, and I thought: Well, why don’t I do something?

That was when I snapped back into my body. She released my hand and I stared down at the neat puncture points her teeth had made. I was calm and detached about the blood that leaked from them; my mind kept repeating one phrase: Why don’t I do something? I’d been feeling this way for a while, I only now realized. Maybe this is why the werewolf was here, to wake me up from this stupor, reclaim me as a lesbian avenger. Not a loup garou but a lesbian garou. My mind began to race through imagined scenes, the power we would have.

I was already beginning to act like a werewolf: the bleeding was slowing as my new super-fast metabolism began to kick in. I figured I could get to liking this. I’d even get a humane fur coat out of it.

Of course, I had still to see how painful the Change would be.

“Watch the store,” I told her, then went upstairs to get gauze and neosporin.

When I got downstairs again, the wolf was gone.

In its place was a naked woman. “How do you feel?” she asked.

I looked her over: mid-thirties, dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders, slightly overweight but seemingly unselfconscious about her body. Here she was, buck naked in a used bookstore, and she was able to hold a conversation. I liked that.

My hand throbbed. It felt swollen big as my thigh. “I’ll live,” was all I said.

And a part of my mind whispered that I would, that I would heal from any ordinary wound, heal from anything but silver.

She smiled and before I could help myself—I generally had more presence of mind, but perhaps I was too flustered at seeing a naked woman again, after so long, or maybe I was just rusty from lack of practice flirting—I blurted out, “Why me?”

She closed the coffee table book she’d been leafing through and put it down on the counter. “It was the wolf. Instinct. My feet just knew where to take me. I guess they knew you’d be able to handle this.” She looked away from me, as if suddenly shy, and then added, “The wolf is not a solitary creature.”

What was she asking of me? Or had I already decided, when I’d asked her to bite me? Was I now part of her pack?

She looked to me like I was the alpha female. So I took charge.

“Human’s aren’t either,” I said, and reached for her.

I didn’t bother to open the store the next day. For one thing, it had been so long since I’d had someone in bed with me, I didn’t want to get out of it. And I’d just have to close up at sundown, anyway, which would confuse people. What if I couldn’t get rid of all my customers in time, I wondered, if I turned into a snarling bitch right in front of them. Every store needs a gimmick these days, but that just didn’t seem right for mine.

The Change began like a severe case of cramps, only it was all over my body at once, not localized to my belly. I wondered briefly if taking Midol or aspirin before the Change would help dull the sensations. I resolved to try it next time, just as my body convulsed and I lost all conscious thought to the pain.

When I uncurled my body from the floor and stretched my limbs, I knew something was different but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. Perhaps it was because I no longer had fingers per se. I yawned, my jaws gaping wide, and I knew suddenly how sharp my teeth had become. I’d felt them, the night before, when Laura bit down on my hand.

And Laura. She, too, would have changed. I could feel her near me, the heat of her body picked up somehow through my new wolf’s senses.

I didn’t bother to look for her, but nosed open the apartment door we’d left ajar and ran down the steps. I was oddly comfortable in this new body, as if I’d lived in it once before. Perhaps being a werewolf was like riding a bicycle, a skill you didn’t forget. I jumped up and pushed open the outer door, which we’d blocked open with a rock, and ran out into the night.

This was nothing like riding a bicycle. This was like riding the wind.

I ran through the city’s streets, hearing the click of my nails on pavement, and the echo of Laura’s behind me, as we raced.

I remembered how one night a friend and I had gotten dressed in male drag and gone out. We were packing dildos in our jeans, and it gave us a glorious feeling of power. It made us feel cocky, in all sense of the word. We didn’t know where else to go, so we went to a gay bar, and we watched the men cruising each other, and were ourselves sometimes cruised, sometimes cruising, wondering what we’d do if one of these big men took us up on our offers, how they would react when they got us home and found out our dicks weren’t real. Would they want us to fuck them anyway? We never found out.

I remembered that heady sensation of power I’d felt that night, but compared to this packing was just playing a wolf in cheap clothing.

This was power. I could feel the energy coiled in my limbs as my silvery pelt stretched and moved across my wolf muscles and sinew.

This was taking back the night.

I felt the familiar anger begin to burn in my belly, a hungering for justice and retribution. I wanted a fight, to test my newfound strength, to redress the balance. The night wasn’t a safe place, only now it wasn’t as safe for the people who made it unsafe.

I could be shot, I realized. I could be knifed.

Only silver can harm a werewolf, a voice inside my head reminded me. Although I didn’t doubt that an ordinary bullet or knife would hurt like hell.

I prowled. My ears strained to pick up the sounds of a disturbance of any sort. The city seemed eerily empty of that sort of activity.

How come nobody warns you that being a vigilante is boring as hell most of the time? Where was a rapist when you needed one? Were they all off having a pot luck somewhere?

Laura seemed to know my restlessness and pulled suddenly ahead, leading me off on a new path. Had she heard something I’d missed, more accustomed to discerning stimulus from her lupine senses? Or did she just fear that I would attack some innocent passerby if I didn’t find release for this building anger soon? We passed a Dumpster with an enticing smell, but I didn’t stop to investigate. I loped after her, anticipation building as we dashed through the alleyways behind buildings. I had no idea where we were, and wondered if I’d even be able to recognize this part of town if I were on the street looking at the fronts of these buildings.