Ekaterina Sedia - Running with the Pack

I skinned my lips back from my teeth, subtly longer and sharper than a natural wolf’s, stretched toes set with claws more like those of a bear than a wolf. Magic sang in my blood. See me! I am terrible and beautiful and wise. Accept me, and my power will be added to yours, and all that runs will fall before us.

The thinner of the Dobermans whined and dropped his head and tail, and then the other. One by one the pack stepped out—bluetick and coonhounds, a shepherd mix, and four of the dingo-like mixes that wild dogs seemed to breed back to—with heads and eyes dropped in submission. A good-sized pack, hunters all—and mine.

I swelled with the knowledge. For tonight, at least, I did have a pack, a pack who knew what it was to hunt and to kill. The Dobermans, I knew, would not hesitate at human prey. They had been headed that way on their own.

One of the Dobermans shifted his eyes behind me, and snarled.

I turned faster than the eye could see. I felt, I knew , that I was all that I had promised the pack. I was beautiful and terrible, my mane a nimbus, my eyes molten, my white teeth gleaming in that wet snarl that promises mayhem. The sight of me fixed Rob to the earth like a beetle pinned to a board, his eyes wide with terror.

The pack began to move, shadows with firelight gleaming in their eyes, closing ranks around me, asking with each movement, with the lips skinned back from yellow teeth, Is this the hunt? Is this the kill?

I stared at Rob, clutching his stupid bottle, and knew he was mine to take.

This is my place! I thought at him. This is my forest. This is my town! You hurt somebody under my protection, somebody good and kind and intelligent. I think you’ll go on hurting people until somebody stops you.

I can stop you. Here. Tonight.

I think I will.

I took a step, one step, and felt the pack tense around me, as if each hunter was an extension of my will. Was this what it was like, to run with the wild ones, to lead the hunt that was life and death? The three who had hurt Orion, who had driven him away, could die, right here, tonight. My tracks would be lost in the tracks of the pack, the tearing of my teeth and claws lost in so many wounds. Even my grandfather would not know, not for sure.

Rob Merrow looked into my eyes, and pissed himself.

“Oh, God,” he moaned. He’d dropped the bottle. His hands were raised in supplication. “Not me. Please. Take them, not me.”

He stank of fear. ’Rion had been afraid, too, had screamed when his arm snapped. But he hadn’t been afraid like this. Not like this.

Was this the bully on whom I had wasted so much hate? He was not worth hunting. Not worth the kill.

The thought shocked me. I hadn’t come here to kill. Had I?

A world without Rob could only be a better place. But Rob and Lee and Jeth were no threat to me, not here and now. It was one thing to kill in immediate defense of myself or of another. But murder was murder, even on four feet.

I couldn’t use this pack, my pack , to work a vengeance that was entirely my own. Maybe it was only a matter of time before the Dobermans, at least, went after a human being. But if I made them kill for me tonight, every person who could carry a gun would be out here, shooting anything on four legs. The wild dogs, too, were mine, like the forest, like the town, and tonight they had come to me of their own will. I owed them better.

And Rob and Lee and Jeth would become martyrs of a sort, their cruelty and their bigotry whitewashed, buried under flowers and candle wax. I owed Orion better than that. I owed myself better.

Stories and movies about werewolves always make the beast the killer. It kills without reason, without remorse, driven by blood lust.

It’s so easy to blame the wolf. But I understood then what the Family chronicles had been trying to teach me. The werewolf is dangerous because the wolf is a weapon —murder without apparent motive, the ultimate misdirection.

Bloodlust is human , not lupine. A wolf kills for food, for territory, or to protect the pack. I wasn’t hungry. The land spoke to me through my flesh and blood, indisputably, forever mine, whether I liked it or not. And murder here would destroy the dog pack, and destroy my grandfather.

The meanest son-of-a-bitch in the school had just wet his pants at the sight of me. It would have to do.

I took a step back and howled. For a moment I felt the pack trembling around me, surprised, perhaps relieved. After a moment I felt them relax. Muzzles lifted, and we sang, voices tumbling over and over the boys who crouched frozen and ignored in the dirt.

Then I turned and lead the pack into the forest, where we ran and hunted the plentiful deer beneath the gibbous moon.

On Monday it seemed at first that the night at the Deadfall had never happened. Rob, Jeth, and Lee were hanging out in the hall as usual, where I’d have to pass them to get to my locker. There was an added opportunity for humiliation because Thomas, a boy I actually liked , was just a little down and across the hallway, stacking books for his morning classes.

On the other hand, I’d seen Rob cowering and terrified. I snugged that image up against me like a shield and continued down the hall.

“Who let the dog out,” Rob sang, sniggering. He made woofing noises, then gave a poor imitation of a coyote howl.

Normally, I’d have hunched in on myself and scuttled down the hall to my locker. This time I just turned around and stared. I saw that neither Lee nor Jeth were wearing the sly, malicious grin that usually accompanied these little dominance displays. Jeth was looking at the floor. Lee’s lip curled in disgust, but he was looking at Rob, not me. And I understood I’d gotten my revenge.

I’d exposed their leader as a coward. And if he was a coward, what were they, who had followed him? I’d broken Rob’s hold. He wasn’t harmless—no one who will use violence and stealth to make his point is ever harmless. But, here and now, I’d stolen much of his power.

He had been raised to think that being white and male made him better than anyone who wasn’t. But even here, in this backwards Southern town, no black folks were going to step out of his path, and no girls of either color were going to want him just because their other options seemed worse.

Hell, he and his little crew had run from the young black woman who had stopped to help ’Rion and me. The thought made me grin.

Rob had noticed Lee and Jeth weren’t backing him. His grin went sickly, then turned thin and hard. He glared at me, but his posture was hunched, defensive. “Bitch,” he snarled at me, “what are you smiling at?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Thomas scowling, pushing his books back onto the shelf while his long hands curled into fists. Part of me really wanted to let him come to my rescue, just so I could smile gratefully up into his beautiful brown eyes. And it would be satisfying to see sweet, bookish Thomas, who was also six-four and ran track, mop the floor with Rob.

But that way lay heartbreak, I reminded myself. Thomas was smart and sweet, which meant in a year he’d be gone, just like ’Rion. So I handled it myself.

I walked up to Rob, still grinning. I pushed into his space, the way an alpha wolf can crowd a subordinate, dominating by the simple act of not being afraid. And even though he was six inches taller than me, he cowered. “I was just thinking,” I said. “That if you are going to howl like that, you should at least do it right.” And I tilted back my head, and howled.

It wasn’t a proper wolf-howl, of course, but it was as close as a human throat can come.

And that whole noisy corridor went completely silent, as that sound rose up from me. Lee and Jeth went dead white, and for a moment I thought Rob was going to wet himself again. When I finished, I gave him a slow, satisfied smile. Then I walked away, feeling his eyes on me.