Rebecca Royce: Wolfs Magic

Leah woke up covered in brown and white fur still trapped in a cage. Dear God, please let me not be a wolf, please let it all be a dream.

Blinking twice, she looked down, her whole body deflating as she realized it wasn’t a dream—she was actually covered in fur. How could any of this be happening? Her moments of lucidity were becoming fewer and fewer and even more frightening were the fact that her memories of her insane times had grown more vague. Now, not only could she not control what she did when the madness overtook her, she also had no recollection of what happened.

Maybe it was a blessing. The things she’d remembered from the earlier episodes had left her feeling horrified.

And then there was him , the man who watched her from outside the cage. Other wolves came and went from the cages, he paid attention to them, but not like he’d been attentive to her. Not to mention she couldn’t figure out why all of the other wolves—or maybe they were actually people trapped in wolf bodies too—got to go somewhere and she was kept locked in her cage.

She couldn’t talk, couldn’t do more than growl or whine, and even those abilities were pathetic at best. The beagle she’d grown up with, Max, had done a better job of communicating than she could.

The man stood up from his desk. When he wasn’t poking and prodding at her or the others, admittedly gently, he was always sitting at that black wooden table that seemed to function as his work station, hunched over a book or staring at a computer screen. The last she remembered before she’d had her previous episode was him falling asleep in the chair, head down on the desk. Didn’t he ever leave? Wasn’t there some family somewhere wondering where he was?

On that same note…wasn’t there someone looking for her?

That was part of the problem. Other than her name—Leah St. James—and the absolute certainty to the pit of her soul that she was not a wolf and should not be in the body she inhabited, she had no idea—zero—who or where she came from.

The man’s hair, brown to the point of almost being black, stuck up like he was a child instead of an adult she guessed to be around thirty years of age. Thin but broad shouldered, he was muscular and looked like he could handle himself in a fight.

Hmmm…that was a funny thing to think. Evidently she was the kind of person who thought of others in terms of their ability to fight. Did that mean she came from someplace violent?

His destination was clearly her cage. All the others were empty. Her heart picked up speed. She admitted it; she liked looking at his eyes. It was fun seeing the concentration and intensity in his brown-eyed gaze. Also, his smell was enticing. His scent reminded her of water, or at least the way the ocean smelled on a clear, crisp morning when no one else was on the beach.

She added the thought to the pile of interesting observations she was making about her inner dialogue. Maybe some of it would give her a clue as to who she was.

“Hello there.”

Huh, usually he didn’t speak other than unintelligible mutterings when he took her temperature or swabbed one of her claws. It’s not like she could answer him. Still, if he wanted to talk at least it was nice to hear someone else’s voice…

“Can you understand me?”

His voice was like chocolate syrup being poured over vanilla ice cream. It was just a perfect combination of taste and texture, like the universe had designed those two things to go together, in other words it was heavenly. She shivered from the intensity.

He noticed her small shake and hesitantly reached inside the cage. She couldn’t blame him for his nerves. She was a wolf, she might bite him. After a moment, he reached farther and stroked her fur.

“Are you okay? Are you cold?” He drew his eyebrows down in a slant. “You’re eyes are so intelligent, so different from the others.”

Others? Did he mean the wolves that came and went? She flipped her head around just to make sure there weren’t any others around that she didn’t know about. Belatedly, she realized she could sniff the air to tell but using her nose to know anything was still pretty foreign to her. Half the time she wasn’t sure what any of the sensory input she received even meant.

“And your fur…it’s brown and white, it still hasn’t lost its luster. It’s soft.” He was downright petting her now. She wished she were a cat, so she could purr. Oh wow, when was the last time she’d been touched? She closed her eyes. Really touched? He was gentle and he knew all the right places to rub. Behind her ears, it really itched; he moved his hand and scratched there. Her tongue fell out of her mouth.

Dear heavens, she panted. Her eyes flew open. If she were human, she would blush with humiliation. Here was this stunning man just barely touching her and she was acting like a real wolf for goodness sake. Daring to look at him, she didn’t see the horror she expected to find at her behavior.

Instead, he seemed to be considering her even more closely. He’d put both hands in the cage. With one he continued to scratch between her ears while the other made long, divine strokes up and down her spine.

“You like that, girlie? I bet that feels better.” He leaned his head up against the bars of the cage and she could see that a small scar, a thin line really, marred his face from the tip of his left eye down to his chin. It wasn’t noticeable from afar but up close it gave him a sexy, scary look. “Can I tell you a secret? I’m not sure how much more of this I can do. I’m so tired of all of you dying. I’m exhausted from not being able to figure this out.”

Dying? Terror poured through her blood, she wished she could scream but it only came out a whimper. He stroked her harder. “Did you actually understand what I just said?”

Staring straight in his eyes, she willed him to understand that she did—she knew everything he was telling her.

Pulling his head off the cage, he nodded. “You did. None of the others ever could. I’m sure of it.” This seemed to excite him. She could hear his heart rate increased. The wolf senses would be cool if they weren’t so terrifying and bizarre.

“Okay, listen to me. I don’t know how they did this to you. I know everything about wolf magic, I’m an expert and even I can’t figure out how the witches did this to all of you. We thought at first that after the change they addicted you to a chemical to make you obey but now we know that’s not true. You all just like the stuff so you go looking for it. With or without it, you’ll die.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. Wolf magic? The change? She whined in confusion.

“All right, I’ll start over. Do you remember what happened to you? Do you remember when the witches did this to you?”

She lowered her head onto her paws. It was so frustrating to not be able to speak. No, she wanted to scream, I have no idea, I have no memory and did you say witches?

An alarm sounded in the room, loud and piercing it caused pain to vibrate through her body like nothing she’d ever felt before. The man jumped back like he’d been struck, he jerked around.

“Shit. They’re here.”

Who was here and what was that alarm? Couldn’t he make it stop? She was howling now and she couldn’t seem to stop.

A boom sounded in the room momentarily covering the alarm. A bright orange light temporarily blinded her. Oh God, this was panic. Anything she’d felt before being locked in the cage and being a wolf was nothing compared to this. What the hell was going on?