Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(22)

And she reached back.

A sizzling, burning energy coursed through me, calling the wolf to hunt—and the wolf answered. It was a better change, now that the witch’s power didn’t fight the wolf. Over the years, I had learned to ease my way between wolf and human, but even so, it hurt.

I dropped to the floor and writhed under the moonlight as the wolf tore through my human flesh with as much care as he would have given the carcass of a deer. In all the years I had been a werewolf, I had never met the full moon in my human flesh. I had not realized that the moon would call the wolf, will I or no. Helpless, I held my silence as long as I could, but wolf and moon between them reft me of my humanity, and I cried out.

“Samuel?” Ariana’s voice, full of worry and love and all those things that meant I wasn’t alone, should not have filled me with dread.

The wolf, who eclipsed me in my own mind as he had not since the very early days of my running on four feet, rose to his feet and met Ariana’s eyes. Ariana’s beautiful green fae eyes. The wolf could see in darkness better than my human self. So he watched as her pupils expanded to eat her iris until her entire eye was black.

Ariana’s scent changed until the smell of terror made the wolf drop his head and growl in pleasure. He bared his teeth, enjoying the spike of fear that followed. He was playing; he knew as well as I that she was not to be hurt. I, caught by surprise and thus overcome by moon-called wolf, was unable to do anything to reassure her.

Haida knocked on the door, “My lady? My lady?”

Ariana moved to get off the bed, and the wolf blocked her in, his countermove bringing him closer to the bed. Ariana made a sound then that I hope never to hear again. A keening, sorrowful sound like a rabbit who knows it will be dead before it draws another breath.

The door to the room opened, and the wolf snarled ferociously, angry at the intrusion into his game. The little hobgoblin stayed in the doorway, dropping her gaze.

“Samuel?” she said.

I felt the pull of my name, felt the wolf begin to give way to my control. I took a step toward Haida.

No!

The voice that uttered that word was not my Ariana, though it came from her throat. It was a roar more felt than heard, and it made my wolf think that we were under threat, and he turned again to face the bed and Ariana.

Her face was oddly distorted; I do not know if it was just the extremity of her fear or if there was some magic at work. Her dark skin was lit by scars that by a trick of magic, because that was thick in the room, or just some oddness of light looked the same color as her silver-lavender hair. The map of her pain was tattooed forever upon her skin, bared to the world.

My attention was caught by her for a moment too long. I didn’t realize she was gathering more magic until the bed dissolved beneath her and she dropped to the floor. Walls crumbled around us as she pulled magic from Underhill to protect Haida from the wolf she thought was attacking her friend. When she thought Haida was threatened, she protected the little fae with all the power she could draw.

She thrust it at me in a deadly blast I could see, wine-dark power bearing the scent of death.

Haida stepped between us and let it hit her instead of me. She hung in the air for a moment, while the magic knocked me through the doorway and into the hall.

“My lady,” she said and then the only thing left of the little fae who taught me to cook and gained such joy in music was a whiff of foul-smelling smoke.

The beast who had replaced my Ariana screamed hoarsely. I hesitated, caught by grief and unwilling to leave Ariana alone in her pain, but the wolf knew better than I. He bolted for the front door, which opened before us. A glance over our shoulder showed only a battered lean-to that collapsed as I watched.

I ran until the moon set, then I curled up in the shelter of an overhang where the last autumn’s leaves were dry. I awoke human and na**d as the day I was born, with the scent of Ariana in my nose and snow on the ground. I had expected her to come. She was not a coward; she would feel it necessary to face the consequences of last night.

I rose from my bed and went out barefoot in the weeks-old crusty snow to meet her.

She looked different. Her waist-length hair had been shorn to a finger’s length, and she wore a gown of white, something that might have been worn in a king’s court.

“Samuel Moon Called,” she said, not meeting my eyes. I could smell her grief. “Well have I loved you.”

“And I you, lady,” I told her, sounding surprisingly steady for a man whose heart was bleeding with grief. Haida was worthy of mourning, and so was the future that Ariana and I had lost.

“And yet,” she said, “and yet I would have killed you had not Haida sacrificed herself for you.”

“Haida whom you also loved,” I said. “It was not your fault, Ariana. She would not blame you.”

She nodded and looked away. “I cannot risk destroying anyone else I love.”

I wanted to drop to my knees and plead with her. I had no pack, they were all dead. My da was dead. He took with him the name I had been born with. He had kept the names of my lost family and their faces safe for me. And he was gone. Ariana was the only person I had left.

And without me, who would keep her safe? Who would hold her when the evil of what her father had done to her overwhelmed her dreams?

Yet between us lay the death of Haida, forming an impenetrable barrier between us.

“I will carry you in my heart until it beats no more,” I told her, giving her the only thing I could think of that would not hurt her more.