Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (2 page)

I called him Richard, because you don’t go speaking a demon's true name where anyone can hear it. He’d been trapped here in the form of a beautiful young man about my age, with golden hair, white skin, slender, muscular body, deep blue eyes… the shape imposed upon him by the magician who caught him and rendered him powerless four hundred years ago.

Richard chose me to defend him from the enemy he feared. He and I ran and hunted, fought and played together, while we worked to save the city and set him free. And I missed him. Since he left, all I wanted to do was moon around the places where he and I had talked and laughed and made love, while everyone kept demanding I call forth my demon and do great battle and destroy the World Snake and on and on, and didn’t listen when I told them and told them, it was already done.

My gift to Richard, in return for his love, was to release him from this world. He wasn’t my demon anymore. He was gone, and it was over, and nobody would let me alone about it.

I lost my job because I didn’t want to miss a minute of my last two weeks with Richard. I wasn’t in love. It wasn’t really love. Richard only looked like a man, smelled and tasted like a man. But he wasn’t real. You can’t really lose something you never had. Funny how it feels just the same, though.

Why didn’t I keep him? I wouldn’t be in this mess, for one thing, if I had. But twice I’d seen him in his demon form. In our last two weeks he took good care to appear just as human and sweet and attractive as he could. But the wolf in me remembered, and I knew in his true form he was unfathomable, and dangerous.

Window-wiper passed into my view again. I must have fallen asleep. The light had changed. It was sharper, the room was warmer. I’d forgotten to blow away the smoke. He wore a blue and white bandana squared neatly on the top of his head. With a spray bottle in one hand, and a soft cloth in the other, he went around and buffed every piece of furniture from top to bottom, even the metal lamp stand.

He stood staring up at the wall for a long time, and I noticed the clock. When it was exactly two o’clock, cleaner guy hurried to put his stuff away, took off the bandana, and curled up on the couch and took a nap. I didn’t blame him.

I came awake again when the vacuum cleaner roared past my head, as the young man proceeded to scrape over every inch of the sandy carpet, twice. He avoided my eyes, where I lay glaring at him. I waited until he pushed that thing near my head again, and I sprang at him, as though I could leap right through the cage. I fell back in agony, but it was worth it. He’d jumped back open-mouthed, hands open, almost squatting in terror.

When he saw I was just as trapped as ever he looked around, picked up the vacuum cleaner, and resumed shoving it right where he’d left off. I lost sight of him when he went to other side of the stove. The sound of the vacuum cleaner changed, and the smoke got thicker, was moving faster. He was blowing it at me. I yanked my wrist hard to try and stay conscious. The smoke was the problem. And I’d smelled it before. I held on to that thought, my eyes closed, waiting for cleaner guy to go away.

My friend, Yvette, leaning out of the window of the car she was driving, “See you tonight at the party!” So I went, driving up the 405 freeway through the stop-and-stop afternoon traffic.

I went to the party because when they invited me I thought it meant that people had figured out I was right, the crisis was over, and everyone wasn’t angry and stupid and wrong anymore. Plus, once they realized I’d won, there should be thanks and speeches, praise and affection. So I told myself I’d been invited to this party because some of that was coming my way. And I’d gotten to like the gatherings with music and drumming and dancing, lots of good food, and people I was starting to know.

The directions took me to Malibu. A dirt parking lot. A path leading down to a private beach. Honey, a guy I knew from the Thunder Mountain Boys, manning the gate.

I didn’t know anyone at the party. Yvette wasn’t there. But everybody seemed to know me. I assumed Yvette and the other drummers would come later.

There was a bonfire. Yes, and there was smoke, that same smoke, not from the bonfire, but from a brazier on the picnic table, and people coming up to me, talking to me, standing so that I stood in the smoke. They were all so attentive, so friendly. They were watching me. And someone called for a toast to victory, and I was handed a glass, and I raised it to drink and I felt a sudden tension in everyone around me, everyone looking at me or carefully not looking at me and smiling, all my new friends smiling, and I could smell that the drink they’d given me was bad, that it had something in it that didn’t belong there. I lowered my glass. I looked around the circle of people, and now all of them were looking at me. All my new friends. And I raised my glass again and smiled back at them, and poured the drink out onto the sand.

The tang of fear, tension, and excitement rose from the crowd, like a dog pack that's found the family chicken loose in the yard. What did these people think I was, their prey or something? My smile widened, showing my teeth, and it was not my nice smile. I decided I didn’t want to be at this party anymore.

A couple of people near me said something, placating lies, pretending the drink was not poisoned or drugged, offering me another, offering me food, and other delights to come. I started away from the fire, stiff-legged, wondering if I should bite someone before I left, and who it should be. A couple of guys, egged on by the others, stepped into my way, held out their hands, and I’d had enough. I changed. The guys coming at me backed away, but not very fast. I realized that while fear spiked off them and the others, shock or surprise did not. They had expected me to change—not that a lot of them weren’t darned amazed nonetheless, because when I change, it's that impressive. I stepped forward in my wolf form, looking around to identify the ones responsible for bringing me here.

People backed away as I turned, and I was about to give up and charge up the dirt road to my car, when I smelled the gun. Everyone was still. I turned, and I saw the barrel of what looked like a shotgun, a woman in the shadows raising it to bear, too far to reach in time. I managed one leap away toward the hopeful darkness when I heard a whoomph, and my hip exploded into agony. I spun in the air, snapping at whatever was causing the pain, and dropped awkwardly to the sand. I scrabbled to my feet, turning to look for the gun. Not a shot gun, a vet's dart gun. The woman, her hands shaking, was reloading. I tried to bare my teeth. I tried to start toward her and stumbled. I think I blacked out before I even hit the sand.

And here I was, in both forms at once. How was that even possible? I’d never heard of such a thing. The throbbing pain in my hip—that was where I’d been shot with the anesthetic dart. And there was something that felt like it was hooked through the tendons of my wrist, and my hind foot. And the smoke was keeping me stupid, making me pass out. And someone had done this to me. Someone arranged the party, doctored the drink, laid the fire, ignited the smoke. Someone from the party? The woman with the gun? Or someone else, who had devised this trap, and the means to hold me helpless in both my forms. I moved my head away from the smoke and breathed as shallowly as I could. First, I had to defeat the smoke. Then, I had to get free. I brooded on hope. I lay my head on my aching and swollen right arm, stretched out my left hind leg as far as I could, and waited to kill someone.

A
woman stomped around the kitchen, plopping food from one pot into another, talking to herself. No, talking to the cleaner guy. Cleaner guy stood by the counter and watched her every move. He had a terrific body: lean, taut and muscular, a long, straight nose, high cheekbones, curly black hair. He watched her with shining eyes, his mouth slightly open. I knew from her scent that she was the woman who lived here. She came over to me, walking heavily, stirring canned chicken and mushroom soup into the pot of noodles she held in her hand while she stared down at me. Cleaner guy turned to watch her, but didn’t move from his spot.

“You’re awake!”

When I am angry, my eyes turn yellow. You don’t want to see that. It bothered me a lot that right then I didn’t seem to have the energy. I just looked at her. Old corduroy jacket, scuffed and dirty boots, worn jeans, denim shirt, short, graying hair, none too clean, and the smell of sheep, and horses. A rancher. I was on a ranch. She bent over me, not touching the bars of the cage. Bad breath. I was right about her teeth.

“Can you hear me?” She turned to the cleaner guy and her voice sharpened. “You keep the thing burning, right? She's not supposed to be awake. This is not good.” She leaned closer, still not touching the cage. “Can you hear me?”

I rolled my eyes back and closed them. I didn’t need her upping the dose.

“Baz, get that for me.” Baz hurried over to her, got down and reached under the stove. He handed her the incense burner, holding it with two hands, as though he were offering her the Grail. She walked out of sight and came back adding a little dark brick to whatever smoldered in there already, holding it away from her face, and then handed it to Baz to get down and push back under the stove. I slept again then. I woke when a door banged open, and I heard her tromp into the kitchen with a flashlight in her hand. It took me a while to realize that it was night, because the room reflected the glow of a high-powered critter-be-gone light through the glass doors and the window.

“Get in here,” she said, calling to the cleaner guy. He hustled in after her. She came toward my cage, and I shut my eyes. She pushed the incense burner with her foot, so it was closer to my head. “Come on, Baz,” she said, and left me in the dark. The smoke thickened, and I went out again.

Baz washed the kitchen cupboards the next day, the bandana square on his head. He’d put his t-shirt on backwards today. It was annoying. At noon he ate two pieces of toast that had sat waiting for him on the kitchen counter all day. Just before two he stood staring at the wall clock again, and at two o’clock, he put everything away, and went to the couch for his nap. I waited until he had just settled down, and then I growled, “Baz! Ge’ off the couch!” He slunk off before he realized who was ordering him around. Then he turned on me, his lips open in what would have been a snarl, if he weren’t in the form of a man. I knew it. I knew it! Baz was a dog.

He came over to the cage, his lip still raised. I leaned into the smoke, pretending to suck it up. “Oh, yes,” I tried to make my sleep-thickened voice sound like a moan. It sounded distorted, whether because of the smoke, or the weird shape I was in, I didn’t know, but I made sure he understood my meaning. “Give me that smoke, it is so good.” I looked up at him sharply. “Don’t you take any of that.
She
gave it to me. It's not for you, you don’t get any.
I’m
the one who gets it, all of it. Not you.”

He stood looking at me, his mouth open. I knew I had him when he turned to look out the glass door. I went into my moaning act again. I closed my eyes partway, and watched under my lashes as he opened the burner, broke off a big chunk from the gray brick smoldering inside, and removed it. He paced to the glass doors and back. He went to a shelf next to the television and brought down a wooden box and pawed through it carefully and took out a little square of incense that resembled the stuff in the burner. He switched it out, and wrapped the purloined piece in a dampened paper towel. Then he looked around, and stuffed it under the couch. He gave me such a look! I thought he was going to turn his back and scrape dirt at me. I closed my eyes, smiling.

In less than an hour my head cleared. Baz polished the heavy, slightly lopsided wooden table, right down to the feet. He set up a stepladder, and wiped down the top of the cupboards. He cleaned and chopped a busload of potatoes and carrots. I felt exhausted just watching him.

I woke from a doze to hear the woman on the phone. She was standing over me. I kept my eyes shut.

“She's fine. She's asleep. Yeah. I thought she was waking up yesterday—she just opened her eyes. But she's been out all day. Come on, Elaine, I can’t keep her here.”

Ah, hah. I knew it wasn’t her. Elaine. I would remember that.

The woman continued, “How much longer before he gets back?”

This I wanted to hear.

“Friday? Three days? You owe me, you so owe me. And Cecil owes me double!” She snapped the phone shut, grumbling to herself. “What does Holly think I am, a zookeeper? Her and her stupid Cecil.” She stomped around some more, and then called, “Come on, Baz!” and the two of them went out.

Well, I was certainly going to be out of there in less than three more days. I pulled at my manacles, wrist and leg at once, and stopped, gasping with the pain. Okay, I thought. Okay. Not by strength was I going to get out of here. Figure this out. I was in both forms. Right. So, I could reach my manacled right wrist with my left forepaw, but a paw wasn’t of use to get me loose. And my right foot wasn’t able to loose my left hind paw. The chains were strong.

Nine tenths of magic is distraction. Richard told me that. The smoke wasn’t the magic. The smoke was a drug to keep me asleep, to keep me stupid when I wasn’t asleep, and make me sleep most of the time. Asleep, they didn’t think I was dangerous. Okay, so I could beat this if I was awake, and if I was smart. And I could beat this if I was in human form, or in wolf form, but not in both. Right.

The manacles would not work if I was in wolf form, because I could slip out of them. The cage would not work if I was in human form. The cage and the manacles were not what were keeping me a prisoner. They were merely a distraction. So it was necessary that I remain in this strange hybrid form, in order to be a prisoner. What was keeping me like this? As if in answer, the tendons throbbed in my wrist and my heel. Yes, that something that was hooked around them. Something cold, or hot, or both. And it hurt. Everything else was a distraction. This was what was keeping me prisoner. This was what I had to beat.

I let myself slip into sleep again, but this was a wolf nap, not unconsciousness. I registered the woman and her… companion…