Aaron didn’t know which hurt more; the transformation or his cracked nose. But he didn’t have a second to consider that, either. The bull was after him again. Aaron braced, but then the bull lost his feet and fell face first into the tarmac with a loud crack that could have been bone or concrete. Aaron watched Jackal rise to her feet, roll the bull onto his back, and dig her shoe into his neck.
“Are you going to cut that shit out or do I have to teach you another lesson?” she said, cool as a winter breeze.
“Fuck you,” he spat blood. Aaron smelt it straight away, strong and metallic.
The bull was easily three times Jackal’s size, and even though he could have grabbed her foot and flung her into a tree with a single motion, he wasn’t moving. His hands were at his side, limp and idle. Why?
“This is the old wolf’s son,” she said, “If anyone’s got first rights to his blood it’s the old wolf or his beta; and the last time I checked that was me. You can get your turn when we’re done with him.”
“Jackal, that’s enough,” Aaron’s father said. This was the second time he had had to call her off someone.
Jackal lifted her foot from the bull’s neck and stood back a few paces while he stood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He scowled a bloody scowl at Aaron and then back at Jackal. “What kind of a wolf is he that he needs a woman to fight his battles for him?” he asked.
The word was full of contempt and even Aaron—stuck in the unnatural yet powerful space between beast wolf and human—saw the way Jackal’s jaw stiffened at the comment.
“That is your beta,” said Marcus, the old wolf. He was approaching now, walking across the hub with a proud swagger. “And unless you want Vinnie to tell us the story of how she took you down blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back again you’d best keep that sexist crap to yourself.”
The man, whose name Aaron yet didn’t know, grunted and pushed his way past the old wolf. The rest of the pack was staring, now. Some of them were watching the bull, others looking at Aaron, trying to size him up. Aaron noticed, then, the lack of women present. It seemed like Jackal was the only one, unless there was a woman hiding in that car that had pulled up.
“Look at how he holds the form,” Jackal said, watching Aaron with a grin on her face. She had taken her glasses off now and was holding them in her hand.
“I see it,” Marcus said.
“Your blood really is strong.”
“My blood is yours too.”
Aaron brought his eyes to his own body and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His forearms were large and thick and covered in grey fur which seemed to shimmer in the fading sun. He touched his face and felt the ridges on his forehead and eyebrows, his elongated ears, his sharp teeth. Aaron’s heart was starting to beat a little more slowly, but he felt power coursing through him with every pulse.
Until he started to calm down and his body started to change shape again.
Aaron dropped to his knees and this time let out an agonized groan as the bones in his body returned to their normal positions and dimensions. His fingernails retracted, but their size had ripped Aaron’s fingers wide open and they were bleeding. The muscles in his arms, chest, and legs were twisting and contorting, ripping and pulling. And the transforming ridges in his face and nose were making it difficult for him to breathe. Aaron fought hard to stifle his groans, but they came anyway and echoed far through the pine forest at the base of Mount Charleston.
When it was done, Jackal helped Aaron to his feet and asked him to stay calm as his body healed the wounds. “The first few weeks of transforming are always the hardest,” she said into his ear. “Breathe through it.”
Marcus approached and laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “The next time,” he said, “Jackal won’t be there to help you.”
“I didn’t need help,” Aaron said, although the blood covering his mouth and shirt would have said otherwise if it had a voice.
“You might be able to hold a form well, but you couldn’t hold your own against Rocky.”
Aaron shrugged away from Marcus and Jackal. “I didn’t come here to get picked on,” he said, cheeks flushed. “I came here because I’m a werewolf and I want to learn.”
“You’re learning right now,” Marcus said, “You lunged at Jackal at the shop just as Rocky lunged at you. This is how wolves are; they question their position in the pack. And when a new wolf comes along, the instinct to figure out your place intensifies. It’s not personal.”
“Seemed pretty damn personal,” Aaron said.
Marcus’ face shifted and took a serious tone. “You have come here to learn,” Marcus said, in a voice that was as full of theater as was authority. “But before you can learn from us, you have to pass one of our trials.”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed into slits. The wound on his nose and fingers had healed and he couldn’t feel any pain at all anymore. “What trial?” he asked.
“You’ll have to take one of our paths, climb Mount Charleston to its peak, and drink the snow from the caps,” Marcus said.
Aaron looked up at the mountain he would have to climb. From here it didn’t seem like such an impossible feat. He’d never climbed a mountain before, but he was sure he could do it in a single day; and he said as much.
“Give him the Cougar path, then,” said a voice from the back. Another agreed.
“No,” Marcus said. “He isn’t ready.”
Aaron frowned. “I’m ready,” he said, “Just tell me what I have to do.”
Marcus’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Aaron, I can’t let you walk the Cougar path. It’s too dangerous. The Cougars would kill you on sight. We stick to our own paths along the mountain; that’s the way it is.”
“I’m your son,” Aaron said, “You said yourself my instincts are strong. Let me do this.”
“He’s stubborn like you, too,” Jackal offered.
Marcus sighed.
“What’s the trial?” Aaron asked.
“Really, it’s the simplest one of all the trials,” Jackal said, “All you have to do is walk the length of the path.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep, from one to the other. Oh, but you have to avoid the Cougars of course. They will kill you on sight.”
“Why would werewolves kill other werewolves on sight?”
“We don’t. We’re wolves, Aaron. The Cougars are… well, cougars.”
Were… cougars?
Chapter Five
They’re just trails, Aaron thought to himself as he walked along the path claimed by the Mountain Cougars. Hundreds of people walked these paths every month, maybe even every day—Aaron didn’t know, in truth—and he knew he could run twelve miles without breaking a sweat. He’d never run a marathon before, but he went to the gym about four times a week and ran a five K warm up and cool down after every workout session, which for Aaron included tough regimens of arm, chest, leg, and back exercises. And that was before he came into his heritage as a werewolf.
Or maybe he had always been a werewolf, only now he was able to shapeshift?
No. That couldn’t be it. Aaron couldn’t remember the last time he took a solid hit to the face like the one the bull had just given him and healed it a few minutes after. Minutes, not hours. Aaron’s body was definitely different now. He could feel the blood in his body roaring with power, his muscles rippling with strength, his every move suffused with a kind of strange, never ending supply of energy. He had barely slept and yet here he was, embarking on a twelve mile trek around a mountain he didn’t know through supposedly enemy territory.
Was he crazy? Of course he wasn’t. This is why he came here. If he didn’t want to learn what it was like to be a werewolf and show his father just what a great man Aaron had turned into without any help he had to make this walk and he had to make it now, in front of the rest of the pack. His father enjoyed a good tough guy; well, Aaron would show him and everyone else.
“You could try being a little more
cautious,” Jackal said.
Her soft voice, barely spoken over a whisper, jarred Aaron out of focus. He blinked and looked at her. “What?” he asked.
Jackal smiled. Her glasses were on her head, now. She had left her denim jacket, wallet, phone and keys back at her car, taken off her shoes, and was walking barefoot through the woods. Aaron hadn’t followed her example, though, so while his feet were crunching over twigs and rocks, hers weren’t making a sound. “The Mountain Cougars are probably going to smell us anyway,” she said, “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little lighter on your feet.”
“If you weren’t here I would be in a full sprint.”
“If I weren’t here you wouldn’t know where the hell to go.”
“I don’t know. I think the trails are pretty well marked,” Aaron said, checking the surroundings. He spotted a trail marker a few yards down the line and shrugged at it.
“You really have no clue, do you?”
“No clue about what?”
They had started walking again. The air was getting a little colder, the trail a little thicker with pines, and Aaron’s feet were still sending cracks echoing lightly through the wilderness.
“Anything,” Jackal said, “You come here on your muscle car, roaring about how awesome you are, demanding to be put into challenges that are way past your league, totally oblivious to the fact that your nose is clearly too wet for your own good.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you’re a rank amateur, and your little stunt back there with the guys may have just gotten us both killed.”
“It wasn’t a stunt.”
“You don’t just walk the Mountain Cougar trail.”
“And you didn’t have to come. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“If I hadn’t have come you would definitely die out here tonight. And for some reason that I don’t yet understand, I didn’t want that.”
“So if we both die out here, it’s your fault.”
“Don’t you think I don’t know that?”
A satisfied smirk spread across Aaron’s face. Jackal caught it and frowned. “Relax,” Aaron said, “What’s the worst—”
“Schh,” Jackal said, pressing her fingers against Aaron’s mouth.
“What?” Aaron said. Cold fingers ran up the length of his back setting his body to high alert.
“By some strange stroke of luck, someone is actually making more noise in this forest than you are.”
“Maybe it was an elk.”
“Will you shut up?” Jackal’s voice was a harsh whisper, urgent and silencing.
The sun had fully set over the back of the mountain now casting the sky in a purple so deep and rich it looked to Aaron like the sky on some distant alien planet. Crickets were chirping ahead, owls hooting above, and winged insects floating all around, though Aaron wasn’t sure how close any of these sounds actually were; they could’ve been hundreds of yards away and imperceptible to the human ear for all he knew. But he couldn’t hear whatever Jackal sound Jackal was honing in on, and that made him nervous.
Then she turned her head to the left, hard and fast. Her blood red hair went loose and whipped around in the movement, and Aaron caught sight of the reason for her supernaturally heightened sense of hearing. Her ear… it was larger, thicker, and it ended in a point. It looked almost like a dog’s ear, only with less hair natural hair.
How are you doing that, he wanted to ask. But he held himself; the time for questions wasn’t now. Whatever had caught her ears was important enough for her to be giving it her full attention which meant it couldn’t have been an elk or a rabbit. Those were prey. Unimportant. Trivial. And Aaron’s very skin was reacting to Jackal’s alarm. What a strange feeling.
“We have to move,” Jackal said.
Aaron didn’t have to hear it twice. He pushed past Jackal and further down the Mountain Cougar path but Jackal grabbed his arm and yanked it hard. A set of razor sharp claws, gleaming in the dark, sailed past Aaron’s face and trimmed a few hairs off of Aaron’s head. He staggered back and stared at the creature that had seemed to simply appear in front of him like a ghost and felt the familiar surge of anger bubble up inside of his chest.
The beast wasn’t tall, at least two heads shorter than Aaron. Its face was the likeness of a jungle cat with eyes that shone like fire in the dark, whiskers, a thick black nose, and a swishing tail. But its muscles were lean and thick, its posture was human, it had teeth and claws that looked sharp as razors, and its fur seemed to perfectly blend into its surroundings making it look as though the forest itself had just tried to carve Aaron a new face.
“Leave,” the thing said in a throaty rasp that sounded more like it had choked the word out.
“Aaron,” Jackal said, stepping back a few paces.
“Leave?” Aaron’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I thought you said these guys would kill us on sight.” And yet this one was offering them a chance.
“Now!” it said, swiping at the air once more.
A wicked grin flashed across Aaron’s face. He felt his muscles tense, his heart quicken, and his blood pump hard in his veins. The smell coming off the strange cat-man creature was intoxicating; a powerful, challenging musk that smelt like the mountain itself, if the mountain were covered in bristly feline hair.
“Aaron, you don’t want to—” Jackal started to say, but it was too late.
Swift as air, Aaron charged at his opponent as his body began the slow process of transformation. His muscles tensed and contracted, bones swapped places, nails and teeth elongated, skin tightened and hardened, and a thin layer of fur started to grow all over his body. But he wasn’t the beast wolf he had been that, the night of the moonfire—the night when Amber set a building ablaze with silver flames No. He was somewhere in between. Caught in a kind of fight-ready half-form Jackal said only Aaron’s blood could achieve.
Aaron cocked an arm and swung it, palm open, but the cougar was ready for him. The cougar twirled to the left and Aaron swiped at air, so Aaron put his right leg down to stop his motion, pivoted, swiped again, but the cougar had anticipated the move and had had jumped out of reach.
“Aaron, no!” Jackal said, but Aaron couldn’t hear her. Wouldn’t hear her. This was his fight, not hers.
He snarled and lunged at the cougar, but the tricky beast kicked a clod of dirt into Aaron’s eyes that sent him staggering shoulder-first into a tree. Aaron saw stars after the impact and struggled to turn around, but he wasn’t fast enough. The cougar lashed out from the darkness with his razor claws and sliced Aaron’s exposed side open sending a spray of hot blood into the air.
Aaron shrieked from the pain! He pushed himself off the tree and brought his arm up to block another deadly attack. This time he blocked the arm and grabbed it, and the success came with a moment of euphoric satisfaction. His heart was hammering in his chest, now. Pain, anger, and elation all mixed inside of him to create a simmering broth that filled him with a kind of immense power and drive; the drive to survive, to succeed—to win.
He threw his free fist into the cougar’s face and connected with its jaw. The hit sent a loud crack through the forest followed by a groan of pain from the receiver. Then Aaron saw Jackal move in from the side, only she wasn’t in her human form; she was a wolf. He knew it was her even though he had never seen her black coat. It was her distinctive scent that gave her away. Aaron didn’t have to question it to believe.
Jackal bit into the cougar’s thigh and the flesh broke under her jaw; flesh and bone and muscle. The cougar cried out and kicked but Jackal was already out of reach. Aaron, who still had a hold of the cougar’s arm after the block, went in for another punch but the cougar was too fast. It wrenched free from Aaron’s grip, spun away from Aaron’s blow, and struck out with its own razor claws catching Aaron across the chest.
Aaron staggered back, roared, and then his vision started to go.
The world was swimming; receding and approaching, receding and approac
hing. Aaron was in motion, but he couldn’t control his movements. He could see the landscape moving before him; his nose was low to the ground and he was running through the woods at a downward angle, though he couldn’t see where he was going. Trees and dead leaves were darting past him, his big, hulking body dodging some of the larger obstacles while crashing through others.
In the conscious part of his mind Aaron knew that he had changed shape again, and in this new shape Aaron was no longer in control; his body given over to a beast possessed of a primal instinct Aaron could never possibly hope to comprehend. It was like he was being held beneath the surface of a pool of blood against his will. He could still see if he opened his eyes, but he was so busy screaming that he could barely see the world through the bubbles.
Receding and approaching. Receding and approaching.
The world was a blurry, red film reel of pine and dirt and kicked up leaves, whizzing past him at full speed. All Aaron could do was endure the ride and hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Escape, hold on, survive. Find safety. Escape. Survive.
Hold on.
Chapter Six
Aaron gasped into consciousness and sucked in a breath of air. The pain came rushing at him in a bright flash which subsided only after a few moments of steady breathing. His entire body was a dull throb punctuated by bright, sharp pains in his chest and arms and shoulders and back. He could smell the blood in the air—his own blood—mixing with the heady aroma of wet dirt, trees, and animal droppings.
Somewhere nearby, a stream rolled down the mountain. Aaron could almost hear the river’s healing and refreshing properties calling to him. He had gotten so close, but he hadn’t quite made it inside. It seemed to him as though he had run—or tumbled—toward the nearest water source and propped himself up against a sturdy tree instead of dipping his battered and torn body into it.
But why?
A cold breeze sailed down from the mountain and brushed against Aaron’s arm. It screamed in pain and Aaron winced, clenched his jaw, and breathed through the moment until the pain subsided; but it didn’t subside. The wound was deep and harsh; four diagonal slashes that had torn open skin and muscle alike. He had another wound on his side that he couldn’t quite see from the angle he was in, but he was sure it too was deep, nasty, and probably bleeding too.