Garden of the Wolf

  "'We?'" I repeated as I righted myself so my rear and not my face was on the cushion.

  She plopped herself down beside me. "Yeah, remember? That whole 'werewolf' thing and all?"

  "It's impossible to forget, but what exactly is it doing to us besides giving me an out-of-control libido?" I asked her.

  "Well, we're faster. Not very fast yet, but faster than we were, and-heck!" She frowned and jumped to her feet. Susie spun around so she faced me and held out her hand to me. "Why don't I just show you? It's a lot more fun that way. Dan showed me yesterday so I know where to go."

  I raised an eyebrow. "And where do we need to go?"

  "The Training Grounds."

  "Seriously?"

  "I know, not very imaginative, but it's a cool place." She grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. Susie was right, she was stronger. I stumbled forward and fell into her. Susie fell backwards and we ended up a tangled mass of flailing legs and arms, but at least Susie was on the bottom.

  I extracted myself from her and climbed to my feet so I could scowl down at her. "Will you stop that?" I growled.

  She raised herself to a seated position and rubbed the back of her head. "Sorry. Forgot again."

  I held out my hand and pulled her to her feet. "How about you lead me without dragging me?" I suggested.

  "Not a bad idea."

  Susie led the way out of the cabin and into the fresh afternoon air. The sun was bright and sunny, and dispelled some of last night's terrible memories of dark woods and golf cart chases. The small settlement was quiet, and I counted not more than a half dozen other people other than us who walked between the cabins.

  "Where is everybody?" I whispered to Susie.

  She replied in her loud, public-speaking voice. "Oh, they're working across the lake. Everybody has a job over there except for a few people who watch the cabins on this side of the lake. They start coming back at sunset," she explained.

  "Could you please keep it down?" I hissed.

  "Why? Everybody's friendly here," she argued.

  "Everybody except Blackwood. . ." I mumbled.

  She waved away my concerns. "He's not here. His place is way on the other side of one of the hills. I think if you followed one of the creeks you could get there, but Dan told me not to try it."

  "Geez, I wonder why. . ."

  "Something about possible death and stuff. Anyway, the Training Ground is just through this trail," she told me.

  We'd reached the edge of the open settlement, and before us was a well-used dirt path that led into the thick trees. I reluctantly followed my friend down the path for twenty yards. At that point the path reopened into a large area cleared of trees. It was as long and wide as a football field. A dirt track circled the green grass in the middle which itself contained outdoor sports areas. There was a long-jump pit, pole-vault, discus, and even a wrestling mat with small stands on one side. There were another half dozen people already there. Some jogged along the track, others were practicing long-jumps across the field.

  Susie jumped ahead of me, spun around and opened her arms. "Ta-da! The Training Grounds!" She slipped beside me and draped an arm over my shoulders. "So whadda ya think? Not bad for being in the middle of the woods, huh?"

  "I think you're all mad," I quipped.

  "We're prepared, my dear Abby," she argued. She swept her free arm over the expansive area. "All of this is to train our minds and bodies. We must fight the lethargy of the modern world and reach for greater mental and physical strength!"

  "You're just repeating what Dan told you, aren't you?" I asked her.

  She cringed and nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."

  "So how does any of this prove we're now super-humans?"

  "Ah-ha! That's where the track comes in!" She grabbed my hand and pulled me to the edge of the track. Susie rummaged in her pocket for a few seconds before she dislodged a stopwatch which she plopped into my hand.

  I looked down at the watch and then to her pocket. "I hope you didn't steal this," I mused.

  "Nope, only borrowing without permission."

  "That's the same thing."

  "No, I plan on returning it. Some time." She stepped onto the track. "All right, you remember how epic I was in high school gym?"

  "No, and neither does anyone else."

  "Well, I'm even better now. I'll show you by running a four-hundred meter dash in record time. You just tell me when to go and I'll be back here before you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

  "You only said that word because you know I can't pronounce it," I countered.

  "Well, yeah, now tell me when to go." She hunched down and dug her heels into the dirt.

  I sighed and raised the stopwatch. An evil thought slipped into my mind and I took a deep breath. "Onetwothreego!"

  "Not fair!" Susie yelped, but she took off down the track.

  Susie had a bad start, but I had to admit she did look faster. She leaned into the corners and pumped her arms. Her feet flew across the ground and she left a small cloud of dust in her wake. Her speed slowed a little on the last turn and she ended up stumbling towards me at the finish. She bent over with her hands on her knees and gasped in enough air to give Mars an atmosphere.

  "How. . .did I. . .do?" she wheezed.

  I glanced down at the watch and blinked. The time still ran on. I'd forgotten to click the 'stop' button. "Um, you did good," I replied as I clicked the button.

  At the noise Susie's head snapped up and she glared at me. "You forgot to click the start button, didn't you?'

  "No, the stop button."

  She straightened and snatched the watch from me. "That means you get to try running and see how fast you are."

  "I'm fine, thanks."

  She pointed at the track. "On. Now. Or I tell Scott you mumble about him in your sleep."

  I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow. "That's not a very good threat."

  "Then I'll tell him you wet the bed until you were nine."

  "And that's a lie."

  "He won't know that, now on."

  I scowled, but dropped my arms and stepped onto the track. Susie stepped off and held up the watch. Her voice boomed across the field. "On your mark!" I hunkered down. "Get set!" My body tensed. "Go!"

  I pushed off from the dirt and sped down the track. My arms sliced the air with their pumping action and my legs stretched and flew across the ground. The scenery swept past me and my lungs and heart worked overtime. Through all the strain I realized I actually felt pretty great. It was a nice feeling to stretch my muscles, long disused after so many years as an office employee.

  "Run, Forrest, run!" Susie called from across the track.

  I rolled my eyes, but picked up speed. At the final one hundred I sprinted down the track and sped past Susie. I heard the click as she touched the button. My legs told me they were done, so I stumbled onto the grass and fell rear-first onto the lush lawn around the track. I fell so I faced Susie, and I felt like my lungs were about to explode. My friend had a grin on her face as she looked at the time on the watch.

  "Well?" I gasped.

  "Forty seconds," she told me.

  I frowned. "Girls don't run that fast. Heck, even guys don't run that fast," I reminded her.

  She pointed the watch in my direction. "Then I guess you're a werewolf."

  I struggled to my feet and stumbled over to her. I leaned forward and squinted at the time. Forty-point-two seconds. My eyes flickered to Susie. "You stop it early?" I questioned her.

  She still had that wide grin on her mouth as she slowly shook her head. "Nope."

  "The watch work?"

  "It works just fine."

  "Trick lighting?"

  Susie rolled her eyes and stuffed the watch into her pocket. "Abby, the watch isn't lying. You really can run that fast now."

  "Then how come I couldn't beat Blackwood yesterday?" I pointed out.

  "Because he's a male werewolf. Those pesky gender rules still apply,"
she explained.

  "I. . .I think I need to lay down. . ." I murmured. I stumbled backwards and eased myself onto the grass.

  Susie plopped herself down beside me and looked me over with a raised eyebrow. "What's the big deal? I thought you knew we were turning into a werewolf."

  I ran a hand through my hair and shook my head. "Because there's a difference between believing it and seeing it on a stop watch. The first one you can dismiss as maybe a hallucination or taking something the wrong way. Heck, I could've even thought those night trysts with Scott were a figment of my imagination, but this-" I nodded at her pocket, "-this is something else. This is real." Susie reached out and pinched my arm. I yelped and pulled my arm away from her. "What's the big idea?"

  "Just wanted to make sure you didn't think this was fake, too," she teased.

  I rubbed my sore skin and glared at her. "Thanks, I kind of got that with the watch."

  "You can never be too careful." Susie jumped to her feet and nodded at the path behind us that led to the settlement. "How about I show you the rest of the Garden?"

  I rolled my eyes. "Can't I get two minutes to let this all sink in?"

  "Nope. Sinking in gives you wrinkles, so let's go." She pulled me to my feet and dragged me along on the Grand Susie Tour.

  Chapter 3

  We traveled down the path and arrived back at the cabins. The bright afternoon sun was waning in the sky. Night would be upon us in a few hours. Susie pulled me through the haphazardly placed cabins and to the lakefront where sat the strange building I'd seen the night before. My friend stopped us in front of the long, white clapboard buildings and stretched out her arms to them.

  "This is the nucleus of their-um, our home. This is the Garden," she announced to me.

  "You're still repeating what Dan told you, aren't you?"

  "Yep, and you'll like it." She grabbed my hand and pulled me around to one of the walls that faced the south. We could see in through the greenhouse windows. Susie flattened both of our faces against the glass so our noses resembled those of pigs. "You see those plants in there?" my friend oinked.

  I did indeed see the tables filled with flowering plants. The flowers were a violet-purple with long, thin petals. The heads were suspended on thin limbs that originated from a main trunk. I also noticed all the plants were the same, and they were contained in a long plastic cover that reached from table end to table end. On the back wall were hazard suits and more tables, but those were covered with scientific equipment. There were Bunsen burners, beakers, glass jars filled with strange, variously-colored liquids.

  "I give, what are they doing here?" I mumbled to my 'guide.'

  "Experimenting with wolf's bane. That's what the plant is," Susie explained.

  I furrowed my brow, or tried to. The glass was a hindrance. "Isn't that stuff dangerous to werewolves?"

  "And humans," she added. "Even it's smell can kill a human, and just a slight whiff could knock out a werewolf. That's what the suits are for, to keep the lab guys from keeling over when they open the plastic containers around the plants and take a sample for the spice."

  I jerked back and whipped my head to her. "Spice? As in the spice they feed everybody at the Garden resort?" I questioned her.

  She waved off my wide eyes. "It's fine. They do some fancy lab work with werewolf blood and take out all the bad stuff. Then they pound it into powder and put it into the food. That's how they make people younger." She paused and tapped her chin. "Though the funny thing is it doesn't work too well mixed with green stuff. It kind of has the opposite effect. You know, making people feel older and weaker. That's why they want people to eat meat at the Garden."

  I cringed. "We were eating dehydrated werewolf blood all along?"

  She grinned and nodded. "Yep, but not just any blood. It came from Scott and Dan. They give blood a few times a month to keep the supply well-stocked."

  "How did they find out how to even do this?" I asked her.

  Susie sighed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. She turned us away from the building and to the lake. "It's a bit of a long story. You see, your mate and-"

  "He's not my mate," I insisted.

  "Husband?"

  "No."

  "Spouse?"

  "No."

  "Significant other?"

  "Susie?"

  "Yeah?"

  "No."

  She threw her arms in the air. "Oh, come on, Abby! You've been with him how many times and you still don't think you two are a match?"

  I shook my head. "Maybe one made in a really warm place, but no. He's not-" I don't know what made me stop before I said the word 'anything.' Maybe I knew it was a lie and the only one who believed it was me.

  Susie didn't miss my hesitation. She leaned towards me and wagged her eyebrows. "You like him, don't you?" she whispered.

  My cheeks reddened. "I-I told you, he's-well, he's not my mate."

  "Uh-huh. Well, just tell me when you get off the river of denial and we can go out on a double date with our mates," she suggested.

  "He's not my mate," I insisted, but by this time Susie had a faraway look in her eyes.

  She frowned and tapped her chin. "Now where was I? Oh, right, the epic back story to your mate."

  "He's not my mate!"

  "Uh-huh. Anyway, Dan told me Scott and Blackwood actually knew each other from a long ways back." She looped her arms through one of mine and led me along the beach. "They were pretty close friends. You know, drinking together, chasing girls together, chasing their own tails together, stuff like that. Anyway, they got interested in trying to make werewolves immune to wolf's bane so werewolf hunters couldn't use it on them, or so that's what Scott thought. They set up a small lab on a piece of scruffy property in the middle of the woods, one with an old mining town, and got to work. While they were at it they fixed up the place and found some gold in one of the mines. That attracted some werewolves who moved in with them and started doing the mining work so they could keep up with the lab. Kind of like moths to some bright flames. Anyway, to make a long story short-"

  "Too late."

  "-they got a whole bunch of werewolves around them and Blackwood started telling people he wanted to make them immune to wolf's bane, but he'd make it even more powerful against other rival clans and against humans."

  I frowned. "Starting a war on two fronts?"

  "Yep. Well, that didn't sit well with Scott, but he kept his head down and tried to find the cure. He was using his own blood in the lab work, and one night he was working alone. Blackwood was out preaching his we-will-be-world-rulers shtick to a bunch of the other werewolves. Scott was blending his blood with the plant when there was some sort of reaction and it suddenly became edible. All the bad stuff was neutralized by the blood, but a little bit of the blood was absorbed into the plant. He tested it on an old bird he caught and it made it young again. Kind of cool, isn't it?" she asked me.

  "Yeah, but judging from what I know of Blackwood I don't think he was happy," I mused.

  Susie shook her head. "Nope. When Blackwood found out it had their longevity blood in it he wanted to burn the whole lab building to the ground. I guess Blackwood hates humans almost as much as he hates Scott. Anyway, Scott got him to agree just to destroy the notes and samples, but before they did it Scott managed to sneak out the info and some of the samples. He worked on it in secret for about twenty years before he got some of his money together and made the Garden."

  I stopped our walking and raised an eyebrow. "Twenty years? Don't you mean two?" I asked her.

  Susie folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. "Haven't you been listening to anybody?" she scolded me.

  "Only if they sounded sane, and there's not that many people around here who do sound sane," I retorted.

  Susie sighed and patted my on the shoulder. "Then I've got some bad news for you, Abby. Your boyfriend's about two hundred years old."

  My eyes widened. "You're joking. You have to be."

  "
You know me. If I was joking there's be some crack about us dating older men," she argued. She paused and tapped her chin. "Now that I think of it that's pretty funny right now."

  I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Susie, focus! What you just told me is impossible!"

  "Yeah, well, so are werewolves, but we're pretty much one of those now," she pointed out.

  My mouth dropped open and my hands slid down her shoulders and dropped to my sides. "Then you're not joking?"

  "Nope."

  "Scott's really two hundred years old?"

  "Give or take a decade. Dan's a little younger."

  I ran a shaky hand through my hair. "My god. . ." I murmured.

  Susie slung an arm over my shoulder and grinned. "Cool, isn't it?"

  "My god. . ."

  "I knew you'd be thrilled." She pulled me along and we continued our trek down the beach. "Anyway, when Scott got the formula just right he revealed what he'd been doing and challenged Blackwood. They had some epic fighting, blah-blah-blah, and the clan split into two. There was Scott's group and Blackwood's group. Scott took the lake because he had more followers and Blackwood was left with the mining town and the gold, or so he thought. The gold vein ran out a few years later, so they've just been kind of limping along for a few decades, living almost like-well, like wolves on the land. Lots of people have come over to Scott and Dan's side, so that's made Blackwood all evil and bitter, like a shriveled mushroom with an attitude. That's why he hates Scott so much." She stopped us at a log and plopped down. "And there you have it. A history of your mate."

  "He's not my mate," I growled.

  "Well, it's his history, anyway. Right now Blackwood's got just a couple dozen followers and is trying to make trouble to provoke them into a small war. Scott doesn't want to, and Dan can't see any other choice." Susie sighed and shook her head. "Men."

  I joined her on the log and looked out on the lake. There was only an hour before the sun set. My mind buzzed with Susie's story. A cool breeze wafted over us. I closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh smell. My mind was soothed. Mostly.

  "So where are we in all of this?" I asked Susie.

  "In the middle of trouble, like always," she quipped.

  "Fire!"

  Chapter 4

  Susie and I jumped to our feet and whipped our heads to and fro to find the source. I guessed it was in the direction of the billowing black smoke that rose up from the trees at the far end of the settlement.