Chapter Four: Luka

Sylvia POV

There have been nearly sixty full moons since I came here. Next month will be Wolf Moon again, making it exactly five years I have been here--and my twenty-first birthday.

You would think that the torment would grow familiar. It doesn't. Each time it feels new and different. It's hell. Without a pack, without the binding force of destiny, without a mate, my own body punishes me. The ache is everywhere at once even as my heart yearns for my love, my love, my Vuko. On these nights his name is the heartbeat that drives me through the night along the pathes, through the city streets, onto the highway where I run with the others like me--all of us desperate to outpace our ache, our desire, our hunger, our grief.

Before the Cold Moon reaches the horizon and the dawn blushes its way toward day, we stop. My limbs are trembling and my paws leave bloodied tracks as I pad back toward my apartment. The ache is not gone, only dulled with my exhaustion. It begins to rain and my coat grows matted and heavy. I stop to lap at the rainwater where it has collected in a puddle. Slowly, slowly I cross the same streets I ran down earlier until I reach my apartment building. Sometimes I'm lucky and the lobby door hasn't shut all the way and I can nose it open.

I'm not lucky this morning. I pad around to the alleyway at the side of building, where the fire escape comes out.

There's already something there. A small something that sniffles in the darkness. A small human something. I flare my nostrils to catch his scent but I've already recognized him. It's the boy from the third floor. The one with the comics. He's crouched in a corner of the alley, wiping his nose with his sleeve and shivering with cold. His eyes are fixed on me and he is terrified.

My nostrils flare again and this time I catch it. It's faint but it's there. The hunter has been somewhere here. Not the alley. The boy managed to escape him by hiding here, which should be impossible.

I pad closer and the tang of the boy's sweat burns my nostrils. Blood, there's also blood.

The boy scrabbles backwards. I've forgotten how I must look. I stop. Tilt my head sideways and let out a soft, low whine. The boy stops scrabbling and listens. But his eyes are still huge, the whites in stark contrast to his brown skin.

I don't want to transform down here because Fer is physically stronger than me. She can get me back into my apartment in spite of limbs that have been pushed beyond anything that my human form could tolerate, despite her bleeding paws. If I'm just Silvia, I don't know how I'll make it up the fire escape.

And I definitely don't want the kid seeing me transform. Cover instantly blown.

Unless ... I sit and think. He's a skinny thing so maybe he looks young than he is, but I'm guessing no more than nine or ten years old. Younger kids can be persuaded that maybe they dreamed something they saw? I don't know if it's true.

But the kid is petrified. I have to do something. So I transform.

Now I'm back in the stupid waitress uniform though it's completely ruined-- I'm going to have to use tips to buy a new one-- but the kid is grinning at me like it's Christmas. I can taste the dust from the night's run on my skin. I run my tongue over my lips and I feel that my teeth have retracted. I check my hands. Also good. But filthy. My feet are bare and bloody. They are going to hurt like helll when I'm standing on them all night later at the diner.

I bend down so I'm eye level with the boy. "Hi," I say, "I'm Silvia. What're you doing here, buddy?"

He grins at me like I'm Christmas and in spite of how tired and dirty I am, I feel like a queen.

"I'm Luka," he says, holding out a blood-streaked hand.

I take his hand and trace the marks up his arm. There's one across his neck and belly. His knees are grazed too where he must have fallen. The claw marks have left deep tracks and they are wide apart. Whatever did this was big.

He's looking at me and still grinning. "I got spinach in my teeth or something?" I say smiling back at him.

"You're the lady from upstairs," he says, "With the spiky hair!"

"Ye-es," I say.

He wipes his eyes with his sleeve. "You're ... you're a wolf!" he says.

Okay, Silvia, I think, here's where you persuade him he didn't see what he just saw. But he's not done talking.

"My granny," he says proudly, "she says a werewolf in the building is a sign that the neighbourhood is improving."

"She--what?" says Silvia, "No, that can't be."

"Okay," he says, "Maybe not werewolves. But she did say magical creatures."

"Luka?" I say, thinking that it's impossible but figuring if I'm going to persuade him this is a dream, then I can ask anything anyway, "Is your granny a witch?"

"Yes," he says, "She would have known what to do tonight."

"What happened, Luka?" I take him by the hand and pull him up. "Let's move this inside and you can tell me about it." I'm already thinking about how I'm going to get the ladder down for fire escape so I can climb it with these weary human limbs.

But Luka is pulling back. He's shaking his head, gripping my hand back--hard.

"It's not safe yet, Silvia," he says, "We can't go back in there."

"Why, Luka?" I say, thinking of the scent of the hunter. Surely he's not inside the building? It's unnatural territory for a werewolf. It would be against all training to hunt inside a place that you don't know or understand. It makes no sense.

About as much sense as a witch in the building?

"Who did this, Luka? Did he attack you in the building? Is he still in the building?" I ask him, suddenly my adrenaline has me wide awake and I feel Fer almost vibrating with panic.

Luka can't answer. He points. His face is ashen with terror, his mouth opening and closing before he can catch enough breath to whisper, "That's him!"

I turn to look.

At the far end of the alley stands the biggest wolf I have ever seen. Its head is lowered and it's mouth is pulled back in a snarl as saliva drips from its mouth.