Chapter Three: Attack

Sylvia POV

I wait. The way we learned as pups. You wait, you use your senses, you make your choice. Only then do you act. You never second guess yourself.

(It’s our best and worst trait. Stubborn as mules – try stubborn as werewolves).

This was a trained hunter. Has Firewolf sent a hunter to avenge Jedan? Four years after his death? It makes no sense.

I slow my heartbeat and still my muscles. Fer, help me, I mindlink my wolf. With her help I extend my senses into the darkness around me. My eyes, aided by Fer’s, adjust minutely to the gloom. There is no movement beyond the rustle of leaves on the trees around me. Suddenly a small creature dashes out from behind a garbage can. My heart pounds at a zillion beats a minute. But I don’t move.

You know what to do, Fer whispers to me.

She is right. There is only one course of action now. I crouch and I'm already running when feel her take over my body breath, my senses.

In front of me is the gate that leads from the park to the entrance of the underground station near my apartment. It is a bright beacon, filled with the noise of humans as they hurry along their thoughtless paths, down into the artifically-lit, pungent corridors.

We don'’t break pace at all for the gate separating the park from the station entrance, clearing it in one leap.

As fast as we are, it is only just in time. We both feel the hunter’s claws slash at Fer’s hindquarters. I wince at the scrape of nails that have been kept killer-sharp. Fer transforms mid-air and I land on my feet on the other side of the gate. I put my hand to where the pink uniform only just covers my butt. It’s painful and the uniform is torn, but my skin is not. I breathe a sigh of relief. You never know what poison werewolves are dipping their claws into. I check in with Fer and she’s okay. A little shaken up.

That hunter was fast.

I hurry to where there are more people. Sometimes I like the smell of them, the sounds they make, the way they live their lives. I like that I’m here and not here. They see me and some primal part of them seems to know I’m different, but mostly they just ignore me and their instincts.

I walk home thinking. That was a Wildlands werewolf. There’s no doubt about it.

And as always happens the moment I allow myself to think of the Wildlands, another face flashes through my mind. Vuko. I try to push it away. I’ve almost managed to do it after all these years. But even if stop thinking about his face (don’t picture his nutmeg skin, or his soft full lips, or his wild curls or his broad chest, his eyes like the winter sky—don’t!), it’s his smell or his touch or ---goddess help me—his taste …

Something crashes into my shoulder and I whirl around, my lips drawn back in a snarl, the iron already at my teeth. A man stares at me in terror, his complaint dead on his lips. I compose myself and try to turn my snarl into a smile. I don’t think it works because he turns and flees.

I need to pay more attention. I bumped into that man and then terrorized him. Way to blend in, Silvia, I tell myself. Low profile, blah blah blah. I cross the road to my apartment building  using my senses to look around and be careful and not think thoughts about werewolves I should not be thinking about.

I use my key to access the building’s lobby. It’s a tall, narrow building with a long narrow lobby. Each floor has just one apartment. Which doesn’t mean the apartments are big. It’s an idiosyncrasy of Loop City that all its tenements are like this. Like tall, grey blades jutting up from the pavements.

There are no new smells in the lobby. Just the same old stale ones. It’s when I see the stairs that I really start to feel the effects of that sprint. I have five floors to climb and most nights after working a full shift at the diner I have to pep talk myself all the way up. Tonight I just want to settle at the foot of the stairs and call it a night.

I make a game of it. ‘Guess what they’re doing’, I call it. As I pass each neighbour, I try to guess what they’re doing. On the first floor, there’s no prizes for guessing because I can smell the cardamom and potatoes and cheese. Mrs Choudry is dishing up for Mr Choudry who is sitting with his belly touching the table complaining that he is starving. My mouth waters for her honey mustard paneer tikka. I hurry past the second floor apartment in spite of my aching legs. If sadness has a smell it is this: damp and bitter, the bitterness made only worse by the hint of something sweet beneath it. The man who lives there has sunken cheeks and rounded shoulders and eyes that seem like they’ve lost something. On the third floor is the boy with the comic books. If we pass on the stairs, he will stop and stare at me with wide eyes, not like I’m strange. Like I’m awesome! I don’t know why or how, but I think I may have one fan. Sometimes I try to take a look at the comic in his hands and I can just about make out figures flying through the air, speech bubbles coming from their mouths. He seems to be embarrassed about the comics though because he always tries to hide it behind his back if he sees me looking. On the fourth floor is the quiet couple. They are young but they act old. They exchange conversation in whispers on the stairwell. I think they may even speak like that behind closed doors.

The game works. Because there I am in front of my own door. I lean my head against the door as I turn the key in the lock. I can hear Wiley give her little chirrupy meow as she hears me. I like to think it’s because I’m home but it’s probably because I can open a can of cat food for her.

The apartment is a single room that fits all functions: kitchen, bedroom, living room. It’s like the saddest packhouse for a pack of one. There is a very small bathroom behind a thin wood door. At night me and Wiley listen to the rats scurrying about in there. Wiley might sigh or raise her head but she doesn’t think they’re her problem. They go back into the cracks in the walls if I put on the light so I don’t make them my problem either.

My stomach growls and suddenly both my and Fer’s appetites come rushing at me at once. I stumble to the fridge telling Fer to get a hold of herself but I can feel that she is almost nauseous with hunger. I have raw steaks in the fridge.

Sometime later I’m dozing on my sofa. I’ve washed the blood from my hands and Fer is sleeping or she’s just gone away wherever she goes when she’s full of raw steak. Wiley is purring contentedly beside me because Fer made sure I gave her some too.

I sleep fitfully, full of dreams of werewolves sitting in diners and ordering burgers and hunters without faces running beside me no matter how hard I run.

I wake when the full moon reaches its zenith in the night sky and the moon goddess's call will no longer be denied.