Wolf Magic Page 3

  “What the…” Before my very eyes, the Giantess was getting smaller and smaller with each successive shake, shrinking until only one part of her remained on the earth – detached and distended, red and swollen. Her stomach.

  I bit back bile, but it was too late – the stomach too seemed to shrink and vanished into nothingness.

  I was dumbfounded as I felt my body change back from wolf to human, exhausted by the chase. What had just happened? I turned around, looking all over. Was I being pranked upon from the likes of jokesters like Pan, who had deceived me a few times before? If it was a prank, it was a deadly one, with wolves who had forfeited their lives in this prank. Perhaps it was the Wolfstone again, testing my ability to keep its secrets, to keep my resolve as the new Red Wolf?

  “Looks like her stomach ate her up,” Josephine said grimly, transforming to human form as she pressed her hand against the bruise on the side of her head. “Strange, I guess. But I’ve heard stranger. In Feyland you learn that the strange is normal. I’ve heard that creatures like this existed in Fairyland. Giants and Giantesses that wander around these parts. Of course, you’ve heard all those stories in the Land Beyond the Crystal River. But they never go quite far enough, do they? They don’t tell the real story.”

  “No,” I admitted as I scratched my head. “These fairy tales have a twist, don’t they?”

  “Fractured fairy tales indeed,” said Josephine, nodding. “That Giantess wasn’t just the giants normal human beings read about in fairy stories – but something else. And I’m not interested in sticking around to see if there are any more like her out there.” She swallowed hard.

  “True,” I sighed, looking around and noting with relief that the woods appeared to be unoccupied. “Let’s head back into Wolf Fey territory. Somewhere that we can hopefully get some rest and quiet.”

  “Yes,” said Josephine.

  Chapter 4

  It was a relief to spend time alone with Josephine after what had happened. The blood was still hot in my veins from my encounter with the Giantess, and adrenaline still coursed through me, snaking through my arteries and giving me a feeling of panic and power combined that still had not worn off, despite having seen the Giantess destroyed in front of me. I was still panting – wolf-like even in my human form – still exhausted. My muscles ached. Every ligament in my body felt poised to snap – stretched to the breaking point. Could I take this? I sighed as Josephine put out her hand, taking mine in hers. She seemed so strong – so comfortable. Life seemed so easy for her. Even when she was facing down death, she did so with a flint-eyed and steely stare: she knew no fear. Easy for her, I supposed. She knew no love. Death for her was a cruel but necessary part of heroism – it would never be, as it was for me, that thing which threatened menacingly to separate me from all those whom I loved. I thought of Breena, lying cold upon a slab, and I woke up in a freezing sweat, terror flooding through me. But not Josephine. She never had such nightmares. She looked on death coolly, as an equal. Even now, many of her wolves having died before her eyes, she treated me with the same cordial formality that she had displayed earlier – the mark, in the wolf lands, of a ruler. Granted, wolves had a reputation of being far from stoical as the fairies on that front. Fairies liked to think that we wolves were animals, were bestial, compared to the smooth and easy civilization of their kind.

  But if that was true, I thought, then Josephine had gone to extra lengths to combat the stereotype. Her placid gaze could out-Fey the Fey themselves.

  Josephine's soft smile put an end to my ruminations. “Come on,” she said softly. “Let's head back toward something approaching civilization, shall we?” She laughed bitterly. “I'm sure your clan misses you – it's been too long, Logan...” For a moment her voice wavered, and I caught something like a tremble in it. She turned her tawny, shining eyes upon my own. “We've all missed you, cousin,” she said. “We howled at the moon when you were gone.”

  I cast down my eyes, shamefaced at her implication. I knew what I had done – in the eyes of so many in my clan. Turned my back on Wolf lives, Wolf ways, to follow after the girl I loved, the girl who wasn't even of my own kind. I knew what the Wolves thought of her – what they whispered behind her back. That she was a seductress, a siren, that she'd cast some Fey spell upon me to make me do her bidding. Perhaps she had, I thought bitterly – after all, my feelings for her were strong enough that enchantments themselves seemed to pale beside them. But I resented the implication, shared by so many of my kind, that Breena was at fault. Perhaps it was easier for them to believe that Breena was some sort of siren, a witch with glowing eyes, than to believe that their own Wolf Prince had chosen to ally himself with someone from the mistrusted Fey lands. Now that Breena and I had broken our engagement, and the hope that their Wolf Prince would marry the Summer Queen dashed, the wolves were harsher with their opinion of her. Even more so with her engagement to Prince Kian. But I knew the truth. My love for Breena was my fault and mine alone.

  “Yeah, about that,” I said in a hollow voice, refusing to look at Josephine. “I know it's been a while.”

  “Been busy?” She raised a querying eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” I looked down again as we walked together through the emerald forests. The foliage got thicker and deeper, as together we walked through the shimmering glens of Feyland. Even now my heart quivered with a soft pang at the sight of Feyland, its beauty resplendent before me.

  We were greeted at long last by Josephine's parents, my aunt and uncle. Unlike me, who was the child of a Wolf father and a human mother, Josephine was full wolf: the child of two creatures like herself. Her father, Thorntree, had silver fur that had gone snowy white with age, and bright blue agate eyes that stared me down, their piercing force making me ever so slightly uncomfortable as they assessed my presence. Her mother, Briar, had beige fur with a slight pinkish tint, and was looking at me with kindly but clearly hawkish eyes.

  I knew my aunt and uncle well. Growing up, I'd spent plenty of time being around them. I spent half my life in the mortal world, in the Land Beyond the Crystal River, but I also spent a fair few months in the summer and winter holidays bounding across green meadows and white snows in the company of wolves. Josephine – my more powerful, older cousin – had been the one to show me the “ropes” of Wolfdom, as it were: racing me through fields, howling at the moon with me. Making me at once conscious of what I'd missed during my time as a human and all the more motivated to prove myself as a worthy Wolf contender.

  I looked around Briar and Thorntree's palace. It had changed much since I had last seen it. I remembered it as a mere collection of wolf-caves, but now it was expanded, luxurious, and ornate. Velvet tapestries hung upon the walls and marble lined the floors. Hardly a Wolf palace, I thought to myself. This kind of opulence was normally reserved for humans, not animals. But I had to admit my whole muscles seemed to ache with relief at the very thought of lying down on one of those satin pillows that I saw lying on the floor.

  Of course, to get there, I'd have to get past the beautiful, half-naked girls who were lying so comfortably atop them. I looked down to avoid showing off my blush. My time in the human world meant that I had never gotten used to the casual nudity that characterized so much of Wolf life. Love might be slightly anathema to our kind, but animal attraction certainly was not, and all of a sudden I felt acutely conscious of the fact that several of the she-wolves were gazing at me as if I were a particularly delicate piece of meat. I felt their eyes trail up and down my body and shivered.

  All around me, I noticed, people were coupling up. The men and women who had returned with us from battle were shaking out their hair, relaxing their muscles, their eyes scanning the room for partners with whom to celebrate victory by engaging in that pleasurable mating act we wolves knew all too well. My skin prickled involuntarily at the suggestion – I was a hero, here in this cavern, as a result of the episode of the Giantess. And by Wolf code, that meant I was entitled to a very particular kind of hero's welc
ome.

  I didn't have time to plan out a response to this. Almost as soon as I had noticed her, a beautiful girl with long chestnut-colored hair and hazel eyes pirouetted over to me, sitting down and looking up at me, her eyelashes batting demurely as she spoke. “You fought bravely,” she said.

  It took me a while to notice the scar – still fresh with blood – on her shoulder. I had seen her in Wolf form in the battle – she had been among the more graceful of our fighters – but her human form was enough to make my mouth drop open. “You did too,” I said, trying to ignore her entirely bared breasts, even as my eyes involuntarily snatched glances downward.

  “I've heard so much about you,” she said, her eyes filled with longing that left me in no doubt know precisely what she wanted. I couldn't deny that my body, at least, wanted it too, even if my heart was reserved for Breena and Breena alone.

  She smiled, letting her fingers trace the outline of my shoulder, finding the slight wound that remained there. I shivered at the electricity of her touch. “You really should treat that,” she said, smiling.

  “Oh...” I gulped, trying not to stutter. “That, right....”

  But it was too late. The girl was already removing a portion of her loincloth, fashioning it into a bandage that she pressed against my skin. Her sweet, musky scent filled my nostrils.

  “Oh, uh, please don't...” I tried. “You don't have to...” Whatever my animal instinct was, I knew, I had to curb it – the way Josephine did. My love for Breena aside, hopeless and yet inevitable as it was, I knew that the only way to maintain my authority as a leader was to stay far, far away from any potentially dangerous entanglements. My love life had already provided the wolf clan enough gossip for one generation.

  “It's really nothing...” said the girl. She stopped, laughing, as she clapped a hand to your mouth. “You're not embarrassed, are you?” She looked delighted at the surprise.

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “I heard that human-raised Wolves can get awfully shy. But it's so silly. After all, you're naked when you're a Wolf, aren't you?”

  I conceded the point, before trying to awkwardly change the subject.

  “So – um – what’s your name?”

  “Cat,” she said, and I stifled a laugh.

  “What is it?” she looked confused. “Did I say something funny?”

  “It's a funny name for a wolf, isn't it? Cat?”

  “Why?”

  It took me a minute to realize it. The girl had probably never seen a feline cat in her life. They were a creation exclusive to our world, one that did not exist beyond the Crystal River. The knowledge of this killed my desire with a single jolt. It reminded me how different she and I were – how different I was both from the mortal creatures that inhabited my own world and the Fey beings that inhabited this current world. I was a hybrid, a Halfling, caught between two worlds and yet belonging in neither. It was what made me and Breena such a perfect couple. She was the only girl I could talk to about that divide, the only girl who understood the pull that each world I so loved had on my psyche. Even here, even now, even surrounded by some of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, my longing for her had not abated. If anything, it had grown stronger.

  “What's so funny about my name?” Cat had gone prickly. “You don't see me making fun of your name, do you?”

  “I'm sorry,” I reached out a hand and took hers. “I didn't mean to offend you. It's only just that...never mind.” I looked into her bright hazel eyes – lovely, radiant even, but missing...something… some understanding of who I was, of what I wanted.

  “You know,” Cat was trying a different tactic now. Her eyes burned a hole into my flesh. “You can have me anytime you want. Hero's prerogative and all that.”

  I was so shocked at her audacity that a second laugh almost escaped my lips, but I swallowed it down quickly. “I'm flattered, Cat, really I am, but...”

  “You don't like sex?” She looked confused.

  “No, uh, I mean, I do, but...” Memories of Breena flashed through my brain – of how close we had been, of our bodies tangling together, of our fumbled explorations.... “I need to be in love,” I said. “I don't want....just the other stuff. The animal stuff.”

  “The good stuff, you mean,” said Cat, looking bored.

  “No,” I said. “The other stuff is the good stuff.” I could see her again in my mind's eye, the joy on her face as she accepted Kian's proposal. I could feel that same pain once again.

  “What is it, Wolf Prince?” Concern flitted across Cat's face.

  “Oh, nothing...” I shrugged off her worries. “I just remembered something I think I'd rather forget.”

  “I know a good way to forget...” Cat was nothing if not persistent.

  “Sorry,” I said, as gently and respectfully as I could. “But that's not my thing. Besides, Josephine would have my hide...”

  At the mention of her name Josephine was at my side. “What's that, cousin?” she asked me.

  “Josephine!” I was relieved to see her. “I'm so sorry, Cat, but I'll have to excuse myself. I need to talk about some important matters with Josephine.”

  Josephine shot Cat a significant look, and if Cat had been in Wolf form, I knew, she'd certainly be departing with her tail between her legs.

  “Don't worry,” Josephine said airily. “There are plenty of much better-looking men who would be interested in you – just have a go!”

  This seemed to cheer Cat up, and she sauntered away quite contentedly.

  “Now,” Josephine said, giving me an equally withering look, “what was that you were saying about me having your hide?”

  Chapter 5

  “Come on, Cousin,” Josephine seized hold of my hand and led me over to a corner of the great Banquet Cave, where several young men were participating in a knife-throwing contest. They were stripped to the waist – all fine, strapping specimens of their kind, their muscles rippling as sweat clung lightly to their bodies. One by one the men lifted a knife in their hands, twirling the handle lightly and nimbly around their fingers before throwing it at a target – an apple on a stick posted in a corner.

  “Come on, Gideon!” One of the wolves looked upset. “You're ruining it for the rest of us!”

  The wolf called Gideon, a ruggedly handsome young man with sandy brown hair and eyes the color of the emerald leaves of the Feyland Forest, seemed not to mind. He made another expert throw, and cleaved the apple in two easily.

  “Hmm,” Josephine folded her arms as she considered him. One of the wolves set up a new target – this time a bulls' eye.

  “Easy,” scoffed Gideon, tossing his long hair as he raised his knife.

  But a shining blade beat him to the center of the target. Josephine's knife had landed true, its point deep in the heart.

  “Competitive, are we?” Gideon shot her a smile as his knife found its place right next to hers, so close that a single grain of sand could not have fit between them. He grinned at Josephine – a slow, wide, confident grin that made a good portion of the female Wolves sigh and howl with desire. His look was full of longing, I noted, even as a slight arrogance made it clear that he preferred his women to long for him.

  Unfortunately for Gideon, however, it appeared that Josephine was the obvious exception to the rule – although it was clear that every other woman in the place was head over heels for him, Josephine remained completely oblivious, throwing an additional knife so that it split the two previous knives apart with great technical precision.

  “Why are you trying to drive us apart, eh, Jo?” Gideon's voice was low and jocular.

  “I'm trying to win,” Josephine said simply, with such forthrightness that Gideon could not help but laugh with surprise.

  “That's you, Josephine. Always trying to beat us guys.”

  “I try,” said Josephine, looking slightly perplexed by his clumsy attempts at flirtation.

  I couldn't help but feel for Gideon. After all, I knew what it was like
to be head over heels for a girl that didn't notice me, just as he did. As I watched the two of them play their knife game – as I watched Gideon move his hands closer to Josephine's in an effort to be near her, watched the friendly affection in her eyes as she bantered with him even as love between them seemed an impossibility, I couldn't help but reflect once more on my own life, on my own pain. I too was, like Gideon, stuck in my own longing. Breena had moved on without me. She had moved on with Kian.

  She had chosen Kian over me.

  And I never would understand why. Did I not love her as much as he did? Was I not as handsome – as brave – as willing to die for her as he was? What could make her choose that cold ice Prince over me, her friend of so many years? Where had I gone wrong? What had I done – or left undone – to make her choose another?

  The same bitter thoughts echoed throughout my head, again and again. The more I tried to rationalize her decision, the more I tried to understand it, the more upset I felt. I would never know, would I? I'd never know why she chose Kian and not me. The only thing I could do was accept it – ignore it – move on.

  “If I only could,” I whispered to myself.

  Be reasonable, Logan, I told myself. Breena's love has no bearing on your quest – whether or not you solve the mystery of the Wolfstone.

  I strode over to where Josephine and Gideon were concluding their competition – Josephine firmly and clearly in the lead, and took hold of Josephine by the elbow. Gideon shot me a look full of pure jealousy – and I couldn't help but be inwardly amused. Josephine was my cousin, after all, and we wolves had standards about that sort of thing. Especially wolves like me and Josephine, who prided ourselves on our fey nature. Without it, after all, we would be mere beasts, driven by nothing more than animal instinct.