Enticing wails resounded in my sleep. I was walking through the rain-slicked grass of my own suburban backyard, yet mountains rose in the distance like black broken teeth in the skull of a long-dead animal.
The moon was dulled by rain clouds, so I thought it odd that the wolves should be crying so. Their voices rose until the shrillness of them echoed in my head, and I felt compelled to open my own mouth, shriek my own presence, and join in the macabre communications which ended to my waking in my own bedroom surrounded by plastic furniture, fluorescent lamps, and the outside sound of cars driving up the main road.
My throat ached from the howling, and my blue cotton sheets were rumpled and torn in one corner, the edges jagged as if ripped by an animal claw.
My cat's eyes glowed at me from on top of the wardrobe, and I scolded her for ruining my new sheets. She dropped from her perch and scurried by me with the sound of tiny, pounding feet and a scent which urged me to follow.
As the sun rose, I felt calm enough to sleep again, but I had to work. I wanted to close my eyes and curl back up into the torn sheets, but the office awaited me with appointments to schedule, phone calls to answer, and endless, boring paperwork to mindlessly complete.
Wolves are family creatures, so the books said. They're closer to us than we'd like to believe, so perhaps we just need the fear of the wild ones since we don't have imagination enough to terrify ourselves though we're the most dangerous predators on Earth.
We build weapons of mass destruction, poison our bodies and minds with drugs, slaughter each other for the excitement of it, but we still need the fantasy of vampires, ghosts, and werewolves.
I dreamed of the cold isolation of a winter forest. Snow heaped on the ground and froze the scent of every creature who dwelled there. My stomach twisted with agonizing hunger.
In the distance a shot pierced the silence among the trees, and the scent of hot blood forced its way through the cold. My hunger ached, but fear pushed me on in the opposite direction of the blood-smell. The gunshot terrified me.
I called in sick at work and spent the morning at the zoo instead. Two wolves were being housed there on transit to a more natural environment.
They trotted along the perimeter of the pitifully tiny barred-off section of land, their large paws making imprints on the muddy patches of ground. With dark silver-gray coats, narrow muzzles, and observant expressions, they were the most beautiful beings I'd ever seen.
As I glanced at them from behind the prison like bars, I was careful to avoid their all-knowing amber eyes so as not to offend them with a direct stare. Briefly, accidentally, my eyes met those of the female wolf's, and I stood dumbly transfixed as I heard a breathy voice as old and strong as the wind. "You understand us, Sister. You've always been one of us, and it's time to come home."
Beside me ignorant others stood gawking and making stupid howling noises. The sight of two such noble creatures trapped by monkey-faced fools became more than I could tolerate, and I turned to leave, nearly crashing into the chest of a man who had been standing so quietly behind me that I hadn't noticed him.
"Excuse me." I glanced up, my voice sounding strangely hollow in comparison to the sighing, wolf-voices in my mind. I inhaled sharply at the steel-colored eyes which stared down at me with an intelligence which was both instinctive and acquired. He wasn't handsome, but he was stunning and bestial with lean lines and unruly tangles of hair which noticeably contradicted the conservative image of his pinstripe suit. The man's very presence roared above the languid, technology-dulled people around us.
"Beautiful, aren't they?" His voice was a sigh on the summer wind. Just the sound of it caused my heart to race, and I realized that a growl of desire was trapped in my throat.
Startled, I couldn't answer, so he turned to me again and smiled ever so slightly, exposing the glistening tips of white teeth which I was certain came to gruesome points. I stepped back, my eyes widening, straining to see the impossible. His smile broadened over gleaming yet normally shaped-teeth, and the reality of my hallucination sent me racing out to the parking lot where it took several moments for my violently-trembling hands to insert the key into the ignition. I was intensely aware of everything around me: the smell of gasoline from the cars, the scent of the various species trapped within the cages behind the high stone walls, and the sounds of collective heartbeats and voices which were all too loud.
As I fumbled with the keys, I glanced around like a hunted rabbit, expecting the gray-eyed man to follow me through the crowd and flash me his sharp-toothed grin, yet it wasn't terror that chased me from his presence. It was something far worse...
Unable to sleep that night, I drove North to the mountains, so far that there were no streetlights, no other cars on the stretch of road, and only random houses spread miles apart.
I pulled off to the side of the road and wandered into the woods, realizing that I shouldn't be able to see at all in the darkness.
Discarding my spike-heeled pumps, my bare feet touched a rocky ground which should have hurt my soft, human flesh, but didn't. Instead it felt cool and firm beneath my feet. The roughly blowing mountain wind didn't chill me, but rather tempted me to join it, so I broke into a run.
Voices called to me. "Sister, Sister, just a little further and you'll be home."
Leaping across a brook on legs which grew stronger and faster with every step, I raced through the tangle of trees.
All around me I heard, saw, and felt the forest and every creature in it.
An owl stared down at me from a treetop. A rabbit, frightened by my ferocious hurry, scrambled by my foot and disappeared into the thrush, grateful that the wolf wasn't stalking it tonight.
"Sister, Sister. Welcome home."
I stopped in a moonlit clearing and howled. Louder and higher I wailed, pausing only to listen to a chorus of answering cries.
I sensed them around me, and saw their eyes watching me through the trees, shining red in the moonlight, reminding me of cats' eyes in a photograph.
"Sister, welcome home." The words were whispered so close to my ear that I felt warm breath across my cheek and the subtle motion of a hand on my back. I spun around, growling, yearning, and fearful all at once.
He smiled.
"What do you want?" I demanded, my voice sounding sultry, foreign compared to its normal, stunted pitch, but somehow I knew it was the voice of my true self.
"I want you back," he said. "Orphaned Tia. Lost. I have never stopped searching for you."
I closed my eyes as he leaned forward, his cheek brushing mine.
I awoke in my bed lying on top of rumpled sheets, the morning breeze feeling cool upon my skin. Running a hand through my hair, squinting at the brightness of the sun, I closed the window and searched the room for my cat. She usually slept with me, but this morning she was huddled beneath a wicker chair looking frightened. As I stooped to pick her up, she hissed and fled the room.
The illusions of the past several days had faded with the passing of night, but still I felt the presence of the gray-eyed man in my dreams, the one whose voice made me shudder, the one with the beauty of the wolf. The memory of him was so strong that now that I was awake and in full control of my senses, I didn't want him to be a dream. I wanted to be back in the wood shrieking to the moon and running so that my feet scarcely touched the ground. I wanted to be free.
Orphaned Tia. How had he known the name I had called myself in childhood dreams and make-believe worlds? I had never known my parents, but had been found during hunting season just outside a rural town. Passed from foster family to foster family, I had never been able to find the truth.
At work I sat behind my desk, dejectedly punching computer keys, working by habit alone, as my mind was still somewhere in the midnight woods.
His eyes focused on me the instant he stepped out of my boss's office. Staring at him dumbly, my heart beat so fiercely that I thought I might faint as he walked directly to me, his long strides leaving my stubby, balding manager lagging behind.
My boss made a hasty introduction, though I could see disapproval in his close-set eyes. "Miss Cooper, this is Caleb Moon. He's the new co-owner of..."
"We've met once before." Caleb extended his hand to me and I took it, wondering if he felt the tremors coursing through me. If he did, I couldn't tell as he continued speaking. "The wolves at the zoo?"
"Ye..Yes." I tried to appear calm and professional, but he was still holding my hand, and I scoffed at how just that morning I thought I could accept seeing him again. However, then I had thought he was only a spirit wandering through my dreams.
My employer was called back to his office momentarily, and Caleb took the opportunity to lean closer to me and whisper, "Dinner tonight. I'll come for you."
I started to protest, but he was already out the door, and I really didn't want to refuse him or my own curiosity any longer. This man held the answers to questions asked since my childhood as well as reasons for the vivid dreams which had been slowly pulling me from the real world. Tonight I would know the truth.
As I dressed for dinner in a sleeveless scarlet dress, my hands shook so much that I could scarcely fix the backings on my matching ruby earrings. I'm not sure why I chose that dress, except that it was the most carnal outfit in my closet, and Caleb Moon resurrected sensuous emotions in me which I knew I should try to deny. Still, I couldn't.
It occurred to me that I hadn't given him my address, and I wondered once again if I was losing my mind and merely imagining the man who had visited me in my strangely adventurous dreams.
He appeared on my doorstep at exactly seven o'clock.
Outside the moon appeared enormous in the cloudless sky, and the faint wind carried his woodsy, masculine scent through my open window. Adding the last touch of gloss to my dark-as heart's-blood lipstick, I made my way down the steps, scarcely feeling the rug beneath my feet. I felt like I was floating in one of my dreams.
He wore another of his conservative pinstripe suits the same gray as his eyes which stared intensely at me beneath a random lock of his unbound chestnut hair. He appeared as I felt: a wanton animal imprisoned in the trappings of civilization.
His eyes raked over me in a manner which quickened my pulse, and he offered me a clipping of a spiked plant adorned with hooded yellow flowers.
As I accepted it, his fingers brushed mine slowly and I became uneasy more from my own feelings rather than the messages transmitted by his eyes and touch.
"It's lovely," I said.
"It is, but take care. It's poisonous."
"What is it called?"
Beneath the sultry confidence of his dark eyes, I momentarily glimpsed of desperation touched with disappointment.
"You know. Don't you?"
I shook my head.
"Wolfsbane."
I drew a long breath and placed the clipping in my pocket book as he took my hand and escorted me silently to his car.
He brought me to a restaurant more expensive than I could ever hope to afford, and I listened dumbly as he ordered prime cuts of steak cooked rare.
"Rare meat isn't good for you," I murmured.
He only smiled.
"You don't know me at all, do you, Tia?"
"Why do you keep calling me that? It's not my name."
"It is."
"How do you know me?" I leaned forward and noticed that his eyes were focused on my red-painted lips.
"I can scarcely believe that you don't know me," he whispered, reaching across the table and taking my hand. I tensed, but his thumb stroked my wrist in a soothing motion which relaxed me in spite of myself. "Close your eyes, Tia."
"Here?" I glanced around the dimly-lit dining room. There were only a few other couples seated far away, yet I could still see the color of their eyes and smell the perfumes they wore along with the variety of foods they'd ordered. The scent of meat was most tempting.
"Close your eyes," He repeated, and this time I obeyed.
"I know in your dreams you can hear the wind and feel the forest. I know that somewhere, deep inside, you remember me and the rest of our family."
His words guided me out of the restaurant, out of the city crowded with people who remembered nothing of their own primitive beginnings, but who buried their most natural fears and desires under the rubble of progress. His voice was something untamed and forbidden, but his hand was safety. It was kinship, and it was love. He ran beside me, guided me. He stood to protect me against...
"I can hear the gunfire," I said, clutching his hand fiercely.
"It's all right." His warm grip tightened on mine.
"I'm lost. Everyone's gone." I tried to keep the tears from my voice, but couldn't tell if I was succeeding or not.
I heard a tremor in his own voice. "I tried to find you, but they'd struck me. The others wouldn't let me go after you."
"I cried for you and the others, but it was like you'd never existed. I thought you were a dream. After they found me and sent to live in the city, they told me it was only nightmares I'd had. They told me you were only in my imagination." I opened my eyes, knowing there were tears running unchecked down my face, but I didn't care as I reached across the table for his other hand. "Caleb, I know you. You were my best friend as a child."
"I searched for you," he said, touching my tears with his fingertips. "But they'd sent you away."
"I've lived in many places." I smiled, wiping my eyes with a tissue, wondering why I couldn't stop crying when I only felt joy. Finally, I knew who I was. "I've tried many different lives, but I've never known where I belong."
"It's because you belong with me. This world isn't ours." He motioned to the richly-decorated dining room with it's delicate china plates and glimmering chandeliers. "The pack is mine now, Tia, and for far too long they've been pressing me to take a mate. I knew I couldn't hold them off forever, but not before I found you. It's our pack. Come and lead it with me."
"But I don't know anything about who we are. How can I just leave my life here and go with you?" I said, knowing as I spoke the words that I'd already made my decision.
"I'm not telling you it will be easy, but neither is pretending to be one of them when every night you are one of us."
"My dreams...They're real."
"You've been with us before. It was only that human-induced amnesia that made you forget. I won't hinder you if you decide not to return with me," he said. "Most of the others have told me I've been crazy to hope that you would come back, but like you, I've been plagued by dreams. Every night since we'd lost you, I've seen your face and heard your voice. I've watched you grow up, and somehow, I think you've heard me too."
I nodded, about to reply, but the waiter had brought our food. The pink meat sat in a cream-colored dish puddled with blood, and my stomach growled. I doubted I'd ever seen a more appetizing meal.
Caleb smiled slightly as I began to cut the tender flesh. The first bite was as stimulating as I'd thought it would be. I chewed and savored every piece, and when I finished, I glanced at him. His long, elegant hands held the knife and fork as he cut the meat with all the civility of the wealthy gentleman he appeared to be, but when the dripping pink flesh was raised to his mouth, I noticed white, keen-edged teeth take it from the fork with a violent clip which sent an erotic thrill through me.
When we'd finished the meal, he started to drive me home, but once parked in my yard, I refused to leave the car.
"Take me with you."
"This is fast," he said, though I could see how much he wanted to drive away with me. "You might want to take some more time."
"I've wasted enough time not knowing who I am. I have to find out exactly where I belong."
He parked his car at the edge of the wood, and we made our way through the trees, guided only by the glowing moon.
"I told you it won't be easy at first," he warned. "By now someone has already fought for leadership in my place. We'll have to take back what's ours by force."
I nodded, discarding my clothes as we quickened our pace. Shifting shape no longer seemed dreamlike to me, but very real. It was something far more natural than riding a train or typing up my boss's letters on a word processor.
Racing side by side with Caleb through the damp, rocky ground was where I belonged, and nothing, not gunfire, humanity, or another wolf was going to take it from me.
We ran until we reached the familiar clearing of my dreams. All around us voices howled and gleaming eyes peered through the tangle of trees.
As a wolf, Caleb was magnificent: long, graceful, as strong as the forest itself. He bellowed in the clearing, his voice rising above the wind which had suddenly grown cold and wet.
Wolves emerged from the trees and trotted around us, but only one approached. Large, thick-boned, gray as a stormy sky, he lunged at Caleb, his teeth gnashing and eyes glaring boldly.
Caleb rose to meet him, and the struggle which ensued was short-lived but bloody. Caleb's muzzle dripped red and his chestnut fur was matted with rain and blood as he stood over the cowering gray who slipped from his view with his head swinging low as he dragged himself from the clearing.
Melting upward into man-form, Caleb stood, lashed by rain, lacerated by teeth and claws, and extended his hand to me. As I approached, another wolf leapt between us.
"You have no power here." She snarled in the rain-spiked wind. "He is mine. Leadership is mine."
Fury chased away my reason when I saw her brush possessively against Caleb, and without hesitation I swiped her aside with a newly-shaped paw.
She growled ominously, and I stared into her knowing eyes. She was young and powerful. She'd spent her life running and hunting with the pack, and she knew how to fight, but I was also young and strong, and had a lifetime of frustration to compensate for my lack of skill. I had just found Caleb, and she was not going to take him from me.
The first sting of her teeth and claws surprised me, but after the initial shock, I knew that the pain wouldn't kill me and that I could cause her the same discomfort. I learned then that leadership had more to do with determination and will than with size or strength. My will was far stronger than hers.
In the end she slithered away from me and back to the others who wailed, "Welcome home, sister! Welcome home."
I hunted with the pack. I led with Caleb. We ran through the tangled paths together and swam beneath the cascade deep in the wood.
Sometimes I had nightmares of flashing lights, speeding cars, and cramped offices, but such horrors grew more distant every year.
Bio: Kate Hill is an enthusiast of dark and romantic fiction. She especially enjoys works which explore both the good and evil sides of paranormal beings.
Email: katehill@sprintmail.com
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