Constantine
Small.
I hadn’t really thought this through.
In my fantasies of a woman who hadn’t been made small, I somehow still expected that I would be her center of gravity and she would fall into orbit around me. When I look at the blood on my hand, I know that’s not really an option.
I remember the way Eudemos licked away Magnus’s pain when he first changed. When I kneel beside Evie and lift the hem of her shirt, she opens her eyes, tired and wary. The muscles of her torso tighten as I take a deep breath and bend down toward her waist. I am tentative at first—I don’t want to hurt her—cleaning the spilled blood smeared by the T-shirt. She is still tense under my hand, and I try to remember the way Eudemos had done it, with faith and commitment that made it seem like a kind of blessing.
Looking at her skin, I take a deep breath and press my tongue to the gash itself, tasting the coppery blood. I try to read her, stroking her, comforting her, loving her in the way a wolf would until finally her body begins to relax. Stroke by stroke, I feel her both coming apart and knitting together under the gentle pressure of my tongue, this unspeakable intimacy, this benison.
Evie eventually falls asleep with Nils on one side. Even in the middle of the summer, the nights can be cold here and wolves don’t like to be cut off from the outside, so all the windows are open. I pull the blanket from the back of the sofa and shake it out, letting it settle over the two of them.
A small animal scuttles up a tree and a night bird’s wings flap hard in pursuit, pulling fir-scented air in her slipstream followed by a breeze from the north, the lowing of a moose, and a clearing of the sky.
The flap in the door opens and shuts, and a pup sniffs around Evie and Nils with a low whine.
“Nyala,” I whisper so she won’t wake them. As soon as she jumps up on my chest, my toe throbs in recognition. She turns around and around. I put my hand near her so she has something to cuddle into. Then with a big yawn, she sneezes.
The moonlight breaks through the window and Evie sighs. Putting my free hand gently on her thigh, I feel the pulse of her skin. I smell the forest-infused scent of Nyala’s fur. I’ve been told over and over that wolves and pack and land are one, but words are slippery, and while I heard, I never did understand.
Not the way I do now as I watch the moon clear the trees of the Holm to hit the waters of Home Pond and almost weep for the magic of this place that has turned an island into a home.
* * *
In the morning, Evie took Nils with her, along with a bright-pink bag stuffed with the ad hoc diapers, the regurgitated food, and the too-large clothes. Even a maggot belongs to the Pack, and the Pack would take care of him as they did when he had four legs, sharp teeth, and a measure of independence.
The one thing she did not take was my phone. Not first thing in the morning when her foot caught it and sent it sliding across the floor. Not later when I put it into her hand and curled her fingers around it.
Its once-familiar weight now feels odd in my pocket. I take it out and look through the contacts, many of whom are dead: August is listed in my contacts as AAA. Unnamed but always first. Also Antony. Under the D’s is a 604 number. Drusilla, the Bitch of Vancouver.
A stick breaks and I cram the phone back in my pocket.
Cassius stands suddenly still behind me. Then he turns and drives something that I can’t make out high into a tree. Whatever it is, it’s sharp enough to make a pale gash in the bark.
A moment later, I smell the sap bleeding into this wound and another one already beaded with amber.
“They’re very protective of their trees.”
“‘They’re very protective of their trees.’ They don’t bother to look any higher on a tree than the height of a raised leg.”
“What are you doing, Cassius?”
“Marking a path. If I’m going to be trapped here forever, I need to be able to find my way around.”
I realize that at some point I slid my hand into my pocket, trying to disguise the shape of my phone under the shape of my hand.
My thumb feels around, turning it off, so no alerts or alarms will signal to him that there is a line to the world outside, then I slide back into the woods, watching him. Soon, two wolves appear on either side of me, watching, too, until the evening comes and Cassius heads in for Evening Meat.
“I don’t trust him,” I say to the gray wolf on my right.
She shows her teeth and opens and closes her jaws rapidly, making a soft clacking sound.
“Exactly. You going to movie night?”
Tara makes a little expulsive cough.
“See you there.”
Back at the dormitory, I look around for a hiding place. There isn’t one, really. The lack of any old stuff makes it hard to hide new stuff. In the end, like a kid at summer camp, I unzip my cotton pillow liner, slip the phone in, put the pillowcase on, and turn it upside down.
* * *
You think you know somebody.
From the beginning, I’ve known Ziggy was the Great North’s Number One Werewolf Star Fanboy. I don’t know if he’s the GNNOWSF because he runs the AV equipment during movie nights, or he runs the AV equipment during movie nights because he is the GNNOWSF.
Either way, he’s nuts.
“Bill Nighy is an English actor and Bill Nye is the Science Guy. They are not the same.”
“Plug these in,” he says, holding a cord out to me. “Then I’ll show you.”
As soon as I’ve set up the power strip, I come back. “Look, here they are side by side.” Ziggy turns the laptop toward me. “That is the same man. Sickly, they have…light hair and the rims around their eyes.”
“Glasses, Ziggy. And he’s not sickly—they’re not sickly—just thin.”
I’m not really arguing. I now know it’s pointless, given the difficulty Pack have with facial recognition. Strip away sound and smell and feel, and for wolves, it’s like trying to separate one stick figure from another.
Once speakers, projector, and screen are set up, I help other wolves distribute the rickety gold-toned party chairs with their bloodstained ecru cushions in rows with ample leg room on either side of the projector tripod connected to the computer.
We toss around large claw-picked pillows on the floor up front and bowls with water and the teeth-shattering sweet potato pucks that wolves like to gnaw. On the short wall to the right of the door is a table with napkin-lined baskets filled with peanut-butter muffins and popcorn. Chipped earthenware jugs are filled with water and iced tea.
There is no swinging door here, so pups jump their paws up on the screen, whimpering until someone opens up. A pup takes the corner of one of the large cushions between his jaws and drags it across the floor. An older wolf drops his cheese chew, clambers to his feet, and drags both pillow and pup back across the floor.
The door opens again, admitting a wolf dragging a slack Nils in his teeth, his legs dragging along the floor.
“Hey!” I grab at Nils and the wolf growls until I smack him in the jaw, not hard, but in the way of wolves making a point. He opens his jaws and drops the baby into my arms.
“How many times do I have to say this: don’t carry maggots in your teeth.” I smooth out Nils’s rumpled and spit-covered shirt. It would help if he complained about the rough treatment but he never does. I suppose he’s so used to being carried around by the scruff that it doesn’t occur to him that this is not natural. That he should be screaming and crying, not looking up at me with his big, dark eyes and the tip of his tongue sticking out from the corner of his two-toothed smile.
“And just how do you suggest picking him up?” asks Ziggy.
“Arms, Ziggy. Arms.”
Ziggy and the wolf exchange glances. The wolf shrugs, then starts to pick something out of his forepaw with his teeth as though to point out the hole in my logic.
I dampen a cloth with some cold water and wash the dirt from the front of Nils’s legs and the back of his feet, then drag another pillow over, angled to the side so he can be with the pack but not overwhelmed by the flashing lights on the screen.
Soon, the Meeting Hall is crowded. There’s a lot of posturing for the one remaining floor pillow. Magnus gets it until Elijah dumps him out, dragging it away for Thea. Ziggy is once again showing some female his comparison of Bill Nye and Bill Nighy; she lifts her hands up as though to say of course they’re the same. Several pups have joined Nils on his big pillow. Lying on him for a moment, then running off. Poor Nils raises his arm awkwardly after them. One juvenile taunts him by waving her tail in his face. He finally catches it and brings it to his mouth, though there is too much fur and it makes him sneeze.
In the third row on the left side, in the chair one over from the aisle sits Poul with his arm around an empty seat.
“Alpha.” I nod to Poul and sit down, feeling the warmth of his arm stretched around my back, smelling the scent of his slaggy armpit.
“I’m saving this seat for the Alpha,” Poul says, staring at me.
“And if she asks me to get up, I’ll get up. Until then, move your fucking arm.” I feel the strength, the warmth, and the hesitation in his arm as he tries to decide whether his status is more likely to suffer from giving in to my demands or staying seated with his arm curled intimately around a Shifter.
He taps his finger rapidly on the back of the chair before finally deciding to extricate his arm. Then to make it clear that he’s not giving in, he pushes his face close, his eyes boring into mine. I may not be a wolf, but I recognize a dominance play when I see it.
Removing my cheese chew to the hand carrying the iced tea, I rock onto the back legs of the chair and slam forward with fair to middling momentum. Poul backs up, his head raised, trying to stanch the bleeding.
The movie is about vampires and—what else—werewolves. It stars either Bill Nighy or Bill Nye. Even I can no longer tell the difference.
“…first Clan of Werewolves: A Vicious and Infectious Breed, unable to take Human Form ever again…Until he was born.”
Poul wipes his nose with his hand, wipes his hand on his arm, then looms over me until my knee meets his balls.
Not sure how he got to be Alpha if a seated man can best him without spilling his iced tea.
“Is that your answer then? You will not come with me, so you want me to stay here for you? Like this? Like an animal?”
Poul stomps off to the Deemer, who is in the process of shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth. He speaks quickly and Silver holds up one finger, chewing carefully before taking a swig of water and saying a word or two. She turns back to the popcorn. Poul shuffles around so that he’s in front of her again, his mouth moving more, his finger pointed toward me. I can’t hear what’s being said, but judging from her expression, the Deemer does not seem to think that who sits next to the popular girl at movie night is a matter for the law.
Poul makes a mistake and jabs an accusing finger first toward Tiberius, then toward Silver. She looks at it coldly, puts her popcorn on the table, and lunges forward, biting him hard with her fanged and salty teeth.
She takes her popcorn back. Tiberius repeatedly smooths his mustache and cropped beard.
Now Poul stands holding his finger, his face bright red and furious. There are no longer two seats together. He thumps back, banging harder against my legs and the skull of the wolf in front of him, who growls, but Poul shows teeth and the wolf lowers his head.
He sucks at his wounded finger, staring at the door until Evie finally arrives. She’s trying to do it quietly so as not to disturb the movie, but when she turns away from the snack table, with a sweet potato puck and a glass of iced tea, her expression changes. All her wolves are watching her. Even the pups have stopped fighting. I doubt they understand the middle-school dynamics of the moment, but they recognize the possibility of a fight when they smell it.
“Alpha.” Poul stands, blocking me from her view. “I saved you a seat.”
I stare straight ahead, still pretending to watch the movie.
“You are a credit to your race. Do you know how to remain so? Keep your eyes on the ground…!”
“Alpha?” Poul says again. “He knows he has to move for you.”
“There’s plenty of room on the floor,” she says. Lowering herself gracefully, she props her head on the hip of a wolf lying like a comma. Another wolf props her head on the Alpha’s chest, her eyes slowly rising and lowering in time with her dominant’s breath.
Poul limps toward me, nose swelling, sucking on his finger.
“You know she only tolerates you because you look like John,” he says without bothering to disguise his voice.
“How would you know, Poul?” comes a voice from the back of the room.
“Elijah told Esme who told Joelle who told me.”
Elijah doesn’t have the words to confirm or deny but when Thea says, “I told you not to say anything,” he drops a paw over his eyes.
Evie looks straight ahead, the iced tea raised to her mouth, her face stony. I focus on the condensation dripping to her lower lip.
“But you’re not John,” Poul continues. “I am the Alpha of the 10th Echelon of the Great North Pack and you… You. Are. Nothing.”
I press my palm against my fingers, and one by one, they crack.
“I know who you are. You are the man who plotted with the noseless dog to give the Great North’s pups to August. To give your Pack and your Alpha to hunters,” I say, my eyes glued to the screen, where interestingly enough wolves are in retreat from a Shifter. “I am the man who stopped it.”
The room freezes. Poul doesn’t breathe, and everyone in the room looks somewhere that isn’t at us.
Evie stands stiffly, her palm extended as though she was hoping to shake hands with someone who has disappeared. Everyone, even the pups, has gone quiet, making the movie so horribly loud.
“The accused has committed high treason against this covenant.
“She has consorted with animals.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her. She puts her iced tea on the table, squats down to give the sweet potato to the pup. He jumps up on her knee, his skinny tail wagging furiously until she cups his little face in her hand and marks him. Then she stands and, without looking around, leaves.
“I have saved this coven many times over.
“You have killed your own kind!”
“By the moon, Sigegeat, mute it!”
The door bangs. I extract my legs, making ready to follow her, but Poul puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Get off me.”
“Constantine WhateverTheFuckYourNameIs. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors, I, Poul Ardithsson, challenge you for Cunnan-riht—”
“Stop,” Silver says, loudly now. Authoritatively. “He is neither Pack nor table guest; he cannot be challenged for Cunnan-riht.”
“Mæþ holmgang, then.”
“What makes you think that if the law doesn’t allow you to challenge for fucking rights, you can challenge for honor? Your only alternative is to challenge Constantine to prove himself worthy of the Pack. But, Alpha, if you fight him and he wins, there will be a Thing and the Great North will decide on whether he brings strength to the Pack.”
“Like there’s any chance he would win,” Poul snaps. He takes one step toward the door before Silver’s voice cuts through the room, cold and sharp.
“The challenge, Poul Ardithsson, Alpha of the 10th Echelon of the Great North Pack, must be spoken.”
Without turning to face me, he starts again: “Constantine WhateverTheFuckYourNameIs. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors and under the watchful eye of our Pack and Alpha, I, Poul Ardithsson, challenge you to prove your strength worthy of the Great North. With fang and claw, I will attend upon you the last day of this Iron Moon.”
“Down in front,” someone yells. “You’re blocking the screen.”
* * *
Neither of us sticks around for the rest of the movie. Poul is long gone by the time I take a seat on the stairs.
Finally, the film howls in triumph.
“Lucian,” says a comically deep voice. “It is finished.”
“No,” says another voice, softer, almost gentle. “This is just the beginning.”
The music builds and wolves begin to straggle out in groups, in pairs, and alone. Many of them stripped down while the credits were still rolling. Like Eudemos. Hirsute and chewing on an antler, he seems half wolf already.
“That shows there’s a practical reason for eating them,” he says to a female I think is named Eawynn. He taps his throat with a gnawed prong. “A sword through the throat didn’t do it, but if Lucian had eaten Bill Nighy, none of it would have happened.
“Did you know he’s a scientist too?”
Ah, Ziggy.
“Hey, is Elijah coming out?”
Eudemos puts his head back through the door. “Elijah, you coming?” he says and someone roars out the name of the 9th’s Alpha. “Thea’s in the bathroom.”
“He’s coming.”
“Maybe the vampires taste gross,” says the female. She is carrying, of course, a well-thumbed edition of Passing the New York State Bar Exam and has a pencil above her ear.
“You do what you have to. We ate a state trooper. There is no way a vampire tastes worse than a state trooper.”
“They’ve been dead forever,” she says and the two of them leap from the porch, landing softly and surely on the ground. “I think they’d taste like humans crossed with roadkill. And dry.”
Even in skin, the Pack has no trouble negotiating darkness: the moon is low, there are no porch lights or path lights, only a weak nimbus from one of the windows as Ziggy packs up the AV equipment and holds forth from his trove of obscure and deluded movie trivia.
Elijah moves much more slowly and carefully even though he is wild. Thea, who has her hand buried in the long fur at his shoulders, slides her feet cautiously forward as he pauses at the top of each step. I wait until they are safely at the bottom before approaching them.
“Hello?” she says, turning toward me.
“I need to talk to Elijah.”
“You can walk with us to my cabin,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Is this about you looking like John? I knew that was going to cause trouble.”
Elijah chuffs and scratches at the moldering leaves with his hind legs.
“Not really. Poul wanted to make me angry. I shouldn’t have let him, but I did and now I have to fight him. I’ve fought…a lot…but never tooth and nail.”
“I think it’s fang and claw.”
She stumbles on a rock, but before I reach out to help her, Elijah darts forward and she steadies herself on his shoulders. She is a small human and he is a large wolf, but still I like them together. They add strength to each other, even if it isn’t the kind of strength the Pack understands.
“I’m not afraid of working or fighting or getting hurt, but for the first time in my life I’m afraid of losing, because for the first time in my life, it means something. If I lose, Poul is still the strongest unmated male. Ev… The Alpha doesn’t like him, but she will not go against Pack traditions for her own sake. Not like she did for you.”
Elijah gazes at Thea, the woman who smiles toward him but not at him because it’s too dark and she’s too human.
“If I win,” I continue, “then at least she has a choice. I want her to choose me, but whatever else happens, Poul will no longer take it as his right to sniff around her like she’s his personal fire hydrant.”
I know I’m talking too fast and saying too much, so I take a deep breath. “All I’m asking is to give me a chance to give her a choice.”
Elijah moves to Thea’s front, his muzzle at her chest until she squats down. He pats his head against the underside of her chin and she lifts her head back, eyes closed while Elijah opens his enormous jaws, fitting them to either side of her vulnerable throat. She is motionless except for a few thin strands of hair that bend to the current of his breath. When he moves away, one fang traces a gentle line down until it catches on the leather braid at her collarbone.
Then he plants himself in front of me, his head cocked, looking expectantly, though if he thinks I’m going to stick my throat between his jaws, he can go—
He jumps up, grabbing the front of my shirt between his fangs and pulling me down. Next he rubs his muzzle against my cheek. First one side, then the other.
“Do you understand?” Thea asks.
“Uhhh.” I watch her pull the flashlight from her belt. “Tell me he’s saying yes.”
“He’s saying yes.”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
Thea trains the bright beam on the steep hill in front of her.
“Can I ask you something?”
She points the flashlight down.
“If you had this all along, why didn’t you use it?”
“Hurts their eyes,” she says, grabbing hold of a branch and pulling herself up.
I stand at the base of the hill, watching the light and the woman and the wolf until in the middle distance, a door closes.