Carl Wilson
I never really know how to feel about the new moon. One the one hand, it is when I feel least compelled to change, when the wolf is quietest and calmest. When I can most easily pass for just another young man who’s fuzzier than most.
But at the same time, I can never deny the powerful thrill that having the wolf close to the surface brings to me. Under the full moon, I feel – I am – stronger, more powerful, more aware, and more alert. My blood pounds harder in my veins. Even the struggle to keep the wolf quiet is exhilarating. Unlike people who get turned later in life, I was born to my blood. The only time I fear truly losing control and turning against my will, is in the most extreme anger, or if there is an imminent threat to my life. But under the full moon, I never forget that potential lurks within me.
Under the new moon, I have an easier time dealing with the pinkies, they are more at ease with me. It is my time to let my softer, human blood express itself.
Still, when I can hear someone is on my property in the middle of the night, I want the wolf closer to the surface, just in case.
I step out of my house, the well-oiled hinge of my back door silent, and I sniff the air. Whoever is out there is coming from downwind so I can’t immediately tell who it is. Once I’m outside, though, I can hear their footsteps more clearly. There’s only one person who moves with that cadence.
“Nathan!” I hiss.
“I still can’t get the jump on you, can I?” he asks.
“Not tonight. I could hear you over my furnace,” I say. “You distracted or drunk?”
He doesn’t answer. He knows I’d smell it on him if he’d been drinking.
“So you’re accidentally wandering through my yard, or did you want to talk about something?” He’s coming from the direction of Ivy’s house. Like me, Nathan has had his eye on her for quite some time. Also like me, he’s known Ivy since we were kids, and while we’ve both certainly changed in how we view her, she still thinks of us as purely platonic companions. It’s probably good for the friendship between Nathan and me, though, not being romantic rivals. We’re both hot blooded enough that if one of us were with Ivy, one of the many small things that’s come up between us would have blown up into something irreconcilable. And it would hurt Ivy immeasurably to lose either of us to a fight over her.
“Distracted,” Nathan finally says. “Something odd in town. I don’t think I’ve been aware of it until just now.” Even in the darkness, I can see that his mind is a million miles away. “You notice anything strange lately?”
“You’re not the only one that’s been wandering the woods lately,” I say. “At least a half dozen times in the past week or so, I’ve heard someone out here at night. They’ve been staying off my land, but coming close. Smells funny.”
“Hmm.” Nathan seems to chew on that for a while. I wonder if he knows or suspects what I mean. He’s aware that there are people in the world that aren’t really people. It’s an open secret between the two of us that I’m a werewolf. He never mentions it, doesn’t treat me differently because of it, treats it as something just as normal as somebody having blue eyes or brown hair. He also knows that Ivy and her grandma are both witches and considers that perfectly normal.
Speaking of things that smell funny, whatever Nathan is, he isn’t human. Now that we’re close, I can clearly pick up his scent, and it’s always seemed off to me. He can fool the pinkies – he walks like one, talks like one, looks like one, but he certainly doesn’t smell like one. I’m not sure what he is, but it isn’t human and it isn’t animal. He’s not a wolf, like me. Not a vampire. I’ve hunted enough of them to know that for sure.
“Well, if you find out for sure, please let me know,” Nathan says. “We’ve got a kind of weird going on here that I like. I’m not sure bringing some new weird in would be good for the place.”
I have to agree with him. Stokers Mill has been very good to me. It’s the kind of small town where everybody knows everybody, but mostly stays out of each other’s business. Don’t hurt anybody, and nobody really cares what you do in your one time and place. I decide to float a little teaser his way, to see if I can get him to slip a bit of information. “I used to hunt, a few years ago, before I moved out here. Reminds me of some of the weird out in the bayous,” I say.
“Back when you lived down in Louisiana? Hunting gators and boar out in the swamps?” No clue in his voice as to whether he believes those old stories.
“Yeah. If I pick it up again, I’ll see if I can get a good look for you.”
Nathan wishes me a good night, and slinks back into the woods, leaving me with just as many questions about him as I’ve ever had. I wait a good long while until I know he’s well away, and I crawl under the fence at the back of my yard, into the sloping woodland beyond.
Underneath Nathan’s weird smell I can pick up the reek of the undead thing that has been in the area lately. There’s just one of them so far. Definitely male, and very careful. Skilled at stalking and not leaving a trail. If I hadn’t been trained as well as I have, I would have never picked him up. But I wasn’t really hunting gators before moving out here.
While the new moon makes it easier for me to control the wolf, it certainly doesn’t prevent me from transforming. I take my clothes off and fold them up into a neat pile by the little dip in the land under my fence. My wolf blood comes from the big arctic beasts, so the bite of cold air against my bare skin actually feels good. I let myself savor it for a while before I let the wolf out. Slowly, I drop down to all fours. My hair grows thicker and denser, my tail unfurls out behind me. My vision shifts as my eyes become the wolf’s eyes, yellow and good at night. I curl my lips into a toothsome smile and let a soft happy growl escape from my throat.
I sniff around until I find the undead scent again. It’s running parallel to my property line, about a hundred yards downhill. If I follow it east, I’ll get to Ivy’s place, west will take me away from town. I decide to follow it east.
As I near Ivy’s house, I’m not surprised, but still not happy. There’s no way a vampire coming into the area wouldn’t at least pick up something strange coming from there and get curious. They’re not necessarily drawn to witches, but witches know a lot of things. So far, Ivy’s grandma hasn’t outed me to her, but her training is inevitably going to include how to identify and treat werewolves and vampires. I do not look forward to that day at all, because then Ivy will know that I’ve been hiding my nature from her for years. And try as she might, her grandma is never going to be able to hide from Ivy forever the truth about the Great War between my kind and the vampires, and that her parents were unfortunate casualties of it.
I know that I’ll lose Ivy for a time once she finds these things out. I can only hope that she’ll still be the truly caring and compassionate and thoughtful woman she has grown into, and will understand the reason why I keep the wolf a secret from everybody, including her.
I search back and forth along the woods at the edge of Ivy’s yard, and find that the vampire hasn’t only been by once. The trail I followed from near my house is the freshest scent, but I can find weaker traces of his presence from the past few days. He’s definitely got his eye on the place.
A part of me wants to find a good place to hide and wait to see if he’ll come by yet tonight, but my human part knows that would be a bad idea. We’d negotiated a Truce with the vampires to end the Great War a few years ago, and it’s still somewhat fragile. Surprising a vampire in the woods in my wolf form could quickly escalate and threaten the Truce. I’d been raised to hunt vampires, since before I could crawl. Most of my life has been spent either preparing to fight them, or actually fighting them. These past few years of peace have been precious to me, allowed me to do things like go to a regular school, read books, make friends, meet Ivy… A lot of the time, the wolf misses the thrill of the hunt, the tense vitality of being hunted, the furious heat of the fight. But even it is learning to appreciate normality.
I allow myself one long, slow loop around Ivy’s house, keeping to the woods, before I stop and take a last look at it. Ivy’s grandma is in the living room, and through the big bay window, I see her raise her hand to me.