Homecoming (10 page)

Cal and Daniel got on the floor more often than not, which surprised Sula since most men were too self–conscious to chance looking uncool. They did not dance together as a couple for obvious reasons, but they moved well and familiarly within each other's spaces. Cal, unsurprisingly, had a loose limbed rhythm that spoke to a lot of years clubbing in his youth, while Daniel moved with practiced grace that bordered on formal. Sula assumed he had probably learned to dance at a country music bar. Both of them managed to draw single women into their orbit and seemed to have fun with that, but always ended up giving the women a polite brush off. Cal enjoyed the attention more than Daniel, who more than once left the floor to let Cal flirt with the drunk girls who probably hoped he was their bad–boy angel for the night.

Well after midnight, Sula had worked her way down to her last shirt, a black sleeveless under–tee that let her bra straps show. She was past caring at that point, sweaty and hot and loose. The last song had been fairly fast–paced so the DJ put on a moderate beat to give the dancers a chance to catch their breath.

She sensed Cal behind her and went to turn, but he moved quickly to press up against her back. “Mind if I join you?” He did not put his arms around her or his hands on her in any way, just swayed with her to the beat, his chest sometimes touching her back.

“Dance floor is neutral territory,” Sula said, holding herself back from pushing him away.

“Yeah.”

At some point, one hand ended up on her hip, but Sula still did not push him off. She didn't usually like dancing with partners, it was her own space and her own time, but the touch was gentle and Cal was warm against her, pressing slowly closer. It was the kind of touching that never went with casual sex, intimate and comforting, and Sula was surprised by how much she craved it.

“Let me,” Daniel appeared in front of her, picking up one of her hands as if starting a waltz. Part of Sula's brain, the part connected to Bracelet and her past and everything bad she knew would happen if she let him near, screamed “no!” but she nodded. He stepped closer, wrapping his other arm around her waist. Cal finally put both hands on her hips, pressing into her into Daniel. They stayed like that throughout the rest of the song, doing nothing complicated, simply swaying and shuffling together. Sula's breath became ragged as she picked up on their smells. Their pheromones were putting out clearly that they were turned on, and it made her dizzy. She leaned forward and rested her head against Daniel's chest, wrapping her arms around him for support. Cal moved up even more and they stood like that, closely pressed together, as the next song started and the dance floor picked up.

She did not break until she felt Cal snuffling her neck. When he licked her skin, she squirmed away from them and went to their table without looking back. Tony was smiling paternally at her, but Lisbeth was smart enough to be worried. She got up and dragged Sula to the restroom.

“Ursula Mae Price!” Lisbeth said as she locked the door to the small bathroom behind her. “What's wrong?”

“I'm dizzy.”

“Oh, god.” Lisbeth wet down a towel and started wiping down Sula's face. “Bracelet? Is it Bracelet?”

Sula nodded, then shook her head. “I don't know…just…they smelled overpowering.”

“Really? Okay, okay, sit down.”

Sula practically fell onto the toilet, taking deep breaths. For the first time since she got on the floor, she realized that Bracelet was charged up and radiating an electricity that nearly numbed her arm.

She held up her arm to look, but there were no burns. “I don't know what happened.”

Lisbeth frowned. “I don't know either, you just looked completely broken when you got back to the table.” She handed Sula another cold wet paper towel. “I thought they had said something to you.”

Sula shook her head. “No, nothing like that. They were nice and warm. I just got dizzy.”

“I hate that thing, I hate it mercilessly. Take it off. Throw it away.” Lisbeth pointed at Bracelet.

“It's not Bracelet—”

“The hell it isn't. It doesn't want you happy, Sula. You looked so good with them, so at peace, and then suddenly you look like you are going to throw up. Don't tell me that's not Bracelet!”

Sula could not argue with her. She had never figured out exactly how or why Bracelet worked, only that it had somehow knitted itself into her very being, into her nature, and could do things to her without her noticing at all. Lisbeth was probably right, and that frightened Sula. But not enough to be stupid. “I can't, Lisbeth, you know I can't.”

“Damnit! Okay, you stay here and recover. I'm going to go tab out. We're going home.”

“No, it's only—”

“After one! We have been here long enough. Pull yourself together, and meet us at the table in a few minutes.” Lisbeth turned and walked out, and Sula knew she was angry.

She was not feeling particularly better when she got out of the bathroom a few minutes later, only steadier on her feet. Bracelet was not hiding anymore, sending jolts of energy through her that made her nauseous and unable to concentrate on her surroundings. She felt Cal and Daniel next to her long before she made it back to the table, steering her instead towards the exit. Lisbeth met them there and the three of them bundled her into her jacket. She hoped Lisbeth grabbed her other shirts.

She did not balk as Cal and Daniel pushed and pulled her into the middle of the back seat. She was surprised that being near them did not make her feel worse, but then again, she figured the only way she could feel worse was if she was actually dying. Her head throbbed in pain, the nausea was not going away, and her body ached. It was like being slammed with a sudden case of meningitis, which would have scared her senseless if it was not a feeling she knew well: she was starting to shift. It had just been a long time since it had happened, not since Baltimore, and she had forgotten what it felt like.

When they pulled up to Lisbeth and Sula's house, Sula finally stumbled away from them, pushing hard to get Cal to back off. “Stop! Just…I need to, I have to…please, go away!”

Lisbeth was next to her in a heartbeat. “No! Sula, something's wrong, please—”

“No! Nothing's wrong. Lisbeth!” Sula pushed at her ineffectually with one hand, the other clinging to the porch steps handrail. “Tony!” Sula gasped, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I'm here.” Tony said behind her, his voice surprisingly gentle and warm. He placed a light hand against her back, offering support.

“Get them away. Far, far away, all of them, especially Lisbeth.”

“No! What? Sula!” Lisbeth yelled.

Tony murmured something, but Sula was past hearing them.

“Fuck, just…oh fuck.” Sula pawed at Bracelet which for once focused pleasure at he—angry, petty pleasure in her misery, but pleasure all the same. She watched in horror as the beads became translucent, shining with power and anger and melting into her skin where it would hide under her fur for as long as it could hold her.

Then the change hit like lightening, fast and dangerous. Sula leaned over to finally get on with the puking and felt everything inside of her start to shift as she did. Distantly, she heard the others shouting, Tony's voice rising up in a commanding yell that apparently did the trick. In the next moment, she was alone.

It was a painful change, and she fought it for what felt like hours but it was hopeless. Bracelet had already invested too much energy into forcing it before she knew what was happening, and she could not stop. It throbbed under her skin, demanding and cruel. Screaming, then howling, then growling in frustration she beat the ground until she was clawing at it.

Then it was over. Sula was completely changed and exhausted beyond thought. There was not too much thought that went on after she shifted anyway, just familiar shades of knowledge, smells of things and people she knew. Falling to her side, she snorted and breathed deeply, trying to push past the lingering pain that pulsed through her. Bracelet burned her, deep under her fur and skin, demanding that she attack. It screamed in her blood for her to hunt down her enemies and eliminate the threat to her people, her line. It made sense, even though Sula knew it was insane: she had no people, and her line was a dead end. There was nothing to protect, other than Lisbeth and Cal and Daniel and Tony. Bracelet threw energy like acid into her veins, but Sula did not get up. It called upon her nature but Sula fought back, keeping control of impulses that were not her own. She only wanted to lay down and wait for the pain to subside.

The ground was cold and comforting, soaking up her heat and calming her down as she focused on it instead of the bracelet trying to boil her blood. She did not intend to get up until the magic worked out of her, which she instinctively knew would be sometime around sunrise. It meant only a few hours lying on the ground, fighting Bracelet and holding herself back from an unnecessary rampage, and as long as random hunters did not stumble over the house and shoot the big, bad bear strewn helplessly at the bottom of the porch steps, she would be okay.

As pain receded and her bear senses tuned in to her surroundings, she heard bothersome noises a little ways off. Not the usual night sounds that would creep back to soothe her after a change, but peculiar shufflings and footfalls. She realized with a start that the pack had shifted but were close by. After carefully listening for a while, she figured out that they were patrolling the area, pacing large circles around the house, scaring away anything that might try to bother Sula. She did not know how to process that information. Brain connections were wired differently in her shifted state, but she thought that if she was in human form she would be really touched by it.

After a couple of hours, she rolled over to her other side, determined not to get up but uncomfortable where the ground had warmed under her. As she pulled her back legs up to curl into herself, she saw a pair of bright yellow eyes off in the bushes. Too close, she thought lazily, staring back. The eyes finally blinked, and were joined by another pair. Sula sniffed, recognizing Cal and Daniel. She wanted to tell them they were idiots, but her half–hearted growling did not move them. Bracelet throbbed eagerly with blood–lust, but Sula snarled through it, forced the impulse back into the beads she could feel tight around her arm bone.

It was a standoff between her and Bracelet for a while. Emotionally drained, Sula offered it nothing to feed on and fought its attempts to push her into action. Eventually Bracelet's energy faded away. Several hours in, Bracelet's powerful force gave out with nothing from Sula to sustain it. Sula dozed because she had no worries about being attacked, by them or anything, and when she woke up again Cal was sitting barely an arm's length away, staring down at her. She snuffled at him, nodding her head to tell him to get gone.

Instead he stood up, crouched low to the ground and scooted forward. Sula watched him impassively, surprised and worried. She did not move a muscle as he kept creeping closer and closer until they were nose to nose. He settled down lower until he was stretched out on the ground from snout to tail, the last of which was wagging in a slow drag through the dirt. Just as he was as a human, his body was wiry and thin but solid, his coat a mix of silver, brown and grays. Sula drank in his beauty as they laid there, noses barely touching. Finally, Cal lifted his head a little and licked her nose, probably checking for illness. She growled, causing him to squirm back a bit but not more than a few inches. They both settled down, but as Sula drifted off to sleep again she heard Cal sneaking in closer.

She woke up cold and warm. Cold, laying on the ground, naked and exposed to the chilly morning air, and cold where Bracelet hung from her arm and burning like ice. There was blood frozen to it, her own blood that had come with Bracelet back through the change and emerged from under her bear hide. The warmth was at her back, where someone was plastered against her. Dimly she raised an arm to check, confirming that she had completely shifted to human form again. It was rare she could sleep through that, but she decided it was the least she was owed for the nightmare the night before. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide how best to get her sore muscles moving.

“Hey.”

She was rolled onto her back by a gentle hand. Cal was propped up on an elbow and leaning over her, a worried expression on his face that bordered on angry. He was as naked as she was, warm and soft , so she instinctively kept rolling until she could rub her face against his slightly furred chest.

“Oh hey, okay.”

She felt him smile as he wrapped his arms around her. They lay like that for a few moments before he placed a leg over hers, his morning erection pushing into her thigh. She felt the charge of sex run through her and she pressed against him with a roll of her hips before she could even think to stop herself. He tightened his hug, tipping his head to nibble at her neck. Gasping at the soft, warm sensation she pulled at his hair until he lifted his head so she could kiss him.

It was a wet, deep kiss, nothing shy between them. Sula pushed into it eagerly, touch starved and desperate for skin contact, her hands clutching at his arms. Cal groaned, hauling her up and over until she was straddling him, his cock hot and thick between them, pushing at her sex.

It was so perfect and arousing that Sula didn't notice the feeling until the drop in her stomach hit her. She gasped and peeled off of him, crab walking backwards towards the banister. Flush and erect, Cal sat up in confusion.

“Where you going?”

“I can't…another change this soon would hurt me. I—” She scrambled up, Bracelet coming back to life with vicious intent.

“Sula!” It was Daniel, then, just as naked and aroused as Cal although both were losing their erections quickly.

“Were you watching us?” Sula asked, her eyes tearing up in pain as she clutched at her arm.

Daniel did not answer, instead helping Cal to get her to her feet and drag her up the stairs. As she was pulled into the house, she looked behind her to see two wolves pacing the drive restlessly, watching them. She recognized Lisbeth's auburn coat, and guessed the large, dark black and gray wolf was Tony, and that they were guarding the pack's den while Cal and Daniel took care her.