Lunatic Fringe (25 page)

The male seized the opportunity. With a
yelp, he burst from beneath Archer’s heavy paws and fled. Before
Archer righted herself, he was gone.

Riding on adrenaline, her pupils
dilated such that her eyes looked uniformly inky, Archer shouted,
“Why did you do that?”

Lexie lowered her chest to the ground,
tail between her legs, ears flat against her skull. Archer panted
at her, waiting for an answer. Lexie’s mind retreated with her
body, back-stepping up the mountainside, wishing for an edge to
disappear behind.

“
I’m sorry! I just couldn’t
watch you . . .” Lexie stammered. “You were torturing
him.”

Archer rolled her eyes as though she
were dealing with a stupid child. “Blood loss,” she
whispered.

Lexie shook her head, not
understanding.

“
Blood loss,” Archer
repeated. “It’s important. Other werewolves can smell it, and it
sends a message that there are bigger and badder wolves out here.
The blood loss works in our favor. I wasn’t torturing him. I was
bleeding him to protect us.”

Lexie gnawed at her lip, wanting to
howl again, to release the swirling anxiety.

“
Hey,” Archer said, calmer
now. “Come here.”

Lexie came, head low, shivering with
fear, her tail still stuck firmly between her back legs. Archer
licked at Lexie’s muzzle, cheeks, and ears, ridding her of the
sticky blood that clung to her fur. The full moon bathed them both
in the succor of its silvery light. Once Lexie was clean, Archer
stepped a pace away and sat.

Fuck! Lexie tried to scream. Her throat
clenched on the word and it came out like a croak before a retch.
Fuck! She tried again. Her larynx seized against the word. She
tried to scream her pain without articulation and it came out in a
stream of whines and groans. She strained against the sounds, a
simultaneous clench and release as if preventing herself from
vomiting. Her shoulders heaved and she dug her black nose into the
ash. Her tongue lolled to the ground. She released a snort and
sigh. She croaked again, desperate to cry or shout or scream but
her physiology resisted.

Her paws clenched at the dirt, and she
tried to regain her breath, her mind, her forepaws locked and
holding to the earth.

Archer held still as a stone lion.
“Howl, Lexie,” she whispered.

Lexie winced, her eyes pleading with
Archer to immolate this new form, to take this body
away.

“
Howl.”

Lexie strained, her throat burning, her
muscles not knowing how to behave. She heaved a sound, a squeal
over a groan. She inhaled to the breadth of her lungs, her larynx
shocking her with its capacity. Her exhale fought against her
insides and knocked her head back on her neck. Her forepaws
clutched the earth and she released a bellow that shook her
ribcage, shook her skull, shook the bare branches of the denuded
trees. She pushed the howl out, though she didn’t have to--this
anguish would leave her body with or without her
consent.

Her howl moved out of her in
undulations, in waves. It shattered her consciousness and let it
fall to the ground like a million shards of glass. She tried to
follow the ribbon of sound but it defied her, cascading beyond even
her new, keen senses.

Her head threw the last of her breath
in one heave. The sound ricocheted off the mountainside and Lexie
swooned.

She fell into the warm, dark recesses
of her mind where she was just a girl, who only a week ago was
falling in love with a stranger, struggling over a midterm paper
thesis, wondering if her new friends liked her enough. She wanted
to return to that girl and stay there in suspended animation,
before the kidnapping, the beating, and the uprooting of all
rationality and reason.

But something better lurked beyond. It
seduced her away from the safety of her own head with promises of
new scents and tastes and the feeling of pine needles beneath her
paws, of exaltation of the gorgeous gloaming like some people
admired the sunrise, and of companionship with the exquisite
creature sitting on the rocks before her, patiently awaiting her
return. Out there it was night, and Lexie wondered if it would be
night forever. If she were to return, there would be tears in her
flesh and fur on her body, and questions would pour from her like
blood from a gash. Yet there was also the promise of a new power
within her and a new magic in this land. Even if she could go back
to the girl from last week, doing so would mean returning to life
of complacent stagnation in which nothing was new or
unbelievable--a life of hourly wages and nothing stalking in the
darkness.

She had traveled a mere sixty miles
from home to create something extraordinary for herself. That sixty
miles may well have been to the moon, so much mystery crept in the
periphery. Lexie whimpered deep with in her mind, the howl of
anguish had long since echoed away from the mountainside. Now she
cried for wishes granted and preconceptions shattered. She cried
for her future and the life yet to come.

The moon sat above the tree line in the
west when Lexie blinked back to reality. The first thing that came
into focus was Archer, lying with head resting on crossed forepaws,
her gaze focused on something far in the distance, deep in her own
thoughts. Her tail curled next to her body, fluffy and clean. Her
nose was wet, like a river rock against the silty beige of her
muzzle. Lexie sighed, the beauty of this beast in the moonlight
overtaking her. She tried to speak, and her voice box vibrated a
trill of sound.

“
Archer?” Lexie croaked
through a hoarse throat.

Archer’s ears perked, and she jumped to
all fours. The sides of her mouth curled into a smile, and her pink
tongue unfurled from her jaw to loll to one side. Lexie walked to
her, and they entwined their necks, nuzzling. Archer pulled her
face away and licked at Lexie’s muzzle, cleaning the last traces of
blood from her fur, grooming her.

“
There’s skin stuck between
my teeth,” Lexie whined.

Archer wrapped her forelegs around
Lexie, squeezing away the snarling, the saliva, the jagged teeth
and claws. Archer was a bulwark of warmth and safety; her body was
a sanctuary for them both, regardless of the monsters beyond,
soothing like a sister and holding like a lover. Archer’s strong
neck draped over Lexie’s shoulder, warming her core, hiding her
face from the chill of the forest. Her exhalations cycled in the
enclosed space between their bodies, warming them both.

Archer smiled with tender eyes. “Let’s
get you some water and some rest.”

She whispered into Archer’s chest, “I’m
sorry.”

Archer lapped at her shoulder, shushing
the confession away. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“
I couldn’t let you kill a
man.”

“
Shh . . .” Archer nuzzled
her. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“
You’re a werewolf,” Lexie
whispered.

“
Yes,” replied
Archer.

“
And me too.”

Archer nodded. Stating it so plainly
should have shocked Lexie, but her nervous system had adapted by
refusing to engage any further. An eerie peace crept across her
skin, gripping her with ghostly fingers, forcing her heart rate to
slow and her breath to deepen. It was a disconcerting calm, her
thoughts sharp and empty.

“
Did you do this to me?”
Lexie asked.

“
I’m afraid
not.”

“
Who did?”

“
I don’t know. I can only
guess.”

“
Guess, then.”

“
Last month, at the Full
Moon Tribe. When you ran, you fell and drank from a puddle,
yes?”

Lexie nodded.

“
There is lore, that the
footprint of a pureblood, beneath the light of the full moon can
create the change, though I’ve never seen it happen.”

“
Until now?”

“
I suppose.”

“
What’s a
pureblood?”

“
Me.”

“
And?”

“
Only me,” Archer sighed.
“Or so I thought. But that footprint wasn’t mine.”

“
Pureblood. What does that
even mean?”

Each question was a hydra; for every
one Archer answered, ten more sprang forth in its place.

“
It means a lot of things,”
Archer said, drawing back and placing her paw over Lexie’s.
“Listen, I know you have many questions, but you’re also hurt and
tired. Let’s take care of that first, okay?” She nuzzled the soft,
spiky fur at the base of Lexie’s triangle ears. “Things will look
different in the morning.”

Lexie nodded, still seeking answers in
Archer’s particolored eyes, so unusual in a woman, but well-suited
to a wolf. Everything about Archer seemed better suited as a wolf,
from her dispatch of the rogue wolf to the way she had licked
Lexie’s muzzle clean of blood, to the way she comforted by rubbing
her forehead against Lexie’s trembling neck.

Archer turned, looking over her
shoulder in invitation--or command--for Lexie to follow. Lexie
loped after her.

The silent journey gave her opportunity
to observe Archer, a great wolf who mere hours ago had loved her as
a woman, who had cradled her body in her long, lean arms and tasted
her flesh with human lips. Her eyes were the same as a both human
and wolf: the left like candle-lit brass, warm and organic; and the
right, clear blue as an icy lake, preternatural and uncanny.
Archer’s mouth curled at the edges when she grinned her lupine
grin, similar to the shrouded smile she carried on her human
face.

A ridge of mottled grey fur ran from
the tip of her nose up her forehead, along her back, and all the
way to her fluffy black tail. Her cheeks were beige, and small
rings of short black fur circled her eyes, as though traced by
kohl. Archer’s articulated paws were broad, almost twice the size
of Lexie’s. They moved agilely, more like her human hands than
not.

Growing up, Lexie shared the local
assumption that the rare wolves were a product of the environment.
A chill of nauseous guilt gripped her throat as she wondered who
those wolves, those people, may have been before the locals
dispatched them with guns and blades. She wondered how Archer had
survived and if long ago she had been a normal girl like Lexie. She
was gripped with the same uneasy wonder that had accompanied the
sensation of Archer’s body on top of hers, that everything was
terrifying and everything was perfect.

Lexie loped to a stop beside her lover.
She studied Archer’s face, marveling at the subtle colorings and
shades along her muzzle, wondering what they were for, if
anything.

Archer waited through Lexie’s perusal,
letting her soak in the magic of what was occurring now. The fur on
her throat rippled when she spoke.

“
Are you okay?” she
chattered to Lexie in a language that sounded so natural Lexie
wondered why she had never heard it before.

Though she didn’t know the answer to
Archer’s question, she suspected that she had no real choice but to
decide. Lexie lowered her head to her forepaws, stretching the lean
bands of muscle on her legs and across her back. “Yes,” she
asserted, the decision making it true. “I think I am.”

Archer bounded into the tree, and Lexie
followed. They climbed together to the treehouse, so warm and
welcoming, high above the cruelty of the forest below. Weariness
overtook Lexie as the calm of the space enveloped them. She curled
down upon the sheepskin, tucking her nose beneath her foreleg,
hiding from the lingering moon rays. To Lexie’s lupine figure, the
fleece was a sensual delight. A sound came from her mouth that she
had not yet heard, a mixture of a guttural sigh and a satisfied
snort through the nose. Seeing that Archer was watching her, Lexie
rolled onto her back, exposing her pale belly. Archer padded over
and nuzzled Lexie’s belly, snuffling along the soft fur and
flesh.

They pressed tightly against one
another, wrapping legs, rubbing their faces together. Their panting
deepened. Archer licked Lexie’s face and ears. Lexie lost herself
in the sensation of Archer’s touch. She had to ask Archer one
question, and placing her paw against Archer’s chest to stop her,
she whispered, “Archer, what do I look like?” The sides of Archer’s
mouth curled into a broader grin, and she rested on her forepaw,
using her other to stroke the side of Lexie’s face.

“
Your fur is light brown,
like honey. Your eyes are the same, rich hazel. Your mouth curls
into a smile at the edges, here.” She traced the curls of Lexie’s
mouth with the tip of her paw. “Your cheeks are pale, like mine.
Your snout is the color of peanut butter.”

“
Peanut butter?” Lexie
laughed.

“
Yes. You are beautiful.
And delicious.” Archer buried her face in Lexie’s neck, making
snorting sounds that tickled Lexie’s whiskers and made her giggle
aloud.

They rolled together on the blanket,
wrestling, licking, playing and giggling.

“
Am I going to be okay?”
Lexie asked.

“
You are going to be
magnificent.”

Lexie couldn’t make sense of any of it,
nor could she think of the future; it was all too deep and
unknowable, but she resisted escaping into her head. She’d lived
there long enough.