Lois had sat in the chair across from the darkened TV for more than two hours as the daylight slipped away, moving only occasionally to a slightly different position. Clark had been worried at first until he realized that she was deep in thought. And because she was focused on something – probably their current predicament – he moved as little as possible and was silent when he did move.
Finally she unfolded her legs from beneath her and stood in front of him. “I know what I have to do.”
He handed her a tall glass of ice water. “What’s that?”
She took the glass and drained half of it without stopping. “Since we can’t find Arthur’s band, and since finding the Naturals would just start a fight—”
“I’m glad you see it my way.”
She shrugged. “Don’t get cocky. Even a busted clock is right twice a day.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Her glance at him carried whimsy for a moment, then shut down. “I have to change.”
His eyes narrowed and he took the glass back. “I hope you’re referring to your wardrobe.”
“You know I’m not.”
He shook his head sharply. “That’s a terrible idea, Lois. And that’s if everything goes like you want it to. Otherwise it could be a complete, total, utter, unmitigated disaster.”
“I’ve got to be able to take care of myself. I always have and I don’t want to give up that control.”
“But—”
“Shh.” She put her index finger on his lips. “I know how dangerous this is. I’m counting on you to keep me grounded, okay?”
“I won’t know when to step in and try to stop the transformation!”
She smiled softly. “Of course you’ll know. You always know. You’ve rescued me from dozens of imminent death situations since we met. You won’t let me down now.”
His heart shrank in on itself as if liquid nitrogen were being poured on it. “Lois, please don’t—”
Her hand fell away from his mouth to cover his heart. “I trust you with my life. I always have and I always will. I know that you’ll protect me.” She smiled up at him. “And I trust you to protect ‘us,’ the ‘us’ that we’ll always have.”
Of course, he thought, she’s going to do it. Even if I weren’t here, she’d still try.
Silently she guided him to the head of the bed and pushed him until he sat down. “I want you to stay there unless I call you. Okay?”
He held his breath for a long moment, then nodded without breaking eye contact with her. “I’ll stay until you call for me. Or until I think you’ve gone too far.”
She nodded. “Fair enough. Now, in order to do this, I’ll have to undress, so don’t get any amorous ideas right now.”
He made a show of sighing with disappointment. “If you really insist.”
She smiled and moved to the foot of the bed. “If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t try this.”
The thought that had he not been there, she would have already been forced to transform slapped him in the cerebral cortex. She was right again, he mused. She had to try this, no matter how dangerous it was.
Lois turned her back on him and stepped to the foot of the bed, then stopped and shed her clothing. As she walked closer to the door, her posture shifted until she stopped moving and leaned forward, her forearms seeming to lengthen as her knees turned around to face the wrong way and her thighs bent and formed an extra joint.
Clark nearly lost it at that point. Being told that a human could transform into a wolf was one thing – really believing it was something else entirely. And watching it happen to the woman he loved more than his own life almost pushed him into rushing toward her and enveloping her in his most protective embrace.
Somehow he held his ground and just watched.
Her hair flowed back along her skull and her ears crawled up the sides of her head, elongating into points as they went. Her waist seemed to move up her body as her legs shortened. Suddenly she dropped to all fours and groaned.
The groan turned into a growl and she filled her lungs with air.
Now!
Clark flung himself at the beast his wife had become and tackled her. She squirmed and snarled and fought back with preternatural strength. It was not unlike trying to wrestle a polar bear without bruising it.
Her struggles suddenly ceased as the almost-lupine shape in his arms stiffened and then began shaking. “It’s me, Lois!” he whispered in her ear. “It’s Clark. I’m here for you. I’ve got you and I’m not letting go!”
The almost-wolf creature he was holding abruptly went limp and began panting. As he watched, she transitioned from an almost-wolf back to being a human woman. The pattern of her panting changed from that of an exhausted dog to that of an exhausted woman. The fur beneath his hands faded like morning fog on Hob’s Bay. Her skin was suddenly damp, clammy human epidermis again. She moaned as if she’d just been dropped from a tall building and not been caught by her husband.
“Lois? Lois! Are you okay? What can I do? How can I help?”
She rolled her head so she could face him. Still breathing deeply, she managed to say, “That – really hurt. I mean – it really hurt. Like knives gouging – way down – deep inside my bones – and fire under my skin – kind of hurt.” She collapsed against his torso. “After that – I think – childbirth will be – be a breeze.”
He gently kissed her forehead. “I think that’s enough of that, don’t you?”
Her eyes opened. After a couple of tries, they focused on him. “Not yet. Need to – try again.”
“What? Again? But you just—”
She nodded and found his face with her eyes again, more quickly this time. “As bad as the pain was, Clark, I – I almost controlled it. I almost had it. I just – didn’t think it would hurt so much.” She leaned her head against his massive chest. “It surprised me, that’s all.”
He shook his head. “No. You can’t. I thought – I thought for a second that I – that I’d lost you.”
She smiled and touched his face. “I don’t think there’s any place I could go where you couldn’t find me.”
He choked back a sob and said, “As long as – as both of us are alive, that will be true.”
“I know. Now I need a favor from you.”
“Anything. Anything at all.”
“Just pick me up and put me on the bed. I’ll be more comfortable there than here on the floor.”
He exhaled deeply. “Done and done. And then you need some sleep.”
She nestled her head against his chest. “Just a couple of hours. Then I need to try it again.”
He lifted her and floated her to the bed. “No. It’s too much for you.”
“I have to, darling. I have to be able to control this change. It may be my only chance to stay alive.” She caught his hand as he pulled the sheet up to her chest. “Promise me that you’ll let me try again later.”
He was so mad at her for endangering herself that he wanted to punch her.
He was so proud of her for facing something this terrible head-on that he wanted to lead a parade for her.
He was so frightened that she’d be hurt that he seriously considered flying her straight to STAR labs and ordering Bernie Klein to diagnose this – this thing threatening her life and fix it immediately.
He loved her so much that he did exactly as she asked.
*****
She went through the change three more times, and each time even Clark could see that the process became less difficult for her. Not that it was easy – it just didn’t threaten to rip her psyche to shreds like the first time.
The second change took her to the point of becoming a wolf before she reached out to her husband to rescue her.
The third change dropped her to all fours before she whimpered like a kicked puppy and took a single step toward him.
The fourth time – the last time, Clark promised himself – Lois’ body was gone and a wolf stood in her place. The animal panted for a long moment, then shook itself and stood tall. But when it looked at him, there was real intelligence in its eyes.
“Lois?” he whispered. “Are you in there?”
The animal yipped once and nodded its head. Then it sat down on the carpet as if proud of what it had just accomplished.
No, thought Clark, that’s not an “it.” That’s my wife, the woman I love.
Then a horrible thought struck him. What if she couldn’t change back?
“Lois? Can you change back without – without me being there to help you?”
She tilted her head as if to say, Silly human, of course I can.
And she did.
Watching the transition from animal form to human was just as jarring as seeing it happen the other way round. Her fur faded back into her skin, her muzzle shrank to form a human nose and mouth, her ears flowed down the sides of her head to their original position, and her hind legs bent unnaturally until they were pink and smooth again. The most obvious evidence of her exertions was the sweat that dripped from her earlobes and chin.
She finally lifted her normal face to her husband and smiled wearily. “I did it,” she panted. “I really did it. And I can control it from now on.”
“You mean – you can become the wolf—”
“Any time I choose, yes. I told you I could control it.” She chuckled wearily. “Eat your heart out, Teen Wolf Michael J. Fox.”
His arms wrapped her up in his loving embrace and he wept silently for what she’d been forced to undergo. And he promised himself that he’d make sure this ordeal had not been in vain.
*****
Gawain looked both ways before crossing Hamilton just north of 5th street. The next block was Ocean Avenue, and he was sure he could find some trace of the Patriarch’s pack near the wooded area to his right. The news of the homeless massacre had already made its way to Arthur’s safe house, and in the babble of anger and disgust it created, he’d slipped away.
He was tired of being treated like a mascot. He hated Jane’s verbal pats on the head, Lancelot’s false smiles and demeaning remarks, and Guinevere’s patronizing dismissal of his abilities. He might be the newest member of the pack, having only been turned twenty months earlier, and he might be the smallest, but he was beginning to hold his own in the sparring sessions with Jane and Arthur. He was also the one most familiar with the Big Easy as she was today, not as she had been decades before.
And he wanted to be a hero. Maybe then Teresa – or even Jane – would smile at him with admiration instead of condescension.
A faint scent came to him, along with the sound of something moving in the wooded area. He stopped and crouched, then decided that what he heard was a small alligator looking for water. The scrape of scales over dirt and wood was unmistakable once you’d heard—
He felt himself falling and realized that he’d been hit in the back of the head. His cheek smashed into the ground and he heard himself grunt with pain and the force of the impact.
So much for being a hero.
Then the stars disappeared from the sky. He smelled something caustic and lost consciousness.
*****
“I say we hit them now while they are torpid from stuffing themselves!”
Arthur shook his head. “We are too few, Lancelot, and we do not know where they have hidden themselves. We stand a much better chance of being wiped out than we do of destroying them.”
“We cannot allow this atrocity to remain unpunished!”
Guinevere shook her head. “I feel as you do, Lancelot, but Arthur is correct. What you propose is understandable, but it is a suicide mission. If we had fifty more with us – or even thirty – I would support you, and I suspect Arthur would also. Bur our half-dozen against the Patriarch’s pack? None of us would survive the battle.”
If it were possible, Lancelot became even more frantic. “Then what? I ask you all, what do we do? How do we respond? We cannot sit here and do nothing! Our actions in denying them food and in killing a few have pushed them into this unspeakable crime! We are partly responsible for those deaths! Teresa, where are you going?”
“To relieve Gawain at the front door. I would rather watch for our enemies than hear you plan our extermination.”
“Do you care so little about the innocents who have died by their fangs?”
Teresa’s eyes narrowed and her fists clenched. She spun on her heel, then stalked toward Lancelot and stopped inches from his face. “I care,” she hissed. “I care more than you know. You care because your life is in more danger and you are closer to exposure and being hunted to your death by normal humans. I care about all the people who will never see their loved ones again, those who will not see tomorrow, who cannot even see tonight’s stars! So do not attempt to justify your please for self-preservation under the banner of righteous vengeance! Not to me!” She bared her teeth and snapped at him once. “With others you may risk such a course, but never test me thus again!”
Her nostrils flared and she rose on her toes as if ready to attack him, then spun on her heel again and stomped toward the front door. No one spoke for a long moment, then Jane sighed deeply.
“We’ll get them, Lance. We will take them down. We’ll have to do it slow and steady, but we’ll get them. We’ll put enough pressure on them that the Patriarch will get desperate enough to either leave town or come out in the open. If he leaves, it will cost him prestige and power. If he comes out, the humans will realize who he is and go after him. Either way, we’ll hurt him.”
She stepped to the middle of the group, her voice harder and firmer. “But we have to play the long game. We have to be the guerillas in this war. Every one of us wants to rip the Patriarch apart and spread his organs along the bank of a bayou. I know I do. But if we try it now, we’ll all die, and we probably won’t kill him.” Her body seemed to deflate. “That’s not a trade I’m willing to make right now.”
Lancelot muttered under his breath for a moment, then fixed Arthur with a piercing stare. “Fine. Assuming Alphonse agrees with everyone else, I’m willing—”
“Where’s Gawain!”
Teresa’s sudden appearance and shouted query startled everyone. Arthur frowned and replied, “He’s supposed to be on lookout duty.”
“He is not there and has not been for at least an hour!”
For a long moment, the only sound was Teresa’s anxious breathing, then Jane covered her face with her hands. “No, no, no!” she wailed. “That stupid, stupid, stupid kid!”
They all knew what he’d done. And why. And that there was no help for him.
If he survived, he’d return on his own. If not—
If not, his death would be yet another reason for them to destroy the Patriarch and his band.
*****
Slap.
Slap.
Double slap.
Gawain’s eyes cracked open.
He didn’t recognize either the man or the woman standing over him.
The man nodded. “Try the smelling salts.”
Isn’t that what they wave under a boxer’s nose when—
The acrid odor assaulted Gawain and jarred him into a less unconscious state.
“Aahh! Who’re you? Wha’m I here?”
The woman capped the vial and put it in her pocket. The man said, “I’m glad you’re back with us. My name is Roger, and this is Bernice. We need for you to answer some questions, then we’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
That sounded like a good deal. “Ya, sure.”
“Do you know someone named Arthur?”
“Arrer?” Something was wrong. They shouldn’t be asking about Arthur.
“Yes, Arthur. Is he your pack leader still?”
Gawain’s head cleared a bit more and he realized that this man – Roger, his name was Roger, need to remember that – knew he was a werewolf and that he was part of Arthur’s pack. But how could he know that unless—
Roger and Bernice were also werewolves. They were with the Patriarch.
They were Naturals. And he was their prisoner.
Dismay filled his heart. He’d found what he’d sought, but he knew he wouldn’t survive long enough to use the information or pass it on.
Bernice leaned closer. “He’s coming around, Roger. He knows who we are and that we know who he is. I think we can talk to him now.”
Gawain tried to shift his position on the floor but couldn’t. He suddenly realized that his hands were bound in front of him and there was a collar around his neck, and it was poking his skin with sharp points.
“You know what that is, don’t you, boy?” Roger taunted. “You change, you cut your own throat and drown in your own blood. You struggle, same thing happens.” The older werewolf smiled. “Now you will answer my questions, yes?”
It was the smile that tipped the scales, the same insulting, dismissive smile the rest of them had shown him when he told them that he wanted to take a more active role in the pack, the isn’t-he-cute-when-he-tries-to-be-adult and he’s-too-young-to-take-seriously smile.
He’d show them.
He’d show everyone.
Gawain slowly took a deep breath, then let it burst out in one last howl.
*****
Bernice lurched backward away from the blood pooling on the concrete around the young werewolf’s neck. Already his breathing had ceased and his blood had stopped spurting. Nor were his paws twitching. He was dead.
She panted as if her lungs might burst. “Did you – did you see that? He – he knew! He knew changing would kill him and he still did it!” She gagged for a moment, then controlled herself. “I’ve never seen anything like that before!”
“Nor I,” whispered Roger. “Nor I.”
“What – why did he do that? What made him do that?”
Roger shook his head as he removed the bloody contraption from the dead wolf, then dropped it to the ground beside the young man’s body. “We must inform the Patriarch immediately. If such a one as this youth would willing die for Arthur, it means their small pack is far more dangerous than we thought.”
“Yes. Yes! We must tell the Patriarch! He will know what to do! He will lead us to victory!”
Roger stood and put out his hand for Bernice. “Yes, of course he will. Our all-powerful, all-knowing Patriarch will surely have the solution for this conundrum, as he has for all our problems.”
Bernice took his hand and stood, then followed Roger into the night, too shaken to hear his sarcasm. Nor did she recognize it when she and Roger reported Gawain’s suicide to the Patriarch.
*****
Bernie Klein’s voice came through the phone as bone-dry and he didn’t sound amused in the slightest. “Werewolves.”
“That’s right. Werewolves.”
“Lois, you can’t be serious.”
Lois controlled her quick anger and sighed again, knowing that Bernie’s doubt wasn’t directed at her but at what she’d said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I still want you to analyze a blood sample.”
“For what, werewolf residue? Blood cells with little tiny hairs and teeth? Even if I wholeheartedly accepted what you’re telling me – which, of course, I don’t – there’s no scientific test I can run to check that!”
Count to ten, she told herself, then remember that you need him. “Bernie. Listen to me, please. We’re going to give you as much research as we can about the transformation process. Someone down here in New Orleans was working on identifying some kind of DNA change that turned regular people into werewolves. We need you to try to figure out whatever causes the change and see if you can come up with something to reverse it.”
The line was silent for a long moment, then Bernie said, “Are you finished now? Because I don’t have time for practical jokes this month. The weather is still nasty and we’ve been down at least twenty percent of our workforce every day. I have legitimate projects with hard completion dates backed up in the queue and I don’t have time to indulge in gags, pranks, or hijinks. Now unless you have something—”
“It’s my blood!”
“Wh-what?”
She hadn’t intended to tell him that. She and Clark had agreed not to tell Bernie Klein whose blood he’d be analyzing. They didn’t want to prejudice him in any way.
But the cat – or, in this case, the wolf – was out of the bag now. “It’s my blood, Bernie. I got scratched by a werewolf and I’ve already changed into my bow-wow form and turned human again twice. This is not a joke, a prank, or any kind of put-on, and don’t you dare ask me if it’s a shaggy dog story. It’s for real. Now can you do the analysis or not?”
The line was silent again, then Bernie said, “I’ll do it myself. I assume you’ll send Superman with the research and the sample?”
“As soon as we can.”
“Good. Please pack the blood sample in an insulated case. And if you could furnish me with both electronic and hard copy versions of the research you mentioned, that would help a lot. I’ll start as soon as he gets here.”
Some of the weight on her shoulders lifted and vanished. “Thanks, Bernie. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Let’s hope that’s true. Now hang up and get started on that printout. If the person you’re talking about spent any serious time analyzing the data, Superman will bring a goodly amount of paper with him. Oh, and make the blood sample the last thing you do. For this, the fresher it is the better it will be for testing and analysis.”
*****
Clark hadn’t wanted to leave, of course. Lois had had to promise to behave herself while he was gone and not change for any reason whatsoever. She loved him for his concern about her, but she’d been getting into and out of difficult situations for more years than she’d known him. Of course, none of those situations were quite as existence-threatening as this one. So she had every intention of doing exactly what she’d promised to do – stay in the hotel room and pretend to be invisible.
He’d made one quick trip to the New Orleans satellite STAR Labs location to pick up the insulated blood carrier Bernie had asked them to use, along with a small-bore needle and a six-pack of blood vials. The trip had taken less than ten minutes, including Bernie’s last-minute instructions on finding a good vein in Lois’ arm.
Ten more minutes to pack the printouts and draw the blood, something that was easier than either of them had expected, then he was gone again after all but demanding that Lois repeat her promise to him.
“I’ll have to stay for a while so Dr. Klein can verify the effect my aura has on the mutation process. But I’ll be back here as soon as I possibly can be.”
Lois grinned. “You do remember that I printed Evelyn Carstairs’ notes, don’t you? And that my father is a doctor who pushed me into pre-med until the middle of my sophomore year? I understand that stuff about as well as you do.”
He shook his head and tried to return her grin. “All right. I guess I’m just a bit nervous about all this.”
She lifted one eyebrow and tilted her head in an attempt to ease the tension in the room. “And I’m not?”
“No, Lois, you don’t – I’m sorry, I phrased that poorly. I’m – I’m afraid for you – for us. All I can think of right now is that – that wolf sitting by the hotel room door where you used to be.” He shuddered. “And I don’t think I could take it if – if Bernie can’t fix this.”
She put her hand on his forearm and leaned close. “Listen to me. We will overcome this obstacle. We’ve beaten everything else we’ve come up against in our lives, and as serious and dangerous as this is, we’re not letting a little thing like me being a werewolf come between us. Now scoot up to the roof and get going. The sooner you get there, the sooner I’ll be what passes for normal for me.”
He gave her a longing look. “I like it when you’re as normal as you can be.”
She grinned back and shoved him gently. “You and me both, flyboy. Now get going and don’t stop for any cats in trees.”
*****
Alphonse was getting tired. His wolf form would have been more energy-efficient, but a regular person walking his big dog, even without a leash, was far less alarming to any pedestrians in this part of town than two humans anxiously searching for something, especially this close to nightfall. Besides, Teresa was working harder than he was, casting desperately about for Gawain’s scent and whimpering when it threatened to fade out.
Then they turned the corner and found the dead wolf.
Teresa froze in place and gulped, then bounded to the body. She sniffed it anxiously and nudged it several times with her muzzle, then lay on her stomach and changed to her human form, naked and draped over the stiffening corpse.
Alphonse pulled her dress out of his shoulder bag and slipped it on her as best he could as she pulled Gawain’s bloody head into her lap. She stroked his head between his ears twice, then pulled him close and began wailing at the darkening sky.
A small woman rose from a pile of cardboard not fifteen feet from them and stared. Alphonse stood and took a step toward her. To his surprise, she didn’t turn to run, nor did she take her eyes off Teresa’s mourning.
He reached into his pocket to pull out some money to give to her, but she said, “I seen it. I seen it go down.”
Her accent was Cajun, so Alphonse left his hand in his pocket and spoke to her in that language. "Madame, are you well?"
"Yes. I’m fine."
"If I may ask, what do you mean? Did you see what happened to – to our beloved pet?"
Her eyes snapped to his and she continued in heavily accented English. “That ain’t no dog, mister. It be a dead Rougarou.”
He sighed, then responded in English. “For the sake of continuing our conversation, I will not contradict you. But please, did you see what happened?”
The woman looked at Teresa again, who was still weeping. “A man and a woman caught a young man and they strap him in that – that torture thing on the ground.” She pointed out the harness and sighed. “Then they wake him up and try to ask some questions and he – he change! He change just like that woman there, just backwards. He lay there and howl and turn into a wolf and that torture thing cut him and he bleed real bad and then he be dead.”
Alphonse risked another step closer. “Please do not be alarmed, Madame. We mean you no harm. But did you hear the man and woman speak their names?”
She nodded slowly. “Oui, I hear. The man, his name be Roger. The woman, she be called Bernice. They ask that young man about somebody name Arthur.”
Alphonse nodded back. It wasn’t unexpected that the Patriarch would know – or at least suspect – who was harassing his pack, but it wasn’t good news. It meant that they would need to be even more careful from now on, pick their battles and victims with even more caution.
They couldn’t afford to enter a war of attrition with the Naturals. They didn’t have anywhere near the resources to succeed in that kind of fight.
But now he had to get Teresa away from Gawain’s body, and her grief was far from spent. When it was, there was a good chance that she would be too full of rage to listen to reason. Perhaps Guinevere or Jane could perform that feat of near-magic.
First, though, he had to insure that this street dweller would tell no one else about what she’d seen.
“Madame,” he finally said, “I must ask a great favor of you. I must ask you to keep to yourself this – this thing that you have seen and not tell anyone. It would not be healthy for us if you did.”
She gave him a disgusted sneer. “You kill me too? I can’t stop you if you do.”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. I ask because we can deal with this tragedy more effectively if there is no one else around to interfere. May I count on your discretion?”
She snorted and put her hands on her hips. “Who I gonna tell? Who believe me if I do?”
He smiled thinly. “You have a point.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some folded cash. “May I thank you in a more practical manner?”
Her hands dropped and she stared at the money as if it were a snake. “You can’t buy me. Ain’t that much money in the city.”
“Please forgive me, Madame, I have expressed myself poorly. I do not wish to purchase your silence. I wish to thank you for telling me your story as you saw it. Your cooperation will help us find and punish those guilty of this crime.”
She stared at the money for a long moment, then finally nodded. “You put it like that, it be just fine. I take it and bid you welcome.”
He handed it over with a smile. “Thank you, Madame. I hope this will help you to eat well for a time.”
She gave him a partially toothless grin. “If not, I just burn it. Been chilly at night lately.”
He bowed. “Then I bid you adieu, Madame.”
What he’d just learned was more than worth the hundred or so dollars he’d given the old homeless woman.
Now they’d have to make a more overt move against the Patriarch. The choice to hide and wait had been taken from them.
Last edited by Terry Leatherwood; 11/28/19 10:00 AM. Reason: Correct Lois' transformation description
