Page 45 of Witchblood
“They will be in good hands. Both you and Jayson are here.”
“Felix is not well.”
“And if I have to put him down right now, I won’t be either. Find out what you can about the father. This isn’t just a random hiccup from an old bloodline.”
Oberon let out a long sigh. “As the Volkov wills.”
* * *
The dream did a weird shift and I was no longer in the room, but in a wide open field. I remember running with a wolf as a small child, but only in vague memories. This time I was the little fox. Gleefully jumping after the nearest beetle, or chasing a dragonfly. Happier years. Glimpses of catching rodents, fish or small birds for food. Memories of sleeping in a cave-like den. Days filled with carefree fun and joy. Until a stranger came to disturb all of it.
This day was a vague memory, so I knew it had been pulled out of my subconscious somewhere. Specific things like time and place had long since vanished into the depths of the abyss of my memory. But smells: the woods, pine and maple, grass, dirt and wildflowers; the warmth of the sun on my fur; the sound of a gurgling stream nearby; home to me. Familiar.
In memory the human was little more than a shape of a person. An outline of noise and separation of space. Only now, transposed over my young self, did I see him clearly. Felix.
Apaslid to a stop and growled, so I mimicked him, being the good little fox he’d trained me to be. Sometimes a big black wolf showed up to play, but mostly it was justApaand me.
“Oberon and Jayson have been spewing lies for years now. You’re visiting other packs. On a diplomatic mission across the ocean. Only I find you here, playing games with a fox. I’m sure your wife will love to learn she’s been abandoned over this,” he flung his hand in my direction.
I snarled and bared my teeth at him.
Felix bared his human teeth and snarled back at me. I felt a wave of some supernatural energy sling off him, smacking me hard enough to throw me and roll me several feet. My yelp disappeared in the grumbling rage ofApaattacking Felix. One moment it was wolf on man, then next it was two wolves, larger than most ponies, battling with claws and fangs.
I darted back, rememberingApatelling me to make myself small and invisible. Sneak away from an attack if I could. My fangs and claws couldn’t tear a man in two. Not likeApaand this other wolf.
How real it felt to be nestled in the cradle of a bush, watching, terrified, yet fascinated, as I’d never seen anyone fightApabefore. The other wolf dwarfed him, looking almost awkwardly large. The dark gray in contrast toApa’swhite-spattered gray helped me track the fight. The new wolf wasn’t winning despite his size, but he also wasn’t giving up.
Apaleapt at his throat, catching him hard and shaking him. The other wolf made a strangled sound. The movement slowed.Apatore at the other wolf, shaking it, trying to break its neck. I could feel the rage pouring out of him, growing like some sort of monster. I tried to soothe it with natural instincts, sending waves of it outward. For a minute everything froze. The wolves, the sounds of the stream far off, and even the air seemed to stop.
Then both wolves dropped to the ground.Apabreathing hard, the other wolf shaking and foaming at the mouth.Apawhined. The other wolf staggered to its feet, swaying, almost drunk. It peered into the brush where I hid, eyes finding me without trouble. There was nothing calm or safe in those eyes. He took an unsteady step in my direction. In that blood-spattered face I saw madness, rage, and my death. Whatever had been human in him was gone, leaving just the blood-crazed wolf.
Apagrowled again.
Another step.
Blackness began to ooze fromApa,pooling into another shape in between the wolf and me. It grew and grew, mass upon mass of liquid darkness built until it was something I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Not then with my little baby fox brain, and even not now, seeing it again. It was some sort of dragon, perhaps. Monster,my brain affirmed, having nothing else to compare it to.
In this memory, I was nothing more than Sebastian the baby fox. Tiny and helpless with baby teeth, and baby claws. I must have made a sound because it turned my way, and suddenly my world was terror. Any other thought was swallowed into the darkness of absolute fear. My heart raced in my chest until I couldn’t breathe from the speed, my body refused to react to my brain screaming “Run!”
All that remained was darkness, pain, terror, and oncoming death. I dropped to my belly, too terrified to do more than submit to my extinction. The high pitched whimpering sound dripping from my throat sounded foreign even to me. If I could have dropped dead of fear alone right there, I would have.
A bright light surrounded us and the calm dripped over everything like a blanket of snow. Only the terror remained and I could feel energy coursing through me, demanding release. I responded with an explosion of something within me. A searing heat poured over me, making my fur light on fire. I screamed, a keening wail. Terror all around. Burning up from within.
A dark form leapt over me, shoved me away hard enough to send me rolling down the hillside and into the creek. The cold bite of water doused the fire and snapped me free of the terror that had kept me immobile and my body finally reacted, running as I’d never run before. With no thought to direction, other thanaway, I ran until there wasn’t an ounce of strength left in my body.
That memory was vivid. The exhaustion. The hopelessness. The loneliness. The release as I let my fox take over when my human brain succumbed to the absolute emotional exhaustion.
I crawled into the rotted innards of a fallen tree and was asleep before I even had a thought to where I might be. Both in that time and in whatever dream world I’d been dragged into.
Chapter 21
Werewolves lost most of their humanity in their animal form. It was what made them so deadly. Instincts of a wolf, and the niggling sensation of being human. It was enough to drive a lot of wolves mad after their first change.
As a fox I was always me. I could let the fox to the front when we hunted or had to den outside, but the human mind was always present, functioning and planning. It made me slow to react to most other animal threats, but more cunning overall.
Like waking from a dream I found myself lost in confusion, trying to separate reality from distorted memory. For a minute it was like my human brain struggled to catch up with the fox. Which was why I stumbled groggily to a stop, chasing a squirrel of some kind, even though I subconsciously knew my belly was full.
Never before had I felt such a strong sense of a separate being bound together with me. The familiarity of it let me know this was the fox part of mywitchblood, but I’d never experienced it as a full awareness before. It thought of food and den, while I was confused as to why I was a fox at all.