As Sharp As Fangs Or Knives

CHAPTER TWO
Invasion


“Oh my god oh my god oh my god!”

It was something like ten minutes later, and Dusa felt that the entire situation she found herself in could never be properly expressed. All she could do, currently, was pace along the warm wood of her living room floor, seven paces left, three paces right, around the recliner four paces, seven paces left again, and then again, and again. Walking awkward angles around her old rug.

“Dusa,” Robert attempted to say calmly. Unfortunately, it was rather ruined by the fact that his voice was still high and thin with shared terror. “Dusa! Calm! Down!”

Dusa stared at him; she could tell her eyes were wide. She could feel how pale her face was. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking. She said, “There are wolves living on top of me.”

Robert sucked his lips into a straight pale line on his pale sharp face and thought about that for a moment.

Dusa said, “I think I deserve a freak out,” and resumed her frantic pacing.

“Right,” Robert muttered, sounding to Dusa like a man in a dream. “This calls for liquor. A lot of liquor. Yes. Yes of course. It’s always the plan for when grandmother comes home for the holidays, after all, and if it can pull us through her, well, what’s a couple frothing, mangy-haired-“

“I wonder,” Dusa said faintly, “if their hearing is keen enough to listen through walls.”

They both looked up at the ceiling.

Then Dusa said, “I’m never masturbating again.”

“You can use my place, if you want,” Robert said, quite nobly.

To which Dusa blinked her eyes rapidly, looked around her small living room frantically, and finally ran over to her couch, still as light as air despite the heavy weight of terror, landed nimbly on the back of the fluffy monstrosity, and pulled a decorative katana from the wall. Which she then slid out of its scabbard and showed that it wasn’t quite so decorative as that.

“Excuse me, Robert,” she said quite clearly, if quietly. “I think I’m going to curl up with this nice shiny and sharp object, and cry a little. Okay?”

Robert eyed the smooth light twisting over the folded metal of her sword, and said, with the absolute steadfast and understanding of a best friend: “I’ll be sure to bring you Captain Morgan’s.”

“Let me borrow your pirate hat while you’re at it!” she called a little shrilly as he turned, and flitted quickly out the door.

Then she was alone, and along entered silence to court her fears.

It flowed through the house, around the corners, smoothing over shadows and curling up in the lampshades. It twined around her feet like a purring cat, except more stealthily, eerie, and Dusa felt a chill creep slowly up her spine. She held the sword’s hilt in her hand too tightly. She thought: I could never do any good like this.

She tried to think. It was hard, her animal instinct was never so obvious inside of her – or any shifter, she’d learned – as when she was scared. Backed into a corner, like she figuratively was now, living with wolves treaded over her head. But she tried, because she’d spent the last ten years learning how to master the deer instinct of prey. Animals weren’t contradicting, but humans were. She fought for sanity.

What was it her father had always said? His voice came in low and soothing through her memories, gentle and resolute, saying: You lose the fight when you lose your head. It doesn’t matter whether you want to win or not; it only matters that you cannot lose. So keep your head, and remember that you can fight. You have other options than running scared. And you can win, if you just keep your head.

“Well, daddy,” she said through lips she couldn’t feel through her still reeling shock, “You always said I wouldn’t be defenseless again. But I don’t think either of us could have expected this.”

She breathed, easy, relaxed breathes; at least, she thought they were. They were probably sharp and whistling through clenched teeth, first, but slowly, slowly, her fingers loosened, her hands turned soft against the hilt, but stern. She uncurled her body from its tight withdrawal. Slid her feet lightly and moved the blade before her in controlled movements until she forgot the world around her in existed in the blade as an extension of her arm and breathing just right so that the force was just on the curling edge of explosive and made the air scream against its razor edge.

The fear was still there, courting the edges of her solitude. She knew she’d be back to panicking soon. She wasn’t level and fierce like her father, but she refused to fall apart in a nervous breakdown like her mother was prone to. The least she could do was make her fear sharp edged and defensive.

For a few brief, shining moments lost in the whirlwind of emotional insanity, Dusa wasn’t brave, and she wasn’t scared. She just breathed along the killing sway of her katana, and was still.

*

Upstairs, above where Dusa danced with sword, the werewolves were making themselves comfortably domestic. The werewolf woman that Dusa and Robert had met, Clarissa Lills, finally came back inside, after giving up on parsing at least half the smells of her new home into understanding. They were in Brooklyn, which wasn’t, at least, New York City, but it was still full of people, and animals, and cars, and food, and so much garbage. How on earth could such a small area produce that much waste? She wondered with distaste. It almost hurt to breathe.

But her pack seemed happy enough; it had been a good decision she made, she decided, in coming here. It would be good for the younger members, to get lost in a crowd and not be stared at for being strange, or ostracized because everyone in a small town knew everyone else, and they talked about little things, and tried to put pieces together, and labeled you as “other” so that you had not a moment’s rest.

Across the room was Bill, in one of the soft flannel shirts he refused to give up despite how many times the pups complained at his apparent lack of fashion sense. He asked, “And what are you looking insufferably smug about, Clarissa Lills?”

“Oh,” the auburn haired woman said, with laughter locked in loose fits within her slowly drawling voice, “just meeting the neighbors.”

It made Bill raise his bushy eyebrows over his pale green eyes inquiringly, his arms full of china plates. They still weren’t quite unpacked, after a week of having been moved in; especially since they kept escaping outside, too excited about a new place, and too energized by the coming full moon to keep inside for long.

“They’re back? College kid below us, right?”

“Mmhmm,” Clarissa said, prowling over and helping Bill in putting away their finer dishes into an old, oak and glass display case set back at the bottom of their moderate sized dining room. “Classes start in a few days. My guess would be that she was home with her family. Looks like we have a smoker on the perimeter, so watch out for Lucky.”

Bill groaned. “He’s done for.”

Clarissa chuckled. They put the china away in companionable silence for a little longer. Most of the inhabitants of their house were out exploring the new territory, though Clarissa was pretty sure that Peter and Rebecca were concocting some diabolical crime against fashion in Rebecca and Melantha’s room. Then she added, almost casually if it wasn’t for the fact that it was too casual, and expectant. She said, “They’re shapeshifters, by the way.”

Bill dropped the plate he was holding, one that’d been in their pack for generations, painted in exquisite detail of blue wolves dancing around a red moon. He caught it about three inches from the floor, his face blown wide open with shock. Clarissa smiled at him, and took the plate, balancing on tip toe to place it on its display rack.

Finally, Bill recovered enough to ask in his rough gravel voice, “What species?”

“Deer,” Clarissa answered, “and bird.”

It made Bill choke on strangled laughter. “Oh, oh, I’m sure they were just thrilled to meet you.”

Clarissa laughed with mouth open and teeth gleaming, full mirth. It had been a little strange, actually, meeting a shifter who didn’t change into a predator animal. It’d been a while since she had to deal with the deep set bigotry involved with it.

At least, she didn’t think that the boy’s second form was something like a hawk. Clarissa thought that unlikely, when coupled with the fact that the deer girl, who could be nothing but prey, had been fiercer about being threatened than the bird.

Clarissa was used to people being unsure how to react around her; she was a smooth, charming, beautiful woman, if she did say so herself, and very strong willed. She’d been told before that it could be intimidating to approach her. But she didn’t like been greeted with outright fear like that. It created an awkward combination in her, between her wolf and human sides: a little exhilarating, and a little sickening.

She hoped the children wouldn’t be offended by it.

“You didn’t bite one of them, did you?” Bill asked, amused in turn, and teasingly drawing her out of her more somber reminiscing, and shifting her back to the humorous side of it, again.

Clarissa sniffed, and buffed a crystal glass with a great, showy air. Primly, she said, “A lady doesn’t bite and tell, now.”

They lasted about two seconds before they both fell into howls of laughter.

*

Rebecca said, “I am not wearing pink.”

“Good,” Simon returned snippily from ransacking her closet, “it’s an awful shade on you.”

Rebecca, lounging on her bed in the new room she shared with her pack sister, watched him eye the pink shirt in narrow eyed speculation. Then he threw it back onto the pile of “no”s taking up the middle of her floor. “Why did you buy that thing anyway?”

“It was during that silly prissy stage I had, remember?”

“No,” Simon said distractedly, finally pulling one out one of Rebecca’s fitted black tank tops and her worn leather jacket. “That was before I paid attention to girls. Here, just wear this. It’s not like it’ll last for long, you skank.”

Rebecca snorted, sliding off her bed, and changing into the clothing flung at her. She said, “You’ve never paid attention to girls in your life, you poof.”

“Now, now, no need to get so feisty just because you can’t even dress yourself. Of course I pay attention to girls. And then I tell them that their shoes clash with their make-up and that they should really try looking in a mirror when they do their hair.”

“Bitch,” Rebecca laughed, situating her jacket around her. She breathed in, loving the scent of leather. “Where are we running tonight?”

Simon didn’t answer, and Rebecca stared at his back, her brows lowering as she caught a sense of-- something. Something awkward and sharp edged, in the air. Lowly, she asked, “What is it?”

Despite being three years Simon’s senior, Rebecca knew that he outranked her in the pack. He was more serious, despite his at times flippant, sarcastic attitude. He was smarter, and while they were equal in strength, smarts was what won a fight half the time. Rebecca knew Clarissa and the other pack elders spoke to him more than they did to Rebecca. It didn’t bother her, usually, but now Rebecca was feeling like maybe this was something she should have been paying better attention to.

Simon, his strong face tight and worried beneath his floppy blonde hair, finally said, “I don’t think we’ll be running anywhere in a while.” Then he said, “You absolutely cannot tell Melantha,” and Rebecca knew it was serious.

*

The phone ringing shattered all her careful concentration. The sword banked to the left on an awkward jerk of her hand, her arm stinging from the abuse of a miscalculated swing. Dusa cursed, and kept the naked blade in hand, while she rummaged in the pockets of the coat she’d flung heedlessly upon her small kitchen floor earlier.

“Hello?” she snapped after flipping it aggressively open. With the break of her peace she was feeling tiny pinpricks of fear that hadn’t been worked out resurfacing again, and it was making her angry. She hated being afraid.

“You could be a sex operator with that kind of welcome. But, here, okay, here’s the thing Deuce: What part of running to the safety of what amounts to the wolf’s den was smart? I mean, not that I’m blaming you. Though maybe I am. But still. Get out of your house.”

That, okay. Yes, she thought, that makes sense. That does make sense. Because, wow, yeah, there is a pack of wolves prowling above my head. I have a pointy thing in my hand. I am one person with one pointy thing in my hand. They have mouths of teeth. Rows of them.

“So I’ll be staying the night at your house Robert, possibly the week, you’ve always wanted a roommate, right?”

“We can work out who gets the side with the window when we figure out how to move your things without them tracking your scent. Now get your frolicking deer ass over here.”

He hung up, and Dusa snapped the phone shut on her thigh. Eyed the sword in her hand and decided that it would be a little obvious if she walked across the street with it. If it was a lightsaber, maybe that would have gone over okay. But this? Yeah, not so much.

She sheathed the katana, hung it back up on her wall. Grabbed the knives she kept in her bedside table because her daddy was paranoid and taught her his traits, and slid them under her soft fuzzy wool dress and strapped them in thigh holsters over her leggings. Shoved her feet into her only pair of boots and slid another knife down the left one, too.

All that she could think now was that she was armed, not particularly dangerous, and that she wanted to be out from the pressure of this fear. She didn’t have to run, she thought, guilty at the thought of her stern and loving father, but-

She glanced at the shattered glass of her parents’ picture frame, and heard the heavy thump of something moving above her. She shuddered, didn’t want to know what that possibly could have been. Maybe she didn’t have to run, but no one said she had to stay and fight. Nothing to win or lose if she could just escape from the possibility all together.

So she grabbed her coat and left her scarf; swung the door open and was moving in one fluid graceful start from still to action, and-

Immediate ran into something.

The something she went into didn’t stagger back as hard as Dusa did from the impact, but Dusa had on boots better for dealing with the slightly icy ground, and this something apparently didn’t. “Ah!” said a voice and Dusa automatically reached out to try and save the boy from falling. Because the something, Dusa saw in a flash of momentum and flailing limbs, was blonde and handsome and a touch too rugged and broad to be anything but male. He caught Dusa’s arm automatically, and they both went down in a heap.

“Aw, fuck my life,” Dusa muttered. She could already feel the aches and bruises sprouting, and it would be annoyingly uncomfortable minutes, possibly hours, before they faded. Then Dusa’s skin prickled and she realized that she was in the gaze of predators.

“Here, let me.”

Hands gripped Dusa around her waist, pulled her up in a fluid roll that made Dusa feel like she didn’t have a spine, and pulled her tight against firm breasts and an excess of body heat from someone only wearing a thin long sleeved shirt.

“Another one?” Dusa asked weakly.

The girl she was pressed against laughed, and the throaty laughter wasn’t as rich as the auburn haired woman from before, but it pressed hot points of liquid reaction to Dusa, the laughter vibrating against her back, through her skin. Dusa shivered, and wanted to spin wildly out of the embrace, to escape, but there was a werewolf still lying in a crooked disgruntled mess before her and eyeing them with a fair amount of grumpiness in his amber-brown eyes.

“How many of you are there?” Dusa asked helplessly.

“Why put a limit on greatness?” the girl holding her asked impishly, and slid her hands slowly up from where they’d been contentedly tucked around Dusa’s waist before, following the curve of her ribcage, and then skirting- skirting-

“HEY,” Dusa said fiercely, “THAT IS A STRICTLY NO WEREWOLF TOUCH ZONE!”

The boy finally getting his body back under him – a body that rippled even beneath his loose clothing – said with great disdain, “Let her go, ‘Becca. Stop being a slut. Don’t you know it’s considered a bad first impression?”

“Spoil sport,” the girl – ‘Becca – breathed against Dusa’s ear, sending her shivering and even more stiff and furious. She jerked out of the werewolf girl’s hands now that she knew she wasn’t going to be tripping all over the werewolf boy again and spun around to glare ferociously at the werewolf. It was one thing to threaten to eat her. It was another thing to fondle the goods while they were still alive and breathing as if deciding which the choicest bits were.

“Oh,” ‘Becca said, a growl in her voice, her tongue touching against her full bottom lip tauntingly. Her eyes were brilliant green, and her hair a deep brown that she had cut in sharp angles around her face to a flattering degree. “I do like it when my girls’ have a bit of color to them.” She reached up, and tapped on fingertip to the high color in Dusa’s cheeks, and Dusa flinched back, as if it had been taloned. Then ‘Becca said, “And a healthy amount of meat on them,” and Dusa remembered just where she was.

Between a werewolf and a werewolf. Her home had been invaded.

She looked around her wildly and said, “I am stringy with muscle and sinew and it would be so gross I would taste awful even in a stew,” and then slammed her mouth shut and stared at the werewolf, ‘Becca, with wide eyes.

She hadn’t drawn her knives yet. She had never used them outside practice with her dad, or practicing at home, incorporating them into her dance moves, unable to not be drawn by the lethal grace of it all. She knew how to use them, she just hadn’t before, had no experience. Was not hardened enough to take a knife to a throat just because an offhand comment may have been made about the fact that she might be perfect for dinner.

Dusa realized that she was crazy, and this was the perfect time to draw her knife.

But before she could the werewolf boy behind her huffed a put upon sigh and said, “Rebecca,” sternly. And ‘Becca threw her head back gracefully and was full of life and joy in her face and said, “Oh, very well Simon. We don’t want to be late, right?”

“Oh, no,” Simon said tetchily behind her, and Dusa stepped carefully sideways between them so the two strange werewolves who acted like her classmates may have when with their very best friend couldn’t be at her back. They didn’t even twitch like they’d like to stop her.

Rebecca did, however, give her a once over. Which Dusa found uncomfortable at first, and then found immensely uncomfortable once she realized that the heated gaze and the slow, sensual smirk didn’t look like she was thinking “mm, deer jerky time,” and lingered rather like a hot touch over the curves of her body, her breasts and neck and thighs where the flow of her soft skirt rustled gently against them.

“Erm,” she said with great articulation.

“I see you finally get my meaning,” Rebecca said with a light, teasing grin, and even went so far as to pat her on her shoulder as she walked out onto the sidewalk with Simon, the two of them moving with a predator grace that even human skin couldn’t hide. Dusa felt a little like she had just escaped certain doom. She didn’t know how to feel about this. She wasn’t even quite sure what there was to feel about, in the first place.

Nothing had happened.

Wind blew and the trees shivered over head as it always did, and Dusa pulled her coat on slowly, and buttoned it with slowly numbing fingers, the world gray and cheerful and entirely blind to what was occurring in this tiny lot on this homey street. And then she remembers as if waking from dreaming that she was just accosted by two werewolves on her front porch and that others were still upstairs, and she bolted over her stone railing effortlessly, and was a graceful, long legged shadow moving quickly down the street through the crowds to Robert’s, where she could be hysterically confused and offended and scared and have nothing to which she might think about drawing a knife on.


*


AN: lol, Dusa is very confused deer jerky, isn't she? :D