As Sharp As Fangs Or Knives

CHAPTER THREE
Arm Yourself


Robert opened his door at the first knock, and Dusa nearly fell into his apartment, a small little nest on the seventh floor that was done in creams and, of all things, teal, with honey gold wood. It was pretty, with little stained glass ornaments his grandmother gave him hanging from the windows. Dusa kicked off her shoes and threw herself into one of the overly stuffed recliners they’d both dragged up the stairs one crazy Saturday afternoon months ago.

The first thing she said to Robert was, “I almost got eaten!”

“Oh my god,” Robert said dutifully, clasping her hands in his passionately. “Did they attack you with their teeth? Did they try to kill you in the face? You can cry on my shoulder if you need to.”

“Er,” Dusa said, “It was…terrible. Yes, it was very terrible.”

Robert, settling across from her into the other recliner, nodded sagely, and told her, “Tell me all about it.”

With great articulation, Dusa repeated: “Er.”

Dusa shifted, fidgeted, eyed Robert who was leaning forward eagerly to hear how she’d been brutally attacked and chased across the street and narrowly escaped being kibble for a pack of homicidal wolves. The thing, though, was that Dusa didn’t, exactly, have a story to tell.

“Okay,” she said finally. “So the thing is, that, maybe. Uhm.”

“Yesss?” Robert encouraged.

“Maybe the technical term wouldn’t exactly be getting eaten, per se, and more uhm, along the lines of?” Dusa paused, and searched her memory for an appropriate choice of words. “Getting eye-raped?”

Robert cocked his head, his fluffy hair shadowing his furrowed brow and his eyes bright with suspicion and what was quite probably disbelief. Very slowly, he asked, “Eye-rape?”

Dusa blushed, agitated. “Well, yes,” she snapped, “I do believe that’s what you call it when you’re devoured by someone’s eyes and they look at you like they’re wondering what you’d look like strapped down to their bed naked, thank you very much.”

And then she stopped, and realized that she was eye-raped.

“Oh my god,” she said faintly, “I wasn’t almost eaten. I was eaten! I was devoured by her eyes. Wolf shifters have evolved to the point that they don’t even have to eat you to EAT you.” She stared in horror at Robert. “We’re done for.”

“…Okay now you’re just being ridiculous.”

Dusa deflated against the couch, limbs splayed like broken doll joints, feeling exhausted with high emotion and confusion. She said, “I am, aren’t I?”

“So what did happen?” Robert asked.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Dusa said with a faint grimace. “And I ran straight into one. A boy this time, named Simon. He fell, and I almost fell, but, uh, the other wolf shifter, Rebecca, she caught me.” Dusa sat there with her lips pursed for a long moment, and then said, “She didn’t let me go. Until Simon made her. She kept making comments. And giving me leers. She’s a pervert. Ugh, god!”

And Robert, the traitor, snickered.

“Oh, shut up,” Dusa said, “I don’t understand any of this. This is. This is like out of the fucking twilight zone! I would almost be more okay if they were trying to eat me!”

“Well,” Robert consoled dryly, “you never know. They still could.”

“Thanks,” was Dusa’s dry response. “Thanks ever so kindly for that little thought. It’ll keep me warm at night, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense!” Robert grinned consolingly. “You don’t need that to keep you warm tonight. That’s why we have Captain Morgan!”

This cheered Dusa up quite a great deal. She said, “Can I wear your pirate hat and can we watch all the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and will you not freak out this time if I start waving a knife around?”

“Look, last time was entirely justified! You almost took off my cat’s tail-!”

“I still can’t believe you have a cat,” Dusa muttered, “the irony alone.”

“I am locking her in the bathroom this time,” Robert said. “And then, yes, fine, sounds like a plan. We will order pizza and eat popcorn and lock ourselves in this room and not start drinking until the second movie because it’s the only way I can stand it.”

“I like the second movie!”

“I know you do, you heathen, but I don’t, so I will be opening the alcohol then, which will probably wind up being around seven tonight, which is not as bad as four right now, and then we will drink and drink the full moon away safe up high away from the wolves and not be eaten, or- or-“

“Eye-raped,” Dusa put in helpfully.

“Yes, or eye-raped, and we will pass out and sleep so blissfully that even if the wolves did come over and eat us we would be too fucked up to notice, and then wake up with beautiful hangovers in the morning! Sound good?”

Dusa sighed. “It sounds like heaven.”

“All right then,” Robert said with a bright, flitting grin. “Let’s get the party started, then.”

*

There was something her mother wasn’t telling her. Melantha cocked her head from where she sat in her favorite recliner, with her little sister curled up in her lap. She was only partly changed, still retaining human shape, but with claws and fur in certain places. She threaded her sharp nails carefully through her little sister’s ruff, the girl almost too big to be able to sit on Melantha’s lap comfortably.

Charlotte yipped a little, and her tail wagged intermittently, but overall the little girl was far too quiet. She had to be, though, because they were all in their new home. As humans, the fit was tight, with ten people living there, practically on top of one another. But that was fine, wolf shifters tended to like the company; their preference was for cramped and tripping over each other, than solitary.

But as wolves, this was ridiculous. There was no room to spread out, to run, to dance beneath the moon and throw their voices up to the heavens in song. Melantha’s mother, pack leader, had decreed it though. They had to stay home.

“There’s no where we can go,” Clarissa had said earlier, “I haven’t found a place that’s safe enough yet. Sorry everyone, just hang in there. We should be fine come next moon.”

That was a lie, though. Her mother was prowling through the living room and kitchen, half transformed like Melantha was. She’d checked the locks and blinds three times already, and now she couldn’t keep still. Power hummed around her, a blistering, carnal intensity. The strength that made her alpha.

It was a strength that Melantha shared, but not readily. Melantha grinned ruefully, thinking about the absurdity of leading a pack, of following in her mother’s – or even her father’s – footsteps. She huffed a laugh, gentle, and knew it would never happen. She didn’t want it to. She didn’t have the temperament to lead; she didn’t want to use that power. She was content, just being with the people she loved.

Beside her, her brother came up. George was half transformed as well, and his words came out rough and distorted through his fanged mouth. “Lucky needs to be put in his place.”

Melantha looked over at Lucky, who was maybe six years their senior. Not quite an adult in the pack yet, but almost. Melantha’s tongue rolled lazily through her grin, and she said, “Have fun with that.”

George made a sound that was more growl than anything, but which Melantha knew was meant to be a dry snort. “You think I’m taking that on? Nu uh, not me. C’mere, Charlotte.” Before Melantha could open her mouth to protest, George had taken Charlotte and disappeared upstairs. The moon would be out soon, and Lucky wasn’t strong, but he wanted to be, and it was wolf instinct to throw your weight around and have clear pecking order. He followed George and Charlotte, and Simon followed them up, already in full wolf form, and Melantha sulked for one brief moment, because Lucky was going to follow them and cause a fight.

Lucky had a temper, and he hated small spaces. He was generally a cool person, and Melantha liked to play video games with him, but in this small space, on the full moon, it was asking for trouble. And that was how Melantha knew her mother wasn’t telling her something. There was no way her mother wouldn’t have worked out a location for them to go. It would have been decided even before they moved here. No, there was something her mother wasn’t telling her; some other reason it was unsafe to leave their new territory and run together.

Lucky growled low and started to follow them; Rebecca stood in the stairwell, big and beautiful and all wolf. She could probably take Lucky, but it’d be a hard fight, and would be loud and dangerous, and probably break a lot of their things. Melantha glanced over to her mother, who was fully wolf now, beautiful and auburn with her eyes like big blue stars. She was busy keeping tabs on the adult wolves. Lily wouldn’t be much of a problem, but Jason might. Jason wanted to be with Clarissa very badly, and would try and prove his strength, even if tonight wasn’t the night. Melantha could see Clarissa watching him with vicious amusement, waiting for him to step out of line, so she could put him back in place. He was bigger by a hand span, but that wouldn’t stop Clarissa.

Melantha sighed, and grinned full of teeth and lolling tongue and hot wolf eyes. “Guess it’s just you and me, Lucky. And you are in so much trouble, let me tell you.”

Melantha stood up, and shifted all the way. There was a brief moment of heat and light and her bones crunching, muscles straining, physique and senses new, everything duller and sharper at the same instant. Melantha sucked in a breath through her nose, and landed stiff legged and ready on their carpet.

Transformed, Melantha was as big as a small pony; her fur was arctic white, like her fathers, and the temporary dye she put into her hair daily was gone. She shook out her winter coat, and lifted her head, to find Lucky staring at her, head low, fur rucked up in challenge, teeth bared. Melantha laughed, a low growling, nearly subterranean noise.

No need to be rude, she thought, annoyed instinctively at the way he glared into her eyes, when by all rights he should have dropped to the ground beneath her power. She shifted, ready to spring. Lucky lunged in the next moment, and Melantha was on him, easy as breathing. No hard feelings, just natural instinct. She was stronger than he was, and as a wolf, Melantha would fight. Instinct, hierarchy, and the need to protect.

It was a bitter taste in the back of her mouth, like laughter echoing in her ears, because it was what she didn’t want, what she’d hated, at least a little, since she was six. Since her father died defending his pack.

*

Dusa was dreaming. Black forests and wet ground that sucked at her thin legs and squished between her human toes and ripped at her deer flank. Sometimes she was in her animal form, sometimes her human, but always, always she was running, from things she couldn’t see, but heard. Her heart pounded, hard and fast, like so long ago, like when she’d been a little girl, getting hunted down.

She was lost and she heard howls, and they sent fear up her spine in long shivering lances, and her breath was in high whistling gasps and the moon spread out in a sudden clearing and Dusa was spotlit in silver light and-

Her cell rang.

Her nightmare fractured apart in shadow images, menace dissolving on wolf sounds and the eerie silence of a forest that was meant to be her grave.

The dream broke on her ringtone, and she fumbled the phone open and grunted into it.

It was her mother, and her tone was a tight line of panic on the phone. She said, "You should come home."

"Mrwaaah?" was about all Dusa could manage, throat tight and brain not properly channeling sounds to words. The sun wasn’t even up yet, which was pretty awful, seeing as she needed to sleep until at least noon to be safe from the possibility of vomiting. But it saved her from her nightmare. She was glad for that, even as her thoughts whirled black on the edges and she was weak with bitter memories and angry-scared emotion.

"Dusa," her mother said, with words too careful and precise and clear on the phone for the night sky still dampened with star dust; too loud for the agony that was infusing her head into a stuffy fog with the world twisting wickedly around her. Dusa grimaced, and tried to hear what her mother was saying.

“Dusa you’re living downstairs from a pack of predators! Dusa, Dusa you need to come home now! This is not good!”

It took a minute; Dusa was tired and still half-dreaming in her thoughts. She thought of fur and whistling breathes and sharp teeth white in the moonlight, and the smell of grass and the thunder of her heart in the chase. Her breath whistled in through her teeth, and she blinked hard to dispel the images, the flee instinct too keenly felt.

"Are you- What?"

"Dusa," her mother said, scared and fierce because of it. "I want you to come home."

"I..." Dusa pressed her palm against her forehead, gazed blearily across Robert’s living room at the clock. It said 4:13 in bright red numbers, and Dusa thought: It would be so much easier if I was home, with mom and dad. And then she thought: Dad wouldn’t care if I came back. But he’d be proud of me if I stayed. Which almost made her angrier than the fear that still had her heart pounding.

For a brief moment, she hated her father, hated him fiercely and viciously, for making her a contradiction in herself; for creating in a prey animal the human pride of not wanting run away. He’d found stubbornness and pride in her, and though maybe she’d always had it, he taught her to listen to it.

But she said, "Mom," and didn't let her voice tremble. "It's fine. There are tons of people in this city, let alone on campus. The odds of a wolf scenting me on the streets and deciding to track me- it's ridiculous. I'll be fine."

"Dusa-"

"I am not leaving," Dusa murmured, tired and sick but determined in the quiet of the night and the weird shine of how she was half drunk still, half hung over, though she had the feeling the nightmare may have shocked her more sober than she liked dealing with. "I have classes, and I have a life here, and I'm not giving it up. I love you mom, I'll be fine. Go back to bed. They. They seem nice. No one’s tried to eat me yet."

Her mom said nothing. It probably wasn’t the best thing to say, but Dusa was not at her best, either.

Dusa repeated, "I love you."

"I love you, too," her mother said, clear and clipped like she was holding something in. The phone went dead, and Dusa sat there, hearing the dead line in her ear and she groaned. None of this was supposed to have happened, and god, but it wasn’t fair. Half the reason she chose this school - and not the one she'd been dreaming about since she knew what the SATs were for - was because of the lack of predators. They didn’t like big cities: too many people for solitary hunters, too many sounds and smells to deal with.

And now she had a pack living upstairs from her, and Dusa-

Dusa decided she didn't care. It was a sudden, exhausted, frustrated, hateful decision. She was angry; she’d given up so much, worked so hard for what she had now, and she was so sick, sick and tired of being afraid. The hangover made her angry, the situation made her angry, her fear made her angry. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore, she knew how to fight, so why was she so afraid?

She didn’t want to be. It didn’t make sense.

She shut her phone off with a click, and tossed it across the room, and rolled over, pulled up the covers on her makeshift bed on Robert’s floor. “That’s it,” she said, a numb whisper from the heart, “I’m done with fear. I’d rather die in a fight than die running. I don’t want that. I don’t.”

She closed her eyes, and tried not to cry. She was tired, and long ago she’d decided she didn’t want to be hunted down like some piece of meat. So she wouldn’t run, and give them a chance. Dusa breathed, slow and calm, and tried to cling to that fierce determination, that dead end desperation that made her grit her teeth and burn with fiercer emotions than what she’d woken from sleep with. She went back to sleep; her mouth was a tight line even in slumber, and she dreamed of lonely howls that shivered under her skin, and she did not run.




*

AN: Enter Melantha Lills! :D Haha, promise, there is a romance in the works here, yo! Annnnd Melantha sure as hell has her work cut out for her in handling the hysterics of Dusa, let me tell you...