Silvermane-Wolf Within

Saturday night, a night for shedding the bonds that life imposes, a night for partying with others, and a night that can be regretted by the next morning. So many people do as they please on nights like these, and have their imperfections exposed to those that are sworn to keep the peace. No one likes the idea of strangers knowing how deep their flaws run, and the strangers don’t like dealing with such problems, but so it continues.
Here, in the east-coast city known as New Hope, a man by the name of Leopold Garret sees these imperfections on a regular basis. It is his job as a private investigator to find what people don’t want him to, and there are many things to find in the landscape of smog and steel. He has been on the job for two years, right out of college, and made some very nasty enemies. Some of them he knows of, and some of them are things humanity doesn’t believe in. But, tonight, things are about to change.
For the last two weeks, Leo had been working the most important case of his life: the death of his best friend Rick. The young Irishman had been found face down in the gutter with the earmarks of a notorious gang that the policed didn’t dare touch. But Leo didn’t care. He had dealt them crushing blows to their leadership and activities before, and he wasn’t about to let their latest crime slide.
Standing in the shadowed and crumbling remains of an old apartment building, he was closing on his pray with frightening speed. Eight bodies lay behind him, face down in blood with a .45 caliber hole in each corpse. But voices above were keeping him in place, with one sounding more like a monster than a man. He shook it off and zipped down the hall to the staircase.
Just as he put one foot on the first step a familiar voice called his name, far louder than he would have liked. He almost tackled his companion, holding his free hand over her mouth and glancing back up the rotting steps.
“What are you doing here Ashley,” he snarled.
“Uh…I-“
“Never mind, just go back the way you came and get out of here.”
“W-Where are you going?”
“To settle a score.”
“No, you can’t, he’ll-“
“Ashley, I appreciate you sticking with me for the last few days, but get out of here.”
Without a word, Leo slipped up the first flight of stairs, checked the way ahead, and slipped to the second floor. The voices were louder now, one angry, two fearful. The rouge’s heart was racing, his blood boiling. He crept down the hall, checking each room along the way to keep from being surprised. The door was just ahead now, and the voices were clear enough to be underdstood.
“…but no one could survive that.” One man was saying. “We blew his wheels sky high with the pig in it.”
“You idiot,” said another. “He survived our boat in the harbor when it went up, and you just led him right to us! You, your boss sent you here, quit standing around and go kill him!”
“I don’t take orders from you,” snarled a voice that sent shivers down Leo’s spine. “Besides, I wouldn’t have far to go.”
“What-?”
With a crash, Leo kicked out the rotting door to the room. His hands snapped to his first target, a heavy man trick to bring his Uzi around. Before the first body hit the ground, the hammer fell again, ripping into the second thug at the far end of the room. He screamed and dropped his pistol on the floor. Two more shots sent him to his knees with blood pooling on the floor. The third was nowhere to be seen, but Leo didn’t care.
“You killed my friend,” he snarled at the thug whimpering and cradling his injured arm. “Now I kill you. Fair trade huh?”
“I didn’t kill nobody!” he cried desperately.
“Like I haven’t heard that one.”
With a thunderous crack it was over. It was funny, Leo had almost believed him. He shook his head and laughed.
“You should have been an actor,” Leo chuckled.
“You thought he was acting,” the voice of the third man cackled. “You’re not as good as I thought.”
Leo spun on his heel and snapped his .45 to his last opponent, only to freeze with his finger on the trigger.
“What’s the matter,” the other snarled, “I have a piece of your friend Richard in my teeth?”
Leo wanted to pull the trigger, to plant a bullet in the snarky creature, but fear held him fast. Besides, he doubted it would do much good.
Standing in the doorway was a shaggy creature that science said couldn’t be real, and yet it was smiling a maleficent smile with its fangs. Its cold wolven eyes reflected red in what light filtered in from the streetlamps, illuminating the monstrous form. Leo swallowed hard as he came to grips with the myth standing before him: a real werewolf.
“Y-You killed Rick,” the human stuttered.
The beast chuckled, his yellow fangs glistening as he marched forward through the warm pool crawling across the boards.
The hammer fell twice, thunder ringing through the halls as the creature shuddered from the bullets finding their mark. A huge paw snapped through the air and sent the man to the floor, the gun clattering across the boards as he skidded into a wall. With a crack, the demon kicked human through the rotting boards, cackling as he tried to scramble away. With the rolling rip of his jacket, Leo found himself looking at the dead eyes of his executioner.
“Time to die worm,” it snickered.
With a shower of splinters, the wall desitagrated next to them and a fist cracked into the werewolf’s skull. The force was tremendous, sending both wolf and man sailing through the hole they had passed through before.
“Time to come to grips rogue,” a new voice stated coldly.
“You don’t have the strength bitch,” the wolf snarled.
“Try me.”
Leo picked himself off the floor in time to duck a blur of fur and claws as the combatants smashed through the building like a wrecking ball. The howls of pain and roars of anger rattled through the empty rooms as the structure rocked as if in the middle of an earthquake until a whine cut the air like a guillotine. Pinned to the floor, one combatant squirmed in fright as the other raised his bloody claws for one final blow.
“Hey ya flea bitten S.O.B.,” a voice roared, “kiss my ass.”
A shot rang out again as the monster turned to look at the human, and this time it reeled with a howl of pain as the bullet cut into the only soft spot it could find.
“That’s it,” the werewolf roared as blood poured from his eye socket, “I kill you right now.”
Pain flashed through Leo’s body before he could even realize the werewolf had moved. Claws sank straight to the bone in his arm and others into his side. There was a sickening thud and the two collapsed to the floor, the inside of a skull spilt across the boards. Hot shards shot through the human’s body as the claws were removed and a paw pressed down on the cut.
“Hang on,” the werewolf murmured in a familiar tone.
“You’re a girl,” Leo managed to say.
She chuckled softly, the final sounds the young man heard as his vision turned to black.

* * *

Leo struggled to get his bearings as his eyes attempted to focus in the strange blue light. There was a monstrous gap in his memories. A blurred image of two people fighting was the most recent thing he could conjure from them. How he had come to this bizarre cave and what had happened to the two fighters were blank, as was how much time had passed.
His eyesight clearing, the young investigator began taking in his surroundings. From the walls hung strange wooden ornaments, somehow radiating the blue glow that lit the dark gash in the earth. On the floor was a peculiar set of three circles, each ring containing a continuous line of runes set into the rock itself, with him sitting in the centre.
“Where the hell am I?” Leo asked the stone.
“Somewhere safe,” answered a familiar voice, “where we can be alone.”
Leo jumped as the voice reverberated off the cool walls and a shadow moved from a crack that was no doubt the entrance. The shape and motion was feminine, but some body parts were wolven. As she drew closer the light reflected in her blue eyes and Leo understood what had happened to his little shadow.
“You tricked me,” Leo growled at the figure.
The werewolf come within arm’s reach of her pray, looking down with an apologetic stare.
“I’m sorry,” she said, surprising him with perfect English. “We were supposed to have more time, supposed to have a chance to really know each other before all this.”
“What are you talking about?”
The she-wolf sat on her knees before Leo slowly, watching him shift away.
“You’re something special Leo,” she stated. “You were born human, but, deep down, your soul is a wolf’s. There are very few humans with that trait, and they are extremely hard to find. I stumbled across you by complete accident. That werewolf I fought knew what I was doing, and killed your friend to draw you to him.”
“So Rick’s death is your fault.”
“No Leo, it’s yours. That special mix of man and wolf makes you a perfect choice for turning into one of us.”
Leo felt his heart plummet into his stomach. His best friend in the world was dead because he was a great recruit for werewolf packs. He looked down at the floor, torn inside by his part in the affair.
A gentle touch snapped him back to reality as a paw settled against his cheek. The she-wolf’s ears were pinned back almost timidly, and a sad smile was spreading across her face. There was also an odd majesty to her features that comforted him a bit. Perhaps having a wolf’s soul churning inside his chest wasn’t so farfetched.
“Oh Leo,” the she-wolf sighed, “I’m so sorry. It was never supposed to happen this way.”
“You want to recruit me too huh,” Leo said with a very hollow voice.
“You were supposed to have a choice, but after what happened that is impossible. It’s turn or die now, and I refuse to end your life.”
“I could just bolt right now you know, disappear into-“
“No, some of my pack is guarding the entrance. You wouldn’t even make it outside.”
A shaft of light began to filter down from the ceiling, cool and white. Both the human and the werewolf looked up through a shaft cut to the surface as the full moon appeared from behind a cloud.
“Are you ready?” the she-wolf asked with a sigh.
“Do I really have a choice?”
The she-wolf chuckled slightly and began speaking in a language that was both alien and familiar to the man sitting with her. As each word echoed off the stone walls, the runes in the floor, character by character, burned steadily brighter. As the last rune lit, she stopped, looking at Leo with blue, wolven eyes that glittered in the darkness.
“Please Leo,” she whispered, “forgive me.”
Opening her jaws wide, the she-wolf sank her teeth into Leo’s arm. He could feel the fangs sink deep into his muscle and the warm blood trickle down his bicep. The pain tore at his consciousness, threatening to drag him under.
He felt is body start to fall, but strange hands stopped him, drawing him up against something soft.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, this time in his ear. “Sleep well Lycan.”

“You knew it was coming.”
Leo turned away from the dark forest, looking to the city lights.
“You have seen things most men wouldn’t believe.”
“Leave me alone!” he roared.
“You will become a werewolf.”
“Shut up!”
Shadowed figures of men were walking towards Leo from the city, blank and lifeless. They were devilish, reeking like the dead, and grabbing for him. He scrambled away, pushed back to the forest he dared not enter.
“Be one of us,” they screeched in a terrifying harmony. “Be one of us.”
They clawed at the young man, trying to draw him into their midst. He cried out for help, and the growling voice answered.
“The city, or the forest, is it so hard a choice?”
Terrified Leo scrambled into the trees, the ghosts on his heels. His mind knew not where he was going, but his heart did. Brush ripped at his clothes, but he pushed through, the sounds of the ghastly pursuers spurring him onward. Faces, blank of all but a horrific rift of a mouth, leapt from the shadows after him. The forms were as rags as frustration set in, but Leo’s retaliation only made the demons strike out at him harder, digging into his flesh. Battered and bleeding, he tumbled to the ground panting as they encircled him.
“It’s alright Leo…I am with you…the pain will pass…you’ll be okay.”
He could recognize the feminine voice wafting through the trees; and as much as he blamed her for this, he drew strength from her words.
“You have made the choice,” growled the old voice again, “and now walk the path humans cannot. Hear the voice of one of your own, and take heart.”
This was impossible. No man could survive this test, this nightmare.
“This is true, but then, you are no longer a mere man.”
Only with the strength, senses, and will of a lycanthrope could he come out of it with his life. He feared this power, but he also knew that the test was to the end, to the death. Fear had never been his master, and it was not about to cost him his life.
Without warning, the shadows tackled the battered young man. They beat and tore at him in a heap atop his back, each trying to get the final blow. The pain was truly horrendous. He called out in agony, but there was no help to be found. He was on his own.
“Hold on Leo…you can do it…”
He refused to give in to the creatures, and tried his hardest to fight them off, but his strength just wasn’t enough. He could feel something deep down, a strange power, a reservoir of energy, and tapped it as he felt his body begin to give in. Then, with a howl that seemed to make the forest shudder, a new creature broke free.
The shadows not torn asunder disappeared with shrieks of fear, tearing off into the trees as if their bodies were ablaze, leaving Leo to marvel at his new body’s power and senses.
The name Leo didn’t seem to fit in his mind anymore. It seemed conventional, dull, human, but what else was there?
“Lycan…” a new voice called, “Lycan…”
Something drew him forward, through the trees, and he could not help but answer it. The brush no longer tore at him, nor did running seem so exhausting, and all the time, a light ahead grew brighter. He could hear the breeze in the leaves above, smell the plants at his feet, and see as though night were day.
At last, Leo emerged from the wood onto a ledge overlooking a gigantic expanse of trees. The light that had led him to the spot was above him, none other than the full moon, shining brightly.
“You have come far,” stated a serine voice. “It is no small feat to pass such a trial.”
A female werewolf stood, in robes as pure white as her fur, before him. Her eyes seemed to crackle with energy, though gave a sense of peace.
“Leo, you have come at last.”
“Who-?”
“I am Lanariia, though humans know me as Luna.”
“You mean you are…”
Leo looked to the full moon above and back to Lanariia.
“Yes. The werewolves are my children, and now, so too are you. I am sorry that you have had to weather the pains of human life for so long. I can feel the scars of the life in you, and a wound more recent as well.”
“Then you know about Rick.”
“Not all children heed their mother, as it is with those like he who killed your friend. Hardened as you are by your past, the ties you will make in the future will be stronger than anything you have ever seen or felt.”
“I doubt that.”
“It is unfortunate how you came to be here, but the wound heal. Trust in the girl that has brought you here. It will be by her hands that all your scars shall fade.”
“And what if I don’t want anything to do with her?”
“This is not an option to you. In time, you will understand why. It is now time for you to begin your new journey. Go my child, and may my light guide you through the gloom.”

“Lycan…” whispered the she-wolf, stroking the side of her charge’s head gently, “come on Lycan…that’s it. Poor guy…you had such a rough night.”
Regretfully, Leo opened his eyes and looked up. His female counterpart was holding is head as he lay propped up against her knees. Her face and features were clearer now, the cloak of shadows undone by his new eyes. In the soft moon light, she almost seemed beautiful.
“What did you call me,” he asked.
“Lycan,” she repeated softly, “it’s your new name. And my name is Aria.”