A Justified Kill (12 page)

****

After making it through a
n agonizing
,
extremely
long night at work
,
Amber fell into bed
, ex
haus
ted
but anxious for the next evening
to come
, when
she would finally make her first change.
It still plag
ued her that she was in her mid-
twenties and just now making the shift when normal female werewolves changed at sixteen.
S
he knew she was not the typical werewolf
. H
er mother had told her that plenty of
times
. But
it still didn’t make sense. What was so different about her that she changed
ten years later,
at twenty-six
,
rather than sixteen?

Her mother had taught her a lot, but
she knew it was
not enough. Being on the run and alone, she had learned and was still learning that she had abilities
most wolves didn’t possess
. Altering her appearance was normal for all werewolves so that wasn’t much of a mystery to her. The one stumping her was the strange ability she had stumbled upon by accident. It had
suddenly shown itself one night when s
he became so frustrated with her life on the run.
She remembered s
tanding
in the
bathroom of yet another motel with her h
and in
her
pocket wrapped around the stone
her grandfather had given her
.
Frustrated with her life, she stared
at herself in the mirror
and
had simply said “I want to disappear.” In her mind, she seriously meant what she said
, and repeated
that statement
several more times wishing something would happen
. To her surpris
e, she watched her reflection in the mirror
slowly fade, but never completely disappeared
.
Looking down at her body she was fading away.
She remembered the panicked feeling that coursed through her, and then relief flooded her mind when her form returned to normal.
Unsure if she would fade away into nothingness and never reappear, she hadn’t
said those words again
.

One day she would have to grow a pair and
try it again
, to
see if it really worked.
That nifty ability may one day c
ome in handy.
She was beg
inning to believe
the new abilit
ies were tied to the stone
she now wore around her neck rather than just carrying it in her pocket.
During her frustrated wanting to disappear act, t
he stone had vibrated lightly in her hand and
she
had wondered if it had been enchanted somehow
.
Then she realized that the stone had probably saved her life on many occasions. She thought back to when she had nearly run into one of her mother’s pack member
s
.

Carelessly, she had left her grandfather’s gift on the bedside table
while
she
was extending her stay in the m
otel. With her mind preoccupied, she had left her door unlocked and the maid
’s young son
had slipped i
nto her room and taken it
. Distraught over it being missing, she
had
traced her steps and nearly
came face to face with the male wolf
and was forced to hide in the laundry room, where the boy
happened to be playing with her stone. In the
end, she had retrieved it safely, but in the process,
she
would not have been able to live with herself if she had not helped the boy and
his werewolf mother to escape her own abusive pack.

S
he couldn’t relax enough to go to sleep yet and lay s
taring up at the ceiling of the o
ld motel room when Amber
realized
e
ven
back
then she ha
d felt the presence of her wolf. It was hard to believe that the feelings had always been there and she just hadn’t known what they were.
None of this was
making sense. There was absolutely no reason for
her not to shift.
Sighing, nothing she
could do about it then, and nothing she could do about it now
. Apparently, wolves emerged when the time was right, and it was finally her time.
Her wolf would be emerging soon and she could move on with her life as a full werewolf, and a wh
ole new set of problems. At the
thought she
groaned.
This
meant she was going to really have to be careful
and went over the list of warning
s
her mother had ground into her head. The main one being: “Once you shift, all werewolves will
be able to
sense your wolf if they are close enough.”

Finally, her lids dropped and in the recesses of her mind she thought of Hanna. By helping her, she would also be saving more lives, protecting the females in the area by ri
dding the world of a menacing predator.
An echo o
f a laugh sounded in her mind and
she wondered when she had embarked on the crusade to save women in trouble.

T
he
evening air was
coo
l against her
over
heated
skin.
Amber jogged
silently
through the
trees, following the leaf
covered
trail
. Her
suede
hiking boo
ts were well worn, and the light
gray t-shirt she wore was
,
too. She wished she had saved her old worn out clothes. Unfortunately, she’d burned most of her threadbare clothing and purchased more the month before. The jeans were new and
she
really didn’t want to
mess
them
up with her planned activities
for
the
evening
.
Clothes
were just too damned expensive for her to ruin them over a loser like Gerald.

The sun was sinking low in the sky, with
pinks, purples
,
and blue
s
mixing toget
her in a kaleidoscope of color.
Amber knew this was her night
,
t
he evening she had been
born
twenty-
six
years earlier
. As it was then, tonight,
there
was a full moon and she felt it
s powerful pull on her senses
. Finally, the change was upon her and th
e nudges on her mind were becoming
insistent pushes. Her skin was alternatingly itching and
tingling, continually
crawling
all over her body
. The pain in her head was a constant companio
n
.
Earlier in the afternoon,
w
hen
she h
ad
tried to eat the
food
the waitress had placed in front of her at the diner
,
she
’
d pushed
it away. She wanted fresh meat and the
processed mess in front of her had twisted
her stomach into knots
.

All throughout the day
,
so
on
, she
had to keep
telling herself
and her wolf
to calm her nerves
. Soon it would be time for her to shift.
For years, s
he had planned for this
long awaited
night.
She had cancelled her reservation for the
motel room
she had rented for the week
and cleared out her belongings.
Renting a camping space
was easy enough and
she pulled her jeep
in front of her spot and set up the
tent
she had bought earlier that morning
.
She figured sooner or later, she might need one anyway.
This time s
he would not be using it much, but she had to make it look as if the camp was occupied and threw some clothing in on the sleeping bag.
She left her large green backpack
locked in the small toolbox she’d had installed in her jeep
, o
nly carrying with her a small pac
k which
would not g
et in her
way.
The
campsite whe
re Gerald was staying was
a couple miles around
the other side of the mountain
, in a very remote spot where people didn’t camp too often.
With her werewolf genetics she really didn’t need the exercise to stay in shape, jogging tens miles a day allowed her to release pent up energy. Reaching his campsite would require little effort.

The waiting is what took its toll on her nerves, and r
ealizing her mistake of not finding Gerald sooner, she had
surveyed
more of the area
a little further. She
found
Klamath’s National Forest
was
large and she
could run for days without being seen
. The park
was teaming with enough game to keep her
wolf
fed
. The Full Moon Phase would last up to five days.
She was somewhat prepared, th
e first night
werewolves
would emerge
in a rage of bloodlust.
She had seen her mother change, but never on the first night of the phase. Her mother had only t
old her to be ready for the boiling anger that would overtake her on the
first night. After that, her wolf should be more under her control for the remaining days of the phase.
There was only one problem
Amber was
really
wary of. Other female werewolves changed with their mother at their side and had their guidance to help them th
rough
their first time
. She didn’t have that option
and it was a bit on the scary side to know that she was going to be alone in this.