Black Wolf

Black Wolf

Steph Shangraw

copyright 2014
Stephanie Shangraw

Smashwords edition

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License Notes

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Prysmcat Books

Kingston, Ontario,
Canada

www.prysmcat.com

Cover images used
under

Creative Commons
attribution license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

They have been modified
and combined to create this cover, but the originals remain the
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Use does not imply that
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Grey wolves by Ronnie
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronmacphotos/11065841524/

Moon by turquoise
field/turquoisefield

https://www.flickr.com/photos/turquoisefield/4734937865/

Dedication

It's impossible to list
everyone who, over a lifetime, has helped to encourage my writing
in general and assisted with this book in particular.

However, I do need to
mention:

My parents

Jackie LaRonde

My cats

Of course, my awesome
beta-readers:

Benita Burger

Brook True

DaraLynn Hill

Elizabeth Lombard

Jill Blanchard

Linda Mull

who made this a better
book

And Robin Collet for
the wonderful cover art!

Contents

Black Sheep

Black Wolf

Demon Wolf

Characters

About the Author

Note
on Characters

If you need a reminder
as to which coven someone belongs to or their particular gift, at
the end of the book you can find a list. This hasn't generally been
an issue, but the author would rather it be ignored as unnecessary
than needed but absent!

Note
on Time

The original version
of Black Wolf was written during the mid-1990's. Aware that younger
readers might find concepts like the absence of cell phones and
Internet in a more-or-less modern real world setting rather alien
or at least improbable, I did attempt an update during one of the
three major overhauls it has undergone since then. Unfortunately,
rewriting it to take place twenty years later proved not to be a
viable option. Events, therefore, still take place roughly two
decades ago.

Black Sheep

1

Jesse opened
his eyes, and squeezed them closed again, tightly, against the
bright sunlight. Blindly, he fumbled around in the inner pockets of
his black leather jacket, found his sunglasses—the darkest pair of
Nike sports shades rip-offs he'd been able to find and steal—and
put them on. This time when he opened his eyes, the sunlight was
only uncomfortable, not excruciating.

That only
raised a whole new set of questions, though. Why was he under a
tree?

Carefully,
pausing a couple of times as the world spun under him in nauseating
swoops, he sat up and looked around, squinting despite the
sunglasses.

Trees,
enormous ones, heavy on the evergreens, pine and cedar and whatever
those other ones were called. Rocks, also enormous, smooth and
almost flat, sloping up from the far side of the road at a gentle
angle to a rusty wire fence and then more trees.

A road? Well,
it was paved, and had a faded yellow line down the centre. No
sidewalk or anything, and no signs or buildings as far as he could
see from here—which wasn't much more than a hundred yards or so in
either direction, because of the curves and the trees. There was no
traffic that he could see or hear, either.

He sighed and
buried his face in his hands. Must've had another blackout. God
knew how far north he'd gone this time. Right out of the city
entirely, from the looks of things, which was going to make getting
home just heaps of fun. He remembered the party, the twenty or so
other people who had made Michelle's small apartment feel even more
cramped, remembered a lot of booze going around and that he'd had
his fair share of it. More hazily, he remembered that as usual, as
the air got rather smoky, it had made his too-sensitive sinuses
burn far too intensely to ignore, and had finally triggered a
violent sneezing fit. There was something there about feeling
crowded, restless, trapped, an intense need to get away... Nothing
else.

Great, I'm
having blackouts at seventeen. Wonder if it's brain damage from
getting smacked around too often. I mean okay, I drink sometimes,
but not
that
much. Don't you have
to, like, drink heavily for years before you get blackouts, or
something?

Well, time to
see how bad the situation was. He crossed his legs, and dug around
in the pockets of his jacket to see what he had. Wallet with ID.
The key to Shaine's apartment, nearest thing to home he had,
sharing its ring with a miniature flashlight. Three twenty-dollar
bills, which he didn't remember, along with a handful of change. Of
the condoms Shaine insisted he always carry and always use, he only
had one instead of three, which might explain where the money had
come from, especially if he'd been hitch-hiking. And that was about
it.

He swore
softly to himself. It had been months since he'd tried to get
through a day completely on his own, no pills to help him focus on
something other than the despair and emptiness, no pills to help
him sleep without the nightmares. He really had no desire to try
again now, cold-turkey and off familiar ground. Possibly right off
the bloody map. He was going to have to figure out where he was and
get home as fast as he could.

He stowed
everything back in his pockets and carefully levered himself to his
feet, bracing himself against the tree with one hand. Once he was
sure he'd stay vertical, he made his way carefully across the thick
summer-green grass towards the edge of the road. A paved road meant
there had to be people somewhere, in one direction or the other,
right? He just had to guess at which direction.

At the very
edge of the road, he stopped, closed his eyes, and concentrated. He
was only half-conscious of his nostrils dilating, searching for any
traces of human scent or the scents that came with human activity;
he strained instead to listen for some kind of noise other than the
incessant cheerful singing of birds.

He couldn't
hear anything, but when he tested the idea of going to his left
against the idea of going to his right, going left felt better.
With nothing better to base a decision on, he went to his left.

Since there
was no traffic, he walked right on the pavement. At least he was
wearing his old well-worn comfortable black running shoes, and he'd
astonished a number of friends and acquaintances before with how
far he could walk—he just had to find that steady, ground-eating
pace that took next to no energy. It was easier when he had music
to concentrate on, but that wasn't necessary. He tucked his hands
in the pockets of his jacket, and just walked, letting his mind toy
with the possibilities of where on earth he might be until that got
too scary, and he turned to imagining Shaine tearing strips off him
verbally when he got home. At least once he was there for Shaine to
yell at, he'd know things were back to normal.

The hum of an
engine brought his wandering attention back to his immediate
surroundings. He shielded his eyes with one hand, looked ahead and
saw nothing, and turned to look behind.

Well, it
wasn't anything large, but he could see something coming towards
him, still quite some way off. Jesse shrugged to himself and went
back to walking, rather than lose time, but he kept listening, and
checked behind him periodically. Light-coloured car, no, mini-van,
he decided. When it was close enough, he took a chance and stuck
out a thumb.

The driver
slowed down, and stopped just past him. The mini-van looked fairly
new and in very good condition, nothing marring the antique-gold
paint job. Preferring not to look too desperate, Jesse made for the
passenger side quickly enough to look polite but without
running.

The van's
driver, and only occupant, was a woman in her mid-twenties or so
with more vividly red hair than he'd ever seen as a natural
colour—but given the lack of make-up and the simple off-white
peasant blouse he could see, it just might actually
be
a
natural colour.

She gave him a
friendly smile. "Hi. This is an odd place to be out for a
walk."

Jesse spread
his hands. "I was with a friend. At least, I thought he was a
friend. We got in an argument about something stupid, he got mad
and made me get out. If I'd realized his temper could be
that
bad…" He shrugged, let it go at that. Offering too many
details would be more of a giveaway than acting reluctant to get
into it. "Anyway, he left me kinda stranded."

"Hop in. I'll
get you at least as far as what passes for civilization."

"That would be
great." He opened the passenger door, and the redhead leaned over
to pick up a small cooler from the floor on that side.

"Here, just
put that in the back out of the way. Help yourself to something to
drink out of it if you'd like."

"You must be
my guardian angel." He moved the cooler to the back seat, but
couldn't resist, and chose one of the bottles of juice—grape came
to hand first. "I'm Jesse," he said, as he hopped up into the front
seat and closed the door.

"It's a
pleasure to meet you, Jesse. I'm Rebecca."

"You live out
here?"

"Oh, not too
terribly far away. I'm on my way to meet a couple of friends for a
camping trip."

"Cool." He
fished around for something to keep her talking—most people were
happy to meet a good listener, and Jesse was very good at
listening. "I've never been camping, but it sounds like fun. Is
there a campground or something?"

"No, just a
place that we know of that no one really does anything with. It's a
nice place to just set up a tent for the weekend and have a private
party with a couple of good friends."

He discovered,
over the next ten minutes or so, that the friends in question were
her two closest female friends and that she had the very sensible
but unexciting job of being one of three employees of a small bank
in an equally small town of a couple of thousand people. He was
beginning to strongly suspect that he was much farther north this
time than he'd been after his previous blackouts.

Why he always
woke up to find out he'd gone north during those blank spots, he
had no idea. South towards Toronto or someplace like that might
have made some kind of sense, but north was just crazy. There was
nothing up here.

He couldn't
call the place they reached a village. It was just a little
combined gas station and convenience store. Across the road was a
house, as run-down as the store, the yard full of junk.

"I'm not sure
if this counts as civilization," Rebecca said, as they both got out
of the van, "but it's the closest there is nearby, and at least
there's a phone."

"Thanks. I
really appreciate the ride."

"No problem. I
enjoyed it."

Jesse ventured
cautiously into the convenience store.

To his intense
relief, they had road maps for sale. He picked one up, chose a
chocolate bar he hoped wasn't as old as some of the goods he could
see in the store, and went to the counter to pay for them.

"Got your
card?" asked the woman behind the counter, boredly. She looked
about sixty, and that burgundy hair with the pale roots was
definitely a home dye job. Somehow it fit with the frayed jeans and
plaid cotton shirt.