Black Wolf (44 page)

Historically speaking:
Giovanna Albertine, a healer to whom we should all be grateful for
her many contributions to healing knowledge, died 23 years ago the
12th. Among her accomplishments, she researched and proved the
disease-transmission odds between human, wolf, dryad, and elf. Her
theory was that the bubonic plague, syphilis, tuberculosis, and...
well, you get the idea... were in large part responsible for our
present low numbers. If you haven't been paying attention, we
have
had HIV cases in Haven and the
others, six in fact, two human, two elf, one dryad, and a latent
wolf—at present it looks like full wolves are immune, like they are
to almost everything else, but they might be able to carry it.
Let's not make AIDS the one that wipes us out. I'm sure Giovanna
will forgive me for using her death as an occasion for saying
this:

Long
live sensuality, but PLAY SAFE so you live long enjoying
it!

40

"Kev?"

Kevin looked
up fast from cursing silently at his homework for his inability to
concentrate. He found the
last
person he expected hovering
in the doorway. "What's up?" he asked, keeping his tone carefully
neutral.

"Can we
talk?"

"'Course we
can."

Jess came all
the way in, and joined him on the bed, hands tangled together in
his lap and eyes low.

"'Sela said
something... that I don't know just how evil a trap Rebecca set
because I don't know what happened with you and her."

Kevin winced.
"Evil. Good word."

"I know
someone or other told me you and Deanna were in Rebecca's coven
once, and that has something to do with why she hates you so much,
but that's about it."

Not something
he particularly wanted to think about, but all things considered,
Jess had a right to know. For that matter, he'd have faced worse if
it would help Jess forgive him. "Originally, it was Dia and I and a
wolf we grew up with, Karl. You know Coven Helix, Dia and Gisela's
parents. My parents apparently fell in love while he was here at
the college. He's a mage, although not a remarkably strong one, so
he pretty much had to join a wolf coven, but my mother wanted to
stay solitary. Which is normally just fine, because with that whole
complicated genetic compatibility thing, there's no one in my dad's
coven he could have kids with anyway. When I was twelve, my dad's
coven moved out of Haven to Ravenrock, combination of reasons that
made it pretty hard not to, but my mom wanted to stay here, which
was okay with me. Usually with mages, our gifts wake up over a few
months around fourteen or so, but sometimes, especially in really
strong mages, they wake up in a matter of days or weeks early. Karl
decided it was his job to protect me, and where I was, Dia was, of
course, so even in high school we were effectively a coven.

"I had a
wonderful time showing off, playing games. Most mages do, to some
degree. Most mages outgrow it before long, a lot of it is novelty.
Sometimes they were more like pranks, and okay, sometimes they were
kinda mean, just because I could, and sometimes it annoyed people,
but not anything really bad. More brat than bully. If I could show
off and get attention by doing something useful or helpful instead,
that was good too. Just as well, because my mother pretty much lost
or gave up on any control over what I was doing around the time it
became clear how strong I am. She was nervous about trying to
discipline a mage to begin with, and when I started refusing to
obey her, she got outright scared and started giving in more and
more. Tomas kept me more or less disciplined while he was teaching
me, but training doesn't take all that long, since so much of it is
instinct and practice anyway. So at sixteen, I was a newly
full-trained mage, and I was excessively proud of the fact, and
there was really nothing to stop me from being a royal pain except
that I never liked doing any real harm.

"Along came
Rebecca, she moved here from Endor to start at the College. She was
a couple of years older, you know how beautiful she is, and we had
no idea what she was capable of. Bane must have told you how some
wolves get extremely unstable because of being forced to live in
ways that go counter to natural instinct? She's a perfect example.
Bryan warned us a time or two, I think he got it from wolves from
Endor, but we didn't listen. We let her join us. Big mistake. Yeah,
there's the understatement of the year." He looked down, and
sighed. "Rebecca is fixated on the idea that mixed-village culture
sacrifices individuality and personal freedom for harmony and
safety. To a teenager who was being told constantly that I should
act more responsible and was more interested in playing and
exploring than in a future as an Adept with a boring sensible job
and a series of teenaged mages to teach... well, someone telling
you that you shouldn't listen to anyone else and you should only do
what you want to do is pretty tempting. For a little while, we saw
her as a kind of martyr to free thought, someone telling a
brilliant truth that no one else understood, just us, and they were
trying to silence her. I started seeing myself as her champion and
defender, and she encouraged it to the point that I came within a
hair of getting expelled for fighting and intimidation. Karl, well,
you have some idea by now what kind of power an alpha has over the
rest of the pack, it's all in how it's used." He knew Jess knew
that, had watched him struggle with the concept and eventually come
to terms with it, under Bane and Eva's extremely protective and
patient—if not always comprehending—care.

Jess listened
quietly to Kevin's tale of everything that had happened and how
Deanna had forced a choice and Bane had taken a chance, his
expression betraying nothing. Kevin made no effort to hide anything
or excuse anything, simply told the truth.

"I've been
really acting like an idiot, haven't I," Jess sighed, when Kevin
finished.

"No," Kevin
said. "You've been acting like someone who's been hurt too many
times, and as soon as you let your guard down you got hurt again.
Believe me, Jess, I am in no position to yell at you. I did a few
spectacularly stupid things while I was trying to get my life put
back together."

"Like
what?"

Kevin sighed
to himself, but now was not the time to leave things buried, not if
it could possibly start rebuilding the trust he'd lost.

So he told
Jess about the scar that still marked his left arm, about halfway
up. He'd gone to Deanna's, found her and Cynthia talking in the
kitchen, and Cynthia mentioned needing to find Lori. Kevin asked if
he could help, since he was right there. The whiplash pain when
Cynthia had simply looked at him, wondering if he'd attack her for
saying no, stayed vivid in his memory, even now. He'd grabbed the
knife Deanna was using to chop vegetables, slashed his arm open and
sworn to Cynthia on his blood that he'd never attack her or her
coven-mates again.

Deanna
snagging a clean dish-towel to wrap around his arm. "Idiot. Are you
trying to kill yourself?"

"As if anyone
but you cares!" And gating himself home.

He'd refused
to let Deanna call a healer when she showed up at his door moments
later, or to leave the house, so she'd done her best and stayed
there to hold him while he spent the next hour crying. For days, he
wouldn't go out, not for school, not to go to Deanna's, not for
anything, and only for Deanna would he open the door; his mother,
who hadn't yet reached the point of physically throwing him out but
had already largely dissociated herself emotionally, had tried only
once. The phone he ignored or left to his mother to answer. When
Bane had asked and Deanna answered, the result was everyone mad at
everyone.

Out of the
anger and the pain and the fear, though, some good had come.

Opening the
door, expecting Deanna, stunned to see Flynn—alone.

"What are you
doing here?"

Flynn giving
him a tentative smile, violet-grey eyes meeting his shyly and then
dropping. "I thought maybe we could see if my cards can turn up
anything useful. If you want to try, anyway."

Kevin looked
down at the scar, and held out his arm to show Jess. "I never did
let a healer touch it, even though Dia thought it needed stitches.
I told her I was going to make sure I never forgot how much it hurt
when everyone believed I could never be anything but what they
thought I was." He smiled ruefully. "It didn't work, I guess.
Sometimes I need things pounded into my skull."

"Sometimes we
all do. Except I've got Shaine to do the pounding for me."

What did he
mean by that? From what Gisela said, all Shaine did was pour more
verbal abuse on him than Kevin would take from
anybody
, and
Jess just let him.

Then again...
he'd already come to the conclusion that there was more to Shaine
than Shaine wanted anyone to see. On many levels.

"I think,"
Jess said slowly, "that's sort of like why I ran. Panic reaction,
get away from something that hurts. And... there's..." He closed
his eyes, struggling visibly with something. Kevin decided to stay
quiet and let him choose what he wanted to do. While they'd been
talking, the room had turned to twilight; he glanced at the lamp at
the head of the bed, undecided, not wanting to startle Jess, but
reluctant to continue this conversation all but blind to anything
but the heat-image of Jess himself.

Wolves use
body-language too much, I'll miss something if I can't see.
He
reached out physically, and switched on the lamp. Jess paid no
attention at all, beyond his eyes narrowing briefly until they
adjusted.

"I know I
messed up by running. But I always run." He stopped again. "I told
you I don't remember stuff, my life basically starts in the summer
of '89, and no one can do anything."

Kevin likely
could, but not without heavy damage. "Yes, and that you were in
foster homes."

"For a while.
Then I got adopted, by this lawyer and his wife, that was really
cool. Except... he didn't want
me
, he wanted an instant
model family that would make him look good. He started complaining
about my hair, I wanted it too long, and about my clothes, I liked
black too much and denim and leather too much, I liked moon stuff
and pentagrams and daggers and things, I always have for as long as
I can remember. But I was just an ordinary kid then, I did
reasonably good in school and stayed out of trouble, and none of it
meant the kinds of things he thought it did. One night... he had
both his partners and their wives over for dinner... and I messed
up, I said something I wasn't supposed to... and... " His voice
broke. "He... hurt me..." He shuddered. "I
can't
," he said
pleadingly. Behind Jesse's dark eyes, for a heartbeat Kevin saw a
child, terrified and bewildered. Tentatively, he closed a hand
around Jess'.

"I get the
idea," he said gently.

"I lost it.
Grades started to drop, I started talking back to teachers when
they asked what was wrong, I started getting into fights. I was
sometimes depressed and sometimes crazy and I kept doing things I
never did before. They said I had a behaviour problem, and I
couldn't tell anybody what was really wrong, that it was just
because he was trying to control every thought and every word and
every action and make every choice for me and he punished me bad
when I did anything else. I ran away, I was fifteen I think, and
the cops took me home, they never asked me why I ran. I kept
running away. Shaine found me, he taught me who and where to stay
away from, everything about surviving. He let me stay with him."
Another pause.

"Jess, if it's
too hard to say, don't. I'm not expecting anything."

"I have to
tell you
why
. There were these people I was hanging around
with, a bunch of runaways and throwaways and whatever, and one of
them offered to let me try what she was on, one night when I was
feeling really bad. And it helped, it made me feel better. So I
started using it more and more often, uppers to make me feel better
and downers so I could relax and sleep, and sometimes LSD just for
the hell of it. I tried stopping, once, I can't remember why,
but... after a couple of days of having my feelings completely out
of my power to control them... I didn't have much by the way of
physical withdrawal symptoms, maybe a little bit of being wolf even
before it was awake. I just couldn't stand it, having to feel
everything, knowing there was a way to stop it if I chose to. You
haven't ever felt anything that
awful
." He paused to
reflect. "Maybe you have."

The wild joy
of being at the heart of a storm of purest power, knowing he could
form it into any shape with nothing but his own will, the wrenching
transition back each time... The aching gnawing self-doubt every
time he saw Rebecca...
Yeah, Jess, I think maybe I have.
Kevin saw a single tear escape, saw Jess bite his lip hard; he
reached for the box of Kleenex without comment, sent a silent
request to Deanna not to let anyone come upstairs for
any
reason until he said otherwise. She acknowledged without asking
why.

"I survived.
Some don't. Most people don't have Shaine watching their backs,
either. At least somebody cared that I was alive, even if he was
mad at me a lot. Only, even more, I just got called bad and useless
and stuff like that. When Rebecca found me... I hadn't been home in
days, and I know he had the cops keeping an eye out for me. I
missed some family thing he'd told me I had to be there for, and it
would've been bad. I went to a party a friend invited me to, Shaine
didn't come, and sometimes when I used to drink a lot or whatever,
I'd black out for a while and wake up north of the city. Always
north, so I think it was more than just trying to be somewhere the
local cops wouldn't spot me. Maybe part of me always knew more than
I think I remember, I dunno."