Why a Wolf Cries - Julie Steimle (read a book .TXT) 📗

put a combination lock on the food box and locked it. He carried it to the tree, where he slung up the rope to hang it.

It was already getting darker.

Another wolf cried out.

This time both Rick and his father answered it with a howl, neither of them able to resist. Rick fell on all fours, dropping into wolf form. Rusty hair sprouted all over him. He shook it off, shuddering as he regained human form. His father, maintained his human form, but only just.

“I am sorry,” his father said, watching him.

Rick looked to him, confused.

“For all of this,” Mr. Deacon said. “I honestly had hoped you would not be what I am. When you never became a wolf when you were a baby, I had been sure of it. I would have warned you, had I known.”

“That I was different?” Rick painfully chuckled, urging the fire to burn more, shoving tinder into it again. “Dad, don’t worry about it. None of us asked for this. Not even Grandpa. He was just a wolf. And it is no good blaming that stupid witch either. She got what she deserved in the end, and life is life.”

Mr. Deacon II nodded. He gazed to the fire which now blazed up warm. They needed to let it burn for a bit.

“Well…” Rick got up, dusted his hands then took off his shirt. His scars crisscrossed his torso like a war map, each line a row of trenches and barbed wire. Some of the stitching lines made him look like a Frankenstein rag doll. Others had healed better. “I’m gonna get ready to go. Just let me tromp around the camp with my boot feet before we start this little ordeal.”

His father nodded, sorry his son had gone back to regarding this part of his life as an ordeal. “I should too.”

As they both walked around just to leave their human scent of freshly detergent-ed clothes, human body spray, and even a whiff of spearmint toothpaste, so the smells of getting down for camp were real, they listened to the air, paying attention to the animal life that was skulking away. Even the squirrels climbed higher.

When it got dim enough, Rick went back to his tent, kicked off his hiking boots, peeled off his socks and tucked them inside, while covering the hole so nothing could climb in. Then he took off the rest of his clothes and tucked them into his sleeping bag for a semblance of human sleeping there. Falling onto his four paws, his fur growing out again along with his snout full of sharp teeth, he made a wolfish leap out of his tent so that he landed at least five feet from it. From there, he walked back to the tent on paws to leave coming tracks. There, with care (and one human hand), he zipped up the tent so it looked like wolves had visited, but he wasn’t one. Just in case.

Fact was, even though it was illegal to hunt in Yellowstone, that did not stop the unscrupulous Supernatural Regulator’s Association (SRA) hunter from trying to kill him or his father. They did not believe rules applied to them.

Rushing on four paws over the pine-needle covered forest floor, Rick joined his father at the creek. The sun was still up, but barely now.

“Are you sure you will not join me with the pack for the hunt?” his-father-the-gray-wolf asked in his human-wolf hybrid voice. “Safety in numbers, you know. Wild wolves are peaceful.”

Nodding his rusty wolf head, Rick sighed, backing off. “No, thank you. For the last time. I’m sure they’re fine and all. I just… I really do need alone time. You go have fun with the local pack.”

“You don’t have to be scared of them.” His father’s amber eyes shone in the dimming slight

Rick’s tail tucked between his legs, his ears lowering. “I’m not—”

“You keep having nightmares about the German pack.” His father angled his wolfy head to the side, sympathy there.

Shuddering, Rick closed his gray eyes. “It’s not just the Germans. It’s all of them.”

His father let out a curious wolf whimper.

“I went and visited Kurt Blithe recently,” Rick explained, “and he said he could smell those other wolves on me. I’m a marked wolf now.”

“That’s a lie.” His father growled low.

“Kurt has no reason to lie to me,” Rick-the-wolf protested. He shook his furry head. “I…. Maybe I just need a break from wolves. And though I can’t take a break from myself, I can at least minimize the trouble I’m having by going it alone. Ok?”

His father started to pace. “Please, son. I doubt the Alabama wolves will come after you again. I know your friends have finally driven them off.”

Rick nodded with a wolfy whimper. “Yes. And I have zero desire to go back to that pack now. So you can breathe easy. I just…”

He looked to his father, how the wolf eyed him just like any natural wolf would. It really did amaze him he was related to the man. Of course he got all his wolf traits from his father, so that really was it. His mother had been one hundred percent human. He loved that about her.

His mind wandered to her. There was something nobly beautiful about purely-human woman, something he never really appreciated until after entangling with she-werewolves. Those she-wolves were savagely passionate. In many ways, they were the worst of both worlds. At least… the she-wolves he had gotten entangled with. Rick mildly wondered about his four half-sisters who were she-wolves. Were they like that when it came to seeking mates? He hoped not.

“I just don’t want to be dragged into wolf society again,” Rick murmured, haunted by that thought, “even if it just real wolves. It would be like going back to an addiction, and I’d rather stay human.”

Though his father smiled at him, hearing that, it was with those sad eyes again. His father knew exactly what Rick was talking about. That entire mess with the Alabama pack had almost ruined his life. And his father nodded.  “Ok.”

“So…” Rick shifted his paws on the shoreline, feeling humanly awkward. “See you in three days?”

Nodding, his father sighed. “Yeah. In the morning after the waning moon. I’ll come back to camp after the kill on the third night. We can leave the next morning. We can hike the canyon before we go. Have a bit of fun.”

Nodding his wolfy head, Rick chuckled. “Ok. See you then.”

His father immediately trotted off in the direction of a known Yellowstone wolf pack. There were several. Rick went in the opposite direction, hoping not to go too far. Fact was, he’d rather make a kill near the camp and then go back to the camp to sleep in the tent than stay out those three days. He cherished when he could be human. Being a wolf had caused him too much pain.

In the dwindling light, Rick sniffed and searched to find an animal to kill. So far, the rabbits seemed to have vanished. The groundhogs had dug into the earth for the night. That was the other bothersome thing about night hunts. Lots of animals simply went into their dens to sleep. He just didn’t want to run across the cantankerous ones that didn’t.

Sniffing, he caught whiff of a skunk, and veered away. For a second he caught sight of a squirrel, but it dashed quickly ahead and up a tree, out of reach. He saw a badger, but decided not to badger the badger—leaving it be. And he continued on.

The winds blew all sorts of scents toward him. He follow them so that he was downwind and undetected. Though he had started hunting like this at thirteen, and in wolf experience was a late bloomer, he was also a natural. A few of the werewolves he had encountered had said so with a degree of envy.

Rick didn’t like that. He didn’t like being envied. Envy led to animosity. And that, in his experience, let to severe pain. Somebody always got hurt because of envy.

He pounced on a jackrabbit he tracked—or tried to. It dashed to the right and he had to make chase. Jackrabbits were frightfully fast and exceptionally good at dodging. That one entangled through his own legs and tripped Rick up, getting away. Or… for a while did. Rick crept up on it again, downwind, and soon made the chase all over again. But he could smell bear in the direction the rabbit ran—so this time he gave it up.

Back to stalking and snuffling the ground and searching, Rick caught a vole. It was small, and it was still wriggling when he bit it in half to kill it. He didn’t like swallowing wriggling food. It made his skin shudder.

But then he caught scent of something really good. He did not know what it was, but he saw downwind from it. And though it made him feel slightly hungry, the further he tracked it, the more he found he was not hungry but excited. It was a sweet scent. A welcome and happy scent. It invoked memories and feelings of safety, love, and an overwhelming desire to be near it. Yet as he advanced further, wondering over what that thing he was smelling was, it finally clicked into his head.

Audry.

It was Audry Bruchenhaus he was smelling.

That was not a way to go.

Rick-the-Wolf backed away from that path, his mind going over all the other horrible things that could happen if he were near Audry on the full moon. He decided to head westward. But then, he picked up another scent and stiffened.

Cougar.

He knew the scent. He had detected it earlier near the canyon when they got out of the cars. It had scurried away from him and his father. Was this the same one?

Lowering his nose to the ground, Rick tracked it, following the cougar’s path. It wasn’t stalking him. A cougar would not really want to take on a singular wolf, despite having the better jaw bite or claws. It would seek smaller prey.

But out here?

It did not seem reasonable. Usually cougars stuck to rocky areas, like the canyon. This was open forest. Was it having trouble hunting too?

Rick was about to abandon this path when he picked up several other scents, the scents the cougar was tracking.

Human.

And one among them was Audry.

Rick added it up, and rushed along the path, following the cougar and their other people’s scents. Audry had to be camping with a group of people. He breathed in their smells and counted seven distinct odors. Two, besides Audry, smelled like women. Three were men, though one smelled a tad on the young side. There was an odor of acne medication on him. The last one had to be a child. It did not have a mature male or female scent at all, gender indiscernible as it was prepubescent—no real strong hormones to detect.

And though he picked up bear scents all around, it was clear this cougar was definitely tracking this hiking group—probably now a ‘camping’ group. It was too far away from any parking lots for a trip back. Rick hoped Audry had her tranquilizer gun with her. Bear spray would be no use on a cougar.

He rushed quietly on his paws, following to catch up. He hoped he could scare away the cougar. He just had to get there in time. Rick let out a wolf howl, warning it.

Yet his mind went into overdrive, realizing one wolf would not scare a cougar either. It would not understand that howl meant, ‘stay away from my human’. Rick-the-Wolf ran faster. His paws scurrying up the hill, he could sense he was getting closer. But the cougar was too far ahead. He could see it now, standing on the crest of the hill, crouching down as it watched its prey—probably assessing how to take out the littlest one. Rick dashed through the grasses to get there, panting. ‘The cougar slunk into the darkness, further out of sight.

In