PRINCE OF WOLVES By Susan Krinard

Shifting to ease a cramp in her legs, Joey gnawed her lower lip. “Then where do you suppose all these legends started—silver bullets and full moons and the like?”

“We don’t know all the answers.” Luke nodded toward the shelves of books that lined three of the walls. “Ever since I learned what I was, I began to collect books, magazines, anything that could tell me the things I needed to know. All I found were scraps, most so distorted that they had no bearing on our reality.”

“Such as,” Joey consulted the text in her lap, “a lust for human blood?”

Luke grimaced. “Humans fear what they don’t understand. That never changes. Though it’s possible,” he added reluctantly, “that some of our kind, our ancestors in Europe, went rogue and took the easiest prey.” His expression was grim. “Which makes us no worse than humankind.”

Joey swallowed, knowing that his “us” included herself. Not quite human—or more than human.

“As for full moons,” he continued, “it may be that we were simply more visible then. European peasants didn’t have the benefit of electricity. You’ve seen what the light of a full moon can do out here.”

Leaning an elbow on the armrest of the sofa, Joey dropped her chin in her hand. “It’s breathtaking, the way the moon and stars light up the night sky. Back home…” She blinked, suddenly confused. For a moment she struggled to regain her train of thought. Whatever she had been about to say drifted away like windblown snow. “I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said at last, smiling into his eyes. “Which is exactly what I would have done if I—if I had known.”

Luke rose to his feet, moving to the hearth to stare into the fire. “When I first learned what I was—just after my mother died—I was too isolated to understand all the changes.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Too many things happened too fast. I’d lost my mother, found Val Cache—and changed, all in the same brief span of time. I knew I had to keep what I was hidden from the other kids in school, even though there were several occasions when I was sorely tempted to change right in the middle of class and chase a few bullies around the room.”

Joey laughed, imagining just such a scene, and Luke’s smile was less strained as he looked at her. “About six months after my mother died, there was a series of old movies shown in the theater in East Fork. One of them was The Wolf Man.”

“The one with Lon Chaney, Jr ?” Joey asked.

“Yes. And of course I had to see it, thinking I might learn something. I badgered Allan for days to take me into East Fork.”

“Don’t tell me,” Joey said with a grin. “He kept saying no, and you never left him alone until you got your way.”

Luke arched a dark eyebrow. “I usually do.”

There was a sudden sinister quality to his voice that made Joey shake her head.

“Allan finally found the time to take me in for a matinee. I remember feeling stunned by what I saw on the screen. I didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense. Even then I knew enough to realize how much they’d twisted what we were.”

“You didn’t see it as a curse,” she said softly, as much statement as question.

“Being what I am?” Luke shook his head. “No. Even though it had killed my mother.” He turned away quickly so that she could not see his eyes. “Even when I didn’t understand it, it was a marvel to me. But after I saw the movie, I had a hunger to know more. To see the truth behind what I was. That evening when we returned to town, I tried to make myself become what I had seen.”

Joey started. “A real werewolf? The kind that… ?”

“Is neither man nor wolf, but something in between? Yes.” Shuddering visibly, he looked back at her again. “It was not pleasant.”

“Then you can’t take that form—the one that all the legends seem fixated on?”

“It might be possible,” he admitted, lifting his upper lip, “but I would never want to try it again. It was exceedingly painful. Unnatural. That was my first real lesson.”

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