Lone Wolf (Shifters' World 1) Read online

  Contents

  Lone Wolf

  Afters

  Lone Wolf

  Ruby Fielding

  A Shifters’ World story

  Published by James Grieve Press

  © Ruby Fielding 2013

  www.rubyfielding.com

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  Cover images © Kiselev Andrey Valerevich and Triff, with design by James Grieve

  This ebook is copyright material and no portion of it may be reproduced or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law.

  Lone Wolf

  She woke to birdsong, alone.

  Her body ached, her mouth was dry and tasted bad. At least she didn’t have that hungry knot twisting her belly any more. Food yesterday had been a welcome relief.

  She opened her eyes. Sun angled in through the trees and the gaps in the broken roof. The shadow of a supporting beam drew a black line across the broken concrete floor. This ruined building had once been a hunter’s lodge, she guessed, or maybe some kind of private forest retreat. Back when the world had been a different place.

  She sat, stretched, found her clothes in a pile nearby and stood to pull them on. A pair of loose-fitting jeans held up with a length of cord, a sweatshirt bearing the logo of some long-forgotten college. She found her stash of willow-bark and used a strip to rub her teeth clean. She would be nothing if she didn’t look after herself. If she gave up these last scraps of civilization she knew she would have lost.

  It was more than simply looking after herself: it was human dignity, her sense of who she was. You keep yourself clean, you don’t sleep in your clothes, you do all you can to retain the civilized person you once were.

  In a shard of broken mirror she looked at herself, the shadows under her eyes, her shaggy, uncut hair.

  This is me, she thought. It wasn’t a question of liking it or not.

  This is me.

  §

  There were signs of activity outside again.

  Nothing obvious. Just a sense that something had been here, and those big paw-prints in the dirt.

  She surveyed the tangle of undergrowth around the clearing that had once been this building’s front yard. Nothing. No beady eyes staring back.

  You couldn’t trust that, though. You couldn’t trust anything any more. Not even… your memory.

  Moments before... gazing into that shard from a broken mirror. She knew that fragment was a prized possession. She knew that this was a place where she felt relatively secure in a world that was no longer safe.

  But the face in that reflection... She did not know who she was, or who she had become.

  She did not know who she had been.

  Her heart raced, as she feared that finally her time had come. One of the viruses, one of the great plagues... was this the first sign that something was bringing her down? Were the sweat on her brow, the blanks in her memory and the racing of her heart signs of panic, or symptoms of something worse?

  She took a deep breath and held it until her heart slowed. She reminded herself that, sick or not, she must do what she could to survive. All she had were hope and her treasured few remnants of the civilized world.

  §

  Happy that there was no immediate danger, she gathered the empty water drum from just inside the ruined wall and set off on the rough trail that led through the undergrowth and down into the trees. She was lucky to have somewhere like this: a building with a door that closed and walls that were reasonably intact until just past the level of her head. It might not look much, but it was a castle to her.

  Before long, the track leveled, cutting across the sloping forest floor and then, ahead of her, there was a splash of sunlight where the trees thinned.

  She approached cautiously, a lesson well lodged in her head despite her failing memory. Clean water was a place where animals gathered, and therefore a place of danger.

  She came to a place where creepers hung down from the trees forming a natural screen, a vantage point she used every time she came here.

  She sensed threat before she saw anything. It was something in the air. Maybe sounds her ears had picked up but her brain was yet to process. A strange scent, perhaps.

  As her eyes adjusted to the bright light of the clearing she surveyed the forest fringe, looking to see if anything was lurking in the shadows. There was nothing, and then she looked at the pool itself and saw rings of spreading ripples followed by a sudden swelling of the water as a bulbous object emerged.

  A head. A man’s head, dark hair and beard plastered flat by the water. Pale shoulders, a dark smudge of hair to the chest as he bobbed up and then settled again, deeper in the water. He raised a hand to rub water from his eyes, then flicked his hair back, creating a fountain of glimmering droplets flying through the air.

  And then, as if water were his natural element, he dipped forward. His head submerged as his back appeared, a sinuous, flowing movement, and then his butt, legs, feet and he was gone once more, lost below the churning surface of the pool.

  Briefly transfixed by the sight of the man, which had lasted only a moment, she tore her eyes away and searched the forest perimeter again for signs of any others.

  Nothing.

  She waited, and then there was another swelling of water and the man’s head and shoulders bobbed up again, followed by the same eyes-swipe and head flick.

  She didn’t know what to do. If she slipped away, she would never know where he went, only that there was a stranger here in her forest. But what else? She could hardly approach him. That would be too dangerous. He was an unknown, a risk.

  She needed water, too, and the spring that fed this pool was the only safe source she knew.

  What to do?

  She watched him carefully, now picking up all those clues that must have been subliminal before. A grunt as he cleared his throat, an irregular splash of water as he moved, almost lost to the steady gurgle from the stream. A scent in the air, perhaps. When you live a life like this your senses become attuned to these things.

  §

  He had been lying back in the water, arms spread, eyes shut, drifting slowly until now he straightened, found his footing on the rocky bottom of the pool – she knew the slimy hardness of those rocks so well! – and stood.

  Swaying for balance, the water came up to his ribs now.

  His arms were long and lean, his frame wiry and muscular. He had the look of a fighter, a scrapper. A survivor.

  That smudge of dark hair thickened across his chest, down over his ribs and over his belly, she saw as he started to emerge from the water, treading carefully as he headed towards dry land... towards her.

  His belly rippled with muscles and looked hard, dark with that hair as it thickened towards...

  She swallowed as he paused, the water around his thighs and the long shaft of his manhood hanging down, fat and heavy. Its head just touched the water’s surface, sending its own ripples spreading outwards.

  She reached down, fingers trailing across her ribs, her belly, to the waistband of her jeans, that belt of cord and the hardness she had tucked there before venturing out.

  Easing it free, she raised the handgun, suddenly very aware of its weight. She didn’t aim it yet, just stood there with it poised. A solid lump of reassurance in her hands.

  The man st
retched, yawning, and she watched his manhood twitch, and then flop to one side as he took another step out of the water. Its length swung easily as he moved.

  “You got a silver bullet in that thing?”

  He was staring right at the screen of vegetation, as if he could see through it!

  She didn’t move. She wasn’t the only one whose senses were attuned to the environment, it seemed.

  “If so, you don’t want to be wasting that silver bullet on me,” the man went on.

  How long since she’d heard another voice? She didn’t know. Another memory lost, or buried deep

  “It’s an old wives’ tale anyhow.” The man’s tone was easy, conversational; no indication from his voice that she had a handgun that was now trained on him and he was standing their butt-naked in front of her. “Silver bullet or any old bullet – you hit one of the beasts right in the head or in the heart and it’ll drop just like a man. Useful piece of information that, and I’m giving it you as a gift, you hear me?”

  One more step, another, and he was clear of the water.

  She studied him, unable to deny the base feelings the sight stirred in her. How long had it been? Since the touch of another human, of bare skin against her own. The intimacy, and the trust.

  And damn, but he was growing hard as he stood there! As he’d been talking, that shaft had thickened even more as it filled out, hung longer, then started to push away from his body. Now, like an animal emerging from its lair, the swollen purple head started to break free, the skin rolling back to reveal that most intimate of places.

  Now, the man shrugged, and a shy smile broke across his face. “I think I need to apologize, ma’am. It’s been a time and I guess my body’s got a few less manners than the rest of me. If you’d just allow me to...?” He nodded towards a pile of clothes nearby.

  She caught herself. She had to pull herself together, stop reacting like this. She was a woman. She was a human. She was in control of herself and her responses. She wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted by...

  “No,” she snapped.

  How long since she’d spoken aloud? Her voice was dry, little more than a croak. “You wait there where I can see you,” she went on. “Ain’t no reason why I should trust you with your things.” Who knew what he might have concealed there with his clothes?

  He shrugged, and spread his hands briefly, as if to acknowledge the sense in her caution, and damn, but that thing of his just cranked itself up a notch or two higher as, finally, she broke free of her hiding place and came to stand before him.

  §

  Close to, he was younger than she had guessed. No gray to his hair, no craggy lines to his face. A few scars on his body, but that could happen any age.

  Now it was his turn for eyes to roam, and suddenly she was reminded of when she’d checked herself in that shard of mirror earlier on, remembering how exhausted she had looked and – fainter – a time when that kind of thing had mattered a whole lot more than it did now.

  “You can shoot me now, if that’s what you want to do,” he said, his tone still conversational. “But I suggest you don’t want to do anything that’s going to make so much noise. Never know what you might draw in, and that’s not meant to be a threat, although it sounded like one. Just common caution.”

  He moved his hands to cover himself, cupping his manhood but barely containing it.

  “You could just let me get my things and I’d beat my retreat. That’d be a sensible thing to do – no point killing off those of us who may just be ordinary good folk like yourself when some day you may come to realize just how rare a commodity we are. But then I’d be the first to acknowledge the inherent risk in that proposition, ma’am. Set me free and how do you know I’ll be as good as my word and won’t just hang around until I can take you off guard and do whatever it is I might be wanting to do?”

  As he shrugged, she couldn’t help but notice the movement of his hands, pulled by the raising of his shoulders, and the slight gasp that induced in him. Damn, but her guard was low today! She’d never have thought she would be drawn so much to the physical...

  She lowered her aim until it was pointing at his crotch. “Am I to take that as a sign of what you ‘might be wanting to do’?” she asked.

  “No ma’am. That’s just what a man’s body does when he puts himself naked before...” he stopped. “Hell,” he then started again. “That’s just a natural response, ma’am. Ain’t much I can do about it, I’m afraid.”

  “So what’s it to be?” she asked him. “Shoot you or set you free on the promise there’ll never be a hint of you round these parts again?”

  “You asking my advice? Hell, if I were you I’d take the third option, ma’am.”

  §

  The third option was that they talk. “It’s the one thing we’re really good at, and the beasts just ain’t,” the man had said, as he pulled his pants up and tied them secure around his waist. “And it’s a pretty rare opportunity these days, in my experience at least.”

  Now, they sat on a rocky ledge by where the spring emerged from a crack in the ground. Rock against their backs, it was a relatively safe vantage point with a good view of the pool.

  “So how long have you been in these parts?”

  She shrugged. All the days blurred into one, a repeated cycle of get through the day, get through the night, start all over again.

  “Anyone else about here?”

  Another shrug. “Not in a long time,” she said. “Apart from the wildlife.”

  A wry grin from him, at that. “I hadn’t seen much sign of wildlife about here,” he said. “So I guess I dropped my guard a little. Me, I’m just passing through. On my way from someplace worse in the hope that I’ll find me some place better.”

  “You got a destination in mind?”

  He shook his head. “Just not there,” he said softly, and left it at that for a time.

  Then, unprompted, he said, “I was in a camp for a time. Too many sick people for my liking, though. If you don’t go to a refugee camp with an illness, you’re sure to pick one up.”

  An illness. One of the plagues. The viruses.

  “You get ill?”

  His silence was answer enough, and she couldn’t help but feel herself shrinking away.

  All this time, she’d stayed clean, and now...

  “It’s okay,” he said, in response. “It was a time ago and I ain’t dangerous.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know. I seen it often enough at the camp. There’s sick and then there’s... that.”

  “The changing plagues?”

  He nodded, then said, “They say it isn’t a natural thing. They say it wasn’t always this way, but then who can remember much, our heads are so screwed up...”

  “How do you mean, ‘not natural’?”

  “The plagues. I got in with the medics at the camp. They remember some. They remember coming in from outside to help clean up and then things got worse and they were abandoned. They say outside is just as bad as here now, that there’s nowhere safe from the plagues and they’d been fools to ever think it all could be contained.”

  His words made sense of some of the jumble in her head. It seemed right that there had been a before and that there had been an outside. That humankind had clung onto the hope that these plagues they had unleashed on themselves in their petty little conflicts could be contained. That...

  “This is all there is now?”

  She didn’t know when it had changed but she realized that this stranger was in danger of becoming something else now. If he was the last man on Earth, then she could have done a lot worse.

  She pulled herself up. There was a reason why she sat a little apart from him, the handgun still cradled in her lap. While his story made sense, there was nothing in his words that should make her trust him.

  “How do I know you’re not one of them?” she said, twitching the gun to remind him of its existence.

  “Same as I know you�
��re not,” he said.

  “And how’s that?”

  “Animal instinct,” he said, with a sudden, brief smile.

  §

  “So?”

  They’d talked for what seemed like much of the day. About their world, about the things they knew about how to get by, about Outside and Before, and what little they could remember. “I think we’ve all been ill,” he had said. “All of us damaged to some degree or another, not just the beasts, the changers.”

  And now, he looked at her, an eyebrow raised, and waited for an answer to his question.

  One word. So?

  Where to from here? Join forces or go their separate ways, her to her ruined home and him to his journey to who knew where?

  She looked at him, and saw the gap there had been in her existence before today. She didn’t know if it was something about him, or just that he was here, convenient, reminding her of what had been missing.

  She reached for him, buried her fingers in that shaggy black hair, and pulled him towards her, pausing as their faces were almost pressing together. His eyes were blue, with dark flecks, bright islands in a face dark with beard and shaggy eyebrows.

  His mouth was hard, his lips dry, the taste bad like hers had been this morning. She kissed him hungrily, and their tastes merged until they were one.

  He twisted, tried to swing his legs round and then she pushed him back down onto the rocky floor, her knees catching the hard surface painfully as she kneeled astride him.

  One hand still in his hair, she ran the other one down over his chest, knuckles dragging through coarse body hair until her thumb found the hard stub of a nipple and started to flick at it with the nail, making his back arch and his pelvis thrust upwards, sharply, in response.

  She could feel him growing hard against her now and she ground down onto him, sending sharp bursts of pleasure shooting through her body.

  His arms around her pulled her hard against him, squashing her breasts against that hard chest, and then he was pulling at her top, tugging it free and over her head until her skin was against his, her hard nipples thrilling at the touch of his body.