Disclaimer: Guess what? They're not mine! And, what, you're shocked and surprised? She-Wolf of London belongs to Universal, alas. Thanks goes to Susan Smith for beta reading.
Dinner at the Matheson B&B was, as usual, an event that had to be experienced to be believed. Julian, upset because Randi had accidentally stepped on one of his Metallica tapes earlier that day, had started flicking peas at her with his fork, trying to make sure that neither she nor his relatives noticed. Then he got one in her hair.
Randi felt it hit, looked a little confused, and reached up to see what it was. She examined the pea with a frown, glancing at Julian, who was by now innocently eating his steak. After a moment of glaring at him she got back to her own steak, though by now she was a little wary and kept glancing at Julian covertly.
Ian turned to look at Randi. “Would you mind coming on a promotion trip with me next month? I don’t expect a large turnout and I may need you to gripe at afterwards.” He hated the nearly empty lectures. Even worse were the ones no one bothered to come to. However, he was worried she would refuse, since although it was a day trip, it was close to the full moon. Randi tended to be understandably anxious about traveling at those times.
Randi looked at him sympathetically. “Maybe you’re just trying the wrong crowds,” she suggested. Then she felt a slight tugging, as though something had gotten caught in her hair again. She fumbled through her hair and found another pea. This one squished in a green smudge against her fingers as she pulled it off and she rubbed at her hair a little to remove the rest of the pea. Julian was eating, looking as innocent as he could, and Randi glared at him. She couldn’t accuse him unless she caught him in the act, but it wasn’t very likely that Aunt Elsa was trying to start a food fight, after all.
Ian shook his head and Randi forced her attention back to him. “I’m trying every crowd I can think of,” he argued, “But the book just isn’t selling.” He groaned. “I should never have written that commercial trash; I should have stuck to stuffy, academic books the chairman would have approved of. I would have found a publisher somewhere.”
“If you ask me,” Ian’s father put in, “you should never have started teaching in the first place. Look at me; thirty years of work for the crown and now a nice steady pension.”
“Oh yes,” put in Aunt Elsa sarcastically, “look at us, living in the lap of luxury.”
“If you didn’t take all my money to buy new purses and such, you old hag, we’d be living like kings, we would.”
Randi was about to put in a comment when out of the corner of her eye she saw Julian’s hand move. “Aha!” she shouted, glaring at him, “Okay, that does it. You’re dead!”
“Julian, stop it,” demanded Mrs. Matheson.
Julian tried to hide a grin as he protested, “I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
“That’s what your father used to say,” Aunt Elsa declared knowingly.
“Not another word out of you!” Ian’s father growled at her, his attention completely off of Julian now.
Randi growled at Julian and strode over to his side of the table. “This isn’t funny. Do you have any idea how long it takes to wash hair this thick?” She felt through her hair for more peas and found two. “Next time I’m going to go through your room in high-heeled shoes and stomp on anything I find on the floor. That should be about half of what you own, considering your room.” No, that was too good for him. She grabbed his collar, barely restrained from lifting him bodily out of his seat. “Maybe I should just--”
“Randi,” Ian interrupted, tugging at her shoulder desperately, “don’t you have some research to do? Now?” Much as Julian annoyed him, he didn’t want to find the boy in pieces of varying size in the morning, and as tonight was the full moon, whatever threat she was about to make was not an empty one.
“Research on dismembering small boys?” Randi growled, ignoring Ian and tightening her grip on Julian’s collar.
“On, ah, lunar cycles?” Ian tried as he pulled harder on her sleeve.
“It can wait,” she replied with a feral smile.
“Randi!” Ian stressed as he struggled to haul her away from his nephew.
Suddenly remembering, Randi paused, her eyes widening as she released Julian, who still thought all of this was a joke. She managed to thank Ian’s mother for the food and hurry downstairs without convulsing, but it was taking all of her control.
Back at the table, Ian’s mother asked, “I wonder why they were in such a hurry to do research? They didn’t even finish their steaks.”
Julian grinned. “Hey, when you’ve got to have it, you’ve got to--”
“Julian!” Ian’s father ordered. “You’re too young to know about that sort of thing.”
Aunt Elsa smirked, about to offer her own opinion of the situation.
“And you’re too old!” Mr. Matheson fought for some sort of order.
“Eat me,” the parrot called softly, causing Julian to burst into laughter again.
When Ian and Randi closed the basement door behind them, she felt her control snap, and she nearly fell down the stairs. Ian had to hurry in order to keep her from hurting herself. “Ian, I’ll go with you, but -- Argh!-- is there any danger of getting caught out during the full moon?” she gasped out.
“It’s a day trip, it shouldn’t be a problem,” he responded as he slapped the handcuffs on her and backed away slightly. Granted, they had been stranded on day trips before, but that had been because the townspeople wouldn’t let them leave until the Huntsman killed them, and it was unlikely that anything like that would happen again.
“Fine, then.” She groaned and twisted, feeling her vision shift as her eyes changed, feeling her senses explode with new information. “Ian, promise me something?”
“What?” he asked, edging slightly closer.
“Promise me you’ll -- Rargh! -- strangle your stupid nephew.” Anything else she was going to say was lost as she began convulsing wildly and howling, fully in the painful throes of her transformation.
Ian slammed the cell door shut behind him and backed away further. “Oh, Randi,” he whispered sadly. “See you in the morning.” He watched Randi spasm, jerk and lunge against the chains that bound her. For a moment he paused. Part of him was moved with a mixture of pity and horror at what Randi was forced to endure month after month, the threat she posed if she ever managed to free herself during her curse. Another part of him, so small that he tried to pretend it didn’t exist at all, felt a brief thrill of power. This woman whom he mentally sparred with, worked on cases with, told his dreams to; this woman was utterly in his power and dependent on him, ironically at the very time she was strongest. Then he turned and hurried up the stairs, pretending to ignore the snarls and howls that followed him.
Randi kicked the tire in frustration, then turned and bent over Ian, who was peering under the hood of the car. “I can’t believe this!” she growled. “The one time we need your car to get us home by dark, and it breaks down. I should never have gone with you on this stupid book promotion trip.”
Ian withdrew his head from under the hood. “Calm down, Randi,” he assured her. “There has got to be a town with a mechanic within walking distance.” He moved to the back of the car, pushing aside the boxes of books that were the reason for their trip. Finding the map, he opened in, scanned it, and found where they were. Then he frowned. “Right then,” he decided, “we’ll walk. There’s a small town five miles down the road from here. We’ll be home by dark.”
“Great,” Randi sighed sarcastically, striding down the road so quickly that Ian had to hurry to catch up.
The mechanic came back with them in a tow truck and looked over the hulk of metal that had stranded them. “Your radiator’s shot,” he decided, “and you could use more than a tune-up on everything else. I’ll take it back to the shop. There’s an inn in town, you can sleep there. I’ll have it ready for you in the morning.”
Randi froze. “I don’t think you understand. We need to be home before dark.”
The mechanic shrugged. “Not my fault.”
Ian pulled out a checkbook. “All right,” he declared, “How much is the ransom?” What do we give you to make it worth your while?”
The mechanic shook his head. “I need the radiator, and I don’t have one in the shop. There’s a bigger town about fifteen miles down. The mechanic there, Bruce, he has one that’ll work on your car. That’s going to take half the day as it is, calling him and getting his boy to drive down with it.” Ian groaned and got in the cab of the tow-truck and squeezed Randi in beside him. It seemed the best option for the moment.
“We’ll just have to make the best of it,” he murmured to her as they rode into town.
“Make the best of it?” Randi hissed, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Ian, in about six hours I am going to become a bloodthirsty killer. I’m going to run across the countryside ripping small animals to shreds, and you’re likely to be one of them if you don’t find some shelter. Make the best of it? Are you kidding?”
“Randi,” Ian trailed off helplessly. “What choice do we have?” When the truck got back to town they got out and slammed the door, letting the mechanic start the engine to go to his shop. “All right. We’ll see you in the morning.”
At least there was a bed and breakfast in town. Ian left his case of books there while they scoped the area for somewhere to leave Randi for the night. The town was small but dense, and there were few buildings that were not in use. The one that might have been suitable was a barn on the outskirts of town. They found a general store that sold thick chains, though they didn’t have many in stock, and Ian and Randi looked over the barn to make sure it was suitable.
“Ian, this could work. Those beams up there would be good for hooking the chains over, and it’s far enough from the other buildings that the howling won’t be as bad.”
Then Ian took a closer look at the wood. “Randi, I don’t think this is the best idea. Take a look at this.” He showed her what he had noticed, and her face fell. The wood was old and dry rot had set in, though not drastically so. The building would hold up just fine under realistic stresses, but it was highly unlikely a werewolf would find it the slightest impediment.
Defeated, the two of them sat down for a moment to think. “At times like these, I wish I had a portable oubliette,” Ian commented darkly.
“What’s an oubliette?” Randi asked, trying to remember from his lectures if he had mentioned it before.
“A nice underground hole with walls that tilt inward. You can’t get out unless someone lets down a rope.”
Randi gave a derisive snort and replied sarcastically. “Yeah, I think we’ll find one of those around here pretty quick. I remember it on the tour.” Then she brightened. “Wait a minute! I think I could find one of those!” She jumped up and ran over to the general store again, coming back with some rope and a wide grin. “Let’s go, Ian,” she ordered cheerfully, setting off.
“Where are we going?” he asked, hurrying to catch her.
“To find an oubliette.”
The two of them quickly reached an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of town. “Randi,” Ian argued, “I’m sure that the wood in there is as rotten as that old barn.”
“Yeah, but wells don’t rot,” she replied triumphantly. “The store clerk said there was a well right -- there!”
Ian shook his head. “Randi, old wells are very dangerous. There could be broken boards down there from a rotted cover. If things rotted down there, you wouldn’t have enough air to breathe. For that matter, if the water’s too deep or too cold, you could get sick or drown.”
“So we’ll test it. Do you have a better idea?”
Ian was still not satisfied. “What if you climb out?”
“I don’t think I’m that coordinated when I change,” Randi responded. “Those walls are pretty slick.”
“I’m not leaving you here. You might still get out.”
“Wonderful. So if you’re wrong you waste a sleepless night while still paying for the hotel room where you stashed your stuff, and if you’re right, you’re the first one I kill. That’s a brilliant plan.”
His fear for Randi won out against his fear of heights. “What if I climb up one of these trees here? That should keep me out of harm’s way, but I’ll still be here if something goes wrong.”
“Ian, what do you expect to do? You don’t have any silver bullets handy, do you? Are you going to jump out of the tree and slap manacles on my hands? Where would you get the manacles anyway?”
Ian shrugged. “Randi, what if you fall when you’re climbing down the well? What if it collapses in the night, when you’re down there pounding on the walls? I want to be here to make sure nothing happens to you.” It defied reason, but he still wanted to protect her the best way he knew how, whether it did any good or not. He was not leaving her alone out here.
Randi gave a resigned sigh. “I’m going to have to leave my clothes with you; I don’t want to head back into town tomorrow naked.” She looked around. “Our best bet is to put my clothes in the food hamper and somehow prop it up in the tree you choose.”
After a few minutes they decided on a huge oak tree with enough knotholes at the bottom that even Ian could climb it with a little work and practice. They sat down to eat a meal, seeing as they had missed lunch and wouldn’t have much of an opportunity for dinner. They ate in silence, tense and worried. Ian didn’t have much appetite, and picked at his food absently. Randi ate ravenously; though she was as tense as he, she always had a voracious appetite right before her transformation.
Randi tried as hard as she could not to think about what might happen, but images kept popping into her mind, images that only tightened the knot of fear in her stomach. What if she got out? It was unlikely, but what if it happened? Waking up and finding Ian’s blood in her mouth. Coming across a young couple who had just gone out for a romantic moonlight stroll ... She shook her head, trying to wipe the images from her thoughts. Finally, she decided she had lost her appetite as well and stood up. “I’m going to get down into the well, then you should go climb the tree.” She packed up the hamper, then looked in it, estimating how much space was left.
Slowly, self-consciously, she began stripping off her clothes, folding them neatly and placing them in the hamper. Trying hard to be a gentleman, Ian looked away as she did so, pretending to tie his shoes. When Randi was done, she cleared her throat to get Ian’s attention. Her face was red with embarrassment, but otherwise she tried to give the impression of handling the situation well. “I’m going to secure the basket up there. I don’t think you can climb and carry something.” She hooked the basket on her arm and began maneuvering up the tree, finally hooking the basket over a limb when she found enough branches in a cluster that she thought Ian could spend the night there without falling. When she returned to the ground, she handed Ian one end of the rope and tossed the other down the well. There was nothing close enough to secure the rope with, so Randi showed Ian how to brace himself and hold it.
Once he was secured, she walked a few feet away to the well and began slowly climbing into it backwards, pressing against the walls to control her movement as she eased herself down. Ian watched her worriedly, looking for the slightest sign that she was in trouble. Then she suddenly disappeared out of view with a scream, and there was a tremendous sound of splashing and shouting. “Randi? Randi!”
“God damn it,” she cursed, “I slipped. I hurt my ankle, but I don’t think it’s broken.” There was a long pause. “Oh God, what died down here? Ian, be very glad that you’re the one up in the fresh air.”
“Are you all right?” he called.
“Just freezing, the water here is cold and nasty. The air too, but it’s breathable. At least I won’t notice it once the moon rises. How about you?”
“Just fine,” he lied.
“Okay, go secure yourself,” she ordered. Her throat caught for a moment, and she whispered after him, “Be safe...” Through the small opening at the top, she saw his face vanish, and heard him clamber awkwardly up the tree.
Ian shifted from side to side, trying to find a position that wouldn’t either crush his ribs or bugger him. Now that he was stuck up in the tree, there were a dozen things he wanted to do. He wanted to stretch his legs, take a leak, anything other than be in this tree. He was annoyingly aware of a very small, very sharp rock in the toe of his left shoe. But though the sun still hung low on the horizon, Ian didn’t climb down for any reason. Going up the tree had been difficult enough in full daylight. He squirmed around again, trying to find a comfortable position. This was going to be a long, uncomfortable, sleepless night.
He could hear her splashing below. “Randi, you’re not in over your head, are you?” he asked worriedly.
“I’m just trying to find a comfortable position to sit, my ankle’s really bothering me. I’m freezing.” Before he could voice his concerns, she sensed them and added, “No, not really freezing, just cold. I wish I had something to wear, or at least that I wasn’t soaking wet.” Though her tone was light, Randi could not begin to express how frightened she was. This was the first time she had been outside and unchained under the full moon, knowing exactly how much of a danger she was to everyone. Though she had sometimes escaped her chains and fled outside, she had never yet hurt anyone, and at those times she hadn’t known in advance that she would be loose.
Now here she was bobbing up and down in the water and picturing tomorrow’s headlines, pictures of mangled bodies found in the forest: a child out catching fireflies, some poor trapper, perhaps even Ian himself. Ian never was much of an outdoorsman, though he was generally able to take care of himself. If he couldn’t manage to keep himself in that tree without falling asleep... Randi remembered only too well what had happened the first time her curse had come. Then she had chased him through the university halls like a hound flushing out a rabbit, and felt sick as she remembered the relish with which she had run her prey to ground.
Although it was unlikely she would escape, since she was pretty sure she couldn’t climb the slick walls of the well without Ian to help with a rope, she was still very worried. The idea of coming across innocents after her transformation terrified her. She similarly prayed that none would cross the path before the sun set. It was rather embarrassing to be stark naked in a well, and she could imagine some local man coming by and hearing the ruckus, peering in to see if she was all right. However, it would have been harder to move around in the water in jeans and a shirt, and she would still have been cold. Besides, even if she was wearing clothes, they would rip and split the moment she transformed, and she would have been humiliated to appear in the morning at the mechanic’s wearing only the jacket she knew Ian would gallantly offer.
As the light at the top of the well faded and the chill grew more piercing, Randi felt the change overcome her. She writhed in pain, her claws ripping deep into the stone of the well, striking sparks. As her back twisted and her fur and fangs appeared, she bellowed dark rage to the sky and in a last trace of sanity, she prayed that Ian was safe where he was.
All through the night, Ian sat awake, his muscles in agony from the tension roiling through him every time he heard the furious roars as the wolf attempted again and again to scale the slick walls. Several times his heart raced into his mouth as he saw a white flash of claws when Randi made it within a foot of her goal, only to fall back when she could find no purchase in the smooth brick that made up the top two feet of the well.
His watch told him it was only a little past midnight now, though his mind insisted that he had been sitting in this tree for eons, or at least centuries. He was ready to scream from the tension and the noise, and lack of sleep wasn’t doing much for his temper either. He felt a mixture of hysteric fear, helpless rage and stress overload. Staying awake was not the problem. The difficulty lay in not losing his mind. Gritting his teeth and shifting uncomfortably in his perch, thinking for the thousandth time that he really had to go to the bathroom or he was going to explode, he began to recite alphabetically the names of all the sacrificed fertility gods he could remember. Then he started reciting as much of Caesar’s Gaelic Wars as he could recall under the circumstances, remembering the interminable waits in Latin class as a boy while glancing at the clock and mentally begging the bell to ring and release him from the clutches of Professor Langley, his cold and remorseless Latin teacher. He had to stop this when he realized that his tired brain was putting together sentences like “Caesar divided Vercingetorix into four parts and rode his chariots over the hooking poles on the mast of the ship.”
He had to find something, anything, to drown out that damnable racket below him, anything to keep a hold on his sanity until morning could release both himself and Randi from the tortures of this night. He began singing old bawdy tunes he hadn’t thought of since his college days, skipping whole verses in his distraction and sometimes making do with lines like: “and she (something something) the Scotsman’s kilt-lifting show--” He was willing to wager Aunt Elsa could have remembered the words to each and every one of those songs, if she were here.
The howls grew louder below him, and Ian raised his voice as loud as he could, though he could feel it cracking from exhaustion. “I’ve played the wild rover for many a year--!” He wanted so badly to be anywhere else but here, and he looked at his watch again. It was only 12:56. At least they were far enough from town that neither the wolf’s howling or his singing should be audible there. Gritting his teeth yet again against both cold and tension, Ian tried to remember the third verse of “Wild Rover”.
As dawn approached, he saw the claws flash near the top of the well again, and waited for the usual howl of thwarted rage as Randi slipped down again into the foul water with a splash. Instead he heard a scraping sound like fingernails on a blackboard as the werewolf’s claws scored deep enough into the brick to find purchase. Slowly, terribly, the creature rose from its dank prison as massive, dripping limbs and head followed by vicious torso hauled themselves out of confinement and howled victory to the gray sky. Ian swallowed hard and forced his weary, aching limbs to get a tighter grip on the tree.
The werewolf stalked around the well for a minute, snout raised to catch scents in the wind. Then she circled the oak for a moment with a low rumble in her throat. Suddenly, she attacked the tree, shaking it roughly in an attempt to knock Ian to the ground. Though Ian clung as well as he could, the slow swaying of the tree was unnerving, and he was tired. His hands began to shake, both from understandable terror and from pure exhaustion. As the werewolf below howled and shook the tree, Ian froze. She was now attempting to climb the tree and come after him. He had to get up higher, or she would reach him and kill him before sunrise.
Ian grabbed the picnic basket, yanking it from the limb that had supported it. If Randi got too close he could throw it at her, maybe blind her enough to make her fall from the tree, buy him a few precious minutes of time. He squirmed around and strained to grab hold of the limbs above him. His shoes suddenly slipped, and Ian’s heart stopped beating as he snatched at a branch to stop his fall. His shoes were not the best for climbing and the soles had no traction, but he forced himself not to think about it as he pulled himself up, hand over hand. The bark was rough against his hands, scraping skin as he heedlessly scrambled for higher ground. Then, as he was nearing the top, one of the branches he stepped onto snapped. For a second, the branch above him miraculously suspended him. Then a crack as he fell. Twigs whipped his face as he fell, his stomach in his mouth. Then he bashed headlong into a branch, gasping for breath against the pain as he hurtled to the forest floor. There was a loud snapping sound as he landed and a sharp pain in his arm. Ian forced himself to start moving. He heard the beast leap to the ground and easily cross the distance between them. He grabbed the picnic basket from his injured arm with his whole one and whacked the werewolf across the face as hard as he could with it, praying she would understand when she was herself again. Instead it was wrenched from his hand by a casual swipe of a claw.
Ian had no time to scream before the claws viciously ripped into his chest and side, tearing both cloth and flesh. He tried to struggle, to get away, but the beast had pinned him to the ground and the pain was overwhelming. He heard a yell as a shot rang out and the beast above him roared in pain and rage. Then he fell into blessed unconsciousness.
Randi awoke when the sun hit her eyes, and she sat up slowly, trying to remember where she was. She winced as she felt a sharp pain in her side. A bruise and a little dried blood. There should have been a bullet hole through her side. There was only a scratch, it had grazed her. She could remember the pain, explosion, running. Fragments. A werewolf could only be killed by someone who loved them, Ian had told her. She shouldn’t be out here. Where was the well? There should be freezing, foul water and a rope hanging down, ready to pull her up. Ian, where was Ian? She looked at her hands and froze in cold fear. Under her torn and broken nails were dried clots of blood and skin, and she could taste blood in her mouth. She couldn’t tell if it was human or animal, and she really did not want to know the truth.
Randi could hear voices not too far away. Ignoring the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, she hurried in the direction of the voices, praying Ian was with them and alive. She didn’t even think about the fact that she was naked until she burst through the bush and saw eight men in police and medic uniforms. The ambulance was loading Ian’s body into the back. As they all stared at her, Randi realized with a jolt of sickened embarrassment what she must look like to them. She walked over to Ian. Not daring to breathe. Ignoring the men who hurried over her, babbling concern.
The sight that greeted Randi was one she had prayed she would never see outside of her nightmares. Ian lay bloody on the sheet, his chest and legs slashed to ribbons and bleeding through the white covering, his face covered with gore. He did not move. Fighting back the waves of nausea she felt, Randi stumbled forward, crying hot tears of relief and shame when the medic pulled her back and told her it was all right; he was alive. The medics loaded her in the back of the ambulance with him, checking her pupils and her unscarred -- though bloodstained -- body. One of the medics gave her a crisis blanket to cover herself and reduce the risk of shock. The other was busy attending to Ian’s injuries and keeping him alive.
The one attending her began asking her questions about what had happened, trying both to establish the situation and make sure she was not going into shock. Randi could not stop crying, she kept breaking down at each new question, trying her best to lie, though each false answer stabbed her with guilt. Even as she talked she pulled at her broken fingernails, trying to peel them off and remove the taint of blood from her hands. She felt like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing her hands ineffectually against a stain that would never, could never, come clean and be absolved.
At the hospital the police wanted to hear her story again and match it up with that of the hunter who had found Ian and shot the wild dog attacking him. They asked her for the telephone number of Ian’s relatives, and it took Randi several minutes to remember it, her mind was still reeling from shock. They decided that she was fine except for an understandable case of post-traumatic stress, and gave her a set of sterile scrubs to wear. Now she was focusing all her thoughts on praying that Ian would make it through surgery. She was not yet ready to think about whether it might be more merciful to kill him now, if there was a possibility she had made him a werewolf.
Finally Dr. Parkinson came out of the emergency room to talk to her. “Ms. Wallace, we’ve managed to stabilize your friend, but he’s in very bad shape. He’s lost a lot of blood, and his injuries are extensive. You can go in and see him now, but he’s unconscious and won’t know you’re there.”
Randi nodded, tight-lipped, and followed the doctor into the recovery room. Ian was lying on the bed, pale as the sheets tucked around his wiry form, and suddenly looked very frail. She swallowed hard, trying to get a hold of herself. She hadn’t been prepared, even after she had seen him in the woods, for how drastically his injuries had changed him. One arm was in traction, and two separate IV’s were dripping into his good arm, one filled with blood, the other with clear fluid. A breathing tube was curled around his face and plugged into his nose, and the steady, slow beep of the machine next to the bed signaled that his heart was still working. Randi fought to keep herself under control, stepping past the doctor and fumbling gently for Ian’s hand. “Ian, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
She felt unclean. She didn’t want to think about the very real question of whether she had made Ian into a werewolf. Every time she even tried to think about it she felt nauseous. She just couldn’t handle it. She bent and kissed his hand, hot tears spilling onto their twined fingers, though he gave no response. The doctor’s hand was gentle but firm on her shoulder, as he urged her to let Ian rest. Reluctantly, Randi followed him.
Eventually, Randi fell asleep in the hard plastic chair next to the bed despite her best intentions to stand vigil until he woke. She was roused by a hand gently shaking her shoulder. It was Ian’s father, who looked at her worriedly. “We just came in,” he explained, nodding to the two women and the teenage boy who hovered worriedly over Ian’s bed, “The doctor’s told us what happened. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Randi answered. “I’m just afraid for Ian. He hasn’t woken up yet.”
Mr. Matheson nodded. “What needs to be done? I can’t just sit around here and worry.”
Randi thought for a moment, realizing that she too needed to get away from the hospital before she willed herself into a heart attack. “All the papers and such are signed and dealt with; I’ve been here for hours. But the car and all our belongings are still in that little town we passed through. You and I could go pick it up and bring it here. That’s one less thing to worry about.”
The ride was uneventful, but Randi kept wondering how Ian’s father could sit next to her, confiding his worries about his son to her, and not guess that her mind was screaming. She had torn Ian to pieces, possibly turned him into a cursed monster like herself. How could his father not see her guilt?
The two of them returned shortly, and Mr. Matheson urged Randi to eat something in the hospital cafeteria. After reluctantly picking at a disgusting portion of Jell-O, she returned to the room and pulled in another chair, sitting with Ian’s family. But after a few minutes she got up restlessly and paced down the corridor, finding an unused cot next to a wall and lying down to think.
Ian was slashed to ribbons, but had she bitten him? Or just clawed him? She had to remember. If she had just clawed him, then he wasn’t a werewolf. If she had bitten him as well, they both had serious problems. She had to remember exactly what had happened. Was the blood she had tasted in her mouth that morning had been torn directly from Ian’s body? Or just smeared there by her claws? She had to think as hard as she could, especially since Ian wasn’t up to answering any questions at the moment.
Randi closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, using a technique for self-hypnosis that Ian had taught her a few months ago. Counting backwards in her head and mumbling to herself, she slipped deeper into a relaxed state. Then she turned her thoughts to the night of the full moon. She focused on the memory of running through the woods, finding the oak tree, climbing after her prey and knocking him to the ground. Then the memory of slashing at his body, watching his rich blood fountain--
Randi snapped out of her trance with a jolt. It was still too close to the full moon, the memory alone had nearly triggered her change. She sat up on the cot and cried with helpless fear, hugging her knees to her chest.
Ian awoke nearly a day later, still weak and dazed. Randi and the Mathesons leapt to their feet and crowded around the bed all at once until the doctor came in and forced them all to calm themselves and avoid upsetting the patient. “What happened?” Ian asked softly.
“You and Randi were attacked by a pack of wild dogs,” Mrs. Matheson put in, fretting over her son and touching him to reassure herself that he was alive, “Randi says you defended her against the lot of them until that hunter showed up and shot one. You saved her life, dear.”
Ian’s eyes slowly trailed over to Randi’s guilty face, lingering there for a moment before answering in a whisper. “Yes, I remember.”
It was several hours before the family had finished reassuring themselves that Ian was truly all right, and the doctor managed to coax the family to go out and get something to eat. Randi pulled a chair closer to Ian and touched his hand. “Do you remember what happened?”
Ian tried to laugh, the effort making him wince instead. “No. It was all rather tedious, and I’ve forgotten the whole thing,” he commented with the light sarcasm that always came when he was scared and didn’t want to admit it.
Randi frowned in frustration at his humor. “Do you remember if I bit you? Or just ripped you to pieces?”
Ian shook his head. “Randi, I was mercifully unconscious for most of it. I don’t remember.”
Randi shook her head. “We can’t take any chances. You’ll have to sever the bloodline as soon as you’re well enough to leave the hospital. We’ll do it somewhere where no one will find the body and--”
“Randi,” Ian protested weakly, “I am not going to kill you.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Randi argued stubbornly, “It’s the only sure way to cure yourself.”
“Randi, we don’t know if I’m a werewolf. And if I am one, we’ve been searching for a cure for months already. I don’t see why we can’t keep looking. We’ll manage.”
Randi shook her head. “How many close calls have we had when the only thing that saved us was the fact that you had a clear head while I was transforming? Do you think that if both of us started transforming at the same time, we would be able to clap ourselves in handcuffs and then put the key where it wouldn’t get kicked out of reach?” She stopped talking and squeezed her eyes shut against tears when she realized that the pain medication had made Ian fade out again.
The next day, Randi arrived at the hospital to find Ian in good spirits, smiling at a copy of the Times of London. “That’s the first time I ever saw the news make anyone smile,” she teased, sitting down on the bed beside him and pretending a cheerfulness she did not feel.
“Randi, it’s wonderful. There’s an article on the front page about the ‘wild dog attack’ I suffered. It’s boosted sales in my book!”
Randi forced a grin. “Isn’t that a little extreme for a promotion attempt?” She had other things on her mind. She needed to work what she had to say into the conversation before she lost her nerve.
Ian raised an eyebrow. “Well, it is what the fans expect, apparently.”
Randi gave him a kiss on the forehead. “Where’s the family?” She didn’t want anyone walking in on them just now.
“They came in early this morning, and left just now to grab breakfast. Do you want any?” As there was no tray in the room, it was subtly apparent to Randi that Ian would have preferred some distance from her to work out what to do.
Randi shook her head, trying to find the courage for what she had resolved after leaving the hospital the night before. She remembered the long walk up and down the streets, trying to find a shop that sold the items she wanted, the one thing she knew could ensure Ian’s uncursed recovery. But though her guilt and love and fear had driven her this far, it still took a long moment before she gathered her courage in her hands and went through with her plan. “I brought you something.” She pulled a gun out of her coat pocket. “I’m not expecting you to use it now. Just think about it, all right? The bullets are silver, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Then we can both be cured.” As she said it she felt something akin to peace come over her for the first time since the full moon. She was offering it out of love and worry for him. This was the only way she could absolve herself and show Ian how much his support had meant to her for all these months. Now it was her turn to help him; she understood it instinctively.
“Absolutely not,” Ian retorted. “Randi, I’m not going to play into this! First of all, I am quite sure I would know if I was a werewolf. Second, I am not letting you give up just because things are getting bad. Third, I am not going to kill you just to salve your guilty conscience. Now either stop this nonsense or go get some breakfast and leave me alone!”
“Ian, I didn’t feel any different either until I transformed the first time, and if I did feel anything, I wrote it off as post-traumatic shock. I don’t think you would know you were any different.”
“Randi, I would know. Your senses became much more enhanced around the time of the full moon, and you developed a craving for red meat. I don’t have either.”
“You’re full of painkillers right now. You can’t tell whether you feel different or not.”
Ian tried to reason it out. “Randi, when you saw Pitak and that werewolf in the asylum, you could sense what they were. Can you sense me that way?”
“I don’t know, I’m so tense I can’t tell. I tried to remember what happened to you, but I nearly triggered my transformation.” The memory still made her stomach tighten and her throat close with fear. “I don’t want to risk doing that again.”
He shook his head tiredly. “Randi, I need to rest. We can talk about this later.”
Randi backed out of the room, trying not to look at Ian. Ian waited until she was out of hearing range, then turned towards the wall. He still couldn’t believe Randi had bought a gun and silver bullets. How could she have so little faith in herself and in him after all this time? She had told him before that she would rather die than risk harming innocent people, but there was no way Ian was going to pull the trigger on his dearest friend.
Despite his words to her, he was scared, more scared than he had ever been in his life. No matter what case he and Randi were working on, he always tried to be rational, as though refusing to believe in the supernatural would mean it couldn’t hurt him, or change him like it had changed Randi. Jokes and logical thinking were his two best defenses, and he had always relied on them, especially since he had no supernatural strength to call on.
But now everything was spinning out of control, and he couldn’t make it stop or turn to anyone for help. No one would believe him except for Randi, and he couldn’t turn to her. He had asked her once how she could bear it, transforming every month, terrified of hurting someone. She had answered that without him, she wouldn’t be able to. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that he was a werewolf, but it had to be dealt with, one way or another. It had been feasible up until now to lock her up in the cellar, but Randi was right, it would be impossible to lock them both up while still allowing for escape in the morning. How on earth were they going to manage this if he transformed as well? Enlist help? Right. Neither Aunt Elsa nor Julian would ever let them hear the end of it if they asked, and they wouldn’t take it seriously enough to help. There was no way Ian would bring his mother or father into this.
He was pretty sure that if he broke down, Randi would take that gun and use it on herself. He had to be strong for both of them, and no matter what, he couldn’t admit that he even considered the possibility that he might be cursed. But more than anything right now he wanted someone to take his share of this burden from his shoulders, at least for a little while. He couldn’t carry the pain for both of them, not forever. But now, with Randi safely away where she could not see and blame herself, Ian felt the tears rise in his eyes and throat. He turned away and hid the hot liquid shame in his pillow. It took a long time before he was able to stop shaking, and even longer before exhaustion claimed him and forced him back into sleep.
Almost a week later, Ian was declared recovered enough to go home, so long as he promised to take it easy and not go tangling with any more wild dogs. Back at home, Ian humored his mother as she fretted over him constantly, getting him a pillow or yet another cup of tea, despite his protests that he had already had too much tea and would start shooting it out his ears if he was given any more.
Randi didn’t come near him, she just stood in the doorway and brooded over him whenever she wasn’t in classes. Finally, she spoke. “We need to talk about the full moon.”
“What about it?” asked Ian. “I’m fine. We’ll carry on as usual.”
“Ian, this is serious! We have to chain you up too!”
“I told you, I’m not a werewolf. You’re letting your guilty conscience run away with you.”
“I won’t accept that,” she retorted. “I know what it’s like to wake up from a transformation. I don’t want you waking up and discovering you’ve killed your parents. Or Aunt Elsa. Or even Julian. Well, maybe killing Julian wouldn’t be that bad,” she joked weakly.
“No, that might not be so bad,” Ian mused, trying to reassure her. “Fine, then we’ll chain each other up.” Anything to get her to stop bringing it up and worrying him more. “There is one problem, though. How will we get unlocked in the morning? It’s not as if we can stuff the keys into our pants pockets.”
“And we can’t ask anyone for help, especially not your family.” She thought things over. “The wall chains in the cell you lock me in are the only ones strong enough to restrain a werewolf, and there are enough for both of us. But I can’t reach the door lock with them on, and the chains are long enough that if you didn’t transform, I would be able to reach you and rip you to shreds.”
“Lovely thought.” Ian remarked dryly. He could see his dry wit was worrying Randi, but he couldn’t tell her how scared he felt. “Why don’t we chain ourselves up a little early, and I’ll hold onto the key. I’ve seen you transform, you give plenty of warning time. If I don’t start to change when you do, I’ll have time to unlock myself. If I do change, I’ll still have the time to put the key as near the door as possible.”
“What if, when you’re a werewolf, you kick the key out of the cell altogether?” Randi worried. “Besides, you’ve got one arm in a cast. Do you really think you can unlock yourself like that? I don’t even know if we can get the handcuffs over the cast!”
“Then Aunt Elsa is going to have proof positive that we are a very kinky couple, if she has to rescue us in the morning. And I’m more nimble than you give me credit for. If you want, we can do a few dry runs to make sure we can manage before then, if it will make you feel better.” The truth was that he was as frightened as Randi of the possibilities. He kept telling himself he was agreeing with her to keep her out of his hair and away from the silver bullets. In reality he could not ignore the very real threat he could pose to his family if he was wrong about himself.
For days they practiced in the evenings, snapping one cuff around Ian’s uninjured wrist and testing how fast he could move the cast around to the proper position and unlock the cuff. They were not going to harness the second arm, as there was no way they could get an iron clasp around the plaster cast. They didn’t mention the gun.
Ian missed quite a few of his classes during the first few days of his recovery, but was soon back to terrorizing students, including Randi, and his manner did not suggest in the slightest that anything had changed. It was an effective mask that fooled everyone but Randi, the one person he wanted most to fool.
One night she slipped into his room and sat on the side of his bed while he graded papers. “You should be asleep,” she accused gently.
Ian shrugged. “If I was, you would have woken me when you came in.”
“Ian, do you want to talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Ian replied, “In a few days things will be back to normal and I’ll be laughing at you for worrying so much.”
Randi shook her head. “Ian, I know what it’s like to be scared of what you are, and not know what’s going to happen to you. You’ve always been there for me. Why won’t you let me in when you need me?”
“I’m fine,” he protested. “Randi, why do you always have to overreact to everything?”
Randi touched his hand. “Ian, do you remember that other werewolf? Derek Westbury? When the two of us were locked up in the sanitarium and we talked, I felt like he understood me, like we both understood all that pain and fear you can’t describe to someone who hasn’t gone through it. Somehow that made me feel...” She paused, trying to find the words. “Not better, but like I wasn’t alone. I don’t want you to be alone either.”
Ian swallowed hard, feeling his control near the breaking point, trying to come up with a snappy response to keep her at bay and finding nothing. “Randi?” he murmured softly.
“Yes?”
“Could you just stay here?”
There were no more words passed between them that night. Nor did they spend the night in sexual exploration. It was enough to feel Randi’s arms around him, soft and comforting, knowing that she would never leave him, and that he could trust her to be as strong for him as he was for her. And Randi felt relief that, after all she had done to him, Ian had come to her when he needed comfort.
The month passed quickly, in a flurry of normality that confused and disoriented them both, in the sharp contrast with the dark worries that filled their minds. The night of the full moon, Randi and Ian went down to the cellar early with extra clothes and the key to the cell. Randi closed the cell door after them, hearing the lock click, then held out her wrists. Ian snapped the handcuffs on her with cold efficiency, but she could see that underneath it, he was scared. Then he moved to the opposite wall and closed his own cuff, carefully placing the key as far away as he could manage with one arm tied up and the other crooked at ninety degrees and wrapped in plaster.
Randi looked at him and took a deep breath to steady her voice. “In case this doesn’t work out the way we planned,” she murmured, “I just want you to know that I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you. I couldn’t have made it this far without you to help me, and I care about you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Ian nodded, trying to shut off the reality of the situation. “It will be fine, I promise you.”
They waited. They were both dressed in grungy clothes; they didn’t want to be naked in front of each other for the half hour they had to wait, but they didn’t want to ruin good clothes, either. At one point Randi tried to make a joking comment about one of Ian’s students, but it died before she could start a conversation. Neither of them was much in a mood to talk. Ian squirmed around uncomfortably, still a little stiff from his injuries, especially in the chill of the cellar. His arm itched under the cast. At least, he thought, if I turn into a werewolf, it’ll burst off and I’ll get to scratch all those stupid itches I’ve been having for the past month. Randi was twitchy by comparison, tapping fingers and feet in an effort to relieve the tension she felt. Ian found her behavior bordering on intolerable, but told himself firmly that she was trying to cope, just like him. But it didn’t improve his mood.
After about half an hour, Randi felt a slight cramping in her stomach that turned into a tensing wrench. Then another twist of her guts and a rush of adrenaline, fear and eagerness. She looked at Ian. “Anything?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, “I’m too tense to notice.”
The cramps were getting worse, Randi began slowly writhing against her chains and giving small growls and cries of pain. “Ian, if you still don’t feel anything, get out now while you still can.” Her breathing was short and tense, and the green cats-eyes she flashed at him were wide with fear.
Ian scrambled for the key, moving too fast. His cast was hard to maneuver quickly with any great accuracy, and he nearly knocked the key out of reach. Cursing under his breath, he forced himself to ignore the threat Randi’s cries implied. Ian forced himself to remain calm and carefully stretched his fingers out to grasp the key, ignoring the roars and howls behind him as the problem became more and more serious by the second. His finger touched the key and he managed to strain a little further, catching it and gently pulling it back to him, cursing every time it caught on the cement and needed to be coaxed. Finally he had a firm grasp of it and picked it up, rapidly unlocking his chain and springing for the door.
“Ian!” Randi howled. “Run...!”
Ian fumbled with the lock, trying to maneuver it from the inside, and screamed, collapsing in pain as Randi’s claws swiped his back. He forced himself to get up and push the door open, slamming it behind him in the nick of time and collapsing outside the cell. He leaned against the wall, watching Randi shake her fur and howl in frustration at her unreachable prey, lunging after him again and again, only held back by her chains at the last moment. Ian leaned against the wall and watched her, too overcome even to cry.
He sat there all night, though his back hurt badly where she had clawed him, and he would have liked to go upstairs and get some iodine out of the medicine cabinet for it. He couldn’t bring himself to move. It wasn’t just pity for Randi’s situation, nor relief for his own. It was a surge of all the fears he had kept bottled inside all month, the ones he had shared and the ones he had not even dared to think in private, rushing upward. Only now that the danger was over could he face them as they came up into his throat and choked him, then slowly faded, leaving exhaustion in their wake.
In the morning, Ian awoke to find Randi huddled up against the wall watching him with concern. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I cut you. I can smell the blood.”
Ian used the bars for support as he stood up and unlocked first the door, and then her chains. “I told you before that I would be fine. Now aren’t you glad I didn’t use that gun on you?”
“Things might be easier if you had,” Randi commented, sliding her arms around him for a reassuring hug, mindful of his injuries.
“Nonsense. As usual, we’ll manage, and keep on looking for your cure. This is just one less thing to worry about.”
Randi awkwardly broke off the hug and began dressing, embarrassed. “Come on, let’s get you back into bed.”
“Only with proper inducements,” Ian teased.
End.