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PART 8

A few minutes later, I'd managed to make myself presentable, though I didn't bother getting dressed. I sat at the table, staring at the overabundance of food, wondering how the two of us were going to be able to eat it all.

It was then that I learned something else about Robert: the man was a ravenous, bottomless pit. I managed two buckwheat pancakes, three strips of bacon, a couple of eggs, and some orange juice. Meanwhile, I watched in awe as he plowed through several plates before I'd even finished my first, and he showed no signs of slowing down.

"Would you hurt me if I told you that you shouldn't wolf your food?"

He paused, his forkful of scrambled eggs and salsa halfway to his mouth. "Probably."

"Then it's a good thing I didn't, huh?" The fork finished its journey, but I saw the hint of that feral grin before it did. "You must have one hell of a grocery bill."

"Only when I've been hurt; even small cuts and bruises take a lot of energy to heal. We garou are pretty tough, and can survive things that would kill other people, though being wounded still hurts. I'd bet our friends from last night are ready to chew off each others' legs about now."

I hesitated for a moment as he continued his meal. They'd still be alive, even after I'd crushed one wind-pipe and doled out several what-should-have-been-fatal stabbings. Huh. Not exactly conducive to my continued good health. "I take it I'm going to get another visit from the Kennel Club, then?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. Jericho's gonna be more than a little pissed off at losing an eye, especially since it was done by one of us, ahem, 'limp-wristed, fruity little faggots.' It may grow back, since I doubt your knife was silver, but wounding his pride is at least as bad."

"Uh...it's silver-plated. It was a gift from my dad."

He dropped his fork and just stared at me for a second. "Daaamn, son. No wonder they took off so fast. The virus in our bodies causes severe allergic reactions to solid silver. Even just touching it burns for days, and makes healing slow and very, very painful, if we can even heal at all."

"Serves them right," I said, and it took a moment for my brain to catch up with the conversation. "...Wait, 'fruity little faggot'? They attacked me last night because I'm gay? I take it this isn't the first time they've done this?"

"'Fraid so, and 'fraid not. They're the vandals that have been in the news for the last several months, and they're getting a lot worse. I've helped stop them a few times, though I did have pack-mates as backup. We got them a lot better this time than we usually do, but I'm pretty sure Jericho survived, and he's the one we need to watch out for."

So, a crazed homophobic militant right-winger werewolf and his cronies were out there gunning for my blood. Yay.

"You're more than a random target now, and I think you'll need those reflexes of yours if we're gonna keep you safe." He shoveled in another mouthful.

"'We'? You mean, you and your...what'd you call them? Your garou pack-mates?"

He nodded. "Short for 'loup-garou.'" He pronounced it loo-gah-roo. "You can guess the translation. It's French. Anyway, I was thinking of trying to request an honorary membership in the pack. That way Jericho and his flunkies would have to follow rules regarding violence on pack-members, and if they tried to hurt you anyway, they'd have to contend with every able-bodied pack-member on our side, since we'd be duty-bound to help protect you. But..."

"But what? I'm not going to have to kill a bear with my teeth or something, am I?"

"No, no. It's just that you'd have to be a relative, or...or my mate." Those piercing blue eyes were painfully poignant. "Officially." He didn't look particularly happy with himself. I had a good idea why.

"Why Mr. Whyte," I said coyly, "I do believe I've just been propositioned."

His expression was strained, and a little sad. "Not the most romantic way to say it, and I'm sorry for that, but yeah. They'll be able to tell if I've...ah...marked you as mine. It's dangerous, though."

"Dangerous? How so?"

"Lycanthropy -- the thing that turns humans into werewolves -- is a virus. A very nasty one, at that. It's only contagious if infected body fluids enter an uninfected person's blood somehow, usually through a bite or other open wound, or...well...through sex. Condoms work as well as they do with anything else, but there's still some risk involved. Well over half the people infected die during their first transformation; the strain on their bodies is just too much, and they...err...tear themselves apart. Literally. Even if you don't die, the pain is...really unpleasant."

Ouch. That didn't sound promising at all. "Shit. I might've gotten some blood in my mouth last night. I'm not sure; there was a lot of it spraying around."

"It wouldn't matter if you did, 'cuz some enzyme in uninfected spit -- as well as stomach acid -- kills it off pretty quick, so it's hard to get infected through your mouth or stomach. And we don't get sick, since the virus attacks bacteria and other viruses with a vengeance, so you don't have to worry about other kinds of infection, either. So there's that, at least."

I drummed my fingers on the table for a moment. "I need to be family or a mate? No other options?" He shook his head sadly. "Well, dating would be a bit awkward if I was your adopted cousin, it'd take weeks for all the paperwork, and I doubt it'd count anyway, so it's not really a viable alternative. Would this...mating...be a permanent arrangement?"

"As permanent as it needs to be."

"That's...vague."

"Even honorary membership is permanent, and can't be revoked for anything short of betraying the entire pack. It's s'posed to be a life-bond, not something that can be thrown away when you're done with it; the bonds don't always last, but granting the status of pack-member is an important mark of trust to give to outsiders, and because of that the pack needs to see -- and smell -- that we're close. I'm a trusted member in good standing, and so they'll mostly depend on my judgment in the matter, though some of the Council will need to talk to you personally."

I frowned, "Council? Just how many garou are there?"

"Here? About a hundred or so at last count, though there are more now. There are a lot more of us around than in a lot of places, given that it's a quiet town with a good college and plenty of forested woodland. It's not really a surprise that problems happen, since we do tend to be territorial, though Jericho goes well beyond the normal posturing and such. He's a right bastard, and it shows."

"Does your pack know -- or care -- that your mate will be a man?"

"They know I'm queer. It's hard to hide in the closet when everyone's nose knows who -- and what -- turns you on. I doubt it'll be a big deal for most of the guys on our side, 'cuz our faction has a pretty high concentration of, err, 'non-heterocentric sexual orientations,' as one of those GSA pamphlets puts it."

I cocked my head to the side. "Something tells me this Jericho creep has a lot to do with that."

"Yup. I'll have to fill in the details later, but he's basically split our pack down the middle, with most of the bigots and the less reputable members on his side of the fence, the gay-friendlies and law-abiders on ours. Yeah, our numbers have grown because we've taken in the people that've survived his attacks, but they're mostly civilians, and they're almost as scared of us as they are of the guys who attacked them. Meanwhile, his side has been 'recruiting,' and even those that aren't sociopaths or crack-heads definitely aren't shy.

"I don't even know how he's managed to keep them together so far; they're about as compatible as gasoline and dynamite, and one of the reasons the Council didn't have him exiled and killed straight off is because they didn't consider the group a credible threat. They snapped and snarled at each other when they were together before, so nobody really saw this coming."

My face slid into a frown as I thought about some of the implications. "These guys aren't exactly keeping a low-profile. Why hasn't any of this gotten into the news? For that matter, why aren't you guys public knowledge? I know about the 'curse of the werewolf' crap we're fed through pop-culture, but if people knew it was just a virus..."

"No." He shook his head, eyes closed, his expression downcast. "Even people with normal illnesses like HIV can't fit into society without serious discrimination. Lycanthropy's too deadly and too freakish. We had a sister-pack in a small town out in Montana that was outed a few years ago; they were literally burned at the stake. It was a hell of a job keeping that out of the news, or so I'm told, and it wasn't an isolated incident. Religious nut-jobs, mostly, but there are enough of those that it's a definite problem. For some people, 'Love thy neighbor' only applies if they're not too different, the hypocrites. Not to mention the rumors of government 'super soldier' experiments. And considering how hard we are to kill, that's actually pretty damned credible, even if it sounds like conspiracy theory.

"We tend to keep our heads down either way, and do our best to keep our existence out of the public eye. It never ends well. That's why the council has kept news of the maulings away from the papers and the news reporters. The best we can do is to protect ourselves while keeping a leash on Jericho and those like him. And we've been trying. But he was a dangerous SOB before he became garou, and he's worse now."

He sighed. "Horrible as it is for me to say, it's too bad you didn't kill him. It's a hell of a thing to kill another person, and I'd hate what you would've gone through, but it would've made things so much easier."

"As wonderful as that would've been," I retorted snidely, "I don't think I'm ready for that breakdown yet." My voice softened. "But seriously, this guy seems like a real psycho, and I'm not nearly as durable as you are. But as scared as I am, I can't use it to justify becoming your mate."

His expression didn't change, but I could read those eyes, and what was happening behind them. The rejection stung, and bad. "Oh. Okay. It wouldn't be right to force you into something you're not comfortable with, but it'll just be you and me and whoever else I can wrangle up.

"I'll try my best to protect you either way, son. I promise."

©Lycanthromancer

10/14/2010