The Bite
Calum Findley´s POV (This event is also described in An Inconvenient Wolf)
It had been months since I hacked my brother´s phone, receiving coded messages about drug deals as well as conversations between Samuel, and his girlfriend that made me blush. I had made it clear I wanted nothing to do with the family business, so no one told me anything, but I still needed to know enough to avoid getting caught up in a gang war.
Over the last week, messages had become more frantic. Samuel had ended up in a fight with Nemi Rivers of all people. She was good at running but otherwise unremarkable as far as I knew. Not very pretty, hardly any money, diligent in school, but not exceptional. Nevertheless, he and my father became obsessed with finding her and a mysterious man she had as company. This morning, I finally had enough when I received a message that Dad had captured this man and was going to interrogate him to find Nemi. I got on my bike to go and try to talk some sense into them.
When I turned off toward the gang’s hideout, I realized I was too late. It was a chaotic scene; two cars had crashed into each other, steam hissing from a broken radiator; Samuel held Nemi´s mother with a gun against her head while Owen pointed his gun at an unknown man and woman. Nemi was there too, looking absolutely terrified. My bike skidded to a halt, and I got off, throwing my helmet to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing here, Calum? This is none of your business!” Samuel screamed when he recognized me. Way to greet your brother. We´d never gone along, but now I looked into his eyes and realized he might be crazy enough to shoot me.
I held out my hands to show I was unarmed. “This has gone far enough, Samuel. You and our dad’s obsession will get us all killed.”
“We already have your father prisoner, and we don’t want any more people dead,” the man Owen threatened stated. “Calum is right, everyone needs to calm down.” This was far worse than I had thought. Who were these people? Who were already dead?
Samuel couldn´t have known about Dad. “You fuckers! I’ll get you all, starting with you,” he screamed as he threw Nemi´s mom away from him and turned the gun at the man. He´d lost it completely.
“Drop the guns!” a scream rang out, and even if I didn’t have a gun, I felt my hand twitch in a desire to obey. Owen did drop his with a clatter, and the woman leaped at him with uncanny speed until she collapsed, hit by a bullet. The man gave up an anguished scream and fell to his knees trying to help.
This was madness. What was going on? I turned to my brother, who held a smoking gun and was ranting something about a protection amulet and that he was going to kill Nemi.
“I told you it’s enough!” I shouted as I tackled Samuel to the ground, and we started to fight until a scream that barely sounded human rang out. “You bastard, you killed her!” I looked up and saw the horrifying sight of a man jumping at us, his clothes tearing and him turning into a beast with huge fangs in mid-air. He landed on top of us, smashing my head into the ground, and things went black.
When I became aware of my surroundings, I was already standing up, looking out over a scene of carnage. I think I had been talking, but couldn’t remember the words. Confused, I recognized Owen´s face staring up at me from the ground, but why wasn’t it attached to his body? That arm lying nearby; I recognized the tattoo on the back of its hand; it belonged to my brother. I must have fainted again.
Next time I woke up choking with water in my nose, but my head felt clearer. Nemi was kneeling beside me, rubbing a rag against my face. I remembered the beast. Had they said they were werewolves? I stared wildly around, but now everyone looked human.
“It’s alright, Calum. It’s just me,” Nemi said to calm me. Wait, didn’t she say she was a werewolf too? I couldn’t remember.
“I’m afraid Lawrence bit you, and that can’t be undone. You will turn into one of us,” a new, older man said.
“It’s not as if being a werewolf is a bad thing,” Nemi said as she continued to clean off the blood. My brother´s blood, I realized with a shudder. How could she say it wasn’t a bad thing? That man had butchered two people in seconds. My brother might not have been a nice person, but no one deserved to die like that.
“You will have to accept more discipline than you are used to, and you will have to learn to follow our laws.” Yet another man, this one sounding more hostile. What laws? Was this like a werewolf mafia?
“My father?” I croaked.
“He ran off, and we let him go,” the older man said. “You will never see him again. He´s only alive because he never saw what we are, and you must never let him know.” Should I believe him? I had always known my father could be killed at any time; it was part of the life he had chosen, and there was nothing I could do here except try to stay alive.
He continued, “The change is unfortunately an extremely painful process that’s far from certain you survive. Or we can give you a quick death. Those are the only options open by now. The good part is that if you do survive, you will live a longer, healthier life.”
“Was this what happened to you when you disappeared?” I looked at Nemi with trepidation. How was it like?
“No, my father must have been a werewolf. I was born like this. I just didn’t know until I had my first shift, so I can’t help you with how it feels to be turned. Sorry.” She looked at me with pity. That couldn’t be good news.
I didn’t want to die, that was the one thing I was certain of. Nemi had always been a nice girl; it couldn’t be all bad, could it? “It’s not as if I have much of a choice, do I?” I sighed. “What do I have to do?”
“Start by getting rid of those ruined clothes and get cleaned off,” the old man said. “We have spares, we always do.”
When I started to head off into the forest for privacy, the man who had sounded hostile before sneered. “We got us a shy one here.”
I suppose werewolves wouldn’t care much about nudity, and I had to learn their ways. I stopped when I got onto the nearest grass and started to undress, turning my back for at least a little modesty. When I got to my underwear, I cast a glance behind me and saw that only Nemi had turned her back; the others looked on, amused. Assholes! Fortunately, the blood hadn’t soaked through my pants, so the underwear was clean, and I could keep some dignity. A water bottle and a towel were thrown my way, and I started to clean off as best I could, using most of the water to rinse my hair.
At last, I was reasonably presentable and received a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants to put on, while my old clothes went into a bag with the towel.
“I know you can make it! Think how fun it’ll be to go running in the forest on four legs, outpacing even the fastest humans.” Nemi hugged me and tried to cheer me up before I was led into the back seat of an SUV behind two men.
“I’m Aaron, and the man beside me is Sven,” the driver introduced himself. “How are you feeling now?”
In all the confusion, I hadn’t gotten around to thinking about that, but now I started to note a pulsing pain in my left arm. I rolled up the sleeve and saw two small puncture wounds in the middle of a red, swollen area and a sickly deep blue color spreading along the veins. When I touched them, it felt hot and incredibly sore, but oddly enough, there was no bleeding.
“Is it supposed to look like this?” I wondered with a shaking voice, holding my arm forward for them to see.
Sven took hold of my arm, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed it. “No idea, I´ve never seen a turn, but it doesn’t smell bad, at least.”
“You’ll have to hold out until we reach our clinic that specializes in werewolves. It will be a twelve-hour ride, and expect to start getting a rising fever in the meantime,” Aaron stated. When he mentioned it, I did start to feel cold, as if a fever was coming on, added to soreness in my chest from having a wolf land on it.
With nothing else to do, the pulsing in my arm took up more and more of my focus. The discoloration seemed to spread. Then Aaron started to explain what would come later.
“The dead tissue in your body can’t change shape, so it will have to go. Over the next days, your hair, nail, and teeth will fall out. Later, new hair will grow out that looks the same but is able to fold into your skin as you shift. You’ll get new nails that can turn into claws and a perfect dental set that can turn into fangs.” He sounded so cold and clinical, but then it wasn’t his body that was falling apart.
I tried pulling at my hair and ended up with a few loose strands, but at least my nails still looked normal. Was my mouth starting to feel sore, or was I just imagining things? The pain in my arm made it hard to concentrate.
Soon, Aaron slowed down and turned into a drive-in Burger King where he ordered a mountain of burgers, fries, chicken nuggets and milkshakes. “Some of it is for us, but you need to eat as much as you can, while you can. You’re going to need the energy in the coming days,” he explained.
I didn’t feel hungry, but the first burgers went down easily anyway, and Sven kept nagging me to keep eating even when I felt full. After a break to step out and pee, the fever started to feel worse. I got to borrow Sven´s jacket to wrap around me as I sat shaking and miserable, the arm feeling worse all the time.
Gradually, I felt more and more dizzy and lost track of time. More fries were pushed into my mouth, and I mechanically chewed and swallowed.
Someone was shaking my shoulder. When did it get dark outside? We had stopped outside a well-illuminated building and I was lifted out of the car and into a wheelchair. The bright light inside made me close my eyes, and I felt hands starting to undress me and put me in a bed.
“107.9” A woman´s voice.
“Wrap him up more. We need to get him up to 110 before his energy runs out.” I felt myself being immobilized as blankets were wrapped tightly around my body, leaving only the face free, and I screamed when hands touched the wound in my arm.
I coughed, choking on something sharp stuck in my throat, my mouth full of blood. My head was turned sideways, and a rag was forced into my mouth, soaking up the blood. Pain! With a jerk, one of my teeth was pulled out. Then another. I wondered if I had made the right choice. Death would have been so much simpler.
