The Unclaimed A young man named Morgan, accidentally bitten by a member of a werewolf pack, is tracked down several months later and recruited. He goes through the next full moon change in the company of the pack, five otherwise ordinary Australians, but his “recruiter”, a psychiatrist named Arren Moffatt, has not told his Queen everything about the night he bit Morgan . . .Excerpt from an unpublished story
by Sue Isle
*** Morgan was asleep again, half an hour later, almost as soon as he lay down on the bed in his room. Arren closed the door quietly and went to Natalya’s study/library to report to her. The house was again peaceful; the others had gone, their blood eased for another month.
His Queen looked up from her leather recliner as he appeared in the open doorway. She also had bathed and changed clothes. Her gleaming dark hair fell in waves to her waist, as perfect as though a hairdresser had done it, but Arren knew that Natalya’s skills were professional in that respect. She did not look as though she had spent the night in an underground cavern but she didn’t look particularly happy either. The confined moons were never good ones but they had to maintain caution, particularly with a new cub, not yet properly Claimed by the pack.“I like the new look,” he said, nodding towards the dark hair.
“And you’re still a redhead. Where’s your sense of adventure, doctor? How is he?”
“I’ve earthed his memories,” Arren said. “He’s remembered most of it this time. I think he’ll have proper control soon and we can tell him the rest. He recalled a lot more this time, about his previous changes as well as this one.”
“So he’s clear?”
“No,” Arren said uncomfortably before the sudden sharpening of her stare. “Morgan has been careful, or lucky, most times, but there is someone who may have seen him more than once. An ex-client of mine, actually.”
“Small world,” Natalya said, unsmiling. “Do you believe this person witnessed Morgan’s attack?”
“Yes.”
“Who was running free that night, do you remember?”
Arren hesitated, licked dry lips. “I was.”
“And your client had come to see you that night, hadn’t he?” Her voice sliced skin. “Morgan has an excuse for not remembering. What’s yours?”
Arren did not answer. Natalya leaned forward, lips parting as though about to speak, and abruptly lashed out with one hand, that had grown talons in the moment of movement. They drew bloody stripes across Arren’s throat. He jerked but did not retreat out of range.
“Morgan is a good recruit,” he said at last when no second strike came. Natalya stared consideringly, calmly now.
“He had better be, Arren, or you die with him. Just to have the bleeding obvious out in the open, you did forget yourself and attack him, didn’t you?”
“All of you were with me,” Arren said steadily. “All of us together, riding my body that night, just as it might be yours another night, or the others. You felt the blood lust, you wanted to destroy prey as much as I did. It’s only luck that Morgan lived, it’s luck that all of us lived.”
“But you had the eyes, Arren. You didn’t make sure you were unobserved. That is the crime. Tell me, are you sure that is all you did?”
Arren took a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and slowly blotted the blood welling from the scratches on his throat. “So far as I know.”
Finally Natalya nodded. “All right, Arren. We tidy up. Why haven’t you mentioned this ex-client to me before?”
“This client is unlikely to go to the authorities. I know this from our therapy sessions - which were not by choice.”
“And this person mentioned seeing someone being jumped by his doctor?”
“No,” Arren said, definite now. “That’s why I wasn’t certain until tonight, when Morgan was able to give me the address where he’d woken on my client’s lawn, two months ago and say that she - he had seen him attacked.”
“Excuse me?” said Natalya.
“My client is a transsexual,” Arren informed her. “Female-to-male.”
Natalya laughed softly. “Oh, it’s too precious. A transsexual sees a werewolf created!”
“I wouldn’t have used precisely that word,” Arren muttered.
“Well, whatever word you would use, find this he/she and discover what it knows,” Natalya said, bored. “You said you know the address now, well, go and deal with it.”
“He, not it,” Arren said.
“He,” Natalya said with exaggerated patience.
“Morgan could probably help me,” Arren said. “Shall I take him along?”
Natalya considered. “I don’t know about that. If you have to terminate this individual, Morgan may balk. He’s still very new to us.”
Arren stared at her. “Natalya, I neglected to mention that this client is only seventeen years old and is extremely disturbed. Even if he did see a werewolf and retains a clear memory of the incident, I doubt anyone will pay any attention. Surely he’d have told someone by now if he was going to. If anyone could have dreamed it up out of moonshine, it’s this kid. Sh - he used to have a real thing about werewolves, had all these books on the subject.”
“Then get the information, bring it back to me and I’ll decide,” Natalya said, a slight snap in her voice indicating this was the end of the conversation.
Arren nodded, just managing not to bow, and left the study. Being a werewolf, part of a pack, made for a fascinating study in social dynamics and he was only sorry he’d never be able to publish a paper on the subject. It was still inconclusive, given the scarcity of subjects for study, just what made a werewolf an “alpha”, what gave them that extra strength. Look at him, he was a successful psychiatrist who made as much as Natalya did, yet in werewolf matters he was definitely second banana, he mused, making his way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. There’d be no waking Morgan for a couple of hours so he could afford the time. He hoped that the younger man’s presence would be reassuring, rather than a cause of alarm for Ash. There were really no good choices
*** Morgan felt still half asleep as he got out of the black Merc and walked up the path to the weatherboard cottage beside Arren. He wasn’t so sleepy that the place didn’t look familiar, but he was still struggling to remember why when someone answered Arren’s knock at the door. Morgan found himself staring straight at the boy who had given him clothes two months before. The boy who, he was now certain, had been walking behind him on the night he was attacked at the train station. The kid looked like hell; hair and clothes messy, eyes bloodshot as though he hadn’t slept. He plainly recognised Morgan from the clothes stealing encounter. He turned his stare on Arren. “What are you doing here, Dr Moffatt?” he said.“Hello, Ash. Your dad thought I should see how you were,” Arren said easily. “Can we come in?”
“If Dad said that, why’s he with you?” Ash nodded at Morgan.
“It’s not a consultation, just a friendly visit,” Arren answered. “This is Morgan.”
Morgan was not sure whether to mention the previous meeting or not; was he supposed to pretend to be another patient of Arren’s? Ash was right, no shrink was going to haul somebody else along on a consultation. He decided Arren was making this up as he went along. Ash didn’t say anything, just kept looking at Arren.
“All right,” Arren said. “I haven’t spoken to your father, not this time. But I do need to talk to you concerning something you may have seen. It involves another client I’m trying to locate, someone who may be in serious trouble.”
“I’m not your client any more,” Ash said. “And I know you’ve been asking people about me. I don’t like that.”
“Not asking about you, trying to find you so I can ask you about this event,” Arren said. “Check back with your friends; you’ll find out I haven’t been saying anything personal.”
Ash looked briefly at Morgan, back at the psychiatrist. He did not move out of the doorway. At such close quarters, there was something a bit off about the kid, Morgan thought, but then if he was Arren’s patient - sorry, client, sorry, ex-client, that was probably to be expected. He shifted off a few feet, pretended to be interested in the neighbouring fence and a cat that sat up there, staring back at him. Arren was saying something about a night train and a mugging. Ash’s voice was flat; suspicious rather than disinterested, Morgan realised. Yeah, he thought he’d caught a train home that night after his appointment, so? No, he hadn’t stood around and watched somebody get mugged. Morgan grinned; Ash reminded him of the headspace he’d been in only a few years ago. Then he thought of the headspace he was in now and stopped grinning.
“Would you let me find out if you remember more than you think?” Arren asked.
“You mean hypnotise me? You think I’m lying?”
“No. I think you could have forgotten. People do.”
“So? You’re not a cop or a detective or whatever,” Ash said indignantly. “What’s the big deal anyway? Nobody got murdered, the guy just ran off . . .”
“So you did see something?”
Ash sighed, put upon. “Look, one guy walks into the tunnel, another guy there tries to jump him, steal his wallet, whatever, but the victim’s too strong, he fights back and gets away on to the platform. There are too many lights, the mugger doesn’t know who else is around, he decides to beat it. Dr Moffatt, you get that most Saturday nights around here.”
“I guess so. I’m sorry if I seemed pushy.”
“Seemed!” Ash stepped back and began to close the door.
“Ash, please. Can I come in and talk to you properly? I won’t try and hypnotise you; you know it’s not like the movies, I can’t just look into your eyes and you’re asleep. This is really important to me.”
“Get lost. I didn’t sleep last night and you’re not going to hear any more than what I just said,” Ash said and shut the door.
Arren looked at it, sighed and turned away. “He’s still standing there,” he murmured to Morgan.
“Yeah, but how are you going to get him to talk to you now?”
“I don’t have to. I know he was lying.”
“Yeah? It sounded like he was telling the truth just now?”
“You’re not used to your sharper senses yet,” Arren told him. “I could smell the difference in Ash’s sweat - he was lying all right. Even without the change in body odour, professionally I know all the signs and they were there. It would have been useful if Ash had allowed us inside and for me to hypnotise him properly, but not essential. He didn’t just see “a guy”, he saw something a bit more out of the ordinary than that.”
“What could he have seen, precisely?”
“A Changed human,” Arren said. “You have never seen yourself, not and retained conscious memory of it, though you remember in your dreams.”
“Oh, do I now?”
“The lycanthrope can be whatever they wish,” the psychiatrist went on, unshaken. “Between the beast and the human, the impossible thing, the Jekyll and the killer. Ash is also in a state of flux, between what he is and what he will be. He has an interest in werewolves, in changing, in the nature of the change, and he may well integrate the two, in time, into his conscious mind. He is someone who may be a threat.”
“What?” said Morgan.
“Walk a little further away. I am about to violate client confidentiality.”
“Well, don’t,” Morgan said, annoyed. “I don’t want to hear that kid’s secrets.”
“Ash is a secret,” Arren continued as though Morgan had not spoken. “He is a transsexual.”
“He wants to be a girl?” Morgan shook his head. He’d known a guy at university who’d done that and nobody had figured it; the guy had seemed to be perfectly normal. Moody, depressed at times, but who wasn’t at university? He’d come in as Lawrence and gone out with an engineering degree as Cecelia. Ash was a good-looking kid who seemed to have his head screwed on as well as a teenager ever did. Morgan was close enough to that age to be sympathetic.
“Ash is a girl,” Arren said, startling Morgan anew just when he thought he’d got the information processed. “Physically, at any rate. He’s begun psychiatric treatment at the Gender Dysphoria Clinic, but is still under eighteen so physical treatment - drugs and so on - cannot begin yet. Not officially. I know Ash has got hold of some testosterone on the black market.”
“Shit. I didn’t think it happened that way.”
“It’s less common or talked about, partly because the practical problems of surgery haven’t been solved nearly as well as with male-to-female sex changes.”
“I don’t think I want to know. Arren, why are we hassling this kid? Why’s she - he dangerous, for god’s sake? Even if he did see something big and hairy and impossible, nobody’s going to believe him, not with these other mental hang-ups he’s got.”
“That’s by the by, anyway,” Arren said, walking slowly down the path so that Morgan had no choice but to follow if he wanted to keep talking. “Perhaps Ash didn’t see anything crucial but I have to know and I’ve been ordered to find out. Don’t be so anxious. This is only day-to-day business for a werewolf pack.” He smiled but Morgan didn’t. “I’ll take care of this and you won’t be involved. Now, I have to go to work now. Remember to be back at Natalya’s house by nightfall or meet me at my offices at five o’clock.”
“How long do I have to stay at Natalya’s place?”
“Until we know you’re under control.”
Morgan shrugged, granting this point. It was exasperating to be treated like a non-housebroken pet, but he had to admit, the circumstances under which he’d met them didn’t indicate he was safe to be let out alone. They were at the railway, he realised, and he stopped at one side of the tracks. Arren Moffatt turned back towards his car. “Have a nice day,” he said cheerfully. “See you tonight.”
Morgan thought about saluting or saying something smart arse, but in the end he just stood there and watched Arren drive away, recognising that the leash was still attached.
There was nowhere he wanted to go and nothing he wanted to do. Nothing he could do. It was as though he didn’t exist, here in a limbo controlled by crazy people. In the end, after the train had come and gone, he walked up on to the platform and sat down, trying to make sense of his life. There was a lot Arren hadn’t told him, he thought. He’d given him some of the forgotten pieces but the rest of it floated out of reach. The train warning went off and he jumped, cursing himself for an idiot, but he sat there and watched it arrive, disgorge and take on passengers before proceeding on its way. A few people looked at him but let him alone. You got all sorts of crazies at train stations.
Finally he did stand up and walk off the platform. Back towards the kid’s house.
Somehow, Morgan felt that the only answers were back there.
He was so sunk in his own thoughts that he was on the path outside the front door before he looked back and recognised Arren’s Mercedes now parked right outside on the road.
A feeling which was tension and anger and plain sick dread roiled around in Morgan’s stomach as he tried the door. It opened and he heard Arren’s voice, loud and intimidating and rising over that of Ash. He pulled the door open and found himself in a sparsely furnished living room, but nothing else about the room registered because Ash was crumpled on the ground with Arren standing above him, in a pose suggesting he had just knocked Ash down. One sleeve of Ash’s shirt was torn off and Morgan could see the bite mark on the kid’s arm. Not new, he thought in a vague sort of wonder; it had included a hell of a bruise a few weeks ago but was now reduced to a fairly clean-looking reddish mark. You had to be looking for it, had to know what it was.
A bite from a werewolf, perhaps one month old or nearly so.
“Go outside,” Arren said to Morgan. He did not look surprised.
“I have something to take care of here.”
“Excuse me,” Morgan said, wondering whether he was really awake,
“but you appear to be beating up on your client, Doctor. Did you bite Ash too?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ash retorted, climbing to her/his feet. Morgan’s mind whirled - Ash looked like a boy.
“I won’t ask you again,” Arren said. “You remember, don’t you? It’s no use lying. I can smell lies. You Changed last night, Ashley. I can see it, smell it. Now you think you are going mad. Your memory is already beginning to play tricks on you and you aren’t sure if you were simply slipped a drug by someone.”
He moved and struck in a blur of nonhuman speed. Ash tumbled to the ground again, but as he struggled to get up, Arren hit him once more.
“Observe, Morgan,” he said, not looking at Morgan, “This is the reward of the Claimed. Once you’re able to control the monthly Change, you will be able to do whatever you want. Your mind will be quicker, you’ll learn faster and more than you ever have before. It is as though you are reborn each Change. But the downside is the full moon. The stories have it that werewolves are completely normal people except for that time and that’s not true. You’ll be better than that. But at the full moon, every so often, it isn’t enough to change your shape and snarl and fuck or do whatever else in the underground sanctuary. So one of us goes out. Only one, but he or she carries the - the spirits, whatever, of the others. There are sometimes lapses. We accept that this will happen and we clean up and go on. One night I lost control and I attacked two people I encountered at a late night train station. One was you - one was a boy, or almost a boy, who had left my consulting rooms a short time before. I shouldn’t have been working - Natalya told me that and she’s right, so it’s up to me to clean up.”
“So you’ve got two of us,” Morgan yelled. “Stop the fucking dramas already. Teach this kid same as you taught me.”
“I can’t,” Arren said. “Natalya will only allow one and you are the more stable. Ash’s sense of self is more fragile and more skewed, as Natalya sees it.”
“Who cares how Natalya sees it?”
“She’s the strongest,” Arren said as though that answered all. He moved towards Ash again with a quiet, focused purpose and a look on his face that said in his mind, the killing was already done.
But Ash scrambled backwards to give himself enough room to stand, though this placed him too close to a bookcase behind to give much manoeuvering room.
“No, she fucking isn’t,” he said. “I am what I say I am, Arren. You taught me that when you were sane. My mind is male and I’m male. I know what I am and where I’m standing.”
With that, Ash pulled his sleeveless tee over his head. Morgan hadn’t really noticed it except as an ordinary black shirt, but now he realised that it was actually large for Ash, that Ash had on beneath it a tank top and under that, revealed as he pulled the clothes off, a bandage wound around his chest as though for broken ribs, though in this case, Morgan realised, it was to flatten the small breasts visible without the shirt. Ash’s upper body was strange. Still basically female, as he was pre-op, but showing the effects of the illegal testosterone, breasts shrunken, muscle increased in arms and shoulders and chest. Ash’s face was tense and nervous as he revealed himself, something he would not willingly have done.
Arren still had the look of a hunting cat focused on its prey, but now he hesitated.
“We can choose, can’t we?” Ash asked. “Yeah, I remember what you did. I remembered last night when I lost myself - and you never came back and told me what you’d done. You hoped I would just die, get out of your way, so you never had to tell your boss what you’d done.”
Ash raised his arms up and away from his body, displaying himself. Morgan tried not to stare but couldn’t help himself. Natalya had it wrong, he thought confusedly. Not less of a sense of self; because the gender identity and the body weren’t the same, the mind’s self-knowledge was steadier than anyone in the pack . Morgan had forgotten his life and his family, full moon by full moon. Arren had had to bring him back, but Ash could not be shocked away from what he believed he was. Then Morgan blinked and quickly rubbed his eyes as Ash seemed to blur in front of him.
Ash’s flesh was reforming.
Not into a werewolf, not a monster, nothing which grinned fangs or showed eyeshine or gave terror. Ash’s chest simply grew firmer, leaner. The muscles of his body and arms increased, not grotesquely, but enough for a young man around seventeen, eighteen years of age. His hair and eyes did not change but his face grew firmer and leaner as well, the skin a little rougher, the beginning of a moustache on his upper lip, the protrusion of an adam’s apple in his neck. Before this, Arren simply stared in shock. Ash’s gray gaze met that of the psychiatrist, pitiless, unafraid.
“I practised,” he said.
Future Stock by Jack B. Nimble
I look at the stars
and the future I see,
But not because of astrology.
The people and places
I see all around,
Keep themselves planted firmly on the ground.
But when I glimpse up
to the stars in the sky,
Many possible futures soar and fly.
Let’s keep looking skyward
and aiming ahead,
For a future without dreams is as good as dead.