Wolf of War
A Patricia Briggs werewolf fanfiction
Chapter One:
First Steps
Are you really sure about this? a part of him asked. Not that he had any real doubts. But it was a part of him, a part of his nature, to double-check and final check his decisions, to make sure in his own mind that he was making the right choices. Or, if he wasn't, that he was at least sure of the choice he was making.
And this choice was a big one; it was worthy of a few moments of second-guessing, of taking a few more moments of thinking about, of making sure that his choice was the right choice.
And he was sure that it was; why else would he be here?
Here, was the in the desolate forests of Canada—British Columbia Territory, to be more precise—where it was beautiful, quiet, and cold. Thankfully, that cold didn't exist inside his Chevy Suburban, as he gave a quick glance down to the stapled collection of papers where the directions he'd gotten from the internet had led him to, a small, almost forgotten-looking gas station practically in the middle of nowhere. He had never been here before; it was his first trip outside of the United States, his first major trip outside of Baltimore, and the first time he'd had the opportunity to make use of the passport he'd purchased just for this trip…and discovered that he hadn't needed to have it. Oh sure, that he had it, was very much appreciated by the border patrol, but they would have accepted just his driver's license, if he hadn't had the passport.
He pulled into the area underneath the awning that sheltered the gas pumps, driving slowly as he looked around to spy a payphone; it hadn't dawned on him until after he'd crossed the border and driven for a bit that his cellphone wouldn't work—well, it would work, but roaming charges would be horrific—so he was hoping to find the payphone to make his final phone call, to confirm that he was actually going to meet with someone.
He'd been told in the last email he'd gotten that that someone, his point of contact, was named Sam. Sam Cornick. That was the name that Damon had given him. It wasn't a name he'd heard of, at least not before the last couple of years, when he'd been contacted by Damon, who he'd only known then as someone who was claiming to be an actual werewolf. Before that, before he met Damon, he'd written a few stories about characters who were werewolves, or who had become werewolves, and chatting on the new chat boards on AOL with other writers, and sometimes folks who wanted to talk about his stories, talk about the idea of being a werewolf.
Damon had eventually revealed to him, in the course of their conversations, that he was genuinely real, and had offered to meet with him- in public, of course- to talk some more. It had taken time, trust and an actual display of his ability to change to convince him that Damon was being truthful, but that had led to their talks, and him hearing the name of Sam Cornick.
Just off to the far side of the store building—and up close, he could see that the gas station was actually open—he spotted the payphone, out in the cold. He cursed that fact for a moment, but then surmised that he'd come this far, and a few moments in the cold wouldn't kill him.
He took a moment to rethink that particular thought; as he closed the vehicle door, a gust of arctic wind whipped about him, making the dark skin of his face almost instantly frozen to his senses, stunning him and making it hard to breathe for a moment. Even for as warmly as he was dressed, wearing a t-shirt, short sleeved polo, a long-sleeved sweatshirt bearing the "Big Dog" logo on his upper half, and underwear, a pair of heavy sweatpants and an outer layer of heavy jeans on his lower half; a solid pair of heavy winter boots kept his feet warm, and his heavy jacket— he still felt the bite of the cold in places that weren't so well protected. Quickly he ducked his head and everything close into himself and dashed over to the payphone, and after consulting the printed pages of his email for a phone number, he fed some coins into it and dialed the number. The other end of the phone line rang twice before someone picked up.
"This is Sam Cornick," an even, not quite baritone, not quite tenor voice spoke.
"Hello, Mr. Cornick," he began, introducing himself in the process, and then letting the other man know what he was calling about. After a few more moments of mutual discussion about his intentions, Sam gives him a few further directions.
"It's about another thirty minutes down the same road you've been driving," Sam offers with what sounds like good humor. "There's a small convenience store there, and I can meet you there by the time you'd get there. Does that sound reasonable to you?"
"Yes; that works for me," he offered with a bit of a grin—even if the other man couldn't see it.
"Then I'll see you there," Sam commented from the other end of the phone line, and disconnected.
On the one hand, thirty extra minutes to finally get to where he'd been wanting to get to, for at least the last couple of years, was no big ordeal. Even at the scope of the last couple of days, an extra thirty minutes was still small potatoes. And it wasn't like he didn't have the time to take; he had as much as another three or four weeks and change to invest here, to becoming a werewolf.
It was good to be able to set his own work schedule like he could; he could 'take a vacation' almost without having to give notice to his patients that he would be away. If his patients were going through a problem they felt was serious enough, he usually gave them the numbers of some of his more trustworthy colleagues- just to have someone to talk to, if they needed while he was away. Most of them were pretty particular to him, especially as a counselor of his type of therapy, and most of their problems weren't such that his being away for a few weeks would much affect their deterioration or resolution.
And wasn't it time for him to do something for himself, do something that helped him to feel good about himself, too? It had been a fantasy of his as a young man, to become a werewolf, to become stronger and faster and find himself connected in some small way with magic. He'd never thought that his fantasy would really have a chance to come true, but now that a chance existed, shouldn't he make the attempt to make it real?
You could die a part of him offered up in challenge. That was one of the things that Damon had explained to him; his own transformation was more of an accident, though that was on his part, not the part of the werewolf that changed him, and without help—mainly of the recuperative kind—he would have died. Damon had made it pretty clear that death was quite on the table with his attempting to become a werewolf. But dying was fairly easy; one could die while skydiving, or spending time on a cruise, or even by simply stepping out of—or into—the bathtub. While he certainly didn't want to die, he wasn't afraid of dying. Or, at least, he wasn't afraid of death as a consequence of what he wanted to try and become. He very much wanted to live through this; he very much wanted to become a werewolf.
Are you really sure about this? that small part of him asked again, for the umpteenth time. It was a quiet voice, especially this time; he was confident in what he was doing. He knew what he wanted; he knew, at least intellectually, what potential misery and suffering that he was setting himself up to endure, but he had already had these thoughts, and had already decided that, while the benefits would outweigh the costs, it wasn't about benefits or costs, but about determination. He was determined that this choice, his choice, was suited to him, come hell or high water, and he would see it through.
Yeah…yeah, I'm sure, he answered himself, and that small part of himself shrugged its shoulders, and let him be, at least for a while longer.
And hadn't he had ample opportunities to not be sure? It wasn't like Damon hadn't talked with him at length about what he'd have to go through, if he really wanted to do this.
"What I went through, I would only wish on a few people," Damon had admitted to him, with a faint but brief smirk. "It hurt. I mean, of course, having a werewolf try to gut you like a fish, to try and rip you to shreds, yeah that hurts. But I mean afterwards, when your body is trying to put itself back together again. If you're lucky, you just hurt from your bones and muscles and tendons rearranging themselves the first time you change forms. It's even worse when those bones and all those other parts are injured or broken, because your body then wants to do everything—change you, fix you, heal you—all at once. And then after the pain, for some new wolves there's time to be exhausted, so exhausted that you almost can't summon the effort to breathe, and then you're hit with a soul-crushing hunger. You're so hungry that you almost can't stand it, it's so powerful and all consuming that all you can think about is eating, eating something, eating almost anything. And the emerging wolf does not help with that at all. It wants food, and you have to fight your hunger, and the wolf wanting to take control of you—the wolf is you, but it isn't. It's….it's not like a split personality, but it's…it's like having a tiny voice in the back of your head, and for years, even decades, that voice has been a quiet whisper, and perhaps occasionally you'll hear it say something important to you, and then all of a sudden that voice is all but screaming and shouting, and you can't ignore it, you can't make it go away, and it wants to be heard. That's the wolf. The wolf takes over all those parts of you that you call 'instinct' and 'gut-feeling' and even some of those parts of you that you push all the way deep down and try not to give voice to or let see the light of day, and the wolf takes them and owns them and gives them voice and gives them a stronger hold on you and who you are. And you're absolutely starving, and you have to rise above all of this, and master it, master yourself. It doesn't sound nearly as awful for me to say it, as it does to feel it, but if you go through with this, you'll find out for yourself just how much of a struggle that is.
"And that's just the first day or so," he'd added, a wider smirk on his face, that almost didn't reach his eyes; his grin was infectious, but his eyes were serious and steady. Not quite haunted, but seemingly headed in that direction, perhaps.
"Dealing with the hunger is the easy part," he'd continued, "or it is when you have other wolves around who've been through it, and know to keep some good food waiting for your ravenous beastly self to be ready for it. After that, you go through cycles of eating and sleeping for another day, and then the real fight begins. You get to battle your wolf for dominance."
That had been one of his—Damon's—more fundamental "examples" of what he'd jokingly called "Werewolf Life"; he'd also made sure that his examples weren't the only ones he heard. Through his connections and contacts as a private investigator, Damon had gotten in touch with a few other werewolves, and he'd gotten to hear their thoughts on the matter as well.
Wendy was one of the first werewolves he'd met through Damon, and she was nearly his polar opposite in many ways. Damon was fairly tall, just a few inches taller than his own 6' 1", while Wendy was only just over five feet tall herself. Damon was broad shouldered, dark of skin—much like himself—and looked lean and fit. Wendy was much more feminine looking, a lightly tanned, and was a shapely woman who looked as though exercise wasn't at the top of her "to-do" list.
Like he had come to learn about werewolves, Wendy hadn't immediately given him her trust, simply based on Damon's vouching for him. Her first words to him—
"Don't."
—he took in stride, in part because Damon had said similar things to him as well at first. That first visit with her had been a short one, but in the next one she'd decided to talk with him about her own experiences.
"Becoming a werewolf, it doesn't change who you are, but it does change you," she'd explained to him over a mug of hot cocoa.
"It doesn't make you into some blood-thirsty savage, and it doesn't make you any more brave when you're face to face with a grizzly bear," Wendy had continued, "but it changes you. You're not…you're not the you you were before you were changed, not entirely. You..well, for me, my change wasn't just my wolf. For me, becoming a werewolf changed the way I look at the world, completely." She'd sipped some more at her mug of cocoa before saying anything more.
"I was at Woodstock just before I became a werewolf, and I ate pretty decently before, but after, some of the things I ate didn't taste like they used to, and that lead me to researching what went into the foods I ate. Made me stop eating some things, due to what was in them. I started digging deeper, looking more and more into what was being done to us, done to our foods, done to the environment…" She gave a wry smirk that had only graced her features for a few seconds before fading away. "Can't say I became an activist, but for the longest time, I was something of a hermit, staying away from others, because I couldn't stand dealing with humanity anymore and the shit they- the shit we, do to each other, what we do to our environment. Of course my wolf fully agreed with me, "she gave a quick, derisive, mirthless snort.
"I mean, that was the outward change, but what changed for me was inside. My wolf—well, I mean, you almost can't not change when you and your wolf come together, but for me, it was like I shook off the blinders of the world. I stopped the mary jane, the pot. I stopped fucking around because I wanted someone to want me. I stopped trying to be all of those things I really wasn't. I stopped running away from myself…and I started being more of myself. I started being a bit more picky with my fucking around, because I wanted someone who wanted me, not because I wanted them to want me, and I did it because I enjoyed the fucking around. I started being more true to who I was, because when my wolf and I came together, I couldn't look into my own spirit anymore and try to fit myself into what everyone else thought I should be."
Once more she'd stopped, and she'd finished her drink at that point. "I can't say that everyone else's changes were like mine, like that. But just everyone I've talked to in the last almost thirty years agrees with me. It changes you."
But that was one of the very reasons he wanted this. "It changes you", both Damon and Wendy had told him, but he wanted to change, wanted to be changed. A part of him was tired of being…human. It was a weariness deep down in his bones, that small part of him that loathed his humanity, that disliked his association with the general populace of the human race. More fundamentally, he wanted to be changed, not outwardly, not even humanly, but who he himself was. He wanted to discover who he could be, who other than the human he was, could be, and this was one of the more preferred ways to take up that challenge.
But is that all this is? just a challenge? a part of him questioned, and he took a good few moments to consider that thought. He was in his mid-thirties, he had a decent career as a psychologist and he was fairly satisfied with the way his life had turned out through to this point in his life. Was this really just the metaphysical temper tantrum of a midlife crisis?
He dismissed that conclusion with only the most cursory of thoughts; it wasn't like this had been a whimsical idea that suddenly planted itself in his mind one day a year or so ago; he had been roleplaying and pretending to be a werewolf for years, decades, from his first beginnings at tabletop role playing games and even in the live-action stuff he'd done in college. It had always been something of a fantasy of his, to release his 'inner wolf', even when he hadn't had one. And now he had the opportunity to make that fantasy a reality; why not take the chance? It wasn't like he wasn't aware of the risks- and who knew just how much 'his wolf' would change him?
I'll just have to see, he thought to himself.
He glanced down and into the middle of the dashboard, that quick look taking note that nearly thirty minutes had passed, and he focused his attentions to the road ahead, keeping a watchful eye out for the convenience store that Sam Cornick had mentioned to him, and within a minute, maybe even two of them, he spotted the store in the distance.
Even in the grey daylight of the overcast afternoon, the store stood out for its bright electric lights and boldly colored outside and fixtures, making it hard to miss. He turned on his indicator signal to turn into the store parking lot, where a man stood out amidst the cold and—at least for now—gently falling snow. The man appeared to be tall, maybe even close to his own height, and dressed…well, if it had been him, standing out in the weather like this, he would have been dressed more ruggedly. Of course, he was dressed pretty ruggedly, as he had anticipated the type of weather he'd be driving into, and without knowing what he'd be doing on the other end of his rather long journey, he wanted to be prepared. And warm.
But the man standing outside of the convenience store apparently lived around these parts; he was dressed in jeans and a leather bomber jacket, with the woolen collar pulled up around his neck, but other than what appeared to be a light pair of boots and his hands in the pockets of his jacket, he seemed quite fine to be standing outside with no scarf or knit cap atop the dark scruff of hair on his head.
He already knew that the man had blue eyes, and that his name was Sam Cornick. That much had been evident from the picture that was attached to the email he'd gotten, the final bit of communication that had led him to this point. Deftly he turned his Chevy Suburban into the space between the building and the gas pumps, stopping just a few meters short of the man. Even closer now, he could see that the face of the man matched the face he'd seen in the email; his face seemed open and his expression an upbeat one, but he had an idea that that Mr. Cornick could be rather intimidating when he wanted to be.
The other man began to approach the vehicle, but he turned the key and shut down the engine before he could reach the door. He opened the door and swung his own legs out into the cold Canadian air once more, offering a quick 'hello' as he did so.
"Need to stretch, and grab a bottle of water," he explained a bit further. "Have you been waiting here very long?" He rounded the front of the Suburban, both approaching the other man, and headed for the door of the store. The man he knew as Sam shifted slightly on his feet, a slight moment of tension slipping into his body language; he recognized what had happened, and in a fairly smooth shift of his own he gave the man a bit of a wider berth.
Sam turned towards him, an easy smile shifting onto his face. "No, not long," he returned, and took a step in his direction. "I'm Sam, though I imagine you already know who I am."
"True enough," he returned with a soft smirk of his own, before extending his gloved hand to shake, "and you should know me as Ares." His own smirk shifted to the side a bit. "Nice to meet ya."
Sam gave him a brief chuckle in return. "God of War, huh? Nice to meet you as well," he responded, "though let me ask you- are you sure you wanna go through with this?"
He gave a chuckle of his own. "Yes, I'm sure," he grinned.
Sam seemed to search his face for something for just a moment, and then nodded. "Alright then," he offered with a quiet yet solemn smile. "I'll wait for you while you get your water, and then we'll be on our way."
