Chapter Three: Lucian's Legacy
Seneca adjusted her blouse, because the garment was steadily crawling out of place. Her corset was tied too loosely, at her own behest, and the coarse fabrics fought, shifting her shirt into positions the bishops would consider blasphemous.
She gathered her skirt in both hands, freeing her legs to do some running now that she was again alone. Village life was dull, treacherous, and tedious, and against the wishes of her elders she loved to get out into the forest. The elders feared what lurked in the darkness, in the shadows that gathered thick along the trunks and in the underbrush. They were scared of sounds; they were also scared of their own shadows, and made up monsters to justify their own shortcomings.
Seneca was none of that, she adored the forest, loved to be out in it and among the shadows. There were berries to pick, wildlife to watch, and the whispering of trees about stories long forgotten. The villagers never understood her, any more than she understood how they could live day to day within the confines of the mud walls and flimsy bush barricades that kept most creatures out of their homes.
It wasn't a surprise to her, growing up here as an orphan, a foundling, that they thought her so strange. She had been discovered in the middle of the woods by a hunting party. She had only been about three they said, wandering between the trees completely naked and dazed. She had been hit in the head and still bore the scar low on her skull in the back. No one knew where she had come from, and she couldn't remember her life before the moment this small village had adopted her.
They were kind enough, had kept her fed and clothed, but she caught the looks they shot her when she unabashedly headed to the forest on a daily basis to explore and commune with the forest. Several of the matrons and hags in the village had sworn she was a sorceress, an evil sprite of the forest that it would hold so much sway over her. The fact that her eyes were an unnatural gold did nothing to help alleviate those rumors.
She didn't care; this place was much more interesting than the stink of the garbage in the streets or the sweat of such a gathering of unwashed bodies.
Her heart rate had barely climbed when she arrived at the clearing. The meadow was beautiful, blanketed in the green of fresh grass and the blooms of new flowers, white and gold scattered about the green. She flopped down among a thick patch of clover, reveling in the perfume of crushed leaves and bruised petals.
Seneca had been lying there only moments when the air was cut by a chilling howl. She bolted upright, darting her glance into the surrounding trees. She knew the call, it was a wolf, a large one she thought by the deepness of its throaty call. She pushed back to her feet, but didn't retreat; instead she was drawn to the sound of it. A part of her answered that cry and she didn't try to deny its compulsion.
She had traveled only long enough for the sun to slip past zenith when she came upon a smaller clearing, and in it, stood a man. Her feet shuffled to a stop as she regarded him, still unafraid but curious.
He was tall, built as was typical for men of this area, but fuller, better fed than most in her town. He had stringy hair that might have been brown were it clean; it was a muddy gray currently. He was dressed like a noble, though the clothes were old and threadbare in several places. The shirt he wore was once white, but it was drab and nearly yellow now.
"Hello, Seneca." There was a burr in the man's throat that made him sound weary.
"Good day to you sir." She curtsied, and somehow it didn't seem at all odd that he knew her name. She was surprised at her own reactions to this stranger. "You are a traveler?"
A predator's smile broke on his face, revealing poorly kept yellow teeth, "A hunter would be more precise."
"And what is your quarry today?" The young woman was intrigued by the differentiation.
"I have come a long way to find you again, my child."
She blinked, not expecting to hear that.
"We thought you had died with your mother. The attack on her party had been too swift for us to help defend her. I only just recently discovered that you had survived. I am glad that I tracked you down before the first full moon after you hit a woman's time."
She did step back now, the odd words and the hungry way in which the man looked at her began to put her ill at ease. How would this fellow know that she had recently come into womanhood?
"We must get you free of here before the changes come. Come with me."
"Sir, you are scaring me."
That smile grew wider, "Fathers can do that to their daughters…especially in our family."
The statement caught any further protest and shoved them back down her throat.
"Come, I will explain it. But we cannot be caught here."
His head whipped to a patch of sky only partially blocked by the stand of trees around them. She followed his eyes, lighting upon the sight of the full moon peering down at them.
It was beautiful and too large and she could only stare.
"Too late!" the man barked, his voice sounding strangled. He gargled as his body tensed and he fell to hands and knees on the thick carpet of decayed leaves. She only had a moment to watch what was happening to him before that same part of her that answered the wolf's call rose up, growing in her until she felt as if she was going to split her skin. Her insides sang and strained, stretched and twisted; and fully aware of every horrific moment, she watched as her skin slipped, grew darker and sprouted not only silver hairs but long rending claws.
She shrieked or wanted to, what came out of her changed vocal chords was the whine she heard when the local wolf pack was disciplining one of its members. The pain was overwhelming and yet somehow she managed to remain awake as the transformation completed. Shivering, crouched in the tatters of her clothes, Seneca looked upon herself again, scared by what she was seeing. She pushed up, unused to the new way in which her legs bent and falling once more into the loamy soil. Trying again, she managed to balance on the ball of her foot, seeing that they were paws, padded and sharply clawed.
Her gaze then moved across the space to find the hulking figure where the man had stood before. His skin and fur were both midnight black, his muzzle had a slight wash of silver to it. His wolfish ears were long and tufted at the ends, articulated as they went from drooped and dejected to perked and aimed at her.
"What's happening to me?" she tried to say, the question came out as a series of growls, whines, and snarls.
What was more amazing was that he seemed to understand everything she said.
Seneca pulled herself from her reverie, having been lulled into her memories by the scent of the forest. The experience was something that she had dearly missed over the past several hundred years. She had loved her forest home some three hundred miles from here and over six hundred years distant. The smells that had brought on that memory was cut in two by the acrid smell of burned wood and other less natural substances, and caused her to snort to free herself of its stench.
The place had been burned nearly to cinders, and she thought that they would have moved the coven to another safe house. Her scouts reported differently, there was a lot of vampire activity still within the burned out husk of a house. Thought Seneca didn't know what precisely that activity meant, she knew it was a golden opportunity to strike at the vampires on their home turf, something that none would expect. That was the vampire's problem; they held no respect for their cousins. They had lorded over them for so long they had come to be thought of as inferior.
She sighed. Unfortunately many of the cretins surrounding her had grandly proved the vampires prejudices. She wanted to show them just how cunning and sophisticated her branch of the family tree could be.
She crouched next to the bole of one of the large trees surrounding the property, a place that was thick with shadows, hiding even her silver and gray coat from casual onlookers. Her ears twitched to the side and behind her, marking each of the pack's positions. Somewhere further to the back of the mansion interspersed among the remnants of forest were the Lycana. They were the surgical teams; these creatures surrounding her were only a ruse, a trick to draw the vampires out of hiding and into the open.
She thrilled at the thought of what lay ahead. She had been sick for the hunt for so long now. She could smell the vampires, her muscles singing at the thought of the fight. She wanted to get on with slaying – wanted to feel the flesh of the mortal enemy of the Lycan under her claws.
Just a little bit longer now. Her golden eyes strayed to the setting sun, not quite low enough for the vampires to be up. That was to their benefit.
She perked her ears forward hearing the sound of a car beyond the high wrought iron walls hemming the mansion in. There was the quiet creak as the gates swung open and then the car moving forward again.
Her brow rose slightly and she turned to the nearest male with a russet colored coat. He licked his lips and rocked back and forth on his haunches in anticipation. She picked up his eagerness to use the provided entrance. She flattened her ears and growled at him and he cowered in reprimand. Even if it was unexpected, there was no proof that the opening of the gate wasn't some sort of trap.
Seneca turned her eyes back toward the gray wall fronting her squad, listening again for any further disturbance. She wasn't disappointed when the yapping and snarling of dogs sounded and the collars jangled as they bolted towards the intruders. She could hear teeth against metal and the incessant growling of the new guardians of the nightwalkers. There was a yelp and the slamming of a door.
Her ears perked forward with more interest when another growl sounded, one borne of no dog she had ever heard. She straightened as something that sounded like cross between a huff of a human and the snarl of a dog floated on the breeze to her attentive listening.
Lycan? But who?
She furrowed her brows as there was a moment of silence before the grating of rock against rock reached her. All fell silent after that, or the action was further from her hearing than she could pick up.
She glanced around her once more, signaling to Leopold to begin the infiltration. He nodded his lips curling in an anticipatory snarl. The men coursed past her, leaping the walls with ten centimeters to spare. Their snarls became audible now that there was no turning back. She counted to ten before she howled loudly, her signal for the Lycana to take up their positions.
The pieces in place she cleared the wall, landing in a crouch and surveying the progress of the invasion party. They hadn't made it three quarters of the way across the lawn, when a creature burst from around one corner of the decimated mansion. The thing was blue skinned with pale palms and claws. It was more humanoid than anything she had seen before, but the skin, claws and pitch black eyes gave him away as something else – something that she couldn't readily identify.
The thing bowled over the first of the Lycans to reach it, others near it cowered, tucking tail and running from the humanoid. She realized that this was the thing that her warriors had been telling her of from the tunnels.
He appeared to her as if he was on the run, more pushing back the members of her pack than trying to fight them. Her thought was confirmed when vampires appeared from the same direction, raised their weapons, and opened fire on the creature and the pack members surrounding him. Several of her hunters went down; whines and cries filled the air at their pain. Another five shots connected with the blue skinned creature, one directly in the back of the head. The creature fell, but was still moving on the lawn – and the vampires were closing in.
She growled.
If the vampires wanted the creature dead, then perhaps he was worth making an ally - if he survived that many direct hits. She sprung forward, clearing the space quickly, dodging between her pack members in lithe and well practiced motions. She came to the man just as one of the vampires was running toward the creature. Straddling the limp body Seneca presented the side of her body snarling at the vampire, before scooping him up and running towards the perimeter.
A series of short howls from her throat signaled the Lycana to back off, the vampires had very obviously found another to lead. With the surprise thwarted and a concerted attack facing them, Seneca decided another day would be better to continue this.
She signaled the retreat to her pack as well - three short yips - before leaping the wall. Seneca didn't quite clear on the way out, lighting atop the fence and chancing a glance she noted that the dark haired vampire female looked distraught. The woman was trying to make it through the retreating pack toward her. One of the males turned and challenged her. The woman stopped, her face no longer lost, but determined.
The vampire's weapon came up and its bullet caught the werewolf between the eyes. He fell and didn't get up again. The vampire turned her gaze on Seneca, hatred easily read in the bright blue eyes. She raised her weapon once more, but Seneca wasn't about to give her the opportunity to shoot. Seneca leapt down with her booty in tow and disappeared into the darkness.
It occurred to her that she was rescuing Lucian's Legacy.