Page 4 of Wild Wolf

We shook hands, with the uchastkovyi leading the ritual, and both men gripped my hand in a borderline painful manner. Stanislav’s arrival ended my questioning, and when he supported my claim he’d invited me, the uchastkovyi shook his head. “It’s too bad in there for now. The wood must wait. My apologies, Sergei Sokolov.”

“Unfortunate,” my overseer murmured, unusual compared to his normal, boisterous voice. I didn’t need my nose to detect his lie.

I’d been lured to the site for questioning, and I didn’t understand why. While I’d scented other werewolves in the city, I avoided them. I avoided anyone I believed might be a ved’ma, too. Had someone noticed me despite my precautions?

I would need to be even more careful in the days to come, and I would push off transforming for as long as my wolf could handle, which could be years if necessary. I checked my watch. “If you don’t require anything else from me, I should take care of some other business. I do need to study before the library closes, and I have other errands as well.”

“Go,” the uchastkovyi ordered.

The hardest part was walking to my truck. I wanted to bolt and escape them, but I needed to be brisk at the same time.

I needed to walk a fine line.

I wanted to floor it and burn rubber in my hurry to escape, but I drove with the caution of someone who knew his truck might fall apart if pushed too hard. In case someone followed me, I went to the general store and stocked up on supplies, getting enough for the week. On my way out, I’d stop for some fresh meat and a new bone for Bodwin’s wolf.

I needed to give her a name and lay the past to rest.

To keep myself busy, I purchased the mortar I’d need to finish my fireplace in the cabin. It would be large enough for me to, if I wished, cook over it or give Bodwin’s wolf enough space to enjoy the fire with me without venturing too close to me.

She tolerated me, she even obeyed my commands, but she did not appreciate when I didn’t keep an appropriate distance.

Working on the fireplace also supported my story about what I did when I wasn’t working.

One day, I would be able to live without having to cultivate every moment to trick those around me. One day, I would be able to return to the United States and disappear in a crowd. Maybe I’d even get that cabin I longed for and the mate my wolf desired. Learning packs of werewolves existed would haunt me.

I wanted what they had, as did my wolf.

For now, I would wait and work hard to disappear, fading from memory until nobody remembered I existed.

I kept to my usual routine after work, braving the city to visit one of Blagoveshchensk’s three libraries. Compared to the United States, the government controlled information as their way of controlling the people. On the other hand, I marveled at how well educated the Russian people were, valuing what they could learn with a relentlessness I admired.

For the next few hours, to maintain my cover, I would agonize over piecing together Cyrillic script. However, instead of delving through more modern texts, I hunted new prey: Russian folklore, as seen through the eyes of Blagoveshchensk’s people.

In a world where werewolves didn’t exist in the open, how did Blagoveshchensk have a population who knew the supernatural existed, branded their faces so all would know what they were, and controlled them? I picked several books, took them to a table tucked in a shadowy corner, and armed myself with my translation dictionary. The first two, judging from their table of contents, contained nothing of use.

The third was a gold mine of information about the ved’ma, spirits, and general folklore, ranging from the legends surrounding Baba Yaga to the vucari, which translated roughly to lycanthrope in other parts of the world. Vucari were similar to bodark but not quite the same in Blagoveshchensk folklore, although the book didn’t explain the differences. I wasn’t sure how other parts of Russia viewed werewolves, but something learned was better than nothing.

According to the text, written over fifty years ago by a local, the vucari, unlike the bodark, had incurred the Devil’s wrath, and in an effort to protect the people from the werewolf’s curse, the church had crafted talismans to ward homes against them. The volume claimed that if a vucari could atone and resist the curse for a period of five years, they would rise to become a hound of heaven, a servant favored by God.

Why did Blagoveshchensk have bodark but no vucari? Did they attempt to cultivate the bodark to become vucari? The wawkalak seemed closer to the vucari to me.

Trying to wrap my head around the collision of the supernatural and the church, which I presumed to be Russian Orthodox, gave me a headache. I could deal with the supernatural and superstitious, but religious fanatics of all stripes terrified me. Sense, humanity, and fact meant nothing in the face of fanaticism.

Fanatical mothers and fathers would brand their children with crescent moons if their religion demanded it of them. They would do more than merely burn their children with silver brands.

They might kill them.

I forced myself to return to my reading, my eyes widening when the entry on the vucari delved into cures for those inflicted with lycanthropy. In refreshing honesty, the book acknowledged few who fell to the curse could be restored. It also declared that for a vucari to return to human form and spirit, he or she needed to be humanized.

It began with the gift of a name and ended with love and acceptance.

Love broke many curses in folklore, but I also recognized the truth. When my wolf hunted, there was no room in him for such emotions. Neither one of us had opened that door since our mother’s death, and we agreed. Until we no longer had to run, we couldn’t afford to love anyone.

My wolf sighed, and I felt as much as heard his longing.

I closed the book, returned it to its shelf, and resolved to put the problem of Russian werewolves behind me. I was no wawkalak, bodark, vucari, or sumasshedshiy volk. I wasn’t Fenerec, either.

I defied such easy categorization with my glowing fur and a wolf I didn’t need to control, for he controlled himself. I could go years without shifting. I had gone over a decade without shifting when working within the military.