Cursed by Desire

Prologue

6 Years Ago

“Please can we go out, Lei? I need to run, Dawn needs to run.” I looked up from where I’d been hopelessly trying to learn the chemical formulae I needed for tomorrow's midterm exam and look to the doorway to see my 10-year-old sister Amaris looking at me with a pleading expression. “You know how much freedom running brings,” She whines ever so slightly.

I sigh. Most of me know that I shouldn't do this. I’m already failing chem and my teacher has already threatened to fail me. Twice. So much so that my parents became involved and lectured me about the ‘importance of education’. Sigh. So I know I should stay here and study by the candlelight I chose to work with, but a part of me can’t stop thinking of the woods now Amaris has mentioned it. In my head, I could hear Luna howling for a release, her pleas made stronger when my thoughts turned to the vast expanse of woodland located behind the pack house.

Sighing again, though this time in defeat, I close my textbook with a thud and look back to where Amaris is watching me with wide eyes that sparkle like some exotic gem that sparkles smoky grey and blue. “Fine,” I relent, seeing how her eyes brighten even more until the silvery-grey color seems to shine in tune with the sky blue as her wolf, Dawn, takes over from the inside. “But it needs to be quick because I really do need to study for that test tomorrow.”

She gives an excited squeal and runs off down the hallway, screaming at the top of her little 10-year-old lungs with so much gusto that I’m surprised that mom and or dad don’t arrive to admonish her for all the noise. Smiling indulgently in the direction of where she’d disappeared, I blew out the candle on my desk and padded down the stairs after her, still able to hear her screaming with joy. Although no sooner had I got to the top of the stairs, I stopped and clutched the railing when a bad feeling slammed into me. We shouldn’t go out. My instincts warned me as much, but when Amaris’s face appeared at the bottom of the stairs, I shook it off.

A huge mistake. Though how huge I wouldn’t realize for some time.

“Are you coming, Lei?” She calls, her eyes growing brighter with every passing second and I swear I can see her jumping up and down in frustration at my tardiness. “COME ON!” She pleads, and I shake off what remains of the bad feeling in my chest and race out after her.

When we clear the large lawn that sits behind the pack house, we both shift easily. Being newer to this, Amaris has more difficulty than me, but in no time at all her human form is replaced by a wolf that stands a few feet higher than a wild wolf, its fur a gleaming golden brown like her hair. My wolf, Luna, stands a few feet taller than hers, since I’m a little further due to our age difference. But I easily recognize her as she lopes off into the woods. Bet you can’t beat me at a race. She thinks to me and I scoff at her, knowing that I easily can.

You wish little sister, I tease, charging after her and feeling a howl tear out of me at the elation of being among the trees rather than in my room at the pack house studying for a chem test that I’m more than likely about to fail. We ran for hours that night, both of us chasing each other in circles around the trails we’d all but grown up on - first on two legs and then four paws when we’d shifted for the first time. So it’s difficult to remember how something that should have been so good turned so bad so fast.

Perhaps I should have listened to the warning that had lodged itself under my breastbone when I’d tried to banish it in my room earlier before leaving. Perhaps I should have dissuaded Amaris from talking me into going out with her and told her ‘another day’. At least then she’d be alive to see another day. Instead, I’d let her talk me into leaving with her and set in motion a chain of events that I can never take back.

I remember being some distance from catching her in one of our many games of chase during the moonlit woods that night when I heard her howl. Unlike the previous victory howls, she’d been giving all night when I’d failed to find her, this one was saturated with fear and pain. Instantly I scrambled to my paws from where I’d fallen chasing her, my athletic abilities still not as good as I’d have liked them to be, and following the sound like a beacon through the moonlit night.

I remember finding her trapped - though not by anything I could see. My sister was still in her wolf form, but she was cowering in the center of one of our many special groves that our parents had taken her to not long after she’d shifted for the first time a few months before this fateful night - the same way they’d done with all of our siblings (even little Griffin who’d shifted not long after Amaris a year early at 9 years old.) But what I couldn’t understand is why she was cowering in the presence of the shadows. What could they do that she couldn't do back? Why was she so afraid?

Ris? I called to her through our Link very quietly, the same trepidation that had crept up on me in my room now assaulting me with so much force that it was difficult to breathe. I could feel and smell the blood that clung to both of us from the superficial scratches we’d gained from our unruly gambling through the woods. But I could also sense her fear. And it was a strong scent. She was terrified. Ris? I try again when I receive no response. Her lack of it makes me feel even more worried than before. Ris? What’s wrong? What do you see?

Danger, her voice is shaking, and I can see where she and Dawn are both trembling. Another pitiful howl escapes her and I see something jump out of the shadows moments before she collapses to the ground. Howling painfully into the night sky. A howl I find myself echoing but for a different purpose. I can feel the malignant presence around us and know that we can’t defeat them all with just me and my… my wounded sister.

Snapping my jaws in threat, I looked around at the grove of trees that surrounds the clearing and tried to see what we were up against when Amaris stumbled to her paws, but a shadow jumped out of the encroaching gloom and slashed a deep cut down my foreleg before I had a chance to react. Blinding pain that I knew could only be inflicted using a silver weapon slices through me and I crumple slightly under the pain. Next, to me, my sister’s smaller wolf howls in anger and I see her try to attack the shadowy assailants.

But her attack was off-balance due to her existing injury, and she made very little mark at all - even for a wolf of her training and size. The shadows laugh mockingly and throw her into a nest of waiting shadows which all slice into her with such cruelty that eventually she cannot even scream, her pain-filled eyes looking at me and begging for release. But I can’t help her. By the time I struggled to my feet and did what she did, I'd been thrown through a similar patch of shadows and left bleeding and wounded. And too weak to fight alone. Turning a blood-soaked snout to the sky, I howled in pain and agony, calling for the help of any wolves nearby.

My little brother Griffin appears in the shadows first, his chocolate brown coat disappearing into the darkness of the trees and other surroundings. But I know it’s him from the grey-green eyes that shine out from the gloom. Lei-Lei? He asks, using his old nickname for me from before he could speak my full name. What’s wrong with Ris?

Go get help Griff, I plead, knowing that if two wolves bigger than him couldn't fight off these creatures, then there was no use pretending that he could. Griffin looks at me curiously, but I plead with him to understand. I need you to do something for me and Ris, okay? I hate seeing the worry in his eyes, but he nods once, and I continue, pushing through the pain of the still cutting shadows to make him understand. I need you to get the others for me. Mom, Dad, Astrophel, Corbi and anyone else who's still awake in the pack house, okay? Tell them Amaris and I are in trouble and need their help.

What if they aren’t awake? My younger brother’s voice was full of concern and I felt a pang of fear shoot through me, prompted by the unrelenting feeling lodged under my breastbone. But I can’t succumb to fear. Not when Amaris needs me. Lei-Lei? What do I do if they aren’t awake or aren’t here?

Then wake them. I feel cruel saying it, but I know that both mine and Amaris’s lives are on the line if we don’t get help. And soon. Wake anyone you can find. But try and get our family first. The silver poisoning spreads through me like tar. Thick, sticky and nullifying my power. Griffin still hadn’t moved, and I looked at him, pleading. Griff. Please. It’s then that I notice the fear in his eyes and I sigh, drawing on what little of my strength remains to ask him a question. Your big sisters need you to do this, and I need you to be brave, okay? Brave and fast. He nods and scampers off, his mournful howl echoing as he goes.

Time seemed suspended then. To me looking back, it seemed to have occurred very quickly but, trapped in the moment, time seemed to hold still whilst the shadows methodically tore both my sister and me apart. Watching each other, we both try to fight the possessive grip of the shadows - what they were I don’t think I’ll ever know - and terror floods through me, helping me to fight. Sometime later, Griffin returns and with him, I see my mother’s honey-blonde fur and grey-green eyes - eyes she shared with her youngest. My father’s dark chocolate wolf with blue eyes follows, and he howls once when he sees both Amaris and I trapped. Finally, my eldest brother, Astrophel, brings up the rear of our rescue team, his blonde fur causing him to look like he’d been dipped in the moonlight and adding a darker color to his blue eyes.

Struggling to pry off the shadowy grips on my limp body, I fell to the ground, my paws unable to support my bleeding, broken body, but still I pushed on. Closing ranks with my family, we heard Griffin in the shadows, but that turned out to be my second mistake of the night. The first being coming out here at all. Mere moments after he’s safe - or so we thought - in the shadows, we hear a low, mournful howl and, when looking back, see that what had been our youngest was now just a pile of dismembered body parts, his eyes slowly losing their otherworldly brightness as he died.

Grief settles around me like a numbing blanket, but I push it off, using the fuel of my rage to keep me going. Angrier than before, what remains of my family keeps trying to battle whatever had attached itself to Amaris after, most probably, following us and attacking her. Fighting them off in perfect synchrony, I almost started to believe that we can beat them when an anguished howl sounds, and we all stop. My father’s dark wolf along with my mother’s lighter ones stands over the now dismembered body of my eldest brother, his moonlight fur looking paler than before as the light dies from his eyes, the same way it had from Griffin, and the blue fades to black under the moon.

Enraged beyond words, beyond feeling, I launched another attack at the shadowy villains that still entrapped my ten-year-old sister and tried to pry them off one by one, not minding the lethal amounts of silver being pumped into me when they scored my flesh with bloody furrows left right and center.

But then the sound came again.

High and shrill, I can see my mother’s corpse now also on the ground. Dismembered just like those of my two siblings. The shadows that had been tormenting us pushed the three bodies into the clearing and, upon closer inspection, I could see that my mother’s body was more intact than those of my brothers with only her head cut off and her pack mark cut out of her shoulder. The wound is still weeping blood into the earth. But my father’s rage equals mine as we stand, shakily, side by side to face off the shadows and hopefully save Amaris before she also dies. Her fur no longer looked sleek and healthy but flat and dry, the bright color of her eyes dimmed to half their usual luster. Don’t panic, Ris, we’re coming. We’ll save you. I thought to her, hearing only a weak chuckle in response.

The last sound she made for a long time.

My father is next to die, dismembered in a similar way to that of my mother with his Pack Mark carved out along with a sizable chunk of his shoulder, the open wound bleeding into the earth. Again, grief threatens to carry me under, but I fight it with all the remaining strength that I had.

The next few hours are a blur. Others of the Pack had followed my parent’s desperate calls and found me, Amaris and the corpses of the rest of my family who had tried to help me and Amaris defeat whatever had come after us that night. I remember the shock, the horror and the disgust on some of their faces, but most of me was confused. See, some time between when I blacked out and when I woke up again, the shadowy figures - shapes really - that had been entrapping Amaris had disappeared, leaving her bleeding and dying on the forest floor from the lethal amount of silver injected into her veins.

Struggling to my paws, I hobbled over to her side before collapsing, licking clean some of the wounds covering her. The sharp, metallic taste of her fear mixed with the silver in her blood made it a difficult job, but I continued nonetheless until the pack doctor arrived and carried her away. I’m adamant, even in my numb haze, that we aren’t to be parted, and he agrees, carrying us both from the scene, so I don’t have to look at the corpses of my family any longer. When we arrive at the small infirmary located near the pack house, I watch, numb, as they place her on the bed, my ears tuned out her diagnosis. Having shifted during the transition from forest to the infirmary, her body is covered in cuts, but I already know that she won’t be able to survive the poison from the silver. The pain is too great. But she just watches me as she breathes shallowly, her eyes never leaving mine. Someone places a blanket around my shoulders, but I don’t feel it. Nor do I feel the fire burning near her bed, the warmth remaining separate from me. She died not long after the move. The doctor called the nearby mortician, who pronounced her dead due to the amount of silver poisoning which caused her to develop a rare form of Silver Cancer. Her death.

Grief blankets me and I struggle to breathe, my mind focused on my two remaining siblings, my older brother Ascelin and twin Corbin. Did they know what had happened to the rest of our family? If so, then who would tell them? What would they think of me? Would they hate me the way I know the rest of the pack does and the way I now do too?

And most importantly, could they ever forgive me?