Wolf Tales

Chapter 3

"Where did you get that?" Mike didn't seem to be able to tear his eyes away from it.

"Up in my attic." She moved it more into the open so he could see it better. "It's seen better days but I thought I'd put it out on my porch for Halloween."

Mike reached a hand out to touch the stuffed animal, which came almost to his waist. "So I guess this belonged to your grandparents, too?"

Jamie shrugged. "I guess, although I never saw it whenever I visited them. It was up in the attic behind a stack of cartons. I know this sounds crazy but sometimes when I look at it I get the feeling it's looking back at me."

Mike gave her quizzical look. "Yeah? Interesting."

Before she had a chance to ask him what he meant by that he was at the front door, looking back at Jamie. "You planning to decorate tonight?"

"No. I'm taking the day off tomorrow. My assistant and the volunteers work on Halloween and I work a Sunday for each of them."

Mike frowned. "The library is open Sunday?"

"Only once a month." Her lips thinned. "We used to be open seven days a week but budget cuts did us in."

"I think everyone's feeling the pinch somehow."

"Anyway, if I decorate tonight most everything will be gone by morning." She gave a rueful laugh. "These are good kids in the neighborhood but they like to make mischief as well as anyone. So, tomorrow is the day."

"Maybe I'll stop over." He winked. "See if I can give you a hand. If you'd like me to, I mean."

Before she could answer him he was gone, leaving her with the strangest feeling she'd missed something.

"Well, Mischief. How about some dinner."

"Mrow." The little cat rubbed against her and twined around her ankles.

"And then we'll read some more of that book. Would you like that?"

When she curled up in the big armchair to read Mischief loved to sit in her lap, settling herself so she almost appeared to reading, too.

The book was one of the many treasures she'd unearthed as she worked her way through everything in the attic. First she'd found the wolf, inexplicably dust-free despite the fact that everything else was wrapped in a thick layer of the stuff. Then several books on the history of Romania. She hadn't known her grandparents were students of history, especially of a country that had no relationship to their family. Or did it? Did she have ancestors from there several generations back that she just didn't know about?

And most of all, what did any of it have to do with the very strange book she'd found, Legends of the Werewolf. The binding was ancient leather, now frayed in many places, and the lettering in gold. The other night when she finally opened it she expected to read about the history of werewolves and how that history came to be. Instead, to her shock, the stories were about shapeshifters, people who could change into the shape of a wolf. Whole villages apparently had that ability and when danger presented itself they shifted into their wolf shape, gathered as a pack and disappeared.

The first thing that caught her attention was the extensive family chart at the very beginning of the book. Labeled Pack Diagram, it listed all the human form names of what she assumed was an entire pack. What on earth could this have to do with her grandparents? Did they study this? Surely they weren't -

No. She gave herself a mental slap. That was just too wacky to even contemplate. She was letting her imagination run away with her.

The legends fascinated her from the moment she opened the volume, especially those chapters about werewolf shifters being warriors in human form, even the women. And the hand-drawn pictures showed magnificent animals, sometimes poised on a rock in the moonlight, other times racing through woods.

The first chapters of the book were devoted to the history of shifters and the explanation of the Slavic term for them, vlkodlak. Now why did that suddenly sound familiar to her?

Of course! Her neighbor, Mike Volka. He'd said his ancestry was Slavic. Was that the reason for his interest in werewolves? She needed to get the book out again and get back into it. She replaced what she called her library clothes with sweats and a long-sleeved tee shirt, leaving off her bra, a treat she gave herself in the privacy of her own home. Then she fed Mischief, fixed herself a sandwich and a soft drink and settled in her chair to read more in the obviously ancient book. The little black cat curled up in her lap as usual.

"Tonight we find out the real skinny on this, kitty," she murmured as she opened the heavy book to the page she had marked. "I don't even know what I'm looking for any more but I hope I find it soon."

She opened the book to the place she'd marked, two pages of hand-drawn sketches. One of the drawings especially caught her eye. The face of the wolf looked almost human and she had the bizarre feeling the animal was staring out at her from the page.

Stop it! You're letting this book mess with your mind.

But one of the chapters had mentioned the hypnotic effect of the wolf's eyes. It cautioned against staring into them too long. Well, that certainly wouldn't be a problem. She had no intention of ever getting close enough to such a savage animal to have a staring contest with it.

Then her mind went back to those few seconds in her kitchen when for a moment she'd felt transported to an alternate reality. No, that had nothing to do with this. Mike and a wolf? She had to be losing her mind.

She looked down at the book again and carefully turned the page.

"As only a few mythical creatures can claim," she read, "werewolves have been described throughout different parts of the world for centuries. In the last century, several werewolf sightings have been recorded. The werewolf legend has spread across borders, even across seas and oceans. The shapeshifter wolf has the ability to change form at any time. Aggressive energy or anger may increase the likelihood of causing an unintentional transformation, so such shifters are cautioned to practice extreme discipline and self-control. Black and white werewolves, particularly, are also able to maintain the same ability to think consciously and reasonably as a regular human being, no matter what form they take physically."

Jamie read the paragraph again. How interesting. Did that mean they could communicate with each other in wolf form? Exactly how did they do that? Maybe that was addressed in a later chapter.

"It is especially important if they choose a human to mate with."

She nearly dropped the b*******e? With a human?