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The Rescue

Kyllein MacKellerann©

The Wulfen Universe

Please note: this is not set in the present day.

The last thing Cathy remembered before the crash was asking her mother about school and wondering what she was going to wear on the first day. This was her first year in high school, and she wanted to look nice.

Then her father had yelled, her mother had screamed, and there was a loud crunch that seemed to last forever until the lights went out.

Slowly, awareness returned. She was in a bed that wasn't her own. There were medical smells in the air.

She was restrained. She couldn't move a muscle.

As she opened her eyes she realized she had, in that moment of terror, Shifted. She was in fur. That was going to cause trouble.

Turning her head to the right and left, she could see she was in a small room, with a curtain in it, and there were drips running into her veins. When she tried to speak, she discovered there was a fabric cone-shaped thing apparently strapped around her head; and over her muzzle so she could only open her mouth a little bit.

It seemed that someone was monitoring things, since the curtain in the room was pushed back and then a couple of soldiers came in and pointed their pistols at her. Then a person in a white medical coat so much like a Servant came in and started checking her eyes and taking her pulse.

Apparently the doctor was satisfied, because he said; "She is awake and apparently aware," to the soldiers with the guns. Then he told them to wait in the hall.

"Coo I ha' som wa'er?" she asked, trying to speak around the covering. The doctor gave her a sip of water out of a straw, then put down his note pad and queried, "Do you want to tell us what you did to Catherine Matthews? Do you know the whereabouts of a Miss Christine Demmings?"

"I am Cath'reen Mathoos! I don' know dat odder" she replied, fright building within her. The cone hampered her speaking a lot, she discovered.

"Certainly. And did your parents knew you were not their daughter?"

"They my 'doptive parens. My sworn parens. Where ah 'dey?"

The doctor replied, "They are not here. If you are their daughter I may have some bad news for you." He shook his head as if something was bothering him.

"More to the point," the doctor asked, "what are you? You are patently not human; in fact, you most resemble a wolf. I need to know what you are; so tell me, for your own good."

He leaned over her; "What are you?" he asked again. "Are you one of those movie creatures, a Werewolf?" He sounded curious and hopeful at the same time.

"Where ah mah an dah?" she asked again. "Where ah 'dey?"

"Margaret Matthews and William Matthews died in a car accident. You were found in the rear seat of their automobile, as you are now," the doctor replied. Then he asked, "Did you get hurt in the accident? Is that why you are the way you are now? Were they taking you somewhere? What were you doing with them?"

"No-o-o-o," she moaned; then she started crying, realizing that she was in human hands and that her protectors and sworn parents were dead.

Then oddly, the doctor stroked her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said gently.

There was another sound in the room, apparently someone had entered it and was speaking to the doctor in hushed tones.

The doctor apparently didn't like what he was hearing; and as Cathy regained control of herself, she heard the doctor saying; "...absolutely not. This patient is in my custody and I will decide what will be done with her, private. Now get out of here before--uhhh."

There was a muffled thump and another face came into her view. She felt the straps that had held her arms down by her waist releasing and then there were hands unfastening the cloth thing that covered her muzzle.

As she started to sit up, she saw a soldier releasing the straps that had held her feet down. Her own hands unfastened the leather strap around her waist that had held her to the bed, and she shook her feet free of the now loosened ankle restraints.

As soon as they were free, she drew them to her and tried to huddle on the bed as the soldier went to what appeared to be closets on the wall and started looking in them for something...her clothing, she realized.

Another soldier entered the draped area and hurried to her as she sat on the bed. "Are you alright?" he asked; and when she made no reply, he asked again.

Seeing that the girl was frozen with shock, he muttered something and bent forward while simultaneously kneeling on the floor. Fur sprouted and the uniform gave as his body shifted under it, as he became Werewolf like she was.

His fur was white; the Lunar white of the Servant. He stood and Cathy instinctively clung to him when he had returned to the bed she was in.

"Now, now; things are going to work out," he said soothingly. "We are a part of the Army, and when the Base Commander's office contacted his higher-ups about you, we were sent in to get you out of here before there were too many people involved for the security of the Secret to be maintained."

Cathy looked down at the floor and saw the doctor there; an ugly lump in white and green. She shivered.

Looking up at the Servant's calm eyes, she said; "Mother and Father were in an accident. That man said they were dead, that they had hit an Army truck and I was at fault somehow."

"Well, you weren't at fault;" the Servant replied, "but as to your Sworn Parents...I'm sorry, but it seems that they did pass on. Our Goddess holds them safe."

He would have said more, but the other soldier tapped him on the shoulder and said, "No clothing. We have to get something for her to wear before doctor Frankenstein down there wakes up."

The Servant answered, "I can take care of that right now; since I have to find out who he spoke with outside of the usual chain of command. We also have to find out about any X-rays he may have had taken and what happened to them. The compulsion I put on the MP's at the door will hold for about an hour; but I'd like to be out of here well before then."

"You'll need to revert," he said to Cathy as he released her and she settled on the bed again. "You'll need to revert, and then we can get you some clothing and get you and ourselves out of here." He knelt by the doctor and put his fingertips on the man's head and began to chant something Cathy couldn't quite hear.

The other soldier took her hand; "I'm sorry about your parents. Once we're out, you can find out what happened to them and see to their proper burial; but right now you need to not look like a wolf."

Cathy drew a shuddering breath and tried to start the reversion process for the first time in her life. It wouldn't come. She tried again, harder; focusing her thoughts as she had been taught by her Pack's Servant. She had studied and practiced daily.

She visualized herself as she had been for all fourteen years of her life, Smoothskinned and smooth-bodied, a perfectly normal-looking human girl. She tried to call the feeling of in-drawing and compression as her ribs and the rest of her body went from Wolf the Smooth. She anticipated the cold-damp of her coat turning into cold mist, even as Father Haouu's breath was in the winter, when he breathed the fogs and low lying clouds onto the cold land and ice.

Nothing happened. She was still Wolf, still in her natural form of the upright wolf of legend and story.

Fear gripped her with icy talons. She couldn't revert!

"Servant?" she asked hesitantly; and he was beside her in a moment.

"What's your problem, Cathy?" he asked; his voice still calm and peace-filled.

"I--I can't revert..." she half-whispered. "I can't get it to start," she wept; "no matter what I do; and I tried, I really did. I've never done it before..." Panic began to twine around her heart.

Calm flowed through her as the Servant took her hand. She felt an odd tingling in her head as he stared into her eyes, and that brought peace to her soul as if there was not a problem in the world she couldn't handle.

"You hit your head," he replied. "You probably have a concussion that is keeping you from initiating the reversion. Let me handle that for you."

Moments later she had a splitting headache and was seeing stars as she picked herself up from the bed where she had almost fallen over. The other soldier had grabbed her just before she had lost consciousness for a second.

"Hooo-boy," the Servant muttered; "you do have a concussion, and a nasty one. The part of your brain where the shifts and reversions begin is swollen and just won't work properly."

He rubbed his chin, thinking; then he touched her forehead and most of the headache went away, although not all of it.

"Looks like we have to get you out of here as you are," he said after a moment. "While that makes this more difficult, we can still do this. Somehow. I think..."

"How's the Doc?" his buddy asked, from Cathy's side where he had been all the time while she had tried her reversion. "Is he sufficiently scrambled?"

"Pretty much," the Servant replied; "I know where the films are they took of her when they brought her in, and we need to get them before we leave. We do have another problem, though."

Glancing down at the still unconscious doctor, he said; "He's been worked on by another Servant at some time of his life, not making that encounter seem unreal and dreamlike so much as just erasing it. I can't get as thorough a scramble as I would like as a result, without leaving something obvious behind, and he will wake up a lot faster than I'd like him to. He remembers just enough to want to prove that there are Werewolves, to somehow vindicate himself inside his own mind. He's convinced himself that we are hiding for some reason, and doesn't know why but thinks we're a threat somehow. When Miss Matthews fell into his hands, he must have thought all his prayers had been answered. He had some plans to use her as a tool for promotion, since she seemed locked into wolf form, and he very much wanted to protect her as well. He was concerned about something regarding her shifting, too. Complex, very complex."

"I'm sorry..." Cathy said in shame; "I tried, I really did..."

"We know," the other soldier said quietly; "don't be afraid, we're specialists at this business. We'll have you out of here before anybody realizes it. That's one of the things that Manikin does; it protects the Secret as a part of its agreement with the Werewolf population."

"Well," the Servant observed, "we had better be on our way while everybody is still out to lunch mentally. The more time we have, the better. We still have X-ray films to gather and a way out of this hospital to plan with Miss Matthews in her fur instead of Smooth skin."

"I'll go get the cart," the soldier said; "at least that part still works like we figured." Setting words to action, he left the curtained room, stepping over the doctor as he did.

"Who are you?" Cathy asked the strange Servant; "I mean, what is your name? You've done so much for me..."

The Servant actually ear-blushed as he replied; "Just call me Servant. If you learn too much, I'll have to take those memories away from you. Manikin is ultra-secret, and the less you know, the better. We are, in our way, helping to bring the day of freedom closer for everyone by serving our country in secret, and in return gaining the trust of some very important people who will be in places to help us when we do come out."

"My sworn-parents prayed for the Day," Cathy said sadly; "now, they'll never see it." Oddly, the grief she had expected to feel just wasn't there; she stayed calm.

"I wouldn't be so certain of that," the Servant replied gently; "They will know, in the Place of Peace, that the Day had dawned for us; and when they return it will be to a People who don't have to hide anymore. That will be a wonder for all of us, both our own People and our SmoothKindred will be free to be a part of the world and its wonders as who they are; not who they have to pretend to be."

"Why am I so calm?" Cathy asked suddenly; "have you done something to me?"

The Servant nodded. "I'm calming you, so that you aren't lost in grief over losing your sworn parents. That will be a thing for later; now you need to be able to think clearly and stay calm, so I am sharing part of what I feel deep down inside all the time. I know that your Parents and your Sworn Parents are in a Place where they are at peace and would want you to share that peace with them...so you are. They aren't dead, and they love you as much as ever."

He would have said more, but there was a rolling noise from outside the door, and the soldier came into the room with...a wire and canvas laundry tub half full of linens.

"You're kidding," the Servant said in a dry voice, then stopped and looked at the cart again. "Maybe..." he amended.

"You want me in that?" Cathy asked incredulously.

"Yeah," the soldier said with a grin; "there's lots of space and the linens are all clean."

"Isn't this like in some movie?" Cathy asked worriedly.

"That was my concern as well," the Servant added; "still, it just might work out."

"That's what I'm hoping for," the soldier admitted, "It's so obvious that nobody would actually try it. Being invisible by being obvious, so to speak."

He bent and began extracting the linens; indeed they were clean and there was space for Cathy if she folded herself up carefully. There was even a sort of vent or grommet hole she could look out of in each corner.

She scrunched down into the bottom of the fabric and wire cart, and the soldier and the Servant carefully piled sheets on top of her and beside her to make the cart look full.

"What do you think?" the soldier's voice asked.

"I think it will have to do," the Servant's voice replied, lacking the certainty that Cathy had wanted to hear. She shivered.

Out of the grommet hole in the side, she could see the floor and little else. A pair of soldier's boots passed her viewpoint going one way; then passed again going the other way.

She heard; "You aren't reverting?" in the soldier's voice; and "No, I'll trust to illusion until we're out of here. If things go wrong, I won't have time to shift; so I stay as I am. As long as there are no television cameras, we should be all right," the Servant's voice replied.

The boots came past again, and she realized that these were normal feet with heels. These feet must belong to the soldier, a human.

Then they disappeared and she began to move. The floor moved past her little viewing hole and then there was a metal strip and she saw the tiles had changed. Were they in a hallway?

She heard the Servant's voice murmuring to someone, then she started moving again. Had there been guards at the door to her room? Were they the soldiers with the guns she had seen when she had just awakened?

She rolled along in the laundry cart for what seemed forever, then the cart stopped and she heard voices again.

"So how's your patient, Doctor Mercer?" a voice asked. "I heard that she was some sort of animal who had been brought in last uhhh..." The uhhh part didn't sound like speech, somehow.

"So much for security," Servant's voice said with a hint of annoyance; "I can't make the whole damned hospital forget she was here."

"So, just make this joker forget us," Soldier's voice replied. "If they can't trace our way out, it makes whatever Doc Mercer said seem like a hallucination. Patients just don't disappear."

"I'm well aware of that," Servant's voice replied. "I just hope he stays asleep until we're airborne and out of here. Whoever did that last modification wasn't very thorough since there were shadow memories all over the place. What worries me about that is the very real attempt to erase rather than make dreams. That speaks fear, to me."

Then, "There, that should take care of him. He'll awaken in two or three minutes and have no memory of our passage."

She began moving again. Her view of the tiles showed that they had changed pattern and looked shinier, like they had been waxed recently.

After what seemed to be a very long time to her, the cart stopped again.

"Mercer's office. Damn, it's locked. Simon, would you do your clever human trick with the lock, please?" Servant's voice asked wearily.

"Sure thing, Jerry; monkey dexterity overcomes wolf strength, once again," came the soldier's chuckle as there was a jingling and scratching sound somewhere.

Then there was a click and the squeaking of a door opening.

Then next to her, she heard Soldier's voice saying, "We've stopped to get the Doctor's records of you and the x-rays he must have taken. This may take a few minutes, so stay still. We'll be right nearby."

The "few minutes" seemed to drag on and on until there was a stirring of the linens covering her and Cathy froze with fear. Then there was something beside her in the cart that felt like a piece of cardboard or a big envelope.

"Here," Servant's voice said, "his notes were right on his desk and there was a half-typed report still in his typewriter. The x-rays were in his desk drawer. They are now right beside you, and we are free to get out of here."

Then the cart began to move again. There was a lot less light and there were sounds of people nearby. Where was she? Had something gone wrong?

Then the sounds retreated and she saw another strip of metal as she passed over it and there was a puff of colder air through her little grommet-window.

Servant's voice whispered; "We're outside now, and my partner has gone to find us some transportation. When I give you the word, get out of the cart and into whatever vehicle is in front of you. We're at the base hospital loading dock, outside. Be ready to move, we'll shield you."

After an eternity, there was the sound of an engine and a surprised grunt from Servant.

"It would seem my partner likes fancy transport. He is coming now, be ready," Servant's voice warned.

Then she heard the word "Now!" and she erupted from the cart and into the car that was in front of her with its door open.

Then she saw she was in some sort of jeep with a top on it, in the back seat area. There was a slam behind her that blew air over her tail, and moments later there was someone in the front seat.

She froze; it was the doctor! Fear rose in her throat; this was a trick of some sort!

Then he smiled, and he was Servant again. She had seen the illusion he had been projecting to fool people, and she had been convinced as well for just a moment.

"I will say this for Doctor Mercer," Servant commented as they bounced along the base road; "the man was thorough. He took full body x-rays as well as a full set of blood panels and just about everything else he could think of. He was being very thorough and seemed rather concerned for you."

He pointed to what had been beside her in the laundry cart; a huge envelope that looked very stuffed. "Without this, it will be just his memory of you, what is left of it; against witnesses who will swear that there was nobody in the room. I hope he doesn't get too badly annoyed over this; since he does seem to be a caring doctor when he isn't on his personal crusade to expose us."

"He was mean to me with all those questions," Cathy replied; "and I don't care about what he does for others; he was awful with me and that's all I know." Then she looked around and asked, "What sort of car is this? Is it a jeep? The ride is awfully rough."

The Soldier laughed, "Naaah... This is the Army's newest form transportation; it's called a Humvee. These things are replacing the old-style jeeps as the Army cycles them out of service. It can go places where even a jeep couldn't go, not without tipping over. We'll need that ability, since we are headed out and away from roads and into the hills, where we can call for pickup. Thank the Goddess this is desert, we can make good time over the dirt."

The fear and fright was over for Cathy, and she began to wonder what was going to happen to her now. She was for all intents and purposes invisible, without her clothing and her identification. She began to feel afraid for the future.

"What is going to happen to me?" she asked the Servant.

There was a sad look in the Servant's eyes as he replied; "You are going to sort-of disappear. As Kindred, your house and all your family effects will be taken over by your Council. Your sworn parents are dead, so they can't relocate you with them somewhere else. You may keep your name, though; I really don't know about that.

"Probably you will be relocated with a family that you know, as a part of the same Council. That's a lot better than what we had with old Pack system, these Councils are larger and have more people in them, so the likelihood of your staying in the same area is reasonably good, I think. You may be adopted by another set of parents who are on the "Sworn-Parent" list who haven't had that happen yet. That would probably be best, since they will want you as a child of their own."

Then he shrugged; "Actually, I don't know that much about this area's placement practices. I'm not from around here.

"You see, that isn't what we are part of; there is a separate agency to deal with that. We just rescue, when we aren't involved with national matters. You will have a family around you again, though."

She looked down at the floor. Her family was gone and she was alone. Then a thought struck her and she asked, "Are you going to take my memories, like you did to that other soldier? Am I going to forget who I am? Am I going to forget I had parents, and sworn parents? Are you going to take them away from me, too?"

She was crying now, not for herself; but for what she feared: that she wouldn't sing for her sworn parents with the rest of her People as they sang them home to Mother-Beloved's arms. That she would forget the people who had been her whole world, since she had been only three years old when her blood parents had died in a house fire.

She was so deeply sunken in grief that she almost missed Servant's words.

"You will keep your personal memories. They are a part of you, a Sacred part that no Servant should erase for any reason. What may happen is that you will be given new memories to help with your new identity, if that is what happens. It will be up to you to decide if you want to forget us. Some people do, some don't. You will have to keep our rescue of you a secret, though; should you decide you want to remember it."

"Thank you," she whispered, and the Servant nodded in reply.

"Uh-oh," the soldier muttered as he glanced in the mirror, "we got us some company with red lights."

"Crap," Servant muttered; "those would be the M.P.'s, wondering what we are doing out this late. Stop and we'll see what happens."

He looked back at Cathy and said; "There is a tarp behind you. Cover yourself with it while we deal with the M.P.'s."

She did so as the vehicle slowed to a stop.

Cathy waited while the M.P. spoke with the Soldier and the Servant. She could hear his boots crunching on the gravel as he walked around the car. Then he stopped.

A moment later, the tarp covering her was flipped back and there was a bright light in her eyes. Automatically, she raised her hands to block the light, revealing them to be hands and not forepaws. The light was lowered.

Then the M.P. asked her, "Miss, are you all right? We've all heard about Doc Mercer's 'werewolf', and I expect that you are her. He was real worried about you for some reason. He's a pain when he worries about someone, I know that personally."

She nodded, dumbstruck. Then the man smiled gently.

"Your tail was sticking out. Tuck it in, okay?" the M.P. said quietly. Then he carefully placed the cover over her legs and tail, and closed the door, smiling at her all the while.

"Corporal," Servant asked; "you aren't surprised? You seem more concerned with her welfare than with what she is." He had dropped his illusion, and Cathy could see his white fur as he spoke to the human. The human seemed unimpressed.

"Yeah," the man replied; "Not everybody is a nut around here. I'm from Colorado, and you see a lot of odd wolves in the hills there. They sing when the moon is full, too. They ain't what the movies make them, that's for sure."

Servant handed the human a card. There was a stick figure on it in black ink with a block letter "M" under it.

"I've been briefed about this card," the man said; "you guys don't exist, right?"

Servant nodded; "We don't. You'll forget what you saw, right?"

"Yessir, I will. I'm sorry if I scared your passenger, though."

"What's your name, rank, and serial number?" Servant queried, and as the man gave it, Soldier was busy writing it down.

"You'll be contacted. Maybe you would like to learn why we sing at the full moon. We are always open to humans who are not hostile to us," Servant said quietly; "and I think you will like who we really are. You are a good young man, as are we."

The M.P. nodded and wished them a pleasant drive. As he walked back to his vehicle, he waved a little to Cathy and she waved back, a little. Then he left in his car, heading back toward the Army base in the distance.

"Whee ew!" Soldier said, relaxing out of his ready-to-act position and re-setting the safety on his pistol. "A friendly! What a relief." He started the engine and began to drive again.

He looked over at Servant and asked, "You read him?"

Servant replied, "Yes. He is what I said; a good young man who believes what he sees and not what's in the movies. I suspect that he was impressed with the Song nights, too. Not all humans scream and run when they see us. Some say hello."

Then he chuckled, "And Colorado has some of the worst Pack security in the nation; the idiots. We got lucky this time."

They drove for some time, leaving the road and heading into the hills, apparently headed for some point that they knew of. There moon wasn't up yet and the stars shed little light even for her wolf eyes, leaving what she could see as dark lumps and humps with what might be underbrush. The only light was in front of the car, and that wasn't a lot to see by, back where she was.

Cathy had tried to sleep a little, but the jeep rode too roughly for that. Finally, after almost an hour, they stopped on the side of a low hill and she followed them to the top, wincing because her knees were beginning to ache, as were her ankles.

Soldier had left one of those odd cards on the driver's seat, and another under the windshield wiper. When she had asked about it, Soldier had simply said that it was to send a message to the proper people. Then he had started up the hill.

Once there, Cathy felt odd, being out in the wilds. There, on the hilltop, she heard a voice...something...calling to her to come, run away, and be the wolf she was born to be. The thought of running made her legs hurt and shoulders ache, right now.

Servant noticed her listening to that voice and walked over to her and put his arm around her. She winced a little.

"You hear it, don't you?" he asked; "The Call. That is our ancestral wolf calling to us, Father Haouu. Some of us follow that voice, and become wolves; forgetting the man, the human side of themselves. They live short wolf lives, and return to Mother-Beloved a little embarrassed at what they became; and their forgetting of the life-tasks they promised Her to undertake."

He looked down at her, meeting her raised eyes and asked; "Is that what you want to do? I won't stop you if you want to do that. It is your right, always."

She shook her head, "No. I want to be who I was born to be, to honor my parents; all of them. I am wolf, and I am human; and that is what I was born to be, not just a wolf under the sun and stars. Besides, I ache; and running is not what I want to do now."

Servant gave her a gentle hug and said, "Have your Servant check you over, will you? You may have been hurt in the car wreck. That may have been why the doctor was so upset with you."

She stared at him for a moment, then agreed to talk to Servant Michael.

Soldier wandered over to them. He had what looked like a radio, with two antennas that stuck out of it pointing away from each other.

"We get lucky," he said; "C and C staged an Owl ten miles away from us in case we had to run fast. They will be here in maybe ten minutes."

Then he looked out over the land and muttered a curse. "We seem to have attracted something. I can see lights out there, and they seem to be headed our way. Looks like somebody is following our tracks."

Servant looked where Soldier was pointing and sighed, "I was afraid this went too easily for us. I can see one vehicle, not a jeep or a Humvee. Maybe our luck will hold and whoever it is will get stuck." He looked over at Soldier and said, "See if that Owl can get here any faster. We need to be out of here now."

Soldier nodded and began to speak into the radio again.

Cathy looked out over the semi-desert and could also see the car that was creeping along the Humvee's tracks. It looked far away, but she didn't know how far.

She did know who was driving it, though; that Doctor-person. She cringed against Servant and whined her fear, her ears back against her skull.

Servant was a calm pillar of strength beside her, and he held her close to his body, offering comfort and easing her discomforted legs and back.

"They're in the air now," Soldier said beside her, surprising her and making her jump a little. "They can get here in maybe five minutes, flat out."

"Good," said Servant; "Whoever that is, they are at least ten minutes away if they only follow our tracks."

Cathy just watched as the lights grew nearer. She shuddered and whined again, fear gaining power in her mind.

"Calm yourself, Cathy," Servant said as he held her; "there is nothing to get frightened about. We'll be out of here before anyone gets near us."

She wasn't sure. The Doctor was coming and she would be...

Then a great calm came over her. She looked up at Servant, and he smiled down at her and asked, "Better now?" His white fur coat was a sense of coolness and peace to her eyes and spirit, and she nodded back, relieved.

The lights on their trail disappeared behind a bluff, still slowly following as their trail began to climb into and through the hills to the one they were on right now. Then they were back, growing ever closer; ever nearer.

Then they stopped. The sound of a racing engine came on the wind, and there was a cloud of dust growing around the car that was following them; but the lights weren't moving anymore. Soldier snickered.

"That was a soft spot for us," he commented, "and we have the right tires for this terrain. He seems to have bogged down, poor guy."

"That is less good news that you might think," Servant replied as he watched the now motionless vehicle. "On foot, he'll actually make better time than in that car."

Servant scanned the sky, asking, "Where are you, Owl? We need to be out now, not ten minutes from now."

Soldier got something out of his pocket and fastened it to one of the radio antennas, then used that antenna to raise that something high into the air above them. All Cathy could see was a very dim reddish glow coming out of it.

"What's that?" she asked Servant.

He glanced over at the thing and grew a little calmer; "That is an infra-red beacon. We can't see it, but the people flying the Owl can see it like a searchlight with their night-sight gear. That must mean they're getting close, and he's using it to guide them in."

There was a soft fluttering sound on the wind that their wolf-sensitive ears began to pick up. It was growing louder by the moment.

Then the sound was there, coming from what looked like the same sort of helicopter that had been used in Viet-Nam, settling on the hilltop as the three people ran toward it.

In moments they were inside and it took off, leaving the hilltop behind. The downdraft from the rotors had played a trick, erasing their footprints from the dust as if they had never been there.

Ten minutes later, that was what Doctor Charles Mercer found as he puffed up past the abandoned Humvee; in the light of his dim flashlight, the odd footprints just vanished at the top of the hill.

"Oh my God," he groaned as he stared at the empty hilltop; "where did they go? Do they have flying saucers too?"

He sat on a rock at the hill's upper edge. What was happening to him, he wondered? He couldn't remember the girl clearly. He had forgotten her name. There were a few fragmentary notes left, but the X-rays that showed her distorted non-human skeleton were gone, and he had no copies. He had kept them all to himself, as a sort of safety measure; should his higher-ups try to spirit her away somewhere. Even his orthopedic damage notes were gone. He had nothing.

Nothing, other than a dream named Christine who was also a wolf-woman; who he had loved as a young man, and who had also disappeared one night. She still wandered through his dreams at night when he slept. He had spied on her when she had gone up into the local hills and seen her change from woman to wolf, along with many others who were there with her.

She had been beautiful both ways, wolf and woman.

Then he remembered flashes of angry men and Christine crying and a white-furred wolf who had done...something, and left him with only fragments and bits.

The girl was a part of it. She was another wolf that could hide among people. She had been his key to finding Christine and now she was gone.

They must be up to something devious, that is why they hide. That was the only thing that made sense. Christine was involved in that...but she couldn't be part of whatever it was, not if it was hurtful. She wasn't like that.

He was still sitting there when the M.P.'s arrived in the morning. They had asked a few questions, but then had sent him back to the hospital after they had found a couple of cards on the Humvee. They had even driven him in the Humvee back down the hill and used it to free his own car from the sand it had become stuck in. He had driven back to the base and the Hospital and been met by men in cheap dark suits, in his office.

"Don't talk about this," they had said. "National Security," they had said.

Then to complete things, they had taken the last of his notes and repeated the warnings and left. He had sat in the gloom until rounds at nine o'clock.

Later, the chief of Base Security had called him into his office and had suggested that he consider requesting reassignment to a less-stressful job at another Army hospital. He was also warned again that this was a matter of National Security, and if he said anything to anyone about the "occurrence" he would most likely finish his military career in someplace like Greenland or Guam, and have his commission as an officer revoked.

As far as the Army was concerned, the matter was closed.

Cathy remembered flying in the helicopter, but then things blurred out until Servant and Soldier had awakened her and introduced her to a woman from the local Children's Protective Services. She had finally managed to sleep aboard the helicopter.

Then they had said good bye. The last sight she had of them were two men in Army uniforms walking toward an odd-looking helicopter, which had almost silently flown away. She had watched until the speck disappeared.

They were at the Singing Ground, and the woman had given her some clothing once she had finally been able to revert to Smooth. Oddly, it felt good to be wearing clothes again, even though she preferred her fur over anything else, now that she had worn it. The aches eased, too.

The Singing Ground looked different in the morning light; it wasn't the place that she remembered Singing by moonlight to Mother-Beloved. It looked plain and ordinary, not the place of sacredness she remembered.

The woman had brought food and water for her, and while she ate the woman told her what had happened to her family. They were seated in the woman's car's front seats.

"It seems that your car had a front tire blow out and the carcass of the tire jammed the steering. Your car veered into an Army convoy on the way somewhere for some sort of military exercises and your parents were killed. You survived because you were in the back seat and because it seems you did a Panic-Shift before you lost consciousness. The Army took you and we've been having a hard time getting any word about you or your condition. Apparently, there was something else happening and a special group called Manikin was involved in getting you out.

"Oh, excuse me, I'm Christine Demmings; and I use my job in Children's Services to make sure our people aren't put with non-Kindred families."

She extended her hand and Cathy took it with a friendly grip, at last someone who wasn't strange in some way. Then she remembered something.

"The Doctor said your name at the Hospital, when he was asking me questions," she said, "do you know him?"

"What was the doctor's name? I know a number of doctors through my work," Christine replied.

"Mercer, I think;" Cathy replied. "We didn't talk a lot. I couldn't, and he...Miss Demmings? What's wrong?"

"Miss Demmings" had turned pale as she heard the name.

"Charles Mercer and I were friends, very good friends, years ago. I was going to get my parents to nominate him for Kindred membership when he was caught spying on us right here on these Singing Grounds," she said slowly.

"There was a terrible row about it, and although I tried to get people to listen, my parents and the other elders decided to wipe all memory of me from his mind. I was forbidden to see him, and he wouldn't recognize me if he saw me; or so I was told. I was only fifteen at the time, and not an adult; so I had to obey. When I passed my Trials at sixteen, he and his family had moved out of town.

"Later I learned that his father worked for a Pack member, and had been fired for some reason, just to make them leave," she said with a bowed head. "There were some terse times with my parents and our pack's First, because of that. I felt that they had shamed me when they acted that way."

"But Servant said..." Cathy began, only to be interrupted by Christine who grumbled, "Not all Servants are as strong as they should be. Ours pretty much went with what the Council wanted unless it was specifically against the Word of the People. He's no longer our Servant, and he's moved out of state. You know our current Servant, Michael. He wouldn't have done something like that."

Then she looked at Cathy, asking; "What about you? You seem to be handling the loss of your sworn parents very well, even though we don't grieve as much as our Smooth brothers do. How do you feel?" she asked with concern.

Cathy sighed, "I don't know. Servant did something that made me calm when we had to get out of that Army base. Maybe it's still in effect."

"Possibly," Christine said, "and possibly all this excitement has caused you to shut that part of yourself down. Would you like to talk to Servant Michael about this? We will have to go back to your house to get your things, and that could trigger a reaction to your parent's death in itself."

Cathy thought and then agreed. Servant Michael was a nice man, and always made her feel happy and loved when they talked at the Sings. He could help her cope with whatever happened, and since he was also a professional nature writer, his days were free. Then a frightening thought struck her.

"What is going to happen to me?" she asked Christine, "what is going to happen next?"

"Do you know John and Amanda Carter?" Christine asked; "they are in your year group in School. Their parents have asked about you."

"I know Amanda," Cathy replied; "she's good with math and she helped me last year in middle school with algebra. I don't know John that well, he's a sports guy, I think."

"Yes, he is," Christine replied, "they are a very remarkable family, since he is Smooth and she is Wolf and the parents are Wolf as well. They are both sworn children, and the parents were calling as soon as we knew for certain that your parents were dead and you were alive in Army custody. They were going to go over to the Base and ask after you tomorrow. Now they won't have to.

"The Carters are devoted parents, even though they haven't had children of their own," Christine continued; "and they can support another child easily. The question is what do you want, Cathy? What would you prefer? What do you want?"

"What do you want?"

The words caught Cathy off guard. In an instant, Servant's calming fled.

"Mother and Father, that's what I want;" she said as tears began to fall. "For them not to be dead, to still be here and to be their daughter; that is what I want..." She couldn't say anything more. She curled into a ball of grief and loss and pain, the rest of her meal ignored in her lap.

Christine started her car and headed to town and the Council's Servant. Cathy had finally admitted to grief. Now, hopefully, she could start to heal.

Christine realized that she had something to deal with as well. She hadn't taken a mate, and since Charles had disappeared hadn't wanted one. How much would he remember? Should she stir those memories?

Later; now there was a child in pain next to her in her car, and that child deserved all of her caring until things got better.

By the time they had driven the twenty-some miles to town, Cathy had stopped crying and was just staring at the floor of the car. She looked like someone in great pain, and she was. She was afraid, afraid of everything that was going to happen, afraid of what had already happened, and was living in a place where loss and fear were the only parts of life that she was aware of.

When they arrived at Servant Michael's small garden-enclosed house, Cathy was numb; staring at nothing and almost unresponsive when Christine helped her out of the car and into Michael's driveway, to walk to his house past flowering herbs and some vegetables he grew for his table.

He met them at the door in his fur, and gently guided Cathy into the living room and settled her down in a comfortable-looking chair. He handed her a cup of something and made her drink it. She immediately began to relax.

All the while, Christine waited and watched from the hallway; seeing for the first time the girl she had come to collect on the strength of a telephone call from Servant Michael himself.

Cathy looked frankly horrible. Her hair was knotted and kinked, there were bruises on her wrists, she was hunched over and her eyes were red from crying and held the frightening emptiness Christine had seen before in children suddenly orphaned.

They were never quite the same children afterwards.

Of course, those were human children, not wulfen children; still the similarity in appearance made her breath catch in her throat.

Cathy was speaking with the Servant quietly, and in smooth Christine couldn't hear the words; but Michael was acting the way he did when he was worried about something serious and trying to hide it. His ears were not quite up and his tail was half tucked under him. Christine began to worry.

Cathy finished the cup and soon was asleep, settled in the cushions of Michael's chair. He bent and did something and it reclined, making a bed for the girl.

He stood and motioned toward the kitchen, and led Christine into it. His ears and tail were down and now he looked worried. He rarely did that, and that worried Christine even more.

Seated at the table with tea and cookies in front of her, Christine asked him, "Okay, Mike, how bad is it? You look worried and you never look worried unless you're scared silly. What's wrong, and how did you know we were coming? I didn't call, there are no telephones out there."

The Servant sighed and said, "I got a strange telephone call telling me that Cathy was released and where to get her. I called you and I knew you'd bring her here. That's about it.

"About Catherine; she's been shocked enough to have done a full shift at the age of fourteen. That is not normal in any way, shape, or form.

"Then she was forced into calm, and not allowed even the slightest bit of grieving until now. That's bad, very bad. She is recovering from a concussion in the area of her brain that controls her shifts; which might make control at a later date difficult or impossible. She has been terrified repeatedly, and the Servant who was involved in her rescue warned me she might have control issues over that, as well.

"And she is exhausted, totally exhausted both physically and spiritually. She is going to have to re-learn to trust Smooth humans again in social situations."

Then his ears drooped even farther; "She still has to return to her home, one last time, to gather her personal things and say good-bye to the place where she grew up. That's where it will hit her; that her parents are gone, gone, gone; and outside of the Place of Peace, she will never see them again.

"That is where it's the worst, because Death has visited her safe place, her home, and taken away her parents. All the words in the world won't help her then. I have had to do this three times in the eighteen years I have been Servant to this Council, and this will be the worst, I think.

"She needs to gain strength before that time, and I'd like to keep her here for a week or ten days and try to get her strong enough to deal with that shock, and all the shocks that will follow; once the human courts get into the act."

He glanced at Christine and asked; "Do you think you can do that; get us the time she and I need to deal with this thing?"

Christine thought for a moment, then said, "I can get you a week, probably; since you are registered with Social Services as a Custodian for 'children in need,' but the Courts are going to want this resolved fast and will want her in an approved family as a foster child as soon as possible, and the property matters seen to as well. I'll do what I can."

Then she grimaced; "And they will want a psychological evaluation on her as soon as they can get it. I don't know what I can do about that."

"Georgia Wells is SmoothKindred and a child psychologist," Michael said thoughtfully, "and if I ask her, she will undoubtedly take the case. Can she buy some time for us, though? I'm not kidding about her control problems, she could do a full shift in Court if she gets frightened enough; now that she's done one already. She is on the bare edge of stability right now, and anything negative by her lights will only make things worse."

Then Michael added, "She heard the Call, according to my source. That means she might just go feral if she is stressed too much and disappear into the desert as a wolf. It's happened before, not a hundred miles away from here, about twenty years ago. That was a royal mess, since half a dozen humans saw it happen. We had to do some fast patchwork, let me tell you."

"You were involved with the Reynolds affair?" Christine asked in surprise.

"Yes," Michael replied, "as a student to their local Servant. The Army wanted the kid--guess why--and the judge found for the Army family that wanted to 'adopt' him. Joseph lost it right there, in the Kindred house he had been staying in, shifted and was out the door in thirty seconds flat. We never saw him again, other than once in the hills with a pack around him. He ran when we tried to contact him."

"That is Haouu's protection; the ability to forget the human and just be the wolf for a few years. It has saved a lot of kids who were orphaned when their parents were found out, in the real old days."

"But things are different now," Christine replied, then amended her words with, "aren't they?"

"If you mean the mobs of peasants--then yes, somewhat;" the Servant responded, "but if you mean people who will exploit us and use us for their own ends, those; not in the least. We are still at risk in this world, and only our acceptance of more Kindred helps us in that way. We have more clout than we used to, because of them."

"Hum," he muttered, "I'm still bitter over the Reynolds case, it seems. I need to address that little problem, and soon. It's past, and a Servant lives in the present."

Christine asked worriedly, "Do you think that the Army will get involved again, like in the Reynolds case? She was in their custody for thirty-six hours before she was rescued."

Michael grinned for the first time, "Not bloody likely," he said. "The people who were involved will make sure of that. At the most, she will show as being treated and released to Child Services as soon as someone could get out there. There may not be any records of her being there at all, as another possibility. We will just have to find out."

"Meanwhile," he said firmly, "I have a very hurt wolf-child in my recliner and only a sketchy idea as to how to treat her. That will be my focus in meditation for the immediate future. After that we will have to get her through the visit to what was her home and then get her settled with a family. After that, I am taking a vacation for awhile; provided I can get another Servant to stand in for me."

"How can you meditate and learn how to deal with Cathy's problems?" Christine asked in surprise.

"The only answer I can give you for that is to suggest you petition for the White Coat of Service," Michael smiled back, "then you'll know. Otherwise, I can't discuss it since it's Servants-only information. It will also involve a lot of long-distance charges on the telephone as I consult with other Servants who have experience in fear-induced early shifting. I am going to be one busy Werewolf for awhile."

Catherine sighed and stood. "I have to get back to my office and start the paperwork on Cathy's case," she said as she pushed her chair back under the table. "I'll buy you as much time as I can," she promised.

As she and the Servant headed toward the door, she glanced in on Cathy and saw she had shifted again to wolf as she slept. Michael pointed to the door and followed her through it.

"That's another problem," he said quietly; "at her age she isn't physically ready for the full shift she's doing. She could become deformed as a result of her immature skeleton being forced into the shift. Her bones won't take the strain yet, and she is using a huge amount of energy to do each shift at this age. That's another worry I have; Cathy being forced into wolf shape and not being able to get fully out of it, eventually. She may have to stay wolf if this keeps up much more."

Those words ringing in her ears, she grew more and more worried as she drove toward her offices at the Social Services building. Cathy might have to go the way of Haouu whether she wanted to or not.

Maybe Michael could pull a miracle out of his hat. She prayed that he could, for Cathy's sake, as she headed toward her work of entering an orphan into the Social Services registers and getting the government into protecting her the way she needed to be protected.

Cathy was aware of none of this. She was in a wonderful place, and her parents were there with her.

"But I don't want to leave," she said for the third time, "I want to stay here with you. You're mom and dad, and I'm your daughter. We should be together, not apart. Why do I have to go back to that awful place?"

"Why?" she asked with sudden fear.

"Because you have your life ahead of you, unlived," Father said quietly. "We didn't want to leave you, but we had to because our bodies were broken and couldn't be alive any longer, back there."

"But you're alive now," Cathy replied logically; "So why can't I stay here where you are alive?"

"Because you aren't ready," Mother answered. "You promised our Mother-Beloved that you would do something special with your life and you haven't done that yet. It is important that you do what you said you would do, because it will help to bring our Day of Freedom to us. Because of what you do, in time our People will never have to hide again. You won't have to pretend to be Smooth when you aren't. You will be able to wear your fur whenever you want to.

"You will help set our People free, Cathy. That is why you have to go back to the world we left behind when we came here."

"B-but then I won't see you again..." she whispered, "you'll be gone, and I'll be alone."

"You won't be alone, Cathy;" Father said gently, "we will be with you every minute in your memory of us. We will be beside you, even if you can't see or hear us, we will be there supporting you, just as we would if we had continued to live in your world.

"In time, you will learn to love your new parents; did you know they wanted to adopt you when we were made your sworn parents? We were going to let you spend time with their children in high school. Now you will have all the time you need to grow in their love as their chosen daughter. You will have a sister to talk to and a brother to be annoyed with. You will have parents who love you as if you were their own flesh and blood."

Then Mother warned her; "You must work to control your body's shifting, because you have been hurt in the area that controls shifts. It will be doubly hard for you to maintain Smooth appearance for a time, although you will heal eventually and be as normal as anybody else in your shifts. Right now, though, it will mean hard work if you don't want to follow our Divine Father's path and live out your life as a wolf, forgetting your heritage and humanity.

"If that happens," Mother warned again; "our People's freedom will be delayed for years, and more children will have to hide like you do now. You will make it harder for all of our People to gain their freedom if you let yourself go that way."

"Then...either way, I lose you," she said as sorrow settled into her heart. "I will be alone, when all I want is to be here with you."

"You won't have to be alone if you let others into your heart," Mother replied gently. "Being alone is something you choose, not something that Heaven requires of you. You will miss us, yes; but there are others who will love you the way we do. That is your choice, Cathy, always. You will be as alone as you choose to be, or as loved as you will allow."

"That would hurt us, if you did that and were alone;" Father told her. "We raised you to love others, not to turn them away."

Then they kissed her and began to fade as the bridge created by Servant Michael's cup of "Reunion" began to wear off.

Cathy slept, at peace and calm now; for the first time after the accident. She began to heal, just a little.

It was night when she awakened, and at first the recliner frightened her, reminding her of the hospital bed and the restraints she had worn.

That made her gasp and look around. She saw that she was in Servant Michael's house, and looking down saw a white furred wolf in a nightshirt curled up on the floor beside her chair. He had just opened one eye to look at her.

Her gasp had awakened him and so he sat up, stretching out the kinks that sleeping on the floor always gave him.

"I had the strangest dream," she began and then stopped at the Servant's expression of knowing something she didn't.

"It wasn't a dream, Cathy," he said; "I gave you a Reunion Cup so you could have some time with your parents. If anyone could soothe you, they could; and it appears that they did just that. You aren't radiating fear anymore."

"B-but the Reunion Cup is poison," she replied, suddenly tense. "It kills People whose Bond-mate has passed on and they haven't. Everybody knows that."

"You're still here," Michael pointed out; "The 'lethality' of the Cup is something we Servants let people believe, because people have to get on with their lives after a tragedy like yours, and the Cup has been abused in the past when people used it to stay with family who had gone on. They ignored their own lives, and became addicted to visiting their loved ones in the Place of Peace, preventing those loved ones from doing what they needed to, which is to learn and grow in spirit.

"When the Cup is used in the case of a Bonded Mate being left behind, it weakens their soul-to-body attachment enough to let the Bond take them to their mate in the Place, and avoid starvation and death by dehydration and bodily collapse.

"That's what the Cup actually does. I will ask you to keep this a secret, since I'm not supposed to use the Cup in the way I did, but you needed to be able to get closure somehow to start your healing."

"I don't feel sick," Cathy said, a bit confused at the Servant's words. "How am I sick? I feel okay physically, just a little stiff..."

Michael held up her hand. It was a fur-covered hand, half wolf's paw and half human hand.

"You see this?" he asked, "you're fourteen, and you will be fifteen in three months. Your skeleton isn't finished yet, and your shifting is putting a terrible strain on it. If you keep shifting the way you have been, you could be crippled in your Smooth form. You might even have to stay wolf, and not try to shift in the worst case. That would be bad, since you would have to leave everyone and live out in the desert, as a wolf; with only visits from your packmates to keep you human. It is not the way to live; I had a child your age go feral and we lost him to Haouu's protection. He forgot he was human and became only a wolf. He died six years later of old age, as a wolf would.

"I don't want that to happen to you, Cathy; I really don't."

"What can I do?' she asked fearfully, "I'm not doing this deliberately. It seems that if I stop trying to be Smooth, I go back to wolf when I relax."

"I contacted a Healing Servant I know," Michael explained, "and she is on her way here. You have an injury to your brain that is doing this, and I can't fix it. I don't know how to, as a general Servant. I can do some healing, but this is 'way beyond my skills in healing people."

"Can't you do something?" Cathy asked, now really afraid for herself.

"Yes, but it will involve you taking something called 'Mute' on a regular basis while you're in Smooth," Michael replied. "It will make you feel sort of relaxed and silly, but it will suppress your involuntary shifting. Then we will talk about your parents, and what you want to do in your life, and you'll eat a special diet to help replace what you've used up with these shifts.

"I'll teach you to meditate, and how to find our Mother-Beloved's Peace within yourself, and how to control yourself as you grow.

"Together, we'll get you better, so you can pick up your life-task and go on with it. As your Servant, that is my duty to you; and it's my pleasure as your friend. You'll stay here for a while, so you can get stronger and learn to deal with what has happened to you.

"Then you will be ready for what you'll have to do while the Courts resettle you with another Wolf family."

"That's what Dad said," Cathy admitted sadly, "in the Place. Mom said I had a special life-task to do so we won't have to hide anymore. It sounded like a really big job, and I wonder if I can do it like I should."

"Have faith in yourself," Michael said firmly, "you wouldn't be asked to do something you couldn't. Seek our Goddess for guidance, and seek Her for comfort; but always trust that you have a task you can accomplish.

"As with every Wolf," he continued, " we have a People who will support us in what we need to accomplish, and a People we support in our turn as a member of a Pack. Trust in yourself and your People, and trust in our Goddess, and you won't go wrong."

"Now let me get you your first dose of Mute," he said as he stood, "and then you'll revert and drink it. You'll probably go back to sleep, and I have a guest bedroom where you can do that more comfortably than in my recliner."

He went into the kitchen and got the drug and some mint tea, then into the tiny guest bedroom for a shift for her to wear. Then he returned to the living room where Cathy was sitting up in her chair with a look of concentration on her young wolf's face.

"I can't seem to do it," she lamented. "I reverted in Miss Christine's car, but I can't do it now."

"That was probably exhaustion," Michael explained. "You're rested a bit, now. Remember, you are hurt. You have a concussion, and aren't in complete control of yourself right now."

"I do have a headache," Cathy admitted, "is that part of it?"

Michael nodded, "Yes it is. Fortunately, the Mute is good for headaches as well as shifting control."

Together, the managed to get Cathy reverted to a fourteen year old girl in a tan colored shift that was a little large for her. Then it was time for the Mute.

"Why two cups?" she asked when he put the tray in her lap.

"One is Mute, and one is mint tea. You will want it after the Mute," Michael warned. He handed her one cup with the admonition, "Drink it fast so you won't taste it as much."

She did and made a face as she grabbed the mint tea and took a swallow.

"Yuccch," she groaned as she drank the mint tea, "that tasted like a licorice swamp. Is that what Mute tastes like all the time?"

"Actually, the licorice flavor is from Anisette, a liqueur used to mask the actual taste of the Mute; as well as dilute it so you can drink it in Smooth," Michael explained. "If we were keeping you in fur, there wouldn't have been the Anisette. It dilutes the stuff so you absorb it properly."

"Gleh," she replied, "I need to get better fast. That stuff is awful."

Inside, Michael was relieved at her response. It meant that her parents' death was not foremost in her mind anymore. That was a good sign.

"Hey, my headache is gone," she said after a few minutes. "I don't have to fight the urge to shift, either. That Mute is awful tasting, but it seems to work okay."

A few minutes after that, she yawned and announced, "I'm getting sleepy. Is it okay to go to bed now?"

"Absolutely," Michael said with a grin, and led her to the guest bedroom, a Werewolf and a child walking together down his hallway. She climbed into the bed and was asleep almost instantly.

Then Michael sang a short prayer and blessing over her and retired to his own bed in the next room. He was tired and could use some decent sleep himself, after the events of the day. The floor was hard.

He did set his alarm, though. She would need regular doses of Mute to stay Smooth and he didn't want to oversleep and let her shift again. That would be very bad.

And...the Healing Servant would be arriving sometime in the morning.

Christine, in the meantime, had run into a snag at her office. After typing the information she already had on Cathy Matthews and setting the legal protections in place that would keep the Army and anyone else from bothering her, she checked her other high-priority work and started in on that. Then she had taken care of her normal work and finally gone home.

The next day, she had been called into her supervisor's office, a woman she detested as incompetent and only interested in her career; not the children in her care.

"You are letting a fourteen-year old girl stay with a single man?" her supervisor, Marjorie Winslow, asked in astonishment. "What were you thinking? He is definitely not proper as a custodian for a girl of that age. Why wasn't she sent to a family where she would have proper models and supervision at this impressionable time? I cannot approve this, she must be put with one of our registered foster parents while the department takes over the parents' legal affairs.

"Contact this man and tell him that he is to bring her here immediately."

Christine summoned her reserves of calm by main force and managed to stay outwardly calm. Ms. Winslow was an idiot, someone who ran things by her book, and really didn't care what chaos resulted in the children's lives as long as she looked like she was running a tight and proper agency.

"First," Christine said as calmly as she could, " Michael Conner is vouched for by this agency as a first-call foster parent, with many citations as to his probity and kindness with traumatized children. Second, this agency is not involved in the property matters; the Matthews family is part of an organization that provides post-trauma support and is legally the family's receiver and Cathy's protector under law. We just have to officially notify them, although they already know that the parents are dead and the girl is--with their approval--in the care of Mr. Conner.

"Mr. Connor is a trained post-mortem children's counselor, and his credentials are impeccable; and finally, he knows Cathy and her family and she asked to be put in his care."

Ms. Winslow blinked behind her thick glasses and replied, "What some social group has by way of a conservatorship agreement is irrelevant in this matter. We are the Children's Protective Services for this county, and we are the conservators for all children, whether orphaned, abused or abandoned. They are not. Period.

"I am directing you to follow policy in this matter, and you will follow policy whether you like to or not. I run a tight agency here, and you are not changing that.

"As to the child's wishes in this matter, they are also irrelevant, since she is a minor child and cannot know what is best for her."

Christine gritted her teeth and said nothing.

The woman glared at Christine. "I gave you an order. Follow it, or I will put another agency representative on the matter and suspend you for insubordination. The matter is closed." Her lips were closed in a flat line and she was angry. This mere employee was not going to cost her when the evaluations came around. She would not be given a less-than-excellent rating over some orphaned brat.

Keeping her anger in check and suppressing the urge to shift and rip the woman to shreds in her own office, Christine stood and left the room. She headed for her desk and her telephone list.

First, she called the Council's legal representatives; SmoothKin who were the People's defenders in human courts. They accepted the case as soon as she explained who and what was involved.

Next she called the Carters. They were the legal in-extremis parents that Cathy's own parents had designated to take their daughter should they be unable to care for her. They had the documents to take Cathy into their family, signed by a Kindred Family Law judge. Once they were presented, the Agency would have to comply.

These documents were a legal Will that left Cathy Matthews, a minor, as a chattel to the family of George and Francine Carter; rather like a vase or a piece of furniture. Such was the law that "protected" children while at the same time not really knowing what to do with them. They were chattels. Objects, not people.

The very concept was alien to the Wulfen People, who cherished children and always saw them as People-to-be, and treated them that way. It wasn't that way in human society, and the differences showed in the children who were the supposed reason for the law's existence.

That was why the Council had Kindred human legal representation. The Wulfen might be of human descent, but they for the most part didn't understand human law in detail. It was as alien as ancient Egyptian to them. Christine was a rare exception to that, in that she understood and could navigate the rocky waters of human law with some degree of competence. Still, she was glad for the lawyers the Council provided.

Finally, she called Michael. She had to warn him, and at the same time find out how Cathy was doing.

"She's under a Healer's care," he said after Christine had identified herself. "And we got lucky with her. She was hit by something in the car; that's what caused the injury. An inch lower and she would have either died or been seriously mentally impaired. An inch higher, and she would have had a headache and that would be about it. As she is, she will need at least a week of very careful healing and swelling control to keep her shifting dependable. I'll need to keep her on Mute for at least that long as well, just so the healer isn't having to constantly suppress her shifts while she works.

"Now the bad news; her shifting has damaged her legs and shoulders. She will need extra-height shoes until she is grown because her Achilles tendons have reduced in length permanently, and she may be stoop-shouldered because of the shoulder-blade relocation over immature bones and ligaments. The Healer thinks she can keep the shoulder problems to a minimum, but the legs and feet are warped into wolf pattern and will probably stay that way; although the Healer isn't certain about that, either, yet. She will try to reposition the shoulders as high as she can, but in her words, 'don't hold my breath' over the legs."

Then he asked Christine what was happening with Children's Protective Services, and when she told him what Ms. Winslow had demanded, he simply said, "No. I'll let her go to Haouu's protection before I let her be sent off to a non-Kindred family. She is...damaged, and with one shift in a non-Kindred household , the Secret around here would be history. She would lead others to us, whether she wanted to or not. We can't allow that, not until the Day."

"Perhaps if I came down there and spoke with your boss, we might reach a different understanding," he suggested.

Christine shuddered, "I really don't think so. Mr. Chasen was reasonable about things, but he retired four months ago, and Miz Winslow transferred in from Accounting. She had a good record there, and apparently the powers that be decided that even if she had no experience in the Services end of things, she was the best person for the job. She's making a mess of the department by trying to run things the way things were run among the bean counters, and Cathy is only the most recent example. I don't expect her to last another three months, but for now she's the one in charge."

There was silence on the line long enough for Christine to think that they had been disconnected, but then Michael's voice was back and he was asking when Ms. Winslow usually came back from lunch.

"She usually eats at her desk from what she's brought from home," Christine replied, "and she is punctual about her lunch hour. She is back 'on the clock' at one p.m. like clockwork. Why?"

"Because that's when I want to speak with her," Michael replied, "when she is 'torpid from feeding'. That's always the best time to make an impression, when they have just fed and aren't hungry. I'll see you then." The line went to dial tone.

"What did he mean by that?" Christine wondered silently.

The morning crept by and when lunch time finally arrived, Christine was still puzzled by Michael's statement.

When he came into the Services office, she went over to him for some sort of explanation.

He chuckled, "You wouldn't believe it. I'm just glad there is a men's room on this floor. Now, where is this dragon I need to slay?"

That made his reference clear. That also worried the daylights out of her.

When she introduced him to Miz Winslow, the woman asked bluntly, "Did you bring the child with you?"

When he shook his head, she glared and said, "Then you will return to your house with a Services escort and a Police officer and the girl will be turned over that way, and you will lose your approval as a Custodial Care-giver. I cannot fathom how you ever qualified in the first place," she said disapprovingly, as she looked at him.

Michael looked like he always did in Smooth; a slightly taller than average, well developed mature man with shoulder length white hair, sort of like a beardless Santa Claus. Normally, he acted like one; but not today and not here.

"Christine, close the door and the blinds, will you?" he asked, before turning to Miz Winslow. To her, he said, "Sit and do nothing." She sat.

Then he was no longer the gentle and caring looking Smooth. In an instant, he was himself; an upright wolf in slacks and a polo shirt.

"Miz" Winslow goggled at the transformation, but said nothing. She didn't move, either. She couldn't. The command had taken control of her body.

"You will not converse or convey anything you see or hear in this meeting," the Servant said, making it a command; "to anyone. You will remember, but not communicate what happens here today. Ever. It will be your special knowledge alone, and when Christine or some other person I designate says that this is an 'exceptional case' you will remember what we say this day, and only then."

"Cathy Matthews, like myself, is a werewolf. She has been severely injured and is only now receiving the treatment she needs to heal properly, so that she may grow into a normal adult of our People without being crippled or worse.

"I am a person who is responsible for the well-being of the People of my kind that live in this area. That is why I am here, speaking to you now. Cathy is gravely ill in a way that you as a smooth-skinned human cannot be ill. She needs the care that special members of our People can give. These people are called Healing Servants. I am a simple General Servant and unable to give her that scale of care, although I am dealing with her fear and grief at the loss of her parents myself, since I know her and she sees me as a protective presence in her life right now.

"Christine is also a member of our race, and is here specifically to make sure that our children are guided into understanding and capable homes when the unthinkable happens and they are left without parents, or without parents who are capable of giving them the care that they need.

"We are not the monsters that legend portrays us to be. We are a People who simply evolved differently from you. Our appearance causes instinctive fear in those who do not know us, and that fear requires that we hide in society rather than be what we are, people who look like wolves.

"We have a religion, moral direction, a recorded history, and a stable society; just as you have religion, morals, history, and a societal structure. We are exactly like you in that respect. We differ solely in appearance and the responses that our appearance causes in others.

"You will not interfere in Catherine's care, and you will allow Christine Demmings to handle her care and placement with a family of our own People.

"Should you no longer be in the position you now possess, this visit will become an after-lunch dream you had when you ate too heavy a lunch and dozed off in your office as a result. This will be embarrassing, so you will not speak of it to anyone.

"Do you understand what I have said? You may now speak in a normal voice and only in a normal voice. You may not scream or call out.

"You may now respond."

The first thing Marjorie Winslow tried to do was scream. When her voice wouldn't work, she tried speaking.

"Are you going to kill me?" was her first question.

Michael shook his head, "No. If that was my intent, you would be dead already. I can control your mind, and I can command you to die. I didn't, because we respect life and take it only as a last resort to protect our People's safety."

"Is the Matthews girl going to be a monster when she grows up?" came next.

"She isn't a monster now, and she will grow up to be a young woman of our People. We are not monsters, just different from you," Michael replied, then asked; "Do you see why we hide, just from your own questions so far? We are nothing like the way we are generally depicted. We are simply different from you."

Ms. Winslow's jaws worked for a moment, then she simply said, "Yes. You are frightening to normal people. You frighten me."

"We are 'normal' in every way but appearance," Michael explained again. He was becoming annoyed; the woman had not asked a single caring question about Cathy; only about what he looked like and intended for her, Miz Winslow.

He wasn't that sure about the answer to that one himself, not right now.

"If I allow Miss Demmings a free hand with the girl, will you not kill me, then?" she asked. "I do not want a monster to kill me over one orphaned brat. I have a career."

He sighed, Christine was right. "No, we won't kill you. You won't even know she exists, outside of the paperwork. This will cost your department less money, since we care for our own people in our own way. She will need a Psychological evaluation, and that will be a charge; but otherwise this will be a low-cost case for your department."

"That will be very agreeable," Ms. Winslow said. "This department has been operating at a deficit for too long. We need to cut costs."

Michael glared at the woman for a moment, then commanded; "You will transfer out of this department as soon as you can, and never try to manage it again after that. You place money above the needs of children whose lives have been destroyed, and that is something I cannot in conscience allow to continue."

"You will leave this department at your earliest opportunity, do you understand?"

He made that as strong a command as he could. This woman was a disaster in the lives of children who already had experienced a disaster with their parents. She had to go.

"I understand," Ms. Winslow replied vacantly. "Leave the department and return to accounting," she added.

"Yes." Michael replied, "Yes, go count beans again."

He stood and stared at the woman for nearly a minute.

"Done," he said with satisfaction; "the compulsions are set and she won't throw them off. She will ask for a transfer, and get it; if what I picked up from her free- associating mind is at all accurate. The powers that be are not happy with her performance here."

Then he was Smooth Michael again.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said as he left the office. "I need to use the men's room again...to shift, so I don't have to carry this illusion any more." Then he was gone and out of the offices as Christine watched. She opened the blinds and looked back at Miz Winslow. The woman was staring, and would continue to do so for a few minutes as the various compulsions settled into her mind. Then she would be her old un-lovable self again, only with a hands-off approach where Cathy and other wulfen children were involved.

One small victory won.

As Christine returned to her desk, wondering at what her Servant had done. She hadn't realized he was that powerful. He certainly didn't act like it most of the time.

When Michael returned, he was completely in Smooth, no illusions. Glancing down at Christine's desk he asked, "Want some decaf and maybe a visit to see how Cathy is doing? I could use a bit of talk, myself."

Taking the hint, Christine left a note as to where she would be and the telephone number there on her desk, should she need to be contacted.

They went to a coffee shop across from the Childrens Services building, and he surprised her by ordering a hamburger diet plate, no tomato and an extra patty of meat.

"I used a lot of energy back there," he began as they sipped the coffee. "I was letting a rider use my abilities to set some deep compulsions, and the illusions are always a drain on me. I think it will work, though. She had no defenses at all, and once she stopped gibbering mentally and listened, she was remarkably compliant."

"She is a totally incompetent administrator for your department, though," he added.

"Rider?" Christine asked, "what is a rider? I didn't realize you were that powerful, though; until you took over in her office. I was just glad you were able to get her to back off, though she seems to be assimilating the compulsions you set quite well."

Michael smiled and said, "A rider is another Servant in meditation somewhere, hitching a ride with me and using his knowledge and my ability to get things done. We don't do it often; but when we need it, nothing else will do, as a rule."

"You gave her my name, Cathy's name, and she knows your own name as well, isn't that a little dangerous?" Christine queried the now eating Servant.

He swallowed. "Do you remember the conditions I put with the main compulsion? She won't be able to give anything away, and when she leaves the department, she will believe she ate too much and dozed off," he replied. "Even if she remembers something, she won't say anything for fear of being called a crackpot. She is in trouble in your department, and she knows it. She won't risk further damage to her career by making wild un-provable claims about her co-workers.

"I just feel sorry for the kids she economized with, that's all."

"They are being seen to, after the adoptive parents complained to the Court," Christine replied with relief. "The Court started asking questions, and I suspect that she will be out on her ass, once the Court turns in the findings on the children we had to scrimp on. They will be alright, in time."

"I certainly hope so," Michael said in return, "I certainly hope so."

"That is very good, Cathy; you are getting the idea behind what you need to do with your bones now," Healer's voice floated through Cathy's mind.

She wasn't actually in her body right now; she was floating somewhere above the long bone in her lower right leg and pulling it back to straight from the bent shape it had assumed while she was shifting.

Healer was also working on her body, although it was her head that was getting Healer's ministrations right now.

She and Healer had discovered that she had developed very good control over her body as a result of her un-intended shifts, and as a result she could do some "Healing" of herself while Healer was working on her body somewhere else and supplying the energy.

It was strange to say the least. She was using...something...to straighten bones in her legs that had been distorted because she was shifting to wolf at the wrong age, when her skeleton was still soft enough to be bent by the forces that reshaped her in the shift, but not soft enough to spring back when the shift was over.

A year from now, her bones would be strong enough to stay in shape; and it was in the fifteenth year of life that most wolf children began to experiment with their shifting abilities; frequently with mixed results, often comical.

Usually, the first full shift would take place while they were asleep; and they would wake up as a true child of the wolf in body, mind, and spirit. They would strut and preen until they realized that they didn't know how to get back to Smooth again. Then they would usually panic, fearing that they would be stuck in their Werewolf form forever.

At that point, their parents would give them a juvenile version of "Mute" and patiently walk them through the process of reversion to Smooth. They would practice and practice until they were in control of the miracle they were as Werewolves, shape-changers, and sometime around their sixteenth birthday, they would take the Proving tests, pass and become adults in the Wulfen community; inheritors of Mother-Beloved Lunara and Father Protector Haouu's lineage that stretched back to the stone age.

Cathy didn't have that good fortune. She had begun to shift and stay shifted at exactly the wrong time in her life; younger, and the bones were still soft enough to adapt.

Older, and the bones were strong enough to resist.

But from the age of thirteen to the age of fifteen, shifting could be a catastrophe for the skeleton of the one shifting.

And that had been when Cathy had shifted due to a brain injury that forced her into an adult shape that she was not ready for.

Healer was working to reduce the persistent swelling in her brain that kept her shifted whether she wanted to be or not. Healer had been optimistic about her making a full recovery and regaining her physical control, and so far that optimism had paid off. She was still taking Mute on a regular basis and washing the taste out of her mouth with flavored tea of some sort; usually mint. She had not shifted now for sixteen hours, and as the swelling went down, the urge to shift was going down as well. Still, this was only the beginning, and she understood that.

She would be many more days healing, but she was healing.

Christine pulled up to Michael's little house, set back from the road and well away from the neighbors who were Wulf on one side and Kindred on the other; being next door to the Council's Servant was a desirable location.

She watched him park his two-year old Volkswagen Rabbit in the driveway next to a strange car that looked like one of the new Asian cars that were moving into American homes and roads. She still drove her Mustang, and planned on keeping the car as long as she could. It was comfortable and fast, something a Werewolf could appreciate. She did, greatly.

He waited for her to reach the front door before opening the screen and inviting her in. Soon, a glass of water in-hand, she looked in on Cathy and the Healing Servant.

"Miss Demmings," Cathy called out, "look at my legs! Healer says I'm doing part of the job of straightening them myself." Then she blushed and added, "Healer lends me the stuff I'm using to do it, though."

"Healer" Jeanette Marks stood and shook hands with Christine and motioned toward the living room as Michael entered the bedroom and went to sit with Cathy and start teaching her the calming meditations he had promised to show her. He stepped aside as the two women left the room and headed for the living room and a discussion of what was happening to and with Cathy.

Once seated, Jeanette began with introducing herself and Christine responded. Once that was out of the way, Cathy became the center of their conversation.

Jeanette relaxed on the couch in her fur, a couch which Christine could see was set up as a bed for her as well and gave her assessment of Cathy's condition, while Christine took a facing chair so they could talk easily.

"Cathy is still in some danger," Jeanette began, "since that swelling on her brain's surface is like a blood blister on someone's finger. It could break and Goddess knows what would happen. I'm getting the blood to reabsorb, but the leaks that caused it in the first place are still dribbling a little, so I'm not making as much progress as I'd hoped for. She still could die of hemorrhage at any time, and the pressure makes a steady diet of Mute a necessity for now.

"She isn't as deformed as I had expected her to be, given the amount of in-fur time she spent at the Army hospital. I suspect that her being restrained helped a bit there. She couldn't move, couldn't stress her bones until she had stabilized enough.

"There is deformation in her shoulders from the movement of her shoulder blades, but they again are movable to almost their original position, and she won't look humpbacked the way I had feared she would. Her legs are a similar case, and there she is actively relocating bone when I give her the capability to do so."

She leaned back on the couch and stretched, her ears back then forward and then she yawned showing bright white fangs and shredders. "I could use a nap," she declared; "and I just may take one in a little bit while Mike is working with Cathy."

Then she settled, and looking at Christine asked her how the legal matters were going.

"They could be better, but since Michael dealt with my supervisor, I don't foresee anything serious or difficult. We have the standard contract between Pack members, and I think I have a family to take Cathy when she is better. They all know her, and their daughter helped her with math last year in school.

"The Matthews house is mortgaged but almost paid off, and the increase in equity should give Cathy a nice nest egg for college once the property is sold. There is a second car, and her new family may keep it until she is ready to drive. The dangerous things were removed within twenty-four hours of the parents' death so there are no risky pictures or letters to get us in trouble.

"Out of everything, I'll probably wind up doing the least; so if you need help, let me know."

Then she made a face and said, "I have to contact a Kindred member who is a Child Psychologist for an assessment, in fact; I'd better do that once we're finished."

Jeanette sighed; "As far as I'm concerned, I'm done for now. I plan to nap, then call my mate to see how the kids are doing. Go ahead and call your Psych. I'll call home later."

Cathy was listening to Michael and trying to do what he said. She understood what meditation was, but didn't know how to do it other than the basic mental self-control she had started learning from her parents as a prelude to her completing the Change and winding up in fur.

One of the problems was that a lot of "trigger" images were mingled with thoughts of her parents, and she would begin to feel pain instead of peace as the meditation went on.

The ones that worked best were the ones where she was on a boat or a sailing ship and listened to the water and the wind, or where she was in a deep forest again listening to the winds in the trees. Those were calming.

The ones where she was in a lake reminded her too much of the fact that the family was on the way to a friend's mountain cabin by a lake when the car's front tire had blown out and jammed the steering; and the deadly accident that had occurred as a result. Almost anything to do with travel brought sadness, since her family had made a point of getting out of town and going for little trips at least twice a month in the summer and fall.

It was on those trips that she had begun to grow into her heritage as a child of the wolf, reveling in the forests and mountains and blending with nature as she grew to become a part of it.

She had met her first "Cousins" that way once, when her family had come upon a pack of wolves feeding on a deer carcass. The Alpha had growled at first, but then had come to sniff; recognizing her as a part of his line and therefore not playing the usual shy and retreating games that he did with humans when they would come near.

Even her parents had been sniffed and accepted on the strength of her scent on them, even though they were human and otherwise fear-creatures. She had introduced her parents to her Cousins...

"Why are you sad again, Cathy?" Michael asked as the memory brought pain to her mind, "you were doing quite well with that set of memories and then suddenly you turned right around and started to grieve. What was it that made that happen?"

"Last year, we met some wolves in the mountains," she said sadly, "and they accepted me and my parents because of my scent on them. That was a wonderful time, since I was showing them part of my world and they were being accepted because of who I was...and then I was remembering the accident and all the pain and Mom screaming and..."

She stopped talking, letting the emotion flow away from her. That was the Mute, she knew; keeping her calm and peaceful and for the present, Smooth.

Michael scratched his chin, puzzled. Why would Cathy keep fixing on that accident time after time, when both the Mute and her own nature should have started smoothing that pain over. Werewolves did grieve, but not as much as their human counterparts or for as long. She was still reliving that part of her past, and Michael wondered if there was a reason why she was doing it.

There was the forced calming, yes; it could be dangerous to force calm too soon after a tragedy; especially with children.

There was something else though; Michael was becoming certain of it. Something that revolved around his patient, Cathy; something she was a part of, that was tying her to that particular period of time when her world had come to an ending.

He decided to try hypnotism, to regress Cathy to just before the accident; and have her lead him through the minutes just before the tire had blown out and the car had crashed into the Army truck.

It was risky, to a degree; but he could moderate that risk by keeping her mentally at a distance from the occurrence. He could make her dilute the hypnotism session mentally the same way he would treat a human who had seen too much for Wulfen safety, by making it into a disjointed dream.

It had been four and a half days since the accident. She should be more at ease with herself by now; but she wasn't. That worried him.

"Cathy," he began, "I'd like to try something with you. I would like to hypnotize you and see what it is that has you locked to the past, the way you are. I think that there is some memory that is not letting you advance normally and start to heal over from your ordeal, only you don't know of it.

"Perhaps if we both looked for it..."

Her response surprised him, in that she drew away from him with fear in her eyes for a moment, then looked around as if surprised at something.

"That was weird," she said in a shocked voice; "Suddenly I was terribly afraid of what I would find there; and it was me, not you that I was afraid for."

Michael stared at her for a moment. "I'd think I need to find out what that was, if that were me. What about you?" he asked the girl.

Cathy nodded. "That was the strangest thing I ever felt," she replied, "and I think you're right; this needs to be looked at."

Michael relaxed, that was the pragmatic wolf viewpoint that he had been half expecting and had not been there before.

Excusing himself, he went into the living room and spoke to both the women there, waking the Healer to do so.

"I had wondered..." Jeanette said after he had given them the story; "I felt that there was something strange, but I couldn't put a finger on it. If she is suppressing something from the crash, it would have an effect on her healing and her shifting capability. She is still sick, but I'll bet there is more to the shifting problem than cerebral haematoma."

"I think we should all be there," Christine added, "in case she says something we can act on. She may have confused things she heard in the ambulance, for example."

Michael agreed with her.

So, late that afternoon, Michael inducted Cathy into first a light trance then into an ever deeper trance state until she was mentally "aware" but seeing what she had experienced in the crash as a motion picture she was watching, rather than experiencing it at first hand.

"Where are we, Cathy?" Michael asked her after 'setting the stage'.

"We're in the back seat of a car like mom and dad's, only this one isn't broken," she responded.

"Where are we going?"

"To the Markus's cabin, by Loon lake in the mountains. I'm going to go swimming there."

"Okay, Cathy; it's a little later on the trip. Your parents have just turned onto highway 21, and your car is heading toward the mountains. What's happening?"

Cathy's face grew unhappy; "Mom and Dad and are arguing about me and Francis Turner, only I'm not arguing; I'm trying to explain that we didn't do anything wrong."

Three adult faces glanced at each other in apprehension. Francis Taylor was a sworn-child adopted by Wulfen. He was a human, though.

"What did you and Francis do, Cathy?" Michael asked nervously.

"I showed him my tail. He hadn't seen a tail in smooth before," Cathy replied vacantly. "He said 'wow, that's neat' when he saw it."

"What are your parents saying, Cathy," Michael continued. Questions had to be asked step-by-step when the trance was this deep.

"They are saying that I was wrong in showing him my tail. They say that I am too young to do that, and Francis might get the wrong ideas about me because I showed him my tail."

"Oh, Goddess; the human nudity fetish," Christine muttered under her breath.

"What are your parents saying now, Cathy," Michael asked carefully; "after you said you had showed Francis your tail?"

"Mother is saying that I have to be an adult to do that, and Father is saying that he is going to talk to Francis's parents about what we did. I'm trying to get them not to be mad at me and Francis by asking Mom what I should wear to the first day in High School; so I look nice and make them proud of me. I don't want them to be mad at me."

"Keep going, Cathy; what happened next?" Michael asked, trying to get a timeline on the conversation.

"There is a loud bang and the car swings left while Mom screams and Dad shouts. Then there is a loud crunch and the car is upside down and Mom and Dad aren't moving or saying anything. I'm scared that Dad wasn't paying attention because of what I did; and somehow I've shifted, but that's okay because now I can get them out of the car when it stops moving, only something hits me on the side of the head and I can't see or hear anything anymore."

A single tear ran down Cathy's cheek as she stared at nothingness in her tranced state.

Three Werewolves sighed as one in relief.

"Okay, Cathy, the movie is over. You did nothing wrong in showing your tail to Francis. You have to remember that your parents were human and humans sometimes have problems over things like exploring your own body as you grow up. They made a mistake because they loved you so much they forgot you are wolf and that it's different for wolf children. They saw you as their smoothskin daughter, not their little wolfling.

Do you understand that? They forgot who you were because they loved you so much."

Michael was carefully setting those words and thoughts into Cathy's mind, just as if he was making an encounter seem dreamlike and unreal. She had to understand that she had done no wrong, and that the crash was not her fault.

As she wakened, Cathy collapsed into Michael's arms and wept; only this time it was grief alone and not grief and secret shame.

Later, after Cathy had managed to calm herself and appeared more aware and centered, Christine gave her some news about the accident.

"Cathy," she said, " the accident was caused by the tread of the driver's side front tire coming loose and jamming inside the wheel well of the car, and not anything you said or did. The tire was what is called a 're-cap' which has new tread put on an older tire body, and the company who did the re-cap didn't do it right. Your father bought the tire thinking it was okay, only it wasn't. It failed while you and your parents were driving, and there is no way that the accident could have been avoided.

"Your father couldn't have stopped in time to keep the accident from happening, even if he knew what was happening. The car was going too fast to stop in the space it had available to stop in.

"It wasn't you, or Francis, or anybody's fault. It was a bad tire, period;" Christine said as the girl stared up at her with hope in her eyes.

"You mean I didn't do a wrongful thing?" she asked wide-eyed.

Christine nodded. "Humans have different standards about their bodies than we have," she explained. "They were acting as if you were a smooth girl, rather than who you are, Wulfen. A smooth girl could get in trouble from doing things like that, but you can't, because you aren't smoothskin. You are growing up to be a young wolf lady, and what you did isn't wrong for us because we are physically different enough from humans to keep bad things from happening to us that way."

"Do you understand me?" she asked.

Cathy nodded, then said, "I think so. That's because smooth girls make babies younger than we do, right?"

Christine nodded back; "Exactly. That is why humans have rules about when human girls can give their consent for sex. We are old enough by the time we can make babies that we are considered adult enough to think things through and do what is right. Human girls mature that way when they are too young to make an intelligent decision about sex, and some have unplanned babies because of it. We are different, since we can only make babies in our heats; and we choose whether we want to have a baby or to take herbs so we don't conceive them."

"Mom and Dad forgot I was different from them," Cathy said in wonder. "They saw me as their own flesh-and-blood daughter, the same as they were."

She looked down at her hands and then touched her face as she closed her eyes and felt wonder at what she had discovered about her parents. She had been as their own flesh and blood to them, not a child of others that they were raising. She learned a little about love in that moment of enlightenment, and the miracles it could work.

"I hope that I will love my children that much when I have them," she said in a wondering voice that was now free of pain and shame-of-self.

"Don't worry, wolfling, you will," Michael promised; "And your parents in the Place will be very proud of their wolf daughter and her wonderful children; I just know it."

Christine stapled the latest update form to the psychologist's report letter in Cathy's file as she sat at her desk in Children's Services. Things were different now.

Miz Winslow was keeping to her office a lot, since Michael's visit. She had countersigned the reports on Cathy with almost indecent haste, hardly pausing to scan them, let alone read them in detail.

Georgia Wells had come through with her assessment of Cathy's mental state, stating that she was grieving but otherwise normal in her responses to things, and should recover from the shock of losing both parents and almost dying herself in a reasonable amount of time.

She had also praised Michael's handling of Cathy while she was in deep grief, stating that he had helped the girl through the worst parts of the grieving process with a competence that rivaled any professional psychological counselor's best efforts.

Christine briefly wondered if Miz Winslow thought that Georgia was a wolf, too. She would be shocked to learn that Georgia was not only not Wulfen, but was wearing braces as a result of a skiing accident in college that had broken her back.

A Werewolf would have recovered from something like that in days, or less.

Today was the big day. Today, Cathy was considered well enough that she was going to her family's house to collect her personal items from her room so the house could be emptied and sold to finish liquidating her parents' estate.

She had already met the Carters, and was willing to move in with them as a foster child. She had almost immediately bonded to Amanda, their daughter, as well as George and Francine, the parents; but John was a different story. Around him, she was shy and retiring and prone to taking fright, even with Mute on board. He was human and smelled human, not wolf; and even in Smooth Cathy could smell the difference and react to it.

Still, she admitted she liked him and was embarrassed at her reactions to him. She had been relieved when Michael had promised that her fear response would fade as she got to know him.

She had been even more relieved when John had promised to be careful around her and had also promised that she would go from fear to annoyance with him, just like his own sister had.

She had even laughed a little at the joke.

The Carters would meet her at the house with a pickup truck, and Michael would bring her there to choose the things she would take with her into her new home and family.

Then, a few days after that, once Michael said she was healed enough, she would move in with her new family. She would "graduate" to the juvenile version of Mute that came in capsules to help her control things until everyone was sure that she was well enough to do without the medicine's assistance in controlling her form and shifts.

Christine put the papers into a file folder and put that into her "active" stack of cases in the filing cabinet beside her desk.

Everything was ready. She would meet them all at the house and unlock the door with the keys that had been entrusted to Children's Services by the Court. She would inventory everything Cathy took so they could be removed from the list of "assets" in the residence that would be sold.

This would be hard on Cathy. She couldn't take the most important thing; the feeling of "Home" with her, since it was intangible. It was a mental concept, not an asset or a property; yet it was the most important part of a child's personal possessions.

Christine sighed and got up from her desk. It was time to go. She had done this before, of course; but this particular case had her dreading the thing she was about to do.

Still, it had to be done and she had to be there when it was done. That was the law.

She got to the house first and opened it up to air out since it was musty smelling inside. She had broken the seals on the doors and unlocked the padlocks that had been used to secure the house against intrusion.

Pulling back the curtains, she let in light as well; to dispel the gloom that seemed to collect in houses like this like dust on the furniture and the floors. Looking around, she saw the same thing she had seen so many times before; a house stopped in its evolution from a residence to a family dwelling. There was a sense of things unfinished, things that would never be finished now; since the family that had lived there was no more.

She went into the parents' bedroom. A faint scent of perfume and powder and aftershave drifted into her nostrils, of old laundry and a hint of the people themselves; old scents that even in smooth she could pick up thanks to her wolf's enhanced sense of smell.

She wandered through the family room, and saw a half-completed crossword puzzle on a side table by a rocking chair and a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines in a magazine stand beside a big overstuffed chair that had probably been the father's seat.

A dusty television sat across from them with a recent copy of TV Guide on top of it. There was a dog-eared page sticking up. Christine looked at it, and it was dated the week before the accident.

Between the two chairs was a smaller chair that still had Cathy's scent on it. A bag of knitting was on the seat, since Werewolves often used knitting to improve their manual dexterity.

So, Cathy had been knitting to keep up her dexterity for the day when she woke up in a coat of fur; some morning in perhaps a year's time. Lifting the work out of the bag revealed a very nice half-done sweater in the father's size. She put the knitting back in the bag and sought calm and peace herself for a moment.

This part was always painful, if you had any empathic nature at all. A whole family was gone, never mind that the daughter still lived. The entity called a "Family" had died when an improperly recapped tire had sent a car into the side of an Army truck.

Cathy would need to be carefully steered away from all this. It was affecting Christine strongly, it would send Cathy into profound shock. This family had been very close, as most Wulfen families were. Some people said it was the "pack" instinct; while others simply said it was the natural closeness of any good family.

Enough. She went to Cathy's bedroom and looked around.

There was a photograph on the wall, nicely framed. Two people who were now dead were holding a girl who was holding up a stuffed wolf plush toy. That picture should have been "collected" along with the rest of the dangerous materials, but somehow it had been overlooked.

The room itself was obviously a girl's room, with clothing hanging in the closet revealed by an open door, probably the result of checking by the "first call" security team. Skirts, tops, and dresses were hanging in neat rows with slacks and cold weather coats, while a collection of caps and hats were settled on the shelf above them. There were shoes and sandals on the floor.

She turned to look at the bed. Again, the sense of a girl's bedroom became intense with the stuffed animals piled on the coverlet and the pillows stacked against the headboard, all in soft muted colors.

Many of the stuffed toy animals were also canine in appearance, although only a few were obviously lupus in shape. The stuffed wolf from the picture held pride of place among them.

There was a desk, with the beginnings of school supplies neatly stacked on one corner. Two binders and two stacks of paper began the stack, and pens and pencils were still in their paper and plastic packages and a lunch box completed the pile. In the center of the desk was a still-new compact typewriter, ready for reports and homework. On shelves above the desk were various figures of wolves, from comical to serious; and above them were photographs of a young girl and several of the "cousins" together.

She had spoken about that to Michael who had told Christine. So these were the wolves she had met a summer ago. One of the parents had obviously had a camera. The reason these pictures had not disappeared was plain; in the bottom right corner of each was the logo of one of the local wolf parks.

Stickers made useful camouflage, sometimes.

Christine hoped that Michael had plenty of Mute on hand. She might want some as well as Cathy, before this was over.

Houses were places where people lived, but for Cathy this place would be a house of pain and grief over a life that was being hijacked by death into the unknown. It wouldn't matter that the Carters would care for her and love her and were her own race. The Carters were not Mom and Dad, and that was the whole of it.

Christine heard the door open and Michael's voice in the living room. She left the bedroom and returned to the living room herself, where the Carters and Cathy were standing and looking around silently.

There was a look of shock and growing pain on the fourteen year-old's features as she surveyed the place that she had once called her home.

No more.

Shaking, Cathy sat on the couch; staring about as if she were afraid something would jump out and bite her. She was growing pale and her jaw was shaking a little.

John Carter settled on the couch beside Cathy and inelegantly reached out. Cathy forgot her fear of humans and pulled herself into his embrace and began to cry and then to howl, the sound was awful; it was the sound of someone who was being ripped apart by a pain that penetrated from the heart to the deepest depths of her soul, it was the keen of terrible grief in one who should never have known it so young.

But she did. She knew now that Mom and Dad were never going to come back, never hold her again, never talk to her again...that they were gone into a Place of Peace that was a chasm of agony away from her right now.

She knew to a terrible finality that her parents were dead.

Michael was gently stroking her, reinforcing the stabilization he had put in place once the Healer was finished doing what she could do. Cathy's brain swelling was gone, and the uncontrollable force of the shift had gone with it. She was now a girl again, a young Werewolf, with nothing forcing her into her wolf form against her will and without control.

Since she had fully shifted once, she was going to always be at risk of it; but the Mute he had given her before they had left his house would lessen that risk to a manageable level.

They were all in fur other than Cathy, close to the girl who needed them and the love and caring they had to give. Only John, the human, was as he had been when he had entered the house.

Hours later, when Cathy had decided on what she was taking with her, they were talking and letting Cathy rest a little bit on her bed. The bed was coming with her, but they would wait to disassemble it until Cathy no longer was taking a last nap in the place she had called home.

There was a hesitant knock at the door, and Christine answered it.

The man on the porch was somehow familiar to her. He looked tired, with creases in his face and bags under his eyes. He was wearing ordinary clothing, but there was a bit of stiffness about him that wasn't age or fatigue.

He stared into Christine's face for so long she was becoming embarrassed, then he said a name as a question.

"Christine? Christine Demmings?"

"Yes," she replied, "but you have the advantage of me..."

"They made you forget too?" Hope faded in his eyes.

"Charles? Charles Mercer?" she asked in amazement, "how did you find this place?"

"I was told," he began; when Michael opened the door wider and said in a determined voice; "Come in, Doctor Mercer. There is someone here you need to speak to. Her name is Cathy."

Christine was aghast. This was the man who had held Cathy in the hospital...

As he entered the house, he looked over at Michael and asked; "Her legs and shoulders; are they all right?"

Now Michael was surprised. Why would this man ask that?

The Carters were interested too. Amanda slipped into Cathy's bedroom to get her.

As he sat on a chair, Doctor Mercer explained; "I could see that she was basically human in the x-rays. Those same x-rays showed that there was terrific stress in both the shoulder and leg areas, but since she was covered with fur I couldn't put casts on her. She would overheat."

"So you restrained her?" Michael asked in surprise.

"Yes," Doctor Mercer said forcefully, "Yes! I was able to keep her from stressing the areas where I could see the bones were actually being bent by what had happened to her. I had to keep her in one position so the damage to her skeleton would be minimized."

"What about the muzzle you had on her?" Michael asked, now more confused than anything else.

"That wasn't a muzzle. Her lower jaw was spreading out wider than her upper jaw. I had to stop that spreading. I improvised with a stump cup from the amputee lab."

"You mean you were trying to treat her?" Christine asked in surprise.

"Yes, I was;" Doctor Mercer replied. "I had only guesses to go with, so I did the best that I could. Then she disappeared. I just had to hope that her people could treat whatever was wrong with her then."

"Then why did you say what you did when you talked to me?" Cathy's voice floated into the room. She was at the hall door, watching; terrified, but still curious.

"You're Cathy?" the doctor asked. When she nodded, he explained; "I had to know what was happening. Were you some sort of spy? Were you their daughter? Just what you were was important. If there were more of your kind coming, I was ready to hide you if you were trying to get away from them. I just didn't know, and I do get abrupt when I need information about a patient, especially when that patient is critically ill."

"I was critically ill?" Cathy asked curiously, "how? I hit my head, but that was all." She crept a few feet into the room as she spoke.

Doctor Mercer explained, "Your bones were twisting as I watched. I was afraid they would start breaking in a little while. Your lower jaw was half an inch shorter than your upper jaw, but almost an inch wider. You had a swelling on your brain that I was afraid would need surgery, and I couldn't cut your skin; it healed as fast as I ran the scalpel through it.

"I didn't know anything about your anatomy, and I was looking at the possibility of surgery in your brain. All I could do was to keep you still to slow the bone deformation and let you sleep, and hope you'd wake up so I could ask you what you were involved in."

He looked down at his feet. "Then you disappeared, and I lost all my notes about you. If another of your people showed up, I would be back at square one with no idea as to how to treat them."

Looking at the girl again, he continued; "I was in town today. I grew up here, and since I am being reassigned to one of the Military hospitals in Alaska; I thought I'd see how my home town had changed.

"I was in a coffee shop having lunch when out of the blue I heard a voice saying, 'Go to this house, your past is there;" and so I did. When a woman met me at the door, I almost thought I knew her. It seems that I do."

Cathy stepped further into the room and looked at Michael. "Is he saying the truth, Michael?" she asked with a trace of a stutter.

The Servant considered for a moment, then admitted; "Without the ability to otherwise fix your bones, what he says makes sense."

Then he sighed internally and admitted, "There is one way to be certain."

He stared at the doctor and asked, "How are your nerves, human?"

Doctor Mercer almost asked what he meant, then realized he already knew.

"Go ahead. I have nothing to hide," he replied.

As Michael shifted, doctor Mercer looked at Cathy and said; "I was two cars back from the crash. I worked on your mother for nearly an hour before I had to admit she wasn't coming back. I almost had her, but she died in spite of everything I could do. She had a broken neck and would have been paralyzed if she had lived, understand that."

Cathy nodded dumbly. Things were getting confused and she didn't like it.

When Michael tapped the doctor on his shoulder, he watched as the man turned- but did not jump at seeing a wolf sitting next to him. Maybe it was the aloha shirt that did it; but when he felt into the human's mind, there was no fear.

Moments later he told Cathy, "He's telling the truth; about you and about your mother. He was trying to help you, not hurt you; and he did everything he could to save your mother."

Cathy sat on the floor and thought. Then she looked at the fear-man and realized that he wasn't a fear-man, he was as confused as she was.

"Thank-you, Doctor Mercer," she said. Then she got up and went back to her room to sleep some more.

Doctor Mercer felt a hand on his left shoulder. He looked, and saw a mix of human hand and wolf paw.

He knew who it was.

"Christine?" he asked.

A Wolf's face came into his vision. This wolf had human eyes and beautiful coloring in her fur.

She spoke. "We have some talking to do, Charles. Stay; and then later we'll have dinner. I want to get to know you better."

He nodded. She was as beautiful as he remembered. The memory of her in fur had somehow not been removed. He had held that for years, and now she was right in front of him.

"Yes," he said; "I'll wait. I would like to know you again, and not lose it this time."

And Cathy slept quietly and at peace. There was no more fear, now. That doctor had been trying to help her although he didn't know how to. He had cared enough to try.

The next day Christine knocked at Michael's door and when he answered asked him simply "How did you manage to do that?"

When the Servant tried to say that it wasn't him, she simply said, "Crap. That had your paw marks all over it. How did you contact him?"

Michael sighed and said, after inviting her in; "You remember asking me about how I could learn things by meditating? When I meditate, I go to a part of the Place that is set aside for Servants to, well, talk to each other. I knew who our Servant was; I was his student, and I contacted him there. He sent the information to the man's mind, because he knew it from the time he had erased Mercer's memories of finding our Singing ground. He also erased you from Mercer's mind because the Council Elders had demanded it of him.

"I acted on a hunch. Either he would turn out to be someone who needed another mental cleansing for our safety, or he might have been a misunderstood good-guy who was in over his head. I was as amazed as you were when he said that he was trying to treat Cathy, but it made sense after I thought about it. So, he gets to keep his memories.

Then Michael glanced at Christine and asked; "And you?"

Christine ducked her head. "He's got two more years in the Army, then he can resign his commission and take the state medical boards. He's coming back here."

Michael chuckled, "And you?" he asked again.

Christine's ears were turning scarlet. "We'll keep in touch until then. He is thinking about getting more experience in treating us as a doctor who knows how we work and are put together. He really cared about Cathy; and I am still amazed at that. He knew nothing about her but he was going to try to prevent her from being deformed, and was trying to figure out how to do surgery on her."

Michael smiled, "I think he likes us as a People. I think he may be taking the 'big risk' by Crossing Over as well, in time. Don't worry about that, though; I have it on excellent authority that he'll be a Healing Servant, and they have families...like you and him, together.

Christine stiffened, "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to those who care, Chris; only to those who care."

"Thanks, Mike. You're the best big brother there is."

"I'm a Servant, Chris. I never stopped being your brother; you never stopped being my sister. I just want the best for you, and since I'm now Servant to the Council I grew up in, I can do it."

"Mike, I swear you are the most devious..."

"That's one of the things that makes a good Servant, Chris; being devious. Of course if you want to know what else it takes..."

"I know; Petition for the White Coat. I want a family."

"Maybe the day will come when you can do both, Chris. We can always hope."

"Yeah, we can hope."

"Yeah..."

End? Not quite.

Post Scriptum: Eight nights later, the night before he was due to leave, Charles Mercer and Christine Demmings sat in the hills outside a certain desert town and listened to the Songs of the People.

She was in fur. He was wearing long pants because there were sharp leaved weeds in the area. They were just outside the Singing Ground in the hills.

When one particular song began, he was mesmerized by the sound of it, for it combined both sorrow and hope in an inhumanly beautiful harmony. When the other voices joined in, it was as if every choir in the world was singing a song of faith and hope, out into the night and the full moon.

"Was that..." he asked; and Christine nodded, "That was Cathy singing the 'Song of Parting Sorrow, and the rest of the People replying with the 'Mother's Promise'. It's our form of funeral service. We sing our departed into our Goddess's arms, into a Place where Grief and Pain do not come."

"I'm sorry that I frightened her. I was only trying to keep her from being crippled."

"You have contacts in Alaska to learn from. They will teach you how to treat us for the things our Healer can't make right."

"And then?" He turned to look into the wolf's eyes.

"And then you'll come back; I hope it will be to me. After that...is the far future. Learn patience while you're in Alaska, Charles."

"For when I come back?"

"That depends..." She leaned against him, and he stopped talking.

End

Excerpt: The song of Parting Sorrow.

You are gone away from me, into the west and the sunset.

And I am left behind, in a world full of pain and sorrow.

You have taken all the light and left me to sit in the shadows.

I would follow if I could, but my path leads me ever onwards.

We were together once, and I will always remember

Your smile and laughing song as I wend my way in the darkness.

Why did you go, Why did you leave, when we were happy together?

Why did you leave when we were one, and let me dwell in shadow?

Let Mother's light guide you, for now it is what guides me.

And in that light we'll meet, in a Place where there is no parting.

Excerpt: Mother's Promise.

I shall not let you go. You are my child, my birthing.

Though the shadows close about you, I will bring my light to lead you.

I will take you to your kin, in my Place where my children play.

No child of mine is lost, our blood calls to each other.

I will reach out and part the night, that you might find your way to me.

I will comfort those who grieve, for this is my eternal promise;

I shall not let you go. You are my child, my birthing.

Though the shadows close about you, I will bring my light to lead you.

I will lift you up from fear and give you my maternal blessing; that

Wherever you may go, nothing shall stand between us;

for you are My beloved children and I am your Goddess.

This is translated and excerpted from the longer Song of Parting Sorrow and the Mother's Promise. They are part of the Children of the Wolf's sacred Liturgy for the dead. And, of course;© Kyllein MacKellerann, translator. Also © the Children Of the Wolf.