Chapter 2: The Soulless Curse

My feet curl around the branches as I push myself higher up the tree. It's pine, a neutral tree that covers scent about as well as anything can in a pack of wolves and no one has found my hiding place yet when I've been up here. I've only ever told one person and that person never betrays me. Secrecy and privacy is a rare thing when everything is shared, but it's something I've long learned to cherish.

Up here I've made a little platform and I stole a small wooden crate from the storehouse to pack my few bits and pieces in. Ever since I was small and running around with the other cubs of the pack, I've loved things from before the Becoming. They're rare and few and most Werewolf packs have banned them, ours too since my mother fled into the night and took her bits of the old days with her.

When I was younger we would play with the old things together and she would tell me stories passed to her from her mother about how things used to be.

I don't have much left, all wrapped up as careful as I can make them in a slip of cloth beneath my little wooden crate. I have a man who turns into one of the old-time cars, brightly coloured and in something my mother called 'plasstik'. We used to have the best time trying to figure out why a man would want to change himself into something inanimate that other men could ride in.

I have a selection of tapes with worn labels, some I've played so often that they won't go around in my little music box anymore. They're smooth as silk, the singers on them. People with exotic names like Ju Y Arlan and Jon Y Cas. My music box is the most treasured thing I have. I fixed it myself, a little machine that makes the most amazing music come out of muffs you wear on your ears.

When my heart aches so bad that I can't breathe, I come to my tree and I listen to Ju Y Arlan sing about Rainbows. Just like her I wish I could get to that land beyond the rainbow and find out what a lemon drop is.

There's a sound down below me and I hold my breath, scuffling back until I've pressed myself against the trunk of the tree. The young ones, just on the brink of getting their gift, are being taken through the ceremony of the night by one of the teachers. They're all so small, not more than ten years of age and littler than I ever remember being.

I send a little prayer out for them that they all look into the fire and find a wolf on the other side. As the teacher takes them through the Chant of the Moon, I remember what it was like to be small and hopeful.

Praise to the Moon

The lady of the skies

Praise to her mercy

So tender and so wise

Praise to the Sun

Who guides from up above

One leads with fury

The other leads with Love

***

NINE YEARS AGO

I was smaller than a lot of my fellows. My mother always said that was natural for a girl as delicate and fine as I was going to be when I got out of my awkward years, but my father looked at me cold and thoughtful and later he said it was a sign he should have paid attention to.

Being the Alpha's oldest child, everyone was there to see me become a full grown wolf at the Bonfire of the Moon. I sang with my friends and I danced with Elliot Hawk, his strong tan arms holding me safe and close. Then one by one those of us who'd come of age came up to the fire and met our wolves.

I was so excited. I'd met my mother's wolf already and she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She was silver and white and larger than my father with bright green eyes and she called me Cub and let me hug her around her neck. I wanted that. It was like an ache inside me.

I took hold of the sides of the large iron basin filled with fire and heated coals and the first I knew something was wrong was when the iron seared into my palms with a fury that stole the breath right out of me. I couldn't even scream, it hurt that deep.

I tried to pull back, but my father was there behind me, holding me in place. His arms were like whipcords of strength and I couldn't breathe. I heard him in my ear, his voice low and full of danger. "Look into the flame, Ella. Find your wolf."

I looked, but no wolf came to rescue me. I was the first No Soul of my pack in fifteen years.

***

PRESENT DAY

Fairies and Sandmen, born of the Sun

One always dancing, the other on the run

Vampires are cold and hunt within the dark

The moon is their goddess and politics their art

We are the werewolves

Honest, Brave and True

No matter what the challenge

Together we fight through

When the Becoming ripped across the land in 1969, no one knew what was happening. Overnight we went from a country of people with no powers, to a mess of powerful beings all shoved up in each other's business. It was like a pack of wild cats thrown in a bag together. We call it the War of Blood and some places are still empty except for the graves of those who died there.

Eventually the gods found us and helped us form our factions, two for each god. The Sun God with his fairies and sandmen, and the Moon Goddess with the werewolves and vampires. We'd been blessed, everyone had been touched by the divine and it was beautiful.

Except when it wasn't, because some kids were being brought to the gods when they came of age and were coming away empty. People said it was because those folk had no souls, no connection with the gods.

It's a huge disgrace. It breaks a family, it destroys. And when you're the heir to an Alpha Wolf it does even worse than that. I watched my father fight every able-bodied wolf with a nose for power in the pack, coming back bloody and torn and tired every night until we were all scared we'd be slaughtered in our beds. One day he finished it by killing his own half-brother and losing an eye in the process. That night my mother ran away. That night I stopped sleeping in the Alpha's house.

I can hear the children moving on, the last part of the chant louder and louder as the teacher gets them to shout it to the sky in joyous excitement.

Goddess of the Sky

Bless us on this day

Night and morn, Hand and claw

We’ll serve you every way

Goddess of the Moon

Hold us in your arms

We thank you for the gifts you give

And we’ll keep your cubs from harm

I'm so busy watching them go and wishing good luck down on them that I don't notice until it's too late that I'm no longer alone and unseen. Several large men are halfway up my tree and I try to run but they have me, big hands pinning me roughly to my little perch as others swarm upwards and smash my treasures. I cry out, watching them crush one of my precious, precious music tapes and the next moment my head is ringing from a blow and everything goes black.