Predator

Liminal, that’s the word I’d use to describe myself. I live in the spaces between; between human and beast, between day and night, between civilization and…shit, I’m rambling in my own head. What am I, an emo teen now?

Looking at me, you’d never guess what I am. In fact, looking at me and the man studying me with a predatory eye, you’d assume he’s the more dangerous one. Which seems more of a threat, a dark-haired, fair-skinned, amber-eyed woman who stands five-foot-nothing and weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet, or a six-foot-and-change, two-hundred-sixty pound, muscle-bound, heavily tattooed, blond, blue-eyed, hairy dude wearing leather and chains?

If someone showed a thousand people our pictures side by side and asked them to pick the werewolf, I’d bet good money he’d be chosen almost every time. They would be wrong, of course. Ever heard of a wolf that large? No.

At least he’s lost interest in the young lady he was targeting earlier. Once I had his attention, I signaled the bartender to help her to slip out the back door and get away. He’s at least as dangerous as he looks, but I’m far more dangerous. Of all the long-running packs, mine is one of the six most respected and powerful in terms of werewolf politics.

Estimates range from a few hundred to as many as thirty-thousand people put to death as werewolves in the witch trials of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of those, none were actual werewolves. At least, that’s the history as I’ve been taught.

If anyone should know, it would be my mother who taught me these things. Our family, the Liutprand pack, dates back to the Kingdom of the Lombards in 728. From there, the history lessons are dry and boring but bring us eventually to passage to the New World on The Ambrose in 1630. There were werewolves in Massachusetts before it was Massachusetts.

The pack started a dairy farm and stayed there, at least up to just before the California gold rush. The Liutprand pack left Massachusetts and headed West for more open hunting land. It was there in Oregon that we settled once again. The pack is still there, but I’m here in Chicago, vetting a man my sister wants to bring into the family. It seems their university fling was more serious than I first thought. That means that I’m faced with doing something a wolf should never do, facing a challenge solo. Without the pack, a wolf is vulnerable.

It’s not like the movies, even though I love them. In movies, we’re like superheroes. We don’t heal by transforming, we don’t live hundreds of years, transforming only happens on purpose, and we are born, not made. We don’t have superhuman strength or speed, but we do train to defend ourselves and the pack from an early age. I can already hear the question, so yes, I suppose a silver bullet would kill me, but so would a regular one.

I’ve made sure to keep the big predator’s attention on me. I sent my sister’s suitor home an hour ago. He’s a good guy, solid. I already called my sister and told her to bring him to the pack in Oregon. Remember I said that werewolves are born and not made? If both parents are a werewolf, the child will be as well. If one is not but comes from a family with a werewolf in the wood pile, as it were, there is chance, though small, that the child will be a werewolf.

The days of sending sixteen-year-old sons to marry into another pack are mostly gone. Nowadays, it’s generally after they finish their undergraduate degree, and they aren’t expected to marry one of the daughters at the same time they meet them. Often, those young men end up like my brother, being a sperm donor for a couple of the girls and settle into a life as part of the pack without marrying in.

It’s amazing how far a mind can wander when thinking about the danger ahead is too uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that’s what I need to be thinking about now. He’s huge, and if he gets a hand on me, I’ll be in a world of hurt. The narrow alley halfway down the block would make a good place for an ambush. He won’t have much room to maneuver, and there are plenty of places I can hide and transform before he makes it to me.

I’ve been acting more and more drunk, and as a small woman alone, the predator has made up his mind that I am his prey tonight. With my plan firmly in mind, I got up from the bar, weaving a bit as I head toward the door. I heard his boots behind me as I neared the exit. Subtle he was not.

I half-stumbled out the door, then stood up and walked briskly as soon as I was out of sight. When I heard his boots on the sidewalk behind me, I kept up my pace, though my path swerved from one side of the sidewalk to the other. I wasn’t sure how drunk I looked, but he kept up following.

Here I was in the liminal spaces again; between buildings, between the relative safety of the semi-lit streets and the wall that turned the space into a dead-end, between life and death. I reached the blind alley and headed in, hoping I looked like a drunk ducking into the alley for a piss. I sprinted to the far end of the alley and dropped behind a dumpster where I transformed and stepped out of my heels.

That’s another thing that’s unlike the movies. It doesn’t take minutes to transform, and it isn’t painful. At least a few get it right with the transformation happening in an instant. We don’t have to be nude to transform, and we certainly don’t get bigger and rip our clothes. Ever seen a wolf wearing a little black dress? Well, this guy did.

When I tell you that I let a predator more than twice my size follow me down a blind alley, you would assume that I would be the one to suffer from my poor choices. Spoiler — you would be wrong. I don’t know if he survived, and frankly, I don’t care. Judging by the amount of his blood soaked into my clothes, however, I doubt it.