They threw me back into the same solitary cell. Warden Bennett read me a series of results from my ‘little stunt.’ He didn’t seem phased by me killing Spike and acted as if it’d been expected.

Of course in his mind, perhaps murder had been inevitable. Problems tended to resolve themselves. He’d classified me as a murdering brute from day one.

I snarled and opened my stupid mouth again, “Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me?”

There was a pause and Warden Bennett managed to go still. Too late I forgot he was a full-fledged vampire, in the room with me, and my brain felt foggy. Fighting humans had been one thing, throwing people and pulling on my strength another.

Plus, during the fight, I’d pulled on my own powers to toss people. What kind of alarm bells did that set off to the Western Sector employees? Were Hunters in here?

Warden Bennett, after his momentary lapse in movement, responded simply. “I’ve stepped up my end, and will continue to do so until the situation passes. Your actions have helped, which I assume was the point to the little drama.”

I’m not sure if my surprise was concealed or not. After a moment I gave the Warden my best flat stare. “What do you think?” I asked.

“I think you’re doing your job excellently. I do not envy those who go...” He almost looked sheepish. “Well, I shall say this, if you ever find yourself in a different line of work, do look me up. I’ve need of individuals who can rile a crowd. Talents against the grain are always in demand.”

I chewed on a lip and wondered which way this conversation was going. Warden Bennett believed I was undercover somehow. Go team secret password sojourn. Using it had been a form of cheating, but it wasn’t exactly something normal people would slip into conversation.

“It’s one of my few skills,” I muttered dryly.

“Indeed.” The vampire turned and closed the door. The guards didn’t even bother looking my way.

I surveyed the cell. In the last few weeks they’d managed to patch many holes with fresh cement and bolted down iron covers over other spots. The mirror was new, again, and the toilet functional.

Fantastic.

I’d decided how to handle the here and now, which was to simply kill those who were hell bent on hurting me. If I could murder droves of wolves to defend Kahina, I could off one racist piece of shit to keep from being annoyed.

But it didn’t help the terror of going public with my inhuman nature. Ms. Sauter might have ideas and the legal background but Daniel was the only person with intelligence I trusted.

I crossed my arms and flopped onto the bed, searching my memories for answers. Somewhere in the past Daniel might have left clues.

***

I was a child, staring across another bowl of breakfast cereal. A giant raven with black feathers puffed up outside. It didn’t look in the window at me, but instead stared into the distance.

Something aggravated the creature and it cawed twice and flew away. A single black feather, caught by a parting breeze, fluttered down. The moment passed and I sat up in the small room Tal had allowed me.

Another memory spun by. It took me a moment to track what was happening in this moment of the past.

Shouting echoed from downstairs. Tal was arguing with someone. They shouted back. None of the specifics registered because the conversation had happened before. It was simply the latest trainee trying to measure up to Tal’s insane standards. I’d heard the man working with person after person.

He worked hard to train normal humans into something resembling warriors. His words, not mine. I’d recently learned what humans were, along with hundreds of others.

I’d been repeatedly lured with food into working with Roy at night. He didn’t slow down the pace and Tal’s expectations cared not one whit for my young age. We got it worse than those other people who only practiced during the day.

As a child none of it made real sense. I only had one real person anywhere near my age and Roy existed without questioning his father’s orders. I assumed it was what young people did in this world. Even Daniel adhered to this insane standard.

School was an experiment yielding poor results. There was no reason for me to stay, and home was easy to find. Multiple times I’d just walked out and gone back to Tal’s. People came in and frequently found me eating food from the fridge.

Sometimes the police would find me first. Other times the teacher would try to stop me. After a while I got to stop going. Breaking a teacher’s nose and attacking the police when they came into Tal’s upstairs rooms had set the tone for my social interactions.

Then the memories settled and played real details. I could remember punching a kid during a fight weeks before. Tal had congratulated me for winning my fight. I still felt pride at that.

Daniel’s father was over and in a heated argument with Tal, about me. I felt their words through the floor. Sensations within Tal’s lair were very easy to read, especially at night when there were fewer people.

“There’s no good options. The runt needs an outlet.” Tal sounded un-phased by the other man’s shouts.

“There’s got to be an alternative. Putting him in the human circuits is too big a risk, and there aren’t wolves his age. Young don’t survive the change, except when it goes wrong.” I felt Daniel’s father put a hand to his face and wince. “This would have been easier if he’d been a wolf like we suspected.”

“Jay won’t last without an outlet. Especially not until eighteen. He needs something.”

“What about your son?” Daniel’s father said.

I perked up and tilted my head. What about Roy? How would Roy help?

Daniel himself certainly wasn’t helping. He’d run upstairs to the bedrooms with a bag full of food. I sat upstairs in my room, jealously guarding the doorway. Daniel couldn’t come in, not if I had my say.

“C’mon, man, let me in. We’re friends, right?” he said.

“No,” I responded. I moved away from the door to focus on the adults below me.

“I brought food.”

I opened the door immediately. I stepped out and closed the door, then flopped onto the ground. If Daniel wanted to eat, we’d have to do it out here.

“Okay, man.” He sat outside of arm’s length, and rustled through the bag for items.

I’d recently learned about fries. They weren’t as good as a hamburger and a far cry from steak but there was something enjoyable about the hot crispy ones. They were hard shelled surprises of crispy, like tortoises.

Daniel shut up long enough for me to hear more of Tal’s words as they rumbled through the building. “Jay’s getting too rough for Roy to keep up. Soon, very soon, there won’t be many who can stand up to him alone. Not if he snaps again.”

“Jesus, Tal, I don’t want to hear that. Things like that give me ulcers.” During their pause I distractedly fidgeted. I understood the words they were saying, but the context was broken. It didn’t seem real.

Daniel’s father continued, “I don’t want to put the kid down.” Chills traveled up my spine, both in my memory and now in the cell. The adult sounded cold when he talked of ending my life. “But if he’s out of control, and can’t restrain his instincts, I may have to.”

They paused their conversation while Tal ran his hands through his hair. Tal himself was checking equipment all over the bottom floor. I could feel fingers trace through laces as he picked up a glove.

“It’ll kill Daniel.”

Tal grunted in response and explained, “Jay’s just too strong, and it grows worse when he’s riled up. I’ve been working to instill discipline”—Tal shook his head—“but in a few years this will be beyond the boy and me.”

“What else can I do? There’s no one like this, Jay, is his name? And the books haven’t provided me any hints on what sort of creature he is.” Daniel’s father waved his hands while talking. “Nothing anything in the archives either, and if I ask Central they may catch on.”

Tal waved. “No. I didn’t ask you here for that. You risked much letting me and Roy slide, I’ll figure out something else.”

Something bopped my nose. I blinked and lost the tactile sensation helping me eavesdrop on the adults.

“Are you gonna eat that?” Daniel’s words were almost as muffled as Tal’s. I blinked and looked sharply at him. He had a giant burger shoved into his face and was trying to talk around it.

I could see a silly grin.

“You’re weird,” I said. Daniel was odd for a human, and I’d run into a lot by then. They were all strange. Lots of them loved to talk and refused to leave me alone.

A crunching sound came out of the far room. At the end of the hallway was where Roy typically practiced. Seconds later he stomped by us, a barely restrained amount of anger crawling across his face.

Down the stairs with a series of thumps. Then he shouted at Tal.

I blinked. Tal and Daniel’s father worried about my issues, when Roy was a walking powder keg himself. He was officially a teenager. According to the television shows I’d watched, that was a bad time for mood swings.

Granted, I only had a few shows to gauge by since dramas were less interesting than cooking shows. I’d been salivating over a barbecue show. There was an elf who constantly boasted his food was the best and offered money to anyone who could win in a blind taste test. One episode had left me slobbering and nibbling on a remote control.

I’d recently learned plastic was not edible. The memory faded with me grabbing the food from Daniel and shuffling downstairs to see what Roy had stirred up.

***

Morning’s sunlight was so close I could feel it on the other side of a double thick wall. Sometime during the mental playback I’d crawled to the closest side and managed to stay upright.

One eye twitched. My body hurt from a strain equal to trying to right a semi-truck hell-bent on going the wrong direction. With my arms, before it ran me over.

No. I had fought a truck head on and was blurring a memory together with the current time. A flash of the past hit me. I stood, arms wide, braced against an oncoming truck of unfair size. It slipped away as another series of unrelated thoughts passed my mind.

Each moment was fresh and raw as if it happened moments ago, instead of years. I reeled with dizziness and barely kept from face planting into the ground. Dozens of emotions hit me, a throbbing forehead, phantom pains from broken bones, and sucking in breath in sharp gasps. The events weren’t what drove me batty, it was the sensations resurfacing with it. Every so often Kahina’s face would float by.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Seeing her face hurt just a little bit less than reliving physical pain. The replaying memories made me shake and chatter uncontrollably. How had I held it together over the last few weeks in general population? Out there I’d managed to keep going without anything too obvious.

Now though, it’d gotten worse. Maybe I just needed personal space to let myself break down. I prayed it would end soon, and that my mind would settle.

***

Years passed. Things happened, but most were lost in the flow of my mind fast forwarding. Everything had changed, but so many things felt the same.

The gym had slowly adapted over the last three years by going from mostly boxing to some mixed studio. Roy had purchased more property from the businesses next door. Expanded and put in a few rooms for people to rent. Our single focus sport became the kind of place that did Yoga, martial arts, and boxing. The old man had managed to coach a few champions and crowed it to anyone who’d listen.

Roy wasn’t doing badly, all things considered. His self-control had been tested thoroughly over the years. He’d had a girlfriend, lost her to high school drama, got another. Then swore off them after that relationship imploded. I had no advice for him. Oddly, when it came to Roy, I was almost timid. Adult me might label it as a mix of awe and respect. After all, he’d suffered under Tal’s tutelage for years more than me.

We trained at nights. He studied, high school homework, and had managed to reduce the number of violin strings being snapped to one a month.

I only got to fight against people at the gym, adults mostly. It was something, and each battle was a moment of happiness. I looked forward to it. We, mostly Tal, had decided I was thirteen now. Though by the height and muscle I’d put on recently, thirteen seemed wrong. I was almost Roy’s size and he was years older.

Both of them were getting sharp on the criticism. Roy caught a number of mistakes slipping past Tal.

Tal gave orders and struggled to bribe me into action. Many times he simply ordered. The other fighters kept their chatter focused on techniques and rarely talked about anything else. Roy was angry half the time and snapped if I asked questions.

So I stopped asking. My reading comprehension was low. Numbers and higher math were terrible. The only thing I had any success in was punching things. It turned out I was also extremely good at holding a pad and correcting people who couldn’t figure out how to use their waist properly.

“Hips,” I said.

On the other end of the pad was a girl in her mid-twenties. She’d joined our kickboxing classes and was working up a sweat. Her hands kept slipping downward.

“What?” she said with a ragged word.

“Turn your hips more.” My voice had started cracking, so I kept sentences short.

“I am.”

I shook my head. She was light, had too much hair in a ponytail, and entirely too tight clothing. I barely noticed, though.

“I am,” she insisted.

I shook my head again. “You’re not.”

“Maybe show her,” Daniel’s voice floated over. He wore workout clothes and had turned into a toned but lanky teen.

I waved.

“Hey, man.” Daniel smiled and tilted his head a bit. His face wasn’t super tanned yet, but it’d grown in depth over the last year. “Sometimes people learn by showing, instead of just talking about it. Here”—he stepped closer—“I’ll show you with hips, and without.”

Daniel swapped places with the female.

“Keep moving,” I told her. My words were Tal’s, learned over long hours of endless practice. He expected everyone to perform at a basic level. Plus, I had to earn my food money for the month.

Tal refused to simply pay for my meals anymore.

“Again,” Daniel said. I braced for the incoming kick. “With hips first, so you see how it should look.” He exaggerated the motion and I had to put more strength into the pads.

“Without,” he said. My friend demonstrated the two methods a few times. This woman and he were about the same weight, and he’d made me grunt from the force of his kick.

“It’s all in the hips,” Daniel finished.

I nodded. “Punching is the same.” I managed to keep myself stable and only cracked a little. “Your body tilts, adds force to the blow, engages more muscles.” Tal had taught me that last line. The explanation behind engaging muscles took me a long time to understand.

“More muscle work means more definition, more calories burned, and all that.” Daniel perked up and smiled.

The redhead had ventured into to strange territory. I didn’t really know the ins and outs of what these calories things were. I could feel muscles move, so that clicked. Theory and names were beyond me.

I nodded in agreement. The girl switched with Daniel and tried a few more times.

“Better,” I said after a few kicks.

“Hey, man, I’ll catch you after, all right?” Daniel waved. I could feel his footsteps trail across the room for a few moments before I shifted my senses back to the woman.

Daniel went off to another corner and found a bar hanging from above. He and Roy were well trained. They didn’t even need bribes of food.

“All right.” I kept holding the giant pad, bracing a bit more as the force of her kicks increased slowly with her improved movement.

We switched to punching with small mitts.

Soon the hour was over. The client wiped her forehead with a towel and tried not to let her face quiver. I wasn’t familiar with the emotions as a child, but now, reliving the moment as an adult, I could see both relief and worry on her features.

It must have been embarrassing to be corrected by a bunch of young teenagers like ourselves. It’s probably why she was one of our last trainees of the night. The place had cleared out and no one would pay attention to her.

I put our practice gear away carefully after wiping the pads down. Tal Forge had been very specific on how things should be done. Failure resulted in more laps, more pushups, more exercise, and less food. Losing food was unacceptable.

Daniel waited patiently and stretched to cool down from his exercise. Unlike everyone else, the redhead was never coached. He was bounds ahead of even Roy in terms of conditioning.

And unlike Roy, who did things with a straight face or me who did it just for food, Daniel seemed almost happy. A grin was plastered across his features anytime he worked out. I’d heard going crazy happened to humans occasionally.

“So I’ve been thinking, man.” Daniel helped himself to the pads I’d just cleaned and put away. He held them out.

I punched them in turn, as Tal had drilled me to do. Each hit let me release tension. Hitting things felt great. “Uh huh.”

Daniel shook his hand then raised it for me again. The material flapped lightly and the sensation of it brushing through air made me happy. He said, “About your situation.”

“Uh huh,” I repeated.

“And it’s a mess.”

“Uh huh.” He probably meant how I’d dropped out of nowhere to land in an abandoned train yard. This whole world felt strange and I sucked at research. Reading was hard, and slow. Dry books from the past were even worse. Television shows were much easier but a lot of them repeated themselves.

“You ever say anything else?” he asked while putting out another pattern for me to hit.

“Uh huh.” This time I smiled a little while putting more force into punching the pads. Daniel was sturdy. Not like Tal or Roy, but oddly harder than most humans.

His eyebrows bunched as I connected with left, right, then right again. “You should be careful doing that.”

“Huh?” I hit the next three.

“That thing you do. Whatever it is when you’re…” He frowned. His mitt covered hand waved at me. “Here. Hit it again.”

I did, lightly, while confused.

“Again.” Daniel frowned. “But harder.”

I changed to a better stance and put more effort into the swing, twisting my hips and bringing the body in line before swiveling back to a ready position.

“Not like that, harder. Like you were before.”

This time I growled and increased the energy of my swing. Parts of my senses tingled and a slight heat crawled up my arm. The same heat resided deep at my core.

“That. Whatever that is.”

I paused, frowned, and went for a stronger punch, this time putting more energy into it. Daniel nodded as my fist connected.

“Yeah. That, I can feel when you do it.” My friend, or as close as I had to one, seemed agitated. I could see it by the way his jaw tensed, and the posture of his arms and shoulders.

I pushed again and put more into it.

Daniel shook his head like he was seeing double and trying to shake it off. I’d seen fighters do the same thing in the ring when a blow came too hard, or it rang in uncomfortable ways.

His arm hung loosely as he cursed. I stared blankly. Tal and Roy did not believe in cursing. They felt resorting to foul language meant a lack of self-control and discipline. Others at the gym were more impulsive and used expletives frequently.

He raised both mitts, ready. “All right, again. But this time without the extra,” he said.

I rolled my shoulders and attempted to calm down. Roy and Tal were big on knowing when to be violent. This wasn’t a ring, this was practice.

We continued fighting. Daniel told me every single time he felt the extra power being pulled. I found it interesting to know someone else could detect what I was doing. Daniel keyed in quicker as the week went on, and I learned what my natural strength was versus empowered.

It turned out I could still hit hard even without the extra edge.

***

I paced the room and counted blocks, toes, and bodies nearby. There were fewer than before. The jail felt less packed. People talked but their volume no longer bore into every ounce of stone in the area.

My head shook and fingers curled against mostly whole bricks. There were a few grooves from prior tantrums but most of the time they were under vague control.

I only beat the walls with human strength. Daniel taught me the line between acting like a monster and being human. It did nothing to control my bouts of anger and rage.

Guards, or Caretakers, or Western Sector Hunter people stood outside the door. There were two and only those two in this entire stretch. They mumbled to each other while I heard—or, more accurately felt—snippets of conversations from across the building.

Focusing on them meant the past stayed away.

A woman shook her head. She was bound in chains and sitting at a small table that could barely hold a good meal. She was familiar but felt too thin to be Stacy. Still, the woman moved like a wolf, and felt annoyed. One leg bounced up and down. “I don’t think I’ll make it back. They aren’t going to let me. They’re sending more people to the other side of the island, one a day.”

“Stacy?” I asked, but neither woman could hear me. They were floors away in another wing of the building.

Ms. Sauter responded, “Keep your head down. You know the rules here, and I can’t get you moved until the judges agree with Jay’s statement.”

“What about Thomas? Can he give a statement? He started working with them, right?”

“He’s…” the other wolf paused.

“A complete idiot sometimes. But trust me, he loves you,” Julianne said to Kahina.

The sudden disconnect make my heartbeat stutter. I’d forgotten what she sounded like. A mixture of gruff and playful that vibrated when she spoke. The air shook around her from an intensity normal people didn’t have.

But Julianne was dead and the memory was from almost seven years ago. Why had I thought of her?

Because of Stacy. My memories were still a mess. In a split second I was kneeling in the woods, cradling Julianne’s dying form. Julianne held up a hand, pleading with me.

“Take care of my girl,” she said to me.

My head dipped in agreement. I wanted to go back in time to change what happened. If it were possible to alter the past.

But time didn’t march backward. I’d cast Kahina aside a second time to keep her alive. That decision would haunt me for the rest of my life. It could compete with all my other terrible decisions; disguising my nature, or not remembering enough to keep Julianne alive, or even letting the fucking Order of Merlin into pack woods.

Julianne died, was dying, and died again as my mind relived the moment. I screamed and banged on the wall with a fist as I crumpled to my knees. She would have made a hell of a wolf. She would never get the chance. Her death was my fault in a dozen different ways.

I cursed Muni for agreeing to suppress my memories. That thought vibrated until her words echoed again. Her form, a hopping raven, alighted onto Julianne’s dying body. Memories blurred.

“My charms cannot hold back the hurricane of your mind forever,” the raven said. It hopped and avoided my imaginary arm backhanding it. “When the trinket comes off, there will be hell to pay.”

“Fuck off, Muni,” I yelled. “Go away, or I’ll burn you to a cinder!”

The memory of Muni chirped then fluttered away. Black feathers spun all around, taking the past away for a moment.

I sniffed and let myself be swept to another part of the jail. I was responsible for other people, and Roy’s son couldn’t be allowed face the same fate as Julianne.

“Sir, Mr. Fields is still in solitary,” Leo said. His body stiff and eyes locked on the man.

Last Chief shifts slightly. Controlling agitation. Will shift back in seconds. Bitter Whelp’s heart beats strongly. Toes curl. Hands flatten upon tabletop.

Roy carefully measured every single movement. His son, which my inner mind thought of as “Bitter Whelp” couldn’t keep his nervousness from expressing itself.

“Do we know how long?”

“No. He should be on strike three and pushed to the forest, but the Wardens haven’t done it yet.”

“Why?”

Leo shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter. Jay would survive the other side. It wouldn’t matter what they send against him.”

“I don’t know. There’s rumors of a dark monster in the woods. Something that isn’t one of the major races.” Leo’s head turned side to side in a motion that might be to scan the room for eavesdroppers. “Like us.”

Roy moved slightly and resumed holding still. “Have you made progress figuring out what they might be?” He ran a tongue across his teeth and flared his nostrils.

Roy’s unease worried me.

“No, but there is something wrong with this place. Earthquakes every other night, small ones, but consistent. There are fewer people than ever. The caretakers are finding any excuse to send people to the other side.”

“There’s been no news about it,” Roy responded. His cheek twitched ahead of schedule. “Not even the tremors.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry about how. The people we’re against could easily stifle news reports. What we need to focus on is the truth behind their enforced silence.”

Leo nodded but his eyebrows were tight. He felt confused. Roy shook his head and stared toward the small room’s rear door. There were other footsteps passing by as guards checked in on the father and son.

“They wouldn’t prevent the news if there wasn’t something to hide. We were right to suspect this place as housing a potential family member.”

“I don’t know,” Leo stammered.

“It doesn’t matter. Jay’s abandoned the trinket. Soon he’ll be in control of his powers. He will find the unknown here. He will decide if he returns home with us, or is culled for the safety of us all.”

Leo bit his lip and clasped his hands tightly. He nodded. I felt his head stutter. Roy’s body lifted with a deep breath before he nodded in return.

Roy led into a speech. “If you complete this trial—”

Leo quickly nodded again then cut off his father, “I know. I failed you in front of the tribe members and this is my punishment.”

Roy’s face hardened but he lifted an arm and banged the table. It dented sharply around his hand. Two guards rushed down the hallway toward their room. Leo flinched.

It was too many motions for me to absorb at once with my tenuous grasp on the now. I fell backward onto the ruined leftovers of my cot. Being vertical reminded me of another time, almost two decades ago.