26 – Wasting Daylight

Ward let the water get hot and filled the tub halfway, adding plenty of soap. He was determined to get ahead of the stinking filth he figured was about to come out of his body. “You know,” Grace said, watching him, “you had stuff coming out of both ends when you drank the refinement potion in the catacombs. That water is going to be disgusting.”

“Yeah, well, I can drain it and then fill it up again, can’t I? It’s better than nothing.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” she offered. “Wouldn’t it make sense that the first refinement would get rid of the bulk of your…impurities?”

“Here’s hoping. I mean, we don’t even know for sure that this potion is a refinement. ‘R+’ could stand for all kinds of things. Hah, maybe it’s a strong dose of radiation!”

“No, I think your initial suspicion was correct. The beings who created the challenges labeled refinements with an ‘R,’ so it wouldn’t make sense to use the same denotation for a different type of potion.” She chuckled. “Or poison.”

“Very comforting,” Ward sighed, unbuttoning his shirt. He didn’t bother asking Grace to leave; he knew she wouldn’t be willing to miss whatever show he was about to put on, and, besides, he’d gotten too damn used to her to care if she saw his naked butt. He stripped down and slid into the soapy water, the potion clutched in his hand. The water felt amazing, and his impulse was to lay back and soak for a while.

Part of him wanted to drink the potion to find out what it would do and how it might improve him, but another part was dreading it. His hesitation was largely due to the flashes of memory that kept running through his mind’s eye—puking, cramping, writhing in agony and disgust, unable to fathom how such filth could be pouring out of him.

“Come on, old man,” Grace urged. “Take your medicine. It’ll be over before you know it.”

“Maybe a bath is the wrong idea. What if I cramp up and drown?”

“In this little tub?” Grace chuckled and moved to sit on the smoothly curved porcelain. She reached into the water to gently squeeze the back of his neck. “I can keep your head above water if it comes to that.”

Ward nodded, enjoying the feel of her firm, warm fingers. He was tense, partly from their experiences in the spire, partly from fighting and fleeing the guards in the street, and partly from his anticipation of going through literal hell when he drank the potion. “‘Nothing to it but to do it,’ as they say,” he sighed and then twisted the stopper in the potion bottle, breaking the wax seal. He took a whiff and almost chickened out right then and there when the unmistakable tang of ammonia brought tears to his eyes. “What the fuck? This smells like it's meant to clean out a dirty oven!”

Grace nodded, having smelt the stuff vicariously through him. “It’s bad, that’s for sure. I recommend not breathing while you chug it.”

“What if this shit really is poison?”

“It’s not, Ward. Come on. Be brave.”

Ward scowled, looking up at Grace. He wanted to bicker with her, but most of that impulse was his way of stalling. He wanted to accuse her of being power hungry, of pushing his advancement above all else, but they’d turned a new leaf, hadn’t they? They’d been friendly—even charitable—with each other since, well, since getting to Port Granite. She’d shown herself to have real feelings and, in his mind, proven to care about him and Haley. Hell, she’d even been pretty damn good-willed toward Lisa.

“We’ve got a healing tonic right there,” she said, gently squeezing his neck and nodding to the little glass jar on the bathroom sink. “If it’s not a refinement, I’ll make sure you drink it.”

“All right. Enough stalling.” Ward took a deep breath and tilted the potion to his lips, swallowing it down. It was smooth and a little syrupy, and he downed it all in four gulps. He didn’t breathe as he drank, so the fumes didn’t get to him, and when he finished and gasped a breath of air, he was surprised to find his throat wasn’t burning, and he didn’t feel like vomiting. Even more perplexing, a faint, pleasantly sweet citrus tang clung to his tongue. “Hey,” he smiled at Grace, “that wasn’t bad, act—” An eye-watering clench of his guts cut off his words.

“Ward?”

“Oh—” He grunted and groaned, every muscle in his abdomen contracting. “Shit!” he cried, and then sweat exploded out of his pores, and his vision grew hazy and bright, like he was looking at the sun through an old stained-glass window. He could feel his body doing things it had no business doing—muscles contracting in opposition to each other and then relaxing too much, releasing everything he’d spent his entire life holding in—shit, urine, tears, snot, and, of course, sweat. For some reason, he didn’t vomit, but he was too far gone to be thankful for that little mercy.

Ward writhed in the water, splashing, but not a lot—he’d only filled it halfway, anticipating his convulsions. He’d opened the window, cranking it out so the many little panes caught and reflected the street lamps below and, thankfully, directed a nighttime breeze into the bathroom. Still, if he’d been cognizant of his surroundings, he would have gagged at the steamy stench filling the air. He moaned and groaned and occasionally cried out. After two or three minutes of such noises, a knock sounded at the door.

“Ward? Are you going to be all—” Ward barked a gasping, coughing cry of pain as his abdominal muscles twisted in a knot, cutting Haley off.

“He’s going through it, Haley!” Grace called. “It happened last time, too. I think he’ll be all right.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Go ahead with your Gopah.”

Ward continued to writhe, their words only discernable as background noise. His vision had changed in tone, shading the world in sepia. He felt like his muscles and bones were being pulled apart from each other, and though he remembered the experience as being awful when he’d drunk the refinement in the catacombs, he didn’t remember it being this painful. With the pain came hunger, which was strange, considering the sickness he’d just gone through.

As he thrashed, his joints popping and cracking, his mind flashed with bloody images—men he’d killed, meat he’d eaten, and, to the horror of his barely conscious self, he found himself growling and snarling, salivating for a taste of the coppery stuff. He felt Grace, then, grasping the sides of his face, shaking him. “Ward!” Her voice was distant, like she was outside, calling for him through a closed door. “Ward!”

The words were muffled, indistinct, and, above all else, irritating. Ward swiped at her with one arm, and she was gone, no longer a bother. He gripped the sides of the tub and thrust himself up, unaware that his hands cracked the porcelain where they gripped it. A deep, rumbling growl rose from his chest, and he glared around the bathroom as hot, soapy water sluiced off him. The space was stifling and damp. The breeze from the window tickled his flesh, and Ward swiveled his head that way, staring out into the darkness that fell away from his piercing gaze.

Shadows didn’t exist for him; everything was lit in shades of yellow and gray. He leaped for the window sill, adroitly catching himself on it, his feet balanced while his hands gripped the casing. Distantly, he heard a shrill cry, “Ward! What’s going on?” Then, Ward leaped, sailing from the second-story window to land lightly on the cobbles. He lifted his nose to the sky, sniffing, seeking something to satiate the hunger that clawed at his guts. A whiff of pine and grass came to him atop the underlying soot and damp, and he ran toward it, slipping through the shadows, a menacing growl tinging each of his heaving, excited breaths.

He tore down an alley, the wind rushing through his hair. A cat saw him coming, yowled, and jumped atop the fence bordering the yard of a narrow, gabled home, but something in Ward was triggered by the thing’s flight, and he leaped after it. His claws—claws?—swiped through the air, narrowly missing the feline and shattering several planks. He would have given further chase, but his ears picked up a new sound, a distant yip, a series of snarls, and the cry of something dying. Saliva flooded his mouth, and Ward tore down the alley, stretching his legs in long, loping strides.

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Motion caught his attention here and there, but he was fixated on the scent of grass and pine and the unmistakable sounds of predators feeding. He crossed streets, leaped parked carts, and scrabbled over low walls until he came to the fortifications that guarded the northern edge of the city—a watch tower here and there, a bridge across a gorge where a river crashed over boulders far below, and low, broken-up fortifications meant to deter siege engines that had fallen into disrepair and disuse long before the last burn cycle.

Soon, Ward was savoring the soft grass and moist soil beneath his feet, the fresh air, and the night sounds of birds and forest creatures—predators and prey. His nose and ears guided him through the trees and undergrowth until he came upon the scene he’d been hunting for. A berm in the forest, soft soil covered with old leaves and pine needles, upon which a buck had been taken down, ripped open, and was currently being feasted upon by four big wolves.

If Ward had been his usual self, rational and thoughtful, he would have frozen on the spot, his mind desperately seeking an exit plan. He wasn’t himself, however. He was something less…and something more. He didn’t care about the eight luminescent eyes turned his way. He didn’t care about the growls rumbling out of the throats of those wolves. All he cared about was that hot, steaming, bloody flesh, and he intended to have his share.

Ward stalked up to the corpse, ignoring the wolves. They challenged him, of course, with barks and growls, and two of the big females began to circle behind him, but they cast worried glances at their alpha. “What was this thing?” those eyes asked. “Do we fight it?” The big male backed away, sniffing the air, his savage-toothed snarls turning querulous, a slight yip chasing the lowest notes. The wolves, despite their initial instinct to defend their kill, backed off, forming a loose circle around the interloper, and they watched, licking bloody muzzles, panting in a way that meant they were more confused than angry.

Ward fell to all fours and sniffed the blood. His mouth exploded with saliva, and he gripped a great hunk of the buck’s rear thigh, pulling it away from the bone with ease. He bit into it, slicing through the bloody meat with canines and incisors grown unnaturally sharp, biting down with jaw muscles that felt suddenly powerful beyond reason. Grunting and huffing, he ate his fill while the wolves watched, and when he was done, he moved off to a soft patch of loam at the base of an old oak and curled up, too exhausted, too blood drunk, to care that he was utterly exposed.

He slept then, deeply and soundly, though when he awoke, he had fragments of disjointed memories of a warm tongue lapping his face, his lips, even his teeth as he snored and grunted in response. It was when he contemplated that memory that Ward sat up straight, inhaling sharply as the chill morning air caressed his bare chest. “What the fuck?” He scanned his surroundings, taking in the massive tree boles, the loamy leaf-covered ground, and the freshly killed buck stripped to the hide and bones a dozen yards away.

He could remember everything he’d done. It was dreamlike, unreal—surreal—but he could remember it. He’d run, naked, out of the city. He’d walked right up to a pack of wolves and helped himself to their kill! “And they fucking let me.” Ward looked at his hands—normal in every respect, though stained with dried blood. Didn’t he remember having claws? He gingerly probed his teeth, afraid of what he’d find, but his mouth felt normal. Had it all been a bad trip? Had that potion been laced with wild hallucinogens?

He grunted, stretching his neck, surprised by how limber and fresh he felt. “What the fu—” he started to ask himself again, only to have Grace suddenly appear before him, stormy-eyed and disheveled.

“What the hell was that?” she growled, shoving his chest.

Ward, used to her occasional outbursts, met her outrage with a wry grin and shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. I drank that damn potion, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in the woods.”

“You pushed me down! You buried me! I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear or smell! I was trapped, Ward! What did you do?”

“Grace, what part of me waking up naked in the woods don’t you understand?”

“You don’t remember anything?”

Ward sighed, shaking his head. He wasn’t being honest. He remembered everything, but it was just too damn strange to be real. Nevertheless, he tried to explain. “I do, I guess, but it was more like I was along for the ride than I was doing anything. I jumped out the damn window, ran through town, into the woods, here, and took some meat from a pack of goddamn wolves.” He gestured with a bloody hand toward the deer carcass.

Grace sat back, eyeing him up and down with her dimly smoldering eyes. “You’ve changed.”

“Ah, c’mon. I didn’t mean to—what did you call it? Bury? Yeah, I didn’t mean to bury you, Grace, I—”

“No, you dummy, you’ve changed. Literally. You’re more muscular. You have more hair on your chest. Your eyes aren’t just blue anymore—you have a band of gold near the pupil. I think that ‘R+’ potion did more than advance your ‘vessel’ attributes.”

Ward wasn’t a dummy. He could put two and two together. “Oh, shit. The ‘lycan’ bloodline? Am I a werewolf, for God’s sake?”

Grace frowned, folding her arms as she continued to study Ward. “I don’t know about that. You took some meat from a pack of wolves?”

“That’s what I remember, yeah.”

“And they didn’t fight?”

“They growled, but they backed off.”

“I know a thing or two about wolves. If a lone wolf tried to take meat from a pack’s kill, they’d be very likely to attack it. Either that doesn’t hold true for werewolves, or you might have the scent of a different animal, something that could back off a wolf pack.”

“Like what? A bear?”

Grace nodded. “Exactly. Who’s to say, though? It could just be that lycanthropes trump regular beasts when it comes to the perceived-threat department.” She sighed and stood, pacing in a small circle, examining their surroundings. “Please tell me you didn’t murder anyone on the way out of town.”

Ward chuckled. “Nah, I almost got a cat, but I didn’t attack anyone.” He stood and stretched, enjoying the way his body felt, enjoying the scents on the wind and the dappled sunlight coming through the tree branches above. “God, everything feels good. Everything seems…sharper.” He clenched his fist, grinning as his knuckles popped with the force of his grip. “Honestly, Grace, I feel fantastic.”

“We need to get you back to the inn; I want to see what the hemograph says about you.”

Ward nodded. “Shit! How late is it? We’ve got a lot to do today, and what about Haley? She must be losing it!”

Grace looked up at the sky, shielding her eyes. “It’s still early. Let’s start back, and, hopefully, something will present itself as a solution to your, um, nakedness.”

Ward nodded and started out, somehow knowing which way to go. He might not have been entirely in the driver’s seat the night before, but he’d definitely been cognizant of everything that had gone down. He recognized little landmarks as they went—a tiny stream, an old, lightning-blasted tree, an enormous bee hive buzzing from a hollow log. When he heard the sounds of axes falling and men shouting, he slowed and frowned down at his nakedness. “I’m going to cause some trouble if I run into some loggers like this.”

“Ward, I think your hearing has improved. I think those sounds are much farther than you think. Do you remember running past any tree stumps?”

Ward shook his head. “Nope.” He concentrated, closing his eyes and focusing on the distant sounds. “Yeah, I think you’re right. They’re coming from off that way.” He nodded toward his right, then continued ahead. He’d only covered another ten yards when he heard a faint cry on the wind.

“Ward!”

“Haley!” Grace cried.

“Yep!” Ward started jogging toward the voice. He heard her call his name three more times before he came upon her, hands on knees, studying the forest floor. Ward cupped his hands over his family jewels before she could look up at the sound of his pounding feet. He needn’t have worried; Grace stood before him, arms on hips, blocking most of his nakedness.

“Ward!” Haley cried, leaping up. “I’ve been looking for you all night!”

“How’d you track him this far?” Grace asked, and Ward had to admit to some curiosity about the subject.

“I followed him! The lunatic! I chased him through the streets until he outpaced me, but I could see he was running for the city's edge. Ward! You looked like a monster on the prowl! Growling and gnashing your teeth! I didn’t get close enough to get the details, but I swear you were more animal than man by the time I lost sight of you.” She gestured to the soft mulch-covered ground. “I picked up these tracks near a beet farm outside the city.”

“Haley,” Grace sighed, “do you have something he can cover up with?”

Haley looked over Grace’s head, her eyes brightening with humor as she reached up to unclasp her cloak. “This won’t cover you if you wear it around your neck, but just wrap it around your waist. It’ll get you to the inn.” She tossed it over, and Ward did as she suggested, wrapping himself with it like a big beach towel. “You have to tell me what’s going on, though.”

Ward nodded, motioning for her to follow as he began walking again. “I will, but it’s all guesses right now. We need to get back to the inn and take a look at the hemograph.”

“It’s his bloodline, we think,” Grace added. “It seems that ‘R+’ potion might have been a refinement plus a bloodline awakening.”

“Oh, gods. Lycan? Ward…I’ve heard stories…” she trailed off, shaking her head.

Ward sighed, rubbing the back of his head in frustration. “I don’t want to hear it. Not yet. Let’s get to the inn, and we’ll get to work as planned. You need to do your refinements, and then we’ll go to the library. Depending on what the hemograph says, I think I’ve got some research to do.” He put an arm over Haley’s shoulders. “Thanks for coming to find me, partner.”

“Of course! Though, this whole thing has me wondering if I want to go through with the refinements. Ward, that bathroom is disgusting!”

“Hah!” Ward laughed and squeezed her against his side. “I’ll clean the tub for you, don’t worry.” He felt good despite everything, and he couldn’t help picking up the pace, breaking into a loping jog after a few seconds. “Come on!” he laughed, “We’re wasting daylight!”