4: Jack - In The Pack (11 page)

“We can fly in together. You can get your bearings. I’ll set you up in an apartment.” He had it all worked out. “We’ll set you up with some traveling papers that won’t set off any alarms.” Or make anyone suspicious. I knew that’s what he meant. He didn’t want to resurrect a well-mourned, long dead Olympian.

I insisted, “But I want to keep my real name.”

He shook his head. “That’s the bitch of this. At the very least, you have to take on a new last name.”

At that moment, I hated him. I hated everything about his company, his relatives, and all they had become. They stole my identity!

I know this sounds calculating, but I decided that I might just turn the tables. I could go with the flow, meet up with his sister and hold her hostage. Yeah, he’d already let on that she meant way too much to him. Oh, I knew if I screwed up I’d be swimming with the fishes--or eaten by the bitches. But the possibility of revenge, taking something in return for what he’d stolen from me--seemed too good to pass off. If that was the new game, I was a player. I was lining up for first roll of the die.

“Fine.” I killed my drink, set the glass aside. “My life’s over anyway. Point me to my new...bitch.”

He didn’t flinch at that, but I did. Inwardly. Even though I’d learned to talk their talk, the real man in me--wanted to find true love. Yeah, the stuff fairytales are made of, that young girls dream of. Well, I’m here to tell ya, Olympians dream of that, too. It’s like...the one thing left.

Very few people ever really find it. I know that.

I felt like I was dying inside. I was giving up on that one last hope that Jack Barton really had. The happily ever after part.

So, when I was given my new driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate the next day, I didn’t even read the name they’d given me. Just tucked them in my wallet.

I’m going to fast-forward a little bit. Hood escorted me across the world. We’d been in Europe. He took me to the States. An apartment had already been set up for me. Under constant surveillance, I know, I was allowed to find my way back into society.

Months passed, nearly a year. We had several talks about what he wanted to happen. Hood kept saying that he couldn’t introduce me until his sister was ready. He likened it to a bitch dog that wasn’t quite in heat, how she snaps at the males that come sniffing, said he was saving me from the torture, the hard shaft ache that most of the males at Pack City were dealing with.

What he didn’t know was that I was starting to suffer like that anyway. After all that activity at Lobos, I felt like I’d gone on the longest dry spell in history. It was funny, really, because, as an Olympian, I’d always gone months between taking release. Chalk it up to building stamina, working on self-control, pacing one’s self.

Well, I’d caught up on missed opportunities. And I’d damn near sworn off women in any form. But that didn’t stop my crotch from begging me to take pity.

I guess Hood really began to trust me. Maybe because I wasn’t alley-catting around, sniffing up all the females that are available on the streets of America. Maybe he thought I was psyching myself up for fidelity. Who knows?

Maybe I was.

And, truth be told, thoughts of taking his sister hostage had slipped my mind. Hood flew in and out, left me to live in the big city. I don’t want to tell you the name of it, because I think you’d really panic if you realized how close you were to the garou stronghold.

Just look on a map. Make a few calls. Climb out of your complacency, and find out where the wolf preserves are. They aren’t all labeled as that. Some are just nature centers, where all wild creatures are protected.

Oh, I should mention this...I had an ordeal once, when Hood was out of town. I’d taken myself for a run. Didn’t even realize how close to Pack City I’d managed to get. Back then, it hadn’t occurred to me to look in the phone book for a wild animal sanctuary. So I’m out on the edge of town, running like a deaf, dumb, and blind oaf.

No one was in sight. I was oblivious to everything but maxing out my lung and leg capacity. The moon was on its way. I’d managed to get through several changes without killing anything on the street. Hood flew me back to Lobos for those odd hours, let me loose in the habitat there. It worked for me, because I didn’t want to be responsible for killing anybody, or anyone’s pet. You understand.

I declined the collar. And he allowed me that choice. Let me suffer through the change without medication. It was excruciating, but I felt like a survivor when it was all over. And each time, I got progressively more immune to the pain, learned to deal with it without becoming totally incapacitated. In fact, because I was on hormone therapy, I found that my shifts became easier with practice, the more my bones, muscles, and ligaments made the stretches. Staying loose is half the trick. You know, relaxing, letting it happen.

Anyhow, out of nowhere came these...losers. A pack of scraggly skanks. They pounced me before I even realized they were near me.

I don’t make that mistake--of tuning out the world like I used to while in training--anymore. No. I have my radar up at all times...
now
.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Hood is a master planner. Everybody’s his puppet. At least, to his one main goal.

So, they pounce me--I’m going to gloss over this part--and threatened to gang-rape me. These are all males, mind you. Too many to fight. At least, in human form--I didn’t have a prayer.

I think Hood set them loose on me to teach me a little of the fear of God, maybe humble me. The bitches at Lobos had been building me up pretty well, ya know? I was getting a little full of myself.

Anyhow, I’ll just say that I saw more than I wanted to see that day. The wolves shifted to crinos--and I know now that their poor genetic version is very sad, definitely low-end breeders. Their cocks, even in enhanced form, were nothing to brag about, but they had them out, threatened to--Well, let’s just say, by the time they got around to letting me up, making a deal with me, I was thinking I was living a blessed life.

It made no sense that they didn’t go ahead and use me as their boy toy.

Except I was on Hood’s prized possession list, and they were on his shit list, trying to get up the chain. And as soon as I realized that the wolves were garou, affiliated with Pack City, I started rambling about Lobos until I hit on a name they understood. Hood.

So they let me up. That’s when they started shifting, like it was a game. God, it was awful. Grinding, breaking bone sounds. It took forever, too.

Made me watch their acts of perversion. That’s what I’d call it. They went beyond homosexual behavior.
That
, I might have been able to deal with. But they were into sadism and masochism. I don’t mind admitting that watching them hurt themselves and each other had me flinching. That was one show I didn’t enjoy. I can’t go into the details of it. All I’m saying is, don’t go that route. It didn’t look fun. Always, play it safe. Skirt the edges if you need to, but don’t ever give someone the permission to hurt you.

I thought it was almost over. They were shooting off their little twenty-twos all over the place. Doing it by the strap and slap method. I didn’t understand it at all. But that’s me.

And suddenly, they pounced me again. You can imagine the fear I felt, after seeing their little demonstration. Bile climbed up my throat. It was a worse moment than when Hood had bit me, because now I knew what was possible.

And make no mistake. They told me that they’d just as soon rip me open as let me go. In fact, they explained, in no uncertain terms, that unnaturals were all supposed to be put down in that fashion.

Only Hood’s name had saved me. I didn’t tell them that he’d bitten me, or that I was one of his pet projects. I did say that I knew Hood and he wouldn’t be happy if I ended up dead.

They convinced me that I needed to slip into Pack City and ‘steal the princess for them’.

Okay. I never connected ‘the princess’ with Hood’s sister. Not until later. I never saw how their plan was his plan. Not until I got her out of there.

So they led me to Pack City, made sure I knew that the Pack would hunt me down, if they got wind of me. I had the smell of the unnatural, they said.

I think it was bullshit. I sniff my pits, and everything else. I’m not smelling it. And my nose is garou’d up the fucking ying-yang now. But what up? I didn’t want to push my luck. Who knew if the morons were telling the truth or not? It didn’t matter. I was getting a lesson on P.C. How to get in. How to get out. They talked about safe ways around the sanctuary. I listened closely. Though, ultimately, I wasn’t able to use any of the things they’d taught me when it really counted.

Anyhow, I had opportunity to go to the outskirts of Pack City several times. Did a whole lot of scouting. Stayed downwind the whole time, kept my eye out for scouts, sentries, that sort of thing. They make roving searches of their perimeter all the time.

The full moon came and went, and I had another encounter with my ‘friends.’ Let’s just say, in crinos, I had plenty to say to those jerk-offs. We came to an understanding.

I wasn’t going to renege on my deal to ‘steal their princess’ once I figured out that she and Hood’s sister were one and the same. But, again, they didn’t tell me her name. Just called her
Princess
.

So by the time I really started smelling her, I was fully intrigued. I mean, the losers had all taken their turns--jacking off to telling me about her, how she smelled, how she acted, how bad they wanted to take her down to the ground and fuck her until she screamed, or howled or whatever. Some of their pictures were pretty ugly.

I only listened because sometimes they let important information slip, little tidbits about Pack City and its other inhabitants. I didn’t get off on their little brain trips.

I knew, at that point, why they preferred lupus to crinos or human. Less vulnerable. Less pathetic.

They turned out to be invaluable to me. All I had to do was hold them down, threaten to slit their throats--catching them one on one over a period of time--to get them to swear an oath that they’d help me, if the time came. Basically, we were all watching each other’s backs, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust them or not.

Only the pack was clueless.

At least, that’s what I thought. I’m rethinking it, now. Maybe Leer was in on it. I’ve heard too much about him. And he and Hood are pretty tight.

But Hood stacked some wood at the shed door, the night that I was supposed to come in and get his sister. So to speak. He made sure that Kayty was the vulnerable spot in the plan, the one who would have to struggle between instinct and orders. Guaranteed Leer’s co-operation, I think, through the blame he laid at Kayty’s feet.