Free Howling Moon by C. T. Adams, Cathy Clamp

breakfast?” Tatya said bitterly. She turned on her heel and left. Raphael heard her stomp into the kitchen, heard the few terse words of her orders, followed by the slamming of the kitchen door and the sound of glass breaking.
    She’d left.
    It was probably better that she had, considering her emotional state. But Betty still needed to be taken to the pack hospital, and someone needed to give the woman breakfast and her initial orientation lecture.
    “Why is she so angry?” Catherine asked with a soft sniffle.
    “Long story. It has nothing to do with you.” Raphael answered. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a clean handkerchief, which she gratefully accepted. “But you need breakfast. After that, there are important things we need to discuss.”
     

Cat sat on the couch. Someone had closed the living room drapes. The room was dim and shadowed, despite the bright sunshine she could glimpse streaming into the kitchen over the top of the swinging doors. Raphael sat down beside her, close enough that the length of his thigh pressed against hers. Her throat went dry; Cat swallowed convulsively. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. Common sense said she should be, but she just wasn’t. No, this was a deeper, and much more primal reaction.
    He raised his hand to cup her cheek. With gentle pressure, he turned her face until her eyes locked with his. As she watched they changed subtly, the color shifting from a hazel-brown to intense gold. She felt the power building between them. The hairs on her body raised in reaction. It didn’t hurt, but it felt strange. The temperature in the room rose as well.
    When he spoke, his voice was deeper, rougher than it had been with the edge of a growl. “Since the dark beginnings when man and animal began roaming the earth there have been stories – tales of blood and magic that spoke of those who could shift their skins and become their totem animals. Some were worshiped as gods. Your godfather was one of them. He is the most powerful Sazi of us all. For years beyond count we have coexisted with the wandering tribes of humans.”
    She opened her mouth to speak, but the power pressed against her like a living thing, cutting off her ability to utter so much as a sound. Uncle Chuck was one of them? The leader! How could she have never guessed?
    Raphael’s harsh voice brought her back to listen. “But humans fear that which they can’t understand. And they kill what they fear.”
    The living room where they sat vanished in a rush of power. Catherine blinked, gasping in shock and fear.
    She was a small, brown-skinned girl of nine or so, her black hair pulled back in a tight braid. She ran desperately across uneven d e sert ground, cactus thorns and sharp rocks tearing at her bare feet and legs as she fled the screams of the dying.
    She heard the thunder of footsteps, felt the ground shudder b e neath her feet. She risked a glance back, and saw her mother’s brother drawing ever closer, a club drawn back to swing.
    She felt the club strike home, hard enough to lift her small body from the ground before slamming face forward into the sand.
    He ran on, leaving her for dead. She very nearly was. But slowly, she began to heal, enough to move her head, to see the fate of her kind.
    Scenes of blood and violence assaulted her senses as the killers moved like a scythe through the village, slaughtering anyone, even pregnant women, they suspected might carry the contamination.
    The adults they beheaded, to make sure there would be no return, no magical healing.
    Then, suddenly, it was over. There were no more screams. A f a miliar voice barked orders, and the attackers disappeared, back to the neighboring village from whence they came.
    She lay, listening, hoping to hear the sound of some other surv i vor. But the silence was only broken by the harsh caws of the carrion birds, eager to feast.
    One or two of the birds were bold enough to try to attack her, but they ‘d waited