“Having a hard-on doesn’t make you an adult, boy,” Gabriel said, and some of the grown males laughed.
Orlando waved them quiet. “The Law is specific in this matter, Rafael. Bone and flesh, flesh and bone, a man takes time to grow them. Two-five-two number the moons that it takes for a man to know them. Till then he is not the match of a man, and a man is not bound to match him.”
“That’s twenty-one years for you slow students,” Bucky pointed out. Finn gave him the finger.
“How do I know you didn’t make that up?” Rafe said to Orlando.
A collective growl went up around the circle. Ulf cringed.
“The voice of the Law never lies,” someone shouted.
“Give it up,” someone else called, and others took up the cry until Orlando raised his arms again.
Sharp, silver light etched the old man’s wrinkled face into a craggy landscape as ancient as the moon’s itself. “This is the Law,” he said in a voice that was the Law. “You will obey or die.”
The males moved silently through the crowd toward the Five, encircling them. Ulf looked this way and that, his teeth bared in panic. The smirks left the faces of Gregory and Finn. Then Vivian could see no more, for wide backs and shoulders obscured her view.
“Come on, Rafe,” she heard Gregory’s voice plead. “Another time, okay?”
“Yeah,” Willem joined in. “We’ll get other chances.”
There was silence for a minute.
Finally Vivian heard Rafe speak. “Fuck you.” It was a curse of defeat.
The tight wall of males relaxed, and Vivian caught a glimpse of the Five slouching through the crowd.
Gabriel slapped Bucky on the back and said something that made him laugh. The men turned to leave the circle as if this was a cue. Bucky passed the joke on to another. As Raul passed his wife, Magda, he grabbed her and kissed her deeply. A squeal caused Vivian to turn to her right and see Rolf and Renata in a similar embrace. Esmé stared at the ground, and Vivian knew she longed for someone to kiss for luck.
“Come on,” Vivian whispered, tugging at her mother’s T-shirt.
When they reached the edge of the clearing, Esmé pulled her shirt over her head. Vivian took off her own blouse and slid off her shorts. In no time they were both as naked as the others who gathered in a semicircle facing the clearing.
The combatants lined up in the center of the clearing, their backs to the watching crowd, their faces to the rising moon. Astrid, standing at the end of the row, looked absurdly small beside the others, like a child mimicking her elders. There were seventeen males in line, and some of them were anonymous from behind. There was no mistaking Gabriel, however. He was half a head taller than the tallest of them, and only the blond newcomer matched the width of his shoulders.
Esmé was playing who’s who. “That’s Jean next to Raul,” she said to Renata. “I’d recognize that tight little butt anywhere.”
Renata choked back a laugh. “Shhh!”
For a moment only the creaking and chirping of insects filled the air.
Then a rustling began in the woods across the clearing, beneath the rising moon. Closer and closer it came, and with it groaning. A pale figure took form in the darkness, and out stepped Persia Devereux dressed in silver robes. In her hands she carried a silver bowl, as ripe and as full as the moon. She sang a moaning soft song that throbbed like the heart of a beast. Aunt Persia was far away, but the music thrummed in Vivian’s ears. She swayed to it.
The old woman offered each fighter the bowl. “Drink of the Moon,” she said. And as she passed down the line, backs furred, limbs twisted, ears sprouted tufts. Vivian felt an answering crunch in her spine-sharp pain, sweet pain-and a warm rush of blood in her veins that swept to her hands and feet, causing her nails to pop and grow.
Aunt Persia reached Astrid the last. The lone female was already foxy red and, though she still had fingers to steady it, she lapped from the dish with her muzzle like an Egyptian god feeding. As Astrid lifted her head, a pearl of liquid suspended on her black lip, Aunt Persia cried out a guttural word in an ancient tongue and tossed the bowl over her head.
Vivian howled the answering word she had learned as a cub and fell to all fours.
She expected the center to burst, but the males stepped back as if they danced to a well-known tune, and Gabriel shot down the line, his legs evolving. He curled out a lengthening arm and swiped once, twice. “First blood,” he boomed in hollow tones from the echoing cavity of his changing mouth.
Astrid reeled and her snout, dripping red, curled back to a woman’s face with the shock. “Cheat!” she screamed with human lips, then made the full change and went for his throat. He tossed her aside like a rag.
Rudy and the skinny stranger, unchanged, ran to retrieve her and tried to drag her from the field of combat. She escaped their grip, tearing Rudy’s side. Another male jumped her and she ripped his throat, sending him yelping back in surprise. The other males stared as she growled a challenge, unsure of what to do, until Gabriel grabbed her and threw her once more to the ground, and whatever he screamed in her ear as he pinned her made her collapse. He got up and stood over her, showing his canine long teeth, until she rolled onto her back to present her belly, eyes narrow with rage. When he retreated a few paces, she flipped over and slunk to the edge of the clearing several yards down from where the other females stood.
Vivian, like the rest, growled as she watched Astrid go. She knew if Astrid set one paw wrong they would all be on her. Astrid knew, too. She sank down to lie with her nose on her paws, but a ridge of fur down her spine still bristled.
A howl rose into the night.
Vivian pivoted to see an ancient grizzled wolf-creature keen at the moon, a pile of silver robes at her feet.
The males, all in their fur, answered-deep and baying.
Then the clearing erupted in a seething, snarling mass of fur.
Four males were eliminated before Vivian could blink twice. Spat out of the fur maelstrom, they staggered their separate zigzag routes to the sidelines with bloody flanks. One dragged a damaged leg. Another burst from the rumble and fled into the woods, tail between his legs.
Rudy and Tomas, still only partly changed, dove in to drag a brindle stranger out from under scuffling claws. The stranger lay motionless under the bushes, but he stayed in his fur, so he was still alive.
The remainder wove an intricate Celtic knot. The object was to wound and not be touched. To be wounded was to be disqualified. Jaws snapped, paws danced, bodies lunged, then rolled aside.
Vivian noticed the brothers, Raul and Rolf, on opposite sides of the fray. They would avoid each other if they could. Bucky had no such qualms about the two buddies he usually hung with. He feinted at one, then veered and sank his teeth into the other’s throat. Gabriel took the first one by surprise when he ducked Bucky’s feint, and ripped a hole in his shoulder; then Gabriel turned his fangs back to the blond stranger, who retreated quickly.
Bucky brought his opponent down. They rolled, a growling mass of fur and spume, but Bucky kept his grip, forcing his teeth through the thick pelt. He must have tasted blood, because he released his hold, scrambled to all fours, and raised his muzzle in a brief triumphant howl. Vivian found she was howling, too. She choked it off in surprise.
Bucky spun around to protect his back. It wasn’t wise to savor victory long. His defeated friend slunk toward the edge of the clearing, his belly close to the ground.
In the center, Gabriel and the blond stranger circled each other warily, their hackles spiked and their teeth bared. Rolf edged by them, intent on a gray who stood momentarily disengaged, his sides heaving.
That was a mistake.
The blond lunged, savaged Rolf’s nose, and swung back to Gabriel in a snarling heartbeat.
Meanwhile, someone took out Raul; Vivian didn’t know who, but she saw Jean lay low the gray, who had only made it this far from dumb luck.
Gabriel and the blond still circled stiff-legged. Their lips were wrinkled into masks of hatred; their sinews trembled with the stress of restraint. Gabriel struck, missed, tumbled, and was back on four feet before the blond’s teeth clicked on air.
Bucky herded two other strangers like sheep. Jean joined him. They made short work of the unknown pair, and Vivian’s heart thumped with the beauty of their fierce symmetry.
Then they had only each other to turn on.
They faced off, their jaws parted in laughter. Bucky glanced over at Gabriel and the blond, then back at Jean. He cocked his head and Vivian knew he said, “It’s just us, buddy, unless you wanna come between them
?”
Jean deliberately lifted his leg and sent a short stream of urine shooting in their direction. The message was clear: “Piss on that.”
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