Wolves of the Havenlands: Chapter 3
The adverse effects of her contact with silver, it turned out, were very much like an allergic reaction. With some trial and error over the last year, she had discovered that what seemed to help the most was a topical Benadryl cream, so she applied that to the rash on the palm of her hand.
Thankfully, Mariska had pointed out her mistake before too long and Claire had relinquished her hold of the piece of silver jewelry after only a moment, but that moment was still enough to cause blisters to form on her skin a couple of hours later.
In the first few months of her transformation, Mariska had warned her of the harmful effects of silver on werewolves; it turns out those weren’t fictional in the slightest. As a vampire, Mariska had similar reactions to contact with the metal, with a severity range dependent on how well-fed she was at the time.
It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Claire walked from her bedroom to her living room, sipping on a glass of wine and enjoying the quiet day off. The minor injury had served a secondary purpose in forcing her to not do any painting or other work. The day off would also help the healing process before she was to head out to meet with Mariska and Shondra later.
The windows were open, as usual. Since her change, she couldn’t really stand air conditioning unless it got excessively hot. She preferred the open windows and fans whenever possible, so once the sun started going down, she tended to let in the natural air. For her, it was akin to getting out. The smells of the city wafted in as she stepped out onto her small patio to lean over the railing at the view of the copse of woods out behind her apartment building. This offered her a wonderful bit of privacy where she could explore the smells from the dry brush stretching out below her.
Taking a sip of her wine, Claire looked at her hand again. At this point, it really just itched. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but the implications of it were lodged in her mind.
On one hand, it was the same problem anyone with an allergy has to deal with; searching out any potential products that might contain it, only to find out just how many things actually have some trace amounts. That was a bit stressful early on.
There was also the larger concern that Mariska had told her about, months ago. The lithe vampire hadn’t gone into the more elaborate details with Shondra, but she had made the threat known well enough in her warning to Claire.
“Of the things you and I share, this might be the most important to be on guard for.” Claire could remember Mariska’s voice echoing in her memory, stern and far more serious than the woman usually was. Pulling up her shirt, Mariska had turned around to show Claire a two-inch scar at the base of her back, only a few inches to the left of her spine. “This came from a silver arrowhead. A… hunter… of a sort… had identified me. This was only in the first few years of my change. I was still living in New York when… well, let us simply say I may have earned this.”
Mariska had never gone into details about the first few years that she was a vampire, but the implication of her cryptic statements was clear. In those early times, left alone to fend for herself, Claire assumed that Mariska had taken lives out of desperation. They were actions she still held deep regret for, and had worked hard to get past. It was a topic that Claire never pressed her friend on, and thankfully, neither had Shondra.
‘As a werewolf… you heal. Incredibly fast compared to normal humans. For me, that is much the same. Faster… if I drink fresh after an injury. But this…’ Mariska’s voice rattled around in Claire’s brain, ‘This took weeks. Silver is poison to us. It… deadens our flesh. Slows our healing to sometimes less than if we were human. I… had to cut out the infected skin to get rid of the parts that the silver had touched so it would heal at all.’
Claire had asked her new friend why the two of them, so different in so many ways, shared this one curse. Mariska had no real answer to give. “I truly wish I knew, volchonok. If there is a god, perhaps he denies us equally. I have never heard a reason, but I like to think it simply makes what we are that much more similar.”
Taking another sip, Claire knitted her brows as she thought about it. She had actively chosen to reject such concepts of religious connotations regarding what sort of lifeforms she and Mariska were now. While she had been agnostic most of her life, there was nothing that was particularly ominous about what she was now. Nothing demonic or bad. And despite her best efforts to seem dark and mysterious at times, Mariska was one of the most giving and good-hearted women Claire had ever known. They weren’t evil. Besides, if the touch of silver WAS a curse to them both, then BENADRYL wouldn’t really work to help.
Stepping back inside, Claire put her glass of wine down and walked through the living room to the kitchen, where she began to consider dinner. One of the other more noticeable side effects of being a werewolf was a significant appetite. The inside of the fridge was a sad sight as she looked over the lack of decent options. There were some cartons of leftover Chinese food that needed to be tossed in the trash, hot dogs, a carton of eggs, and a few packs of bacon.
Hmmm, breakfast for dinner sounds pretty good, Claire thought, pulling out the eggs and bacon and setting them on the counter. It was an 18-pack and she would likely use half of it to make a satiating meal. Picking through, she found some shredded cheddar and enough milk to scramble them up the way she preferred.
For a change, the dishes were clean, though still in the drying rack. Claire grabbed the large frying pan and popped it over onto the stovetop. She had never been much of a cook before, and in truth, still wasn’t, but she was at least getting better and less messy about the whole affair. It made the appetite issue more affordable.
As she was starting to crack the eggs into a mixing bowl, her phone began to vibrate on the end table in the living room. Her heightened senses detected the phone from a room away, so a ringtone was unnecessary and, for her ears, jarringly loud. Rolling her eyes, Claire tossed the freshly cracked shell of the first egg into the trash.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course it had to wait until I have egg on my hands.” Claire groused as she rushed over to the sink to try and rinse off some of the egg as quickly as she could. The phone kept up its steady, repeating buzz as she grabbed the dishtowel and dried her hands off, heading into the living room.
The phone display showed a local number she didn’t quite recognize, prompting her to groan audibly. “Really? I swear if this is another one of those frickin’ ‘we’re trying to contact you about your vehicle’s extended warranty’ calls, I’m hunting down the person on the other side and frickin’ eating THEM. Fuck eggs.”
Grabbing the phone and pressing the call button to answer, Claire put it up to her ear and snapped, clearly irritated. “What?”
“Uh…” came a familiar man’s voice on the other end, nervous. “Is… this Claire? It’s… um… Sam.”
SHIIIIIIT! Claire thought, biting her lip and course-correcting as she realized it was the young bartender from the karaoke bar she, Mariska and now Shondra frequented. Smooth frickin’ answer, Claire. Frickin’ smooth.
“Uh… hey. Hi, Sam. Shit, sorry.” Claire leaned into the truth as she apologized. “I was just starting dinner and thought you were another one of those obnoxious-ass telemarketer calls. Sorry.”
Hemming, Claire realized she was blushing in the privacy of her own apartment. She frequented the locale where Sam worked as a bartender and the two had grown increasingly friendly over the last few months. In point of fact, Claire’s unique senses had already let her know that, while she found the somewhat chunky, blonde man cute, he liked her, too.
With her supernatural senses, the man’s physiological reactions were as clear as the metalsmith’s at the Fair the day prior.
“Um… what’s going on?” Claire asked, clearly nervous as her mind stumbled on a sticking point that had just occurred to her. “Wait. How do… I didn’t give you my phone number.”
The phone buzzed again and a text message notification appeared in the corner. Tapping the icon, a message from Mariska populated the screen, simply saying: ‘Sorry.’
“Oh… Uh. Well, I went into that ramen place down in Ybor City for lunch… and… ya’ know. The place where… Mariska works and…” Sam answered, treading lightly as another text popped up.
Reading the texts as Sam stammered, Claire scowled at the screen. ‘You might be getting a call from Sam, from the club. He came in for lunch and was sad. You two need to stop stalling! He is cute. You know you like him. NOT SORRY!’
“Annnnd, she gave you my number?” Claire interjected, doing her best to not sound irritated at Sam; she was more annoyed at her friend's interference.
“Uh… well, yeah. Yes. We were talking and she said that you… I’m sorry. I’m intruding, aren’t I?” He asked, clearly regretting his decision to take the first, awkward step.
Picking up on the shift in the man’s tone, Claire quickly replied, hoping to right what appeared to be a rapidly sinking ship. “NO! No. No, you… you aren’t intruding. Honestly. I was just a bit… caught off guard.”
“Seriously… Mariska is texting me RIGHT NOW to tell me she told you. Heh.” Claire added with a chuckle. She was annoyed at her friend, but it wouldn’t last. As usual, the lithe vampire knew Claire well, and knew she would need a push to engage with the man who she found cute.
They had only ever talked when he was working at the karaoke bar, and over the last couple of months, even Claire had to admit that she was dragging her feet. She was scared, but she was also interested and trying to avoid that interest.
“Heh! Yeah, that sounds like her.” Sam said through the phone. In the bar, he was generally more confident, but there he had the pretense of the job to bolster his confidence. There, Claire was a customer and he had a reason to interact with her that was legitimate. Now, he was clearly putting himself out there in a way that was less comfortable, but still doing his best to be charming. “Sooo, I guess the question here is… are you mad that she did, or not?”
“Heh…” Claire couldn’t help but chuckle as she walked back into the kitchen to resume her dinner prep. “Well… I’m… I’m not MAD, per se. I was a little… caught off guard. But… not mad.”
“Well, that’s something right?” Sam said, building up more courage as he did. “So… I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Just making dinner. Nothing specific, really.” Claire said, putting the phone on speaker so she could prep and talk as she resumed cracking eggs. “Just some… breakfast for dinner. Bacon and eggs.”
“So I hear. Do you have people over? Sounds like you’re making a lot.” Sam said casually, as the sound had clearly carried over the speaker. As he spoke, Claire froze for a second, looking at the mixing bowl that now had about nine eggs in it. The conversation reminded her of the primary reason she hadn’t acted on talking to Sam outside of the bar.
“Uhh… yeah. Yeah. S… Shondra’s coming over. Yeah.” Claire lied, wincing as she said it, realizing how fake it sounded. “Just… uh… girls night in. Watching some movies. And… um… eating a lot of eggs.”
The lie felt exceedingly stupid as she committed to it, looking down at the eggs.
Taking a breath, Claire realized this was a part of what she was. Some of the only advice that she had been given in those earliest days was to feed the wolf when she was hungry. In the moment, however, it was a reminder that Sam was just a normal man. He had no idea what Claire was, and after a year of hiding that truth from Shondra, she wasn’t prepared to step back into that kind of lie with someone else.
Right now, Sam was a cute bartender with a crush on her. Her own feelings were uncertain, but in spite of her concerns, Claire found that she didn’t want to end the call right away.
“Sounds like a fun night. I won’t keep you from it, then. But…” Sam interjected, “I was thinking, what you would think about maybe… getting something to eat… together, one night?”
Biting her lip, Claire flushed at the idea. It had been a long time since she had even considered dating, and here she was being asked out by a guy she thought was cute. It didn’t quite seem real.
“One night sounds… promising,” Claire answered, grinning as she turned around in the kitchen, pacing nervously. In spite of being alone in the apartment, she could feel herself blushing as she froze in front of the window over the sink. Even from a few feet away, she could see herself, as the sun had gone down enough to allow her reflection to appear in the glass, backed by the increasing darkness outside. In that reflection, she could see her eyes.
In her excitement, without thinking, they had gone amber.
Without even being aware of it, she had become emotional enough to subconsciously let just a bit of the wolf out, and the idea made that old, familiar knot that lived in her stomach tighten up.
“Um… but… I don’t know, Sam. I’ve… I’ve got a lot going on right now. And… let me think about it, okay?” Claire stammered.
“Uh… yeah, okay. That’s… that’s cool.” Same replied, disappointment creeping into his voice as he tried not to sound upset. In her kitchen, Claire was gritting her teeth, angry at herself for doing this, but it was that old fear rearing up. That fear she thought she was getting better at managing. That fear of losing control that she still didn’t quite know how to mitigate.
“I’m… sorry. I’ll… I’ll talk to you later.” Claire said, kicking herself as she did. "Bye."
Hanging up before Sam had a chance to say anything else, Claire had to resist the urge to throw her phone across the room. She pressed the ‘call end’ button and heard a crack. Looking down at the screen, there was a spider web fracture along the glass of the phone screen where she had pressed too hard.
Closing her eyes, Claire tried to breathe. It seemed simple enough until you tried actively thinking about it. Her heart rate was starting to ramp up and she knew she was pushing herself. She felt the wolf just under the surface wanting to come out.
Claire didn’t know what scared her more; how difficult it was becoming to keep that part of her inside… or how little she truly wanted to.
©2024, Dee Sarah Fish
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