“We’re here for our totems.”
“Totems?”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. Then, after a sigh: “It’s difficult to explain.”
I blew warmth into my hands. Damn I wish I’d brought gloves. “Try me.”
“Well, we weren’t always Lycanthropes. We weren’t born this way, we were made.”
“So… you were bitten?”
“Yes,” said Damien. He looked to Broderick. “and no.”
After Xiomara’s call, I decided to humor them. It wasn’t that I believed them — the bigger part of me actually didn’t — it was more that I’d been deceived before. When it came to the Order, it wasn’t uncommon to be sent into the field thinking one thing, and then finding out something entirely different. It could easily be I was being told to go along with something because my contacts believed it.
Truth was, they could cry wolf all they wanted. The only thing that mattered to me was completing my mission, and getting the hell out of here.
“Getting bitten isn’t at all like it is in the movies,” Damien explained. “It’s more a spiritual change than a physical one, at least initially.”
“So you don’t foam at the mouth?” I quipped. “Grow a snout? Break out of your skin, and—”
“Do you want to laugh, or do you want to listen?”
Broderick’s look was stern and parental. Under normal circumstances I might’ve flipped him off, but we were deep in the woods, about to pull a panty-raid on some ancient castle. Besides, I guess I was kind of was being an asshole.
“Alright,” I said. “Go on.”
“The initial change is different from the rest,” said Damien. “Something slips from you. Not your soul exactly, but a small part of you that makes you fully human. That energy ends up residing in a nearby physical object, usually something of importance to you.”
Broderick nodded. “This object becomes your totem,” he said. “It anchors you to the life you once lived. To the form you once were.”
“So it’s an object?” I asked. “Like… a personal item?”
“Exactly,” said Damien. “For me, it was a carved jade pendant — some stupid trinket I’d bought on the boardwalk when I was a kid. I wore it around my neck for years, while surfing. I never took it off.”
I looked at Broderick. He wasn’t speaking.
“His was more… personal,” Damien said for him.
The wind shifted again, judging by the direction of the swaying trees. Broderick noticed it immediately. He’d been watching the wind ever since we left the truck.
“And why don’t you have these things?” I asked. “Why didn’t you take them when you left?”
“Because Karessa kept them,” said Damien bitterly.
Suddenly I understood. “To lure you back,” I reasoned. “To keep you from leaving the pack for good.”
“Yes.”
As I sat there a strange wave of sensation washed over me, all thick and heavy. The best way to describe it would be a deep empathy. A perception of sadness and loss, of heartbreak and pain. And yet there was an anger there too. A seething, deep-seeded loathing buried beneath layer upon layer of conflicted memories.
Damien’s expression changed to one of concern. “Are you alright?”
I couldn’t speak. Not yet. I was too busy soaking it all in. These feelings radiated from the two of them physically, as surely as light or heat. The sorrow came from them both. But the fury… that was entirely on Broderick’s end.
I felt it all — every mournful bit of their suffering. And whatever they were experiencing, I could see it in their eyes now… they knew I was too.
Broderick took my hand. He did it tenderly, and with an empathy of his own.