"Hello, Eamon. You don't have to shout," she said as Peter left the room, closing the door behind him. She was thankful for this privacy afforded her.

"Fucking hell, Jess! It's a miracle! An awful miracle, but still--"

"I've been telling you for ages to try using telephones. It makes communication so much easier."

Scornful laughter from Eamon's end. "No, not this beastly thing! I hate it. Things haven't been the same since--"

Jess changed the subject quickly, lest she be subjected to another of Eamon's growling tirades as he railed endlessly against the decay of the world and the woes of modernity. "What is it, then? This miracle?"

A pause, then Eamon, as though he feared being overheard, switched from English to the werewolf tongue, a tongue known now to only a few outside of the Hekatoi, the secret keepers and storytellers of their kind. "You remember what I went looking for?" Werewolf was a language that did not translate well over the phone, as the visual and scent cues involved could not be transmitted over the phone lines, a fact Eamon was possibly unaware of, but Jessica understood him well enough.

"Yes, of course," she replied, keeping to English.

"I found one." In spite of that which was lost over the telephone, Jessica sensed pride and no small measure of excitement in his voice. She felt that excitement echoed in her own body as she took in the news, her eyes widening, her pulse quickening. Impossible news, yet, if it were true, how supremely wonderful-- and yes, as Eamon had said, awful at the same time.

She hung up the phone several minutes later, in a daze. She knew she had to speak with her hosts right away. They were in the next room, Peter seated on the floor playing a video game, Lucius on the couch, his legs crossed primly, but his yellow eyes savage. Peter paused the video game as she entered the room, and Lucius fixed his keen gaze upon her. Jessica sensed they had been waiting for her, waiting to hear who had been on the phone and why the call had been made. She had to decide how much she could tell them. "I gave a friend your number, in case he needed to contact me. I hope that's all right. Really, I wasn't expecting him to call at all."

She paused. These two, were they her pack now? Together, they were three werewolves sharing a home, however brief the arrangement might turn out to be, and surely that was something like a pack. It was not an arrangement one happened across often these days. She was already fond of them both. Such an unlikely pair. Peter, still wary of the part of him that was wolf, yet with better control over himself than most with thinned blood. Affable, easygoing, he seemed almost puppyish in some ways-- though he was assuredly not a puppy. And Lucius. Lucius, the one she had been searching for, the Hekatoi who had wanted to form a pack. In him, there remained little of the idealistic youth he must have been, and that saddened her. He did not have Peter's evident likable qualities, but she wanted to like Lucius all the more because of that. His prickliness was perversely endearing. If she did not trust these two fully yet, it was not because she did not want to trust them. It was simply that her life as a Hekatoi had taught her to keep her own counsel, to keep her secrets close.

"I'm afraid I'll have to be leaving you."

Lucius's expression was knowing. "Will you be returning?"

Jessica gave a wry smile. "That all depends on how well I am received at my destination."

"Ah. So you will return to us if you are not dead."

At this, Peter rose to his feet. "It's dangerous?" A consummate alpha male, ready to defend any member of his pack. "We can come with you if you need us."

"Don't be ridiculous," snapped Lucius, before she could reply to this unexpected offer of help. "She can take care of herself."

Peter turned on him, teeth bared. As Jessica watched through lowered eyes, Lucius quickly bared his throat in a gesture of submission. Peter flushed, embarrassed at his reaction to Lucius's unthinking words, but Jessica was secretly pleased. He answered the challenges offered to him. Another sign of a strong alpha. If we were a pack, we might make a good one, she thought. But they were not a pack. If only this summons had come years, even mere months, later, Jessica might have considered his offer of help. Strength was always in numbers, with us. Now their kind was scattered, weaker, and grown used to this unnatural isolation. Returning to the old ways would take time. No, she did not trust them enough. Nothing permanent bound them yet, but that time might come, she saw, if she could survive the journey ahead of her.

"I appreciate your offer, Peter, but I'll be fine. I don't think it's that dangerous, but it's quite likely I could be--" She chose the next word carefully. "--delayed."

He was not her alpha. He could not force his will on her, and that was never his intent. "If you're sure. When do you have to leave?"

"Now would be best."

She'd never understood how Eamon Kelly managed to travel so far, so fast, without the use of airplanes. Like telephones, he considered aircraft insufferable human technology. Perhaps he had recourse to modes of travel that were unknown to her; they all had their little secrets. Whatever the case, Eamon went everywhere, never resting long anywhere, a wanderer like herself. He too was of the Hekatoi, though his original line, of course, was Brenin-- an Irish werewolf, born in a tiny village near Killarney. She and Eamon, when the occasion warranted it, operated as a team.

Eamon had a gift for tracking. He could find anything, anyone, if they existed on this earth, so his task was to seek out werewolves they had not yet made contact with, who might know songs and stories they had not yet heard. For the Hekatoi were seekers of stories; they made of themselves storehouses of werewolf lore. They were historians, shamans, caretakers of the werewolf culture. Like a handful of sand, the werewolves and their heritage had been scattered by the wind. The Hekatoi sought to pull together what they could, to make of the scattered pieces a kind of whole again.

Eamon sought and found these widely dispersed parts of the whole, but, once found, he could do nothing with them. Though he could locate other werewolves, he could get no stories from them-- in fact, they often turned on him violently. Eamon was hardly personable, a lone wolf to his core. He hated to speak with others of his own kind, or of any kind, and avoided them on the whole. The folk he found, he seldom contacted, and what contact he made was fleeting. Usually he merely scented them, made note of their location, and fled. He could not be trusted to speak with anyone. When he wasn't painfully shy, as he most often was, he was obnoxious, snarling about the passage of time, singing snatches of songs, reciting bits of ballads. Jessica suspected he had memorized the complete works of W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, not to mention an extraordinary amount of werewolfish verse, much of which survived now only in the place between his two ears. A volatile, moody poet. Once he would have been revered, but, times being what they were, he was more often reviled. He knew and felt this keenly, which contributed a great deal to his hatred of the modern age and all its contrivances.

Where Eamon fell short, however, Jessica excelled. She had about her a certain quality which could soothe those of her kind; werewolves living in long isolation, as so many were these days, were somewhat less likely to greet her with the typical tumult of the fight-or-mate reaction. She also put humans and true wolves at their ease. She had a way with all peoples; they trusted her. They were unusually willing to sit down with her and tell her their troubles, the stories of their lives. So Eamon acted as the scout, and it was Jessica who made the sortie. She did not resent this arrangement. She knew Eamon faced as much danger as she did, especially as it was much more likely that someone would go for his throat than for hers. The rewards were worth the risks. So many stories would have died if not for she and Eamon, and every story was a precious thing.

As Jessica sat waiting for her connecting flight in Raleigh Durham International Airport, she found herself wondering where Eamon was now. He had called her from Milan, the city where the next plane she boarded would be heading, but she knew he would not wait for her there. At this very moment, he could be racing across the steppes in Russia, his dark grey body in stark contrast to the white snow. Or he could be smiling in the south of France, stealing bottles of Pastis from drunken laborers. She smiled to think of it. Then she remembered what Eamon had told her, and her smile faded. She did not smile again for a while. She boarded her plane with a blank face. She was one of the first passengers flying coach to get on the plane-- after the first class passengers, of course.

Jessica was anxious while the plane was boarding. It was extremely unlikely that another werewolf would board, werewolves being as few and far between as they were, but it was possible. It had happened once before, and Jessica remembered the extreme discomfort of that flight, the two of them so close in that enclosed space but unable to act on their instincts, surrounded by humans as they were. It had been sheer torture, her brain screaming at her, commanding her to do something she could not possibly do. She'd been hard pressed not to jump on him-- and do what? She still didn't know. She'd caught his gaze more than once. A young one. Maybe nineteen? Black hair, black eyes, and skin almost black, the darkest brown possible. Line of Aker. Beautiful. She had not dared speak to him, and she had never seen him again. Perhaps she would, someday. He had smiled at her.

Fortunately, no other werewolves boarded her plane this time. As the pilot taxied down the runway, she sighed in relief. The woman seated next to her gave her a curious glance, but said nothing. Jessica closed her eyes gratefully. She was not in the mood for conversation. Hopefully, she'd manage to fall asleep and stay asleep until they reached Milan.

Malpensa Airport. What did that mean? Ill thought of? Ill thoughts? She did not like the sound of it. As she'd bought her ticket, she had not paused to consider the name of the airport, but the word struck her as she arrived. She hoped it was not an inauspicious sign. She sniffed the air cautiously as she disembarked from the plane. She caught only the faintest scents of werewolves who had since moved on; not surprising. So many people passed through airports, there were bound to be a few werewolves, most likely the kind who had denied their wolf selves and were masquerading as full humans. She did not smell anyone she knew. Stronger was the scent of vampires, or rather, the strange scentlessness of them, nothing animal in it unless they had just recently fed. This too was unsurprising. Italy had a large vampire population.

The vampire scent reassured rather than alarmed Jessica. She liked vampires, and she knew they would not frequent anywhere unsafe or unlucky. She allowed herself to relax. She bought a road map and began to look for the car rental office. She found it easily enough. The man working in the office was exceedingly polite. In perfect English, he complimented the color of her eyes ("So blue!"), and, when she told him where she wanted to go, he used her map to show her the best possible route.

"You have seen the Alps before?" he asked her.

"Yes, I have."

"They are beautiful, aren't they?"

"Very much so."

"But dangerous," he added, then smiled. "You are much the same, I think."

She blinked, surprised at his perceptivity. Perhaps, on some level, he could sense the wolf in her. There were some humans who could do so. Once, of course, there had been many more. She did not know whether to be sad or glad at that, the passing of such gifts from humankind. Her kind was safer now, but at what cost? Why was it that all things seemed to be becoming shadows of themselves? For a moment, she empathized with Eamon's position: all change was for the worst. But no-- she could not allow herself to believe that for any longer than a moment. She was on a hopeful journey, and this young human she was speaking to was both hopeful and kind, treating her with respect instead of suspicion, even though he sensed her difference. And back home-- how strange to think of a place as home!-- two friends were waiting for her return. She returned the young man's smile. "I'm only dangerous when I have to be."

"You might have to be. There are wolves in the mountains."

Wolves. This was almost too much to be mere coincidence. She looked at this young man again, more closely. He seemed perfectly ordinary, slight of build, almost spindly, with dark eyes shaped like almonds and a slightly mischievous expression. Could it be that he knew what she was on a conscious level? "I'm not afraid of wolves," she said carefully. "They rarely, if ever, attack humans."

He nodded. "You're too clever for me. It's true. The most dangerous wolves walk on two legs."

His remark could have easily been classified as a metaphor, but upon its utterance, Jessica's uncertainty vanished. This man knew her for what she was. She had no reason to be alarmed, however. His intentions, if he had any, did not seem to be malevolent. She smelled nothing emanating from him but friendliness, sincerity. "Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Amato." He tilted his head slightly to one side. "But I am not, I suspect, what you think I am."

Jessica took in the scent of him. He was certainly not a werewolf; she would have known at once if he had been. Neither was he a vampire. Yet he had a curious smell. She had not at first noticed it in the mad cacophony of scents that was always present in bustling public places like this airport, as it was not vastly different from a human's scent. Yet there was no element of sweat in his scent, and there was an added element she could not name, as she had never smelled it before. Subtly spicy, there was something also of the scent of violets about it, a scent which slipped from her nose as soon as she thought she had deciphered it. There was, she had no doubt, something inhuman in him. But what was he? "No," Jessica said softly. "You aren't what I thought."

Amato smiled. He put his finger on Jessica's map, and she saw where his fingertip lay: upon the national park which was her ultimate destination, the Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio, in the heart of the Central Alps. "She is very lonely," Amato said, and there was a quiet but great sadness in his voice. "You must be kind to her. It is always hard to be the last, as hard as it is to be the first."

Jessica was surprised again. He not only knew what she was, but he seemed to know the purpose of her journey. She frowned. She did not like anyone to know more about her than she knew about them. Still, the man-- or whatever he was-- did seem friendly, although she knew not to trust too much in outward appearances. "I mean no harm to anyone," said Jessica, telling the truth but making no promises. She took her map and the keys to her rental car. She was ready to be off. This conversation had unnerved her. "Thank you for all your help."

"It was my pleasure." Amato's dark eyes were completely unreadable, and Jessica found herself wondering whether he could read her own blue eyes as easily as if they were a book written for children. There is more in this world than we will ever know, she thought as she walked away from him, not looking back.

Jessica parked the car in the walled market town of Glorenza, which lay at the gates of the park. She would have to leave the car for a time-- she did not know for how long-- and she wanted to leave it where an abandoned car would not soon be noticed. Glorenza seemed busy enough that unknown cars would not be looked at askance. Leaving the car on the border of the park meant that she would have to travel farther on foot, but Jessica did not balk at the prospect. It had been some time since she'd had a truly satisfying run.

She kept human form for a while, masquerading as a tourist going for a walk in the beautiful Italian countryside. Countless valleys descended from the huge peaks of the Alps, which dominated the scenery, and in one of these green valleys she was walking, but her steps lead her ever closer to the mountains, white with snow throughout the year. Her eyes felt tired, as they always were after a long plane ride, but her nose was wide awake. She smelled deer, squirrels, hares, the traces of human hikers who had come this way before her. No wolves. It was too soon to have scented wolves. She was still too close to human settlements. Further up, in higher altitudes, she would find them. Though hunted almost to extinction, the wolves had come back in some areas, owing to the intervention of human conservationists. Too little too late, Eamon would have said, but Jessica was grateful for small mercies. There were few places left on earth where wolves could live, and for the most part, they were lonely places, but she was glad to know that wolves were living somewhere. They were her kin, as much as the humans were.

Lonely places. The phrase drifted through her mind, and she recalled what Amato had said: She is very lonely. You must be kind to her. She could not put the man or his words out of her mind. Throughout her drive to the park, she had been thinking of him, trying to puzzle out the riddle of him. Amato. The name meant "beloved". She thought again of his pleasant manners, his perfect English, his seeming omniscience. There was no way anyone but herself and Eamon could have known about their purpose. Yet he had known. He had not been of any race of people she had previously encountered-- of that she was certain. A name surfaced in her brain: Lucifer. But no, why would the Morning Star concern itself with her errand? As far as she could see, her mission was one which involved only her own people Yet perhaps she was not farsighted enough. Perhaps he had been something like that: angel or demon.

Jessica did not like these thoughts; they made her uneasy, distracting her from her purpose. She sniffed the air. Good, no humans were nearby. It was time for her to discard this form. She stripped quickly, hiding her clothes in a copse. Then her body began to change, that familiar feeling which most people would never understand, slipping from one self into another-- both selves a part of one whole. She experienced something of a wrenching sensation, but it was not unpleasant. Oh no-- it was exhilarating. It was a wonderful thing, becoming a wolf, just as it was wonderful becoming human again. She could not imagine what it would be like to be trapped in one form for an entire lifetime. She would never understand those of her people who willingly chose exile from their own nature and bound themselves permanently to a single self. She would much rather be both, shifting at will, never fixed, never limited like that.

Jessica set out at a loping run. As it was the new moon, her wolf form was, although somewhat larger than a true wolf's, unremarkable; she would not reach her full potential until the next full moon, when her power would be at full strength, a power that waxed and waned as the moon did. Her coat was dark brown, her eyes the same brilliant blue that her human eyes were. She could move more quickly as a wolf, and her stamina was greater, as was her hearing, her sense of smell. It was in this form that she would travel the rest of the way up into the mountains.