The First and The Last, page 1
The First and The Last
Jesse H Reign
Copyright © 6 Aug 2022 Jesse H Reign
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Book formatting by Jesse H Reign
Cover design by MIBLart
Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
20. Twenty
21. Twenty One
. Chapter
ABOUT THE FIRST AND THE LAST
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
1
“Do we have the best life, or what?” whooped Jules as he flew through the air on our old tire swing.
His dark hair flew back as he lurched forward and flopped into his eyes when he swung back. His lips were cracked open in a wide, goofy grin that exposed a white flash of teeth. One eyebrow was arched up and the other pinched down. Jules had the kind of eyebrows that didn’t know how to be serious. Even when the rest of his face attempted it, his eyebrows betrayed him. His eyes were hazel, mainly brown with a ring of green in the center. The happier he was, the more they shone. Right then, he must have been feeling pretty happy because his eyes were more alive than most people look in a lifetime.
That was Jules for you. Julius W Blaine, to those that didn’t know him. Those that did know him, knew he preferred Jules. Those that really knew him, knew that the W in his name didn’t stand for a damn thing. He had no middle name. Just an initial. I guess his parents thought it sounded cool, or something.
Middle name or not, Jules was cool. He was the best. We’d been best mates since I could remember and probably even before then. Apparently, our mothers used to put us down for naps in the same crib when we were babies, so it’s hard to know exactly when we became friends. I just know that we did. Jules was six months older than me, which wasn’t important, but he never let me forget it. We’d been thick as thieves all our lives. We had to be. The two of us were the last two wolves born into the Cleary pack. The last of our kind. The youngest members of an aging pack.
We called ourselves wolves but technically we hadn’t had our first shift yet, so at that point in our lives we were kind of human, kind of magick, and in my case, kind of awkward. Like all shifters, we easily passed for human. Sure, we were a bit bigger and stronger than average kids our age and our senses were a little sharper, but none of it was so marked that it aroused suspicion.
We attended the local school in Clearwater Valley, Colorado. Yes, it was great living in the Rockies and yes, the skiing was to die for. Just one problem: our pack was flat broke and to my knowledge not a single shifter in the pack had ever come within four miles of a ski slope. At least not in human form anyway.
If you asked Jules, he’d tell you school was the best. He’d mean it, too. He might not even be wrong. School might very well have been the best for him. Jules had no problem fitting in with people. He blended in like he was made for it. He walked down the hallways as if he was skating on wheels. Guys called out to him and greeted him like dogs who’d just heard the word “walkies.” Girls moistened their lips and went quiet when they saw him coming. They fixed their hair surreptitiously and laughed a little too loudly when he got close.
If you asked me, I’d tell you school was a colossal crock of shit. If you had a few hours to spare, I’d happily tell you all the ways in which the education system sucked, but if not, you’d just have to take my word for it. It was shit. Even if you could get past the failings of the curriculum, you’d still be left with everything else. The teachers. The students. The shrill voices. The fakeness. The fear. I heard it and felt it and smelled it all over campus. It was loud. Too loud. It interrupted my thoughts and by the end of the day, my brain felt like it was buzzing.
“That bad, huh?” Jules said when we met at our usual meeting place near the school gate and started walking home.
“Worse,” I snarled.
“Only two weeks till summer vacation. Then you’ll be a junior. You’ll be a free man before you know it.”
The thought of the summer vacation did make me feel better. It made me feel a whole lot better. It was going to be great. What didn’t make me feel better was the thought that because of when our birthdays fell, Jules was a year ahead of me. I had two years left of school, and he only had one.
I sighed loudly. “Ugh, two more years of this bullshit. Don’t remind me.” I knew if I thought school was bad now, it was going to get a hell of a lot worse when Jules finished, and I had to attend on my own for the last year.
“Pity your folks didn’t put you in first grade with me. With that brain, you could easily have coped.”
He wasn’t wrong. Jules wasn’t book smart, but he was smart in every other way. I was book smart. Book smart in a big way, though I tried to hide it. The last thing I needed was teachers and parents up in my business. Still, when he said it, the first rustle of an idea took hold.
“Come on,” he yelled. “Let’s run!”
“No fucking way. You know I don’t run unless something’s chasing me.”
“Easily arranged, my friend.”
He put his hands out at his sides, spreading his fingers dramatically and snarling as if he thought he was Wolverine. He tilted his chin down and started pacing toward me. Despite myself, I gave in. I always did. I started to run as we left the outskirts of town. My backpack bounced around uncomfortably on my shoulders and my strides felt too short and then too long. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Jules laughing. His hair was blown back off his face, and his eyes were narrowed from how hard he was smiling. When he smiled like that, the hazel-green ring around his pupils looked so vivid, I wondered how in the world people didn’t take one look at Jules and know he was magick. It was so obvious to me I didn’t know how anyone could miss it.
I found my pace. My legs and my arms settled into a rhythm. A perfect rhythm. One foot in front of the other. I felt the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. My heart rate was steady. So was my breathing. It felt easy. It felt right. It was right. I might have been kind of human and kind of magick, but I was all wild. Jules knew that about me. I guess, because he was the same.
We stopped at the willow tree near the creek just down the road from where we lived. We were on pack land. It was always a relief to me when I left town and my feet hit our land. I lay back on the grassy slope under the stooped branches of the tree and watched as Jules swung on the old tire swing. He was enjoying himself, despite the fact that his legs were crammed into the swing, and he was far too old for swinging in general. He was laughing like there was nothing wrong in the world. Jules was easy to please. Little things made him happy.
“Do we have the best life, or whaaaaaat?” he whooped again.
“You’re going to see your ass on that swing, d’you know that?”
As we walked the rest of the way home, my spirits lifted. Jules was right. We did have a great life. As we rounded the bend to the homestead, I thought the same thing I always thought when I saw it.
There’s no better feeling in the world than being part of a pack.
The homestead was what we called the settlement we lived in. It consisted of a narrow dirt road, with two rows of eight cottages on either side of the road. They were all identical when they were built, but that was a long time ago. In the years since then they’d been altered and extended, cobbled together, depending on the needs of each family. Each cottage started out as a two-bedroom ski chalet with a small, covered porch out front. The timber had grayed with age and most of the roofs would have benefited from being entirely replaced. Technically, the homestead used to be a low-budget ski resort, but since snowfall became nearly nonexistent in Clearwater Valley many years ago, the place went under, and Dallas Cleary bought it for a song.
Dallas Cleary was Dalton’s father. He was our alpha before Dalton. I had no memories of him, he died when I was very young, but everyone who did remember him said he was the best. I guess that’s why Dalton’s so great. He’s from good stock. That’s what everyone said. I’m a Cleary too, so I loved it when people said that. My dad is Dalton’s second cousin once removed. It’s a distant relation, but blood is blood. Pack is pack, too, but you know what I mean.
Dalton and his brothers, Keith, Kevin, and Llewellyn, lived in the pack house at the bottom of the hill with two of their first cousins, Marty and Doug. We called them The Brothers even though that’s not technically what they were. They were all big men. They looked like they could have been line-backers in their day. The family resemblance was strong. They all had dark hair, dark eyes, and thick beards that were highlighted by shades of gray. Dalton was the biggest of the bunch, but th
The pack house was a big log house with six bedrooms and three sprawling entertainment areas. I think it used to be the hotel or clubhouse when the place was a resort. There was a small lawned area in front of it with a huge cottonwood tree growing in the middle of it. Except when it rained, that was where you could find the pack omegas, Lola, Lilac, and Sue. Out of everyone in the pack, I knew them the least. They were always there, lazing about in the shade of the tree, all broad hips and small waists. They didn’t really seem to be close friends with anyone except for Dalton and The Brothers. The omegas were older than my mother, but they hadn’t held up all that well. They looked a bit tatty, to be honest, and their behavior often fell just short of being vulgar. They murmured softly to each other when I walked by and then cackled loudly as if I was the butt of their joke. They made me uncomfortable. If Jules was around, Lilac was sure to offer him a cookie. Just Jules, not me. It was weird. Jules and I weren’t their biggest fans but even we couldn’t deny they smelled damn good.
If you were to walk up the hill from the pack house, you’d pass a few empty cottages, then you get to the Hawkinses. Bob and Melinda. They were the newest members of our pack. They joined when Jules and I were about ten. They were well into their forties, but they didn’t have any kids. For a while, when they joined, everyone hoped they’d have pups, but I guess it was one of those things that just didn’t happen.
Across from the Hawkinses, were the Zielinskis. Maggie and Janec. If you wanted to know what the Zielinskis were like, all you’d have to do is to picture two people who were permanently in a bad mood. Like PMS level ten. Grouchy didn’t begin to describe it. Despite that, they were all right. They meant well, as my mother always said. Jules and I knew we could knock on their door anytime and Maggie would serve up a plate of snacks for us. We could count on it. Sure, she low key scolded us for something or other the entire time we ate, but we didn’t mind. What can I tell you? The woman made one hell of a snack.
If you kept heading up the hill, you’d pass old man Lou on the left and the Donavans on the right. Isla and Bob. They were like pure sunshine compared to the Zielinskis. We were welcome there anytime, too. The snacks weren’t as good, but they came with nary a bark, a bite, or a scolding. In fact, if you were feeling a bit down on yourself, the Donavans was the best place to be. Fifteen minutes at their place and you’d come out of there feeling like you were best in show.
Jules lived next door to the Donavans, across the way from our place and two doors down. There were a few more empty cottages, and our place was right at the top of the hill. Mrs. O’Malley’s place was directly across the way from us.
She was a strange one, Mrs. O’Malley. She looked like the type of grandmother that you’d expect to see in a commercial for farm butter or fabric softener. Round, smiley face and curly gray hair, but believe me, that’s not what she was. The magick was strong with her. She was definitely strange. Her place was strange, too. It kind of gave me museum vibes. It had done ever since I was a boy. Almost everything in her house was covered in some sort of plastic. The sofas were wrapped in it. The dining table always had a cheery yellow-and-blue-striped tablecloth on it with a clear plastic table cover over it. Even the carpet in the hallway hadn’t escaped. It had one of those plastic runners that made a “zooff zooff” sound if you dragged your feet on it.
Aside from that, I liked her house a lot. It always smelled clean. Like she’d just used beeswax wood polish. She had by far the best furniture of anyone in the pack. Some of her things were part of a matching set. She also had art on the walls. No one else had that. As you walked in, she had a whole lot of ink sketches of various animals framed and hanging in two perfect rows at the entrance. A deer, a coyote, a mountain lion and a grizzly, a hawk, a harrier, a Great Horned owl and a house wren.
When I was little, I used to love standing in front of the drawings and trying to get as much information out of her as possible about each animal. Mrs. O’Malley was special. She was what we called a shifter of yore. She shifted to a wolf, like our whole pack did, but that wasn’t all she could do. Rumor had it, she could shift to just about any animal you could ever imagine.
“How do you do it?” I used to ask when I was a boy.
“It’s magick,” she’d say with a wink.
“But how?” For a long time, I firmly believed that if I nagged enough, eventually she’d crack and tell me something worth knowing.
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
Adults were always saying things like that. Shifters were known to be secretive, but our pack took being secretive to the extreme. It drove Jules and me both crazy as kids. It drove me crazy as a teen, too.
“But, but how did you learn how to do it? Did someone teach you? Who taught you?”
“You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
“Who drew these pictures?” I’d say, trying to change tactics. I knew damn well who drew them. I’d asked the same question a hundred times or more.
“Ah, my Herbert drew them. May he rest easy.”
Her Herbert died of old age before I was born. That should give you some indication of how old Mrs. O’Malley was. She was old old. She was the oldest person I’d ever met. Hell, she might have been the oldest person on the planet, for all I knew.
“Have you shifted into all of these animals?” I’d ask.
Sometimes, I’d think I saw a twinkle in her eye, but she wouldn’t answer. Instead, she’d change the subject. “Which picture is your favorite, Sully boy?”
“The grizzly for sure.”
“Predictable,” she’d say with a slight roll of her eyes, and then she’d lower her voice. “Predictable and easy. Too easy.”
A pit of excitement would form in my belly. I thought she might be about to spill something important. “Do you mean it’s easy to shift into a grizzly?”
“If it was easy, everyone would do it.” She’d give me a knowing look and I’d know she was about to clam up.
“Which picture is your favorite?” I asked once.
Without hesitation, she raised her bent forefinger and pointed straight at the wren.
“Why?”
“That’s enough of this why, what, and how. Why don’t you take your momma this batch of tea? I made it specially for her. Then go and play outside. Wolves grow big in the open.”
Despite how impossible she was, or maybe because of it, most days I thought that although Jules was my first and best friend, there was a chance Mrs. O’Malley was my friend too. She was a friend, but not like a friend like Jules. She was the kind of friend that kept me on my toes. She was sweet as pie one minute, and the next she’d be all but sweeping me off her porch. Sometimes she annoyed me and sometimes she confused me, but I never stayed away from her place for very long. I couldn’t. She was too interesting. She had too many good stories and if she wasn’t telling stories, she had this faraway look about her that made me so curious I could hardly stand it.
When she looked like that, my mother always said, “Leave her be, Sully. Mrs. O’Malley is a wise woman. She needs time on her own to be with her thoughts.”
I never managed to work out exactly what it meant to be a wise woman and despite my best efforts, none of the adults were inclined to enlighten me. Best I could tell, it explained why Mrs. O’Malley just knew things. Sometimes she knew things she had no business knowing. Like, how she knew when Jules had been in trouble at school before we even walked up the drag, or how she’d start battening down the hatches days before a storm warning was issued.
Whatever the case, she was the most interesting adult I’d ever met by far. Like all adult wolves, she was notoriously cagey, but out of all the adults in the pack, my money was on her to be the one to slip up at some point and tell me something really, really interesting.
