When he was done, he had a gadget designed to split natures by lightning. It ran on a self-actuating dynamo with a drum wound with silver wire finer than hair. When he flipped the switch, the drum started to rotate, generating sparks that crackled between the two arms. The electrical force built up it lanced outward to a point. He experimented on a water bucket and a drop-forged ball peen hammer. They both melted into puddles of iron. The Log Splitter vibrated mightily, but it held together. There was no telling if it would work on a wolf with two bodies, but it was worth a try. He’d scorch its tail anyhow. Satisfied, he finished his shift and waited for Carson to arrive.

  “I suppose you want to bring a mule team out with us?” Carson asked sourly, surveying the insulated black case and its makeshift carriage. “That thing is the size of a safe!”

  Duncan put up with a lot of his guff because Carson was his oldest friend, but he wasn’t taking any abuse of his inventions. He put his hands on his hips and glared.

  “I suppose you want to go shake Owl’s necklace at them by itself?” he asked.

  Carson backed down, but only a little. “Of course not! But this had better work. I want that wolf’s pelt on my floor.”

  “Nothing’s sure,” Duncan admitted. “But it’s an experiment. We can only fail until we succeed.”

  “There it goes!” Carson bellowed, stumbling over the uneven ground under a full moon the size of a barn. He put one leg in a gopher hole and measured his length on the ground. Duncan saw his arm go up, pointing desperately. “Shoot it!”

  “Can’t! Too far away!” Duncan panted. He shoved the Log Splitter along in the wheelbarrow yards behind his friend. It was heavy, kicking dirt up from under the wheel. It sprayed him in the face. He spat out grass and dust.

  The gray shadow flitted out of reach as if playing with them. It seemed to enjoy frolicking in the eldritch light. It disappeared from plain sight and popped up in another place entirely as if distance meant nothing to it. Carson clambered up and followed, swearing loudly.

  They followed it downhill into Edward Posner’s orchard. The shadow ducked back and forth between the apple trees. Showers of sweet-scented blossoms fell on Duncan as he maneuvered the wheelbarrow over the gnarled roots. Mr. Posner would be mighty angry if they damaged any of the trees. He could smell his own sweat.

  No, that wasn’t him. The bitter stench welled up, giving Duncan his only warning.

  “Carson!” he shouted. The wolf loomed up out of nowhere, grinning at him. It heeled over and galloped down the row, out of reach. It looked like it was laughing over its shoulder. Carson pursued it, winging off shot after shot with his rifle. The two of them went around and around the orchard, while Duncan tried to spot the wolf and level his Splitter on it.

  He figured he had a maximum of four tries with the Splitter before the insides slagged. Each successive try would be weaker than the one before. It’d be best if he could take the wolf down with the first one. Carson, if he had any ammunition left, could finish it after that.

  The wolf, with Carson shouting and puffing in pursuit, came roaring around four rows up. They were heading straight for him.

  “Shoot it!” Carson yelled at him.

  “I might hit you! Get down!”

  Carson threw himself face first on the ground. “Shoot it!”

  Duncan flipped up the switch. The dynamo wowed as it came on. He urged it to hurry up and gather up power. Tiny sparks were playing between the ends of the curved metal arms, but they wouldn’t stop a hummingbird.

  Come on! he begged it.

  But the wolf moved faster than a man could think. The wolf gathered itself and sprang. Duncan’s eyes went wide. It crashed into him, bearing him over backwards. He hit his head against an apple tree and saw stars. The wolf grabbed his throat in its teeth and started to squeeze.

  “Duncan!” Carson shouted. Duncan heard the sound of his friend’s rifle. The wolf jerked several times as each bullet hit it, but it didn’t fall. Duncan thought he was done for.

  Suddenly, it let out a yelp and loosened its grip. Duncan wriggled away under the boughs of the apple tree, clutching his throat. Carson must have gotten it at last.

  But it wasn’t Carson that had the wolf at bay. It was another wolf. There were two wolves!

  The newcomer was smaller and had a browner coat than the first one. It snarled fiercely at the bigger wolf. They circled one another, then leaped for each other’s throat. Growling, they separated and ped again.

  “It’s his mate,” Carson croaked, hurrying over to help him up. “They’re fighting.”

  “We’ll get him while he’s busy,” Duncan said. He staggered to the Splitter. Blue sparks were now arcing between the arms. Plenty of charge. “This is our best shot, Carson. You be ready.”

  Carson cocked his rifle again. “I’m ready.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Duncan threw the switch.

  The whole orchard turned to stark black and white as lightning leaped out of the Splitter. It hit the big wolf square in the side. It let out a whine of pain and staggered sideways.

  Duncan thought it was a trick of the light, but the creature blurred. Suddenly, it stood up tall, and split into two pieces, one dark and one light. It was two bodies with one soul!

  It took him a moment to realize that the light one was the shape of a man, all but hairless and naked as a jaybird. The dark one, still a wolf but much diminished in size, opened terrified red eyes at all the people and fled down the rows, yelping. The man tottered and fell down.

  Carson strode to him, with Duncan tagging along behind.

  “I know him,” Duncan said, peering down. The man on the ground looked young, but his hair was pale silver gray. “It’s that Tim Pettigrew.”

  “That’s impossible! How could he be a wolf?”

  “He’s gotta be like one of those loops in the stories the French traders tell,” Duncan said. “A loop garoo. A wolf-man.”

  “Well, then, he’s a monster.” Carson put his foot on Tim Pettigrew’s chest and aimed the rifle right up his nose. “Did you kill my Jo?”

  “She’s not your Jo,” Tim said. He looked more meek than he ever did on the street, but it was hard to look dignified when you’re stark naked and lying on your back in the dirt. Duncan had to admit that he was a pretty good-looking man. He had a long, square jaw and a straight nose not unlike a muzzle. His eyes, though, were plain blue. Tim stared up at the moon in shock, then examined his arms, pale in the moonlight. “What have you done to me?”

  “What did you do with her?” Carson demanded. “It had to be you who snagged her out of her room and killed her! You’re a dead man, Pettigrew!” He cocked the rifle.

  “No!” Tim protested, holding his hands up. “She’s not dead!”

  The smaller wolf let out a fierce growl. Its haunches twitched like a cat’s, and it bounded at Carson’s chest. The rifle got knocked upward, and the shot pinged into the trees. The wolf grabbed the rifle out of Carson’s fingers with her teeth and tossed it to one side. Then it went for his throat with her teeth.

  Duncan stared in disbelief. He realized suddenly what he must be looking at. All logic was against it, but intuition was for it. Aunt Nan wasn’t wrong!

  “Josephine Hopkin, leave him be, or I will tell Ma what kind of hijinks you have been up to!”

  The small wolf stopped chewing on Carson’s throat and looked up at him with wide, bewildered eyes. Carson fought his way free.

  “What’s the matter with you, Duncan? Wolves can’t understand human speech!”

  “This isn’t a wolf either,” Duncan said. “That’s my sister Josephine. Like he was, until we split him up. She’s a loop garoo, too.” He kicked Tim in the leg. “That means you bit her, you scoundrel! My pa is going to take you to court, but not until I finish kicking you around this whole orchard!”

  “I can explain,” Tim began.

  “You’re talking nonsense,” Carson said, bewildered. “He must have been next to the wolf in the bushes.”

  “He was the wolf, and she’s one, too,” Duncan said stoutly. “I can prove it.” He looked at the sky. A line of blue glimmered at the eastern horizon. “In about an hour.”

  He broke his dynamo down and took out the silver wire. The wolf backed away from him, but he jumped on her back and looped it around her neck. It fell on the ground, crying as if it was in pain.

  “You oughta cry, after what you put Ma and Pa through,” he said severely, shaking her. The female wolf lay on the ground, whimpering.

  “She didn’t mean to,” Tim said. He had gathered a couple leafy branches off the nearest apple tree and had covered his privates with them. “It was my idea. We were going to surprise everyone.”

  “You took her in with your wild, university-man ways,” Duncan said. “She was a respectable girl, and now what will people say?”

  “I’ll make it right for her. I swear to you!”

  “You’re as crazy as bedbugs, both of you,” Carson said hoarsely. Duncan could tell this was all getting to be too much for him. He didn’t have a scientist’s dispassionate interest. He was just in love with Jo. “What do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Duncan said.

  It seemed to take forever, but the sun eventually came up over the orchard. The wolf, who had given up complaining about the silver tether, began to show terrible signs of distress. She curled up on herself, writhing and moaning. Duncan watched with a scientist’s eyes. As light washed over the wolf, the fur started to fall off in handfuls. Carson crossed himself. Duncan took off his coat and threw it over her body for decency’s sake. Her muzzle shortened and smoothed out. Her feet lost their claws and shrank to dainty proportions. All the hair seemed to gather itself up on her head then fell in a neat brown braid down her back. She sat up, pulling the coat close around her. She looked as healthy as she had the day she went missing. Carson gazed at her in open-mouthed disbelief.

  “It’s good to see you, Jo,” Duncan said, swallowing his pleasure and favoring her with a stern look, “but Ma is gonna have a heart attack. What were you thinking?”

  “Tim and I ran away together,” Jo said, apologetically. “We were gonna get married, but I want a proper church wedding. His family’s afraid to set foot in a church because of the curse. Each of them gets it when they grow to adulthood.”

  “The parson might be able to cure them,” Duncan said.

  “You don’t understand,” Jo said. “They like it. I like it. It’s fun. Tim… well, he bit me that very same night we ran away, and I changed for the first time. I have never felt so free in my life. Whenever the moon’s full, we can run together. I felt like he was my other half.” She glared at him accusingly. “Then you spoiled everything! His wolf half is gone!”

  “Two bodies with one soul,” Duncan said, nodding. “Owl Feather was right.”

  Jo smiled up at Tim. “That’s the way I feel. We’re meant to be together.”

  Tim touched her chin with a gentle forefinger.

  “That’s my sentiment exactly, my wild rose.”

  “Maybe we can restore the curse and get your wolf back. It might just take a little nip. A love bite,” she said, then ducked her eyes shyly. Duncan felt embarrassed. He wished he wasn’t watching them.

  “If not, I’ll live with it,” Tim said manfully. “As long as I have you, nothing else is important.”

  Carson let out a sorrowful cry.

  “But you were gonna marry me, Jo!”

  Jo regarded him with weary impatience.

  “I was never going to marry you, Carson McCreary. The only person who ever thought so was you!”

  “You can’t marry a loop garoo,” Duncan said, reasonably. He never argued with facts. Jo didn’t want Carson and that was that. “You wouldn’t want a wife who went running around naked in the moonlight.”

  “I could,” Carson said stubbornly. “She could bite me and I’d be one, too. Won’t you, Jo?”

  “Never in a thousand years,” Jo said. She flung a hand at Duncan’s Log Splitter. “I’d let Duncan use that thing on me first.”

  Carson stood up. His eyes blazed as much as the wolves’ had. “Well, if that’s the kind of gratitude you give a man who almost lost his life for you, then I wash my hands of you.”

  Gathering as much dignity as he could muster, he stalked off into the glare of the sunrise.

  “There goes a man who is going to be lonely all his life,” Jo said sympathetically.

  “Well, you’re going to have a hard time ahead of you, too,” Duncan reminded her.

  Jo reached out and put her hand into Tim’s. “I’m prepared. I thought it through pretty thoroughly before I let him do it. You’re not the only scientist in the family. I’ll cope with being a wolf.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Duncan said, standing up to load what was left of his greatest invention into the wheelbarrow. He grinned down at Jo. “How are you going to tell Ma and Pa where you’ve been for a month?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Jennifer Brozek is an award-winning editor and author. Winner of the 2009 Australian Shadows Award for edited publication, Jennifer has edited five anthologies with more on the way. Author of In a Gilded Light and The Little Finance Book That Could, she has written more than thirty-five published short stories and is an assistant editor for the Apex Book Company. Jennifer also is a freelance author for many RPG companies including Margaret Weis Productions, Savage Mojo, Rogue Games, and Catalyst Game Labs. Winner of the 2010 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game Supplement, her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun, Serenity, Savage Worlds, and White Wolf SAS. She also writes the monthly gaming column Dice & Deadlines. When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. Jennifer is a member of Broad Universe, SFWA and HWA.

  Brenda Cooper is a Seattle-area futurist and writer, and also the CIO for the City of Kirkland. Brenda writes a monthly column for Futurismic called Today’s Tomorrows, and is the author of the Endeavor award winner for 2008: The Silver Ship and the Sea and of the sequels, Reading The Wind and Wings of Creation. She co-authored Building Harlequin’s Moon with Larry Niven. Her next book is Mayan December, coming in August 2012. See her website at www.brenda-cooper.com.

  Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2012 books are Kalimpura and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh, along with paperback releases of two of his other titles. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a past winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

  Jeff Mariotte is the award-winning author of more than forty-five novels, including the border horror trilogy Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, and Cold Black Hearts; The Slab; and the Dark Vengeance teen horror quartet. He also writes comic books, including the long-running horror/Western comic book series Desperadoes. He’s a co-owner of specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego and lives on the Flying M Ranch in Arizona’s historic Sulphur Springs Valley. Find out more by visiting www.jeffmariotte.com.

  Seanan McGuire was born and raised in Northern California, where she grew up with tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and her own mountain: all the necessary components for the weird Wild West. Naturally, she now writes urban fantasy, and is the author of the October Daye series (published by DAW Books). She also writes science fiction under the name Mira Grant—the pseudonym lets her preserve the illusion that she sleeps (she doesn’t sleep). Seanan shares a crumbling farmhouse with three enormous blue cats, several thousand books, several hundred horror movies, a lot of little plastic horses, and the occasional trespassing tarantula. She is very proud of her complete set of Monster High dolls, and feels this is worthy of inclusion in a professional bio. “Flower of Arizona” is set in the same universe as her InCryptid urban fantasy series, several decades earlier. You can keep up with the madness at www.seananmcguire.com.

  Christopher McKitterick’s short work has appeared in Analog, Artemis, Captain Proton, Extrapolation, Mythic Circle, Ruins: Extraterrestrial, Sentinels: In Honor of Arthur C. Clarke, Synergy SF, Tomorrow SF, Visual Journeys, and elsewhere, and he was honored to edit the special science fiction issue of World Literature Today. Chris recently finished a far-future novel, Empire Ship, and his debut novel Transcendence has just been published. He is Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction (ku.edu/~sfcenter) and lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he teaches writing and SF, restores old vehicles, and watches the sky. Visit Chris at his website (sff.net/people/mckitterick), blog (mckitterick.livejournal.com), or on Facebook.

  Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with one of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has published more than forty books, including seven contemporary fantasies, five SF novels, four novels in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey, including Crisis on Doona and Treaty at Doona; edited a humorous anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!; and over a hundred short stories. Her latest books are Dragon’s Deal, the third in Robert Asprin’s Dragons series, and View from the Imperium.

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning writer who writes too much weird fantasy, but usually under the name Kristine Grayson. In fact, her latest Grayson novel Wickedly Charming has hit a number of bestseller lists, as has the reissue of Utterly Charming. Thoroughly Kissed (also a reissue) will appear in June 2012, and Charming Blue will appear in fall of 2012. Her other Grayson novels, Completely Smitten and Simply Irresistible are out, along with some Western short fiction. You can find her more serious fiction under the names Kristine Kathryn Rusch (latest novel: City of Ruins) or Kris Nelscott. Find out more about all of her fiction at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com.

  Steven Saus injects people with radioactivity as his day job, but only to serve the forces of good. His work has appeared in print in the anthologies Mages & Magic, Timeshares, and Hungry for Your Love, and has fiction and nonfiction articles in magazines both online and off. He professionally converts books to eBooks, and has started his own foray into digital publishing with the release of The Crimson Pact, an anthology edited by Paul Genesse. You can find him at stevensaus.com and his digital publishing ventures at alliterationink.com.

 

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