The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy Read online

  “What about those two, the ones you just said. The Peter Stumpe guy, and the Beast of whatever,” Aiden asked.

  “In both cases, the humans were right. The Beast was a feral, Marcel Dupius. He shifted too often, and he had lost his human side. Stumpe, though, he was feral by choice. He could shift back whenever he wanted to. From all accounts, he just enjoyed the taste of women and children,” Hozan told him.

  “He ate them? Women and kids?” Aiden asked as he felt the gorge threaten to rise up his throat.

  “That’s what our records say.”

  “Wait, you said he went feral, the Beast guy, because he shifted too much. What do you mean?”

  Hozan seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering. “We live long lives, longer than humans. But every time we shift, we take a tiny cut off our lifeline. Shift too often, stay shifted too long, and you age much faster. But that’s not all. Many of us, the longer we stay in form, the more we want to abandon our human side. Some go over an edge, and they give themselves completely to the wolf.”

  “I don’t understand. Why’s that?”

  “Why go feral? It’s in our DNA. All of us feel the call, but most of us can resist.”

  “No, why a shorter life?” Aiden asked.

  “Energy. It takes much energy to shift, and when we are not in human form, we run at a higher metabolism. Your muscles are essentially the same when you are in varg form, but you are now able to use those muscles more efficiently.” He seemed to think for a moment. “Do you drive a car in America?”

  Aiden never owned a car, but he answered that he did drive.

  “If you drive your car at a steady 30 KPH, or if you drive your car speeding up and slowing down, going from 30 to 200 KPH, which way will burn out the car quicker?” Hozan asked.

  Aiden tried to change kilometers per hour to miles per hour, then gave up. He didn’t think the actual number mattered.

  “If you drive it crazy like that, the second way will burn the car out quicker,” he said.

  “But the car is the same car, right?”

  “Sure, but . . . oh, I think I get it! When you shift too much, or if you stay like a werewolf too long, your engine is revving up and down, and it’s going to wear out sooner,” Aiden said, comprehension dawning on him.

  That made him wonder about something else, so he asked, “You said it takes lots of energy, but where does that energy come from?”

  “From our food, of course. This isn’t magic. That’s why we need so much food. Each time you shift, each time you heal, it takes energy, and if you don’t eat, you can actually starve to death within a day or two.”

  Aiden thought back to how hungry he’d been after he shifted, how hungry he’d been in the base hospital. It made sense. Ever since he had been bitten by his patron, Hozan had called him, his appetite had increased. His body was using lots of fuel for the changes going on inside of him.

  Aiden started to ask Hozan about eating when he saw the werewolf’s hand held up in the darkness silencing him. Aiden strained to listen, and after a few moments he could hear what Hozan had heard. Two people were walking towards them, their voices low, but punctuated with giggles. One was obviously male, the other female. The two people walked past the gear locker. Aiden didn’t recognize the voices. The two continued down the line of lockers, and a door opened, whether that of one of the lockers at the end of the line or of one of the SWA workshops past the gear lockers, Aiden couldn’t tell. The voices became more hushed as the two went inside, but the tone of them became more desperate. Within moments, the sounds became inarticulate and transformed into the bestial grunting and moaning of sex. Aiden was shocked. He’d heard rumors of a few people hooking up, but he’d never actually witnessed it. He didn’t know if the two trysters were Marine, civilian, Navy, or what, but he couldn’t help but listen in even as he felt guilty about doing it.

  “You are going to find that you will be eating more than you used to even without shifting, but if you do have to shift or if you have to heal yourself, try and make sure you get enough food in you,” Hozan continued, impervious to the faint sounds going on 20 or 30 meters away.

  Hozan went on about the types of food that were best, but Aiden barely paid attention, listening instead to the two lovers. There was a masculine-sounding grunt, then what might have been a plaintive exclamation from the woman. Was she wanting more? There were a few shushing noises, then the door creaked open. One set of footsteps seemed to lead farther away, but the other set came back towards them, and Hozan quit talking until the steps passed and faded away.

  Wanting to get the image out of his mind, Aiden asked the first thing that popped into his head. “When I shifted that first time, how come I didn’t hulk out of my clothes? I lost my boots, but I kept my trou and my flak jacket, at least. How could that happen if I got so much bigger?”

  Hozan didn’t seem to mind the change in the subject.

  “You didn’t get bigger. How could you?”

  “Well, you know, like in the movies, when they change, their clothes rip off when they grow bigger,” Aiden said.

  “I can assure you, we don’t get bigger, as you say. Conservation of mass is a well-documented scientific law. It is impossible for your mass to change,” Hozan said.

  “But my flak jacket, when I shifted that first time, it about suffocated me.”

  “Ah, I see. You changed, your shape changed, but not your mass. Your waist got much thinner, and your legs got longer and stiffer. Your chest, on the other hand, got bigger as your lungs grew to be able to take in more oxygen,” Hozan said.

  Aiden seemed to think about that for a moment before responding, “You mean I was the same weight as before? I just changed my shape?”

  “Same mass, yes.”

  Aiden wasn’t convinced about that. “But what about you? When you found me, you were naked. Where were your clothes if you could keep them on?”

  Hozan waited a good five or ten seconds before answering.

  “Just because we can wear some clothes doesn’t mean we have to wear them.”

  Aiden felt there was more to the issue, but he couldn’t figure out what and so decided to ignore that for the moment.

  “OK, what about this?” he asked. “How come I shifted when it wasn’t even a full moon, and how come I stayed as a werewolf in the daylight?”

  “Why not? Oh, I know what the books and movies say, but that’s all myth. We can shift anytime we want. But we do like the dark better. We can see better, we function better when it’s cooler. We tend to suffer in the higher heat, and bright sunlight is hard on our eyes.”

  “So we don’t like the heat, and we don’t like bright sunlight? So why’re you in Iraq?” Aiden asked.

  Hozan actually laughed at that before replying, “I can’t say my ancestors were the smartest one in the Tribe, leaving Germany and making their way down here. You must realize, though, that I’m a Kurd, a mountain man, not like these desert crawlers around here. Our weather is much better.”

  “Your family came from Germany?”

  “Well, we all came from what is now Germany, we think. There are more of us in that region than any other place, that is, and the earliest human records of us are from what is now Eastern Europe, Germany, France, and down into Spain. But my family’s been in this region from before we even kept track of that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t want to insult you, but if you are a mountain man, how did you learn all this stuff. Do you have internet up there?” Aiden asked.

  “Kurdish schools are surprisingly good, and my family taught me about the Tribe. But we all make trips when we come of age to the Council, well, headquarters, you might call it, in Germany where we are taught more and what it means to be a member of the Tribe. As far as the rest, well, I read books, and yes, I can go online.”

  Hozan went quiet after that, not saying anything more. Aiden sat in the dark, wondering what else he wanted to know. He felt he didn’t even know enough to realize what he ne
eded to know. The internet sure hadn’t given him much to go on. When the silence crept on, though, he felt like he had to say something.

  “Uh . . . you’ve been kinda all over the place, and I’m not sure I’ve got all of this. You say the Council could decide I need to go, and I really don’t want that, so let’s make sure I’ve got all the important stuff.

  “First, I’m a kreuzung, a turned kind of werewolf. You’re a blood, and we are sort of second-class citizens in back of you.”

  Hozan didn’t respond, so Aiden continued, “Second, we’re tougher than regular people and we can do things they can’t, but they’ve got some abilities we don’t.

  “Third, we are not supermen. We can get killed, but we can take more abuse and heal better. Silver is our kryptonite, though.

  “Fourth, I can’t go biting others to make them like us.

  “Fifth, let’s see, oh yeah, we need to eat a lot. And shifting our form can make us live a shorter life or even make us go feral.

  “Sixth, there are a bunch of myths about us, like us needing the moon to shift, stuff like that.

  “Seventh, regular people hunt us.

  “And that leads us to the eighth. The Council is our court system, and they’ll kill us if we break the rules. That about wrap it up?”

  Hozan quietly replied, “That is most of what we’ve covered tonight. There’s more, and I’ll teach you as I can, but yes, those are the basics.”

  “Well, I think that might be enough for me to try and wrap my mind around for now. I need to digest all of this, and I’d better get back before someone misses me,” Aiden said.

  Without another word, he slid open the door a crack, peered outside, and when he couldn’t see anyone, slipped out.

  Chapter 21

  Hozan listened as Aiden quietly made his way back to his company area. He was glad that was over. He was especially glad that Aiden had shown up that evening. When Aiden had gone two nights without meeting him, he had reported back to the Council. He had been given instructions that if Aiden hadn’t shown up this night or the next, then that was a good indication that he was not wont to obey the rules, and he would have to be eliminated. By showing up tonight, Aiden had taken that responsibility out of Hozan’s hands—for now, at least.

  He thought it had gone well, all things considered. He hadn’t understood all of Aiden’s words. He wanted to look up “hulk,” for example. But the boy, for all he kept yammering about vampires and not understanding simple science such as conservation of mass and the periodic table, seemed to catch on quickly. He had understood the analogy about a car engine easily enough.

  Hozan hadn’t intended to get into silver and ways to kill one of them, but he had kept quiet on full shift to full wolf form. Aiden was not out of the woods yet, so the less he knew for now the better. He just needed to know enough now to not get himself into trouble.

  Hozan had laid it on a little thick about the toll shifting had on a person. From only human to varg form, the toll was not great, and a person would have to shift many, many times to really start tearing his body down. It was the human to wolf form shift that really taxed the body, and Aiden didn’t need to know about that yet.

  He looked down at his watch. He hadn’t been lying about his kind’s lack of punctuality, something they had to fight when working with humans. The alarm watches humans had invented were godsends in dealing with that. He had two hours before he had to report to the DFAC. That wasn’t really enough time to get to the small room in Fallujah he called home and then get back. Like all of his kind, he could go several days without sleep, but he didn’t like to do it. Instead, with his watch alarm set on vibrate, he settled down inside the gear locker and quickly fell asleep.

  Chapter 22

  “Come on, you pussy, you can do more than that!” Suarez shouted as Aiden’s arms trembled under the 330 lbs.

  Suarez, standing just over his head, reached forward and grabbed the bar, helping get it up and onto the rack.

  “Only four reps? You can double that!” he told Aiden.

  He was right. Aiden’s trembling arms were an act. He didn’t know how many times he could get the bar up, but he wasn’t about to find out with the others there. Hozan hadn’t expressly warned him about showing off, but the knowledge that the Council had him in its sights was sobering. He glanced around the gym, wondering if any of the men and women sweating away were there to watch him.

  “I only saw you do two, so shut the fuck up!” Aiden told Suarez. “And Rico here, as big as you are,” he said, turning to the private who was waiting his turn, “how many you going to do?”

  Rico did the beach pose, flexing his impressive biceps. “Don’t matter much about the bench shit,” he said. “Curls for girls!” he added, kissing each bicep in turn.

  As one of the boys now, Aiden met the others in the gym when they had free time. Rico, Dontrell, Suarez, Doc Mainz, and Rys were all there with him, giving each other shit and generally having a good time. This was still new to Aiden, this male bonding, and it wasn’t only fear of the Council that made him underperform his abilities. He didn’t want to become persona non grata to the guys.

  “How come your ‘curls for girls’ doesn’t work on the Lez Queen,” Doc asked with a smirk on his face.

  All eyes swiveled to the Marine on the stairstepper. Her issue green PT shorts and desert tan t-shirt did nothing to hide her amazing figure. LCpl Claire Record worked at the head shed with the G4. Each and every Marine on base knew who she was. Her body was perfect—not the runway model perfect or the Playboy Magazine perfect, but the perfection of fitness and form. Her face was the beauty of nature, unsullied by makeup. The only problem with her face was that it rarely smiled, and it supposedly had never smiled any of the zillion times that she’d been hit on. Since she had never accepted any kind of date, such as a date could be in Fallujah, the commonly held reasoning was that she had to be a lesbian. There was no way a straight woman could turn down so many manly men, right?

  “’Cause she’s a lez, of course. No other possibility,” Rico said as he lay down on the bench for his set.

  Aiden watched her exercise, each step highlighting the shape of her ass. Despite himself, he wondered what that butt would feel like in his hands.

  “Hey, check out Kaas! He’s into her,” Doc said with unabated glee.

  “Hell no!” he protested, turning his head back towards the others.

  “No, I saw it! You want the Lez Queen!” he continued as the others laughed along.

  “Bullshit!” he protested. “OK, I was just checking her ass out. Lez or not, that’s a fine piece, but that’s it.”

  “Lay off the man, Doc,” Dontrell said. “He might like that fine-ass booty, but our man Kaas here, he too punk-ass to ever hit on that kind of gadunk-gadunk!”

  With Dontrell ratcheting up the smack talk, the others chimed in with “woo’s.”

  Aiden’s social IQ had never been too high given that he’d been somewhat of an outcast back in school. He still wasn’t quite sure why the guys busted each others’ asses, but he knew even with his buds, he had to push back. They were all friends now, but there was still a degree of alpha-jockeying going on.

  “I don’t see you hitting on her, there, Dontrell. Don’t you have the balls?”

  “Hey, I got my sweet thang over there in Motor T,” he replied, smacking his lips and drawing out the “a” in “thang” over several seconds.

  It was true that Dontrell sometimes met up with a homegirl who was with the motor transport company, but Aiden didn’t think it was anything serious. It gave him a pass, though, in the current conversation.

  “Ah, fuck you. She’s a lez, and it ain’t like there’s a bunch of supermodels out here. I’ll just wait until I get back home,” Aiden said.

  “Oh, so you’re a prison wolf?” Dontrell asked.

  “What the fuck’s a prison wolf?” Aiden asked.

  The other guys looked over to Dontrell for his response, so Aiden figured the
y didn’t know what it was, either.

  “You know. You’ve got prisons in Vegas, too. A prison wolf is like a guy who digs chicks on the outside, but inside the prison, you know, with no chicks, he digs dudes,” Dontrell said, but more subdued as if he realized he might have gone a bit too far in his smack talk.

  The others gave out a few “oh mans” and “woos” when they realized things had been ratcheted up. Aiden had decked Dontrell before for much less.

  Aiden just stared at Dontrell. He had to do something. Personally, he never gave gay guys much of a thought one way or the other. But to be called out in front of the others, to even have his sexuality questioned, that was something that just wasn’t done.

  There must have been something in his eyes as he stared at Dontrell because the other Marine backed up from where he’d been getting ready to spot Rico.

  “Hey man, I’m just fucking with you,” he said.

  Despite Dontrell’s words, Aiden was afraid that the seed had been planted. He had to nip it in the bud. Without a word, he turned and walked over to where the Lez Queen was on the machine. Once he got there, though, he didn’t know what to say. She was stepping at a pretty fast pace, the sweat soaking her t-shirt. Sweat also pasted strands of her reddish-blonde hair on her forehead. His eyes strayed to her left breast, as with each step, it jiggled slightly. She continued for a few moments, then slowly looked to her left to where Aiden was standing.

  Aiden knew he had to say something. He wanted to wheel away, but he knew the guys’ eyes were on him. He wished he had more experience in chatting up girls

  “Uh, you can sure step on that thing,” he stammered out, pointing at the machine.

  The Lez Queen shook her head, then looked forward again, continuing her stepping.