Beneath the Skin Read online

  At 5:45 PM I boarded one of these buses, hoping I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I wasn’t ready yet. My heart pounded like hell against my ribcage, and one moment I burned up, then a minute later I froze. Tears choked me so I could barely breathe.

  I was bundled up against the Paris cold in my best wool coat, a pair of leather gloves and a purple scarf wound around and around my neck. Nobody could see my jewelry then work out for themselves that I was unbonded.

  I supposed they could see me sitting by myself and figure it out, but sometimes packs sent representatives if they couldn’t afford for all to attend.

  The bus seated fifty people. I was the fourth one on and took a window seat in the

  middle. I craned my neck as I looked out and tried to give the impression I waited for someone, maybe my bond mate or a pack mate, to join me.

  But I bet my smell was all wrong. I bet I exuded a mixture of trepidation, shame and desire.

  Nobody sat by me for the longest time. It wasn’t until the bus driver shouted out the door in French that there was room for one more that I finally got a seat mate.

  A teenage girl with mousy brown hair and a petulant expression slumped into the seat next to me. She spent the entire drive examining her black nail polish and popping her gum and studiously ignoring me. She didn’t want to be beside me anymore than I wanted to be beside her.

  If I smelled, she didn’t react to it.

  She was so young this had to be her first Great Gathering. Teenagers fifteen to nineteen were allowed to attend. Instead of mixing with the adults, they stayed together in a conference room of their own with one or two grandmothers or grandfathers as chaperones. Field trips and events were organized. Sometimes they found future bond mates, but most of the time they either brooded sullenly or played games. Nowadays it was Wii or Nintendo. Back in the days of the grandfathers and grandmothers it had been board games.

  When I had been sixteen, I’d attended a Regional Gathering in upper state New York.

  “You can make a living off chess,” I remembered the old grandfather growling at us, his teen charges. “When I was Alpha, I supported my whole pack by playing chess against Others in the park. You can’t do that with these damn electronic games. Only thing they’re good for is making you go blind and ruining your hearing. Damn shame, if you ask me.”

  We hadn’t told the grandfather that plenty of our generation made lots of money gaming online and at clubs and arcades. He wouldn’t have understood and, even if he had, he would have condemned it as against the old ways.

  An Other lifespan is about seventy-five years give or take. Those of us who are Pack live about one hundred and fifty. We age normally until we hit our twenties, where we seem to stall for years and years. The last fifty years or so we look old, but never older than a normal sixty or sixty-five year old. We die of normal diseases and, if we’re autopsied by Others, which is rare considering packs take care of their own dead, we don’t appear any different inside. I suppose if the right blood analysis was performed they might detect some anomalies, but the right tests are never performed, because there is no need for them. It would have to be an accidental discovery.

  Our blood would need to be mixed with the proper distilled herbs, and why would anyone do that?

  Even without living under the radar, we lived under the radar.

  Outside my bus window the Paris skyline gave way to the French countryside. It all

  passed in a blur. I’d only been to one Great Gathering in my life when I was eighteen. This would be the first time I would mingle with the group at large. I’d never attended a Gathering alone. For the past two years, I’d existed in a twilight excess of Others, deliberately exiled from my own kind. I didn’t know if I even remembered how to talk to someone Pack. I felt rusty and conspicuous as if everyone would know my past, even though they couldn’t possibly. Odds were I wouldn’t see even one person I knew. New England packs were notoriously clannish and parsimonious. Not many of them would spend the money to travel to Paris, especially since there were so many Regionals in the area. Keyed up and nervous, I was as cold on the outside as I was on the inside. My legs had goose bumps, because I wasn’t wearing stockings with the dress and my coat didn’t come down as long as the gown.

  The girl beside me was dressed in designer jeans and Ugg boots, a fashionable parka--

  fuchsia and turquoise. Loud as hell, and it hurt my eyes even under the muted reading lights.

  The entire ride she texted, probably to someone in the bus immediately before or behind us.

  As I looked at her, I couldn’t remember ever being so young.

  When I was twenty and he was twenty-two, Grey and I had bonded. Elena had joined

  with us at a Regional Gathering two years after that. We’d both loved Elena. She’d completed us almost from the first night we met her.

  Packs were made up of duos and triads. There were no adult singles. If someone from a duo died, the one left behind either bonded with another duo in the pack, found someone from a different pack, or the ties were severed. The only exception was with elders of at least a hundred years old. They had an honorary position in the pack at best by that point and were allowed to affiliate, but they usually only socialized. They were supported by the pack so they always had a place to live and food to eat. It was like Pack social security. You contributed all your life and paid your dues to your pack. When you were too old to participate and contribute, your pack took care of you based on what you did for them. It was a good system for the most part.

  The older you got, the harder it was to shape shift. I think it’s because shape-shifting is tied to sex. That got harder as people aged too. People could still do it, but most of the time the desire was not there anymore.

  The grandfathers and grandmothers loved to lecture us, but I thought they were the ones who had lost touch with what it meant to be Pack. When was the last time they’d ever shifted?

  You heard stories of virile grandfathers and seductive grandmothers who managed to attract and seduce someone younger in the pack, but for some of them it had been decades since they’d shifted, even if they had bond mates.

  The wheels of the bus crunched loudly down a gravel driveway leading to an imposing white chateau topped with a slate blue roof. Lost in my private reveries, I had been taken by surprise when we left the smooth road for the gravel drive. I had to scramble to minimize the sudden assault of sound. Pack had a dimmer switch sort of control over our senses that we dialed up or down as we concentrated. Some of us were set higher or lower, it just depended. I was one of the ones who was higher, even in human form.

  I’d learned to dial way down out of self-preservation. It had been a hard-won lesson. The first time I’d shifted I’d spent the entire time trying to escape this awful, huge booming sound.

  Like a bass drum only more organic. It wasn’t until I’d shifted back that I’d realized it was my own damn heart that had driven me crazy.

  I had been eighteen, and for those of us who were close to twenty, the age of Pack

  majority, it really chafed that we weren’t yet allowed to participate fully in the Great Gathering.

  We’d disdained the younger teens and the grandmother left to chaperone us and instead spent our time drinking and smoking pot behind the plantation home in Louisiana where the Gathering had taken place. Heavy petting had been pretty much demanded if you’d wanted to be even marginally cool.

  It had only been a short skip from that to actual sex.

  Something happened when two people who were Pack had sex. There was an exchange

  of essence, something indefinable that created the energy you needed to shift. You didn’t have to do it every time you had sex, and you didn’t have to shift right after it. Usually there was a twenty-four to forty-eight hour window and you could shift at any point during that time. You got better and had greater control over this the more you shifted.

  Once I talked to a grandmother in my pack about sex and shifting. I
thought it was

  magical, this exchange of essence. She laughed at me, yes, it was, but it was more than the exchange of essence, it was the exchange of fluid too.

  “Saliva, sweat and semen, child, sharing that is just as essential as this magical essence you can’t see.”

  We never used condoms with each other, and I guess that’s part of the reason. We needed to exchange fluids.

  One of the boys in our teen group at that Great Gathering when I was eighteen proposed a dare--that we stage our own Great Hunt, to hell with the adults. We could screw, shift, then hunt in the sugar cane fields behind the plantation.

  My partner was a young German boy two days older than me. He spoke very little

  English, but man, could he kiss. I still dreamed sometimes about his kisses. Slow and urgent, fueled by teen passion, sexy because we could barely communicate with words. Instead of using our mouths to talk, we used them to kiss. That’s how we talked, that German boy and I.

  We broke the rules when we shifted, of course. When you first shifted, you were

  supposed to be initiated by an experienced member of your Pack. You usually got to choose who, but they were free to decline the invitation. People rarely did, because it was considered an honor to be chosen as someone’s mentor. Once you got the hang of it, you were encouraged to find a bond mate. If you didn’t find one within a few years, one was generally found for you.

  There were always a few who never bonded, but there was usually something wrong with them. After they turned twenty-six they lost their privileges and kept to the fringes of their birth packs where they were looked after but never treated as equals. Some people turned their backs on the Great Pack and lived in the world of the Others. They denied their wolves and who they really were. Most of the time these were people who’d lost their bond mate and didn’t want another. Some of them, like me, had been exiled for some transgression or crime they’d committed. Those exiled had to exist on their own for two years before they could even attempt to find a new pack. When they did return, everything was forgiven and the slate was wiped clean.

  In theory. In practice, some people kept score and judged. I supposed that was only natural, but I was determined to keep my past exile a secret at this Great Gathering if I could help it. I knew I’d have to tell some people, but the whole damn Pack didn’t need to know.

  A set of stone stairs led up to the massive front doors of the chateau. They were thrown open and light spilled out into the courtyard from a large reception hall. Skirted tables were set up along the walls manned by mostly women with laptops who searched for names in the database. When they found the right one, they clicked a few keys and a nametag spat out of a printer next to them.

  The nametag contained the person’s name and their pack, as well as their country of origin.

  It stuck with adhesive to clothing, for which I was grateful. No pins to ruin my new expensive French gown.

  When I pasted my nametag on my chest, I felt exposed because all it said was Constance Newcastle--Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

  Of course my jewelry also proclaimed me as unbonded and unaffiliated with a pack.

  To indicate mated status, everyone wore pendants with different colored stones in them.

  Birthstones--one stone for the unbonded, two for a duo, three for a triad.

  My pendant was a simple peridot suspended by a silver chain.

  Pack membership jewelry differed. Bracelets, rings, necklaces: they were distinctive and designed by the pack. It wasn’t hard to spot a piece of pack jewelry, but it wasn’t as specific as a mating status pendant.

  It was hot in the chateau with the press of bodies, and I took off my coat somewhat awkwardly, trying to balance it and my purse and not bash anyone in the face with a flailing arm.

  Distinctive laughter rang out and I spun on my heel. I knew that laugh. It was Callie, from my old pack. Peter and Vaughn flanked her protectively. Peter pretended to cop a feel as he stuck Callie’s nametag on her dress. He was always the jokester, Peter.

  I smiled to see them and warmth stole through my body. I suddenly felt at home. I had been alone for two years, and seeing them now made those years disappear somehow.

  “Callie!” I called and the three of them looked at me. All the laughter and fun died out of their faces. Callie took Vaughn’s hand and tugged him away. Peter followed, his gaze the last to leave mine. They turned their backs on me, shunning me, and disappeared into the crowd Someone near me laughed. I don’t suppose they laughed at me. No one paid particular attention to me, but that laugh cut through me like a sword, sliced me open, exposed all my weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

  Ashamed, I pushed against the tide of the crowd and forced my way back onto the stone steps only to see the last of the buses pulling away. The first departure was not until midnight.

  By my watch, it was barely seven o’clock. For a moment, I observed people as they flowed up the staircase and inside the chateau. They all seemed to arrive in pairs or groups. Search as I would, I couldn’t find anybody on their own. I imagined stories for them as they passed by without even seeing me. All the stories were happy because everyone smiled. It was a Great Gathering. Alliances would be forged, friendships renewed, memories made.

  Of course I couldn’t achieve any of those things if I stood all night long on the front steps and waited for the damn bus to come back.

  Back inside I let the crowd direct me to a winding staircase that I followed up a level.

  The entire second floor of this particular wing of the chateau was a ballroom. An intricate floor made of blocks and strips of wood had been inlaid with painstaking precision by hand. Eight massive crystal chandeliers hung suspended like glittering ice from the ceiling that was painted with a series of frescos of men, women and wolves, all intertwined and frolicking together. Some of the people looked half wolf, some of the wolves half human.

  I could have looked at the ceiling for hours, but I couldn’t stand there with my head tilted back like a dolt, gaping, so I found a seat at a large round table in the corner of the room, a table that was not prominent and reserved, as were several of them--the ones near the front.

  A huge head table had been placed just before a series of arching floor-to-ceiling

  windows--for the Council and their bond mates.

  The Great Council comprised the crème de la crème of the Great Pack. Members of the Council were all past Alphas of their packs. Theirs were influential ones.

  Councilors chose Advisors. Advisors were the record-keepers of the Great Pack, the

  guardians of our knowledge, our numbers, our secrets and our past. Many Councilors were once Advisors.

  In conjunction with the Regional Councils, the Great Council oversaw disputes and

  investigated accidents and murders. They sent Advisors in first to gather the facts before the Councilors made a ruling.

  The seats on the Council fluctuated with our population. Councilors on the Great Council generally had two or three Advisors--whereas Councilors on the Regionals normally only had one.

  We were taught to both respect and fear the Councils, especially the Great. Most of us were mainly in awe of it.

  The head table was set for at least fifty tonight, which meant about twenty-five

  Councilors were in attendance. A good turn-out, but then, this was a Great Gathering.

  Beyond the windows was a decorative pond with several splashing fountains lit up in pink, green, blue, purple and gold.

  Tablecloths of dark gold adorned each table. Chairs were wrapped in gold and plum

  fabric tied back with broad ribbons. Dark purple goblets and matching napkins folded into intricate shapes marked each place setting.

  It was gorgeous and very French.

  I draped my coat over the back of one of the gold chairs and sat so I faced the windows and fountains, my back to most of the room.

  I had this ridiculous urge to start crying, because everybody in the room had somebody el
se to be with and I didn’t. Who else my age didn’t have a pack or a bond mate? What if I were the only one? I was supposed to be there to find a bond mate and new pack, but what if there were no one who wanted me? I’d been lonely on my own, but this gnawing, horrible feeling of inferiority and worthlessness was worse than the loneliest night I’d spent in Boston. Which was stupid, because I’d been waiting so long for this chance. Sure, at first after Grey and Elena died and Riverglow had turned against me, I’d sworn I’d never belong to another pack. But that was at first when my grief and betrayal both burned so hot and high I didn’t have time to be wistful.

  Lately, wistful was pretty much all I ever felt. I wanted to belong again.

  I had nothing to be ashamed of. My pack may have blamed me for the deaths of Grey and Elena, but the Councils had not.

  They’d sent one of the American Great Councilors to our pack in Connecticut, and after he had heard all the evidence and my story of what had happened, he and the Regional Council cleared me of all culpability. My pack still severed ties with me. I could have been taken into Jonathan and Nora’s duo and we could have made a triad, but they had not even considered the idea.

  Tonight the wistfulness was accompanied by guilt. Was I really here to replace Grey and Elena? Just so I wouldn’t be alone? But I wouldn’t ever forget them. How could I? Was it a crime to move on? Is that why I felt so guilty?

  Instead of dwelling on my guilt, I focused on the sights and scents around me.

  Music was piped into the room through strategically placed speakers. At the moment, it was American pop, but later in the evening it would change to something fast and danceable.

  The tables were arranged so a huge space for dancing remained. At the moment, tables piled with cheese, fruit and sliced meat, as well as savory things wrapped in pastry and baked until light golden brown, filled this space. The food smelled divine and I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.