Once a Wolf

*****

Mike Blair had graduated from the University of Illinois with degrees in Mechanical, Chemical, and Electronic Engineering and a minor in Mathematics and Computer Science. He had a five-point-oh average across the board, spoke technical Russian and fluent Japanese. He enlisted and preferenced Light Weapons Infantry because it was the right thing to do, the next logical step. The recruiter took one look at the specialty posting he had selected as his enlistment ‘guarantee’ and told him he “had guts”.

The sergeant had run a routine criminal background check. Mike knew he would get a hit from the Urbana Police Department. He watched as the recruiter read the incident report from that night four years before – and almost creamed in his pants. The look on the sergeant’s face was priceless! He wasted no more time signing Mike up and welcoming him to the Army.

Giselle remembered that night during New Student Week. A slender, brown-eyed, sandy-haired Mike Blair had just returned to the States from his five-year ‘field study’ in Japan. He had enrolled at Illinois as had three generations of his family before him. Looking back, Giselle realized just how cute he had been. The seven drunken Varsity football players had invaded her dormitory floor that night, looking for “fresh fish” and decided she needed a “real man”, times seven. Mike had taken exception to that idea.

The arrogant quarterback, a legitimate Heisman candidate, had required extensive maxillofacial reconstructive surgery. The fullback had spent three months in traction and never played football again. That disgusting pig of a middle linebacker eventually got around OK; he simply breathed into a tube to make his motorized wheelchair go backward, forward, or turn. The defensive end who had pawed her snatch had required a year to learn how to use his new prosthetic arm. The rest had escaped –

fled

- with less severe injuries. The

Togakure-ryu

had taught Mike Blair well.

*****

The Third Day

Geoff had been wrong; he couldn’t sleep. So much had happened in the past two days. The Tournament itself. Giant ants. Fiends with chain saws. Green blood everywhere. Fearsome looking pigs that wanted to either slice him open or dash his brains out. More than any other thing, he couldn’t sleep because of this exquisite, marvelous, mysterious, vexing woman who was even then curled up on his chest like it was the most natural thing on this or any other planet. The damnable thing was, it felt that way to

him

, too!

The only thing to do then was to exercise, wear himself out. He ever… so… gently eased himself out from under her, lowering her head carefully to the soft earth of the cave floor. He quietly fetched the sword from the corner and took it outside to practice. He briefly considered strapping it onto his back as she did (he was grateful she, too, was left-handed), but decided against it. He was full aware of how sharp that blade was and didn’t fancy slicing his

own

head off in an errant attempt to draw or re-sheathe the weapon.

In the stillness of the night, he practiced the basic stances, parries, and slashes she had shown him, concentrating on gripping the handle properly (left hand at the handguard, right hand just above the end of the hilt) and centering his balance for each movement. She had cautioned him to work on

form

. The speed would come in time, but would be useless or dangerous if coupled with bad technique. She had admonished him to

become

the sword; that it be an extension of his

soul.

He felt a subtle change in air pressure, as if a gentle desert breeze had softly whispered by him. There was no moon that night. He hadn’t really needed the moonlight to practice by. Now, he wished he had it. He felt the breeze again, a wind where there should be no wind. This time he heard something. It was like the gentle lapping of a banner in the breeze or –

the flap of wings!

He assumed the back stance, knees flexed, sword held over his head, pointing forward, in line with his body. She had cautioned him, there would be times when his eyes would not be enough. This was one of those times. His eyes darted in every direction, but he remained completely still, reaching out with his other senses as well.

It struck him from behind, a glancing blow, but almost knocking him off his feet and the sword from his hands.

Stupid, Geoff! Use the terrain to YOUR advantage, not theirs.

He stepped back against the rock wall. An outcropping shielded his right side; the cave entrance was to his left, another outcropping beyond that. Whatever the thing was, it could only approach him from in front and, with difficulty, from the left. He could hear and feel it. The subtle changes of air pressure were a physical thing he could reach out to. It was making an approach from the right, a dozen or so yards out, carving a wide arc. He could make it out dimly now. It was wheeling left, and…

coming straight for him!

He prepared for it. He stepped forward from the wall with his left foot and planted it pointing straight ahead, flexing the knee at a right angle. He extended his right leg straight back, right foot pointed forward The two feet were approximately shoulder-width apart. He centered his body weight over his forward knee, raised his arms up, sword overhead and pointed backwards along his bodyline, blade parallel to the ground, edge up.

Wait for it. Waiiiiiit…. NOW!

The blade flashed through the air in a smooth, straight diagonal line from above his left shoulder, across the front of his body, to a point just above ground to his right. What he felt was not so much an impact as a gentle resistance, as though the blade were passing through water. The dim shape thudded to the ground at his feet. Almost immediately, he felt a jarring impact from the left that hurled him into the rock outcropping to his right. Stars danced behind his eyes. The world was spinning. He dropped the sword and sank to his knees. Just then, he heard a deep, rumbling growl to his left that seemed to cause the air around him to vibrate. Through the fog that was his vision, he saw a flash of white, something big, fly through the air next to him. Then, there was only blackness.

*****

“Geoffrey. Geoffrey. Are you with me, My Love? GEOFF!”

He was dead. He was certain of it. An angel had come for him, the most beautiful angel he had ever seen.

Whatever happened, wherever I am, take me; I’m yours

. Just a moment; this angel is wearing…

desert fatigues

. The mists in his mind slowly cleared. They were sitting on the ground at the mouth of the cave, approximate to where he had fought – and fallen. Giselle cradled his head in her lap. She smiled at him and he felt he really

did

want to curl up and die, right there in her arms.

“Welcome back, Tiger. You gave me quite a start. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a two-ton lorry… sorry,

truck

. You didn’t get the license number by any chance, did you?”

She smiled a smile that warmed him to the bone.

“Didn’t have to. You can get it yourself at your leisure.”

She glanced to her left. He turned his head – and winced with the pain. There, lying a few yards away was a… thing. All right, it had wings, so it was bird-

like

, but completely unlike any bird he had ever seen. As nearly as he could tell from this angle, its wingspan had been over six feet. It was black or dark gray and Pterodactyl-like. The head was wrong; rounder, not pointed, and bigger. This ‘bird’ had claws in the wings, claws in the feet, and a big mouth full of dagger-like teeth. At least, it might have looked like that once. This one was neatly sliced in two, from where the neck joined the right shoulder, diagonally through the body, to about the left leg. Giselle followed the direction of his gaze, then smiled down at him once more.

“I appreciate you feel the need to practice,” she stated, her voice tinged with both concern and mirth, “but you really didn’t have to go to the trouble of arranging a live-fire exercise in the dead of night. Technically speaking, that was

brilliantly

done.”

“I feel I should be brilliantly

dead

,” Geoff replied ruefully. “Now, I am more confused than ever. If I got

that one

, what hit

me

?”

“The other one,” she intoned softly.

Giselle shifted her body slightly. He could see the second form now, lying crumpled on the ground a few yards from the first. Unlike its mate, this one had been torn to shreds, apparently by something massively powerful. He shuddered involuntarily. Giselle continued.

“They appear to be nocturnal, carnivorous, and hunt in pairs or packs. If I were to make a guess, I would say the Golganthans just paid us back for the ant.”

“Why did they come after

me

? How did they find me?”

“Why did the second ant go after the Golganthans? You were a target of opportunity. As to the mechanics of it, who knows? Movement. Smell. Body heat. Since they are nocturnal, they may have some form of night vision - or sonar, like bats. You saw the teeth and claws. Something like that could hit its prey on the fly, disable it, then tear it to shreds at its leisure.”

“It almost did that very thing to

me

. Marvelous. It isn’t bad enough we have to worry about these traumas by day. Now we have to face Night Stalkers.”

Giselle chuckled.

“Night Stalkers, huh? Thank you, Carl Kolchak. Actually, it’s a good name for the ugly little beast.”

“It didn’t feel so little while it was trying to cave my head in. All right, I got the first one. What the Devil got the

second

?”

The blonde shrugged her shoulders.

“Perhaps Part Two of the Golganthan’s nightmare,” she espoused. We haven’t seen any of their challenges until now. The Arcturans may be making up for lost time. The ferocity of the attack, plus the extent of destruction is certainly indicative of the Golganthan’s world. I am certain it was not the Golganthans themselves. We pummeled them pretty hard yesterday. Even with the help we later gave them, they were in no condition to leave their cave and may not be for a day or two. We may have earned the Golganthan’s challenge

by default

– either as the last ones standing, or as punishment for our ‘breech of protocol’.”

“Repercussions,” Geoff intoned.

“Excuse me?”

“Something I was thinking about earlier tonight,” he replied. There would be

repercussions

for what we did for the Golganthans. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“So true,” Giselle agreed. “I have the bruises to prove it.”

“Please don’t,” the chagrined man pleaded. “I already feel enough guilt to last the week. Next time, I will keep my big mouth shut.”

Giselle smiled at that.

“I doubt the latter,” she observed. “Besides, you have nothing to feel guilty

about

. It was a decision

we

made and I don’t regret it for a moment. Besides, I heal quickly. At any rate, I should be thanking

you

for watching over me while I slept. You are my hero.”

“I don’t feel very heroic just now,” he professed. “Heroes don’t fall down on the job half-way through.”

She lightly caressed his cheek.

“You look pretty heroic to

me

,” she murmured. “I won’t sweat the details. Let’s get inside. This time, I will watch over

you

while you sleep. You took a pretty nasty knock to the head.”

As he lay his head down to sleep, he looked up at her again.

“Giselle, after I was hit, just before I blacked out… I

saw

something.”

She just stared at him impassively.

“It was probably the second Night Stalker coming back to finish you off,” she offered.

“I’m not so certain. It was big and fast and I got the impression it had white…

fur

.”

“That must have been a delusion caused by your head trauma,” she countered. “Those things that attacked you weren’t white. They don’t even have

feathers

, much less fur. Their hide is almost like leather. If it wasn’t that, well, maybe you caught a glimpse of the ‘Part Two’ I mentioned. If that is the case, you really

are

lucky to be alive.”

“There is something else. A while ago, as I was coming around, I thought I heard you call me ‘My Love’.”

“Now I

know

you are delusional.”

*****

She meditated while he slept, summoning her spirit guide for the second time in an hour. It came to her, enveloping her in its customary comforting warmth. Together, they looked inward, probing her body, identifying the points of damage, increasing her metabolism and blood flow to speed the healing process to those injured areas.

Geoffrey had seen it the first time she summoned it. She didn’t know how she could explain it to him in terms he could understand. So few did. The entire concept was alien to the religion, the culture he knew. Yet it had stood over him, protected him from the second Night Stalker, just as he had protected her. She hoped, some day, she would be able to reconcile him to it. In the meantime, it was best he remained unaware of its existence.

She had questions, sought guidance to straighten the tangle of emotions she felt for this brave, beautiful man who had come into her life. He was so worldly in many ways, yet so naïve in hers. At least, it had seemed so in the beginning. He was growing, expanding,

becoming

at an almost frightening rate, like none she had ever known before. Was he the one? Her spirit guide responded as she knew it would, as it always did in such matters.

That answer must come from within, not without.

*****

Predictably, the Praetor had a few questions of his own, beginning with the same old ones.

“Tell me again,” the Praetor demanded. “What is your

real

rank and service organization?”

“How many different ways do I have to say this?”, a tired, frustrated, irritated Giselle had countered. “I am not currently in the Service. Most recently, I

worked

for the Government, as a civilian, but they canned me.”

“Your killing skills are too precise

not

to be professional,” the Praetor continued. “Your swordcraft exceeds any we have ever seen. This

new

killing method you have displayed goes beyond any capability your species has ever exhibited. The only references to it we can find are in your literature and motion pictures. Even

our

warriors cannot do that technique. I ask you again: what is your rank and Service?”

“I

was

a soldier,” a testy Giselle responded, “but that is no big wup to you guys, now is it? I am

not

on active duty, therefore I meet the basic criteria of your candidate selection process. Our records archive is in St. Louis, Missouri. Look me up. Make sure you spell it right; they’re fussy about that. Whatever ‘killing skills’ I may possess, I owe to someone else.”

*****

Mike Blair had been the

best

. He had led an LRP team in Viet Nam. He was a lieutenant then, attached to Company B (Ranger) 75th Infantry Regiment. The

name

“Long Range Patrol” had been phased out, just as had the previous “Long Range

Reconnaissance

Patrol”, but once a

Lurp

, always a

Lurp

. He had first met his teammates during their rotation through MACV Recondo School at Nha Trang. The five were all Northern Cheyenne, descendants of

Hotamitaneo

– Dog Men. The six of them had worked so well together, their commanders had agreed to keep the team intact.

He had built on their proud tradition, training them in techniques even the Army didn’t know. In turn, he had received from them the gift of their deep spirituality and warrior spirit. He combined that with his own, acquired during his years of apprenticeship to the Togakure Clan. He had felt better, stronger for it. He knew he would need that strength to face the ordeal ahead.

Together, they had forged a new identity and reputation known on both sides of the 17th Parallel. They were revered – and feared – as ghosts who appeared out of nowhere, struck, and vanished into thin air. They had earned the singular distinction of having a price put on their heads by no less than General Vo Nugyen Giap himself. Friend and foe alike respected the six ‘dog soldiers’ – five Cheyenne and one Illini – and knew them not by their official unit designation, but by the name they had chosen for themselves:

Wolfen.

They

had

to be the best; they had the hairiest assignment in the entire Southeast Asia Command. Where other teams were sent to do straight recon, lay ambushes, perform acts of sabotage, rescue prisoners, spot for air strikes or perform Bomb Damage Assessment for the Air Force, the Army called upon Mike Blair to perform a task only his unique skills could accomplish: to infiltrate the most secure areas of enemy territory and seek out their newest Russian, Chinese or other weapons technology.

He was to recover a sample, if possible. Otherwise, he reverse-engineered the weapon in place, taking photographs and drawing sketches, detailing his uncannily-accurate interpretations of what it did and how. Then, his team would exfiltrate in a manner such that the enemy would not know they had been there. On the occasions when their adversaries

did

discover them, the Wolfen made them wish they

hadn’t

.

*****

Giselle was unsure of how to smooth things over with the Praetor, but she was giving it her best effort.

“You brought me here to do a job. OK, I’m doing it. Are your people

dissatisfied

with my performance?”

“To your credit,” the Praetor intoned, “the audience approval ratings for your – how do your people put it? – ‘late night show’ were the highest ever recorded for a single day’s viewing. Given the reputation those creatures have on the Golganthan home world, your opponents would certainly express their appreciation for the actions taken by you and your mate – if they knew, of course.”

“I am

so glad

your people enjoyed the show,” Giselle replied dryly. Then, the realization of the Praetor’s words hit her. “My…

mate

?”, she inquired accusingly.

“Yes,” returned the Arcturan. “We picked someone with whom we believed you would be most compatible. Again, the audience has been most enthusiastic with our selection – especially in light of his developing combat skills.”

“Yes,” snorted an irate Giselle, “I can see where they

would

be. Although, I must confess I

missed the memo

identifying my urgent need for a Significant Other. Do you play

yenta

for all your contestants, or am I just the lucky one?”

“Would you like to be rid of him?”, the Praetor inquired. “I am certain we could acquire one of your professional wrestlers to take his place.”

“DON’T YOU DARE!”, Giselle exploded. Restraining her temper, she continued.

“This one is

more

than satisfactory.”

“Indeed?” the Praetor inquired. “We were not certain. You seem to be resisting coitus with him. The audience is getting impatient.”

“Well, gee, we can’t have

that

, now can we?”, Giselle interjected sarcastically. “What’s the rush, anyway?”

“Many of our females have expressed a degree of… discomfort watching the Golganthans mate. The general sentiment is, they do it like pigs.”

“Well

of course

they do,” Giselle seethed. “What did you expect? They

are

pigs! I’ll bet your

males

are OK with it, though. Am I right?”

“Well, yes. The overnights are….”

“Yeah, I get the idea. How did I know? If your people are so hot to trot to see

me

hot to trot, I’m gonna need a few things

up front.

”

“And that would be…?”

“First, my laptop,” she stated.

“Your laptop…?”

“

Computer

,” the Blonde explained. “I have three days’ worth of journal entries to key in. I don’t want to forget anything.”

“

Journal entries

,” the Arcturan repeated. “Oh, you mean

your diary

? Yes, by all means, that would be…

permissible

. What else?”