I whispered, "Richard, what have you done to me?" Maybe it was his name, maybe it was just thinking of him, but I suddenly felt him sitting in the car. I had a moment of seeing Daniel driving. I could smell Daniel's aftershave. I could feel the warm tightness of Richard's chest. I pulled away and was left staggering. If I hadn't had a tree to hug, I'd have fallen to my knees. If that moment of sharing hit Richard as hard as it hit me, I was glad he wasn't driving.
"Anita, are you all right?" Jason touched my shoulder. And power flowed between us in a hot, skin-creeping rush. I turned to him and it felt like I was moving in slow motion. I couldn't breathe past the power and the sensations that filled my mind. Images, flashes, like watching a room through strobe light. A bed, white sheets, the smell of sex so fresh it was hot and musky. My hands resting on a smooth chest. A man's chest. That warm, rolling power that was pure lycanthrope, pure beast, filled my body, like the man underneath me. Sharp, pleasant, exciting. The power spilled out my fingertips, pulling claws from my hands like knives unsheathing. The beast pushed at the smooth skin of my body, tried to slip out and overwhelm me. But I held it, tightened my body around it, and let only my hands turn monstrous. Claws sliced that smooth chest. Blood, hot and fresh enough to taste on our tongues.
Jason stared up at me from the bed, still pinned by my body, our body, and he screamed. He'd wanted this. Chosen it. And still he screamed. I felt his flesh give under claws. Those hands struck again and again, until the white sheets were spongy with blood and he lay motionless underneath us. If he survived, he would be one of us. I remembered not caring if he lived or if he died, not really. It was the sex, the pain, the joy of it all that mattered.
When I could feel my body again, Jason and I were kneeling in the leaves. His hands were still on my arms. Someone was screaming, and it was me. Jason stared at me with a face almost blank with horror. He'd shared the ride, but it wasn't his memory.
It wasn't Richard's memory, or mine. It was Raina's. She was dead but not forgotten. She was why I feared the munin. I was a necromancer with ties to the wolves. The munin liked me. Raina's munin liked me best of all.
"What's wrong?" Cherry said. She touched me, and it opened something inside of me again. It welcomed Raina back with a rush that left me screaming. But I fought it this time. Fought it because I did not want to see Cherry the way Raina would see her. Jason wouldn't care. Cherry would care. I would care.
There was a rush of sensations: skin damp with sweat, hands with long, polished nails on my br**sts, those grey eyes staring up at me, mouth open, slack, shoulder-length yellow hair against a pillow. Raina on top again.
I screamed and pulled away from them both. The images died as if a plug had been pulled. I scrambled through the leaves on all fours, eyes shut tight. I ended sitting, hugging my knees to my chest, face buried against my legs. I squeezed my eyes so tight that I began seeing white snakes against my eyelids.
I heard someone move through the crunching leaves. I felt them hovering over me.
"Don't touch me," I said. It was almost another scream.
I heard whoever it was kneel in the dry leaves before Jamil's voice came. "I won't touch you. Are you still getting the memories?"
He didn't ask if I was seeing the memories. I found the phrasing strange. I shook my head without looking up.
"Then it's over, Anita. Once the munin leave, they're gone until called again."
"I didn't call her." I raised my face slowly and opened my eyes. The summer night seemed blacker somehow.
"It was Raina again?" he made it a question.
"Yes."
He knelt as close as he could get without touching me. "You shared the memories with Jason and with Cherry."
I wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement, but I answered it: "Yeah."
"It was a full visual," Jason said. He was sitting with his bare back against a tree.
Cherry had her hands pressed to her face. She spoke, face hidden. "I cut my hair after that night, after what she did to me. One night with her was the price for not having to do one of their p**n o movies." She jerked her hands away from her face, crying. "God, I can smell Raina's scent." She rubbed her hands against her jeans, over and over, as if she'd touched something bad and was trying to wipe it away.
"What the f**k was that?" I asked. "I've channeled Raina before, but it wasn't like that. I've got glimpses of memories, but not a full-blown movie. Nothing like that, ever."
"Have you been trying to learn to control the munin?" Jamil asked.
"Just to get rid of it, them, whatever."
Jamil moved closer to me, studying my face as if looking for something. "If you were lukoi, I'd tell you, you can't just turn the munin off. If you have the power to call them, then you must learn to control them, not just shut them out. Because you can't shut them out. They'll seek a way into you, through you."
"How do you know so much?" I asked.
"I knew a werewolf who could call the munin. She hated it. She tried to shut them out. It didn't work."
"Just because it didn't work for your friend doesn't mean I can't do it." I could feel his breath warm against my face. "Back off, Jamil."
He scooted back, but he was still closer than I wanted him to be. He sat back in the leaves. "She went crazy, Anita. The pack had to execute her." His eyes went past me into the darkness. I turned to see what he was looking at. Two figures stood in the darkness. One was a woman with long, pale hair and a long, white dress like something out of a 1950s horror movie. If you were playing the victim. But she stood very straight, very certain, as if she were anchored to the ground like a tree. There was something almost frightfully confident about her.
The man with her was tall, slender, and tanned dark enough that he looked brown in the dark. His hair was short and a paler brown than his skin. If the woman seemed calm, he seemed nervous. He gave off energy in a roiling bath that breathed along my skin and made the night seem hotter.
"Are you well?" the woman asked.