Sanctuary - 8. Chapter 8 - James

“It must be around here somewhere,” Peter consulted the thick and dog-eared A to Z map book in his hand and frowned adorably. James sighed and wrapped an arm around his mate’s neck, pulling him out of the way of a cyclist who was speeding down the path.

“I don’t know why you bring that thing. I keep telling you: we don’t need a map.” James tapped the bridge of his nose, and then sniffed. “We go East along the river… no, East is left.” Peter looked at him with the expression of the hopelessly lost, and James chuckled. “That’s what I’m for babe.”

“Like you have any other uses…” Peter grumbled good-naturedly. James goosed him and earned himself an ineffectual slap on the arm. “You have a one track mind!”

“Don’t you know it?” James arched a smug eyebrow. “Come on, let’s go make Aki squirm uncomfortably.”

“You’re mean to him.”

James laughed.

“That’s because it’s so easy!”

James loved and hated the big city in equal measures. Enough people living, breathing, dying, fighting, and loving in the same place meant the city was a raucous mess of scents which were barely distinguishable from each other: but at the same time the scents of others gave the werewolf so much to investigate. There were stories to be discovered, places where dark and secret deeds were communicated through their smells and people feeling things so purely they left colour trails in his brain. As they walked together along the riverside, a young woman jogged by in Lycra and expensive trainers, but she was a flash of pink love and joy in James’s inner vision, because she was so incredibly happy. Perhaps she’d been promoted, or her lover was waiting for her at home, or maybe she was listening to a song that reminded her of summer; James liked to think that all of them might have been true.

He and Peter walked as far as the Quayside, a little group of shops and restaurants opposite one of the old staging areas where ships used to be set to float in the river. It was very relaxed and bohemian, but above the smell of food, natural leather products and the clothing shops which sold things made of hemp, James could pick out the scents of the people they were meeting. Aki was easy, because James never forgot someone he’d met, and the part demon was distinctive in his warm but spiky flavour. The person with him was new however, and James lingered over the scent which was exotic but deeply familiar: it was blue, shining, and special. They were normally characteristics James would have associated with something not natural, but underneath was a familiar earthy texture, and the werewolf suddenly felt incredibly protective of the person the scent belonged to. A moment later, they rounded the corner, and saw Aki and a thin, blond, blue-eyed boy sitting opposite each other at a wooden picnic bench. James felt a sudden pang of jealousy: Aki was possibly the least equipped person James could think of to become the warden of a teenage spirit guide.

Aki saw them coming and raised a hand.

“Hey Peter.”

James watched the blue-eyed boy glance up at them, his gaze flicking from James to his mate and back again, and tension crackled across his shoulders. He was a skittish thing, and if it hadn’t been for the overwhelming scent that marked him as a pup, James would have pegged him for a prey animal.

“Hel, this is Peter and James,” Aki explained in a soft voice, “Peter is the Rectory Officer at station six. It’s another house like mine.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s like yours,” James grinned, “Aki likes to be modest, but his office is huge compared ours.”

“You live there too?” Hel blinked at him, and James got the feeling that despite the hints of fear coming from the boy, he was being sized up.

“Yeah, coming up for three years now,” James replied with a smile before dropping his volume to a conversational level no one would have overheard even if they’d been listening. “You know Peter is the only human here, right?”

Hel gulped audibly, and James wondered if he’d been wrong in thinking Aki was overestimating the kid’s instability.

“What are you?”

“I’m a werewolf.”

There was a long moment of silence, stretched out like an elastic band under pressure, and James remembered the moment when he’d known, rather than suspected, that the universe was not the place most people thought it was. He’d been Hel’s age or thereabouts, just shy of his fourteenth birthday when his mother had taken him aside and tried to explain as best she could, what she remembered about his father. James had always known he’d died in a road accident, but he hadn’t known was that the body of the big dog he’d watched his mother bury in the back garden when he’d been five had also been the man who’s helped to raise him. She’d done her best, but nothing she had said had really been able to prepare him for the pain, the sudden loss of control, or the view of the world when he stood on four paws. It had taken James years to get in control of himself around the time of the full moon, and more time still to really accept the universe as the way it was. Up until his mother’s death when he was twenty-one, he’d had support, if not actual guidance, and James could barely imagine going through the whole process alone and terrified. Aki had said Hel had run away and been beaten up, but what he’d run from was still unclear.

“So, has Aki told you where we’re going?”

The Forgery was just that; it had once been a blacksmiths, and the front of the shop still looked that way; old wood and blackened iron. There was always a horseshoe kicking about somewhere, but as far as James, Peter, or Aki knew, there hadn’t been a fire lit in the hearth for more than half a century. It was one of those places that looked shut and run down from the outside, but it was all an illusion, and no one passing would have noticed the three men and a boy walking in through the half open entrance way. It was dark inside, and James watched the boy called Hel carefully as he wrinkled his nose and moved as if to poke the old cold coals in the heart of the forge.

“Don’t touch that.”

The boy sprung back with an unconscious bark of panic, and impacted with James’s sternum. He was thinner than the werewolf had thought, and there was nothing of him under the t-shirt and hoodie other than pointy shoulder blades and the prominent ridges of his spine.

“Whoa bud, it’s OK.” James tried to make his voice as soothing as possible. “Don’t panic.”

The Forgery was run by a woman who looked very much like the sort who would be good at smuggling guns through war zones, and other things besides. She stood at the back of the shop in tight leather trousers and an open necked shirt, her frizzy hair bound up at the nape of her neck, staring at them as though considering in which order they would be easiest to kill. James had met her once before, and she still freaked him out a little bit.

“Zoe said you’d be coming,” she said with a tight smile. “Are you trading your dog in for an upgrade then Peter?”

James couldn’t keep the growl from his throat, but Peter just laughed.

“No, we’re here for him actually.”

“Well then,” Lucia folded her arms across her ample bosom with a grin, “you’d best come through.”

“What is this place?” Hel asked in a slightly shaky voice as he followed James through the curtain at the back of the shop.

James grinned.

“This is where you go to get a new identity.”

*

It took hours. Long enough for James to start wondering why he’d volunteered to accompany the man he loved down to the big city in the first place. James had never had to have a whole new identity produced, just bits and pieces replaced after he’d lost them, but Hel needed everything from a birth certificate upwards, and it wasn’t only him. Aki needed to put his name and face to a dozen bits of paper which would make him into the boy’s legal guardian, and Peter was to be his character witness. It was all done with utmost efficiency, but it still took a long time.

“So what did you pick?” James asked as the boy sank into the armchair opposite him. He had finally finished standing in front of a screen, having his photograph taken, and the kid look exhausted. James fished around in his backpack for a packet of Skittles and a chocolate bar, and watched as they vanished with barely time to touch the sides.

“Pick for what?” Hel replied, picking bits of sugar out of his teeth.

“For your new name.”

“Oh, they gave me a list to pick from, things that were normal enough but not as boring as ‘Smith’,” he shrugged, “I went for Thorn; it’s sort of Nordic too. Did you ever have to pick a new name?”

“No; I am as my mother called me,” James smiled, “I was lucky compared to a lot of people.”

“So…” Hel looked scared of asking whatever words sat on his tongue, but James had been running on four feet long enough to know what he was going to say.

“How long have I been a werewolf? My father was one; I was born like this, but I didn’t start shifting until I was about your age actually.” James looked levelly across at the young spirit wolf, and saw the curiosity in his eyes. There was more of that now than the fear he’d seen before. “We’re all in the same boat until puberty hits: but you were shit out of luck with no one to warn you.”

“But… what do you mean?” Hel looked suddenly anxious. “How could anyone warn me?”

“If your parents had been around…?” James stopped, remembering what Peter had relayed from Aki’s phone call. “This isn’t some punishment Hel; it’s who you are. At least one of your parents was just like you: it’s as genetic as your pretty blue eyes.”

“No!” Hel didn’t shout, but his voice shook with something like anger at James’s words. “I don’t want it.”

He started going blurry at the edges, and James recognised the expression of fear in the boy’s eyes. He’d worn it often as he tried to keep himself together, stop his emotions from taking over and destroying the moment he was in. There had been plenty of times in James’s life when he’d been on the verge of wolfing-out at inappropriate moments, and he knew just how important it was to resist that urge.

“Breathe!” he commanded in his best soft but stern voice. James reached out and offered his hand to the boy, and after a long moment where neither of them said anything, Hel grabbed a hold of him with strong, desperate fingers.

“Please?”

Once again, James didn’t need him to finish the question.

“Breathe with me. Don’t think about anything else: just in… and out… and in…. That’s a good lad. You’re the one in control here Hel, it’s your body, your spirit: you can keep them together if you want to. Just breathe.” James realised they were being watched as Hel’s figure stopped blurring with the tension. He could feel the boy’s pulse, smell his rancid fear, and James wondered if the kid had ever managed to control what he did before. “You’re doing great.”

Hel exhaled long and slow, and when he opened his blue eyes, they shone with un-spilt tears.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” James beamed. “You did well there.”

The young spirit wolf gulped, his smooth brow furrowing in worry.

“Is it always going to be like this?”

“Oh no bud,” James shook his shoulder happily. “It can be amazing.”