Page 14 of White Wolf

A chill skittered down her back. She turned, slowly, toward her dresser. The sound was coming from the top drawer. It was her family heirloom bell. The one with “Our Friend” inscribed in Cyrillic on the inside.

It was ringing.

“Jesus,” she whispered, shivering. “Oh, Jesus.”

It had to be a hallucination. It couldn’t be real. A trick of the mind. An echo bouncing in from the street.

But the window was closed.

And it was still ringing.

She took a deep breath, told herself she was being stupid, and yanked open the drawer. Itwasthe bell, sitting perfectly still in its corner, emitting sound impossibly.

It went silent when she touched it. She stood a moment, breathing through her mouth, fingers against the cool bronze, silence loud in her ears. It must have been her imagination. That was the only way to explain it.

She drew the bell up by its chain and lifted it from the drawer, brought it to her face. It looked innocuous, the same dinged-up, tarnished bit of metal it had always been.

“I don’t…” she said to herself…

And then there was an incredible flash. She felt a numbness overtake her, felt herself falling, crumpling. She thought she hit the floor.

But then her vision cleared, and there he was, her blue-eyed stranger.

She gasped, and when her lungs expanded, they felt too-large somehow. She feltenergized, full of leashed power, awash with the kind of adrenaline she had never known.

She was sitting upright in a ratty corduroy chair, feet planted on the floor, hands on her knees; she flexed them and felt denim beneath her palms: jeans. She looked at them, and they were a man’s hands, large, and white, and strong-looking.

“What,” she said, and her voice was not her own. Deep, masculine, and faintly-accented. “What,” she said again, panicking now, energy flooding her limbs in a terrifying way.

“Oh,” the stranger said, and came to kneel at her feet, hands on her knees, face tipped up to hers. Young. Sweet. Trusting. He was beautiful, blue eyes wide with wonder. “Nikita,” he said. “I think it’s happening again.”

She was panting, could hear the rush of her own breathing, lungs working beautifully. “I can’t…I’m not…who are you?”

“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” He sounded Russian.Oh shit, oh shit, she thought. All her father’s crazy rambling about Dark Forces, and here she was, in someone else’s body. “Ekaterina, it’s you, isn’t it?”

“H-h-how do you know my name?”

He smiled, teeth white and sharp. “I am the best of friends with your great-grandfather. We’ve been looking for you.”

“We?”

Slowly, as if he didn’t want to startle her, he lifted her hand (but it wasn’t her hand!) into his and moved them both to her chest – smooth with muscle, no longer her own, a man’s chest. His fingers were long and pale and delicate. “Yes, we.” He couldn’t stop smiling, expression beatific. “Nikita and me. Your great-grandfather. And I’m Sasha.”

“I…” She closed her eyes, wanting desperately to wake from this new, too-vivid kind of nightmare. The snow and the blood were better than this…thisinteraction. It felt soreal.

Sasha stroked her face, fingertips warm against her cheek. “It’s alright,” he whispered, but she wouldn’t open her eyes.

He sighed, quiet, patient. “I think you had better show her, Nik. If you can.”

Though her eyes were shut, it began to grow light behind her lids. A slow-creeping gray light that seemed to exist inside her head.

“It’s alright, Katyusha,” Sasha said, stroking her face again. “He’ll show you. Let him. He’s your family.”

Sashka, she thought, unbidden. Someone else’s thought.Little brother.

And then she fell through time.

Part II.

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