“Swing Low Sweet Moon” © Phoebe Wagner

Off the coast of Nova Scotia, the island waited like a scab. I arrived by helicopter. Pesticides had burnt the island brown except for the five-acre prison farm. No trees—if there ever were any—just nubbly grass and scree pits. A tall fence enclosed most of the island, with warehouses and guard barracks separating the prisoners from the supply dock. Tiny figures in orange milled around a vegetable garden.

          In training, they warn you about monsters, but only the humankind, caged because she skinned someone alive or he killed his son by braining him with a baseball bat. They tell you to look out for the perverts and the gore fanatics, the overlords, and their henchmen dogs. Still, they’re human; their actions land on the human spectrum. Monstrous, but sapien. When my bosses at Correctional Rehabilitation Corporation offered me a better paying position, I thought it was a promotion and accepted a six-month stint at the Sanctuary.

          A guard named Reyes, returning for this fifth term, accompanied me on the hour ride from the mainland. A jagged scar split his cheek. He pointed at it even though I’d been careful to only look him in the eye.

          “Not claws, if that’s what you are thinking.”

          I shrugged. “I assumed not.”

          “Everyone’s a bit freaked out before their first change.” He thumbed his smartphone, snickered, then hooked it to his belt. “I’ll add you to the group message. Funny stuff on there.”

          “Funny?”

          He lowered his sunglasses as the copter banked into descent. “Trust me, werewolves are funny. If you’re going to stick it out for a second hitch, you got to be able to laugh about it.”

          The word “werewolf” had been tossed around in my required reading, but I automatically assumed it meant a person who believes he is a werewolf—a mental disorder of sorts. I’d taken too many psych classes in college to laugh at a mental disorder, but I knew other people who would.

          After landing, I went straight to what Reyes called the welcoming committee. They took my clothes and phone, though I was given a company phone for my time at the Sanctuary. Another guard ushered me into a room with a computer and a list of instructional videos before I could see the grounds. A mural brightened the cinderblock walls: a bald eagle gliding over a river with a faded American flag fluttering above all, the red faded pink, the navy to gray.

          The first video opened with glowing comic sans text posing the question: “Are werewolves real?” A man wearing the Correctional Rehabilitation Corporation logo of a soaring eagle rattled off the company line about keeping America safe for the law-abiding, keeping drugs off the street, making it safe for children to play in the front yard, but a new bit showed up—“So nobody need fear the full moon.”

          I leaned forward, fingers steepled. The man continued, “Stories of werewolves had been documented throughout each civilization and sightings continue to modern day. We here at Correctional Rehabilitation Corporation believe in keeping innocent people safe from the threats they might not even know exist.” A video popped on screen of an orange-dressed prisoner caught in a spotlight just as his jumpsuit split. The man twisted and compacted into a four-legged creature, which darted from the spotlights, snarling.           Another video displayed a woman changing into a more humanoid, apelike wolf. Hair-fur sprouted all over her body, and her face seemed to pull apart and reform as a muzzle. She howled, and I shivered, suddenly cold.

          The air conditioner kicked on, and I jerked, swiveling around in my chair.

          The narration continued with the videos. “Most of these people are just like you and me. Ordinary people, trying to make a living, but they went for a jog during a moon or ran out of gas near the woods, or simply walked to a vehicle across a dark parking lot.”

The bone-crunching changes were replaced by jumpsuit-wearing humans working the one-acre farm, at conveyor lines, in the medical bay. “We provide these people with a safe and normal routine o help them cope with their transformations.”

          I pushed back my chair and stretched my legs. Werewolves were real. It felt like a confirmation of something I already knew, such as when my mother told me the man I had called “dad” wasn’t my birth father. Yes, werewolves exist, and yes, they should be contained safely from regular society.

          Perhaps my brain could accept it one level, but a moment later, I scrambled for a trash can across the room. I only dry heaved. From the smell, others had done worse.

I crouched, breathed, then returned to the computer. I tuned out the happy prisoner videos until the final two explained pack dynamics complete with bullet points and quick tips. Currently, the four hundred werewolves at the Sanctuary were divided into nine packs plus loners. Three packs contained the majority of the werewolves: the Volsungs (mostly hulking, humanoid types), the Detroits (USA citizens only), and the Cherry Bombs (all female presenting). Most werewolves came from the lower forty-eight, CRC’s base of operation, but some of the smaller packs consisted of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Algerians, Nigerians, Maori, Australians, and Japanese.

          After the final video, Reyes strolled into the room wearing the same guard uniform as me—khaki with a gun, Taser, tranquilizer, baton, flashlight, and radio. “Ready for the grand tour?”

          Now homogenized with the other guards, he walked me around the fence topped with scythe wire above and cement below. Reyes rolled out a new guard spiel about how the fence was electrified during the change, how all the gates were controlled from a second-story guard room. I had a packet of material waiting in my room to review with procedures, but during the first full moon, less than thirty-six hours away, I would mostly be shadowing Reyes.

          Beyond the fence, the werewolves treated the enclosed area like an exercise yard. Some squatted in the shade of the buildings, some lifted, some played catch. One group sang, harmonizing to an old hymn, the words sometimes lost in humming.

          Reyes rattled the fence, receiving a few shifty glances. “I’m sure we’ll see some action later on. This close to a full moon, they get loony.” He barked a laugh.

          The lot was half a mile square but housed four hundred wolves. Long and low cement barracks were built inside the lot—enough for all the wolves—but the strongest pack usually controlled the buildings, according to Reyes. Currently, the Volsungs occupied them. The packs without shelter slept in a huddled mass against the fence. We passed one, and, like some strange sleepover, the bodies swirled together, their identical orange jumpsuits making it hard to guess where one ended and another began. I blinked and rubbed my sun-aching eyes. Their stench stung my nose. Sweat and unwashed bodies, but something more vinegary, like wild onions or skunk cabbage.

          Reyes pressed the crook of his arm to his nose. “Disgusting, isn’t it? Just picture this when one of them acts human and tries to fool you. Picture this.”

          I wanted to say how I thought it looked rather innocent, but Reyes would rub my nose in it later. The thing was, most were innocent according to the CRC videos. A nurse or a mechanic or a student. The innocence bothered me. If an individual had lived several years as a werewolf without hurting another human, did such a person deserve to be locked away? They had control of it. The corresponding argument would be what happened when they couldn’t control it any longer? Yet to function in these conditions, how did they manage? Not only had they become a monster, but their lives had become a nightmare. Reyes would say monsters deserve to live in a nightmare, but I wouldn’t curse my mechanic to this sanctuary.

          As we patrolled, Reyes pointed out any notable werewolves near the fence—a governor, a rock musician, a porn star, a fancy chef. The blue-collar workers still found employment to help them whittle out their days. Most continued their trade in one of the three long warehouses I’d seen from the copter, which we toured. Still, in their orange jumpsuits, men and women cracked open phones, computer towers, game consoles, laptops, and pried out different bits. The biggest profit came from dismantling and refurbishing electronics, and CRC kept the warehouses staffed twenty-four hours a day on shifts, the reason for the sleeping pile in the middle of the day.

          The tour ended at the dining hall, where I would shadow Reyes during lunch. Like the warehouses, the cafeteria was just outside the fence, accessible by a double gate. Inside, steel tables were bolted to the floor, and no silverware was provided, even plastic. The werewolves’ high protein needs were fulfilled by algae supplements, while the rest of the vegetables were provided by the small farm, as Reyes relayed. He reassured me the guard’s food was imported.

          Pack ordering was obvious during lunch. The Volsungs sauntered in and ate first, devouring what little meat had been offered. The pans were not refilled. The Detroit gang entered as soon as the Volsungs had spread over several tables, taking up extra space. The Cherry Bombs filed in after the Detroits had loaded their trays, and the smaller packs followed the women, though they didn’t butt in front. Because of the tables the Volsungs and Detroits had claimed, many of the prisoners crouched against the wall, shoveling food with their hands.

          Instead of joking and chatting among the packs, only fingernails scraping plastic filled the hall. Reyes nudged me, and I realized I had been gripping my Taser. Such silence reminded me of midnight darkness and what could stalk a man.

          The alphas did pause in their eating to mutter to their lieutenants, glaringe at other alphas, jaws set as if imagining a lunge for the throat.

          I whispered to Reyes, “Is this tension normal?”

As he turned to respond, the Detroit alpha lifted his tray and flicked it at the Volsung alpha’s face. The corner cracked against his nose, and blood gushed, but the Volsung alpha didn’t wipe at it or flinch. He stood slowly, knuckles planted on the table.

Reyes yelled into his radio. “Code Steam, Code Steam!” He jerked out his tranq pistol, and I copied him.

          Two guards closer to the alphas edged forward. One said, “Settle now, settle. Save it for the cage.”

          The other packs had cleared the nearby tables and pressed against the walls.

          The Volsung leader shivered as if he’d shrugged off a coat. My position only afforded a view of the back of his head, but I could see the Detroit alpha’s face. The Volsung appeared to open his mouth, the skin at the base of his skull wrinkling and wrinkling as if his jaw was unhinging.

          I asked Reyes if we should dart him and only realized a few seconds later that I was shouting. Reyes waved me aside. “Wait, wait. Not if we don’t have to.”

The Detroit leader stood strong, but he seemed to shrink, and his lips were moving as if praying. His eyes stared wide, and he was panting. (Later, one of the guards imitated him to the others’ laughter: “But it’s not even dark out! But it’s not even dark out!”)

          I edged around the Cherry Bombs, still holding onto their tables, but each body frozen and angled toward the door, ready to bolt.

          The Volsung came in profile. His jaw hung open as if dislocated, and a wolf’s muzzle snapped and snarled from the hole.

          I darted him twice. Once in the neck and once in the thigh, then holstered my tranq for my pistol. Reyes yelled, but the Volsung’s howl overcame all. The muzzle retreated to wherever the wolf hid, and he shouted, facing me, “Your skin is mine!” He vaulted over the table, bearing only human, harmless teeth, but Reyes and another guard tased him in the side and between the shoulders. He convulsed and dropped to one knee. Reyes brained him, then turned to the room.

          “Get back to eating!” He knocked a tray off the table, splattering the food over the Volsung’s unconscious body. “Now!”

          I wanted to step outside and sit with my head between my knees, but I took a shaky stance behind Reyes. As the packs focused on their plates, only the spine-tingling scritch of fingernails on plastic stabbed the silence.

          Each minute seemed to stretch, and I’d sweat through my shirt before the end. The packs filed out, the remaining Volsungs first, followed hungrily by the Detroits.

Reyes leaned toward me. “There’s going to be trouble in the yard tonight, and they aren’t even fanged yet.”

          The other packs milled around the tables for a ten count before exiting. The cleaning crew came out—apparently members of the Volsungs—as they recounted the face-off beat by beat. Reyes still held his position, watching the door. An Asian woman poked her head inside. She glanced around, sniffed, then padded inside.

          Only scraps stuck to the steel pans, but she scooped them clean, licking her fingers. A brawny Middle Eastern man and another man, Jamaican maybe, cleaned out the other bowls.

          One of the Volsungs stomped over. “All right, all right, that’s enough. Don’t want to touch it after you’ve drooled all over it.”

          The woman shoved him. “You already ate your fill.”

          The other two men stopped, their hands half-full. They edged past the cleaning crew and bolted, but the woman scooped the last of the mashed potatoes, then strolled toward the door, licking the mush as if it were ice cream.

          She paused at the threshold near Reyes but kept her eyes straight ahead. “I told you there’d be trouble, didn’t I?” She passed through.

          Reyes rolled his eyes, then left the cafeteria. “They’re the loners. Other packs don’t like them.”

          I followed him outside. “Why not?”

          “Different breed of wolf.” We waited for the double gate as the lone woman walked back to the enclosure. Reyes patted his holster. “Not different enough to outrun a bullet.”

          Reyes released me at the dorms, where I found a packet on my bed with a duties list. For my first change in two days, I stayed posted in the control room, but the next day, I would join Reyes for an observational day patrol, whatever that might be.

●●●

Forty-eight hours later, the sunset in the control room, spreading the last reds and pinks. The second story of the barracks acted as a high-tech prison tower and was placed in total electric lockdown for the night. Even if the wolves escaped the fence, entrance from outside was impossible.

          Along the entire fence, blinding spotlights flicked on, soon collecting swirls of moths and mosquitos.

          I sat at a computer screen divided into four camera views—section ten. Twenty computers lined the wall with a large projector screen in the center featuring a map spotted with red dots of the electric-chipped prisoners. Salted regular guards operated three-quarters of the computers, the remainder manned by newcomers experiencing our first change. The regulars circled the room, collecting sheets of paper with what looked like brackets printed on the front and back.

          Reyes stopped at my terminal and nodded at the clocking blinking down to moonrise. “Still got twenty minutes to make a bet.”

          “I wouldn’t know who to choose.” I attempted a good-old-guard smile.

          He handed me a blank bracket. “For next time.”

          I folded and pocketed it without looking. Maybe it was the fresh-out-of-college naiveté or an old Sunday school inhibition, but these were people, even if they were sick. I wouldn’t bet on a dog fight, let alone prisoners.

          My screen displayed no movement, but the main projector showed clusters in all four corners of the lot. Different colors denoted the packs. Volsungs were red, Detroits blue, Cherry Bombs pink, and the remaining packs yellow.

          With two minutes until official moonrise, a brightness glowed along the horizon. A long howl swung into the darkness, rising in pitch and surety, wildness cutting like frost. Since the screens had no speakers, the howl crossed distance and glass, pressing me to my seat. No animal would leave its den tonight, least of all me.

          The lead guard, a retired Marine named Cho, ordered camera angles that featured the packs to go front screen. “Let’s give these chew toys a show.”

          To watch the change felt like peeping, not on sex, but something bloody, ancient. An unveiling of nature, claiming once again that she was not owned, her secrets still kept.

The change seemed different for each person. On some, the human skin peeled off like a membrane. Sometimes, their humanity just disintegrated, a wolf lunging out. Others clawed away their skin and shed it by writhing on the dirt. Some truly shifted, seemed to merely step into another form. Some remained humanoid except for the elongated muzzle. Others could have belonged in a zoo, loping back and forth, tongues lolling.

The Volsung pack leader seemed larger than a wolf, crouching, half-human, half fanged. Most of his pack were hybrids, true wolfmen, or if not humanoid, of a monstrous size. While the Detroits couldn’t match the Volsungs for size, they outnumbered them, and seconds after the change, the pack darted through the shadows, their blue dots crossing ground twice as fast as the Volsungs.

          Cho yelled to keep the Detroits on screen, so we faced our computers, calling out when they passed through our sections. They raced through mine, spurts of green flame to the night vision cameras.

          I muttered to the guard next to me, Jake Jones, according to his badge, “It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

          He snorted. “You want to go down there and play diplomat? Be my guest.”

          Section eighteen was the battlefield, and Cho ordered those camera views projected on the front screen. I focused on my terminal, marking activity, not looking over my shoulder, but I couldn’t block out the other guards.

          This night was their football match. Even the new guards joined the cheering and roaring out of names. From the reactions, strength outmatched speed. The Detroits were losing—no surprise since strength also meant the best food first and probably more advantages.

          Other noises permeated the control room: howls, squeals, death screams, and something more as if their furred throats hitched for syllables.

          I finished my four-hour shift, and per regulations, went straight to my room. Only when I sat on my bed did my muscles release. My hands shook, which I hid by staying busy. Showering, setting out a clean uniform, prepping, and storing my fear for the morning patrol.

          I stretched out in bed, but my breathing felt irregular, and when I rolled upright, I started hyperventilating. I crouched in the corner, hanging my head between my knees until I could breathe, and nausea had stopped flooding my mouth with saliva. I spit into my waste can.

          This wasn’t humane, none of it. Not the wolves, not the guards, not this sanctuary.

          An overwhelming desire to tell someone, to cement the details, filled me with energy. I paced the room, hands clasped behind my head, kneading my fingers into my skull. How could so many just watch? How could I just watch?

          I paced until my feet blistered. All night their violence sang.

●●●

As ordered, I met Reyes and another new guard in full biohazard gear just after dawn. Reyes lumbered over and signaled for the gate. We drove a land rover with a wagon into the compound, but no humans were in sight. Reyes drove clockwise around the fence.           “We’re looking for bodies and fence damage. Speak up if you see something.”

          Not even paw prints marred the dust. The perimeter clear, we started on the next circle twenty feet away from the fence. The brightening morning light separated lumps of fur from the prickly scrub. Reyes braked for a dead wolf. Blood matted the fur, and it seemed to have collapsed mid-stride, legs splayed.

          I fingered my gun. “Do we need to make sure?”

          “Nah, if it’s not human after sunrise, then it’s dead. Just put it in the wagon.”

          The other newbie, Sam Carlyle, swung out, and Reyes glared at me. “They’re heavy as hell. You’ll need to help.”

          I picked up the front paws, and their head lolled as if his neck were broken. His fur was black-silver, side torn apart until his ribs showed.

          Reyes grimaced as we swung the body into the wagon. “Won’t get much for him. Hide’s too chewed up.”

          I huffed, climbing into the rover and brushing black hairs off my gloves. “Get much?”

          “After each moon, we skin the dead ones and sell the hides to distributors in Norway.”

          An angry exclamation welled up, but Sam Carlyle beat me to it.

          “They were human once. They should be buried.”

          I agreed as Reyes braked beside, two wolves still snarling in death, jaws locked on throats. Reyes yelled after us as we pried open the jaws, the wolves too heavy to carry together.

          “Let’s see if you feel this way next month.”

          We passed bloody masses of sleeping packs. Vultures swirled like smoke signals, and I considered asking about checking for wounded. But Reyes would say something like:           What do you think they are? Human?

          So I just looked away. As if thinking the same thing, the other guard watched me, then followed my lead. Only near the gate did I see somebody walking around. The loner, the Asian woman, meandered toward the gate as if to intercept us. Reyes slowed, the loaded wagon creaking.

          Blood reddened her lips and chin, more on her hands. She paused to snap a grimy bone over her knee and sucked at the marrow like a candy stick.

          Tension iron-rodded through me. These are people! I wanted to shout in Reyes’ ear.           I swung off the moving rover, stumbling but catching my feet. Reyes swore as he whipped the rover around, but I jogged to meet the loner.

          “Are you hurt?”

          She looked me up and down, worrying the splintered bone.

          “Do you need assistance?”

          Her gaze shifted over my shoulder as the rover approached. “Just curious.” She hurled the bone pieces against the windshield so hard, the bones exploded, bits flying. Reyes braked and screamed at her.

          She’d sprinted off, vaulting over brush and rock, running so fast the rover was just a slug.

●●●

We left the wolf bodies in a large freezer. Reyes ordered us to finish the job while he filed a report against the loner. Deep in the blue, humming box, the other guard Sam stopped. His breath frosted his bio hazard mask, and he lifted it to whisper.

          “What do you think about this?”

          They could be listening. This place had enough cameras. I pointed to my ear, then rolled my eyes to the ceiling. The other guard nodded, flushing.

          “I think it sucks hauling dead wolves,” I said. “No wonder they make the newbies do it.”

          Since I’d completed a night shift and a day patrol, my only assignment was to sleep and not leave the barracks. Now, I knew the guards wouldn’t be watching the screens during the blood bath, especially the screens to the guard barracks, so I waited for the violent whine to wrinkle the night and simply walked outside.

          No alarm sounded, and no one chased me down. From guard stories, I knew it wasn’t the first time. Something drew nearly everyone during a change. The magic, the horror, the thrill. I walked the shadows and avoided the icy moonlight. Wolves wouldn’t come near the gate, so I jogged around the fence until a shadow flitted through a moonbeam. I stayed a few yards back to avoid showing up on the cameras.

          A white wolf loped toward the fence. It panted, then cocked its head and winked.

          Some instinct prompted me to say, “Just curious.”

          She lowered on her front paws, tail rising and white tip flicking. Could it be the woman?

          Her ears swiveled left, and she streaked like a comet. A shadow carved after her, howling and slavering.

          I stepped toward the fence. “Hey!”

          Another shadow, this one humanoid, leaped at the fence, snapping very wolfish jaws, bloody spit flying. He backed up, then took another running leap, crashing against the chain link.

          I fell backward, scrambling like a crab. Something ancient as this curse screamed inside to run, so I did, in the dark where no one could see, until the moonlight was softened by manmade lights, until I could hide in the windowless box of my bedroom.

Again, as my adrenalin drained, the desire to write it all down, to tell someone, became overpowering. I laid down and forced myself to remember. To lock in each detail and memorize the night.

          The next evening, I held the moonset shift and witnessed the end of the cycle as the wolves seemed to retract into human form. Muzzle melting into the jaw. Ears folding back to nothing. Eyes dulling from their moon-yellow sheen.

          The routine guard replaced my shift, and, now allowed to leave the barracks, I used my downtime to walk the perimeter. The sunrise bloodied the ground, and I scanned for furred lumps among the scrub, though I doubted to see them by the fence. Even so, I searched for a white patch like snow.

          She appeared while I was on lunch duty two hours later—and she winked. As before, she ate scraps before the cleaning crew, Cherry Bomb members this time, finished. They let her and the other loners take their time. They seemed fewer, only the woman and another man I hadn’t seen before. The wolf-now-woman had survived without a scratch, but blood still tinged her lips, dull as if she had tried to scrub it off. I stared at her, leaning forward slightly, hoping some wolfish sixth sense would turn her—I needed more, to know if she recognized me, if wolf and woman shared the same experiences—but she left munching a bruised apple.

          The new moon was spent resting, but the next day, the human wolves returned to their assigned tasks. Reyes took me with him on farm patrol, which involved mostly driving the rover in circles. The farmland stretched along the cliffs and had a shorter fence with barbed wire at the top. At the corners, guards monitored the workers from towers. The sea breeze salted everything and kept the temperature right for strawberries. Reyes told me they made thousands off exporting them.

          Field guard duty, I found out the next week, mostly involved keeping track of pack dynamics. The packs carefully mixed on the worksites, numbers even, but whatever dispute had inspired the bloodshed seemed to have vanished with the moon. The human wolves yelled jokes across the rows, sang radio hits, ate lunch together with less regard for pack orderings, helped out if someone was struggling with a heavy load. Certain people often seemed the brunt of jokes—the betas, Reyes explained—but even they laughed it off.

          “It’s a little night and day,” I said to Reyes while walking the electronics recycling factory.

          Reyes stretched, a meaty smell wafting from his stained armpits. He would still train me for another two weeks until the next change. “That moon-madness turns them into animals. This peace will crack by next week.”

          The betas started it, demanding the respect they thought they deserved for being two-legged. They snarled and cursed when another member of the pack ate off their plate. They shoved when somebody tried to pinch their ass.

          Week three and pack tensions sectioned the dining hall, mainly the Detroits and the Volsungs again, but the Cherry Bombs were in full support of the Detroits as shown by mixing their packs during meals. That doubled the numbers against the Volsungs. The guards were already drawing up brackets.

          The woman continued to ignore me, but I found out by asking Reyes general questions about the loners that she had no name and rarely spoke. They called her J since she’d come from some black market deal in Japan. Not quite right in the head, Reyes said. That’s why she didn’t have a pack.

          But I hadn’t seen crazy, just another trapped person—like the rest of us.

          I usually had the day shift unless I need to fill in, so at night, I’d walk the fence. Her loner status meant she wouldn’t sleep with the other packs, so maybe I’d find her. Never did I call her J, usually the white wolf woman in my thoughts. I believed, for some reason, that she would tell me her name when I asked.

          The moon was a bright sickle, shedding enough light to walk the scrublands. After a few miles, the moon right overhead, I saw her. She wasn’t alone. Four others faced her, but from her hand gestures, she spoke animatedly.

          I took one step too close, and though yards away, they stopped and whipped toward me. I froze. Even in human form, beneath the moon and the wind, something dark orbited them.

          The woman cooed as she approached, then hummed a wordless song often heard in the fields, a longing song. She leaned against the fence, and I flinched, waiting for the buzz and yelp. The woman laughed.

          She slapped the links, so the metal clashed, a lightning sound that made me stumble backward.

          “That’s the trouble with caging electricians and engineers. We’re smart.”

          One of the shadowy figures hissed. “You’ll ruin us all.”

          She kept her gaze fixed on me, and I edged closer. “No need to worry,” she said. And I wasn’t sure if she spoke to me or them. “He’s my man on the inside.” She pressed her face to the fence links and sparked a memory of the drawings I’d made as a child. A fine grid placed overtop a face, scratching in detail section by section. “Aren’t you my spy man?”

          I nodded and stepped closer.

          A smoker’s growl spoke from the group. “You should have consulted us.”

She wove her fingers through the chain link, and I held out my hand, the barest tips brushed my palm. I wondered if that’s what grass felt like on paws.

          The largest shadow growled and melded into the night. The others followed, vanishing among the scrub-marked land, even with the moon bright as it was.

The woman sat cross-legged, knees pressed against the fence. “You’ll be missed if you stay much longer.”

I knelt. “What do I call you?” Her unwashed, earthy scent overlaid the salty air.

“I am the white wolf,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“I am part of the moon.”

The moon shifted from a wisp of a cloud because the fence and land gleamed until all looked lunar.

No woman sat before me but a white wolf. I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, but the wolf only cocked her head, stood, stretched, then loped off.

“Wait!” I stood, gripping the fence. “I want to help you.”

She flicked her tail and padded on.

I replayed that gesture with each step of my return to the barracks. Had she acknowledged my offer or dismissed it? Or both. But I knew something she wanted—to be on the other side of the fence. Was her change true or just an illusion? No training mentioned wolves changing at will.

The moon gleamed off the metal watchtowers. Moths gathered and swirled around the spotlights like dancers. On this island in the far dark ocean, the lights were just lightning bugs compared to the moon that controlled the black mass encircling us.

I paced my room until breakfast, another debate raging. If I turned her in, probable promotion, more money to pay off college debt. But I was trained to guard prisoners, people who decided to break the law and now faced the consequences. The people behind the fence were dragged into an experience worse than hell once a month with no choice. The word sanctuary was a mockery.

But I’d been in enough prisons to know that justice wasn’t the priority, not when there was money to be made—here, off labor and pelts.

Except I couldn’t forget these wolves could and did kill. I’d be responsible for that if I—if I what?
I spent the days leading to the full moon ignoring the white wolf as studiously as she ignored me. The night before the change, I filled out a bracket to avoid suspicion, but as blood and hair stained the ground, I couldn’t cheer. I couldn’t look away, either. The violence needed to reinforce my decision.

The battlefield was section nine, so the wounded fled, or limped, through section ten, my screen. Sometimes, their lights blinked out. As the previous human scuffles had suggested, the Cherry Bombs teamed up with the Detroits and sent the Volsungs scampering.

On corpse patrol the next morning, I half expected to find the white wolf, but she made no appearance. Ten bodies. The last one made me vomit in the bushes, ripping off my hazmat helmet just in time. He’d died so far off from the fighting we almost missed him. An emaciated black wolf, tortured. One of the humanoid ones.

Each finger had been gnawed off and eaten since we found no remains in the dirt. The tail had been bit off and partially consumed. One leg was chewed, to the bone, the foot missing just below the dewclaw. The ears were shreds, and the killing blow clawed open his chest.

The other officer suggested we leave him for a midnight snack, but I said no. The pelt was worthless, but I wouldn’t encourage cannibalism. We put the body in the freezer with the others.
The first night when the moon returned, a fingernail sliver, I walked to the spot I’d found the white wolf. She wasn’t there, so I hummed the melody often, thrumming through the fields between changes.
She appeared on my left, following the fence. She plucked the chains; they sounded like breaking glass.
Anger flared, and I scrambled to my feet, stomping along the fence to meet her. “You call me your inside man, but you’re all just violent monsters.”
She looked up at me. The moon shone behind her, shadowing her face. It looked grim, almost evil.
“Did you take a bite out of José, too?”
His chip had identified him because I couldn’t tell beneath the torture. I rattled the fence.
“José?” She ran her tongue along her teeth. “Oh, you mean Blackstar. He missed the dry canyons.”
“You’re all cannibals! You want freedom, but you eat each other!”
She tilted her face to the stars. “He told me stories of running miles over cool sand with the moon so, so large above him.” She turned away, her words caught on the wind. “Check his stomach.”
“What’s that going to prove? You kill your own each full moon.”
She faced the fence. “Removing those who would reveal our plans.”
“I’m glad you can justify your monstrosity. You have to live with it.”
She leaned against the fence. “You are very good at justification, too.”
I shook my head and left, kicking up dust and scrub. Reyes was right. After a month, I believed in fences.

●●●

Even so, Blackstar came to me in my dreams. He’d sit in the corner of the room, biting at his shoulder like a dog with an itch until he crunched bone.
The dream woke me one morning an hour before breakfast. Sweat-drenched and jaw aching as if I had been grinding my teeth all night, I dressed and went to the freezer.
My sweaty hair stiffened, and I shivered (or trembled—I couldn’t tell) as I approached the heap of wolves. A metallic tang condensed in the air and on my tongue. I tried not to swallow. Fur stuck to the icy walls.
I used a hacksaw to finish what claws had started, sawing Blackstar from the chest down. I pried open the folds of frozen pelt. White shards stuck through his stomach. I knifed the membrane, and bone bits glistened with blood. His stomach was full of fragments and patches of skin. I broke off most of a black-furred finger, then dropped it as if burned. He’d eaten himself.

●●●

The next morning, the woman fixed me in her gaze the moment she loped into the cafeteria. I nodded, and she grinned or maybe leered, before scooping brown-dry eggs to eat out of her hand.
The thought of being near the fence when not on duty made my pulse spike. Instead, I took part in the other half of being a good guard—hating what you guarded. I instigated a round of betting on what day the first altercation would occur. This action seemed to clear me with Reyes as he told stories of how guards had killed werewolves in the past. About how once he and his buddies had gotten drunk and taken potshots during a full moon. He’d almost been fired, but, hell, it’d been worth it to see them run.
As my third full moon neared, the lunar restlessness began—arguments, black eyes. First blood drawn was between two members of the Cherry Bombs fighting in the double gate before lunch. One woman bit the other’s shoulder to the bone. Besides the blood, the fight seemed staged, now that I knew to look. Two members of the same social scale rarely fought. The Detroits and the Volsungs postured as usual, but only doled out a few scratches.
The night watch recorded too much nightly movement for the likings of the guards, so a night patrol was issued, one guard in a rover circling the fence the week before the full moon. I was on the first patrol, thankfully, since the chew toys were always assigned such jobs. At breakfast before my nightly patrol, I caught the white wolf’s eye. She jutted out her chin, which I took as a confirmation.

She waited with three others at the usual spot. I turned off the rover and joined them at the fence.
I tapped my radio. “I can’t stay long. I have to call in at certain checkpoints. But something’s going on, right?”
She hooked her fingers through the chain link. “We have a request.”
I hitched my thumbs in my belt. “Anything I can do to help.”
“Let me bite you.”
I shrank back. “What?”
She pressed her face to the chain link. “But you won’t change until the first moon. Then you can infect others from the inside.”
“I said I would help, not—”
One of the shadows spoke, “Become a monster?” He stepped forward, one of the mid-level Volsungs.
“Not join a pack,” I said instead.
He stood beside the white wolf and crossed his arms. “You are part of a pack, the ruling one.”
“Look, I don’t have time for this. I will help you any way I can from the inside.”
“How?” said the Volsung. “You won’t bite. You won’t shoot.”
The white wolf growled, and the moon seemed to dim.
My radio crackled. “You missed your check-in three minutes ago,” Reyes said.
I backed toward the rover. “I can try to bring you some bolt cutters—”
The third wolf trotted closer, a Cherry Bomb beta. She hunched her shoulders and snarled. “You don’t think we can get out of this fence on our own?”
The white wolf woman plucked at the fence. “What will you do? Watch?”
I hooked my fingers through the fence. I had been watching. For too long. “I’m not on guard duty the first night of the full moon, which means I can open the barracks for you. All the guards should be stationed inside per regulations.”
The white wolf woman pressed a palm to my fingers. “We will sing to you when we are ready.”
I swung into the rover and gunned it. I told Reyes I’d seen some movement in the bushes near checkpoint two and was worried about digging. All I’d found was a few of them doing it doggie style. He got a laugh about that and let it drop with a comment about hoping I had my binos.

●●●

The first night of the full moon, it hung low and sharp-edged against a clear sky. I stood in the common room before the large windows facing the cliff. The moon’s reflection in the ocean showed where the land turned to air. Waves hummed, stirred by the same moon stirring my blood.
The howling breached the walls and windows, racing like wind around the building. But it wasn’t singing—just a call of violence, the last drop of spectacle to lull the guards—so I suspected.
As the moon clawed into the stars, blinding the sky, the howling hum shifted to a chorus. A working song snarled with hot blood. I keyed in my security code and wedged open the main door as the wolves ran through the artificial lights like dark comets. I retreated to the common room and faced a long window opening to the dark ocean. Behind me, claws scrabbled against the cement floor, and ragged breath gasped and huffed.
Soon, alarms sounded, followed by bullets.
Gunfire sparked on the second level, and the howling returned, death screams and painful shrieks, unknowable from man or wolf.
The lights flickered off, the alarms silencing. The wolves kept coming. I didn’t turn around as some passed nearly silent, others dragging themselves into the barracks, up the stairs to the guard room.
Near moonset, the screaming stopped, a final voice cut off like the alarms. I wondered if it were Reyes.
I turned my back on the moon and faced the blood. The Volsung leader, in his hulking humanoid form, leaned against the door. He’d taken a bullet to the chest, and his body slumped, he propped open the gateway. A red trail led to the stairs where a mangled guard stretched crooked and curled up at the bottom step. Jake Jones. I stepped over the body.
Some guards died easy—broken necks, slit throat. Others, the hated ones, part of Reyes’ group, were mangled. I tallied the bodies as I walked toward the control room. My body count. I had killed them with an open door.
Not all of the guards. As I climbed to the control room, my count suggested twenty were missing. Gone wolf, I assumed—just as I had. I didn’t grow hair or teeth, but I’d switched packs, joined the monsters, or simply swapped sides. Maybe there were no monsters, or rather no such things as humans.
All the wolves crammed into the control room. They’d broken the windows and made extra space by hurling outside computer chairs and anything not bolted to the floor. When I stepped over the threshold, the tension whipped me back a pace. Bloody-smelling wolves snarled, then relaxed.
She stood in human form by the broken window where glass shards jutted like teeth.
She stretched her hand toward me. “Come, watch the moon set with us.”
It hovered, framed by the jagged-toothed window, that icy orb, so small yet so large. The light glinted off the glass as if it were diamonds.
I stepped forward, and the werewolves parted. Some dipped their heads.
“What are they doing?” I whispered through grit teeth.
“Thanking you.”
The moonlight glittered in their yellow eyes. I inched toward the white wolf woman. One snap and I would no longer be human.
I stood beside her. The others began to whine. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s sing her to sleep.” She shrank from human to wolf, then they all tilted their heads and howled.
The music filled my chest, a thrum in my throat. The words to their melody were so close to the surface, a song for the moon.
When the humans suspected something wrong and came for the island, I would be taken. Even if I wiped every piece of security footage, bloodied myself, it would follow me in one form or another. There was a revolt, and they let that guard live.
I grazed the white wolf’s shoulder, hair coarse and cold. “I’m like you. Neither wolf nor human.”
My bones itched. I dug my fingernails into my arm and peeled back the skin to free black fur beneath. The song spiked, words ringing as I tore myself apart.