When I awoke, I was laying not quite comfortably on a pile of woven blankets. A fire burned somewhere to my left, and Seth, who had been reclothed in leather garments, was unconscious on my right side. From what I could see, I was in a den of some sort, with various Native American paraphernalia cluttering up the already small space. My heart shot straight into my throat when I saw a pile of said paraphernalia shift in a chair. I realized the pile was actually a person; an old woman, to be exact. Beneath an old, feathered headdress, her face was leathery and covered with so many wrinkles I could hardly distinguish the original shape. Gray hair fell over her stooped shoulders, which were covered with a heavy black cloak. A gnarled wooden staff was gripped in her equally gnarled hand, the top of which formed some sort of small cage out of branchlike protrusions. A small glass globe rested in the center.

"Awake, are we?" she asked, her voice cracked with age. "Finally. Thought you'd never get up."

"Who are you?" I asked cautiously, sitting up slowly. "Why did you attack us?"

"Why? You were getting too close to my cave. When you found it, you would have told your animal friends all about me, and that wouldn't have been any good." She smiled, and somehow the action seemed wicked. "As for who I am... I'm an old shaman. I've been here for centuries, watching as the world changed and grew polluted. I've been forgotten, and that is alright with me."

I could not comprehend what I was hearing. "What? You've been here for centuries? How? And why are you messing with the tribe that you belong to?"

"How? Why? I'll tell you all in one answer. My tribe overestimated my talents and asked me to do that which I could not do. In the end, I released an evil spirit into the world and it took control of me. I was exiled, and here I sit to this day." She straightened up as well as she could, haughtily almost, in her chair. "If that's not a reason to disturb the peace, I don't know what is. I like to cause chaos from time to time. Occasionally people are killed. I care little. But you were threatening to bring me to light, and I could not let that happen."

An evil spirit. Great, why don't we just bring warlocks and demons into the equation and throw a whole supernatural party? "You never tried to rid yourself of the spirit?" I asked.

"Why should I? It's given me eternal life and power beyond anything I was capable of before." She pushed herself to her feet, bones creaking and clothes rustling.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Oh, don't worry. It'll be creative, whatever it is." She smiled at me with blackened teeth. Eternal life obviously did not provide its own dental plan. "I think perhaps I'll turn you into the beast you fear the most. How does that sound?" She tilted the staff, aiming the glass end toward me.

"I'm not afraid of wolves anymore." I informed her.

She seemed put out. "Oh, really? Well, that does ruin things, doesn't it? What are you afraid of now?"

"I don't know, I haven't had a chance to find out yet." I told her. What am I doing? my mind screamed. What am I supposed to be doing?

The corner of her wide mouth quirked up. "Would you like me to find out for you?" She lunged, the staff aimed at my head, and it would have connected were it not for the foot that shot out just in time and kicked it away. "Stay away from her." Seth growled, getting unsteadily to his feet.

She was distracted. I'd be damned if I was going to let this chance pass by. I launched myself at her, tackling her to the floor. She tried to fend me off with her staff but I clung on. "What did you do to the pack?" I demanded.

"Why should you care? You'll be dead soon, or worse!" she promised with a manic gleam in her ancient eyes.

The sound of metal scraping against something like leather reached my ears, and suddenly there was a knife at the shaman's throat. "What did you do to them?" Seth asked.

She glowered at him. "It is a curse. One of four viral curses. One person gets it, and the next to touch their blood takes it upon himself. This particular curse is for the werewolves, and the longer you bear it, the more you become a feral animal permanently." She spat in his face on the word "permanently", sneering at him.

"How do we undo it?" I asked, because I knew who bore it now. I had previously suspected that Sam had received the virus, since he'd pulled Seth off of me. But Seth had not been in wolf form, so no one attacked him and no one touched his blood. He still had it.

"You can't!" she laughed. "There is no spell to break the curse! You must keep passing it on to one another, or become an animal." She began to laugh, then. It was a horrible laugh, one that grated on my nerves. The staff. I was still touching the staff. Maybe the was the source of her power, and, once broken, things would be reset. It was a longshot, but I decided to give it a go. I tried to yank it from her grasp, but she was stronger than she looked. So I rose to my feet and slammed my knee into the wood. It splintered, and on the second try, broke clean in half.

"NO!" she howled, clutching the broken pieces. "You evil little child! Look what you've done!"

I looked at Seth, stepping back from the screaming shaman. "Feel any different?"

"No." he said, his face pale and drawn, like he was about to be sick. "I – Nani, I need to get out of here, I-"

"Go." I said. "She's one old woman without her staff. I can hold her off."

His form was blurring even as he raced to the opening of the den. My heart was beating fast, threatening to leap out of my throat. I didn't want to lose him. I didn't want him to hurt anyone, but I didn't have a lot of options. I looked down at the old woman. "Okay, listen, 'ilio wahine; I've broken your staff. You can't work magic, so tell me how to fix the pack."

Instead of answering me, she burst out laughing. "You think a flimsy piece of wood is the source of my power? You're more stupid than you look."

I didn't know what to do. Up until recently, I'd never been involved with the supernatural. I'd never had any training in fighting evil shamans or curing a werewolf pack of an ancient curse. I wished I'd made Seth stay; even if he did go nuts, the shaman would have been the main target. Now he might go and infect somebody else, and I was still no closer to helping him.

"I still don't understand." I said, if only to keep from having to face her magic for a little while. "You've been sitting here for centuries wreaking havoc on the same tribe. Not only are they too stupid to figure out there's a shaman out here, but you haven't done very much damage. What's the point?"

"The point?" she sneered. "The point is..." Her voice deepened, trailed off, and then her face went slack. I stepped back as what was perhaps the weirdest thing I'd ever seen unfolded before my eyes. Her eyes went black – irises, whites, everything. Everything about her looked dead. She was slumped, her mouth hanging open, her limbs laying limp at her sides. Then, she became reanimated, though it was more like something was taking control of her. The blackness of her eyes brightened, like there was life behind them, and she straightened up. "You make a good argument." she said, though it wasn't her voice. It was deep, frightening, and sounded... evil. "This shell I've been surviving in is of little use to me, but in her exile, I was unable to leave my host. I've been doing what I can to destroy this tribe that woke me from my slumber, but she was too weak. You, on the other hand," The dark eyes looked me up and down. "You are young, strong, and, even better, the tribe trusts you. You will be perfect."

"Perfect? What do you-"

Three things happened then. Almost all of them on top of each other so I barely had time to figure it all out. Smoke burst out of the shaman from every available outlet. She crumpled to the ground and began disintegrating, becoming a pile of gray ash on the floor. I didn't even see the full process because, in a split second, the smoke enveloped me. I couldn't breath. It felt like someone was forcing sandpaper down my throat, and my head was going to explode. Memories were swirling through my mind that weren't mine, intentions that weren't my own became all I could think about.

Stay quiet, said an evil voice in my mind. And you will not be in pain.