Chapter 1

“Help!”

I know, strange way to start a story, me screaming at you like that, but they say you need to grab the reader’s attention right off the bat. Help!I figured would do just that. Plus, you know, help was just what I needed. I mean, I was locked in a cage, my life in jeopardy of being snuffed out—which was par for the course, but still. In any case, help!seemed right on up there with the greats: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; Call me Ishmael; Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret.And I only needed four little letters to get my point across. Take that, Judy Blume!

Anyway, back to that aforementioned help I was shouting for. No, it wasn’t my best moment, to be certain, what with me being a superhero and all. Fierce. That’s my name; pleased to meet you. Though I’m guessing you’ve probably already heard of me, me being famous and all. And yes, that’s me blowing my own horn. Louis Armstrong should blow a horn so well, in fact.

All that being said, and in case you’ve been living under a rock and have yet to hear of my, you know, greatness, here’s my story in a nutshell:

As a baby, I was raised by wolves in the mountainous wilds of Montana.

I have super powers. Like, seriously super.

I catch bad guys for a living. For free! Minus, of course, the well-merited and desperately sought-after publicity.

But, you ask, raised by wolves? Come on now, Fierce, really? Does that actually happen? Wolves eat babies, don’t they? I mean dingoes do—or so I’ve heard, a la one Miss Meryl Streep—so it stands to reason that wolves do, too. Though not these wolves. These were tame wolves. Well, tameish. They were zoo wolves, hand-raised by humans. Except, they escaped during a freak storm, back to the wilds from whence their ancestors came, never to be seen again.

I saw them right off the bat, though. Well, sawish. I mean, I was a baby at the time, my eyesight not what it is today—which is freakishly strong, by the way. And yes, toot, toot, my horn doth bloweth, yet again. Gabriel in the heavens up above turns green with envy at my tooting abilities. Oh, and in case you hadn’t already surmised it, superhero, at least in my case, equates to super ego. Freud missed out big time on the likes of yours truly.

But I digress. Back to the wolves.

Best I could figure it—seeing as, again, I was just a baby at the time—the initial wolf pack consisted of ten wolves that once inhabited a small zoo on the outskirts of Billings, Montana. One fateful day, a tornado hit. A big one. Huge even! Dorothy would’ve shit her panties it was so friggin’ massive. Anyway, from what I’ve read, the storm struck quite suddenly, too suddenly for the folks at the zoo to be able to corral all the animals beforehand, so, when the fencing to the wolves’ enclosure twisted and uprooted, out they sped. The zoo figured they died in the storm, except, well, duh, they didn’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be hearing this account right now, right? Then help!would’ve been lost to the cosmos. A truly sad thought, I know.

Now then, wolves, it should be noted, are wily and smart creatures, so the first thing they did was run. Free at last, free at last! In other words, once the storm broke, they found themselves as far away from humans as they could get. Eventually, they wound up along the outskirts of Granite Peak, which is the highest natural point in all of Montana, the tenth highest state highpoint in the nation. Granite Peak is also the second most difficult state highpoint to climb because of the generally poor weather and equally poor delineated pathways. Montana being so sparsely populated to begin with, the wolves could easily escape and literally never again be spotted. Which is just what they did, until, ultimately, they were spotted by the tiny likes of me. Fate! Or, you know, simply pure dumb luck. Depends on if your glass is half full, I suppose.

Now then, the wolves’ story was easy enough to figure out. The tornado was public record, their escape as well. I was eventually found at the age of seven by some intrepid climbers along the slopes of Granite Peak, so that must’ve been where the wolves had escaped to. That part of the puzzle was therefore easy enough to piece together; my part, however, was far more complicated. Only recently did I uncover the pieces needed to finish that troubling puzzle of mine. Sadly, the uncovering led to that aforementioned caging, to that genius first line of help!

As for being raised by the wolves, well, the memories are a bit hazy, like a dream, really. I mean, I was found by those climbers when I was seven. How much of your childhood do you remember from the age of seven and younger? Granted, my childhood was, shall we say, more feral than yours—or so I’m guessing—but still. And it was a happy childhood, of that I was certain. I was loved, tended to. I had playmates, however furry and toothy though they were. I suckled on my adopted mom’s teats as a baby—first and last time for everything—ate what the pack caught when I got older, and hunted with them until my eventual “rescue.” In other words, I had a family and learned of the world around me—not book smarts so much as street smarts, however rocky those streets might have been. It was an Eden-like upbringing, but eventually the apple was offered and promptly chomped upon

As to being rescued, it’s a term I abhor. After all, I had a good life, free of the evils of the world. I had a loving mother and family, a carefree existence. Still, I was a child, what the hell did I know? Eventually, I would’ve grown lonely, bored, more keenly aware of my differences from the pack. Evil, after all, is enticing to a human. I mean, why else would we have left Eden? For free cable and Twitter? Granted, a Big Mac is far more enticing than a bloody deer carcass, but, you know, what isn’t?

Still, rescued is what I was. I’d been alone that day, out gathering berries along the pack’s outer territory. My wolf mom taught me hunting; I’d learned gathering on my own, had even fashioned a rather fetching toga out of deer hide. I guess my fashionista gene was loathe to remain dormant, even in the wilds of Montana.