It would have to do. It wasn’t like we could go to the hospital. I couldn’t even look up online and find out how to treat werewolf injuries. I already knew they weren’t like wolf or human injuries. That was about the extent of our knowledge, though.
“There was a guy,” Alarick said from inside the shower while I slammed the medicine cabinet for the third time. “He attacked us in the parking lot.”
“Us?” I asked, my chest joining my stomach in the rebellion against normal functioning. “Where’s Adolf?”
“He wanted to finish his shift at the club,” Alarick said. “He’s fine. He seemed to heal while he was… Wolfed out.”
He lowered his voice on the last few words. The weird thing was, we didn’t talk about what we were, but it was always there, in everything we did. No matter how normal we pretended to be, the facts didn’t change. We were freaks.
“Wait,” I said, my fingers curling around the edge of the sink to steady myself. “Adolf went wolf? In the middle of the parking lot? Oh shit. We should be getting the fuck out of Memphis, not showering and finishing work.”
“We went into the woods before it happened,” Alarick said.
“The woods?”
“That gulley,” he said. “The one behind the club, where the lights don’t shine.”
“Why the fuck did you go into the junkie grove with a guy who attacked you?”
“He was like us, Donovan,” my brother said, and the water shut off with a thud. He yanked back the curtain and stared out of the steam at me, watching my reaction as the realization of what that meant sank in. The diagonal slashes across his face made more sense now. I’d always been horrified at the truth about us, about what we were capable of. I knew we could hurt someone without thought or intention. But we didn’t. That was the point. Now I saw what it looked like when a monster like us attacked someone. Bile rose in my throat, and I bowed my head over the sink, closing my eyes and trying to breathe, to get my shit together.
“He knew what we were,” Alarick said, his voice quiet. “He kept saying there were more like us. When he attacked us… I think he wanted us to go wolf. He provoked us until we had no choice but to show ourselves.”
“There’s always a choice,” I whispered, remembering the words our first adoptive mother had said before she dropped us back in the system. I hadn’t meant to hurt her daughter. I was just playing. We were kids. I might have looked like a typical six-year-old—the ‘roid-like blowup didn’t happen until puberty—but that didn’t mean I was normal. No matter how hard we tried to pretend, no matter how many blood promises I made with my brothers, I couldn’t be human. I hadn’t known that jumping off the shop roof onto a trampoline was a bad idea. I had done it. I thought she could do it, too.
“He had Adolf by the throat,” Alarick said. “He was in wolf form. And he was strong, Donovan. You don’t even know how strong. He shifted in two seconds flat. I did what I had to do.”
“You showed yourself,” I said. “We should go. We have to leave here.”
“I don’t know,” Alarick said. “We might have killed him.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?” I asked, wheeling from the sink. “You killed a man? We said we’d never hurt a person.”
“A human,” Alarick corrected. “We don’t hurt humans.”
We stared at each other. We all had a story, a moment when we realized that we were monsters, that we couldn’t live human lives the way humans did.
“I’m going to pour alcohol on that,” I said, nodding toward his gaping wound. Little trickles of bloody water ran down his massive, muscled form. “Who knows what’s in that gulley where you fought.”
“Or if a bite from one of our kind heals like a regular wound,” Alarick said, eyeing his shoulder while I readied the rubbing alcohol. “Although Adolf’s healed really fucking fast.”
He gritted his teeth, but when I poured the alcohol on, he yelped a ferocious growl, and his eyes flashed silver like someone shone a light in a mirror.
“Whoa there,” I said, steadying him with my free hand. “Ready for your face?”
“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the bottle. He turned his face sideways over the sink and sloshed the alcohol on, groaning curses as it splattered into the sink, pink with blood.
I left him alone, but when he came out, I had a cup of black coffee ready. “I’m waiting up for Adolf,” I said. “You?”
“I better get some sleep,” Alarick said. “Let this thing heal.”
“Quick recap,” I said. “Dude attacked you in the parking lot, dragged you into the woods, said he knew what you were, forced you to show yourselves, and said there were more. And you killed him.”
“I don’t know if we did,” Alarick said. “We left him there.”
“But don’t you want to know?” I asked. “Who was he? How did he know what you were? How did he find you?”
“I don’t know,” Alarick said. “But if he’s smart, he won’t bother us again.”
“But don’t you want to know?” I asked. “If there’s really more of us out there…”
“I don’t need to know anything,” Alarick said, pushing the coffee back to me and heading for his bedroom. “There are three of us out there. We have each other. We don’t need anyone else.”
His door closed, quiet but firm, leaving me standing in the kitchen holding two cups of coffee. “Maybe you don’t,” I muttered.
Alarick didn’t hear. He’d already turned on his music, which was how he kept the demons at bay while he slept. I sighed and sat down at the bar to wait for Adolf. I understood both my brothers, but we had our share of disagreements. The one that had left me standing in an empty kitchen was nothing new.
Alarick didn’t trust anyone else, and for good reason. But I knew that no matter how many hours he slept, no matter how much time Adolf spent in his fur until he healed, there were wounds that no amount of sleep or wolfing out could heal. There were wounds inside us and between us that needed attention. One of these days, we were going to have to do more than pour burning alcohol on them and call it a night.
If only we had a mediator. A real mom, not a bossy triplet who tried to fill shoes that would never fit like an ugly stepsister. We needed our Cinderella to come along and fill the hollow spaces left in our lives. Unfortunately, we’d stopped believing in fairytales a long time ago, right around the time we realized that having superpowers wasn’t a gift. It was a curse.
But what if?
What if there was someone else out there, like the man had said? It was possible. Maybe somewhere there was a fairy godmother who could turn us normal. Maybe there was a world out there where we really could be superheroes, using our powers for good instead of evil, not hiding them away so they didn’t accidentally hurt people. What if we didn’t have to hide anymore? What if this wasn’t a curse, and we could live just as we were, without having to choose one side of our nature or the other. Maybe, somewhere, it was normal to be both wolf and boy.
5
Adolf
We searched the news for stories about an animal fight, about wolves showing up in Memphis. But there was nothing, only a mention of a cougar attacking some dumbass hiker halfway across the country.
“Does that mean he wasn’t dead?” Donovan asked. “Maybe they didn’t find a body.”
I exchanged a look with Alarick. We hadn’t checked his vitals. I hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near him, if I was honest. I’d been afraid he was dead, that we’d killed a man. In the moment, I’d still been in shock at the sudden attack. But I’d thought about it all night at work. I’d been on edge, watching the door and waiting for the cops to come drag me away. And today, I’d dreaded what we’d find when we searched for news stories online.
I watched Alarick from the corner of my eye. Unlike my miraculous recovery, he still had long, angry red slashes across his face. He’d healed some, but not nearly enough. Had he really slept all night? He’d left the club while I was still outside, and Donovan s
aid he’d come home at a reasonable time. Still, part of me wondered. Had he gone back to check? Had he found the guy dead, hauled him off, and buried him somewhere so that we never knew we were responsible for his death? I wouldn’t put it past Rick to shoulder that burden alone. He’d do anything to protect his brothers.
If anyone could stomach the task of burying a body and living with the guilt for the rest of his life, it was Rick. He had ripped that wolf’s throat out. I’d seen it with my own eyes.
Though I’d been quick to jump in and help Rick when he was in danger, I was a lover, not a fighter. The only thing I had going for me in a fight was brute strength. Skill required practice, and for obvious reasons—like body counts—I hadn’t had much practice.
Not that I was much of a lover, either. Again, for obvious reasons like body counts, we couldn’t go around sexing up fragile little human honeys like we were human guys, incapable of smushing them like bugs on a windshield. But I liked to think if I could have chosen, I’d be a lover. Fighting wasn’t in me, despite my intimidating appearance.
“So, we have to assume this guy is alive and still out there,” Alarick said after a long silence. “We know how fast we heal. He was in fur, too, and that seemed to make you heal even faster.”
“Crazy fast,” I agreed.
“We’re going to have to move again, aren’t we?” Donovan asked, flopping back in his chair.
“He knows where we work,” Alarick said, sympathy in his eyes as he surveyed us. We were happy in Memphis. Alarick… Well, sometimes it was hard to tell, even for me. I wasn’t sure he was ever happy. He might not be capable after what we’d been through. Family after family realizing that there was something about us, something not quite right. Sometimes, they came closer to the truth and called us monsters, but usually it was a slow, subtle shift from the belief that we were just misunderstood kids who needed love to a creeping suspicion. We weren’t right. Impossible things happened around us. It wasn’t natural. We weren’t natural. They didn’t want us anymore.
That was the theme of our lives. No one wanted us except each other. As we’d come to that realization, it had been easier not to want anyone else, either. At least for Rick. If it was up to him, we probably would have gone to live in an off-grid cabin in the woods where we never had to see anyone but each other.
Don and me, we needed a little more. Sometimes I felt bad about that, since it forced Alarick out of his comfort zone. But maybe it was good for him to get out of his head, to have to interact with humans. Hell, if we did move out to that cabin, he’d probably submit to the monster inside and relinquish his human side altogether. I wasn’t going to let that happen. He might need us to remind him to get out and see how normal humans did things, but we needed him for a lot more. Protection, safety, order. Nothing made sense without Rick’s steady, guiding presence. Without him, we were a car with no driver.
But I also needed Donovan, his kindness and the reminder that we were more than monsters. And I needed the women at the club, their hands on me, their admiration and approval. I didn’t care if it wasn’t real, if it was just a fantasy for them. It was the only place I got that shit.
“I’m going in for one more shift at the club,” I said.
“That wouldn’t be safe,” Alarick said. “He might be watching the club. We have no idea where he is or who he is.”
“Or what he wants,” Donovan said.
“He wants us dead,” Alarick said.
“If he wanted you dead, why did he tell you there were more of us?” Donovan asked. “Maybe he knows where they are.”
“He was trying to provoke us,” I said. “He was definitely trying to kill us.”
“Whose side are you on?” Donovan asked. “I thought you wanted to go to work tonight.”
“Oh, I do,” I said. “I know you think Rodney’s sleazy, but I like him. The least we owe him is one night’s notice. He won’t be able to book a dancer in tonight if we all skip town.”
“You go,” Alarick said. “You can do a solo act. We’ll cancel our shift and keep watch on the club. If anything even a fraction shady happens, you let us know.” He tapped his temple to let me know I was supposed to communicate the way we did, with our minds. We didn’t usually talk about it, but we did it all the time, almost as second nature. When we were kids, we’d thought everyone did that. It hadn’t been until we realized we couldn’t do it with other people that we knew it was strange. By then, at least a couple families had ditched us because of our weird behavior.
“It’s beyond eerie,” one of the foster moms had said. “It’s like they’re reading each other’s minds.”
“It’s unnatural,” the husband had agreed.
The next week, we were back in a group home. Of course it hadn’t just been that. They had already known there was something about us, something they couldn’t put their finger on. Something that made us undesirable and off-putting to humans.
Now, we didn’t have those problems. We were rarely around people enough for them to notice our unnatural quirks. “Then it’s settled,” I said. “It wouldn’t hurt to have that extra cash when we start over, anyway.”
That evening, the guys dropped me off at the club and split. They would patrol the area using their heightened senses and communication skills, alerting me at the first sign of the wolf man. Meanwhile, I delivered the news to Rodney that all three of us were leaving, and this would be our last night. And actually, only I was working, so technically it was only my last night. He was not happy to hear that, but lots of guys did this stuff under the table. It wasn’t exactly a job with low turnover.
Rodney didn’t have time to find anyone to replace our three-brothers act, so he let me go on solo. Solo shows were the best, since I got all the tips, but it didn’t make any difference when the only guys sharing the stage with me also shared a bank account. I wouldn’t have minded my brothers up there with me, but I won’t lie, I didn’t hate the extra attention. Stripping was the first thing in my life I’d been good at besides fucking up.
I knew Rick wasn’t a fan, but it was addictive to me. For the first time in my life, someone admired me, praised me, clapped for me. I was no longer walking across a gym floor to receive some lame elementary school award, only to be greeted by dead silence. Here, as my hips slowly gyrated to the music, all eyes were on me. I got all the applause. All the desire. All the drooling honeys who couldn’t have me.
When the first set ended, I could practically feel the thirst from the audience. The hair along my arms prickled, and then I realized I wasn’t just feeling the rush of the high or the charge of the crowd. Something weird was in the air—the faint odor of burnt sugar, a crackling along my arms that made the Unleash-the-Beast feeling awaken inside me.
I heard Alarick ask what it was, except it wasn’t really words, but more of a questioning feeling.
???
“Sir?” said a nasally little man’s voice as I stepped off the stage.
Ignoring him, I pushed the sensations going through my body out to my brothers, so they knew what I was experiencing.
“Excuse me, sir?” the man said again, grabbing my elbow. His hand was small and clammy, soft like a businessman’s, but when he touched me, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and the animal side of me went on such high alert I was afraid my eyes were flashing silver. When I looked down at the dude, he licked his lips nervously, his watery eyes darting around behind his glasses. The guy couldn’t have been more than five and a half feet tall, at least a foot shorter than me, and he didn’t look like any kind of threat at all.
“Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked in his weaselly little voice.
“Not unless you get a private dance,” said one of the bouncers behind me.
“I don’t need help with this,” I growled, keeping my eyes on the little man who made my skin crawl with the need to wolf out.
“Club policy,” said the bouncer.
“I just want a word,” the guy said, looking
flustered. “I don’t need a lap dance.”
“Club policy,” the bouncer said, more forcefully this time. A cluster of women had gathered around, wanting to pay for my time. And this guy was wasting it.
“No one comes here to talk,” I said, winking at a blonde soccer-mom type with a birthday sash across her chest. All her friends started tittering and pushing her forward, wanting her to approach me for a dance.
“Please step aside or pay,” the bouncer said to the man.
“If I must,” the man said, removing his wallet from his pocket. His pale fingers shook as he pulled out a couple hundreds and handed them to the bouncer with a pained expression. I could see a few more similar bills in his wallet, and I assessed him a little more closely. He wore a brown tweed jacket and navy slacks, but his shoes looked rich. I wasn’t as good at smelling money as Donovan, but I was starting to learn how to spot the money clients.
I balked, wanting to refuse the dance, but the two hundred would put me over a thousand for the night, and that paid for a deposit on an apartment even without references. Somewhere, Alarick and Donovan were on high alert. If anything happened, they had my back. I started toward the VIP lounge with the nervous little perv in tow.
“I’ll be just outside the curtain,” the bouncer said, eyeing the client as if he could be a threat to a guy like me. With a weapon, anyone could be, though.
The bouncer explained the rules, then stepped out of the area, leaving me alone with Professor Pervis. That’s what I was calling him from now on.
“This is really not necessary,” he said, clutching the edges of his seat just as the bouncer had instructed. I stepped over his lap, my dick straining against the nylon thong, just twelve inches from his sweating face.
“What do you want?” I growled, making sure to keep my voice from getting too hostile. If he was just there for a look at my junk, he could still construe my tone as inquisitive.
Paranormal Academy Page 18