Brothersong

by TJ Klune

  I didn’t fight her as she pulled me toward the back of the store. It seemed like too much work. And she was right. I was exhausted, and it’d been a long time since I’d seen a friendly face. There was a voice at the back of my head warning me that this could be a trap, that I couldn’t trust her, but it was negligible.

  She led me to a small office. There was a cot against one wall. She pushed me down onto it and crouched before me to slide off my boots. I didn’t stop her. I could barely keep my eyes open. “What have you done to me?” I muttered, my words slow and thick like molasses.

  “Nothing you can’t handle. Sleep, wolf. Nothing can harm you here.”

  I wanted to believe her.

  In the end I didn’t have a choice.

  My eyes closed and didn’t open for two days.

  KELLY SAID, “HEY.”

  I grinned at him. “Hi.”

  Kelly said, “This isn’t real.”

  I ached. “I know.”

  Kelly said, “Is it worth it?”

  I leaned my head back against a tree. “I don’t know.”

  Kelly said, “Do you remember when Robbie was taken?”

  I nodded tightly. “I… should have done more. For him. For you.”

  Kelly said, “Maybe. It’s weird, isn’t it? Looking back. The choices we’ve made. Where they’ve led us.”

  The grass swayed in a cool breeze. “I’m lost.”

  Kelly looked away. “I know you think so. But you know where I am. You know I’m waiting for you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  He shook his head but didn’t speak.

  “I thought it was for the best. To keep you safe. That I could find them on my own.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you just ran away, half-cocked, with barely an idea of what to do.”

  I said, “That sounds about right” and “Can you say my name?” and “I know this isn’t real, I know it’s just a dream, but please just say my name.”

  And there, in the warm sunlight, he said, “Carter. Carter. Carter.”

  I reached for him.

  He wasn’t there.

  I OPENED MY EYES.

  A ceiling fan spun lazily.

  I sat up with a groan, my head foggy.

  A piece of paper fluttered in my lap.

  I picked it up. There, in sharp script, were the words:

  Your wolfsong will always be heard xx

  THE SHOP LOOKED AS IF it’d been empty for a long time. A thick layer of dust covered the counter. The shelves were bare. The bones were gone.

  There was a placard in the window where the neon sign had been.

  FOR RENT, it said, followed by the name of a realty company and a phone number.

  THE TRUCK WAS WHERE I’D LEFT IT in the parking lot.

  A slip of paper lay underneath the windshield wiper. I thought it was a ticket.

  It wasn’t.

  As I got closer, I knew.

  It was wild, the scent. Like an old forest untouched by man, overgrown and thick.

  I recognized it.

  Don’t. Touch. Him.

  I rushed forward and grabbed the paper, almost tearing it as I opened it.

  ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?

  “Fuck you too,” I said in a choked whisper.

  But I was smiling.

  And for a moment, it felt like it was enough.

  better candy/need to stop

  Five months later I was barely holding on.

  It was the Sunday before the full moon.

  I was driving down a road to nowhere, lost in my head. I was thinking about tradition, about how everyone was together and there’d be food on the table, so much food that even a wolf pack wouldn’t be able to eat it all. Mom would be in the kitchen, her radio playing old music. She’d be singing, I knew, singing in a way that felt like heartbreak.

  Ox and Joe would be outside manning the grill. The air would be cool, the leaves of October gold and red and green. They’d be standing side by side, their shoulders brushing.

  Rico and Tanner and Chris were setting up the table and chairs in the grass. They were stronger now, the three of them, Rico having taken to the wolf as if he had always been that way. They were laughing over some little thing, and Rico was trying to be subtle about getting his scent on his friends but failing miserably. Tanner and Chris gave him crap for it, but they hugged him, their cheeks rubbing together.

  Jessie was putting Mark and Gordo to work, handing them dishes to carry outside. Gordo was scowling, but he didn’t mean it. It’d been a long time since he had. There was a light in his eyes, something bright and fierce, a fire that had been rekindled after a cold darkness. He stopped just outside of the back door and looked at all the others. His stump itched, but it always did, and he’d learned to ignore it. Phantom limb syndrome was a bitch, and there were days when he’d almost forget that he didn’t have a hand. He’d adapted. And when he thought no one was watching, he’d allow himself to smile.

  “Good, right?” Mark whispered in his ear.

  “Yeah,” he said roughly. “It’s good.”

  Robbie and Kelly came around the side of the house, their hands joined.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “Hey,” Kelly said.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Carter?” He sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head.

  He glanced at Robbie before nodding toward the table. Robbie kissed him on the cheek and left us alone.

  “What’s wrong?” Kelly said in a low voice, even though it didn’t matter. Everyone would be able to hear us. Even Jessie.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My throat felt raw, my eyes burning.

  “That’s okay. You don’t always have to know.” He shook his head. “Sometimes we can be sad without having a reason. It’s part of being human.”

  “We’re not human,” I reminded him.

  He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  And then I said, “I’m not really here.”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Where else would you be?”

  “Far away.”

  “Why?”

  Mom came out of the kitchen. She glanced at us curiously, and when she smiled, it felt like the sun. She left us alone.

  “Hey,” Kelly said, and I looked back at him. “Come on.” He grabbed me by the hand and began pulling me toward the woods.

  The sounds of the others faded behind us. I looked up through the canopy of the trees to see blue, blue, blue, and though it was faint, I could see the moon, not quite full, but close.

  “Do you remember when we were kids?” Kelly asked, looking back at me over his shoulder. “Halloween. You were… seven. I think. Seven or eight. And for some reason you’d gotten it in your head that we needed to go trick-or-treating outside of Caswell. One of the other kids had told you that there was better candy at human houses.”

  I was startled into laughter. “I forgot about that.”

  He smiled. “You were so convinced. You demanded that Dad take us to these houses. You said he’d been holding out on us.”

  “He tried to tell me once that we couldn’t eat chocolate. That it was bad for us. Like dogs.”

  “Yeah. But you didn’t believe him.”

  “I did at first.”

  “Did you?”

  I closed my eyes. “I believed anything he said. He was our dad.”

  “You were a pirate,” Kelly said, and there were birds in the trees. They called for us. “You had an eye patch and a plastic sword. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.”

  “You were a ninja.”

  “I was. But only because Mom said it was too late for me to be a pirate too.”

  “You cried.”

  I opened my eyes in time to see him shrug. “I always wanted to be like you.” Then, “Dad took us.
He didn’t have a costume, but as soon as we were outside of Caswell, he looked at us in the rearview mirror and said that he was going to do something and that we absolutely could not tell Mom about it.”

  My body was heavy. I could barely move my legs. “He half-shifted.”

  “Yeah. Said it was his costume. His eyes were bright red, and his face was longer, and there was white hair on it. And everyone was in awe of him. Every time a door opened, they would say, ‘Oh, a little pirate, and oh, look at the ninja.’ And then they’d see him and laugh and laugh and laugh, asking him how he’d done it, how his costume looked so real. ‘Is that makeup? Is it a mask? How did you do that?’”

  I hung my head. “It was the same candy. It wasn’t any different.”

  “Well, yeah. But it tasted different. Better, somehow. Because it was the three of us. Together. The others, they saw him for what he was. An Alpha. Powerful. Strong. A leader unlike anyone they’d ever seen before. But to us, he was just… Dad.”

  “I’m not here,” I whispered. “This isn’t real.”

  Kelly stopped. His grip on my hand tightened.

  He said, “I forgave him. It was hard. But I did. I was angry for so long. For leaving us like he did. For not seeing Richard Collins for what he was. For not doing more to stop him. For letting Joe get taken. For what he did to Gordo and Mark. He was a good man, but he made bad decisions. And for a son to realize that about his father, to understand he wasn’t perfect, it was—”

  “Devastating. Kelly, I….”

  Kelly turned to look at me. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, pulling him forward. I pressed my forehead against his. “Yeah,” he whispered. “It was. But sometimes we do what we think is right, even if others can’t see it. Before he died, he told me something that has always stuck with me.”

  “What?” I asked, suddenly needing to know. “What did he tell you?” I pulled back, and Kelly was gone. The forest was gone. Tradition was gone.

  I was in the truck. The road stretched out before me.

  I looked over to the passenger side.

  Not-Kelly was there, feet propped up on the dash, head back against the seat. He looked over at me, and I swore he was really there, and it was us, just the two of us, on a secret highway.

  “Dad said that we must fight for the world we want. That it’s up to us to make it how we want it to be. I never forgot that.”

  “I’m trying.”

  He smiled quietly. “I know you are.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Fighting,” Kelly said. “You’re fighting. For me. For your pack. For him. Gavin.”

  “He doesn’t want me.”

  “Then why do you keep going?”

  I said, “I don’t know what else to do. You and Joe, you’ve got….”

  “Mates,” he said. “We do. But we’ve never forgotten you. We would have never left you behind. That’s the funny thing about love, I think. Just because I’ve got Robbie and Joe’s got Ox doesn’t mean we love you any less. How could we?”

  “I’m slipping,” I whispered.

  “I know.”

  “I left you.”

  “You did,” he agreed. “And I’ll probably be mad for a long time.”

  “Will you yell at me?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Do you want me to?”

  “I think so.”

  “What a weird thing to want.”

  “It means you still love me,” I said as a tear trickled down my cheek. “If you’re angry, you still give a shit.”

  “Ah. Then I’ll probably yell at you forever.”

  “Say it, please. Say my name again.”

  He didn’t.

  The seat next to me was empty.

  I drove on.

  THE FULL MOON came in the middle of the week.

  It was my tenth since leaving Green Creek.

  And I did what I’d promised him, as I’d done nine times before.

  I howled.

  I sang.

  In the middle of nowhere, far from human eyes, I cried at the moon as loud as I could, a song of brothers that I chose to believe could be heard across the distance. The stars were bright, the moon fat, and I sang for him.

  It echoed throughout the valley, and I waited, my wolf brain thinking he’ll hear he’ll hear and come and sing and we’ll run run run.

  He didn’t.

  I FOUND THE SECOND NOTE IN JUNE, nailed to the door of an abandoned cabin.

  I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU.

  “Yeah, buddy,” I muttered. “Should have said that before you started growling at anyone who got within ten feet of me.”

  I pushed inside the cabin. That scent was there, wild woods, though it was faded. A cot sat up against one wall, a blanket hanging off onto the floor. The remains of what had once been a rabbit lay near the old fireplace. I grimaced at the stench of it. It looked as if it’d been weeks since anyone had been here.

  I was about to turn and leave when something caught my eye in the shadows on the far wall.

  I walked toward it slowly, the floor creaking beneath my feet.

  Gouge marks.

  On the wall. Into the wood.

  Claws.

  But the spread of them was bigger than any wolf should have been able to do. Like they had come from a beast of great size.

  I thought this place haunted.

  I left as quickly as I’d come.

  That night I slept in the truck with the note curled in my hand.

  I WAS IN A BAR IN NOWHERE, KANSAS, sitting in a corner booth, a half-empty beer on the table in front of me.

  “This place is a dive,” Kelly said. He was coming easier now. There’d be stretches of days when I wouldn’t see him at all, and then he’d be right there next to me as if he’d always been there. This Not-Kelly. “I’ve never been in a dive bar before.”

  “You’ve been to the Lighthouse,” I said.

  He laughed. “Oh, man, please let me be there the day you tell Bambi she owns a dive bar. Please. I’ll record it and everything.”

  I pulled at the label on the bottle, tearing it into strips. “I’d rather keep my balls, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Probably for the best.” Then, “She’ll have had her baby by now. You ever think about that? Rico as a father.” He shook his head. “Will wonders never cease.”

  No, I hadn’t thought about that. But here it was now, a terrible gift from Not-Kelly. Across the country, in a tiny mountain town, there was a little human in the world that was tied to me that I’d never met before. I let the bottle go before I broke it. “Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter either way. But it’s the first. For us.”

  “And will probably be the only unless they have another. We’ve got the gayest pack in the entire world.”

  He chuckled, folding his hands on the table. He grimaced because the surface was sticky. “Speaking of.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I looked up.

  A woman stood in front of the table. Her head was cocked as she looked down at me. Her fingernails were painted red. Her hair was black and curled around her shoulders. Her cleavage was on full display, and her eyes were wide and lovely. She looked like she was around my age and on the prowl.

  “No one,” I muttered.

  “Because it looks like you were talking to someone.”

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Did you need something?”

  Her smile was coy. “You look lonesome here all by yourself. Haven’t seen you around before.”

  “Because I’m not from here.”

  “Just passing through?” She leaned forward, putting her hands on the table. Oh, she was hunting and had decided I was prey. If only she knew.

  “Something like that.” I kept my words clipped, my voice flat. I wasn’t interested in whatever she wanted. There were days when I’d have played along, days whe
n I’d have welcomed her with open arms. I’d grin, flashing the barest hint of teeth, and she’d melt a little, her scent spiking with arousal.

  But those days were long gone. I didn’t think I could ever be that person again.

  “You look like you could use some company.”

  “Go away.”

  Her expression faltered slightly before smoothing out. “What’s your name? I’m Sarah.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She sighed. “Fine. Be that way. Just trying to be friendly.” She turned and left.

  A jukebox in the corner played some country shit, a man wailing over a guitar about how he’d lost the love of his life and he was just so sad about it. A group of men stood next to it, near a pool table.

  She went to them.

  I stared down at the table.

  “That didn’t go well,” Kelly said.

  “Shut up.”

  “How the hell did you ever get laid?”

  “I swear to god, if you don’t—”

  “Hey, friend.”

  I looked up again. Four men stood at my table. Sarah was near the jukebox, looking upset. She called to the men, “It’s not a big deal. Leave it alone.”

  They ignored her. “It seems like we have a problem,” one of the men said. He was stocky, the lines on his face deep. His head was shaved, and I saw a tattoo of a cross on his neck.

  “I’m just having a beer.”

  “Is that right?” the man said. “Because my sister over there said you were rude to her.”

  “She wouldn’t leave me alone.”

  “You too good for her?”

  I sat back in the booth, stretching my arms over the back of the seat. “Are you seriously asking me why I won’t fuck your sister? Because if you are, I gotta say, dude. You are far too invested in the sex life of your sibling. Probably should set some boundaries.”

  He leaned forward, hands flat against the table. “What was that?”

  “You heard me.”

  He nodded slowly. “I think we have a problem.”

  “That sounds like a you thing. You should walk away.”

  The men behind him laughed. “That right?”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  He knocked my beer bottle into my lap. My jeans were instantly soaked.