“You think that’s a gift?” I screamed as I stood. “It’s not! I already watched my mother die. The idea that anyone else I care about leavin’ me terrifies my soul. You may have chosen to run away from your family, but mine were taken!”
“I didn’t run from my family.”
“From a broken heart then. Whatever. You ran from a nice home where you were loved. You weren’t abandoned by everyone you thought loved you!”
“No, just by the one person who mattered most, the one I thought I’d spend my life with.”
His voice was so steady and quiet I knew I’d stepped on something that mattered. Even so, I pressed. “Has it ever occurred to you that had to happen so you’d be here, with us? That you have a greater purpose than marryin’ a woman who wasn’t smart enough to keep you?”
“She was all I ever wanted,” he said, voice cracking. “Matilda and I were a pair from our early teen years. She was supposed to be with me through it all, and she married my cousin.”
Now I knew he was feeling like death because he was opening up to me about things he’d told no one before. Deciding it was best to keep his mind on anything except the possible change, I quietly said, “Did she say why?”
“She felt pressured into our marriage. Like everyone had decided on it but her.” He shook his head. “My cousin was a bit older than me, like Matilda, and had more money. Plus, they shared a love of books and the city. The idea of bein’ a farmer’s wife wasn’t who she was, or so she said the night she ended it.
“Thing is, I’d talked about nothin’ else but my own farm for years. She knew where my heart lay, yet she kept me thinkin’ we were meant.” He fought to swallow and then added, “She also felt I was too much of a lone wolf, her words.” To this, he burst out laughing. “If she only knew, right?”
“Dick, you may not—”
“Stop!” he yelled at me, his blue eyes lightening up to glow. “Stop lying to me like she did!”
I looked at my watch; it was ten after six. The sun would set fully any moment, and the full moon would rise fourteen minutes later. Those fourteen minutes were to be his most painful, and deep down, I knew it.
“Yes, you’re right. I’m lying, but not to you, to me. I’m lying to myself because the idea of having to shoot you is not something I can bear.”
Dick breathed in, wheezing like my mom had when her lungs hurt. Exhaling, he made the same sound. “You shoot me if I hurt you or anyone else. You hear me?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“You hear me?!” he screamed in agony.
Tears came to my eyes, but I held them back as I saw hair begin to grow on his neck and chest. I’d not cried since my momma died, and I wasn’t going to start again now.
“Yes! But damn it, Dick, you stay you!” Though fear coursed through me, the idea the Zahara had given me rang through my mind. I had one shot, and I was going to take it.
I grabbed the mug of water and dumped it out. Pulling the knife from my pocket, I drew it rapidly across my wrist and let the blood pour into it until the wound healed. I then poured some into my empty mug and added water. The scent hit Dick just as the sun went down, and his eyes hit the full fever glow, a blue with silver behind it, like the moon shone from behind his eyes.
Another wave of pain hit, the full moon now rising. Dick dropped to his knees, chest out, arms splayed to the sides as he threw his head back in excruciating pain. He yelled out Matilda’s name, and my heart broke for him.
As this wave of pain let up, he sat back on his heels and tears slid down his face, arms limp at his sides but fists clenched. If I was going to try, now was my only window.
With the courage of ten men, I approached the changing werewolf with both mugs, unsure when Dick would cease to be, and said, “Do you trust me?”
Panting from pain, he nodded, and I set both mugs down. Without waiting for him to ask for something to drink, I grabbed the mug I’d added water to and brought it to his lips. Without second-guessing the contents, he allowed me to pour the bloody water down his throat. After I’d gotten enough down him, he tasted it and knocked the mug away.
“What are you doing?” he growled.
“I’m tryin’ to save you,” I said, coating my palms with the remaining blood and placing them on either side of his long face. “The only way I was told how.” Concentrating on the energy stored inside me, I pushed some of that into Dick, and said, “So given to me, I give to you freely, out of love for you, my brother, my family, my friend. This gift is yours.”
For the first time ever, the transference of energy hurt like the dickens. I shouted out, fighting to keep my palms on his face.
Dick’s eyes once again grew large and began to glow as he placed his great paws on my hands, and this time they really were paws. Before my eyes, I watched bones break and shift as fur sprouted under my hands and his face elongated, coming toward me with teeth the size of a shark’s.
Finally, the energy stopped its transference, and I backed away quickly. Reaching the two pistols I’d set on the rock on the other side of the cave near the exit, I picked them both up. Turning to face my friend, his body began to change. Bones broke, shifted. Muscles detached, moved, adhered to the new form.
Once he had completely changed, Dick stood there on all fours, breathing hard, and he was massive. Obviously large human bone structure equated to the same in wolf form. However, due to muscle restructure, the chains I had attached to his wrists and ankles had snapped, and he stepped out of them, leaving only the ones around his neck and his center attached.
Head low and eyes on me, he growled and lunged, the neck chain holding him back while the center one slipped down near his rear. He snapped large jaws in anger, and with a wiggle of his behind, the next to last chain slid off.
“Aw shit,” I muttered to myself and began to back away, toward the cave opening.
The wolf growled and pulled again, putting immense stress on the thickest chain of them all, the one around the boulder.
“That’s my exit cue!” I said, then turned and ran down the shaft and into the bright moonlight.
Following the plan to a tee, I holstered one gun and tucked the second into my belt before I began to climb up the mountain. There was no way a wolf could scale up the same wall, so once I reached the first plateau, I stopped to wait.
A roar from within the cavern sounded and made me shudder. Moments later, Dick ran out into the moonlight, raised his nose to the sky, and damn it if he wasn’t beautiful. He stopped dead in his tracks to howl at the moon, I got a good look at him. His fur was a dark gray-tipped silver with what appeared to be flames of a lighter silver shooting up his face, starting at his nose, which scented me out right away.
He turned to me and huffed. Shaking his head, he tried to remove the iron, but it just caused the tail of chain to swing round and smack him in the ass.
I laughed and I shouldn’t have. He turned toward my direction and growled, blue eyes so bright they glowed in the dark. Tracking the sound, he found me. Lowing his head slightly, he bared his teeth for a moment before he ran at the wall. Leaping up toward me, he tried to get to the cliff I rested on and almost made it, scaring the piss out of me. He tried two more times before he stopped, howled, and without warning, ran off.
The quark-quark of the raven sounded as Gaax flew over me.
“Follow him!” I shouted.
Gaax answered and disappeared.
I sat back and sighed but stayed alert another half hour. But nothing happened. I was about to kick back for some rest when I heard a noise from above. Pulling my gun, I backed up near the edge and looked up to find a pair of blue eyes staring down at me.
“Dag-nabbit, Dick. How the hell did you...? Aw, never mind. Are you gonna come down here and try to kill me or what?”
Gaax sounded a warning cry as he flew over me.
“You’re a little late, bird boy,” I muttered. “I see him.”
The wolf let out a bark that for the love of the Alm
ighty Creator sounded like the word “help.” Next thing I knew, the chain to his neck shackle dropped over the edge.
“You want that off, I take it?”
The wolf shook his head before laying on his belly, using his paws to try and remove the shackle.
“Okay, but I’m staying down here.” I holstered my gun and grabbed the chain good and tight. “Pull!”
Without waiting to be asked twice, Dick pulled by backing up. Problem was, with the leverage of being above me, he was stronger by far. Before I knew it, my feet were pressed against the wall for more resistance, and then I was walking right up it.
I thought of letting go and falling, but there was no promise I’d land on that ledge and stop. I lifted up a prayer and went to meet my friend or my death. It all depended on if my earlier theory was correct, and I wasn’t right that often. I expected the worst as I flew up the side of the mountain, my heart racing as I prepared to pull my gun as the top approached.
I placed the center of my boot on the edge of the cliff, and as soon as the momentum vaulted me upright, I let go of the chain, stood my ground, legs apart, and pulled both six-shooters.
Dick flew backward. Landing, he shook off the fall and stood on all fours, staring me down before slowly coming toward me. Was it a ruse, or was Dick still in there? I had to know.
I cocked both pistols. “That’s far enough.” But he kept coming, and I held my ground. “If you are trying to force me to kill you, think about Matilda. How do we tell her you died?”
This stopped him completely. He laid down on his belly and crawled toward me.
“Well I’ll be...it is you in there.” I holstered my weapon and knelt, setting my second weapon on the ground. The wolf lay his long nose at my knee and whimpered as he tried to pull the shackle off. “I’ll get that, Mr. No-Thumbs.”
Pulling the key from my pant pocket, I slowly reached to the metal ring and unlocked it. Opening the hinge, I tossed it aside. Without warning, the gratitude of the wolf part of Dick’s brain won, and against the human side’s better judgment, he sat up and licked my face in appreciation.
“Oh man, you did not just do that!”
The wolf looked as disgusted as I felt, and I had to laugh. “You should see your face! Oh man!”
His eyes narrowed at me, and I halted my laughter. Without knowing how much control Dick had over instinct, I thought it best to behave.
“No, really, you should see your face. The pattern on your face is like flames.” Fascination won out over caution, and I reached one hand toward his face. Surprisingly, he didn’t move. “The pattern is so striking and unusual, I wish you could...”
I stopped as I lay my hand on the pattern to find it matched exactly. I put my other hand in place and muttered the words from earlier, “So given to me, I give to you freely, out of love for you, my brother, my family, my friend. This gift is yours.”
The energy inside me slid into the wolf and back again, taking my breath away.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied and then realized no one had spoken, unless... “Uh, Dick, did you just ask me a question?”
“Can you get your hands off my face? You mean that kinda question?”
I let go of his face, and he now looked back at me in a weird way. Silence held steady as we stared at each other. He barked, and it was just barking. I understood nothing, so I reached out and touched his body. “Bark again but mean something by it.”
He huffed and barked. “I meant something just then, thank you very much. This is ridiculous.”
“It is not ridiculous.”
“You can understand me?”
“Hot damn! I can! But only when I’m touching you.”
“Have you been able to, with any of the other wolves?”
“No, but I tend to shoot them if they’re this close.”
“Good point.”
“I have no idea what happened. Maybe it has something to do with my blood or the energy I used as you changed. My plan was to stop the process, not alter it.”
“Well, looks like your plan failed.” With that, he stepped away from me and walked to the edge of the cliff as Gaax called to us and swooped down to sit on my shoulder.
“He’s himself. That part worked,” I told Gaax.
The raven’s head bobbed up and down, his feet tapping out a happy dance before he flew off.
I have no idea how long Dick stood there, but I sat quietly by. He lifted his nose to the sky at one point and howled into the night, a cry of sorrow if I’d ever heard one. I said nothing. He was right; I’d failed him. I’d not stopped the change, and though he had his wits about him, would he when Scáthach called? That alone dug at my core like an icepick, and if it hurt me that badly, I didn’t dare think of how he felt.
I eventually let him lead me the long way back down to the cave we’d started out in. He stayed outside while I lay my bedroll out inside where it was warmer. Unable to sleep at first, I tossed and turned, eventually falling asleep.
I woke to find the sun already over the horizon, filling the front of the cave with light. I looked to see where the wolf was to get a shocking view.
“Well damn, Dick, aren’t you cold?”
Dick Brewer, all six-foot-three of him, lay naked on his bedroll that I’d laid out next to mine. Thankfully, he was curled up on his side with his back to me.
I tossed my blanket over him and headed out to go take a piss. When I returned, he was still out cold. I stole his blanket from his pack in the corner and lay back down to catch a few extra hours of rest seeing as it was another full moon tonight.
He was still out when I woke for the second time, so I headed out to hunt. Only once I walked back in with Gaax on my shoulder and some dead rabbits in my hands did he sit up.
“What time is it?” he asked, voice deep and gravely.
“Wow, you sound like you’re hung over,” I said. “It’s around three.”
“In the afternoon?” he asked, obviously shocked.
I put the rabbits down. “Well, you probably didn’t pass out until the moon went down shortly after sunrise, so I’m not surprised.”
He rubbed his face. “Any chance you made coffee?”
I chuckled. “Sure, hours ago, while you got your oh-so-naked beauty sleep. That was not what I expected to wake up to. Talk about a moon...”
Dick looked down and realized the truth of the matter. “Where are the clothes I had on when I changed?”
I sat and Gaax flew over to the bowl of water I’d set out for him earlier. “It’s no big deal, Dick. We all been traveling together for a while, bathing in rivers and stuff. It ain’t like I’ve not seen all the Regulators naked at one point or another. Just wasn’t expecting you to be all curled up next to me. Didn’t know ya felt that way...”
“I don’t...” he sputtered. “I’m not...you thought that I...?”
“Hey, it’s fine by me if you swing that way, I don’t, but I’d love ya anyway, big man.”
He stood in frustration, thankfully holding the blanket in front of him. “I would not make advances on someone in that manner, even if I was like Murphy!”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst out laughing.
Realizing my joke, his brow furrowed, and a light growl escaped him before saying, “Oh, fuck you!” To emphasize his annoyance, he threw the blanket over my head. “I’m gonna take a piss. You want to live through the night, you better make some damn coffee!”
Guessing he’d walked out, I began to laugh so hard my eyes watered. Pulling the blanket from my face, I looked at Gaax. “So worth it.”
“Quark-quark,” he replied, as usual, but it sounded like laughter to me, and that made me roll in a fit of my own.
17
George Coe’s Ride From Hell
That night’s transformation wasn’t much easier, but it was faster, and since he wasn’t wrapped in chains, he wasn’t in a rage afterward. Instead, we worked on discovering his abilities in
his new form, specifically how far away he could hear and smell me or food. We hunted and played hide and seek, Gaax joining in on the fun, and that is when everything changed.
Walking around a brush area, trying to find where Dick had hidden, I heard Gaax call out in warning far above me. When I didn’t react, my vision shifted, pain radiating through my skull. Losing my footing, I stumbled to kneel in the dirt and rock, blinking my eyes. Closing one and then the other. With my left eye, my sight was normal, yet with my right eye, I saw a different view. I could see exactly what Gaax did, from high above, and that is when I saw two wolves, Dick and a visitor we’d not planned on.
Due to the pattern on his face, it was easy to identify which of the two was Dick. Plus, he was larger than the new arrival. Dick was evident by the pattern on his head, but there was a second, smaller furry friend on the mountain with us.
Trying to figure out where I was in the bird’s eye view, I reached up, removed my hat, and waved it. Seeing where I was, I could tell that our party-crasher was closer to me than Dick was. Placing my hat back on my head, I closed my right eye to focus on what was in front of me. Slowly, I pulled my gun with the silver bullets and moved toward the creature quietly, sniffing the air. I opened my right eye and watched the second wolf and I approach one another.
Then, out of nowhere, I saw Dick moving in toward the creature as well. He must’ve gotten the scent and headed our way. Unsure if he knew where I was, I paused and watched from above in awe of how Dick almost slithered toward the creature, who didn’t notice his approach.
Focused solely on me, the smaller wolf didn’t notice the threat until it was too late and Dick was air bound, leaping at the creature. Fear at the scuffle gripped me, and before I realized it, I was running toward them.
Arriving, I found Dick holding the living creature in his jaws. The smaller wolf was making sounds like I’d only heard a New Mexican shepherd make, like he was talking. Dick grunted in reply, and I desperately wanted to reach out and touch him to see if I could understand the conversation, but Dick’s body language told me to stay put.
The Curse of Billy the Kid: Untold Legends Volume One Page 19