Glowing in his new found revelations Tommy noticed Jenni darkly watching the full moon arching across the mouth of the stone wolf.
“Damn, he shouldn’t be out here,” she said under her breath. Then she smiled at him like nothing had happened but the truth held in her eyes. She tucked her arm around his and started walking down the street, urging him along.
“Where we going?” Tommy asked.
“Back to the motel, I don’t feel like coffee anymore.” Jenni flashed a quick, tense smile and kept her eyes on the sidewalk as the crimson moonlight filled the street and sidewalks like a river of blood. She stopped.
Tommy could feel the tension taut in her every muscle. Her nails gouging deep ruts in his arms.
“Hey,” Tommy cried and pulled his arm loose.
Jenni looked up at Tommy with those Sapphire eyes, but they were different now. All humor and wit had been devoured by a strange hunger. Tommy remembered Frank’s eyes in the coffee house and stepped back.
Then a series of events happened so quickly Tommy barely had time to register what was happening. Jenni grabbed Tommy’s arms and pulled him towards her. Tommy’s toes barely touched the sidewalk as he was helplessly dragged into her embrace. He watched as Jenni bit her bottom lip so hard that a flow of blood flooded down her chin. Jenni smelt him, her breath ragged and hot against the exposed crook of his neck. Her nostrils flushed violently breathing him in and out.
Tommy noticed that same pungent musky scent drifting in the air, exuding from Jenni’s pores, and he began to feel himself slip away in the moment like he had in the motel room. His vision grew tunneled and all he could see was Jenni’s bright red hair mussed as she held him close to her.
Jenni’s lips bared against her gums revealing a wicked set of canines with broad sharp fangs perfect for ripping flesh and sinew. Jenni’s tongue flicked out, unnaturally long, licking Tommy’s neck, tasting him. She opened her jaws wide.
Suddenly Tommy was flying through the air landing hard on his ass twenty feet from where Jenni was standing.
“No... Jenni snarled. Damn it, no!”
The impact reverberated through his bones and his teeth clanked together. The trance was broken and Tommy looked up to see Jenni bathed in blood red light, like a statute of Kali the goddess of death in all her gore. Jenni’s fangs were pressing hard against the outside of her lips.
“No...no...no...” Tommy heard the words before he realized he was pleading.
Jenni walked towards him and then stopped about five feet away. A brief sadness softened her features.
“Remember who I am,” she whispered.
Then all the softness was driven away and replaced by a hard gleam in her eyes as she seemed to grow taller with each passing heartbeat.
In a cold, calculating voice that sent a chill through his very soul Jenni asked. “You ever been in a small town horror movie, Tommy?”
Silhouetted against the great stone wolf Jenni raised her head and screamed.
The transformation was terrifying. No, transformation implies something benign, like the gentle transformation of caterpillar to beautiful butterfly.
This was brutal.
A great vortex, originating just over the place her heart should have been, sucked Jenni’s flesh inside out. It was like everything that was Jenni on the outside, her ivory skin, her complex face that had been bright with humor, was nothing more than a monkey suit with a zipper in the back, and now Jenni was not only shrugging off her old flesh but inwardly digesting it. The wet juicy sound of flesh ripping over bone reminded Tommy of a farmer’s butcher room he had visited once as a child. He watched as the butcher hung the bodies of rabbits on a hook from their feet, sliced the skin, and sluiced it off the bone. But it wasn’t only Jenni’s flesh but her blood, bone, and organs that followed the raging current into the bottomless hole.
Tommy was transfixed at this obscene abomination that came from the pits of the damned. What had once been Jenni, was being devoured by her own body. Each passing second was marked by that wet, sloppy sound of flesh flopping through the gaping maw inside Jenni’s heart.
As Jenni herself was sucked inside what unfolded itself in her place was hairy. The creature that towered over Tommy was at least eight feet tall. It’s lean, sinewy muscles rippled underneath a thick coat of crimson red hair. Its large front paws raked the night sky with bright, ivory talons and the elongated mouth snapped its jaws violently. It was a vision from hell in the body of a wolf.
The creature raised its mouth and sounded a cry of triumph and release from the bondage of its mortal flesh. Up and down main street the creature’s cry was echoed by other monsters as they completed their change. Window glass shattered around dozens of wolf beasts as they flung their bodies out of buildings and into the waiting moonlight. Tommy watched in horror as each person’s blood, bone and soul was sucked into the gaping vortex in their chest replaced by fur and furry. Looking back at the café, he saw Daisy and Frank transform side by side and then together run down main street toward the red hills of Stone Wolf. The nurse that Tommy had the vision of eating a raw steak staggered outside, her flesh ripped and was replaced by a gleaming white wolf the size of a polar bear.
Without warning the white wolf’s eyes landed on Tommy and she leaped for him, a white streak against the black sky, fangs intent on his blood. Tommy watched transfixed as death came for him. The white wolf landed a foot from Tommy’s face, drool dripped from its jaws as its acrid breath blew hot against his face. As she lunged for him a blood red blur collided hard into the white wolf’s side, tumbling the two creatures on top of each other in a vicious embrace. The red wolf rolled on top of the white wolf, straddled her and sunk her jaws into the white wolf’s neck and shook her. Blood dripping from her teeth, the red wolf turned her head and stared at Tommy.
Tommy ran.
He saw the Caddy and threw himself into the still open passenger door, slid over and look for the keys in the ignition.
Empty.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Tommy ransacked the car looking for the keys. Dash. Cup holder. Floor. Under the mat. Under the seat. Visor. “Yes, he cried!”
The caddy’s engine roared to life and without a second look back Tommy threw the car out of park, hit the accelerator and burnt a half circle of rubber across main street and the hell out of town.
Tommy’s breath came in ragged gasps. The shops on main street flew by his window. Tommy wasn’t thinking, wasn’t processing how all this could be happening. He was staring straight ahead in shocked stupor with his foot grinding the gas pedal into the floor.
One impulse, primal and ancestral, ancient and beastly, drove him.
Flight.
The prey, glassy eyed and stupid, fleeing the unrelenting death that chased them. The one impulse that is basic to every creature since the fall into sin. At the sight of a terror so unreal you fly or die.
Claws sliced through the supple leather roof, like a hot knife through butter, missing Tommy’s face by a fraction of an inch. Tommy swerved the caddy side to side, rear tires fish-tailing across the pavement. The creature’s black claws sunk through the leather but gained no purchase. Howling, the creature flew off of the roof and collided with a parked car. The entire side of the car imploded on impact. Tommy dared a glance back and saw the white wolf struggle against the tangle of steel and destroyed metal.
Not Jenni, Tommy thought, strangely grateful given the circumstances. He pushed the pedal deeper into the floorboard. He saw the outskirts of town, the new construction site on his left and the crest of the hill leading out of town just ahead.
“I can make it,” Tommy stuttered his mantra over and over willing it to be true. “I can make it! I can make it! I can make it!”
The driver’s side window imploded, showering Tommy with glass. Flesh and bone crunched against metal as the red wolf slammed her massive form into the car. The steering wheel swung out of control, cracking his fingers, bone snapped in his thumb. Tommy cried out in
pain as the caddy swerved off of the road and crashed into the construction site. Steel met steel as the front end of the car was smashed in by a vertical support beam.
Tommy’s head hit the steering wheel sending white hot sparks across his eyes. Barely holding consciousness, Tommy threw his body across the seat and fell out the wrecked passenger door.
Clouds covered the moon leaving the desert in pitch blackness. Tommy stumbled blindly into the desert, tripping over shards of metal. The night seemed to close in on him, suffocating his senses. His instinct alone moved him.
Flee.
Flee.
Flee.
A weight crashed into his back, sand burst around him as he crashed hard into the ground. With a final effort he rolled his abused body on it’s back.
This was it.
Balls to the wall.
Time to meet death.
The red wolf straddled him like she had done to the white wolf. Her weight pressed against his body, crushing the air out of him. The wolf’s breath was hot with need. Deep with hunger.
Tommy looked up, and saw those same sapphire blue eyes blazing from the mask of the red wolf that had earlier blazed from Jenni’s beautiful face. The clouds retreated and moonlight shone like a spotlight from the heavens upon them. In the moonlight, reality flickered once again, and Tommy could see Jenni’s pale, lithe human body naked on top of him. Her face fought a chaotic mixture of emotions: rage and exultation, hopelessness and determination, each struggling for domination.
He didn’t know what all of this meant. He knew he might die soon, but at that moment it didn’t seem as real as the pain he saw in Jenni’s face. At that moment Jenni was struggling against the wolf for his life.
Sometimes death danced with love.
Tommy reached his hand up to her face. He heard Jenni’s voice in his mind, Remember me.
He wiped a tear from her eye and whispered. “Jenni.”
As if awakened from a trance, Jenni looked at him, the war inside her was quieted by his touch. She smiled a soft, tired smile.
The red wolf threw itself off of Tommy and retreated deep into the desert night as Tommy’s mind fell into blissful blackness.
Two weeks later the town of Red Wolf basked in the bright Nevada sunshine while Jenni was inside the coffee house finishing a cherry pie. Contentedly she wiped cherry blood from the corner of her lips. Standing up she stretched letting her bright red sun dress fall loosely along her generous curves.
“Thanks Daisy,” she said dropping a ten.
“Anytime hon,” Daisy replied. “Come back soon.”
Jenny walked into the bright sunlight towards the mechanic’s shop and grinned. She could see Tommy leaning over the hood of his Honda with the mechanic. His right hand was still wrapped up and bruises still covered his face and body. She knew how much it still hurt him. He looked up and saw her standing there, said his thanks to the mechanic and walked towards her.
“Hey there,” he said and kissed her gently on the cheek.
She smiled up at him, “Hey babe, how’s the car?”
“The Honda’s fine, but your car’s going to cost a mint. Do you know how damn impossible it is to find Caddy parts anymore. He shook his head. If you weren’t so frisky that first night we met it wouldn’t cost so much.”
“What can I say, you just bring out the beast in me.”
Tommy and Jenni had spent almost every waking moment with each other since that night in the desert. They stayed with each other as Jenni faithfully nursed Tommy back to health after saving him from the night. They became as inseparable as two people could be. Jenni explained as much as she could about what she was and how he had come into town during their mating season festival. No one, especially a pure human, came to town, so why not celebrate? But Tommy came accidently to the wrong town at the wrong time. But in the end, maybe not.
What terrified Jenni was the thought that Tommy might leave when his car got fixed. Leaving all of the horrors of Red Wolf, and leave her, behind.
“So, now what Tommy. You’re a little late for California?” She started off bravely.
Tommy looked at her and knew he would never leave her whatever that meant for his life. He also knew she couldn’t leave her people. A man in a werewolf community. He must be insane. But he knew what he wanted, always had.
He grinned. “Compared to you, California is boring.”
Jenni rolled her eyes.
“I was wondering,” Tommy looked at her. “Why me? Why did you pick me instead of a guy, you know, like you?”
Jenni paused and blushed a little. “You smelt right.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, sometimes you just know.”
“Yeah, sometimes you do.”
They grinned wolfishly at each other and walked hand in hand, together under the watchful eye of the Red Wolf.
Red Wolf Moon
by P. Daniel Patrick
copyright 2011 Philip McClelland
Red Wolf Moon Page 2