Fire Of Love

by Preston Walker

  “What’s up?” Isaac asked.

  “Who’s going to take the news of the report to Destiny?”

  Another new rule implemented in the aftermath of the events of only a few months ago. Anyone who had returned from a patrol needed to take the news right up to the top. Wolves in the past had a habit of handing off bits of news from one person to the next. It was the way of their animal halves, the nature of a howl. However, important bits of nuance could be lost like that.

  Everyone now was a little more aware of how much difference a few words could make.

  “You can if you want to,” Isaac said. He tried to sound as if he didn’t care one way or another. There was nothing to report except silence. The city was working as it should be, trundling along at the same pace as always without any major hitches. The two of them were more or less done here. They had come together to work. It hadn’t been a disaster. They could go their own separate ways and never have to worry about this again.

  Moody didn’t know that, couldn’t have guessed what Isaac was thinking. However, Isaac could feel his time in Pensacola coming to an end. The endless days had to have an end. He was coming to the end of a tunnel, pursued by a dark and creeping sensation which bit at his ankles. When he came to that end, there would be other doors through which he could walk. All of them led away from here as far as he could see.

  “I guess I will,” Moody huffed, “if you’ve got somewhere to be.”

  If he stayed here to give the news to Destiny himself, he would have many more chances to accidentally run into Moody again. What would happen then? Would they ignore each other, the lack of interaction sending pain through his chest like he’d been stabbed? Or maybe they would fall into conversation, continuing on with the slight connection formed during their ride, causing it to blossom. That option, too, would hurt.

  “I guess you will, too.”

  Isaac turned to face his bike again, preparing to mount. As he lifted his leg, he became abruptly aware of Moody’s gaze searing into him again. Every movement he made felt as if it had to be accomplished through a long series of factorial procedures. His bones were pistols, his tendons coiled wires, the blood racing through his veins an odd sort of liquid conveyor belt. He felt stiff, mechanical.

  “I had fun today.”

  Isaac froze. The factory shut down. He was a purposeless robot, robbed of electricity and life. His mouth suddenly tasted of copper, and he realized that he’d bitten his cheek when he jerked to a halt.

  “You did?” he asked. Speaking was nearly impossible. He could hardly breathe, his chest an absurdly-tight coil of drawn cables. Now he was aware that he wasn’t devoid of feeling. The electricity had only relocated, finding its way to his groin, crackling and charged.

  Don’t encourage him. Don’t encourage this.

  Moody didn’t answer for a long moment, the sound of his labored breathing filling the span. “I did. So far, I guess. There’s still a lot of daylight left. Something could happen to really fuck it all up.”

  And just like that, Isaac remembered a similar conversation from two years ago. Moody came to him after what he called a fucking awful day, complaining of judgments from his dad, who didn’t approve of his ambitions to ride a motorcycle.

  “He says it’s going to fill my brain with useless shit,” Moody had said. Even back then, his name had been different. He had been Desmond Jr., though he cast off that moniker at some point since they last saw each other in an apparent effort to minimize his connection with his old man. “He doesn’t want me to even learn mechanic skills or anything.”

  “That sucks,” Isaac had said, keeping a comforting arm around the omega. It was hard for him to imagine what it was like, to have such difficulties with family. He had no such problems himself, knowing he was considered a valuable member of his pack. “What does he want you to do?”

  “Go to school. Focus on all that academic bullshit. Can you believe it? We’re wolves. We’re better at actually doing work, actually making things happen. I don’t care about all this pretend stuff with numbers and shit. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Makes sense to me.” Isaac remembered how good it had felt to smile when he said that, how Moody had looked at him with such offense and indignation. “What you said, I mean. I need to see it to believe it.”

  “You always get me. So does my mom. I wish Dad could be more like that.”

  Moody had tilted his head back, asking for a kiss in the way he had. The gesture always melted Isaac’s heart. Of course he had bent his head down, first nuzzling his nose over Moody’s and then letting their lips brush together.

  “You realize you just compared me to your mom. That’s not exactly the thing that an alpha wants to hear.”

  Moody had swatted at him, then grinned cheekily. “Shut up.”

  They kissed and petted a while longer after that. Moody was a virgin then and Isaac made an effort to be conscious of that fact, letting the omega set their pace. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have done that.

  When they had paused for breath, panting, content and discontent at the same time with the desire for him, Moody let his head loll against Isaac’s shoulder. “You know, this day has sucked so far, but there’s still a lot of daylight left. Something could happen to really make it all better.”

  At some point, Moody’s way of thinking and existing had flipped around and become the exact opposite of how it used to be.

  “Hello?”

  Isaac flinched, brought abruptly back into reality by the sound of the other wolf’s voice. “Sorry, what?”

  “I didn’t say anything.” Moody frowned at him, his forehead wrinkling with what seemed to be disapproval. No one else would have mistaken that look as worry, but Isaac knew that was exactly what it was. “You’re acting really strange.”

  “How I act is none of your business.” He said the words harsher than he meant to. Moody’s dour expression flickered with surprise, showing some of what lingered beneath before he was able to pull the pieces of his mask together again. Growling at himself, growing frustrated, Isaac turned back to his bike again. “I’m leaving.”

  “Go, then. Not sure what you’re waiting for. Do you want me to be the one to say goodbye this time?”

  Those parting words were just another stab to the heart, just another level of pain on top of what was already there. Mounting his bike, no longer knowing why he’d bothered to park in the first place when things were bound to wind up like this, Isaac started up the engine and rode off.

  His thoughts were lost inside the steady roaring of his bike, tumbling over themselves again and again. He rode on autopilot, heading back home for lack of anything else to do.

  The day he met Moody, Isaac had been at Pensacola Beach. He was visiting on business, being a junior manager for the executive branch of an advertising firm. He wasn’t one of the artists, lacked the imagination to be one of the idea people. Instead, he was in charge of making sure the departments were all doing their jobs. He was a cog in a machine, moving others, being moved by them. The work mostly consisted of paperwork, interspersed with periods throughout the day where he went around to the different parts of the building to see who needed a swift kick in the pants to get moving.

  He liked that job. Almost loved it, if a person could ever love a job for which they had no real passion. He didn’t understand art, didn’t really get the whole practice of twisting and mangling words into the right positions to be most effective. He didn’t even really care whether or not the clients succeeded or failed. The real reason he stayed there, working his way to junior manager, was because he enjoyed telling others what to do. His dominant nature as an alpha wolf, gave him a natural advantage in that regard.

  That being said, he wasn’t a people person. He had no time for the typical subtlety of a businessman, preferring to jump right to the heart of the matter instead of wasting precious hours—or days—on the rituals of polite society.

  He was on this business trip for exactly
that reason. His own bosses wanted to see him continue to climb the corporate ladder, though they made it quite clear they thought he wouldn’t get there unless he developed some patience. The firm was growing by the day. Soon, they might be able to work with regional, or even national, companies. From Bob’s Moo Market, a local dairy farm, to southeast area libraries or prisons and colleges, and maybe all the way up to Coca Cola Company someday. The bar was set high. Everyone was determined to get there.

  Isaac wanted to be part of it, and he was informed that he might be passed over for someone more personable if he didn’t start showing progress with developing those skills.

  So, when word reached the company that a job conference would be held in the Pensacola, Florida area in a few months, Isaac asked to go. A conference meant many, many dealings with people of all walks of life. Businesses looking for new connections, freelancers seeking their big break. It would be a big deal, running for several weeks.

  If Isaac couldn’t improve his skills there, he was pretty much a lost cause. Eternally a junior manager, to be passed by as the shadows grew long and his importance grew dusty. After all, the bigger the firm grew, the more people would be above him.

  So, he traveled from Daphne, Alabama, to Pensacola with eight of his colleagues when the time came. They took three company cars, since the drive was only about an hour.

  The first couple days of the conference went more or less swimmingly. Isaac forced himself to compliment others, to actually pay attention to the idle chitchat forced upon him.

  The weekend arrived, providing two free days for idleness as the attendees saw fit. Isaac received compliments of his own from his boss, who also came on the trip.

  “Keep this up and you just might have a chance next time things get restructured.”

  This came from a man who never spoke even slightly in a positive manner unless he was 101% convinced of a good outcome. Isaac basked in the praise and decided that he would treat himself. His paperwork could wait in his hotel room for a few hours while he visited one of the beaches that Pensacola was so known for.

  He walked there, much to the amusement of the other men, some of whom were headed to a bar and planned to take a taxi to get there even though it was only a half hour’s walk away. He made up some lame excuse about getting his exercise in after all the free food at the gathering, and that was enough to satisfy them. He saw it on their faces, their assumptions that he worked hard for his muscles. And he did, though not nearly with the vehemence with which they must have thought. Being a shifter tended to amplify the positive. Good looks were good looks. Exercise had twice the effectiveness. Isaac’s occasional visits to the gym were therefore more than enough to keep him the way he was.

  The real reason he walked was that he just wanted to. He liked it. Going on foot made him feel like a wolf, walking through a concrete forest. He smelled the city, exhaust, frying fish, and the salty tang of sea spray carried in on the ocean breeze. He tasted gasoline, listened to the cries of tourists and seagulls alike, and it felt good to do so. The unique atmosphere of this city, so modern and yet so naturally beautiful, was an experience he might otherwise have missed out on if he’d deigned to trap himself in a moving, metal box. Even if he rolled the window down, it wouldn’t be the same.

  He didn’t have to be imaginative to enjoy a good thing, was what it came down to.

  The way to Pensacola Beach was across a bustling highway, which led directly to a long strip of barrier island threaded with sugary-white beaches. There wasn’t actually a walking path, and the cars all blasted by as if trying to flee the site of some apocalyptic event. Isaac stuck to the shoulder, actually enjoying the way the passing cars buffeted him with wind. A strong sea breeze blew in from his other side, which overlooked a glassy green ocean. If he let his mind wander, he could almost fool himself into thinking he was floating above the open waters, unbound to anything but himself.

  The highway bridge arched down at a gradual level, coming to a rest at the sand. Thin, tangled webs of road led off in every direction.

  Isaac went west, heading toward the shorter end of the island. He didn’t know why he had wanted to go in that direction except it seemed to him most tourists would head inward instead of outward. They would want to make the most of their visit, frequent the part of the island where there were the most things to do.

  At first, it had seemed like he was mistaken. Families and couples crawled over the beach in droves, marching around like busy ants. Frisbees flew through the air, filling the sky with as many plastic discs as there were birds. Children frolicked in the surf, splashing and shrieking and just generally making it difficult to tell whether they were drowning or having fun. Parking lots filled with a variety of vehicles glittered, sending gleams of color across the blank canvas of the sand. It was all fairly normal, standard stuff.

  Isaac enjoyed the experience all the same, the conflicting warmth from the sun and the cool array of droplets of water which pattered against his skin.

  Then, the beach started to change shape. The lay of the land warped from flat to hilly, like a crumpled blanket, ribbonned with dunes which created areas of shadow and isolation. Beachgoers tended to prefer flat, open beaches where they could see as much of everything at one time as was humanly possible. Therefore, fewer people were around.

  The deeper Isaac went into the dunes, the less people there were. It got to the point where others were so far away he couldn’t hear their conversations, which was quite a feat considering he had wolf hearing.

  He went around the side of a dune and found himself pinned between sand and sea, completely cut off from everything else. There was nothing but open ocean out in front of him, calm water so smooth it looked like ice. He could barely tell where the sea stopped and the sky began.

  As he had stood there, feeling like he was on the edge of the world, soft footsteps approached from behind. Remembering the sound of those steps, he felt like he could recall the distinctive crunching of every single grain of sand being compressed against its neighbors. A waterfall of sound, carrying him down and down and down into a dark state that someone more emotional might have identified as depression.

  “This is my favorite spot,” a soft voice had said.

  Isaac had turned his head, and he saw a beautiful boy approaching him. A beautiful young wolf with heated eyes like spice.

  And now Isaac snapped back to the present, realizing that he had come to a stop in front of his home. His engine idled, purring softly in the background. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting here, doing nothing, just remembering.

  Everything had changed since then. He no longer had that job. He no longer had that love. He no longer had anything that he once did.

  An ache settled high up in his throat, a harsh presence which choked his breathing. The only thing which helped at all was to tell himself this wouldn’t last forever. He would be able to move on eventually, and when he did he hoped he would be in a better place than before. Nothing could be done about the past, but the future was still wide open.

  He normally would have been going to bed around the time the patrol started, and he was suddenly so tired he had trouble getting inside his trailer. Falling into bed, he let the darkness carry him even further down into a dreamless sleep.

  3

  I shouldn’t be doing this.

  That wasn’t the first time Isaac had this thought today. The weight of the words dragged at him more with every repetition, making him feel like he was dragging an entire gym’s worth of barbells. His brain was trying to delay him, dragging out the journey as long as possible.

  The rest of him, his body, his soul, his heart, were what kept him going onward despite all that. Fuck logic. He needed to do this, even though at the same time he needed to be doing anything but this.

  He rode down the highway in the direction of Pensacola Beach, a location he’d been avoiding ever since he put an end to his relationship with Moody. The memories were too stark, too fierce.r />
  He turned off to the west, exactly as he had two years prior. Not two years to the day, though close enough. What was a handful of days, a few months, in the grand scheme of things? Hardly anything at all, that’s what.

  Isaac abandoned his motorcycle at a parking lot, wedging his way into the space designated for bikes that had nevertheless been infringed upon by someone with a truck who clearly needed to go back to driver’s education class.

  He walked along the winding, snakelike paths which led gradually to the end of the barrier island, so neglected by tourists that it was hard to see through the layer of sand to know where the concrete actually was. He didn’t need the guidance. If he closed his eyes, remembered the way he had walked when he first came out here on business, he knew he would arrive at the place all the same.

  The hour was late. Most of the families had already vacated the area, they had in fact cleared out as soon as the sky started to go gray. Routines needed to be kept for children and adults alike, so this vacation of theirs wouldn’t ruin the course of their daily life when they returned home. A few teenagers still traipsed about, already in that odd sort of twilight area between childhood and adult so they didn’t notice the actual approaching dusk. And there were other couples, other groups, friends and family, though Isaac knew they wouldn’t stay long. Some beaches closed at night. Others stayed open, and that was where these people would go, drawn like fireflies to the dance lights and the fireworks.

  Moody’s favorite spot.

  Isaac crossed around the last dune where the shadows were deepest, carved harshly against the sand by the lowering sun. He was cut off from the rest of the world, forgotten, isolated. Peaceful.

  It was a beautiful spot, with the endless ocean framed in the distance by curves of island and shore. The sunset only made the sight better, bringing thoughts of an end, a beginning, golden and red as the flames of a phoenix. To see a sunset was to lose part of yourself, only to find something else, returning as that mythical bird did.