Unleashed

by Kristopher Reisz

  “I’m a wolf,” Eric whispered. “Don’t need to see. I’m a wolf, wolf.”

  Flashlight beams, diffused through swirls of smoke, bobbed up from the stairwell. Daniel gave them a few heartbeats to enter the hall, then raced out. Shifting didn’t feel like hiding under a disguise; it felt like ripping free of one.

  Four firefighters walked in a line. Moving quick, silent, and low, Daniel lunged at the leader. By the time the man saw Daniel, he didn’t have time to throw his arms up. He wore a flashlight mounted on his helmet. As they arched to the ground together, Daniel bit through its plastic, then jumped clear as the man crashed to the floor. He brought the second one down by his jacket, then slid, twisted, and bit into the thick canvas and rubber of the third’s pant leg, whipping him off his feet. Tearing his light from its bracket like meat from the bone, Daniel flung it skittering into a corner.

  The fourth firefighter stumbled back down the stairs. Daniel caught him at the landing, and the last light went dark. The man curled into a ball yelling for help and never heard Eric stumbling past in the dark.

  Eric’s footsteps sank toward the ground floor. Daniel rushed by like a hard wind. Another group of men jostled toward the stairs from the opposite direction as the gym, following distress calls from the first group. Daniel struck without a sound. Fangs cast awful shadows as they shattered lights.

  Scattering the firefighters’ line and plunging them into primal darkness, Daniel vanished again. He followed the unsteady rhythm of Eric’s footsteps down the swampy, sweat-gagged hall between the gym and locker rooms. The fire door swung open. Eric staggered into the moonlight, and Daniel burst past him again. He barked and snarled. Spit flew from his jaws. He searched for the next human standing in their way, but there wasn’t any.

  Daniel and Eric half-ran, half-tumbled down the hill toward Seventeenth Street. Daniel wouldn’t let Eric stop until they reached the Ronald McDonald House two blocks north of the school. Collapsing into the red mud, Eric coughed and heaved for breath.

  Daniel heard the rest of the pack growling, keeping the police away. He sent up a baying howl, telling them they were safe. Their clamor fell off as they slipped back into the shadows and followed Daniel’s call.

  “The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire. We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn! Burn, motherfucker, burn!”

  At the furnace, Val and Eric sang while Marc told Daniel everything that had happened on the north side of the school.

  “So I fly down the pipe. Like, so fast, it’s burning my hands, and I drop the last few feet. Twist my ankle bad and just shout, ’Ow! Fuck!’ As soon as I do, somebody comes running around the corner, and I know its gonna be one of the cops.”

  “Did he see you? See your face?”

  “Shhh … don’t talk.” Misty straddled Daniel’s lap. With his chin in one hand and tweezers in the other, she dug for the glass lodged in his lip.

  Marc shook his head. “He comes around the corner, and I jump out as a wolf at him. Fucker screams, right? He’s out of there. So I chase him all the way to the parking lot. He fucking jumps back in his car, locks the fucking door.”

  Daniel snickered, as much at how Marc’s words tripped over one another as the story.

  “Don’t laugh, either.” Misty tilted his chin higher. “Got it. I got it.” Her hand trembling with care, she removed a half-inch-long sliver of bloody glass and held it up to admire. “Jesus.”

  She leaned down to kiss him. Rising, her mouth was smeared scarlet. Misty licked Daniel’s blood from her lips and smiled.

  Eric crept toward them. Sliding out from under Misty, Daniel stood up. Eric glanced at him. He managed to mumble, “Hey. Thanks, man,” before his eyes darted back to the dirt.

  Daniel hugged him. Eric resisted for a moment before wrapping his arms around him. He just nodded instead. It wasn’t a normal hug. He clutched the back of Daniel’s shirt, like Daniel was the only thing holding him up.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” Daniel whispered.

  Eric’s face was buried against Daniel’s shoulder. He sniffed and tried to say something, but his voice quivered too much.

  “But you’ve got a pack now. You know that, right? We’re a pack.” Until sunrise. Until the amnesic magic of Amanita muscaria wore off. Until he flew up to the bluestone towers of Cornell. But for the moment, in the thrall of the rot-eater god, Daniel believed every word.

  They turned the music so loud it hurt and danced on top of the rusted machines. They howled and sang into the clear night. “We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn!” Daniel sang louder than any of them.

  CHAPTER 15

  Misty woke up still exhausted. Lying in the foggy land between Birmingham and dreams, she felt Amanita muscaria growing inside her. The mushroom budded through organs like cancer and clogged her throat. She jerked upright, coughing until her chest hurt. It was just crud from the night before.

  In the shower, Misty washed her hair three times, but the sooty smell lingered. Her mom and Marc were still in bed. After breakfast, Misty curled onto the couch and watched the morning news. They showed footage of the pack’s sign slashing out the McCammon falcon and covering Mrs. MacKaye’s room. The fire had wrecked the main office. A fire captain said it could have been a lot worse if it had gotten into the ceiling and spread.

  Last night, Misty had felt drunk on triumph. It was almost graduation, and she’d given that miserable school a big, wet kiss good-bye. Staring at the TV, she waited for that rush to return.

  She tried to force a chuckle, a sneer, anything, but she couldn’t push herself to hatred or happiness. She just felt leached dry.

  There was a soft rap at the door. Misty saw her grampa in his blue suit through the window, and her mood brightened. Opening the door, she hugged him. The sweat and machine oil smells of the stamping plant clung to Grampa even when he wore his church clothes.

  “Hey, girl. Missed you at church today.”

  “Yeah. Sorry,” Misty said sheepishly.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “In bed. I don’t know when she has to get up, but you want to wait? I can make some coffee.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Grampa and Nana had never liked the way their son had left Misty’s mom to raise two kids on her own. They didn’t have a lot of money themselves, but they helped out whenever they could. While Misty poured water into the coffeemaker, Grampa stood in the living room watching the news report.

  “Misty? What happened at your school?”

  She hesitated. “Some—somebody trashed it, I guess.”

  Grampa shook his head, and that was enough to make Misty ashamed. Handing him his coffee, she glanced at the crescent-shaped depression on the side of his forehead.

  He’d dropped to his knees and prayed in front of police batons. He’d been arrested and almost expelled. Even then, he wouldn’t shut up, so they smashed an ashtray over his head. They bloodied him, might have killed him, but they couldn’t make him believe he was a nigger.

  And Misty hunched under a pelt, spray-painted walls, and trashed schools. The rot-eater god offered revenge on anybody who treated Misty like some nasty little animal. All she had to do was prove them right.

  Somehow, the wolf was both rebellion and total surrender. Misty finally managed a small, sour laugh. Nobody had ever told Misty the devil had a sense of humor.

  Daniel’s mom banged on his door to wake him up. He mumbled that he was up already, and after she went away, dropped his head back onto the pillow. There were no bird-songs outside his window. From that, Daniel knew the sun had already reached its peak in the sky.

  Two soup cans lay on the floor. Coming home last night, he’d been starving, drinking the clam chowder cold along with several MoonPies. Throwing the garbage away, Daniel took a shower. The water swirled gray with ash and paint.

  Standing under the hot spray, Daniel thought about last night. He hadn’t planned on entering the school. He certainly hadn’t pla
nned on the firefighters and police. Remembering the chaotic rush of it all, he allowed himself a small, sated grin.

  But now, Daniel had to make sure the pack’s trail was swept clean. As his mental gears started clicking again, he let the shooting star take over, the brilliant Cornell-admit with excellent organizational skills. First, they had to dump their clothes from last night. Walking to the kitchen, he ran into his dad coming in from mowing the lawn.

  “Well, good morning” His dad beamed with mock enthusiasm, then said, “Christ. What happened?”

  Daniel touched the scabbed-over slash above his mouth. “Cut myself shaving,” he said, too distracted to come up with anything believable.

  His dad shook his head. “Damnit, Daniel,” he said, walking away. He’d given up trying to get anything out of his son, and that was good enough for Daniel.

  Getting a trash bag, Daniel went back upstairs, stuffed his boots and ruined clothes into it, then headed out, grabbing a few more moonpies on the way.

  Grampa was still waiting for Misty’s mom to wake up. Marc had emerged from his room, but he’d barely spoken, just hunched over a bowl of cereal without a shirt or shoes. Misty wanted to talk to Daniel. She left a message on his phone. When he called her back from his car, though, he was all business.

  “Hey, baby, how’s everything?”

  “Okay,” Misty said, even though she wasn’t so sure.

  “Good. Listen, we need to get rid of any evidence from last night. First, we need to throw away everything we were wearing.”

  “I already did. The smoke ruined it all anyway. Even my underwear was—”

  “Where? In the Dumpster at the apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go get it. We need to dump everything at the furnace. Nobody will look there even if they suspect us. Boots especially. Police can match shoe prints the way they can fingerprints.”

  “Eric’s not about to throw Andrew’s boots away.”

  “I’ll handle Eric. Just get those clothes and let Marc know, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Misty knew they needed to prepare for any fallout, but it wasn’t what she’d wanted to talk to Daniel about.

  “I’m on my way over. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Daniel showed up fifteen minutes later to pick up Misty, Marc, and a bag fished from the Dumpster. He’d already called Val and Eric, and the pack met at Al Army Surplus before it closed.

  Everyone at school knew the pack for their tanker boots. Showing up in sneakers Monday might seem suspicious. Searching for boots with a different tread pattern than her other pair, Val turned to Daniel “So this stuff about cops matching shoe prints to specific shoes. Do you know if they can do that or is it just something you saw on CSI?”

  “You know what? I’d rather not find out,” he answered.

  Leaving the store, they drove to the furnace and tossed the evidence down the black mouth of an underground coal silo. Before Eric dumped his brother’s boots, he wrapped them inside two plastic grocery bags. Daniel said they could retrieve them in a few months. Humbled since Daniel had rescued him, Eric accepted the compromise.

  As night fell, they kept meaning to get something to eat but lingered at the furnace instead, talking amid the rising cricket songs.

  “You should have seen it, man,” Marc told Daniel about scaring the cop again. “He screamed like a bitch. Just screamed and bolted.”

  Misty watched her friends, her boyfriend, and her brother. Her pack of misfits. She remembered Val assuring her that wolves weren’t evil, just strong. Misty had convinced Daniel of the same thing. But hiding under wolf skin made it so easy to do evil things.

  “I guess it’s about time to go home,” Val said.

  “Hell. Let’s go hit the town again,” Marc suggested.

  They dithered and drifted toward prowling a second night in a row. Misty kept quiet. Even seeing how dangerous the rot-eater god could be, she still felt reluctant to venture back into the hand-lickers’ world. She looked at one of the rust-skinned blast stoves. In the dark, Misty could just see the wolf head painted on its side. The sign surrounded them, marking the borders of their territory. Misty realized it was better at keeping them penned in than keeping imaginary enemies out.

  Eric pulled his cell phone out. “Let me call Mom and tell her we’re going to a movie or something.”

  Finally, Misty stammered, “Actually, I’m still pretty worn out. I’m just going to go home.”

  “C’mon,” Daniel said. “Well just roam for a couple hours. You can sleep when you’re dead.”

  Misty gave him a halted laugh. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about not prowling all the time anymore.”

  None of the others said anything.

  “I mean, I’m probably going to ask Ilie for some more hours. Start saving some money for when we go to Europe.” She looked up at Daniel, hoping for support.

  “Well, you can come with us tonight, at least,” Eric said.

  “No. I’m worn out. You guys go, though. You don’t need me.”

  But they were a pack. The others started mumbling, no, maybe they should just get some rest. Misty started feeling bad. She insisted they should prowl if they wanted to. After a minute, Daniel took her hand and led her around one of the massive ladle cars.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked once they were alone. “Last night scare you?”

  “Well?” Misty shrugged. “I mean, we almost burned down the fucking school.”

  “Misty, we did that for you. We did it because of what Mrs. MacKaye—”

  “I know. I know.” She folded her arms across her chest. “But first we just ran around. Then we ran around and spray-painted buildings. Now, we’re running around, spray-painting buildings, then setting them on fire? What’s next, you know? And there’s lots of things I want to do besides be a wolf. I mean, things we want to do, right?”

  Daniel kissed her forehead and pulled her close. He started rocking her side to side. Her thoughts had been a briar patch all day. It felt nice to be held. “So what do you think?” she asked.

  He nodded toward the others, goofing around like pups. “I think the pack needs you a lot more than you need them.”

  That made Misty smile. Then Daniel whispered, “I need you more than anybody, though.”

  “Yeah, right,” Misty said, despite the hot rush of blood the words brought.

  “Last night got out of hand.”

  “It’s not just—”

  “I know. But it did. I don’t want to do anything like that again. Just prowling, though, just roaming the city, why should we give that up until we have to? You’re right, we’ve got to grow up sometime. But we can at least wait until graduation, can’t we?”

  The way Daniel explained it made Misty think she’d blown everything out of proportion. It made her wonder why she couldn’t enjoy being a wolf for a little while longer before moving on. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Just no more fires, okay?”

  “God, no. I’ve been coughing all day. When I took a shower, I swear, the water turned gray.”

  The lights of Birmingham swirled in Daniel’s eyes like pinprick galaxies. Laughing, Misty could just glimpse herself there, reflected against the depthless green.

  They decided to prowl. Gathering Amanita muscaria behind the casting shed, Daniel thought about what Misty had said. Their attack on the school had frightened her, how vicious it had turned, and how quickly. It frightened Daniel, too. He’d wanted to get the kind of revenge he never could in human skin, but if Eric had been arrested, he might have dragged them all down with him. Daniel could never have gone to Cornell then.

  He was glad Misty wanted to move on, ready to be more than a wolf on the fringes of civilization. After graduation, she would travel to distant places and fight fires instead of start them. Daniel would head off to the bluestone towers of Cornell. The others would find their own places in the world.

  No more arson, but Daniel couldn’t bear to give up racing through
the city, drinking in the night, until he absolutely had to. He, none of them, would ever be this free again.

  He felt bad for promising Misty, once again, that he was going to Europe with her. But then, Marc turned up the music. They started to dance and scream, and once again, the rot-eater god’s ritual washed away all memory and guilt.

  CHAPTER 16

  “I want to make this clear. This is your school. When somebody trashes it, they’re trashing you.”

  First thing Monday morning, homeroom teachers herded their students to an assembly. Mrs. Wainwright, the principal, spoke from the podium. Two glowering police officers stood to her left. Mr. Fine and some guy in a brown suit stood to her right.

  “Hey, guess who’s in ISS. Claire Rollins.” Misty should have been sitting with the ISS students. As traffic bottlenecked at the auditorium doors, though, she’d let herself get lost in the muddle and sat next to Daniel.

  “What did she do?” Enjoying this unsanctioned time together, Daniel cuddled with her the best he could with the metal armrest between them.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to try to find out.”

  “We know some of the people in this auditorium were involved. We don’t suspect; we know,” Mrs. Wainwright continued. “And I promise you, everybody involved will be arrested soon.”

  Val sat on Misty’s other side. “I bet Claire missed a spot when she was polishing Mrs. Turner’s shoes.”

  Misty laughed into her fist. “Or forgot to change the batteries in her vibrator.”

  “Ew. You’re sick.”

  “You know what it was? I bet—”

  Mr. Nguyen appeared behind them. “You need to listen to this. All of you.” He pulled Daniel’s arm off Misty’s shoulders, then vanished again. The pack straightened up a little in their seats.

  “This is a zero-tolerance situation. If you were involved, we’re going to find out. If you helped, we’re going to find out. If you think you might have something to tell us, there’s a very narrow window of opportunity for you to come to me or Mr. Fine and clear the air.”