Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  It was incredible. Envy knotted up my guts. Throwback? No fucking way. This is what the rest of us should have been, not this fucked-up halfway house, neither human nor animal, just wholly a monster. I realized I’d started to change again, and I snarled aloud as I let it take me.

  Silke turned her head to the moon and howled.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Christoph turned to face me. His face looked like it’d been filmed in black-and-white. If it hadn’t been for the scars, the resemblance to some old-time movie star would have been complete. Even with them, though, he didn’t look so bad to my altered eyesight. Like they were just marks, not scars, you know? Like he’d had them tattooed on, or something. Okay, they didn’t exactly make him look any better, but somehow they didn’t make him look any worse, either. They were just there.

  He smiled, like he knew what I’d been thinking.

  I looked away, embarrassed, as his face morphed. Then I looked back, curious. His scars didn’t disappear, like I’d half thought they would—instead, they changed shape as his face did, stretching with his skin. I wondered if it hurt. I figured it must have—they still looked raw and angry when he was done changing. Like the half-healed wounds they were.

  I found myself rubbing my shoulder with a paw. How come my bite wound had healed so quickly but the claw marks on Christoph’s face were taking so much longer? Was it something to do with him being in the cage? Or had Schreiber done something to make them heal worse? Say, dipped his claws in silver nitrate, or silver plated them like that goddamn cage, or whatever the hell psycho werewolves did whenever they wanted to make a point? There was an herb or something called wolf’s bane, wasn’t there? Maybe, like the silver, that wasn’t just an old wives' tale. Had Schreiber used that on him?

  Shit. Should I have gotten Christoph to a doctor? Maybe something could have been done to minimize the scarring, although I was damned if I knew what. Wasn’t it already too late after they’d started to heal?

  I didn’t know, and I figured now wasn't the time to ask. I wondered if later on, when he’d healed, he’d just have lines of white fur over his muzzle to show where the scars were. I hoped so. Christoph stared at me, tongue lolling, for a moment. I wished like hell I knew what he was thinking. Then he jerked his head at me, and ran off into the darkness, the moonlight on his back now gleaming on sleek grey fur, not tanned skin.

  I followed, a silver-white wolf bounding easily by my side. I sniffed the air—it was full of the smells of the city, with exhaust fumes almost overpowering, but I could still make out the clean, fresh scent of water underneath it all. We were heading for the lake.

  Part of me was thinking, this is crazy. We were in a city park—they’re never deserted, not even at ass o’clock on a weekday morning. There’d be homeless guys, drunks sleeping it off. Gay guys who’d hooked up, and those too desperate or stubborn to accept they wouldn’t be getting lucky tonight. People who’d been out partying all night and were killing time until the first train home. Maybe not so many of them, though. City parks at night are scary places, full of scary people.

  Nobody scarier than us, I figured. Although we weren’t exactly people. Not anymore.

  If there was anyone else around, they must have had Special Ops training. I didn’t see a soul—didn’t even smell anyone, although I was getting more and more distracted the closer we got to the lake. I had a flashback to the night when I’d first met Christoph, and I’d sat in his car shedding feathers. What did you get, duck or goose? I could smell both of them up ahead, not far from us now. I started to salivate.

  We hit the lakeside like a SWAT team. The waterfowl were roosting on the banks, laid out like a fucking smorgasbord. Shit, hadn’t anyone ever told them about foxes? I wondered what a fox would taste like, and swore to myself I’d find out one day.

  Maybe not one that lived in the city and ate out of garbage cans, though.

  Geese were honking, ducks quacking like the apocalypse was kicking off. Hell, I guess for them, it was. I saw Silke pounce on a goose, snapping its neck with her jaws, and I drooled reflexively. Christoph’s muzzle was dark with blood already. I realized I was wasting time here. I lunged into the melee, seizing a duck as it waddled in panic, too stupid to fly away. Killed it with a bite to the neck. The first taste of it sent me wild, and I tore at it with my fangs, biting through the feathers, through the skin to the sweet, juicy, fatty meat beneath. The warm flesh slid down my throat like manna from heaven.

  I didn’t look up again until all that was left was bits of wing and a cloud of feathers. Christoph was crouching down, wiping his muzzle with one hairy arm. I couldn’t see Silke anywhere, so I figured she must have chased something into the trees. All the birds had gone from the lake shore. It was just us.

  The hunt was over, but my heart was still racing. My belly was full, but I was hungrier than I’d ever been in my life.

  I took a step toward Christoph. He stood up slowly. The moonlight gilded his form, showing its muscular contours, the subtly nonhuman shape of his chest, his limbs. His strength radiated out, almost burning me, yet I wanted more. As I took another step, he gave a low growl. His teeth gleamed white as he bared them, and his clawed hands hung ready by his side. My head was telling me to stop, but my feet weren’t listening. I fought the urge to bow my head and looked Christoph in the eye. He snarled. My throat felt naked, exposed, and I grasped at memories of him biting me back in another life, but they slipped through my mind like blood through a wolf’s jaws.

  I needed him. To fuck me or fight me, I didn’t have a clue which. Maybe it was all the same, anyhow.

  I took another step—and then Silke bounded out of the trees, a limp carcass in her mouth.

  I swallowed, the mood broken. Christoph stretched out a paw toward her, and she padded up to him, laying the dead bird at his feet. It was a swan, which seemed kind of fitting at the time, although when I thought about it later, I was damned if I could say why. He petted her on the head and neck.

  Then he knelt down beside the carcass and ripped it open with his claws. He shoved a paw inside its body, and it came out clutching something I realized must be the swan’s heart. I stepped forward again, but he offered it to Silke. She gulped it down as a pain burst in my chest, and for a moment I felt more alone than I ever had in my life.

  Christoph straightened again and jerked his head over in the direction of the zoo.

  Right. Time to go. I swallowed my pain and went toward him, my tongue lolling, still tasting blood and meat and feathers on the air. As I glanced down, I saw my pants were covered in feathers, especially around the knee where they’d gotten damp. I brushed at them with my paws. A memory of the night I’d met Christoph socked me in the gut and winded me for a second. What did you get? he’d asked, seeing me covered in feathers. Huh. If he’d realized the truth a little earlier, how different would both our lives be now? He’d have dropped me off in Charlottenburg, and maybe he’d have come up to my room at the hostel and maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d have disappeared afterward anyhow. He’d have gone back to his house by the Wannsee, maybe lain low for a while longer, and taken out Schreiber when the time was right.

  Or died trying, I guessed. And I’d never have known, either way.

  Somehow, despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to wish it had happened that way.

  I looked up to see Christoph staring at me with something like hunger in his eyes. Spooked, I took a step backward without meaning to. He broke eye contact and ducked his head briefly, and my heartbeat slowed to something approaching normal. Then he changed back to human form, and the sight of him bare-chested ratcheted my pulse right up again. “We should clean up in the lake,” he said. “And you should change form before we go.”

  I realized I was still staring at him with my tongue hanging out, and managed my quickest change yet before making a dash for the lake to hide my embarrassment.

  We did our best, but there’s only so much you can do with brackish lake water that’s
thick with algae, feathers and bird shit. We sure as hell didn’t smell any better afterward. Christoph grabbed his shirt and slung it on loosely, so I did the same. I was fairly sure we wouldn’t be the only half-dressed guys wandering around the park tonight anyhow. I was about to grab Silke’s clothes for her, but Christoph stopped me with a touch to my arm. “Leave it. We’ll come back.”

  So she’d be staying in wolf form for the duration, then, I guessed. Maybe the change wasn’t so easy for her? It’d looked kind of painful. Maybe we had the advantage there, but it seemed a poor trade to me—an easier transformation against the ability to change into a real wolf.

  We got into the zoo by crossing the footbridge over the river and climbing over the perimeter fence—at least, Christoph and I did. Silke just backed up and took a run at it, ending with a fucking awesome leap. She looked like she was flying, and God, I hated the thing I was while I watched her.

  “Come on,” Christoph urged me, and we scaled the iron railings together in human form. As we reached the top, he paused. “Change before you drop to the ground. Your wolf form will absorb the impact better.”

  I did as he’d asked, hoping like hell he was right. Funny how high fences always seem so much bigger on the way down than on the way up. We landed on the footpath near the camel enclosure, which they didn’t seem too happy about, waking up with a jerk and scrambling to get away.

  A zoo at night is an eerie place, although I guess we weren’t improving it any. I don’t like to think what the hell we must have looked like, two bloodstained freaks wandering around with their pet wolf. The place was full of faint animal calls and strange rustlings. Like walking on a concrete track into the jungle. And God, the smell of it. The air was so full of the mingled scents of all those animals crammed in tight, it was like wading through soup.

  No wonder Christoph had made sure we’d eaten before we came.

  The animals seemed to find us plenty interesting. The herbivores—prey, my wolf-brain reminded me—scattered while the other predators prowled restlessly, promising us a messy death if we were stupid enough to invade their enclosures. Although I’d be willing to bet we’d give them a run for their money. The apes went—hell, apeshit, throwing themselves against the front of the enclosures and whooping at us. We had to back out of there real fast before security came over to see what the hell was going on.

  And then we got to the wolf enclosure, and I figured out what Christoph had meant about this being good for Silke. She was a wolf—and wolves are pack animals, right? She had to be feeling the lack of her own kind like a missing limb.

  At first, there was nothing to see. I realized I didn’t have a clue what real wolves did at night. Would it hold true in a place like this anyhow? They didn’t have any hunting to do, so would they be sleeping? Prowling? Fucking?

  My answer came as Silke sniffed sharply, her ears pricked and alert. Somehow I knew just where to look for the wolf that slinked out of the shadows to stare at us from behind that double fence. Silke padded up to the outer fence and poked her nose through, sniffing. The wolf on the inside did the same, like this was some animal equivalent of a prison visit. It’s always struck me as fucked up how you can see your loved ones but you can’t damn well touch them. Like an open casket at a wake where you’re so close to the person you love it hurts, knowing you’re forever separated yet seeing them here with you—but not with you. I thought about giving Silke a boost over the fence, but I figured she wouldn’t thank me if the real wolf bit her nose off.

  After a while, it bounded back to its pack, leaving Silke standing there alone. I wondered if I should pet her—then wondered where the hell that had come from.

  Something caught my eyes, and I froze. I grabbed Christoph by the arm and dragged him back from the fence, my claws sinking in a little. He snarled as he turned to me but broke into a run anyhow as I urged him along. I pulled him into a pool of blackness behind the reptile house, struggling to change back to human as fast as I could. Christoph changed easily, the bastard. He stood there, his broad chest rising and falling softly from the exertion, while he waited for me to follow.

  “CCTV,” I panted, when I could speak again. Silke had bounded after us and was snuffling around Christoph, ears pricked.

  “I know.” Christoph’s tone was calm and somehow sad.

  What the hell? “You knew?”

  “I told you we were coming here for Silke.” He scratched her behind the ears, and she nuzzled into him. I wondered how much she understood—did the wolf brain process human speech? “I’ve been here before.”

  “And?”

  “The security here is run by a wolf pack. Full wolves, not wolfmen.” Christoph crouched down to encircle Silke with his arms, burying his face briefly in her neck ruff. “It’s time she was with her own kind.”

  “Fuck, Christoph—does she know about this? Did you even ask her if it was what she wanted?” Shit, only a half hour ago I’d thought… He bared his teeth, but I was damned if I was going to back down. “What the hell gives you the right to just hand her over to a pack of fucking animals?”

  “She needs protection.”

  “And you just don’t give enough of a damn to provide it, is that it? Getting tired of playing nursemaid, were you?” It was just like when Ben died, and my parents sent me to a fucking therapist so they wouldn’t have to deal with my grief firsthand. “Shit, Christoph, why the hell didn’t you just leave her with her father?” Halfway through, my teeth lengthened, and I snagged my tongue on a fucking fang, which didn’t improve my mood any.

  “I’m doing this for her!” Christoph snapped. “You’ve seen the sort of life she had with Schreiber! At least she’ll be safe with them.”

  Silke whined. I put my hand out blindly to pet her as I fought back the change. “Yeah? But just what the hell do you think these guys are going to do to us? And okay, maybe I’m relying on Schreiber having told us the truth here, but I have a feeling that bit about the real werewolves hating us was the one thing he wasn’t lying about!”

  Christoph snarled at me, and it hit me that maybe, just maybe, antagonizing the one guy who was nominally on my side here wasn’t the best thing I could have done. Then a light flashed blindingly. I jumped back, trying to blink the colored blobs out of my vision.

  A mocking voice cut through the silence. “You’d better make up your mind, Halbmensch. Are we real werewolves, or animals?”

  Chapter Eleven

  I bristled. Literally.

  I heard a low growl come from the direction of the voice—had the guy changed? No. As my vision cleared, I saw there were two of them—one human, the asshole with the flashlight, and one wolf. Damn, it was big. Silke whimpered, crouched low beside me. A snarl came out of my throat, and the wolf’s muscles bunched like it was about to spring.

  “Leon!” Christoph snapped, and my hackles subsided, although it pissed me the hell off that he thought he could order me around like that. He stepped forward, hands held wide, into a patch of moonlight. The guy with the flashlight tensed at the sight of him but didn’t move. “This is Silke,” Christoph said, not taking his eyes off the werewolves. “She needs to belong to a pack. If she goes with you, will you guarantee she will be well treated?”

  Wait a goddamn minute, I wanted to say. But my throat seemed to have closed up.

  Flashlight Guy nodded. “Better than your pack has treated you, I think.” Hell, he wasn’t wrong there.

  Silke whined, and Christoph crouched with his arms around her again. His gaze was still fixed on Flashlight Guy and Lassie. “Silke, it’s for the best. They’ll teach you not to be ashamed of what you are.”

  The strange wolf padded forward, tail up. It stopped a few feet away.

  “Go to him,” Christoph said, releasing her. Silke whined again, then slunk forward, tail low.

  “What’s her history?” Flashlight Guy asked. He was a big brute of a man, but he looked like he’d be worryingly light on his feet.

  “Her father is like u
s,” Christoph told him. “I believe her mother was one of you, but I never met her.” Hell, that was news to me. I’d have thought Schreiber wouldn’t touch a full werewolf if she was the last bitch on earth.

  The two wolves were sniffing each other out. “Why don’t they change back to people?” I asked. I mean, hell, she could actually talk to these guys then. Although I guess they’d all be naked, which might not make for the easiest of conversations on her part.

  Flashlight Guy kind of snorted, like it was the stupidest question he’d heard all night, and my skin started to itch. I clamped my teeth shut to try to stop them from getting any funny ideas about turning into fangs.

  Christoph answered me softly. “The change can be painful for the full wolves. Not something to be done lightly. And I think there are other reasons. Social reasons.”

  “You’ve done your homework,” Flashlight Guy said neutrally.

  “How come it hurts for them and not for us?” I asked. Not that I had a problem with any lack of pain on my part.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Christoph murmured. By which I guess he meant, not in front of these guys.

  Flashlight Guy must have been listening in. “Pain is natural. Children suffer growing pains. Childbirth is the most painful process most women ever go through.” Like he’d been a mommy in a previous life or something. “When doctors intervene, they try to take away the pain. As if pain is not part of life. Natural life.”

  “Let me guess,” I said to Christoph out of the corner of my mouth. “He’s one of those guys who stubs out cigarettes in the palm of his hand to prove how goddamn manly he is.”

  “I could try it with you, Halbmensch,” Flashlight Guy said mockingly. “Let’s see how manly you are, shall we?”

  Christoph growled. I was breathing hard, and my claws were out. “Enough with the fucking insults already!” I snarled.