by Kathy Lyons
Laddin had no idea if it was intentional or not, but the word probe exploded in his mind and tightened areas of his body into hard knots of terror.
“Much better,” the alien said as he turned toward Wiz. “You may finish now.”
Wiz did. His voice rose with an impressive crescendo while his free hand danced in the air. Then there was a boom. Not an audible boom but a vibration that affected Laddin more than the biggest car explosion he’d ever pulled off.
His muscles quivered and his bones rattled with the power of it. His throat closed off and his shoulders hunched. But inside, he was still caught up in Grandmama’s prediction. Finally, the batty old woman had been proven right, and that made him happy. She may have plagued his childhood with one wacky idea after another, but in this, she was 100 percent right.
“Do not be so calm,” the alien warbled. “Otherwise you will die.”
The line was so stupid that it actually made Laddin loosen up even more. His cells were bathed in an electric current that was almost fun as it coursed through his body in erratic and uncertain patterns. But before he could fully relax, a sound filled the room—a guttural roar like that of a beast. It was harsh and terrified, but the fury in the roar spiked Laddin’s adrenaline. That was the sound of a creature about to attack. And from the depth of the noise, he knew it wasn’t a small animal.
In fact, it sounded like a very pissed-off wolf.
The others must have had the same thought. Wiz and Nero stared at each other in shock. The alien, however, seemed to settle more firmly into its form as he warbled.
“Much better. You will survive now.” Then he looked at the other men. “The other one will die without help.”
“What other one?” Nero demanded. Then he waved off an answer, pointing hard at Wiz. “You watch this one. Gelpack, you’re with me. At least you can get a leg ripped off without dying.”
The alien oozed toward the door. “It is hard to stabilize a werewolf while being dismembered, but I will try.”
Laddin turned to help. After all, this was his set, his workplace. But his body moved strangely. His head was tilted too far forward, and his vision was different—more side to side, less in front. His balance was off because his hands were taking weight.
He looked down and saw fur and paws, and when he gasped, his tongue was too long and his nose… mamma mia, the scents! He could smell everything! He started spinning, stumbling as he tried to maneuver. His backside was wiggling, and he kept trying to stand up to see better, but he was a wolf. He couldn’t stand like a man.
He was a wolf! The joy of that flooded his body, and he yipped in excitement. There was so much to explore. Not just his body, but everything in his office was new. Dust bunnies and spilled soda, cracker crumbs and gunpowder. He couldn’t decide what to smell first.
“Settle down!” Wiz exclaimed as he knelt down with his arms wide. “You’re going to break something! And in here, who knows what you’ll set off.”
That sank in. His office was filled with explosive charges and delicate electronics for special effects. He’d spent hours organizing things in the most logical and safe manner. The last thing he wanted was to mess that up. So he stilled, though not quite frozen. His backside was wiggling back and forth. It took him a moment to realize that it was his tail whipping around behind him. And with that knowledge came the need to see, so he twisted around to could look. But then his ass turned as well, and he was spinning like a top.
Wiz groaned. “They always have to see their tail. Hold still! I’ll grab it so you can see it. I’ve never seen a happier wolf in my life.”
There was a sharp tug on his butt, hard enough to make him yip in surprise, and then he lunged forward to bite. It wasn’t a conscious movement. Hell, nothing he did right now was conscious. It was all instinct. The more he thought about moving anything, the less he was able to do it. But he lunged and nearly took a hunk out of Wiz’s hand.
Fortunately the guy was fast. One second his hand was right there, the next it was gripping Laddin’s muzzle tight.
“There’ll be none of that!” he snapped. “But now that I’ve got you….”
Something sharp stabbed him hard in the neck. A hypodermic needle, he realized as Wiz abruptly stood holding the thing high. Laddin growled in annoyance, but Wiz just shook his head.
“You’re a new pup. We need to get you into a safe environment. Then you can chase your tail all you want.”
Lethargy was growing fast. It was becoming harder and harder to stay standing, and damn it, his head was dropping too. He whined, high-pitched and mournful, but that was all the sound he got out before he flopped onto the floor. He could see his paws spread out before him, but he couldn’t move them. And pretty soon his head lolled to the side. He tried to keep his eyes open. If nothing else, there was so much to see from this angle. And the smells….
Too late. He was going under.
But the good news still echoed through his heart, and his last conscious thoughts were joyous.
Grandmama had been right! He’d transformed into something magic! And being a werewolf was fun, fun, fun!
Chapter 2
SIX WEEKS LATER, BRUCE DISCOVERS WEREWOLVES AND FAIRIES, OH MY!
BRUCE COLLIER had been nine when his father had first told him Bruce’s uncle and younger brother, Josh, were monsters. He’d laughed because he was nine, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that his father was serious. The older man had shown him police images of bodies ripped apart, blood everywhere, and a black-and-white TV covered in gore. That was the impression that had burned into his nine-year-old brain. An old TV, front and center in a family living room, just like where he and his brother and sister often sat and played video games. It was smashed and covered in things that made his stomach lurch.
“Your uncle did that, and Josh carries the same curse. It’s buried right now and we’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to keep him weak and frightened so it never comes out.” Then his father squatted down so that they were eye to eye. When he spoke, Bruce could smell the acrid scent of whiskey and tobacco on his father’s breath. “But if something goes wrong, if Josh does change, then I’m going to need you to protect your mother and sister. I’ll take care of Josh, but you need to be strong enough to fight for them. Can you do that? Can you fight for your mother and sister?”
Bruce nodded because that was what a boy did when his father asked such things. And that was also when the lessons in violence began. His father punched him, and he learned to punch back. His father shoved his face into furniture, and he learned to grab whatever was at hand to hit him back. His father beat him, grappled with him… and ultimately lost to him. But only after years of daily battle out in the back shed where no one—especially not Josh—could see them.
And every day his father would point out how the beatings helped him. He was strong and could punch like a Mack Truck. That made him a valuable member of the football team. He watched people carefully for signs of evil and created a strong pack of loyal friends. That served him well as a college quarterback. He learned to protect his mother and sister against any foes—even though no enemy ever appeared—and that was what drove him to firefighting.
All good things.
Except now that he was a mature man heading toward thirty, he realized he’d been a brute to his little brother. His pack of loyal friends in high school were more a gang of thugs than harmless kids hanging out after school. And though he had saved lives as a fire medic—a firefighter/EMT—he had never once seen signs of evil in his little brother.
Until today.
Today, when Josh had shown up unexpectedly at their parents’ house for Sunday dinner. He’d buffed out and had a handler, who was definitely spouting bullshit. Josh had not been in a hospital, as his parents had been told. And he certainly hadn’t been recuperating from stress, as that huge asshole Nero had said. No, his little brother was clearly still under enormous stress, and it was breaking him. Hell, he’d even blurted out that he was
gay in an attempt to turn the conversation away from where he’d disappeared to for the past six weeks.
That alone had been bad enough, but then Josh demanded his father make a weird outfit out of Volcax—a heat-resistant fabric so secret Josh could be jailed for having it without approval from the Pentagon.
Bruce had no idea why his father agreed to make the clothing for his brother, but he understood the hard look his dad gave him on the way out the door. It said, without words, that Bruce was to protect his mother and sister. That his father was going to take care of Josh, one way or another.
That might have worked on Bruce if he’d still been nine years old. Only he wasn’t. He was twenty-nine, a firefighter, and old enough to decide for himself if his brother was evil.
Besides, his sister was just back from deployment with the Army. She had way more combat training than he did. So for the first time in his life, he decided to protect his brother instead.
He followed them. He saw Josh and his father go into the warehouse, presumably to make whatever weird outfit Josh needed. Bruce snuck in and waited, listening to their conversation and hoping to get Josh alone. It never happened.
Then he followed Josh to a hotel where Nero was waiting. He tried to catch his brother, but Josh went straight to Nero’s room while Bruce was still parking his car. Stupid, stupid. He was a firefighter, damn it, not a cop. What the hell did he know about deprograming someone from a cult? He’d been trying the gentle approach. He wanted to talk to his brother as a friend. Now he was thinking about busting in and abducting the guy. But given his brother’s new size, Bruce wasn’t sure he could take him unwillingly, and he didn’t think Nero would let Josh escape without a fight.
Which left him sitting in the hotel parking lot and fuming at his own incompetence.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” a voice abruptly said from his right. “You’re trying to be a good guy for the first time in your life, but you haven’t the foggiest idea how. I can relate.”
Bruce spun in his seat, fumbling as he grabbed for the heavy flashlight that he kept close. It was his only weapon against the… ventriloquist dummy? Circus clown? Weird short guy covered in leafy greens who suddenly sat in his front seat. The guy had bright eyes and a hard cut to his jaw… and was also about three feet tall and wearing curly elf shoes on his tiny feet.
“How did you get in my car?” Bruce demanded. The question wasn’t at the top of his list of worries, but somehow it was the first stupid thing that came out.
The small person’s brows rose and lowered in an obvious taunt. “Figure out who I am and that’ll answer all your questions.” His voice was musical and laced with humor. And as Bruce stared, his hair turned from spinach green to tomato red. Oh shit. He was hallucinating! He always knew the chemicals in his father’s factories would fuck with his brain eventually.
Bruce looked around frantically, half searching for any other threats, half checking to see if his vision had gone wonky everywhere.
Nope. Everything looked just the same in this brightly lit parking lot. Everything except the hallucination sitting in his front seat. Only this didn’t seem like a hallucination so much as a clown dream gone bad.
“Okay,” he said, faking calm as best he could. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Jonas Bitterroot, and I’m the fairy indirectly responsible for your brother’s situation.”
“And what situation is that?”
“He’s a werewolf, and he’s about to risk his life trying to kill a demon. Only it’s the wrong timeline for him, even though it’s right for Nero.”
Not one single word of that made sense, except maybe one. “Werewolf.” His father had never explained the evil curse that was inside Josh. Not even when Bruce had been a stubborn teen who’d demanded real training in a dojo and not the daily beatings his father had given him. But he remembered his dad often saying, “Pretend you’re fighting a werewolf, a bigass dog with smarts. How would you defeat that?” Not once had he said vampire or ghoul or creature from the black lagoon. It was always a werewolf, and then he’d show Bruce those police photos again. The one with the claw and teeth marks through the bodies.
“You already knew,” the hallucination said with a smirk. “If you know that, then it’s a short, obvious hop to what I am.” He grinned as he wiggled his curly toed shoes.
“Bullshit,” Bruce fumed. “My brother is not a werewolf, and you aren’t some demented Christmas elf.”
“Elf!” the guy cried as he straightened up to his full half-pint size. “I am a fairy prince, and the only reason I look like this is because you lack imagination. This is the only image of a fae that exists in your limited thoughts, and so here I am.” He gestured disdainfully at himself. “And wearing salad!” He pulled off a leaf and chomped on it with an angry grumble. “Did you get hit with a head of lettuce when you were a kid or something? Who dresses like this? Even in your imagination?”
That’s when Bruce remembered the Christmas decorations at his mother’s favorite restaurant. Every year they put elves in the salad bar. His sister had thought they were adorable, especially the ones wearing leaves for clothing and fake cherry tomatoes for hats. He looked at the so-called prince beside him and yes, his hair did indeed look like half a cherry tomato.
“This isn’t real,” he said out loud. “I’ve hit my head. I’m dreaming. I’m—”
“You’re a moron, that’s what you are.” The elf dropped his head back against the seat. “My mother told me to stay away from humans. They’re all stupid and have rigid minds. They self-destruct and take everything else with them. But even she said they make really good ale. So I had to find out. One day I went to a human bar, and sure enough, the ale was spectacular. But then a bar fight erupted, all because I started gifting the idiots with better looks according to their imagination. Was it my fault one of them was a Shakespeare scholar? One donkey head later, and suddenly I was about to die. Nero saved my life, and wham, now I’m stuck in a cheap car wearing iceberg lettuce with big brother Bozo beside me.”
If this was a hallucination, it was damned persistent. Bruce tried to ride it out. He tried to count his breaths, calm his heart rate, silence his thoughts—all that meditation stuff that did absolutely no good at all. The fairy prince was still there when he finished counting to ten.
He sighed. “What do you want from me?”
“What do I want?” the fairy taunted. “I want this thing to be over. I’m tired of you mortals screwing up every plan I make.” He leaned in close enough that Bruce could see the bright red radicchio leaves that made up his undershirt. “And I want you to pay for the problems you’ve caused me.” The threat was delivered in a chilling way that would have been terrifying… if it hadn’t been said by a salad elf.
Bruce rolled his eyes, pretending to be unimpressed when, in fact, he was completely freaked-out. “You get that line out of a bad movie?”
The fairy held his gaze for a moment, then another, but Bruce was an old hand at intimidation games. This didn’t faze him in the least. In the end, the hallucination broke first. He sighed and held up an old dime novel. “Wisconsin short story. Author never made it big except locally, and now his creation is eating up the entire state.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Either start making sense or get out of my car.”
The fairy glared at him in disgust. “Have you heard about the big black hole in Wisconsin that used to be a lake? It’s expanding into a death zone that will kill the planet in a matter of months. Any of that sound familiar?”
Of course it did. It had filled the news for weeks now. But what did that have to do with him or his brother?
The fairy tucked the book away beneath the layers of lettuce. “That’s what your brother and Nero are trying to fight—a demon created in a bad short story that became legendary enough to end the world. Don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense. You mortals create all sorts of nonsense, not us. We just….” He wiggled his fingers at Bruce’s face, and his skin suddenly
felt like it had seven pounds of makeup on it. “Play with what you imagine.”
“Get this shit off my face,” Bruce growled. He didn’t want to look in the mirror, but he couldn’t help himself. Hell. Now he was a salad elf too, and his face was made up of sunflower seeds.
“Why should I?” the fairy taunted.
Bruce couldn’t think of a damned reason, so he gripped the steering wheel tight in celery-stalk hands and tried to tell himself he’d simply have to ride out the hallucination.
“This is real,” the elf said.
“You’re a real ass, you know that?”
“And you’re so jealous of your brother, you don’t know a fairy gift when it’s being offered to you.”
Bruce’s eyes shot open. “What the hell are you talking about?” Then he saw it—bright red and on his dash. A glowing cherry. It appeared to be a normal piece of fruit, the kind he’d find in any grocery store, but he knew it wasn’t. He could see how much it wasn’t. It was too perfect, it glowed with unearthly light, and most telling? He wanted it like he’d never wanted anything before in his life.
“You want what your brother has?” the elf said. “Eat that.”
“Hell no. You think I’d touch anything from you?”
The fairy snapped his fingers, and suddenly everything was normal again. Bruce wore the same clothes as before, his face was made of flesh, not sunflower seeds, and even his reflection showed the normal bags under his eyes. Everything was the same… except for the salad fairy sitting beside him and the glowing cherry on his dash.
“Your brother has found his power.”
“Says you.”
“Says him, if you bothered to ask.”
He had tried, in a roundabout kind of way. He’d invited his brother out for a beer, said they should catch up. He’d extended an olive branch, and it might have worked if that asshole of a handler hadn’t whisked him away.
“Stop being jealous of him. Eat that and find what he has.”